Guild Wars 2

Dear Community, dear Arena.Net Staff,

I am concerned about the future of the Game and please hear me out on this one. I see content appearing and disappering in the Game, without leaving little more as a trace as the tentacles on the back of my thief or a bunch of refugees standing in the cities.
ArenaNet promised more; they promised a living story that has an impact on the world, and this impact can not be accomplished with content that fades at the end of the month.
I would like to recommend more permanent content updates, like a new permanent dungeon that ties into a bigger plot, not like the short lived one on southsun cove. I played the game since it’s first beta weekend, and it felt magical. It was a completely new world, and the new content fails to evoke this feeling in me, and I think others have a similar experience.
Permanent content is the way to go or content that makes a difference and influences the content of the months to come; an example:

A refugee asks the player to recover some sort of magic artifact from the human queen’s palace, telling the player that he needs it to establish an existance for his people. He offers the player a reward right away, say 1 gold. The player enters the Palace, fights guards, and takes the amulet. Then, shortly before the exit, queen Jennah blocks a final passage to the outside, asking the player to give back the amulet, explaining that the thief would use it to establish some sort of rival bandit camp with its power, and offers to repay whatever reward the refugee would pay.
Now, the player has to decide, whom to trust. The decisions of every player playing this mission are logged and depending on the outcome, the content patch of the following month is designed.

For example, queen Jennah has the Amulet and decides to punish the “thieves” and throws them into jail, which they take over and a new bandit leader emerges.

If the refugee got the amulet, he might establish a camp of thieves or, if he was good after all and Jennah lied, establish a new tiny village on one of the maps, which then may be threatened by centaurs.

This would be my idea of dynamic evolving storylines, and I would like to hear the opinion of the community and maybe even Arena.Net. Furthermore, I hope that my previously mentioned concerns will be relieved in the coming months.
Thank you for the read.

Good point! I can also add by myself:

Less RNG or more encouraging one (0.0000000001% to get ticket is demotivating…).
In Dragon Bash I can see that You walking good path but please give people hard numbers like: 3% chance to get ticket, 10% chance to get mini-pet etc.

Having specific details encourage me to try because I can see that I have that percentage of chance.

soneilon.7095:

Less RNG or more encouraging one (0.0000000001% to get ticket is demotivating…).

Good thing there is not a single thing in the game with that low drop-rate then.
The ones from the gem store seems to have about 1,3% chance of dropping while the others seems to be closer to 1,0%.
None of those (even if they are most likely not exact) is even close to 0.0000000001%. If they were, there would basically be more or less 0 Jade Weapons in the game.

What I’d like to see is a darker game.

Your character always runs around, doing what is right, that is also the nicest thing to do. The only think you have to fight are plain bad guys, whom you can’t get to know more.

They could manage to do something like that with Southsun and the refugee: a fight between the people of Tyria, who don’t want to take for the refugees, and the refugees.

How did that end? It’s all Consortium’s fault, they are evil, let’s all go home together! No grey shades. Nothing.

We playing characters are all boy scouts who do all that they are told to do. And it’s always the right thing. No bad consequences. Nothing. A bit sad for our personal story.

You have to keep in mind that the game is rated T. They HAVE to be rather light.

lordkrall.7241:

None of those (even if they are most likely not exact) is even close to 0.0000000001%. If they were, there would basically be more or less 0 Jade Weapons in the game.

I know but I’ve used that value to add dramatism to my post :P

I don’t really think that what you’re envisionening is manageable with the staff that ANet has and the payment-modell they are pursuing, as promising as it sounds.
The releases of the past months kinda got me thinking that they’re already working at capacity to try and bring us new stuff every other week. You already hear a lot of people complaining that the storyline structures aren’t complex enough or there’s not enough content and it’s stretched out too much.
Adding a hypertext-structure (which is basically what you’re suggesting) to all of this would essentially cut their productivity into half (if we’re talking about two seperate branches), which would mean every player would get the same amount of content as today, but every 4 instead of every 2 weeks, or you’d get even less content biweekly.

