Guild Wars 2

Tranc.6780:

Current map purpose is to level up characters and to make place for living world releases. And it serves that purpose. But take note that all maps are pretty dead besides those that are hosts for current LS release. So LS releases makes people play… Not the vast world.

LS makes people play, because it’s the ONLY NEW THING TO DO. There are no other options available in terms of new content. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be trashed for something MUCH MUCH BETTER. Because it should. And adding new zones, with new things to do would be perfect. The faster LS dies, the better.

islarose.7356:

Guild Wars keeps me through living story. I’d rather have new content every two weeks for something new, novel and of a short duration, as opposed to a year or more of utter stagnance for a new map to be developed, designed, tested and implemented (as well as all of the additional content a new zone demands). Yes, I would love to see the entirety of the world map unveiled, however not at the expense of LS. Exploring a new zone is definitely fun and exciting, but that excitement is about as lasting as a new LS release. I’ve played the other games with new maps every 1-2 years with expansions, and new zones don’t have a lasting draw to the community aside from dailies or farming mats (which coincide with a raised level cap, new crafting recipes, vertical gear progression, etc). There is also little change between expansions, they add dungeons, raids, and daily quests, but everything can be obtained/completed (at a reasonable pace) within a fairly short amount of time – obviously much faster for those who don’t savor content – and shortly thereafter, people return to the original populous zones (after their dailies) and continue to repeat the same content (raids, dungeons, dailies) until the next expansion or they burn out/level an alt. There is very little else to break up the monotony in the meantime.

Were GW2 to abandon LS entirely and focus their resources on a new zone, they could add a series of events and perhaps it’d wind up like another Frostgorge and thus see some consistent use, but we would give up all content updates aside from small bug fixing updates every few months, for the duration of a year or more. No change, nothing new, whatsoever. Perhaps some players would enjoy that, and the game itself, unchanging would suffice – however in my experience, the shine of a new zone wears off about as quickly as it does with LS. Thus the beauty of LS; it only lasts a short duration, usually timed at about when the novelty fades. The LS may drive some players away – nearly every other MMO lacks that particular feature, and may appeal to said players – however the LS cycles are a draw for some of us as well, those of us who want new changes on a regular basis to shake things up a bit after the staid monotony of other games. That is what drew me back to GW2. I don’t even mind having missed 6-7 months of LS releases – because more are coming.

A new zone will offer some new events, hearts, additional resource nodes, and opportunity for exploration – and perhaps I’m less of an explorer, but once the hearts are completed, how much time would one likely spend there, after fully completing it, without a champ train or something like the temple events? Even on a large server, it’s at times hard to muster up a crowd for those in Orr. If we got another Brisban Wildlands, Harathi Hinterlands, or Blazeridge Steppes, how often would you truly spend your time there, having completed the zone?

Honestly, it’s people like you who are helping to hold this game back. You reinforce the BAD IDEA that LS is, and praise Anet for doing such a crappy job on maintaining an MMO. People like you need to leave this game forever.

islarose.7356:

Obsidian.1328:

islarose.7356:

-snip-

You think all the past years’ LS content would only equate to 1 new zone? I’m pretty sure we’re talking about a continent’s worth of zones. And yeah, I’d go there a lot if it was set up well. On the other hand, I might avoid it entirely if it’s tied to the LS.

A single, fully fleshed out zone would take a significantly longer period of time to develop than a series of LS events, being worked on simultaneously by multiple teams in existing zones. A continent’s worth of zones, with hearts, dynamic events, PoI’s, Skill points, way points, etc. in addition to the artwork and races/lore/voice overs/etc. would not equate to one year of LS releases. How long did they take to build Tyria, pre-release? Probably only slightly longer than it would take to build Cantha or Elona (to account for their work on classes/balancing/etc.), which is why a release of that size would likely take ~2-3 years to develop. It would be unheard of for a game just over one year old to release a major expansion, and in the meantime we would see minimal change or evolution; this issue with player expectations has been discussed endlessly by developers, from every major MMO out there.

The fact that you think the crappy LS updates are in any way, shape, or form better than the alternative you just described, just goes to show how little we should listen to your opinion. You are in the minority on that line of thinking, and if you’re not, then you need to be. It’s that kind of thinking that’s killing this game and making it one of the biggest jokes of the gaming industry.

And other updates can be done while they work on new zones. Balance updates, skill updates, trait updates, etc, etc can all be done independently from designing new zones. If a developer is not capable of doing that, then they should stop making video games period.

Is this question a joke?

