Guild Wars 2

nethykins.7986:

Neriandal Freit.2810:

• Scarlet Briar –
A hot topic it seems on here. I LOVE HER CHARACTER and I’m not sure why others don’t.

Others have stated why they don’t like her character…some in extensive detail. It would be good to hear a reason why you think her character is good?
(Besides from just saying “I like it”)

Scarlet makes me laugh. That’s not entirely due to writing, at least some of that is Tara Strong, but I find myself giggling pretty regularly.

I like the concept that she knows things we don’t know. Hey, she knows things that she probably shouldn’t know.

I also recognize that, contrary to what people here have said, she’s not an expert in everything. She’s more of a jack-of-all-trades, learning bits and pieces from lots of places and putting that information together. (You’d have to listen to one of the interviews the writers did to pick up that info, though, it’s not immediately obvious from the game/short story.)

Mostly, I like her because she’s a different villain from the ones we’ve had in game so far.

I got a little question here, since i am here mostly for the story.

The LS somehow died for me, after we got Scarlet (as i mentioned before) revealed, because let`s face it.. it wasn`t done well and everything after it felt like trying to save your hides, instead of saying outright that you made (maybe) a mistake.

My question is: how much does certain mechanics or implementations of the developement team impact the direction of the story?

I remember an interview where it was stated that the only reason we got these long (in my opinion stupid) invasions only to see how far people would go for their loot.

it was a case study, however it totally destoryed the impact of the story and made scarlet and her “army” into nothing more then piniatas, to a point that she cant be taken seriously anymore (also possible “roles” of alliances inside an army are lost).
Furthermore we got “useless?” implementation of elements, just for the heck of it? Best example were the watchknights which appeared out of nothing and were only there so Scarlet can courupt them.
I would relly like an answer here…

To further the discusion here:
- Archievements don`t deserve the name, since they are inded nothing more then a “kill ten rats” quest mostly. A big no go is gating the story behind it. I rather prefer a steady flow like at the beginning, where every week a new step was released, but with the chance to do them all to a certain cut off date.

Furthermore, these scavanger hunts we get recently are kinda pointless, since they are not integrated in the story in a meaningfull way.
n a TV series if the heroes go after several mcguffins they have always an adventure or get more exposition.
Right now it is just some brainless running around. The first scavanger hunt was great (last helloween), every step revealed something new about what was happening. it was`t just a check list.

In a TV show we have a consitent cast we follow through an adventure. We discover the plot alongside them.
Right now the cast is unsteady. Thanks to the releaseshedule and the amount of storycontent we have no real idea.
We know about Rox and Breham. Kiel is “gone” thanks to our vote and now we got Majory and Kashmeer.
Other then that we just have reocouring character, who most people quickly forget.

In the game we should actually be the “maincharacter” who discovers everything, however we are not. This has several reasonsons, mostly narative consitency.

The “Maincharacter” actually influences the Story. This means he is allowed some choice. He can make mistakes, or right decisions. Or he can decide who he can go to, to advance the story.

In the LS we are only on a rail. There are no different direction we can choose inside each segment.
Which is understandable, since it should be consitent, but then we got the problem with the lenght.
The story for a “month” split in two releases is just too short and over far to quickly.
We are not able to build a conection to characters, situation or anything, because not only the content is short, but there are no repurcations…

Hi everybody,

I wanted to post again today to clarify what I was trying to say yesterday.

Some folks have pointed out that I mischaracterized some player opinion, and/or made generalizations about statistics. I acknowledge that and apologize.

So let me try to say something simpler to make my point:

I implore ArenaNet to consider two groups of players, and do the best they can with all the internal metrics they have to measure how we feel about the game:

Group 1. The players represented by most of the posters in this thread, who have been largely intelligent, articulate, and respectful in listing their concerns with the Living World.

Group 2. The tens of thousands – or possibly hundreds of thousands – of players who are silent in this thread. And to consider a few things that come to my mind as to why they are silent:

- They’ve read your thoughts and agree with you and don’t feel the need to add to the conversation

- They might have something to say but are too timid to post, or don’t think that what they have to say will be considered

- Some players simply don’t know there is a place for us to come and talk about the game together

- They like the game the way it is and feel no need to add to the discussion

I’m not going to reiterate my own personal preference, but just ask again that everyone keep an open mind and think about all of the players (who quite outnumber us forum posters) who have been silent, and think about why they aren’t saying anything.

It’s easy to think that the entirety of opinion is swirling within these 15 pages, but consider that 3 million copies of the game have been sold. Even if you count out the folks who’ve stopped playing or shouldn’t be counted for whatever reason, that’s still a lot of people whose voices we haven’t heard chime in here. I ask you to consider – why?

Just another thing to think about: I wanted to list the number of pages of length on the Living Story topic in other languages, and link to them so you can go see for yourself:

German – 3 pages: https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gemeinsame-Entwicklung-Euer-Thema-Lebendige-Geschichte

French – 2 pages: https://forum-fr.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/game/D-veloppement-collaboratif-Monde-Vivant

Spanish – only 1 page! https://forum-es.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/game/Tema-de-desarrollo-colaborativo-Mundo-viviente

So what does all that mean? German, French, and Spanish players have less to complain about that American, Canadian, Brit, Irish, Aussie, and Kiwi players?

I have no idea. And none of us have access to ArenaNet’s internal metrics, statistics, and polling.

TL:DR Please keep an open mind. There are thousands upon thousands of players worldwide whose voices are silent in these pages and we should ask ourselves why that is.

Thanks guys!
Matt

Edit: now 16 pages

I made a thread about what I envision a World Event to be. Developers please read this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Future-World-Events-Need-your-input

Temp vs. Permanent conten
As for temporary vs. permanent content, both have their own purpose. Temporary content should be used for creating the experience of a living world. Permanent content should be used to tell the story. To give an example of this, I will be using ,part of a previous post of mine, especially the ‘Living’ part.

The part describing the events clearly is the ‘experience’ part, something that is temporary content. However, the event leading up to these events would be a mission going out exploring the map, searching for a suitable place to set up the outpost, introducing the local inhabitants etc. A mission* like this can tell the story and should really be permanent content. This way, players who come later can still get the story and the experience of discovering something new (make playing the instance mandatory, like the second part of entering the Crown Pavilion during Queen’s Jubilee). They will miss the large events, but at least there will no holes in the story.

