Guild Wars 2

I’m the first person to jump on the writers how bad they are doing their job. But for the next living story let’s give them a chance to prove they are not fresh out of some community college or home schooled writing class. Sure they made some ridiculously simple and glaring mistakes any rookie would avoid but I have hope.

IF they deliver some boring story then unleash hell, go broadside and open all barrels. But until then I say give them a chance to prove that the first chapter was more of a lesson than their best attempt.

TL;DR – give them a chance…

I so agree with u on this!!! Just wrote on Another threat to give the Devs a break and wait with the complaining till the season has actually been released. Before then, there is nothing to go on…

Agree, very well said.

For me I have liked most of the LS content so I doubt I will be disupointed but I realy hope for others that they have upped their game for LS2.

The writers give us Marjory and Kasmeer. And Taimi, let’s not forget Taimi and her cuteness.
For that alone the writers are awesome and deserve a high five!!
Kudos writers!!

I lost count of how many chances have been given.

Rebound.3409:

I lost count of how many chances have been given.

This. Plus, the fact that the last Living World storyline was even approved means Anet is incapable of telling a good storytelling from a bad one. That does not bode well.

It’s not that the writers were bad i think. They did really bad though because of release plan for living story.
That’s usually also why 99,9 percent of tv shows sucks b@lls.
Quality takes time, love and care to create.
When they have to follow a busy schedual it will be a rushed trainwreck like the last seasons of Dexter, and not a fully fleshed masterpiece like Breaking Bad or Game Of Thrones 8D .. Not that gw2 lore will ever reach that kind of awesome, but you get my point ..
But I have hopes for season 2, we shall just have to wait and see ..

The writing on Living Story Season 1 left something to be desired. However, once it started, it could no longer be changed. The entire story had already been written by the time the first negative feedback about the writing started trickling in.

At that point, they would have had two options:
1. Continue rolling out the original story as planned, and taking notes to improve the quality of any content to come after that.
2. Cancel the original story immediately, leaving players without a conclusion, and hope the game survives 4-6 months of no updates at all (not even a feature patch) while the writers and developers scramble to start over from scratch on a new story.

Which do you think would be worse for the game?

From December 2013 onwards, ArenaNet took time to at least give Season One a decent ending that did not contain the writing mistakes of the previous chapters, and
to better prepare for Season Two.

The four month hiatus after the end of Season One was probably not only used for the China launch, but also for the writers and developers to use all the Season One feedback to create a better Season Two. Remember, it took them 2 months on average of development time on a single LS update in 2013, and they needed 4 development teams to keep up with the updating pace. Writing and preparing Season Two from scratch (as well as developing the first few LS content updates) will take at least as long, if not longer, and I believe it is a good sign that they took the time to draw and incorporate all lessons learned from Season One (including the finale) into the preparations for their new Season Two project.

If it’s okay to fanboi hype things to hell, it’s also okay to be skeptical.

agree.

lets not proclaim it a failure simply because you disliked the first season………..or hype it up pretending you know certain things based on interpreting screen shots, artwork, or old dev comments).

that said……….i hope they keep this 4-6 week pace. no pressure to do achieves is nice.

Imo, problem is not the story itself but how the LS was being dropped to the players, 2 thing thats this game does wells are the graphics and story-lines, player only wanted to press 1 key for the drops no point of following the story, blob after blob, teams getting separated on different overflows, this events design was IMO what was wrong and people felt it was a storyline fault.

p.s problem with gw2 are the lack of mechanics that do not allow a “true mmo experience” besides the zerg rushes where every looks lost.

Thobek.1730:

TL;DR – give them a chance…

Did I fall through a wormhole into the Opposite Universe where people on the internet are nice to each other?

Aeolus.3615:

Imo, problem is not the story itself but how the LS was being dropped to the players,

And this is exactly what the developers acknowledged they could have seriously done better, and which they will bear in mind for their future story content. (I remember reading this in a blog from either December or January, before the LS final started.) They flat out admitted that they should have given more background to Scarlet Briar’s madness/agenda before they gave us her secret lair.
Just presenting Scarlet as a raving lunatic who laughed in our faces as we defeated her (claiming she had won anyway) is what made people lose interest in the Living Story the most.

