Guild Wars 2

I think the developers really need to reevaluate their Living Story model. I think the quality of this content has been well below the standard they’ve set themselves with the initial game. They need to ask themselves “is this content worth releasing?” And by content, I mean the meat of what’s in the update after all the filler (breaking pinatas, finding kites, eating candy, riding in hot air balloons, etc) has been stripped away.

If the answer is “no”, then don’t release it. Roll it into the next Living Story update, then ask yourself the same question. And keep rolling it back until you’ve got enough substantive content (new zones, quality of life changes, new dungeons, more than 20 minutes of story, actual voice acting, QA polish, etc) to release it.

Wait until you can actually be proud of what you’re releasing the same way you were proud of the game you released a year ago today. That’s the game you wanted to make. That’s the game I wanted to play. That’s not the game you’re making with your Living Story model.

PS – If you’re going to reply, please do so in a constructive and civil manner. Thanks.

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I fell in love with the dynamic event system at release as the chaining ones usually tell a little story about the zone you’re in. I signed on to Guild Wars 2 based on the manifesto and its promises of player actions affecting the world, and I feel the dynamic events at release mostly accomplish this; some to a lesser extent than others.

However, I can’t say this about the dynamic events added in Scarlet’s Invasion, Queen’s Pavillion, Secret of Southsun, or even Flame and Frost (their best release in my opinion, despite how long it took them to complete it). These events were so disconnected from the zones they occurred in. There was no lead up, such as NPCs discussing the events and then performing some action that triggers a dynamic event; once the events started they didn’t affect the zones as the enemies just sit there waiting to be killed; the enemies aren’t actually performing the actions the dynamic event says they are; when the event concludes there are no effects on the world. Essentially, the zones as a whole act as if these events are not going on.

These events do not meet the quality of other events in the world and they definitely are not what was promised in the manifesto. If the two-week release schedule is causing content to be released that is substandard, it needs to be reevaluated.

I personally think people are just too used to expansions. They’re used to having all this content at one time available. So anet tries to do something different than expansions and nobody likes it because it’s not the general way of releasing content.

The LS is still a new system and anet still needs to work out the kinks in it. What players like about it and what players don’t like about it. It’s not fair to say it’s all bad.

As for QA in the updates, it probably makes it easier. Instead of saying you have every nook and cranny of this expansion to test in a month; they say you have every nook and cranny of this short update to test.

I hear a lot of people say the LS is awful, but then I hear most people say they like specific updates. SAB was great, flame and frost was well received, sky pirates was good, I loved the bazaar, people got invested in cutthroat politics, the queens gauntlet was good and challenging, and I like the idea of invasions and the play house was a fun dungeon, even if it wasn’t hard. (Not counting Mad King and Wintersday since they existed before the LS in its proper form but I loved them). After you get though those good updates you realize, those are most of the LS updates. The only ones I didnt list are the two southsun ones, which I didn’t get to participate in for one reason or another so I can’t speak for them.

So if most of the updates are good and well received, how is the living story a bad medium?

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

I personally think people are just too used to expansions. They’re used to having all this content at one time available. So anet tries to do something different than expansions and nobody likes it because it’s not the general way of releasing content.

Actually, no it’s not that we need an expansions worth of content (though it’d be nice as it’d give players multiple options to branch out into rather than just zerg the only new thing added). It’s about the quality of the content being released compared to what we had at release.

The LS is still a new system and anet still needs to work out the kinks in it. What players like about it and what players don’t like about it. It’s not fair to say it’s all bad.

I think their plan going forward seems like it could solve the problem. That is they plan on building base level, repeatable content which they can easily add to (e.g., SAB, festivals) to give their team enough time behind the scenes to make more substantial content releases. The problem is they’ve jumped into telling a Living Tale before they have enough of this base level content ready. As such, when they try to advance the story it is disjointed and quality suffers across the board. Scarlet’s story could have been told through the game world, added to over time with new events telling her tale, and her invasion could have been better integrated into at least one zone (i.e., it actually affects that zone). Her invasion lacks the polish events had at release, and could have used more time in development.

I hear a lot of people say the LS is awful, […]

It isn’t awful it has a list of quality issues longer development time would weed out.

So if most of the updates are good and well received, how is the living story a bad medium?

People have different standards. For example, I like the game advertised in the manifesto. Scarlet’s invasion departs from their manifesto in almost every way it can. Most of their criticisms Arena Net leverages at other MMOs in their manifesto apply to many of the events they’ve been adding in the Living Story content.

- They give you quest text directing you where to go
- The enemies are not actually performing the actions the quest text says they are
- The enemies are just sitting there waiting to be killed
- There is no story lead up to the events, they just appear
- The events don’t have consequences on the area, in fact the zone behaves as if an attack isn’t happening
- When failed there are no consequences
- When successful there are no consequences
- Shortly after completion the events happen again making one’s action feel worthless

I have to agree with some of what you’re saying, but disagree with other parts.

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not meant to be the whole game. There is an arcing theme of most of it, however, it’s difficult to see.

The first Sountsun LS was mroe or less a “test” event in my opinion. It showed what was possible, but unfortunately, it was badly implemented, and relatively disliked by a lot of people. It was also a stand-alone event, with nothing tied to it except a still-broken lighthouse in LA.

The whole Flame and Frost LS was not too bad, although there were parts of it that were pretty slow. It’s just that the best parts went away after it was over, and that LS more or less ended after Southsun. Now I only go there for the occasional mat run.

Now we have Clockwork Chaos. It is the culmination of the LS that started with the Aetherblade Pirates and the Zephyr Sanctum. The way they tied in was pretty good, actually, with the pirates showing up first, then the Evon/Erin election, and finally the Queen’s Pavillion, which in turn was ruined by Scarlet and the Clockwork minions.