Zerging
As for the current content usually ending in a large zerg: reward players for playing in smaller groups. Again using the same part of my previous post, the mentioned escort events could be split up in small (2-3 players), medium(5-10) and large (20+) escorts, each having their own paths. Having a timer till when each escort will start from the staging area and having them start every few minutes, will enable players to choose the group in which they play. As all successful escort will contribute to the main goal, splitting up in smaller groups will actually get a reasonable and logical alternative for zerg-play.

*I call them missions, as that is what I would like the instances to become. Right now, instances are usually pretty small and lack a feel of progression. Having more GW1-mission like instances, where you actually explore areas you haven’t seen before, having to actually search for a way to get to your objective and maybe take 5 wrong turns and where you eventually end up in an actual new place would really make the instances much more of a rewarding experience for me.

I imagine this post will be lost amongst the crowd, but I did just want to thank you all for taking the time to craft a story as the game’s PvE progression versus a mindless gear grind that most other MMOs seem to focus on.

There are many times over the past 14 months or so that I’ve wished that we’d have the static campaigns of Guild Wars 1 back, with timed trials through Hard Mode. But the problem with that game (and other expansion-based titles) is that you eventually reach the point where you’ve done everything that you can.

A lot of RPGs counter this problem by instilling a gear treadmill instead a la large-scale raiding. What it always boils down to in the end, though, is a bunch of high level geared characters that have nothing to fight with their high level gear. It’s always been a massive conundrum amongst RPGs. The core experience of leveling up your character and gearing him out is so much fun, but the game always seems to end about the point in which your character is most powerful. You weren’t able to have your cake and eat it to, so to speak.

I like that the Living Story has managed to avoid this trap by making plot the progression of PvE. And I love that I always can look forward to new stuff to do every two weeks, even after I’ve fully geared out all my 80s with Ascended stuff.

I love how you guys have crafted the Living Story as a scaffold, because it feels like a more sincere compromise between story progression and loot progression. You still get the chance to obtain high-level, epic gear, but you continue to push out content at a regular pace that allows you to similarly experience content showing off your character.

I apologize if this wasn’t as serious a critique of your Living Story that you were more perhaps looking for, but I just wanted to let you know that some of us “get it” and are fully behind the design philosophy you have in mind for the Living Story, even if it hasn’t matched all of my expectations to this point. I think framing it as a television show is a really good way to place it, ideally because we always reach the point in watching our favorites that we don’t truly ever want it to end.

Over the last few days, I’ve managed to read through every post here so far. A lot of interesting ideas and criticism, much of which is echoed very strongly by the majority of the posters here.

So, GW2 players (on this forum) really want to see the waiving of the “2 week release” policy in favor of a more “it’s ready when it’s ready” approach. Another strong point I saw was a push for the inclusion of an IN GAME lore vehicle. Players also want achievements to be either more meaningful, or at least less grind-y. Of course there is the issue of Scarlet Briar as well…

I’m going to go another direction with this. Many of you have hit great points and I won’t try to re-state them. I want to talk about the ToN LS patch and all the things it DID RIGHT!

I was poised, POISED to hate this LS patch before it even came out. I saw the purple nightmare vines and thought…“Oh no! Another alliance. When will Scarlet leave my game?” However, ToN surprised me in a few ways.
-The mini/instance intro to ToN and the characters: This was great. GW1 players will love this style of cinematic if it continues and expands past this little experiment. This was just enough exposition get me curious about ToN and Kessex hills. It introduces characters and what we’re doing there.
-The instance AND the NPCs in Kessex: This is huge! We might still hate Scarlet, sure…but there are now NPCs delivering Lore in game to those that care for this sort of thing. I think this is going to please a lot of players. Please expand on this. We get a nice setup for what we’re doing in Kessex from the little instance when you zone, and then the NPCs give more info about the Krait, the NC, Scarlet, etc… (it was cool finding out that this was just a splinter of the NC that would consider allying and not destroying the Krait)
-Story Pacing: I hope this is no coincidence; the pacing has slowed down considerably. I love that we’re going back to how F&F was handled. A slow story progression that can move forward every 2 weeks (or however long is needed for the content).

However I do hope that the grind aspect of LS can be reduced. It actually hurts the game in my opinion. So what if there “isn’t enough to do in LS”? There isn’t enough to do in PS either. The idea is that you progress the story and then can go back to dungeons, WvW, fractals, etc… Right now, a HUGE chunk of players are doing zerg trains to grind in LS content instead of fractals and dungeons.

I think enough players have hit the Scarlet point. Anet knows and hopefully they are wrapping that up. ToN is a step in the right direction though. Hopefully we can see more content develop along these lines.

Best.

I know that this has been said over and over again, but I’m saying it one more time: The story in the Living World has to make some sense with the lore that has gone before it.

You might, maybe, possibly, be able to convince me the Krait would enter into an alliance with Scarlet and the Nightmare Court for the sake of the obelisk shards, but the Krait speaking common just completely kills any smidgen of plausibility that there might have been. Krait are speaking common. Krait. Common.

This does not make the game more immersive.

C’mon guys — please, please have some respect for your own lore.

I got to agree that much of LS has turned into a grind. Everyone just grind train to get the item reward to the point that it is no longer fun.

Why an event as difficult as Teq (not really that hard, but let’s assume it is) doesn’t give a mega reward (Ascended items 100% chance) just for completion is beyond me.

Thank you for doing this, I really hope that this contributes to the game and makes it better! There are many great contributions in this thread, so I will only mention what I feel is the most important, even if it’s a bit out of place in the current state of the discussion.

Problem: The living story (stories) seems disjointed and, at least to me, completely irrelevant to the GW universe. I’m seriously missing what I was promised before launch and during the first weeks, which is the threat of the elder dragons, not to mention everything from GW1. I just can’t understand why the whole team would end up completely ditching everything they have carefully built up since the release of the first GW game in favor of Scarlet and Aetherblades. GW1 was successful for many reasons, one of them was the lore.
Solution: Draw on existing Gw1 and 2 lore. Don’t invent new random stories. Use the Mursaat. Use Palawa Joko. Glint, Ogden Stonehealer, the human gods, the Elder Dragons, the list goes on and on.
Also, the lore should be in-game, not only on webpages. I don’t mind them being there as well, but it should definitely be in the game itself, or else it won’t matter at all.

