Guild Wars 2

After reading the first question of this interview, I have to settle this once and for all.

Cliffhangers do not work in a MMO, especially not if you try to tie new gameplay to the story.
It is clear why you’re using cliffhangers, they’ve been working great for films, books or series. They create tension and let the person reading or watching this cliffhanger urge for more, which ensures that the person will come back if this story is continued.

To understand what the problems with cliffhangers in MMOs are, we have to understand what the differences between a MMO and a regular story are.
If a regular story ends with a cliffhanger, the story, the whole universe the story takes place in, is on halt. Nothing will happen until the story get continued. This keeps the tension high and ensures that the person experiencing this cliffhanger will come back unless he/she gets bored of waiting.
An MMO however is never completely on halt. The story may be, but the MMO isn’t.
This creates the immersion-killing situation, that you’ve just experienced the story progressing and now it’s on halt for two weeks. The tension flattens out because it seems like nothing is happening, which is simply unrealistic. This gets further incentiviced by the necessity to deal with this – now on halt – story through achievements and stuff. You get permanently reminded that the story is on halt while the world itself should progress, which creates dissatisfacion.
So the the cliffhanger gets not only undermined by the fact that the world should still progress, it looks also much more like a flat slope due to the achievements and other activities, which are loosely tied to the story.

I can’t say how you could get around this effect, other than stopping the episodic nature and releasing the whole story at once, so that this effect can be avoided.
I’m not saying that this is a great suggestion but I can tell you that I loathe the current system and that I don’t feel invested in the story at all.

We are not watching a movie, we are playing a game. A game has to be consistent. An inconsistent, episodic storytelling does not fit into a game.

This may be best served over in Living Story or Lore.

Good luck.

Cliffhangers work. Never getting around to tying up cliffhangers, however, doesn’t. How many cliffhangers do we have now that haven’t been resolved? Way too many.

scarlet…
caithe…
everything since 2005 = resolved
right?

Cuddy.6247:

Cliffhangers work. Never getting around to tying up cliffhangers, however, doesn’t. How many cliffhangers do we have now that haven’t been resolved? Way too many.

I’m soo thrilled to see what’s in the cave we’ve found in the last episode… not.
You’re right too, there are many loose ends but this episodic storytelling kills it for me. Cliffhanger or not, being stuck with the same content for two weeks or more, just to move a step forward in the story to then wait again is killing any tension for me.
That’s why I like the Personal Story more: You can choose when you want to progress (If you’re lvl 80 atleast. Yay for the NPE changes!).

If I would replay the whole season 2, I would need one day maximal.
And the story would feel good and epic but it doesn’t because I needed more than half a year to get as far as I would get in one day if the story would’ve been released at once.

You can get round it in part by

a) having less cliffhangers. To say they don’t work in MMO’s at all is silly. They do create speculation and people are actively discussing them and the next chapter – exatcly what Anet wants to happen. Unfortunately, I am uncertain if they are aware that there is far too many. A couple a season is enough…more than enough, otherwise they lose their power. You comment about the MMO world never being completely on halt is more spot on for GW2 than anything else.

b) Giving out answers. I think one of the big lessons that now has to be learned (and quickly since it hasn’t from season 1 despite the promising start to S2) is that you can’t keep leaving more and more questions unanswered as time goes on. You need to feed back answers to the player. This isn’t a book or a film where you are inactively engaged in the story or are going at your pace. Players are confined to Anets release pace and are actively involved in the story. It’s a different medium entirely and can’t be templated against other forms of media.
We are even still waiting on answers from season 1!

Living Story will always divide the community. Always. But, GW2 needs to do its own natural thing rather than mish mash cliffhangers and flashbacks into a story just because thats what blockbuster TV series do.

The problem are not the cliffhangers but the episodic structure. The episodic structure doesn’t work, ergo cliffhangers don’t work either. But getting rid of the cliffhangers is atleast a start, a start I would appreciate.

Not to say that cliffhangers don’t work at all, but the cliffhangers used in books or films don’t work. You can’t stop the story with a cliffhanger and say “Now we have to wait two weeks” because it’s unrealistic. Using cliffhangers that don’t stop the whole story but only one part of it do work. For example, we could’ve discovered the cave but then get called back to base because a giant mordrem attack is rolling in, which we have to fight off the next two weeks. But this has to be planned meticulously because the players can’t be allowed to reach the cave again until the story continues, otherwise they would reach the cave but couldn’t interact with it and you would have the same mess you have now, namely the player having the feeling “I could progress now but the devs don’t let me”.

