Guild Wars 2

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better . Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think . Im sorry and this is just my personal opinion and im sure some people like the living world content but i find it really shallow …

I would agree. I can’t handle another year of carnival events and go touch this achievements. Where are the intense story missions? New questing zones, new dungeons, new bosses. Its been a year. Everything we have gotten has been revamps of the current world. At one point the current world will get pretty boring regardless of how many times you change the LA fountain.

I think they’ve made some positive changes with September’s Living Story. SAB is permanent content that returns from time to time, so players who don’t like it can skip it and do dungeons/WvW/whatever they like to do, and players who do like it don’t need to stress that the achievements will be gone forever once SAB is temporarily retired. (I do think that all of the basic SAB skins should be made available again, but that’s another topic.)

Tequatl Rising was taking existing content and making it bigger and better (although I agree that it still needs fine-tuning to make it fairer for low-med pop servers), and again, all of the new achievements and rewards are here to stay. This is stuff that permanently expands what players can do, which is a good thing.

That said, I do think that the 2 week release schedule is unnecessary. I’m perfectly happy with stuff like this getting added once a month/2 months, have festivals to pad out some quieter parts of the year, and then getting bigger content updates or expansions every 6 months – 1 year.

I agree. The living world isnt working, it ruins immersion, and makes the game boring.

I agree that September was an improvement over the summer updates because its mostly returning or permanent content.

In fact I find boss week almost perfect:

- The meat of the patch is permanent (New Tequatl, LFG feature, WvW changes)
- The temporary boss week content ties into the permanent content but are not excluding any playstyles.

The only thing missing is ‘story’ … the few lines of dialogue with Rox arent enough. If this patch had a version of the story instance chain like the one that brought Rox and Braham together, it would be perfect. Rox could send you to Rytlock with her findings about Tequatl, who then sends you to Blazeridge and Frostgorge, all told with small story instances.

Even with this one area of improvement, Boss week stands way above the last few LS chapters.

I agree, I would be much happier if they could give us new zones, skills and stuff.

But I would like to see events like wintersday and hallowen return, those were the best events IMO.

I don’t want the living world to end.

I want more permanent stuff, and for a living world not a progressive story (which is what we’re getting). A living world would focus on more than just one villain and her joker antics.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t want the living world to end.

I want more permanent stuff, and for a living world not a progressive story (which is what we’re getting). A living world would focus on more than just one villain and her joker antics.

Pretty much this. The only hint of “living” in this story that I noticed were small updates to whats going in with Braham while all these other crazy events took place over summer. That is what we need more of to make this world seem alive. Moving the focus from one event to the next and ignoring the rest of the world outside of the focus is not even good for a novel, much less a “living” world.

I hate missing stuff that happens. I work and have other commitments. It makes it difficult to get to some of the content. I love Super Adventure Box, but it has it in my two busiest work seasons and I can’t possibly spend the time in it I want to. I’d like to see it be a permanent addition, along with any of the other updates.

Some of the updates are interesting, some of them are just grind it out stuff. I’d like to see more permanent additions.

I like the idea of there being so much going on that one cannot possibly complete it, forcing us to focus on our own goals for the game. If someone wants all SAB, there it is.. If someone wants Scarlet raids, there it is… If someone wants to explore new continents, well there it will be..

To me, it seems that the problem most players have is: PERSPECTIVE. With this 2 week release schedule, we are all lost in the moment and fail to see that there are big content updates coming every couple of months, within that framework. Having 300+ people working on this game means that the living story isn’t taking away from other types of updates.

In other words, we’re all getting what we want, but not seeing it because of the volume of content, and the variety of it.

Totally disagree with OP.

If Anet takes away Living Story they would be going back on their vision of what GW2 is supposed to be.

Maybe Anet shouldn’t announce what is next to come so it feels even more like a living world. Of course some will miss out , but that is life. It’s like missing your favorite sports team on television. At least people can tell you what happened if you ask.

