Actually i never played a full LS, couse there was never a challange due to bad design blob fight and bad rewards.
This game is far from being a challenge, they still need to improve allot the LS system, but i kinda liked the tower, if theres an awesome spawn like i got it yesterday with just a group of 10 to 16, funny those who tough they could run into the top the party always cough them dead ^^.
1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.
Tbh I only do them for the achievements, cause otherwise i regret loosing them forever, when that specific LS vanishes. And for the things like ‘home instance mining blocks’ (quartz, and candy corn). To usefull to skip. The reward from this one, isn’t worth it imo (getting a bit tired of these ‘crazy looking’ skins, with one time use.). They are taking space in bank imo, i should delete them, but can’t since i know i can never replace them. And also for story ofc (hoping there would be another cutscene like Marjory in dragonbash (was beautifull), but disappointed again.
I would rate it 3/5. (not bad, but definitely not amazing either.) Just content to keep players busy it seems.
Legendary weapons can be hidden now!
No excuse anymore for not giving ‘hide mounts’-option
No thanks to unidentified weapons.
I love new content and so far I’m having a lot of fun with it.
I don’t have a screenshot yet, but my engineer now has the gas mask, Aetherblade medium armor, a big metal back piece I forget the name of (round cylinder, smoke coming out) and The Exterminator rifle… oh man, looks completely awesome. I walked around WvW like that, RP walking mind you, and the over servers logged out out of a combination of respect and fear.
I only play when the skins are worth the time. So i played to get the slick backpack and now playing to get the head piece. The LS is bad, it’s boring and the story is uninteresting. And this tower thing is a complete 1/5. Nothing is new, is always zerg here zerg there.
How did you all find a way to zerg inside the instances in the tower?
Back on topic, I play the LS when the people I play with decide that is what we are going to do. The list varies a bit, including:
- story
- achievements
- loot
- exploration
- fun (seems like people rarely do anything for this anymore)
The last LS I did was Flame and Frost, and that’s because after that every LS has gone downhill in every aspect, rewards, storyline, and challenge, it’s a total joke just so Anet can add items to their Gem Store every cpl of weeks and say they are adding content to the game.
Truth is Anet can’t add content to the game their servers cant handle it, that’s why they add and remove it.
- For the Achievement points – to get achievements chests
- For the Skin .. but only if it worth it
- Taking advantage of the LS to farm mats ( aka:Reef Skelk farm in south sun LS events )
I have all the tower achievements and the skin. Im not going inside again because you have absolutely no reason to do it again. The reward a the top is not big enough to push me to farm keys … you get crap greens and blues anyway.
Minis and Evelasting tonics are two think that i really don’t care this game. The end boss is fun … i killed it about 7- 9 times solo and with party .. but that’s it. im back to my normal schedule ( world boss , dungeon runs )
Most people do it for the rewards at the end, be it a mini or a skin, and of course, the Achievement Points. Lie someone mentioned, the LS compels people to log in every 2 weeks or so and do the content because it’s highly likely that it won’t come back. So the skin is a one time deal thing, and the 50 or so APs that are tied to it are as well.
And by logging in, something catches a persons eye on the gem store, and a person gets it as well. Win/win. ANet gets a sale, and those concurrency numbers they hold so dear look stable as well.
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
– Euripides
Inertia. Guildies. Mostly I just play the parts I think are fun. I pretty much skipped the Halloween stuff. I’ve been having fun running some of my guys around in the tower, but I have no idea where I am on the AP for it and really don’t care.
Basically I think it keeps the game fresh, after a year into the game, I have achieved the following:
5 legendaries, (sold 6th one)
3 Map completions
Dungeon Master
fotm lvl 40 (working my way to 80 slowly)
7 lvl 80s, 8th is class is lvl 50ish
full mini pet collection
Rank 100 in WvW (while not super high, still gave me enough time to experience a ton of encounters)
Dolyak in sPvp (again not super high but i found spvp not very rewarding)
To sum the above, I have repeated all the content the game has to offer several times over and running it again kind of bores me unless im helping a friend/guildie.
