Guild Wars 2

We’ve all heard the QQ’ing about the Living Story and how the content is limited time only.

• Players who can’t log on consistently or new players end up missing a lot of good content.
• Furthermore, they may be dropped into the middle of a narrative they never had the opportunity to begin.
• Lastly, some of the content like dungeons takes a lot of work to create and balance, just to have it disappear in a month – this may not be most efficient use of resources and creative talent.

However, limited time content also has it’s positives.

• It presents the world as living, breathing, and evolving rather than static.
• It encourages players who can log on consistently to do so – this keeps the persistent world alive and populated.
• And finally, it helps the gem store sales by increasing demand for items that are unique to the event while also giving them a context.

I propose the Historian as a compromise toward the first 3 points, without stealing the luster from the last 3 points.

The Historian is an NPC who records and offers to players his account of the past events in the Living Story.

The Historian’s account should include:

1. Story
The story is simply the Historian telling (voiced or written) in his own words the story that took place. This includes what happened in the dialogs, cutscenes, the open world activity, and the instanced parts. Concept art and screen shots should supplement the story. The story driven cutscenes may or may not be included.

2. “Flashback” Instanced Missions
This includes the very same dungeons and instanced story missions that ran during the event. These instances are arguably where the quality gameplay is in the Living Story. Though I won’t presume that it takes more developer resources than the open world activities, instanced content is the typically more fine tuned and replayable.

Because it is completely instanced it does not threaten the new state of the world for people who participated in the actual Living Story event, nor does it require participation of the world. For all intents and purposes, it is simply a playable “flashback”. But for those who missed it, this is a chance to experience without disrupting the world continuity for others.

The Historian’s account should NOT include:

1. Open World Activities
What can be considered the “Living” part of the Living Story – the activities that took place in cities and explorable areas. For example: killing the dredge sonars, helping the refugees, collecting southsun samples, and smacking piñatas.

These open world activities definitely have a place in the event making it feel like the story was really having an impact on the world. However, these activities didn’t really offer anything unique or challenging to the gameplay, rather most of it depended on community coming together to be meaningful. Even the boss events were just the same old damage spam for an hour.

Also, re-implementing open world activities that were supposed to have been in the past presents serious technical and continuity challenges in itself. Attempting to bring open world activities back to the world could destroy the permanence of the changed world that the developers were trying so hard to create, or split the playerbase more than necessary between shards.

2. Achievements, drops, cosmetics, and other exclusive items

One of the goals of the Living Story is to reward players with that prestige “I was there when it happened” titles, and exclusive cosmetics. Allowing others who weren’t there to easily pick them up later through the Historian would diminish that sense of pride. It would also decrease demand for the cash shop exclusives during the event, which doesn’t benefit the company financially.

I’m not saying certain rewards should never be offered again in the future, but that it should not be the purpose of the Historian.
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=== TL;DR ===
The Historian is intended as a compromise for new players or those who can’t make it to the live events, while remaining in line with the original purpose of the Living Story – a one time event with a permanent effect on the world.

Players will be able to read/listen to an account of the Living Story events and play the instanced missions/dungeons as flashbacks. Players will not be able to engage in the open world activities from the event (they will be summarized in the story) nor can any of the achievements or exclusive items from the event be earned through the Historian.

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The Historian is primarily aimed at the story related content, not exclusive drops and rewards.
If you wish to discuss ideas about bringing back previously exclusive items or achievements, PLEASE START A NEW TOPIC ! ! !

Very good idea of the Historian. It’ll solve a lot of problems caused by one-time content. But I can’t agree the achievements part.

First, like many other players, I’m just a casual player, I can’t be the top player of PVE or PVP. I only want to be an achiever who is chasing for all the achievements. I completed all the achievements of Super Adventure Box and Flame & Frost. But I missed Southsun achievements because I was busy in real life at that time. It’s really frustrating when I noticed it’s one-time achievements. Uncompleted achievements are forever in my achievements panel. If there’s no way to get them, I decide to give up all the following living story achievements later or just quit the game. Someone may laugh at me here, I should admit I can’t complete all the achievements even to the end of the game, but I need the “Hope” and a goal I can chase for. Now, my goal of the game and last “Hope” are killed. I think new players will also face the same problem.

