Guild Wars 2

Well, as I see it the Living story is a unique community event and I resent it being turned into a solo farm. This was to be a dynamic game and the living story played into that this new Living Story throws that whole concept down the mystic forge and we get what we all wanted a solo farm run. Sounds like a lot of crap to me.

The living story was fun because it was a one time community event we could all do for about a month and move on. The events were for everyone and we could all get together for some fun and games. Some parts were easy and some parts were hard and everyone could do what they wanted. There were some good times killing the Marionette and fighting the Nightmare Tower. But we did it as a community and not as a solo run.

I realize that you got to the end of the personal story and realized it ended and what the hey, we need to do something. My personal story I stopped doing because I realized in order to finish I need to do a 5 man instance dungeon. Not my idea of a good time. But you don’t take the Living Story and make it into the Personal story because it’s easier. You write and new section of personal story and Continue the Living Story as it is. This is a rotten fish dressed up in a pretty paper trying to make us believe it don’t stink. You better rethink this whole idea because it just doesn’t fly.

2nd in a thread already expressing concerns about the new LS concept!

As I see it, this is a return to ANet’s comfort zone: e.g. campaigns. This moves GW2 further away from a classic MMO and back towards GW1.

I am not commenting on whether I think this is a good idea or not.

And obviously, if you miss anything, feel free to buy access.

-Back to W* for PvE.

Hopefully WvW will continue to provide fun.

edit: see my 2nd post below for positive assessment

I pray for this to be a chance to escape from zergs.

You guys do realize they will probably do this the same way they did your Personal Story. You can go at it alone if you want, OR you can get a party and have them all enter an instance with you. Everyone is worrying about nothing. Besides Anet tried to do massive world events for LS and 90% of them fell apart due to tasks being too easy, too hard, too long, not enough reward, etc. I hope they go back to their roots of GW1 with these missions. Grab a group of buddies and beat your story.

Eight Samurai.6840:

You guys do realize they will probably do this the same way they did your Personal Story. You can go at it alone if you want, OR you can get a party and have them all enter an instance with you. Everyone is worrying about nothing. Besides Anet tried to do massive world events for LS and 90% of them fell apart due to tasks being too easy, too hard, too long, not enough reward, etc. I hope they go back to their roots of GW1 with these missions. Grab a group of buddies and beat your story.

I agree. A lot of people seem to like the open world stuff, but from my perspective it just doesn’t really work all that well. I definitely don’t want them to remove it, but it should be subordinate to instances and organized missions.

LS was not fun because it was a one time community event. Everyone not playing this game super casually will agree, why? because even the biggest ls fans haven’t seen any content since the end months ago. Everyone wants some new permanent content now.

I don’t get how this is a bad thing. People get storytelling now, zerg press1 = win events and maybe, just maybe if we’re really lucky an actual difficult fight fingers crossed.

Did they ever say the LS was supposed to be ‘community events?’. I always thought it was simply to be a way of telling a story in increments rather than at once like an expansion, thereby giving the illusion that the world is changing. I personally don’t recall ever hearing about community events being the focus-that’s just how it turned out; consequence rather than intent as far as I’m concerned.

I am curious to see exactly how s2 will play out though-they promised it would be more lasting…but the PS had zero lasting effect in the….(wait is the open world the real world or is the floating green teleportation device the real world.-and you know what I mean when I say ‘real’)….well regardless, the PS had no effect in the world you play in most of the time (<-killed Zhaitan, cleansed Orr like 5 times…just came back from there-still overrun with zombies screaming ‘submit to the will of Zhaitan’ and brown looking as ever)

With this announcement, ANet has managed to deliver a lot of what customers were asking for:

1) Replayable content

2) Hooked into personal story – where your character continues to be important

3) more challenging content

4) access to the content if not able to be present during a 2 week window

5) ability to play content on personal schedules

=====

How all that actually works out will be interesting. How that impacts open world zones, etcetera will be fun to view.

I’m sure the forums will be active. Both now and then.

Anet open world event is the worst instanced raid content I have ever played.

Notice how I call Anet open world event as instanced raid.

I am pretty sure, OP, Colin said nothing about getting rid of Open World events connected to the Living Story. In fact, he said just the opposite:

‘Open world content additions to Living World updates will permanently expand or change the world of Tyria and will tie to the theme and story of the episode. This means you can play the open world content and the story content (if you’ve unlocked that episode) anytime you want, on every character you ever make on your account! You’re no longer limited to completing the episode during its two-week release window. This means that going forward, all of the content and all of the rewards for Living World will be permanent.’

