Guild Wars 2

Errant Venture.9371:

We’ve had another 4 weeks of (fairly fun) ministories, but there’s still been NO PROGRESS in the storyline. There’s still no PLOT to Scarlet’s Story.

Here’s the point for the story writers: for every piece of content please ask yourself, “How does this fit into the story and how does it advance the plot? What new information am i giving the players to keep them interested in the meta-arc of the Living story?”

If the story writers can’t give good answers to these questions, and the players themselves can’t find the answers to these questions IN GAME, then you’re failing at the PURPOSE of the Living Story.

This is mostly good, clear feedback. Thanks for sharing.

In the future, please ditch the overuse of caps, as that’s not constructive and reduces the chance that we’ll respond. We read this stuff. You’re not posting in a vacuum.

Jaken.6801:

I hope we can get a more through discussion about the matter after the arc is finished. You are in the process of learning and i am courious about what you learned, which ideas you had had to be revised and what your overall vision was against how it ended up.

Yeah, we’re learning a lot about integrating story with gameplay with the two-week Living World release cadence. It’s exposing issues with our writing process, presentation, and development methods that we’re working on improving with each release.

I’ve been formulating a LW season postmortem in my head that I am looking forward to sharing internally first, and then one day discussing publicly if I’m given the opportunity.

smeen.4237:

Scarlet, although I do love her voice acting (I think there’s no Sylvari that sounds this good) is shallow to me just because she’s doing all of it herself. Yeah she has her alliances but there’s no interaction, no chemistry, no nothing between them. Scarlet is above all of this, she has nobody to interact with and that doesn’t do her character any good. Characters grow and develop when they interact with others, but since she’s not interacting with anyone she just stays the same. And how she is right now doesn’t work for me. I don’t even think she’s a convincing villain, she’s just a bored child to me.

Thanks for the constructive feedback. I think you’re right in that Scarlet, because she’s not often interacting with other characters, doesn’t have the same opportunities to grow as a character. She just shows up, says a few things, and then blips out. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to play the Twilight Assault dungeon, but Scarlet has a few exchanges with Caithe that hints a bit about their respective pasts.

We’ve known about this issue for a while and have a few things in development that should flesh out her character in greater detail through a variety of methods. I can’t say when they’ll go live, only that they’re written and being built now.

smeen.4237:

Also, I would like to thank you guys personally for that recap cinematic in the latest update. I missed the assasination and it was great to see something of it, even if it was minimal. You should make these recaps more frequently, I think.

You’re welcome. To be honest, we wanted to do this sort of thing for every release but we just haven’t had the resources. I’m glad that for some people this elicited the intended response. Some folks were disappointed that we didn’t reveal more details in the cinematic, and I can understand that, That’s why we made a conscious effort to put more info in upcoming releases, so keep your eyes open.

I received a PM from someone this morning. Rather than reply directly I decided to share my response with the community for transparency.

“Why do you never respond to negative feedback about Scarlet? I’ve seen you reply to people who like Scarlet, but almost never to people who dislike her. Why the bias?”

Here’s a tip: Devs are much more likely to engage in discussion when the tone isn’t overwhelmingly negative and hostile. I have to devote what little time I have for forum review to a couple of threads, and lately that’s been the Collaborative Development one. Please post here and keep it constructive and in the spirit of discussion. Also, please understand that none of us can reply to every post. Just because we haven’t responded to your specific question does not mean that we haven’t read your feedback or are discussing it internally.

We can see from a user’s post history if they’re routinely complaining about the same things in a multitude of threads and often taking a sarcastic tone. That’s useless feedback that more often annoys devs to the point that they won’t take you seriously. You want to be heard? Keep the delivery constructive and civil. It’s pretty simple.