What they should have done was give us hints about the mystery behind Scarlet’s madness. Instead, they only gave us hints that maybe there could be a mystery.

So in this regard at least, I expect a significant improvement in the next Living Story.

Unless they’ve hired new writers, I don’t see it getting much better. The personal story writing and voice direction was below average. Granted, I didn’t do even half of the LS content, but what I did play didn’t impress me in the least. Playing SWTOR during my downtime from GW2 didn’t help either. The story/voice acting in SWTOR is far superior. It makes me sad because they had some really good voice talent. Troy Baker, Jennifer Hale…. It just goes to show you that it really is all in the writing and direction. Troy Baker as Logan Thackery was just a borefest. Now Troy Baker as Joel in Last of Us? Outstanding!

DaveGan.8065:

If it’s okay to fanboi hype things to hell, it’s also okay to be skeptical.

There is however a rather massive difference between being skeptical and shouting about how much something will suck.

And to be honest I haven’t really seen anyone fanboying about how awesome the release is, seeing as no-one have actually seen it yet.

Most Guild Wars 2 players are teenagers… I mean, I don’t have numbers, but look me in the username and tell me you genuinely think that’s not the case.

ANet is writing for teenagers. I’m sure they could do a better job, but there’s really nothing in it for them if they do. Also, they have to crank out stories pretty quickly, so I would guess they don’t have a lot of time to consider too many intricacies, especially since that would also mean more time needed for the devs to implement it.

I’m pretty confident that the next season of LS will be just as uninspiring as the rest of the GW2 story has been so far, not simply because of looking at their previous work, but the motivation behind it. The GW2 playerbase is too young to appreciate a seriously good story, and ANet knows it.

Also, ANet is kind of… let’s say “family friendly,” for lack of a better word. They’re soft. It’s not a bad thing, but their story-telling ability definitely suffers for it.

They are also limited by the Teen rating the game have, which means that they can’t past certain lines even if they are fully capable of it.

Those are some excellent points, Andred & lordkrall. The game is intended for a predominantly teenaged audience, and so the writing does reflect that most of the time.
One can see that it appeals largely to a young teenaged to young adult type of crowd…..spend any length of time in map chat for a boss mob in PvE or in map chat in PvP, and it becomes very obvious that a very large portion of those playing are in the junior high/middle/high school age range.

Plus, the fact, as lordkrall pointed out…..that it has a teen rating on the game.

So obviously, Anet has aimed their writing at this sort of age group, as that will sell the most games.

So you both make a very valid point that maybe older players shouldn’t expect too much in the writing, because of the audience that it is intended for.

Reminds me of when I read The Hunger Games trilogy several years ago. Decent books, but could have been so much better. Mainly due to the fact that the series was intended for a young teenager crowd, so the writing of the books was very clunky and simplistic at times….which ended up disappointing me at the end of the 3rd book, as it became very simplistic and shallow. Was mainly because I expected too much from the trilogy, not realizing off the bat what sort of crowd it was largely intended for.

Of course, what does this say about those of us who are a lot older and enjoy the game? Do we have simplistic minds? Or are we just enjoying a game that makes us feel younger and helps us to forget our real life hassles?

Or maybe it’s just nostalgia for a lot of us older players, as many of us started playing muds in the ’80s and ’90s.

Thobek.1730:

I’m the first person to jump on the writers how bad they are doing their job. But for the next living story let’s give them a chance to prove they are not fresh out of some community college or home schooled writing class. Sure they made some ridiculously simple and glaring mistakes any rookie would avoid but I have hope.

IF they deliver some boring story then unleash hell, go broadside and open all barrels. But until then I say give them a chance to prove that the first chapter was more of a lesson than their best attempt.

