Guild Wars 2

Isi.1453:

Wow….I didn’t even know they put lore stories on the website.

I just assumed all the story info was in game.

you’re definitely not alone on this. A lot of my friends don’t care for anything GW2-related which isn’t in the game, they want to play the game as easy as possible (plug and play) and don’t want to search the internet for story-stuff which should be in the game like in “our” time when games like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights had a huge amount of ingame books which consisted of quite a lot of interesting stuff to read to expand the lore.

Now we have links in the launcher which disappear soon after they’re released… older blogposts are not that easy to find again. I think it would be totally worth it to create a UI for ingame books and just copy&paste each new blogpost into these books. They would make great rewards also, so you could expand the reward variety which would be a good thing, since some already explain about only minis, tonics and back items (as well as gear) as only rewards.

Astralporing.1957:

No. The majority of players would have gained on story, because currently they have none. Remember, only a minority ever visits the website.

But at the same time those of us that have the ability to look on the website would lose out on story.

Most of the key points of the story IS in the game however, by listening to the Mad King and the Prince in the Labyrinth. The story on the home-page simply add some more details to it.

I remember that in alpha was a collection of books and achiev associated with them. Why not just bring back this idea?

Sunptel.5031:

Ok this is going to sound pretty stupid, but could someone link me those stories ? I just discovered they exist but I still can’t find them on the website.
By the way I really wonder how many of the complaints on the living story being devoid of lore and, well, story, come from the fact most people expected the story to be, well, in the freaking game.

Leo Paul.1659:

Astral Projections.7320:

What website stories are y’all talking about?

This.. Link pls!

They’ve all been put up on GW2W – though without their images. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Tales

lordkrall.7241:

Most of the key points of the story IS in the game however, by listening to the Mad King and the Prince in the Labyrinth. The story on the home-page simply add some more details to it.

The Blood and Madness update is probably on the rare side of “maybe done right.” Though the in-game dialogue paints Edrick as an emo kid who was punished for being a disappointment to Oswald, rather than the prince who incited the populous against his father in order to take the throne and was subsequently imprisoned for such.

Gives context, yes, but the in-game dialogue paint a different picture entirely from the short story. Still, this update was perhaps one of the “better” ones, though still less than Braham’s Story and Rox’s Tale and the important part of those being in-game.

MeGaZlo.9516:

I remember that in alpha was a collection of books and achiev associated with them. Why not just bring back this idea?

They were cut because they couldn’t be done the way Anet wanted to with their current programming.

It was only a paragraph shown at a time in those things anyways.

This thread is silly and I hope the devs ignore it. I think the website stories are fine. I enjoy reading them. People that agree with the OP seriously just need to lighten up.

I don’t think its a good way to introduce villains to a game with little to none background story about those in the actual game.

The website stories are good, I like reading it on the site, but I also think they should copy the same story content to be accessible in the game. For example in Ebonhawke you have like… over 10 segments of The Founding lore/story/history as in game books to interact with and read through, though not everyone will read it, at least it is accessible in game. In the game you could also have clues/pointers about where to read it, for example it would be next to wherever the objective starting star location is for the living story update, (which is shown on our maps from our in game mail).

or you could even make a new achievement section for reading, and put every in game book to interact with in those achievements, so people can work to collect all the achievements

I just think it is a simple enough solution that is easy to implement and will help more people to understand the lore. For example Scarlet’s story during that update was tremendously intriguing and important to the lore. Those who read on the site or watched Wooden Potato’s lore videos for example would pick up a lot from it, but yet people who missed that, will think Scarlet is another random addition that has nothing to do with the real lore

Maybe they should have a ‘lore library’ in one of the cities. Shelves with interactable books where ANet could put lore. Maybe interacting with a book could start a cut scene that shows old lore from past living story events, like the scrying pool in Guild Wars 1.

If you want them ingame can you not just have an Asuran Story Teller in LA that takes you to a small cut screen and reads the story too you.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Thanks for the feedback Colin! Nice to see that the devs acknowledge that the current situation isn’t the optimal one.

I think if you would implement a certain libary into the home instances, people should learn more about the home instance in the first place. I’ve heard a few people say that they have no idea what this “home instance” is and where it’s located. I’d prefer an instanced library in Lions Arch since I feel this is where the most people are located when they’re not out in the world.

(it’s odd, but the home instance is a place I rarely go because it’s so “far” away from my daily routines. Maybe it would be good to have the mystic forge in each of the main cities… I don’t know.)

