Guild Wars 2

bestest post

THIS IS A GOOD POST.
Sorry, I got excited and caps’d.

Adding to 14: The LS assumes your character both is and isn’t there, so if you show up at the tail end, everyone acts like they know you despite you not being a part of previous events. It’s awkward, especially for an MMO that’s otherwise so casual friendly. Who are these people? What’s happening?

Removing the player character from the story doesn’t change the story at all. That’s how forgotten they are. And that’s just not good Video Game Writing.

I don’t want the LS to be written like a TV show, I want the LS to be written like a Dungeon and Dragons campaign where the focus is cool stuff I do. The linearity might have to be forced because it’s a coded MMO, but good DMs can hide that from their players.

But I only complain because I’m invested and I want to enjoy things more than I already do.

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1- The story inside the video game.

2- Solutions and conclusions regarding The Pact and the Personal Story and their impact on the Living Story and the open world.

3- This one is up to disccussion because player’s feelings are crossed, but:
The interaction of the player with NPCs in the different situations. Should we get more or less involment? Should we all be The Great Commander of The Pact or should we be useful heroes who hold no name but witness it all?

IMHO.

Also, thanks for the reply.

Randulf.7614:

Was a bit small to read, but #9 stands out for me as a major bugbear. It’s a flaw in so many films and TV series these days as well.

TVTropes calls this the Idiot Ball.

I’m a bit unhappy when my enemies carry the Idiot Ball. Like installing portals to the important secret base right inside lion’s arch, and giving keys to your leutnants down there. I gladly jump at the opportunity, but it makes the enemies less believable.

I’m really unhappy when my allies carry the Idiot Ball. “Hey Scarlet, just give me a minute here. I’ll finish you as soon as I’m done smacking Rox for abandoning her mission over a broken leg! I’d also smack Marjory for moving close to you instead of letting me snipe your eye with my longbow, but I doubt she’d notice while she’s dead.”
It kinda ruined the final sequence for me.

But if you want to make me really angry, hand the Idiot Ball to my character. The moment Scarlet revealed herself, I knew I should’ve gathered intelligence about her. In Rata Sum’s Archives. In my Order’s headquarters. From the last breaths of the lackeys I killed. I should’ve talked to whoever invented the Watchknights, figuring out how they could’ve been captured. I also knew about the attack against Lion’s Arch since visiting the Secret Lair, but wasn’t allowed to notify anyone – leaving it for Marjory and Kasmeer to discover in a later patch, but even then I couldn’t act on that information, leaving LA defenseless.

Seeing my character lobotomized by a story writer just hurts.

Mainly what I hated most about Scarlet is that she popped up out of nowhere and was cheesy as hell as a cartoon villain.

You should’ve started with Ceara helping us out in some random event. Having like a gentle shy personality. Having some threats where she would help us with her high intelligence to provide solutions. Slightly over time becoming more corrupt, players and game characters alike wondering if she’s alright and trying to find different means of helping her. While Ceara getting worse and eventually spouting out comments in situations that would make the game characters uncomfortable.

Later on, starting to commit crimes. The heroes knowing how gentle she is, not believing the rumors, they seek out to confront her to see what is actually going on.
From this point you were to notice that Ceara is slightly becoming more abrupt in her ways of thinking and ideals. Coming up with absurd ideas and crazy dreams.

From there you can easily mold her up the way you want till the point where she becomes Scarlet Briar and still having the suspense and the important factor of the player relating to her. While this may still be kind of stereotyping, good friend turns evil. It’s still tons better than just randomly dropping a super villain out of nowhere.

1. Make us feel that our characters are important again.

2. Stop storytelling outside of the game, i.e. forums, site, facebook, whatever.

3. Do not forget about Personal Story in the Living World.

I totally agree with the OP and for me the most important point is #13.
Put everything into the game and explain new terms IN THE GAME
I had to read outstanding websites and the wiki to find out what ley lines mean for example. The end in LS1 had some really beautiful cinematic cutscenes.

Edit: corrected some misspellings

Hey, Bobby, thanks for stopping in. For an idea, look at this quote by John Scalzi.

“This is what happens when the Narrative takes over. Things quit making sense. The laws of physics take a coffee break. People stop thinking logically and start thinking dramatically.”
— John Scalzi, “Redshirts”

Having the Captain’s Council ignore a city-sized airship on their doorstep was dramatic, having them ignore Marjory and Kasmeer’s warnings about Scarlet’s attack is dramatic. This resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people for the sake of drama rather than logic. Restoring the Captain’s Council to power without any criminal charges for negligent mass homicide is drama. Do you see where this is going?

Also, my chief complaint is time. ANet takes fifteen months to do what Star Trek Online can do in six months, and STO can bang out two seasons of a multi-chapter story arc in that time. The problem I saw is that the writing team thought they were writing a book, when video game narrative structure doesn’t resemble book structure, or at least a good book.

I do commend you for putting more effort into characterization, such as Marjory and Taimi. Now give them a story and a plot that doesn’t underserve them.

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience.

The game as it was released is perfect. I think you guys just need to stay grounded and and stop developing new technology and simply use what you have.

New tech is not always a good thing since it can bring a lot of unforeseen problems and technical difficulties.

The stories of Catha and Elona in GW1 has more substance and better character building and heroic player character role than the Season 1 Living story in the same time span.

The difference? GW1 used the same tech it already have and spent more time developing the story than making flashy things.

Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Exactly. Priority should be focused on story telling, character building, plot developing rather than developing new techs.

Just because George Lucas used new techs in the Star Wars Episode 4 doesn’t mean the story of the New Hope improves. Just compare Episode 4 to Episode 1. New techs doesn’t make great story.

@BobbyStein

“Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?”

1. Hire new writers. I’ve seen more compelling storytelling in a Woodenpotatoes video than anything I’ve seen in developer interviews or in-game through the LS.

