Guild Wars 2

I really haven’t found the story to be confusing. I get what is going on so far. I knew they were rolling this out piece by piece, so while what little we got was underwhelming, I figured there’d be more later. Mostly, I’ve found Frost & Flame to be tedious and repetitive. Fixing a bunch of signs, killing dredge and Flame Legion over and over in the same DEs, looking for trinkets in the dirt and snow, it just seemed like the activities that went with the story were designed to be grindy and take a while to keep us playing. I enjoyed the Halloween quest line more where we hunted up book pages based on clues that led into each other. For me, that was way more engaging and story-like than this has been. Also, I liked that I was working for a reward of some type. Frost & Flame leaves me feeling basically unrewarded for my time.

It’s not so much vague for me as it is difficult or motivating to actually engage with the content.

I know you guys received some flak for the unforgiving and breakneck pace of the Karka event, but miniquests spread over four months? Dialed back a bit much, it feels like.

I am also intrigued about the story, and I think that it hasn’t even started yet, this is just the presentation.

Anyway, all these kind of events, and the way Anet is trying to make them happen in the world looks like new grounds to me. It must be hard to adjust the rhythm of the storytelling for a mmo game. It’s hard already to do it in a movie based on a book, I don’t even want to think on how hard it must be when the audience is actually participating in your story as it develops… and they’re hundreds of thousands…

So I hope this event goes well, or at least helps on learning how to involve players and manage the storytelling better in further events. Anyway keep up the good work.

Tachenon.5270:

Aelelan.1639:

I don’t think his enumerating what has been released in the two months in 2013 was necessarily to claim “here are all these other things that we did, why don’t you go do these things instead” but rather to say something more along the lines of “these are all the systems that we’ve been working on while also doing the living story and now that they are done we can allot more resources to the living story”.

It’s a pretty flawed argument to claim that “because I’m not going to be playing it, then it’s not content” or insinuate that because something isn’t necessarily applicable to you it isn’t a valued addition to the game/doesn’t take up resources in development.

I’m all for giving feedback on the personal story – I also thought that the content was very over-hyped – but not only is a claim that these additions are somehow not worth adding to the game irrelevant, it’s also just plain incorrect.

What is just plain incorrect is the manner in which that ‘content’ was presented. That particular ‘content’ could have been presented in a manner which would have allowed every guild, large or small or in between, to begin their participation in and enjoyment of the ‘content’ right away, without any delay wrought by exclusive and prohibitive prerequisites. There should have been two and only two prerequisites for getting started with Guild Missions:

1) have a Guild Wars 2 account, and
2) be in a guild.

That’s all.

Flawed argument or not, I maintain that such ‘content’ does not count as ‘content’ for those excluded – by design! – from the ‘content’.

As for the Living Story, as I’ve said previously, I don’t see much life or much story – but! I have at least been able to repair signs and pick up mementos and find lost personal items and fight invaders without having to fulfill some exclusive and prohibitive prerequisite. Other than having a Guild Wars 2 account, of course.

All completely valid complaints, but the way you phrased your original post it made it sound as though the things like Guild Missions (things that exclude people not interested in joining a guild big enough to get the influence) somehow don’t take time to make because it isn’t content that you’ll be playing.

I think we can both recognize the truthfulness in the fact that because things like Guild Missions were being created, things like the Living Story were temporarily less intensively developed. This explains minimal living story content bringing us back to what I was saying – this was the whole point of Captain Stein telling us what else was made in 2013 so far.

MRA.4758:

Fiontar.4695:

It seems like almost every interview the last few months have offered some excuse about relatively straight forward things they would/could/should be doing, but can’t because of a lack of coders. It’s not always that direct, but it seems they really do have a serious lack of coders and if you have a serious lack of coders and that lack is threatening the potential of the game’s ongoing financial success, you go out and get more coders.

I agree. Anybody else ever wondered why the “ANet is Hiring!” ad has been up for months now on the gw2 website? It doesn’t seem to be that simple for them to get the actual coders/artists/writers they want.

Fiontar.4695:

As to “we got this all for free”. Well, some of you are getting it for free while some of us are actually paying for it via gem purchases, often to sums greater than a typical monthly subscription fee. You might say “that’s optional and if you don’t like the ongoing development, stop buying gems”. Well, that’s really what my concerns all come back to.