Having books as rare rewards on the one hand would be exciting, on the other hand it would go against what you’re proposing: the easy access. I can see this now. You should learn about the villains before you start doing the content based around them. Or alongside?!

How about: unlock new pieces of information (pages of a book) while you get the living story achievements. Once the Meta is completed, you’ll have the full story unlocked. Unlocking the pieces would keep people involved in the story of the villain / heroes.

For people who couldn’t complete the achievements and/or have missed the LS-weeks, the missing pages could be rare drops in the open world zones where things happened. Sellable for 1-2g at vendors.

Ok I Did It.2854:

If you want them ingame can you not just have an Asuran Story Teller in LA that takes you to a small cut screen and reads the story too you.

Ooooh. Thought! I could get behind a Lost Odyssey-style visual story presentation thing. I loved those. Some of them were really moving.

well Colin mentioned a few posts above that cutscenes aren’t feasible for them.

Full cutscenes with art, voice acting and such, sure. Pretty confident that text overlayed on existing music with some afterfx maybe wouldn’t be as resource-intensive. Besides, just throwing out ideas

Colin

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

I’d love to have more information about what way of implementation could work for you and the characteristics of that.

-) easy access. Easier to access than a location like a library would be a new UI-element. We already have quite a lot of buttons in our UI, so it should somehow be a logical implementation. The personal story tab could be expanded into a story tab. (personal story, living world story,…) This includes a page for collectibles like those “books” you can find in the world or get via living story achievements etc. I’m thinking in the way of a bank-tab where you can put those books (or send these via the “deploy all” option in the bag-menu).

(I wonder if it’s feasible for Anet to create short story instances in the spirit of Bonus Mission Packs from GW1, where you ARE the character of that story)

Thumbs up for that Lost Odyssey inspiration. Even a PowerPoint presentation really…
And if nothing else, i’d welcome GW 1 walls of text back, they look even better than these webstories, that mind you… i’m hearing about them just now… true story!

So weird, i went from loving build making and story in gw while disliking the combat to kind of enjoying build making and caring little about story while loving combat. Story presentation never rocked my boat, this “face-to-face” cinematics still makes me roll my eyes. In-game cinematics without much fluff works even better.

Libraries in the faction personal instances. When I visit the Durmand Priory, the personal instance already has a large library. Add a clickable shelf (ala Dragon Age: Origins) — heck, you can be simple. and just make it a list of books we can read.

Or, how about a little grey icon in the upper left corner of the main interface, giving us a list of stories?

ColinJohanson.2394:

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

So I hope that you are already working on the cutscene for Scarlet’s final battle

—
What about something like the storybooks?

Personally I think it would be great if the game had a lore system with books that had information on characters, monsters and the various races of Tyria that are or have been. Similar to the kind of system that games like the elder scrolls have. I think it would add so much more depth and immersion into the game and it’s exploration because I find so often I want to discover more about an area or race or something and have no idea how to besides wiki. Having a journal system or something with tabs on lore, monsters, races, area and to keep track of events in the living story and their back stories would be great, you could even add achievements for completing sections of the journal. Even something we can pick up from scouts in an area that gives us detail on the whole area that we can read in our own time if we want to or not, but something we can go back to whenever whether we’re in the area or no would be a great addition.

I’d love what Sanguis suggests. And why not give bonus magic find on mobs we have gathered information about? Or new gameplay options like extended stun duration on those mobs or decreased poison on yourself etc.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

Here’s a question-with-possible-solution for you:

Would a lore codex using something akin to the Hint and Achievement-registering system be possible?

The Hint system acknowledges your actions – use of skills, hoping on a profession, pressing other buttons (or not pressing when you could for easier gameplay). Achievements have been known to activate upon using items, getting to locations, or interacting with something (NPC or object).

Can these be used to unlock a entries in a new Hero Panel tab for lore information? Kill a jotun, unlock the jotun entry. Pick up ancient jotun weapons and get a new paragraph/bullet point on the jotun weapons. Complete certain personal story steps (retroactively using characters’ personal stories?) and get more information.

Kind of like the Devil May Cry enemy codex thing if memory serves me right – though there it was by witnessing different attacks or killing different ranked foes. But point being to use the registering from the hint or achievement systems to fill out something else.