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice, round stopping point.”

And to suggest that it’s problematic, when the next episode will be released shortly, is kind of ridiculous. Surely you have more to do in your life than twiddle your thumbs until the next release.

Andred.1087:

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice stopping point.”

Does this change the fact that the cliffhangers, used intentionally or not, are unrealistic in a persistant world like GW2?

Agreed. They could at least avoid ending on a cliff hanger.

I’m very excited to see the rest of the story so they do work. What doesn’t work are these long gaps during a season.

Cliffhangers in MMOs can and do work, as long as the episodes told are feeling completed.

GW2 fails at this. Ending an episode in front of a closed door? Wait six weeks to open it? That is not a cliffhanger, that is just a sad decision.

You create an arc. A meta story so to say. You create episodes that follow the arc, but at the end of each episode you give the players a conclusion. While a player won’t get the answer to the arc itself, he/she will still feel they have accomplished something.

You know what ANet story writers? Watch “Breaking Bad”. Do it.

Seriously.

Do it.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Cuddy.6247:

Cliffhangers work. Never getting around to tying up cliffhangers, however, doesn’t. How many cliffhangers do we have now that haven’t been resolved? Way too many.

I’m soo thrilled to see what’s in the cave we’ve found in the last episode… not.
You’re right too, there are many loose ends but this episodic storytelling kills it for me. Cliffhanger or not, being stuck with the same content for two weeks or more, just to move a step forward in the story to then wait again is killing any tension for me.
That’s why I like the Personal Story more: You can choose when you want to progress (If you’re lvl 80 atleast. Yay for the NPE changes!).

If I would replay the whole season 2, I would need one day maximal.
And the story would feel good and epic but it doesn’t because I needed more than half a year to get as far as I would get in one day if the story would’ve been released at once.

THERE’S THE MASTER OF PEACE.

AND RYTLOCK.

AND CAITHE.

AND GLINT’S EGG.

AND MORDREMOTH.

…But have we forgotten about Aerin, the locket, the world leaders? Have we really forgotten all about Scarlet and Omadd’s machine? It still feels like it’s all speculation with no real investigation or answers. And I only imagine Rytlock isn’t forgotten because I think they mention vaguely how they’re down by one member in the recent episode. Still, it just seems like we’ve started a whole lot of kitten and don’t tie anything up.

This game’s plot is starting to feel like what Kingdom Hearts was becoming before 3DS (which KH3 better end on a strong point, because they REALLY threw a grenade in the plot with Chain of Memories and Birth by Sleep).

I know everyone was off their rocker on how much they hated Scarlet/Aerin/ferns as the center of their story…but is that really a reason to just drop it? I don’t think so. I say let them kitten and moan and let’s have some real closure in some of these story arcs.

Don’t forget: The locket, the waypoints, Omadd’s machine….probably more I’m forgetting.

How many loose ends are there going to be?

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Andred.1087:

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice stopping point.”

Does this change the fact that the cliffhangers, used intentionally or not, are unrealistic in a persistant world like GW2?

Here’s the reason you are having a problem, you need to look at this from another angle. The Living Story is separate from the Living World, take them as two completely individual items and you should have less of an issue with the episodic content for the story, which isn’t necessarily taking place in the world at the same time.

Thanks for starting this thread. I think it picks up nicely on the discussion that had been trucking along in the New Narrative Director thread. (That thread had gone very much off topic from the OP but was delving into some excellent story-crafting theory. Now it isn’t even archived, it’s 404’d). I’d been meaning to start something to springboard off that.

The larger frame of the discussion, beyond cliffhangers, is how to tell an ongoing story in the constraints of an MMO that uses LS as its delivery mechanism. There were comments on pacing and continuity, which the cliffhanger part addresses.

There was also a sub-discussion on “show don’t tell,” and that’s the thing I wanted to look at. The night of the forum reorganization I saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 for the first time, and a scene in that provides a beautiful example of the concept. Now, I’m not sure it would work in this game because perforce the writers have to use mostly dialogue, not body language. Still, think about:

Hiccup has gone flying off exploring and lands on a high pinnacle overlooking a new land. He gets out a map he's been working on and starts drawing. We know it's been 5 years since the first movie thanks to the opening narrative (and to understand this scene we need to have experienced Hiccup and Astrid's courtship in that one). Astrid arrives and it's almost instantly obvious the two are now very close and very comfortable with each other. She plops right down to take over working on Hiccup's map in progress, they tease and banter and hug and cheek-kiss like it's no big deal. In the few minutes of that scene we can see five years of becoming lovers, all just from how they interact, without one word discussing the past years. Also in the whole movie there's no foolish misunderstanding leading to tension and tiffs, they remain solid companions against the bad guy.

