Guild Wars 2

Hi LS writers and the lead design teams.

I wanted to write a quick message to emplore you to stay risky, and continue to make changes/choices that make sense to you and your story. I fear that community feedback that you receive regarding almost every aspect/choice that you make may bring design paralysis potentially meaning we will miss out on something that could of been great.

Imagine the scenario:
A living story threat occurs that disables the use of waypoints for travel, enforcing tyrians to travel widely on foot to reunite with friends and loved ones.

Yes many wouldnt like it, (thats the point!) a convenience taken away to establish a hardship that would unite players together to take out the threat and regain the travel network over a month. It would be fighting for something and be much more rememberable for that reason.

Get Scarlet to destroy our waypoint network, get some real consequences for her existance give players a real reason to care thats shes out on the rampage!

Oh the communities tears would be fantastic..

.. but epic at the same time

As frustrating as that would be, I….might actually be open to it.
We don’t have any real consequence to her invading a map.
Maybe if she made all but one waypoint contested it would give us a reason to care if that yellow text tells us she’s on a map.

That’s a pretty clever idea. I like it. But I think more would be needed to make the story interesting. It’s not just lacking hardship, but also motivations, plot twists, and character depth.

It would be annoying at best i think. Unless WPs could be restored by players, even if temporarily. By solo players. Also if Scarlet attacks a map that has no more than 1 activeWP, its an automatic fail.

…

Not like there is a single server that actually didnt fail a scarlet invasion in the past 2 months.

yeah, it would be annoying and that would be the point. It would make the primary evildoers that much more meaningful, that are actually affecting your playstyle due to their actions. Right now in PvE its possible to pretty much ignore LS, and in my opinion if you can ignore it, then it’s too lightweight and disposable.

The above was an example, I mean it could be anything..

For example, these posions etc we are getting from the tower, I’d prefer it if they were a little more dangerous. level 80 players gaining a permenant debuff to damage or something, perhaps a visual “plauge” effect to your characters face so you look sick.

Obviously give a way to remove the plauge and perhaps immunise against it (through an instanced dungeon or story chain), but until you do you have this debuff in all PvE.

Affect the players, otherwise it’s just a temporary attraction that can be ignored and holds no weight.

@mad queen – yeah agreed, it’s not just the consequences that matter, but it certainly does help. Looking at older games like original eq, having to retrieve your gear once you were killed is an extreme example of this, the hardship of having to figure out how to get that gear back proved the base of some amazing stories. This would in no way fit gw2’s casual feel, but there must be some middle ground.

So I’ve just seen the new living story advert that shows broken asura gates, maybe just maybe the travel network is going to get nuked?

I’d love that! I do use waypoints hell of a lot, but having “real” consequenves of LS is worth the trouble!

Carpet bomb Divinity’s Reach like I suggested. That would be enough hardship to be shared by everyone.

The baseline of any epic might be hardship, but the baseline of the casual player’s ability to enjoy a game is “accessibility” (read: lack of hardship/difficulty).

darkace.8925:

The baseline of any epic might be hardship, but the baseline of the casual player’s ability to enjoy a game is “accessibility” (read: lack of hardship/difficulty).

Yeah because that TOTALLY explains why WoW has lasted all these years with an insane player base that doesn’t mind traveling everywhere, having to get on boats to go to parts of the world, etc.

There are a LOT of people including myself who would like gw2 even more if there weren’t any waypoints or portals and people actually had to travel and see how beautiful the game is. Maybe not most gamers, but a lot of us.

Brother Dulfite.5793:

darkace.8925:

The baseline of any epic might be hardship, but the baseline of the casual player’s ability to enjoy a game is “accessibility” (read: lack of hardship/difficulty).

Yeah because that TOTALLY explains why WoW has lasted all these years with an insane player base that doesn’t mind traveling everywhere, having to get on boats to go to parts of the world, etc.

There are a LOT of people including myself who would like gw2 even more if there weren’t any waypoints or portals and people actually had to travel and see how beautiful the game is. Maybe not most gamers, but a lot of us.

WoW? As in World of Warcraft? As in that game that was dumbed down, or “casualized” in an effort to make it more accessible? As in that game whose developers said, “everyone pays the same subscription fee, so everyone should get to experience the same content regardless of skill level.” That WoW?

Killing WP’s would cripple a champ train, remove the ability to hit multiple world bosses in an effective manner, and stop players from running consecutive dungeon runs. Compromising player income gain on a global scale would have some hilarious and tragic consequences even if it is for a limited time.

Take away my ability to make money and I’ll just have to play something else until that chapter of the LS is over.

I love the idea. One afternoon I decided to play without WPs and I’ll tell you: it got old fast but it skyrocketed my immersion and appreciation for the beauty of this game.

My boss train would come screetching to a halt though. As for disabling WPs permanently, well…only if we get mounts in return.

I agree; I’m going through some of the zones again for the immersion and it’s incredible how intertwined and connected some of the DE stories are. Honestly it’s some of the best writing of the game, and it’s a shame it’s ignored so much.

I like the idea, but I don’t think that I could deal with the whining that went with it. I think that you might need asura gates to dungeons (20 minutes to walk to CoF?) and the world bosses would have free reign.