Guild Wars 2

My issue with the living world is that it’s all over the place. Instead of multiple updates that chain to each other we have very disconnected updates.

It doesn’t matter how wonderful internal roadmap you have when for players they all feel separate instances that seem to have no connection whatsoever. There’s no continuity. It doesn’t feel like the living story is building towards… well… anything really.

- Holiday Events -

Please do not even try to marry these to real living story and I’ve to say this year’s Halloween is a big disappointment. They should be distractions that buy time for you to further develop living story.

As far as I can tell Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash and Queen’s Jubilee all fall to this category.

- Lost Shores -

Lost shores was actually the first major living story content. It earned you guys a lot flack and for a good reason:

a) it was buggy and laggy
b) poorly informed (never knew what would happen on a specific date and time)
c) the content didn’t come in sufficient quantities
d) the new zone had no purpose after the event and even now very little

I don’t believe at all that majority of people complained because some content was staggered. People complained because it happened only on specific time and you missed rewards. Great potential. Badly executed. Instead of building on the zone you forgot it until the secret of southsun.

- Flame and Frost -

Flame and Frost introduced a fun new dungeon. The problem is that the dungeon was temporary. Of all the F&F content it would have made most sense to leave that dungeon behind.

Flame and Frost also initially lacked stuff to do which was a major complaint as well but it had the continuity thing going – until it flopped in the end and was forgotten.

- Secret of Southsun & Last Stand of Southsun -

You actually dedicated two updates for the content so I got my hopes up. I liked the story in fact. Maybe this was getting somewhere? Maybe this would be a path to the dragon that drove away Karka? Ok. So it wasn’t.

This should have been direct continuation of the Lost Shores. Not something that happens almost a year later. It should have also carried the story to some significant end. Instead of a great dungeon like in flame & frost we had a very small instance and even that is gone now. Again the end flopped.

At least it left the Karka Queen event behind but you missed an opportunity to create a new dungeon location and to actually anchor the story to some existing zone.

- Sky Pirates of Tyria, Bazaar of the Four Winds & Cutthroat Politics -

Ok. You switched gears again. Instead of carrying on with the lost shores you suddenly introduced a new enemy group, a new villain, pulled out a political campaign which has not produced anything concrete, and introduced a new temporary zone.

I could have gotten behind introducing merely Bazaar. The zone was beautiful and jumping there was fun. Still even if you had left it behind it would have been abandoned the moment vendors had disappeared.

You should have left behind the zone & vendors. There’s still a huge excess of materials so having a permanent location where you can exchange it for stuff would be great.

Converting stacks of mats to rare crafting materials would have been great addition. Even better if you could trade excess materials to any skin from older living world updates. Add a world event there and people would visit the zone daily. This is what Bazaar should have been about and would have resulted into something permanent.

- Other updates and lost focus -

After this I think you lost focus. You introduced yet another villain, massive zerg farms, and now I’m completely lost about what you are trying to tell me?

After Clockworks we got this Tower of Nightmares and the weird alliance that is likely to be gone again soon only to be replaced with another villain group.

Please focus. Don’t jump from one spot to another. I’m more puzzled than ever what the heck you are actually trying to do with the living story?

- What I’d like to see -

Stick to one story and one continuity. For example what happens in Southsun could have been a continuity.

Unwrap the content slowly over the two weeks update with cutscenes, instances and new world events. At no point should players lose access to achievements or any rewards. People should be able to replay the cut scenes and instances. Events should clminate to a “peak” event. The peak itself should leave behind something permanent.

I envision something like this:
1. Opening scene (like we have now) and investigation stuff
2. Some world events start popping up on the zone and persist for a few days
3. New world events get chained off of those further carrying the story
4. Second scene around first weekend, something significant in the story unwraps
5. “Peaks” to something permanent around mid of the second week

Weekends are the best spots for “hotspots” but any event associated with the “peak” absolutely should not happen only within a single day!

Try to pace so that people have both combat and investigative stuff in beginning and middle of the event. Not unlike the 10 minutes investigation and then zerg zerg zerg for two weeks.

Make a good use of the progress bar. You remember the little bar, right? The one that among other things showed in last Halloween how close the mad king’s approach is.

I don’t mind if within two week period we have to visit other zones as long as there is a key zone and enemy group that is the anchor for the story. Something we keep returning to in every update until some significant change happens.

Take temporary breaks with things like holiday events, SAB and even introduce things like the Bazaar but try to keep the primary focus on the anchor zone and villain group. I can’t stress how frustrating current design is.

- Southsun Story -

As mentioned you already have permanent zone to tell the story. An anchor. All updates should somehow involve this anchor. All traces should lead back to there.

Southsun story should have been:

1. Karka appear and assault (like it was but less buggy, no time gated reward content)

2. Elements from flame and frost as detour within two weeks period to explain how refugees ended there which culminates but primary focus would have been the refugee trouble of the secret of southsun. Mostly investigative stuff but also some zone events. This is where Karka Queen should have appeared as permanent content.

3. Further investigation and zone events lead to Canachs lair which should have been another piece of permanent content. What was learned from lair would point towards dragon threat and reason why Karka appeared.

4. Bazaar appears but at the same time there are reports of “underwater dragon” sighting on southsun. Content is split between bazaar and southsun. Elections start.

5. Krait and more Karka appear in southsun. Elections ongoing but primary focus is pulled back to southsun with candidate trials being open both in bazaar and southsun. Culminates to dragon liutenant making a visit to southsun with both Ellen and Evon being involved heavily in it.

6. Sanctum leaves but the zone itself becomes permanent with vendors you can try excess junk for rare mats and skins from previous events. Hunt for Dragon liutenant’s underwater lair starts in southsun and eventually culminates to fight against it. LT gets destroyed but the lair remains. Temporarily closed but back as part of future updates turning into yet another piece of permanent content.

