Guild Wars 2

If this was an in game feature i would be impressed.

It has been a massive problem ever since the Living Story started that players were forced to go to websites in order to follow the story. ArenaNet acknowledge this was a massive problem and said they were working on an in game solution so players can keep track of the story in game.

“We’re currently working on a system that will better direct players through Living World content. Eventually, it will also provide story context for LW and other content types. The first phase of the system should be ready before the end of the year.
I am hopeful that some of the new systems that we have in development (the LW tracking system, journal tracking, etc.) will make it easier for folks to make sense of the long-term story." -BobbyStein

We should not have to go to a website to follow the story, get exclusive content, this should all be in game. This has been one of the top complaints of the living story and this Atlas only makes things significantly worse.

How about instead of hunting down secrets on this Atlas you allow players to hunt down those secrets IN GAME, creating content and immersing people in the story.

This Atlas tears people out of the story immersion, it only contributes to the massively growing problem of poor in game story telling, and is waste of developer resources.

I honestly don’t get what the problem is… There is nothing offered in the Atlas besides the old videos, some sounds, the Wallpapers from the previous releases etc… I don’t see any “exclusive content” that should be added ingame… It is just a new design of the living story page… where you can see what happened before and the teaser for the next release.
It is a nice design and that’s it, why are you upset?

For anyone interested.

http://atlas.guildwars2.com/en/

Something like your imagining will take much longer to develop. Maybe you should reel in some expectations. Also, having played the games since gw1 just after launch, I can say when someone needs to reference lore or catch up on something its always best to consult the wiki. The CDI reference you make to having more of the story in the game is things like the Scarlett’s journal from the marionette patch, which is obviously something they are working on. So, congrats Anet on the new resource. It looks good and may the LS keep on evolving.

Enough of the whine, did anyone get 9/9 discoveries yet? I went through all the things and had 8/9. Two of the “hidden” links on mmorpg just went to things in Divinity’s Reach that were already there.

Eulolia.2467:

Enough of the whine, did anyone get 9/9 discoveries yet? I went through all the things and had 8/9. Two of the “hidden” links on mmorpg just went to things in Divinity’s Reach that were already there.

I am having the same problem

Got it now, hidden sound..
1630014426 for anyone who doesn’t want to click around for it themselves.

Indeed, complaining that fast is indeed a skill!

On topic though, I like the new Atlas alot, because i can see, or atleast think i can see, where they wanna take this. This will be a great place for new players to catch up on what happened before, and just a fun way to introduce now LS.

I don’t know what you exactly expected Arnath, but imo the Atlas has a huge potential, yes potential. It’s good, not great; but they can take it there. Insert links to the wiki, dates and timeframes when things happened perhaps…

I don’t think it should at all be accesable ingame, cause it’s not intended as a tool to use ingame, rather, like the forums or wiki, as something extra to discover new things, or an easy way to go back and find something when storycrafting (eventually)
It’s not supposed to link to your account and show you your map completion etc imho, that would ruin it

Eulolia.2467:

Got it now, hidden sound in Lion’s Arch..

what coords?

So after looking at the atlas for a while I have to say I am not entirely upset or pleased about it.

Yes it is a novel toy and lets us explore locations and various pieces of media from living story releases. I love the art and and especially the audio clips, also the way we are able to unlock more media from finding points of interest is a nice touch.

Thing is one of the major issues players had with the living story was that story content/lore was featured on the website and not in game. This atlas hardly addresses that issue and if anything makes it slightly worse by providing a tool to explore past stories outside the game. I am not sure Arena Net learned anything from all the player complaints.

Please start putting these cool stories and tools inside the game, none of us should have to ever leave the game in order to experience more Guild Wars. Add more options to the hero panel like including this map, to be honest I would even take an ingame browser at this point.

I guess I should be happy that we have a nice new tool to explore but if anything I am more annoyed that we have more web content that I have to log out in order to experience.

Aedelric.1287:

Thing is one of the major issues players had with the living story was that story content/lore was featured on the website and not in game. This atlas hardly addresses that issue and if anything makes it slightly worse by providing a tool to explore past stories outside the game. I am not sure Arena Net learned anything from all the player complaints.

Really now… this is just a redesign of the previous pages for the living story releases. The videos and wallpapers have all been there when you clicked on the release-pages for every update so it could be explored there all the time. Since this is just a redesign of the website I see no reason to be upset.
And I still think the devs heard our complaints, but this was website design, normally there are people which are specified to the website working on it, this does not mean that the devs are not working on putting story things inside the game.

People on these forums are quite funny.

