Guild Wars 2

SAB1 I couldn’t stand after playing it a couple of times, SAB2 I gave a try once and found it just as bad, possibly even worse, than SAB1.

Teq I’ve tried a couple of times and even though I’ve been in a crew that got it down to 5% before the timer went out – it took a few days to get into main instead of OF – and then the battle was just a zerg that stood still for most of the time. After about the 5th time I just couldn’t be bothered. The last time I went to Teq there were 5 people there doing their jumping over the waves achievement. I had already done it but wanted the daily …. which I got whilst laying dead and afk. I was in the other room eating dinner at the time.

Most of the LS has been good, the last few though have just seemed to be a procession of annoyance – well a procession that increases in annoyance as it moves along.

On our server, Invasions are now rarely attended (it’s easier and faster to zerg the champs elsewhere); Teq is done maybe once or twice seriously on the weekends; most WB’s are lucky to get five or six people when they spawn; and the Orr temples are never seriously bothered.

Most people though ARE spending all their time harvesting mats and doing JP’s to get their ascended weapons.

TooBz.3065:

Or alternatively, the GW2 staff could spend time fixing forum bugs.

those and game bugs. Really, since they started to put “new content” every two weeks GW2 is crashing like old barn every day for me. It is not only ny or my computer, I play on 2 different rigs and my guildies complain too.

On topic, as someone said I do LS only if I want meta reward and sadly, most rewards are only some stupid backpack skins. I have full bank row filled with different skins I probably will never use. APs… sure, why not but nothing I must do now even tho I have most of achievements completed. Also it quite annoys me that I feel like taking a week break will kitten me in one way or the other. When a game becomes a second job it is something wrong with it…

+1 since I decided not to do SAB2 my game experience has improved by a lot.
Tet – I haven’t bothered with him either. Will do him one day once the whole overflow thing dies dow.

I’m curious: OP, if you’re not doing the Living Story…what are you doing in the game? Aside from the Living Story, it seems there’s really not much else for a level 80 character to do once you’ve played through what the initial game had to offer.

I rolled a thief. Playing low level areas, ignoring the ascended grind. Trying new builds. Playing with whomever I encounter in the world. Since nobody is running champ trains in Wayfarer and the likes, it’s fun again to run around doing DEs.

I wouldn’t say I’m ignoring the LS by any means … but for me, I don’t go out of my way to complete any of the content unless something being offered is something I’m interested in obtaining … I don’t find it to be horrendous or boring or anything like that, but by the same token, i haven’t found any of it to be so awe-inspiringly awesome i’ve felt compelled to participate in every aspect of it.

I just go happily about my way as I have since beta, logging in with anyone of my 17 chars and doing whatever it is I feel like doing at that particular time … wandering, leveling, crafting, whatevs … if i happen to be in a zone where an event is going down, and it’s an event I feel like participating in, i’ll jump in on it, but if not, i’ll just meander on by, continuing to do whatever it was I’d been doing …

I think that is one of the truly appealing aspects of the game to me, and anyone like me — there’s no obligation to DO anything in the game. I don’t NEED a certain gear set to wander around any of the zones, though, admittedly, exotics make survivability in certain zones a little more likely. I don’t NEED to farm mats for anything, because none of the things I could craft with said mats are things I NEED. Heck, I don’t even NEED to finish the PS, and I’ve got 5 lvl 80 chars, with the last three classes hitting 80 soon, and I don’t think I’ve completed even a third of any one of their PSs. I don’t need to do dungeons, WvW, PvP, etc.

The only thing I NEED to do is enjoy myself. And the moment I stop enjoying myself, I log off and do something else.

Spiral Architect.6540:

I took it a step further — I quit logging in 2 weeks ago, and it’s awesome. Without a doubt, that was the best decision I’ve made regarding this game yet.

I may log in again for the Mad King event, but maybe not.

When you stop chasing the carrot, you look at what does this game really have to offer me now. For me the answer is, not much that I haven’t already done. I am looking forward to the Halloween event just because I love this time of year and the whole ambiance surrounding it. After that, I am probably out.

I haven’t done much with living story stuff since Bazaar of the Four Winds. I really enjoyed that one. Sanctum Sprint is the only mini game I play but it’s getting boring now because most people are there just for achievements and don’t try.