The business model for the game relies on people making optional cash infusions to the company via the gem store. I have to seriously question their priorities and productivity when it comes to providing ongoing content needed to maintain and drive ongoing gem store revenue.

I’d still argue it is for free. I, for one, have also bough a dye pack, a key, or similar non-essential stuff out of my good-will to support the game. However, in the gem shop, I still only get what I pay for (a dye pack, a key, etc.). Halloween, more PvP maps, the karka slideshow, guild missions, and so were/are available to anyone regardless of their participation in the gem shop. This IS content for free. If the monthly releases also encourages players to buy an additional bank slots/whatever, then this is great for ANet, but it is still optional. If I don’t like the current months release, then no harm is done, and maybe I will like the next month’s release.

Of course ANet should make it’s releases as good as possible to keep people interested in playing (and, as a side-effect, in spending). Yet, I still cannot understand the attitude of some people who seriously now feel entitled to a monthly “DLC’S worth of content for free” (to use a CJ-like description) and are not ashamed to complain rudely if they are not completely satisfied. (Again, this is not necessarily directed at your post, but I have seen enough posts that fit into that category.)

~MRA

Well, it’s good that they are hiring, which means that things are hopefully running well and that they need to expand. But judging from the type of bugs they have, they seem to complete lack automated testing and bugfixers. Some of the bugs (e.g. bugged achievements [which could’ve been caught by automated testing]) seems like a shout out to developers that are test and quality oriented. They seem to lack this kind of stuff.

I don’t know their code base, but it seems that there are a hell lot of things that could be eeeeeasily fixed within a couple of days/weeks.

BobbyStein.2315:

Actually, we’ve been adding a lot of content each month of 2013 but most of it hasn’t been related to the Living Story. That’s because the Living World teams were ramping up design and development while other teams were completing their projects. Here’s what we’ve released in the past two months.

In short, January and February were teaser months for the Living Story. March and April will have much more story content. As always, we appreciate your patience and look forward to hearing your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to play the new stuff.

Well let’s break down a lot of that stuff into the kind of “content” it is.

Value Added to the game (new content)

• Flame & Frost teaser events/NPCs
• Flame & Frost teaser events/NPCs (phase 2 – calling them phase 1 and phase 2 is where so much of the criticism comes from, if there was a minimum amount of content required to be considered a phase, these two updates combined wouldn’t even qualify)
• PvP map (huh?)
• Spirit Watch PvP map
• Guild Bounty, Guild Rush, Guild Trek, etc.

Polishing Existing Systems (a lot of this could be argued as pre-launch features that never made it)

• Dailies/Monthlies
• Achievement tracking UI
• Item preview

Features Promised at Launch

• Guesting

Stuff that should have been done before launch

• Orr polish

Problems that should never have been problems

• Fractal reconnect

Normal MMO Maintenance

• Bug fixes
• Skill balance
• Etc.

Let’s be honest, the game wasn’t ready when it launched. A lot of people would argue, the ability to preview an item from the TP should have been a lunch feature (it’s a fundamental desire when browsing the TP for weapons and to a lesser extent, armour). The Orr rebalance was sorely needed. I played there during the first week of the game (and the following months). That place was insanely broken. The vast majority of the content was bugged and all people did was farm never ending events for early money.

I played through Sparkfly Fenn this week on my necro and when I compare the experience to my ranger during the first week of the game, it makes me incredibly sad that I experienced GW2 before the first six months of finishing the game took place (playing through the game again is never going to be the same – first impressions don’t give second chances). It is so clear to me that many of the zones later in the game simply weren’t finished (not lacking in polish, they simple weren’t finished). Most of the event chains were bugged leaving entire areas of the map starved for content (I came across bugged events even today) and a huge struggle to play in (no event experience, some hearts were very hard to fill, lots of story, content, lore and immersion simply didn’t happen for me because the game was not finished etc). It’s not that the game wasn’t polished at launch, it simply wasn’t finished (even allowing for bugs, the meta event box indicating the general theme of an area makes a huge difference – at launch this wouldn’t have mattered because none of these events worked).

I’m not trying to be aggressive or antagonising, but seeing someone be defensive about the amount of content in January and February, it conflicts with how I see things. There is some new content but most of it is balance, polish and completion of the product that should have taken place before the game was ever released. The game has made a lot of progress in the last six months and it’s clear ArenaNet has been working very hard, but the idea that the game offers lots of new content every month is very much a marketing myth and not a reality from the actual player experience.