I’m totally open to discuss Scarlet, but you have to understand something: it takes months for any feedback to make its way into a release so don’t be surprised if a comment about the November story delivery doesn’t affect the December release (those deadlines are long past). Also, I’m not at liberty to discuss the contents of future unannounced releases, so while you may get frustrated that “we’re not listening” or that “we’re hiding information from you” the reality is much simpler. Building releases takes months, and sometimes features or other items shift dates, or we’ve had to adjust the story or release schedule due to external factors (including community feedback). I know I sound like Subdirector Blingg when I say, “We haven’t revealed X yet, but it will be featured in an upcoming release.” I’m not at libertly to divulge release schedules or story timelines outside of a current release so I can’t say much more than that.

People want more details about Scarlet. We know that. Details will be revealed in the near future and will be paced more aggressively. Until then, I hope you enjoy the game and our most recent Living World release and continue to constructively tell us what you think. Thanks.

Hey all,

We are looking into this now and I will update this thread once I have more information to provide.

Thanks,

We’ve included a few changes that we suspect will help, but don’t yet have metrics on how successful those changes have been.

That said, we have plans to resolve this issue as part of a pretty significant refactor and restructure that we’re well into, but that won’t be ready by year’s end.

NevirSayDie.6235:

New MM is a massive improvement! Had a 500-495 fight and no fight was further apart than 500-350.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying the changes! I didn’t get much of a chance to play tonight myself, but hopefully I can get some games in tomorrow. Sitting at 274 right now – hopefully I can crack top 200 in the next few days.

Thanks for participating in the poll, folks. Can’t say I’m surprised at the results so far!

Keep the votes coming.

docMed.7692:

Nice to see the random shake up (definitely noticing a difference). Still a bit of an issue though when u get 3-4 thieves on one team vs a well balanced team. Any chance of adding a little more criteria there?

Justin has been looking into adding additional parameters to solo queue like balancing professions between both teams. Every additional criteria we add increases the queue times, though. I don’t think we’ve decided on anything for sure, but we have been toying with the idea.

Glad to hear you’re enjoying the changes.

Welcome back. Apparently you’ve been gone quite a while.

Flumek.9043:

In perfect theory, if matchmaking put you against EQUAL opponents , would everyone have/be very close to a 50/50 win ratio in the long run ?

No, even assuming a very large population with abundant skill range coverage, a portion of the difference comes from a player raising/lowering their rating from the default starting position. It takes a while for your MMR to settle.

The Lesh Prince!

felivear.1536:

Just curious, what was the issue people experienced?

You can thank Evan for finding and fixing it quickly.

Are all these yours?

3778
31255
51701
51809

Are there more?

BUG-FIXING

• Fixed several client crashes, including one that prevented some players from entering the game.
• Fixed a roster crash in sPvP.

Your e-mail address is not exposed to others, so no worries there!

More, please!

Michael
Customer Support Lead

Please put the ticket number in this thread. Even if we’ve discussed the matter a dozen times, it saves me time and allows me to help more if I don’t have to search PMs and posts to find it. Thank you.

Hi there Szejker,

Are you getting a particular error code number at all? Do you have any security software or firewalls enabled? You’ll also want to make sure all necessary Guild Wars 2 ports are completely open and accessible both inbound and outbound.

Hi Black Drops – I can’t see the full error here but what I can see indicates a possible issue with your hard drive. I’d start with a Disk check and then follow-up with a client repair. If you want the steps to do so, please refer to the steps below:

1. Open Computer by clicking the “Start” button and then clicking “Computer.”

2. Right-click the hard disk drive that you want to check, and then click “Properties.”

3. Click the “Tools” tab, and then, under “Error-checking”, click “Check Now.” If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

4. To check for both file errors and physical errors, select both Automatically fix file system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.

5. Click “Start.”

Depending upon the size of your hard disk, this may take several minutes. For best results, don’t use your computer for any other tasks while it’s checking for errors.