Problem: Everything is temporary, and there is no way to relive content, especially dungeons.
Solution: A way to revisit at least the dungeons, and at best even a cutscene showing what happened. Books in Home instance can give “flashbacks” to past LS content, either instanced or simply a different open map. (Which would make the home instance more interesting as a bonus.) This could also be used if players, who complete the last mission and defeat Zhaitan, end up in a cleansed Orr and want to relive the tainted version, for example for playing with friends. Alternatively an NPC could stand in Orr somewhere and say “remember what Orr was like before Zhaitan’s defeat..?” and that could take the player “back” to the tainted Orr.

Problem: The short time-frames. Too little time to complete anything, for bugs to be fixed, to get immersed, and most importantly, not enough time for you, the creators, to make meaningful, deep and fun updates.
Solution: Longer intervals, but heavier updates. For example, large-scale updates once every six months with smaller additions/progression every month. I’d much rather have to wait if that means that the update will have me all giddy and excited because, for example, Palawa Joko is coming back, perhaps (again) in a temporary unholy alliance with us against an elder dragon which is messing with him. If we then have well-written dialogs, which makes us really feel that this is the same Palawa Joko as in GW1! and this is a deep character with shades of grey! instead of the black-and-white, slightly childish pattern we have right now, I’d be in GW-heaven.

Edit: Also, concerning Scarlet: You had the right intentions with foreshadowing and all that, but too much lore was presented in a blog instead of in the game, and she is, as a character, simply too flat.

In my opinion the living story should not destroy existing content. You want to make it realistic by ‘changing the world, on frequent basis’. However this change (and destroys to certain extend) old content. This should not be the case.

Look at current tower event. Is it bad? nope. But consider the following. Kessex hills was a nice area, i loved exploring it. Now that is gone, when the LS ends either it goes back to normal, but then we loose the created tower area event stuff. See whatever you do, you just did resources on something, that will either fade, or destroy existing content (wich also took time to create).

This should stop imo. More content = more fun, more player keeping playing the game. A game is about ‘freedom to fullfil the need to have fun’. And the more ways you can do it the better. Not ’we’ll limit your ways, and also change content’. Limiting = bad. No matter how good living story is. So far the best living story was frost and flame (although it’s sad minidungeon is gone), and the southsun cove story wasn’t super good, BUT i love it for how it was created: new area, new jumping puzzles, new wayoints, new materials to farm. And guess what: this content STAYED. We didn’t loose it!!! i can go back on any char, any time i want. Do i go back superior often? nope. But i go often enough back to feel that ‘changing existing content’ sucks over this way of implementing change.

Remember anet, one of the most fun things about gw2 is exploring, new beautifull area’s, and coming there again with alts. It would be great to add (maybe at a later stadium, not immediately after LS), that each time you add a zone like southsun, you also add more heart quests. This is not a priority, but if you could expand the game like gw1, and include heart quests in the new area’s, it would be amazing.

Try not to make LS a grind. I love having more AP points, but lately it’s been a bit of a drag sometimes like ‘wait as long as you have to, to spawn the witch to then kill her’. This is ok to certain extend, but if you have to to it 10
+ times’ (Here be dragons) it gets anoying. Try to find a nice balance between grinding and time needed to get something. An amazing fix so far to this is that you can do daily living story achievements, to add up to the meta!!! keep this at all cost. Cause it give casuals a chance to complete it with (mostly) dailies, and hardcores can do both.

As a former communications manager, I have some insight that may be of help to the entire Anet and Player teams taking part in these discussions.

The problem of in game actions by some members of the Anet team, and some unprofessional posts on these forums, are making it difficult for the average person to separate the personal and business interaction with Anet into separate categories.

Any interaction in game, or on the forums, should be monitored and buffered through a single person to insure consistency and accuracy across the broadest spectrum of interaction.
Yes you can post to the forums, but you need to have someone who understands the consequences of statements that may seem inconsequential to you. Now if we could get the forum members to use the same high degree of thoughtfulness to their posts it would be a grand world indeed.
I highly recommend a Communications Liaison, it will allow you to hone your message and allow you a more focused view of the message that the players are trying to relate.

This is just my opinion. Take it into consideration at your own convenience.

I have to agree and Ecco most of what has already been sead. My biggest problem with the living world/story is the fact it’s temporary. I played most of the flam and frost story but was unable to see the end dew to time/commitments and not being able to find a group to do the end dungeon. After that I just gave up with the living story as I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Dew to real life I there didn’t play for a few months and when I came back I had missed a lot. I came back just I time for the first year celebration. Which was fun, but didn’t feel like there was a story too it. Then with the bizar of the four winds. I didn’t notice a story there. As for the politics, I felt there was even less of a story there as I had missed last stand at south sun I didn’t know this woman so felt distant from the story. Taquel rising. The amount of people needed is just stupid in my opinion. After the first week I can’t even find people to do it on my server now. I know guild members guesting to other servers just to get a chance to fight him. I feel this needs to be addressed as on my server at least it’s a dead encounter. Halloween was fun, but sadly no where near as fun as last year. I think I did it all in 3 days or at least it felt like that. Now for the tower of nightmares. It started really well with the instance. I thought “holy s***! This is epic!” Then after running around doing the events to get the 50 spores, I was ready for the next part. “Oh ok” I thought “I have to get 250 more.” So I went off and got them. Got the new skill as I thought this would unlock the next part of the story. And I didn’t. I was expecting so much from this story and it’s just dead ended on me. I’m hoping that it will continue in the next few weeks. What I would like to see is a way to “relive” the living world events. Or moving forward make them so the story sections of them can be done at your own pace. Maybe via instances in your home instance maybe. Yu could click on a book as if you where reading the events but then play through them. Kind of like the bonus missions in guild wars. Which I loved by the way. Would also like to see them come back in guild wars 2 for the key history moments between guild wars and guild wars 2.

Chris RJ.1843:

So, GW2 players (on this forum) really want to see the waiving of the “2 week release” policy in favor of a more “it’s ready when it’s ready” approach.

I want to vehemently disagree with this interpretation.

Saying “2 weeks is too fast” does not mean “at your leisure”.

A steady schedule is a good thing. Brilliant even. Shifting the cadence to 3 weeks or a month or whatever (and jettisoning the aspect of new content vanishing every few weeks) is rich with potential. Having the next release always just floating out there in the void of “eh, when its done” is not the only alternative to “quit wearing us out jumping through 14 day hoops”.

