Guild Wars 2

I reach the Concordia mission and everyone’s all fine and cheery about their shiny new fort… Which is mangled and destroyed by vines…

Is there a way perhaps the living story could not change the maps within the story missions? The Living Story is awesome, as is how it affects the world, but it’s a bit weird when the new events are affecting instances that are supposed to be in the past (IE Mordremoth influence in the time when Zhaitan still lived).

I agree. The same thing goes for the story instances in LA, where everything is now destroyed despite the fact that personal story, according to anet, occured before season 1 of living world. I also remember that previously they still had that NPC in the instance, still talking about the lion statue as if it was still there, even though Mad King had destroyed it a few months back. They really need to do something about this type of stuff. Personal story instances shouldn’t be affected by the living world content/story. The way it is now is very confusing and just doesn’t work.

I’m going to apologize in advance at the length of my post but it is worth the read if you are interested.

I agree and suspect the reason this is occurring is because of technical design. I’m confident that the instances are simply instances of the current zone with boundary limits enforced so that you can’t go beyond the intended scope of that story part. And also provide an exit avenue. Rather than a separately coded version of the map. Given the nature of the changes from the living story I think it only right that they make the personal story instances actual separately coded versions of the map so that they retain the actual state of the map at the time the personal story events took place.

Basically time line wise this is how I understand the personal story to be. Our characters arrive in the world at their respective home area after having a flash back of how everything began. The personal story is a continuance of flashbacks while you journey through the world in it’s post Zhaitan’s defeat state. This is evident in the nature of events that are occurring in the persistent world. If the events of the personal story were not the past at the time your character arrives in the game then it would make no sense that the pact is actively fighting in Orr when you have not yet formed the pact in the story.

This clearly shows and confirms my suspicion when they began the temporary content before it was called the living story, that they did not have this planned from pre-release design all the way back to the foundation. Making GW2 a living world was an after thought along with the 2 week release effort. I’d put my money on it that their original design plans were to have annual releases like GW1 where a new lengthy chapter of personal story was added. To which they arrive to currently with this new journal system design. It allows them to provide that well designed personal story system and at the same time provide an expanding and changing world.

I’d be willing to bet also that one of the reasons why they are looking at conversion of the personal story into this new system is because they see the need to address this very topic of the thread. And it’s not much of a stretch when you have to redo coding for areas of the game to correct a side effect (possibly unforeseen or unconsidered) to do a little more coding to add a feature to it.

You’re really asking for an MMO nirvana here. It has been desired in all MMOs from day one and has until recently been impossible to deliver. Instances have been the way of showing different players different things. I think it will be almost impossible for GW2 to be retrofitted to do this for wide areas of the open world though they can probably hide some objects and NPCs. Elder Scrolls had this sort of mixed timeline and although I thought it looked ok (in beta), lots of others have complained that it didn’t really work and looked confusing. Just imagine some people walking along the high vines in Concordia and others being unable to see the vines!

Stooperdale.3560:

You’re really asking for an MMO nirvana here. It has been desired in all MMOs from day one and has until recently been impossible to deliver. Instances have been the way of showing different players different things. I think it will be almost impossible for GW2 to be retrofitted to do this for wide areas of the open world though they can probably hide some objects and NPCs. Elder Scrolls had this sort of mixed timeline and although I thought it looked ok (in beta), lots of others have complained that it didn’t really work and looked confusing. Just imagine some people walking along the high vines in Concordia and others being unable to see the vines!

I don’t think they need to do what ESO did, and I really don’t think they should. (Btw, this is a GW2 forum so stay on topic.) They could just keep the open world areas changeable as they are now and then make sure the story instances can’t change from their initial state regardless of what happens in the open world. The instances currently don’t change depending on the state of the dynamic events in the open world, so why should they change as a result of what happens in the living world story?

I don’t know if there would be IP issues with something like this, but WoW has tech that allows for phasing terrain and locations to suite the current story that the character is working on. For instance, a zone might have 4 story hubs, each with multiple distinct phases as the player accomplishes goals.

It sounds like that kind of thing may be what you are looking for, but it is a technical limitation due to required systems, and may have some IP conflicts as far as coding and design. It also can separate the players depending on implementation (players that advance past a certain point cannot see/interact/help with players that are not as far into the quest/story line).

Amazing tool, but with the trouble ANET has fielding bug fixes and balancing cycles, my bet is that their budget/time creedos that are pushed all over the place will come into play – whether valid or not, it’s starting to sound like excuses to me. But that’s off topic.