Once that is complete, please navigate to your local.dat file by following the steps below:

1. Hold down the Windows button on the keyboard and hit the “R” key.

2. Paste in the following line:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

3. Click “OK.”

4. Locate and delete the “Local.dat” file.

Next:

1. Navigate to your Guild Wars 2 installation folder.

2. Right-click on “GW2.exe” and select “Create Shortcut.”

3. Rename this shortcut to “Guild Wars 2 Repair.”

4. Right-click on this shortcut and select “Properties.”

5. Edit the “Target” line to include -repair at the end.

Note: Please make sure -repair is outside of the quotes

Correctly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe” -repair
Incorrectly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe -repair”

6. Once completed, click “Ok” to save your changes.

If you get an error trying to save, your target line may not have the correct format. Please try step 5 again.

7. Double click “Guild Wars 2 Repair” to start the repair process.

Once completed, please try starting Guild Wars 2 again and see if this resolves your issue.

Hope this helps!

Looks like we’re going to be bringing it back up before the hotfix.

Should be coming back online…..now!

Did anyone die during the entirety of the instance? The achievement tracks deaths in all three Watchwork/Hallucination rooms and the Toxic Hybrid room. It does not count downed states, but it does count every player death for the whole instance.

Hi again jayvux – Have you tried bypassing your router completely and connecting directly to the modem? Also, when you say port 80, are you referring to the /clientport 80 command line or are you simply saying that port 80 is open? The reason that I ask is I’ve noticed an increase of blocked port 6112’s lately.

We’re going to be disabling the newly implemented roster shuffling until the next hotfix. Some players were experiencing issues with the system and we want to make sure we get everything completely ironed out before we bring it back online.

You may continue to participate in Solo Queue – it will match you the same way that it did prior to the update.

I’ll keep you guys updated.

Thanks!

Hi Celebratty – Kessex Hills is pretty busy these days with the new content and all. This could be putting some extra strain on your system. When you crash, are you prompted to send an error report to ArenaNet? If so, you can find the crash logs by doing the following:

1. Hold down the Windows button on the keyboard and hit the R key.
2. Paste in the following line and then click OK.

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2

Once there, please locate the ArenaNet.log file and attach it to the thread by clicking “More posting & formatting options…”

Hi jayvux. – If you’re getting all three of those error codes then there’s definitely something up. Do you have any security software enabled? Are you running the client as Admin? Lastly and most importantly, are you at least on a broadband Internet connection and are TCP ports 80, 443, 6112 completely open and accessible both inbound and outbound?

Aww, that’s sweet, Infamous Darkness! I’ll pass this along to the team!

felivear.1536:

I don’t understand their philosophy on decay disappearing after you play a game. It makes no sense.

We’re going to be changing this, but you’ll have to wait for the details. :/

These changes to decay aren’t exactly a ‘new system’ – we’ve just increased the speed and severity that someone loses ranking. Like I mentioned in a previous post, we’re looking to overhaul quite a few things in the New Year, and this system is on our list.

For the time being, if players are logging in to maintain their ranking because they’re decaying at a faster rate – then in a sense the leaderboard decay is working. Players who have afk’d for months will begin to drop down in the list. With the changes to MMR and roster randomization players will be far less likely to play in stacked games when they do come back to maintain their position.

Hey all, I’m locking this, a bit late.Thanks for all your input and your feedback. We really appreciate it!

Thank you all for the friendly open discussion and all of the ideas we’ve tossed back and forth. This feedback will be of great value to us as we continue to take WvW forward and grow the game.

There was a lot of discussion about the need for balanced levels of populations on the WvW worlds. We also discussed the need to separate PvE and WvW population in terms of determining transfer costs. That is something that we are very cognizant of and we agree on the basic concept. I think we hit on some good ideas in terms of world transfers as a way to potentially balance out the populations and we have been discussing ways to improve that system.

A number of you touched on the idea of decreasing the map caps in WvW. This is indicative of the complexity of solving this problem because it would certainly help the lower population worlds, but it could have negative effects on the higher population worlds. We’ve been discussing how to deal with this problem and some of the ideas in here are definitely going to help us get to the right answer.

We also got into a discussion about how population affects scoring in the game. I think this is actually a far larger topic of discussion, but we did discuss some things about how we could try to address it. A number of people suggested changes to scoring that are really intriguing and could help us to mitigate some of the impact that pure numbers have at the moment.