Cutthroat Politics – Didn’t bother because I didn’t care. I knew that the waypoint person would win anyway. Payoff, I sold all those support whatever for some decent coin.

Queen’s Jubilee – I hung out in the pavilion for a bit farming with the zerg. I didn’t mess with the rest and couldn’t even tell you what the achievements were.

Clockwork Chaos – I didn’t really have time to mess with 5 invasions that lasted an hour with no one really trying to win. I had some free time one day and decided to try one out for the heck of it. I had a valuable item drop and sold it on the TP. That was enough for me and didn’t go out of my way to do any invasions again.

Super Adventure Box – I burned out on those types of games in the 80’s. I did world 1 normal mode and tried for awhile to do tribulation mode. I don’t like things that make me want to smash my computer and felt the difficulty was more dealing with frustration than anything else. I found it a bit odd that one of the most anticipated events is a game that isn’t really GW2.

Tequatl Rising/Boss Week – I don’t think I need to say much about this one. See sig.

I’m taking a break from GW2. I’ve noticed my enjoyment waning. That is a sign that I need to stay logged off for a while and revisit it later. I do really like GW2 but I have been rather disappointed in the last few living story updates.

I hear what you’re saying, TC. You don’t like the Living Story, and so you skip it. You do the things you enjoyed when the game first released. But here’s the important question: how long can you do those same things before they grow stale?

That’s the rub. If every resource ArenaNet can muster is poured into the Living Story that means those of us who don’t like it will never see new content we enjoy. Eventually – no matter how great it is – the old content is going to lose its luster. So that leaves us with our fill of the old content, no desire to play the new Living Story content, and no prospect of new old-style content that would have been delivered via formal expansion.

In other words, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story have nothing to look forward to. The game is going to stagnate. Where more traditional MMOs release major content updates and expansions to combat stagnation, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story content are left with nothing to inject fresh air into the game. That’s a recipe for an ever-shortening desire to log in.

Hopefully the “big project” they’ve claimed to be working on behind the scenes will be something akin to a full-fledged expansion; but given the way the developers have failed to deliver on so much of their Living Story hype, I’m not holding my breath.

darkace.8925:

I hear what you’re saying, TC. You don’t like the Living Story, and so you skip it. You do the things you enjoyed when the game first released. But here’s the important question: how long can you do those same things before they grow stale?

That’s the rub. If every resource ArenaNet can muster is poured into the Living Story that means those of us who don’t like it will never see new content we enjoy. Eventually – no matter how great it is – the old content is going to lose its luster. So that leaves us with our fill of the old content, no desire to play the new Living Story content, and no prospect of new old-style content that would have been delivered via formal expansion.

In other words, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story have nothing to look forward to. The game is going to stagnate. Where more traditional MMOs release major content updates and expansions to combat stagnation, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story content are left with nothing to inject fresh air into the game. That’s a recipe for an ever-shortening desire to log in.

Hopefully the “big project” they’ve claimed to be working on behind the scenes will be something akin to a full-fledged expansion; but given the way the developers have failed to deliver on so much of their Living Story hype, I’m not holding my breath.

Ive been holding my breath for cantha since release……im dead

darkace.8925:

I hear what you’re saying, TC. You don’t like the Living Story, and so you skip it. You do the things you enjoyed when the game first released. But here’s the important question: how long can you do those same things before they grow stale?

That’s the rub. If every resource ArenaNet can muster is poured into the Living Story that means those of us who don’t like it will never see new content we enjoy. Eventually – no matter how great it is – the old content is going to lose its luster. So that leaves us with our fill of the old content, no desire to play the new Living Story content, and no prospect of new old-style content that would have been delivered via formal expansion.

In other words, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story have nothing to look forward to. The game is going to stagnate. Where more traditional MMOs release major content updates and expansions to combat stagnation, those of us who don’t enjoy the Living Story content are left with nothing to inject fresh air into the game. That’s a recipe for an ever-shortening desire to log in.

Hopefully the “big project” they’ve claimed to be working on behind the scenes will be something akin to a full-fledged expansion; but given the way the developers have failed to deliver on so much of their Living Story hype, I’m not holding my breath.