LS has only gotten better. Why can’t living story bring us to new maps like the Crystal Desert? Same goes for Cantha. If they start off Living Story season 2 on the right foot, bring in new permanent maps that we all want to see, and new dungeons every so often, I truly believe that we have a lot to be excited about.

Maybe two week updates is holding it back. What if they did one big update every month instead of two a month?

Scoompoof.4657:

Maybe two week updates is holding it back. What if they did one big update every month instead of two a month?

and maybe less achievement point runarounds like mini games etc..
they have their people working on mini games that you need to do for achievements and stall for time instead of working on living story and new maps..

hell you could introduce new maps with the living story..

just imagine going further into the lore of the humans vs centaurs war and going deep into centaur lands to try and kill the head guy who stands in the way of peace or rescuing a human outpost under attack in a new map? new lands and lore people care about

have the asura make an expedition into one of their former underground cities they had to recover a valuable piece of tech, or to investigate further into what drove them from those places (this would also be a new map or dungeon)

re-connect with the zephyrs and go further into what they found in the crystal desert and possibly start to slowly make maps going toward the desert (this would be over 4-6 month time) and see what happened to glint

open up the dominion just outside LA and see what those bird people are up to.. new maps and maybe another playable race..

all of these things would get the player base excited a lot more than time wasting mini games and farming for yet another back piece … especially with the elder scrolls online coming out soon ANET has to do something to keep us going or GW2 might be in trouble

We want new maps!!!

At the begining of the game i want to see missing maps, desert,maguma jungle or fire island….but since i get already 8 level 80…I don’t see the point.

I will not xp there, nothing good to grab here like elite skill in gw1, no pvp, or alliance with wild pvp, maybe 2 week with living story or a new boring dungeon, and after ? I never go to karka island or jubilee new map(forgot even the name lol) anymore.

I’m not a pve player, lot less than gw1 (where is the solo/duo uw…), so i will go there, if only they put something interesting around pvp, or wvw-like..i dunno what they could do here that is not even like old boring maps…guild vs guild for maps control vs same server than in WvW,including wild pvp on those new maps ? ( suggestion…)

To be honest, as much as I love new zones to explore, I don’t want any new zones at this point.

Why? Because Arenanet have already utterly failed at keeping the existing world feeling like a living place by abandoning the original strategy of evolving current Dynamic Events across the game world and making new events that progress the story with in each zone.

I hate Living Story, Adventure by Checklist game design. It drove me from a game I absolutely love more than any MMO I’ve played in over 14 years. With the original promise of constantly evolving world content, plus the B2P business model, taking a break from the game would have been no problem, because I’d come back knowing there was stuff worth exploring every where in the game world that I had never encountered before.

Now, I’m several months from the game, have absolutely zippo worth returning for, other than lists of LS achievements I will never be able to experience because I wasn’t interested in doing time limited, linear content during the given window.

Utter failure is my determined take on Living Story.

I can only pray that after the Scarlett crud comes to an end there will be some major shift in the way they provide content moving forward.

I don’t know how anyone who helped create this incredible game could ever have committed to the Living Story strategy, unless the goal was to muck up everything they accomplished at release as thoroughly as possible!

IMO, Flame and Frost hinted at what LS could have been, if done right, but that wrapped up well short of leveraging it’s obvious potential and, with rare exception, things have gone steeply down hill since.

What’s sad is that Wintersday WAS a great holiday event, but ANet so completely wore out the mode of content that should have been reserved just for holiday events that, this year, it just felt like yet another horrible Living Story extension. I logged in, trying to recapture some of that magic from a year ago, too no avail…

So, 2013, abandoned world development, ruined holiday events, (perhaps forever) and re-imagined the game from being an MMO with sandbox like freedom of adventure into one of the most linear, horribly scripted theme park MMOs in a decade. Absolutely brilliant…

Can we please have a return to sanity and a commitment to the GW2 Manifesto for 2014? For the love of all that is good and to bring justice to the once limitless potential this game had before you completely screwed things up? Please?

Orswich.6423:

Scoompoof.4657:

Maybe two week updates is holding it back. What if they did one big update every month instead of two a month?

and maybe less achievement point runarounds like mini games etc..
they have their people working on mini games that you need to do for achievements and stall for time instead of working on living story and new maps..

hell you could introduce new maps with the living story..

just imagine going further into the lore of the humans vs centaurs war and going deep into centaur lands to try and kill the head guy who stands in the way of peace or rescuing a human outpost under attack in a new map? new lands and lore people care about

have the asura make an expedition into one of their former underground cities they had to recover a valuable piece of tech, or to investigate further into what drove them from those places (this would also be a new map or dungeon)

re-connect with the zephyrs and go further into what they found in the crystal desert and possibly start to slowly make maps going toward the desert (this would be over 4-6 month time) and see what happened to glint

open up the dominion just outside LA and see what those bird people are up to.. new maps and maybe another playable race..

all of these things would get the player base excited a lot more than time wasting mini games and farming for yet another back piece … especially with the elder scrolls online coming out soon ANET has to do something to keep us going or GW2 might be in trouble

I have to agree. The concept of Living Story is comparable to the patches other games have in between expansions. The current problem with living story is that there is no story arc except the mantra everything is related to Scarlet.