Second, you mentioned " sense of pride". I can tell you, even a casual player like me can not feel any difficulty of the living story achievements, they can’t give me “Pride”. I only need to log in at the right time and play enough time. Pride comes from difficult achievements, not one-time and easy achievements.

GW2 is the only game I want to play after WOW and I want to play it for years, but I stop playing these days because of the missed achievements. I just check the forum everyday to see if Anet will let us have a chance to get the missed achievements.

Not a bad idea. They did similar story telling in GW1 with the purchasable mission packs.

I’ve think about this too before, and a great way to make it happen and also make personal storyline replayable, would be to introduce this feature in the Hall of Monuments pool.

That place doesn’t get too much love after being the focal point of Eye of the North, most players went there once for skins and never got back. The pool has the property of allowing you to see events (past and future) so it could be a great way to replay any chapter, both personal story (eliminating choices at the end of each chapter so you can’t change your paths) and living story.

Should come as no surprise – I endorse this.

I personally haven’t missed anything so far, but I would have loved to be able to brush up my memory on Lost Shores (I had absolutely no recollection of Canach or Kiel… oh, my memory.)

Azure.2407:

But I can’t agree the achievements part.

The Historian is geared for players who are new or play infrequently. I do not think getting and keeping 100% achievements is a priority for the majority of such players – it’s a large commitment even for regulars who play alot. You claim to be a casual player yet set such a hardcore goal for yourself.

Allowing players to complete some of these past achievements would mean bringing back the actual world events as they are the core of these achievements. This opens a bag of technical issues. Do we split the playerbase into dozens of shards, representing different events on the timeline? Do we have giant invisible Karka bosses romping around that only 1/3 of the players can see? Do we simply repeat all the Living Story chapters, hoping the players who missed it will be able to make it this time (many probably won’t), and everyone else doesn’t get bored from repeated content over and over?

I’m sure there are answers to the technical hurdles, but that is not within the scope of the Historian’s role as an compromise, not a full blown overhaul of the system.

Lokheit.7943:

I’ve think about this too before, and a great way to make it happen and also make personal storyline replayable, would be to introduce this feature in the Hall of Monuments pool.

I didn’t think of the old Scrying Pool, that’s a great idea!

Perhaps a combination of the two: the Historian tells the story, and the Scrying Pool gives the cutscenes + instanced gameplay.

Hall of Monuments pool? Where is that? I thought I had 100% world completion but I don’t think I ran into that on my wanderings.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Hall of Monuments pool? Where is that? I thought I had 100% world completion but I don’t think I ran into that on my wanderings.

It’s only accessible if you linked your GW1 account to the GW2 account. It doesn’t count toward world completion, for that very reason.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hall_of_monuments

Edit: Don’t know what I was thinking.

Spencer.1386:

Not a bad idea. They did similar story telling in GW1 with the purchasable mission packs.

if the did the purchassable mission packs which unlocked an instanced version of the living story missions/events with the rewards/achievements. that would be perfect.
could call it an asura time gate patent pending

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

So if the Molten Alliance Weapon Facility dungeon ever gets moved to fractals, there will still be no way to get more jetpacks/minis? I still want a jetpack (don’t have the gold to buy it from tp either)

Sounds good, but still being able to get a jet pack or something would be cool. Unfortunately the rewards in fractals are lackluster currently with their being no use for relics after you have two rings so being able to buy the event rewards or other items would be cool.

Replacing the awful dredge fractal slog with a cut down version of excellent F&F dungeon would be a fantastic start (beginning at the mid boss maybe)

ColinJohanson.2394:

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Yes, it would, assuming you made it not quite as long. We need more shorter fractals, unlike the Dredge fractal.

Good for me, I already have one. You could have something like it but weird and fractally

Imitation Molten Jetpack – 10 Pristine Relics
Crude mock up based on observations in the mists. Constructed out of cardboard, glue and cellophane.

Although if it existed and looked tacky and cheap enough i’d probably replace the real one for it

Or we could preserve it in its original state and not make it a fractal.

A historian (or different mechanism with similar purpose) would solve many more problems than just us missing the Molten Facility.

All the new players of this game will see their forever uncompleted living story achievements. How they feel if they are hardcore players or just want to be an achiever?