The topic of discussion unless I’m mistaken is the personal story instances which are not the persistent world. So there is no issue with showing one player what they are supposed to see over another person who would be walking on a vine or something that is not there. Perhaps it was cutting corners during design to simply overlay the instance stuff on the zone and instance it vs a completely separate coding of the zone for the instance. We don’t really know. We can only observer as I pointed out that they did not plan this living story from the foundation of game design up until the game was released. Otherwise this would have not been an issue for us to discuss today. As they would have coded the instance 100% separate from the state of the persistent world. The only solution at this point is for them to fill in these instances so they are not overlay instances on the persistent world’s map as far as I can tell. I’m sure the developers are saying to themselves why didn’t we consider this when we were designing the game. But it is something completely reasonable for them to be able to fix since these are instances that are in need of being fixed.

People are claiming that this is an impossibility, but somehow Wildstar is currently doing just what is being asked, but without instances!

So, in Wildstar, the zones change based on the progress of your story, is it so hard for the fort at Concordia to appear non destroyed by vines until we have reached this part in the personal story? And for it to be on a character by character basis? No, I don’t think this would be too hard, likewise for Lions Arch, cept there would have to be a non destroyed Lions Arch instance or something, and then upon completeting (when it is release) the Living World Season 1 stuffs, then you log into the destroyed and current LA.

These things, I don’t think, are impossible to implement, but maybe since ANet didn’t have these things in mind pre launch they’d be harder to implement now? Sad thing is though Wildstar is doing a much better job at this currently lol

There are quite a few MMOs new and old that use a feature that shows you what is relevant to you in the persistent world. But I personally haven’t seen this go beyond simple things like NPCs and small objects. In the case of LA there would be no reason to have both old and new LA existing persistently. Because it doesn’t fit with the story concept we have had from the start. The moment you first click to enter the game with a character that character is in the present time of the game. The personal story and past living story are events that have already occurred. So when you are playing those instances you are flashing back to what took place. At the moment we can’t play LS1 but when we can it will be the same. As we move forward the previous content becomes flash backs.

The key factor is anything LS1 that gets implemented in permanent form will have to take place in instances. What makes instances great is they can be whatever they need to be and can look different than the current state of the world. Remember the game designers at arenanet strong point is story telling with instances. This was one of the biggest successes for GW1 and carried over with GW2. So it’s definitely not impossible and not harder to do than it was to design them in the first place. It’s simply a matter of a developer team and time to do it. Which is why I think it would be justified for them to make permanent LS1 a purchased upgrade. That income would also offfset costs of correcting the PS instances to show the correct appearances of the areas they take place in that were altered as a result of events of LS1.

Soooo… we shouldnt start new characters anytime soon that has the potential to be stuck forever on specific parts of the original Personal Story with the Living World continuously messing up the maps of old/historical events.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

That sucks. Although instead of including all the instances how about only including the instances that are being affected at the time. A few hundred megs here and there overall might end up being large but as long as it’s not dumped on us all at once I think it might be fine. Who knows, not me since I have no idea of the technical challenges involved.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hey guys – I can tell you that we have certainly looked at this issue, even as far back as Lost Shores, and it did come down to technical and logistical problems we are, at this time, unable to solve. Jia Shen is correct that our instances do not use separate maps from the open world, so if those maps change because of a larger world story event, like Lion’s Arch being laid to waste for example, then the story instances that take place in those maps will reflect whatever the current state of the world is.

We do have some limited ability to do phased instancing of certain elements within those maps, but not the kind of sweeping large scale terrain changes that result from the major changes we want to make to the world.

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

Even though there are hundreds of instances in personal story, they arent 100 different instances, we only have 25 maps, and essentially all of them are happening in the same general time frame.
so you would need 25 maps (if there is a ps in everystory) for essentially all lore that took place on release, and most of season 1.

though honestly you would only need copies for majorly changed areas.

Also for the future, you could start essentially cutting maps for the decided upon zone. that we can actually walk, for story/lore related zones.

but if thats too big a deal, you can sacrifice consistency, for all but the major ones.
I think old lions arch deserves a place in the dats. And it would be good to be able to reference it from a lore point of view, when you are showing the past.

I suspect that eventually the tools team will work out a way that instances can overwrite parts of the heightmap and terrain texture so that instances can preserve towns as they’re supposed to be (or have maps that look different during instances, for instance the attack on Lion’s Arch at the start of the Orr invasion). That’s a non-trivial technical challenge, though, although it’s clear that someone has thought about how to solve it.

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

Djinn.9245:

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.

lakdav.3694:

Soooo… we shouldnt start new characters anytime soon that has the potential to be stuck forever on specific parts of the original Personal Story with the Living World continuously messing up the maps of old/historical events.

Not at all. You can still do the story, you’ll just have to deal with the terrain not exactly matching the character attitudes and actions. You won’t be “stuck.” I took a new alt through Whispers stuff and had Tybalt cheerfully selling apples in an LA on fire.

