Guild Wars 2

So like myself and many others that played through the Living Story (LS) contents, we found that the information presented was fragmented, or it wasn’t just there at all times. Players had to get it from blogposts and sites that dedicate on updating the stories instead.

But what we really need, is an in-game lexicon that presents the players all of the stories from previous to current LSes - from the general overview to the details of it. We already have the (rather shallow one, in my opnion) presentation of information about our Personal Story. Why not start with something along that line of parsing the LS information first, and then gradually increase the number of details, like little awesome tid-bits of the who, what, where, when, and hows.

What do you think? Do you agree with this, or do you have an even better implementation of it? Discuss!

/wiki Living Story

I agree fully, we shouldn’t have to leave the game to have any idea what has been happening. Would be great seeing it written into a book of GW2 as we play.

lordkrall.7241:

/wiki Living Story

ALL of the story should be told in-game. There should be NO reason one would have to go to a 3rd party website to learn the storyline.

Elbegast.6970:

ALL of the story should be told in-game. There should be NO reason one would have to go to a 3rd party website to learn the storyline.

But that storyline is over, why would it be in the game if it is no longer active?
If people want to read up on stuff that have happened they can use the wiki.
Or do you want every single holiday event to stay in the game all year around and forever? Because that is basically the exact same thing. After the Halloween was over people would have to check the wiki to get the story.

And for all we know the event of last Halloween will NOT come back for the next Halloween.

lordkrall.7241:

Elbegast.6970:

ALL of the story should be told in-game. There should be NO reason one would have to go to a 3rd party website to learn the storyline.

But that storyline is over, why would it be in the game if it is no longer active?
If people want to read up on stuff that have happened they can use the wiki.
Or do you want every single holiday event to stay in the game all year around and forever? Because that is basically the exact same thing. After the Halloween was over people would have to check the wiki to get the story.

And for all we know the event of last Halloween will NOT come back for the next Halloween.

I said nothing about the events staying in the game. I said the storyline should always be told in the game and not on websites. The most recent example would be the Canach story that was printed on this website. That should have been in-game and not on a website. I shouldn’t have to go outside the game to catch up on missing plotholes and current events.

Elbegast.6970:

I said nothing about the events staying in the game. I said the storyline should always be told in the game and not on websites. The most recent example would be the Canach story that was printed on this website. That should have been in-game and not on a website. I shouldn’t have to go outside the game to catch up on missing plotholes and current events.

Most of the information could however be found in-game, even if it required some actual exploring and listening.

The parts that are NOT found in game would however been quite hard to put into the game in a logical way and said information is also not really needed to actually understand the story-line but rather used to flesh out the characters a bit extra for people that care.

Oh, nice. +1 for this thread.

Made basically the same plea in another thread before noticing this one.

Anything that has happened in the recent past can be recounted in some kind of journal, either from a neutral point of view or a biased personal one. Having both would actually be even more interesting.

They could place rumormongers in taverns, give the heralds some text about past events players can ask about if they care, etc etc. Doing these things isnt even much work compared to scripting or making graphical stuff.

lordkrall.7241:

Elbegast.6970:

I said nothing about the events staying in the game. I said the storyline should always be told in the game and not on websites. The most recent example would be the Canach story that was printed on this website. That should have been in-game and not on a website. I shouldn’t have to go outside the game to catch up on missing plotholes and current events.

Most of the information could however be found in-game, even if it required some actual exploring and listening.

The parts that are NOT found in game would however been quite hard to put into the game in a logical way and said information is also not really needed to actually understand the story-line but rather used to flesh out the characters a bit extra for people that care.

I see dozens of people railing on this game for it’s lack of storytelling yet I only see you defending it. I am beginning to think you are an Anet employee.

How can you be so dismissive of such a glaring problem as the lack of coherent, meaningful and comprehensive in-game storytelling?

Do you enjoy flipping over every single rock in hopes of finding a word or number that can be pinned to your wall and connected, by yellow yarn, to other randomly placed clues?

The wiki is the most appropriate place to go read up on past events. What other MMOs have this ingame lexicon of everything you need to know from past events without going outside of the game itself?

WoW runs off of lore from all the previous Warcraft games. Even after playing all of them growing up and reading the lore in the manuals, the story is still confusing unless you read all the info they post on their website regarding background stories.

SWTOR essentially assumes you have watched the Star Wars movies and the entire setting is based off of KOTOR games. I have no idea who any of the major characters that show up are since I didn’t play them. I had to read up on the Star Wars wiki and website info to understand the context.

Elbegast.6970:

lordkrall.7241:

/wiki Living Story

ALL of the story should be told in-game. There should be NO reason one would have to go to a 3rd party website to learn the storyline.

This kinda. The fact they also officially endorsed GW2lfg was also a bad PR move, unless gw2lfg was managed by a reliable inside-source.

Yeah, ANet hasn’t quite gotten storytelling right yet. It’s like they have a wonderful story, but then fall down on telling it to us.