2. Stop budgeting story for the sake of technical data in each release. If a developer tells the writers that ‘you are allotted x number of words’ per release, that developer needs to find a new job.

3. Stop telling the story outside of the game. All those web short stories and external developer interviews that explain the motivations of the characters and outline general plot details….they all need to stop. If you can’t tell your story exclusively in-game then you don’t really have a story at all….just disassociated chapters that force the customer on an extra-game scavenger hunt.

Top three for me

1) Recognition of who the player character is. The commander of the Pact should be fairly well known at this point. I understand that Lion’s Arch affairs and Scarlet were not the Pact’s business, but I felt like the world saw me as some wandering lady who happened to be where the action was. After the events of the personal story, it would be nice to have some weight in the world.

2) One of the points in the original post was about henchmen and lieutenants, and I could not agree more. I think that there were some wonderful opportunities for characters leading the various Scarlet alliances, but we saw very little in that regard.

3) There were far too many mysteries that went unexplained for far too long. Keeping the major motivation for the villain a secret can work, but not for something that is delivered over 15 months. In addition, too many things are still unexplained even after the ending. For example, if the reason for the flame legion to follow Scarlet ever came up, it was not very evident in the game itself.

1. Get the Hero Voice actors back in the recording studio and record some new dialogue. I am sick of being MUTE.

2. Devote the majority of your effort to stories that begin, middle, and end in 3 month blocks. 6 parts is plenty of time to tell meaningful stories and keeps us from bogging down when a story fails to resonate. If you have another mega-story to tell, lay some proper ground work in the smaller stories before launching it.

3. Idiot ball: put it in a box and then bury the box. Characters can and should make mistakes, but lingering and recurring gross incompetence lessens everyone. There is no glory in beating stupid enemies, and the is no joy in being made to act like a fool because the plot is too thin to get by without it. e.g. the Invasion of Lion’s Arch would have been much more frightening if instead of the Captain’s Council being made up of de-cerebrate mouth-breathers we’d been told the city was going on double watches and citizens had been advised to stay in their homes. That despite their best preparation Scarlet rolled over the city anyway instead of her doing so in the face of no preparations…

BobbyStein.2315:

What are your top three requests?

1. Bring back Jennifer Hale to voice my female sylvari (and all other player character voice actors, if you can spare them)! This coencides with the point made in the OP of having the player character take centerstage. The mute protagonist isn’t as much fun as other games make it out to be.

2. Get to the point of the plot quickly. Don’t play “wait and see” for over 10 months. Give us a clear understanding of what the Season is going to be about from the get-go.

3. Any story given on the website or social media should be told in-game first/simultaneously. For example, Ceara should have been in the game prior to Flame and Frost at Hoelbrak, the Black Citadel, and finally Rata Sum to coincide with the What Scarlet Saw webstory. Finally, she appears as Scarlet Briar and the players go “Wait, she looks like that one NPC!” Shock and awe and boom, dramatic story telling through an MMO medium. Remember that your playerbase is very observant to changes not listed in patch notes. They found Kasmeer and Majory in Kessex Hills long before the Tower of Nightmare patch was even announced.

1. No storytelling outside the game and do not make up new stories while the ones that are currently in the game are just on hold. (hey we still got 3 more dragons, they do nothing for a year and a half and we let crazy scarlet wake another one up!). Not necesarily has to be one of the other dragons, there is so much lore to build upon in the game.

2. The pact and orders, I mean these are huge organizations in the world and they are practically doing nothing, apart from deliviring cannon flodder in events. We need ore involvement from these orders if you go around world changing events like with scarlet. If for example you were to build on triad of evil alliance (nightmare court, inquest bandits), this should not necesarily include the great orders, but should have strong involvement from groups such as peacemakers etc.

3. Don’t wait until the last few episodes to answer all questions/mysteries.

Noteworthy, stuff like the captains council won’t listen when you warn them, don’t do that again. The hero that saved your kitten multiple times, that solved a murder of your own, the savior of this world that has been ‘fighting’ a great evil for a while already as well as other characters that have become well known tell you disaster will strike. Hell even one members of the captains council itself said so, yea lets ignore all that we know better (rest of council), not cool. I mean after knowing about that huge pupper they actually think they can handle it?

Kalarchis.8635:

Shut up and take my +1

THIS times all the +1 I’m allowed to give.

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. More permanent content. A friend of mine pretty much stopped playing GW2 although she loved it dearly, because she hates feeling pressured to do a certain bit of content in 2 weeks or else it’s gone forever.
Myself, I also missed out on the past 2-3 months of living story because I had to study for exams (and still do ^^). As many students, I have phases where I can play rather excessively, and then phases where I can barely play at all. It doesn’t feel great when this makes you miss out on important content. I didn’t see the destruction of Lion’s Arch, I couldn’t fight Scarlet, now all I can do is wade through the ruins of LA, and feeling like I missed out on so much that is now gone forever.

I can only imagine the amount of time, effort and heart blood that goes into each Living Story update. So I beg you: don’t just throw them away! Of course the Living Story has to move on in order to feel alive, but don’t just remove the old content from the game. Give us an option to play through older content. How about an Asura time machine that lets us travel to and relive older Living Story releases?

This would have so many positive effects: it would give players who couldn’t play at the time give a chance to experience that content. Players who consider returning to the game might feel a lot more inclined to do so if they could play through 1,5+ years of living story content upon returning, instead of returning and feeling like they missed out on everything. And it would forever store and treasure all those updates you guys have worked on.

… okay, that was a very long point 1, since I feel very strongly about this so my other 2 are:

2. More individual choices in the Living Story. I very much liked the idea of making choices in character creation (like choosing a college for my Asura, or a favorite god for my Human) and I liked how those choices mattered in the first 30 levels. I did not like how most of the rest of the Personal Story felt “on rails”. And I dislike the same thing about the Living Story: it’s quite one dimensional.