It may confuse new players, though.

Jia Shen.4217:

Basically time line wise this is how I understand the personal story to be. Our characters arrive in the world at their respective home area after having a flash back of how everything began. The personal story is a continuance of flashbacks while you journey through the world in it’s post Zhaitan’s defeat state. This is evident in the nature of events that are occurring in the persistent world. If the events of the personal story were not the past at the time your character arrives in the game then it would make no sense that the pact is actively fighting in Orr when you have not yet formed the pact in the story.

I agree, and I try my best to think of it that way as well. Everything in the Story Journal and living story season 1 all happened in the past (conveniently dated and all), except for the most current episode. The most current episode of the story journal and the open world at large reflect the every present, continually changing, current moment of the world of Tyria, after all of the events of the past. The way I see it, new players can jump in and explore the world of Tyria as is (kind of like joining your friends in watching Game of Thrones in the middle of season 2) but if they fall in love with the world and the lore and the story they can always go back and play through the “history” of what happened (kind of like catching up on the past episodes of GoT on your own time).

There are some problems with trying to see things this way which bother me. First, as mentioned, is that in these private instances the terrain reflects the current world. Ok, fine- now that I hear an official response saying that just a technical limitation, I can just pretend/imagine it the way it’s supposed to be (sucks for new players though). Secondly, why, in the open world is Orr still a desolate hostile risen infested land with its corruption radiating throughout the neighboring zones? I feel like, after the events of the personal story, they should really redesign all of Orr and even a bunch of neighboring zones and their relevant hearts to reflect a Zhitan-free, cleansed Orr that’s simply in the process of recovering and fighting off lingering corruption.

TL;DR- The open world should be redesigned in a patch or expansion to reflect what it would look like now that Zhaitan has been defeated and Orr is being cleansed.

Okay… i am confused.
Yes we would have to have a sperate map to download for our .dat file.

However, …
Right now, not all PS steps are greatly affected. Several can still work without breaking immersion.
Subsequently the amount of “new” maps is rather small.
Sure, the amount of maps might increase, the more stuff changes through the LS in the future, but till then you should be able to find another solution.

Furthermore, the story maps are not bigger then a minidungeon and you easily include these “temporary” in S1 and for the festivals.
Even if you do not delete the “not needed” maps from the client afterwards (which i do not believe, since apearently the Mad Kings realm is still there, as if of late people were still able to reload there toon there), nobody asks of you to include the whole map, but only the relevant parts.

I am sorry, I am no programmer, but I somehow fail to understand the problem.
- Cut out the needed part of the map
- link to through the story step
- reload the original map afterwards.

Since it is in the past anyway, you can put some mist effects around the cut out part of the map to explain why you cannot leave the area (which you cannot anyway, since you usually get booted there).

Hence the limits of Living Story and the real reason behind expansions and additional areas. It is nearly impossible to keep continuity in an MMO designed around altering the world when so much of the personal story takes place throughout key areas of that world. Realistically the only way to completely avoid this is by ensuring the changes made are only to new areas of Tyria that are not a part of the personal story. All LS content needs to take place in newly created areas or limited to instanced or continuity will completely deteriorate.
The other issue is that it makes the characters involved in the PS almost off limits to current LS as far as killing them off or changing their role. Personally I have no idea how the heck this would play out if the current LS leads us to the death of Queen J.

phys.7689:

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hey guys – I can tell you that we have certainly looked at this issue, even as far back as Lost Shores, and it did come down to technical and logistical problems we are, at this time, unable to solve. Jia Shen is correct that our instances do not use separate maps from the open world, so if those maps change because of a larger world story event, like Lion’s Arch being laid to waste for example, then the story instances that take place in those maps will reflect whatever the current state of the world is.

We do have some limited ability to do phased instancing of certain elements within those maps, but not the kind of sweeping large scale terrain changes that result from the major changes we want to make to the world.

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

Even though there are hundreds of instances in personal story, they arent 100 different instances, we only have 25 maps, and essentially all of them are happening in the same general time frame.
so you would need 25 maps (if there is a ps in everystory) for essentially all lore that took place on release, and most of season 1.

though honestly you would only need copies for majorly changed areas.

Also for the future, you could start essentially cutting maps for the decided upon zone. that we can actually walk, for story/lore related zones.

but if thats too big a deal, you can sacrifice consistency, for all but the major ones.
I think old lions arch deserves a place in the dats. And it would be good to be able to reference it from a lore point of view, when you are showing the past.

Completely agree with this post.

EDIT: just realized my alternative proposal wouldn’t work.

