Hi,
Curious why develop direction and the main focus has turned to living story, instead of making the world seem alive, as was the goal? If you visit any zone that is not connected to the current Living Story, you find an empty zone.
I am currently standing in Fireheart Rise, I see no one. I see events kicking off, expiring, failing, dead friendly NPCs because no one is doing any events. The world feels dead. If you are not playing in the small handful of zones…Queensdale, Kessex, Frostgorge, sometimes Orr. Thats about it.
I am curious what anyone thinks why the development direction went to living story, instead of giving us a real reason to play the game in these zones, when the whole idea was to create a living world. I truly feel that Living Story has had the opposite effect on the game. Its sad to see such fantastic content and dynamic events go to waste.
It’s a far easier and malleable undertaking than adjusting the near entirety of the game world. They could absolutely put effort into making the current map of Tyria strongly dynamic, immensely replayable, and as close to “living” as you could get in a game. But the time and effort it would take to do so would be astronomical, moreso when they’re relying on continued microtransactions as the lifeblood to the game.
Hence the current form of the “Living World”: Getting the players in centralized areas and rewarding their continued play with progress bars.
Well, maybe maybe not. Id say the foundation is already there. Why have dynamic events, with voice narrated chatter between NPCs, event chains, etc. They put dynamic events into the game instead of traditional quest hubs to be just that..dynamic. The make the world seem a bit more real, malleable, living. The framework is there. All they have to do is give people reason to go adventure in any zone they like instead of being herded like sheep into Kessex, for example.
It might not be as lage of an undertaking as you might think. Maybe if the content was traditional quest hubs, but we have dynamic events that have chains, some with success/failure branches. We just need to play them.
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.
For reasons previously stated here, we spend our time in one or two zones mostly, following a zerg. For reasons unknown, I feel that arenanet abandoned true open world gameplay in favor of this. There was little dev work to be done with the actual content. It was there already. Just design a reward system or incentive system, much like you have created around Living Story, and get players to play the content you have already developed.
You spent months or years developing the hundreds or thousand different dynamic events in the game, from mini story arcs to voice narrated exchanges, to the actual content itself. Its there. You don’t need to add a single dynamic event. You dont have to do anything to it. Just create a way/come up with a reward system or incentive to get everyone into a multitude of zones. You would still be free to release things into the gem store. What is to stop you?
I for one think this would be easier and require far less development time than pumping out zerg and achievement grinding content with a poorly connected story.
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.