Guild Wars 2

Because of 2013 living stories is a super fast paced and my lack of time, I got bored (can’t complete a single living story at all) and already vacant for around 6 months.
Will 2014 be another living story chains? Anyone heard anything from dev or anet?

Kinda regret it if so because I want to come back if good perm content can be played without chasing another backpack skin or achievement point

By judging of it, seems like this Scarlett thing is still around, and big chance there will still be another living story.

Yes, the living story will continue in 2014. This is now their way of updating the game and adding content to it, and it’s here to stay.

AN took a winterbreak to have a bit more time to work on the conclusion of the current LS arc, which will continue on the 21st of January. The next 3 updates will probably follow in the usual 2 week intervals, finishing off Season 1.

After that, a new season will begin.

2014 will be another Living Story year but don’t think just because 2013 was like it was 2014 will be the same. I think Anet realise that people want permanent content (areas) and they also want a living story that is actually interesting and you feel like you want to learn more about it. 2013 boiled down to just: “sigh, here comes MarySue Scarlet again with another silly lore breaking alliance and some stupid juvenile monologue about how she is so great.”

This year we finally see the end of her and it gives the writers a chance to show they actually know how to write a decent story with complex characters at a pace where people feel engaged and informed… currently its just a confusing mess and all we have is player speculations and no solid info.

OMG. Kinda shocked with the answers for living world.
I really hope that there will be more of permanent content, more interesting bosses (molten duo!!), more beautiful maps etc.
Lets see how this will turn out.
Thanks for the feedback guys

darwin.2790:

OMG. Kinda shocked with the answers for living world.
I really hope that there will be more of permanent content, more interesting bosses (molten duo!!), more beautiful maps etc.
Lets see how this will turn out.
Thanks for the feedback guys

Agreed, the last year wasn’t horrible but as I look at the game world now and how it was at launch (ignoring technical and mechanical changes) it does feel like the world hasn’t really evolved and grown all that much (i.e. not particularly living).

A guildmate of mine found this awesome recap of the living story…..why isn’t this on their official youtube channel?

The apprenticeship of the Living World will end in March. Season 2 will be the journeyman’s piece showing what they have learned from season 1.

I have the feeling season 2 will bring us much more permanent content and a denser storytelling.

CureForLiving.5360:

darwin.2790:

OMG. Kinda shocked with the answers for living world.
I really hope that there will be more of permanent content, more interesting bosses (molten duo!!), more beautiful maps etc.
Lets see how this will turn out.
Thanks for the feedback guys

Agreed, the last year wasn’t horrible but as I look at the game world now and how it was at launch (ignoring technical and mechanical changes) it does feel like the world hasn’t really evolved and grown all that much (i.e. not particularly living).

They shouldn’t change the vanilla world physically too much, what they should do is expand and give us new areas to explore allowing our character to venture further out into the world and make those regions permanent. They should change the characters in the game and develop the relationships, leaderships, etc which they are trying to do but doesn’t gel well with me since I dislike Kiel and her mannish bullyboy attitude or the odd relationship between Majory and Kasmeer.

khani.4786:

A guildmate of mine found this awesome recap of the living story…..why isn’t this on their official youtube channel?

-removed link-

If you checked you would have found out that it is.

http://www.youtube.com/user/arenanetofficial/videos

4 more LW updates of Scarlett

Looking into 2014 and back on the plot of the main story of 2013, many questions remain: why did Scarlet brings these groups together? What did she see when she looked into the eternal alchemy, and how did it change her? What is she trying to accomplish? Is she just nuts, or is there something far more sinister going on? How do each of these moments through 2013 tie together?
The answer to all of these questions await in our four upcoming releases in 2014: and lead to one final moment that will change the face of Tyria forever.

Aedelric.1287:

khani.4786:

A guildmate of mine found this awesome recap of the living story…..why isn’t this on their official youtube channel?

-removed link-

If you checked you would have found out that it is.

http://www.youtube.com/user/arenanetofficial/videos

When I posted that it wasn’t yet…..just saying. I did check by the way.

