Guild Wars 2

This is more for the benefit of the devs than for ours, but I wanted to discuss the pacing of the events since the October update. What do you suggest to be good pacing? How much is bad?

My favorite has been Halloween so far. It flowed for its entire duration, while also building tension for the fight with the Mad King; and then the denouement was very well done too. On top of that, we got by far the best jumping puzzle in the game, but that’s besides the point ;D

Meanwhile, that Karka event had to have some of the most ridiculous schedules ever. That should be pretty obvious to anyone who was participating. And our current Living Story is just being dragged out for far too long: those refugees could have built a second Hoelbrak by now…

My personal preference would have been Prelude and Gathering Storm come in one month, but separated by about two weeks; the other two sections would be set up in a similar way. This gives the notion that it is truly a big event, but it also keeps the player’s attention for the entire duration (think about it: we’d be killing off the Molten Alliance Big Bad Bosses right now as opposed to blocking ruptures, really only passing time while Maw resets).

So? Where do you guys think is the line that ANet should implement for their future Living Stories, regarding pacing? Should it be a hectic, all-or-none weekend like the Lost Shores? Or should the ‘Prelude’ last a month in and of itself?

Personally both Halloween and Wintersday were the best events by far due to the content releasing on a good schedule but aside from that releasing content that was large enough to keep you going for the few days, not weeks, and even if you missed it the content stayed for weeks so you could revisit when you were ready to play.

With Lost Shores they learned to bug test correctly, we can hope :P Nothing more needs to be said on this disaster of an event.

With Living Story… well the prelude lasted all of 15 minutes to max the Volunteer title and honestly I have had longer bowel movements…. that were more enjoyable. A month of waiting for updates revealed 15 minutes of gameplay… bad pacing, was much more interested in all the updates anyway so the update was not too bad. The next part has come just as slow; find two barely visible items in the dirt and snow and kill some dredge and legion, two weeks later 2 more random items show up and then the last two a week after that. Bad pacing especially since these appeared with little-to-no notice, I mean who actually checks these heralds? Their star is always yellow so there is no way to tell if the information is new or not. Will be interesting to see this next chapter.

So my hope is that they continue with GW1-esque events, 1 update provides 90% of the content for several weeks for people to enjoy at their leisure while the last 10% is released over a weekend with several intervals so all may enjoy but more importantly the items received are purely for the player and non-tradable and non-profitable.

dargosian.2704:

Meanwhile, that Karka event had to have some of the most ridiculous schedules ever. That should be pretty obvious to anyone who was participating. And our current Living Story is just being dragged out for far too long: those refugees could have built a second Hoelbrak by now…

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Have you ever seen RL disaster/war refugees build replicas of their original home town in 2 months time? No, even after years they still live in provisional tent camps. Your sentence just doesn’t make any sense.

I like the pacing. It is slow, doesn’t involve too much grind nor overall time. As such, it doesn’t interfere too much with other activities such as dungeon, daily etc.

On the other hand, the few zones affected by this living story really feel more alive now than before.

I think it’s a vast improvement over the Lost Shores event.

I was one of the few who got to play through most of it and got my reward from the chest and even I think it was a nightmare. Wintersday, and especially this, gives me hope that Anet have learned that players have lives outside their game and can’t work to their schedule, and that telling everyone in your game to be at the same place at the same time is a really bad idea.

I agree that there could either have been a bit more content in the first 2 updates or they could have come closer together (2 weeks apart would have been perfect) but if it’s a choice between this way or Lost Shores I’d take this every time.

The last update is really nice. I haven’t played it all yet but it feels like there’s a lot going on, without it hitting that point of “drop everything and do this now!”