Guild Wars 2

It would be nice if A-Net would organize some story writing contest for their future living story. Let’s say for the next year.
They can set up some parameters like we need to have Brham and Rox involved plus introducing 3 new characters, 1 good and 2 bad, etc.
let players write stories and give them some in-game rewards for most of the winners.
You may also combine some ideas into a better one.

Ronah.2869:

It would be nice if A-Net would organize some story writing contest for their future living story. Let’s say for the next year.
They can set up some parameters like we need to have Brham and Rox involved plus introducing 3 new characters, 1 good and 2 bad, etc.
let players write stories and give them some in-game rewards for most of the winners.
You may also combine some ideas into a better one.

Good idea and bad idea at the same time.

Good: The idea to invite players to come up with something which will make it into the game and have a permanent (for what passes for it) imprint on the Living Story.

Good: Allowing them some reward for the inventiveness and quality.

Bad: Allowing them some reward which may not be achievable by multiple people.

I like this idea! I would participate!

I have also posted on the suggestion forum earlier about Another in-game rewarding competiotion. Plz say what u Think about it…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Part-Of-The-Game-Competition/first#post2418351

Oh my gosh, yes yes yes PLEASE do this! I love to write! Got waaay too many novels-in-progress right now, and this would just be another side track but dang it all IT WOULD BE AWESOME! +1

Considering the crap they’ve been churning out for Living Story, I’d be happy to see what the players manage. +1.

Remove the rewards, and this is a grand idea.

It would help give the writers some fresh and out-of-their-box ideas, and at the same time allow the players to steer the storyline in the direction they are interested in, rather than what Anet thinks the players are interested in (which is heavily mixed response; ironically, the frequenters of the lore forum are majorily leaned towards the “dislike” of current story and characters – to put it mildly).

Though the problem still is in that ArenaNet’s the sole ones who see and decide the story, they can easily just toss all submitted stories out the window, produce their own as planned, and say “this was from/inspired by the fans.”

But with the current direction, I feel that players could produce far better stuff.

How I wish the game was moddable – like Elder Scrolls game… capable of inserting your own stories into the game would be wonderful. Sadly, doesn’t quite work on MMOs (then again… isolated overflows would allow such, wouldn’t it…).

Weindrasi.3805:

Got waaay too many novels-in-progress right now,

Hah. I know how that feels.

Always just one scene that keeps me from continuing, or new ideas pop in and I feel like rewriting when I’m 80% done, or different story ideas that I just must get out… keeps me from finishing stories. lol

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But with the current direction, I feel that players could produce far better stuff.

They could, in theory, produce something much much better than this. Of course, in the same theory, a thousand monkeys might accidentally create something much better than this.

What we’ll get is more likely to be worse or so labor intensive they won’t be able to be used at all . . . such as battles with the Elder Dragons requiring complex boss mechanics

I doubt we’ll end up with anything worse than Scarlet Briar and her amazing ability to be retconned into everything, and have studied with everyone (including the Asura, who somehow never mention that one random sylvari zipped through the Colleges, and the Hylek, despite them having absolutely nothing to teach her, by the author’s own admission), in order to seem interesting.

As for the possibility of labor-intensive stuff…well, maybe they’d have a disclaimer regarding keeping new mechanics to a minimum and ‘Any mechanics suggested may or may not be used. Don’t take it personally if it’s the latter.’

Personally, I wouldn’t even want a reward for it. I’d just like to see some better-thought-out villains, with more interesting plots, and I’d jump at the chance to write a thing and have it used; after all, it would not just be a little bit of “Woo! My stuff is in a game!” but also possibly lead to future opportunities, if the right people happened to like it well enough.

Anymras.5729:

I doubt we’ll end up with anything worse than Scarlet Briar and her amazing ability to be retconned into everything, and have studied with everyone (including the Asura, who somehow never mention that one random sylvari zipped through the Colleges, and the Hylek, despite them having absolutely nothing to teach her, by the author’s own admission), in order to seem interesting.

