(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
PS, LW, and Narrative Structure
I think that would really badly fragment the player base. I, personally, haven’t completed the personal story on even my main character. I know many who haven’t touched it. It’s a considerable time investment, for one, and there’s plenty of people who don’t want to play it for one reason or another.
It’s unfair, then, to quarantine those individuals who don’t want to or cannot complete the PS or Season 1 into some strange phased time capsule of an outdated map, especially in a game so reliant on player numbers to move the dynamic events along. Its a sure fire way to make this massively multiplayer online game feel depressing and barren.
The current system isn’t perfect but it’s about as elegant a system as I can imagine for dealing with time sensitive events. Time sensitivity will always be a problem with MMO’s with a progressive story, and I rather like GW2’s general method of dealing with it; it happens in real time, and if you’re not there for it, tough – you’ll be there for something else.
See I don’t really think it would, for two reasons:
a.) megaservers are designed to handle fluctuating population levels within the game
b.) only level 80 characters participate in living world or expansion content anyway, so what map pre-80s go to really doesn’t matter that much. Especially in the case of Lion’s Arch.
The obvious solution to the specific problem you’re describing is to not require playing previous seasons, letting players skip seasons once they reach level 80 if they wish. I mean, if they reintroduce season 1, I doubt they’ll require players to play all the way through it to access season 2, just as they allow you to play season 2 without completing the PS now. The map generated would then depend on your current story step, not what you have or haven’t played through in the past.
The benefits would dramatically outweigh the drawbacks, IMO. It would let people who prefer the original LA (or even the wrecked one) retain the ability to visit it, and it would provide the necessary framework for putting Season 1 back into the game AND provide many more options for handling future LW content.
It’s even how they handled Ascalon in GW1.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
I also think they should can the idea of using the story dungeon instances like Molten Facility and Aetherblade as Fractals and reintroduce them in this same way as dungeons you can run solo with a party of NPCs just like Arah in the PS.
The fractals released with Fractured a couple of years back don’t thematically mesh with the original fractals, and adding them in that way was the wrong approach IMO. They should be brought back as part of LW season 1 and removed from FotM, with FotM receiving several new fractals more similar in concept to the original ones (generically themed areas).
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
It does matter what map pre-80’s go to. Because pre-80’s include new players who may not be experienced. Should they be stuck on one map because no veteran is playing on a pre-80 character on that map?
How do you handle world wide special events? Wintersday puts presents over the entire map in previous years. That wouldn’t be hard to code, but what about Kessex Hills and the tower map? What if there was a special event in the water where it’s located.
Do you doom those people with characters during those LS steps to have to not play that character for the event? What if it’s their only character?
It does matter what map pre-80’s go to. Because pre-80’s include new players who may not be experienced. Should they be stuck on one map because no veteran is playing on a pre-80 character on that map?
How do you handle world wide special events? Wintersday puts presents over the entire map in previous years. That wouldn’t be hard to code, but what about Kessex Hills and the tower map? What if there was a special event in the water where it’s located.
Do you doom those people with characters during those LS steps to have to not play that character for the event? What if it’s their only character?
We’re talking about Lion’s Arch. New players won’t be starting in Lion’s Arch, and many veteran players that preferred the original LA over the new one would intentionally go there anyway. That’s the only zone that even comes close to mattering.
A worldwide special event in the water of Kessex Hills? Huh? No, that is just not even an argument. The vast majority of special events are living world releases, which by design excludes pre-80 characters. The remaining ones are holiday events, and it wouldn’t be hard to do Halloween and Wintersday in both maps.
Trust me, this is the best way to do it.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
It does matter what map pre-80’s go to. Because pre-80’s include new players who may not be experienced. Should they be stuck on one map because no veteran is playing on a pre-80 character on that map?
How do you handle world wide special events? Wintersday puts presents over the entire map in previous years. That wouldn’t be hard to code, but what about Kessex Hills and the tower map? What if there was a special event in the water where it’s located.
Do you doom those people with characters during those LS steps to have to not play that character for the event? What if it’s their only character?
We’re talking about Lion’s Arch. New players won’t be starting in Lion’s Arch, and many veteran players that preferred the original LA over the new one would intentionally go there anyway. That’s the only zone that even comes close to mattering.
A worldwide special event in the water of Kessex Hills? Huh? No, that is just not even an argument.
So why mention Kessex Hills at all if you’re suggestion is for Lion’s Arch only?
