Guild Wars 2

(yes the post is long, so was the year)

Introduction
Most of this has been said, I’d just like to add another constructive voice. I hope that the devs come to the understanding that this opinion isn’t arbitrary, nor a minority view of the LS content.

I could never get “in” to any other mmo. They just couldn’t maintain my interest for more than a couple of weeks. Even “long lasting” games like Skyrim, which I loved, I only played for 3-4 months. Yet here I am one year later, still playing this game. Not since Baulder’s Gate and Age of Empires have I ever devoted so much time to a single game. As an avid gamer, having passed up quite a few other games I do want to play because this game is actually still fun, should show how much I do like this game and want it to succeed.

I would like you to understand this, and know just how much I enjoy this game that was created. But “Living Story” needs a major overhaul in it’s design philosophy. I believe it may help the cash shop make money now but it is very detrimental to the long term enjoyment of an otherwise top notch game.

I hope you guys can appreciate my feedback on just what the Living Story has meant to me: I want this to be as constructive as possible.

Prelude
Yes there has been some good fun content. But as a whole there has been far more lost potential. Looking back at LS as a whole, there was a lot of stuff, for sure. But take too long to try and remember any one thing and it was “Meh.” Or if was good, it was accompanied or preceded or immediately followed by more “meh.”

The game is like a great Anime series. But we’ve been stuck in a horrible “filler” arc since the mangaka died.

There’s a fading memory of mildly interesting content, awkward comic relief that doesn’t feel like it even belongs, the story feels like it’s completely forgotten everything that happened before it, and the villains are so ‘out there’ you can’t even suspend disbelief long enough to accept them as cannon, oh, and hours of time launching fireworks and being sent to “kill X things” and “touch X signs” something I seem to recall DE’s and heart quests were specifically designed to avoid.

I have great memories of many games, but I can go back and play those games to relive those memories. There is no means of that here. In the end it barely matters how much fun I had at the time if I can’t relive it.

Chapter One: Looking Back
SAB was the first recurring event, and as a fan of it, it was fun. There have been a lot of games built on the nostalgia idea and I think they all failed horribly in comparison to this game within a game. The nay=sayers claim it is out of place, but the world of Tyria doesn’t really belong in my living room either. But then so much of the reward system was changed for W1 (instead of maybe just doubling the prices and rewards from w2) it actually damaged the memory. And makes me worry about upcoming holiday events and what fun things will be “improved” in horrifying ways.

I sincerely hope that you begin to understand that more and more people have given you as much time as we could. A whole year to see if your way was gonna work, that’s a long time to dedicate to any game. I hope you guys understand that. It’s a testament to the launch title that so many of us are still around. I for one am not here because of living story. I would like to see it live up to it’s potential, I had so much hope after F&F, the direction then and the opening of Secret of Southson looked like AMAZING and bright future for the direction of the game. That much great content every month? Sweet!

So tell me why the long drawn out “lets take our time and figure out what we are going to do with this LS idea” thing worked so much better than “Lets have four teams rushing content out the door every two weeks because that looks good on an advertisement!”

Chapter Two: Looking Forward
Unless you plan on releasing a brand new game within a couple of years to recapture the populous and do it all again, you need to concern yourselves with long term player interest. “It’s always less then two weeks since or til a brand new update!” Carries a huge connotation when those are the only updates available. “GW2, where there are only two small updates available at any given time!” Is what far too many of us are at least tempted to tell our friends. (I actually recently convinced my brother to buy the game and kinda felt like I was lying to him by not pointing that out, so you are welcome for that.)

Two things are killing this game for me personally, there are many other reasons in other posts like this, but these are my personal demons, and you should care, because I’m not alone:

Time gating content “Once per day.”
And the biweekly Random AP Quest. The “story” is on the website, as usual. And there is nothing living about it.

Chapter Three: What could have been
The world is the same as it was at launch. The most memorable change to me was the lighthouse in LA, and the statue melting prior to the mad king, then being rebuilt over several weeks through wintersday. Both of those happened in 2012! And neither of them matter to anyone who wasn’t there to know it happened.

Orr is still corrupted, none of the other dragons have done anything. None of the races have done anything. Lions Arch elected a new official (really, as a highlight for one year’s worth of content, that’s kinda lame) and there are Skypirates. (Which still manages to sound cooler than it actually has been.)