If there is a “phase one and two” of whatever follows the Flame and Frost content, I suggest you add it with “phase three and four” of Flame and Frost instead of having two months of dead air (ArenaNet keeps using the TV show example – dead air is the closest TV parallel of “phase one and two”). Depending on how robust the final package is (how much content there truly is in phase three and four) it might be a much better idea to spread it out more evenly across the four months (four months feels too long imo unless there is a tonne of content in three and four). As it is, I mirror the OP. The story is almost non-existent atm and it feels more like the website and promotion of phase one and two had more to do with marketing smoke and mirrors than accurately communicating with the players.

Ohoni.6057:

Talk to someone that manages rewards so we can get something other than a Jug Of Karma. These events have been pretty tedious (fedex quests). You probably be able to get alot more people to suck it up and play Frost and Flame: The Fetch Quest if they got something.

It doesn’t even have to be something worth anything. A pos mini/townclothes, hell even a laurel.

True. Whoever decides what reward each activity provides, they seem to value karma as a resource far more than any player in the entire game does. Karma used to be worthwhile back when you could trade karma items in for cash money, but so long as karma items are soulbound and non-sellable, even to vendors, it’s a fairly valueless currency. I did buy two cool cultural3 daggers the other day with karma, but that only cost a tiny fraction of the karma jugs I had filling up my bank.

Ohoni,

If you decide to work on a Legendary weapon, you will need karma, and quite a lot of it, to make your weapon. That is when having a lot of karma stored up will really help you out.

Shiren.9532:

Let’s be honest, the game wasn’t ready when it launched.

Really? I’ve been here since launch and had an absolute ball doing tons of different things. We’ve been given stacks of new content each month as well as bugs fixes which have been turned around really quickly when needed. They’ve let the meta evolve instead of knee jerk fixing every complaint and then made some changes with more to come. Can I ask if you ever stop and think about the complexity of a game like this? The number of permutations of characters and powers and events is mind boggling without considering the griefers. Even if they had 500 people working on the test team do you think they can reproduce the chaos that we will all unleash once in game?

Since launch we’ve had Guild Events, Fractals, more jumping puzzles, Mini Dungeons,
Christmas and Halloween events, Scavenger Hunts, New PvP maps, Fixes and Balances what more do you want? they are a company with finite resources and human beings with lives, I came from an MMO where you were lucky to get new content every 3 months, I’m blown away by the amount of new things I’ve done on top of the awesome game I brought, I still haven’t done everything despite playing almost every day. Yeah there are things I would like to see fixed sooner, but I know there are limits and the amount of criticism a teaser campaign is getting makes me wonder if people stamp their feet and write letters when they can’t see Avengers 2 right now!

So, the marketing team gave information on where the game was headed to keep people informed before they wandered off to try something new. People are always asking the team to communicate and let them know things. So they did and I think the plan was to have more stuff happen in part 2 but working out the living system i.e getting it ready to launch, took a little longer than they had ,so they stretched. If this was the only thing to do in game we might have a problem but as it’s not why can’t people give this a chance to see what happens?

Shiren.9532:

I’m not trying to be aggressive or antagonising, but seeing someone be defensive about the amount of content in January and February, it conflicts with how I see things. There is some new content but most of it is balance, polish and completion of the product that should have taken place before the game was ever released. The game has made a lot of progress in the last six months and it’s clear ArenaNet has been working very hard, but the idea that the game offers lots of new content every month is very much a marketing myth and not a reality from the actual player experience.

I agree – while Anet have been doing lots for the game in Jan and Feb, those aforementioned huge content updates Colin advertised before Xmas for these months were dealt killing blows when Anet later came out and said they wouldn’t be so big after all. In fact, they changed and would be focusing on “making the core game better” – i.e. fixing all their bugs and exploit holes. While that is all good and necessary of course, it’s a huge letdown compared to expecting great things when you were told to expect something bigger than Halloween/Southsun/Wintersday put together!

I’m now holding my breath that the content updates for March and April include those previously promised “massive” updates that will outshine the Oct/Nov/Dec updates together and dazzle me, because frankly my mains at lvl 80 are now idling and waiting for some new end-game content and stuff worth doing.
I practically just log them to do the odd Fractal or world event boss for a chance of some decent drop – meanwhile I’m back to a low-level alt exploring other maps and taking my time there while waiting to see if Anet will bring some considerable content additions anytime soon. And my patience grows ever thinner… especially being fed the same ol’ ‘coming soon / in the future’ on much requested features that were first reported 4-5 months ago.