Here’s the part where you mention it:
What would seem to make more sense would be to have the Lion’s Arch map change depending on their current place in the story, and this would also be the ideal way to re-release Season 1, including things that changed other zones like the Nightmare Tower in Kessex Hills. I.e. characters who hadn’t reached level 80 yet would always go to the original version of Lion’s Arch and the Kessex Hills, and those zones would change depending on your current story step.
And it is an argument, you can’t dismiss it just because you don’t have a solution for it. They have done events out in the open world. I seem to recall one shortly before HoT launched that involved Modrem attacking. I can’t remember what map, but what if the map for a future such event ends up being Kessex Hills?
(edited by Seera.5916)
It does matter what map pre-80’s go to. Because pre-80’s include new players who may not be experienced. Should they be stuck on one map because no veteran is playing on a pre-80 character on that map?
How do you handle world wide special events? Wintersday puts presents over the entire map in previous years. That wouldn’t be hard to code, but what about Kessex Hills and the tower map? What if there was a special event in the water where it’s located.
Do you doom those people with characters during those LS steps to have to not play that character for the event? What if it’s their only character?
We’re talking about Lion’s Arch. New players won’t be starting in Lion’s Arch, and many veteran players that preferred the original LA over the new one would intentionally go there anyway. That’s the only zone that even comes close to mattering.
A worldwide special event in the water of Kessex Hills? Huh? No, that is just not even an argument.
Then why mention Kessex Hills in the OP at all? And it is an argument, you can’t dismiss it just because you don’t have a solution for it. They have done events out in the open world. I seem to recall one shortly before HoT launched that involved Modrem attacking. I can’t remember what map, but what if the map for a future such event ends up being Kessex Hills?
Like I said, those events are tied to Living World releases, and the Living World is designed to be only for level 80 characters. They made this official following season 1 when they unified the PS and LW frameworks into the Story Journal.
Anything that isn’t part of the LW can just be coded to happen on all the different variations of the maps.
It’s not a problem.
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Right, and I’m still not understanding what the real problem is. First of all, they are very unlikely to do any open world events in Kessex Hills anytime soon. Secondly, if they do, they can either make the decision to only use the current one (if it’s LW related) or do it in the original and latest variations (if it’s not LW related).
I doubt they would feel the need to do it in the single story step variation where the full tower existed.
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Right, and I’m still not understanding what the real problem is. First of all, they are very unlikely to do any open world events in Kessex Hills anytime soon. Secondly, if they do, they can either make the decision to only use the current one (if it’s LW related) or do it in the original and latest variations (if it’s not LW related).
I doubt they would feel the need to do it in the single story step variation where the full tower existed.
The more maps they have to design for the less work can be put on other aspects of the event. That’s the problem.
And what if not enough people are on the pre-LS map to do an event during prime time and want to do the event? Do those without a level 80+ get told: get to level 80 before the event is over or sorry? Do those who want to play a character that’s not past the LS get told: move to a character that’s past it or sorry?
What about players who have done the HoT story on a character but not the base game story? Which map do they get put on?
What about Troll’s Revenge? The new LA Jumping Puzzle only in new LA. And what about Troll’s End? The old LA Jumping Puzzle.
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Right, and I’m still not understanding what the real problem is. First of all, they are very unlikely to do any open world events in Kessex Hills anytime soon. Secondly, if they do, they can either make the decision to only use the current one (if it’s LW related) or do it in the original and latest variations (if it’s not LW related).
I doubt they would feel the need to do it in the single story step variation where the full tower existed.
The more maps they have to design for the less work can be put on other aspects of the event. That’s the problem.
And what if not enough people are on the pre-LS map to do an event during prime time and want to do the event? Do those without a level 80+ get told: get to level 80 before the event is over or sorry? Do those who want to play a character that’s not past the LS get told: move to a character that’s past it or sorry?
What about players who have done the HoT story on a character but not the base game story? Which map do they get put on?
What about Troll’s Revenge? The new LA Jumping Puzzle only in new LA. And what about Troll’s End? The old LA Jumping Puzzle.
You’re really grasping at straws – every one of those “problems” can fairly easily be developed around, and some of them I already addressed above. The map generated would depend on your current story step, not what you may or may not have done in the past as the game doesn’t force you to complete the PS to play the LW, and I doubt if they reintroduce season 1 they’ll require anyone to complete it before playing season 2 or 3.