It makes almost no difference which character I play a Living Story update on. There are no choices. It would feel so awesome if my brute Norn Warrior could do things differently than my charming Asura Mesmer. Of course, in the end the story would have to converge somehow, but it would be amazing if we had a choice in the process.

It would also give us an incentive to experience an update on more than one character. One example of this that I LOVE is how Taimi talks differently to us when we’re an Asura, or how Marjory accidentally insulted my Sylvari in the Dead End’s tavern. That was a tiny example, but felt really cool.

… also, it would be great if those previously unused character creation choices (like the Human God, or the mentor for Asura) could play a role at some point.

3. More Taimi. All the Taimi. Such cute. Many feels. Much intelligent. Wow. <3

My only regret is that I have but one +1 to give to this post.

I absolutely agree with Shriketalon’s concerns and suggestions. My 3 points:

1 – PLEASE make those characters deeper. Scarlet was like a jammed cd-player repeating repeating repeating. Well at least she was still better than Trehearne… everything’s better than Trehearne – he was as flat as a skating rink, shallow as a puddle on that rink and stiff as Scarlet’s cold corpse. I have never seen such a sissy-boy in my entire life and I would absloutely NOT follow him to the battlefield. I wouldn’t actually follow him anywhere… He was a curse of the PS and he should be, idk, changed, improved or whatever, not to scare off the new players.. creepy!
Uhhh, sorry for that!

2 – More interaction with the player during LS so he/she actually feels involved in the ongoing story and not only in reward-item chase. Up until today most of the time I felt like an observer of some kind only switching to hired muscle when the dirty work needed to be done and cerainly not a part of the team. Also no credit for earlier achievements such as e.g. widely mentioned Pact Commander.

3 – Let the Guild Wars 2 universe be more consistent and consequent. This also involves the fact that there is so much interesting content which is actually connected to the lore and history of the world and could be made into something big. Think of that.

I am being influenced by Shriektalon’s list but that’s all good and well because there is finally someone who adressed my suffering in a diplomatic way for which I am grateful.

I can’t upvote or plus this or like or whatever this enough.

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. Show us new characters earlier in the story line to allow us and you guys to build depth for them, allow them to grow, and give them more connections to the players. These past 3 months the way the LS characters (braham, timini, etc) are interacting with one another should have been done 2-3 months after the start of the living story. It makes them seem so much more alive and interesting.

2. Utilizing already ingame things. Allied and enemy factions, environments, mechanics, technology, etc. Everything about Scarlet was new, and I personally hated that. I didn’t like fighting a new faction every other month when you guys had tons of enemies in the game already. I didn’t like everything Scarlet did was because she was a genius and had a super secret technological process. I’m all for surprises, but the excuse for everything new piece of equipment she invented or came up with was because she was a genius >.>. Got a little tiring after while. Then you have all the factions in the game just ignoring everything she does. I mean she sprouted a gigantic toxic flower that destroyed local wild life and created a new race of krait, she started invading entire zones with massive armies, she created a gigantic robot/UFO, she attacked the Queens Jubilee and almost kidnapped her on top of putting countless nobles lives at risk, she killed her mentor/professor, etc. The list goes on and on. What did all the factions in the game do? Nothing. They just blew everything off. I would have loved to see 2-3 peacemaker hunters going after scarlet (with names and character development of course, side characters) cause she murdered her mentor and what not. I would have loved to see the seraph getting involved more (she did attack them and all, killed tons civilians). I would have loved to see the Pact get involved some more. Even if she didn’t directly say she was with dragons at teh start; the Pact should have been worried about having a super genius that was borderline toppling entire nations/armies months before the big finale. I mean thats a huge enemy on your flank against enemies; you don’t want that. Then you have the wardens. The pale tree sees that someone from HER is causing all this destruction. You’d think a few wyld hunts would atleast come and help; at the very least help with the mending of kessex hills. So basically the Seraph, Peacmakers, Wyld hunts, and the Pact should have been involved a lot more. You get the gist of this point.

3. Less none stop battles. I would have loved more scenes and instances like during these last few months in dead ends bar where you just explore lore. I mean the main story was basically Cut Scene > gignatic battle >cut scene > gigantic battle > custcene > gigantic battle. None stop for almost a year and a half. Having story parts where players have to investigate stuff or do small battles or lore based things are fine. It doesn’t have to just be cutscenes and zerg battles none stop. An exampel could be in kessex hills. It would have been awesome to go and talk to the seraph in teh area, help them take out the centaurs and in return they’d help us and the Pact take down the tower since their forces were no longer split. I loved the dragon bash instance where we traveled around the world investigating stuff with majory. More stuff like that. Heck even traveling to the priory and looking through their library for information and interacting with the NPCs (like the way you do to start the mini dungeon in dredgehaunt hills) would have been awesome. Just make it less zergy/achievement driven and more story driven. You guys started doing a lot better in 2014, but was still very zergy.

Had to login to give +1, and bump it, it is THAT good.

I will like to add that although I did like the LS, I never considered it the main thing in the game, because for me it was a side story to go with all the others things like gathering skins and stuff.

But now that I’ve realized that LS is our form of “expansion”, I do agree that it is going too slow. Oh well, hopefully next one will be better, and it wont take 2 years

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. I would like to see the story told IN game and not outside of it.

2. I would like to see the currently unexplored plot arcs developed (i.e. Largos or Tengu) rather than the introduction of new characters who remain rather shallow.

3. Make living story items like skins and weapons available through the living story itself; that way we have a sense of achievement in the story, rather than a sense of achievement in having disposable income.

BobbyStein.2315:

What are your top three requests?

