Guild Wars 2

My main issue with the living story, and concern with the games future, is that while we see a lot of change, there is very little growth.

The largest addition to this game was fractals and the southsun cove map, nearly a year ago. Since then we have only seen additions to southsun cove and more mini-games. Other than these, and perhaps a few small changes I’ve forgotten about, there has been no growth provided by the living story. Everything else has been changes to existing content, is going to be removed once the living story segment ends, or has been removed.

This is not good for the health of the game. The lack of growth makes the game feel stale as outside of what each living story release offers, you’re not left with much more than what you’ve been doing for the past year, and some of the content which you used to enjoy (I’m looking at you TA forward/up) is gone due to forced replacement in order to make the game look like it’s changing rather than expanding.

The living story needs to focus more on expanding the game, not just changing it.

I totally agree

This is what I call, smoke and mirrors.

It’s the illusion of things, but it’s really just the same grocery list and recycles mechanics. But….we all log in because achievements.

On a side note…I’m getting so tired of seeing the same mobs over and over.

Bri.8354:

The living story needs to focus more on expanding the game, not just changing it.

Completely agree, there is a large door by Ebonhawk which is guarded. Why don’t they open that area up, give us a new huge area to explore complete with a new threatening menace that isn’t a bratty teenage sylvari.

Thobek.1730:

Completely agree, there is a large door by Ebonhawk which is guarded. Why don’t they open that area up, give us a new huge area to explore complete with a new threatening menace that isn’t a bratty teenage sylvari.

I think they are somewhat hesitant to open up new areas due to the understandable lack of popularity of the open world. The entire dynamic event system, which was meant to act as one of the core activities for players to participate in, is dull, repetitive, and doesn’t hold player interest. The only thing keeping the open world alive outside of leveling and dailies is guild missions, temple events, and world bosses, and that really needs to be addressed.

But yes, the world is loaded with opportunities for expansion. Not only could they fill the map we currently see, but they could open up other regions like Cantha and Elona.

It’s come up on other threads here and there, and I really do think it’s “Player Survey” time. It seems like ANet devs are working in seclusion, cut-off and out of touch. We see the same complaints over and over. The same suggestions, over and over. We get VERY LITTLE feedback from devs in forums and elsewhere. Usually when we hear from devs it’s when content is already done and ready to be implemented. At that point it is largely pointless to tell them, “Er, we actually don’t want that….” because it’s going to happen anyway.

I think it’s past time for there to be a developer-player pow-wow with some real back-and-forth discussion about the future of the game. It’s hard to make that kind of communication happen, but a survey is a very powerful tool and would get us there.

I still love gw2 and I expect that I will continue playing it for a long time, but I have my concerns about the future of the game. Chief among them is simply, “Are you listening to your customers?”

C’mon, ANet. Give us some sign that you know we are out here.

GW2 is over a year old, and to this date nothing big actually happened in our world. Zhaitan was never seen in the world (personal story doesn’t count).

If Anet want this Living Story to work, they need to make big changes to the world every single time something happens.

jsduke.6537:

It’s come up on other threads here and there, and I really do think it’s “Player Survey” time. It seems like ANet devs are working in seclusion, cut-off and out of touch. We see the same complaints over and over. The same suggestions, over and over. We get VERY LITTLE feedback from devs in forums and elsewhere. Usually when we hear from devs it’s when content is already done and ready to be implemented. At that point it is largely pointless to tell them, “Er, we actually don’t want that….” because it’s going to happen anyway.

I think it’s past time for there to be a developer-player pow-wow with some real back-and-forth discussion about the future of the game. It’s hard to make that kind of communication happen, but a survey is a very powerful tool and would get us there.

I still love gw2 and I expect that I will continue playing it for a long time, but I have my concerns about the future of the game. Chief among them is simply, “Are you listening to your customers?”

C’mon, ANet. Give us some sign that you know we are out here.

If a survey ever comes out, i will definately do it

Here is a really nice and quite old article about maps that were planned for release, but were cut due to lack of time:
http://thatshaman.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-much-room-for-expansions-guide-to.html

I would say we need fresh zones badly cause as much as I love the world right now and living story all those changes you make feel so unimportant.
At first you planned to expand maps in Flame and Frost but you stopped that and it makes it really boring to run all the same maps again and again.
I know you have your ideas for living stories, but really you can add like 1 map each 1 or 2 months and maybe place living story in there? It would mean so much for me and some of my guildies to feel like explorers again. It’s very needed feeling for us.
I have to add that I hopped for that when Zephyr Sanctum arrived but in the end you didn’t even left empty cliffs after it so I can go in and wonder around a bit. The area just vanished…

So I agree TOTALLY!!!
Please, we need permanent maps to be added regularly.

Yes, this is pretty much #1 of the list of about 8 major flaws with the concept of the LW. It’s no surprise that for many players what started with ambivalence or even excitement has slowly eroded into irritation. The longer that temporary content is the primary focus of development, the more the growth of the game gets set back and the more the game-play experience suffers for the majority of players who just find it stale and trite.

They made a major miscalculation in thinking that change was an adequate substitute for growth. It wouldn’t be even if the LS was of very high quality (which it isn’t). And players are frustrated as the world just gets more and more stale.

Einlanzer.1627:

They made a major miscalculation in thinking that change was an adequate substitute for growth. It wouldn’t be even if the LS was of very high quality (which it isn’t). And players are frustrated as the world just gets more and more stale.

True, it won’t make people like more GW2 if the world is like it is now…

Basically if the world doesn’t grow it will die.
I love GW2 and it makes me sad to be forced to tun all the same places again and again. There is just nothing to freshen things up.