Guild Wars 2

FlamingFoxx.1305:

But it’s worth pointing out that a minority of the tiny number of players who post on forums fall into that “tough crowd” category.

Fixed that for you.

Millions of people play this game. Very few pay any attention to forums, and even fewer post here. There are a few dozen who make up the “hard crowd”.

I was in-game this morning, and found 4 or 5 people in Hoelbrak who were have a most happy and spontaneous time. Without prompting, just natural conversation. I see this all the time.

I do see people complaining in-game. And I’m a bit annoyed with the last couple episodes of the LS. Heck, I’ve even posted my complaints.

But I figure that 300 people at ANet are getting paychecks based on gem-store sales, which means a lot of happy players. And those 300 people aren’t just sitting at their desks drinking lattes and laughing about their duped players.

I’m expecting good things from ANet in 2015.

@Sytherek

Well, that’s a fallacy assuming people who don’t post here don’t have similar expectations to posters though.

Just like players can be quietly happy, players can also be quietly unhappy. Someone who has an issue with the handling of lore might rant to it to their best friend as opposed to post a wall on a social media site or wherever it’s visible for others. It’s not that easy to write off a sentiment as vocal minority.

Anyways, back to Mr. Fries.

You don’t have to please us, you have to be honest with us. No need to spill the beans and tell us about what you are working on, but something along the lines of “we’re excited about what we’re working on” and expressing your giddiness and joy about seeing our reaction when it goes live is miles better than standard PR speech like “you’ll love it! It will surprise you! blahblahblah” :P

My old teacher always used to say, writers decide what is right, readers decide what is good. ;P

I think the reason people are saying that Episode 7 was not related to Season 2 in the overall is because if you took the flashbacks and put them elsewhere – for instance, the Sylvari personal story or the story of Twilight Arbor – they would fit in fine.

If I didn’t have to take a minute after each flashback to update Jory on what happened, I wouldn’t even know I’m working on Season 2 of the Living Story.

PeterFries.1057:

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

I’m sure you know but since I like covering as many bases as I can:

It’s not so much that people are impatient to find out what happens next.

It’s that people are unsatisfied with Episodes 6 and 7’s plot progression, where in the first we pretty much got 2 instances of development which weren’t much and were mostly just boss fights and the second was no development at all.

I am fairly sure that if Episode 7 included that 4th seed location, people wouldn’t be impatient.

The other side of the complaints about the sudden break is that it was a sudden announcement and we had built the expectation, due to lack of communication, for the plot’s continuation without any further fragmentation. (sorry, couldn’t resist) If we were told earlier than the week prior to the expected release, I doubt the backlash would have been as fierce as it is (the ferocity of the backlash being subjective to one’s knowledge of the overall playerbase’s opinions).

PeterFries.1057:

Any of the parts you didn’t like were almost certainly my fault.

Pfft, there are better targets to paint than you Fries. We like you.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Anyways, back to Mr. Fries.

You don’t have to please us, you have to be honest with us. No need to spill the beans and tell us about what you are working on, but something along the lines of “we’re excited about what we’re working on” and expressing your giddiness and joy about seeing our reaction when it goes live is miles better than standard PR speech like “you’ll love it! It will surprise you! blahblahblah” :P

My old teacher always used to say, writers decide what is right, readers decide what is good. ;P

Can’t disagree. So I’ll just agree.

PeterFries.1057:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(…) probably more that my sickened brain cannot really work out atm.

Get well soon.

Danke. Thankfully it’s gone down to a brain-rattling cough… for now.

This is what I get for driving from 80 degree Florida to 30 degree Virginia back to 80 degree Florida right before it becomes 30-60 degree Florida in less than 3 days. >.< Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

PeterFries.1057:

Xter.6271:

I really feel disheartened by this 6 week break now.

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me. It may not seem like it at times to you (bearing in mind that we’re working ahead), but are we doing our best to make course-corrections to address your concerns.

I wish you (and all our fans) a great holiday season as well. Thank you for nearly two and a half years of your support, strong feelings, and constructive criticism. You guys are the best!

Here’s my feedback, some based on assumptions, and done by phone, bare with me.

I see each episode of the LS like a TV episode, except once every two weeks. So, what kind of TV episode is it? One that just stands alone? Or that each episode builds into another? Easy answer, number 2.

I feel it should be falling in the lines of how some of my favorite old cartoons did (and still rewatch till this day if given the chance) of justice league (and unlimited) and avatar the last air bender, for example. Now of course, there were some episodes that could stand alone, but there was something always going on in the background that led to a bigger finale. Now, what that did was give me the feeling of closure at least for the current problem, but then awaiting, a suspense, for what’s to come. Example: justice league defeat self replicating robots from space (Dark heart), and the military confiscates them. Closure in the League defeating, suspense in ‘how will the military abuse this?’. And yes, it does come back.