Taken from a relatively objective point of view, it is a good idea. It’s the implementation that is leaving a lot to be desired.

I think we all have a case of overload. We are at a point now that there are so many achievements, gizmos, and skins that we cannot support more of the same. When Clockwork Chaos ends, we need a bit of a break, and allow us to catch up on other things.

Right now, a brand new player will log in and see that there is so much going on, that they can’t catch up and be competitive with everyone else. They’re hearing things like “Ascended gear” and stories that they missed before they bought the game. I could almost see where they would think that there was no way they could ever catch up to those who have been playing for a year and have all their kitten.

The thing is that in general, I like the IDEA of the living world, just not the pace. I’m overloaded and I think we all need a bit of a break. Even a week or two without any LS at all going on would be nice, just to be able to sit back and take stock of where we are and where to go from here.

I agree, this living world content is absolute garbage. Please stop kidding yourselves, Arena net has had a year to prove themselves but this is just… endless temporary events and stupid parties in Lion’s Arch. I want new quests, personal stories and stuff which continues and doesn’t just last 3 hours then you never hear anything about it ever again.

Maybe it’s time to add some new MAP areas? Okay we got sunset cove or whatever but that place was lame. Maybe some more level 40 – 50 zones? Where more players will go?? And it will be more fun because the enemies won’t just two hit you. Perhaps some new heart quests? Like once you complete the current ones it goes onto another one set by the same NPC? Instead of every kittening time where the NPC says “THANKS A LOT. BYE NOW. HERE’S SOME USELESS COINS.”

I posted this on another thread, but I will repost:
“Living Story is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to this game or any MMO in general. Temporary content destroys any enjoyment I have in games. The truth is I have no time and OCD when it comes to these things. I need to get any new items/recipes/abilities/content that will be gone in two weeks because I simply can’t leave it knowing it will be lost forever. Living story makes it so that I am not able to ever play the game for fun, this is especially true of the most recent Living Story updates. They are TOO GRIND HEAVY, when I bought Guild Wars I was under the impression that I could play a game casually and enjoy the world without being forced to endure periods of boring grinding or frustrating temporary content. Living Story has robbed Guild Wars of everything that made it special. It is no longer a fun game. Guild Wars 2 has become a chore especially since Living Story began to be released every two weeks. In addition to the boredom the pressure to finish it within the time limit when I have no time due to a busy life Living Story is absolutely ruining the economy something that is especially frustrating to me because I am studying Economics and because the Economy is so important to the health of an MMO. I hate playing the game right now and will probably quit soon if Living Story continues the way it is going. The very least A-net can do is make living story release every 4-6 weeks and make it less grindy although in truth they should scrap the idea completely and focus on making good content not trashy filler.
Thanks and I really hope a dev can read this”

In addition to what I have said here I wholeheartedly disagree that LS is not “the whole game”. It takes so long now and is released so long and I have so little time that it is all I do in game now and I hate it. I also fully agree with the fact that Living Story makes NO impact to the actual world. The truth is we would all much rather have permanent quests and stories rather than this horrible temp content.
Thanks

One huge difference between expansions and living story is that expansions expand the game content. Living story does not permanently expand the content.

In theory, the Living Story is a good idea. In execution, however, it’s been terrible: buggy, terribly simplistic storylines, with awful half-developed characters. The bulk of the play content is grinding out 15 of these, or 30 of that, etc.

It has been a farmer’s heaven (e.g. Southsun, and now the Invasions), but why cater to them? Hardcore farmers are satisfied as long as they are farming at the optimal location; and no matter how bad loot drops are, there always will be an optimal location!

Dynamic Events are/were a great new concept, some of them needed more love and overall there needed to be more of them. They needed to be more meaningful, their consequences, rewards more impressive.

Living Story is a great idea. The current pace of release is questionable, but the feature additions and bug fixes that happen along with it are all welcome. However, “Living Story” is essentially what should happen with almost every game created—and it is even expected by the players. Therefore, it will never spiritually replace the tried and true, Expansion.

Considering a piece of content for two weeks, Bazaar, Queen’s Jubilee and the current Clockwork Chaos were definitively worth release. Didn’t play much of Cutthroat but it looked extremely solid. So if they keep the current pace (SAB), I can only agree with OP … the Living Story is worth releasing.

Pure Heart.1456:

Living Story is a great idea. The current pace of release is questionable, but the feature additions and bug fixes that happen along with it are all welcome. However, “Living Story” is essentially what should happen with almost every game created—and it is even expected by the players. Therefore, it will never spiritually replace the tried and true, Expansion.

And yet no other MMO bar Eve has ever really created a living world but merely the next raid to grind. By doing so, it’s not even a massive game anymore but a 5-25-40 man hub game. I’m extremely happy that A.net focusses on the open world for their content, and it sure looks like it’s improving.

Ashabhi.1365:

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

Maybe that’s part of the problem, because I want to take storytelling seriously, as it is one of the main reason why I play games. And he living story elements I’ve seen clash pretty badly with the epic “save this world from the Elder Dragons” theme I bought the game for. It’s been one party after another, oh-so-cool Steampunk pirates, and an out-of-control jerkwad of a teenage brat with godlike superpowers that make her completely untouchable. At best this leaves me cold, at worst it feels like a slap in the face.

It also doesn’t help that the living story takes place in some kind of limbo. There’s basically no interaction between it and the rest of the game. Massive armies of enemies randomly appear out of nowhere, with zero buildup and zero effect on the zones they spawn in. Fanciful balloon docks suddenly exist in random in the enemy-riddled wilderness. Why? Uh, because. Look, just have some shinies. Shinies are all that matters.