TL;DR – give them a chance…

Anet might not be to blame for the LS content. Keep in mind that NCSoft might be the real villain here. When I participated in the WildStar beta, I realized that it had the same problems as GW2: a flat storyline and the PCs are forced to rush from event to event (Just like Living Story Season 1). Even the Explorer path is too similar to GW2. *There is a very good chance that inexperienced folks in NCSoft are calling the shots when it comes to content in GW2. *

As a long time Guild Wars fan, NCSoft is on their last legs with me. If LS Season 2 fails, then I just won’t buy any games from NCSoft in the future due to the fact that they interfere too much with developers, animators, and writers. Video games cost money for us consumers ($20 – $60 in the U.S.). When a game doesn’t deliver, I won’t purchase the sequel. As a consumer, I buy RPGs for the storyline and interesting gameplay. Anet has the gameplay part down. We just need a really good storyline to act as icing on the cake. The story doesn’t have to be complicated or extremely thought provoking. The LS 2 story just has to have the following:

— the PCs as the main characters and the heroes of the story. This is non-negotiable.

— NPCs can’t steal the PC’s spotlight. If the NPCs dare steal the spotlight, they have to be punished in some way (i.e. get overwhelmed by the bad guys, get themselves killed, gets their power taken away, etc.)

— Believable NPCs. Give me a reason to care about the PC’s sidekicks and minions.

— Keep the story in-game. No dev-created fanfics and important lore on other sites like Facebook, the blog, Flickr, etc. As an RPG, all GW2 Lore and story needs to be in-game. Period.

FYI— I will still keep playing GW2 no matter what. I bought the game last October and I like my main character. I’ve also found good people via this game. If Living Story 2 fails, I just won’t buy other games from NCSoft (including WildStar).

lordkrall.7241:

They are also limited by the Teen rating the game have, which means that they can’t past certain lines even if they are fully capable of it.

This is no excuse for a mediocre storyline. There have been many games with Teen Ratings that have had awesome stories. Knights of the Old Republic? Morrowind? Baldurs Gate 2? None of those are MMOs, but saying that a Teen rating is hindering a writing staff is a bit of a stretch.

kta.6502:

Thobek.1730:

I’m the first person to jump on the writers how bad they are doing their job. But for the next living story let’s give them a chance to prove they are not fresh out of some community college or home schooled writing class. Sure they made some ridiculously simple and glaring mistakes any rookie would avoid but I have hope.

IF they deliver some boring story then unleash hell, go broadside and open all barrels. But until then I say give them a chance to prove that the first chapter was more of a lesson than their best attempt.

TL;DR – give them a chance…

Anet might not be to blame for the LS content. Keep in mind that NCSoft might be the real villain here. When I participated in the WildStar beta, I realized that it had the same problems as GW2: a flat storyline and the PCs are forced to rush from event to event (Just like Living Story Season 1). Even the Explorer path is too similar to GW2. *There is a very good chance that inexperienced folks in NCSoft are calling the shots when it comes to content in GW2. *

As a long time Guild Wars fan, NCSoft is on their last legs with me. If LS Season 2 fails, then I just won’t buy any games from NCSoft in the future due to the fact that they interfere too much with developers, animators, and writers. Video games cost money for us consumers ($20 – $60 in the U.S.). When a game doesn’t deliver, I won’t purchase the sequel. As a consumer, I buy RPGs for the storyline and interesting gameplay. Anet has the gameplay part down. We just need a really good storyline to act as icing on the cake. The story doesn’t have to be complicated or extremely thought provoking. The LS 2 story just has to have the following:

— the PCs as the main characters and the heroes of the story. This is non-negotiable.

— NPCs can’t steal the PC’s spotlight. If the NPCs dare steal the spotlight, they have to be punished in some way (i.e. get overwhelmed by the bad guys, get themselves killed, gets their power taken away, etc.)

— Believable NPCs. Give me a reason to care about the PC’s sidekicks and minions.

— Keep the story in-game. No dev-created fanfics and important lore on other sites like Facebook, the blog, Flickr, etc. As an RPG, all GW2 Lore and story needs to be in-game. Period.