Nike.2631:

Chris RJ.1843:

So, GW2 players (on this forum) really want to see the waiving of the “2 week release” policy in favor of a more “it’s ready when it’s ready” approach.

I want to vehemently disagree with this interpretation.

Saying “2 weeks is too fast” does not mean “at your leisure”.

A steady schedule is a good thing. Brilliant even. Shifting the cadence to 3 weeks or a month or whatever (and jettisoning the aspect of new content vanishing every few weeks) is rich with potential. Having the next release always just floating out there in the void of “eh, when its done” is not the only alternative to “quit wearing us out jumping through 14 day hoops”.

Id even ask them to take alittle longer. Not only for development time but for our sakes as well.

The supposed king of MMOs, currently, WoW has increased their content patch updates to something like every 3-6 months, which is faster than their own average of 6 months to a year (partly because many other games are releasing content at a more rapid pace).

Arenanet took this a bit too far with two weeks. I think the happen median is one month, maybe two.

Nike.2631:

A steady schedule is a good thing. Brilliant even. Shifting the cadence to 3 weeks or a month or whatever (and jettisoning the aspect of new content vanishing every few weeks) is rich with potential. Having the next release always just floating out there in the void of “eh, when its done” is not the only alternative to “quit wearing us out jumping through 14 day hoops”.

Listening to the devs on the livestream talk about how quickly they have to put together the story and lines to get it off for voice-over recording, etc, really pushes me to think how much better the content would be with a 3-week schedule. That means that each team gets 6 months instead of 4 months to build content. That’s HUGE.

Or even, perhaps, a schedule where there’s an initial release, a secondary release 2 weeks later (like we’ve had so far), but then 3 weeks before the next team’s initial release. That gives us 2 releases every 5 weeks but gives each team 5 months (up from 4) to build content.

I’m curious as to whether ArenaNet would even consider changing the release cadence or whether they are just too locked into it at the moment…

CHIPS.6018:

I got to agree that much of LS has turned into a grind. Everyone just grind train to get the item reward to the point that it is no longer fun.

Why an event as difficult as Teq (not really that hard, but let’s assume it is) doesn’t give a mega reward (Ascended items 100% chance) just for completion is beyond me.

I agree it is a grind

And I agree that Reward for completing the Teq event should be a gaurunteed ascended item. Once people have gotten their achieves, back pieces and what not, it sounds like these folks dont return. Why bother?

cesmode.4257:

And I agree that Reward for completing the Teq event should be a gaurunteed ascended item. Once people have gotten their achieves, back pieces and what not, it sounds like these folks dont return. Why bother?

Wow. Guaranteed Ascended? That’s steep. I think a guaranteed Exotic would be overkill, but I’d at least be willing to consider it… Ascended is crazy-high reward, though.

A Continuity Department

I think it’s time to make an ANet Continuity Department. The sole purpose of this department is to make sure everything makes sense. I propose having a few different people in this department.

Continuity Manager – This person will be in charge of the department and is the final say for making sure that everything that is released in the game makes logical sense with what came before, what is currently in development and future ideas.

Intergame Analyst – This person makes sure that what is released in GW2 goes hand in hand with what already exists in GW1. They could also give ideas to the development teams for items that could be brought from GW1 → GW2

Lore Analyst – This person insures that you do not get conflicting lore and new releases jive with what the Lore already says is fact.

Maybe those are the same person depending on how much work they have to do in each area but I think both positions will have their hands full.

Release Continuity Developer – This person would be a floater working with all 4 of the Living Story teams to keep a constant Stream of Consciousness between all of the upcoming releases.

Hopefully that is something new to bring to the table.

I feel like its an obvious sentiment shared by many and said a hundred different ways so far, but maybe it needs to be spelled out explicitly:

I don’t mind/object to/oppose new content being delivered every 2 weeks. In fact, that’s great.

I hate it that content vanishes every 2 weeks.

Feels more like filler episodes, as opposed to a progressive storyline:
This is the biggest reason why the Living Story gets as much flack as it does IMO. Living Story updates feel like they exist in a vacuum; they follow their own mini-arch, and then after they’re done, the world essentially resets and you never hear about it again. There also seems to be little to no tie-in to the major, overarching storyline of Guild Wars 2 (ie. fighting the Elder Dragons). I’m under the assumption that the Living Story takes place after you defeat Zhaitan, and yet, it doesn’t seem like we’ve seen or heard anything related to the remaining elder dragons… well, ever really. Take for example, the Tequatl Rising update. I understand that at a base level, the goal of that Living Story arch was simply to revamp Tequatl into a more engaging encounter. I feel like that was a missed opportunity to weave some of the core storyline into the LS though. Why did Tequatl suddenly become more powerful? Did something happen to it while dormant underwater? Did Zhaitan do something to it before he died? Is Zhaitan really even dead? The mystery behind Tequatl’s sudden rise in power didn’t appear to be built upon and could’ve quite easily resulted in one of the most engaging LS updates.

Utilize the stories you already have as opposed to simply inventing new ones all the time:
Another thing I feel is lacking is the fact that the LS doesn’t seem to take enough advantage of what’s happened historically in the Guild Wars lore. For example, Ogden Stonehealer and the Dwarves. Currently, the Dwarves have all been turned to stone and went underground to combat Primordius and the Destroyers, and Ogden is only Dwarf remaining on the surface interacting with people. Their current battle with the Destroyers and Primordius is freaking cool yet feels all but forgotten in GW2. Hell, had I not had friends that played the original game and saw Ogden in the story, I would’ve had zero clue any of that stuff was going on behind the scenes. There’s are hundreds of little storylines peppered just like that throughout Tyria that I feel are vastly underutilized.

The updates are too short because they’re too frequent:
I personally think it was a mistake to switch to a two-week rotation period. While you theoretically always have something new going on ingame, I feel it vastly reduces the quality of the content to compensate. Take the recent release, The Tower of Nightmares, as an example. I feel if the developers had given themselves more time, this LS update would be far more “complete”. Currently, the update consists of a fairly linear solo-instance (roughly 15 minutes or so to complete) as the sole “meat” of the content, as the tower itself is inaccessible. The rest of the content is essentially going for achievements.

Rewards:
One of the biggest issues I have with LS updates is how heavily they seem to rely on achievement hunting or RNG chest/bags/etc to reward participation. And simply due to the random nature of how RNG works, you don’t really get rewarded for completing the LS itself; you get rewards for either A) zerg farming RNG chests or B ) achievement hunting. The way the rewards system for your average LS update is set up rewards grinding almost exclusively. Why not a random themed weapon skin tied to defeating a difficult open-world raid boss? Not every meta rewards NEEDS to be super duper rare, especially considering that this game thrives on aesthetic rewards.