Not to mention the complete silence and thus lack of any story involvement of our own characters because voice acting is too expensive for them.

It’s really a terrible way of content delivery. It doesn’t have to be terrible, but as it is, it feels rushed, shallow, disconnected and stressful.

Right now, a brand new player will log in and see that there is so much going on, that they can’t catch up and be competitive with everyone else. They’re hearing things like “Ascended gear” and stories that they missed before they bought the game. I could almost see where they would think that there was no way they could ever catch up to those who have been playing for a year and have all their kitten.

This is a very good point. As a returning player, I definitely

The thing is that in general, I like the IDEA of the living world, just not the pace. I’m overloaded and I think we all need a bit of a break. Even a week or two without any LS at all going on would be nice, just to be able to sit back and take stock of where we are and where to go from here.

This, too. I completely agree that some breaks would be good — especially after and between ridiculously grindy updates as we had this month. If you want to do all the achievements, you’re looking at AT LEAST 13 solid hours of mindless, repetitive grinding. That is very much not what I imagine when I hear the term “living story”!

I also hope very fiercely that future updates will not be the same sort of fodder for antagonistic player behavior. The “competition” for queue slots in the gauntlet, the refusal to res people who died there, the borderline abusive crap you get from certain “farmers” for politely trying to actually get an invasion completed. It’s just ugly and I cannot imagine that Anet didn’t see any of this coming. None of this “builds a community feeling” as they had intended — on the bloody contrary.

Chadramar.8156:

Ashabhi.1365:

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously.

Maybe that’s part of the problem, because I want to take storytelling seriously, as it is one of the main reason why I play games. And he living story elements I’ve seen clash pretty badly with the epic “save this world from the Elder Dragons” theme I bought the game for. It’s been one party after another, oh-so-cool Steampunk pirates, and an out-of-control jerkwad of a teenage brat with godlike superpowers that make her completely untouchable. At best this leaves me cold, at worst it feels like a slap in the face.

You’re playing the wrong genre then. You’ll be far more interested in single player RPGs. MMORPGs almost inevitably have such bland, generic and cliché storylines because they’re easy to digest for massive playerbases.

That’s not really an excuse but sadly a limitation of the genre. Maybe it’ll improve, but even bad RPGs have better stories than good MMOs.

I wouldn’t say they are catering to farmers. They also have had dungeons, mini games of different types including pvp. It also had the gauntlet which was intended to be a challenging solo experience. We had one that catered to jumping puzzle fans.

The current one was a foray into open world LS which was requested by many people on this forum. Many also requested that the rewards be better.

I think that they are experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn’t work well.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of the activities.

My complaint is that it is all rush, rush, rush, and bugs that can’t be fixed because 1) there isn’t enough time to fix them, and 2) it will be over before it could be fixed.

I’m just going to back off living story. If anything requires you complete a certain amount of things that are likely to bug out on you, I won’t even start them anymore. I have better things to do than put up with buggy content that will disappear in 2 weeks anyway.

If you think about the content we have been getting with the Living Story there has been a decent balance (forgoing the fact that it has been bit festival heavy for reasons ANet has given a practical reasoning to).

The story elements themselves are mediocre, but mostly because they have difficulty representing all their lore in-game properly, if you read the short story about Evon for instance he became immediately more likable, however, none of that was referenced inside the game. Same can be said about Scarlet, although there are few references to her short story the most interesting bits are really not represented at all… thus leaving the game character feeling much less fleshed out than what the actual character that they wrote is (although her motivations are still kind of vague but that is obviously intentional for future instances of living story). If they can nail down how to do lore exposition so that no so much of it is let outside of the game, the quality will suddenly improve considerably.

Gameplay wise, GW2 is pretty focused on combat so the kind of content and plots we keep seeing makes sense, if there is nothing for players to fight then what are we supposed to do. Scavenger hunts, like the one for Halloween, are fun, but they are not for everyone same for mini games. SAB is of course the extreme example of what they can do in terms of gameplay, however, that is also the riskiest thing they could do… since content that completely deviates from the normal gameplay can alienate people easily.

I agree that 2-4 weeks for some content does require heavy QA, because once it is live there is no time to necessarily fix the temporary content’s issues fast enough. However, they themselves set the bar that high, if they can’t handle it then they will see the consequences of it and if they do they will change their policies, it makes little sense to state that they are not meeting their standards when we have no idea what their present standards are. If the game does not meet someone’s perceived standards then that is a different matter entirely.

Quality doesn’t matter. The metrics matter. They can have players running around doing tedious “press f” achievements every two weeks and incentivise players to participate in content not because they enjoy it, but because it’s temporary, and that will boost their weekly log in metrics a lot more easily than trying to make top quality content.

A lot of days it feels like making great content is incidental to keeping the players on the hamster wheel. It’s great if it happens and a lot of the devs are striving to do that, but the biggest priority is to time gate things, to create filler content and time sensitive content to keep up that weekly log ins metric.

They’ve put out a lot of content this year but how much of it makes you as excited about the game as you were before launch? How of much of the content this year made you want to tell someone who didn’t play “hey look at this cool thing Guild Wars 2 just released, you should join me”. I think to a certain extent SAB did this (while ironically not being a fundamental part of what an MMO is), but aside from that most of the excitement about this year’s releases was over the quantity, not the quality.

Shiren.9532:

How of much of the content this year made you want to tell someone who didn’t play “hey look at this cool thing Guild Wars 2 just released, you should join me”.

