Guild Wars 2

The problem I have with GW2 is it seems too PG rated and the games story as a whole is just not ominous like it felt in GW1.

GW1 was just great in terms of story. You had The Searing which killed so many and ravaged your country to the point of an apocalypse. You then had to follow your leader price Rurik as he told his dad to screw off to lead his people to a better home in Kryta only to die along the way. After a long hard journey to Kryta you then encounter the White Mantle and all seems fine as you help them battle the undead… only to find out later they worship alien looking things called the Mursaat and gather people of magical talent to sacrifice them on something called a Bloostone.

Here in ToN you had this copy paste noir character with a noble who has the personality of a wet band aid that just happen to stumble upon a massive illusion spell by sheer luck? What should have happened was the Krait and Nightmare Court unveils the tower and kills everything. I want to walk into the human forts and see the carnage, I want to see the centaurs wiped off the face of kessex hills and their skeletons littering the ground. I then want to fight my way to the top of the giant tower and find out its a giant new world boss that wants to eat my skin like I’m a piece of KFC. And after all the effort I went through to kill it I find out its spores are brain parasites that turn all the surviving NPCs in kessex into horrible crazed blood drinking maniacs that turn into living trees that again want to eat my skin. This all happened because I rushed to the top and killed the tree.

Somewhere along the way after ToN I find out scarlet is just an illusion and kasmeers behind it all. That’s what I want.

…and I want better dialogue!

:)

The way to make the living world feel like it’s alive is to tell us about something coming in the future (a dragon invasion) and then having us do things in the present that will help us in the future (think GW1 Hall of Monuments). We need to be building up for a future event, but we occasionally get attacked destroying some of that which we saved and built making us understand how much more we need to prepare.

FOR EXAMPLE: the Kodan and Norn start building fortresses in the mountains that change the map somewhat, gathering crafting supplies and gear and supply (yes, WvW supply for building castles and siege), but are targeted by dragon minions while they are being built. If in 3 months we don’t maintain those defenses, the Kodan soldier’s weapons and armor, and stockpile enough supply, then the players may not be able to stop Jormag when he sends his armies. Every map of the Shiverpeakes is invaded until the players and NPCs stop them. Then they have to push them back out of every map that was successfully taken by Jormag pushing into new maps that include Jormag’s lair (this will include epic living story).

Features include:
-Turning the players into enemies of other players like the beta event with the Shatterer. Please do this again.
-Rewards would be based on participaton, not acheivements. This encourages building up keeps and holding points instead of just attack, attack, attack.
-An NPC who tells you in VO about where the battle lines are currently drawn. Not the eyeglass guys, but the NPC hero leading the NPC armies.
-The end dungeon cinematic would be an epic character driven event.
-Add a renown mechanic for these giant events that awards players who contribute the most in some way. This could be the commander who led you to victory (having celebrity players can make the game very interesting, but it is based on in-game fame, not real world)
-Make the event difficult to gain ground especially due to the turning you into a dragon minion problem. It takes good commanders to retake a map.
-Several different event types: survival, capture, rescue, build, etc.

RANDOM PLOT IDEA FROM THIS: killing Jormag frees many icebrood, and some of his minions are ancient, preserved in ice. Some of these are heroes and villains from the past…you know the ones I’m thinking about…But in general, beating a dragon should bring about lesser villains and other conflicts in some form (eg Norn fighting Kodan).

In general, LW/LS content needs to be easy enough to obtain the meta acheivement, but there needs to be harder acheivements (with chests) for guilds and individuals who want the challenge (I mean really hard).

P.S. I’ve attached a picture of one of these celebrity commanders on Yak’s Bend.

About them armor glitching fixes…..poke…hint…nudge……slap………kick!

Posting screenshots would just waste my time, go look for yourself… Asuran toes glitch with nearly every single pair of boots in the game… NEARLY NOT ALL. Same goes with Charr and their tails/horns/ears. I don’t really care about a story if I can’t enjoy a cosmetic look in this cosmetic game.

I’m honestly not being rude but what on earth is ‘living’ about it? Its stagnant from what I have seen. Banging signs into the ground, then they disappear so you do it all again the next day? Following a zerg train around a map over and over and over and over and over while auto attacking some random boss or champion you can’t really make out in a sea of players to open some ridiculous chest with Random gear in it is what I have come to expect from Guild Wars 2. It is boring! I think ArenaNet really to to rethink the entire premise and put some more thought into an actual ‘living’ world if they want to call it that and give us some actual class roles to play thanks! God I miss the trinity after playing this game.

I will know more when i have caught up a little bit, for sure though there has been a huge amount of value so far but i do want to continue discussing DEs pertaining to LW and peoples favorite and least favorite events and why.

Hmm. My favorite DEs that I’ve experienced are Temple of Lyssa, The Modnir Chieftain chain, the Claw of Jormag chain, and the Tequatl event (IF the timer were removed and it scaled down to the number of players participating, even in groups of less than 100).

What’s important with DEs is that if they aren’t always available, then there needs to be ways of letting people know when they are. One problem with the Modnir chain is that it only updates the tracking sites when the final boss appears, not when the assault chain starts. That’s one that should list all the stages of the chain. One thing I’ve been arguing for since launch is that major events need to be visible from all the way access the map. Too many of them you can’t even see on the map until you’re within eyesight of them! You can have the best event in the world and it’s useless if nobody knows to show up.

Ideally also on event chains they start with a small mission that can be soloed, then at any point after you could do another mission, than another, each being best with a larger and larger party, so that people who see that the event is up can join in on the fun. If so, however, you can’t have a timer, because there needs to be time for people to join in even if there’s other stuff going on.

In terms of general design, I like proper chains where one event opens access to the next, but they should be relatively short and all completable in 15-30 minutes total. I don’t like having to chase a chain all the way across the zone, they should be relatively compact. I also HATE HATE HATE the timers added to several world bosses with the recent update. In most cases there’s little risk of going over them, but when you do it’s never any fun.

It’s also important to not confuse “longer time to kill” with “more fun.” Recent changed were made to event bosses like the Maw Shaman and the Shatterer that made them take 2-3 times as long to kill. While it’s true that the Shaman used to drop like a rock in the presence of a large zerg, now he never takes less than 5-10 minutes, and he gets very boring to fight after about thirty seconds. He should be two minutes, TOPS. Same with Shatterer, the original version was the perfect balance of time/reward and fun/tedium, but now he just goes on, and on, and ooooon, taking around 10-15 minutes to kill instead of 5 or so. If you’re going to increase the length of these encounters, then you also have to add a bunch of new mechanics so that there’s more fun things to be doing. Even Claw, the mechanics of which I enjoy, has too much HP in each phase, so the battle drags on a bit longer than is really fun. Each phase should take about half the time. Shadow Behemoth seems to be the world boss closest to perfect. He’s not that fun to fight, and rarely any kind of threat, but he takes about the right amount of time to kill.

While I love the Lyssa event chain design, the boss herself is one of the worst. If you only have about five people around the encounter works fine, but her HP skyrockets with large groups, taking 2-4 times as long to kill as is at all interesting, and she starts summoning Champion Ape Illusions, which not only slaughter everyone and take forever to kill, but also drop no loot so they aren’t even worth killing. She also does that “time out” thing, which gives us a chance to clear out our bags, but not much more.

I think the Scarlet problem it’s similar to the Watchknights problem.
They have been tossed into the game too sudden, there was no real sense of progression in their introduction (even if we had hints about Scarlet), moreover part of the Ceara story is presented to us just through the official site… but to plead Chris’s cause, I believe that most of what we saw will make sense in the future.

Maybe her character is a little stereotyped, but I found it funny anyway (probably mainly thanks to her voice acting).
I don’t get why some people say that it is not believable and/or it make no sense that she is such a genius… c’mon… isn’t it believable?
We are talking about a race of “botanical humanoids”…

And if we want to be honest… how much do we know about sylvari to say that this is so weird?
If you have joined the Durmand priory you’ve already got proof that this race can be “unsuspecting” clever (do you remember Sieran and Gixx?).

In my life I have read many books… I watched countless movies and anime, and if there’s one thing that I’m sure of, is that you can’t really judge a story if you don’t reach its last page/last minute.