First it is all like: “Give us something so we can see stuff about earlier Living Story parts! Give it to us NOW!”

Then they give us something exactly like that. And then it is all about:
“We don’t want it LIKE THIS! We want it in THIS way!”

Have people ever stopped and thought about the fact that things actually takes time to develop? Maybe they decided to do something like this for now, until they can add it in a good way in-game, due to people screaming about wanting it right now.

i agree with the OP, why do we have to get out of the game to get “tips” “clues” for the next patch or for more lore!? this is just stupid.

This would be much better if hours before the 4march patch we had a small briefing in game that would show some of this stuff, or a cutscene

Moon.7310:

Really now… this is just a redesign of the previous pages for the living story releases

No this is not a redesign, the release pages remain, this atlas includes new content, like audio clips, additional art and so on.

Seems like I have a different definition about content. It does not matter if they put a thousand art on the website if they have them lying around as well as audio-clips which are generated for the game and I suppose the new ones will be ingame ones the update hits the servers… And what the hell does art and audio have to to with the complaint about adding story ingame anyway…
Guess I am out here, seems like I am not able to understand the problem here. If you don’t like it, fine for me, everyone has their own opinion, I was just trying to see the reason for complaining here ^^

Moon.7310:

seems like I am not able to understand the problem here. If you don’t like it, fine for me

I like it, I just do not like it being on a website as opposed to a functional tool found in game. Surely that is not hard to understand?

I can’t listen the audio files.

Aedelric.1287:

I like it, I just do not like it being on a website as opposed to a functional tool found in game. Surely that is not hard to understand?

And surely it is not hard to understand that adding something to a website is much easier than to adding something to a massive game?

I like this! Gonna be fun to explore

I do think the Atlas is a bit confusing, but should be fixable through future design refinements. I just hope this doesn’t replace release notes. I already was a bit upset when they stopped putting out notes a week in advance. It’s nice to have an outline available. If this does replace them, it’s gonna be a lot harder to get hyped about a new release when I can’t quickly scan the bullet points at work, lol.

i got 7/9 can tell me where the other two are

well I agree that this should be ingame, but I think Anet is working on that ingame solution just as they said they did. It’s maybe just for now so that every new player gets the living story so far to be ready for the big finale.

Good thing takes time, I’m happy when they deliver as soon as it’s ready.

Think of it: they listened to us when we discussed the story blog posts. I haven’t seen any one of those for a while, instead story telling ingame was improved considerably (e.g. Dead End Bar interactive investigation… brilliant).

It would be cool if it were an in-game feature, but either way I don’t understand the point of this? I got all of them..Now what?

never mind i found them

TheReaperTheFourthHorsemen.7894:

i got 7/9 can tell me where the other two are

Same here

EDIT:

never mind i found them

Where?

I have 6/9 where is other 3 I checked other regions but theres none?

I don’t really care for it.

It’s not an in game/out of game thing. It’s just an “I see no point in it” thing. If I want to review past updates, there’s the wiki and the videos on YouTube. If I want to know about the next update, I’ll read the page on the next update when it goes live. (Though, I’ll be very upset if this replaces the standard update page.) I see little point in clicking around on a map.

I will give the atlas one thing, it does a good job of showing us how much of the world we still have to explore. And that’s just the “local” area! Instead of impressing me with the scope of the living story, it reinforces how small and contained it has been.

can someone help me? coordinates

finally the preview page is back and its all fancy. i was a little underwhelmed by the bfla teaser vid but this almost made up for it. hidden sounds effects, really? dialogue next time plz. what about hidden videos? one thing that would be cool is blueprints of things like in attack on titan. the priory could have its own sub-section in the atlas (maybe one for each of the orders) where they share some historical perspective with excerpts from ancient texts or a ‘wet behind the ears’ novice’s panicked field report. maybe even steward Gixx’s personal take on how things are unfolding. and why not some more browser mini games like the rytlok’s critter rampage?

like it was said in a previous post this atlas thingy has potential. enough potential to keep me clicking on it for at least the next handful of tuesdays. as long as i’m getting better content than the old preview page i will find the map scrolling less cumbersome.

all in all i would say that it all looks great visually, and the hidden coords are a nice touch but it needs to keep improving to make up for the simple efficiency of the old preview page.

lordkrall.7241:

And surely it is not hard to understand that adding something to a website is much easier than to adding something to a massive game?

Uhh… Duh?

Just because it is not easy does not mean we should stop wanting something.

This is a completely worthless “feature”. We need changes to allow us to play the content at our own pace, not to just see what everyone else got to play.