This is a really good question. Friends who started the game together with me at headstart left after a while. Two of them popped back in shortly when the Lost Shores event happened, never to be seen again since. Since then nothing has been added which would make me go and tell them “Hey, have a look at GW2 again, they added this really cool content!”

Living Story has been mainly fluff, mini games and the few meatier bits (like F+F dungeon, gauntlet challenges) are temporary. Calling the huge farm zergs of this months content “players banding together” makes me question the developers insight into their own game. I actually mainly experienced people being too focused on tagging that champion over there to even go ress downed players. Quality content looks different to me, sorry.

Ashabhi.1365:

I have to agree with some of what you’re saying, but disagree with other parts.

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not meant to be the whole game. There is an arcing theme of most of it, however, it’s difficult to see.

At this point LS is whole game. Invasions farming, gauntlet farming…Few days ago Claw of Jormag was up 6 hours without anyone touching it. I finished Maw with 4 other guys, four!!! Similar state can be seen across whole world, except zone where invasion is currently.

kRiza krimos.1637:

Ashabhi.1365:

I have to agree with some of what you’re saying, but disagree with other parts.

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not meant to be the whole game. There is an arcing theme of most of it, however, it’s difficult to see.

At this point LS is whole game. Invasions farming, gauntlet farming…Few days ago Claw of Jormag was up 6 hours without anyone touching it. I finished Maw with 4 other guys, four!!! Similar state can be seen across whole world, except zone where invasion is currently.

People asked for better rewards and more rewarding content, they got that. Now the pendulum will inevitably sway back, because ANet can not allow the economy to hyper-inflate and spin out of control. Presumably they set this up, so that when Ascended weapons came it would offset itself in the end… reducing gold generation with MF changes and increasing TP transactions with ascended mats, thus taking more fees and also liquidating lot of earlier tier crafting materials when new mats are created.

If that is not enough they will simply either make the permanent invasions happen only once in a blue moon or nerf the rewards across the board. Really in the end the point of invasions is, I think, an attempt at changing the PvE gameplay more than it is the rewards (rewards are just something they need to keep/get some people interested imo. right now it is working against them though pirates being too lucrative to portals so the event doesn’t even always run its full course)

I could be wrong but here is my opinion on what’s happened in this first year:

At launch we have a lot of us hardcore Guild Wars fans come in along with many players from several other “grindy” MMOs. I’m sure there were some GW1 veterans who decided to see how fast they could hit lvl 80, but for the most part even they knew there were still many things they could do in the game to have fun.

The vast majority of the “race to 80” group came from those other MMOs, hit the end, and started loudly complaining that GW2 was shallow and had no end-game. ArenaNet saw all of these complaints they didn’t expect to see and thought “Oh no, we gotta add a bunch of repetitive content or we’re going to lose a lot of customers.”, which, for the grind-happy, was mostly true. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone at ArenaNet ever stopped and asked themselves how this content would be received by their core fans. And now here we are with zones of mindless invasion mobs standing around waiting to be farmed into oblivion.

I love this game!!! I’m not going anywhere! This is NOT a whiny “I’m gonna quit!” post. But I do think there have been several missteps lately by ArenaNet all to appease a group of gamers who are all going to move on to the next big thing as soon as it launches. That is the wrong group of gamers to develop content for!

I think just the fact that they have had to say “its not going to be everyone’s cup a tea” to defend the difficulty of the living story content, the content that is supposed to be of high focus and appeal to a broad base is absolutely horrifying.

Not that such things should not exist in the game, I believe they should on a permanent basis not be a kick in the throat for people that don’t have hours to play a day to level and fund the appropriate classes just have the best chance to beat some of these challenges on time.

The biggest thing I think anet needs to do is making the living story simple, and make the challenging stuff and the instances permanent. Just a quick from the view point of someone that has returned after only playing the first month after release, as far as NEW playable content there is only a hand full of fractals, south sun cove map, and whatever the living story happens to be at the time. Players that left in December and after, nothing new to come back to at all. That is just disappointing. Anet has put out all this great content in living story complete with cut-scenes and everything. I think its absolutely ludicrous that they are not using these mini dungeon and story instances as permanent content returning players can go back and complete much like the story and dungeons already in the game. Heck you can even go as far as adding the flame of frost, the south sun, the anther-blade, scarlet’s playhouse and similar future mini dungeons to fractals. How permanent challenge missions? how many people actually got around to doing the t4 candidate trials the way they were intended for the reward they were intended to give?

Anet you don’t need to keep pumping out content every 2 weeks, you just need to have more effective implementation of the content you are already putting out. Have the living story complement the content coming out not be the content itself and players won’t have so much grief and anxiety feeling like they must log on every day and complete things before they just evaporate.

Crise.9401:

kRiza krimos.1637:

Ashabhi.1365:

I have to agree with some of what you’re saying, but disagree with other parts.

The Living Story is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not meant to be the whole game. There is an arcing theme of most of it, however, it’s difficult to see.

At this point LS is whole game. Invasions farming, gauntlet farming…Few days ago Claw of Jormag was up 6 hours without anyone touching it. I finished Maw with 4 other guys, four!!! Similar state can be seen across whole world, except zone where invasion is currently.

People asked for better rewards and more rewarding content, they got that. Now the pendulum will inevitably sway back, because ANet can not allow the economy to hyper-inflate and spin out of control. Presumably they set this up, so that when Ascended weapons came it would offset itself in the end… reducing gold generation with MF changes and increasing TP transactions with ascended mats, thus taking more fees and also liquidating lot of earlier tier crafting materials when new mats are created.