I’m not saying that it doesn’t care what devs will do because maybe one day a great ending will cancel all the past flaws, but I feel that before pointing our finger screaming “kill her! kill her now!” we should at least wait and see what the Scarlet’s role really is.

living world has no real “finality”

I would love to see an event where it matters in some tangible way

Let’s say there are some pirates (because that seems to be the common theme for these living stories) and they are doing two things which you have to prevent

1. Causing the volcano near Mt. Maelstrom to erupt
2. Flooding Kessex hills (or wherever)

Players have to save one of the areas and let’s say they save kessex. Well, from the end of the event on, Mt. Maelstrom should change into a lava area. This would give players more incentive and make the living story feel like it’s worth playing and not something that’s thrown at us every two weeks to fit into some kind of quota.

Also, please please please make it last more than two weeks with increasing complexity of events and some kind of meaningful progression. During the current living stories, I find myself bored and I feel like I’m farming. Then another stage of the living story comes out, and once again I’ve unlocked more farming. Have the living story be engaging and change how the maps/quests are in all the zones as well.

I would love to see the living story actually take us to new unexplored zones. I liked the idea of the karka event, and had hoped it would last longer with the karka invading all zones, and maybe having players team up with grawl and other traditional enemies to overcome the karka

Players have to save one of the areas and let’s say they save kessex. Well, from the end of the event on, Mt. Maelstrom should change into a lava area. This would give players more incentive and make the living story feel like it’s worth playing and not something that’s thrown at us every two weeks to fit into some kind of quota.

No. I hated the election thing for this very reason. I wanted the Fractal that lost, but really I wanted both, and forcing players to choose, much less to be at the whim of other people’s choices, is terrible. It’s a mechanic that works fine in a single player game, where you have total control over the outcome, and moreover can just play it through again the other way if you change your mind, but in an MMO it’s just too much taken out of the individual’s control.

Not to mention the work involved would be nuts, they would need to model both the flooded Kessex and the lavaed Maelstrom if they intended to show the results, and then whichever one didn’t get used they’d need to just chuck, hundreds of man-hours completely wasted.

Nike.2631:

For the Future of Scarlet:

Ok, I want one thing, ONE THING, when it comes to dealing with Scarlet in future content:

These portals she keeps using? The ones that tens of millions of mobs come rolling out of every week as the invasion events continue?

I want my side to drop the idiot ball, take the initiative, and for SOMEBODY to figure out how to put me and a band of my hardcase friends (Hey, Rox. Whassup, Braham? Oh, Majory and Kasmeer made it too!) back through the portal all clandestine-like.

I want a 1-5 player roflstomp ROMP though her secret base. And the most important thing of all?

I don’t want to see Scarlet at all. If she’s always out building alliances, then kitten she can be out wining and dining her new harpies-&-skritt team-up or whatever. I want to burn her whole base to the ground and do racial dances in the ashes.

You give me bloody-handed vengeance against her Twisted Clockknights Factory, let me be the one launching the surprise attack on a secret Aeitherblades Barracks, let me dump a vat of acid over her personal stockpile of toxic spores, and most of all LET ME CATCH HER UNWARES for a change, I’ll take back fully a third of every nasty caustic remark I’ve ever made about the character. Just let her come up short one time.

1,000,000 bonus points if there’s a full fully voiced epilogue for after we pull out, Scarlet get back, sniffs the air curiously and says “That’s strange. I don’t remember leaving the stove on…”

Offer’s on the table ANet.

While it wouldn’t make me like Scarlet, it would still be enjoyable. I’d love to see this added.

One thing for the Living story I would, really, really love to see, is the additional dialog acknowledging the Pact, and also the Pact Commander, aka the player. I remember very well during Flame and Frost release that my characters that had become Commander of the Pact, had different dialog compared to those who weren’t yet Pact Commander. That nice little touch alone was really great and helped me more feel that the world was really alive and changing.

I understand the complication that arises when you have players who either aren’t at that stage yet in the Personal Story because of their level, or just because they haven’t gotten around to it. But there needs to be dialog acknowledging the Pact (could even go a step further and have dialog that Zhaitan has been defeated, but really just at least acknowledging the Pact campaign in Orr alone would be a great start). I remember that during the recent release Tequatl Rising, the mail got from Warmaster Narru, in charge of the operation in Sparkyfly Fen against Tequatl, specifically mentioned the Pact campaign in Orr.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Nike and All Those that have been discussing Failure Consequences,

Internally for a while we now we have been talking about positive and negative consequences of completion or failure of activities and challenges within the game and more specifically around events. For example Jon Peters one of our Design Leads was putting forward the idea of the above rules/paradigms around TQ. So for example if the players are fail to take down TQ then this would cause a ‘Darkness’ to fall across the zone, perhaps where he would fly around attacking locations and creating new events. A second chance on TQ would therefore be to complete these events and then perhaps rally the NPC forces in the zone to help you take him down. A positive modifier could bring ‘Light’ to the land for example and lower cost on NPC traders, give greater rewards from events and perhaps even create new events. Of course this is all brainstorming but it is the natural evolution of our current platform.

One of my concerns with failure consequences is the effect it has on server morale and the possibility of an even becoming a dead event. Tequatl is like this right now, on some servers the event is perpetually dead. If too much weight is given to success or failure, players would feel punished for being on a server that did not complete it. It would favour guesting (or transfers to already populated servers) and increase population issues on less populated servers. Orr has a lot of DEs across the map that tell a story and try to sell the war plot through gameplay. For all the things it does well, it can be a very unenjoyable place if your server doesn’t have enough people and you don’t have a guild backing you up. For all the cool things you give for event success, they become bad things for players with event failure. I’m concerned about the impact that success/failure will have on less populated servers. We see players transferring to T1 servers for WvW season rewards, we saw guesting for Tequatl, it will be worse if more weight is put on this area without caring for population issues first.

Back to story telling through DEs. I like that the Living Story now has Braham and Rox popping up in random DEs. This creates more screen time for the characters and makes them feel like they are actually involved in the conflict (and not just waiting to steal the credit during a cut scene). One flaw to this kind of story telling was the Ellen Kiel appearances during the Secret of Southsun. She made an important story appearance at the end of a DE. If players never did that DE or they missed it, they missed a part of the story. Her role at the time was to track down Canach, I think this would be better communicated if she had the DE icon to indicate she could begin an event which caused her to begin the patrol and scout for clues about Canach’s location. Some degree of control would exist on when to begin the event (instead of a hidden spawn window) and the event would show her actually looking for clues instead of sitting at camp all the time. Appearances in events strengthens characters in my mind and helps to sell their involvement, but the RNG nature of events is a hindrance if the event contains important story information.

I liked the use of the Balloon events during the Queen’s Jubilee to tell the story of the racial delegates attending the event. It helped sell the conflict with the Aetherblades and it gave an in-game presence to show that the queen had invited all these people to attend (instead of just telling us they attended). It was a lot better than the holograms/present boxes from past events, I do wish some of the delegates (or even the Aetherblades) had more dialogue or character.

Personally I think a lot of the gameplay is there but the story is missing from it. Maybe it’s an issue of voice acting budgets, but I don’t feel like it’s communicated well during the events why we need to take down the towers in the current content. If I ignore them they don’t do anything (like Scarlet’s invasions). The biggest threat in Kessex hills still feels like the centaurs because they will move along their event chain to attack towns and outposts, even if they only do it in a linear path (I think there is a Toxic alliance event that captures an outpost, but most of them are static). When I destroy the towers I am doing it for the meta event credit and the harvest node, not because I feel like I am contributing to the war effort.

So, I’ve been reading this post today, and I think it might be good to try and quickly some of the basics that I think we can all agree on and see where it takes us from there.

1. DE’s need to be expanded: DE’s were intended as the backbone at launch for a living world, and the general consensus seems to be that they are greatly valued by players and that most players believe that the Dev’s have backslided on the idea of cycling them with new replacements and expanding them.

2. Scarlet Must DIE! At the very least eventually. Many people say they hate her as a villain, some hating her not in the good way that we should hate a villain, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that she should burn and we all want to be there to roast marshmallows and have some smores. Personaly, I like Scarlet as a villain, even though I can’t wait to kill her, but before that happens I would hope that we can at least get SOME answers, some filler to flesh her out more. As she is now, we have only really been presented a single facet of a personality that some, myself included, believes has many more sides. We would like to know the diamond and revel in its light…then burn it to the ground.

3. Let Us Catch our Breath: Fire and Frost was a month long LS and has very little to do in that time period. It was extremely boring for the first part due so little to do and I found myself yearning for more. More story, more action, more….well, just more. Unfortunately, since we started the every 2 weeks LS that wish has become a nightmare. No sooner do we finish all the Meta event farms to get our nice big reward than we are being thrust back into the fire once more. I believe, from things I have read in this post and my own thoughts, that we can all agree on a few changes to the timing and content of the LS:

…2BContinued….

