Guild Wars 2

It just takes design time away from actual significant things in the game. Is this game really so huge on all the role playing bs?

Take that election thing which people loved. Who cares. It doesnt actually change anything. The living story doesn’t ever feel alive and that is a fact.

Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped wasting time on this and put more resources into pvp, wvw and dungeons and things. Still no new fractals? Still no pvp at all? Still the same old WvW where all they do is add a new skill on a siege weapon each month.

Everything else gets the screw in favour of the living story and yet the living story is BS.

Who agrees?

Screw Living Story.

ANet should dump it and focus on something more substantial. A few more Dynamic Events somewhere in the world would be better than the entirety of Scarlet’s Invasion.

They won’t though. One thing gets the PR department salivating, the other, not so much.

I like the idea, the execution has flaws, but I believe they are getting better at it.

Living Story stuff is good when I need a distraction from whatever normal stuff I’m doing, if I do it I generally end up cramming it all into 1 day or just ignoring it completely if the achievements aren’t as good as I would like in exchange for the effort… But I’m beyond worrying about missing out on anything cause you really won’t miss out on much.

I would rather see all the resources put into permanent content.

Dulfy the content, finish it in 2 hours, get your rewards, call it a day.

That’s fun, right? Every two weeks you get some new reward that you can show off with the rest of the GW2 players who have the same exact thing.

No. I’d rather some things that are there to stay and require using brainpower instead of reading some prewritten guide.

I like it. Around this time I’m just mindlessly doing dailies in some other MMO, not playing, or repeating the same content over and over trying to get gear to drop since I’ve done all the questing and what not.

I would rather have a full expansion with a proper story than this filler content we ve been fed with for the past year.

Sure a few updates were interesting and looked like they could have actually progressed the story but then came Scarlet and turned GW2 into a joke.

Skan.5301:

Dulfy the content, finish it in 2 hours, get your rewards, call it a day.

That’s fun, right? Every two weeks you get some new reward that you can show off with the rest of the GW2 players who have the same exact thing.

No. I’d rather some things that are there to stay and require using brainpower instead of reading some prewritten guide.

Isn’t it your own fault that you uses the guide though?
As far as I know there is not a single thing in the game that directs you to said guide, which would mean that you would need to either know about it, or search for it yourself before using it.
If you feel like the game requires no thinking due to these guides, have you ever though about simply not using the guides and doing stuff yourself instead?

I for one like the living story.
I prefer to actually have new stuff to do every two week instead of having to wait a year or so for one months new content.

I don’t like it at all.

I don’t like the Living Story for what it is…a system designed with two purposes:
1) it’s designed to keep players logging in as often as possible as long as possible. This is something the developers said they wouldn’t do. This is very evident in the lucrative-but-temporarily-available achievements, many of which are time-gated.
2) it’s designed to be a convenient delivery system for a constant stream of temporarily available cash shop items. When was the last time you read Living Story patch notes that didn’t include a “New Items Available in the Gem Shop!”?

I also dislike the Living Story for what it’s not…it’s not a good way to tell a story. So little of the Living Story is actually substantive; it’s mostly menial tasks designed to act as filler. Filler is not story. And what little story there is seems disjointed, at best. There’s no spoken dialogue for our characters, there’s no motivation or development for the antagonist, there’s very little in-game plot exposition…everything feels rushed, unpolished, and just thrown together on the fly.

So no, I do not like the Living Story.

Wolfheart.1938:

I like the idea, the execution has flaws, but I believe they are getting better at it.

Their speed of getting better at it is as fast as a speeding snail, from what I see.

They took a huge step back right after Flame and Frost, and only started picking themselves up again with Queen’s Jubilee, but have a long way to go before they get back to how much better Flame and Frost was compared to everything else we’ve been getting since.