If that is not enough they will simply either make the permanent invasions happen only once in a blue moon or nerf the rewards across the board. Really in the end the point of invasions is, I think, an attempt at changing the PvE gameplay more than it is the rewards (rewards are just something they need to keep/get some people interested imo. right now it is working against them though pirates being too lucrative to portals so the event doesn’t even always run its full course)

It is true that game needs to be better rewarded i agree. But adding one very profitable event is effectivley killing every other aspect of game. There are alot of smaller meta-events and standalone events that should be rewarded better, so people that actually like stories and gameplay behind those events can do them while feeling rewarded, and even encounter other people when they go to do them.

Everything in this thread if dead on. Liadri was the last straw for me, I dont think I’m going to stay on this treadmill to “rush” to complete this grindy content before it’s over anymore.

It’s a pity, the queen’s gauntlet was pretty enjoyable up until her and certain things like the flame and frost storyline and the aetherblades dungeon did stick out as pretty good content that is not permanent.

I think many are burned out from feeling like they “have” to log in when they don’t want to, or in my case when I don’t have time to and be put into a position of having to rush everything before it gets taken away. This has already gotten old. I’m done.

I can only say for myself.
In the begining I was really protecting LS, asking my friends to give Anet some time. They will settle things eventually. But as OP said – it’s time to face some facts. What I got from LS so far?
Some shinnies – granted
2 week chore list – yup
Leaving friends – oh, yeah, 2 aside, my whole guild vanished
Grindfest – some like it, some don’t. It gets me bored (note that farming and grinding are fluent definitions and no one has to agree on what they mean to me… and LS for me is in some 80-90% made out of pointless farm)
Stories – yep. 5 minutes of poorly written not living to my lowest expectation, but yeah, we’ve got some stories. And those characters. Kiel is my favorite – she’s like a cartoon from a low budget production, that supposed to keep kids occupied in waiting line to the dentist office.

So yeah. I like the concept – I really do. But I can force myself to like execution. Main problem for me is fact, that LS is “the THING”. There is nothing else to GW2 now, than LS. Because it’s temporary. It sucked playerbase from other, higher quality things in game. So yeah. That’s it.
Some time ago, one guy on this forum, throw me a tart comment saying “maybe this game is not for you, so do yourself a favor and stop playing”. While I believe in constructive criticism (while I’m still surly in mine XD) not elitism, I thought – “hey! Maybe he’s right?!”. I took a week pause from GW2. Consider it a big step, because I’m a guy with inner completionist deamon inside, who has every daily, monthly PvE and PvP alike. And almost every achievement in LS, because after beating “trials” (cutthroat politics), I was one of those “lucky” guys who had bug and didn’t get achiv for it. So yeah – I heard Anet fixed it later, but then I was on delegation and my net connection didn’t allow me to do anything more than daily (and it was with lot of pain…). So now, after a week, my job send me to some faaar corner of the universe and I thought “hey – it’s a sign”. So I took second week of pit-stop. And yesterday, when I finally come back and saw all this clockwork thingies and organized, bored to death zergtrain, another chore list full of nonachiving achivements… all I could think and say was “nah”. And I turned off the game. I still have around 12 hours before new update hit, to catch whatever I can from this one, but why? Guy who send me home was right. It’s not a game for me anymore. I wanned Guild Wars that was sequel to a GW1. I wanned game that was painted before my eyes in manifesto. That’s why I bought GW2, that’s why I supported Anet. That’s what I didn’t get.

Samson.1345:

I posted this on another thread, but I will repost:
“Living Story is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to this game or any MMO in general. Temporary content destroys any enjoyment I have in games. The truth is I have no time and OCD when it comes to these things. I need to get any new items/recipes/abilities/content that will be gone in two weeks because I simply can’t leave it knowing it will be lost forever. Living story makes it so that I am not able to ever play the game for fun, this is especially true of the most recent Living Story updates. They are TOO GRIND HEAVY, when I bought Guild Wars I was under the impression that I could play a game casually and enjoy the world without being forced to endure periods of boring grinding or frustrating temporary content. Living Story has robbed Guild Wars of everything that made it special. It is no longer a fun game. Guild Wars 2 has become a chore especially since Living Story began to be released every two weeks. In addition to the boredom the pressure to finish it within the time limit when I have no time due to a busy life Living Story is absolutely ruining the economy something that is especially frustrating to me because I am studying Economics and because the Economy is so important to the health of an MMO. I hate playing the game right now and will probably quit soon if Living Story continues the way it is going. The very least A-net can do is make living story release every 4-6 weeks and make it less grindy although in truth they should scrap the idea completely and focus on making good content not trashy filler.
Thanks and I really hope a dev can read this”

In addition to what I have said here I wholeheartedly disagree that LS is not “the whole game”. It takes so long now and is released so long and I have so little time that it is all I do in game now and I hate it. I also fully agree with the fact that Living Story makes NO impact to the actual world. The truth is we would all much rather have permanent quests and stories rather than this horrible temp content.
Thanks

I agree with you 100%. This game has gone to 100% grinning the complete opposite of what Guild Wars 2 promised to do when released a year ago. If you are listening, Arenanet, please get rid of these every 2 weeks LS contents all together. I think a lot of players still do it because many of them are completionists and do not want to miss out the contents. This can only go so far as more and more players started to get frustrated because they can no longer catch up with the grinning due to work schedule, life, school, etc. That is when I am predicting some players will start going rage quit. I remember playing the original GW for a few years without feeling having to grind and played casually. GW2 however, only a year into it and I am literally feeling this game has becomes Grind Wars. New contents should be something of higher quality that are much polished/refined and should be permanent not temporary contents and say released once per quarter of the year. In my opinion if this LS still go into the same path it is going, I am afraid my interest in this game will also be lost. To me this is not the solution to keep players interested for years to come, is doing the opposite.

