Guild Wars 2

The mid season break has occured and I think im in a good position to throw out some criticism about the Living Story so far. The biggest being that its almost entirely single player focused. This contrasts highly with how the first season was, where everything was pretty much Open World content. They need to be able to do both.

The instances were getting are cool but outside of that they add very little to the open world. The biggest update was the first where we were introduced to dry top and all its glory. After that, the amount of zone unlocked afterwards, bit by bit, was small. Especially in Dragons Reach part II, we only got a small crumb of the map that had very little to do in it.

Perhaps its too much for Anet to keep up with doing both doing quality living story instances but also quality open world content. Im not saying the quality of the open world content was low, but the quantity compared to the living story instances sorta were.

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

There were multiple people getting upset that ANet added in events into the story that have to be done also. So you’re neither the only one crying, nor the only stance on this matter.

I personally like the way they try to live up to their personal story. Also, fights vs. 1-5 players can be balanced way better, which makes them more challenging, thus more fun for the most players, than they can balance open world events.
Not to mention that if they would focus on events rather than instances, we only would get events where the whole server has to participate, like we have to already in drytop.

So all in all I’m way more pleased with this season than the last season.

So far, the story bits are instance-based. The massively multiplayer elements are present in the form of Dry Top activities and the living story events presented in Episode 1 of Dragon’s Reach. Which I think is a very logical approach if you ask me. I mean, it’s going to be really hectic to have a massive group of players (unless they are your BFFs) play along side you.

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

I would think with the advent of the Journal, and it being where ArenaNet has not gone before, that it would encompass a bit of experimentation. I mean, geez! People asked for better story and more permanence, and the Devs tried to give that. And still…not happy!
What exactly is it that should be done? And remember, what works for you may be the exact opposite of what someone else envisions. I know I will never aspire to be a Game Developer. You just can’t win!

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

It’s called drama and building. You do big stuff for climaxes, not openers. This has nothing to do with big stuff every 2 weeks or every month.

They give you half a zone, not good enough. You want something very specific. Shrugs.

There may well be big events like the ones you’re talking about, but if it was a constant influx of those they’d become meaningless.

We did have some open world massive events in episode three, and guess what?
People hated it, even without the bugs.

It’s part of the game design, so that you can play the game without being restricted by lack of party members.

It’s already been said, but the instances aren’t solo only – go in with friends or guild mates; hell… even randoms. You have your non-solo option right there, don’t take away the solo option from solo players or those without people online at that time.

The last thing I want to see is another “For the next two weeks, [insert zone here] has been completely ruined! Zerg around in a blob of 100 (whether mechanics want you to or not) and farm it, probably failing the events for more loot.” – those things were awful, literally destroyed parts of the game, lagged like crazy and became farm fests. No thank you.

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

It’s called drama and building. You do big stuff for climaxes, not openers. This has nothing to do with big stuff every 2 weeks or every month.

They give you half a zone, not good enough. You want something very specific. Shrugs.

There may well be big events like the ones you’re talking about, but if it was a constant influx of those they’d become meaningless.

Thats called an excuse lol. You don’t know much about MMO’s do you? Its not normal to have nearly 2 zones after 2 years. Thats called sub-par for the industry. Its not even that. You act like im the only one who was surprised how little we got from season 2 so far in terms of open world content. You kidding? Especially the most recent patch should have had a much bigger sized zone since we’d be without any updates to content for over a month.

lordkrall.7241:

We did have some open world massive events in episode three, and guess what?
People hated it, even without the bugs.

People hated the zerginess of frostgorge sound and the bugginess that initially ensued. Thats not the open world content im talking about anyway. I mean open world like dry-top. Im not talking about directly involving open world content with the story instances.

SkylightMoon.1980:

lordkrall.7241:

We did have some open world massive events in episode three, and guess what?
People hated it, even without the bugs.

People hated the zerginess of frostgorge sound and the bugginess that initially ensued. Thats not the open world content im talking about anyway. I mean open world like dry-top. Im not talking about directly involving open world content with the story instances.

Dry top is largely just another zerg with a few off shoot groups but like other zerg maps people just follow the blue taco spamming 1 without thinking.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

It’s called drama and building. You do big stuff for climaxes, not openers. This has nothing to do with big stuff every 2 weeks or every month.

They give you half a zone, not good enough. You want something very specific. Shrugs.

There may well be big events like the ones you’re talking about, but if it was a constant influx of those they’d become meaningless.

Thats called an excuse lol. You don’t know much about MMO’s do you? Its not normal to have nearly 2 zones after 2 years. Thats called sub-par for the industry. Its not even that. You act like im the only one who was surprised how little we got from season 2 so far in terms of open world content. You kidding? Especially the most recent patch should have had a much bigger sized zone since we’d be without any updates to content for over a month.

It’s not normal to start an MMO with 25 zones either, or 5 starting zones and various personal stories. Do you realize how much bigger this game was at launch than most MMOs. Have you looked at some of the MMOs that have come out and what they actually offer AT LAUNCH?

