Living story (monthly arcs!)
So I like the living story but it feels sometimes like a jumbled mess of short stories being thrown at us. I think the concept is great but you still need to work the pacing and actual content being delivered. If we can bring back the acts and divide that in the month, we can have a much more completing living story. Giving ppl a lot more time to finish the content and yet still keep ppl interested in what’s going on in the world. Here’s an example.
Scarlets Twilight assault
Few days before the month of the new arc. (unannounced)
- Aetherblades are spotted in Caledon forest, with the nightmare court.
Act1 (2 weeks): Caithe suspects something up in TA, needs hero’s to investigate the area (ingame mail).
- Aetherblades have begun building fortifications around TA,
- New dynamic event (evolving breaking down fortifications, stopping the AE waves, holo waves) eventually leading to Spurs introduction as the head of the operation, (quick dialog) does battle with players, at half life, sick and sparki show up and creates a fire wall in which the Aetherblades and Spurs retreats (all immune) into TA.
- Add the usual achievements (defeating x Aetherblades/nightmare courts/Spur etc), and have Aetherblades drop map pieces. 5 pieces complete the map which you take back to Caithe
- Caithe tells you she might know where this map leads, drops some hits on how she knows scarlet and that she’s heading to TA. Caithe suggest you to take this map to Captain Magnus.
- Find Magnus, show him what you found, he says he knows the perfect person for the job, Thanks for you intel and will let you know of further development.
Act2 (2weeks): Magnus lets you know (ingame mail) that preparations have been made to assault the scarlet base.
- Players head to TA, you meet Caithe and Turma. (you know the rest)
- Concludes with you going back to Caithe and she lets you know more about scarlet or faolain.(insert sum lore here) and that she need to continue to investigate to find out what scarlet knows. And players can also talk to Cpt Magnus about being disappointed that Scarlet was not found
A few days before the new monthly arc: (unannounced)
- Players are reporting seeing doors appearing at night, and the mad moon hanging over kryta. (doors don’t open, just spawn for a little while, not indicated on map)
PS: ( also at the end of the month the dynamic event is removed, won’t make sense to see spur continue to push out or fortify )
As you see its still 2 releases a month, but its one whole cohesive story with an intro, conflict, climax and conclusion, vs “here’s a new path, go at it!!” this will give more players time to complete there metas and for players to catch up on whats happen as they will be able to do all parts of the story till the end of the month.
TLDR; Continue to make 2 week updates but about the same story in order to get a cohesive story vs a random event.