Zaklex.6308:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Andred.1087:

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice stopping point.”

Does this change the fact that the cliffhangers, used intentionally or not, are unrealistic in a persistant world like GW2?

Here’s the reason you are having a problem, you need to look at this from another angle. The Living Story is separate from the Living World, take them as two completely individual items and you should have less of an issue with the episodic content for the story, which isn’t necessarily taking place in the world at the same time.

I think it’s exactly the other way around. We have to keep in mind what the Living Story is: A story and no gameplay update. ArenaNet is pushing the Living Story while the players are demanding new maps, new weapons, new races, new classes, new skills, new skins and new challenges. The Living World is ArenaNet’s attempt to please those demands with the Living Story.
I never could understand why people are expecting huge gameplay updates from the Living Story because it’s just a story and not meant to deliver huge gameplay aspects.
I think this misconception comes from ANet’s statement that the “Living Story will be like an expansion.”. A statement which I haven’t heard them using anymore.

The Living World is tied around the Living Story, when the Living Story has flaws, the Living World wont change them. They’re not seperate. The Living World gets updated when the Living Story needs the world to be updated. Look at the giant vines spreading through the Silverwastes. Now it looks cool, now it feels epic. But I wonder what will happen when we’ve defeated Mordremoth. Will the map be stuck with those monsters like Orr is stuck with the undead?

I don’t necessarily have an issue with a cliffhanger if it’s actually warranted, like after going to Glint’s lair. But having every single chapter end with a cliffhanger and nothing ever feeling truly resolved or answered leaves way too many loose ends lying around, and I don’t know how they plan on tying them back together at this point.

This thread’s title and opening post are worthwhile to me. +50…if I could. Sigh.

Not to contradict the OP’s general point, but not every ending lacking in resolution is a cliffhanger. If you end an episode with the series protagonist literally hanging off a cliff, or stabbed and kicked off a cliff, or whatever, that’s a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger has some inherent drama that makes people anxious to see the resolution.

When you end an episode based on unraveling a mystery with “welp, I guess we’ll have to take a break for a while and figure out what to do next”, that’s not a cliffhanger, it’s just a comma.

I think asking the ArenaNet writers to be capable of working on Vince Gilligan’s level is asking a lot. There’s approximately one person capable of operating on Vince Gilligan’s level.

Writing a story where you don’t have control of the main character, or the camera, or the gestures of the characters, is significantly tougher than a linear story like a television program.

Might as well jump on the bandwagon, telling Anet what to watch…

Hey, Anet, know what you should watch? Madoka (http://www.crunchyroll.ca/puella-magi-madoka-magica)

The plot is freaking amazing!

Nah, I’m not making any comparisons with GW2. Living Story 2 writing has been great so far.

Just showing the crew an awesome anime!

PeterFries.1057:

To be fair, Mr. Gilligan had a lot of very talented help writing his show, including Moira Walley-Beckett, Sam Catlin, Peter Gould, Tom Schnauz, Gennifer Hutchison, and George Mastras (Schnauz, Hutchison, and Gould are writing for “Better Call Saul” now).

Speaking of cliffhangers…Could you shed some light on what happened to Evennia from GW1 War in Kryta?

Very well made post, +1

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Cliffhangers do not work in a MMO, especially not if you try to tie new gameplay to the story.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem are not the cliffhangers but the episodic structure.

I disagree strongly with both statements:

• I like cliffhangers.
• I like the episodic structure.

Combined, both give the sense of an evolving story that consumes the folks within (including our character) and that drives them forward, making choices both good an bad. I enjoy seeing the discussions that ensue. I enjoy trying to figure out how these events are related to past histories and might influence the future.

For me, the problems are that sometimes the cliffhangers drag out unnecessarily:

• Not finding out where Rytlock went? Fine, I don’t mind waiting.
• Not finding out why Caithe acted seemingly out of character: not fine, especially since the episode was hyped to deliver that answer. We learned a lot of background, but not really anything that seemed relevant to the previous episode. For me, it felt like a flashback for the purposes of having a flashback.

