Guild Wars 2

So I’ve seen a lot of negative feedback regarding the living world and it occurred to me that it must be at least a little disheartening if you’re the person at Anet reading it all. So I just wanted to take a moment to say that I have really really REALLY enjoyed the living world. I think the two week update schedule is great, especially with more permanent content. I think it’s wonderful that you are Shifting towards more lasting consequences. I like that the upcoming election will give players a real chance to affect the world, even if our candidate doesn’t win. I’ve enjoyed every update so far and have loved watching the small things that were wrong disappear in favor of better things. Anyways. That’s my happy opinion. I hope it brightens someone’s day over there in Bellevue.
PS you guys have an awesome office, I visited about a month ago and it was just sweet

Thank you for writing this!

I share your opinion. There is a lot of things that were less than perfect in the last chapters, but some of the recent changes show that ANet is trying out different things, slowly getting rid of all the annoyances.
And the Bazaar chapter is the best chapter so far.

This is why I prefer the Living World concept over expansions – you can steadily improve things.

Dra Keln.2015:

(…)I like that the upcoming election will give players a real chance to affect the world, even if our candidate doesn’t win. (…)

I would like an awnser from Anet dev or some external info about the elected NPC. If players in my server vote for Kiel, Evon can win becouse other *Worlds*also vonting in a global way, in my opinion there is already an elected NPC coded to win due storyline, i just hope im wrong.

There is no living story its just straight forward content with one ending.
When Anet reaches the level of living story endings are acording due server actions, that is a living world.

Anet has done a great job so far and apart from most seemingly, I understand that this concept needs time. It’s a almost completely new concept and idea to bring forth content, another example they gave is Runescape. Whilst not perfect, it still lives on and is fully alive today because of their continuous new content.

I love the Living Story and what it brings, I have nothing against the temporary content very much, as long as it expands on the permanent department. To me, the Living Story is only getting better and better and that clearly shows that Anet is gaining experience from something they once had no idea of.

Aeolus@ With that said, whilst I doubt there’s a code to whom wins and voting doesn’t matter, there’s enough evidence that shows that we get different kind of content. Kinda like saying “Which content do you want see us release first?” which is a smart way.

About living story not truly being living cause players don’t really affect it, I sorta agree and don’t. It’s hard to make it too personal, cause that just splits it up. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to make something server based unless you’ve planned the different outcomes in advance. Even then, the ending and what continues might not go back to it. It’s a lot of wasted work in my opinion which is expected in single player games, not online games. In essence, it’s not truly “living”, but compared to what other MMOs offers, it makes the world of Tyria a lot more progressing and living.

Yet I do hope we will see some sort of similar things to the election in the future as Anet progresses.

@Aeolus. That’d actually make it much less living and player affected. If they went with your suggestion that’d mean all future content would have to be designed twice once for servers with gnash blade, once for servers with Kiel. What this would mean in reality would be that content would have to be 99% the same with minor dialogue variations for each candidate. If its an overall choice, then we could have the next content tale is somewhere entirely different depending on who was chosen. But that’s getting off topic so lets not go there, k?

The Living Story is finally picking up steam and I love it!
I never played GW1 but I heard so many things about it like that it has a cool story and all (I’m a sucker for story and lore) and that was sorely missing in GW2.

It’s awesome to see that it’s getting better every 2 weeks!
Keep going, ArenaNet!

Payadopa.4706:

The Living Story is finally picking up steam and I love it!
I never played GW1 but I heard so many things about it like that it has a cool story and all (I’m a sucker for story and lore) and that was sorely missing in GW2.

It’s awesome to see that it’s getting better every 2 weeks!
Keep going, ArenaNet!

The lore in 2 is somewhat deeper when you have played 1, but for anything interesting you have to do some serious digging. The Bazaar specifically has some potential secrets that are pretty awesome. If you want to find some interesting, somewhat hidden lore, check out wooden potatoes on youtube, he likes to dig into a lot of it.

Yeah, I’ve seen a few of his (pretty awesome) videos, but that is kind of the problem.
Why isn’t this stuff in-game?

Giving NPCs more things to say than two generic sentences would be a good start, as most converstaions feel pointless.

Not enough focus on wvw improvements…..just my observation of course.

I love parts of it, am neutral on parts of it, and hate parts of it.

I enjoy new things added every two weeks or month…but hate temporary and rushed for time result due to it not staying in.

Another thing I don’t like is for example the current Bazaar quartz node reward requirements. You have basically two rewards from achievements. One you get from jp like sky crystals. I managed to get that one. The other, more important quartz node reward has many achievements available and I’ve gotten 15 out of the 16 required.

But now I’m faced with ones left that aren’t due to time invested or perseverance, but are based on certain types of player skills and luck or being able to find a group to go with you. I hope I can get a fractal group together because then that one should be doable.

I’d rather they separate these things out and give separate rewards for similar tasks. Have the jp give a reward and achievement. Have the minigames have their own reward and achievement. Have the quartz crystal node not tied to jp and minigame winning. If for example I could finish this up by just trying over and over and over, ok I would do that. But you have to win.

Sadly, I love the new area. I love the looks, the activities, pretty much everything about it. I love the race. That is soured by the fact that I can’t by persistence finish that last achievement.

I also don’t like not knowing what will never come back, what will show back up, when it will show back up, etc.

Katz.5143:

But now I’m faced with ones left that aren’t due to time invested or perseverance, but are based on certain types of player skills and luck or being able to find a group to go with you. I hope I can get a fractal group together because then that one should be doable.

I’d rather they separate these things out and give separate rewards for similar tasks. Have the jp give a reward and achievement. Have the minigames have their own reward and achievement. Have the quartz crystal node not tied to jp and minigame winning. If for example I could finish this up by just trying over and over and over, ok I would do that. But you have to win.

My roommate got the node the day before yesterday. He has neither won Sanctum Sprint, gotten the kite meta-achieve, done the fractals kite, done the OS kite nor touched Belcher’s Bluff.

Personally, I really like the new content and having content delivered on a regular basis is nice since there is always something fresh.

But the temporary content is definitely a problem for me. I feel pressured to play to not miss content, like the old days of WoW raiding (and I am getting too old for that). I feel like I cannot put the game down for a few weeks or a month to play something else, do something, go on a trip with the kids… without feeling I missed something in game. The main reason I liked GW1 and, until Living Story, GW2, is the fact that I could put it down from time to time and not miss anything. This is no longer the case and that takes a lot of enjoyment out of it.

Temporary content also has a major drawback and that is the Story. I like the story and the way it is told and I believe Arena Net is doing an awesome job on it. But designing temporary content means that you cannot build on previous work since players might not have played it. Or if you do, players feel lost. For example, when I see Aetherblades striking in Labyrinthine Cliffs, I do not understand exactly who they are since I did miss that content; I did not play much during that part and when I did, I felt like starting a new character. I kind of feel cheated since I cannot enjoy the content as much and I feel frustrated by that.

Do not get me wrong, the new content is awesome and the sky crystal hunt was a blast! I just do not like where this is going.