Bobby here’s the thing as far as I’m concerned it was clear to me the early stages of the living story were just simple content but I wasn’t sure how important it was to be involved or complete the achievements in regards to being able to take part in the main story. In early game release with new content if I mind right certain events had to be done in a certain time to take part in later episodes and I wasn’t sure if this was going to be the case here.

Also in regards to finding content it seems its a case of running about with your key that shows object nameplates held down or having to find out from another player who has run across that object. This is lazy and not very involving in design. I don’t understand why you didn’t thrown in refugees with hints or guides scattered around eg. a refugee could have been found that could tell you they saw the compass just up north west a little from their present location.

From the design perspective this whole storyline is bad. Asking people to run and click on sign posts is boring. telling people: go and find 2-4 items somewhere in 2 big zones is terrible gameplay. With no clues, no direction, just go and search for gold stars on the ground. Is this what you learned to do during gw2’s development? I expected something more from ANet b/c this is a design from 15 years ago.

QSatu.1586:

From the design perspective this whole storyline is bad. Asking people to run and click on sign posts is boring. telling people: go and find 2-4 items somewhere in 2 big zones is terrible gameplay. With no clues, no direction, just go and search for gold stars on the ground. Is this what you learned to do during gw2’s development? I expected something more from ANet b/c this is a design from 15 years ago.

15 years ago the only MMO really out there was Ultima Online, and it certainly didn’t have design like that. Nor did EQ, 14 years ago. Indeed, if a game had done something like this 12-15 years ago, not only would the items have been randomly placed in a large zone, they wouldn’t have been tagged as quest items, would probably only have appeared once every eight hours, only one player would have been able to pick them up, no-one would have explained what was going on, and the entire deal would have been guesswork. So that seems like a strange thing to say, or ridiculous hyperbole at best.

This design is actually most reminiscent of GW1 bonus missions, I’d say, where you often had to kill X things which were somewhere in the zone, but way out of your path and with no indicators to help you find them. That’s not to say it’s a good design – it’s not, imho, but it’s not as bad or ancient as you are claiming.

@ BobbyStein – there are two real problems with the stuff so far:

1) Messaging. As you seem to be aware, much of this comes down to F&F being over-hyped. I get that you didn’t want people to miss out, but far from being a big thing, you have to kind of hunt around the zones involved to even really find anything, which seems downright weird given how it’s described.

2) Dull content attached to achievements/titles which are seemingly time-limited. People don’t want to miss out on one-time achievements or titles – the karma reward is largely irrelevant, I suspect, but a lot of people feel that they “must” do this stuff because of the title and achievements in general. It’s nice to recognise players for their effort, but perhaps better to leave achievements and so on for big, almost-unavoidable events, and to link them to, fun or at least diverse activities, as opposed to simply going around picking things up in low-level zones (again, choice of low-level zones is understandable, you want to let all players participate, but it makes “go around and pick stuff up” tasks even more dull and unrewarding than they otherwise might be).

Apart from that it seems like a good start or good prelude. My wife, who is a veteran of many MMOs, was still excited and alarmed when portals opened whilst she was in a Norn village, and Dredge and Flame Legion came pouring out. That’s clearly the sort of “Oh kitten… cool!” reaction you want, not the “Oh god where is this stupid thing…” or “Ugh need to find more dead dudes or signposts…”-type reactions the other content provokes.

Speaking broadly, it seems that many of the issues that people have had with the monthly updates so far is a disparity between communicated scope and perhaps internal pressures due to the strict schedule. For example, the ‘big WvWvW patch’ was moved back and the impact of these teasers for F&F was much smaller than people seemed to have expected. I don’t want to patronize (but I feel I’m doing so by posting here at all .__.), but it strikes me that the marketing team need to have discussions with the developers and content providers to strike a more representative balance between selling the content before it’s ready and actually implementing the finished product.