I don’t understand why not encourage all the players to chase for all the achievements. Some perfectionists like me will give up all the remaining achievements if they miss just one living story achievement before. If you want to make the hardcore players feel “Pride”, just provide them more difficult achievements, that will be better than time-limited achievements. In my opinion, the orientation of GW2 is not to force players to be online all the time. Casual play style will make the game live longer, am I right?

Please, think about it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

Umm….. Fractals are for Hard Core players who can log in every day and get every achievement for every living story that comes by (which defeats the purpose of it being “historical” as in for people who missed the content). The casual player who misses the content in the Living Story doesn’t stand a shot in seeing it in Fractals. Plus, Fractals are random. I’d like to choose the story I want to replay.

The BMP was great. It was challenging, but you could choose what you wanted to do and it wasn’t too difficult. Fractals are meant to be challenging – even to the player that logs in every day. You don’t just go in there solo or with a couple of friends with random gear. I’ve done that before and just got frustrated – we had to give up.

TBH I don’t have much of a desire to do Fractals (besides going through all nine once). I just want to do all the dungeons in PvE, log in when I can, do the stories, and so forth. Perhaps hop into WvW and PvP later.

Please have an “historian” or such option that’s more casual with how it handles the game play of the living story or the story that was missed for casual players that missed it – obviously without the rewards. Like the Scrying Pool (and I’d love that for personal storyline, too).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Thats what I was afraid of. So all the new player (or ones who didn’t get to experience it originally) will only get a stripped version of the content.
And, once supply is used up, oh well to any new player that sees it and wants one.

I’m really becoming disappointed in the new content reward structure. First it was the kitten limited time, RNG based item (like the jetpack/firestorm mini), that drop so rarely that you have to be really lucky to get one. Then its the one reward item per account for any new content (like wintersday backpack (was actually first thing), fused guantlets, SoSC back items). At least this time we can get one of the back items multiple times (though it takes extreme grinding or getting lucky with a drop), but the other are still once per account. What happened to the philosophy you guys had with the Halloween where we could get the items multiple times if we did (relatively) enjoyable content each time. /rant

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Or we could preserve it in its original state and not make it a fractal.

A historian (or different mechanism with similar purpose) would solve many more problems than just us missing the Molten Facility.

this.

What about the limited time RNG skins?

I have to say, I don’t like this idea of ‘prestige items’ and ‘destroying value’ that seems to have appeared in GW2. In GW1 there were no items and weapons that were yanked out of the game forever after introduction and never able to be found/achieved/farmed again. I get the idea of not wanting everyone to be able to get everything easily. I really do. I’m not asking to have something handed to me – before everyone starts to scream ‘entitled.’

No offense to people that have the jetpack, but how did they earn it? It was an RNG drop from a dungeon. Sure they maybe ran the dungeon a hundred times to get it, but if it’s an RNG drop I could have run the dungeon twice that many times and still not gotten it. That’s the very definition of random.

It’s really upsetting to me to see the art department release beautiful skins and to tell myself I have to hate them because RNG and I have never gotten along. I never get the RNG drops I want. Never. I’m not lucky. Everything RNG I’ve ever gotten I’ve either purchased from another player or been given by a friend who has amazing RNG luck. I don’t feel like opening RNG chests in a short span of a month is ‘earning’ something. It’s luck.

I’ve heard, though I missed it, that SAB had a method similar to the dungeons wherein you earned tokens and turned those tokens in for something. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE introduce a system like this for getting the new skins. I don’t care if you want to make them available in RNG only chests for awhile and let people pay for the chance to get them faster and easier. But it’s really disappointing to see such a small amount of the player base being able to enjoy these beautiful pieces of art.

I want to earn a fused weapon skin. I don’t care if it takes me a month or a year. But please give me a chance to do that. If the end game is all about personalizing our appearance, why, why, why make beautiful skins so extremely limited?

Lorelei.7809:

Umm….. Fractals are for Hard Core players who can log in every day and get every achievement for every living story that comes by (which defeats the purpose of it being “historical” as in for people who missed the content). The casual player who misses the content in the Living Story doesn’t stand a shot in seeing it in Fractals. Plus, Fractals are random. I’d like to choose the story I want to replay.

