Guild Wars 2

*I have a real issue with the lore and history in current Living Story

I like that world has it’s history but for now you tend to serve us a tiny bits of informations and getting few lines every month is like reading a book 2 pages a month.

You forget what is it about after 3-6 months. There should be some more feeling to it and it should be more compressed. So we can explore something and get some lore that is like finished and then we can add 1 story to another and make some bigger picture we explore.

Some can say we get that now, but we don’t. We don’t get any real informations.
Just like with molten alliance we newer got any information why it started and why are they still with scarlet. We only know that it happened due her influence.
AetherBlade pirates – We don’t even know what does that name stand for, we don’t know why they work with scarlet, we don’t know anything about her and her plans.

It’s great for developer so they can do anything with scarlet cause they didn’t defined good base for her character, she is an enigma so she can do whatever.

And it it really boring and frustrating. I gave almost up on getting into things and interest in the living story due to how we get story now.
Example: When I herd that Scarlet knows something about Caithie past I limitedly stopped myself to care for that information at all. Why? Because it probably will be like mentioned again 5+ months so getting excited about it of the story will only hurt us. All those little details in the story that was supposed to be interesting is really only boring and frustrating thanks to how much information we get and what all that leads to nothing really.

Now it feels like we are getting like 10 min show with big red info “to be continued next month or maybe later”. It’s no fun at least for me and my guildies.
We really cared for the story but you can’t like that.

I really hope instead of boring story something will finally come from dragons, cause they and they correlation to human gods and all gods in total is way more interesting than some enigma character that can be used in any patch cause she really can do everything. She is insane, right? So she can (even if she is not).

Dragons Story – Another thing the another thing that pains me.
Dragons that were supposed to attack everyone waked up a now they really do nothing. I mean we can see how big the world is in chantry of secrets so Tyria is really small and we have like 40% of Tyrias map, so YES, they can work somewhere else, but they were supposed to be in here. They were supposed to be expanding their lands and gather armies.
I really hopped something would happen anywhere: in Dragonbash… Nothing… Shaterer was not intimidated by seeing his image in the sky… Zephyr Sanctum came with the information that they are caring the will of Glint and I really hopped we will see Crystal Dragon soon…. Maybe some expedition directed to Crystal Desert… Nope that wont happen either, nothing significant wont happen…

Dragons just don’t care that we killed Zaithan (if we did it due the fight was not finished but I don’t care, he is dead for me until they revamp it and finish it properly).
We just defended against one six elder dragons (real strong enemy that can get land mases form the oceans floor) and that’s it, Another dragons don’t care, they have their own lives and if we are becoming stronger and are able to kill one of the that doesn’t bother them at all.

I would say not all of the story is this bad.
Dragonbash story was fun, election was fun. We played for 2 weeks or more and something changed, we got to know some NPCs stories, we got some outcome and something changed. It wasn’t some never ending story that we get server most of the time…

To sum things up.
I want to ask authors so they will start making whole stories, that change the world, not some enigmas that will lure us for months and make us feel like a dog ruining after our own tail. I’m really sick of feeling like whatever I do where is just nothing that changes, and I feel that after countless events around scarlet that really make me sick, cause it’s like: “lets to a living story with dungeon revamp”, “OK, how do we tie that to LS?”, “Scarlet was there, it will be good explanation.”

I’m sorry if I hurt someones feelings

Please let me know what do you think about GW2 Living Story?

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

That doesn’t mean that big things can’t happen or won’t happen…but the living story was never supposed to further the main story or be the main story. If you expect it to, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

…

But you do have to log in to follow it. If you’re busy doing other things, in-game or out, you miss it. Forever. That’s crappy design.

So…last LS thing I did was the Karka Queen. Where do I go in-game to experience all that content I missed?

Obsidian.1328:

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

…

But you do have to log in to follow it. If you’re busy doing other things, in-game or out, you miss it. Forever. That’s crappy design.

So…last LS thing I did was the Karka Queen. Where do I go in-game to experience all that content I missed?

You can’t and you don’t have any NPC that tell the story about what you missed.

Also its not closed whole part like election that you would know "There wan an election and the outcome was that Elen Kiel is now in Capitan’s Council in LA ".

Its all parted whole story that should be way more encapsulated instead we get tens of hints that if you are lucky will ever be of any value.

Thats the real issue.
You can’t go back, you can’t get enough information and there is almost no outcome.
we get multiple threads that will never be fully finished in any way.

That frustrates people i know the most.
When you start finish something and then bound some stories on outcomes of finished stories, not partly started issues…

I must agree with everything you said. In last update the whole story that we got was few sentences of dialog. And that’s it… What’s even worst is that we didn’t get any information from it. Just a promise of information. The only cool story was published on the website.