The only living story I found frustrating was Tequatl (wait, does he even count as a living story), and that’s because my server lacks organization while fighting him.

I agree with mad demon, thats the only living story I would not try to finish since its a living story that even having just 1 friend isn’t enough and thats kind of hard waiting the whole day just to kill a hard boss, but I like the change though,

September is the best Living Story thus far because there’s no living story to speak of.

The “Living Story” updates are no different from other MMO updates other than adding a tiny bit of story onto the new content. We get a new feature here and there, bug fixes, balancing, and temporary story content.

And a few times a year, there will be larger updates that either adds or changes something more significant in the game.

Personally, I would rather have a small feed of updates than waiting awhile for longer updates. If these “Living Story” updates didn’t exist, I’d imagine there would not be too much to entice the player to keep playing. I mean, obtaining end-game skins are fun and all, to a point.

Indeed. Had they not bothered to call it Living Story, no one would even care. But now everyone seems obsessed about the story they don’t even bother to read anyway.

Who cares? Would you rather have nothing change for months in a row? People just assume this LS is taking away time from an expansion but that’s just not true. This is the fluff that keeps you interested in the game. That keeps you logging in and that sells some store stuff to the casuals.

Atmo.1325:

The “Living Story” updates are no different from other MMO updates other than adding a tiny bit of story onto the new content. We get a new feature here and there, bug fixes, balancing, and temporary story content.

And a few times a year, there will be larger updates that either adds or changes something more significant in the game.

Personally, I would rather have a small feed of updates than waiting awhile for longer updates. If these “Living Story” updates didn’t exist, I’d imagine there would not be too much to entice the player to keep playing. I mean, obtaining end-game skins are fun and all, to a point.

What are these large updates that adds or change something significant? Except for taco, I don´t think we have gotten anything this year.

I wish the Living Story added story instances each month. Basically GW1 missions, one or two a month. It would be a good way to tell a story that develops a strong narrative from one chapter to the next, add some gameplay and avoid the pitfalls of relying on pumpkin carving, snowman building or kill x of y mob in zone z achievements to tell the crux of your story. I think they are trying too hard to tell the story in the open world and that’s a really poor medium for story telling. I don’t think a few snippets of text from the NPCs in Sparkfly Fen is a very satisfying story. I’d rather something like the instances from Flame and Frost with Braham and Rox (without removing them once the event ends), especially if they work on the gameplay.

I’m OK if they utilise existing maps, I really liked the content added to GW1 with Guild Wars Beyond. The quests added to the game were fun and challenging. The token system used by them also ensured that they were rewarding and the story being told by them was a lot more interesting and better communicated in my opinion.

I don’t want the Living Story to end (although I look forward to Scarlet’s story ending) but I would like to see some changes made. I also wish they would stop focusing on new things (Scarlet came out of nowhere and she advances none of the existing plots) and utilise the interesting parts of the world and story they’ve already created.

Shiren.9532:

I wish the Living Story added story instances each month.

The opening ceremony for the Jubilee is the first one that comes to mind…. Flame and Frost had storyline instances. Check the other previous updates for additional examples.

Decrypter.1785:

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better . Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think . Im sorry and this is just my personal opinion and im sure some people like the living world content but i find it really shallow …

Is that not what they did to Tequatl?

Really, people need to stop complaining because they can’t kill Teq. In reality, once all the people go away from him and go to other content, you won’t get as many PuGs and Tequatl will be farmed again. This time it just takes more than your 1 skill.

I think new regions should be introduced gradually over the course of living story. Like a Cantha arc, Where over the course of say, 6 months we get access to a large portion (if not all) of Cantha. Every two weeks we get a new zone. That’s LS I want to see.

I don’t like anything that I can’t do whenever I choose to, with or without whomever I choose to go with, whenever I feel like it, without being guided into content I want to avoid like pvp zones or jumping puzzles and which doesn’t have a satisfactory balance of effort and reward.