…..And now we Return to your regularly Scheduled show….

…..A) Timing: I think it would be useful to actually consider this as a multiple part thing. Basically, have a Story Arc that will span about 6 months. Within those 6 months, have 1 month Stories that all link together. Allow players to have access to the current and the previous Story Arc at the same time, so that the story won’t be closed every month, or especially not every 2 weeks. And then also have updates every 2 weeks, or maybe just bi monthly. 1st of the month the story arch begins, 15th of the month it gets a new installment and this continues for 6 months. This would allow a progression and a deeper, more developed story…something with enough meat on the bones to keep everyone interested.

…..B) Progression: Let Stories progress. Perhaps in the last month of a story arch the seeds of the next story arch can be granted. While dealing with the Aetherblade menace, word is leaked out that the queen is planning her Jubilee; as the Jubilee is coming to its culmination, there are reports of strange portals opening around the world; it is noted that the invasions seem to be staying out of Caledon Forest for some reason; adventurers have been discovering strange plants carried around the world by the Krait, but they don’t seem to be dangerous….at first. In this manner we can link things together, give players hints about what is coming, and even plant a few mis directions. I myself love trying puzzle out what is coming next, and that leads us to….

…..C.) Complexity: One of the best things is trying to figure out what Anet is going to do next. I love looking for clues, even though I am almost always wrong. Dropping clues, liberally dosed with red herrings, will help keep us interested, so long as you then deliver us real story. Something we can sink our teeth into. The developing storylines have been, to be polite, a bit anemic. They all have tons of potential…but then they just never get to the finishline. GW1 had the best, most amazing storylines. Not even the main storyline, but all of the sub storylines as well. While Ascelon was dealing with the fall out from the Searing, we also still were invested in the obviously postponed wedding of Ruric and Althea…but then to discover her missing, and that that was why Duke Barridin made his insane charge through the broken wall to Piken Square…well, we all know how that story ended, and I myself shed more than a few tears.

I want to do that again in GW2, but alas, it just hasn’t been there for me.

Additionally, another level of complexity that would be helpful would be to take the above mentioned timing framework and use that in an achievement structure. A 6 month Meta Achievement that would take a lot of work to get done, involving the completion of 5 or the 6 monthly meta achievements as well as some additional achievements tied to perhaps guest spots from other LS characters, or previews hinting of what is to come next, then the Monthly meta achievement much as it is now, but spreading a whole month to achieve, and then a bi-monthly that would be easier to accomplish and not take much time.

I think this gives a good framework of the kinds of changes we have been discussing thus far, and hopefully can encourage a stronger discussion focused on some other areas I propose herein.

~~<@> Gany of RTGC, Crystal Desert

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Galen Grey.4709:

If they make Living story branching based on results I really doubt it will ever be per server. I love the idea and it would be cool dont get me wrong but can you imagine the work they’d have to do every release if they’d need to create different story / content for every server based on what happened previously. It will keep getting exponentially larger.

I think the solution to that, would be to not tie each Living Story directly to the outcome of the previous one. Possible consequences could be the permanent destruction of a village, which would then no longer play a role in further content anyway.

For the conclusion of any Living Story arch, they could take some outcomes into consideration. For example, for a final battle each possible outcome could provide a server with more allies to assist them during that battle. This makes the various outcomes more manageable, and prevents the writers from having to take into account combinations of all outcomes.

Galen Grey.4709:

I like your idea though and perhaps what would be feasible is have the story direction be dictated by the result of all the servers. So if more then half the servers succeed then the story continues based on the event succeeding even for the servers who failed.

That is also a way to go. Although I think that would feel less rewarding. If it’s server specific, then much like with Tequatl, the guilds on that server can make a cooperative effort to beat the Living Story for their server.

Galen Grey.4709:

On the other hand to give a stake to each individual server on the overall result ,the servers who failed could perhaps get a penalty tied to the particular LS. Say for the clockwork invasion that could mean double way point costs while those who win get a bonus like say 1/2 way point costs.

I was thinking more along the lines of continued invasions, or higher monster populations of a certain kind in some areas. To take the Tower of Nightmares as an example. If a server succeeds at stopping the corruption, part of Viathan Lake is restored to normal, and the tower falls into ruin. The Krait and their alliance will be driven out of Kessex Hills, and peace returns to this zone. But if they fail, the corruption spreads, and Krait become a dominant group of monsters on the entire map. It would be interesting to have one server where peace was restored, and one server where the Krait have overrun the zone.

Following Living Story could then move on to something new, regardless of the previous outcome.

Yes what you’re saying makes sense and could work. Dont fork the story just change the landscape based on result.

One concern i would have is what would such a system do to the server player population. Would there be a risk that people might move to servers that never fail to avoid the annoyances created by failures and thus dooming a server to perpetually fail LS episodes?

Actually – regarding scarlett. At this point i’m waiting to find out shes some asuran geniuses project into A.I. gone amuck.
Then cue even more steam and clockwork minions.

An earlier poster said something that got my neurons activating, the de chains are awesome. Some are brilliantly executed and a lot of fun, the problem is that theres no way to tell whats going on- or where. The event circles don’t always show up on the map, is it possible to have a collapsable ui that shows whats available on entering the zone?
Also – as a quality of life issue – could we have the UI grant the ability to “slide away” the daily/monthly/halloween etc side warnings? so they collapse down to a small triangle that expands again on click?

Regarding zone changes – One trick that’s used to great effect in orr (straits) is when you first enter the zone and theres an event involving risen fish heads there, when it activates the colour seeps from the area and the area becomes dark and hard to see far. Although a small change it really effects the feel of the area, such a change is immediately noticable and would work well as a failure option as it can act as a semi permanent change.
It also doesn’t require a massive amount of re-texturing work so would work as a “we’re working on bigger changes later, but for now, here’s a stopgap!”

My family and Living Story game design.

When Guild Wars 2 first went live it was just amazing, we loved the game and believed we had finally found a truly casual MMO. A game we could play at our own pace, when we wanted to play, and not be left behind when we didn’t play.

Then the Living Story started. Oh dear…

The very concept of temporary content goes against the entire casual game design. So now the game was dictating when we had to play , otherwise we got left behind, as far as game participation. A big block of content that would be gone after 2 to 4 weeks – really? Doing dailies was bad enough, now we have weekly/monthly content.

A true casual MMO would never remove content,(apart from special “holiday” themes, which is understandable. We can plan to play rare time-limited content, just not every month).

So what happened? We stopped playing. We could not keep up with amount of temporary content being pushed at us.

So, if you want casual players in Guild Wars 2, stop removing content. We just can’t play a game that dictates when we play.

Thanks for listening.

I can agree with Diva about the loss of casual play, but I don’t think we need to completely get rid of LS to do this.

I’m not sure I would really want this myself, but what I think would work for the place of the LS in the context that Diva is talking about is to simply scale it back.

Don’t worry about constant updates. Use the LS to roll out new areas, or to herald changes in DE’s in a zone. This would actually contribute to the idea of a changing and evolving world, but would also allow some story to be presented and provide new content in rolling out new zones and new DE’s.

Like I said, not sure I would want it to be that extreme. I do like the LS idea, I just want some evolving story and a longer time to do it.

After all, you don’t actually have to do the LS if you don’t want to, and so can be as casual as you want that way, but it does require making the choice of ignoring LS content.

~~<@> Gany

Not sure if this has been raised, because I’ve only scanned about half of the 28 pages of posts…

It would be interesting if the living world had an impact on the economy in some way other than periodically causing rampant inflation due to super champ farming invasions, etc.

What if enemies harvested resources on the map? Essentially shutting down nodes but creating “caches” of resources in their camps? What if they forged these resources into items over time – making the enemies stronger, better armed, but likely to drop better loot? This might lead to an interesting dynamic – small groups of players can prevent enemies from gaining a foothold on the map but it would take a major group of players to clear out enemies once fortified.

Similarly, what if it took crafted items to arm NPCs and allies so that they could attack/defend an objective? Making or turning in specific armor, weapons, etc. (low/mid tier stuff that just gets vendor trashed) might be necessary to activate a DE? This could make crafting mean something beyond just being a roadway to a legendary.

What if NPCs consumed/bought things from the trading post, had varying prices for crafted items… you needed to talk to them to find out what they were looking for; smart players who follow the dialog can profit, the “in demand” items change periodically to prevent exploitation…

I’m sure there are balance issues with all of these concepts – but the basic thing is that the economy doesn’t really factor into any of these events. Yet in our REAL living world, it’s a dominant force. Perhaps there’s something there…

I’d really love to see the elder dragons return, if only because the fight against Zhaitian never really lived up to the “Fear Not This Night” song. I want to feel like the world may really be overwhelmed even if I know it really can’t be. I want the struggle against the dragons to be epic. Nay… LEGENDARY.

