Guild Wars 2

Is it just me or am I the only one who looks back over the story and thinks it’s really good? It’s the way they brought it all together but it was spread over too long of a period.

If you like the writings of ten year old school children, than the living story is right up your alley.

One good thing, at this point, is that its almost over.

it’s a great story but yeah definitely spread out over too long it was better when it was coming out every 4 weeks so they could balance the updates better for instance edge of the mists had very little to do but alot of neat story and escape from Lions arch is fun but doesn’t add enough story whereas flame and frost updates or zephyr sanctum added things to do people to talk to and places to go all at once.

hopefully they can balance season 2 updates better but i do really like the story. (aside from the ham fisted fractal tie in)

It may just be you. I can say at this point that the story itself hasn’t been as bad once Anet took into account the community’s input. The presentation however has been, and continues to be sloppy.

Events are connected through retroactively added plot conveniences instead of gradually built connections and exposition. This continues to be the case to the day.

Saint.5647:

It may just be you. I can say at this point that the story itself hasn’t been as bad once Anet took into account the community’s input. The presentation however has been, and continues to be sloppy.

Events are connected through retroactively added plot conveniences instead of gradually built connections and exposition. This continues to be the case to the day.

Where are you getting this information? Specifically, why are you so sure that ANet changed the story in response to community input? I remember reading something where an ANet writer said they knew the whole season 1 story before the first patch was released.

Well, the assertions about the presentation and exposition are my opinion; an opinion I have developed by being a part of the LS/LW patch by patch, since the first day.

My ‘information’ is community information. It’s not mine, but rather common knowledge for anyone interested in reading on the direction of the game.

“The feedback that ArenaNet has gotten from players has gone a long way toward shaping the upcoming releases, Johanson said, and will continue to do so.”
-http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/01/14/exclusive-preview-of-guild-wars-2s-origin-of-madness-release/

HoBo Tron is another example of a community driven decision by Anet. He was not initially as focal a character but was fleshed out and developed in response to a good community reaction.

I think saying that the whole Season was planned is the smart PR statement to make. I hope that it is indeed a PR statement and that they have better writers on board than the ones who penned this story. I believe that they’ve had a good concept, an idea for a conclusion, and have fumbled the ball on execution in between.

Regardless, we know Anet is willing to change their game plan (e.g. Manifesto). Hopefully the second season shows us what they can really do.

Saint.5647:

I think saying that the whole Season was planned is the smart PR statement to make. I hope that it is indeed a PR statement and that they have better writers on board than the ones who penned this story. I believe that they’ve had a good concept, an idea for a conclusion, and have fumbled the ball on execution in between.

I’ve just made this point elsewhere, but I believe the main difficulty with writing the LW is that chapters are published before the end is even written, and a lot of writers will struggle with trying to keep the story focused and coherent under that paradigm. For that reason, they obviously had to have the arc planned out, even if not all the details were filled in.

I think they’re getting better, and I don’t think it’s fair to blame it all on the writers. There was a comment from a dev a few weeks ago along the lines that the recent increase in story-related NPC dialogue in the open world was a result of them giving tools and training to another team within ANet that had the capacity to add these dialogues.

I’ll see if I can find the quote somewhere, but it illustrates the difficulty with getting story content into the game when you have deadlines and only so many resources.

The story might be good in the end (we still don’t know all details and how it all ends), but it was shrouded in unbreakable mystery for too long. ANet has themselves admitted this and thus we have hope season 2 will have more “mid-season” finales instead of piling all the answers to the end of the season.

not great but i think they are improving. i think they learned but have a way to go. a lot more revealing so people get a somewhat understanding of where it was headed might have helped. all her alliances why do they still follow her after she used is one question id like answered. it seemed to me she used them to build upon each but why she maintain control over all of them. im sorry but it felt at end of frost and flame the molten alliance realized they were being used so if they realized why keep following her. if she attacked la with the aetherblade and watchwork it might have made me feel better saying she only had hold of those two in fist whereas she just used the rest to get her toxin and drill shes using

why was tequalt strengthened in ls and they said it was connected. might still be answered but i doubt they got enough time to do that

i agree season two has a lot more potential due to what anet has learned and i think season two will be miles better with experience but season one wasnt that good with a few parts i liked doing but the story overall wasnt that good

It’s indeed good.. that it’s almost over.

I’m going to echo the sentiment that at least it’s almost over. I understand the LS idea was a bit of an experiment, and that’s fine. As long as they never do something this bad again.

thank god it’s almost over, so tired living story as a whole. Temporary content is bad content no matter what it is.

The storytelling is amazingly terrible. It’s as if they’re just going update by update and making it up as they go along.

That’s why they had to blow up Lion’s Arch: the fallback when you can’t right a compelling story is to blow something up. And the worse your story is, the more important what you blow up has to be (hence Lion’s Arch).

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If you like the writings of ten year old school children, than the living story is right up your alley.