Have you actually tried Fractals?
Lvl 1 Fractals is easy and can be done by anyone that have somewhat of a clue about what is going on.

skullmount.1758:

Thats what I was afraid of. So all the new player (or ones who didn’t get to experience it originally) will only get a stripped version of the content.
And, once supply is used up, oh well to any new player that sees it and wants one.

So, what would be the point of removing them in the first place if they would be doable with the exact same rewards 5 years later?

The whole point of the specific items is to show that you were there when it actually happened.

fractals aren’t only for the hardcores, you can go in at lv.1 with likeminded people (lfg – webpage or the lfg-tool later this (?) year).

The problem I think could arise: People want to play the new dungeon but fractal-rounds are random. The number of fractals gets larger too, so the more content they bring to fractals, the less likely it will be to get a new one.

Wouldn’t it be cool if every player can set his/her favourite fractal and one of the 3 will be the most-voted one. Or That you can choose to play specific fractals with reduced rewards or without rank-up chance? So that people can alternatively visit fractals because they are interested in one specific fractal.

and to Colin if you’re still listening: a wardrobe / collection alá the pvp wardrobe would be nice for pve too, because bank-space get’s smaller and smaller the longer we’re around collecting stuff is fun, but cooking is fun too (not mentioning the tons of cooking-mats in half a dozen bank tabs)

I’m much happier that they decided to add it to FotM rather than just copying the same dungeon. The bosses were very well designed mechanically and it seems obvious that they would keep them for the FotM version. The mobs however, while well designed mechanically, would have you fighting the same series over and over again with no variety (plenty of groups had 1 Brawler + 1 Rifle + 1 Shaman, no groups ever had 2 Brawlers + X or 2 Rifles +X).

By making it a fractal it also keeps the instance more relevant to the players. A fractal version of MF would probably be even easier than it was as a dungeon at low fractal levels (or at least I know FotM lvl 1-10 is faceroll if the group knows the mechanics), while higher fractal levels where you actually need to pay attention to all the mechanics could turn it into a very difficult encounter.

Molten Facility as a fractal makes a great deal of sense. It strikes me a more balanced version of the dredge fractal.

The canach/kroll fights would NOT be a good addition to fractals, as the only redeeming quality they possess is a short duration.

While I see the fractals as an interesting way of reusing the old content, it doesn’t at all perform the same function that the OP is proposing. That said, the entrance instance to the fractals could certainly be a way for players to encounter the “Historian” NPC and find a portal into these “time shards” as it would all tie together neatly without needing to create anything new. The “Historian” could simply be a member of the Asura Krewe already working on the fractals project.

lordkrall.7241:

skullmount.1758:

Thats what I was afraid of. So all the new player (or ones who didn’t get to experience it originally) will only get a stripped version of the content.
And, once supply is used up, oh well to any new player that sees it and wants one.

So, what would be the point of removing them in the first place if they would be doable with the exact same rewards 5 years later?

The whole point of the specific items is to show that you were there when it actually happened.

Except thats not true either, since you could have just bought it off the TP. If I somehow had the gold right now I could buy it from the TP, which doesn’t mean I was there for F&F (even though I was and ran the kitten dungeon at least 3 times a day trying to get one, and still never got one).

.

While I see the fractals as an interesting way of reusing the old content, it doesn’t at all perform the same function that the OP is proposing. That said, the entrance instance to the fractals could certainly be a way for players to encounter the “Historian” NPC and find a portal into these “time shards” as it would all tie together neatly without needing to create anything new. The “Historian” could simply be a member of the Asura Krewe already working on the fractals project.

removing content just screws new or unlucky players.
And there will be no prestige if those “select few” who got such reward eventually stop playing → jetpacks and such simply disappear from the game

It would be much better to just make these rng limited time items avaible each year in festivals and such that celebrate living stories and whatever, even if these events last for a week, at least give new players a chance at earning such objects again. If I started playing in September, for example, I would be pretty kitten ed for not being able to get jade weapons anymore (dragon coffers supply is going to run out sooner or later)

To be honest, I like that the living story content is only temporary availaible. It gives the impression that the ingame-time progresses. Why would anyone invent the new Dragon Festival during the Molten Alliance crysis?