CureForLiving.5360:

darwin.2790:

OMG. Kinda shocked with the answers for living world.
I really hope that there will be more of permanent content, more interesting bosses (molten duo!!), more beautiful maps etc.
Lets see how this will turn out.
Thanks for the feedback guys

Agreed, the last year wasn’t horrible but as I look at the game world now and how it was at launch (ignoring technical and mechanical changes) it does feel like the world hasn’t really evolved and grown all that much (i.e. not particularly living).

I agree that I’ve liked the LS and that it will continue. I’d have to disagree that the changes to the game world haven’t been felt. From launch til now, there are have been some great additions and not only from a LS point of view.

Map Changes can be found in the following;
Kessex Hills
Wayfarer’s Foothills
Disseau Plateau
Southsun Cove
Twilight Arbor
Lions Arch
Divinity’s Reach

Then there have been some nice QOL updates.
Champ bags
Tequatl
Fractals
Wallet
LFG tool
Crafting
Ascended Gear
Legendary Stat Swap
No MF armor

Honestly the game is very different and has been changed since launch. The best part is, it’s all be with no sub fees or expansion costs.

Cheers to ANET.

Living Story has systematically destroyed this game and it’s once vast potential, so I have to hope and pray that they will find the courage to admit the mistake that 2013 was and get back to developing actual world content.

Games as good as GW2 was at launch are startlingly rare in the MMO space. I’ve been playing MMOs for 14 years and at launch, GW2 was as close to being “the game many of us had been waiting for since we played our first MMO” as any title ever.

Living Story has abandoned the game’s core design principles in favor of the most cynical, vapid and disgusting “adventure by checklist” content model ever seen in an MMO. It’s not something to be proud of, it’s something to hang one’s head in shame over.

I don’t think anyone who pushed the original core game design, understood it and fostered it through to launch is still with the studio or in a position to shame the current developers into waking up to the waste that has been Living Story.

I used to routinely spend well over a subscriptions worth each month supporting the game. That ended several months ago and will never resume with out a total shift in strategy by Arenanet and a mea culpa on the Living Story mistake.

Revenue has been dropping steadily, based on NCSoft earnings reports. How far does the game need to slide in the wrong direction before someone will wake up?

I still firmly believe this game had lifetime potential for over $1Billion in revenue. This game could have been and should have been one of the few MMOs to increase revenue and active player base steadily over time. That it’s slide has been slightly less pronounced than most other AAA MMOs, post launch, is absolutely nothing to be proud of. So much potential has been thrown away as a result of the Living Story strategy that it frankly sickens me.

We finally get an MMO that starts to live up to the potential for the format and they do this with it? It still flummoxes me when ever I turn my mind to it…

Delvoire.8930:

CureForLiving.5360:

darwin.2790:

OMG. Kinda shocked with the answers for living world.
I really hope that there will be more of permanent content, more interesting bosses (molten duo!!), more beautiful maps etc.
Lets see how this will turn out.
Thanks for the feedback guys

Agreed, the last year wasn’t horrible but as I look at the game world now and how it was at launch (ignoring technical and mechanical changes) it does feel like the world hasn’t really evolved and grown all that much (i.e. not particularly living).

I agree that I’ve liked the LS and that it will continue. I’d have to disagree that the changes to the game world haven’t been felt. From launch til now, there are have been some great additions and not only from a LS point of view.

Map Changes can be found in the following;
Kessex Hills
Wayfarer’s Foothills
Disseau Plateau
Southsun Cove
Twilight Arbor
Lions Arch
Divinity’s Reach

Then there have been some nice QOL updates.
Champ bags
Tequatl
Fractals
Wallet
LFG tool
Crafting
Ascended Gear
Legendary Stat Swap
No MF armor

Honestly the game is very different and has been changed since launch. The best part is, it’s all be with no sub fees or expansion costs.

Cheers to ANET.