Let’s compare to something more current and has. Mid season breaks, Walking Dead. SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER
In the mid season finale, we see them finally rescue beth, only to see her die. So, closure, although sad. But then, there are still questions that are unknown. Where do they go? What do they do with Eugene? Will Beth’s sister go suicidal? Etc. We got some answers, but are left with questions still to keep us coming back
end spoiler
With this episode ending, we were teased about caiths past by scarlet, and now we are learning, that’s fine. The problem was the cut off. I mean, I feel I can predict part of episode 8. “We must find a way to open this door, back to priory, run around, open door, end”. Now, its hard for me to say where ep 7 should end, because I don’t know the next episode, but as a guess, we should’ve planted the final seed, seen that event, realize what’s coming, THEN end it. Again, I would need to see EP 8 to make the call.

Next, the LS seems to be written in the hard POI of second person. Not just the LS, but all of gw2 story so far, when gw1 threw in some third person (our characters weren’t present at some scenes, like when the lich first appears, but we as players see it). The LS can be seen as " you go to look for caiths scouting party. You find canach. You help faith, etc". And while gw1 can be said the same, there are no third person moments I can even remember. And as something seen as a TV episode, those are needed at some points. They don’t have to be big giveaways, but more anticipating bits (oh we are gonna fight a lich at some point!).

Finally, we are the silent protagonist. I know, too much money to record for each race plus each gender, and we are technically are talking, its just in text. But it just feels….weird. I mean I know other games do it, but here it seems really weird that people are having a conversation around us, it stops for us to say something in text, then back to talking. When again, in gw1, we actually spoke during cutscenes.

I don’t hate ls2, I think its better than one so far, but it still has ways to go.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

This knowledge might come in handy.

/shifty eyes/

PeterFries.1057:

I know where we’re going, and I advise you to go ahead and fasten your seat belt.

Oh! I know what this means, the vines in the Silverwaste are going to turn into roller coasters and we can ride them further west into a giant mordremoth themed park!

The deal for me is this constant misunderstanding I get from Anet when you folks say “It’s an expansion’s worth of content!” No, it’s not. Living Story and a Boxed Expansion are very different things. They are not two lines that will intersect down the road.

Living Story is often Playwalled off for me since I play the game solo. They are very channeled via Jumping Puzzles, Trick Fights, etc. Often this is just not that fun. Sorry to say but S2 is actually worse in that regard.

An Expansion is large enough I can run around and find fun stuff to do. And I get to pay you guys for your hard work. Colin, Peter, et al I’m getting very concerned that the game can’t be sustained via gem-store sales much longer.

So, for myself and many others the only thing that has an “expansion’s worth of content” is an Expansion.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I am fairly sure that if Episode 7 included that 4th seed location, people wouldn’t be impatient.

QFT

Although not so much impatient as annoyed

ElysianEternity.6215:

You don’t have to please us, you have to be honest with us. No need to spill the beans and tell us about what you are working on, but something along the lines of “we’re excited about what we’re working on”

I think part of it is that, judging from the forum and from the subreddit, ArenaNet has a bit of a credibility problem at the moment. They don’t have a particularly good history of delivering on promises because they don’t make promises, but unfortunately you don’t build credibility from scrupulously not promising to do things. (A lot of the discontent from scheduling breaks comes from the same place – one of the few promises was a new release with new content every two weeks, and they stuck to that. Having it ‘broken’ now, even if for a good reason like the holiday season, stings.) As a result, even relatively innocuous statements like “we think you’ll enjoy what we’re working on” from an ArenaNet employee who’s only started posting recently seem disingenuous.

PeterFries.1057:

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me. It may not seem like it at times to you (bearing in mind that we’re working ahead), but are we doing our best to make course-corrections to address your concerns.

Nah, don`t worry, totaly justified.
We can only imagine your workload and what you have to have in mind generaly.
Just don`t play punchingbag for us.
Play with us, be human, have fun. You are doing good so far and words like this are much appreaciated.

On the other hand, we are only humans as well.

PeterFries.1057:

Wow, tough crowd (mops brow, loosens tie nervously like Rodney Dangerfield)…

Maybe I should have just said, “All I know is that I’m excited about what we’re working on.”

Feel free to buckle or unbuckle your seat belts according to personal taste and locally legislated safety standards.

Buckle up it is. Better safe than sorry.
However, your intention or not, the way you paced and released the story so far makes it hard to be amazed by certain outcomes as a Season finale:

Revealing Mordremoths body
The fact that S1 ended with it and S2 was tiptoing around the corner would just make it a repeat of the S1 finale. We know he is there. Bringing him in early to apreaciate him is also good, however he has to do some big destruction to be interesting (he is waking up)
Just showing him wouldn`t cut it.