As for the possibility of labor-intensive stuff…well, maybe they’d have a disclaimer regarding keeping new mechanics to a minimum and ‘Any mechanics suggested may or may not be used. Don’t take it personally if it’s the latter.’

Personally, I wouldn’t even want a reward for it. I’d just like to see some better-thought-out villains, with more interesting plots, and I’d jump at the chance to write a thing and have it used; after all, it would not just be a little bit of “Woo! My stuff is in a game!” but also possibly lead to future opportunities, if the right people happened to like it well enough.

Having judged story contests before?

Your capacity for optimism, with regards to player-generated content confounds me :P Not meant to be insulting but I really have seen worse than Scarlet Briar as often as I’ve seen things LIKE her (shoehorned into gaps in data rather than having data rewritten to suit her).

It is very rare I see anything resembling “decent writing” in a contest. I’ve seen a definite potential for more OUTSIDE of contests, but generally when you start running a contest the people with the capacity for excellence don’t enter. I don’t know why.

I know I, at least, could do better than they’ve done lately, and in theory, they’d pick the good stuff for use as content.

Then again, the people that would be choosing are the people who’ve okayed Scarlet Briar to begin with. Who thought it was perfectly reasonable to have Thackeray stomp into a dive bar and try to be secretive about hiring a detective…in full battle armor.

See, the problem is that anyone can stand up and say “I can do a better job than those hacks” much like anyone can be a well-loved critic by just getting a microphone and a YouTube account. Or, failing that, a blog space.

Talk is cheap.

The only reason I’d not question someone saying that is if they’d been published. The question would still be “let’s see what you come up with”, but I’d be less predisposed to skepticism.

I have published one thing, but it was self-published, so I wouldn’t really say it counts (don’t worry, you haven’t heard of it, in all likelihood). Whether somebody’s been published or not doesn’t actually strike me as anything to go by, anyway – after all, I’ve never heard anybody say 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight are any good, but they’ve not only been published but been incredibly successful.

I’ve also already suggested my idea for a Living Story segment, in this thread here, though I’m rather lacking in feedback on the idea – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-Story-suggestion-Golem-Uprising/first#post2700514

Thinking of doing a short story based on that idea, too, to flesh it out a little. That bit’s fairly bare-bones, but at least the characters have reasons for doing things, it makes use of existing factions and I don’t think the proposed mechanics would be too difficult to make use of.

The only reason I posted the last two paragraphs is because I honestly don’t think I’m anything special – I’m certain that many of the people playing GW2 are quite capable of coming up with more interesting, developed, relatable villains and plotlines than the crap that we’ve had as Living Story right now, which is why it’s so baffling to me that Anet is paying people to write what they do.

+This can’t be worse than what we have now
+They can use some theorycrafting at forum

Anymras.5729:

The only reason I posted the last two paragraphs is because I honestly don’t think I’m anything special – I’m certain that many of the people playing GW2 are quite capable of coming up with more interesting, developed, relatable villains and plotlines than the crap that we’ve had as Living Story right now, which is why it’s so baffling to me that Anet is paying people to write what they do.

I’m certain many people could, if we define many as “more than three”.

I’m also certain the ANet writers could do better, if they had an infinite timeframe and no strings attached. Unfortunately, that’s not really the case for any collaborative work.

Even with a timeframe and strings, they should be able to come up with an interesting villain. It’s not that hard. Anything in that link I posted, for example, I came up with in maybe an hour, not counting time spent writing it out – it was an idea I had while trying to go to sleep.

