Guild Wars 2

“I don’t know what scarlet wants, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop her.”

That pretty much sums up how i feel about the Living Story at this point. I don’t sense any sort of developed, over-arching storyline, each update seems to be a micro-event with relatively little relation to the other updates, and I don’t know what the main villain’s motivations and goals are.

Where’s the plot Anet? Where’s the detailed storytelling? I’m bored with disjointed updates, we need something concrete.

See this reddit thread for more discussion on this topic.

Shouldn’t this be in the “Living World Discussion” forum? ..

Larkir.6502:

Shouldn’t this be in the “Living World Discussion” forum? ..

^this, and.. we just don’t know. Anet probably thought on paper that this would entice intrigue in the player base but instead its been more of a disconnect. Its one thing to have a villain who’s out to get you by hurting you directly or things you hold dear, even if you don’t know the reason why, you’d want vengeance. Its a completely different thing to have a villain hate everyone and terrorize things you don’t even care about.

Sorry, might be the wrong forums. But seriously, what gives with this awful, lazy story arc?

Larkir.6502:

Shouldn’t this be in the “Living World Discussion” forum? ..

Should they move it back here if it’s revealed next week that Scarlet is behind the the krait presence, similair to the Molten Alliance?

Plot? Plot?! You’re wanting a plot, are you?! deep breath Oh, okay. I’ll show you where the plot is!

grabs Errant Venture and throws him out a window

That’s where the plot went!

/end bad joke

I’d have to say what Kingmutez said – they probably thought that spacing out the plot for so bloody long would entice players. And we didn’t quite prove them wrong with Flame and Frost. Now we get as much story development as each F&F chapter, but the amount of “content” (and I use the term loosely) as all four in one.

Now we’re just given a few breadcrumbs of a plot development every month, and are being expected to have that satisfy us, especially when they break it up every other month (or less) with celebrations and non-plot relevant updates (see: SAB, Halloween). Honestly, with as little of Halloween we got this year, why couldn’t they split Twilight Assault’s content update in two – having a lead in and then releasing the new dungeon with Halloween?

I have a problem with the bread crumb metaphor.

Typically that phrase is used when talking about a bread crumb trail. Just follow the trail of bread crumbs and you will reach the intended destination. Scarlet doesn’t have a “trail” of bread crumbs. The plot is jumping all over the place. A bread crumb trail is connected, it is, by definition, a trail. It would have actual progression. Very little of the Scarlet “plot” feels like it has progression, just appearances. The Molten Alliance, Mai Trinn’s attempt at the Captain’s Council, the disruption of the Queen’s Speech, Twilight Assault, are you telling me there are people out there who have felt like these events are in some way connected to each other? The only continuation of the plot I saw was the recognition of the Dragonbash assassination in the dialogue of Twilight Assault. If this was a bread crumb trail, everyone would be lost by now. There’s nothing leading from patch to patch and very little to indicate why past events mattered in the context of current events. Very little of the story even considers that anything else happened in the story.

A bread crumb trail would have revisited the topic of Mister E by now.

I’m using it as the idea of we’re getting very little bit – instead of a whole loaf of bread, or even a slice, we’re getting only crumbs at a time.

Hence why I never used trail. Just bread crumbs. Because it’s not a full slice.

And the little proverbial bread crumbs we do get, are not in the game, but in a blog post on the GW2 website. If there was a trail, we could speak to the NPCs in Rata Sum and Hoelbrak etc. that appear in that short story. Alas, we cannot to that. Because the story (however small), is always told outside the game.

Bread crumbs like this tend to be pretty difficult to connect into a meaningful narrative within the game itself when you don’t have a quest log to keep track of developments. A lot of people lose track of where to go, so getting the pieces of the story from various NPCs doesn’t work very well unless you’re going to do it with a long chain of “mail” basically hitting you over the head saying “go here, dummy”.
Things like this make me miss the old quests you’d get in GW1 that were reminiscent of scavenger hunts. One of my favorites with the one where you fought the dragon aspects scattered throughout the EotN areas where you got that strange coded message at the end of it. Good times. I miss the quest log

Ataraxis.6098:

Bread crumbs like this tend to be pretty difficult to connect into a meaningful narrative within the game itself when you don’t have a quest log to keep track of developments.

We have a PERSONAL story log. A Living one wouldn’t be so far fetched. For some wierd reason however it didn’t come to the developers minds.

And even if, for some reason we don’t know about, a copy of the personal story log in the top right corner isn’t possible, Anet’s been using achievements to catalog progress – that can be done the same. But it’s not really needed to have such logging – take Dead Drops from Flame and Frost.

Errant Venture.9371:

“I don’t know what scarlet wants, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop her.”

What there is of her story and motives, which isn’t much, are found all over the place: obscure interviews, short stories found on this site, some of her story is even included in the game, but not much. Mostly its her being an annoying little brat spamming “DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE” – hardly a super villian, if I did that I’ll get muted for spamming map chat too much…

The plot is…there is no plot! Anet might know how to wrtite a good story plot but they have forgotten the success in telling one.. i.e GW1! It was once said GW2 will be out when it’s ready. A year after release and I still don’t think the game is ready.
It is too cpu heavy it needs to be optimized more! It seems they are just throwing content at us that has no cohesiveness to it…I get the feeling they are saying here is FREE random content enjoy, and because it’s FREE they don’t care what we think!

we got the Marjory log with the cut-scene a while back.
what about a similar log that keeps track of the LS?

Morrigan.2809:

we got the Marjory log with the cut-scene a while back.
what about a similar log that keeps track of the LS?

The problem isn’t keeping track of the Living Story, it’s that the plot and main antagonist are poorly written and are not engaging.

Errant Venture.9371:

Morrigan.2809:

we got the Marjory log with the cut-scene a while back.
what about a similar log that keeps track of the LS?

The problem isn’t keeping track of the Living Story, it’s that the plot and main antagonist are poorly written and are not engaging.

This.

And where does she get the money to hire all these goons?

Zanshin.5379:

And where does she get the money to hire all these goons?

The Gem Shop, so stop buying junk.

Errant Venture.9371:

“I don’t know what scarlet wants, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop her.”

That pretty much sums up how i feel about the Living Story at this point. I don’t sense any sort of developed, over-arching storyline, each update seems to be a micro-event with relatively little relation to the other updates, and I don’t know what the main villain’s motivations and goals are.

Where’s the plot Anet? Where’s the detailed storytelling? I’m bored with disjointed updates, we need something concrete.

See this reddit thread for more discussion on this topic.

This sums up my thoughts as well. Instead of being more excited by each Living Story updated, I’m instead more & more frustrated. This isn’t one over-arching game… it’s a zillion little mini games with no relation to one another.

I’m at the point now where I’m simply killing time until ESO comes out and offers me something better.