The first story of Flame and Frost had a great arc first begining with a teaser and slowly working towards the big finale the molten facility. Altough the time frame of certain parts wasn’t chosen well the overall idea was good. However it didn’t have leave any big marks on the map like hearts that dissapeared of appeared due to the story happening.
And that is the problem the marks left on the so called changing world are small. Kessex hills is the first time the mark really seeable. But only in the envirement almost all hearts are still there. The centaurs don’t have anything else to do then warring against the humans, and all of this trough toxic alliance infested land and arriving without a scratch.

After Flame and Frost they tried to make a logical storyline out of all of this but with the begining of Dragon Bash there wasn’t any logical relation to the past and to the future.

As Scoompoof said maybe they should take some extra time between updates and as Orswich adds take us futher into the cyrstal desert, the centaur war or the Ebonhawke peace treaty (I don’t quite understand why set up a meeting table and wait for more than a year- in a living and changing world).

Maybe try and release something every three weaks and it doesn’t have to be a new map every update every second till fourth depending on how you use the map in the updates in between. This will give a greater feel of satisfaction since you can see some kind of progeres towards something we are slowly advancing towards Jormag, Cantha doesn’t matter -to me- as long as it is a constructive storyline working towards something. This storyline doesn’t have clear like: Hey I am Scarlet and for the next year I am you worst nightmare. It may be not clear at times as long as you can try and figure out what we are working towards instead of releasing new alliance every other update without any background in them.

The release of Southsun cove didn’t add such a thing it is a map with some waypoints and some realy diffucult mobs. Zephyr Sanctum was full with people who where completing their achievements for that update and people who where running a champ train. Other than your achievements and a severall champions there weren’t many mobs and other activeties.
This didn’t give the feeling of a growing world since both maps are in now way comparable to any of the existing maps.

P.S. Some of the things I have written about Living Story are a bit more cynical then meant. I like the concpet of living story and hope it will become better

I would love to see a new map, preferably one that differs completely from the existing areas. A proper desert, or maybe some place with entirely new species and different architecture would be awesome. They’d really need to add something special to make them worthwhile though, lest it be neglected like last year’s toys.

A new dungeon or world boss, a proper level 80 champ train and maybe even a couple nodes for ascended mats could do the trick.

A new dungeon would be nice, with a proper explorable mode with EXPLORATION and not some escort this dude thru it. If we are exploring a dungeon, it should be like no one has ever stepped foot inside before.
Something dark and epic and preferably lenghty

As for maps, there is so many areas on the map that we “should” be able to explore, like Deldrimor Front, Woodland Cascades and the Magus Falls and Maguuma Jungle. And hopefully those areas will be free of Inquest bases..

Destai.9603:

They’re actively erasing all sense of history they’ve put in their game – adding new zones is one step towards remedying that and playing towards one of the game’s greatest strengths.

So true

Finnway.2183:

Because exploring new areas while leveling was one of the best experiences I have had while playing Guild Wars 2.

This.

new content and completely new dugions<-living world who wouldn’t want that. Mechanics of old ones are well known which makes them pretty boring in my opinion.

When a new MMO comes out one of the big draws for many players (not all) is a new world to explore and adventure in. New zones add this to the game. It also can have the effect of stretching the player base out too much as well which we know from previous statements AN doesn’t want. (who would)

However there are a good deal of players who sit in LA all day everyday because there is nothing new to explore or really do.

I would love new maps to explore and perhaps a new dungeon as well, Not a rehashed one, but a full complete new dungeon. The list goes on.

My point is that these new MMO coming out this year aren’t necessarily better or offer more than GW2 currently has, but it does have a new map / world to explore and for some that’s enough to play for a month or 2.

PokerTuna.6170:

Is this question a joke?

It’s not a joke! I really don’t see how adding new maps can help the game. Don’t get me wrong. I know that new maps will most likely interest a lot of people. But I really doubt that adding new maps is going to make people play as long as it took to develop those maps.

To make this work they need to add some engaging progression systems that makes playing those maps worth a while. Something a whole lot different then dailies…

Some new maps, and perhaps a precursor scavenger hunt that takes a long time and takes you all over the world could be pretty cool no?

