Guild Wars 2

This was written as a response to the “Collaborative Development Topic – Living World” post, but because of the size, I think it necessary to post here. Feel free to leave your impressions, or ignore it.

EDIT: I’ve done my best to highlight important parts if you don’t want to read through the whole thing.
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Firstly, I absolutely love what Tommyknocker.6089 said. I agree with this 100%
Secondly, I would like to propose that a two week update cycle is NOT too often, but in a lot of cases, the updates are irrelevant in most ways to the last.

Lets review Scarlet, for example.
Her content has been very diversified, from party-crashing the DR celebration to a new dungeon path in TA, to Zone-wide invasions alongside the Aetherblades. These are very different schemes and mechanics, and when following the curve, it feels to me like we’re thrown all over the place.

And then we have Tequatl and SAB contributing nothing to the living story, but rather just randomly popping in. This drops what little immersion there is and feels like content for content sake. A lot of people have enjoyed this content, don’t get me wrong, and in the case of Tequatl, I enjoy the improvements to things like that.

In my opinion, the shining jewel of GW2 is WvW – and I really think you should run with that, but not just in the WvW mode.

In WvW, you’ve designed a spectacle of player-controlled-outcomes along with a Success/Fail system that is perpetually endless – and this kind of system has incredible potential when put in a Living World situation.

In WvW, your fail scenario is losing a Castle, Keep, Tower, Garrison, Supply Camp, etc. And this has actual repercussions for the server. If a Garrison or a Keep is overturned, the available spawns for players is decreased, making it more difficult to fend off the enemy invasion. If a supply camp is overturned, your defenses and offenses are effectively lowered because you don’t have any resources to use. You know how WvW works.

Now, in a living story situation, let’s inspect Scarlet’s invasions.
1st. I don’t actually know the goal of these invasions. I don’t personally believe she actually had a goal that the players were trying to prevent. I think the goal of the player experience was to kill everything as fast as it came alive. What if Scarlet had a goal in each map that the players had to actively work together to combat? What if there was a central point in that map that Scarlet was attempting to take? Lets continue forward with that idea.

Lets suppose, perhaps, that Scarlet was after the Black Lion Trading Company. And if the Black Lion Trading Company was taken over, Waypoint costs went up 10%, and maybe another handful of repercussions. Or maybe Lion’s Arch was destroyed aesthetically and the mystic forge was broken. Or maybe Divinity’s Reach was destroyed and that convenience store of an area that you can buy on the gem store was destroyed. What if the ultimate fail scenario was something that the players actually felt attached to.

[See Next Post]

So Scarlet attacks a zone. What if players had to man mines and caves to deliver an otherwise unusable resource we’ll call (for the sake of familiarity) “supply” to a depot. If the Scarlet mob makes it (on foot, not by spawn) to the mine, that was cut off, and players had to find other places to get their resources. Siege could be placed, just like in WvW, to defend certain places.

If Scarlet is defeated, well done! It will be several hours before she will return. But if she isn’t defeated in that zone, she will immediately start invading an adjacent zone. The same process will continue. All waypoints will be contested in a zone that is destroyed, and players will have to go back into that zone and mine/gather supply to rebuild those areas. When the area is rebuilt, the players can begin to rebuild the waypoint.

Most all of the waypoints in the game could behave like this. This would probably never happen due to the crazy amount of work it would take to build an environment system like this. I’m not even getting into the work it would take to script the attacks in the first place. But THIS would be a sure way to make the world truly feel alive – and to make each player feel important. Every player would have a role. In the rebuilding of the waypoint, it could require a certain number of a trophy that is dropped by a mob in that area, along with a certain number of Bedrock (mined from a vein unaffiliated with any pre-existing resource) or scrap wood (chopped from a tree unaffiliated with any pre-existing resource).

I have a feeling like this idea could possibly exceed the scope of your current engine/server capability, or be too much of a gamble to invest this much time on. But THIS is how the world could feel alive, and THIS is how I would like to see content created in the future. It allows the progression of the content to be put in the players’ hands.

And furthermore, this could be implemented as a groundwork for future updates. This could be the first update in January and then in each update, you add a different spice. Maybe a dungeon (yeah, this probably sounds familiar) infiltrating Scarlet’s base, but in doing so, you begin to understand her motives further, deepening the character. You don’t come any closer to thwarting her plans, but you understand her character more. She could unleash a new kind of enemy the next update, like a dragon. She, herself, could disappear from her raids and you get mail telling you that she has been found fraternizing with the Kodan.

In closing, let us talk. I’m not necessarily talking about us as players, although we really really appreciate you doing that too. But our characters. We are silent spectators of the game. And I realize that voice acting isn’t something you can always guarantee, especially when it comes to contracting the actors. But I feel like there’s something cool with being able to select your text answer and then hear your character respond to the other subject in the cutscene.

Thank you for your plausible review of this post, and thank you for opening discussion up to the players in this very forward fashion.

And if you read through this entire post, you deserve a cookie. Thank you.

You’re right to post this as a new thread, because if you have followed the collaborative development initiative, Chris wants to try to address the issues most important to people first. And your post covers many things.

People seem to misunderstand the reason for the Collaborative Development intiative. It’s basically a “here’s what we care about, lets talk about it and ways to fix it” get together between the studio and the players. And then something that works both to alleviate the studios concerns and the players would be worked on.

Then you move on to the next idea. This is where your post would fizzle out. You go from LS, to WvW and end with WP with a whole bunch of stuff in between.

Why am I ranting this, well because you have some decent ideas, and I hope that you fracture your post and still post them in the appropriate CD thread (there is one in WvW atm that is working out the population issues just like one in GW2 Discussion about LS).