@MatthewMedina:

Why would you have to cache the entirety of maps just to have them for story instances? Just take cookie-cutter pieces out. There is no story instance that takes up an entire map. Each one is already segmented off by the red-zone. Just take the pieces that are within the red-zone, and hack out what will never be needed. This will reduce the size of the map space actually used to just a tiny fraction of what the entire map itself would be. You’re cutting out a ton of assets that there is no need to copy over.

Am I wrong here? I’m sure we can reduce that “dozens of gigabytes” to a much, much smaller number (considering the entire game install is only about two dozen Gigabytes anyway, and I don’t think there’s any need to completely replicate every single map piece that already exists).

Fix it. Somehow, just fix it. This is absolutely inappropriate from a story-telling standpoint.

I can’t give dev advice, so I wont pretend to know the workings of the game. But somehow, please fix it.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

@MatthewMedina:

Why would you have to cache the entirety of maps just to have them for story instances? Just take cookie-cutter pieces out. There is no story instance that takes up an entire map. Each one is already segmented off by the red-zone. Just take the pieces that are within the red-zone, and hack out what will never be needed. This will reduce the size of the map space actually used to just a tiny fraction of what the entire map itself would be. You’re cutting out a ton of assets that there is no need to copy over.

Am I wrong here? I’m sure we can reduce that “dozens of gigabytes” to a much, much smaller number (considering the entire game install is only about two dozen Gigabytes anyway, and I don’t think there’s any need to completely replicate every single map piece that already exists).

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

Kain Francois.4328:

Fix it. Somehow, just fix it. This is absolutely inappropriate from a story-telling standpoint.

I can’t give dev advice, so I wont pretend to know the workings of the game. But somehow, please fix it.

Dude they already want to fix it and agree that it is not ideal, so you don’t have to go complaining to them. The issue is that have not figured out a feasible way to do so yet, so wait patiently and let them work on it.

Smokey.7652:

Kain Francois.4328:

Fix it. Somehow, just fix it. This is absolutely inappropriate from a story-telling standpoint.

I can’t give dev advice, so I wont pretend to know the workings of the game. But somehow, please fix it.

Dude they already want to fix it and agree that it is not ideal, so you don’t have to go complaining to them. The issue is that have not figured out a feasible way to do so yet, so wait patiently and let them work on it.

@Smokey: This is an MMO. We’re going to have zone pileup as the game lives on anyway. Season 1 and Season 2 both added all new zones, not just modified versions of old zones. As the game keeps going, we’re going to keep getting new content regardless, and there’s nothing that ANet will be able to do to stop the bloat size. It’s an MMO, it happens, and that’s fine.

Just… don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. You know the install will grow in size eventually, so don’t throw out solutions now just because you don’t want to get to that point just yet.

lakdav.3694:

Soooo… we shouldnt start new characters anytime soon that has the potential to be stuck forever on specific parts of the original Personal Story with the Living World continuously messing up the maps of old/historical events.

I think it’s more likely that they’re got a list of places and NPCs that MUST remain within certain specifics to progress the PS and LS. Lion’s Arch, for example, got badly torn up, but the areas where you needed to walk were not covered in rubble or blocked off in ways you couldn’t get around. The same can be said for the two forts damaged in this update, broken but not in a way that keeps you from using them in the older stories.

The devs will simply have to work around any NPC or location protected by this “plot armor”

Still better than the redesign of Freeport in EverQuest way back when. Not as good as the redesign of Tos, though.

Huh. Well, thanks for explaining the current situation. I just wanted to chime in and say that this is something I’m interested in—that is, it’s worth it to me for you guys to devote some resources to figuring out a long-term solution to this issue. If that means developing new tech for how maps/instances/etc., are stored, compressed, distributed, etc., that’s something that’s worth doing.

I gotta be honest: ESO’s phasing is pretty impressive. I realize GW2’s infrastructure has a little age on ESO’s, but I’d absolutely be willing to give up a few gigs of hard drive for consistency. I’m afraid to say what I’d be willing to give up for the Nightmare Tower. a lot. probably too much. …

Anyway, even apart from the past PS and S1/2 issues, having the maps and instances be a little more modular could go a long way toward enabling you guys to develop more dynamic content with lasting consequences without disrupting open world play. You could actually show the repairs to LA happening in segments without having to build a dozen different whole Lion’s Arches. You could also do all kinds of tricks with the brand (or other dragon-of-choice corruptions)—either expanding or receding depending on player participation and success in events, for example.

I’ve no technical expertise whatsoever, but this seems like a problem that could actually be a gateway to some cool new features down the line, and unless I’m way off base, that should make it worth solving.

In any event, thanks for letting us know what’s up.

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

I’m thinking long-term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance under the current system?
Let’s say that after season 2, Primordus decides to burn away the vines at Concordia?
Then not only do you have charred remains of vines in your personal story, but in the season 2 stuff as well!