If this is possible, then this can replace the desires for lore books and can be an easier way to put the information from the short stories into the game – in a more accessible-to-the-players option. Especially since what’s placed there can be out-of-character and thus isn’t limited to what your character(s) find out, but what you (Anet) want to give for doing certain things. And it may even be possible to set it up to add all info that’s no longer possible to obtain because the tied activity’s gone automatically to these codexes (including previous LS update information that was observable – whether caught or missed by the playerbase).

Finally…just reading titles on the bookstands in queensdale will actually let me pick up a book and read the whole thing!

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away,

No, keep the story part, but toss the website. It can still be literature, the exact format and style that you post on the website, but in-game instead. I have given you many options in this regard, but my favorite is a lore tab. Sort of like how there is a personal story sub-tab in the character tab. Do the same thing with lore, except as an expositional narrative rather than a short summery.

I would love to have an area in-game like a giant library that contains these stories and a timeline of events that have occured in the Living Story so that we may view and read about what has happened in the past for the years going forward.

Lunaire.5827:

I would love to have an area in-game like a giant library that contains these stories and a timeline of events that have occured in the Living Story so that we may view and read about what has happened in the past for the years going forward.

Thing is, these areas already exist in the form of the priory’s various offices, camps, and hadquarters… none of which are actually repositories of knowledge accessible by the player. My first character joined the vigil because I was a long time player of the first game, and i thought “hey, these guys should be the ones with all of that cool lore information”

Well they weren’t. I actually got less information about the world because I joined them.

Keep in mind that whispers characters get a whole WEALTH of extra ingame content in the form of secret agents all over tyria, while the other two orders are given access to nothing more than faction armor skins. Whispers should get to keep that cool expository information about current happennings, but for events of historical significance or theoretical/scientific ones, that information should logically be the domain of the priory.

This exposition, this raw data, should be avaliable to priory characters, and it could really be as easy and a mail that says “dear magister/explorer/etc, we’ve discovered some interesting infromation on X, you can find it at Y”

Non-priory characters could access the same information by way of a minor fetch quest, doing a small favor for whoever owns the information.
Get that in and you’re only left with coming up with special world features for vigil characters. Maybe an ability to get “field reports” from scouts or other vigil which can kick off special world events or something, I dunno.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Ameepa.6793:

Huh, I didn’t even know about the story until I noticed this thread.

That is exactly the problem.

Yep. Same for me, been a bit busy and missed the Random blog post.
Why do I usually read the stuff on the website – because the storytelling in-game is SO POORLY PRESENTED that I desperately try to cling onto some kind of lore. Does that mean out-of-game stories are justified? No. It’s just lazyness and bad development. I do understand that it’s hard to do animated scenes etc, but as many people said before, in-game books or a lore NPC would fix the issue.
More stuff like the foreshadowing changes in the Kessex Hills is a good example of the in-game storytelling and Living Story presentation. Blog posts aren’t.

It is true that this particular story wouldn’t really work well in a book. But then, Writers please get a grip and write something that fits in the game! Don’t waste time/resources on random stories, players would appreciate if you use your time to improve the hard-to-come-by lore in game.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

don’t want to search the internet for story-stuff which should be in the game like in “our” time when games like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights had a huge amount of ingame books which consisted of quite a lot of interesting stuff to read to expand the lore.

This! Anet, it’s almost 2014. If 90’s and early 00’s games can have a book system, surely this game can too! A little less development on pointless mini-games and more on the lore implementation and voilà.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No, leave it on the website. I can access the site from work, but not the game. When I’m bored out of my mind, I like having these short stories to read.

I agree with this, of course we can have it in both places too nothing wrong with that but I personally would love for these short stories to stay online too makes it accessable from anywhere. One thing I would suggest though is the stories shouldnt be mixed in the news, it would be nice if they had their own section in the website where you can easily follow and revisit old stories.

“More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience."

I appreciate the response Colin. I look forward to seeing what you guys have in store for the player base. However, this seems to be a recurring theme. Paraphrasing here “We would like to do X, Y, and Z someday but we don’t have the resources.”

It is clear from various interviews that profit is being made, that being said you guys need more resources. I also realize that this isn’t really your call and you make best with what you do have. Me as a fan and a player saying “Get more resources” is very naïve. I know it’s not that simple.

I hope that you guys really can find workable solutions. In game books to read and or collect would be an awesome addition. (as an example) But this takes a lot of time and resources. This makes me nervous for other areas of the game that need expansion and or improvement. Resources just seem to be lacking.