Lets see none of this crap makes a kittening difference in any way/shape/form… so story wise its useless garbage.
Its temporary gem store updates.
Its temporary in every kittening imaginable way.
You finish it in 1 day….
Yet the game doesn’t even get good patches… Pvp is a rotting carcass. Wvw is same as the rest of the game zerg fest.
Now they change world bosses into something that requires some semblance of effort yet its not instanced… 20 ppl sitting afk scale the boss and everyone and their crippled grandmother lags.
Anet wouldn’t learn a lessen even if it hit em in the head repetedly over the course of a year. I mean so many people repetedly mentioned that world bosses suck because they generate LAG. On this crippled derelict engine… so what does anet do? Make even more laggy by filling it with a kittenload of stuff and require dodging… and jumping. They put kitten of aoe which you can’t see because your in kittening water and reflections don’t let you see neither the poison nor the aoe circle.

But hey… as long as cash shop feeds em they are happy. They even said so. So it won’t change. Don’t bother asking. Fan boys will cheer… forum fanboys will flame because someone dares to disagree. And the story that an rpg is suppose to tell will remain completely and utterly forgotten rotting in the depths of wiki, which is the only source of it to begin with.

HiSaZuL.2843:

…You finish it in 1 day…

Not anymore you don’t. They’re now time gating the meta achievements. They’re making the meta achievements require more Living Story achievements than are available, with the remainder being made up at the rate of one Living Story-related Daily Achievement per day.

I like it as a whole. I really liked the Bazaar, it was my favourite update, but I really hated Canach’s Lair for example. I hate Kiel and Noll, but I love Canach and Marjory, so I’m ok with the characters too. I liked the Bazaar so much that it makes up for everything that I hated about the other chapters of the Living Story.

For me, the good stuff makes up for the bad stuff, and that’s why I almost never complain :T

Lordrosicky.5813:

It just takes design time away from actual significant things in the game. Is this game really so huge on all the role playing bs?

Take that election thing which people loved. Who cares. It doesnt actually change anything. The living story doesn’t ever feel alive and that is a fact.

Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped wasting time on this and put more resources into pvp, wvw and dungeons and things. Still no new fractals? Still no pvp at all? Still the same old WvW where all they do is add a new skill on a siege weapon each month.

Everything else gets the screw in favour of the living story and yet the living story is BS.

Who agrees?

This is hilarious – you admit people “loved” something, then say it was meaningless. If you cannot see the extreme contradiction there, you need to go back rethink your entire argument.

You are also in error.

The Living Story teams are separate from the Feature teams – the big stuff isn’t done by them, so it is not really taking significant resources away from anything.

You pretty much betray your loyalties when you say you want more dungeons, fractals and PvP – i.e. stuff most players don’t do much. You want more niche stuff, and less stuff for “the masses”.

Er, no.

Anyway, they just put in new WvW stuff, they’ve got PvP stuff coming, there is a new dungeon path in a few days, and new Fractals in not long, so I don’t think your complaints remotely hold up.

EDIT – That said, I completely agree the Flame and Frost was much better than, oh, all the other stuff since. Can we make the Flame and Frost team the “primary” Living Story team or something? The other guys could really learn from them.

Yes, I like the living story. It’s enjoyable to see what’s coming next and to experience the small spurts of new content. It’s always nice to get permanent content out of it. We almost always get a new feature or two every few weeks.

With that said, the LS content is still in it’s infancy stages. The developers likely have a development cycle that incorporates “lessons learned” from previous content updates based upon data collected, internal and player feedback.

Not all updates will appeal to an individual and not all updates will be outstanding. But I guarantee when the next major update comes around that will “set the bar”, players will be referring and comparing future updates to the one that “sets the bar.”

Atmo.1325:

But I guarantee when the next major update comes around that will “set the bar”, players will be referring and comparing future updates to the one that “sets the bar.”

In most regards, the initial game (as it was at release) already set the bar and almost every Living Story update since then has been nothing but a massive disappointment.

darkace.8925:

Atmo.1325:

But I guarantee when the next major update comes around that will “set the bar”, players will be referring and comparing future updates to the one that “sets the bar.”

In most regards, the initial game (as it was at release) already set the bar and almost every Living Story update since then has been nothing but a massive disappointment.

Well that is entirely your opinion. The game, as released, was excellent. But at that time, there were plenty of unhappy people too (via forums.) There were several LS updates that I’ve personally enjoyed, but that is my opinion. To each his/her own.