- The events don’t have consequences on the area, in fact the zone behaves as if an attack isn’t happening

i was quite pleased to watch Scarlet’s portal minions tear through NPCs found in the zone i was in. The portal was there with a Veteran and he and his friends just ate through a variety of mobs, including yellow named mobs that are neutral, such as deer. It was actually an immersive moment where i found myself wanting to save the creatures.

Wizzlock.3492:

I can only say for myself.
In the begining I was really protecting LS, asking my friends to give Anet some time. They will settle things eventually. But as OP said – it’s time to face some facts. What I got from LS so far?
Some shinnies – granted
2 week chore list – yup
Leaving friends – oh, yeah, 2 aside, my whole guild vanished
Grindfest – some like it, some don’t. It gets me bored (note that farming and grinding are fluent definitions and no one has to agree on what they mean to me… and LS for me is in some 80-90% made out of pointless farm)
Stories – yep. 5 minutes of poorly written not living to my lowest expectation, but yeah, we’ve got some stories. And those characters. Kiel is my favorite – she’s like a cartoon from a low budget production, that supposed to keep kids occupied in waiting line to the dentist office.

So yeah. I like the concept – I really do. But I can force myself to like execution. Main problem for me is fact, that LS is “the THING”. There is nothing else to GW2 now, than LS. Because it’s temporary. It sucked playerbase from other, higher quality things in game. So yeah. That’s it.
Some time ago, one guy on this forum, throw me a tart comment saying “maybe this game is not for you, so do yourself a favor and stop playing”. While I believe in constructive criticism (while I’m still surly in mine XD) not elitism, I thought – “hey! Maybe he’s right?!”. I took a week pause from GW2. Consider it a big step, because I’m a guy with inner completionist deamon inside, who has every daily, monthly PvE and PvP alike. And almost every achievement in LS, because after beating “trials” (cutthroat politics), I was one of those “lucky” guys who had bug and didn’t get achiv for it. So yeah – I heard Anet fixed it later, but then I was on delegation and my net connection didn’t allow me to do anything more than daily (and it was with lot of pain…). So now, after a week, my job send me to some faaar corner of the universe and I thought “hey – it’s a sign”. So I took second week of pit-stop. And yesterday, when I finally come back and saw all this clockwork thingies and organized, bored to death zergtrain, another chore list full of nonachiving achivements… all I could think and say was “nah”. And I turned off the game. I still have around 12 hours before new update hit, to catch whatever I can from this one, but why? Guy who send me home was right. It’s not a game for me anymore. I wanned Guild Wars that was sequel to a GW1. I wanned game that was painted before my eyes in manifesto. That’s why I bought GW2, that’s why I supported Anet. That’s what I didn’t get.

Yep, same thing here.
My first guild died. Then my second one. I joined a third that’s made up of really hardcore gw2 fans and they’re still clinging to the game, but 1/3rd of the active players has stopped playing (me included) because of the last 3 living story parts. ZERG ZERG ZERG. Sorry, if I can’t play a game my way anymore because of mindless kittens, then I quit.

Lord Kuru.3685:

In theory, the Living Story is a good idea. In execution, however, it’s been terrible: buggy, terribly simplistic storylines, with awful half-developed characters. The bulk of the play content is grinding out 15 of these, or 30 of that, etc.

I think this is the second time I’ve quoted you in separate threads…

The concept behind the living story is fantastic, and ongoing story that doesn’t wait 2 years before releasing a new expansion. Things certainly do feel more alive in GW2 than any other MMO I’ve played. BUT the story is terrible, the characters boring, the villains pathetic and underdeveloped, the way they split LS content between this website and the game is stupid.

They promised that all the stories would come to a head last patch but did they? southsun, Molten alliance – what do these stories have to do with Scarlet?

When I first heard the writers will be taking over the living story I felt this would be a step in the right direction. I couldn’t of been more wrong. This is a high fantasy setting with gods, dragons, magic… all these social driven story lines of elections, contracts, trade agreements are terribly boring. The latest invasion with some megalomaniac nut-case leaves no answers, no developments…. I give up..

seems like gw2 caters to the no lifers what about the casual gamers, each event last less than a month and then its another boring click, lag fest again and again, hey cant u guys think of something that motivates players, all I see are gold farm 24/7 from the start of this crap……..

as it is gw2 is just another pile of dung aka D3….

This forum is excellent. I feel the same way. My big question is: How do we actually get Anet to listen. They MAY read our posts if we’re lucky. But they really need a giant homing pigeon to fly into their office and poop on the floor wearing a sign that says: HEY ANET, YOUR LS IS AWFUL. MASSIVE PEOPLE ARE LEAVING THE GAME. STOP IT. I have loved this game, but I’m done.

As a person who plays this game for fun and not for the acheives or amazing loot I have only had fun with a small amount of the content in the living story updates. The 2 dungeons they added earlier this year were really fun, so was southsun survival, and the gauntlet but after thinking really long(lol it blocked H a….r d) on what i have enjoyed in the past year that’s it. I have also yet to see or play anything that has made me talk to my friends and say “this is something you will enjoy” it’s always “it has some good in it but I don’t like X, Y, and Z”. Would just like them to take it slow with the next living story updates work on actual content not filler. Work on making dynamic events meaningful(actually chain over extended periods of time having the player watch the world slowly change as they get involved something that should be done to dynamic events around the world at least the big ones)and give meaning to success and failures. I have never felt that gw2’s world has been alive(i personally feel dynamic events are just looping quests) even with the addition of the living story. The living story just feels like a cartoon having some episodes branch and go together but most of the time after each update the world is ok and nobody really cares that something crazy just happened out there that would shake the entire foundation of the world around them.

