Please consider linear story for Season 2...
Depends how you define “linear”. I would say given the inabilty to affect outcomes (other then perhaps the supposed election) that this season was completly linear.
However your logic is noted… there should be some “grand order” to what happens and not simply be a “guessing game” week after week. Or adding a bunch of “neverbeforeseen” bad guys to advance a story.
THE MASTER HAS SPOKEN!
omg yes! please make it linear or at least have us understand what our goal is. Scarlet could of been introduced next month and we’ll still be in the same spot we are now – with no idea why we are trying to stop her or why we should even bother.
Agreed. I’d like to see a Living Story, “Season,” wherein we know exactly what we’re doing from the start. Everything we’ve been given so far has been more or less completely unrelated occurrences that were connected in the shadows. I don’t think it worked so well. For one thing, the connections in the shadows were -far- too obscure. For another thing, it really ended up using a lot of narrative resources. We’ve seen Flame Legion, Dredge, Aetherblades which were new, Nightmare Court, Krait, Steam Creatures, etc… all being pooled together into a single story that was discordant.
I’d rather have seen something remarkably cliche like all the racial opposing factions joining together in a dark mockery of the existing alliances of Tyria to combat them. I’d honestly have preferred watching Queen Jennah in a slapping contest with some female White Mantle Prophet while Knut Whitebear is Wrestling a so called Havroun of Dragon, with the Arcane Council in a freeforall with an Inquest Council or something. I’d even have been fine watching the Pale Tree’s Avatar mudwrestling with some Avatar of the Nightmare Tree.
At least then we kind of know what’s going on.
The only thing I cared about as far as living story this “season” was a few meta-achievements. None of the story appealed to me, because it was so disjointed and random. Every new part jammed another piece onto an already confusing mess without going deep enough to actually make me care about any individual piece or providing satisfying resolution to each update. A lot of the villains and organizations are just downright cheesy (i.e. Molten Alliance (the name says it all), Aetherblades). I liked some of the quest concepts that were tried out, and I feel like the GW2 team really got their feet wet as far as learning how to develop and roll out the living story content. Now it just needs to be written better and stay a bit more consistent. It is definitely possible to have a more cohesive story and theme while still being friendly to new players and those who have taken a break for a while.
I really have faith in this game. I like it a lot, it’s beautiful, and its fun, but if it is going to survive it needs to rely less on gimmick (achievements, skins, quirky quests that seem more like a developer experiment than a story, skins, holiday evens, and more skins) and more on substance. Even if there is a master plan of interweaving plot webs that on some level makes sense, if players don’t feel engaged and purposeful in the moment, they won’t care. And yeah, a lot of the gem store gimmicks are what is bringing in money, not directly the living story, but you still have to keep players in the game to get them to buy that stuff.
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost”
Not all those who wander are lost”
i wouldnt mind more short random stories that dont connect over the arc we had. two chapters that dealt with stopping a centuar revolution or something along that lines. when we finished a chapter or two we knew we did something instead of a year long chapter were we arent sure why we are doing it and what are villian is up too or there motivations although id take your version too op thought id post an alternative idea to help ls story too