After these last few LS chapters my answer is no, rushed content with poor execution. My answer would have been yes awhile back, but I rather play the game then beta test it at this point.

Tequatl LS is a complete joke, for endgame anet should have taken more time & thought into this content. They could have used this opportunity to bring players back.

I’d love the idea of the Living Story. If this would be actually interesting. But we get content designed for 8 years olds. The only thing i loved to far is the opening ceremony of the Queen’s Jubelee patch and the MF dungeon endboss counter. The first had a good atmosphere, the second had a very good fight. But that’s all.

The Bazaar was probably my favourite; it was different and gave us a new area to explore. Overall, though, I just feel that time and effort and resources spent on LW could be better spent on other quality-of-life content, as well as more substantial gameplay content.

EDIT: There’s a good reason why people keep calling the ‘Living World’ the ‘Living Story’ instead. It has nothing to do with the world being alive in any meaningful way. It’s more about progressing a chronological story – and via pretty poor storytelling so far, to boot.

I like it, it’s one of the things that makes this mmo different from others. I look forward to living world patches and am annoyed when I don’t have time to fully enjoy them.

Not all of them are great, but I prefer them to the flat drag of other mmos. I do wonder what “more important content” means to the op though.

The Living Story hasn’t really impressed me all that much mostly due to most of the interesting bits being tucked away in the short stories they post on the site. I enjoyed the Molten Alliance and the Bazaar, but the others really haven’t sold me on this idea. I dislike that if I try to get my friends interested in the game I get to tell them about all this content that they’ll never get to play and the two week cycle is becoming a ever increase source of stress to keep pace with.

My biggest disappointment from this new focus has to be the near complete lack of expansion on the dynamic event system leaving the open world just feel stagnant to me.

No, living story is a waste of my time and theirs. If they stopped doing living story content though, they would be admitting they do not know what they are doing. So they will still continue and fail to give us content that actually has merit.

i like it, its the only thing that keeps me coming back every two or so weeks, i think this year, the living story is in test mode, after which they shold pick up with some better content, as for people asking for cantha/crystal desert, it will take a LOOOOOONG time, theyd have to create an entirely new continent along with dynamic event chains, npcs, storyline, voice acting, new items/ armor sets, new building types (not just copy,paste,rotate) and new monster types …. you try and make something like that at the level of the rest of tyria

I haven’t really played the game for… a month now?

I Don’t Want To Kill The Same Bosses Over And Over Again – I don’t care if they revamp the boss encounter. It’s still killing the Sunless for the 100th kittening time.

I Want New Explorable Areas And Permanent Content – again, I don’t care if the characters in one zone have a little drama. I don’t care about them adding one measly explorable area. I want a LOT more to play in. Think EXPANSION.

Geez – if this is all the land in the world that characters have to live in then we’ve got a kitten load of inbreeding going on. Granted, Rurik was proof of that in GW1 but still…

the election in the game was really boring the only good part was the debate on the forums and the propaganda stuff players brought up. so op dont think it made that any success it was the players spirit who made it sort of good out of game not in.

id love to see them start to move to new areas now and have ls go that way. i love exploring and now ive gotten that part done it seems like the game doesnt have much to ofer me except dailies and monthlies and a few pieces of gear to get but i dont care about gear so ill get that if i get it in time

I kinda like though I think the focus and quality have suffered throughout the summer. However its obvious Anet doesnt have the manpower/time/money to provide a good living story (this summer was mediocre with some highlights), let alone do that AND put out substantial permanent content. Thus I feel this is a situation where we can only have one or the other, not both.

And if I have to pick either LS or permanent content, then permanent content wins hands down.

I like the Living Story. I do what I can and enjoy what there is.

I hate almost all of it. I did like the Bazaar, but not the Sky Crystals.

The Living Story has been nothing but a joke since it was first announced. And the release of all the LS content so far has done nothing but confirm that it is a joke. A huge waste of time and effort that could have been spent on something WAY better. Oh yeah, and it’s nothing more than a cash grab for the gem store every two weeks.