Caithe`s secret/agenda
This started in S1 in the background and only came back two episodes ago in S2, with episode 7 dancing around the subject and smacking us in the face with a cliffhanger.

As interesting as it might be, it came to late in S2 and the pacing just made it favourable as a season finale (combine that with the fact that the season felt unfocused anyway, I might end up saying: “hmkay.. that`s it?”)

Some great visual bombast Pact attack
Yeah, it will look cool. Pact ships might fall from the sky. Mordremoths army rising. Glints child raising into the air and so on.
Most of it has nothing to do with our story however. It is the war effort that is going on in the background and it would make me ask: “What have we done so far?”

Season 2s goal is still unclear and we are running after an Mcguffin, with no real explanation. It`s few seconds before midnight and we still know nothing…

Revealing a champion of Mordremoth
Which would end up as a new Worldboss. Welcome to the club, your timeslot is 6:00 and 17:00 o`clock. Please be on time… next…

Rytlock comming back
If you hadn`t spoiled it in your PR campaign I would actually be okay with it. Now he might show up or not. If he will be there however I imagine him playing the Cliffhanger to S3/Expansion.
So yeah. Even cramming him in there has to be done with caution

There has to be something bigger than these (yeah, bigger than an Eldar Dragon since, well, he was there allready). It is my personal opinion of course.

By any means however: Put in more than one conclusion
You were holding them off for too long. They are way overdue and I bet some will be hard to stomach becasue of that (Like why certain things just haven`t been revealed sooner. Like the pupose of Glints egg. Just becaus eit is one, there is no reason to tread it like that)

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

This knowledge might come in handy.

/shifty eyes/

kitten , you beat me to it makes a note

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

This knowledge might come in handy.

/shifty eyes/

To catch a thief, you must become a thief.

To kill a necromancer, you must become… an elementalist.

Chill! Burn! Chill! Burn!

(Dang, now I’m imagining Konig as a WoW-style raid boss in one of those over-organisation parody videos.

“Okay, so we’re going to need to apply lots of cold damage until the boss turns blue. Remember, until then, any fire damage will undo cold damage he’s taken in the last 15 seconds, so if you can only do fire damage, DON’T ATTACK THE BOSS. Hit the minions, they’re there specifically so that fire characters have something to do when he’s in the red phase. When he switches over – I’ll announce it in vent in case you’re busy blasting skeletons or something – I’ll need all you fire characters to switch to the boss ay-ess-ay-pee while the frost guys switch to keeping the minions under control. Other damage types do substantially less damage to him then the properly executed cold-fire-cold-fire cycle, so help cull the minions if necessary, otherwise work on the boss, but it would be best if you can participate in the cycle by swapping between fiery and icy weapons. Holy does a bit more damage, of course, but it scales up even better against the minions, so if you’ve got a holy spec you should probably concentrate on the minions. Any questions?”

“KILROOOOOOOOOY STONEKIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!”

“Oh man, not AGAIN!?!”)

draxynnic.3719:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

This knowledge might come in handy.

/shifty eyes/

To catch a thief, you must become a thief.

To kill a necromancer, you must become… an elementalist.

Chill! Burn! Chill! Burn!

(Dang, now I’m imagining Konig as a WoW-style raid boss in one of those over-organisation parody videos.

“Okay, so we’re going to need to apply lots of cold damage until the boss turns blue. Remember, until then, any fire damage will undo cold damage he’s taken in the last 15 seconds, so if you can only do fire damage, DON’T ATTACK THE BOSS. Hit the minions, they’re there specifically so that fire characters have something to do when he’s in the red phase. When he switches over – I’ll announce it in vent in case you’re busy blasting skeletons or something – I’ll need all you fire characters to switch to the boss ay-ess-ay-pee while the frost guys switch to keeping the minions under control. Other damage types do substantially less damage to him then the properly executed cold-fire-cold-fire cycle, so help cull the minions if necessary, otherwise work on the boss, but it would be best if you can participate in the cycle by swapping between fiery and icy weapons. Holy does a bit more damage, of course, but it scales up even better against the minions, so if you’ve got a holy spec you should probably concentrate on the minions. Any questions?”

“KILROOOOOOOOOY STONEKIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!”

“Oh man, not AGAIN!?!”)

> This.

Konig should become the new world boss.

……………

PeterFries.1057:

Xter.6271:

I really feel disheartened by this 6 week break now.

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

The problem isn’t that we have a huge mid-season break (again) it’s that we’ve had two over only 7 episodes, the last two of which were minuscule by comparison.

