Guild Wars 2

I read one of the short stories that Anet released recently and made impossible to find. Anyway its from the perspective from another character taking place in the most recent update when we take back LA. Whoever writes these stories does a really good job, and in the literature, there is an atmosphere cast that is very dark and rightly so since LA is torn to pieces and is basically a warzone.

However in game, because of the structure of the content, you don’t really feel any trauma in the environment. You may see things torn to rubble and NPC dialogue that is rather dim, but from the players perspective, you feel no threat whatsoever. Looking back at the last LS, where we take back LA. It was kind of a joke in some situations because there are loads of people farming their hearts out at this event, while the devs tried to convey this war-torn atmosphere of LA that didn’t completely get across.

I think this has been a pretty consistent trend with the LS. Its not that the story is bad or the writers are bad, I think its that there is trouble in taking that story and portraying it in every aspect to its fullest extent. With the LA events, I think players could have felt more threatened by being in the zone with all these villains of Scarlet. She has champions lurking around, along with other mobs, but they never really feel that dangerous. One reason is that you can pretty much skip all of them(this is an enormous problem with PVE content in this game that subtracts from the threat players feel from dungeons/fractals/pve content). You can pretty much put auto-walk on and stroll through the zone if you please. The only times i’ve really tread carefully in zones, are in Southsun Cove, and the Older version of Orr where there was a stupid amount of mobs around, with a high respawn rate.

I think for LS season 2, the devs need to work more on creating the atmosphere that the writers are doing when they write this story.

The problem is age rating.
They are stuck behind rather strict guidelines as to what they can put in the game due to those.

“Blood, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence” is what the content descriptor says from ESRB. They forgot to include the kitten scene as well I guess. Thats probably partially true though, which is sad, because some of the most dramatic events in the LS, like the beginning where villagers homes were destroyed and they were forced out of their land, or brought into molten facilities where they were tortured, are not captivating at all. I and im sure many other players felt very little emotion, if any at all, to the refugees in the F&F chapter. You could tell that the dialogue tried to embrace this idea of horror but it somewhat failed. Perhaps Anet was too cartoonish on some of the content they created. I think one thing they can do is make the mobs feel more lethal. Were being told of these horrifying enemies ravaging peoples homes, and it ends up being a bunch of 2 hittable dredge who couldn’t tap us below 90%.

The problem is we know it’s “just a game”, nothing is real and we also know that even if we do die in game all it means is we have to pay a silver or so at most to cover the repair. So what else can they do? Tbh tho the first time I was playing in the new LA the screams of people I would hear in the background (through my home theatre system I might add lol) seemed pretty chilling, after a while of course that wore off tho…

There is NOTHING they can do in this game that would scare or shock me (okay if they took my loots away for some reason such as stuff from gemstore etc :P), nothing. They can destroy La and I would just think “okay, that’s cool I guess” but I wont be surprised, I wont be shocked. They could kill of a char here and there and I would just shrug. So again I ask, what really can they do?

Paulytnz.7619:

The problem is we know it’s “just a game”

have you ever played “Bastion”? “Dear Esther”? I could name “A Machine for Pigs” but that is way above as PEGI rating.

No, the problem is definitely not “it’s just a game”, because a game – after all – is just one of the many ways to tell a story, so I would search the problem elsewhere.
I’ve said this in some other thread and will take this chance to further spread the word: GW2 pixels lacks heart. Things slightly improves if we take into account the personal story, but in the open world (in which you will spend 95% of your time) there are no traces of feelings or emotions of any kind.

