Guild Wars 2

Questions…

For those who said they hated living story to begin with;
Do you still dislike it?

And for those who originally liked living story;
Do you still like it?

Why? What changed/reaffirmed your opinions?

Do you consider yourself a Dungeoner/PvEr/FotMer/PvPer/WvWr/LivingWorlder/etc?
Which ones are you?

Where do you see the future of GW2?
Has the answer to the above question changed over the last month?

mwah

The living story started a little slower than I would have liked. But in the last 5 months really picked up the pace. I still enjoy it, and look forward to each 2 week release. I am also looking forward to the next living story release.

This thread may also be biased since a lot of the players that are enjoying the story, are in game playing the story. Be ready for living story hate from a bunch of posts.

I disliked it from beginning to end.

pvp/wvw/dungeons

I always hated the living story.

For the love of all that is holy give us expansions like Factions please.

just did something here, but mostly story related:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/The-Living-Story-S1-in-retrospect

overall it was a lot of hit and miss.
There is however a glimmer of hope, be it writing, it`s implementation or actual content itself.
It got better but is still unsteady. I think they really need a lot more work here till it is stable.
They have a foundation, now they need to build upon it…

I know I’m probably in the minority here but I really enjoyed the Frost and Flame updates especially the finale with the molten weapons facility, other than that I really haven’t enjoyed the open world updates where you get into the largest group possible and slaughter everything…I play a bit of all game types but I will probably be moving onto another game, a bit sad to be going after having played in the Guild wars universe for I think 7 years now, but I hope everyone who continues to play enjoys the game and future releases.

I still think it’s a noble idea with a subpar execution.

I would prefer normal expansions.

I love the idea behind the Living Story. The idea that players’ actions would introduce lasting changes into the world is an interesting one, to be sure. However, I’ve been discouraged by the lack of major change that I, personally, have seen throughout. Yes, something happens, and then two weeks later, it’s all happy happy joy joy again, and unless you were online playing constantly, chances are that you got very little reward for it. I can certainly understand the rationale behind rewarding the frequent players with more goodies, but such tactics can also make people that can’t devote quite so much time to a game feel like there’s not a lot of point to logging on, since each latest bit of content will be gone in 2-4 weeks anyway. It can discourage a player that’s on the edge between dedicated and ho-hum. I know speaking for myself, personally, I am less inclined to go through the MUST PLAY EVERY FACET OF EVERY LIVING STORY UPDATE thing than I was at first. The first few episodes were enough to convince me that while the temporary content could, at times, be amusing, it has largely seemed to have no lasting impact on the world at large.

Note that although my personal opinions are not entirely positive regarding the Living Story concept, I don’t hate it, by any means. I just feel personally discouraged from playing a whole lot since nothing I do during each two week spate will matter one whit in the long run. That said, there are certainly pieces of Living Story related content with which I have been vastly amused. The Tequatl changes and Jungle Wurm fights are great fun, and the Marionette was fantastic. I’m enough of an old-school MMO player to appreciate things that take a fair amount of coordination to achieve successfully. But then again, taking a step back from this, Tequatl and the Wurms are permanent content. The whole idea of “must log on and put in time right now or you’ll miss any chance at the content” is discouraging to me.

Just the two cents of a somewhat disappointed player. I feel the promise I understood to be inherent in the Living Story’s origins—the idea of a world that changed and was impacted on a lasting scale by the choices and actions of the player base—had a lot of good things going for it. Perhaps I misunderstood things. Perhaps not. The Guild Wars universe has so much of a story to tell. I do look forward to seeing more of it, though of late, my seeing more has been largely through watching my boyfriend play. He has more patience than I for repetitiveness.

At least it’s over. That’s all I can really say on the matter.

I like the idea and it was starting to get quite interesting, but this last chapter was probably the worst for me and really let it all down. The idea was sound, but the reliance on group server dynamics for story progression and especially for an important, hyped season finale was a bit of an anti climax (final cutscene itself aside). Yes it could be entered solo, but then you skip an epic bit. So you end up trading off a bit of story vs being gated. A bizarre thing to do.