The open world part of the living story needs to become what you always wanted the dynamic events to be.

I’d love to see dragon invasions that are like a combination of Scarlet Invasions and the Teq event taken to a whole new level. Zones are invaded and if not fended off the zone is corrupted by the dragon with a real visible change. If the dragon’s minions take a zone they push onto the next zone until they assault one of the player cities. On the other hand if we take the zone back we can do events to uncorrupt the zone. With enough victories we can take the fight to the Dragon’s Champion.

And here’s the trick, it would be really awesome if we had that without it just being a zerg. And by zerg I mean encouraging us to gather into 80+ groups whether or not they are coordinated. Lag is bad. Don’t encourage it. Some groups are just too large.

Meanwhile, there should be a story around all that in solo instances. These should make me care about who these dragon’s servants are and tease with the mysteries that surround the elder dragons. They should make me feel like a hero and important. If the dragon happens to be Mordremoth then that’s a great time to really delve into the characters of Caithe, Scarlet, and Faolain in a meaningful way. If that dragon happens to be Kralkotorik then that’s a wonderful time to really explore the legacy of Glint and the Zephrityes. Make the dragons and their servants interesting, but also create other stories that semi-relate to them that make sense.

Most of all… explore the lore of Tyria. Sometimes you have to solve a mystery if only to convince the players that you actually know the answers yourselves. You still haven’t proven that a year in. You just tease more mysteries.

Top 5 improvements you’ve done so far this year:

-Moving to a more cinematic style of storytelling.

-Some memorable characters. Rox, Braham, Faran, Evon Gnashblade, even hobo-tron.

-Moving important story events are told in separate instances, not in the open world.

-Scarlet Invasions and Teq fight show the potential of open world events. They just need tweaking. You’re sooooo close with those. I suggest using them as a beta test for future events and continue adjusting them till you get them just right.

-Love the build up to the Nightmare Tower. If all events are built up like this then it will go a long way to making the world seem more living.

Top 5 changes needed:

-We need a lore panel. The personal story, the living story, general lore in the world (sorta like the codex in Bioware games), and hopefully one day the in-game books that were supposed to be in the game at launch, all wrapped up into one nice user interface experience. With rewards unlocked for our personal instance linked to the lore and story tidbits we uncover. The Living Story badly needs a record of what has been going on and the game in general suffers from a severe lack of in-game lore.

-Scavenger hunts with no clues or real story is not fun, nor is it content. The search for the Mad King’s diary was fun, the search for the dragon clues in Tequetel Rising was not.

-If you’re going to put in open world content that requires coordination then it would be helpful to give commanders features that help facilitate that. Commander tags aren’t just a WvW thing anymore.

-Please… less zergs. Spread us out more. Being in groups in the open world is great, but everyone in the zone in one spot is baaaaaaaad.

-Please stop taking out content. Where was Reaper Rumble this year? The Mad King’s Journal? The journal last year did more for the Mad King’s story than the short fiction piece this year. He was creepy last year, this year he’s just silly. It makes me fear for Wintersday.

Also something dear to my heart, there is minimal asuran presence in the story so far if you take out the festive stuff. I miss Zorjaa and would love to see a new asuran have an IMPORTANT part in the living story (not just an NPC that gives you a quest). Tixx and Motto are fun but they are not in any way central to the living story.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think we have learnt a great deal from where we are now with the Scarlet Arc. I won’t talk about future plans for her i am afraid as this goes against the rules i set for this initiative. I appreciate all the feedback in regard to our current story telling foundations and look forward to seeing the game evolve from them.

Chris

Can you give us Scarlet’s head on the plate soon?
Please.

( Half of it is a joke, only half )

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep the story needs to more ‘Epic’, meaningful and better at evoking emotion.

Not only. There is a need for variation.
I didn’t have a time to write it first so my best releases story wise were:
Bazar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics and Dragonbash. Those releases had ended plot, both made great foundations to what’s to come but they felt whole.
The worst story wise:
New Clockwork Chaos that seemed rushed and had almost nothing in it and Scarlet felt so sticked in there for no reason (not to mention very annoying achievements after dungeon). Even if it had any good story reason for scarlet it was very poorly shown. Flame and Frost was also terrible. You made us wait for so long and made great dungeon but in the end nothing resolved and we just wend to another place barely bound to the previous thread that was taking 3 months.

So to sum it up.
There is a need for epic story from time to time, but be sure not to aim for it every 2-3 months or it will be boring and you have to make it really well. I (and as I read others) can wait for that so please do whatever you can to make a good and epic.
Be sure to make normal stories like election, zephyr sanctum or detective like Dragon Bash also. Fun releases like SAB (how I love it – but please make shorter levels, we can have 6 shorter or something) are SOOO welcome.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Internally for a while we now we have been talking about positive and negative consequences of completion or failure of activities and challenges within the game and more specifically around events. For example Jon Peters one of our Design Leads was putting forward the idea of the above rules/paradigms around TQ. So for example if the players are fail to take down TQ then this would cause a ‘Darkness’ to fall across the zone, perhaps where he would fly around attacking locations and creating new events. A second chance on TQ would therefore be to complete these events and then perhaps rally the NPC forces in the zone to help you take him down. A positive modifier could bring ‘Light’ to the land for example and lower cost on NPC traders, give greater rewards from events and perhaps even create new events. Of course this is all brainstorming but it is the natural evolution of our current platform.

I love the idea and it should be present for each of 3 dragons. This idea rocks so much!
You can have kind of blizzard in Frostgeorge that will reduce visibility and make more ice broods when we fail. There can be tornadoes in blizzard that will be annoying to make people who farm champs care for Claw etc. I would love to see Shaterer ghet closer and closer if event fails. Move to Feilds in Ruins and attack Ebonhawk. and leave zone full of crystals that can be traps of few kinds (paralyzing, blowing up, summoning monsters etc).

THERE IS ONE “BUT”!

Please, please, please revamp TQ already.
Almost no one does TQ. Yes, there are some guilds, yes some players can atapt and learn mechanics, but you need way to many organized people for this event.

We do Karka Queen, all temples (except Balth), and all other world bosses on Underworld, but no one even tries to get people to TQ.

The reason is it’s too hard to organize. We killed it on the LW release few times and thats it. It takes too effort in organization. Normal players don’t do that. Great majority of people who want to enjoy the game like to have some challenges form time to time and even they don’t go for TQ stating it as “waste of time”, cause it’s way too hard to organize due it’s need for 80+ people, when we do Karka with like 40 and all the mechanics that make it too complex to enjoy.
TQ rewards arent also that great so there is no 2nd reason to even think about doing it. You can say that’s not true cause you can get ascended weapon from TQ, but I (as many others) don’t believe in RNG so thats something that don’t exist for me.

It was great for kind of achievement but no one wants to achieve the same thing over and over.

If there are guilds/groups who do TQ they will be bored in time and completely o one will ever do it so I guess we will have forever dark zone in the game.

I have to add at the end that i live overall revamps you made to the bosses but you have to balance them and make it more variant (but not so technical) instead of more impossible to get if not half of the server comes. Technical fight is good for small groups, not for world bosses.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I wanted to say thanks again for being part of this initiative. Personally I think its going to be awesome, it is already impacting our day to day discussion so let’s keep it up!

Chris

I have a personal request. If you could even a little at the end of the thread could you write a bit more specific about what will change after reading this topic?

I think that its great what you wrote. You basically addressed all the main problems and let us know that you are aware of that, but I would really love to get some more informations.

For example: as for expanding the world, many me including wrote that we need new maps, so if you plan to address that let us know that new map will be planned to be released in 4 months or 6 month or something like that.

This would really keep me going and make me look forward to something cause now I very sadly have less and less reasons to log in and play in game after making 9 characters end exploring world so many times.

LW is a great idea but due of many disapointments it’s only kinda nice for me now.
I still give it a chance but its harder and harder when I feel like the wold is dying. I really look forward zone permanent changes and new maps for example.

Favorite Living Story Chapter: Hmm… I’d have to say Bazaar of the Four Winds. The zone was beautiful and there were a lot of fun mechanics you had to use to explore it. Plus there were two really fun and unique mini-games and even the drinking game thrown in just for fun. And the lore around the Zephyrites and the teasing about Glint’s legacy really piqued my interest. It was fun all around but still had strong lore ties. I would love to see it picked up on again and continued.