We have always felt that WvW is incredibly important to Guild Wars 2 and that improving the game mode is a vital piece in continuing to make Guild Wars 2 the best MMO. The discussion we’ve seen in the Collaborative Development Initiative is a big step towards increasing the communication between us and you all while also getting us all discussing the realities of changes to WvW in the context of the constraints of the game. The public testing of the new Edge of the Mists map will increase the opportunities for the community to be involved in development of WvW at an earlier stage and to see some of your feedback implemented . Thanks so much for participating in this initiative and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future!

Devon

cymerdown.4103:

Josh Davis.6015:

We have increased the rate at which someone decays on the leaderboard. We were hoping to observe the change for a few days before making any sort of announcement, but you guys are too clever for that.

Justin has also changed the decay to update every hour, rather than one a day, so you should see movement happen a bit more often.

Let us know what you think!

Wait… every hour? So like if I don’t play for an hour, I’ll start decaying? Or you mean like if I don’t play for a week (or whatever the real minimum interval for decay to start is), the exact hour that 1 week since I last played hits, the decay will start?

Yes, after two hours it will start to decay but the decay is so low that you shouldn’t see any changes in such a short amount of time. It also ramps up the longer it’s been since the last time you played.

My mistake.

I see here that this issue is being looked and should be getting resolved at the earliest convenience. Thanks for the persistence guys!

Marjory’s Helper Dee has taken up the Goods-for-Spores trade now that Marjory has entered the Tower. Dee is by the campfire in the Thunder Ridge Camp in Kessex Hills.

We have increased the rate at which someone decays on the leaderboard. We were hoping to observe the change for a few days before making any sort of announcement, but you guys are too clever for that.

Justin has also changed the decay to update every hour, rather than once a day, so you should see movement happen a bit more often.

Let us know what you think!

Good news, guys! With today’s update, this tool is now Account Bound, and previously purchased versions can be traded in to receive an Account Bound version.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-the-nightmares-within/

Good find, something similar to this happens with Combustive Shot. These will be fixed asap.

Really appreciate the repro steps. Great write up.

Acandis.3250:

I find it hard to believe that getting matched against really low ranks.

Well, you’re right on the curve where we stick new players.

We’ve talked about putting the default MMR to a lower number, might be something we want to do for the upcoming MMR/leaderboard reset.

Yes, the ‘Tower Hybrid Slayer’ and the ‘Tower Hybrid Master’ achievements are for repeat runs of ‘The Nightmare Incarnate’ instance.

I believe you cannot place the Kite City backpacks in the locker because there are technically two versions of the items, one MTX, and one reward achievable. This makes it so that the achievable version cannot be currently deposited.

The ‘Tower Hybrid Slayer’ and the ‘Tower Hybrid Master’ achievements are both locked until you complete ‘Tower Antitoxin Injector’. This means that to get any of the Hybrid achievements going, you first need to fully complete the Story Version of ‘The Nightmare Incarnate’ instance.

A lot of interesting discussion on this topic.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-pros-of-8v8/

Let us know what you think.
http://strawpoll.me/696382

The ‘Tower Hybrid Slayer’ and the ‘Tower Hybrid Master’ achievements are both locked until you complete ‘Tower Antitoxin Injector’. This means that to get any of the Hybrid achievements going, you first need to fully complete the Story Version of ‘The Nightmare Incarnate’ instance.

Acandis.3250:

Nice matchmaking…
jk, nothing changed. it still sucks.

Watching your rosters. So far you’re being put into reasonable matches based on your MMR.

I am so sorry that your friend is dealing with this.

Several ISPs have chosen to block our inbound e-mails, and we are trying to address that issue. I feel quite sure that this is what is happening to your friend because he also is not receiving our support ticket responses.

Since you submitted a ticket, someone will get to that very soon. In the meantime, this thread about missing e-mails might be of interest. Thank you for providing his ISP — I will pass that along to those investigating this whole issue.