I think more complexity is not needed.

Had everyone ever played Neverwinter Nights? The original campaign had a lot of side quests. Most of theme where simple: go to X, do Y, come back with Z.

But the story around them was much more interesting, mature, and fun. Like helping a gnome gigolo retrieving his ring.

I see how this would work in an RPG but not an MMO. That’s why the personal story was added.

Are you suggesting that the new little village exists on the map for some players but not for others? We need a consistent, persistent world because people play in teams.

Sure, but some ideas can be brought from RPGs into MMORPGs: or, at least, the narration can be brought into it.

At least in Living World’s instances. And during the personal story.

I don’t think DeadPrank is saying there should be ongoing bifurcation of story choices, just that the majority of player choices should be reflected in ongoing, fixed, permanent changes to the world. Tabletop RPGs have done something along these lines, where their CCG franchises have determined the direction of future in-game history, as reflected in new modules.

So in the example given, once the “temporary” content had expired, there would be a change to the world that everyone would see, come the next stage of the Living World. It would jarr with the expectations of some of the players, since they chose a path that wouldn’t have led to the change depicted (unless some rationalisation can be made that could be reflected in some background accessible by interacting with NPCs), but as it stands, the “future” wouldn’t mesh with anyone’s expectation, since something should have changed, yet nothing has.

I still like the temporary content, it really does make it feel like a living world. So I miss something one month or two months, big deal, there’ll be something new to do next month.

I’d love if we had a living story event that when multiple ways and depending on our choices ended a certain way and depending on what path had more players would result in that being the end result.

example being 2 factions going to war for a piece of land. everyone would pick a side with its own story line and at the end what every side has more player support will be the faction to win and become permanent.
It would give players a sense of pride knowing they helped make it happen or being a scar on our pride knowing we lost the war, in both situations we would have an emotional involvement with that change in content.

Just chiming in for another “Less RNG!” call. Seriously. Less RNG. It’s really annoying.

Also, agrees wholeheartedly for permanent content. come on, i can only do new content at SPECIFIC period of time only and then cant do it anymore? No, don’t say “you’ll get another new content after that!” because that just doesnt work. to clarify: I may enjoy content A over the newer content B, or that I didnt had time to do content A when its out, and now only content B is available. so really permanent is good.

• southsun now has a new meta-event
• …and new events and architecture (camps, a fort)

• Skypirates has a permanent jumping puzzle…
• … as well as a permanent scavenger hunt which ties in to the new GW2 novel
• Moa Racing is permanent

Hello dear Anet. First of all I like your game quite a bit. Been playing from start and doing pretty much everything there except all of those dungeons. However these all content you are adding for 2-4 weeks that then disappear I don’t get it WHY does it have to disappear o.O.

Living story should impact the game world but at the moment there is special event for few weeks then it’s back to normal. Why not keep the new dungeons/events/super adventure box….I don’t really see a reason why not to except if you are cold hearted corporate and in a way force the playerbase in game with these time limits you are keeping with these events. I’d love to experience them all but this feeling of rush that these all temporary contents give is just overwhelming at times. I don’t have time to go through all these added content in time because of my own life interfering with my nerd life. Could you please make some sort of library where you can relive events or areas or somth….

I like your game but these temporary contents that go away in few weeks….I just can’t keep up if I want to do for example all the achievements. Why the rush…can’t a player advance with own pace anymore?

jucca.8219:

Living story should impact the game world but at the moment there is special event for few weeks then it’s back to normal.

and this is where you’re wrong. Very wrong. After those few weeks there is another living story, new things to do. There is no going back to “normal”.

womble.2153:

I don’t think DeadPrank is saying there should be ongoing bifurcation of story choices, just that the majority of player choices should be reflected in ongoing, fixed, permanent changes to the world.