I’m not talking about WvW, I’m talking about some of the mechanics in WvW and the way that it plays itself that could be brilliantly applied to the open world to keep it alive and interesting. All in this post should be taken generically. I don’t care if it’s fewer waypoints or fewer quaggans – just something the player base would fight for. Let me know your renditions on this concept!

This sounds very interesting, and would be lots of fun, I believe. Maybe ArenaNet will consider something like this in the future. Well done on your proposal. =)

I must admit, I’m still in the dark as to who scarletts actual enemy is. Is it every city? all races? all of Tyria? and why? just cause? Can’t be our chars – she’d just send small assassin teams to wipe us out. So she’s against someone/thing but what/who? It’s reached the stage of “Too late, no longer care to learn her motivations/reasons”
I just want the events to actually matter. For that – we need some fleshing out of the story/world. If there’s an enemy – what are they fighting us for?

Altie.4571:

You’re right to post this as a new thread, because if you have followed the collaborative development initiative, Chris wants to try to address the issues most important to people first. And your post covers many things.

People seem to misunderstand the reason for the Collaborative Development intiative. It’s basically a “here’s what we care about, lets talk about it and ways to fix it” get together between the studio and the players. And then something that works both to alleviate the studios concerns and the players would be worked on.

My fear is that based on the response to 1 of my posts in the thread that its not going to be genuinely collaborative but more anet just getting feedback and thats all. When the fact is most of whats been mentioned in the PvE and WvW threads should be known by anet because its all been discussed before.

I really want some back and forth between the devs and the players which hopefully leads to better understanding of the issues on both sides.

The reason why the perosonal story is all over the place is because Anet is trying to offer different content to different groups of people.

There are people who play this game who have never done a dungeon. There are people who never set foot inside PvP. There are people who find the open world and dynamic events boring and repetitive. There are people who love challenging content. There are people who hate challenging content.

So Anet tries to provide stuff for everyone. In the Queen’s Pavilion event for example, there was something for farmers (the pavilion), something for those who like challenges (the Gauntlet), something for people who like open world zerging (The Scarlet invasions), something for people who like easier open world events (the Balloon events). That’s why the living story seems all over the place.

As for Scarlet’s goal? Well we know she’s insane…possibly driven so by an Asuran experiment. Does every insane character need an easy to follow goal?

I was under the impression from what I read on the website that her goal was to destroy everything just to see what would grow in its place. It might not be a goal that a sane person would understand, but you know, she’s not playing with a full deck.

Anyway, I think the general narrative of the game could be strengthened a lot…I particularly think that all the stories on the website should be something included somehow in game.

But then, most people probably skip the stories anyway or don’t care about them.

Nage.1520:

But then, most people probably skip the stories anyway or don’t care about them.

I feel like more people would probably read the literature if it was somehow presented in game. If it was in game, I feel like it adds to the immersion. It kinda breaks the immersion if you have to go out of game to see it.

I throw a lot of ideas around here just as anyone would with any suggestion thread, this isn’t just me begging attention, I swear. It was mainly just because it was way too long for the main thread and I didn’t want to risk someone posting in-between my posts during the 20 second break.

Nage.1520:

So Anet tries to provide stuff for everyone. In the Queen’s Pavilion event for example, there was something for farmers (the pavilion), something for those who like challenges (the Gauntlet), something for people who like open world zerging (The Scarlet invasions), something for people who like easier open world events (the Balloon events). That’s why the living story seems all over the place.

And you’re right. ArenaNet is bending over backwards to try to make a game for everyone. And while that’s a noble goal, that’s pushing a very big rule in game design, product placement, presentation, etc. You must have a target audience. But that’s a different story altogether.

What I’m trying to say with this thread is: ArenaNet, you’re not thinking big enough. And you’re rushing everything, so you really can’t think big enough. There is a lot you could be doing that makes the player feel needed, adds content that plays itself, and adds meaningful goals/rewards to the game. And if it doesn’t please everyone, then it’s not unlike every other patch released to date.

You’ve built a world. It’s time to quit pulling the strings and let it breathe on its own.

I don’t know why I do this. All those letters you get when you finish a heart? I keep telling myself I will take the time with a character (or several) to read them. I haven’t yet. I have read a few….

It took me many play-throughs in GW1 to read enough lore and finally understand the story. I think people are excited about the play offered to them when it’s new or engaging, and leave ‘stopping to read’ for another time, often.

I have, however, read all the stories on the site…albeit not when instantly released, but when I have the time, and am in the mood. It’s always during the relevant patch, and I must say, some of them are very good and quite exciting or touching.

I do believe they are trying hard to get more ‘lore’ into the game. I hope it will be in a manner that doesn’t detract from playing the content.

I do a tiny bit of WvW occasionally, but I don’t really see the point of battling over the same area all the time. But then, I can’t see the point of football!

I don’t enjoy PvP and WvW is PvP in camouflage, but I do rather enjoy hurtling across the map in zergs. I do like the idea of taking WvW mechanics and adding them to PvE.

My concerns would be: if this is where to be introduced, what about the new players trying to complete quests, gathering and exploration in the area. Also how would this affect quieter servers?

You could have these events triggered by a certain number of players being logged into a server. It would affect the areas in the same kind of way that the Scarlet events would, but maybe just a little longer. Personally, I didn’t waypoint travel very much in my first couple of weeks because it broke the immersion and it costed a bunch. My problem would be the effect of overflows – you can’t fit everybody in those maps, and since it has a lasting impact on the world, losing an overflow doesn’t really count for much.