1. Make the player character an important, pivotal piece of the story. Give us the illusion of choice, even if it is, ultimately, an illusion. We shouldn’t come to the end of a year and feel our characters might as well not have been present.

2. Absolutely every part of the story and lore IN the game. I don’t mind if I have to go looking for it, but my search shouldn’t include anything outside the inside of the game.

3. Persistent, lasting impact of the story that changes the way we interact with the world, not just the way that it looks (IE; changes to heart quests in areas like Kessex Hills where major plot events have left their mark on the world). And there should be both positive and negative instances of this – so not just rubble littering the map.

For me the importance lie in those aspects.

1) The story should be grounded and be consistent with GW lore. i think that the second phase of the story should be about the tengu, what happened to them after the fall of lions arch, will thy try to claim lions arch as their city? it can open up interesting opportunities.

2) The enemy motive should be explained and known, when i played GW nightfall i understood abbadon’s anger and will for vengeance.

3) The story should be told ingame and not in other media.

4) The unlikely party, where NPC from different parts of the land, or NPC from different social class join ranks in order to overcome a common enemy. at first thy need to resolve their personal differences.

5) Opportunity to use stealth or conversation in order to finish a task. maybe steal an armor and use it as a disguise, the ability to temporary stun guards, lie to guards.

6) Adding a historian that can help relive the living story like in GW1 bonus mission pack.

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Better exposure of story in game, and I don’t just mean not posting stories on the site. I’ve made some attempt to follow the story through most of the releases, but ultimately, I’ve missed most things that weren’t tied to an achievement. I learned from this thread (or maybe a similar thread) that apparently the Aetherblades were using airships stolen from the Pact and upgraded by the Inquest. Huh, I had no idea there was any Inquest involvement, nor of any justification for the Aetherblades sudden existence. I’ve only seen Taimi once, sitting next to Braham in EotM. There are numerous references to events in these threads that suggest I’ve missed more, but I don’t even know enough about them to know what those things might be.

1. Character Development
I felt all character development came later in the story, I would have preferred instances to get to know DE2.0 better early on in the story. Ideally, I would like to see multiple character development instances throughout a release. Would it be possible to develop a friendship point system where your responses to them adds or subtracts "friend points" and changes their responses as time passes. This will add some variety to the game and be an excellent character development game. You already have something similar in game where you get different responses based on race or order. Don't hesitate to kill off people in DE2.0 either, a sense of danger is always welcome.

2. The illusion of choice
I would rather see more scalable instances than large-scale events (I believe Mari was the only large-scale event I enjoyed). With smaller, instanced events you can let the player decide how to go about a situation based on menu choices. This not only will help players feel they are in the drivers seat (rather than a minor character in Marjory's story) but will also add variety.

3. Not keeping everything for a big reveal at the end
There is no need to do this. If we had figured out that Scarlet was waking a dragon, would that not have made the players fight harder to stop her? Would it not have been heart wrenching when that drill hit the ley line and we saw the dragon yawn? I believe utilizing multiple character development instances is the way to go about furthering the plot. Why couldn't we have gone with Kasmeer to Rata Sum to ask about Scarlet, rather than having an asura with the answer present? Or visited a place where Scarlet lived with Jory? Character development and planting just enough information for the attentive player to piece together a theory is key to an engaging story. After all, Harry Potter would not have been possible without Snape's key character point.

Edit: I don’t know why the spoilers did not collapse into a pretty drop down, I apologize.

Loved this post. After every section i said yes, that is exactly how I felt, but I didn’t know how to articulate it. Anet please take this to heart and really try to apply all of it to future content.

Very well written post OP! Amazing, agreed to every single point there! And when I was reading it, I was actually hooked! That is, imo how stories should work, even though it is an infograph, you managed to hook me from the get-go, great job!

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. Hook us from the beginning, i.e. make it epic and engaging from day 1, if it’s not a page turner then it’s not worth reading. As the OP said, “the journey is more important than the destination”

2. Give our character dialogues, make us FEEL important. Also make our deeds known to everyone in Tyria. I know you have already implemented that in LA, but now imagine that on a larger scale – also as we are Commander of the Pact, we should also have somewhat of a greater influence on how things work.

3. Have back and forth meaningful dialogue with the villain and the player character. The experience should also be based on your personality.

Living Story is somewhat of a new thing, and GW2 is the first to ever do it, it’s is not as simple as just throwing out an expansion, since the story is continuously evolving the world biweekly. With such great idea, comes great responsibility and greater expectations. Better learn now than never :P

I hope that helps

1 No more exclusive social media lore pieces, if it goes up outside the game it should also be put into the game. I am not a fan of the way it currently is and I would really like to see it changed, perhaps have a section on the hero panel for short stories and such.

2 More stand alone pieces, not everything has to be tied together by a flimsy thread creating a convoluted mess of a story, one of the best updates we had was Bazaar of the Four Winds and that was essentially a story on it’s own. Do not be afraid to leave something as a mystery, give us events that are part of different stories, make the whole world come alive, not just things that revolve around one character.

3 Less temporary more permanent content, the reasoning behind this is obvious and I know it is much requested already.

4 Less focus on NPC heroes and more focus on our own. We play Guild Wars to escape the boring normal world and be the savior of Tyria, make us feel like we are heroes. Have NPCs ask us for our opinions rather than tell us were to go and make our choices carry weight.

I really appreciate the effort you guys do with the Living Story, but it does need a lot of work. So long as you really do take the OP’s post to heart then you can not go wrong.

Thank you for offering us the opportunity to provide feedback here. If I had to prioritize my requests in three points, they’d go something like this:

1. Write what you love to write— I remember being disappointed in the Karka event not so much because it didn’t meet my story-expectations in terms of dragon-connections but because what we got as a replacement felt sort of troubled and dispassionate. I’m not sure if the same writers who conceptualized Guild Wars 2 are still on board or not, or if there’s new blood. Or maybe even an awkward combination of the two. Is ArenaNet chomping at the bit to continue its original story but is held back by some backroom politics? Are we trying to go in a new direction? It’s really hard to fathom where Guild Wars wants to go right now. But I personally would love the creative team to commit to an idea they love and go at it full force.