In other words, it wasn’t the cliffhanger or the episodic story telling, it was the trivialization of an important cliffhanger by (what seemed to me to be) a gratuitous digression. Here’s how I would have organized the release:

• Sub-chapter 1: Go directly to the sylvari discussing the secondborn and in the same episode, move the group to the rescue mission. Skip the bit about talking to the avatar to learn about memory seeds.
• Sub-chapter 2: Move to the Silverwastes and, for Kormir’s sake, slow down the story at the point that Faolin loses it and attacks the centaurs — in the current version, that came out of nowhere. Yes, we knew she was going to go postal, but there must have been an actual trigger and we ought to see it.
• Sub-chapter 3: find out whatever it is that made Caithe think that it was a good idea to steal Glint’s last known viable egg. Plenty of other things to hang over the cliff for the final chapter.

Here is what I think about cliffhangers in this game. EP5 did it extremely well, after the episode was over you thought “Okay, that was awesome, can’t wait to see what’s happening next episode”. In contrast to that after I finished EP6 and EP7 I was more like “what?! that’s it? that’s not enough.. geez I hope the next episode won’t be as short”. The biggest problem right now is the huge break after an episode that didn’t continue the story in any way.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem are not the cliffhangers but the episodic structure. The episodic structure doesn’t work, ergo cliffhangers don’t work either.

To claim that the problem is because of the episodic structure, you would first have to show that GW2 Living Story has an episodic structure.

At this point I would not call the GW2 Living Story Season 2 to be episodic. They are simply delivering a non-episodic story in piecemeal. In my mind episodic means self contained plots in each episode, with larger plots being addressed throughout the season. Season 2 just doesn’t properly introduce, develop, and conclude the multiple plot lines to really have episodes.

And the worst part is that, right now, Caithe’s plot line is simply cut right in the middle, at the worst point, seemingly right between the build up and the climax. A Cliffhanger is something that occurs during the climax and just before resolution. Caithe’s story is just awkwardly cut into two pieces without much regard to why it should be split there. There is no tension or immediate threat, just an, oh well, I guess we have to stop for a while.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Will the map be stuck with those monsters like Orr is stuck with the undead?

I see it so that each location represents the flow of the story at the different portions of time. Of course, it would be good for the “immersion” and “integrity” that everything stays changed when it’s changed, but it does not work that way primarily because it’s an MMO. For every player who witnessed change, there are ten who did not. It’s either that or they pull an Episode 1, leaving anyone and everyone who didn’t happen to have the game at this particular time in the cold.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

An MMO however is never completely on halt. The story may be, but the MMO isn’t.
This creates the immersion-killing situation, that you’ve just experienced the story progressing and now it’s on halt for two weeks. The tension flattens out because it seems like nothing is happening, which is simply unrealistic.

Actually you are wrong here. The way the LS is presented is more immersive, the immersion-killing design is doing the complete PS as a level 80 in a row. How is it unrealistic to have some DOWNTIME between adventures????

Let’s take the last LS part for example, in the end Marjory is going to the Priory to research the new symbols we found at the cave Wayne entered. Just like all the previous parts, the next part will probably begin with a mail, this time from Marjory saying “Hey, I had a breakthrough in my research, come and see me.”

So you are saying it’s not immersion-killing that you get this mail a couple of SECONDS after Marjory leaves to start her research? “Hey I’m going to research this”, couple of seconds later a mail arrives “Hey I made progress come see me”. Does this make sense to you?

The LS is made in a “real time” way and as such it makes sense. They split the parts of the story in ways that makes sense, usually because some character is going to do some research or a subject. That research can’t possibly and realistically happen in the couple of seconds required to press H, go to LS and select then next part.

The story is not on halt for no reason. It’s on halt because something needs to be discussed or researched and in other ways some downtime is required. In other video games this downtime is bypassed by a fade screen and some text indicating how much time passed, for example in Assassin’s Creed or Dragon Age whole in-game years might pass between events.

They could start the new Parts of the LS with a black screen stating “1 month later…” or something similar, but I believe their approach is to have the story evolve and happen in real time. Doesn’t it make sense for Marjory to take a couple of weeks to research the symbols at the Priory? I think the “real time” way of presenting is great, it adds an important downtime to the story and allows it to make some sense and be somewhat realistic.

An example of the complete opposite is doing the entire PS as a level 80 in one go. You are saying it’s immersive and/or realistic to have a random nobody Asura who just presented their first invention for the Snaff Prize, to form an Alliance like the Pact, invade Orr, cleanse Orr and kill an Elder Dragon in just a couple of hours?