Fire and Frost could have lead us into a whole new area where all the refugees had been driven from, filled with molten alliance, skill points, vistas and heart quests and a full 3-path dungeon as the “main” molten facility. (With the original intact as the story mode. And you could have taken six months or more to pull that off and dropped a new race and class at the one year anniversary. The world would have loved you for it. All the story for the molten alliance could have remained in game for future generations to love and adore as they catch up to the next arc.

Then we would have a precedent for a truly epic storyline, with a brand new map and full dungeon every six months. Which could have lead into some connection with one of the elder dragons and tipped the hat for the next “main arc” to start dealing with the actual threat of the dragons. There are enough of them you could deal with a different one every six months as we slowly work towards a resolution and still have a decade worth of content.

We already HAD pirates, far too many for any economy and/or safety in tyra to actually exist, but now they have airships. Yueah.

Chapter Four: To AFK or not to AFK, that is the Daily
There are a lot of things I still enjoy about this game, but they were all here a year ago. In spite of that there is a TON more time gating that’s been added, essentially nerfing the original game in ways that prevent me from doing things. I used to log back in on an alt and do stuff over again if I felt like it, and work towards the same rewards for that alt. Now I can’t. Now I am required to focus on a single character ‘per day’ and use the others to harvest ore and wood that is also timegated and I know that you are going to account lock that before the end of the year. I can feel it in my bones.
This truly diminishes the value of extra chr slots at an exponential rate.

TL:DR:
Love the game, saddened by the direction.

Timegating = I get that you want me to log in every day to be sure I get all the daily limited things done and be tempted by the cash shop, or pour gold into the gem pool so that others can be tempted by gem conversion. But all you are doing is forcing me log out when all my daily limits are effectively locking me out of the content I enjoy (and making me regret ever even starting my alts). Or, more commonly, being tabbed out while I do other more interesting things.

Random Story = Just adding my voice to what so many others have posted about.
The most fun I have in the game is still the vanilla game. LS is completely arbitrary and hollow feeling, it makes me less and less interested in the longevity of this game. There is more story in the random interactions of Skritt in various corners of the world than there is in any LS release.

Taking this with a grain of salt is fine, just don’t pour salt on an open wound and pretend these concerns are from a minority and therefore unimportant.

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

Zoltreez.6435:

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

It’s formatted, chaptered, has an introduction and paragraph breaks as well as a warning about the length. It is most certainly NOT a “wall” of text.

I prefer to think of it as a well crafted castle of text. :P

Someone summarize please?

Edit: Oh nevermind. I found it.

TL:DR: Love the game, saddened by the direction.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Someone summarize please?

There’s a TL:DR (too long : Didn’t Read) at the end of my post.

TL:DR:
Love the game, saddened by the direction.

Timegating = I get that you want me to log in every day to be sure I get all the daily limited things done and be tempted by the cash shop, or pour gold into the gem pool so that others can be tempted by gem conversion. But all you are doing is forcing me log out when all my daily limits are effectively locking me out of the content I enjoy (and making me regret ever even starting my alts). Or, more commonly, being tabbed out while I do other more interesting things.

Random Story = Just adding my voice to what so many others have posted about.
The most fun I have in the game is still the vanilla game. LS is completely arbitrary and hollow feeling, it makes me less and less interested in the longevity of this game. There is more story in the random interactions of Skritt in various corners of the world than there is in any LS release.

Taking this with a grain of salt is fine, just don’t pour salt on an open wound and pretend these concerns are from a minority and therefore unimportant.

Sorry about that. Yep, I agree.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Zoltreez.6435:

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

It’s formatted, chaptered, has an introduction and paragraph breaks as well as a warning about the length. It is most certainly NOT a “wall” of text.

I prefer to think of it as a well crafted castle of text. :P

you made my day LOL

btw why my pic didn’t worked ?

Zoltreez.6435:

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Zoltreez.6435:

[img]http://conversioninsights.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dont-create-a-wall-of-text-on-your-site-285x228.jpg[/img]

It’s formatted, chaptered, has an introduction and paragraph breaks as well as a warning about the length. It is most certainly NOT a “wall” of text.

I prefer to think of it as a well crafted castle of text. :P

you made my day LOL

btw why my pic didn’t worked ?

:P

Not sure why it didn’t work….