2. Permanent content. I’m admittedly an off-and-on again player, having fallen out of Tyria’s happenings for an extended period and coming back after a long hiatus. I do recognize that the development team has been hard at work developing a rather sizable amount of content for its players, but given the transitory nature of the Living Story, the game I left and the game I came back to feel very much the same. I know logically that ArenaNet has done a lot, but from my perspective, I don’t see or have the opportunity to appreciate that effort, and that’s a shame.

3. I would love to see the many subplots of the world advanced in some fashion. Jormag to the north, the spread of the Brand across the Fields of Ruin, Primordus to the … wherever Primordus is— I feel that many of the assets used here can be embellished upon and that the potential for story here is extremely high. There’s a strange sense that while the timeline of the Living Story is active, the world itself is static. But asking to have the entirety of the world constantly updating itself with events is asking for far, far too much work, and I do feel from what I’ve seen that this is the current pipe-dream for ArenaNet’s development team.

I think a good solution would be to have certain populated hubs be active (like Lion’s Arch, the major cities and Frostgorge Sound), have certain areas be static, representing a single point in time in which events have already happened (Such as Fields of Ruin, Caledon Forest and the like) and use new areas to advance the overall plot of the world (Crystal Desert, Maguuma Falls, etc). That way there’s a sense of continuity for long time players and the sense that nothing is lost to any new players you pick up along the way.

(For example, if you moved the plot south into the Crystal Desert to deal with Kralkatorrik, I don’t need the Shatterer removed from the game completely to assume that the Vigil wrecked that Dragon champion’s day. I can infer that from whatever events occur down in the desert. It’s something you’ve already done when a player makes their journey southward into Orr, and I think that worked rather well).

BobbyStein.2315:

What are your top three requests?

#1. The living story needs to be replayable. Similar to how you could replay WiK/WoC in GW1 on each character. If you guys (the GW2 writers/living story teams) never played Wik/WoC you should try it! I would be OK with never getting an expansion for GW2 if this feature was added. I think a lot of the living story thus far could be translated into instances. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t “make sense”; we could go back and play missions that didn’t relate to our particular story in GW, either, and people accepted it without issue. Such as the starting island missions for Cantha/Elona. Sometimes people just want to experience something again, and sometimes other people had real life commitments that caused them to miss certain aspects of the living story. The missing ability to replay the living story takes away from the general replay value of GW2.

#2. Using characters/lore/factions, etc. that are already established in game. I echo a lot of what others have said that it was frustrating when the Pact or Destiny’s Edge did just about nothing. I also kept waiting for the Tengu to send out some warriors to defend their land (seeing how it’s RIGHT NEXT TO Lion’s Arch), but the most I saw of the Tengu were a couple of archers that were towards the end of the story at the top of the wall. You can’t tell me they didn’t notice the aetherblade attack or Scarlet’s final attack in their backyard.

#3. I realize this post is mostly about the story aspect of the living story, but I have to say I was fairly frustrated with the rewards/achievements that went along with the living story.
Achievements: Every 2 weeks I felt like I was having to grind achievements for the sake of filling some achievement quota that was given to the living story team for that particular update. Some of those “run around to X different zones to collect X” were just not needed. Also, HAVING to do some of the dailies to fill the meta achievement was lame; there were a few updates where I couldn’t play until the last day or two of a living story and I missed the meta achievement because I couldn’t grind out those daily achievements.
Rewards: More ability to obtain rewards in game instead of having to use the gem store. Some of the weapon sets that were introduced with the living story were much easier to obtain in game than others, making it so some were hard to get without scraps from black lion chests. Why can’t finishing the meta give you a choice of 1 skin from the set?

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Aight. I’m behind pretty much everything the OP summarized but personally the most important to me are the following:

1. Show, don’t tell. The interviews and information outside of the game are a byproduct of this problem. We have been told Scarlet’s this and that and that. We are told the alliances still follow her because of this and that reason. We have to be told a bajillion things because they don’t fit into the releases due to lack of time, resources or what-have-you.

Problems this causes: Cheapens the feeling of the plot by a lot, leaves potential plotholes, important parts of the plot are easily missed and difficult to track if they are explained or lampshaded outside of the game. They’re also possibly lost forever if they’re on some 3rd party site or the forum (while at it, hint hint the lore forum needs some mod-love, care and stickies)

2. Enemy Lieutenants are allowed to be fleshed out too. Like the OP post says, they can facilitate the plot, be used to explain plotholes, show some of the main enemy’s personality via the big bad’s influence on them and the lieutenants stance towards them – and le gasp, they can be enjoyable characters!
Inb4 Mai Trin, yes Mai Trin had a name. And she was afraid of Scarlet. That’s it. The only memorable thing about her is that she had a name at all, her own boss battle and she was scared of Scarlet (and had outdated text for over half a year). You could have put the Aetherblade Admiral in her place and the difference would have been trivial at best. A good character, foe or friend cannot be easily replaced. And her fear of Scarlet was weak and shallow – keep in mind, if you use a lieutenant to highlight something about a big bad, it should be something the players can get behind emotionally and understand.

3. Marketing. I didn’t see anyone else mention this but uhh… trying not to be rude here, but please keep a leash on your marketing team? The way they present the LS actually puts a huge dent in it, really. Sometimes the hype is way too much but then from the players’ perspective it’s completely unfounded.
In the worst case, it’s also insulting or downright misleading.
Remember when Scarlet was foreshadowed as “a mysterious force behind this new alliance” in the ToN-release? That was really inappropriate and I’m certain more than a few people read that and wondered again what the age of the target group was supposed to be.
Then you’ve got statements that blow things out of proportion. “Rock Tyria to its core, change its face forever in a final confrontation” or what was it.