I tried – I really did – to not inject my Number One concern from the issues survey thread into this one, but the Living Story (and specifically it’s after effects) really does touch upon it.

Its my feeling that the scaling of dynamic events is terrible.

It’s terrible at the low end where solo or paired players have to put up with entire zones that are nearly non-functional (Malchor’s Leap) due to the super-abundance of [Group] events and champions squatting on skill points and waypoints for hours or days at a time.

Its terrible at the high end where steps like “Destroy the Dragon Totem” in the Maw world event are over before the second wave (yes, there IS a second wave, turns out grawl come after the ice brood) even spawn. Heck, the first wave of icebrood doesn’t even get a single shot off most days. The Jungle Worm event had to be re-worked because it dies so fast the event script hung. And no, a fixed and arbitrary event timer to turn the trillion hit point snooze fests into a DPS race didn’t make it a better encounter for large groups or small.

So, in the Living Story, when the part is over, we keep getting left with new world-spanning Dynamic Events. Scarlet’s Invasions are trumpeted to the four corners of the world. Tequatl must be stopped (maybe)! Both of these event chains basically re-enact the debacle of Malchor’s Leap over and over again. They were designed to function adequately when the entire gaze of the player base turned upon them. They are terrible experiences without those kinds of focused population numbers.

No more than a week after the Living Story window closes, the lingering Dynamic Event chains introduced are dead as a doornail to the casual gamer. They are effectively dead even to the major guilds to whom they aren’t Dynamic Events, they are carefully orchestrated Planned Events – pretty much the polar opposite of the spontaneity DEs normally inspire. I can’t speak to the numbers of people still beating their heads against the new TA path without the limited-time-offer incentives plan, but I have to imagine usage plummeted similarly.

So, while I’m in the camp that the Living Story needs to help the game accrue permanent activities we can tackle more in our own time, the entire mechanic of Dynamic Events and their Scaling needs some close scrutiny so that it scales faithfully to the number of people participating (small group OR mega-zerg), rather than leaving nothing but marginally useable wreckage strewn around the landscape.

Sad Tequatl, sitting in his cage.

I kinda think we’re getting into the territory of stagnation with this topic.
So much so we’re beginning to talk about Trahearne…which is personal story and not so much the LW.

A majority of people are saying the same thing, and what little the dev’s have said, hasn’t really guided the conversation to a new realm of discussion, or even more in-depth analysis from player perspective vs dev perspective.
I hope this progresses soon.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I have freed up some time at lunch tomorrow and will be posting then (This is a very busy week). Keep up the great points and discussions, sorry for the delay in joining in.

For some of the posts above please don’t derail what so far has been a good start.

Chris

We gonna get some interaction? I was looking forward to some Dev input this afternoon. Still hoping it comes along.

There’s a lot of stuff I should say, but it would take a big amounts of posts, and I’m not kidding. Instead, I’m going to link two of the few Reddit discussions I created, the ones I think were the best.

Maybe it isn’t “polite” to post links instead of the text itself, but I think it saves space in an already crowded thread, and also shows user feedback on them. Still, I’ll post some TL:DR;s for the first one.

I have gameplay feedback, too, below at the bottom.

Here they are. You’re warned, they are long:

This thread talks about how the game’s lore is great, but the storytelling is weak.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1imw7b/state_of_the_lore_reaching_to_the_players/

• Lack of coordination between the open world and the personal story.
• Dull characters without growth and story progression, specially villains.
• Too many random talks that are too hard to witness.
• Long event chains that are player-unfriendly to follow.
• Lack of easy-to-access ingame sources for background lore.

This other one covers more, and is a bit older. Some things could be considered for the living world discussion, but it’s about the Personal Story, in combination with the living world. Still, I think it’s an interesting read (Warning: Very long).

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/191me2/detailed_analysis_on_how_to_improve_the_personal/

And that’s it. It’s mostly about storytelling, not just the living world, but I think it affects it heavily anyway, since storytelling is storytelling, no matter the medium.

A final touch, regarding the gameplay side of the living story: We need both new content and respect for the old content. Add, and don’t remove living story or already existing stuff. Population problems? Encourage people to play specific content each day, without locking access to it the rest of the days. Freedom is good for the players.

A new player returning feels punished by not logging in for all these events. I am a guild leader, of a big guild, and my personal experience tells me casual and hardcore players are the ones getting hurt the most, at least around me. Casuals feel overwhelmed and can’t play how they want, they need to spend their time doing the events, and then be remembered about each reward they missed. Hardcore players find no long-term content was added after Fractals of the Mist. I think the temporary nature of the living world aims towards the remaining group of players, the dedicated, but I feel they’re being burned out.

In general, I’d say the game has a problem with its reward/dedication/skill ratio. Play your way? Not profitable. Play hard dungeons? Not profitable. Only farming the same spot again and again is profitable. Which isn’t bad, it’s fine. What’s wrong is the difference between normal play and farming is HUGE. And then you add achievements from the living story, which only make it worse, limiting things you want to play. Good luck finding a group for a dungeon when half the people is farming champions and the rest is busy with the achievements.

You have no population problems, that’s for sure. The key here is, is the population happy, or do they feel like the game has become a chore? Do they feel each living world release is another list of must-do boring farm stuff? The problems with how the people don’t like the living world aren’t just in the living world itself, they are in how the game tells the story, and in the reward system.

If you want people to love the living world, you need to tell the story better, and you need to make content fun, and not a chore.

Aaand I just wrote too much. I’m a lost cause.

My two cents.

Add flavor text to loading screens (I believe there was in beta iirc) On LS maps and on regular maps explaining why should we care a bout that area.

For example when loading Bloodtide coast: “Zhaitan’s luitenant Teqatl continues to terrorize the bloodtide coast a Hylek, Quaggan and Silvary resistance have gathered in hopes of stopping the rampaging beast”

Harati Hintherlands: " The Centaur’s main army gather under the rule of the Ulgoth Modir, the Seraph with the help of a few brave Norn are pushing to stop their advancement."