I disagree with the OP’s principle premise, that mmos have a native vulnerability to episodic story pacing and/or cliffhangers. Imo, mmos are made of episodes; each zone is an episode and the omniscient narrator, us, is responsible for maintaining a consistent yet evolving timeline. As a story telling device, interactive games/mmos are an exceptionally plastic medium.

If GW2 storytelling is suffering, it is because the storytelling is taking a back seat to commercialization. It is reminding me more of LOST every chapter; with more and more plot lines, plot asides, and characters that don’t go anywhere because their purpose is to provide space for commercials. The potential story telling depth of existing plots and characters is trumped by the potential commercial breadth of new plots and characters. I think a great example of this is how often we hear characters recommend forgetting about Scarlett and not digging into what her intentions where.

If we are recommending stories to read or watch, I would like to recommend a story not to read or watch.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Cliffhangers do not work in a MMO, especially not if you try to tie new gameplay to the story.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

The problem are not the cliffhangers but the episodic structure.

I disagree strongly with both statements:

• I like cliffhangers.
• I like the episodic structure.

it was the trivialization of an important cliffhanger by (what seemed to me to be) a gratuitous digression

I totally agree. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, these cliffhangers aren’t so bad – it’s never resolving them that gets weary. There are so many loose ends at this point I feel a little bit overwhelmed and underwhelmed because I’ve lost track of what might be important information and what might just be filler (which exists in every story, whether people like it or not). I feel like having too many threads in the story doesn’t make it interesting, it makes it a tangled mess that people stop liking.

Kain Francois.4328:

-snip

totally agree, if we’re going to recommend better writing.. then there’s a ton of lightnovel’s/anime to glean over before referencing: breaking bad, game of thrones, walking dead, dawson’s creek. . .. etc and so forth insert popular arc of whatever medium..

i can’t suggest the writers simply get better at their jobs.. they are going to do things how they do things over at arena net.. personally i do find they’ve been chasing pet side-story material and glamorizing it into the main lore ultimately having this game play out like a glorified web-comic.. it compliments the living world as much as a tutu does on a hippopotamus..

cliff hangers and episodic structure.. well, the story is somewhat limited by what content can be produced, so who can really blame them.. season 2 started off as strong as season 1 ended, but then we had inconsistent bits of story and content and cliffhangers.. if we’re talking about “caithe stole da baby” i personally don’t even feel that is a ‘cliff hanger.’ it’s simply where the episode needed to be cut in relation to the next episode and how much non-story critical content they pumped out: that is, mazes and exploratory terrain, new items, etc..

so unless there’s an expansion or ncsoft decides to bus over a team of devs for the sake of pumping out 2 independent episodes at a time.. people are going to have to simply deal with the living story structure as is, asking for no cliff hangers is just putting more constraint on what they already have to deal with

Cliffhangers CAN work if done correctly. The problem in this game is that:

• cliffhangers never get resolved. An episode starts, stuff happens that never seem to progress the story and add the end some questions remain. The next episode ignores any and all questions and does it’s own thing.
• they are NOT cliffhangers. Someone just keeps turning off the power in the middle of the episode… That not a cliffhanger, just an ’Annoyance"
• ’Cliffhangers from season 1 seem either ignored or forgotten by the devs.
  For example:
  • why did scarlet do what she did? Waking up the dragon might have been a side-effect of her true intentions.
  • Who was in really her head? It would be silly at best if mordremoth corrupted her, so she could wake him up.
• There are more breaks then anything else (3 ‘story’ from season 1 and 7 from season 2… woohooo a full year to provide a lot less then any other game does)
• Everything is rushed and badly explained: why is the egg important to our character? Or at the end of the PS story we didn’t even know Mordremoth existed while at the start of season2 his existence was common knowledge, “Because of the PC’s assumed rank in an organization that deals in fighting dragons, and that such knowledge isn’t really a secret” (from https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Naming-Mordremoth/4236417 ). You would think that a game around elder dragons discovering the existence of a new elder dragon would have more build-up to this instead of just dropping his name everywhere… (sorry, but the writers should have easily seen and take care of this problem)
• the player is of no real use in the story. Let’s face, if we take the story and we remove ourself from it the story remains pretty intact. The personal story did better in that aspect… I mean we still knew how to talk and knew how to make choices. Compared to the Living World we get ‘others make choices and we tag along to write it down…’ This is a problem because of the episodic structure and it’s planning . Besides do all races really need different voice actors? Wouldn’t strike me odd if they used 1 male voice actor for human and sylvary then use a program to make the voice a bit heavier for norn/char, etc…
• the fact that the entire world is frozen in time (2 years ago) doesn’t help either. So… how is war between humans and centaurs going? They have attacking near the human capital for 2 years now? Or how is the peacy treaty between human and char evolving? Or how are the other dragons doing? Are they still limiting the most danger to the parts they already control? etc… So no problems anywhere, just mordremoth and an egg we need for breakfast? How convenient…

maddoctor.2738:

Actually you are wrong here. The way the LS is presented is more immersive, the immersion-killing design is doing the complete PS as a level 80 in a row. How is it unrealistic to have some DOWNTIME between adventures????

Let’s take the last LS part for example, in the end Marjory is going to the Priory to research the new symbols we found at the cave Wayne entered. Just like all the previous parts, the next part will probably begin with a mail, this time from Marjory saying “Hey, I had a breakthrough in my research, come and see me.”

So you are saying it’s not immersion-killing that you get this mail a couple of SECONDS after Marjory leaves to start her research? “Hey I’m going to research this”, couple of seconds later a mail arrives “Hey I made progress come see me”. Does this make sense to you?

The LS is made in a “real time” way and as such it makes sense. They split the parts of the story in ways that makes sense, usually because some character is going to do some research or a subject. That research can’t possibly and realistically happen in the couple of seconds required to press H, go to LS and select then next part.
… <snip>…

That depends on how it is written. The current Living world story is horrible written in the aspect of “time”. the problem with “real time” in a game is that you don’t know when the player will play those episodes. New(er) players may do them all in a row on a rainy afternoon. Since it is in real time new(er) players literately go from “I’m going to do research” to “all done” in … seconds. Other players might have taken a 3 month break from the game after episode 2. This problem didn’t really exist to the extent it is now. It’s normal that there is a time between 2 updates… but real time doesn’t really here. The other problem with real time is that the current story is basically
"Mordremoth is the biggest problem ever. Even bigger then all the other dragons

PeterFries.1057:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You know what ANet story writers? Watch “Breaking Bad”. Do it.

Seriously.

Do it.

This is great advice for anyone, and while you’re at it, listen to the official Breaking Bad podcast from AMC (which began with season 02 because they just didn’t have enough time to do it in season 01):

http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/insider-podcast-season-2
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-bad-insider-podcast/id311058181?mt=2

BTW, even the amazing, amazing writers on the Breaking Bad series staff didn’t know the resolution to every plot thread they introduced on the show. One example is the dangling thread of the second batch of ricin Walt cooked up for Gus in season 04. They weren't sure what they would have Walt ultimately use that "Chekhov's gun" for until the series finale.

Yeah, as I understand it, TV show writers often have to write in the short-term out of necessity, because they aren’t always sure when they’re going to get canceled, whether a pilot will get picked up, whether the right actors are found for ancillary characters, and so on.

cheshirefox.7026:

~Snip~
.. if we’re talking about “caithe stole da baby” i personally don’t even feel that is a ‘cliff hanger.’ it’s simply where the episode needed to be cut in relation to the next episode and how much non-story critical content they pumped out: that is, mazes and exploratory terrain, new items, etc..
~Snip~

This is the answer, what most of you have been claiming as cliff-hangers, are no such thing. Even the ending of Seeds of Truth is far from being a cliff-hanger, it’s just the point in the story where the next episode is going to start. Not all endings like that are considered cliff-hangers, tough most people associate them as such.

sorry my post got cut off a bit early

The other problem with real time is that the current story is basically
"Mordremoth is the biggest problem ever. Even bigger then all the other dragons combined. Let’s wait here for 2 weeks while nothing will happen… at all…

Cliffhangers can work, but only when done correctly.
Like let the centaurs succeed in attacking the human capital, while we are distracted and go help out in the capital caith could take the egg and run off with it. Meaning that in we would need to find a way to trace caith… find out how in the next episode. (compared to “a no a door… let’s do 2 weeks of research to figure out how to open it. Just to have the next episode ignore the previous one altogether.”

This is my problem with the current Cliffhanger syndrome, they show me something in the trailer and I’m anticipating finding out what it is but then, at the end of the story, the very thing they show in the trailer is the last thing you see and you don’t get any of your questions answered.

My advice, don’t put anything you’re not going to expand on immediately, in the trailer. I can live with not chasing down the pale tree after Caithe left but when you show me something so monumental in the trailer, I have to get more than just snippet about it.