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

The general, outside-instance world map already forces a huge disconnect on having a solid living world, because as soon as you enter Orr, you’re suddenly fighting Zhaitan again. We’re in season 2 now, Zhaitan has been dead for a while, and yet running into Orr suddenly flings you back into the past because everything is still about killing Zhaitan and fighting back the corruption which is supposed to have been cleansed.

It pretty much precludes anything from happening in Orr now, unless they retrofit the entire zones to have the corruption be gone and Zhaitan out of the picture, except then when you go do the personal story, suddenly it’s not corrupted and you’re fighting corruption that’s not there.

Filaha.1678:

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

I’m thinking long-term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance under the current system?
Let’s say that after season 2, Primordus decides to burn away the vines at Concordia?
Then not only do you have charred remains of vines in your personal story, but in the season 2 stuff as well!

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

The general, outside-instance world map already forces a huge disconnect on having a solid living world, because as soon as you enter Orr, you’re suddenly fighting Zhaitan again. We’re in season 2 now, Zhaitan has been dead for a while, and yet running into Orr suddenly flings you back into the past because everything is still about killing Zhaitan and fighting back the corruption which is supposed to have been cleansed.

It pretty much precludes anything from happening in Orr now, unless they retrofit the entire zones to have the corruption be gone and Zhaitan out of the picture, except then when you go do the personal story, suddenly it’s not corrupted and you’re fighting corruption that’s not there.

You’re never actually fighting Zhaitan. You’re fighting risen, and pushing toward arah. The personal story was pretty clear that cleansing Orr and killing Zhaitan doesn’t magically make all the risen explode, but rather that it creates the possibility that eventually, one day, the pact can actually destroy them all.

PopeUrban.2578:

Filaha.1678:

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

I’m thinking long-term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance under the current system?
Let’s say that after season 2, Primordus decides to burn away the vines at Concordia?
Then not only do you have charred remains of vines in your personal story, but in the season 2 stuff as well!

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

The general, outside-instance world map already forces a huge disconnect on having a solid living world, because as soon as you enter Orr, you’re suddenly fighting Zhaitan again. We’re in season 2 now, Zhaitan has been dead for a while, and yet running into Orr suddenly flings you back into the past because everything is still about killing Zhaitan and fighting back the corruption which is supposed to have been cleansed.

It pretty much precludes anything from happening in Orr now, unless they retrofit the entire zones to have the corruption be gone and Zhaitan out of the picture, except then when you go do the personal story, suddenly it’s not corrupted and you’re fighting corruption that’s not there.

You’re never actually fighting Zhaitan. You’re fighting risen, and pushing toward arah. The personal story was pretty clear that cleansing Orr and killing Zhaitan doesn’t magically make all the risen explode, but rather that it creates the possibility that eventually, one day, the pact can actually destroy them all.

Incorrect.

NPCs still refer to Zhaitan as an active force, as well as referring to the lands you’re trying to take as belonging to Zhaitan. For example, the attached screenshot was just taken. Notice the present tense. Zhaitan “sends”, not “used to send”. If Zhaitan is dead according to the general world map, then someone should inform the guys still here trying to fight him.

By running around on the Orr maps, you are, effectively, running around in an undetermined time before the end of the personal story, while only a couple zones away, Zhaitan is dead and Mordremoth is in your base, killing your dudes.

Filaha.1678:

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

This is going to become a big problem in time. Every time they use a part of the world as a story instance, the make it difficult or impossible to reuse that area for another story instance. This wasn’t a problem in Season 1, because nobody could go back and replay it. But with the new system, it’s already a problem, as one of the story instances had you fighting your way up to the INTACT Tower of Nightmares. I’m sure this is one of the problems they’re facing with bringing us Season 1 in a replayable format.

If they keep using different areas for the story, eventually the zones will look like little blotches of mis-matched chaos instead of an intact zone. Toxic krait here, killer vines there, destroyer fires down the road. They’re going to have to do something.

Filaha.1678:

PopeUrban.2578:

Filaha.1678:

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

I’m thinking long-term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance under the current system?
Let’s say that after season 2, Primordus decides to burn away the vines at Concordia?
Then not only do you have charred remains of vines in your personal story, but in the season 2 stuff as well!

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

The general, outside-instance world map already forces a huge disconnect on having a solid living world, because as soon as you enter Orr, you’re suddenly fighting Zhaitan again. We’re in season 2 now, Zhaitan has been dead for a while, and yet running into Orr suddenly flings you back into the past because everything is still about killing Zhaitan and fighting back the corruption which is supposed to have been cleansed.