And the idiots who valiantly defend it and say it’s the best thing ever and want more of it…..are nothing but a bunch of blind, fanatical, fanboys who ruin perfectly good games, time and time again.

I stopped caring about the LS “lore” when we got the goth/emo/depressed norn manchild and the cracked out, crazy anime talking charr cat. Anet can’t tell a story to save their lives anymore…..which makes me wonder….what happened to the developer who made GW1? Because the current Anet would have never been capable of making a game on the same level as GW1…..not anymore at least.

Fortnightly content? Great, if it’s any good. In the past, I played a certain MMO which offered good weekly content. Then it offered weekly content. Then it offered regular content updates. Then each update just destroyed the game a little bit more. Sadly… I feel like we’re already on the last step already, the plot is going sideways and doing a loop-de-loop and Anet’s going back on everything they haven’t already gone back on. Meanwhile, the almighty salad marshal is using his new found forces to help that kid in Queensdale chase that bloody chicken.

Also, I forgot to mention that daily chores and fortnightly grind lists are not fun. I want to explore that lovely world which I fell in love with. Oh, and the completionist inside of me hanged himself a while back.

Considering how much activity in GW2 has increased lately, I’d say that is good evidence to support the hypothesis that a lot of people like the living story.

I loved the molten facility but I do not like the inventing of new threats. I think the LS should be a tool to add new permanent things that have meaning towards the world. I’m meaning like expeditions into the crystal desert, or going to the northern shiverpeaks. They can still have little dungeons along the way, but they could make them permanent and reward skins and such at low drop rates that are unique to that dungeon.

Short answer, no there isn’t anyone who likes Living story as it is now, though the concept of a living world is nice in itself, had it been developed in a good way.

Sirendor.1394:

Short answer, no there isn’t anyone who likes Living story as it is now, though the concept of a living world is nice in itself, had it been developed in a good way.

What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? Do you use a random word generator to write with? Climbing usage indicates that people do in fact, like the living story.

DarcShriek.5829:

Considering how much activity in GW2 has increased lately, I’d say that is good evidence to support the hypothesis that a lot of people like the living story.

Actually, I’d wager that the increased activity have more to do with the Tequatl revamp and SAB. I don’t hear much about people getting all fired up to do the next chapter of the LS.

And, yes, I understand that both of those features are “part of the Living Story.” But they would be well attended whether they were or not, so that’s a moot point.

DarcShriek.5829:

Sirendor.1394:

Short answer, no there isn’t anyone who likes Living story as it is now, though the concept of a living world is nice in itself, had it been developed in a good way.

What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? Do you use a random word generator to write with? Climbing usage indicates that people do in fact, like the living story.

I’ll ask you the same question. What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? (because you are)

I’ve seen or heard very few people who actually wholeheartedly enjoyed the LS content for what it was meant to be. The most enjoyment I’ve seen people post about is the fact that they were able to farm some decent gold during the “lolzergfest” LS events. And that’s not even really enjoyment….that’s just performing a mindless task to increase one’s wealth and nothing more.

The fact is (whether Anet fanbois want to admit it or not) that the whole LS idea so far has fallen pretty flat on its face. It’s so disjointed, buggy, and downright boring at times that to call it anything remotely close to fun or a success is lying through one’s teeth. I dunno…maybe there are some delusional people out there who have found some form of actual “fun” in these kittenty updates, but they are few and far between.

And the increased activity during LS updates? People log on to farm kitten and then log off. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the LS “lore” or “content” or w/e you want to call it. It has EVERYTHING to do with people grinding gold to pay for the kittenty legendary system that Anet has put into place or that 0.00000001% chance of getting a new item to drop. To think otherwise only shows one’s stupidity and blindness.

I think its been great and have enjoyed each release. People have been complaining from both ends half wanting complex stories told and the other wants things wrapped up every month. How many TV series have a fantastic first season? Things take time to build, to meet characters. Scarlets been in one episode and people complain that the character hasn’t been developed.

People have complained that the stories are disjointed when we haven’t seen the whole arc, scarlets motivations, why things that didn’t seem important might end up being critical. We are halfway through season 1 and the villian behind the first half was just introduced, I want to see how it plays out.