LS gives me something new to do, I enjoy the tough achievements, best example was the liadri fight, one of my new things to do is to complete every single LS achievement since launch. Been able to do that till now so will hope to continue.
If they were to bring out an expansion, i really hope they continue to follow the LS style of release alongside.
I always at least give it a try. Mostly because of the urgency to get it done before it goes away/the playerbase at large abandons it. Rarely because of genuine interest in the content/story. Though the Zephyr Sanctum and Tower of Nightmares have pleasantly surprised me.
Honestly though, if the helmet skin I wanted wasnt locked behind 9k achievement points, I likely wouldnt participate nearly as much.
Basically I think it keeps the game fresh, after a year into the game, I have achieved the following:
5 legendaries, (sold 6th one)
3 Map completions
Dungeon Master
fotm lvl 40 (working my way to 80 slowly)
7 lvl 80s, 8th is class is lvl 50ish
full mini pet collection
Rank 100 in WvW (while not super high, still gave me enough time to experience a ton of encounters)
Dolyak in sPvp (again not super high but i found spvp not very rewarding)
To sum the above, I have repeated all the content the game has to offer several times over and running it again kind of bores me unless im helping a friend/guildie.
LS gives me something new to do, I enjoy the tough achievements, best example was the liadri fight, one of my new things to do is to complete every single LS achievement since launch. Been able to do that till now so will hope to continue.
If they were to bring out an expansion, i really hope they continue to follow the LS style of release alongside.
You can’t do most of the past LS content, it’s been removed from the game.
“LS gives me something new to do, I enjoy the tough achievements, best example was the liadri fight, one of my new things to do is to complete every single LS achievement since launch. Been able to do that till now so will hope to continue.
If they were to bring out an expansion, i really hope they continue to follow the LS style of release alongside.”
You can’t do most of the past LS content, it’s been removed from the game.
I meant to say I have done every LS achievement since launch already.
It started out to be great and exciting considering the rewards you could get from it but as time pass by it turned out to be lame and borring. Its always an introduction of new enemy npc and how they are all related..
No improvement on the rewards either. Its a never ending achievement for skins, mini, etc etc. housing could probably the only thing that was added to make it a bit.. Hmm.. Satisifying maybe?
It is sad that Gw lacks idea, improvement, and development…
So far I’ve been farming LS for the experience.
After playing with my brother’s account since beta I wanted to get my characters to 80 fast on my own account and LS was amazing for that.
The only achievement I actually enjoyed was getting Liadri. I wish they add more stuff like that in the future.
I think the last one I put any effort into trying to complete was the Bazaar of the four winds and the Queen’s Gauntlet (didn’t care about the story part).
“We recognize that the changes to [ele] will essentially remove it from play. In the future,
we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of [ele] that would be viable
but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.” – ANet
If I do them, its because its where everyone else is. No one is out in the world doing anything else. I realized this during the second southsun patch..southsun revival or whatever. I was in Orr, looked around and no one was near. I asked in map chat “where is everyone”…one person responded saying “all are in southsun. the zone will repopulate when its over”. Never happened.
So, if I don’t want to to play a quasi single player MMO, I go where the crowd is, which is the LS zone of the week. Its funny, that most of you are begrudgingly participating in the content as well…most.
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.
I look them over to see if I want to bother with it. If yes, then I join the thundering zerg. If no, then back to my regular activities.
And woe betide you if you are someone who can’t get with the zerg in the first few days. Any stragglers have to deal with mobs set on high. High powered, high respawn and lonely little you standing in the midst of them.
Maybe you can call on guildies, but many people are in large impersonal guilds whose members have already done it and now are off doing WvW. My smaller guild of friends slowly dwindled and died as one by one they stopped playing.
-Is it the rewards (skin, achievement points, mini pets, etc)?
-Is it the story?
-The zerging?
-Challenges?
Note: LS= Living Story
Update w/ question: And whatever you are playing it for, how would you rate its quality from 1 to 5 (5 being the best)?