Worst Living Story Chapter: Super Adventure Box (both times!). I know a lot of people love the SAB, and so it’s really just personal preference on my part. But even as someone who was gaming in the 8-bit and 16-bit era the minecraft style graphics ruin my enjoyment. So much effort put into the project, it makes me wonder what you guys could do with a story based, solo instance, lore focused release instead. I’d love something like that I could play with my girlfriend, just… not the Super Adventure Box. I’d rather something that was more…Tyrian based.

On the plus side, I enjoyed seeing Motto’s old krewe in Rata Sum in the second SAB release. That was a really nice touch. I’m more interested in them than in Motto’s invention.

Favorite Living Story moments:

Aetherblade attack on the Captain’s Council. This felt epic. The npc’s involved were simply supporting cast, and the player felt like the main character. It felt like we as players were working together with the npc’s without them trying to steal the spotlight. There were also innocent lives at stake, and people died. This makes me care about the story.

Scarlet’s disruption of the opening of the Queen’s Pavilion. Again, the npc’s were simply there as supporting cast. Braham and Rox were there, and Rox fired off some shots to the best of her capabilities, without being a new Marvel superhero. I wanted her to succeed, but I loved that she was powerless. Because it felt like the player and the npc’s were in this together, and were on equal footing. I hate it when ever an npc is pushed forward into the spotlight to showcase impossible powers that none of the players are capable off. It just comes off as Mary Sue behavior, and I was glad not to see any of it here. Again, there also was more at stake. Innocents had to be protected and saved. In fact, I think I would have liked it even more if there were some consequences to failing to save certain people. But the same npc’s always get kidnapped, regardless of your best efforts. And that’s a pity. But it did give me a rush trying to take down the Clockwork horrors, which were really a big surprise.

The hidden Tower of Nightmares. When something of this scale is secretly sneaked into a familiar explorable, it invokes an incredible feeling of mystery and discovery at the same time. Please do this more often. Just add stuff and don’t tell us.

Least favorite moments:

Broadly advertising the Tower of Nightmares on the main website, with a trailer, and a long list of grindy achievements to go with it. It kills all mystery instantly. Why not simply not tell anyone, and change the whole map in secret? Just allow us to figure these things out for our selves. And the long list of achievements just feels like such a chore.

Halloween grind. I think there is an overwhelming disappointment regarding this year’s Halloween, because it feels like a severely watered down version of the one we got last year. Just think about it, we have no Ascent to Madness, no Reaper’s Rumble, no temporary weaponskins, all Halloween weapon recipes are now ludicrously expensive and grindy, there’s a few new bugs in the Clocktower, Lunatic Inquisition is bugged/unplayable due to the imbalance with the Mad King Says skill, we have a mask that isn’t really a Halloween mask at all, a new miniature requiring yet more ludicrous grind, one quest that is much shorter than the one we got last year, and a few new costumes which of course must be bought with gems. None of this invokes the holiday spirit.

The problem I have with the living story is that it is temporary content that puts more emphasis on the rush to grind out achievements and less emphasis on GOOD STORIES. If it wasn’t for the youtuber, “Woodenpotatoe” I would have never realized all these living stories are somehow related to each other. Mostly because I stopped caring about the stories as they’re childish and I have achievements to grind.

In my opinion you should look towards Cryptic and Telltale for your formula. Release these living stories episodically. This gives your writers more flexibility to create really awesome/fleshed out stories that players follow for 6 weeks or so. I’d also create these stories so that they’re mostly instanced, this way you can keep them in the game for new and old players alike.

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.

It has been suggested bringing the story back to the dragons. It has also been stated several days ago that there are plans to return to dragons at some point in the future. Considering at least in my opinion the Elder Dragons house the most impressive stories in the GW universe; I find it a little odd to deviate from or choose not to tie the story arc into at least one or more elder dragons.

I have my own hypothesis of the current Scarlet arc; which is to say I think based on where we have been taken to they could easily create Elder Dragon tie-ins have they not already done so via un-revealed conclusions.

I won’t beat the proverbial dead horse too long ( or in Tyria terms, “beat the dead centaur”), but I also agree the story arc has taken too long to reach its conclusions thus player base frustrations. I understand one of Guild Wars 2’s goals was to be innovative and new; with this being said it would be great to hear from the team as to why scarlet was chosen as an arc when at your fingertips are the Elder-Dragons?? You can still create innovation using lore from the Guild Wars universe.

Like I said above I have my own suspicions and hunches; which is really me just crossing my fingers and hoping for an Elder-Dragon tie in at the end of the scarlet arc. I also understand specifics can’t be discussed and divulged, but maybe it could be discussed upon a little further?

I think myself and many others would love to hear the reasoning’s behind the decision to opt for a new “villain” rather than utilizing the Elder-Dragons for GW2’s first story arc. I would also like to clarify I tried to be mindful of my post and I hope it doesn’t come off as a demand

Lore Book (or Story Book)

As a temporary measure, if other plans are in place to help people who have missed part of the story, could arenanet post some story pages detailing what exactly has gone on during the living story, in a story format?

This way, if I have been out of the game a few months, I could come to http://www.guildwars2.com , and click on a link that brings me to another page that tells the story from start to finish, or until where we currently are in the story. This way, I have an idea of what has gone on.

Perfect example of this would be on World of Warcrafts site, however they give the complete history of Azeroth going all the way back to the Titans which is really interesting! This Lore Book could contain history going as far back as you want, but also include the living story as well.

Last night I decided to log in and see whats going on for the first time in a few months, and I think Im going to stick around a while longer. However, I have no clue whats going on with the story and since the past story arcs are done, I am lost…Who is Marjory Delequa(sp)? Who is her blonde friend? What has happened to Kessex?!? These are the things that should be easily accessible on the http://www.guildwars2.com website. Don’t point me to a third party site like Dulfy or a GW2 wiki. I should be able to find all that I need here.

Personally, I think the Living Story’s greatest strength has been in DESIGN. The Molten Facility (and its bosses), the Tower, the Aetherblade airships are all visually stunning.

Another strength is that the LS includes some of the best bossfights in the game. Tequatl is an obvious one, but also the Molten Firestorm/ Berserker, & I liked Slick & Sparki, too.

The greatest downside to the LS, on the other hand, is story (and how it’s told). The tone is off; it has none of the darkness or emotion it should be portraying. Scarlet is not threatening, and she is impossible to take seriously. She is Harley Quinn, right down to the giant mallet she had in the Pavillion bossfight (picking up that mallet was her lowest point, IMO, pushing her firmly into “children’s cartoon villain”).

So, overall, the visual design has been stunning and brilliant, and the gameplay has included some great parts too, especially in the dungeons. It is gravitas, storytelling, and lore that are suffering. You have a very strong background of lore to work with: don’t overlook it in Scarlet’s pursuit of wacky-evul-alliance number three!

I like to keep life simple. LW needs to be fun. If it is, then it is working. If it isn’t then it is failing and if it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t, then there is room for improvement.

Overall, LW’s fun factor relies way too much on certain playstyles (e.g. PvE, jumping puzzles, boss mobs etc). There is no sense of LW impacting the tension between servers or WvW or Spvp. So there are large sections of play and playstyle that are not integrated into the story. As such it is more a fun distraction than really epic. Sometimes LW can be a whole lot of fun as a “side dish” but it seems to have little to do with the “main course” of kill the guy playing on the computer 1000k away from you for too many.

Yes, I pvp and wvw as my primary “course”.

LW should touch all aspects of the game somehow and should integrate those aspects at least a bit.

You could kill a number of birds with the LW stone. For example, can LW content be used to ease the impact of server population issues in WvW? Can LW PvE be tied to gaining powerful supplies or siege maps for underpowered realms to use in WvW?
Can there be special 6v6 or 12v12 spvp/wvw maps available to the overpopulated realms to siphon off their players creating balance for the Season?

Let me give you an example of each.

Example #1. An enemy realm (NPCs) seeing the growing might of the server which is grossly winning a WvW season decides to get involved in ensuring the overall balance of power. So it might have a few mobs, camps etc in each server’s map but really focus on kicking around the dominant server:

1) Danger and annoyance (say beating your walls, robbing your supplies, making it difficult for that server to move around without an npc fight but avoiding other realms etc).

2) Creating negative effects for the server to overcome (poisoned land creates weaker stats unless you hold and destroy X on the map that is underutilized and can have new content like an Asura radiation leak etc).