A lot of MMOs add zones after the first year, and even the second year. When Rift was two years old, it wasn’t as big as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

I think it’s structured well at the moment. I’ve been doing the story instances with a regular group and it’s been good fun, but it’s even more reassuring knowing that if I want to replay them or anything or my friends are unavailable, I can go in and do them solo. It’s the perfect way to do it for the personal story-esque elements – make group play optional.

I like it like this far more then zerging.Anet doing great job so far with new LS.

I love the fact I’m not being forced into a zerg all the time. Sometimes I even have to try. Fun stuff.

Only thing I dislike is that jory’s sister was an obvious red shirt. not playing much of the LS though.

Vayne.8563:

In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the entire first Season.

FTFY.

I like it this way. The last part where we had to do open world events to proceed was the worst bit of this so far and not just by a little.

I didn’t really mind them tying old open world content into the Living Story, but having bugged/broken events that prevented progress was inexcusable, I agree. Mistakes happen, but each one is a case where things could have been done better, and should be avoided if at all possible in the future.

Zaxares.5419:

I didn’t really mind them tying old open world content into the Living Story, but having bugged/broken events that prevented progress was inexcusable, I agree. Mistakes happen, but each one is a case where things could have been done better, and should be avoided if at all possible in the future.

I am in two minds about the failings here. On one hand some of the problems cropped up on dynamic events that had been running smoothly for almost two years. On the other hand the Hydra Queen showed that bugs can unexpectedly crop up when unusually large numbers show up.

They made a point of apologising on “Points of Interest”, which, while arguably necessary, was good to see.

I think that episode 3’s use of open world is better in theory than in practice. If ANet had asked me before what I thought of the idea I would have said “that’s brilliant”, but now I’m a bit meh.

Personally, I’m hoping that they try for another Marionette style event, but have no idea how they’ll implement it.

I actualy like how the season 2 is working, but i am hopping that they will add some open world content and boss fights. They easilly could do the dragon that we founght at he end as an open world encounter in the future, same way they did claw of jormag and maybe some temporary events like the marionete was.

I’m liking the story and having a nice slow single player story to follow with lots of dialogue, but I miss >real< living world content. They should not have given in to all the whiners who complained about missing something. This is not living world anymore, it’s just a story expansion. There is nothing about it that feels like living world. The world has not changed, nothing that happens in Season 2 has been noticeable in the real world.

The Grove is untouched despite a dragon attack nearly killing the tree and tons of people dying. The town in kryta doesn’t have a massive crater from the vine attack.

This is personal story expansion, not living world.

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

You know what people do after completing the story instances? Go back to whatever they were doing for the last two years.

As cool as those instances can be they add very little to the game.

Dry Top is a cool new area… But it isn’t so engaging as you would like it to be.

Personally, I like it. Someone in Anet got their heads on straight and made it so that someone like me can actually give a hoot about the story and be able to follow it.

For one thing, too much of the first season was just garbage that didn’t seem to link together and even when the pieces were put together it was still a stretch.

Second, if I missed certain things due to working, family and other obligations, it didn’t even matter in the game so why bother? It was no fun coming into the Marionette without having been involved in the events immediately prior to it. Reading about the stuff post-event online doesn’t count. I want to have a part in the story not read about it.

I personally still think that every one should have access to the stories though, regardless of whether they log in during the two-ish week period or not. We paid for the game and sometime gems or other contributions and it’s kinda like you can’t take a summer vacation without being cut out from it. Regardless, having to log in once to be able to access the content weeks last is a step in the right direction.

After funerals, hospital stay and other real life events I was able to spend a week doing all of the LS2 stuff straight through thanks to the new system.

Probably the biggest thing I like is being able to REPLAY the stuff. That’s what made GW1 fun – being able to replay the main missions and stuff that we enjoyed the most with friends. GW2 seriously lacks in replay value unless you enjoy the herd mentality (which I’m ok with for a little while but not for long periods of time). Being able to do the LS stuff with friends later is a very good thing. It’s just a kitten shame they took it out form the personal story in the first place, like guild halls and a lot of other stuff that made GW1 fun.

I wouldn’t mind a new dungeon to do as a group with friends or strangers. I quite like the idea of teaming up with people on a more personal level. Something like the frost and flame dungeon. That was great on all levels.

Currently there is a lot of open world content where I am player X standing next to player Y while reviving player Z. They might as well be NPC’s. There is teamwork but its like being in a crowd not in a tight group.

With recent developments in game and in interviews. It just feels like the 2nd season is an even worse idea. All the resources seem to be sucked into developing the living story, yet I don’t feel it even offers that much. Most of the living story so far has been living story instances which I do, and then go back to doing whatever I did for the last 2 years of the game.

The achievements are absolutely awful, like 2 challenging ones so far out of the entire living story. The rewards are also very bad. Its the normal “craftingmat/champbag” type of reward. Dry top is okay for a bit. I don’t see the living story getting a good response if the rest of it continues this way.