Use logic (“If someone is trying to be secretive in a bar, does it make sense for them to go rolling in wearing full battle armor, face uncovered, knowing full well that they’re one of the most recognizable faces in the city?”) and take a minute figuring out what makes the villain do what they do (Scarlet’s apparently seen the Eternal Alchemy and may have lost her mind, but it’s not like she was nice to begin with), what makes them a threat (she’s supposed to be a supergenius capable of graduating two of the Asura colleges in under a year each, with the best grades in each, with graduation of the third only taking longer because she found it so interesting, as well as having studied with Charr weapon engineers, Norn blacksmiths, and Hylek alchemists), and why they’re a villain (Scarlet’s plans involve the destruction of Kryta, from what I can gather, for…some reason). Then evaluate what it makes sense for them to do – for example, as somebody trying to turn the forces of the world against each other, as Scarlet seems to be (*), it makes sense for her to try to, say, restart the war between the Charr and Humans (as it is, they’re still only negotiating a formal, lasting peace, as far as I can recall), or push the Nightmare Court and Sylvari into greater action against each other (but the Pale Tree would warn the Sylvari about that, most likely) – basically, just for her to try to start an out-and-out war, and then swoop in and take over when her targets are exhausted. Not so much openly attacking when nobody’s forces are particularly weakened, as she’s doing, and then staging invasions all over the place. That’s what a villain who’s not ‘setting forces against one another’ would do.
Sure, they’ll probably shoehorn some twist in that somehow makes it so that her open hostility translates to other factions deciding that they’d rather fight each other than her, or perhaps have it turn out that she’s got moles in all the factions that were waiting for the proper opportunity to start other conflicts, but it just doesn’t make sense for her to do what she’s doing at the moment.

*“But I reject that call. I reject the notion that that I must choose the Dream or be lost to Nightmare. The forces that push us this way or that can be redirected. They can be set against one another to the detriment of both, and now I know how.” (From the What Scarlet Saw story)

It doesn’t strike me as that difficult, really. Even Scarlet could have worked, if they hadn’t shoehorned her in, and were actually acting as makes sense for her stated goal. Her personality and intelligence still leave her feeling like a Villain Sue, but at least she could be a Villain Sue that sticks to her plans.

story writing for a game is actually pretty challenging, since the writer will have to work closely with the designers to create compelling, achievable gameplay. Or the designers will want the writers to create a story based around a gameplay idea they are working on.

Still, it couldn’t hurt. Would love to see lore books in game ala Elder Scrolls.

I think literally any story written will be better than the current stuff.

I mean, it’s DeviantArt tier. Like, I’m not complaining that we’re getting new lore and stuff, buuuuutt… it’s pretty bad… and lore-breaking.

I’d just like to see a higher professionalism and quality in their writing. Guild Wars 1 was amazing. I literally had to step back and go “Oh kitten! Really?! Wow.” at some points in the stories and quests of the first game. It was good and it was detailed and it all fit together. The current stuff, not so much.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Remove the rewards, and this is a grand idea.

It would help give the writers some fresh and out-of-their-box ideas, and at the same time allow the players to steer the storyline in the direction they are interested in, rather than what Anet thinks the players are interested in (which is heavily mixed response; ironically, the frequenters of the lore forum are majorily leaned towards the “dislike” of current story and characters – to put it mildly).

Though the problem still is in that ArenaNet’s the sole ones who see and decide the story, they can easily just toss all submitted stories out the window, produce their own as planned, and say “this was from/inspired by the fans.”

But with the current direction, I feel that players could produce far better stuff.

How I wish the game was moddable – like Elder Scrolls game… capable of inserting your own stories into the game would be wonderful. Sadly, doesn’t quite work on MMOs (then again… isolated overflows would allow such, wouldn’t it…).

Weindrasi.3805:

Got waaay too many novels-in-progress right now,

Hah. I know how that feels.

Always just one scene that keeps me from continuing, or new ideas pop in and I feel like rewriting when I’m 80% done, or different story ideas that I just must get out… keeps me from finishing stories. lol

Wait you’re writing a book? What’s it about? I remember your (or I think it was your’s) story about Grenth and Orr and such in a guild wars online magazine that used to come out and it was really good stuff. Maybe I’m getting confused with someone else, but anyway, I’d probably read your novel.