Saying that, monthly updates set a pretty hard bar to make and I fully recognise that not only is ANet shifting its gears towards this style of development and content but that iterative processes and hard deadlines don’t always allow for things to be released as one might hope – which is why marketing them accurately is difficult. I might even suggest that the deadline is the toughest thing here and not the content itself. We’re familiar with ANet’s ‘release it when ready’ creed of the past, but these recent changes take them pretty drastically towards ‘release it when we have to’. Readjusting your scope to fit this scheduling might not be easy.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I’m not going to think harshly if F&F doesn’t quite live up to hype. Like others, I feel that the content we currently have might have been better implemented with less hype based on its scope and people who are hungry for more narrative-driven stuff will eat through this in an afternoon. It feels that the actual content might have been intended to have been a lot more subtle than it turned out to be and perhaps they could have been better received had they remained completely in-game – perhaps with some out-of-game character-based blogs to give things a bit more of an emotive lean than the currently faceless refugees. Folks were mentioning the whales earlier in this thread, despite them being a tiny part of the goings-on at the time – whales are pretty emotive things to some people. Characterless NPCs driven from homes we’re not familiar with by things we weren’t aware of for reasons we’re not aware of is a much tougher selling point, particularly when many players have churned through rescuing hundreds of NPCs like these during their time in-game.

I haven’t bothered with it at all. It’s far too vague and uninspiring. I’d rather go level another alt. Nothing in the story line grabs my attention and makes me want to go try it out.

I would like it more if it were a little more specific in the clues. For example, “Gnarls attacked me and stole this item.” Fine, I’ll go look in every gnarl cave I can find in Shiverpeaks! Love to kill me some gnarl.

Just wandering around looking for items lost in the snow is tedious. It leads people to just asking in chat, wait for someone else to find it and announce the location in chat, or looking it up on websites.

And if said clues actually came from the refugees themselves. Go talk to the refugees. Find out what they lost and hear their story.

My main problem with the story in Flame & Frost is the inconsequential nature of the threat, as has been stated many times in this thread.

Norn and Charr routinely thrash dredge and flame legion. They’re by far the most physically powerful, combat-oriented races in the story, and in the case of the Charr, also the most technologically advanced. I’m assuming every Charr has had some level of military training, and Norn are consummate hunters.

There is no reason these cultures should be steamrolled like this without it being huge and obvious/world-changing. A single dredge fort and some portals are nothing that hasn’t been seen before, and this detracts greatly from the believability of the event.

Granted, there probably is something yet to be seen, however at these stages I’m unimpressed. When it was first announced, I had hoped this might be the first foray towards Jormag. Hopefully it is, though Icebrood have yet to appear. We shall see.

I found the content so far great and it’s really interesting to watch the evolution of the refugee camps over the last few weeks

This content will be great for the people who enjoy PvE with a storyline (even though this one is in it’s infancy stages and still building). The people who are complaining loudest generally need their hands held through games but there are plenty of people who enjoy the mystery and just discovering stuff on their own.

Looking forward to the next patch

This is one of the major reasons why people are not happy with Flame & Frost thus far:

Shiren.9532:

• Flame & Frost teaser events/NPCs (phase 2 – calling them phase 1 and phase 2 is where so much of the criticism comes from, if there was a minimum amount of content required to be considered a phase, these two updates combined wouldn’t even qualify)

The other major reason is that the content is not fun at all, especially the recovery of lost artifacts. “Somewhere near the (very long) road” is not a hint that makes good gameplay. It leads to first, combing the land — extremely tedious; and then asking on map chat and praying the answer is from someone who found the artifact after the latest server reset.

Hints that we could use to deduce the position of the artifacts would have been much more engaging. A simple example: “The place where we were attacked: to the east was a mountain that looked like the head of a lion” — this also encourages people to stop and look at the scenery!

even better: a chain of hints, one leading to the next.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Hints that we could use to deduce the position of the artifacts would have been much more engaging. A simple example: “The place where we were attacked: to the east was a mountain that looked like the head of a lion” — this also encourages people to stop and look at the scenery!

even better: a chain of hints, one leading to the next.

That would be a big improvement. The Secret World did this quite well, from the little I played in beta To give one example I needed code numbers for one quest, and when I got a hint to go in the church, I suddenly noticed the board with the list of hymn numbers. That was much more fun than finding an answer via running around an area with the control key held down or looking it up on a wiki.

Sure you still had a few people asking for answers in map chat but it wasn’t the fun way to do it and you just needed to think about the hint for a second or two to figure it out, so it wasn’t going to elude most people either. Given that some of the Living Story takes part around the Norn lands, the writers could have used some riddles, as they did for the Raven quest in the starting area.