I find that Guild Wars 2 fails in many, many respects compared to my wishlist as stated above, and that the existing problems have only grown with every update. I couldn’t wait for more GW2 when I played beta. After three months, I was severely disillusioned and quit the game for nine months. I only returned because I more people I know started up the game. Every update has only brought me more frustration and stress.

My short-term solution will be to ignore every aspect of the living world besides extremely easy to grab achievements. For the long run, I will continue to question what I’m doing here.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

In other words, we’re all getting what we want, but not seeing it because of the volume of content, and the variety of it.

I actually have to respectfully disagree with this. I’m not getting what I want. What I want is a game that allows me to choose both when to start new content and how long it takes me to complete it— without penalty in regards to rewards, titles, etc.

I’m not getting that at all. Everything is very rush-rush-do-it-now-or-don’t-bother. Totally not the game I thought I was buying when I pre-ordered.

No one has a problem with the Living Story implementing new content every two weeks. That’s pretty obvious. It’s taking away content that’s a problem.

No one complained about implementing laurels, guild missions, lfg tool, culling improvements, world experience, the wallet and all the other awesome stuff.
People complain about the removal of aetherblade retreat, molten facility, queen’s gauntlet, zephyr sanctum …

Hopefully we are going to kill Scarlet in this patch and finish with her, if she escapes or survives somehow I m going to rage so hard. This woman must die and people of Tyria can focus on their war with the dragons again.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Shiren.9532:

I wish the Living Story added story instances each month.

The opening ceremony for the Jubilee is the first one that comes to mind…. Flame and Frost had storyline instances. Check the other previous updates for additional examples.

These instances are used sparingly, only contain fragments of the story and don’t even come close to a GW1 mission or even the mission-like quests added for War in Kryta or Winds of Change.

I think most people would agree that the current story (Tequatl Rising) would have been much better story delivery if it starts with an instance where you see Rytlock/Warrmaster Naru briefing Rox on the situation in Sparkfly Fen followed by the scavenger hunt achievement accompanied by Rox. This could also contain exposition of the current conflict, maybe show the risen attacking the camps more frequently or have NPCs comment on how the area has become more hostile. Instead Rox and Narru sit at Tequatl’s spawn point and give you a window of dialogue and that’s it. The scavenger hunt doesn’t even have the token asuran story added to it (every piece of information you get is obtained before you find a single scale/tooth etc) it’s just an excuse to pad the content with achievement points and occupy an hour of your time.

The problem with these “events” is that they tend to end up being a zergfest for three days until everyone completes it and then morphing into a wasteland…. Some of these events are a grindfest until you get your shiny title or object and then disappear. I hate feeling like I’m missing SAB because I have a busy September, and I hate that I feel like I missed all kinds of other content because I either didn’t have the time to grind out the title or the resources at the time to make it work. It’s really frustrating to someone who has to play casually that things are constantly being added and taken away….

As far as Guild Wars 1 at least new content was permanent. Sure, I didn’t do things every day, but I always had the option to pick them up and do them….

Morsus.5106:

I think new regions should be introduced gradually over the course of living story. Like a Cantha arc, Where over the course of say, 6 months we get access to a large portion (if not all) of Cantha. Every two weeks we get a new zone. That’s LS I want to see.

How about they make it so that you have to actually fight your way over cantha, pushing back opposing forces bit by bit, and as you push, the content becomes available permanently? You have to help conquer the xenophobia in Cantha?