The title of this post made me sad :-(

Atlas.4509:

The title of this post made me sad :-(

lol

I like this atlas. It’s a neat thing to play around with. Still missing two pieces for BoLA, though. Hmmmm.

Aedelric.1287:

Uhh… Duh?

Just because it is not easy does not mean we should stop wanting something.

Of course not.
But people are complaining about this atlas, due to it not being “good enough”.

Would you rather have nothing at all for another year until they have managed to fix a good in-game version?

Well it is nice… cute i might say… but for whom?

I do not get the reason behind it, aside from providing a new easter egg hunt for the new content and some throwback to some old LS stuff.

However this thing seems to be designed to be on an tablet. Big touchable signs and stuff. Nothing that is supposed to run in a browser.
Which only makes me want the mobile app they were talking about before launch.

This thing is for no one really.

It is not for new players, since they have no idea what is going on and it is not for old players, since they were probably there when things happened.

Pictures are in much better quality on the releasepages, which leaves the only thing this half-an-hour gooschase brings to the table the sound clips.

Overall i hope this is not the supposed tool they want to use to get players more involved with the LS. That is supposed to tell them what is going on and whatnot.
If that is the case, then i am really disapointed.

Just to clarify: Cute idea, but what was the thoughtprocess behind that?
- Do you want to extend the data on the map in the future? What if things are in the same place, overwriting each other?
- What is wrong with a simple timeline?

In the end i can only ask: What is the point of it`s existence?

The Atlas kinda feels like Arena Net wasted their time….
I mean it’s cool, but it doesn’t really offer anything. Just annoyingly click around until you find some bit of information that was much better delivered through the regular release pages.
If they tied this into the game though, it could be quiet nice. For example, if there was an NPC or intractable item at the in-game locations of the things you find on the Atlas, which then had something interesting to say to the player.

Edit: also, what’s up with the “hidden points”, are we expected to click the entire map until we get lucky and find one? That’s annoying, not fun.

So…remind me again why Anet bothered to create this poorly made flash page to replace the Preview pages that worked just fine up until these last few releases?

No, seriously, what’s the point? Do they think it’s innovative or fun to have to click around the ridiculous map to find screenshots and inaudible sound clips? And really, anyone with half a mind is just going to go to Dulfy and view the preview screen shots and sound clips there instead of wasting there time with this mess.

Atleast Anet had the common decency to no lock the preview video behind a requirement to find all eight screen shots and a sound clip. This just feels like a poorly cobbled together intern’s pet project than something from a professional game development company, to be honest.

Atlas.4509:

The title of this post made me sad :-(

Name jokes aside, me too.

When someone says “Atlas”, I think of a giant statue with a bunch of characters lined up below it for a costume contest. And then I get sad.

Is it just me, or does it look like a town is located west of the bloodtide coast area and south of LA where there used to be just a green swath of paint?

As for now I think Atlas is good idea. I would love if it was some kind of platform between Game and Lore ie. finding clues in game which updates our Atlas. Something like Hall of Monuments Meter but for story secrets. It’s nice addition but definitely not a solution for problems with LS

brittitude.1983:

Is it just me, or does it look like a town is located west of the bloodtide coast area and south of LA where there used to be just a green swath of paint?

Isn’t that Clawr Island?

brittitude.1983:

Is it just me, or does it look like a town is located west of the bloodtide coast area and south of LA where there used to be just a green swath of paint?

It’s Claw Island, where you do your personal story to defend Lion’s Arch.

brittitude.1983:

Is it just me, or does it look like a town is located west of the bloodtide coast area and south of LA where there used to be just a green swath of paint?

How far are you in the personal story? The picture is a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t gotten far enough.

Thanks for the replies. I stopped at about three from the end when I learned that the end of the PS was a dungeon; so, no, I haven’t made it there.

Okay, I cannot, for the life of me, find the last two bits for BfLA. 7/9 is frustrating me.

You can find the “hidden” ones by clicking the images you’ve already found.

Loving this map so far, but I have one massive issue with it.. None of the sounds are working for me! Using Firefox, does anyone have a solution for this? ;-;

AladarLionsong.6534:

Loving this map so far, but I have one massive issue with it.. None of the sounds are working for me! Using Firefox, does anyone have a solution for this? ;-;

Use Chrome (Sorry, but using a different browser is usually an easier solution that trying to pinpoint exactly what is wrong with your own browser)

While a nice idea, all this does is illustrate the inadequacy of how Living Story is implemented.

Doesn’t make me excited to log in and experience content shoved down my throat lest I miss it.