The worst offender in that regard is Orr imo. I’d really like to see a “Winds of Change”-y cleansing of Orr so that Orr is finally risen-free. But I understand Anet cannot do that, since the risen are so integrated in the personal story.

There’s also a more pragmatic argument for temporary content. In WoW, all/most old content is still ingame, but it’s dead because players ingore it. Why would anyone to the oldschool lvl 60 raids, if the first random lvl 61 blue item is better? In WoW all content for not-max-level and Tier(max-2) equipment is defacto removed. ANet just choose to remove old content by themselves.

I like the idea. It preserves the unique skins for those who were there at that moment in time, but it also gives new content to those who haven’t gotten to do those dungeons and such.

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

There was no fairness in there anyway, you just needed to be lucky.
Rewards that depend on RNG for their acquisition aren’t fair by definition. Especially if we’re talking about time-limited content.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Yup. Could be fun.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

BMP was a bunch of side stories not essential to the main story. In fact, it wasn’t even part of the game, you had to buy the BMP (it was not an expansion) and it only had a limited purchase time. You can clearly tell this is not ESSENTIAL to the main story.

Living story is THE story. THE STORY.

How could you think fractals is the right place for this? Casual players who are so casual they missed living story (or had life happen — hospital stay, family emergency/family duties, deployments, or even simple things like being divorced and having your kid for a week or two, heck, even just having to do overtime at work) don’t want to do fractals to experience the story unless they were already interested in fractals.

Fractals is the elite dungeon of the game, the farming/grinding endgame, how can you put the main story there?

Admit it, you guys have no clue what you’re doing with your own game.

Players shouldn’t miss the main story. The main story should be available for them to play on their own terms. Specially as the gaming population is much, much older now, and we have a lot more life obligations in the way of our gaming than we did when we were teenagers!

lorazcyk.8927:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

BMP was a bunch of side stories not essential to the main story. In fact, it wasn’t even part of the game, you had to buy the BMP (it was not an expansion) and it only had a limited purchase time. You can clearly tell this is not ESSENTIAL to the main story.

Living story is THE story. THE STORY.

How could you think fractals is the right place for this? Casual players who are so casual they missed living story (or had life happen — hospital stay, family emergency/family duties, deployments, or even simple things like being divorced and having your kid for a week or two, heck, even just having to do overtime at work) don’t want to do fractals to experience the story unless they were already interested in fractals.

Fractals is the elite dungeon of the game, the farming/grinding endgame, how can you put the main story there?

Admit it, you guys have no clue what you’re doing with your own game.

Players shouldn’t miss the main story. The main story should be available for them to play on their own terms. Specially as the gaming population is much, much older now, and we have a lot more life obligations in the way of our gaming than we did when we were teenagers!

Have you tried FotM before?

All fractals set to FotM level 1-9 (and probably higher) are easier than the MF dungeon was.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

I’m not going to bother thinking up examples right now, but I’m pretty sure most of us can think of items which ArenaNet has suddenly altered the value of with updates in the past. It’s inconsistent to say you won’t do it this time but you have done it in the past and will continue to do it in the future. You’re being very selective about this kind of content. I’m not saying the jetpack should be added to FotM, just pointing out that to “undercut value” of an item hasn’t been a no-go area.

I also personally think it’s lame the prioritise power traders over the rest of the community.

Azure.2407:

All the new players of this game will see their forever uncompleted living story achievements. How they feel if they are hardcore players or just want to be an achiever?

I don’t understand why not encourage all the players to chase for all the achievements. Some perfectionists like me will give up all the remaining achievements if they miss just one living story achievement before. If you want to make the hardcore players feel “Pride”, just provide them more difficult achievements, that will be better than time-limited achievements. In my opinion, the orientation of GW2 is not to force players to be online all the time. Casual play style will make the game live longer, am I right?

Please, think about it.

I totally agree with this, why make achievements that aren’t possible to get for new players. It’s completely discouraging for those who like to hunt achievements like me.

GoldenTruth.2853:

lorazcyk.8927:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

BMP was a bunch of side stories not essential to the main story. In fact, it wasn’t even part of the game, you had to buy the BMP (it was not an expansion) and it only had a limited purchase time. You can clearly tell this is not ESSENTIAL to the main story.

Living story is THE story. THE STORY.