For the sake of brevity let’s just take into account the Living Story, and let’s just focus on its last part:
- why separate the evacuation from the invasion? Put hard ethic choices on the players: fighting the Assault Knights or saving the citizens? Who is more righteous, those who fight the invaders or those who try to avoid them helping people?
- add fear: instead of random enemies spawning and standing still, make them group and roam to hunt down civilians and players as well.
- hurt the world: Lion’s Arch has been destroyed, but no one cares in whole Tyria. Everywhere you go, everything is still going on as usual.
- not only the players, but not even characters are not emotionally involved in the process (something like “I studied here, I graduated here, I bought my first weapon here” ecc ecc). There is no “sense of loss”.
- the world is not interactive: NPC across the world do not react differently depending on your actions.
- there is no randomness: everything goes the same way everyday since the beginning and until the end of time.

I know it’s probably very complex to implement some of these things, but this would be a giant leap toward a LIVING world.
Don’t misunderstand me: I like gw2, just underlining how seeing it improve further would make me happier.

As others mentioned above me, LS could be improved mechanically alot and I think Anet is aware now based on the impact. However, I have seen some lack when it comes to feedback regarding the story as the MMO audience is far more interested in gameplay.

Glad to see this thread. Anet basically need to implement the story in-game, not everyone check blogs and sites, not to mention flicker or whatever they use to split the story into alot of locations and if u r not a person who always follow them up, you will probably miss it all.

Wether with npc’s, places or voice-acted cutscenes, Anet need to implement the story behind LS in the game, not outside it.

The thing is that this is an MMO, meaning it won’t have super high quality narrative style. Grevender mentioned games like Bastion and A machine for pigs, but the problem is those are different categories of games. They are single-player games who’s focus is to tell a narrative story. MMO’s do have a story, but it is much harder to tell due to the fact that much of the development is focused on content, quality of life updates, balance, bug-fixing, etc and that the perspective is from third person style in a 3D world and divided between multiple people. With Bastion all they had to do was focus on it’s core elements and make a really compelling story, they didn’t need to worry about multiplayer or keeping players interested for long periods of time because it wasn’t a multiplayer game, it was a single-player game meant to tell a really good story.

Now granted, the LS story can be told better, but it will never give us the heart-wrenching moments of Bastion unless they really really get us invested to the characters.

Zelkovan.2630:

The thing is that this is an MMO, meaning it won’t have super high quality narrative style. Grevender mentioned games like Bastion and A machine for pigs, but the problem is those are different categories of games. They are single-player games who’s focus is to tell a narrative story. MMO’s do have a story, but it is much harder to tell due to the fact that much of the development is focused on content, quality of life updates, balance, bug-fixing, etc and that the perspective is from third person style in a 3D world and divided between multiple people. With Bastion all they had to do was focus on it’s core elements and make a really compelling story, they didn’t need to worry about multiplayer or keeping players interested for long periods of time because it wasn’t a multiplayer game, it was a single-player game meant to tell a really good story.

Now granted, the LS story can be told better, but it will never give us the heart-wrenching moments of Bastion unless they really really get us invested to the characters.

I don’t see why a MMO can’t have amazing narrative. The Secret World is a MMO, and its probably more immersive and has better narrative than most games I’ve played.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Zelkovan.2630:

The thing is that this is an MMO, meaning it won’t have super high quality narrative style. Grevender mentioned games like Bastion and A machine for pigs, but the problem is those are different categories of games. They are single-player games who’s focus is to tell a narrative story. MMO’s do have a story, but it is much harder to tell due to the fact that much of the development is focused on content, quality of life updates, balance, bug-fixing, etc and that the perspective is from third person style in a 3D world and divided between multiple people. With Bastion all they had to do was focus on it’s core elements and make a really compelling story, they didn’t need to worry about multiplayer or keeping players interested for long periods of time because it wasn’t a multiplayer game, it was a single-player game meant to tell a really good story.

Now granted, the LS story can be told better, but it will never give us the heart-wrenching moments of Bastion unless they really really get us invested to the characters.

I don’t see why a MMO can’t have amazing narrative. The Secret World is a MMO, and its probably more immersive and has better narrative than most games I’ve played.