Seriously what happened to that dragon invasion in the open world during the beta weekend THAT was fun. They need to start doing more things like that and if the entire zone does get taken over then i think their should be something big that happens to that zone. Not what happens with scarlet “O you failed well we didn’t even realize this zone was under attack o well the zone looks fine to me”.

Also as a huge WvW fan the living story has left me out for a long time and Anet themselves have yet to realize the potential WvW has and the profit they could make from it with skins alone. Things that I thought would happen at least a year later. This just kinda makes me think Anet doesn’t either have a lot of time to focus on these things or the majority of their resources are going towards temporary content I enjoy very little.(when i say potential btw i mean things that change up how WvW as a whole is played like the upcoming BL change not changes that enforce the current way WvW is played like WvW abilities I’d actually prefer to not get so many of these for a while as they focus on the meat of WvW and balancing these abilities)

The Living Story content, vs the claim made by Anet about how the Living Story is developed and presented is discouraging. The claim ‘was’ that gw2 ‘is’ the most active mmo in the presentation of ‘new content’ by offering it up bi-weekly. Ok this sounds great. Time to play again.

So I get involved in the Scarlet invasions. Finish the Vorpp achievement and then everything is taken away before I get a chance to experience the Fun House. This is similar to the other content ‘added?’ in other releases. THIS IS NOT ADDING NEW CONTENT. It is temporary stuff to do and often the end result is either half filled achievements (also taken away) or plainly, the content is removed.

I understand the invasions had to be temporary due to the resources required. But this type of content generally is a precursor to a permanent addition of substantial new content. In gw2’s case, it’s a bi-weekly series of events that lead basically to nothing. Same game as before. I didn’t get to participate in some of the other living story content and now it represents nothing except memories from those who did.

The enhancements, like changing the magic find, are great to have occur frequently. But YOUR NOT PROVIDING ANY NEW CONTENT. Stop fooling yourselves and your players.

Announce an expansion, but do something to set gw2 apart. Don’t just add some zones, another race, and/or a couple of dungeons. Come up with something as exciting as the dynamic event system, or changing the face of leveling as you did in the original release.

The super fun adventure was a waste of time. It has nothing to do with the game. And all content from biweekly releases is taken away. Your NOT ADDING ANYTHING.

Incoming long Rant on the State of the Game (longer than one post apparently):

One thing that really gets me is the lack of new SMALL GROUP pve content.

SAB is either solo or 5-man… but it becomes hilariously harder with more group members as if they were pointing you towards solo play with it… just like the Candidate Trials being easier solo.

Dungeons are a joke in their current state. Can’t do them at the level they were intended for because they are brokenly balanced around level 80 5-man groups in full exotics. If a dungeon was meant to take 30 minutes, it should take that long no matter what your level because of down leveling… but this is not always the case.

Part of this is player mentality though. Everyone wants to get the dungeon done as fast as possible because they just want the rewards. A majority of dungeons have large numbers of monsters you can skip instead of kill. What if there were extra rewards for clearing the entire dungeon instead of just speed running it?

Suggestion: have another mode called HARD for level 80’s and leave the story/explorable modes be balanced around the level the dungeon was intended for.

Another thing that really bakes my brain is how NEARLY EVERYTHING worth getting in this game REQUIRES FARMING of some form or another and then they ELIMINATE all the chances at doing just that!

You want people to make legendaries? Don’t make them so time consuming to make! Harder than other stuff, for sure. But the FARMING involved in making a legendary as it currently is seems counter intuitive to your attempt to remove farming from the game.

Most legendaries on the Trading Post are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 gold on average. Based on an average gem to gold exchange rate of 3.5 gold per 100 gems, that equates to about $535 roughly for the cheaper ones! How insane is that? And precursors drop so infrequently… I’ve decided that whent the game gives me a precursor, that is when I’ll start thinking about working towards a legendary. And why do you keep the materials limited to 250 per stack in the bank? Especially when some legendaries require multiple stacks of the same item?

Also, what good is crafting if you CAN’T SELL what you MAKE? Account bound craftable items are sometimes ok… if they are trivial or aesthetic only such as the personal portal device which has very little use, but a whole TIER of WEAPONS you can’t trade? MORE FARMING in a NO FARMING game… Doesn’t make sense.

On another topic, WvW is a joke in higher tiers. Gather a group of 30+ and roam around flipping everything just to have if flipped again by the opposing zerg in 5 minutes. No one digs in to defend because you can’t. A 10-man group has no defense against a large zerg EVEN IN A TOWER and that is what a tower is supposed to be for!

And I don’t mean elitest trained veteran WvW players… I mean new to moderate experience players, which makes up the majority of the playerbase. You don’t really need any experience in WvW to join a huge zerg and roll things. But to defend a keep from being flipped by that zerg you have to have patience, siege, practice, teamwork, experience, and lots of luck. Only to lose that keep immediately when your team logs off because you couldn’t stay awake anymore.

I’m not saying keeps should be impenetrable, but they should definitely be easier to defend by smaller forces, even in the face of not having supply camps. A Siege should be a siege… it shouldn’t take all of 5 minutes (10-15 on a fully fortified tower).

How about letting players DEPOSIT supply into a tower/keep supply depot as well as take? And by the same token, supply should be reset upon switching maps in WvW. Taking the waypoint should reset your supply to 5 unless it is already less than that. Want more? Walk it, there are camps near almost anywhere.

I have read that there will be a new “League” match-up system for WvW soon… if it is handled fairly, great. If not, things will only get worse..

I also think there should be a penalty for world hopping. “Oh. My server is losing in WvW all the time… instead of trying to get more players or train better ones, I think I’ll convince my guild to go join a bigger server.” seems to be a common problem.

