How good is Living Story?
It is what you make of it. You will find that many players hate it, many players love it, and many players feel mixed about it. On an objective stance. Living story has both positive and negative notes.
Some positive ones being that it gives players to experience a story that is constantly updating and have an impact on (Cutthroat Politics – though many will be skeptical and say it was rigged), and that it is slowly improving on some aspects lacking in the base core of the game (useful NPCs, obvious telegraphed attacks (especially for those colorblind), incorporation of strategy into fights).
Some negative ones being that a lot of the content is temporary (however, there are permanent features that get added now and then), it can be extremely buggy upon initial release days, or promotion of selfish gameplay for achievements.
More subjective issues can be things like the pacing (bi-weekly updates have pros and cons), or the writing.
You will find a lot of negativity on these forums. I would suggest that you form your own opinion about it (it seems that you already have) and see if that opinion changes in the future. Then you’ll know whether or not it is good in your eyes.
Gelda Nebilim – Nagare [NGE] – Crystal Desert
http://youtube.com/user/Royblazer
http://youtube.com/user/Royblazer
The Living Story is a fairly ambitious idea with an insanely fast release schedule (2 weeks). Each new chapter of the living story so far has felt like a build up to something greater coming next patch. The content of each patch is serviceable, but story content is often not enough to satisfy. It seems like ArenaNet have been working to utilize the Living Story to their fullest, but so far have not been able to reach what they have been striving for. The mechanics of each patch vary, but are for the most part effective in making players invest more time in the game with new content.
The greatest weakness of the Living Story so-far has been characterization and story development. Characters presented in the story are somewhat likable, but there is never any time dedicated to simply develop the characters. Every interaction with the story npcs is either spent fighting with little to no dialogue or exposition dumps. This means we never get any fluid progressions into emotional scenes with the characters that would allow us to really connect with the characters, without it feeling like a sudden shot out of the dark (namely the back story of Kasmeer happening in a very short story instance). The story develops as I described in the beginning, it always feels like it is building up to something even more spectacular in the future, which has become daunting after a whole year of buildup. The story never takes much time to take advantage of the lore of the game, making investing yourself into that lore relatively pointless at the moment. For the past year, we have had the story progress as such:
Bad things happen(but it’s just preparation for something even worse) > more bad things happen > even more bad things happen > holiday/adventure box release, sunshine and happiness to everyone > the worst things yet happen (but there are still even worse things to come later)
All of this contains some mysteries that are promptly answered with less than satisfactory answers. Who is the one uniting factions to destroy Tyria? Oh, some Sylvari lady that no one has ever heard of. Why is she being all evil and stuff? Oh, she’s just corrupted by an Elder dragon and a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
There are some mysteries that have not received answers or even that much attention. Why did Tequatl become stronger when Zhitan is dead? Who is E? What was the ghost kid going to say to Marjory? What secret about Caithe did Scarlet know? Why was Ellen Kiel so driven to find out about the Thaumanova Reactor? What are the Steam Creatures, and where did they come from? Will Elementalists become competitive in PvP again? What is Traherne or Destiny’s Edge doing over the course of the story? Why have we not seen any sign of activity from any of the 4 god-like Elder Dragons over the course of an entire year? Where did the human gods go?
tl;dr: Eh, it’s ok, but underwhelming in the story bits.
It fluctuates between excellent to rubbish…
Your new, only 29th lvl so GW2 is new and shiney, when you have been playing a while your opinion will likely change.
Ah, not bad.
I found the scenes in the Dead End Bar esp good, but I always find those little moments of character building to be enjoyable.
The living story has come a long way since the early days, but it’s temporary nature still holds it back. There were several important character building moments I missed out on due to moving, and now they are effectively lost to me forever.
That is just terrible design. Hands down.
Thou if the living story content were to sometime after the fact be turned into personal story instances, that would pretty much solve the issue. Say after each season, you go back and boil it down into personal story instances, I think that would be great, hours of more content to work through.
Because otherwise your always going to run into the problem of new players being locked out of the story of this world, with no way to catch back up.
(as well as making the world smaller for it)
Ah, not bad.
I found the scenes in the Dead End Bar esp good, but I always find those little moments of character building to be enjoyable.The living story has come a long way since the early days, but it’s temporary nature still holds it back. There were several important character building moments I missed out on due to moving, and now they are effectively lost to me forever.
That is just terrible design. Hands down.Thou if the living story content were to sometime after the fact be turned into personal story instances, that would pretty much solve the issue. Say after each season, you go back and boil it down into personal story instances, I think that would be great, hours of more content to work through.
Because otherwise your always going to run into the problem of new players being locked out of the story of this world, with no way to catch back up.
(as well as making the world smaller for it)
See, I’ve been trying to suggest ArenaNet and the playerbase that expanding our Personal Stories would be a better idea since adding Story in the Living World would lock out other players from knowing what’s happening.
I think they should focus on Dynamic Events changing the world and shaping it up with little story involved, while focusing on expanding Personal stories and choices by keeping them perminant, can bring good replay ability down the table. Also add more Jumping puzzles. lol
How good is the Living story?
I really like the Living part, every couple of weeks new content arrives. The game feels fresh and alive. I don’t mind that some of the content released is temporary, they have the fractals system to bring back key moments like the molten facility.
The Story part is complete and utter rubbish. I’m not sure who their target audience is but its certainly not me. Scarlet was so poorly delivered and developed, no real answers about her motive or how she managed to accomplish all these unbelievable alliances or found the resources to create these enormous war machines, even now after she’s dead and the first major arc has finished there is still only speculation as to what her true motives were.
tbh the main story felt like it was the relationship between Marjory and Kasmeer and Scarlet was just a way to bring them together.
Yes, putting the F&F dungeon (or a small portion of it anyway) in Fractals was a good idea. However…
Player 1: Let’s do the Flame and Frost dungeon!
Player’s Party: Yeah! One of us never got to see it, so let’s do it!
Party enters Fractals, gets Aquatic Ruins, Snowblind, Volcanic, Solid Ocean Fractal.
Player 1: Let’s do it again and do the Flame and Frost dungeon!
Players Party: Umm… that took us almost 2 hours, and we didn’t get the F&F dungeon. But, ok, one of us is new and never got to see it.
Party enters Fractals, gets Swampland, Urban Battlegrounds, Cliffside, Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal.
Five hours after the party had the desire to do the F&F dungeon, and they never got to do it. Colin, could you explain, please, how this is a good idea?
I am a very new player to this game and I would like to express how impressed I am with the living story content. I am currently only level 29 but I really appreciate that I can join in and be a part of something in the game with lots of activity and player interaction.
The rewards are great, the feeling of being a part of something bigger is awesome and to be honest, without this I think I would have quit again. Doing a normal level grind for end game content is just so WoW.
If you were level 80, you would already be wearing mostly orange gear. The rewards don’t look so great from that perspective.
The features? cool.
The Story & characters? Awful. if you liked anything about GW1 they made sure to destroy it with retcons, marginalization of past events & characters, horrible self-satisfying characters, & even physically eradicating any remnants of the old world.