I really don’t know how they didn’t realized before launch that there was nothing in the game that can keep players engaged after completing personal story and killing Zaihtan. And that it’s impossible for them to put additional stories in the game with the systems that they currently have (instances and cutscenes) because it takes to much development time. Or maybe they assumed that farming for legendary is everything players need to be happy? If so then here is a news flash for you: it’s not!

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

That doesn’t mean that big things can’t happen or won’t happen…but the living story was never supposed to further the main story or be the main story. If you expect it to, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Actually they did make it so that folks will have to log in.

That’s the entire point. They’re “spacing the story out” and will “tell it to us later” all these loose ends they have.

The sad thing, the living story is supposed to be the main story. But that takes a back seat to the fact that the living story is made to keep people logged on as much as physically possible.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

That doesn’t mean that big things can’t happen or won’t happen…but the living story was never supposed to further the main story or be the main story. If you expect it to, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Actually they did make it so that folks will have to log in.

That’s the entire point. They’re “spacing the story out” and will “tell it to us later” all these loose ends they have.

The sad thing, the living story is supposed to be the main story. But that takes a back seat to the fact that the living story is made to keep people logged on as much as physically possible.

This. Completely. I’ve stopped caring about it all together. At least the next one doesn’t involve that invasive weed, but she’ll be back eventually. (sighs)

you also have to remember anet has written themselves to a dead end with the personal story. Most of it takes place fighting undead and saving orr to fight the dragon. If they move forward then the undead shouldn’t be there, orr would be safer, the story wouldn’t make sense. Thats what they have to fix in order to really push the world forward. sadly the easiest thing to do is instance orr to ppl doing the story and once complete they get to see the new orr, where all the 80’s are, but that will fracture the community and make ppl feel they need to complete that huge long personal story with all the alts just to get to the new orr.

TLDR: So they have to think of a way to push the world forward without mucking the personal story for the new player base,

Orr is a problem, thats really true, but you forget that there are new maps, new areas that can be added.

We can go above Frostgeorge, and try conquering and where Jormag can be a ruler, just like Orr, but instead in living story, when changes can be made easily without touching personal story.

Look at it this way, each 1-2 month Pact can set foot into new area (new map) bringing fight closer and closer to Jormag.

It can be done rather easily lore and map wise.
Idea: We go and conquer new area. Pact starts at the one point and after 2 weeks we get 1 additional base on the map. 2nd base after next 2 weeks or month (totally outside of LS). After that we can build big canon to go through a mountain on our path or build a ship that will allow us to cross big lake to another map.
So we can get another map after like 2 months and it would still have a very nice base, It would really take 1 month preparations and LS can go on with other stories in the mean time, going back to this Jormag expansion every few months when pack needs heroes help with the war.

Vayne.8563:

The idea of the living story is that it’s a living story…Anet didn’t want to make it so people have to log in to follow the story. It was an intentional design decision so that people who came and went wouldn’t feel lost.

That doesn’t mean that big things can’t happen or won’t happen…but the living story was never supposed to further the main story or be the main story. If you expect it to, you’re bound to be disappointed.

If there were expansions planned then I would agree with you. But as yet it seems like the main story is what is going on in the living story so that’s really all we can go by,
I think I said in another post. it’s like if return of the jedi showed us a few clips of the new death star being built and then spent the rest of the movie(instead of half of it) having our heroes play with ewoks, forgetting all about this big metal moon thing in orbit.

The pacing just feels.. wrong. If there is a main story forming, then we need reminding of it. If we are going after other dragons then they need to start making more of an impact. In short, remind us there is a moon sized death star above us that’s slowly being completed while we play with Ewoks.

The other main issue I have with the living story(and one which makes me totally disengage from it and focus on just doing the content) is that it has no story. It’s just a middle and a bit later on middle.

Every LS pretty much presses the reset button on things, there is no insight into characters motivations, past or dreams. For example Elen Kiel. All of a sudden she’s running for the LA council. Not once when we met her or previously did she say something like ‘you know I could do a lot of good if only I had more resources’

Eir never once mentions she has a son, or even that she’s hiding something that could be a son.

If Scarlet is so unique and graduated from all Asuran colleges you’d think she’d get a mention. Esp being a non Asura.

and so on and so on.

In order to be effective as a story previously referenced stuff from the core game needs to be brought in. Chekov’s guns that have been placed on walls need to be bought into play. Whereas now we get guns appearing from mid air, characters who’s motivations and history there is no reference to outside of that content all of which makes the LS look like a 10 year olds made up story.

In short, the encapsulated nature of the LS is actually detracting from the LS.. If players missed some LS content, then at least retcon it into the core game so there is some context.

I’m sure it’s not the writers fault. We know they can write good material. I just think they are not given the time or the scope or do so. It just seems to me that they are writing the LS more like a cheap day time soap than a breaking bad.