Add to that the season feels unfocused because it’s not clear what kind of story, or what story for that matter, you want to tell. By this I mean, is this story supposed to be climactic or episodic?

The key difference between these two things hinges on this: chapter structure. In a purely climactic story, a single chapter does not have an incident-action-resolution structure, but it’s generally more clear what the story is leading up to. Murder mysteries are the typical example.

Episodic works might have an over-all story arc (they generally don’t), but each chapter (or two) is a self-contained narrative with incident-action-resolution included. Most modern serials work this way, but Star Trek is my favorite example.

I say it’s hard to tell what the plot is because we’ve been thrown several major curves over the entire arc of the Living Story. By the end of the first season, we knew that: Scarlet had learned about Mordremoth and was trying to do something about it. Was she trying to wake him up? Was she trying to destroy him? Why build a giant weapon like the Marionette? I still don’t know. Either way, we awoke him when we stopped her. It seemed at the time our entire next season would be focused on Mordremoth. We were told at that time to “buckle your seat belts” and prepare for something epic; Lion’s Arch got busted up, and then nothing happened. We knocked over Scarlet, got more questions than answers (seriously) and were left to stew for months.

The first half of LS2 focused on that pretty effectively. Still, we know nothing about how the dragons are connected to the Eternal Alchemy, why things are falling out of balance, or what we should be doing about it. Rytlock vanishes (good hook for a future plot, because it doesn’t seem important for this one.)

Then in the second half, suddenly the Pact showing back up and preparing to destroy Mordremoth becomes a backdrop setting and our story veers wildly away and we start chasing an egg. Suddenly it looks less and less likely that Mordremoth is focus of the season anymore (as strongly suggested by the end of LS1).

Again, we’re told to “buckle your seat belts” but now whatever grand finale is being promised either won’t be the one that we’ve been led to believe we were chasing all along (a fight with a dragon) and there STILL will be no resolution, or it will be so rushed it will completely ruin the climax.

TL;DR:
What am I watching here, Lost?

felessan.9587:

~Snip~
Episodic works might have an over-all story arc (they generally don’t), but each chapter (or two) is a self-contained narrative with incident-action-resolution included. Most modern serials work this way, but Star Trek is my favorite example.

~Snip~

If you’re comparing it to episodic TV, yes, most shows are like that. If you want to compare it to episodikittenerature then not all works are like that, I’ve read several(Wheel of Time and Venus Prime come to mind) that didn’t have the self-contained incident-action-resolution narrative over a chapter or two, let alone an entire book in the series. Sometimes you had to read 3 or 4 books(in the case of Wheel of Time) to get that complete narrative.

This post will be mostly an echo from what we’ve read, but is my opinion, for what it’s worth.

I really like the music, the ambiance, the new zones, the overall setup of the story. It’s innovative, beautiful, and specially promising when you think about where this could lead us to.

I just think that the company should work on improving the delivery and the substance of this chapters. We are told that this should give us expansion-like content (yes, again with the same thing…) but it doesn’t feel like it, it feels like “events” (as we can see on other MMOs). If instead, every 4 chapters we knew that we will get a new skill (meaningful, please) for our classes, or a new weapon!, or at a “finale” which happens barely every year up until now, a new class/race, I think we could start talking about expansion-like content. I know that raids are on the table, and I can see that if we get them, raids should be part of the additions of this chapters too.

As a player, I want to feel that after following this long path of LS chapters, I’ve grown too, with the story. That I’ve come a long way from where I started. Because even if you emulate a TV show, I’m not here to watch a TV show, I’m here to play a game (to participate and grow with it), and progression is important, for my character and for the characters of the story.

Overall, if you could manage to include this important elements in the schedule of a year, and make us have less breaks (even if you as a team get breaks, is not clear to me why I have to have a break too, it’s supposed that if you are going to repeat holiday events, that’s a good way to take breaks while we play recycled content, yet this year, we missed two/one holiday events, Dragon Bash, and, potentially, SAB), people would be more excited with this releases. And you would appeal to more people, and not just PvE players or those interested in the story.

Other than that, I agree with the need of improvements on the writing, I don’t want to believe that the story is simplified down because it’s expected to appeal for a more younger audience (and I’m on my 20s).

I’m getting a little sick of the sylvari. First Trahearne, then Scarlet and now Caithe and the Pale Tree. They’re starting to become a creator’s pet.

wildebat.3650:

I’m getting a little sick of the sylvari. First Trahearne, then Scarlet and now Caithe and the Pale Tree. They’re starting to become a creator’s pet.

I’ve been feeling that way about the asura too. Honestly, I don’t think that ANet is playing favorites- they just decided to go with a main plot (the Elder Dragons in general and paired Mordremoth/metaphysical reality in particular) where the sylvari and the asura have more to offer and the humans and the norn have less. Normally, not too much of an issue, but since the plot’s also moving at glacial speeds it’s been compounded until it feels like the slighted races have been forgotten about.