Chokolata.1870:

Some new maps, and perhaps a precursor scavenger hunt that takes a long time and takes you all over the world could be pretty cool no?

Huge grind without any feel of progression is a bad idea… You grind hundred of hours and then you stand in the center of lions arch and feel that the reward was a waste of time. It’s not what anyone wants and that’s the kind of thing that drives people of the game. Progressions systems aren’t suppose to be like that.

Well...then why make large areas of the world that looks like it may exist.

The catch: it has to still remain soloable content. I dont want to revist how i dread walking around southsun alone getting ganked by karka XD.

Its just what GW 1 did. It had giant regions. Atm world bosses and soo many other facts steers where players will be and thetefore rendering some maps no longer interesting.

You have to experience "vanquishing" to understand why maps hold or lose value over time.

Actually when the towers came Anet sort of bugged the Quest chains happening before the change that would draw people there.

As for why would we want new maps, I want our current maps to feel more eventful and “RICH” sorta like queensdale first. Even Queensdale isn’t as rich and eventful as I have hoped. (but its getting there)

What about this idea: eight maps in Cantha playable only by Canthan characters for the first two months meaning everyone has to level up there, no blasting through with you level 80. Then after two months trade is re established with Tyria, meaning you can travel back and forth. Have LS related to this on both continents. Anet may or may not decide to give people a free character slot.

Have series 2 legendaries require World exploration and Canthan exploration.

Step 3 ?

Step 4: Profit.

Cormac.3871:

What about this idea: eight maps in Cantha playable only by Canthan characters for the first two months meaning everyone has to level up there, no blasting through with you level 80.

Or… Just change the level cap? Maybe without increasing item levels (more or less a system like paragon levels in d3)? Or add some other progression system instead? Why should they force people to create more characters?!

HiddenNick.7206:

Cormac.3871:

What about this idea: eight maps in Cantha playable only by Canthan characters for the first two months meaning everyone has to level up there, no blasting through with you level 80.

Or… Just change the level cap? Maybe without increasing item levels (more or less a system like paragon levels in d3)? Or add some other progression system instead? Why should they force people to create more characters?!

You wouldn’t be forced to do that unless you didn’t want to wait 2 months. Actually, 1 month would probably be enough to get through eight maps. 2 weeks might even clear out the low levels.

You make a good point though, not everyone enjoys having alts. As for d3, I have to admit that hardcore was the only mode that appealed to me after having done the story once, and I only ever got up to the low 50’s there, so I am not really sure how the paragon levels work.

There are multiple teams working on the Living Story. Why not commit a team to new maps and let the Living Story updates happen a little less often? There doesn’t seem to be a problem right now with an extended period with no new Living Story update.

Then just track the forums or do a survey on which is more enjoyable. I cant believe I’m the only one getting tired of so many claiming that they speak for everyone else and only their opinion is valid.

I’m surprised this thread isn’t followed by “Why do you want the Living Story?”

Finnway.2183:

Because exploring new areas while leveling was one of the best experiences I have had while playing Guild Wars 2.

This.

I also had a ton of fun while playing through my 100% world completion. Best time in the game, by far.

Now if only they’d add a Dynamic Event checklist and achievement tracker. Would make me go through the whole kitten world once again, with pleasure

Because games (like life) are about the journey. Not the destination. If your goal is to 100% the world, then yes, a zone is probably only good for four hours to you. If your goal is to get lots of money, prestige, loot…then yes, a new zone is probably a waste. You can accomplish all of those things already.

But if you’re like me, the best feeling in the world is to open up your world map and see how far you’ve come and wonder to where you’ll go next. I don’t go where the loot is the best. I just go wherever I want. In games like WoW (hate it or love it) you can open that world map and just revel in vastness of it all. Anywhere you see, you can go. Anywhere you’ve been, you have a story.

In Guild Wars 2, I open my world map and I’m genuinely impressed at its size. But I see empty space in the Tengu territory, the Maguuma Jungle, the Desolation, & Battle Islands, the Crystal Desert, & Far Shiverpeaks…and I can’t go there, and for half these places, I probably won’t ever get to. It breaks my heart. When there’s expansions (whether you blow through it or not) there’s always that sense of wonder. “Where will my next adventure take me?”

I feel the living story just cannot (or will not) deliver a zone that inspires that feeling. It will either be too small or with a linear progression (see tower of nightmares) or too punishing to ever play (see zerg content/southsun).

People wonder why I’ve got a few level 80s and have never been to Orr. It’s because once I explore Orr, there will be no wonder left in my world.