Anymras.5729:

Even with a timeframe and strings, they should be able to come up with an interesting villain. It’s not that hard. Anything in that link I posted, for example, I came up with in maybe an hour, not counting time spent writing it out – it was an idea I had while trying to go to sleep.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say . . . you’re not entirely correct.

First, “interesting villain” is subjective. To put it mildly, everyone in the game . . . and I mean everyone . . . has their one thing they absolutely don’t care about. For me, it’s the asura politics. Couldn’t stand it back in GW1, can’t stand it now. So an interesting villain someone comes up with who slides into that part of the game? I won’t care about and they won’t be interesting to me.

For a lot of people, it’s the sylvari. They don’t want anything to do with them, and would cheerfully ignore they even exist. Seriously, it’s not hard to find about two dozen people right now on the forums who would see any sylvari character (protagonist, antagonist, even bystander) and simply not care. Come up with all the interesting things you can about them, it won’t matter.

For others, and this number is almost as much as the previous, anything even remotely concerning Logan Thackeray will get thrown out the window so hard it will bounce. Ditto Trahearne and Eir. I might go so far as to say there would be more people who would cheerfully ignore any LS material which involves Trahearne unless he was killed every hour on the hour and brought back to life so it could happen again.

So, there’s a consideration: there’s nothing you can create which will not instantly get a group of people going “this sucks and is completely uninteresting”.

Secondly, you don’t know what strings or restrictions, or even timeframes are set. Okay, say I told you tomorrow morning, with no advance warning, I needed a complete and fleshed out script by the end of the day. It can’t use anything this other team is using without their permission. (By the way, they have their own deadline they’re working under.) Why the time crunch? Well there’s time to get the script looked at and polished up, the artists to make up the assets we’re going to need to make it work (especially if nothing is reused), then the voice actors have to have their schedules checked against ours, then it’s time for the animation team to get to work on the cutscenes and then the testing krewe gets their hands on it to make sure absolutely nothing is going to break when it goes live. And this assumes the first thing you give me is good enough to go to work on it.

Lastly, and this is very important, more so than the other two . . .

It won’t make any difference how well you work on the holes in the lore, no matter how tightly it works with (and actually works with) what’s established? There’s going to be about three dozen players vocally tearing it all to shreds over retcons, colon-mining, and any possible detail they don’t agree with. And there will be retcons, colon-mining, and everything else even if they have to invent it.

You delivered the best written, most detailed, and comprehensive story you could possibly put together. It still will never be good enough to present to a group of MMO fans, let alone a whole group of fans AND the people who are just waiting to take a knife to it for anything and everything they don’t like.

And before you say it, no. I am not saying ANet laid the golden egg and nobody is giving them credit. Their story isn’t perfect (any of them) and there are flaws in just about every Living Story segment they’ve released. None of Guild Wars 1 was perfect either.

I’m saying there is nothing which can be put forward right now which isn’t going to be torn to shreds. And especially not anything which has to be done on a schedule and within a budget. And most especially something done solely by one person without access to the same resources as the team putting together the LS.

IF you want an example of it, I’ll gladly provide. I would . . . almost . . . put Gold down if I were to take 12 hours to put something together as far as a scripted opening event, middle event, and closing event for a Living Story segment? It would not be remotely as good as the Living Story.

Eh, I’ll admit, I hadn’t considered the “Some people just don’t like certain things in the least” portion, and that pretty much anything will get torn to shreds. It’s what people do. Sometimes they don’t like a thing, and the people that don’t like it tend to be easier to spot than the people who do, especially in video games and video game forums.