It pretty much precludes anything from happening in Orr now, unless they retrofit the entire zones to have the corruption be gone and Zhaitan out of the picture, except then when you go do the personal story, suddenly it’s not corrupted and you’re fighting corruption that’s not there.

You’re never actually fighting Zhaitan. You’re fighting risen, and pushing toward arah. The personal story was pretty clear that cleansing Orr and killing Zhaitan doesn’t magically make all the risen explode, but rather that it creates the possibility that eventually, one day, the pact can actually destroy them all.

Incorrect.

NPCs still refer to Zhaitan as an active force, as well as referring to the lands you’re trying to take as belonging to Zhaitan. For example, the attached screenshot was just taken. Notice the present tense. Zhaitan “sends”, not “used to send”. If Zhaitan is dead according to the general world map, then someone should inform the guys still here trying to fight him.

By running around on the Orr maps, you are, effectively, running around in an undetermined time before the end of the personal story, while only a couple zones away, Zhaitan is dead and Mordremoth is in your base, killing your dudes.

That’s not the first, and probably won’t be the last asynchronous NPC side-dialogue. Game is riddled with them. However what I stated is the official explanation for old forum topics like “Why doesn’t Zhaitan fly over Orr” or “Why isn’t Zhaitan a world boss” as well as “Where the heck was the pact during season 1?”

The pact is still quite busy killing risen. In Orr. In The official timeline.

PopeUrban.2578:

Filaha.1678:

PopeUrban.2578:

Filaha.1678:

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

I’m thinking long-term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance under the current system?
Let’s say that after season 2, Primordus decides to burn away the vines at Concordia?
Then not only do you have charred remains of vines in your personal story, but in the season 2 stuff as well!

Under the current system, they’re limited in what they can do later. You can’t clean up Fort Salma or Concordia now, because then it’d affect how the season 2 instance looks. Would have an even larger disconnect if you’re running through the attack on Fort Salma while there’s evidence of Jormag’s minions running about.

The general, outside-instance world map already forces a huge disconnect on having a solid living world, because as soon as you enter Orr, you’re suddenly fighting Zhaitan again. We’re in season 2 now, Zhaitan has been dead for a while, and yet running into Orr suddenly flings you back into the past because everything is still about killing Zhaitan and fighting back the corruption which is supposed to have been cleansed.

It pretty much precludes anything from happening in Orr now, unless they retrofit the entire zones to have the corruption be gone and Zhaitan out of the picture, except then when you go do the personal story, suddenly it’s not corrupted and you’re fighting corruption that’s not there.

You’re never actually fighting Zhaitan. You’re fighting risen, and pushing toward arah. The personal story was pretty clear that cleansing Orr and killing Zhaitan doesn’t magically make all the risen explode, but rather that it creates the possibility that eventually, one day, the pact can actually destroy them all.

Incorrect.

NPCs still refer to Zhaitan as an active force, as well as referring to the lands you’re trying to take as belonging to Zhaitan. For example, the attached screenshot was just taken. Notice the present tense. Zhaitan “sends”, not “used to send”. If Zhaitan is dead according to the general world map, then someone should inform the guys still here trying to fight him.

By running around on the Orr maps, you are, effectively, running around in an undetermined time before the end of the personal story, while only a couple zones away, Zhaitan is dead and Mordremoth is in your base, killing your dudes.

That’s not the first, and probably won’t be the last asynchronous NPC side-dialogue. Game is riddled with them. However what I stated is the official explanation for old forum topics like “Why doesn’t Zhaitan fly over Orr” or “Why isn’t Zhaitan a world boss” as well as “Where the heck was the pact during season 1?”

The pact is still quite busy killing risen. In Orr. In The official timeline.

Right. In the official timeline. Where Mordremoth is crushing forts.

However, that doesn’t match up with the game. Which is largely due to the frank impossibility of maintaining continuity in an ever-changing world while operating under a system where past story happens in current lands.

They really need to have a look into keeping small copies of portions of old maps to use for past stories.

Really they are going to have to look into doing this if they want to put Season 1 back into the Story Journal as well.

If they want to create this evolving living world, they would need a team or several to go through each of the maps every Living Story Season lets say to update the maps, the NPC’s, and conversations. Pretty much I guess what World of Warcraft did with their Cataclysm expansion, but on a more consistent basis and that requires a lot of time.

I do agree though that the maps should not be reflected with current events just because there are always going to be new people who play the game and yes, some maps will be restored most likely to their original ways, but until that time, they will not be sure what happened.

Season 2 takes place 2 years after the personal story ends and anything related to Season 2 should not be located in there

MatthewMedina.5419:

Hey guys – I can tell you that we have certainly looked at this issue, even as far back as Lost Shores, and it did come down to technical and logistical problems we are, at this time, unable to solve. Jia Shen is correct that our instances do not use separate maps from the open world, so if those maps change because of a larger world story event, like Lion’s Arch being laid to waste for example, then the story instances that take place in those maps will reflect whatever the current state of the world is.