What’s sad is that the QOL improvements and WvW adjustments are utterly overshadowed and washed out by the Living Story debacle. So, yes, Kudos to the developers that have worked to improve the client and attempted to make WvW a better experience.

For me, Living Story has been such a massive negative that the game would have been better off with just the QOL improvements and three or four Holiday events and no additional content at all for 2013. When your entire content development resources result in a large net negative for the game and no content would have been much better than the content we did get, that should be a clear sign that something has gone horribly wrong.

All year, me and others, as well as ANet in their interviews etc, stated that 2013 would be/was a year of experimentation with the Living Story Platform of delivering content. If we as fans, want GW2 to one day be true to it’s manifesto, we SHOULD be happy that they made mistakes. 2013’s LS platform was, for the devs, a learning experience. They had to see what the limitations of the engine as well as the servers(and other stuff) were. What they could and couldn’t do, and finally focus on what they could and improve on that, and after watching Chris Whiteside’s recent interview on the Guild Wars 2 Hub, about the CDI’s and the little he said about the 2014 LS, I am certain 2014 will give us a much more solid and approachable LS and show how Tyria actually evolves into a living breathing world.

In november of 2012 they saw how their servers handled such stress with the Ancient Karka event, and during 2013 they learnt much more, from the storytelling, to the meta-achievments, to the whole scope of Tyria’s evolution. When the game launched it was 1325 A.E, now it is 1327 A.E, does it feel like it in Tyria’s world, taking into account Elder Dragons and many other "villains’ " interests are supposed to leave a mark on Tyria? No, not really(except for the recent Tower of Nightmares chain and a couple more), but it will, otherwise they’d have scrapped the whole LS concept by now, which is actually a really interesting concept, innovative.

If you want something as innovative, give it time to grow, otherwise GW2’s living breathing world isn’t for you. The LS, as Chris said, is at it’s infancy. Why hate on it so much and “demand” the end of such a concept when we barely gave it time and space to grow? If you don’t enjoy it, why are you around? There are other games that will give you what you are looking for right off the bat. Are you that fast on judging a child just because he/she has problematic parents?(Note: Not referring to ANet as problematic parents in no way, on the contrary really ).

I see 2014 as the first actual year of the LS, 2015 will be even better, and I trust that by mid-2014 ANet will have a good grip on the LS platform and will be able to push it even further exploring more of its potential.
Watch this interesting concept grow and evolve, live it, because we the players are also it’s “parents”, otherwise find another game/mmo that will suit your needs, because clearly GW2 seems to fail at that.

Fiontar.4695:

We finally get an MMO that starts to live up to the potential for the format and they do this with it? It still flummoxes me when ever I turn my mind to it…

I have faith in Anet (just not the writers) and I believe they have used everything they have learnt from this year to develop better content for 2014.

I know what I want from this game.
- I want a high fantasy storyline, where I do quests that allows my character to feel like he/she is an integral part to the story not a handyman fixing sign posts. I don’t mind these achievements where you collect X of these, or kill X of those… but I don’t it to be all there is in each chapter.
- I want a combination of rewards to work towards and random boss drop which are items I actually want, not just crafting materials and blue/green items. I really like how they do the teq fight – that chest that drops giving you a good unique item that can only be found from fighting him.
- I want to explore new areas. The exploration in this game is by far the best I’ve ever played in an MMO. I don’t like areas that are annoying to travel around like Orr used to be before the patch. Constant slows and pulls were painful. Areas should be designed where you actually feel like you are progressing as you travel. The only 2 area’s I know of that does this is Harathi Hinterlands,Straits of Devastation and Fireheart Rise, you notice changes in the map as you move towards the difficult areas.
- I want a combination of challenging content and simple mindless champ farming for when I want to switch my brain off and just relax.
- Finally I want a story that isn’t just a bunch of random monthly events. I want a story that develops, I want a villain that is actually decent and not some super genius student that suddenly appears out of no where and breaks the lore already setup from GW1. I want to engage with this villain and not just sit back and listen to someone laughing and spamming childish dribble at me.