And of course the LS maps should change their text to reflect the changes going on: Kessex Hills: The new alliance between the xenophobic Krait and the deceitful nightmare court have wreck havoc in the land with looming tower and unheard toxins, (insert names of the two girls) are investigating to counter their nefarious plans"

Anyway every map has 3 or 4 chain quest and 1 major theme so flavor text should explain the motivations for each chain or the importance of the map as a whole (randomized).

Think the Star Wars movie beginnings.

PS. Sorry for name spelling can’t remember the correct ones.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

Well, I guess that pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the future development of the game. Honestly, I still feel that whoever is in charge of this decision simply does not want to admit that it was a mistake, no matter how many times people say it. But if that is what you’re planning on sticking to… so be it.

I wish you the best of luck. It’s clear that this game is not for me. I just can’t support a game that insists on prioritizing quantity over quality. But at least now I know.

Ah well. Plenty of other games out there.

My favorite release was first Zephyr Sanctum update. The zone itself was fantastic (please bring it back as permanent content), and the new mechanics were a lot of fun. The whole update was great, with that feeling of exploring something new that none of the updates really had. It was a great update, and honestly, if it stuck around (Why not? If the zephyrites have a trade agreement with LA, it makes sense for them to be sticking around!) it would have justified all the LS hype.

Least favorite is easily dragon bash. Everything bad about the living story in one update. It was a temporary festival with really obnoxious grind achievements, and the dragon skin was ugly as hell. Everything about it sucked. The entire idea behind the festival was bad, and it felt stupid to celebrate beating the dragons when there are still five left.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I’m disappointed to hear this. I don’t see why the development team feels the need to release content so fast. If the content starts being fun, adequately rewarding, polished, and bug free, then there’s obviously no problem with rapid releases, however I doubt that this can be done, and honestly, even if it can be done, I would just wonder how much better it could be if the release schedule were slower.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Zerg! This is an interesting problem that we had actually fixed to an extent in an earlier release where we created a meta goal that forced players to split up into groups. I really enjoyed this and the feedback was excellent. Personally I quite enjoy the zerg sometimes in PVE ( I tend to be less of a ‘zerger’ in WvW) but I also really enjoy group play in the open world as many of you have mentioned. I would love to see more of this in the open world.

The only thing I could think that you mean by this is Tequatl, since as far back as I can remember, its been zergs. The last releases have been zerging bosses in the crown pavilion, zerging aethers in clockwork chaos, zerging candy corn in blood and madness, and zerging krait in tower of nightmares. Tequatl is really he only LS related content that forced players to split up for even a moment, and even then, you were still required to have 95% of players present all balled up by his right foot. Indeed, having lots of people by the turrets was actually a bad thing, since it scaled up the events and caused champions to spawn. If you’re referring to the battery phases, that was just taking 1 giant zerg and turning it into 4 smaller zergs. Truthfully if you want to address the zerg all you need to do is give enemies attacks that grow more powerful the more people they hit, and to remove the limit on how many players can be hit.

TA was one of my least favourites, largely due to the time factor on the meta. Despite a very large amount of feedback and queries, most of which were in accordance to the conduct rules laid down, no one answered as to why this meta was removed early (it said October and no end date was posted in the patch notes). This has then led on to the knock on effect of feeling like I had to blitz the current Tower meta since I wont be able to play online next week for work reasons. WHich is a shame, because I both didn’t want to miss out on the reward if it was removed again without wrning, but also wanted to play what feels like an excellent update at MY own pace.

As to my favourite? Well the early LW updates were ironically the better – F&F, Southson as we could play at a slower pace. This is crucial to myself really with time factors involved coming up. I accept you saying the 2 week schedule is not negotiable, but I’m utterly lost as to why. Firstly, there seemed to be no reason for it that I saw – were there genuinely cries for it in pre-release or later? Also if the community is universally against it (and I’m not saying it is), wouldn’t you stand back and say “hmm, maybe we should think about releasing at a slower pace”

I’m genuinely curious as to know what the reasoning behind a 2 week schedule is. I’m not aware of this ever being addressed to date. It’s not an outright stance against it, more bewilderment on my part based on how the year has panned out so far.

Psycho Robot.7835:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I’m disappointed to hear this. I don’t see why the development team feels the need to release content so fast. If the content starts being fun, adequately rewarding, polished, and bug free, then there’s obviously no problem with rapid releases, however I doubt that this can be done, and honestly, even if it can be done, I would just wonder how much better it could be if the release schedule were slower.

Agreed on this. I’d love to hear more development justification for the fast releases, as it’s just really hard to understand from the perspective of a player feeling overwhelmed by the quantity and underwhelmed by the quality of a large number of LW releases.

I have to confess, I was less civilized when I posted negatively about the living story. To me, that’s one of the major things that NEEDS to be changed in this game. I can’t imagine the court allying with krait, the inquest yes, the aetherblades yes, but the krait? really? They’re pretty much loners. Also Scarlet needs to go, not just because I think she’s not a serious villain but because I see constant threads of people that don’t want her in the game. I believe it’s because she’s holding back not just the living story but the progression of the main story as a whole.

Another major change I’d suggest is encouraging smaller groups by rewarding them more than bigger groups (aka ‘zergs’). Say you fight a champion for instance in Kessex Hills, it takes about 10 people to beat. Those 10 get, say 15 silver a piece, as opposed to a huge group of 30-40 people that will get 2-3 silver each fighting that same champion.

Other changes to the living world, I’d say make the events have more impact, more meaning. The concept of the Nightmare Tower poisoning the land is great, the Crown Pavilion being built is great! Also, I’ve read complaints of the content being so temporary, here today gone tomorrow, that NPC’s in-game & players aren’t affected by changes. It’s as if the events after the content pretend that the content never existed. I believe that needs to change, which goes back to the start of the paragraph, make the changes more meaningful with more impact.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset. However the points raised around achievements being too time consuming is something that I do acknowledge and something we have already taken steps to address both in terms of overall time to complete and the nature of the repetitive achievements. We will continue to make strides in this area and are aware that the current time requirement also cuts in to the player’s ability to achieve goals in other aspects of the game.

Why won’t the cadence of releases be changed? Why are we locked into two week releases? Please answer this simple question.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Ok, first the one I liked most (not including SAB because I love that but it is not something I count to Living world since its not in the normal world):
Bazaar of the Four Winds
The reason I loved this was that I had so much fun exploring the island, doing the jumps, figuring out the locations of the crystals and everything. I know that is not fun for everyone and some people could not really play it because of bad ping, but I loved it. The rewards were great, even if I am now at a point were I don´t want anymore backpiece items, the Aspect one was great (especially the wind – my ele is perfect with it). Also the sanctum model was cute. Alltogher it was just fun, I did not feel the need to farm something or rinse and repeat for achievements, it was just tons of fun.