Changing lion’s arch’s twice for these releases? Probably tons of work from dev-perspective and a huge feat.
A player reading “Tyria’s face being changed forever” and /merely/ sees Lion’s Arch changed? Disappointment doesn’t scratch it.

The LS is a learning experience for the devs and yes it’s a business. But sell it for what it is.
A good example of hype done right is the feature pack I’d say. It lives up to and even beats our expectations in some regards. And that makes players even happier. It’s not perfect yet (see town-clothes stuff) but it’s been hyped for exactly what it is and that’s among other things why we love it already and are looking forward to it.

And… oh yeah, sorry that turned out long. I hope that’s helpful. P:

TBH, I found reading your comment on the Living Story is more enjoyable than playing the Living Story itself. Anet should hire you to oversee the story writing, seriously~
++++1

Thanks for asking for feedback and being receptive to ideas. I appreciate that the developers are interested in their players’ thoughts like this. My personal big three priority wishes:

1. Best foot forward. Don’t hold good ideas in the back pocket to reveal as twists. Take all the cool stuff you’re excited about and throw that out first. The personal storyline ended in fighting a giant undead lich dragon. The LS doesn’t need to shuffle its feet with less threatening enemies. That’s a step backward. There’s no reason to stall for build up. Throw out the most exciting, fun things first, and even better ideas will follow the best ideas.

In other words, if we start the next LS and begin it by fighting bandits I am… well, going to fight bandits, I guess. But I won’t enjoy it.

2. Less focus on dialogue and storytelling through NPCs, and more focus on storytelling through gameplay. This is what characterizes mute protagonists and allows players to project on them. (I prefer the mute protagonist, as I believe the alternatives would require a level of work and compromise that would make us lose more than we gain.)

A cheap way to achieve more PC involvement would be significantly cutting down on NPC allies and friends as major characters. When I meet an antagonist or rival, my PC’s role in that relationship is clear and the possibility for gameplay interactions are greater. When allied NPCs exist to have more conflict with that antagonist than the PC, involvement is lost and PCs begin to question their narrative necessity. There is also not a lot we can do with allies other than talk to them, which presents the writing problems of PC characterization and the increasing number of personal story variables.

I like NPC allies, and I like talking to them, but everything in moderation. Including moderation.

3. Permanent content. When I went to Arah’s story dungeon and realized haha oops, I don’t know the full story behind Destiny’s Edge, I got to go back and do the other dungeons to grok their jam. When I met Kasmeer and Marjory and wondered who these ladies were or what was even happening, I did not have the same luxury. This is an odd philosophy for a game that’s otherwise so casual friendly.

Big, one time events are exciting, but holidays exist for that flavor of content. Story content needs to be permanent and not something gained from outside sources.

ETA: Bonus point: Dragons.
The logo is a dragon.
I want all of the dragons.

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

It seems like a lot of people list resolution between the Personal Story and the Living story as a priority. I will admit that it places top three for me as well.
It’s been stated that the events of the living story occur approximately after one year after the conclusion of the events in the personal story. I propose that we re-structure and remodel the entire open world to reflect the state of Tyria as it would be after the end of the living story (most notably, that Orr would at least be in the process of being cleansed). The personal story would remain as a way for new players to see “this is what happened in the past, before I started playing the game”. Older players who have played through the personal story and kept up with each of the living story releases would have the satisfaction of seeing the transformation of the world congruent with their efforts, game play, and loyalty to the game. We would set the expectation for new players that Tyria IS a dynamic, changing world, and that there ARE things that they will have missed by coming in late (they’ll never get to see Kessex hills like it was before release, or Lion’s Arch before it came to ruins, etc.) but they are still able to catch up and play through the core of the story which sets the stage for the living story by playing through the personal story line (with the understanding that, “this is all what happened in the past”). The storytelling in GW2 has often been compared to a TV series, so I will continue with that analogy. If a new friend joins a group of friends who have been following a show that’s been out for a year, the newcomer would not have the expectation of knowing everything that’s going on or understanding the full plot. At first he may join his friends every week a new episode comes out to share in the excitement and maybe ask a friend next to him for important details/explanations, but eventually he’s going to be pulled into the show enough to go back and watch season 1 of the series on his own time, with the obvious understanding that everything he’s watching chronologically takes place before the weekly new episodes that his friends are watching. Spelling out the analogy, the open world and the living story should be the new episodes, tailored towards those who have been there all along. The season 1 of the TV series or past episodes would be the personal story (or even Guild Wars 1), and would remain as an opportunity for new players to gain some insight into the history of the vast world of Tyria that they have stumbled upon.

Ideally, the personal story would be perfectly preserved and separate from the living story and open world. I know it probably won’t ever happen, but it would add such a sense of satisfaction and congruence for me if the Lion’s Arch in the personal story remained undestroyed, Kessex hills was the old version, etc. It would really give a distinction between the current, evolving, changing world, and an opportunity to play/glimpse into the past.
To add icing on the cake, all future living story releases could be tailored towards two audience: those characters who have completed their PS and those who have not. More than just a pact token, wouldn’t it be great if NPC dialogue would vary based off of whether you finished the PS or not? A character that has finished the story would be approached/spoken to/recognized as the commander of a pact, etc. A character that has not completed the story would be greeted as a random helpful wandering hero. It would certainly give more incentive to complete the personal story on multiple characters, more than just levels/pact tokens/achievement points.