We do have some limited ability to do phased instancing of certain elements within those maps, but not the kind of sweeping large scale terrain changes that result from the major changes we want to make to the world.

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

It’s fine that things get destroyed, but in real life they tend to be rebuilt.
Lions Arch has been sitting there a long time in a destroyed state.
Concordia is a small wooden fortification. With all the Pact resources, it should be able to be fixed up fairly quickly.

It’s fine that things get destroyed – it’s a liking world after all.
However, living worlds also rebuild what was destroyed.

I’ve wondered for a long time, why they couldn’t have a special server that people were sent to when they tried to enter a story instance. That server’s maps could remain static, so that everything looked correct for the time period the instance was taking place in.

That could even be a short term solution, while they worked out something better.

Shiren.9532:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.

They should have considered it BEFORE implementing the ENTIRE Living Story. Its incredibly silly that the Personal Story, the Living Story, and the Open World all use the same resources when each of these might be in a different state at any time.

Djinn.9245:

Shiren.9532:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.

They should have considered it BEFORE implementing the ENTIRE Living Story.

So because they don’t have a solution yet, they would have postphoned the whole living story? Then how could they even be able to intergrate new content? I think it’s quite understandable that the player base would collapse if there was no new content for more then a year.

Cyan.6904:

Djinn.9245:

Shiren.9532:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.

They should have considered it BEFORE implementing the ENTIRE Living Story.

So because they don’t have a solution yet, they would have postphoned the whole living story? Then how could they even be able to intergrate new content? I think it’s quite understandable that the player base would collapse if there was no new content for more then a year.

You understand that the Living Story as a concept was started over a year ago, right? I’m saying that they should have had a solution to these issues before they started the entire Living Story concept.

Djinn.9245:

Cyan.6904:

Djinn.9245:

Shiren.9532:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.

But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.

They should have considered it BEFORE implementing the ENTIRE Living Story.

So because they don’t have a solution yet, they would have postphoned the whole living story? Then how could they even be able to intergrate new content? I think it’s quite understandable that the player base would collapse if there was no new content for more then a year.

You understand that the Living Story as a concept was started over a year ago, right? I’m saying that they should have had a solution to these issues before they started the entire Living Story concept.

I agree. You could tell how quickly they jumped the gun with how buggy The Lost Shores was the weekend it was out. Half the quest thingies leading up to Southsun didn’t work right. I believe that was also when they had a free trial going which really taxed the servers and the whole event was almost impossible to play; that was one of the few times where my client crashed as well.

I really wished they would have took their time to flesh out their systems more before starting the LS but here we are. I haven’t bothered playing the personal stories on my alts since completing it on my main character because of problem this thread is about, and luckily I finished it before they really started to blow up certain zones’ landscapes last year and ruining the immersion for me. I’m hoping they can get a solution on this around the time they (eventually) have LS season 1 ready to be played in the story journal, but I can tell that’s going to be a long, LONG time from now.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

Why can’t you just add in 31 new maps (1 per zone, 1 per city) which are the originals and shared between the personal story steps in full – so all personal story steps use the same “original Lion’s Arch map” if they take place there, etc. for each one.

Then add in a variation of each altered-and-returned-to-zone for each new season when they get altered. Thus with Season 1 we’d get 9 maps (2 Kessex Hills, 1 DR, 3 LA, 1 Lornar’s, and 2 Southsuns), and thus far we’d get 4 with Season 2 (2 Dry Top, one having a non-destroyed Prosperity for our Taimi to be safe in, 1 new Timberline, and 1 new Kessex). If there’s no variation done to the world map, no need for a new copy – the instances can just use the new one.

So at least, you merely double the amount of open world maps in the game, rather than having one per each individual step.

Then again, I don’t think there’s a personal story step in Frostgorge, is there? So you can then knock off one from that list. And my S1 list only takes into account if there’s instances made to replace (most of) the S1’s open world content when Season 1 gets retroactively turned into Story Journal content (make that soon please <3).

And this is only if you’re preparing for any future alteration to any map in existence! If you wanted, you can only create a duplicate map when that zone gets altered – thus, presently, you’d only need 12 maps – and that’s if you care enough to remove the karka warning posters from LA for any Personal Story step and if you think the Marionette’s Landing alteration would affect any PS steps in Lornar’s (so you can even have 10 maps only!).