Now the one I dislike most:
Blood and Madness
This felt like there was not put much effort in it. The story about Prince Thorn was nice, although a bit illogical, but perhaps I am too much of a bookah to understand why Tassi needed my minipet and did not just sent us to the labyrinth to capture some candy corn elementals.
But that was it from the good side. The return of the labyrinth was ok, but the new bosses are just annoying (Candy Corn takes ages and Lich is just really annoying) and after a few days almost now one was in it anymore and the boss doors needed to be avoided.
The Clocktower; of course I understand that you wanted to help people by changing the other players to blue lights, but this also meant transforming it to an activity meaning you can´t go in as group anymore. Last year my guildmates and I had so much fun in the tower, teasing each other about falling down etc and we waited for the tower to return this year. But now you can´t go in as group anymore and even if you manage to get into same instance by syncing the entering you just don´t really realise if your friend is with you or not, since you can´t see the characters anymore. So even if many people might like this change, I would gladly take back the old clocktower.
The instance were we fought against King Thorn, why is it not returning? Also the achievements from last year. I have them all but I still expected them to come back like it was in SAB where the old one could be done. This cut out a lot of content of halloween which could have been done again. This is something I was expecting from yearly events, that the content returns, some new is added to it and we can enjoy things. Are the different mask not enough to show for the different years of participating in halloween, why do the achievements have to be new to?
Lunatic inquisition. It is a fun game, even if I thing time is a bit long (map a bit too big), but the achievement you added turned it into a not fun game anymore. You only get a point added to the achievement if you win, so basically you need to be the last survivor (which is rare) or the ghosts need to kill everyone. So why should I try to survive, it is much easier to run to the middle, jump from the cliff and become a ghost since normally the games always end with the ghosts winning.
So last the rewards: I understand that some rewards should be hard to get, but 20slot bags and minpet for this amount of candy corn (also amount of skulls etc for weapon is a bit extrem, but I do not care so much since I don´t like the skins)? Not acceptable for me. I am a collector and achievement hunter, and up until now I always did my best to collect all rewards, minipets and achievements form living story, especially if it was a challenge (like Liadri 8 orbs). But what you did hear is just grind, I don´t have time for this and since my gold always goes into minis etc I can´t pay 140g for the needed candy corn for the prince minipet. This might not mean much to other people but for me this ruined one of my favorite events since GW1 and I am dissappointed about the decision you made regarding this.
[edit] And why are the rewards always one per account now… last year I could get item from clocktower for every character…

The one thing I would add to the conversation about future living story steps is that I would like to see them avoid what happened with Tequatl post event.

While it is ambitious to design a fight for 80+ coordinated players, it isn’t practical or enjoyable for the majority of players, especially on lower population servers (please dont make our only option be to guest).

In my opinion, the lower threshold for scaling for anything shouldn’t be higher than 20 players (up to as many players can fit in a zone for the upper level scale). That way, even if events arent something done regularly (during or after an actual living story event step), organized guild groups (or just random groups formed in chat) can still tackle and enjoy the content.

And many of us are extremely happy with the 2 week cadence for releases. Im glad to hear you are staying the course on that.

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

Well, I guess that pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the future development of the game. Honestly, I still feel that whoever is in charge of this decision simply does not want to admit that it was a mistake, no matter how many times people say it. But if that is what you’re planning on sticking to… so be it.

I wish you the best of luck. It’s clear that this game is not for me. I just can’t support a game that insists on prioritizing quantity over quality. But at least now I know.

Ah well. Plenty of other games out there.

I think it is important to note that there are two parts in the “quantity” that you are referring to, this is “frequency” and “content”. Currently we are getting a relatively high frequency of fairly grindy content. Since ANet seems to recognize that LS achievements are becoming grindy we can hope for more story meaty and less grind meaty updates.
Although I am in the same boat as you in terms of being overwhelmed with grind, I think there is some hope.

May I suggest a personal event system that would provide a way to address some of the issues raised in this thread along with having several additional benefits. Personal events are story-driven events that are triggered by specific things the character has done in the game. The system has been designed specifically for Guild Wars 2 and as far as I am aware no other persistent world massively multiplayer game has succeeded in accomplishing something like this.

The personal event system can address some of the issues raised in this thread because it is a highly flexible and adaptable information delivery system.

• Information that links the content of the biweekly releases into a more coherent and connected story can be released through personal events. Players can put the story together by combining the info they get from their own personal events with those others have done. In other words you learn about what’s going on in your living world by talking to other people who are living in the world with you.
• The large scale events introduced in the biweekly updates can be seamlessly integrated into the weave of everyday life in Tyria using personal events that illustrate how the big event affects the lives of ordinary people.
• Large content updates can be foreshadowed through personal events. In addition to a website that says “Strange things are brewing in Kessex Hills” strange things can actually start happening in Kessex Hills in advance of the big event. Players discover that something strange is happening in the world while they are living in the world rather than from a FB or Twitter post that says something is going to happen next week.
• Whether or not the designers decide to slow the biweekly pace of large content updates, new content can be continually added through new personal events. Moreover, the content added through the personal events can better pave the way for the large scale content. Instead of biweekly additions of a lot of new content that seems unrelated to much of what has gone before and goes away after two weeks we get more frequent additions of small scale content that leads up to a large scale event and then tracks the consequences of the big event over time while, at the same time, leading up to the next large event. Rather than trying to tell the story that makes sense of the big event though info dumps during the event or out-of-game resources like websites and social media blasts, the story can be naturally told in Tyria over the days or weeks leading up to the event. The ebb and flow of events in a real living world can be more closely modeled in the game.

Some of the ways in which the personal event system enriches and deepens the Living World concept

• The world will actively respond to individual characters in terms of specific things the character has done in the past which is something that is fundamental to worlds that are alive.
• The personal event system is designed so that players are likely to experience something new every time they log in and play for a reasonable amount of time. Something new can happen every day you live in a living world.
• Every zone in the game can provide new experiences for any character, of any level, at any time no matter how much time the character has spent in the zone or how long the player has been playing GW2. Zones are not static. You can go back to the zones where you grew up but life has gone on and they are not the same as when you grew up there. “Been there, done that” changes to “Been there, . . . whoa, that’s new”.