Not sure how it can be read another way. Nothing solo about it, although I suppose if you are super-lucky, you might find a map with no one else there to try the event/content alone. /shrug

But as I see it we will only be getting Living World content for holiday arcs., which, by the way are pretty much done. Unless they are inventing new holidays. The regular 2 week interval of Living World will change from dynamic open world content to solo closed instances. Like a boring old dungeon. Living World Content was new and exciting like nothing we had ever seen before. It was dynamic, if you snooze your loose. Now were Loosing Living World for a pale comparison of repeatable solo content. So instead of new content we get to do it over and over again and again like running AC again and again and again and again. Boring. But they will save tons of dev time while trying to convince you your getting new content. All with the reassurance that if you miss something you can pay a little bit to get it. So not only are they giving you less with the idea they have done you a favor they are willing to make you pay for it if you cannot log on during a certain week. Lame.

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

But as I see it we will only be getting Living World content for holiday arcs., which, by the way are pretty much done. Unless they are inventing new holidays. The regular 2 week interval of Living World will change from dynamic open world content to solo closed instances. Like a boring old dungeon. Living World Content was new and exciting like nothing we had ever seen before. It was dynamic, if you snooze your loose. Now were Loosing Living World for a pale comparison of repeatable solo content. So instead of new content we get to do it over and over again and again like running AC again and again and again and again. Boring. But they will save tons of dev time while trying to convince you your getting new content. All with the reassurance that if you miss something you can pay a little bit to get it. So not only are they giving you less with the idea they have done you a favor they are willing to make you pay for it if you cannot log on during a certain week. Lame.

Where does any of that information come from? We will get a combination of open world and instanced content. It has never been said the open world content is for festivals only.

I guess one could interpret what they say as something they didn’t say, if one so desires. /shrug

I guess one could just wait and see, as well. Or just give up. Not sure what else to say. The announcement clearly states there will be Open World content not associated with the Festivals or the Journal content. Make of it what you will.

They can still add world bosses and zerg content or whatnot as part of the ‘living story’ releases. It just won’t be the story components.

Look at the patch with Marionette and Wurms in it, for example- You would have to pay gems to visit Scarlet’s hideout, but you wouldn’t have to pay to do the open world content/bosses. This is hopefully not the scope that the gem-bought content will have- it’ll be bigger- but at a glance it seems like it could be how it’ll work.

Eight Samurai.6840:

You guys do realize they will probably do this the same way they did your Personal Story.

That’s EXACTLY the issue. The “personal storyline” (more like TRAHEANNE’s little epic) had INCREDIBLY mediocre instances, nowhere NEAR GW1’s missions. Focusing on more of THAT kind of content is far from being GOOD.

Just think about the SEASON 1 single player instances. Do you remember even a SINGLE one that made you think “WOW, this is just SO much FUN!”?

Einlanzer.1627:

I agree. A lot of people seem to like the open world stuff, but from my perspective it just doesn’t really work all that well.

FUNNY, because the open world STUFF is what ArenaNet said makes their game UNIQUE.

cranos.5913:

LS was not fun because it was a one time community event. Everyone not playing this game super casually will agree, why? because even the biggest ls fans haven’t seen any content since the end months ago. Everyone wants some new permanent content now.

I don’t get how this is a bad thing. People get storytelling now, zerg press1 = win events and maybe, just maybe if we’re really lucky an actual difficult fight fingers crossed.

I’m casual, but I play alot and I’m fine with how they’ve been releasing content. Anything permanent risks spreading folks out too thin as they’ll only be in the new areas, or abandon them mostly like southsun.

Just saying that some of us have been fine with the way things have been, just not vocal on the forums as we’ve been enjoying the content.

My belief is that LS as solo instances is a large misconception based on lack of information. We’ve had megaservers for a reason:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Vol.7601:

Yeah all the high quality content from previous living stories were all large scale. In fact, all releases were pretty much large scale…I can’t envision how that works with these journals.

My guess is that each episode creates an instance of that map for everyone who’s replaying this episode. Pretty much like starting instances for new characters (which are shared by several people, just in case anyone appeared in an empty one), but on a large scale.

It’s not really different from zoning into megaservered Brisban Wildlands from megaservered Caledon Forest, except that it’s zoning into megaservered Brisban Wildlands (Corrupted by Dragon) from megaservered Brisban Wildlands (Pre-corruption).

Eight Samurai.6840:

You guys do realize they will probably do this the same way they did your Personal Story. You can go at it alone if you want, OR you can get a party and have them all enter an instance with you. Everyone is worrying about nothing. Besides Anet tried to do massive world events for LS and 90% of them fell apart due to tasks being too easy, too hard, too long, not enough reward, etc. I hope they go back to their roots of GW1 with these missions. Grab a group of buddies and beat your story.