They actually said sometime near the end of Season 1 that there was such a sylvari focus because they are new, don’t have as much lore as the other races, and they want to flesh the race out, to show multiple facets.

Thing is… Norn and asura have about just mad much lore, and it feels like the other races lack those other facets as many have been dumbed down in presentation, especially evil factions.

wildebat.3650:

I’m getting a little sick of the sylvari. First Trahearne, then Scarlet and now Caithe and the Pale Tree. They’re starting to become a creator’s pet.

That’s what I’ve been saying for the last two years. I was overjoyed when they announced flame & frost, too bad it was over without too much happening. And since then we have boarded the train back to Sylvari town; population: Mary-Sue.

Merus.9475:

ElysianEternity.6215:

You don’t have to please us, you have to be honest with us. No need to spill the beans and tell us about what you are working on, but something along the lines of “we’re excited about what we’re working on”

I think part of it is that, judging from the forum and from the subreddit, ArenaNet has a bit of a credibility problem at the moment. They don’t have a particularly good history of delivering on promises because they don’t make promises, but unfortunately you don’t build credibility from scrupulously not promising to do things. (A lot of the discontent from scheduling breaks comes from the same place – one of the few promises was a new release with new content every two weeks, and they stuck to that. Having it ‘broken’ now, even if for a good reason like the holiday season, stings.) As a result, even relatively innocuous statements like “we think you’ll enjoy what we’re working on” from an ArenaNet employee who’s only started posting recently seem disingenuous.

While I agree with the credibility sentiment, I think you misinterpreted what I was addressing about the innocent statement.

A creator, be it writer, designer, musician, artist, etc should NEVER tell their audience how to feel about their work. Especially work that is still in progress.
Unfortunately that’s common as kittens in any industry, be it on purpose or by mistake.

Telling us how we’ll react creates hype. Now, what is hype?
On the customers side, a high and mostly unrealistic expectation, founded in anticipation.
On the creators side? A sugarcoated promise that turns out to be empty.

In Anet’s case, not only are the default expectations high because of all the potential customers see in their product but by constantly creating hype by exaggerating and telling us how we’ll feel, they are also pushing these expectations beyond anything they can actually deliver (or even is human possible, which we as playerbase don’t recognize).

As result, over and over again we feel disappointed and lied at because most of us never felt in awe like we were told we’d feel. So not only is the pushing hype thing coming out of our ears and noses by now, but multiple factors like poor communication, poor transparency, etc. are only adding salt to the wound.

Result, we feel disconnected from the developers.

So, now one may ask, with the hype problem – what do then?
Answer: Be honest. That’s it.

“We’re excited how you’ll feel about our content.” or “The team worked kitten including more xxx for the coming release!” are setting expectations too, but! By all means, they are 99,99% likely honest statements. Even if we are dissatisfied by the delivery still, we are not as disgruntled as if they had told us “This will rock your socks!”

Because they wouldn’t have lied and we couldn’t deny that you put a lot of work into it.

Note, GW2 has always kind of a default hype because it has GW1’s name to ‘live up to’ in the eyes of the players and also because we’re really ????? about its future and what COULD be.

But honesty is the most important step to transparency which creates ‘positive hype’ and a better dev-playerbase relationship. Not the only step since the riff between playerbase and devs is a multilayered problem, but definitely a very appreciated one.

As example, see how relieved we are about Bobby replying to the bug in the latest LS instance and admitting it was just a bug or Peter right here exploring the lore forum and addressing points there and there.

Tl dr;

- Base hype = expectation always high as is because of high potential + high anticipation of/for GW2 content
- Unnecessary extra hype = ‘baseless assumptions’ about how we’ll feel create ridiculously high expectations on top of it = lying = playerbase disappointed no matter what you do

- Honest statements = allow for better communication, definitely better PR = still involves no promises whatsoever, just ‘facts’ = restores credibility and trust!
- Bonus: Step to tighter relationship between playerbase and devs. Woo!

And that’s my wall-o-text analysis of the problems I see around hype. ;P

Zaklex.6308:

felessan.9587:

~Snip~
Episodic works might have an over-all story arc (they generally don’t), but each chapter (or two) is a self-contained narrative with incident-action-resolution included. Most modern serials work this way, but Star Trek is my favorite example.

~Snip~

If you’re comparing it to episodic TV, yes, most shows are like that. If you want to compare it to episodikittenerature then not all works are like that, I’ve read several(Wheel of Time and Venus Prime come to mind) that didn’t have the self-contained incident-action-resolution narrative over a chapter or two, let alone an entire book in the series. Sometimes you had to read 3 or 4 books(in the case of Wheel of Time) to get that complete narrative.