For variation. I mainly play it because it’s fun, relaxed contents that sometimes have meaningful rewards, most of the time does not. At best it is something new that happens, at worst… well, I can just look around then ignore it then.
Nothing anymore, I just realize how unimportant this whole LS is. Why are we playing in here, just killing time? And when we are killing time, each minute takes us closer to our own death, in real life.
Why should I spent my precious time just loosing it, and don’t even have fun? I just don’t know.
They made this game like work. People can not get off the work mode even their free time. That’s not good.
It is nice to be important but more important to be nice.
I do the LS for the story- if there is no story I skip it- If I have to do a 5 man dungeon to see the story I can’t be bothered.
Don’t really care about the achievements
I don’t like zergs all that much but I like different and somewhat challenging content.
Mostly I just play the regular game- which has now become a lot more challenging because there are suddenly a lot less people around since the champ train was invented
I’m currently playing GW2, and I play the LS content because it’s fresh and I don’t know it. (Each 2 week there is a new event happening).
No one game has eternal life, all ignoring is quality, die on a point, (some get bored after the 2 hours, other after the 1000), with the LS, although it may don’t have a long life as the main game itself, I’m thankful for the new content effort that brings me some new times of enjoyment playing the LS.
In my case, I don’t play it continuosly during the 15 days. I go merging it with the activities that offers GW2 and other hobbies as well.
Achievement points, if I do it at all.
I rate it a 1.
Stories are weak. Characters are paper thin. Has little to do with any existing lore, which is far better source for stories, IMO. Content is just a new zerg fest every 2 weeks or killing xx amount of whatever Skeletors minions are this week.
Rewards beyond achievement points are ugly skins that I have never used, so not even worth doing for them.
If it’s easy enough to get the AP’s, I will. Otherwise I don’t bother with it.
I only did this release because it was easy to get in the tower, zerg out the AP’s and was done within the first couple hours of release and I wouldn’t ever have to go back and could get back to doing the things I do like doing in this game. Scarlet is a weak character and I couldn’t care less about the story.
It’s not fresh content at all, its the same zerg-fest with a new coat of paint. We went from zerging the pavilion to zerging the Halloween labyrinth to zerging a tower. Rinse and repeat.
And now Kessex looks like Orr 2.0. Refreshing.
Rewards wouldn’t matter much though to me, if the story was intriguing and fun to do. Like something to do with the actual lore. Starting to expand the map in search of the Dragon in the water that pushed the Krait out of the seas, for example. If this story went in that direction, I might start to care a bit about it.
Sometimes they’re fun. Very few times for reward since most of them seem pretty much cosmetic or relatively small gain like quarz node or skill point in home instance both nice but uhm..
No one ever goes to home instance, I think people don’t do it for quartz either nowadays too much trouble for nothing, easier to idle in LA since there isn’t even guild hall.
Anyhow back to topic. I think some events are fun some not. Problem is that we have some diffent kind of event types going on and not all people like all types. Also since LS content changes way too often, people can’t just take their time to explore it when they feel like it so it has become daily grind like someone said, a facebook game at the best.
Zephyr sanctum was nice, even story behind it felt like something I would like to explore more and I am not that much into roleplaying in this uh.. I don’t know how to say… lolkittenmmo?
More interesting stuff like zephyr sanctum skip politics, voting, scarlet and omg let us kill trahearne over and over again. In painful ways. And burn all sylvari while we begin.
Nothing, because I refuse to participate in their elaborate psychological games. LS is designed to give you feelings of anxiety if you don’t login and run their treadmill of shallow content, disappointing rewards, and grindy, excessive achievements. Mostly by way of “available for a limited time only!” and one shot at “achievement points!”
Because they are fun, and I find some of the voice acting amusing. They are temporary content and meant to be treated as such, I’ve skipped out on several living story rewards because I wasn’t interested in the mini/skin.
Also, I find the current living stories to be more interesting than the previous ones. I only liked the final stages of Flame and Frost.