Be wishes to all the developers and hard workers at arena net.

KOPPER.1458:

It is clear from various interviews that profit is being made, that being said you guys need more resources. I also realize that this isn’t really your call and you make best with what you do have. Me as a fan and a player saying “Get more resources” is very naïve. I know it’s not that simple.

Are new resources really needed? They should just re-direct resources from useless random minigames to something useful, like lore. That little thing called ‘story’ which makes Tyria and drives the game.

hedix.1986:

They should just re-direct resources from useless random minigames to something useful, like lore. That little thing called ‘story’ which makes Tyria and drives the game.

as much as I love lore, there are quite a few other things I love in the game and wouldn’t want to miss (including the games) and opinions differ. Who would I be if I’d cut content which a quarter of the players absolutely loves?

Yet we were given quite a fair number of minigames in the past year, whereas the storytelling aspect just isn’t adequate.

Opinions do differ however, so I would like to see some kind of a poll about what players want to see as a part of LS. Cause my experience with LS-update minigames is people complaining about them and then grinding them for achivements.

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

Great that you’re not taking out the stories, I enjoy reading them, but I do agree that they should also be in the game. The memoirs quest in the 2012 halloween and the suspects interrogation would be a good model to add them as well.

For example, the “what scarlett saw” story (NOTE; spoilers ahead if you haven’t read it, read it first here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-what-scarlet-saw/ ) could have been added to the game by having the players go to the grove to talk to mender Serimon to talk about scarlet awakening and eventual leaving from the grove, then Beigarth in Hoelbrak and Asagai in the Black Citadel, then to Rata Sum to talk to the headmasters of the colleges, then to the Michotl hylek (you could find out she went there if you get the information on Rata Sum that she was sighted near there), then to talk to the Pale Tree about what she saw inside Omadd’s lab, and then maybe have someone in rata sum tell you about some security camera tapes (or crystals?) they found hidden that show how she killed Omadd afterwards.

Just to use that as an example.

ExAstris.8527:

DarcShriek.5829:

Gene Archer.8560:

lordkrall.7241:

Suddenly knowing something that only two people “alive” would know can however not be explained.

Sure it can.

“A new chapter has appeared within the pages of the Mad Memories, revealing to you a past that up to now has been known only to the Bloody Prince and the Mad King.”

And then they tie that together by releasing a new scavenger hunt that leads to yet another upgraded Mad Memories.

Look at that, justification for putting it in game and I thought it up in under a minute.

Bad example. The only way that the informatin in the latest short story could show up in game is if the blood prince stopped fighting you long enough to give a long and boring expository of what happened.

Extremely few people want to read the wall a text that won’t even help them play the game better. Usability tests consistently show that players simply do not want this.

In this example, Anet actually used the best method available to get this information out.

Disagree. The Elder Scrolls games are quite popular and use the book/text format in-game to convey lore. Certainly not everyone reads them, but it is an appreciated option.

But how many of the players you describe would be willing to watch a rad cut scene?

Anet has already stated that your rad cut scenes are too expensive, they’re not going to happen.

You can choose to agree with the results of real test data or not, the choice is yours. Typically, disagreeing results in error.

A bunch of these suggestions bear really strong resemblance to the Tome of Knowledge interface used in Warhammer Online. For all the faults of that game, the ToK was a pretty effective means of integrating lore, quest UI and achievements all in one place.

(http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Tome_of_Knowledge)

For those that didn’t play WAR, the Tome was a book-like UI window with a bunch of tabs. You could get a recap of the general storyline (similar to the personal story window in GW2), a list of achievements and titles (similar to the Hero panel), a quest log, and a few tabs of lore and background info.

The text for the lore and background would unlock as you achieved things. As you kill a certain number of a given mob type, another paragraph on the ecology of that mob would fill in (and the UI icon would blink to show you that something had unlocked). As you met important NPCs, you would get a background on them (usually written in-universe if memory serves). As you explore a zone you get unlocks showing a concise story recap of the zone.

Taken all together, it was a really effective, centralized way of relaying all the important information needed to frame what the PCs were doing in the world, while not beating people over the head with it. As well, because all that other information (quests, achievements, etc.) was centralized to the ToK, players learned to look at that UI element for pretty much everything – so it wasn’t difficult to achieve pretty wide uptake for the lore bits as well.