I like the idea, but “living” story is an odd word for just a normal mmo story released in stages. A living story would be better as multiple stories around the world at the same time, either separate of converging, whilst impacting on the world as it unfolded. I have criticisms of the writing and lore too, but I’m also playing through GW1 prophecies on HM atm and I’d forgotten how much worse that was than any of the story here.

Part of the reason it feels disjointed is because the links are often tenuous between chapters or the explanations for events and characters can only be found outside of the game. I’m no fan of Scarlet, but I probably could appreciate her as a villain if she was fleshed out in game and not solely on the website.

It’s not putting me off the game yet though – I still thoroughly enjoy it, but I think someone on the forum described it pretty well for a new player coming to GW2 and “Opening a book halfway through and not knowing what happened before”.

Funda.7216:

I think its been great and have enjoyed each release. People have been complaining from both ends half wanting complex stories told and the other wants things wrapped up every month. How many TV series have a fantastic first season? Things take time to build, to meet characters. Scarlets been in one episode and people complain that the character hasn’t been developed.

People have complained that the stories are disjointed when we haven’t seen the whole arc, scarlets motivations, why things that didn’t seem important might end up being critical. We are halfway through season 1 and the villian behind the first half was just introduced, I want to see how it plays out.

Speaking about story, we shall count GW1, so it’s definitely not a 1st season. More like 9th.

Spiral Architect.6540:

DarcShriek.5829:

Considering how much activity in GW2 has increased lately, I’d say that is good evidence to support the hypothesis that a lot of people like the living story.

Actually, I’d wager that the increased activity have more to do with the Tequatl revamp and SAB. I don’t hear much about people getting all fired up to do the next chapter of the LS.

And, yes, I understand that both of those features are “part of the Living Story.” But they would be well attended whether they were or not, so that’s a moot point.

You don’t understand that SAB and Teq are part of the living story do you. How can you be that clueless?

Zeph.5927:

DarcShriek.5829:

Sirendor.1394:

Short answer, no there isn’t anyone who likes Living story as it is now, though the concept of a living world is nice in itself, had it been developed in a good way.

What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? Do you use a random word generator to write with? Climbing usage indicates that people do in fact, like the living story.

I’ll ask you the same question. What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? (because you are)

I’ve seen or heard very few people who actually wholeheartedly enjoyed the LS content for what it was meant to be. The most enjoyment I’ve seen people post about is the fact that they were able to farm some decent gold during the “lolzergfest” LS events. And that’s not even really enjoyment….that’s just performing a mindless task to increase one’s wealth and nothing more.

The fact is (whether Anet fanbois want to admit it or not) that the whole LS idea so far has fallen pretty flat on its face. It’s so disjointed, buggy, and downright boring at times that to call it anything remotely close to fun or a success is lying through one’s teeth. I dunno…maybe there are some delusional people out there who have found some form of actual “fun” in these kittenty updates, but they are few and far between.

And the increased activity during LS updates? People log on to farm kitten and then log off. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the LS “lore” or “content” or w/e you want to call it. It has EVERYTHING to do with people grinding gold to pay for the kittenty legendary system that Anet has put into place or that 0.00000001% chance of getting a new item to drop. To think otherwise only shows one’s stupidity and blindness.

Your trivial anecdotes are no match for actual data. You just wrote a large post describing how clueless you are.

DarcShriek.5829:

Considering how much activity in GW2 has increased lately, I’d say that is good evidence to support the hypothesis that a lot of people like the living story.

Saw a banner ad for GW2 which said “FREE CONTENT EVERY 2 WEEKS”. It kinda reminded me of those Evony adverts (“PLAY NOW MY LORD”), complete with cleavage. Maybe their marketing has boosted some numbers because I know I’d forgotten this game existed before I ran across that ad.