One good thing, at this point, is that its almost over.

Not sure, but I think my three year old cousin could write a better story than this unliving rubbish – if he could write at all, of course. Personal story was already pretty bad after the first quarter, but the Unliving Story has fallen below even that low level by orders of magnitude. Season 1 was a total failure – not only was the story incredibly stupid, it also prevented the addition of any meaningful permanent content that deserved this designation. After one year, the world of Tyria has not advanced any step further in terms of content – that’s a real achievement!

I see it more as an experiment, which they have been trying to improve over the course of the whole arc, which is very good. I’m sure that they have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t with the LS. But yes, it was dragged on for too long, and the story could have been better. For the next arc, I hope that they 1. frequently include new permanent gameplay content and fixes (new weapons and skills, guild halls and wars, QoL updates, just things to the core structure that make the gameplay itself more entertaining, and more new permanent areas and dungeons), 2. make a story based on the original storyline and expand on it, instead of tacking on a new random villain that feels irrelevant to the gw universe, and 3. don’t drag it out as much as they have, I just lose track of everything when it’s this slow!

escape from LA has loads of people to talk to and lore, check out all the refugee camps.

It definitely got better towards the end, from the Tower of Nightmares onwards the content was great and I cared more about the characters they focused on (wasnt too bothered about rox and braham). The world felt bigger from those updates.

Speaking of world getting bigger, will there be a decision made on an expansion after this LS arc concludes?

i think they did good on all the side heros rox kasmeer herotron and that bunch were likeable but scarlet wasnt that good. i still dont believe she could accomplish what she did and a lot of explainations or how she got the diferent faction to help doesnt seem plausible to me and why after she got what she got from them why did they continue to work for her. scarlets resources seeemed unlimited and ok so it must have been a dragon whispering in her mind to drive her but i think at the end if she would have had just the aetherblade and watchworks helping her attack la i might have believed that more then all the factions contining to follow her commands.

I thought it was slow to progress to anything that we could piece together. I thought a lot of it felt very temporary and disconnected from the big picture of the world. I thought the first couple of updates were atrocious but then they gradually started figuring out what they were doing with LS and made it better as time went on. Culminating in the attack on Lion’s Arch, we see how it all gets pieced together and in that sense the story as a whole now makes perfect sense. Ans as such I can appreciate it.

In all honestly it was just a conduit to something much bigger, and I think we are going to see that. My hope in that sense is either an expansion of some sort, or a much more permanent story, much more incorporated lore, not to mention new areas to explore.

I had to login and speak my mind:

Living Story, as far as story is concerned, was really, really bad. Horrendous.
I have to agree with one poster that said that a 3 year old could have written a better story.

I am amazed that the higher-ups at ANET gave the green light to such a horrible story.
The NCPs weren’t so bad, some were even good (Rox, Taimi).

But the actual pacing of the story? It’s like a text-book example of how NOT to do a story.
Scarlet was extremely bad as a main-antagonist, a Plant-ex-Machina, a Mary-Sue, with super-powers, super-inteligence, do-all, know-it-all, without any reasons, any explanations.

And the motivations, the “how” and “why”? Nobody understands them.
Why did she do it? How? What were her motivations?

TL,DR: horrendous story. Me, my friends, my guild mates were all saying “I wouldn’t recomend the LS to anyone”.

My greastest fear is that ANET has no clue about how badly the LS was delivered and paced, and that the same mistakes will keep coming on Season 2.

The story behind the Living Story was downright awful, yes. Some of that can be blamed on this being something new for them to try, and there’s not many examples of such story telling in an MMO to take as an example. So, good on them for trying something new, and I could tell that they did learn a few things.

I can also tell that they didn’t learn a few other things they should have.

Going forward, I think they need to view each LS update as two parts. Story, and stuff to do.

Story
Story is where the main plot is. If it’s going to become important, then it has to be here. It also has to be easy to access. No putting it up someplace outside of the game, no putting it behind dungeons or difficult boss fights. This is the plot that holds everything together, they have to make it as easy as possible for everyone to experience it. Because without the plot, everything else just falls apart into a mindless series of “random” and meaningless events. Solo missions and cut scenes will need to be a big part of this, and it’s possible that it may be best done with a series of 3-5 solo missions strung together one after the other (Personal Story style) to advance the plot in some updates.

Any rewards that say “I was there” need to go here.

Stuff to do
Dungeons, big boss fights, jumping puzzles, and anything else that takes time, resources, or skill to access needs to go here. Important plot points and character development should NEVER go here, unless it then moves into the Story part in the next update. (Example: A dungeon is put in where an important artifact is found. Next update, someone in the story section pulls out the artifact and says “This was found when we raided the beast’s lair, and I’ve had the Priory take a look at it”, and it goes on from there.) You can use this to chase a villain out of their lair in one update, and then in the next update’s story you can corner them and deal with them.

Any rewards that say “I was there and I KICKED KITTEN!” need to go here.