GW1 missions were much more fun than any personal story/living story quest that I’ve done in GW2. Some of you may remember missions like Thunderhead Keep, where a team had to work together to get the mission accomplished(and fail a lot in the early days.) It was a good design and very fun. Zerg fest events with 200 people running around pressing 1 isn’t my idea of fun.

Nat.4029:

Eight Samurai.6840:

You guys do realize they will probably do this the same way they did your Personal Story. You can go at it alone if you want, OR you can get a party and have them all enter an instance with you. Everyone is worrying about nothing. Besides Anet tried to do massive world events for LS and 90% of them fell apart due to tasks being too easy, too hard, too long, not enough reward, etc. I hope they go back to their roots of GW1 with these missions. Grab a group of buddies and beat your story.

GW1 missions were much more fun than any personal story/living story quest that I’ve done in GW2. Some of you may remember missions like Thunderhead Keep, where a team had to work together to get the mission accomplished(and fail a lot in the early days.) It was a good design and very fun. Zerg fest events with 200 people running around pressing 1 isn’t my idea of fun.

To be fair I loooooooved the very first LS which was flame and frost dungeon (I’m a dungeoner so biased and was also instanced) and the last one where we had to kill Scarlet because the way they designed it was that zerging actually makes it harder to beat and easy to fail.

To add, I think most people who are complaining about the new stuff are the ones who skimmed through the article that clearly answers all their questions or contradicts them… sigh

Farming is farming. Solo or community, I see no big difference. LS1 was an hour or two of new content followed by “community farming” for baubles and AA. The bulk of every LS release became farming.

Yeah, I do hope that the solo/“form a party” content is few and far between in S2, like the various “chit chat” instances in S1. I definitely don’t want them to be solo instances like the Personal Story, I’ve had plenty of those.

The Journal instances will be just like the PS in that you can choose to do them solo or in a group up to 5 party-members.

The Open World events will be much like they have been in the past.

You can hear the Devs explain how it works on the latest Twitch Livestream.

@OP: Please re-read the blog post. In it, Colin mentions changes in the open world, and that all open world additions or changes will be permanent (so basically think Southsun Cove and Kessex Hills as I understand it, in terms of open world content we can expect – at least in regards to the two forms we’ll see, new zones and new events/aesthetics/heart changes).

The instances would be like a mixture of the personal story and the instances we already had in Season 1 (e.g., “The Nightmare Unveiled”, “The Nightmare Ends”, “Scarlet’s End”, or even Braham’s and Rox’s instances during Flame and Frost – but in the style of being more akin to the personal story).

You’ll still have your community events. It won’t all be instanced.

The Journal instances will be just like the PS in that you can choose to do them solo or in a group up to 5 party-members.

I hope not, that would be awful. That was one of the worst part of things like the Tower of Nightmares or the Aetherblade Retreat. They need to be open world instances, where people can come and go as they please and work towards shared events. They should keep the combat solo/group instances to the bare minimum, maybe one every six months or so.

Ohoni.6057:

The Journal instances will be just like the PS in that you can choose to do them solo or in a group up to 5 party-members.

I hope not, that would be awful. That was one of the worst part of things like the Tower of Nightmares or the Aetherblade Retreat. They need to be open world instances, where people can come and go as they please and work towards shared events. They should keep the combat solo/group instances to the bare minimum, maybe one every six months or so.

It’s not a suggestion or speculation. That’s how it will be. You can hear the Devs explain it on the latest Twitch Livestream.

Bummer. Hopefully they’ll be able to shift gears on that sooner rather than later, because a whole season of solo instances would be a huge disappointment. If I wanted to play solo instances I’d be playing a solo game.

Then, you can concentrate on the Open World large scale content, and skip the Story Instances, if you so desire. It’s all about choice. =)

This is exactly how GW2 was supposed to be………….

People are able to have great adventures and epic storys and the people who feel
like being social beings can go to PvP stuff.
Exatly what GW2 needed, deviding PvP and PvE………..

Awesome A-Net i almost lost the trust in you after moving away from GW1.
A well deserved slap into the face of the fanboys who poisoned this forum so much and chased people away.

Heads up A-Net… trillions of people will come back and finally enjoy playing GW again

thx for that

Ohoni.6057:

Bummer. Hopefully they’ll be able to shift gears on that sooner rather than later, because a whole season of solo instances would be a huge disappointment. If I wanted to play solo instances I’d be playing a solo game.

They’re offering both, just like with Tower of Nightmares which had both instanced and open world. The difference is that the open world stuff will now be permanent (or changing old open world stuff, going off of the blog post), and the instances will be permanent but will have to be unlocked. Open world stuff will be like the rest of the game – unneeding to do the story instances to access or understand. They’re making Season 2 like the initial release – telling two stories (open world story, and the story instances story) side-by-side, but separate.

Don’t want to do the instances? No need! You can still enjoy the new open world content.