How could you think fractals is the right place for this? Casual players who are so casual they missed living story (or had life happen — hospital stay, family emergency/family duties, deployments, or even simple things like being divorced and having your kid for a week or two, heck, even just having to do overtime at work) don’t want to do fractals to experience the story unless they were already interested in fractals.

Fractals is the elite dungeon of the game, the farming/grinding endgame, how can you put the main story there?

Admit it, you guys have no clue what you’re doing with your own game.

Players shouldn’t miss the main story. The main story should be available for them to play on their own terms. Specially as the gaming population is much, much older now, and we have a lot more life obligations in the way of our gaming than we did when we were teenagers!

Have you tried FotM before?

All fractals set to FotM level 1-9 (and probably higher) are easier than the MF dungeon was.

It’s not because it’s easy or because it’s difficult.
It’s because it’s not the right place to do this thing.

Did you read the OP?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/The-Historian-for-people-who-missed-content/first#post2221128

StarbornStriker.6493:

In GW1 there were no items and weapons that were yanked out of the game forever after introduction and never able to be found/achieved/farmed again. I get the idea of not wanting everyone to be able to get everything easily. I really do. I’m not asking to have something handed to me – before everyone starts to scream ‘entitled.’

Yes there was. There were several Prophecies items which were available only for a short time. I think there was a weapon out of Henge which was highly wanted, and some other collector items which were removed before Factions was released.

And there were some minis which were given out as specific prizes or promotions for a specific time and only a limited amount (by the nature of it being a printed promo code or a rewarded item) were available to the entire world of players.

Then there were the more forgiving “one time only quest rewards” such as the Banana Scythe or a Grim Cesta with specific stats which could never be replicated. If you needed one, you’d need to roll up a new character and complete the quest. If you happened to lose it some how, well . . . new character!

And for the LONGEST of times you could only get the festival hats on the finale day of the festivals. Got sick? Had to work? Maybe you just blanked on the date? Tough luck, no hat for you.

lorazcyk.8927:

GoldenTruth.2853:

lorazcyk.8927:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

BMP was a bunch of side stories not essential to the main story. In fact, it wasn’t even part of the game, you had to buy the BMP (it was not an expansion) and it only had a limited purchase time. You can clearly tell this is not ESSENTIAL to the main story.

Living story is THE story. THE STORY.

How could you think fractals is the right place for this? Casual players who are so casual they missed living story (or had life happen — hospital stay, family emergency/family duties, deployments, or even simple things like being divorced and having your kid for a week or two, heck, even just having to do overtime at work) don’t want to do fractals to experience the story unless they were already interested in fractals.

Fractals is the elite dungeon of the game, the farming/grinding endgame, how can you put the main story there?

Admit it, you guys have no clue what you’re doing with your own game.

Players shouldn’t miss the main story. The main story should be available for them to play on their own terms. Specially as the gaming population is much, much older now, and we have a lot more life obligations in the way of our gaming than we did when we were teenagers!

Have you tried FotM before?

All fractals set to FotM level 1-9 (and probably higher) are easier than the MF dungeon was.

It’s not because it’s easy or because it’s difficult.
It’s because it’s not the right place to do this thing.

Did you read the OP?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/The-Historian-for-people-who-missed-content/first#post2221128

You said it’s not the right place to do it because several people “don’t want to do fractals to experience the story”. Your reasons for why people wouldn’t want to do fractals is because it is “the elite dungeon of the game” and the “farming/grinding endgame”.

If we follow the OPs idea we would essentially get the entirety of Molten Forge back correct? If they make MF a fractal it is even more accessible for people who want to see the story because it would most likely be easier (at lower levels) than the original dungeon, it is a shorter version (so those busy people can finish it even faster), and it makes sense (if I die in a flashback why am I paying for armor repairs? If we lose did we fail to stop the molten alliance?). If a person only cares about the story they only need to do this one fractal and can then stop, if a person wants to do FotM they have a whole new fractal.

I don’t see how this isn’t the right place to add it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

can you just tell us if we will have some use for our pristines/crystals of mist essence?
some players played fractal a lot despit current rewards and having something for them would be nice.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Less time and effort creating limited availability “valuables” and more time creating stuff that the majority can enjoy, ok? You guys haven’t been very efficient since launch and the percentage of what you create that only gets very limited access and use is more than a little frustrating.