It’s not that they can’t, Anet has been getting better, but if people are expecting Bastion, Amnesia, or DA:O narrative and storytelling on a consistent basis, then i’m sorry, it won’t happen. All of those games took years to make (especially DA:O) and those years paid off with very good stories. Unless Anet limit’s their releases to every two years, then we don’t get a narrative nowhere near on those levels. To reiterate though, it isn’t that this game can’t have an amazing narrative, but it will never beat games who’s objective is to do so.

lacks atmosphere. rofl.

The writers chose not to focus on the Lionguard characters and their fight to retake Lion’s Arch. They chose not to make Lion’s Arch and its people the centre of the narrative in this release. They gave the dialogue and the story to Rox, Braham, Marjory and Kasmeer. Lots of work went into putting a romance and friendship into the game (and in that final scene) and one of the costs is that the characters most relevant to this conflict were left out of the release or otherwise performing trivial roles.

People take for granted the fact that Destinty’s Edge 2.0 is supposed to be in every release, that we are supposed to focus on them, but why? Why was this story following them and not the people of Lion’s Arch? Magnus, Turma and Kiel have minor roles to play compared to them and that’s wrong imo. These characters don’t enhance the story or the plot, they intrude on it, putting their individual moments right in the middle of everything else. This is most obvious when you take down Scarlet, that moment doesn’t carry the emotional weight of justice for all she’s done to Lion’s Arch, it doesn’t answer questions about how in control of her mind she is at that point or Scarlet’s motives, it doesn’t explore the possibility that drill is Thaumanova 2.0 and the city needs to be evacuated, that moment is made to be about DE 2.0 – characters that don’t represent Lion’s Arch or the victims of Scarlet’s attack. This is even more glaring when Ellen Kiel, a member of the Captain’s Council and the Lionguard, just walks off the ship instead of personally making sure the threat is dealt with or investigating the very possible risk of the drill resulting in a bigger danger for the city.

Do away with the travelling cast and give the prominence back to the most relevant story NPCs. If you want to tell a story about Lion’s Arch and it’s citizens, why use characters other than Lion’s Arch citizens? Instead of snappy lines from Kasmeer calling Scarlet names at the Knights we could have Turma and her unit fighting there. Instead of Rox talking about how gladium get spit on we could have had the flickr NPC fighting and falling in the forum. We can still have stories about individual characters, but put them in a more appropriate time and place.

Gw2 LS lacks

Fixed the title for you.

Grevender.9235:

- add fear: instead of random enemies spawning and standing still, make them group and roam to hunt down civilians and players as well.
- hurt the world: Lion’s Arch has been destroyed, but no one cares in whole Tyria. Everywhere you go, everything is still going on as usual.
- not only the players, but not even characters are not emotionally involved in the process (something like “I studied here, I graduated here, I bought my first weapon here” ecc ecc). There is no “sense of loss”.
- the world is not interactive: NPC across the world do not react differently depending on your actions.
- there is no randomness: everything goes the same way everyday since the beginning and until the end of time.

I know it’s probably very complex to implement some of these things, but this would be a giant leap toward a LIVING world.
Don’t misunderstand me: I like gw2, just underlining how seeing it improve further would make me happier.

THIS! +1

lordkrall.7241:

The problem is age rating.
They are stuck behind rather strict guidelines as to what they can put in the game due to those.

What a cop out! The rating is teen. A dark atmosphere can be created in so many different ways without it actually putting on the screen.

In one of the fractals there are human ready to be sacrificed to lava – that’s pretty dark. Add in a dialogue before that of begging, then a scream and its suddenly darker even still without stepping over the regulations of the rating.

Simply entering a darkly lit room full of slaves in cages asking (crying, moaning) to be released, you can hear the thunderous footsteps of a giant the creature returning to devour them, In one corner you have a piles of bones, of children and adults (corpses of previous prisoners) – that’s a pretty dark scene.

it doesn’t have to be all gore, blood and splatter to add atmosphere.

And it doesn’t have to be all gore, blood and splatter to create issues with the rating either