I remain unconvinced, and I am now through with this back and forth.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Right, and I’m still not understanding what the real problem is. First of all, they are very unlikely to do any open world events in Kessex Hills anytime soon. Secondly, if they do, they can either make the decision to only use the current one (if it’s LW related) or do it in the original and latest variations (if it’s not LW related).
I doubt they would feel the need to do it in the single story step variation where the full tower existed.
The more maps they have to design for the less work can be put on other aspects of the event. That’s the problem.
And what if not enough people are on the pre-LS map to do an event during prime time and want to do the event? Do those without a level 80+ get told: get to level 80 before the event is over or sorry? Do those who want to play a character that’s not past the LS get told: move to a character that’s past it or sorry?
What about players who have done the HoT story on a character but not the base game story? Which map do they get put on?
What about Troll’s Revenge? The new LA Jumping Puzzle only in new LA. And what about Troll’s End? The old LA Jumping Puzzle.
You’re really grasping at straws – every one of those “problems” can fairly easily be developed around, and some of them I already addressed above.
I remain unconvinced, and I am now through with this back and forth.
Right, so you’d rather have less involved events like Halloween and Wintersday (non-LS events) because they have to design it for TWO maps. Right, I’d know who to complain about if ANet decides to do that.
And I see no solution to the whole jumping puzzle problem.
And you didn’t answer which map would someone be on if the character had done HoT’s story but not the core game PS.
So please, answer those questions. Or I’ll just chalk this up as another person who thinks they’ve thought up the answer for everything and put their fingers in their ears when someone points out a problem they didn’t see.
Kessex Hills still has a different map pre and post LW. So how do you solve the problem if the event goes near the water where the tower was? If you haven’t been there recently, do remember the water and the shore to the north have remnants from the tower left over.
Right, and I’m still not understanding what the real problem is. First of all, they are very unlikely to do any open world events in Kessex Hills anytime soon. Secondly, if they do, they can either make the decision to only use the current one (if it’s LW related) or do it in the original and latest variations (if it’s not LW related).
I doubt they would feel the need to do it in the single story step variation where the full tower existed.
The more maps they have to design for the less work can be put on other aspects of the event. That’s the problem.
And what if not enough people are on the pre-LS map to do an event during prime time and want to do the event? Do those without a level 80+ get told: get to level 80 before the event is over or sorry? Do those who want to play a character that’s not past the LS get told: move to a character that’s past it or sorry?
What about players who have done the HoT story on a character but not the base game story? Which map do they get put on?
What about Troll’s Revenge? The new LA Jumping Puzzle only in new LA. And what about Troll’s End? The old LA Jumping Puzzle.
You’re really grasping at straws – every one of those “problems” can fairly easily be developed around, and some of them I already addressed above.
I remain unconvinced, and I am now through with this back and forth.
Right, so you’d rather have less involved events like Halloween and Wintersday (non-LS events) because they have to design it for TWO maps. Right, I’d know who to complain about if ANet decides to do that.
And I see no solution to the whole jumping puzzle problem.
And you didn’t answer which map would someone be on if the character had done HoT’s story but not the core game PS.
So please, answer those questions. Or I’ll just chalk this up as another person who thinks they’ve thought up the answer for everything and put their fingers in their ears when someone points out a problem they didn’t see.
I did answer the second one. The jumping puzzle is not a problem, they would just exist as two separate jumping puzzles. Events would not be less involved because they developed two maps. They already did the development for the original one.
I think the confusion stems from something unclear in your argument. Are you suggesting that those who have not progressed in the personal story should be FORCED into an old version of Lion’s Arch, and any other map that may have been affected over the course of the story, until they have completed the story?
For example, I’m about halfway through the personal story, I have been since year one, and haven’t progressed since. Ostensibly, my character “should” exist in the first incarnation of LA, where the PS takes place. Should I be forced into a phased version of old LA until I complete my PS? I have absolutely no desire to be there, and would feel extremely isolated if I were forced.
I’m not saying having a portal to an old build of LA wouldn’t be a nice accessory to the game, but other than that I find it unnecessary. Moreover, I feel as though breaking apart the world into different time periods really, really goes against the spirit of this game, which is, as the name suggests, a living world, happening in real time, which makes the events therein feel consequential, as opposed to a story like, say, World of Warcraft, which constantly feels disjointed with it’s continuity.
a.) megaservers are designed to handle fluctuating population levels within the game
Yes, but that doesn’t address the issue of player fragmentation.
b.) only level 80 characters participate in living world or expansion content anyway, so what map pre-80s go to really doesn’t matter that much. Especially in the case of Lion’s Arch.
so basically rendering the downscaling system pointless. The idea with downscaling was to allow players to play together, so if your friends start playing you’d be able to take your level 80 and play with your level 10 friends without necessarily (not that it’s really the case) one shot-ing everything.