Maybe an in-game newsletter or some other way for rumors to pop up would help. The Heralds are nice, but could we also have randomly added NPCs running around city zones talking about events? Signs and newsletters posted up in small villages for people to read? The mailed letters are nice, more of that? IDK which options are better, but I’d like for story quality to be more even.

It would also be cool to have NPCs who could direct people to events that haven’t fired in a while, or let them know about secret places when they first enter a zone, etc. Just some way to learn the often empty mid-level areas better than relying on hearts.

lordkrall.7241:

But that storyline is over, why would it be in the game if it is no longer active?
If people want to read up on stuff that have happened they can use the wiki.

Ah-ha! But you see, the Halloween event isn’t just a Halloween event, it’s Mad King clawing up from the depths of the underworld to terrorise the citizens of the surface-world! I think that is a cause for chronicling in the in-game lexicon!

The in-game lexicon, as mentioned, details all the major events of GW2 – from it’s Living Stories, to little bits and pieces of lore, and then tying all of that together into a neat little package the player can access in-game at any time they wish. No more flipping to get to a website (Of course, the website will be there. Likelihood, the information will be pulled from there via GW2’s API, for instance), players can have the convenience of the information at the tip of their fingers! Now, isn’t that just smart?

kokocabana.8153:

What other MMOs have this ingame lexicon of everything you need to know from past events without going outside of the game itself?

You seem to forget Warhammer Online! That game has a BEAST of a lexicon for its lore. Check it out for yourself. It’s pretty well presented, too.

Wonloong.7159:

So like myself and many others that played through the Living Story (LS) contents, we found that the information presented was fragmented, or it wasn’t just there at all times. Players had to get it from blogposts and sites that dedicate on updating the stories instead.

But what we really need, is an in-game lexicon that presents the players all of the stories from previous to current LSes – from the general overview to the details of it. We already have the (rather shallow one, in my opnion) presentation of information about our Personal Story. Why not start with something along that line of parsing the LS information first, and then gradually increase the number of details, like little awesome tid-bits of the who, what, where, when, and hows.

What do you think? Do you agree with this, or do you have an even better implementation of it? Discuss!

It would be nice, yes.

You could event go run around and gather some lore “shards” (for instance the consortium memos in this event) and then have a summary of it in your lexicon/codex/journal. This could be evena quest/achievment, to get all the lore you can.

Also it would open up a new way of doing puzzles, where you have to assamble to lore pieces to make a whole.

Excellent idea OP!

Ps.: And no, /wiki is not an option. People are too lazy/not interested enough to do that. They don’t want to go through the trouble of looking things up on the wiki or the forums. I know, becouse I am the one in my guild who has to explain all events and happenings to 90% of my guildmates becouse they have no idea what’s happening. And it’s getting tiresome.

Elbegast.6970:

lordkrall.7241:

Elbegast.6970:

I said nothing about the events staying in the game. I said the storyline should always be told in the game and not on websites. The most recent example would be the Canach story that was printed on this website. That should have been in-game and not on a website. I shouldn’t have to go outside the game to catch up on missing plotholes and current events.

Most of the information could however be found in-game, even if it required some actual exploring and listening.

The parts that are NOT found in game would however been quite hard to put into the game in a logical way and said information is also not really needed to actually understand the story-line but rather used to flesh out the characters a bit extra for people that care.

I see dozens of people railing on this game for it’s lack of storytelling yet I only see you defending it. I am beginning to think you are an Anet employee.

How can you be so dismissive of such a glaring problem as the lack of coherent, meaningful and comprehensive in-game storytelling?

Do you enjoy flipping over every single rock in hopes of finding a word or number that can be pinned to your wall and connected, by yellow yarn, to other randomly placed clues?

If that’s the same Krall from GW2Guru, he’s been doing this kind of thing since before launch lol. Some people will defend a company and its decisions to the death. I can’t understand why when the company in question is often doing things incorrectly.

I am in full support of your suggestion, though, OP. I would love something like that.

I agree that his argument seems a bit empty since I dont see him arguing to the death against an in-game almanach that details the story if Anet were to implement it.

However this isnt about what TOR or WoW or WAR had (although I agree the presentation of story line, achievements and all the other things in that WAR Almanach was excellent). If TOR jumped off a bridge should GW2 jump too? Well, TOR actually did kinda jump off a bridge at launch…

I dont see how anyone would argue against including more story bits inside the game to add more life to the world, add more gems to find in game for people interested in the lore. Because that’s more fun then reading up on the wiki. Discovering is part of the game, and its a part I enjoy. When I come across a book I read, I talk to npcs, and Anet has done wonderful things in this regard with the release. We just want that approach to be used even more instead of less often.

P.S. Living story tab similar to the Personal story tab that chronicles your actions throughout the various chapters would be awesome too. I feel they need to anchor the living story system to something else then a mash of mail, achievements and the main screen blurb.

Hey! Maybe Anet could get some inspiration from this!

Elbegast.6970:

lordkrall.7241:

/wiki Living Story

ALL of the story should be told in-game. There should be NO reason one would have to go to a 3rd party website to learn the storyline.

Third party? That’s the official wiki. lordkrall even gave you the command to access it from the game client.