Example #2 PvE Linkage (Invasion)

Your realm has found the source of the invading realm’s magic, technology strength etc. In PvE, you have a challenge to capture part of that advantage and take those new blueprints or supplies with you to WvW (make all supplies temporary and poof at the end of the season).

Example #3 Integrating Spvp
If you hold the castle (which typically is held by the force creaming the other two servers), you have access to a new WvW map which pits all the castle owners against each other but siphons off only so many people at a time.

In conclusion, it would be far more interesting if LW would have elements in all three major aspects of the game pve, wvw, spvp and be used as a balance tool. LW may be the ultimate tool for quick fix population/power issues.

I would be willing to see LW content extend from 2 weeks to 3 or even 4 if it could be more robust and tie in all three aspects of the game versus only being pve.

I think the Elder Dragons really deserve to be fleshed out more lore-wise, and the Living Story is the perfect opportunity. There’s way to much focus on a cliche villain at the moment, with not really good lore to back it up. Constant alliances, and experiments? This is Power Rangers type villain of the month story telling. It’s not intriguing or mysterious. Meanwhile all we know about the Elder Dragons, is that they have been asleep for a long while, and want to destroy/corrupt everything. We have nothing on their motivations, and very little on where they came from. I would like to see the Living Story explore this lore, and add some depth and mystery to these rather simplistic evil forces.

I’m a bit late to the party, as I just don’ have the time to actively participate in this fantastic discussion. I’ve read some awesome ideas, some of which I’ve seen throughout the forums before, some of which are new thanks to this open collaboration.

My favorite LS release: it’s hard to nail down one, because the 3 I have in mind brought such great things. Namely, Bazaar and Southsun each brought us a new, well-designed area. Unfortunately, Southsun feels like it’s been forgotten and the Bazaar went away. But introducing new areas is so great. And the Tower shows that the LS can have a large impact on the topography of Tyria. I like seeing a world evolution from the LS. Despite the fact that I named 3, you can take away the same thing from them: a new zone or new look to an existing zone, opening up the world.

As for succeed/fail for DEs, I love the idea. And I think DEs need more focus. Everyone has said they want their hero’s impact felt. The DEs that we’ve completed throughout Tyria need to reflect our efforts, succeed or fail. I like the idea of focusing on a zone or 2 at a time and introducing new DEs based on a storyline:

- the centaurs, tired of the ongoing struggles with humans in Gendarren, have decided to go on an aggressive offensive, leading to new DEs and small changes in the zone
- Mt Maelstrom is becoming more active, spewing lava and noxious smoke. Help to push back rising destroyers, stop the flow of burning lava, fight the curious Inquest, discover that their experiments are behind the volcano’s activity, and put a stop to them.
- The Nightmare Court have gotten wind of Malyck’s existence and are pushing out through Caledon to find him and this other tree. Fight them off and work to discover and then conceal the location of the other tree.

I love the idea of having the success or failure of fights like Teq impact the zone. It gives the player a sense that what they do is actually important, rather than just another fight on a timer.

I’m glad the cadences of release and story are being looked at. Every 2 weeks is a bit fast but if the overall design of the LS and the achievements are going to be changed, then the problem might be remedied. It seems the general consensus is to reduce the grind of too many achievements for a meta reward. This will make every 2 week releases less daunting and alleviate the feeling of having to bang out the achievements right away. I know most people don’t want to feel left behind and I don’t like feeling like I have to join a zerg or champ train just to accomplish the meta in time.

The personal story was one of my favorite parts of the game. I say “was” because soon enough it ends and you simply get into the same Order/Pact story as everyone else. And despite the multiple-choice instances, it’s still the same story. If we could get some releases that add to our hero’s personal storyline, that’d be wonderful. Make them race-specific, just like the initial ones, but without attention to our Order/Legion/College/Cycle, etc. Let the choices we make dictate which storyline we go down. For instance, at a celebration party after the main storyline is completed, a messenger brings you a letter saying that you’re needed urgently in your home instance. Upon arrival, an altercation breaks out that forces you to make a choice (like save him or her, follow the courier or the soldiers, eavesdrop or capture and interrogate, etc) and the choice begins your choose-your-own-adventure storyline. The story will then unfold and be about you, feel personal, and be epic. It could reveal something about the hero’s past and eventually lead to an epic quest. Possibly even leading up to the next dragon we’ll have to take on.

So I’m a bit late to the discussion and while it’s not one of the main topics here it seems, a problem that many people find with Living Story is that you miss things if you aren’t there for them, which is a pity.

A way to solve that problem could be to add the story into the game as stable fractals (as opposed to the unstable ones we are trying to stabilize in Fractals of the Mist), as I wrote in a suggestion here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Stable-fractals-Replay-Tyria-s-history/first#post3155192

It’s pretty long so I’ll just link it here since it’s not a main topic, but I think it’s an idea worth considering and it would help retell the parts of the living story that people have missed.

I haven’t got much of a problem with some Living Story content disappearing. For example, the corruption of Kessex Hills. I could totally understand if this corruption doesn’t last forever, and the Toxic Alliance mobs eventually disappear. But don’t remove things that don’t have to be removed. For example, the Tower of Nightmares dungeon could be a lot of fun, but don’t remove it from the game after that part of the Living Story comes to an end. By all means, return Kessex Hills back to its original state at some point, but don’t remove an entire new dungeon, like with Molten Facility or the Aetherblade dungeon.

Seras.5702

The personal story was one of my favorite parts of the game. I say “was” because soon enough it ends and you simply get into the same Order/Pact story as everyone else. And despite the multiple-choice instances, it’s still the same story. If we could get some releases that add to our hero’s personal storyline, that’d be wonderful. Make them race-specific, just like the initial ones, but without attention to our Order/Legion/College/Cycle, etc. Let the choices we make dictate which storyline we go down. For instance, at a celebration party after the main storyline is completed, a messenger brings you a letter saying that you’re needed urgently in your home instance. Upon arrival, an altercation breaks out that forces you to make a choice (like save him or her, follow the courier or the soldiers, eavesdrop or capture and interrogate, etc) and the choice begins your choose-your-own-adventure storyline. The story will then unfold and be about you, feel personal, and be epic. It could reveal something about the hero’s past and eventually lead to an epic quest. Possibly even leading up to the next dragon we’ll have to take on.

That’s my opinion too. Quests should be more specific to the character-choices. I even liked the “present” from Scarlet for it was somewhat “personal”, but it would have been more convincingly, if it had been offered by a shady npc-messenger or a mailman in the home-instance.

GW2 should become again more personal with Living Story with some little “personal” quests. That needn’t to be epic, when it has a convincing personal background-story.

Additional, actually it has no impact on gameplay, in which of the three orders of tyria our character is. The Personal Story suggested, that it would have some ongoing impact. That isn’t personal too. Is it possible to get a new, specific skills, depending on which order you are, conntected with gameplay, in ongoing LS? Or some repeatable order-specific missions?

Maybe Vigils can get/buy something like temporary commander-skills, Priory something connected with exploring-tasks and the Order of Wispers something with investigation? That probably need not be exclusively, when its buyable, but you should get some kind of “discount” for being member of a specific order.

Fix / dramaticaly improve client side performance befor adding more content.

No point adding content for big groups of people to do together if the majority are all watching a slide show of 10-20 FPS, with a handfull of people trying to let people know whats going on becouse they can just about scrape along with 30 FPS only thanks to having £2000+ worth of hardware brute forcing its way through GW2.

Thats all i got to say.

I’m a bit confused…

Regarding the cadence of the living world / story releases.

First a lot of people commented on how it feels to fast
Then Chris said:

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.

To me, that quote says, “we’re not going to slow down, or in any other way alter the 2 week release schedule. Stop posting about it.”

But then Chris says:

1: I said we plan to move forward as we have been. I later said (and as with everything we do) we will continue to appraise quality of the releases as we continue to improve our deployment with the platform and that if through internal and external discussion we felt that the quality was not meeting the expected level then we would reappraise and evolve.

I’ve been following this thread, and all dev posts aactually. pretty closely and I could find no mention in between the 2 posts quoted about "quality of the releases as we continue to improve our deployment ". Did they happen internally or did I miss them?
It’s totally fine either way, just if they were internal it wasn’t clear.

Then Chris goes on to say:

At no point did i say it is non negotiable . I said that currently we have no intention of changing the plan, however if we feel that we cannot reach the quality bar we and the player’s expect under the current cadence then we will evolve to ensure we are giving player’s the best possible experience. We have a lot of areas we can improve in to meet this goal and I personally would like to see us continue to work in improving in these areas.