Also, this experiment with living story is a prime example of truly being unable to make everyone happy. I wish other MMOs I played rolled out content (voice acted, no less!) on a biweekly basis, even if it was meant to be temporary. I tend to think of it as “holiday events that are always happening”.
I stopped bothering with most of the LS content. I couldn’t care less about most of the rewards and most of the content is just repetitive. Even this update, I did 2 runs of the tower and was bored already, thats not a good sign in a MMO.
We need more stuff like TA Aetherpath or Tequatl (but instanced). I would sell my Guardian’s left kidney for raids.
The easy achievement poins (occassionally the skin, ie the flower back piece) and that it usually coincides with the daily in some way
would rate it at a 1 though, the LS is a ploy to keep people logging in so they see all the gem store skins. There hasn’t been a meaningful content update in over a year (fractals) which is a pretty sad way to go about things.
Let us buy vendor mats (eg spools of thread) in 250 stacks, end the excessive clicking.
Depends on the story and content…if it looks remotely interesting I at least log in a few times. Although running the tower over and over again and waiting for a GOOD zerg group to form got boring.
LS as its going is starting to wind down for me. Nothing looks worth putting the time in for it anymore. I’ll wait for news on a big update, or an expansion…otherwise my time playing has started to dwindle.
I want to enjoy the game with other players so I have to follow the current farming area. I rarely see other players doing world events in Sorrows Furnace. The most I saw recently was during the first day of the Tower of Nightmares.
AMD FX-8350+Sapphire R9-290
Guild Wars Community member since 2005
I initially do it for the story…to find out whats’ going on. I never look at Dulfy if I can help it at all. I like to try to figure stuff out myself. There are exceptions but that’s usually true. For example, this time I didn’t look at Dulfy once.
Then I usually do all the achievements, because I can. Anyway I end up helping different people in my guild get their achievements and in doing so, I end up getting the achievements myself.
Boring and time-consuming. Two weeks is way too often as well, it’s annoying and most updates are full PvE, so it disrupts people who play wvw/pvp.
The living story updates hold no challenge at all and nevermind being rewarding or fun, I went and did the nightmare within achievements in 2 hours by running solo around pressing 1-5 skills (literally I just stood there smashing buttons while healing signet kept me alive, sign of good content) from the events, chambers and toxic hybrid boss. It wasn’t challenging or rewarding and therefore not fun. Pointless waste of time and resources.
There have been a few LS updates that were decent, but omg, the latest ones feel like they are putting random crap together just to get it released by the deadline.
I only do LS when I have time in the weekends for achievements and sometimes for skins.
Need more quality permanent content, and more people working on PvP/WvW, that’s what this games about. No more carebear stuff !
Nothing, I didn’t play the game in a month, and I won’t play it until they add an expansion with some actual content, not this crap, 3 hours of content every 2 weeks (more if you’re willing to grind in order to get “achievement” points).
Because I enjoy doing it and because I collect minis.
Importantly though that’s all I do – the stuff I enjoy and the stuff I need to get new minis. By most peoples standards I hardly ever finish a release because I almost never do all the achievements and sometimes don’t even do the meta-achievement.
I just use the achievements list as a guide to what’s available and then decide what I want to do, do that, and then go back to playing other parts of the game.
It makes it much more enjoyable than if I acted as if I was obligated to finish everything.
Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).
Currently I’d say 3/5. The challenge rooms and final instance was fun, though a tad bit easy. Besides no problem finishing all the achievements during one single day.
Colin Johansen casts – Working As Intended
Colin Johansen hits you for 239407889 damage
Game over
Last meta I completed was the Clockwork Horror one. Rating on LS varies depending on which one. Sanctum was a 5, Queen’s/Clockwork a 2, Flame and Frost a 4, Dragon Bash was a 1. I can’t rate the recent LS’s since I haven’t chosen to participate beyond dropping in on Teq a few times to see no one there.
I will rate the LS initiative overall as a 2, because there were 2 of the updates that I found fun. In general, though, ANet’s decision on where to take the game does not cater to my play-style.