I would also like to have new expansion with races, professions (ritualist if cantha would be available <3), maps, dungeons, lots of weapon/armor skins, more Destiny’s Edge, dragons, Crystal Desert and other remaining zones in Tyria, more GW1 lore thats waiting for unveiling since 2008, more GW2 Lore (really, it’s 3/4 a year and Rox still isn’t in Stone warband O_O), more REALLY living world like revamping hearts – hey I helped Ebonhawk with Ogres, why are they still a threat, I destroyed all of their Kraals!
Most of all – more logic to this game lore. Why Orr is still infected and Zhaitan still ravages Tyria after I killed him? I defeated him so I don’t want to see more “risen attack” events! This is outrageous. ANet should announce big changes, for example that in 2 months Risen won’t exist, Arah will be revamped etc. it would give time for those who didn’t touch Orr yet. And they could add a NPC in Durmand Priory who would teleport players to old arah – with zhaitan (retrospection NPC, historian, like bonus missions pack in GW1).
When ANet created a game about dragons, I expected to kill all of them, not only 1 (whose presence is still here in open world after death). Instead of bothering Tyria with minor villains like Scarlet or dredge/charrs, they should just do new maps with PS etc etc, gosh.

Most of you guys miss the point Anet has made in their blogs about Living Story over, and over, and over, and over.

This year has been the build-up of creating holiday events that will reoccur. And also earlier this year was merely a testing ground for Living Story where they had limited time and resources.

That is why most were temporary, also the fact Anet is still working on making more permanent changes to the world after updates. They have a portfolio of events they can take back to ease things out: Halloween, Wintersday, Dragon Bash, Zethyr Sanctum and Queen’s Jubilee.

All of them will come back, alongside Super Adventure Box which has nothing to do with any of them (SAB are the JP team). Now when they finished Queen’s Jubilee, they can work on permanent content and more storydriven stuff and less temporary holiday events.

You’ve already seen it with Taco update, and I remember reading on an article this TA path is permanent aswell. So far Anet has followed what their blogs have said, they haven’t backed out on any of their words. They have even admitted that what has been this year so far, is just the tip of your toe in the water. They haven’t dived into the water and splashed around yet.

Patience, read their blogs and don’t get over-hyped about anything. Judge it when it’s come.

I won’t say I completely hate living story, I do disagree with parts of it alot has been raised in the forums before you know the basics, the story could be better, more permanency or real impact (not simply for a week or two) etc etc. I don’t however hate it so much that it should completely end. I do have some hope that ANet will continue tweaking until they get it right.

Whats keeping me from playing as it is right now is probably the lack of permanent NEW content – I honostly don’t play the living world all that much even though I find some of it interesting – and that factors into the time limit on it all, since I am not the person who’d be focusing on one single thing at a time for two weeks at a time, and thats the only amount of time you got for getting both the items and achievement points that follows with whatever event is going on.

So yeah when I play, I mostly skip all the living world content – or perhaps spend about an hour or so doing it, and then end up bored – but yeah, more permanent content would be really appriciated

I’m always checking the releases page for updates. The only thing I look out for are new skills/traits they said they were going to add, because right now nothing else appeals to me.
I don’t care about skins or mini’s.

I’ve found the living world/story updates to generally be engaging and worth playing. The only one I’ve not really played have been the SAB updates. Which works for me as it gives me some downtime and as “semi-”permanent content I don’t feel like I’m permanently missing out on achievement points. HOWEVER . . . in the long run these updates will not suffice. Anet started a story with the Elder Dragons and they need to move it forward in a major way at some point. If Anet is not working on a major world expansion with added story, etc. they will slowly begin to lose players to the next new thing . . . eventually even me and I play 2-3 hrs each day now.

BTW – I agree with some of the other posts I’ve seen. I would recommend slowing the pace of the Living Story adds. Once a month is enough time for a substantial add, gives casual players more time to enjoy the new content, and probably will result in higher quality content overall (less unnecessary rushing on the part of the development teams).

I’m pretty tired of Anet’s Story(living lol what a huge joke their is nothing living about this story)

Everytime an update comes I look at it say meh looks alright and are already hoping that the next update is far better but I end up just giving it the same reaction as the last update. A year later I’m wondering if I’ll ever see an update that makes me go “wow that’s cool”.