Variety of skins ensures novelty, while preserving access. You only need exclusivity if you are a tiny game studio that can only afford to pump out a very limited number of new assets every year. Even then, it’s just an evil of necessity, rather than an ideal.

The focus on “l33t stuffs” seems immature and not really worthy of a large, talented and well funded studio.

ColinJohanson.2394:

It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

Also, how is that fair to any new player or us players that grinded the dungeon constantly hoping to get one and never did thanks to the kitten low RNG drop rates?
Isn’t that the risk of trying to sell stuff on the global TP? That someone will always sell it for less or more than you?

Fiontar.4695:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Less time and effort creating limited availability “valuables” and more time creating stuff that the majority can enjoy, ok? You guys haven’t been very efficient since launch and the percentage of what you create that only gets very limited access and use is more than a little frustrating.

Variety of skins ensures novelty, while preserving access. You only need exclusivity if you are a tiny game studio that can only afford to pump out a very limited number of new assets every year. Even then, it’s just an evil of necessity, rather than an ideal.

The focus on “l33t stuffs” seems immature and not really worthy of a large, talented and well funded studio.

Agreed.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

StarbornStriker.6493:

In GW1 there were no items and weapons that were yanked out of the game forever after introduction and never able to be found/achieved/farmed again. I get the idea of not wanting everyone to be able to get everything easily. I really do. I’m not asking to have something handed to me – before everyone starts to scream ‘entitled.’

Yes there was. There were several Prophecies items which were available only for a short time. I think there was a weapon out of Henge which was highly wanted, and some other collector items which were removed before Factions was released.

And there were some minis which were given out as specific prizes or promotions for a specific time and only a limited amount (by the nature of it being a printed promo code or a rewarded item) were available to the entire world of players.

Then there were the more forgiving “one time only quest rewards” such as the Banana Scythe or a Grim Cesta with specific stats which could never be replicated. If you needed one, you’d need to roll up a new character and complete the quest. If you happened to lose it some how, well . . . new character!

And for the LONGEST of times you could only get the festival hats on the finale day of the festivals. Got sick? Had to work? Maybe you just blanked on the date? Tough luck, no hat for you.

Yeah but if you were able to get things like the Banana Scythe (and I still have three of them sitting around in various character inventories) by rolling up a new character, they weren’t impossible to get were they? And they did eventually add a hat vendor in that stuck around for a week after the event in case you were sick or had to work, ect. They also added another vendor who looked at your hats and allowed you to make as many as you wanted across all your other characters instead of just having one. Accidentally delete it? No problem you just get another one. Same with the costumes. Yet in this game people are paying real money for item skins and if they accidentally delete it OH WELL.

Besides I’d hardly call any of the hats from the first game prestigious. Most of them were just silly. Yeah my horns of Grenth from the very first Wintersday got me lots of compliments from people who joined the game later, but even they eventually became available to everyone. And really that’s all people are asking for here is a chance to eventually get something instead of it being locked behind limited time RNG drops for all time.

Edited to add: It’s also a bit different if someone wins a contest. Yeah that should be something special. But then that person got it through effort, by winning something. And obviously limited time promotional codes in magazines and stuff are going to be limited time codes that are printed. And you got it by buying the magazine. RNG still comes down to luck. And no one’s ever going to convince me luck = effort because one can put a vast amount of effort into getting an RNG item and never see it.

Fiontar.4695:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

Less time and effort creating limited availability “valuables” and more time creating stuff that the majority can enjoy, ok? You guys haven’t been very efficient since launch and the percentage of what you create that only gets very limited access and use is more than a little frustrating.

Variety of skins ensures novelty, while preserving access. You only need exclusivity if you are a tiny game studio that can only afford to pump out a very limited number of new assets every year. Even then, it’s just an evil of necessity, rather than an ideal.

The focus on “l33t stuffs” seems immature and not really worthy of a large, talented and well funded studio.

I also agree with this.