Whilst I have no major objections to continuing the LS as it is an intersting experiment, it needs a radical rethink in implementation. The story was too slow and remained so even during these 4 patches. Even looking back on the last year, it all feels a bit contrived and laboured to tell a reasonably straightforward story.

There are also many unanswered questions. A great deal in fact which were never tied up. They may still, but it has been drawn too far out now and as a community will probably cease to care less and less about any hangovers now the finale is just about ovcer.

One of my other problems is how the NPC’s seemed to either
1) act like idiots to progress the story. We all saw the lair. There were enough warnings in there to present to the council to mobilise their defences. There was no logical reason for them not to, but they ignore all warnings they did. This is Lions Arch – the one city which wouldn’t be complacent given its history.
2) Not care about the story they were in. The final cutscene has an example, although I can’t say more for risk of spoilers.
3) Seem unaffected by the global threat. Kryta didn’t care after the Jubilee attack nor seek much retribution – even after LA was attacked. The Orders didn’t really care much at their HQ’s either.
4) Carry on doing as they were a year ago. A truly evolving world would show signs of change – eg the Treaty camp outside of Ebonhawke. Why show some progression in negotiations and be discussing the wider world affairs.

Hopefulyl big, big lessons have been learned from all this and we can have a smoother ride next time.

I had high hopes for the living story when molten facility came out. It was fun and it seemed a first step towards new dungeons. Since then I’ve only seen zerg content and achievement grind. So no, I don’t like LS at all anymore.

As you might have already noticed I’m mostly into dungeons and fractals. I did enjoy teq when it first came out, it was a challenge to overcome with the whole server. However the wurm ruined my excitement for new challenging world bosses. It’s too hard to coordinate with so many people just coming in to leech. I only WvW and PvP casually, but even I am annoyed by the continued lack of updates to sPvP.

Where do I see the future of GW2… I see them nerfing zerkers, I see them focusing on more world bosses that require gigantic zergs, I see them adding a few new fractals in… maybe 2016?, but most of all I see me not playing this game anymore.

" Has the answer to the above question changed over the last month?"
The fool I was… When I read the announcement about the LS finale I was excited, I thought maybe we’d get something nice and interesting. In the end it was one zergfest after another, nothing had changed from before. The only thing I found relatively interesting was the marionette fight.

Liked it, then disliked it, then liked it again.
I loved the slow themed little stories that they started with.
Disliked Scarlet, because she tied things together and felt inferior to the things that she tied. The things that I liked suddenly looked like a disappointment because they were controlled by this pathetic annoying green cabbage.
Liked the destruction of the Lions Arch. It’s exactly the kind of big changes that I wanted out of a living story. A total destruction. A total change. And this weeks living story… The promo for season 2 made me want to squeal. We get a dragon!

I’m largely PVER, love doing all the dungeons and got my fotm up to 30 where I’m sitting comfortably at the moment. I dislike gear grind (hated the introduction of ascended gear) and time gating. I love the fact that in this game I can jump in, do whatever I feel like doing and jump out. No other MMO allows me this freedom.

Spoilers!!!

Scarlet’s 3 Alliances and the Twisted are still there so the Elder Dragon has minions to use in it’s armies even if 2 of them aren’t corrupted they are still valuable allies that Modremoth used so there’s no need to toss them aside.

He can even use Twisted Watchworks as further minions bringing his armies to:
1:Modremoth’s traditional minions(Jungle Wurms, Nightmare Husks and Nightmare Hounds)
2:Nightmare Court
3:Molten Alliance
4:Aetherblades
5:Twisted Watchworks
6:Steam Creatures
7:Toxic Alliance

An Elder Dragon with Machinary and Plants as minions is a dangerous Elder Dragon indeed!

Thorn.7963:

I always hated the living story.

For the love of all that is holy give us expansions like Factions please.