Israel.7056:

I don’t think 8v8 should be removed. Obviously it’s a game mode some people enjoy, myself included. If you don’t agree with my values then don’t play 8v8, simple as that. Play whatever makes you happy, let no one interfere.

If anything we need more game modes, let the players play what they want to play.

This paternalistic attitude of “what we want our youngsters to learn” is absurd. Let people decide for themselves what they want to learn. If you don’t agree with other people’s choices then keep it to yourself, no one needs anyone else’s permission to play this game as they see fit and I don’t see why they should.

It was simply a joke, I’m sure you’re fully capable of taking one. It’s a video game and we are simply attempting to provide the most quality experience we can for our players in game so they can play as they wish.

Anyways concerning the topic, there are players that impeded from getting better at our game and something we wish to do is help players understand how PvP works and help them get better if they do wish it so.

The decision on this topic has yet to be made. Either Josh or myself can give an update when a decision is made. However let me ask this, would you guys like to see less 8v8 servers? no 8v8 servers? Possibly re-work the play now so that it looks for 5v5 matches as priority?

If you jump into Skyhammer after the patch today you might notice some slight inconsistencies with its old appearance. These changes are the groundwork for a few tweaks we’ll be making to the map in an upcoming hotfix. The changes you’ll see in the first update shouldn’t affect your game-play too much, but we figured we’d let you know ahead of time in case you notice anything out of the ordinary.

Our main goal with these changes is to make the map less punishing in certain areas (most notably the edges of the map and the Hammer), while still providing the opportunity to skillfully aim knockbacks on players to launch them into gaps in the guard rails or floor panels.

I’ll update this thread with more information as it comes!

LIVING WORLD
The Nightmares Within
The way is open. The bravest are entering the Tower of Nightmares and confronting scores of powerful enemies. Toxins in the air make the going rough, and players won’t know whether they’re encountering a hallucination or a living foe. No antitoxin can protect them from their inner demons, but someone has to bring this tower down before Kessex Hills is lost to the nightmare.
Story

• Thanks to the heroes of Tyria, Marjory Delaqua’s research has yielded a viable antitoxin that has allowed teams from the Seraph, the Durmand Priory, the Vigil, and the Order of Whispers to infiltrate the Tower of Nightmares in Kessex Hills.
• Air purifiers have been placed at key locations to counteract the toxic clouds around the base of the tower, allowing access to the interior. To destroy the heart of the nightmarish structure, brave squads have attempted to carry newly designed antitoxin injectors to the top of the tower, but they haven’t been heard from since. It’s now up to the heroes of Tyria to defeat the Toxic Alliance and destroy their tower.
• Players will receive in-game mail from Lady Kasmeer Meade informing them that the Tower of Nightmares is now open. Use the Show Me functionality in the mail to find the location of the Tower of Nightmares.
• Once inside the Tower of Nightmares, players will need to make their way up the tower, scaling three floors of horrifying dangers to reach the heart of the tower—a massive, noxious bloom pulsing with malevolent power. At the apex of the tower, players can enter the chamber protecting the tower’s heart and begin a story instance that can be completed solo or with a group of up to five players.
  • Upon defeating the challenges of the story instance, players can finish what the scouting team could not: inject Marjory’s antitoxin directly into the heart of the tower!
  • The story instance also has a repeatable mode so players can confront the challenges as many times as they like for additional rewards and accolades. Upon each completion, players will be able to inject another dose of antitoxin, weakening the tower that much more.

The Tower of Nightmares

• The interior of the Tower of Nightmares has been revealed, and it is as deadly as its name suggests. The Tower of Nightmares is an open-world map designed to challenge even the hardiest of groups. Fighting side by side, players will need to rely on each other to survive.
• Players will participate in a number of new open-world events throughout the structure and encounter the deadly hallucinations and lethal champions of the Toxic Alliance.
• Within the Tower of Nightmares, a mysterious chest was found at the top of the tower. The chest’s lock is an intricate mechanism that seems to require a three-pronged key. The pieces of the key for this Tri-key Chest can be found on creatures within the Tower of Nightmares, or they can be acquired through trade with Marjory’s Helper Dee back at the Thunder Ridge Camp in Kessex Hills. Players will also receive one complete set of keys in the initial mail from Kasmeer. Combine the keys to create a Tricolor Key.
• The Tower of Nightmares content will be available until the tower’s heart is destroyed. Watch the progress as more antitoxin is injected!