Yes, that is what I mean, and there could be some sort of statistics on the Website depicting the current status. I know, maybe the example of the artifact was not chosen well, as this object should be something more common, like treasure chest etc. which is there in huge quantities. It would also encourage a player debate with forming factions, those who would support option one or two.

Also, ChaoticStorms idea of two factions fighting and rallying supporters is a good example how this might work out, I guess it would be even better and make more sense.

jucca.8219:

Hello dear Anet. First of all I like your game quite a bit. Been playing from start and doing pretty much everything there except all of those dungeons. However these all content you are adding for 2-4 weeks that then disappear I don’t get it WHY does it have to disappear o.O.

Living story should impact the game world but at the moment there is special event for few weeks then it’s back to normal. Why not keep the new dungeons/events/super adventure box….I don’t really see a reason why not to except if you are cold hearted corporate and in a way force the playerbase in game with these time limits you are keeping with these events. I’d love to experience them all but this feeling of rush that these all temporary contents give is just overwhelming at times. I don’t have time to go through all these added content in time because of my own life interfering with my nerd life. Could you please make some sort of library where you can relive events or areas or somth….

I like your game but these temporary contents that go away in few weeks….I just can’t keep up if I want to do for example all the achievements. Why the rush…can’t a player advance with own pace anymore?

According to Arena Net, no. You are to jump from living event to living event (now to be released evrey 2 weeks) and all other content is secondary.

Or you rush threw them not paying attention to any thing about it and following a guide so you can “F” all the things and grind your kills and then play how you want.

So either you are a mindless content following zombie, or you blindly blitz threw it with out even giving it a thought……. yah that is a smart business and design move……. right, who wants to just relax and play the way they want to am I right?

theenigma.3597:

jucca.8219:

Hello dear Anet. First of all I like your game quite a bit. Been playing from start and doing pretty much everything there except all of those dungeons. However these all content you are adding for 2-4 weeks that then disappear I don’t get it WHY does it have to disappear o.O.

Living story should impact the game world but at the moment there is special event for few weeks then it’s back to normal. Why not keep the new dungeons/events/super adventure box….I don’t really see a reason why not to except if you are cold hearted corporate and in a way force the playerbase in game with these time limits you are keeping with these events. I’d love to experience them all but this feeling of rush that these all temporary contents give is just overwhelming at times. I don’t have time to go through all these added content in time because of my own life interfering with my nerd life. Could you please make some sort of library where you can relive events or areas or somth….

I like your game but these temporary contents that go away in few weeks….I just can’t keep up if I want to do for example all the achievements. Why the rush…can’t a player advance with own pace anymore?

According to Arena Net, no. You are to jump from living event to living event (now to be released evrey 2 weeks) and all other content is secondary.

Or you rush threw them not paying attention to any thing about it and following a guide so you can “F” all the things and grind your kills and THEN play how you want.

So either you are a mindless content following zombie, or you blindly blitz threw it with out even giving it a thought……. yah that is a smart business and design move……. right, who wants to just relax and play the way they want to am I right?

redslion.9675:

What I’d like to see is a darker game.

Your character always runs around, doing what is right, that is also the nicest thing to do. The only think you have to fight are plain bad guys, whom you can’t get to know more.

They could manage to do something like that with Southsun and the refugee: a fight between the people of Tyria, who don’t want to take for the refugees, and the refugees.

How did that end? It’s all Consortium’s fault, they are evil, let’s all go home together! No grey shades. Nothing.

We playing characters are all boy scouts who do all that they are told to do. And it’s always the right thing. No bad consequences. Nothing. A bit sad for our personal story.

They outlined the overarching theme of GW2 as the sentient races banding together against the primeval dark forces that threaten them. It’s just not set up to for shades of grey in the story and while I like that in game, this just is not that kind of game. If they suddenly changed direction towards such a theme it would a jarring change.

The best example is LA which isnt anything like a pirate city, and certainly not with their very far-reaching peacekeeping away from the sea. I get that they turned legit and all but that whole lionguard setup just a bit too much goody goody for ex-pirates.