I’ve tried Fractals. What ended up happening is, a couple of my friends and I decided to try out Fractals. They sounded neat since they’d scale you up, which, I thought that meant that they wouldn’t be too bad. So we went in there as a three-person group (we’ve 3-manned Ascalon Catacombs Story Mode and Caudecus Mansion). The first one that we ended up going into was the one where you had to stand on platforms to open certain doors with the boss that you have to pull under lava and hit him. Well, we finally got through the door, got through the dredge, and then we got to the boss. Once we got to the boss, we had to give up. We tried another one, it was the jumping puzzle one and we ended up having to give up on it too. I’ve joined up with a group of 5 in Fractals and it was better, but the dredge one just isn’t fun in either situation. I find the PvE dungeons far more enjoyable. At least out of the fractals I’ve tried. I don’t think that historical content should be in the form of a dungeon, personally. It turns a lot of people off automatically. Plus, you really do need to be at least level 30 so you have an elite skill to go through them. To me, it sounds like they’re unfriendly to less than 5-person groups, they’re easy for hard core players, and they’re rough for casuals.

Yes, these are meant for 5 people. But a lot of people don’t like PUGing if they’re just doing something for fun. Which is what it should be done for if it really is for historical purposes.

Also, the number one reason that FotM is a bad place to add it is: You can’t choose your Fractal. Also, they just aren’t casual enough for a historical sort of content. I mean, dungeon = historical? Some casuals avoid dungeons just because they’re dungeons OR they don’t want to PUG (another MAJOR reason).

ColinJohanson.2394:

We feel like our fractals dungeon is the perfect fit for this kind of “historical” experience, similar to the way the BMP worked in Gw1. Even better, it already exists and has explanations behind why these slices of time are available to discover and experience within.

In the future, you’ll see certain types of content that was part of larger story experiences be updated to work within the fractals dungeon and return there where it makes sense to do so. Of course, the specific rewards and achievements will not return since those are intended to be completed as the story unfolds, but the content itself will be used to expand out our fractals experience and serve as a place to continue to experience great (and strange) moments in history.

I think what they are looking for is actually something more similar to the Scrying Pool in the Hall of Monuments, which let you replay missions and quests that you had (or in this case hadn’t) done before. I personally don’t want you to create a new F&F-themed dungeon for the fractals, I do just want the possibility to replay content wich is already there, but not available anymore, and I consider it an unnecessary waste of resources to make content that not all players ever has the chance to experience.
If I was away from GW1: Beyond for a few months I’d be warmly welcomed by a chunk of new content waiting for me that I could play at any time at my own pace. If am away for a month from the Living Story I will be not so warmly welcomed by seeing all the content which I missed while the world hasn’t actually expanded a lot. This is the reason why so many players dislike the focus on temporary content.
It should be quite simple to add an npc in the home instance allows you to just replay the instanced Personal Story or Living Story steps without a reward, since some players actually want to do them for fun rather than profit. By only rewarding players that where there under the event they will still be motivated to log in and play if they can, which I assume is the fundamental reason for the whole temporary content focus.

ColinJohanson.2394:

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

I hope this applies to expensive holiday items too. It would really suck for those who spent over 200 gold on a rare, limited time item only to have it come back and flood the market.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.

As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.

And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)

I have a hard time classifying a random drop like the Jetpack as earned rather than just chance.

I ran the F&F instance as much as I could, and got pretty good at it but never got any of the rarer drops. I don’t feel bad about it, I accept that I just wasn’t lucky, but don’t infer that the guy who got a jetpack his first run, or even in his first five runs, did as much to earn it as others who got no drops for their time.

Player’s aren’t really rewarded for effort, it’s just luck and how much time you can devote to sitting in front of your computer.

I’ll support it if they got a chance for the missed weapon tickets >_< i wanted the fuse long bow so freaking long. Just don’t have the money to throw away for useless keys >_>

I have to say that the idea of bringing certain events from living world story into fractals is really exciting. I’d really like to see that.

But the main point of the idea proposed by the OP is retelling story. A dungeon instance will be fun but it won’t retell the story of entire F&F. It would be great to have a way – either an NPC/NPCs, an object like scrying pool or in books in a public part of Priory library/home instance library, where you could review the story behind the events. Someone buying GW2 next year probably won’t have any idea how Kiel or Rox or Majory came into the story. A ‘historian’ like mechanic would allow them to learn about those events in another way than searching the wiki/forums for hours.