That said: I first read your post…maybe fifteen minutes ago (about 7:15 PM EST). I’m actually kind of curious as to whether I could manage to write up a scripted start, middle and end to my hypothetical golem event within twelve hours. Not going to make it a wager, though – not due to lack of confidence but because I feel a wager is too serious a thing (and because I’ve had this golem uprising idea rattling around for a little while, so it would feel like cheating if I were to successfully do better than the Living Story).
I’ll write something, though, between now and 7:15 AM EST. Something I’d been intending to do tonight got canceled anyway, so I might as well put the time to use.

Anymras.5729:

I’ll write something, though, between now and 7:15 AM EST. Something I’d been intending to do tonight got canceled anyway, so I might as well put the time to use.

I’ll see about getting something out by 7:30am EST myself. (I had an unfortunate interruption which will eat a nice amount of my time later tonight. Suffice it to say, never let anyone pour hot beef fat down your garbage disposal and leave it . . . )

Oh, ew. That’s…that’s nasty. My sympathies – and if you don’t have the time to try to churn something out tonight, don’t feel forced to. I’m doing it for the fun of it, so it’s not like it’s a serious business thing.

Edit: Aaand done mine at 2:49 AM.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/fangen/Golem-Uprising-Hypothetical-Scripts/first#post2716746
Hopefully this is actually what I was supposed to be doing; I have a natural inclination toward the unepic.

I’m sad to say, I have worked on it but the bulk of the time was spent checking things and sizing it up to something more technically fleshed out than story fleshed out. But I have finished most of the central dialogue in a rough sense here.

It hurts having set this up when I had to sleep for a few hours in the middle But —

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/fangen/Hypothetical-Living-Story-Bandits-of-Brisban/first#post2719390

And no, it’s not all that good or fleshed out story-wise. But it is something which has been percolating ever since I spent time doing completion in Brisban.

(To those debating about writing skill above) It doesn’t need to be something by JRR Tolkein. Just something simple like:

Firestorm in black citadel, underneath some kind of arena (the existing one or another, doesn’t matter). The charr shut down the area to everyone (including players). To get access, complete an instance to do something heroic, like save Rytlock or eat a human baby.

The Charr are investigating the possibility of arson. After searching around and questioning witnesses (implemented better than the ‘investigation’ into Theo Ashford’s death) you discover a clue (shock! horror!) that leads you to a seperatist plot.

Cue mass exodus of players to slap seperatists.

Actually as it turns out, the Charr have dug deeper and found some kind of magical energy. If triggered, it might have wiped out half the Black Citadel. And guess what? The arena it was under was the same one that had the firestorm, which co-incidentally (honest) was going to have a contest that would have had the Charr leadership in one place in just a few days.

It appears that the firestorm was started deliberately to expose this magical plot. Realising that one of the seperatists must be on the ‘good’ side (seriously, who decided we were good?) we track him down. He’s a leader, and his motives are unclear.

Upon further investigation, it seems the Charr in charge of destroying the magical energy to allow the contest to go ahead was actually the ringleader out to assume control (invent bad guy here). We warn Rytlock, who catches him red handed and ‘wastes his kitten’.

Plus points: Cliche bad guy from the good team for once.
Good guy not actually mary sue.
Betrayel, conniving etc much missed in story.
Not black vs white.
Bonus points for seperatists having a good reason not to kill leadership of Charr, like they have honour.

Negatives: Many and various, chief among which is that I have no talent at writing storylines and I pulled this out of my “thin air” 10 minutes ago.

Tathar: Yeah, I don’t any of us are saying that Living Story needs to be War and Peace, the Lord of the Rings, a Song of Ice and Fire, or anything. I just think the plots have been crap, the villains flat (even with the short story attempting to add dimensions, she still seems to have just always been a bad sort), and the dialogue (of particular characters, such as Delaqua or Scarlet) painful.

I actually like the idea that you’ve got for a Charr-centric Living Story segment, too.

Tobias: Hey, that looks pretty good. Brings existing lore back into the limelight, which is always a bonus.