FYI— I will still keep playing GW2 no matter what. I bought the game last October and I like my main character. I’ve also found good people via this game. If Living Story 2 fails, I just won’t buy other games from NCSoft (including WildStar).

I kinda like the PC not being the central heroe/heroine of the story or the chosen one.

And I like the actual NPCs… well I love Kas, Jory and Taimi. Rox is kinda cool too. I don’t remember the others… but I missed a lot of story thanks to the temporary content aka living world.

Nat.4029:

This is no excuse for a mediocre storyline. There have been many games with Teen Ratings that have had awesome stories. Knights of the Old Republic? Morrowind? Baldurs Gate 2? None of those are MMOs, but saying that a Teen rating is hindering a writing staff is a bit of a stretch.

I have never said it is. I was just responding to the people talking about target audience and such by pointing out that they CAN’T TARGET an older audience specifically because they are tied by the rating.

Andred.1087:

ANet is writing for teenagers. I’m sure they could do a better job, but there’s really nothing in it for them if they do. Also, they have to crank out stories pretty quickly, so I would guess they don’t have a lot of time to consider too many intricacies, especially since that would also mean more time needed for the devs to implement it.

Even if this was true and that is their target audience then they underestimate what teenagers can deal with in complexity and depth.

I recently watched a few episodes of thundercats (research for my design work). anyway… It was surprisingly mature. It had slavery, torture, death, war, and some scenes that hinted on slaughter. It was completely different to the 80’s version. People have become desensitized over the generations and require more and more to shock.

They aren’t writing for teenagers, more like pre-teen. Its a kids story, a fairytale without the excitement.

I think since the horrible job they did for the first LS people’s expectations are at an all time low. It won’t be hard to improve on it.

Thobek.1730:

I recently watched a few episodes of thundercats (research for my design work). anyway… It was surprisingly mature. It had slavery, torture, death, war, and some scenes that hinted on slaughter. It was completely different to the 80’s version. People have become desensitized over the generations and require more and more to shock.

To be fair the bold part can also be said about GW2.

Andred.1087:

Most Guild Wars 2 players are teenagers… I mean, I don’t have numbers, but look me in the username and tell me you genuinely think that’s not the case.

ANet is writing for teenagers. I’m sure they could do a better job, but there’s really nothing in it for them if they do. Also, they have to crank out stories pretty quickly, so I would guess they don’t have a lot of time to consider too many intricacies, especially since that would also mean more time needed for the devs to implement it.

I’m pretty confident that the next season of LS will be just as uninspiring as the rest of the GW2 story has been so far, not simply because of looking at their previous work, but the motivation behind it. The GW2 playerbase is too young to appreciate a seriously good story, and ANet knows it.

Also, ANet is kind of… let’s say “family friendly,” for lack of a better word. They’re soft. It’s not a bad thing, but their story-telling ability definitely suffers for it.

Most of my guild mates and friends all married and even have kids. Not sure where you get “most teenagers” from. Don’t determine them as teenagers by looking at their usernames.

rincewind.9528:

I kinda like the PC not being the central heroe/heroine of the story or the chosen one.

And I like the actual NPCs… well I love Kas, Jory and Taimi. Rox is kinda cool too. I don’t remember the others… but I missed a lot of story thanks to the temporary content aka living world.

I understand. I know the GW2 community is split in half on this one. One possible solution to solve this is to give the players the choice between being the hero character or being a sidekick.

As a customer, I don’t purchase games that have the PC as a non-heroic person. It’s too much like real life. I live as a normal human in RL, so why would I want to RP as one?

I also enjoy hero stories. That’s why I buy RPGs (esp. JRpgs). GW2 was originally advertised as a hero story via official trailers. The devs even said that the focus would be on the PCs. When I discovered that Traherne stole my character’s storyline, I felt as if I had wasted $40 on the game. It was misleading advertisement. If I had known that my character was going to be a sidekick, I would of never purchased the game. Alot of the fault lies with Anet and NCSoft for not advertising the game correctly. BTW, in the United States, it is a violation of Federal and Washington State business law to advertise a product in one way and then give the customer a totally different product. That’s why fans like myself have spent time pointing out the game’s problems to both companies in hopes that they will give us what they promised in the first place.

