Guild Wars 2

The living story has taken up a lot of resources to produce. The contents aren’t really replayable. It’s more or less one time deal just for the experience. I sometimes wonder if ArenaNet didn’t devote so much time to the Living Story and just focus on permanent contents, new maps, new open world events, new dungeons, new weapons skills, new race, new profession, new legendaries, new pvp game mode etc.. then gw2 wouldn’t feel so stale after merely 2 yrs.

But the living story is re-playable.

Personally i had much more fun with LS1 than with LS2 .. and even since the LS2 stuff
is replayable i really don’t have any interest in playing it more than once.

So personally i would have rather seeing LS2 more than LS1 instead what we have now.
However that LS2 was mostly just 2 looong breaks makes it maybe look worse that it
really is for me.

Jaher Dal.9503:

But the living story is re-playable.

Technically it’s possible but who would want to run it again and again and again? It’s like the personal story, u just want to do it once and never again. So that’s what I mean when I say it’s not replayable content.

Yea it can be replayed but the living story has very little replay value. It has achievements, which only a few people actively seek to accomplish but beyond that it has no reward.

The Living Story Season two was an improvement over one, but it is still very far from being a satisfying experience. It feels shallow, rewards are not rewarding enough and replay value is virtually nonexistent. The new map was nice but to be honest I have never been back since the end of the last episode.

Personally I would rather Arena Net focus on other things rather than the living story as it never seems to be as good as they tout.

I think that the first season was mostly a mistake but they were still learning at that point. I’m much more satisfied with season 2, especially since it’s only 20 people.

Most of the stuff that you want instead of living story seems to be stuff that people who make the living story don’t really make like skills, legendary, pvp game modes. Blaming living story for these things is like complaining that BL releases impact balance changes.

The Illusion of living story hurting GW2 is probably maintained by the lack of diversity in released content. We have had few very unique maps. The new content is permanent
and has included numerous new events both in the old world and t
he new maps.
There haven’t been any new dungeons since Anet has stated that they require too much work and not many people do them (they cited Aetherblade path for this). Even without the LS we probably wouldn’t have seen any of them, maybe fractals but dungeons require context and story.
Weapon skills probably aren’t effected by LS but by balancing teams and they probably don’t find the need to add any. Same for new professions.
A new race would be awesome to have and LS can set up the perfect context for it. It’s basically a season of Living story in personal race story and a city map, not to mention animation, models etc. It’s a lot of work and I doubt that this would happen frequently with or without LS.
I don’t see how some new legendaries would have a great effect on the staleness of the game nor how LS is effecting them.
As for new pvp game modes, again probably not the jurisdiction of people who work on LS. We have also reason to believe that new modes may be incoming. We have data mined maps for sPvP that don’t seem to be for conquest type game play. We will also have CDI for GvG and Raid content.

I don’t see why we can’t have LS with all these changes too. The problem is that we really haven’t had these changes with the LS but I doubt that the reason for thier absence is LS. More probably it’s probably a low priority issue for the teams whose jurisdiction the content falls under, or that they are working on it and implementation is harder than anticipated.

Okay, I’m going to be honest here, and as some of you may know I’ll rip on the devs when I feel they deserve it.

Living Story is something that had to happen. If they’d done an expansion instead, we’d be getting the same writing and event quality as the LS at its worst, but a LOT more of it. With the LS, they’re getting to find out what works and what doesn’t, without making an entire expansion’s worth of writing and events that may have fallen flat.

Remember Trahearne? Lots of people hate him. Now, imagine that the PS had come out in these 2 week installments with occasional breaks. Imagine that they’d had time to take some of that feedback into consideration when making the end of the PS, how they might have changed him and his role some to better fit it being OUR story.

Right now in the LS, they’re calling us Commander and “boss”. This is due to people saying that our past achievements were being ignored. The devs took that into account and have changed the writing some. If this had been an expansion, though, then seasons 1-3 (at the very least) would have been the new PS, made all in one go and with no chance for feedback to improve the writing.

Remember the part of Season 2 where it relied on Open World events, and how badly that went wrong? You know they’ve learned from that, and will either avoid such events or take into account what happens when a zerg hits and overwhelms the normal event mechanics. (I hope.)

The Living Story is causing problems, yes. I feel they need to bring out something bigger than the drip feed of content it provides. However, it’s proving to be an outstanding teaching tool on what does and doesn’t work for writing and events. If they take those lessons into account while making something bigger, then I think it’ll be a net win in the end.

I think the problem with the LS isn’t the theory, but the application. They went from temporary content that affected the world, to permanent episodes that affect pretty much nothing. What they needed in both seasons was permanent content that affected the world.

What would have been cool, and actually feel like a “living world” would have been if the devastation to Lion’s Arch had been permanent. Players would get nostalgic about how the world used to be. New players would be told stories of the old hub, and what had changed since.

Actual meaningful changes that altered the world was the concept. As it is, we’ve got a slightly reorganised (worse IMO) LA, and a slightly less attractive Kessex Hills. For that they have built two new hubs (Vigil and new LA) and a tower that isn’t there any more.

What’s even worse is that, thanks to the massive breaks, the episodic stuff of season 2 doesn’t even feel alive any more. The latest teaser described the last instalment as a “cliffhanger”. Continuous living worlds don’t have cliffhangers.

Obviously we got Dry Top, and it looks like we’re going to get a little more before the end of the season. Which is nice, but isn’t really “living” either, it’s just a tiny fraction of what a paid expansion would have given us, but with the LS used to introduce it.

I would live inside the Tower of Nightmares if it was possible.

Without Anet numbers on active players, and money spent in gem store who knows? For myself though I have had no real interest to financially support this game in the last 1.5years due to the LS.

I think LS is going good imho. Making the story replayable and opening up the game map make it perfect for me. Hopefully one day we can actually explore ALL of Tyria. The experience for a new player I think would be epic (for us vets it will be a bit different kinda like watching yourself grow you don’t notice it till you see a picture lol) . Honestly I can wait till all of Tyria is explorable before I’d really want an expansion (more themed armor skin!) . For me expansions should basically be new continents (CANTHA!!!).

i don’t really blame the living story for hurting this game, there’s plenty of other things for that.. while arena net tries to reinvent the wheel, they fail to keep the vehicle rolling with time proven methods and standards..