I’m actually talking about how we tend to define “episodic” vs. “climactic” when discussing literature. My point was that the plot is generally labeled “climactic” when it’s working towards the resolution of something set off by one singular incident – Lord of the Rings, for example. Episodic works don’t have a singular resolution – generally ancient literature; look at Beowulf.

What I was trying to get at was that I have no idea what the plot of this story is. It seemed like our inciting incident was the awakening of Mordremoth, but the focus for our characters hasn’t been on that story anymore. There have been plot twists along the way, but they just linger and don’t actually “twist” to anything.

PeterFries.1057:

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me.

Okay then.
I really think you need to get a Thesaurus, okay? You seem to be really overdoing the use of okay, but let me tell you it’s not always okay.
Surely the occasional alright, very well, fine or good could be thrown in now and then, okay?
There were some episodes where it seemed like every other line had an okay or 2 or 3 which I found somewhat annoying.

I have noticed very few “how’re you holding up?”s, which I’ve been seeing everywhere once one of the writers on Telltale’s The Walking Dead pointed out how much of a cliche it had become. So, well done to the writing staff for that.

Imperios.2543:

draxynnic.3719:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Fast temperature changes! My one weakness!

This knowledge might come in handy.

/shifty eyes/

To catch a thief, you must become a thief.

To kill a necromancer, you must become… an elementalist.

Chill! Burn! Chill! Burn!

(Dang, now I’m imagining Konig as a WoW-style raid boss in one of those over-organisation parody videos.

“Okay, so we’re going to need to apply lots of cold damage until the boss turns blue. Remember, until then, any fire damage will undo cold damage he’s taken in the last 15 seconds, so if you can only do fire damage, DON’T ATTACK THE BOSS. Hit the minions, they’re there specifically so that fire characters have something to do when he’s in the red phase. When he switches over – I’ll announce it in vent in case you’re busy blasting skeletons or something – I’ll need all you fire characters to switch to the boss ay-ess-ay-pee while the frost guys switch to keeping the minions under control. Other damage types do substantially less damage to him then the properly executed cold-fire-cold-fire cycle, so help cull the minions if necessary, otherwise work on the boss, but it would be best if you can participate in the cycle by swapping between fiery and icy weapons. Holy does a bit more damage, of course, but it scales up even better against the minions, so if you’ve got a holy spec you should probably concentrate on the minions. Any questions?”

“KILROOOOOOOOOY STONEKIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!”

“Oh man, not AGAIN!?!”)

> This.

Konig should become the new world boss.

We’d need to actually have damage types for that to happen – I had a bit of a weird mix of GW1 and what I know of WoW for that exchange above.

Could probably make it work with alternating chilled and burning conditions – only one can be applied at once, but with a mechanic by which extra damage can be applied by alternating between them properly…

Hmm.. I see some of the points you are making Op
but I am personally loving the second season of Living world so far

the first season I found to be a complete mess and I never knew what was going on half the time
and that sounds more like what you described there

as for season 2 it’s all about Mordremoth.. we are hunting him and doing everything we can to get the upper hand..
if we think the Egg will help we’ll go after it
if we think dancing naked in a circle around a Charr War Banner will help then that’s what we would do lol

sure there are some distractions but all of them are valid imo

What I am concerned about though is the actual encounter with Mordremoth himself..
Zhaitan.. was a complete embarassment.. and not one Gw2 player I know, came out of Arah story for the first time without being completely disappointed and annoyed by the fight..

Considering the scale of the Elder Dragons I fear that there will be a limited way we can actually fight them and because of that they will mostly if not all end up being a complete joke when we get to fight them

since we’ve only fought Zhaitan we only have that one battle to go off right now and I am curious but also worried that Mordremoth will end up being just as disappointing due to technical limitations of the actual game

that being said however it is clear that the developers have learned a lot from the living world so far and from us players on the forums and we can clearly see that with the living world content and some of the vanilla game content becoming better over time
like Tequatl for example

so I do have some faith that the next Elder Dragon we fight will be a lot better than Zhaitan
but I’d by lying if I said Im not at least a bit worried that it will be another bad encounter

and that also brings me to when we will get to this point as well..
will it be through living world? or perhaps an actual expansion pack?… who knows

draxynnic.3719:

We’d need to actually have damage types for that to happen – I had a bit of a weird mix of GW1 and what I know of WoW for that exchange above.

Could probably make it work with alternating chilled and burning conditions – only one can be applied at once, but with a mechanic by which extra damage can be applied by alternating between them properly…

Technically, we do have damage types. They’re just so unimportant that the only thing they’re worth is unique death animation! We got poison, fire (I’d say burning but fire-engulfed weapons like the Fiery Dragon Sword trigger this animation too), chilling, electrocuting, and more as death animations.