TL;DR:
To resolve the conflict between personal story and living story, all open world content and living story should be associated with the dynamic, changing world of Tyria, and all personal story should be preserved as an opportunity to play through what has happened in the past.
1) The entire open world should be updated to reflect the state of Tyria after the resolution of the personal story
2) All references alluding to the personal story currently in the open world should be changed from the present tense to the past tense
3) Personal story private instances should be preserved and immutable, as replaying history should be (i.e. visiting LA in your PS, it should look like it did before the events of the LS)
4) When playing through the current living story, how the NPCs and LS responds to your CHARACTER will differ depending on whether or not the character has completed the PS.

I rarely post because I feel like my voice would get lost in the crowd and I don’t feel like having to shout over others to be heard… but I really love this game and am passionate about it, so please let me know what you guys think. Let’s work together for a better, more immersive Tyria!
= )

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. The player character needs to be more of a part of cutscenes. This doesn’t need to involve a lot of voice work, Link manages just fine. What it does require is that 1. your teammates talk TO you during the cutscenes (which likely means coming up with a generic name for your character like “Commander”), asking you to do stuff along the way, and 2. that your character actually does do things in the cutscenes, which I can can be problematic to animate since different characters use different weapons, and could be of different scales, but there should be some options available for interactions.

2. The villain needs to lose sometimes. Scarlet never lost until the very end. We might blow up a lab, but never before she’d gotten what she’d wanted and moved on. We were basically just tidying up after her. There needed to be points along the way where we completely disrupted her plans, where she’d intended to achieve X, and we completely foiled that, forcing her to a plan b. She would escape, of course, but it should have been by the skin of her teeth with the clothes on her back, not a “ta ta because you can’t possibly touch me and I’ve already done whatever I wanted to do!” You can have some of those too, but it should be a more balanced mix.

3. Definitely more dragons. Season 1 was very loosely related to the dragons, something that wasn’t even really hinted at until the last couple weeks, and only made obvious at the very last moment, which is about twelve months too little. Dragons should be apparent right from the start, their Champions and minions should be the primary enemy. Don’t be afraid of running out of dragons. You’ve got five of them still out there, even if we kill off one each year of the game, that’s five more years of play, which is a fairly ambitious lifespan for an MMO, and if we don’t manage to kill all the dragons by the time the servers get shut own then that would feel like a huge rip-off to me.

You want to go past 2020? Fair enough, so do I, but you’ll have five more years to plan out a new over-plot once the dragons are dead, maybe something involving he human gods again, or more mortal villains that take in the power of the Dragons for themselves, I’m sure you’ll think of something. There is a LOT of Tyria out there that we can’t let explore, fill it with stuff.

I see many people want their character to be the Hero of Tyria, and have statues on the behalf even when they know the players next to them are also Commanders of the Pact.

I also see many people who are more into story details that would rather be someone of help but not THE commander. To be a compannion of help to Destiny’s Orphans and yet not to be a MEMBER of it.

How could we get this resolved?

deepwinter.9015:

1. Bring back Jennifer Hale to voice my female sylvari

Oh man, I could listen to the female human, sylvari and asura talk all day. So adorable. “You’re dumb, you’ll die, and you’ll leave a dumb corpse!” Makes me want to buy her a teddy bear!

Ohoni.6057:

The player character needs to be more of a part of cutscenes. This doesn’t need to involve a lot of voice work, Link manages just fine.

This trope used to be The Thing in RPGs while the main character remained critical to the plot. It’s definitely doable. Bolderlands 2 player characters is another example of someone as important to the plot as the supporting cast, but unable to say anything (and, as a bonus, may be anywhere from 1-4 people).

I enjoyed the story and that the game was being constantly updated. I didn’t feel any grind towards accomplishing achievements after we were able to complete the meta by doing the event-related dailies, plus many times, we had 4 weeks to complete them.

What I’d like to see change:

1. Make use of the in-game hint system to guide people towards learning about lore and important mechanics in the game. It was great the Taimi et al would explain what to do, but we should also be able to learn about this when not in the midst of battle. For lore, the hint system would not directly explain things, but would “suggest” locations where you might find an NPC who has more info. (However, please don’t offer any additional achievement points for unlocking these hints.)
2. As many have stated, stop hiding the ball: no more lore/mechanics exclusively outside the game and introduce as many of the NPCs as early as possible. Even though I think Scarlet is great, it would have been more interesting to have met Ceara and only later realize that she was behind the alliance attacks.
3. Continue introducing large scale events that require cooperation amongst PUGs. No other MMO even tries to do this. People said repeatedly that random groups would never be able to defeat the Marionettes and it was great fun when we pulled that off repeatedly. I can go to other games to find instanced raids requiring specific roles; this is the only one that is massively, multiplayer rather than micromangedly scheduled player.

Thank you for listening to us. Here are my top 3:

1. Include more appealing and relatable characters. You had a few interesting characters in the Personal Story, like Tyball & Forgal, but killed them off without replacing them. And retire characters like bungling idiot Faren and fake Asuran Taimi, unless you’re intentionally trying to tick us off. Think about your audience and the fantasy that they want to play.

2. Write a more plausible and interesting story for Season 2. De-emphasize the impossible Season 1 plot elements, listed by Shriketalon. Make it a corrective reset.

3. This is of the lowest priority of my 3 points, as I realize that it would be the costliest to implement. However, it has a huge impact on the enjoyment I get out of the game. I want the player character to have a prominent role in the story and to be fully-voiced in the cutscenes. And when I say “the” player character, I actually mean that each player should see their character on screen.

So I decided to write it. my feedback… Also english is not my native, you’re warned now, lol

1. Work on the stuff that is already in the game, not random generic enemies like aetherblades from nowhere etc. Their look is cool but I think they really had no place in this game. Even branded or inquest would work better as generic super powerful enemies. I like the new but it should be really explained in the lore and ingame. A great example of what already is ingame is #10 from OP post and I really would like the developement of the existing world and not writing new [low quality] one.

