Guild Wars 2

This thread is going to be about the structure of a Living Story Season and how portions of it could be later released as Fractals. I’ve bolded the important parts.

There were at least one moment in every episode of LS2 that could have been created as if it was a Fractal. Now doing this kills two birds with one stone. You are developing content for both Living Story and Fractals at the same time. So at the conclusion of each season you have a couple of new Fractals without having to spend extra resources.

Let’s take episode 5: Echoes of the Past to demonstrate. Chapters 1-3 are purely story instances with the odd fight, but Chapter 4 contain Glint’s Lair which has the level of difficulty and teamwork that would suit a Fractal. The Fractal would only contain Glint’s Lair and not the library portion which would contain the story instances. There’d be no cutscenes in the fractal portion and the story exposition would be left until the Majory & Kasmeer get back to the library.

So with a LS episode you’d have chapters that are pure story instances but have one chapter per episode that contains the Fractal. That chapter would have a beginning, middle and an end. The beginning and end would be story instances but the middle would be the fractal. So when a season is finished and the playerbase has moved on, that middle part would then be ported over as a fractal. Ensuring that it’s not just ‘old content’.

When it comes to achievements, the same ones would apply to the fractal. However a fractal player who hasn’t bought the Living Story wouldn’t have access to the achievements of the other Story Instances. And therefore wouldn’t get rewards like the Luminescent Armor. But if they are having a hard time getting achievements in the fractal portion, they could just do the fractal with a party. It’s easier to find a Fractal party over a Living Story one a year or so after release.

Aside from Glint’s Lair, I can think of some decent candidates from LS2 that could have been designed as if they were Fractals:

Chapter 1: Battle with Aerin.
Chapter 2: Battle at Fort Salma.
Chapter 3: Fighting Duke Barradin.
Chapter 4: The attack on The Grove.
Chapter 6: Saving the Aspect Masters
Chapter 7: Saving the Secondborn plus Canach from the Asura

They’ve already taken some moments of LS1 and turned them into Fractals. It would just be a whole lot easier if future Living Story releases were designed with Fractals in mind, than having to rework old content into Fractals.