But all you really need is to have a unique boon that is removed by having both chilled and burning on the buffed character.

Also, if anything it could be easily suplemented by enviroment weapons or atuning a group of people to an element (which we have also done before)

PeterFries.1057:

jamesg.7128:

I really think you need to get a Thesaurus, okay? You seem to be really overdoing the use of okay, but let me tell you it’s not always okay.
Surely the occasional alright, very well, fine or good could be thrown in now and then, okay?
There were some episodes where it seemed like every other line had an okay or 2 or 3 which I found somewhat annoying.

Okay, got it.

Did you guys read what the wiki has to say about this guy?

“Peter Fries is a Writer at ArenaNet. Prior to this year, he was an Environment Artist on Guild Wars Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2. He has done art for videogames since 1993. To the casual observer, Peter appears to have lived a happy, unremarkable life as a suburban family man. No one has yet uncovered, or even guessed at, the monstrous scheme that Peter set in motion decades ago…”

We better watch our steps…

MakubeC.3026:

Did you guys read what the wiki has to say about this guy?

“Peter Fries is a Writer at ArenaNet. Prior to this year, he was an Environment Artist on Guild Wars Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2. He has done art for videogames since 1993. To the casual observer, Peter appears to have lived a happy, unremarkable life as a suburban family man. No one has yet uncovered, or even guessed at, the monstrous scheme that Peter set in motion decades ago…”

We better watch our steps…

Well if his last name is any indication he is probably a frisian and in Germany they are known to be exceptionally cunning… uhm no wait they are known for something different.

PeterFries.1057:

jamesg.7128:

I really think you need to get a Thesaurus, okay? You seem to be really overdoing the use of okay, but let me tell you it’s not always okay.
Surely the occasional alright, very well, fine or good could be thrown in now and then, okay?
There were some episodes where it seemed like every other line had an okay or 2 or 3 which I found somewhat annoying.

Okay, got it.

Aww, I want a post it note on your desk with my name on it….

Ummm…make Marjory say something other than sugar a lot. Like sweetener, glucose, fructose and caramel.

jamesg.7128:

PeterFries.1057:

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me.

Okay then.
I really think you need to get a Thesaurus, okay? You seem to be really overdoing the use of okay, but let me tell you it’s not always okay.
Surely the occasional alright, very well, fine or good could be thrown in now and then, okay?
There were some episodes where it seemed like every other line had an okay or 2 or 3 which I found somewhat annoying.

Uh-huh.

An important tidbit with characters is to have a list of the words and phrases they DO tend to over-use. Because, like real live people, they should be flawed grammatically too.

EDIT: BWHAHAHAAH! (since PeterFries posted that post-it post between when I started to post, and my post posting)

PeterFries.1057:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Well if his last name is any indication he is probably a frisian and in Germany they are known to be exceptionally cunning… uhm no wait they are known for something “different”

:(

JayMack.8295:

Aww, I want a post it note on your desk with my name on it…

I don’t believe that pic is real. There is no grocery list somewhere, nor a " kill all humans" for bender

PeterFries.1057:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Well if his last name is any indication he is probably a frisian and in Germany they are known to be exceptionally cunning… uhm no wait they are known for something “different”

:(

JayMack.8295:

Aww, I want a post it note on your desk with my name on it…

Bwuahahaha. Keep thus up and your desk will be covered in post-it notes for naming players. :P
Btw, where’s mine?

Uhm…. The PC should start nicknaming all of the biconics. Rox is Eyes, Marjory is Spooks, Kasmeer is Doll, Taimi is Short Stuff, Braham is Wolfie, and Canach is ’Stache (for his cool ’vari mustache).

PeterFries.1057:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Well if his last name is any indication he is probably a frisian and in Germany they are known to be exceptionally cunning… uhm no wait they are known for something “different”

:(

JayMack.8295:

Aww, I want a post it note on your desk with my name on it…

Thank you. I can die happy now.

Amg these post-its are adorable.

Tho, if I may add my feedback, writing-wise:

- Re: Conversation with Marjory.
Sharing Marjory’s opinion on the egg more than our own character’s felt rather jarring.

Never put player-character statements that aren’t conclusive to players themselves.
That works for games in which the player-controlled character has an identity already, but for fill-in protagonists that act as our window to the world of Tyria, it feels weird.

- Re: Lore
The biggest highlight beside Glint’s lair was the Library in EP5. Now I’ve read that Leah isn’t so fond of lore-dump expositions and I agree that it’s not the best way to go about lore in general.