Surely it won’t be as kitten the second time around.

Presenting: The Return of : The Revenge of ShiroScarlet

There is only one thing to learn from season 1. Scrap LS and start making expansions.

They most likely haven’t learned..

I hope things will change, but has anyone seen any actual indication that they will? There was a day when I could say, “It’s Arenanet, if something isn’t right, they will find a way to make it great”, but after the horrible turn off that Living Story was over the entire course of 2013, I feel like this just isn’t the studio that I once felt I could trust.

Bazaar of the Four Winds and Super Adventure Box were stand outs. So was Winter’s Day, before it lost it’s luster after a year of what feel like bi-monthly holiday events.

Flame and Frost hinted at potential, but fell far short by the end. It brought focus onto the game world and four zones there in. It made some changes and introduced some new events. However, there were no meaningful permanent changes, the DEs in the zones never evolved to reflect the ordeal. Plus, a world PvE event that featured instanced story content leading up to the finale, decided to deliver it’s story arch pay off as a five man dungeon?

If they had fixed the issues with Flame and Frost, had used Living Story as a frame work for evolving 2-4 zones where the events took place and once things were said and done, the Dynamic Events and locations across the effected zones had evolved, then that would have been a winning formula.

Instead of progressing and improving, Living Story continued to devolve and it became clear there was no intent to use Living Story as a mechanism for changing the game world, it was just a linear, formulaic, “adventure by checklist” mini-holiday event every two weeks.

I can’t imagine content more contrary to the Manifesto and other espoused and implied ideals the game was designed around than what we got with Living Story.

It’s not just the devolution of the concept that has turned me from uber-fan to mourner-in-chief, but the complete lack of any indication from Arenanet that they have any clue that what they are doing is completely failing the game, it’s original designers and many of it’s fans. If they can’t even acknowledge the issues, there is no way they are ever going to fix them!

LS is fine, the problem is the actual story presentation. If a player has to read stuff outside the game to get an idea of whats happening then something is very wrong.

I think Season 2, having used Season 1 as the beta, will be like having content equal or better than the most popularly approved and liked of Season 1, thus a continuous flow of awesome, one thing that I support the LW for. Being evolving with new and interesting things keeping me captivated in the game.

Chokolata.1870:

the problem is the actual story presentation.

And the content. Seriously, we should have at least 3 new zones by now..

I know they can make good LS content, I thoroughly enjoyed bazaar of the four winds. But for some reason they don’t. LS needs more new zones, more permanent content, and most importantly, actual GW2 lore with deep integrated story telling.

I feel confident that we as a community has presented these complaints, the question is will they be implemented for chapter 2 of the story? They said it takes ~4 months for any changes to make it through the pipeline, and it is approaching 6 months since they said our complaints were heard.

They need to start off big and then go bigger with chapter 2 or I fear for the future of this game.

Living story is fun and all, I really do like it, it’s a great idea, and GW2 really nails it.

But I’m starting to get a bit bored with the game, same zones, same things. I’d really like some new, solid, hard content.

How about adding a new race? Tengu? something? Some new zones? Tengu + New zones? Maybe a new continent? Please?

New zones wouldn’t really help. Even if they added a zone every month, or 2 months, or even every 6 months, it would force the game world to expand faster than its player base, leaving a vast majority of the world untouched and abandoned in the future. It’s better to keep the old zones and simply vamp them up to add new and interesting things to keep players circulating through.

Fiontar.4695:

Instead of progressing and improving, Living Story continued to devolve and it became clear there was no intent to use Living Story as a mechanism for changing the game world, it was just a linear, formulaic, “adventure by checklist” mini-holiday event every two weeks.

And that’s another thing I hate about Living Story. By the time a limited-time holiday event rolls around, I’m so irritated about yet another thing I have to complete by a certain time (or miss out on completely) that I want nothing to do with it.

Holiday events, by their very nature, have to be limited-time events. It is perfectly reasonable for them to be. But I’m so sick of limited-time content that I don’t even enjoy the holiday events anymore. There is nothing special about them. They don’t even feel fun to me. They feel like just another update being shoved frantically at us.