Perhaps, if you were prohibited from joining WvW for a short time after more than one server transfer within a short period of time, it would cut down on the no server loyalty thing. Not too long, but not too short. When transferring server more than once within a six month period, somewhere between two weeks and one month would probably be sufficient. It would make people consider if it is worth it to go without WvW to change servers.

Buffs and conditions limited to 5 targets in a WvW where you can run into groups of 30+ players is just insignificant. If you get hit with a bomb, grenade, napalm, or biological weapon with a radius of 1 mile… it doesn’t just NOT HIT YOU because there were 5 other people in the same radius. If you want it to hit a small number of people, make the TARGET RING or RADIUS smaller, don’t limit the number of targets.

One reason people group up in WvW is to try and get buffs to transfer to the majority of the group. Another reason is due to the 5 target limit on player AoE hits. If I’m in a 5 man group, the max number of individual hits we can cause if we all AoE is 25 individual hits. Now some of those may overlap onto the same target which makes that number go down. So figure 13 targets for an example. Now figure in that is one hit with a cooldown somewhere between 6 and 40 seconds on average before it can happen again… how long would that take to kill another group using group targeted skills? Sounds like single target…

5 vs. 5 even with AoE is one hit on each target per character. 5 vs. 10 is 0.5 targets hit, and so on down the line. Basically, if the opposing force has even 5 more players than yours, you lose a large percentage of your equality… just one five man group difference and bam, its decidedly unbalanced (again not counting siege).

What if there were some TRUE AoE and some LIMITED AoE? Say weapon skills like Mark of Blood were only 5 target max, but Epidemic would be as useful as the name sounds and could hit whoever was in range? (albeit with a change in cooldown or whatever to make it more fair) If there were only 5 targets, both skills have the same effect. But, the more targets, the more appealing the True AoE skill would become.

Then people would have to decide if it was a good time to use a bigger hitting skill or save it for later instead of face roll spamming everything on their bar in a big zerg. At that point, a Zerg wouldn’t be a profitable way to run things anymore because you’d never know if that 5 or 10 man group was packing big group busting skills or not.

“Oh, but then any small group could take whatever they wanted…” Not true. Those unrestricted AoE’s wouldn’t be more effective against a smaller group, only against a larger one. If you had even numbers the stakes would be even. If you have 10 and they have 5, the stakes would be slightly more even than they are now, but not horribly out of balance. If you had 30 and they had 15, the fight would still be almost as overwhelming as it is now unless you know how to split your groups up do minimize damage from AoE.

Tactics would actually come into play again instead of Strength in numbers, I have more so I win. This would make fights between a servers with disproportionate populations that play WvW somewhat more fair. Numbers would no longer guarantee domination of the map or a win. Smaller groups would again be able to hold a tower or keep with proper siege and skill.

Tyrecian.3456:

i was quite pleased to watch Scarlet’s portal minions tear through NPCs found in the zone i was in. The portal was there with a Veteran and he and his friends just ate through a variety of mobs, including yellow named mobs that are neutral, such as deer. It was actually an immersive moment where i found myself wanting to save the creatures.

What you saw were the enemies using AOE attacks on players that happened to hit the local wildlife. Thus, the local wildlife attacked the invaders. It wasn’t done as a goal of the encounter nor to develop connection to the zone. It was done through chance.

Regardless, I hardly consider it very immersive or zone changing for invading forces to sit there, not performing any objective whatsoever, and merely waiting for players to come by to engage them before they take any action. Even if they intentionally attacked the local wildlife in the area I wouldn’t consider this any of the above, as the zone will still offer the same collection events or defend this objective events despite a more threatening foe attacking the area. The zone needs to react to these invasions as they are supposed to be threatening. The way it reacts right now is to carry on business as usual and maybe some bunnies die accidentally during the invasion.

While you might be “quite pleased” with considering happenstance attacks on the wildlife zone changing, which is really what we’re talking about here; the people at Arena Net who produced the manifesto video are definitely not pleased by this, if we are to take their criticisms against other MMOs seriously. As a reminder, you can watch their criticisms here (1:25 mark):

SirMoogie.9263:

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. I fell in love with the dynamic event system at release as the chaining ones usually tell a little story about the zone you’re in. I signed on to Guild Wars 2 based on the manifesto and its promises of player actions affecting the world, and I feel the dynamic events at release mostly accomplish this; some to a lesser extent than others.

However, I can’t say this about the dynamic events added in Scarlet’s Invasion, Queen’s Pavillion, Secret of Southsun, or even Flame and Frost (their best release in my opinion, despite how long it took them to complete it). These events were so disconnected from the zones they occurred in. There was no lead up, such as NPCs discussing the events and then performing some action that triggers a dynamic event; once the events started they didn’t affect the zones as the enemies just sit there waiting to be killed; the enemies aren’t actually performing the actions the dynamic event says they are; when the event concludes there are no effects on the world. Essentially, the zones as a whole act as if these events are not going on.

These events do not meet the quality of other events in the world and they definitely are not what was promised in the manifesto. If the two-week release schedule is causing content to be released that is substandard, it needs to be reevaluated.

I got to agree. The Aetherblades are not related to the area that they appear from at all. A much better LS would be Centaurs attacking Ascalon Settlement for 4 weeks. This makes much more sense because the Centaurs actually do have a base there.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Gendarran_Fields_map.jpg

I find the LS format to be very creative and fun however. it does feel somewhat lacking.
It is like tidbits and tidbits of content, I must rather have the meat of the content. An entire expansion pack wouldn’t be so bad. I’d pay for it with gems if I have to.