Guild Wars 2

To make LS actually alive, players need to be given choices along the way. And those choice, in turn, affects the story in the long run.

“Player election” is not a new concept. It happened during the “Bazaar of the Four Winds”, when players got to vote for either Ellen or Evon to seat on the Captain’s Council. This in turn affects the story of the future.

What I am asking for is more of this.

For example, after the Molten Alliance dungeon, the players would be allowed to choose between “focusing our forces against the Flame Legion” or “focusing our forces against the Dredge.” Picking one or the other would change the story.

Other that actual election (by voting), the players can also vote though action. For example in Clockwork Chaos there were four bombs in Queen’s Pavilion. There are multiple NPCs around each bomb. For example bomb #1 might be full of civilians. Bomb #2 have Shining Blades. Bomb #3 have Lion’s Guards. Bomb #4 have Asuran Ambassadors, etc. The last bomb the player picks cannot be stopped, and would kill whoever is in that area. So the players “voted” when they decided on who to save first.

Let’s say 40% of the players picked bomb #3 last. 20% for each of bombs #1,2 and 4. By “player election” the story will go though with the people around bomb #3 (Lion’s Guards in this case) being killed. The story will change accordingly.

So long as it’s not done the same way as Cutthroat Politics (buying stuff from the gemstore that boosts one’s voting abilities; spending money to buy more tokens), I’d enjoy such a concept.

For example, rather than choosing to focus on Flame or Dredge, it’d be determined by how many dredge and Flame Legion NPCs are killed in an alloted time across the servers.

What’s a darn shame, is that it cannot be a “by server” case, with guesting not altering the score.

I’m sure they considered it but it’s down to development time, since they’ll need to build the content for each scenario, it’s a lot of work for the short turn around time from production to release and doing this could dilute the content.

I think they’re on the right track with what they’re doing with the Scarlet character and am looking forward to seeing the story unfold, what they’re doing is fine, having a “bioware” approach to storytelling would be interesting, though with their current resources I don’t think we’ll see it happen anytime soon.