It’s like Living Story has sucked every last bit of enjoyment out of this game for me. The devs have said they are looking into ways to alleviate some of the concerns of those of us who hate the constant stream of limited-time temporary content. I certainly hope they have some news for us soon, because I don’t know how much longer I’m willing to wait. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I have used the words “spectacular disappointment” to describe the non-replayable, time-gated “throwaway content” of the Living World experience here and elsewhere, so I’m definitely not shy about giving blunt criticism.

However, I’m pretty sure ArenaNet has heard us loud and clear. Based on what Colin said last summer and other devs have also said since, I am very optimistic about the Living World in 2014. Heck, even Scarlet haters might be pleasantly surprised by what’s coming in the last four installments of her story arc.

Granted, I may be setting myself up for even more disappointment, but I have very high regard for the ArenaNet staff (they did, after all, give us this amazing game) and am confident that if anyone can turn the Living World around, they can.

Between myself and those I play with, we’ve all been quietly hoping the living story content is just a distraction to keep people in the game while they’re developing a proper expansion. To me the living story is little more than filler content. Maybe even disposable content, given how it has few real links to the game world, appears and disappears after a month.

There are a few success stories buried in the living story though. For me, most of it is gameplay mechanics related, such as the Molten Facility dungeon. It was fun and it highlights that development in that area is trending in the right direction, for me anyway. Other dungeon-related patches since then have been fairly positive. A lot of the events have been fun to do. I loved the Queen’s Gauntlet, for example. I also found running up the tower of nightmares to be pretty fun. These were things that were just fun to do.

I find the ‘story’ part of the living story to be the main failing point. There really isn’t one. It has little to no connection with the main world, and tends to come out of nowhere. I have difficulty describing how much I dislike Scarlet and wherever that plot is going. I find there is no character in there, just a plot device that’s granted a whole lot of power and ability by fiat to allow for these events to happen. My suspension of disbelief can’t handle it, and it causes the world to de-synch with a jolt. None of it makes any narrative sense.

I’m not going to get over that either. I want new zones to explore. The permanent world has to stop seeming like it’s frozen in time except when these side show events are happening. The biggest current obstacle in the way of a ‘living, breathing world’ is that it’s stuck being tied to a new player experience that only lasts a small fraction of the time they’ll be playing the game. It doesn’t actually take that long to level and go through the personal story, but because of it zones like Orr can’t change to reflect that the invasion was successful.

More to the point, immersion in the world ends at the end of the personal story, because any time a player that’s finished it goes to another zone, they essentially step back to a previous point in the timeline from when they were leveling. Level scaling allowing people to do that was a huge boon to the game as a whole, because most of the time spent playing is done with max-level characters.

It’s time enough now, though, for the game world to stop being so concerned with synching with the personal story and start changing to keep it interesting for the people who have long since finished it.

Thobek.1730:

They shouldn’t change the vanilla world physically too much, what they should do is expand and give us new areas to explore allowing our character to venture further out into the world and make those regions permanent. They should change the characters in the game and develop the relationships, leaderships, etc which they are trying to do but doesn’t gel well with me since I dislike Kiel and her mannish bullyboy attitude or the odd relationship between Majory and Kasmeer.

Two problem with this:

1.) If new content always appears in a new area, you quickly end up with the old areas being empty of players.
2.) It’s a completely unrealistic representation of how things are. “We already did the French Revolution thing in Paris, so we can’t possibly do this WW2 story arc you’re proposing. Now that one interesting thing has happened in Paris, nothing interesting can ever happen there again!”

One of the things that I like about GW2 is that new stuff happens on the current map. Yes I hope we get to see Cantha, Elona, the Crystal Desert, the Far Shiverpeaks, the Maguuma Wastes, etc. again, but it should be because a story arc requires going there. Not just opening up new zones for the sake of opening up new zones.