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

Thanks for a post like that. Would it be too difficult to post a comment like that in the Guild Missions thread? Maybe 3-4 sentences instead of 2? That would be MUCH appreciated.

rootnode.9546:

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

Thanks for a post like that. Would it be too difficult to post a comment like that in the Guild Missions thread? Maybe 3-4 sentences instead of 2? That would be MUCH appreciated.

I dont think that Bobby is part of the team in charge of Guild Missions. Posting tends to be a pretty optional thing for devs. The best he can do is point out the thread to devs who do deal with Guild Missions which the CM team probably already has.

I have alot of respect for devs who actively communicate on forums cause forum goers can be a rough lot.

On the actual topic, Ive decided Im gonna wait till I see how this set of stories pans out in the next two months before giving feedback. Its an exciting idea but I suspect it will take a little while to truely find its stride.

rootnode.9546:

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

Thanks for a post like that. Would it be too difficult to post a comment like that in the Guild Missions thread? Maybe 3-4 sentences instead of 2? That would be MUCH appreciated.

You are aware that Bobby is a writer, right? He’s not a game designer.

Lasur Arkinshade.4107:

rootnode.9546:

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

Thanks for a post like that. Would it be too difficult to post a comment like that in the Guild Missions thread? Maybe 3-4 sentences instead of 2? That would be MUCH appreciated.

You are aware that Bobby is a writer, right? He’s not a game designer.

He can pass it on to the designers. A posting like that doesn’t take long.

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

Thanks for responding to the community. I’m pretty sure most of us are trying to be constructive, even though it may not always seem like it. I certainly appreciated seeing your posts appear on this thread.

Since you’ve encouraged us to talk about the writing on this event, I’d like to mention I really like the charr refugees that have appeared in Lion’s Arch. The early NPCs wouldn’t really say much at all (I felt like the “Heralds” were as helpful to an adventurer as being hit by a brick), but the little charr cub I found truly endearing.

I completed all 3 achievements for the living story that are available. I received nothing for it. I don’t really want a chest with a yellow or black lion key (well I wouldn’t complain), but I’d like some extra tidbit of lore about the story. Something that gives me more background for completing it.

Anyway, not a big thing, just a bit of a letdown to get it all done and then nothing.

The whole idea of a Living Story with new events, plot and achievements is just great. I think all above complaints (note, I agree with all of them) actually come from the fact that what’s available in the game is currently a teaser and not the full content everyone’s been expecting. This is more of a communication than design issue. I don’t like it how all the refugees are vague about what’s happening, but if they told us 2 months ahead what’s coming to town, it would be a major spoiler. I’m not surprised there is no prize for the current events and I really hope there will be something fun available once the full event goes live.

I’m currently waiting for Braham and Rox to show up, hopefully they will be memorable characters who will bring something interesting into the world of Tyria.
What I really like about the Living Story idea is that it lasts longer than just one day. I had tons of fun with the 1-time karka event in Southsun Cove. When I think that some ppl weren’t able to take part in it, it’s sad. Although I’m still not against 1-time events like that (they are really great to take part in), it’s fun if the content can be experienced for a longer time by more people.

KiLLiAN.5629:

I’m currently waiting for Braham and Rox to show up, hopefully they will be memorable characters who will bring something interesting into the world of Tyria.

You know they’re going to be labeled Kormir 3.0/Trahearne 1.5/Rurik X.5, right?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You know they’re going to be labeled Kormir 3.0/Trahearne 1.5/Rurik X.5, right?

Come on, I think they read forums long enough to know not to ever design characters like Trahearne again (fingers crossed).

KiLLiAN.5629:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You know they’re going to be labeled Kormir 3.0/Trahearne 1.5/Rurik X.5, right?

Come on, I think they read forums long enough to know not to ever design characters like Trahearne again (fingers crossed).

I’ve read the forums long enough to know it won’t matter how they do it, I’ll still be seeing it
:D

First off, I appreciate the bug fixes and some of the content released. I really do, and I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth. However, this is bugging me, and I’ve got to critique it.

BobbyStein.2315:

Conner.4702:

You call it teaser. I call it extremely boring and badly written. Teasers are supposed to grab peoples attention. Not have them running around like headless chickens, because you failed to make a compelling intro.