While quality of release during the two week schedule is a concern, it is not the only one, or even the main one. There are several issues with the 2 week release patern that were brought up in this thread from missing out, to recyled content (find 24 widgets in 10 zones and hit ‘f’), to the content being to temporary etc. Quality I guess could be an over arching term here, but I feel that the term quality often means ‘no bugs / exploits’.

So what does all this mean? That slowing down is ‘on the table’? Or does it mean that an alternate solution is in the works and 2 weeks will continue?

In the original Collaborative Development thread Chris mentions being ‘black and white’. Please do so here.

Thank you.

P.S. – I feel that being able to replay the LS parts, in a fashion similar to the personal story, would greatly reduce the amount of ‘burn out’ that comes with 2 week releases and would help to satify the ‘make more permanent content’ faction as well.

P.P.S – I have a suggestion for replaying the living story steps and giving the non lions arch citys a reason to become more populated. I’ll post it a bit later once I have some time.

Solution to replaying older LS content… phasing. Easier said than done, but Im curious why phasing is not used in GW2 when it is such a valuable piece of tech.

cesmode.4257:

Lore Book (or Story Book)

As a temporary measure, if other plans are in place to help people who have missed part of the story, could arenanet post some story pages detailing what exactly has gone on during the living story, in a story format?

This way, if I have been out of the game a few months, I could come to http://www.guildwars2.com , and click on a link that brings me to another page that tells the story from start to finish, or until where we currently are in the story. This way, I have an idea of what has gone on.

Perfect example of this would be on World of Warcrafts site, however they give the complete history of Azeroth going all the way back to the Titans which is really interesting! This Lore Book could contain history going as far back as you want, but also include the living story as well.

Last night I decided to log in and see whats going on for the first time in a few months, and I think Im going to stick around a while longer. However, I have no clue whats going on with the story and since the past story arcs are done, I am lost…Who is Marjory Delequa(sp)? Who is her blonde friend? What has happened to Kessex?!? These are the things that should be easily accessible on the http://www.guildwars2.com website. Don’t point me to a third party site like Dulfy or a GW2 wiki. I should be able to find all that I need here.

I saw this mentioned (and i think i even did so myself), but when i see this sugestion i always have to think of Warhammer Online (now beeing shut down).

It had a book which not only served as your diary (story progression, including new events as well as old), armor collection (things you had in your possion at one point. that game had no wardrobe, but would be something for GW2), Title collection, enemy data (with some artworks sprinkled in) and POI and character lore (you find something intersting, you can instantnly read about it there).

I don`t see why GW2 would not be able to adapt a similiar system.
Righ now we have to go to the wiki, however this is “only” a community effort, so informtation or lore can be false.

An ingame enceclopedia, managed by the game and you developers themselves would actually answer a lot of problems (but would also mean a lot of work i can imagine)

However it would help people stay conected to it in-game, instead of beeing pulled out from it, to research something on the wiki or the forums.

you can also use it do advertise new content, or put together steps on “what to do” after we got our mission from from the flavor-NPC of the patch.
For example:
- After you talked to Majory after the “unveiling” cinematic you can find a synopsis in the book, beneath are the tasks you can do to help the situation and maybe some hints on how to do them.
- if you talk to other NPCs, more information gets added.

This brings in not only a way to stay conected and have everything handy in a quick way, it would also help “lore fanatics” with a new goal, as the have to scavange the land for new “lore” pieces to be added to the book.

- Investigate a searing crystal —> entry into the book about them
- read a book —> entry added
- take part in a certain DE —> information added

- defeat a drake —> simple entry
- defeat 50 drakes —> expanded entry
- defeat 100 drakes —> full entry
- fight every possible drake type —> bonus entry

Just for some examples. There could be even titles associated to it (which are definetly needed for some of the slayers), which might even give a little buff (like 5% more damage to drakes, after you completed all entries and you have the title equiped) like in GW1.

but i digress and i am maybe aiming a bit to high. It is just, that i have seen “intelligent” diaries and enceclopedia in other RPGs allready, which were able to provide a lot better information then what is curently in game.

Hey Xar, hopefully Chris will fully clarify for you, but my understanding is, regarding cadence, that they feel this way:

1) We really want to be able to put out content every 2 weeks
2) We think we have the tools and teams to do so at a high quality
3) These tools and teams have required some refinement, so we’re still finding our feet and getting up to speed a bit
4) We don’t think we’ve had long enough in this mode to consider adjusting the cycle yet (even though, to you guys, it seems like a year, keep in mind that our teams have had AT MOST two releases each)
5) If, moving forward, we aren’t meeting the quality goals we’d like to hit, we’d consider changing it, but we aren’t at that point yet

While I disagree with some of that (specifically #2: I think the cycles are too fast for proper storytelling due to the time required to write, translate, and record voice in multiple languages), I think it’s a fair response at this point and most of us will have to accept it.

Now, 2 week releases don’t have to mean an achievement grind, so that may be a useful topic of discussion moving forward.

That’s my sense of what Chris said, anyway.

@Jaken: Wardrobe is something that I have been clamoring about for a while. It hardly releates to Living Story, but it would be soooooo nice to have a wardrobe UI that stores every skin you’ve ever equipped, including blues and greens. Maybe throw in a karma cost to withdraw a skin for use, giving Karma some actual value again.

Anyways, thats beside the point of the thread. A lore book would be nice, whether in the game or on the website, so we can read and get caught up. Im not talking some quick one or two paragraphs for each LS update…something more in depth. Tell us a story! Spend some time on this.

I must have read the WoW lore on their webpage 3 or 4 times, and it is a good 4-5+ hour read.

I think we are in a conflict with the LS and Tyria Prime.

They want to use the LS to expand the universe and tell a story between the old PS and the upcoming next PS line, without creating a conflicted experience for new player…

well, i am sorry, but you wrote yourself into a corner here and while phasing might help, it would split the community.

Right now the world is frozen in time and evolving at the same time, which is a little weird.

The zones towards Orr cannot change, since they are an eternal conflict for all player, since they are experience the PS there, however every other zone will change and evolve past Zaithan, if the LS continues.

The only way to see an revived Orr through something like the LS or a new PS would be with a new Zone behind/sourounding Orr, which is only accessable after you finish the first PS. Here you will see the efforts the pact and Trahearn have put into, to revive the lands.
however, the old three zones will still stay in eternal conflict.

Is there a solution? Not one that isn`t screwing the “new” players. However to have a LW, you have to change things, even drasticaly. Since the LS is driving the world forward and is set behind the PS, there will be a point where we can`t be hold back by new players anymore.

for that, the PS has to be rewritten to acomidate. If Orr is cleansed, put in new PS storysteps, so they can still experience a fallen Orr.

We need to be able to move PS-Storymarkers as well as Heartquests around on the map, to accomidate changes in the LW.

For example my favourite “missed opportunity”:

Scarlet takes over Divinity`s Reach, tuning it into a warzone, with the astological center beeing her new funhouse. (sorry i just love this idea more, then what we got.. anyway)

This would be cool, but block out every new player out of the city, or hinder their access to certain storymarkers…. Not.
Just move them around to safe spots, close to their destination. Their stories are instanced anyway.

This would allow for some more diverse and “critical” events in the long run.
i have the feeling we are playing it rather safe right now, even though the ToN update is a delightfull bold move. I hope the payoff will be fitting.

Honestly I think the problems with GW2 Living Story and overarching story as a whole are multi-faceted.

The biggest thing that GW1 had that GW2 is completely lacking is atmosphere. I’ll give a few examples. In GW1, anytime you completed a mission (part of the story), it just felt like you had some sort of impact on the world. The second you exited the mission, the gravity of whatever just happened was felt and the world seemed a little different. In GW2, you run up to a little green got on the map clone of the world. You do your story, then you go back to the xact spot you entered in the real world and it feels like there was little to no impact on the world or atmosphere based on your story. As a whole it therefore feels very disconnected. Where-as in GW1, the story and missions where very intertwined into the game as a whole, in GW2 it just feels like a disconnected distraction that most people I know don’t even bother finishing.

The Living Story serves to help correct the disconnected feeling of the personal story well in that its actually happening out in the real world which is a definite improvement over personal story. The only problem with this though is that on the whole the Living Story feels like very little actual story and instead a grind for achievement points. Why am I killing 25 offshoots? Why did I farm holographic enemies back in Dragon Bash? Etc, etc. If anything, there ought to be more story/missions that progress the story part of LS.

Also, there feels like a disconnect from one story to the next each release. As it is right now, even having played all living story since Flame and Frost, I couldn’t tell you how a good deal of them are connected. So really there also needs to be a more visible progression of the LS in how each new release relates to the previous.