Honestly, most of the elements you’d need to create a Tome of Knowledge in GW2 seem to be pretty much present all ready. The achievements and unlock structure already exists, it would seemingly just need to be roped together into a single UI element with a bunch of fiction written (which could readily be crowd-sourced from the folks in the lore forum if desired). I believe the Devs would see a huge return on investment if they just cribbed the Tome concept completely.

If cut-scenes are out of the question (I can see why), I think there will be no option but to put something like this in-game if the devs want the storytelling to improve. MMO storytelling is basically a forced first-person limited perspective narrative, and doing stories from that writing style well is insanely hard. Putting a UI like this in-game gives them the out of using a third-person omniscient perspective to set the scene for the players. The website stories are doing the same thing, but because not everyone knows of them it’s really tripping up the storytelling in general.

Hello ,is there any way to remove NPC dialog in Lion Arch ,instead add one street performer who would read about lore in game or read all that short stories that u have and that are not in game ?
This way a lot of players in LA would have reason to keep their headphones on to hear something interesting , and not listen for dude who likes to live in sewers and dude who is trying to score swampweed all the time . I think this would be easy to incorporate ,because you would need one narrator .

We already have the ability in-game to display external HTML data (the trading post / Black Lion). Why not build a similar UI panel that pulls the text from the stories on the website and displays it in an in-game window?

Have a Lore Master in each capital. When you talk to him, you can choose a dialog option like “Tell me more about the Mad King’s son…” and then up pops a window that displays the story, pulled straight from the website with pictures and all.

“Are new resources really needed? They should just re-direct resources from useless random minigames to something useful, like lore. That little thing called ‘story’ which makes Tyria and drives the game.”

Hedix: You could be right. I have no idea how arena net is structured and where they have their resources placed. Adding any feature is a lot of work generally speaking. I assumed that these Mini games we see are designed and developed by those living story teams. I might be wrong on that though.

I was speaking however in a general overview kind of way and not just about lore. I don’t want to get too much into specifics here but features that players ask for that aren’t very high on the priority list often get the response “nothing is off the table” or something to the effect of lack of resources or time, etc…

I’ve been quite open about how I dislike the web stories. I (and this is entirely personally speaking ofc) think the quality of writing is well below a company of Anet’s capability and I also agree with the thread that this lore should be in game. Crucial storytelling should be prioritised in game, then expanded on if need be on the web stories. Currently it feels entirely that the story is only driven on these web stories.

It is great that this is being addressed, although it feels slightly like catching up with the horse that has already bolted. I’m still unclear why LS was launched w/o a basic structure in place first.

In terms of addressing this going forward, surely it would help just having NPC’s actually progress the story if we talk to them. Eg, if Scarlet is this Asuran scholared/graduated person the web story made her out to be, why not have lots of Rata Sum NPC’s discussing her? The herald or mail could point us in their direction and we can feed on whatever information we like.

Why not each time we get a mail, we get sent to our Order HQ or even just The Priory? A dedicated NPC each 2 weeks/month could be updating via a text bubble about what is going on the World. They can give us background on current affairs or even hint about movements across the continent that may end up being later LS tie ins. The HQ’s are underused atm and this would address this as well.

Astral Projections.7320:

Maybe they should have a ‘lore library’ in one of the cities. Shelves with interactable books where ANet could put lore. Maybe interacting with a book could start a cut scene that shows old lore from past living story events, like the scrying pool in Guild Wars 1.

This reminds me of the library in Durmand Priory, there’s like a ton of books in there to interact with and i actually read all of them LOL. it would be cool to have collective libraries with all in game books and of course the website stories to interact with. It would not only be accessible but it would b really neat and actually make an interesting role-play ish atmosphere, like my character is hanging in the library reading books XD esp if the library looks impressive. that’s totally fun

Randulf.7614:

I’ve been quite open about how I dislike the web stories. I (and this is entirely personally speaking ofc) think the quality of writing is well below a company of Anet’s capability and I also agree with the thread that this lore should be in game. Crucial storytelling should be prioritised in game, then expanded on if need be on the web stories. Currently it feels entirely that the story is only driven on these web stories.

It is great that this is being addressed, although it feels slightly like catching up with the horse that has already bolted. I’m still unclear why LS was launched w/o a basic structure in place first.

In terms of addressing this going forward, surely it would help just having NPC’s actually progress the story if we talk to them. Eg, if Scarlet is this Asuran scholared/graduated person the web story made her out to be, why not have lots of Rata Sum NPC’s discussing her? The herald or mail could point us in their direction and we can feed on whatever information we like.