2. Please less Angel McCoy writing. I know it’s bad to talk about persons but I was really dissapointed (if not more) in living story when after southsun and karka (it was interesting because it’s whole new location to explore and part of Sea of Sorrows! wow) we got strange not motivated molten alliance and wooden acting, far-fetched new characters.
It was very bad surprise when after gw1, with all this great lore and tons of stories to tell, new areas to explore and so on(check #10 at OP post for examples) we got random boring stuff and story about nothing. That molten alliance, consortium and all stuff after that looked weird. Also I was very happy when Scarlet finally died and we won’t get stuff with her again, it was awful and very boring story. I really liked the art-design, it was great, my thanks to great designers work (they really tried to make all this random enemies look good and fitting in the game), amazing! But the story… .
My greatest dream is if you get back people who worked on the original gw1 and gw2 lore, especially who worked on all charr locations, lore and story, Ascalon design and Ebonhawke city in gw2. Return and develop things left from gw1 please. I can’t even believe to myself (lol) that amazing incredible gw1 lore and Scarlet are in the same game world and universe I still can’t believe that incredible Ascalon and Scarlet are in the same game. Very big (I’d say enormous) difference in quality It’s more than enormous. I have no normal words to describe it and I won’t say bad words xD

3. There is good stuff! I like current release about Lion’s Arch very much. Just. Great. I did not expect that. For true, I always expected stuff like this and couldn’t believe it finally happened. Amazing work, that’s how living world should feel. All the happening stuff is in the game and you don’t need to go read website to get what’s going on and why you should care. Amazingly implemented ingame. You can even roleplay and it feels right. Every event, champion was memorable. And even repirability of events was fitting good and you don’t question “huh? again this boss/event? why?” You actually felt that you are part of the story and it needs you. Also storytelling was good. There was many little things, dialogues etc and it felt very natural. A new level. And final was just. Good. Moar. Pls. Moar. The only release I liked after a whole year of.. ehm, you know what I mean.. xD
I wish all living story was written and made like this one, it’s the really good way to go^^

Also I’ve cut lots of words (mostly on #2, but that’s my hate and whine about really bad past stuff, so nevermind xD) because it’s even now too long message I think. And I doubt somebody ever will read it, lol.

Big +1 from me.

One thing I want to expand on. Briefly touched on in 6, 7 and 14. The medium here is a video game.

Interaction, game mechanics and playability need to keep up with the storytelling.

As much as I have loved the epic zone wide battles, the clunkiness of the overflow system needs to be fixed before we get another release that requires mass zone coordination. (Are numbered overflows and a way to easily way to select one really too much to ask for?) As great as the dialogue has been, our character being left out of most of it needs to be addressed. And as great as all the pretty shiny stuff is, can I have some option to limit the amount of spell effects so I can actually see what the heck is going on?

Btw, I still want big expansion.

Ask yourself this, what (as characters and players) did we really learn from this story arc? What makes us better off (or worse off) from when it began? What accomplishment or set backs are felt long-term for the citizens and heroes of this world?

To me, that’s the underlying problem of the living story. It is not living – it will be dead and forgotten in lieu of the next invasion/mad villian/giant revamped boss or (to be crass) achievement kitten objective.

TL;DR The “living” story was just far too many loosely bound plots thrown together with no comprehensive editing to make the player remember anything more than a few paragraphs (i.e. the sub-hero character relationships) at best. It was a storyboard set of ideas with good intentions but terrible execution of final product. The technology of the game was not the real problem (players forgive what they do not know is possible), it was the editing. It was the glue.

Great way to summarize it, congratulations. I’ve been saying stuff like this for some time, but I wasn’t able to synthesize it so well. Some people complain about the format, but I think it’s great, easy to read and somewhat enjoyable, too, reaching further than a wall of text would.

By the way, I’ve recently reposted a long list of unanswered Living World questions: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Unanswered-Living-World-questions (Some of them even got an official response). Maybe I should have posted them here, I don’t know.

+1 Best post ever.

While I totally agree with pretty much everything everyone’s been saying, and I’m probably echoing a lot of things people have said, these are the 3 things that am wanting from future living world updates:

1. Follow-through: while you guys have gotten much better at this (Lion’s Arch remains destroyed yay!), I still can’t forget the (lack of) conclusion to the election. There was all of this build up and it was super exciting to be voting on something, but then when the winner was decided, that was it, there wasn’t anything in game to let us know who won (unless I missed something, then disregard this entire point). It would have been so cool to have an inauguration ceremony of some sort, even if it was 5 seconds long, just something in game so that we could see the person that we voted for get to power.
So in the future, please don’t just drop last week’s update and start something completely different without any thought of what just happened, especially on something as big as a player vote.

2. Don’t forget about the dragons: I’m glad that at the end we got a dragon reveal, but everything up to this point made me totally forget the whole point of this game, which is apparently to defeat the elder dragons. Throughout the LW the game has been going on as though the dragons don’t exist. I’m not saying every patch needs to be some big thing about dragons, it’s just… what’s Jormag doing up north? Sitting in a puddle splashing his feet a bit? These are supposed to be giant monsters of destruction and we’re hearing nothing about them. We can still have our festivals and bashes or whatever, I’m just saying the giant threat to all life on Tyria shouldn’t be totally forgotten and never talked about.

3. Make it last: I know this has been said to death, and I know you guys have made great steps to fix this, but still it is really important. Either extend the time between updates (maybe every 3 weeks?) so that people can keep up and still have time to do other things in the game other than LW, or find a way to keep your updates around, at least the story parts. You could have an asuran movie theater that shows all of the cutscenes you’ve had in the game so far, or something like that I dunno. Other people have had some great ideas about this, and again, I know you’re making great steps to fix it, I just think it’s a very important issue.

Thanks for all of the hard work so far! I know it will only get better from here!

The writing is the weakest link in this game and is making the company lose customers.