Living world will never end. It’s cheap to produce, they can also sell loads of gemstore items with it and ofc it’s a very good marketing choice to show off. “contents every 2 weeks I must try this out” – who cares about what the actual players think

Decrypter.1785:

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better.

People need to remember that the last three patches started development 2-3 months ago (features like LFG and wallet have probably been developed separately from these patches as well), which adds up with the time that ArenaNet started saying they would move towards more permanent content, which shows starting from Queen’s Jubilee (invasions), and is followed by, and increased in, Tequatl and now Twilight Assault. Isn’t making existing content better exactly what TR and TA are doing.

SAB really seemed like a patch they used to free resources for these other projects, since it can be mostly developed by a small team (that is like 2-4 people, from the names I have seen thrown around).

As a side note, it also seems unlikely that this patch (Twilight Assault) would be void of any features, which is a section completely missing from the release page as of now… then again we do know that the patch after this one (Oct 15th, I think) will have some features and balance focus so maybe it is the “feature” patch of this next month. There is no rule that the first patch of the month has to be the bigger one after all, now that their four team setup has kicked into gear properly.

Decrypter.1785:

Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think.

Your two examples are vastly different in scope, but let me say this much. Something like Crystal Desert could probably be opened up as a part of living world, especially when they can have things like Halloween and Wintersday etc. now with a bunch of existing content to free resources to that kind of projects.

Cantha on the other hand is not a zone but a continent, realistically even if they stopped doing living world this instant they couldn’t open up something like that for a long while.

We know that designing completely new maps is time consuming, looking at how long partial redesign of one of the WvW maps took (and here they could reuse existing assets for a lot of it). For a completely new “biome” such as desert (or rather a river delta and/or grass plains of some kind now I guess) everything has to be created from scratch or at least retouched significantly to give it an unique feel. Particularly the ambient and hostile creatures in the area are no simple thing — why do you think Southsun has Karka, karka and some more karka in different sizes? This “trick” won’t work for a larger zone.

Decrypter.1785:

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better . Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think . Im sorry and this is just my personal opinion and im sure some people like the living world content but i find it really shallow …

yes yes yes yes yse yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes…. unfortunately anet will say no. So to elder scrolls I must go.

I think ‘Living World’ is a very good concept, and fits in well with ‘Dynamic Events’. There may be some rough edges and two weeks is kinda short, but it does give you a feeling that nothing is static in the game. All-in-all, zones are never finished with, as in more traditional MMOs.

The main game problem seems to be that there is no way to knowing which zones are busy, so everyone is spread out. On low-pop servers this gives a GW1 instanced feel to the game as ‘Dynamic Events’ are inhibited. I sometimes wonder if all the improvements over GW1 have been worth it, as you are effectively playing the old game with a bigger processor and RAM, far too often.

lilypop.7819:

I think ‘Living World’ is a very good concept, and fits in well with ‘Dynamic Events’. There may be some rough edges and two weeks is kinda short, but it does give you a feeling that nothing is static in the game. All-in-all, zones are never finished with, as in more traditional MMOs.

The main game problem seems to be that there is no way to knowing which zones are busy, so everyone is spread out. On low-pop servers this gives a GW1 instanced feel to the game as ‘Dynamic Events’ are inhibited. I sometimes wonder if all the improvements over GW1 have been worth it, as you are effectively playing the old game with a bigger processor and RAM, far too often.

and you are playing it alone with no heroes helping you. This is a big issue

I believe the living story should continue.

incognito.4019:

Decrypter.1785:

The last 3 living world patch,s have been nothing but frustrating , i would have sooner The devs made the existing content much better . Also a totally new Zone with permanent content like crystal desert or cantha i think would have been so much better. I think . Im sorry and this is just my personal opinion and im sure some people like the living world content but i find it really shallow …

yes yes yes yes yse yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes…. unfortunately anet will say no. So to elder scrolls I must go.

Personally, I can’t stand monthly fees. Good luck to you.