And you can further reduce the size of said maps by taking into consideration the boundaries of each instance, and removing any part of the map that wouldn’t be seen by the collective of the instances in the map. E.g., no map ever goes to War King’s Camp in Harathi Hinterlands – it doesn’t exist in the PS maps now! That saves quite a bit of room, I’m sure. Especially if you go the latter route of only making a unique map once the zone gets an alteration in the open world.

Smokey.7652:

While what you are saying is true right now you have to consider long term. What happens when a season five instance affects a season three instance that affects a personal story instance. That is where the amount of data starts to pile up. While your idea might work as a stop gap I would rather have them put resources into a long-term fix rather then a stop gap.

If this game manages to last for 5 seasons – with each season being a year and a half long, presuming S1’s length will be standard, thus resulting in 7.5 years of life after release – then it should be expected for the game to be huge at that point in time.

Even if you use modern maps everywhere – which will just be a HUGE clusterkitten for continuity (which is worse than having a huge dat file!) – then you’re still going to have a huge gw.dat.

If you however keep a single map for all instances until that map changes where you create a new isolated map that copies the previous version, then you will only have as many maps as there are versions of the map that also have instances attached. And that’s only necessary if the instances would include the altered variation of the map.

For example, there’s no need for a new map of the Black Citadel if all it touches is the Gladium Canton since no PS step takes place there. There’s currently only a single PS step taking place in Iron Marches – so unless Iron Marches is altered that specific spot, then who cares if Iron Marches uses the modern map? No one can tell because you wouldn’t even be able to see the new map changes.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

]Why can’t you just add in 31 new maps (1 per zone, 1 per city) which are the originals and shared between the personal story steps in full – so all personal story steps use the same “original Lion’s Arch map” if they take place there, etc. for each one.

The GW2.DAT file size, I suppose, ballooning in size from what I was reading. Or maybe I don’t get it properly, but we’re looking at doubling the assets-

Then add in a variation of each altered-and-returned-to-zone for each new season when they get altered.

. . . or, in fact, more than doubling . . .

So at least, you merely double the amount of open world maps in the game, rather than having one per each individual step.

More than double, potentially, if there’s more than a single change to a zone like how many times Lion’s Arch had been changed – such as the Mad King destroying the lion statue. Or it replaced with the hologram projector after the election.

This seems like a very ham-fisted way of solving it, and one which is not necessarily friendly to the end-user. Solving the immersion problem at the cost of my hard drive space, and potentially increasing the amount of errors due to hardware troubles. (Bad sectors, for instance.) And, of course, increasing the time to load the assets unless your HDD is incredibly buff at seek time.

Of course, another option is to have all zone data be on a server instead of in the DAT file and loaded into a temporary spot each time . . . sure would solve the immersion problem at the cost of heavy loading times . . .

All this is, naturally, from the perspective of an end-user who barely knows tech matters but has been playing MMOs and other things for a time.

Thanks for the reply, Matthew. While I agree it’s quite annoying and immersion-breaking, I also understand your position. It should have been thought of and addressed back during the design phase, but what’s done is done. Hopefully at some point in the future you guys can come up with a solution though.

I dont know all that much about network and internet programming, but whatever technology (probably thats the one called “streaming”) Youtube and similar video sites use, might be the solution. To my knowledge we dont actually download the video files themselves on the Hard Drive, it goes straight to the memory instead.

If Anet would find further ways to reduce the amount of data needing to be transfered (cutting up the big base maps to the smaller instance areas), theoreticly it could be reasonably bearable to wait out.

Something will need to be done though. Its just a problem now, but it will be a huge problem in the long run. GW2 cannot evolve or progress in a satisfyingly meaningfull way until then.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

More than double, potentially, if there’s more than a single change to a zone like how many times Lion’s Arch had been changed – such as the Mad King destroying the lion statue. Or it replaced with the hologram projector after the election.

During all those iterations, how many LW (read: non-holiday) stories take place in them?

Variations of LA needed (tops)
1) Personal Story
2) The Lost Shores
3) Dragon Bash/Sky Pirates
4) Escape from Lion’s Arch/Battle for Lion’s Arch

There were story in LA during Bazaar of the Four Winds, The Origins of Madness, and The Four Winds – howevern one of them were invovled around the Grand Piazza or would even be able to see the Lion’s Court nor Lion’s Gate thus using The Lost Shores’ version would be viable for them.

Lion’s Arch would certainly be taking up the most, but it certainly wouldn’t be enough to multiply the entire size of maps by triple or more. Not until we get very far into the game’s lifespan – by which time not saving maps would be a larger harm.

But if they merely saved a portion of maps when a change in the world map alters a story instance (the portion being the size of what is witnessable while within the instance) then the size decreases greatly. More than now, yes, but less than the ‘obvious’ answer.

Hmm, but then I wonder if the “scenery” can render properly . . .