Guild Wars 2

So recently I’ve been seeing a lot of hate for the living story – so many flame threads about how it sucks and how it’s “killing the game”.

Now I’ll be one of the first to agree that in order for the living story to work, it requires much more polish – the storyline needs to be both conveyed more fluidly and have more relevance to the world of Tyria that we all know and love. Wasting time and effort on grindy achievements and half-baked events seems daft when it never seems cohesive with the story or world that we are familiar with – unless it fits perfectly with certain developing story lines. I think what everyone wants to see is a more polished experience with better-rounded ideas. I feel one way to achieve this would be to take more time on each living story installment, going back to once per month or even every 2 months – but that’s a different story.

That isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed some things to come out of Living Story. Unfortunately I missed the whole Flame & Frost saga, but heard very good things about it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Bazaar of the Four Winds and wished there was more “meaty” content to do in the area. A couple of Scarlet’s invasions were fun, the Aetherblade JP is an insane addition and the return of SAB is great.

I think the main problem that players are having is feeling like they are “forced” to play the living story, because it won’t be there for much longer. I feel like this is a shame because they are cutting themselves off from the main game and not doing anything else. Throughout the past few living stories, not once did I try to max out all of the achievements: I did a few events, saw the sights, etc. and when I’d had enough, went back to doing map completion, dungeons, WvW and just messing around. And it was great – I really don’t understand why people feel like the Living Story is the be-all, end-all; if you don’t like what’s happening, seriously just don’t do it. It won’t damage your life in any way at all. Make the ethos “Play the way you want” work for you – (but it doesn’t mean being handed skins and loot btw).

tl;dr (and I guess bottom line): while I would like to see an improved Living Story (which I am hoping for), players shouldn’t neglect the awesome base game we have, and should focus more on doing what they enjoy rather than grabbing achievements for things they don’t like.

Crimsonified.6418:

tl;dr (and I guess bottom line): while I would like to see an improved Living Story (which I am hoping for), players shouldn’t neglect the awesome base game we have, and should focus more on doing what they enjoy rather than grabbing achievements for things they don’t like.

That’s just a symptom of the actual problem. The actual problem is that the developers decided, post-release, that they’d rather make the game for Demographic B instead of Demographic A.

The type of game each Demographic enjoys are at opposite ends of the spectrum; one group wants an enjoyable journey (story, exploration, etc) and the other only wants to race to a series of destinations (achievements, gear, etc). This game was conceived and launched as a “journey” game. But somewhere after release ArenaNet realized just how much money there was to make from the “destination” crowd.

Now all of this could be acceptable – not ideal, but acceptable – for the “journey” crowd if the developers weren’t pouring every ounce of energy into a never-ending series of new destinations. Having no new journeys being added to the game is bad. Watching the “destination” crowd trample one another in an effort to reach the current destination before it’s removed and another added in its place is worse. Realized that the developers don’t care about the journey anymore is worst of all.

It’s too hard to find groups for non living story content. People are going to focus on what’s being advertised. The living story content just doesn’t tie together very well and it just feels like a festive event rather than something impacting lore and state of the world.

The biggest problem with the Scarlet Sega is how unattached it is to the rest of the world and story. It feels like one of those boring Naruto Fillers.

Living story should revolve around the characters and enemies in the existing world. Don’t just create something out of nothing. That’s the definition of a Filler.

e.g. Some well known GW character’s daughter, some well known GW character’s former student, Fanatic Cult of Komir, etc

Scarlet=new woman who was trained by new characters leading a new organization. This is unrelated to the rest of the world and story, and hence we don’t feel any attachment.

To clarify, the Molten Alliance was just fine. They are related to the GW2 world.

The Aetherblades would have been fine, if its members were linked back to the GW2 world somehow (e.g. war orphans abandoned by Queen Jennah during the Risen invasion, or a centaur invasion, can be anything). Linking the Aetherblades to Scarlet is not ok, because Scarlet herself is not related to the GW2 world at all.

The other problem is that the Living Story content is much, much, MUCH more rewarding in terms of Achievement Points and loot than the normal story. You might be a player who enjoys exploring/dungeons/Fractals/roleplaying/what-have-you, and you can certainly choose to focus on those while the LS is going on, but if you do, you’ll miss out not only on the (usually) limited-time achievements, costing you a lot of AP’s, but you’ll see your friends bragging about the hundreds of gold and Rares/Exotics they’ve looted from Pavilion/Gauntlet/Invasion farming.

So yes, it does feel that you HAVE to take part, or you’ll be left behind economically.

As Zaxares says, the problem lies in that the Living Story is much more rewarding.
- I was interested in the Flame & Frost story arc. The Secrets of Southsun Cove seemed poorly written to me. It was more the consortium, which (I can understand) is run by some asura, supposedly the asura are intellectually superior to all the other races. I wonder whether or not they heard about the attack on Lion’s Arch and whether or not they considered that Karka’s roam free on Southsun Cove, YET they wanted to turn it into a vacation hot spot? I left at that point.
- The heroes and villains are poorly introduced, with the exception of Braham and Rox, and I loathed Rox when I first saw a screenshot of her, but I was actually pleasantly surprised when I saw how they had executed the Razing.

- Anyhow, right now, I only just check to see if ANet has improved their Living Story content, otherwise I just play what interests me within the world, but I do notice that I am not earning as many AP’s as other players.
- Right now it’s not bothering me, but I will probably stop playing if GW2 becomes unplayable to me for playing the way I want to (by doing PvE and Open World content and the occasional dungeon run).

They should have never introduced achievement point rewards. But everyone loves their shinies sooo much they’d rather bore the crap out of them grinding the LS and then whine about it over here, than actually play the parts of the game they enjoy.