Season 2 Episode 8: Come witness the amazing events that will change Tyria forever!

*After 30 minutes of content…

Just kidding! Come back in a few months and find out what really happens! In the mean time, enjoy this amazing final cliffhanger for the season!

— This is my greatest fear for the finale of LS Season 2. With all these cliffhangers, I feel like a blind rat in a maze filled with dead ends and no way out.

I agree with the op, their use of cliffhangers have made the pacing and overall feel of the story very slow, it feels like nothing has happened or when something finally does, you have to look back at the episode 2 or 3 before it to even remember what was going on because it takes so long.

Speaking of writing plots for episodic drama, such as TV-series or games like this, I think Babylon 5 sets the baseline for writing. The series was written to be specifically 5 seasons long, with the plot set before the pilot was ever filmed. This in an era where you will never get funding for a TV-series for more than one season ahead.

This allowed the writers to put in a lot of stuff you saw clearly, but didn’t realize until it came apparent later in the story and wen’t “holy kitten it was there the whole time!”

I hope Anet has written the plotline for GW2 until the very end of the game’s future, then went back and added small stuff along the way that we won’t or just can’t figure out before we come to the spot where they are revealed, but immediately can connect to previous stuff and get that “holy kitten” feeling.

But I’m afraid they’ve just got very vague lines of what they plan to do and the plot is being written as we go…

IMO, it’s deeper than the cliffhangers. The Living Story is patterning itself off of linear media, like television and single-player RPGs. Problem is, this is an MMO, which really asks for a non-linear story development.

ArenaNet was on to something when they originally designed the game with web-structured, holistic stories across regions of Tyria by means of dynamic events. This is the kind of non-linear storytelling makes so much sense in a game where thousands of people are playing in persistent world. It allows a player to immerse herself into an ongoing story and explore in a non-linear fashion, putting the pieces together across a zone or zones until the big picture emerges.

Yes, the DE system has its issues. Many of them break down immersion because they cycle too often and don’t have quite enough links and branches to feel like complex interactions among the different factions in a zone. That isn’t, however, an inherent flaw in the DE concept. It’s just a sign of it’s immaturity. Early on ArenaNet talked about having the structure to keep adding more DEs to zones and change them as things developed. It would have been amazing to see that happen, watching the stories in the various regions of the world gain complexity and depth over time, rather than episodic, limited time additions that further a linear story.

Unfortunately, it feels like ArenaNet decided too quickly that holistic storytelling was a mistake, and fell back on the tried and true.

I think of it like the early days of most media. When a new technology enables a new form of expression, the natural habit is to mimic a similar medium that went before. You see it in very early film, which tried to imitate theatrical storytelling, until filmmakers understood more about how film could uniquely tell story.

The Living World/Story tries to function like a medium with a single, primary protagonist even though this game has thousands of players adventuring, often together, as well as trying to follow a linear cause-effect even though we have a wide open, persistent world.

Yes, most MMOs that aren’t completely sandbox go that way. At the beginning, however, GW2 looked like it was going to find a way to tell stories that really fit a themepark MMORPG, rather than shoe-horning in a single-player kind of story. I expect as MMORPGs continue to evolve eventually someone will find a way to tell a story that is uniquely suited to the media.

P.S. For those who are relatively new to the game, it might surprise you to know that even hearts, which are essentially old-style quests like every other MMORPG has, weren’t part of the game. Pre-beta playtesting revealed that some people used to traditional MMORPGs became lost and confused upon entering the game because there were no NPCs around to tell them what to do. They didn’t have a grid for exploring and just finding Dynamic Events to bump into.

Hearts were added to pull them out into the zones and give them a structure.

Early on, DEs were the open world, but even before launch it ArenaNet started the process of backing away from that vision. I like to imagine what the game might have been like if they could have found a way to follow through with pure DEs and get people to engage with them.

Gibson.4036:

I like to imagine what the game might have been like if they could have found a way to follow through with pure DEs and get people to engage with them.

After the first wave passed through Queensdale, the rest of the players would have been stuck by bugged events

Ahem, more seriously. I like hearts. I feel like ArenaNet needed the game to be released before they could perfect DEs. For example, Dry Top and SE are everything Orr should have been. They couldn’t have possibly, during prerelease, predicted every direction the community would take.

As players we faced an equal problem. Most of us instantly search for a goal. Early on we’d unlock all of our weapon skills and immediately feel a bit depressed that was all we were getting. So to combat that depression and buyer’s remorse, we’d march toward the next goal, 100% map completion.