I think the main issue with Living Story™ is there’s not much of the story left afterwards. If you missed Flame & Frost, Southsun, the election or anything else that wasn’t a minigame then you won’t get to play it at all. New stuff is good but letting new stuff hang around so people can get backlogs of new things to do would be even better. As it is now:

Mini dungeons are removed, new areas are closed off (if they aren’t then they become desolate since they have no use now), cutscenes and dialogue are largely lost and sometimes there’s nothing left of the story installment but a new minigame to be tucked in a corner somewhere. If players stop logging in for a month and come back then the previous step in the story cannot be experienced, period. …Not that they’d miss out on much. The plots, characters and voice acting they’ve been using recently makes me cringe.

Adding new content to the Story™ every two weeks then deleting half of it leaves the world almost the same as it was before. I was expecting Halloween, Wintersday and SAB to disappear without a trace but… why is the ‘Disappear!’ policy applied to so much more? If it’s to keep people from encountering some immersion-breaking repetition then why are they even developing a game?

Gandarel.5091:

Speaking about story, we shall count GW1, so it’s definitely not a 1st season. More like 9th.

I get what you are saying but it’s not as simple as that. I haven’t played GW1, I’m interested in the lore, so I’ve spent a bit of time looking at some things, but I’m in no way an expert on GW1 and there are many, many players who haven’t put any effort into learning the backstory.

To stick with the TV theme, it’s Season 1 on Star Trek : The Next Generation, sure there are stories that you can build on from the Original series, but you also need to do the stories on these new characters to meet them, you need to introduce some new villians, otherwise you are relying on your audience having seen everything that came before, plus it’s been 250 years isn’t everyone from those stories dead?

Living story to me means “Okay, lets rush this content out to the players, have them beta test it and report the bugs. Once we get the patch working correctly and have all the bugs out, lets rip the content away from them and say suckers, you can have it back next year!” No thanks! I don’t like being a guinea pig to bugged content. It’s bad enough that they have had known bugs for months and since release even and they’re too focused on this living story garbage to give a kitten !

I love the game and I would be a big gem buyer if they put effort into fixing the things that need fixed. But why would I spend a dime to support them if they dont take the first step and support us and deal with issues that 100’s of players have?

They wouldnt release a new update every 2 weeks if people didnt like it.

They have the data, we have anecdotes.
They decide to continue with the living story and increase the ammount of updates per month.
So yes, people do like the living story, your anecdotal evidence is worthless.

A lot people do it just for the achievements. Just because they do it doesn’t mean they necessarily like it.

I doubt they’d commit to 2 living story updates per month if they noticed people log in to do achievements only.
We can only speculate, the only one with real # is Anet, no company would make this kind of decision out of the blue.

DarcShriek.5829:

Zeph.5927:

DarcShriek.5829:

Sirendor.1394:

Short answer, no there isn’t anyone who likes Living story as it is now, though the concept of a living world is nice in itself, had it been developed in a good way.

What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? Do you use a random word generator to write with? Climbing usage indicates that people do in fact, like the living story.

I’ll ask you the same question. What does it feel like to be so incredibly wrong? (because you are)

I’ve seen or heard very few people who actually wholeheartedly enjoyed the LS content for what it was meant to be. The most enjoyment I’ve seen people post about is the fact that they were able to farm some decent gold during the “lolzergfest” LS events. And that’s not even really enjoyment….that’s just performing a mindless task to increase one’s wealth and nothing more.

The fact is (whether Anet fanbois want to admit it or not) that the whole LS idea so far has fallen pretty flat on its face. It’s so disjointed, buggy, and downright boring at times that to call it anything remotely close to fun or a success is lying through one’s teeth. I dunno…maybe there are some delusional people out there who have found some form of actual “fun” in these kittenty updates, but they are few and far between.

And the increased activity during LS updates? People log on to farm kitten and then log off. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the LS “lore” or “content” or w/e you want to call it. It has EVERYTHING to do with people grinding gold to pay for the kittenty legendary system that Anet has put into place or that 0.00000001% chance of getting a new item to drop. To think otherwise only shows one’s stupidity and blindness.

Your trivial anecdotes are no match for actual data. You just wrote a large post describing how clueless you are.

I could say the exact same thing for you. Only difference is, I’d still be more right than you. Nuff said.