7. This is carried on until something significant happens such as opening of new underwater zone. Expansion. New race unlocked etc. Then switch focus because now people are used to the cove and it has two permanent dungeons AND karka queen.

This is what it should have been anyway.

+1
And that would be logical.
Instead of that, they have to create Villainy “Master of convenience” Sue to tie all the loose ends together. And fail miserably on top of that.

+1 from me as well.
- When the Lost Shores arrived I thought it was great. Yes, there were bugs and such, but so much happened. I was in Lion’s Arch when we were suddenly under attack by Karka’s. I had seen the trailer and thought that Bubbles might be involved as well later on (to my disappointment, it was not). From the Lost Shores after finally slaying the Ancient Karka, which was a frustrating fight that took some hours, I walked away with two, count ‘em, TWO precursors, so I thought that "Hey, it was buggy, there’s much to learn from this. First attempts are never perfect, but this is kinda nice." and had my hopes up.
- It felt special since it wasn’t usual to recieve two week updates like now, and a lot happened during a shorter amount of time.

Now, what you just wrote up there about the Secrets of Southsun, and how it should’ve been, I must say: We agree with each other 100%.
- I thought they would lead the story onwards and introduce the next dragon (Bubbles!) or something like that. I had thought that Flame & Frost, back when it started out, would introduce some lore with Jormag and Primordus.
- It’s been a year and we’ve only slain Zhaitan. Sure, I get that one does not simply slay an Elder Dragon, but at this pace, with Mordremoth, Jormag, Primordus, Kralkatorrik and Bubbles left, we’re looking at another 7 and a half year before we get Elona and Cantha.

This is turning into a rant, but I think that what you are suggesting should be taken into account at ANet, because using continuity, cliff hangers and such keeps players interested in the Living Story. And having something permanent or some permanent changes to the world is definitely something they should look into (I think they promised us permanent changes along with the Living Story, in fact… as long as the permanent changes are not “Scarlet” and poorly written and executed LS events. – Whatever happened to “when it’s ready”?).

I’ve missed a chunk of the Living Story over the past few months, but Halloween got me back into achievement-chasing (although Halloween gave me nothing outside of a single mini and a mask skin, but that’s a different discussion). So now I’m trying to get involved in the Living Story again, after having nothing to do with it for quite some time.

Unfortunately, trying to do the Living Story feels like I’m trying to follow along with a story that’s actively trying to alienate me. Some in-game background on past events and continuity between storylines would be a blessing.

Current “living” story. Revamp most of a noob zone. Populate it with an improbable alliance of two factions that hate everyone and are known to be dangerous to everyone.

And then.. have the Seraph, in a large fort with siege weapons, not care. Have an Asuran outpost within sight of the tower, not care. Have a Sylvari outpost on the shore of the lake, not care. Have a Hylek settlement on the very border of the tower, not care. Have a large, HUMAN Bandit fortress..not care. Have all but the bit players in this poorly done play… not care.

Have the locals going on blissfully with their own existing content unaware or apathetic of anything new.

It seems they are smarter than we are.

And then.. to top it off, make the new Villains “not care” about anything but being pawns in yet another “mua haa haa” Team Rocket scenario. They also fail to care about anything but their narrowly scripted role in this fiasco.

This isn’t “living”. It is stilted, wooden and unbelievable.

I agree that they need to put a bit of effort into making the changes believable. A bit of npc dialogue, replacing the most inappropriate events with fitting ones and voila, the whole region appears to react to the intrusion. Another thing they could work into their schedule with only 1 monthly update /hint /hint

one thing that bothers me the most about the living story is that the achievements are the biggest focus, it makes the living story more a zerg full of achievement hunters rather then a player base that plays along a story.
another thing is that, because of the whole commander thing, we have zergs of up to 30+ players destroying the immersion of the game.
i am personally just around casual and role-player, i love to play trough a story and enjoy the immersion of it but at the same time don’t like to be hasted.

they first need to find a way to make the story the main focus, removing the focus on achievements and rebuilding how DE’s work before they start changing the living story.
last i wanted to try a new technique i had a player killing my target, i said kindly to say away for a bit to test something out and all i get is “but i am doing this for an achievement”.

yes ppl, this is how this community is right now, we were promised a game for the community but instead they made a game for the rotten and greedy.
no story line to focus on, no breathing world but a rotten place full of boring stuff and generic junk.

I’d just like to see more content geared toward the elder dragons. That’s what this game was supposed to be kinda about, was it not?

First of all, the LS should not focus on only one thing, but should affect a lot of zones. Some invasions with Tyria’s Joker, something new at Southsun, and a new pirates attack, all in the same update. The world doesn’t change one part at a time, do you know?

Second, some of the LS should be permanent. Sure, the invasions ended, but the pirates attack changed the attacked town, and the new boss at Southsun is there to stay.

And third, yes, we want more dragons. We want to be heroes. Give us the chance of doing something heroic.

Morbridae.8607:

First of all, the LS should not focus on only one thing, but should affect a lot of zones. Some invasions with Tyria’s Joker, something new at Southsun, and a new pirates attack, all in the same update. The world doesn’t change one part at a time, do you know?

I prefer to have major focus on a single anchor zone as that way you can easily also update that zone with permanent content over multiple updates. For example by now Southsun should have significant amount of permanent content – including a dungeon. That hasn’t materialized.

However as I mentioned things should happen on other zones as well but the key is that every update should somehow use the anchor zone for something until the story comes into conclusion. See my second post for a sample.

op i think your right and until they do along that line its going to be grind for your achievements and dont care about it attitude you see all the time