The personal event system can bring more – a lot more – to GW2 but that’s enough for now. The system was originally designed specifically for GW2 and I hope the people at ArenaNet will be interested in taking a look at it and thinking about whether or not it would be worth further consideration. I have put a good deal of time and effort into the system and if ArenaNet has no interest, it can be adapted for use in other games. For that reason, please forgive me for not discussing the details of how the system works in a public forum like this.

If people at ArenaNet think something like this might be of interest, please contact me and I will be very happy to share the personal event system with you.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Okay, i start off with my least favourite:

The Queens Pavilion/Queens Speech.
While the obvious reason would be the reveal of Scarlet, it is not. This was supposed to be the anniversity. One Year GW2 and in the end it was an experiemtn to see how far the people will go for their loot.
The only good thing was the Gauntlet up to Liandri, since it actually involved skill.
The rest of it was mindless zerging for loot and gold.
Everything introduced there was for nothing. The Pavillion itself covers up a nice mystery that was going on, the watchknights were only introduced to be converted by Scarlet and the invasions are still there, but no one cares. In fact they are the thing i totaly dispised about this update, because it just made no sense.
It was supposed to be Krytan/Human centric and then it goes “global” (stupid choice of words here, but it`s discribed like this ingame…) and doesn`t stop to this date.
The whole event brought the supposed main villain from a strategic mastermind down to the level of an annoying bad delivered (not VA but as a character) wannabe harley quinn, who is nothing more then a shadow of her beginnings. Everything build up to this point became laughable, since everything she build up so far, was thrown at us in masses…

Adding to this is the “failure” of the anniversity. It really left a sour taste in my mouth. While the birthday booster is still nice and i appreciate it, the rest of the “gifts” where (excuse me) stupid (lvl up to twenty which is useless to a lot of players, as well as a untradeable mini).
We got a month loot and zerging, but nothing i would call a celebration. It was dull and felt unimaginative…

For my favourite… thats tough:

I really like Flame and Frost up to this date.
Sure, the start was slow, but the things we had to do were “intelligent”. Finding things and helping people, everything with a little story behind it. Thumbs up.
Finding the order of whisper messages, discovering a little piece of information up to the developement of a computer (a fact seemingly forgotten up till now) by the alliance. Thumbs up again.
Sure, the first part was dull, but everything else was fitting.

Then as honorable mentions we have the first helloween.
This actually delivered a story which i enjoyed to follow. The one this year was much too short and annoying, thanks to the fact that it was archievment gated.
Which is sad because it had potential. It would have been cool if we were able to pick a side between the mad king and the bloody prince and whoever would have won, would be our enemy in a fight, or the next “master of helloween” next year.
Last year however was delivered much more entertaining and with much more supsense, something this year wasn`t able to recreate in any way.

Then another good one were the Zepirites. Hints of GW1 Lore and an expansion to the world, instead of “new developements”.
I liked the design, the games, the idea. I actually enjoyed beeing there, because it was cool, even without fighting.
The content right now is just… Zerg Zerg Zerg…
It`s just rushing everywhere, to get the shinies…

It appears to me that i prefer your first ideas much more then how it developed.
However that is not entirely true. I am mostly indifferent.
I liked the Aetherblades, but disliked the Dragon bash… because lets face it… RNG, grind etc…

Overall i am not against the LS, it just needs something permanent. This is even more true for something like the skins.
I know you can now get them with the BLCs, but again.. RNG and really low chance to even open the thing without paying…
While you want to make them special, they devalue the actuall “legendary” items you created.

So yeah, these are my picks. Thanks for the long answer Chris, however i wished other developers would come up as well. While i know we won`t get any “honest” statements, or someone saying: “we f*** up here” because it would be damaging etc. i really enjoy steps you all try by looking for this collaboration.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Favourite: Bazaar of the Four Winds (new lore, skills and map to explore)

Least favourite: Dragon Bash (Dragon Pinatas, fireworks, Dragon Effigies… That wasn’t too much fun)

My favorite release was either the F&F release with Molten Facility (which I thought was excellent) or Bazaar. The Zephyrites seemed very interesting, especially their connection to Glint, and yet away they went… along with that part of the story.

Least favorite? Perhaps Last Stand at Southsun? The Canach fight wasn’t my favorite. I wasn’t a huge fan of Sky Pirates either for the same reason: the dungeon mechanics. “Run in circles for a couple minutes trying to avoid red circles that move faster than you do” is not a fun mechanic. Nor is “surprise! 25 stacks of bleed lololol now try to rez your Thief again…”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Part 1…

…Much of your commentary and discussions have already been raised in meetings and impacted our thought process around development moving forward already.

As laid out by the rules I will not go into specifics about future development, this said however it is very encouraging to see that much of what has been discussed matches our plans.

So we know pretty much nothing about the impact of our input to these ‘talks’. You and I, we use the word “discussion” very differently .

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I see this an my internal parser spits out~

“We asked. You told us. HUNDREDS of you AS PLAYERS speaking of the PLAYER EXPERIENCE, the one area you unquestionably understand things in a different way and a different light than a Developer can or would. And having heard, we’re blowing you off completely.”

You and I, we use the word “collaboration” very differently too .

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are committed to quality not quantity.

Chris

the hard adherance to the two week release schedule seems to indicate the opposite. there has clearly been releases that just seem unfinished. Cannach’s lair comes to mind of something that left the majority of players thinking the content was rushed out to meet a 2 week schedule. There have been others but that was the one that comes to mind first. I think its ok to just have a balance patch and delay content that clearly isnt ready so that our enjoyment of great content is merely delayed not ruined by clearly rushed release schedule.

also chris any comment on the poor reception of scarlet and when you plan to get rid of her. It seems obvious from this thread that for every 1 person who thinks she is great there is 10 who just get annoyed by her and view her as poorly written deus ex machina. While showing her motivations may lower the ratio she is not a well received villain and it is likely too late to fix that.

gidorah.4960:

also chris any comment on the poor reception of scarlet and when you plan to get rid of her. It seems obvious from this thread that for every 1 person who thinks she is great there is 10 who just get annoyed by her and view her as poorly written deus ex machina. While showing her motivations may lower the ratio she is not a well received villain and it is likely too late to fix that.

This has been answered. They have a plan for Scarlet. They will not discuss future plans.