Nightmare Chambers

• Throughout the Tower of Nightmares, players will find smaller blossoms that resemble the tower’s heart. Within these chambers, players will experience their deepest fears and encounter twisted visions of their past.
• The Nightmare Chamber instances are designed for either solo or group play and are comprised of a number of random elements. Each time a player enters a chamber, there is a chance to see something, or someone, different. But is any of it real?

Open World

• The Toxic Alliance isn’t giving up on its plans for domination simply because their tower has been breached. Toxic Offshoots and Toxic Alliance events will continue to run throughout this release, giving players a chance to finish many of the achievements they may have missed in the last release.
• The Antitoxin Injected indicator is a representation of the amount of antitoxin that has been pumped into the heart of the tower by the heroes of Tyria and will update periodically.

Rewards

• Finishing the meta-achievement for The Nightmares Within rewards players with a Gas Mask Skin. This headgear skin has three dye channels and can be applied to head armor of any weight class. It’s just the thing for infiltrating a hostile and toxic environment like the Tower of Nightmares.
• Players will be awarded with a Mini Toxic Nimross miniature for completing the Tower Hybrid Master achievement.
• Tricolor Keys can be used to open the Tri-key Chest at the top of the third level of the Tower of Nightmares. Besides its guaranteed rewards, there’s a chance for players to receive unique items:
  • Air-Filtration Device Skin—a headgear skin for all weight classes
  • Toxic Spore Skin back-slot item
  • New, exclusive miniature

Achievements

• The Nightmares Within meta-achievement will task players with combating their way through the interior of the Tower of Nightmares, conquering their fears in the Nightmare Chamber instances, defeating the Toxic Hybrid, and injecting antitoxin into the heart of the tower.
  • Completing special Nightmares Within daily achievements during this release will contribute to the meta-achievement. These are earned by participating in specific Nightmares Within content each day.

NEW FEATURES AND CONTENT
Structured Player vs. Player

• Added a new Custom Arena option: Force Respawn. When enabled, players will automatically respawn at the end of their respawn timers, and defeated players will no longer be resurrectable.
• Solo Arena players will now be shuffled before joining a match to promote a more even and challenging game.
• The compass and map will now display enemy markers for enemies who are in combat and within line of sight of one of your teammates.
• Trick-or-Treat Bags have been reverted back to reward chests, and candy corn has been removed from Solo Arena and Team Arena. Until December 10, PvP will offer double reward chests for Solo Arena and Team Arena wins.

BALANCE, BUG-FIXING, POLISH
General

• Introduced further server-side optimizations, with significant improvements during heavy combat scenarios.

Structured Player vs. Player

• Fixed the Solo Arena UI to always have a Leave button instead of a Disband button.
• The PvP panel now remembers the last opened tab.
• The trebuchet in Battle of Kyhlo no longer awards personal scores for hitting minions.
• The PvP medal on the Character Select screen now directly represents the player’s rank.
• The Custom Arena configuration UI now disables the Play button when it’s expired.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

• All permanent gathering tools will now be account bound rather than soulbound. For one week, account-bound versions of the Jack-in-the-Box Scythe and Bone Pick gathering tools will be available in the Services category of the Gem Store for 1000 gems each.
  • Previously purchased permanent gathering tools can be upgraded to account-bound versions by unequipping them and bringing them to a Black Lion Weapons Specialist.
• Marjory’s Axe, Marjory’s Dagger, and Kasmeer’s Staff are now available as skins in the Style category of the Gem Store for 600 gems each.
• A pair of spirit wings rises from the player’s defeated foe. The new Permanent Sanctified Finisher is available in the Upgrades category of the Gem Store for 600 gems.