If you throw all level 80s on one map and all 1-79 on another then players can’t play together.
The benefits would dramatically outweigh the drawbacks, IMO. It would let people who prefer the original LA (or even the wrecked one) retain the ability to visit it, and it would provide the necessary framework for putting Season 1 back into the game AND provide many more options for handling future LW content.
It’s even how they handled Ascalon in GW1.
In this case I’d rather argue that an intelligent phasing system would be better and not sharding system. That is we have players on the same map, but where both players see the same building player A sees a ruined burned down house an player B sees a nice, new, rebuilt house. Mind you you’d have to design the maps in such a way that collision detection is constant (don’t want one player running through a wall of floating in the sky).
Unfortunately this won’t work for LA since they weren’t designed to be overlay-ed on each other. But it could work for current maps.
We’ve already seen very very limited implementations of this functionality, when talking to certain NPCs audio only plays for one player and not the other. A intelligent phasing system would be similar but would simply load different textures and models so that the world looks different, but still functions the same allowing for players in different phases to play together.
ESO using phasing heavily to implement a persistent changing world, it works great when looked at from a single character’s PoV, it fails hard when it comes to groups playing together, whether actually grouped-up or simply doing world events, people disappear whenever they come to a phase different from others.
Simple solution I’d like to see is a brief overlay when starting any story instance giving the date the event took place (Tyria time), along with statement like “(2 years ago)”
I actually originally suggested phasing, but it never gets any traction so I tossed out sharding instead.
I think the confusion stems from something unclear in your argument. Are you suggesting that those who have not progressed in the personal story should be FORCED into an old version of Lion’s Arch, and any other map that may have been affected over the course of the story, until they have completed the story?
For example, I’m about halfway through the personal story, I have been since year one, and haven’t progressed since. Ostensibly, my character “should” exist in the first incarnation of LA, where the PS takes place. Should I be forced into a phased version of old LA until I complete my PS? I have absolutely no desire to be there, and would feel extremely isolated if I were forced.
I’m not saying having a portal to an old build of LA wouldn’t be a nice accessory to the game, but other than that I find it unnecessary. Moreover, I feel as though breaking apart the world into different time periods really, really goes against the spirit of this game, which is, as the name suggests, a living world, happening in real time, which makes the events therein feel consequential, as opposed to a story like, say, World of Warcraft, which constantly feels disjointed with it’s continuity.
No, my suggestion was that the version of the map you would zone into would be based on your current location in the story, which is not necessarily dependent on what you have or haven’t played through in the past.
You are not required to complete the PS to begin LW season 2, for example, but only one is active at a time. If your current story step is LW season 2, you would go to the modern Lion’s Arch regardless if you played through the PS or destruction story from season 1. If your current story step is in the PS, you would go to the original Lion’s Arch.
I think the confusion stems from something unclear in your argument. Are you suggesting that those who have not progressed in the personal story should be FORCED into an old version of Lion’s Arch, and any other map that may have been affected over the course of the story, until they have completed the story?
For example, I’m about halfway through the personal story, I have been since year one, and haven’t progressed since. Ostensibly, my character “should” exist in the first incarnation of LA, where the PS takes place. Should I be forced into a phased version of old LA until I complete my PS? I have absolutely no desire to be there, and would feel extremely isolated if I were forced.
I’m not saying having a portal to an old build of LA wouldn’t be a nice accessory to the game, but other than that I find it unnecessary. Moreover, I feel as though breaking apart the world into different time periods really, really goes against the spirit of this game, which is, as the name suggests, a living world, happening in real time, which makes the events therein feel consequential, as opposed to a story like, say, World of Warcraft, which constantly feels disjointed with it’s continuity.
No, my suggestion was that the version of the map you would zone into would be based on your current location in the story, which is not necessarily dependent on what you have or haven’t played through in the past.
You are not required to complete the PS to begin LW season 2, for example, but only one is active at a time. If your current story step is LW season 2, you would go to the modern Lion’s Arch regardless if you played through the PS or destruction story from season 1. If your current story step is in the PS, you would go to the original Lion’s Arch.
Well, I’ve completed the HoT story, so now my story is back in the original PS, where I can choose to resume it. So, then, I would be going to the original LA under your suggestion?