The other thing really missing that GW1 had but GW2 is also lacking is the use of GW lore. The GW universe is very rich in lore and yet it was very absent from the story. At the end of EOTN we see a cinematic of various things that made us excited to see what happens. The biggest of which I think is when se see Livia finding the Scepter of Orr. It completely shocked me that there was no mention or any inclusion of this relic into the GW2 world/story somehow.

What happened to groups like the Mursaat, The White Mantle, etc.? Or at the very least evidense of their past within the world. When will things like this get included into the Living Story of the world?

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. I love GW2 to death, but it can’t hold a candle to GW1’s story, atmosphere, lore.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris – is it possible to get a separate thread for the DE discussion? Largely because it doesn’t directly pertain to the Living Story and there is a small fear some of the LW feedback has got lost amongst the DE discussion (I understnad they can connect, but they are 2 big topics and if you guys are as busy as you appear, it would be easier to sift through as well I’d imagine)

There’s a weight of great discussion going on here, but the title isn’t advertising it is about DE’s. You could feasibly get more people involved in a separate thread (and it doesn’t need a cut off date either since people can opt in/out at will)

Hi Randulf,

I agree that we should and will have a separate discussion thread for DE’s foundational design, evolution and quality. What i am interested in here however is how DE’s can relate to story telling and game play synergy and the overall evolution of Living World. Therefore within these bounds i think it is a great topic for this thread.

Hope this makes sense?

Chris

Hi Chris,

I’m a little strapped for time, so I’m sorry if I’ve missed this already being discussed elsewhere.

Has any thought been put into the consistency of the delivery of the content you’re providing? The main game revolves around heart quests and dynamic events. The personal story and missions for the living story quests have the little starbursts that lead you to a location/instance, and there are the in-game emails that point you towards instances/etc..

When applicable you use dynamic events within the living story as a tool, but the reward system and quests are provided in large part through the achievements panel. I’m not sure what the intent of this was, or if it is working as intended, but it feels clunky to have large parts of the experience tied to a system that has always been intended to be in the background. Achievements are immersion breaking. When you make the only real goal for playing the living story buried inside of this system I feel like I’m playing solitaire instead of a RPG.

Part of the issue, I suppose, is that there is a goal here to try to reward players who can accomplish a certain amount within a certain time limit. I don’t really have a problem with this, but if I’m going to admit that it is a stretch for me to be able to accomplish those goals in the time allotted, then there is absolutely no point in investigating/collecting/participating in anything to do with the living story whatsoever.

Perhaps another currency is in order? Or could there be karma-merchants providing event-specific consumables? It just seems like there is only one goal, the back piece (or the krait obelisk, or the candy corn elemental). I would love to see something that is independent of the amount of time you’ve spent on a specific living story event (2-week period) so that if I run out of time after achieving 10/13 points towards my candy corn elemental, its not time completely wasted.

I feel like more creative use of dynamic events might be part of the solution. I know there are mixed feelings towards the shrines in Orr but I feel like the tower of nightmares could use something like this. Instead of little independent events, they could lead towards one giant event with a merchant at the end that sells you the obelisk shard for living story points.

Just an idea.

There seems to be a lot of talk about consequences for failure but as someone who plays during non-peak times I’d like to say that I am very much against this idea.

Remember when the game was new and exploring the world meant random strangers would converge around dynamic events? That is nothing like my average play experience these days. More often than not Dynamic Events I find are stalled with NPCs that need to be rezzed; and if I do happen to see another player near a DE they are probably running past rather than stopping to complete it. And I don’t mean only the tiny random events are being ignored; Jormag’s crystals will sit for hours and I often see Shatterer fail because there’s just a couple people there and we can’t beat the timer.

Side-note: why was a timer added? Honest question, I am really wondering what the goal of that change was. One of the coolest fights I had in GW2 was taking down Shatterer with 3 people before the timer was put in. Now if there’s no zerg it is pointless to even try fighting. Players in small groups trying to take down a dragon put in a lot more effort than members of the zerg and yet we’re punished by a timer just because we play at unpopular times? If the intention is that the dragons fly away after a while of being ignored that’s fine, but couldn’t there first be a check to see if players were still trying to win?

If consequences for failure exist, or mechanics are introduced that require large groups or long chains to reclaim enemy territory, then I think the game will suddenly get a lot less fun for non-peak/low-world-population players. Even if you make the events possible for small groups, lonely players will still be at a huge disadvantage. Think of the centaur chain in Harathi. Sure someone solo or a small group can take all the land from the centaurs and move the chain all the way from Seraph’s Landing to Ulgoth. But compared to a zerg, they’ll spend longer doing those events for fewer rewards (since zergs scale up the number of enemies and therefore loot drops). Eventually those small groups will give up on the idea and the centaurs will just get to control the northern camps all the time.

So please, if you want to include negative consequences for failing events, fine. But give those an arbitrary timer just like you give the events themselves. So players who come in at odd times aren’t stuck playing in harsh conditions constantly just because nobody was around to prevent things from getting bad.

My favourite and least favourite releases:

Favourite: Bazaar of the Four Winds, close second, Lost Shores (though it was before the Living World initiative really existed in its current form)

The reason I like Bazaar of the Four Winds so much is because it felt like the most substantial of GW2’s releases so far. It added a new (if temporary) area with its own unique atmosphere and music. It gave a tantalising bit of follow-up and resolution to some characters and factions from GW1 (Glint, Brotherhood of the Dwarf, etc). It also had the same trappings as the areas from the initial release of GW2 – ambient conversations and the like, which are a great boon to immersion and atmosphere-building. The only problem with this was the very limited amount of voice variety – if you’re going to do ambient conversations and so many of them, you need more than a couple of voice actors. (It felt like there were about three voice actors there – one for males and one for females, plus one to play kids. That’s so few that it becomes incredibly obvious incredibly quickly that you have a limited amount of actors for a release).

Also, the reason I gave Lost Shores a mention was because it gave me the feeling – moreso than any other GW2 update – that I was banding together with other players to defend Tyria. I think this mainly derived from its use of one-time events. While I realise people will jump on me for daring to suggest that one-time events are a good thing, I think they can be phenomenally good if used sparingly. The problem is when the entire release centres on one-time events, which Lost Shores more or less did. That left a bitter taste in the mouth of people who weren’t there, but I don’t think it’s a reason to completely stop doing one-time events.

Least favourite: Dragon Bash

The main reason I consider Dragon Bash so poor is beacuse it felt uninspired. The story stuff was very cool (the instances and the tracking down of suspects), but the open world achievements felt like they had gone way too far towards the ‘press F on lots of things’ paradigm. They felt uninspired.

On paper I can understand how smashing pinatas, firing fireworks and taking part in the festivities would be fun, but in practice, in a game where most non-combat interactions boil down to pressing the ‘F’ key, it ended up feeling more like boring filler and less like actual content.

The PvP minigame, Dragon Ball, was a bit better but suffered from massive polish issues (no music, just silence, the announcer from outside not actually saying anything, etc.), which were compounded by some massive server lag I got at the time, so I suppose it’s not fair for me to pass judgement on that minigame.

Nevertheless, Dragon Bash felt like it simply existed to justify Sky Pirates of Tyria, which, to its credit, was an amazing update.

ColinJohanson.2394:

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

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

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

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

Thoughts?

ColinJohanson.2394:

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

I would agree. But for a different reason. The original southsun cove patch, however buggy, had the right idea. It launched a new zone, with new dynamic events, new lore tied to the island, a new enemy, and a culminating event.

If each of the LS patches were similar in nature, you might hear a different tune around here. People like new zones, new enemies, etc. We like to see new landscapes, and your art team is definately not short in skill in creating gorgeous landscapes.

I also think the current LS is actually quite decent so far. I have no idea whats going on story wise, because I missed the last two months, but changing Kessex is really cool.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

Honestly, I don’t think having it around for 4 weeks would take away from the sense of story. The people who finished the content would move on, while those who had irl things going on will get to experience it themselves rather than be frustrated.

For example, I have two midterms coming up on the 14th and the 21st and if the Tower of Nightmares is only around for two weeks then I’ll have exactly four days to rush the achievements. So added on to the stress of exams I have the stress of I’m not going to get to enjoy this cool stuff because I’ve got to be an adult. Giving me four weeks however, will give me plenty of time to run the dungeon.

A lot of people complain of the two week pacing of the Living Story release, a compromise might be to leave the release in for four weeks, then they can take their time.