I want an expansion. Living story just seems so sporadically placed, I’m not drawn to the storyline at all, nor do I want to grind to get AP and the not-so-cool rewards. Please dear god, bring Cantha back. And I want a profession like the Ritualist back. PLEASE. I need my spirits haha. A new race would be nice too.

ItsAdamParker.5192:

I want an expansion. Living story just seems so sporadically placed, I’m not drawn to the storyline at all, nor do I want to grind to get AP and the not-so-cool rewards. Please dear god, bring Cantha back. And I want a profession like the Ritualist back. PLEASE. I need my spirits haha. A new race would be nice too.

+1 for all of this

Less fluff, more lasting content.

I hope so. The Living Story is great. The method of having the world change (temporary content) is brilliant. Most MMOs have these static environments that are just dull. You see people complaining about content not being permanent, but old content in other games just sits there- it is no longer relevant and it destroys the timeline of the game world.

I know some people say they don’t like to miss parts of the story, but, in my opinion, it is quite possible to miss some pieces, but to jump right in and participate in the latest installment. I missed a number of the updates, but I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything because there is something new to do every couple of weeks.

They have tried Living story/world out now for a year. Your mileage may vary, I’ve found it mostly lacking content-wise outside AP grind. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for the second year since they might have learned what’s good and what’s not, but really, a year from now the game has been out for whopping 2 and a half years. I’d say it’s make or break for ANet, in 2 and ½ years there should be major content and updates already. GW1 had loads and loads of new stuff added in that timeframe. So personally I’ll give them the “second season” of LW to show that they’re not just all talk.

I actually enjoy LS. I just think they should add a few new zones and skills with it every now and then because sometimes it’s heart breaking to see some of the good stuff leave. Hopefully they add more permanent content this year. I feel like this will be the year that we get more skills/weapons/traits and fun new zones to explore.

I honestly do not see new zones as much of a likelihood. It seems clear they decided the game world was too big and thus turned to developing content designed to concentrate players in one place each month. As Living story not only pulled people out of the game world, but cannibalized resources that should have been spent keeping the game world fresh and ever evolving, Arenanet seems to have panicked even more over the exodus of players from the game world. Forget that their living story concept was responsible, it just re-affirmed their notion that the game world was too big and isn’t worth the resources required to renew/evolve.

GW2 was always a bit of an “impossible dream”. It represented a true paradigm shift for MMO game design and moved the genre closer to the idealized imaginings of long time fans than any other MMO to date. Such impossible dreams are often pushed forward and fostered by a visionary individual or group of individuals who have to constantly fight status quo thinking among their peers. Kudos to Arenanet management for allowing those visionaries to make the game we got, in spite of other doubts.

It now seems that key people who understood and pushed the innovation are gone and those that remain seem to lack the vision and commitment to the game’s paradigm shifting design philosophy needed to make things work, let alone continue to evolve.

I really think that’s the core issue here and it makes the entire mess even more frustrating. I suspect we get Living Story because it’s just the best they can offer us right now and even if they understood what the game actually needed to nurture it’s ongoing evolution, they just don’t think they are capable of actually delivering.

I remain firm in my belief that if they had actually done what Colin talked about doing last fall, before they decided to do Living Story instead, which was to continually update and add to Dynamic Events across the game world, possibly doubling or tripling the events in rotation with in a year, this would be a much better game and a much, much more successful game.

They could even have borrowed some ideas from Living Story and had some temporary/story content to introduce and draw attention to a few zones for each story arch where the most dramatic zone changes would be taking place.

They could still correct course and do this for 2014, possibly saving the game and the studio’s reputation, but, once again, I see no indication that we should expect anything more than an ongoing commitment to continually devolving Living Story content for 2014.

Fiontar.4695:

I honestly do not see new zones as much of a likelihood. It seems clear they decided the game world was too big and thus turned to developing content designed to concentrate players in one place each month.

You should read some of the new articles put out today. One of which states they are working on new areas, professions, races and other stuff. That that stuff will be in the GW2 game, just no time table.