Guild Wars 2

A simple question really. While I can agree with some that season 2’s focus on more personal living story has its benefits to making it personal to the player’s character I do kind of miss the mmo nature of things.

Despite some faults I did love the grand battles that happened in the landscape that happened to everyone in the zone from the Battle of Lion’s Arch to the Attack on the Karka Queen. It gave a scope that you were part of an army to work together to take down overwhelming odds and created a sense of “I was there”

Now I know that season 2 has just begun and the story is still in the initial investigation part but I hope that Arenanet may sprinkle some giant open events down the road along with them.

This could be personal, I am a rp’er and I find it difficult to think that in a mmo filled with hundreds of players, you are the only person that did all these amazing things.

Well, the map-wide efforts are still there if you and the rest of the map care to bother (reaching tier 4 on dry top, getting gold reward in Crown Pavilion), but these are not connected to the story itself the way Escape from LA or the Twisted Marionette was.

I imagine it could be doable though. There is already a subtle mix of PS instances and open world progress in the story (searching for clues in the sand, following the trail left by Scarlet all took place in the open world), so it stands to reason that Anet could make the progress of the PS unlockable by something you do in the Open world, like taking a huge marionette-like boss down with all the others, then progress into your PS instance. In fact this is exactly what happened when we took down Scarlet.

EDIT:
Of course, since the open world is supposed to change depending on how the story goes, Anet must pay attention not to remove any open world event that would lock players out like this. And this is the point where it gets complicated. How to make the illusion of a progressing world story when you need to keep certain, potentially massive elements forever intact.

As cool as that would be, unfortunately as history has proved those massive events lose popularity by the end of the first week they’re out… which means to have this happen would probably kitten off a lot of casual players.

Locking the progression behind a massive raid style fight is really a problem when it comes to living story because it is a STORY first. You wouldn’t read a book if after a month it came out you could not get half a chapter any more because there wasn’t enough people interested in reading it anymore.

Adding a large raid to Dry Top… and a dungeon too… I can see them doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mordremoth battle becomes a new Meta boss raid in Dry Top (or the dungeon and one of his Lieutenants becomes the boss raid) to be put into the cycle of the other ones in the world like the Claw of Jormag, Tequetal the Sunless, or the three wurms.

Kentaine.4692:

As cool as that would be, unfortunately as history has proved those massive events lose popularity by the end of the first week they’re out… which means to have this happen would probably kitten off a lot of casual players.

Locking the progression behind a massive raid style fight is really a problem when it comes to living story because it is a STORY first. You wouldn’t read a book if after a month it came out you could not get half a chapter any more because there wasn’t enough people interested in reading it anymore.

Adding a large raid to Dry Top… and a dungeon too… I can see them doing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mordremoth battle becomes a new Meta boss raid in Dry Top (or the dungeon and one of his Lieutenants becomes the boss raid) to be put into the cycle of the other ones in the world like the Claw of Jormag, Tequetal the Sunless, or the three wurms.

agree. can’t lock story behind them, but certainly could add them as stand-alone, but story-related open world events.

and with new zones, why not design another event like Marionette? loved the breakdown of one large group into smaller groups of 20-25 (to defend) and then down further to parties of 5 (to take down a boss with a specific mechanic). no zerg.

the only coordination it required was getting 20-ish people in each lane. easy to coordinate, fun to play….with a real element of potential failure due to relying on other groups. as long as the rewards were good enough and metered in increments of success (like Teq and TriWurm are….in marionette’s case, maybe a reward for each chain severed), i think it would get played.

there isn’t enough small group PvE play (25-30)…so it would be great if the new “epic” events they add could siphon maps into groups that size.

Hopefully we’ll see this kind of content again later this season!

@Draconder, but others also, what I do wonder about though, is how you felt with every part of LS1 being this One Big Epic fight, do it now for 2 weeks, and never see it back? Where at some point it (to me at least) felt like over the top, and in all honesty felt a sense of ‘urgency stress’ in a sense, as Epic fight lead to Epicer Fight, lead to Epicst Figth, led to Over 9000 Epicst fight, led to Off the Scale Epicst fight.

As opposed to a more gently approach (because yes, we only have 2 installements by now), where we are led towards great plots that can only lead to … an epic fight, obviously. But next to that I also feel like the approach is less that of the vigil (head in and fight), and more that of Priory and Whispers. Now obviously I too am looking forward to that big fight, but hopefully the pacing will be on a bit less steep angle, and there be moments of rest and contemplation in between.

Fun as some of the more coordinated fights were (The marionette, per example.), I must say I found nothing related to the zerg rushes to be epic. As mentioned before, after a few events, it just felt like a massive pile of brainless zergs barking at each other to see who is better at being the zergiest.
Overflows, lag spikes, cluttering of particle effects everywhere and god forbid you don’t arrive early enough! Naw.