Me personally, I went hardcore and burned out. Took a few months break, came back and I’ve been here ever since. I had to slow down and smell the roses in order to appreciate the game. However, I would have never have gotten there if it weren’t for hearts.

A little direction to get me invested in the game so I’d have something to return to when I’m ready to slow down.

If I had to pick a side on whether or not cliffhangers work, I would pick that they do. The problem I have with them, is when you have multiple cliff hangers WITHOUT answers. There are many questions lingering from Season 1, more questions from Season 2, and while I think Season 2 will officially end with the next episode (no official word on it) there will still be more questions than answers.

I don’t mind having cliff hangers because if you think about it like TV series, the cliff hangers are what keeps your coming back. Even in TV series in which episodes are more individualized there is still a common thread. Think about it this way, you could pick up on any episode of Family Guy and not need to see the other episodes to know what is going on, sure you might miss some common/inside jokes. But if you catch an episode of Breaking Bad/GoT you won’t know the history up to that point. So the cliffhanger is there to connect the story between the episodes.

maddoctor.2738:

Let’s take the last LS part for example, in the end Marjory is going to the Priory to research the new symbols we found at the cave Wayne entered. Just like all the previous parts, the next part will probably begin with a mail, this time from Marjory saying “Hey, I had a breakthrough in my research, come and see me.”

So you are saying it’s not immersion-killing that you get this mail a couple of SECONDS after Marjory leaves to start her research? “Hey I’m going to research this”, couple of seconds later a mail arrives “Hey I made progress come see me”. Does this make sense to you?

You’re getting the cause and effect mixed up here. The cliffhanger does not exist because Marjory needs to do research. Marjory needs to do research because they decided to put a cliffhanger there and ‘need to do research’ is one of their favoured methods of making an in-game justification of why the story is put on pause.

The problem with E7 is that the episode basically had nothing that felt satisfying. The historical information is interesting, but doesn’t resolve anything related to the present. While I’m not sure I agree with the OP’s premise that cliffhangers simply don’t work, I think E7 was poorly done in that it basically left us hanging in the same spot as E6, after having claimed that it WOULD resolve the E6 cliffhanger. Thus, people are feeling dissatisfied as a result.

DarkWasp.7291:

I feel like ArenaNet needed the game to be released before they could perfect DEs. For example, Dry Top and SE are everything Orr should have been. They couldn’t have possibly, during prerelease, predicted every direction the community would take.

I agree with you there. DEs at release were a start that needed to be grown and matured. As you said, ArenaNet has made progress with them. Unfortunately, though, they still can’t entirely commit to that form of holistic storytelling. No hearts in these later zones, just as the entire game was originally conceived, but instead we have this misfitting linear story to try and pull us through the zones.

That linear story takes focus over the zones themselves. It’s interesting to imagine what they might have achieved with the DEs if they had focused on them as the main storytelling content.

Just to point out again, not all of the episodes have ended in a cliffhanger, which is: “A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction. A cliffhanger is hoped to ensure the audience will return to see how the characters resolve the dilemma.” Let’s use Ep. 7 as the example, did our character get left in precarious or difficult dilemma? No, we weren’t, it was neither precarious or difficult…just a stone door locked behind some magic. Did our characters have something shocking revealed to them…here again the answer is No. What we were left with was far from a cliffhanger, but instead just a point of the story where the actual ‘cliffhanger’ like story will be or should be revealed in the next episode.

If there is one single TV Series with alot of good cliffhangers that really brign up tension and made me years ago when that series ran in TV want to always see the next episode as quickly as possible and that I’d suggest here now the Devs to see as well to get maybe inspiration from it is the TV series of

LOST

Man, seriously, the whole series began so super simple and was then in the end one of them ost depthful, inspiring, make you think about life and what is really important in liefe-series, that I have ever seen and that “destiny” played in that whole series alot of an important role from begin to its end.

If there should be seriously a writer under Anet, which hasn’t seen LOST so far, i can absolutely tell you, that you MISSED SOMETHING and that its absolutely worth it to watch that series completely all of its 6 seasons.
Make movie evenenings at home, get yourself the whole series on DVD or so and watch them all through in a row.

When your finished, all you will say at the end is just one word….

WOW

God, what would I love to see some of its depth in our Characters of GW2 too
Anet likes to compare the game always with a TV Series, so if the story of GW2 will ever reach that quality of LOST, kitten , then color me really impressed ^^