Improvements

• PvP Locker slots have been added for the Toxic hand and shoulder armors received from the Toxic Gloves Skin and the Toxic Mantle Skin, both available in the Style category of the Gem Store.
• Soulbound permanent gathering tools can be exchanged at a Black Lion Weapons Specialist for account-bound versions. Players must unequip the tool before exchanging it.
• All future permanent gathering tools from the Gem Store will be account bound and will cost slightly more than the soulbound versions.

smitske.4912:

I think what he means is, something I pointed out before too, that he does not understand why you decided to make a completely new villain and a story that for the most part is completely unrelated with the story we get throughout the game. This while there are so many stories on which you could have build on to that are already in the game. For example Kodan reclaiming their lands, tengu seeing the need to open up and combine powers with the current races to fight the evils, still many dragon bosses to defeat. Zhaitan may have fallen, but he other ones don’t seem to do anything at all.

Dragons being one of the big enemies but there are also smaller ones, like the corruption and battle for power between different groups that we often see in the first part of the personal stories, why doesn’t anything seem to happen there?

Reuses of Braham and Roxx is nice, but often I feel like they are just put in so that people recognize them but they play no real role, they have no real connection with the story they just happen to show up. I mean we can see them with the current one where they replace one of the vigil/whispers agents at the destroy the spore events, but they have no real use there. They seem to be just dragged in out of nowhere and that is just silly.

The biggest reason why we introduced new characters for Living World story content was because we weren’t able to separate the Personal Story and Living World timelines and characters. So while we could have used iconics or existing characters more liberally in the Living World releases, we couldn’t put them through any meaningful changes because it could potentially break continuity elsewhere.

If you create a character that has no dependencies to existing content then you have a lot fewer restrictions in how you use them. The good news is that we’re taking steps to address this very concern and we’ll be sharing more details on our solution in the coming months.

Sondergaard.8469:

Firstly, the audience, or in this case, the player needs a character, or a group of characters they can relate to and develop a personal bond with. This is usually done in novels through a series of introductory events that showcase the main characters and their personalities. This helps the reader to develop a much more intimate understanding of the people involved in this story. The same is true with movies. With games you get the best of both worlds. You have the ability to access the meta information that novels provide, while showing a visual story as movies provide.

Personal story and dynamic events are a great way to introduce and build on characters so the players can develop a deeper connection to the storyline and the events happening in the world. There’s a very strong disconnect from the characters and the players though. When I log in and I see the next part of this story, my first thought is, “Who is this, and why should I care?” That shouldn’t be the case if proper story telling mechanics are implemented.

Flame & Frost introduced Rox and Braham in March. We’ve reused them throughout the year (April, August, October, etc.). I guess what I’m saying is that we’re doing this, but if you’ve missed some releases then I completely understand why you may not know them well.

Sondergaard.8469:

Secondly, the voice actors you have are great with a lot of potential, however their written dialog needs a lot of work. Written dialog versus spoken dialog are two different animals. You need to write their scripts in a way that feels natural when spoken. I don’t talk the way I write and that is true for a lot of people in the world. Keep that in mind. More natural dialog will help a lot in allowing players to form a bond with the characters. If the dialog delivered doesn’t come in a manner that feels fluid like someone standing in the room having a normal, believable conversation, you’ll see an increased experience of disconnect from the story. A great way to rehearse this and practice this is simply to read the lines out loud to fellow team members and ask yourself, “Did it feel natural to read that? Was that something I would say in a normal conversation if I were in this situation?”

Can you provide an example where you felt a dialog exchange between two or more characters in the Living World story sounded forced, was written too formally, or the performance didn’t fit the situation? We strive for natural sounding dialog (in an unnatural world) and we hold table reads in advance of every recording session, so we have the process you’re describing already in place. Granted, dialog is often subjective and what sounds natural to you doesn’t to me and vice versa.