It helps if you could be more specific in your feedback. Do you mean:

• Badly written (full of grammatical errors, confusing dialog, characters talking “out of voice”)
• Badly designed (lack of logical flow, unclear directions, broken mechanics)
• Badly messaged (“I was expecting more because of how it was promoted”)

A story does not have to have grammatical errors or confusing dialogue to be badly written. Take Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, for example. Editors cleaned those up, but they’re still awfully written stories. Anyone can write, especially with editors on their side to fix their mistakes, but that does not mean what they wrote is good.
Regarding the Living Story, it doesn’t hook you in, for one. One of the most important things about writing is to immediately hook your reader, audience, or player into the story – if in writing, preferably in the first sentence. Part of the Living Story’s problem is massive anticlimax due to the advertisement blowing the teaser way out of proportion, part of it is the fetch quest feel of it, and part of it is the lackluster writing.
The first could have easily been fixed by, as suggested, not saying a word on release of the content. Or, at the most, giving the barest hint that something might be different to entice people to have a look, just in case.
For the second, you could have included only one or two fetch quests with other quests to amp up the variety. Say a few refugees get abducted and you have to rescue them, or the road is blocked by lava you have to build a bridge over, things like that.
The third is trickier. Honestly, one of the biggest issues is the “eh” factor. Everyone just sort of feels indifferent, and it makes the players indifferent.. It’s like Trahearne (sorry to somewhat prove you right, Tobias!) all over again, if Trahearne were embodied by an event. None of the NPCs emote whatsoever. These NPCs are fleeing for their lives but it feels like every last one of them has been drugged into a profound state of not caring about the things happening around them. And the seemingly sloppy way the notifications and dialogue are handled, sorry to say, also makes it feel as though the devs and writers don’t care, either. Naturally, a good number of players are going feel nothing for the content as well. When my guild mates grabbed me last night to go get more lost items, I practically groaned. Game stories shouldn’t make players want to dig in their heels to avoid more of the same stuff over and over again.

And yes, far more empathy for the whales than the refugees. You could tell that the whales were in a truly desperate situation, that they were on the verge of death and if you didn’t help them, they would die. They were helpless and you knew it, you wanted to give aid to them. The refugees? Some people hobbling almost wordlessly down the road with some corpses and passed out drunks lying about. No one was crying, no one was running to you for help, no one really seemed all that desperate or perturbed. In a situation like that, you would expect parents and crying children (or crying orphans if you really want to be emotionally manipulative), folks flocking to the heroes for help, seeking other NPCs out for comfort and shelter. In one area is a Charr child who lost a toy. You find it for him and the whole time, he (she?) really doesn’t seem bothered at all by any of the events, or particularly emotional about you finding his precious toy, his last connection to his home. It’s not good writing and it really breaks immersion.

Yeah, norn and charr just don’t work (for me) as refugees. Especially the norn. It took an elder dragon to convince the norn to vacate their premises in the northern Shiverpeaks. The charr, well, maybe they’re not quite as indomitable as the norn, but they’re not pushovers by any means.

Until I came into this topic I had no idea that what we’ve had so far was only meant to be teasers, knowing that makes it seem better. However it was confusing to see it advertised as a big thing event then have a lot of stuff that got added that month under the same article, it left me trying to figure out how any of it was related to the event (hint: it turns out it wasn’t).

Egon Vidar.9125:

And yes, far more empathy for the whales than the refugees. You could tell that the whales were in a truly desperate situation, that they were on the verge of death and if you didn’t help them, they would die. They were helpless and you knew it, you wanted to give aid to them. The refugees? Some people hobbling almost wordlessly down the road with some corpses and passed out drunks lying about. No one was crying, no one was running to you for help, no one really seemed all that desperate or perturbed. In a situation like that, you would expect parents and crying children (or crying orphans if you really want to be emotionally manipulative), folks flocking to the heroes for help, seeking other NPCs out for comfort and shelter. In one area is a Charr child who lost a toy. You find it for him and the whole time, he (she?) really doesn’t seem bothered at all by any of the events, or particularly emotional about you finding his precious toy, his last connection to his home. It’s not good writing and it really breaks immersion.

I couldnt work out why i disliked F&F so much till i read this.

Part is the hype oh goody some thing new i ran round fixing signs rezing people gathering amulets then oh thats it? Dont worry the real stuff comes out next month.

Find the camp, it seemed like a psyc ward 30 minutes after they handed out the benzodiazepines, i lost my dolly. um kid the world is ending entire villages are wiped out there are more important things. Nope there wernt, fetch dolly there has to be more, nope thats next month or perhaps the month after.

It feels like a month of story has been broken up into half a year of updates by marketing it doesnt tease it depresses