It’s seems as if Anet is working to fix the problems since one of the devs did say in-game that all the LS 2 stuff is permanent. It indicates that the devs really did read the various comments on the forums about LS 1. I hope LS 2 is successful.

@kta:
Thank you for the insight in your consumer behaviour. Please note that many, many other people who play Guild Wars 2 have different priorities. ArenaNet has to decide where to go based on all those priorities, and not just yours. You putting your preferences in this forum will likely not influence which priorities ArenaNet will cater to.

As they say, nothing can ever be so good that somebody somewhere will not absolutely hate it. Let’s just hope that somebody is not you, or me.

kta.6502:

As a customer, I don’t purchase games that have the PC as a non-heroic person. It’s too much like real life. I live as a normal human in RL, so why would I want to RP as one?

I also enjoy hero stories. That’s why I buy RPGs (esp. JRpgs). GW2 was originally advertised as a hero story via official trailers. The devs even said that the focus would be on the PCs. When I discovered that Traherne stole my character’s storyline, I felt as if I had wasted $40 on the game. It was misleading advertisement. If I had known that my character was going to be a sidekick, I would of never purchased the game. Alot of the fault lies with Anet and NCSoft for not advertising the game correctly. BTW, in the United States, it is a violation of Federal and Washington State business law to advertise a product in one way and then give the customer a totally different product. That’s why fans like myself have spent time pointing out the game’s problems to both companies in hopes that they will give us what they promised in the first place.

Gw2 isn’t, and most likely never will be, a “hero story”. Anet, since gw1, has always told their stories revolving around certain iconic and important characters with the player’s character tagging along with them. More than anything, the players in the Guild Wars universe are observers to the story. And because of this, I can tell you Anet did not falsely advertise their game. They advertised an MMO that broke from the traditional mold MMOs seem to have and innovated on it, and they delivered exactly that.

In regards to the players making an impact on the world, this was in regards to dynamic events, not the personal story. It’s your fault for not understanding that, not Anet’s. Your attempt to criminalize Anet for not creating a story that fits your preferences is, in my opinion, childish and insulting.

I personally would prefer Anet to follow their traditional approach to story telling and have Destiny’s Edge 2.0 (i.e. Braham, Rox, Tiami, Kasmeer, and Majory) be the heroes and not literally everyone and their grandmother who play the game. Hero stories work well in single player games. They don’t make sense in MMOs. Seeing a story that doesn’t follow the “hero story” cliche every rpg has would be a nice fresh breath of air.

If you buy games for their stories, then that’s fine. I won’t judge you for that. But many people, including myself, buy games for the gameplay above all else. And for me, a better story in place of gameplay is a worse decision than better gameplay in place of story. Because, in the end, Gw2 is an MMO. And what matters most in an MMO is the gameplay, not the story. Sacrificing gameplay for a better story is the exact reason why SWTOR flopped.

If you want to give input to Anet, then it’s best to do so from an unbiased standpoint and point out real Pros and Cons, and not just say things that you’d prefer to see. Just a friendly tip.

I’m not judging anything, judging would mean “Well, I like/hate it, and therefor I will definitely play/quit it!” That would be silly.

Still, I think it’s reasonable to make some educated guesses, based on what they’ve said, and what’s already happened, and say “well, I do/don’t like the sounds of that, and based on [this information] and [these basic assumptions], I have a feeling that [this element] will please/annoy me, and make me less likely to enjoy it.”

Why get out in front like that? Because development is a long process, and if players all wait until after the content launched to offer feedback on it (and/or the devs wait until then to read it), then it would mean that it would take an extra month or more for any of that feedback to be translated into improved content.

Now of course if our assumptions are completely wrong then the devs don’t have to worry about it on their end, although they might want to take note not to go that way in future either.