Though! To help the exposition of lore, how does the idea of a collection-tab for lore sound to you? But instead of collecting books themselves, we collect items to unlock books about the lore tied to the items for our home instance.

Think that’s something you could pass on? What do you think?

I think threads in the story linger too long(EX: Caithe’s secret, that sylvari dude that no one knows where he’s from, “E”, etc.)for their own good. I think it would work if the LW didn’t take breaks, but with the breaks it really harms the continuity. If breaks are this unavoidable thing, I would suggest having whole storylines be sussed out in a given season segment. Sure, leave a taste of what is going to start in the next chunk after a break, but this last bit has felt like 3 totally different stories(Zephyr dude and dragon egg, Caithe, Mordy). Caithe’s story was supposed to hint to us as to where Caithe would be going with the egg, but there really was no “why” she did it.

I almost feel like if you guys want to keep using this method of content delivery it should be handled more like a sitcom or tv drama where the whole story happens over 1 episode and then it’s done. Otherwise, I totally feel like an expansion is the better form of delivery because the player can play it at his or her own pace, or at the very least, have 1 episode be the content of 3-4 episodes of what we have now and do less of them over the course of a year.

I will say one of my favorite parts of this second half of the season is the ditching of the cotton candy romance between Jory and Kas. Their relationship works a lot better now. There aren’t any cringe-inducing discourses between them and it’s a breath of fresh air.

• Rytlock jumps down a hole. Community gets a few teaser images about him on social media but we have gotten zero story about him up to this point. That’s frustrating. When you teased the first image of him, how were we not to assume that the next episode was about him?

• Jory imbues soul of sister in sister’s sword. Seems important. Nothing happens with it.

• The Pact is all hands on deck to go after Mordy and it just stalled out. The season was set up by you guys to give us the impression that we were going after the dragon and we skipped around plot points so much I forgot that was what was really happening. Is it about Mordremoth? Is it about the egg? Is it about Caithe’s secret? Is Rytlock on to something and does it have anything to do with what our character’s are doing? I guess I just feel like nothing is cohesively put together.

The cutscene for Jory and her sister was amazing. The library and time with Ogden was dope! Glint’s lair was incredible! Seriously. It has all been top-notch in that regard. Silverwastes is a gorgeous map. There are these great flashes of brilliance in the story this season. They just feel so disjointed is all. I have no problem with a mystery if I can follow it, but it’s been really hard to follow because there are so many threads that feel so disconnected from each other. I am sure it will all be tied up neatly though. It just needs to be tighter during the meat of the rising action and tension and body of the story for it to work as a complete thing.

The library wasn’t really exposition though – it just provided a lot of background lore for the types of people who were interested. If you’re going to do a lore dump, that’s a perfectly acceptable way to do it.

Caithe’s past, on the other hand, felt like an excuse for a gameplay sequence when a cutscene might have been more elegant. Of course, the problem with cutscenes is they add to development time and take away from gameplay time, but that’s one element I’d have been happy not playing – and it’s not too tricky to make a brief text summary for those who’d rather skip it. It would have built the tension over Caithe’s actions more than when the player feels like he/she did them him/herself. And it would have given an opportunity to highlight these misgivings in dialogue with the Pale Tree, which I feel may have been enlightening.

ElysianEternity.6215:

The biggest highlight beside Glint’s lair was the Library in EP5. Now I’ve read that Leah isn’t so fond of lore-dump expositions and I agree that it’s not the best way to go about lore in general.

I think Leah was referring more to things like A Study in Scarlet where the entire purpose was to dump lore exposition, rather than Hidden Arcana, which had optional lore in the background. Prosperity’s Mystery was the former as well, though much better disguised.

One is forced on the player.
The other is optional.

Good Lord, how much butter is that on that waffle?

are those the new bloodstone waffles?

@Ben K. and Konig

I also appreciate the library and the after-talk with Ogden and it was a perfect way to do it! (no disagreement), though what I meant to say is not about it being optional or forced down, but rather that lore can be presented in different ways and doing it always this way is not that good either.

I also should clarify that I meant exposition in the sense of books or a speech by a Priory member or similar because they are a direct way for writers to inform players about lore. :P

A different approach would be showing things via ambiance .

The door in the silverwastes is an example: Right now we don’t know what’s behind it, but a lot of us know that it relates to the Forgotten because of the symbol. (See a lot of people might not know and wonder about it) If the symbol wouldn’t exist but instead we had a priory person standing there that’s like “I’ve deduced these structures once belonged to the Forgotten!”, we’d be back at directly being told.

Not saying either that one replaces the other. In the opposite, they’re supposed to complement each other. Otherwise the lore would get either too vague (too much indirectly being informed) or too disconnected/too forced from/on the plot. (too much directly being informed)

Edit: Man that’s some delicious looking waffles. ;D