Anymras.5729:

, and the dialogue (of particular characters, such as Delaqua or Scarlet) painful.

Dialogue is always hard.

Tobias: Hey, that looks pretty good. Brings existing lore back into the limelight, which is always a bonus.

It’s a slow start with no real payoff, and I approached it under the idea there would not be many new art assets to work with, and only one new temporary zone (the dungeon). It expands on potential if . . . for instance . . . I decided it was okay to use that broken bridge in Lionshead Outcrops? Or if there was indeed a green light to bring back a Mursaat.

Dragon swoops over {insert random major city}.
Oh no, it’s {DRAGON}!
Hero, yes you, we have a dragon problem at hand, head for {major city} and rescue us all!
Rally at {whereisthezerg.com}.
{DRAGON} drops loot, Hero happy.

The End.

Nooo, I promise I would not enter the contest.
I like the idea!

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Anymras.5729:

, and the dialogue (of particular characters, such as Delaqua or Scarlet) painful.

Dialogue is always hard.

Tobias: Hey, that looks pretty good. Brings existing lore back into the limelight, which is always a bonus.

It’s a slow start with no real payoff, and I approached it under the idea there would not be many new art assets to work with, and only one new temporary zone (the dungeon). It expands on potential if . . . for instance . . . I decided it was okay to use that broken bridge in Lionshead Outcrops? Or if there was indeed a green light to bring back a Mursaat.

Yeah, dialogue can be difficult. I think the voice acting in those parts may have something to do with it, as well – but the pseudonoir airs they tried just didn’t work anyway.

Hey, a slow start is still a start – and not every Living Story has to have some great world-changing payoff. If they okayed bringing back a Mursaat, that’d definitely be a “Oh, crap.” moment for people who’d played GW1.

Anymras.5729:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Anymras.5729:

, and the dialogue (of particular characters, such as Delaqua or Scarlet) painful.

Dialogue is always hard.

Tobias: Hey, that looks pretty good. Brings existing lore back into the limelight, which is always a bonus.

It’s a slow start with no real payoff, and I approached it under the idea there would not be many new art assets to work with, and only one new temporary zone (the dungeon). It expands on potential if . . . for instance . . . I decided it was okay to use that broken bridge in Lionshead Outcrops? Or if there was indeed a green light to bring back a Mursaat.

Yeah, dialogue can be difficult. I think the voice acting in those parts may have something to do with it, as well – but the pseudonoir airs they tried just didn’t work anyway.

Hey, a slow start is still a start – and not every Living Story has to have some great world-changing payoff. If they okayed bringing back a Mursaat, that’d definitely be a “Oh, crap.” moment for people who’d played GW1.

Bonus points for also allowing Agony to creep in :P

Well, they’ve already got it in Fractals. It’d give them an easy option to start branching it into non-Fractal content, which would help force people into crafting Ascended gear for the Infusion slots.

Anymras.5729:

Well, they’ve already got it in Fractals. It’d give them an easy option to start branching it into non-Fractal content, which would help force people into crafting Ascended gear for the Infusion slots.

Well, only in a sense. Personally, if I had a LS segment I was adding Mursaat . . . with Agony, because I’m not adding Mursaat without their Spectral Agony . . . either:

1. It’d be a region with a crier before you enter going “Wait, you’re not going in there are you?! That’s suicide!” to explain the need to prepare for Agony. Note, you CAN survive low-scale Agony if you’re keeping an eye on your health. You make the “Jade Mursaat Weapons” drop in there however you like, and you have a reason for players to get geared to go in there. Maybe have them drop not the weapons but crafting recipes at 400+.

2. It’d be an instanced “dungeon” you run through with a few boss Mursaat throwing Agony around enough to require high skill without Infusion to beat. (Note: You could technically kill them without Infusion in GW1 too, it was just REALLY HARD.) Again, make the reward something worthwhile without being “too good to do without”.