Guild Wars 2

Good Morning Everyone.

I have one simple question that often determines if i am motivated to do something in a virtual World like Guild Wars 2 or not: Why does my character do the things that he/she does?

Let us talk about context. The one thing currently in Guild Wars 2 giving context is your personal story and the living Story coming right behind it as the continuation.

And it does the job (for those who are interessted in the first place) realy realy well.
Sure, there are players who simply won’t ever invest in such storys.
They want context through deed and act.

BUT, the big BUT:

After one has completed the personal storyline (including Dungeon Storyline and Season 2), the context to the game world abrutply ends !

There is no logical connection for my character, no context to:

- World Bosses

They appear out of nowhere. If it were not for the timers around the internet, the player would not even notice they are there. 2 new members of my Guild, fresh in the game for a few weeks, had no idea world boss events existed before i brought them along.

My Suggestions:
Reworking those Bossevents, making them into longer and harder event chains like Silverwastes to let the invesment of the players decide when a Boss appears. OR

Let Signs for World Bosses appear in the gameworld.
Maybe an escaping flok of Birds escaping over the maps next to the sea: Lions Arch, Bloodtide Coast and Sparkfly. With a little text in the main chat like Anet did on Scarlets map invasions teling something like: “Something in the water was sighted moving in the directions of Sparkyfly Fen”.
Or a thunder grumbling half an hour before the Shatterer in the Ascalon area appears. Something like that. OR

Do it as incoming requests from your Faction you joined. Let the Vigil tell my Vigil-Member to go and slay those bosses. It would give context both to World Bosses and to those Factions (that are currently nothing more than empty shells after your personal storyline ends)

- Mini Dungeons

They are there but they are often not seen as Mini-Dungeons because there is simply nothing special about them. They should be harder and there has to be a reason for going into them.

My Suggestions:
Besides the Events and Heart Quests, make an Request-Board System in Main Citys, generating old fashoned “bring it to me”-Quests leading into those Mini-Dungeons. Why you ask? Why suggesting something ANet does not want in the first place? Because it gives context, a logical connection both for Kapital Citys and for Mini-Dungeons and Jumping Puzzles to actualy go there for my character. (And for myself in the end, i think you know what i mean)

- Dailys!

There is simply no logical reason for my character to do dailys in his world.
Here could a request-from-someone System again give context. Let an NPC tell me to get 10 Lumber from insert map Sure, that is something ANet again does not want to do (Fed-Ex-Quests) but in its current state, there is simply nothing immersive about it. It is there because it is there and i dont think that someone like ANet who wants a living. breathing virtual World is okay with the current state of simply for those events, bosses and daily Quests being there.

Those were ideas that came to my mind, and of course there are even better ways to give the rest of the game context after your personal story, so that the players realy feel a sense of agency a sense of immersion. ANet did a very very good job with the personal story to get the player into the game world. Now Anet has to do this in the areas outside of the personal story, too.

What do you guys think? Has the game enoug contest? Enough agency? Enough immersion?
Or are there players like me that get the feeling in the game:

“This does not feel right, not natural, to do those things, why should my Human/Charr/Norn/Sylvari/Asura do that?”

Maybe we can have a healthy discussion here.
Let me know what the rest of the tyrians think!

Best regards

Feyhen

So you basically want the traditional quest givers that you have to run to, have them tell the same story over and over again “oh no, the wolves are killing my friends again, like very single day. Kill 10 out of the 1000 you see out there and we’ll be fine lol”, then do what you’re told and then you have to return to them for a reward? No thanks.

Yes and no. It is a complicated thing. I dont want the NPC telling me the story of a plot but to simly give the connection between diffrent content parts. Like the dailys. Every MMo have these nowadays but not so many of them give them context. You are playing an MMO, your char has a story, but ask yourself: What are his motivations? Where is the connection between the World and dailys or certain Bosses that appear. There is none. Maybe ANet would find a way to not go the way of old fashoned Quests but still connect those things believable with the rest of the game.

Feyhen.7432:

My Suggestions:
Reworking those Bossevents, making them into longer and harder event chains like Silverwastes to let the invesment of the players decide when a Boss appears.

As I recall, this was the original concept for Dynamic Event chains as described to us before the game was released. Tequatl, for example, was supposed to be the culminating event at one end of the chain, when the risen had been defeated all over Sparkfly. The boss would appear to deliver fresh troops and re-subjugate Sparkfly if not defeated. So the whole process would have been driven by player investment as you suggest.

Sadly, the majority seem to prefer predictability in World Boss events and like having them on timers. The only remnants of the original concept are the temple event chains in the Orrian maps, particularly the complex three-prong assault in Straits, and you can’t play in any of those maps for more than about five minutes without hearing the question “What time does Balthazar/Lyssa/Dwayna/Melandru/Grenth start?” Many, many players would apparently be happier if the temples were on timers just like the World Bosses.

Even Dry Top doesn’t really break the mold. The sandstorm is going to happen at x:40 no matter what, and almost the only thing that player investment determines is the number of geodes in the bonus chests for each event.

I get my context from RP. The world provides the setting, the props, and the lore. My characters live within the parameters provided but come to the events and world-changing stories from their own perspective. I even pick which zones to focus on for leveling based on what motivates the alt.

And then I can go into RP sessions that fully reference the game world but use it as a springboard to tell ongoing tales of adventure, romance, comedy, and tragedy. Sometimes even horror, though that’s not my personal preferred genre.