I’m sure they are keep epic battles for latter episodes.

I think the best way to look at it is to compare what we have now to the early episodes of Season 1, specifically the first three episodes of Flame and Frost (Southsun was considered a “special event” according to the web site).

Those first three episodes were lead ins, introducing us to Braham and Rox and setting the story through things like the signposts, special instances for both characters (retaking Cragstead and defending the hatchery), some exploration events, etc.

The first three episodes of season 2 feel similar, with the notable exception of adding Dry Top (even though Southsun was added just before the start of season one, so you could say we are at about the same point we were then in terms of content released).

It wasnt until the 4th episode that we saw our first dungeon (the Molten Facilities) and episode 6 introduced the first major world boss (Karka Queen – which was the first real permanent element of that season).

I think we are on track to see some major fights – and lots of new content other than story steps and new maps (which are great, but we can all agree cannot stand alone to offer a full gaming experience).

Before were done, Im sure we will have new dungeons, world bosses, etc – all of those things we love to do.

Yeah, thinking about it I have forgotten one way of story writing is starting small with a steady pace before leading up to a climax but with thorns already sprouting all over the world it would be nice to have a small element of investigation outside of an instanced story. I imagine we will see as the story progresses of what the developers have in mind.

As for the zerging of many of the events. I do agree that as challenge goes, it doesn’t make as much of a fulfilling experience as it can be like The Shatterer. The Twisted Marionette was one of the best world bosses from the living story as it required both skill/tactics and the teamwork of lot of players involvement making for a true battle that was more than just rushing in.

One personally hopes there will be more like the Marionette , a one off event that will be remembered rather than one that will forever spawn back every day.

Draconder.3692:

Yeah, thinking about it I have forgotten one way of story writing is starting small with a steady pace before leading up to a climax but with thorns already sprouting all over the world it would be nice to have a small element of investigation outside of an instanced story. I imagine we will see as the story progresses of what the developers have in mind.

As for the zerging of many of the events. I do agree that as challenge goes, it doesn’t make as much of a fulfilling experience as it can be like The Shatterer. The Twisted Marionette was one of the best world bosses from the living story as it required both skill/tactics and the teamwork of lot of players involvement making for a true battle that was more than just rushing in.

One personally hopes there will be more like the Marionette , a one off event that will be remembered rather than one that will forever spawn back every day.

To play Devil’s Advocate for a moment…
The more complicated you make a big epic event, the easier it is for people to mess it up.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved the Twisted Marionette.
But dang, did it seem rather easy for a few stupid trolls to come in and mess things up for everyone.

The Battle for Lion’s Arch is another one of the thing’s I liked. It felt big and epic with everyone needing to at least loosely work together to try and take back the ruins of a beloved city.
But again, how long did it take before the selfish good for nothing trolls came in and just akitten at the entryways, riding the coat tails of the players that really were trying?

You know what my absolute favorite events were?
The zone-wide invasions of Scarlet’s combined forces. The moment when you and a group of other players who just happened to be there with you charged in and clashed with an equally massive group of Aetherblade Pirates or Molten Alliance and the crazy insanity that followed…
But again… how soon did the ADD rattled masses lose interest? (I’ll give the invasion events this much, at least the trolls couldn’t just idle in the zones and ride other peoples coat tails like they did in Attack on LA…)

Hopefully, Anet doesn’t cave into the overly loud forum warriors that claim to represent more then just themselves and move too far away from the big, epic ‘clash of armies’ type of events just to stroke the egos of the singe-player, console game minded players who can’t stand having other people around them in a massively multiplayer online game…

P.S.
…
Okay, sorry OP, I went off on a bit of a rant near the end… But the whining, kittening and belly-aching that goes on in these forums recently, about /anything/ that Anet does is enough to make me want to vomit…
Bugs or Broken Events or legitimate issues with the mechanics of the game? Okay, air your concerns (minus the vitriol.) Please do! Those kind of things need to be fixed.
Whining and demanding single-player content in an MMO with an overblown sense of self-entitlement? Grow up or go back to playing console RPGs were you can be the worlds biggest special-snowflake and save the entire universe by yourself…

Guess we are entering another case of people whining too much, and then the people that dislike whining people whining about people whining by making the polar opposite of their opinions as a counter measure.

I am not surprised Anet is going hayware with their updates. I think they may be listening to their community a bit -too much- at this point, rather than make their own project. And so we all ride the quality rollercoaster!

Because it’s okay to have a hissy fit and to express how much you can’t stand the game/how the Devs are ruining it/how it’s dying/whatever other Anti-Anet Agenda crap that gets thrown out there…

But anything else that -isn’t- trying to bash this game in some way shape or form?
Constructive criticism as opposed to vitriol laiden crying and gnashing of teeth?
Oh no no no! We can’t have that here, now can we?