Agreed. The LS in its current incarnation is not living up to my expectations from pre-launch. Of course, my expectations don’t mean crap compared to the company’s vision. But I was expecting the LS to be a continuation of what we got at launch, not completely new types of content. Instead of new DEs and evolution of zones, we get randomly appearing holo projectors and temporary solo instances. These are glorified events, not a true continuation of the Living Story.

The GW2 story is about risen dragons, pacts of heroes, and character design. None of the LS includes these things, save the back items that appear with each update. No new armor designs in-game; nope it’s all RNG token bought or gem store bought. I don’t understand why the LS doesn’t even remotely resemble the game that shipped.

The problem with DEs is simple. No matter how many of them you have, eventually players do them all, and they’re bored again. You’ve seen every DE you do a few times…they’re all relatively repetitive (because there really are only so many quest types) and you’re bored again.

So Anet thought what can we do to make the world more alive? It would take them ages to program enough DEs to make any kind of dent in the world and they’re be done and dusted in no time. It’s a bad investment in time and money…particularly because not everyone even likes/wants DEs (even though I personally do).

So they say how can we make it so that each time someone logs in there really is something else to do. As much as people might say DEs can do that, I say they can’t. How long can you stay in one zone before experiencing every single DE? Have some spawn hardly ever? So people camp them like the old Everquest boss camps? For what reward?

The living story isn’t a perfect solution…but then again, they’re only really just starting with it. As time goes on, I expect more and more from it. It’s still in its infancy. It’s a new “type” of content. People need to give it time to let it grow.

And people have complained about permanent content. Well Tequatl is new permanent content and now we’ll have a new Twilight Arbor path that’s permanent.

And who knows what two weeks from now will bring.

That’s the real excitement, to me, of the living story. It’s like going to a buffet. You’re not going to like everything on offer, but as time passes, surely you’ll like some of the stuff.

Vayne.8563:

The problem with DEs is simple. No matter how many of them you have, eventually players do them all, and they’re bored again. You’ve seen every DE you do a few times…they’re all relatively repetitive (because there really are only so many quest types) and you’re bored again.

I think they developers are very talented at what they do, even if they’re wasting those talents with the Living Story. I’d be willing to bet they could have thought of something to make the Dynamic Event system more appealing to players had they taken the time to address the situation rather than hit the panic button with a new tier of gear.

Suppose precursors were made craftable, but required a rare crafting material that only dropped from Dynamic Events. Then suppose that item only dropped from a randomly determined, undisclosed Dynamic Event and only that Dynamic Event. Only players who earned gold in that event get the material. Then a new Dynamic Event is randomly chosen and the process repeats.

I don’t know if that would have actually got players out doing DEs across all zones, but I suspect it would have done more to increase DE popularity than abandoning them altogether (as the developers seem to have done) If I can come up with that, imagine what the talented professionals at ArenaNet could have come up with had they put their minds to it.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

The problem with DEs is simple. No matter how many of them you have, eventually players do them all, and they’re bored again. You’ve seen every DE you do a few times…they’re all relatively repetitive (because there really are only so many quest types) and you’re bored again.

I think they developers are very talented at what they do, even if they’re wasting those talents with the Living Story. I’d be willing to bet they could have thought of something to make the Dynamic Event system more appealing to players had they taken the time to address the situation rather than hit the panic button with a new tier of gear.

Suppose precursors were made craftable, but required a rare crafting material that only dropped from Dynamic Events. Then suppose that item only dropped from a randomly determined, undisclosed Dynamic Event and only that Dynamic Event. Only players who earned gold in that event get the material. Then a new Dynamic Event is randomly chosen and the process repeats.

I don’t know if that would have actually got players out doing DEs across all zones, but I suspect it would have done more to increase DE popularity than abandoning them altogether (as the developers seem to have done) If I can come up with that, imagine what the talented professionals at ArenaNet could have come up with had they put their minds to it.

My comments weren’t about vertical progression or ascended gear. They were about the living story in general. Different stuff in different months. Someone had brought up that more DEs were the answer and I don’t think they are (as much as I’d like them) that’s all.

I’m NOT in favor of vertical progression. But companies often use solutions they know will work when a lot of money is on the line. It’s what I’d do in the same situation. It’s what I’ve done in the past. A gamble is a good thing, as long as you’re not betting your future on it. But if you can’t afford to lose, you don’t bet.

Did Anet panic? I think so. But I’m not sure if they didn’t panic they might not have come to the same decision.