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. And yes, from beginning to end, I have hated the living story. The game isn’t called “Scarlet Wars” after all…give us some lore actually pertaining to the game. A lot of people are prepared to pay handsomely for an expansion…

For those who said they hated living story to begin with;
Do you still dislike it?

Yes immensely. zerging and collecting garbage is not content.

Why? What changed/reaffirmed your opinions?

I left the game 6 months ago because of the way the living story was. 6 months later its exactly the same.

Do you consider yourself a Dungeoner/PvEr/FotMer/PvPer/WvWr/LivingWorlder/etc?

Dungeons and fractals are the only thing in the game really any fun and I blew those all out months ago

Where do you see the future of GW2?
I sincerely hope Anet realizes the way they have made the living story will continue to lose playerbase if they continue the same route. What they need to do in make content that small groups and gasp guilds!?!?! can strive to complete and actually have difficulty in doing so. Sadly I think anet is just going to make a new “southsun” zone and have mordremoth as its zerg boss.

The entire time I was playing the living story, I was thinking to myself, “man, I wish they’d just make an expansion pack already.”

I can’t say, really. I missed most of it until Nightmare Tower. It’s…ok. I heard it was really bad in the beginning but I guess it picked up later on.

I don’t like the idea of the living story taking the spotlight & becoming the main content for the game. Also, you can’t play it ever again. If you miss it, you’re screwed, UNLESS they make a sort of in-game archive to play through in case you missed it. I doubt it at this point, though.

And for those who originally liked living story;
Do you still like it? Why? What changed/reaffirmed your opinions?
No. It was ruined for me the moment they introduced Scarlet as a genius surpassing even genius Asura. There was no reason for a Sylvari to be smarter than the smartest of the smartest race in Tyria. It showed some predisposition towards Sylvari and that irritated me at that point. They then continued to make Scarlet do more and more unrealistic or downright impossible things, with less and less actual story in between.

It kinda picked up when they allowed for the writers to implement some of their writing into the game, and the biconics were actually pretty well done. I started to like the LS again when the marionette came out (best boss fight to date) but Anet’s decision to stick with Scarlet’s overpoweredness ruined the experience in the end. The final attack on Lion’s Arch, advertised by Anet and some fansites as ‘the best ever in story and gaming’ was completely unrealistic and improbable.

What ruined the Living Story for me was actually the story. It felt cheap and poorly written. And no amount of gameplay can make up for a poor story. At least for me. I play rpgs for the story, and the Living Story’s story was among the worst I’ve played so far. All thanks to Scarlet.

Do you consider yourself a Dungeoner/PvEr/FotMer/PvPer/WvWr/LivingWorlder/etc?
Which ones are you?
PvE player mostly, though I do the rest as well.

Where do you see the future of GW2?
I think it’s time for ArenaNet to finally deliver on some of the promises they made during the time before GW2 was released. The grind should be reduced, especially for ascended gear. There should be guild halls and player housing improvements added before the end of the year. Most importantly however, they must take a good, honest look at their storytelling process, and improve it. Nobody likes a character that can do everything. Even superman has his kryptonite, and even the elder dragons have their flaws. Scarlet had none, and that ruined the story the second she was introduced. The biconics have great potential, but Anet must take care not to overuse them. The relationship between Jory and Kasmeer for example, is quickly becoming a cliché if they keep focusing on it. Which means that for now, just let them keep dating. Don’t throw in a wedding next release for example. Save that for next year or something.

Has the answer to the above question changed over the last month?
Although many like the attack on Lion’s Arch, I do not. The gameplay is fun, the setting is awesome, but without a believable story behind it, it just feels like a poor children’s cartoon. And that’s a shame actually, because some children’s cartoons actually have great plots.

Cities of Gold for example, has a relatively weak story…until they revealed the alchemist to actually be the main villan. From the get go, he seemed friendly and yet there was those slight hints of ’can’t put my finger on it’. And then they revealed his true identity, and I was genuinely impressed by how it was done. ArenaNet’s writers can learn from that.