Why not each time we get a mail, we get sent to our Order HQ or even just The Priory? A dedicated NPC each 2 weeks/month could be updating via a text bubble about what is going on the World. They can give us background on current affairs or even hint about movements across the continent that may end up being later LS tie ins. The HQ’s are underused atm and this would address this as well.

While I don’t agree on the writing quality as much, because the stories on the web really are treated as a kind of a “side thing”, and they do probably lack the time, manpower etc to really put forth some crazy writing like the quality of the novels, I agree that the stories shouldn’t be so much of a “side thing” and it should be in the game. The library books would be an easy and quick fix, but indeed, ultimately, the best thing is for us to talk to NPCs and discover the real story. Maybe also implement achievements related to lore digging /clue searching. However, some of the website stories written, cover some information that would probably not make sense if it was told from NPCs… like Scarlet’s experiment, with what sounds like only the asura scientist in the room, and now that the asura is dead, who can truly tell that story? As well Scarlet’s vision being described, would be something only Scarlet knows. It would have to be told from a third person omniscient perspective. That story was super important to game lore as well, and without it, it really makes Scarlet less important or seemingly random.

That brings me to the thought of why Anet is writing website stories. That is, some information would just NOT MAKE LOGICAL SENSE if it was in the game. Like Scarlet’s story, something only she knows? How can it appear in game as a book in the library? LOL. They also don’t have the resources to make real omniscient cinematics/ cutscenes to tell those stories

But i do agree we need more links to our affliated Orders… on the other hand why cant we get Order ranks as titles :P Vigil Warmaster etc

That could be interesting. The higher the rank…the more you info you are privvy too.

I could see the inevitable grind though, but handled properly it could be interesting

I love the web stories and am glad they’ll continue, but I do agree that it’d be great to have them in game as well.

Maybe a book on a table in our home instance that logs living story “discoveries”. Or a room of story memories in our home instance. We could have Majorie’s book (even if I deleted mine), the sanctum model, and a bookshelf where the short stories we’ve earned appeared once we get the achievement from the different segments. If you brought someone into your home instance you could then show off your collection. Some of the books (like Majorie’s) would be interactive, others could just be text with pictures. That would be awesome.

khani.4786:

I love the web stories and am glad they’ll continue, but I do agree that it’d be great to have them in game as well.

Maybe a book on a table in our home instance that logs living story “discoveries”. Or a room of story memories in our home instance. We could have Majorie’s book (even if I deleted mine), the sanctum model, and a bookshelf where the short stories we’ve earned appeared once we get the achievement from the different segments. If you brought someone into your home instance you could then show off your collection. Some of the books (like Majorie’s) would be interactive, others could just be text with pictures. That would be awesome.

Ahhhh that’s such a great idea! they already give home instance mining nodes, this would be quite a nice solution, and give more purpose to home instances ^^

Just asking they are under news so when they are up you can link to them from login screen doesn’t that count as ingame (not hard to find). Fragments of hearsay lore and roomers of the realm. Does it really need to be ingame through cinema or dialog what do you think news of gw2 should count as?

Fafnir.5124:

Just asking they are under news so when they are up you can link to them from login screen doesn’t that count as ingame (not hard to find). Fragments of hearsay lore and roomers of the realm. Does it really need to be ingame through cinema or dialog what do you think news of gw2 should count as?

don’t you understand, in the launcher they are only up for a couple of days. It’s like temporary content all over again. People like me are asking for permanent story additions.

ColinJohanson.2394:

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

As you are at max (and over) capacity, the most obvious suggestion / solution is to slow down. As a software developer, I am pretty sure that making releases you seem to pretend are impossible, at least with the intended quality, when the product is as complex as an MMORPG. Because as we all can see, each release it’s plenty of bugs, and the hotfixes usually comes with bugs too, and you have problems with the comunication with the players, problems with the narration of the story (wich is what this topic is about), a lot of uncertainity and are generating a ton of frustration to the players. Frankly, it’s obvious you are at overcapacity.

So, my main suggestion is, slow down, take a step back, look at the game and take your time to think on improvements and updates with much more quality. They don’t need to be “bigger”, not even different just better overall, with a better way to tell the story, much less bugs in each release, with good info about when each thing start and ends, making the players less frustrated (and happier) and probable, you as developers will gain quality of life with a less stressful schedule.

And, the “full on-topic” suggestion I have (and I’ve read it here) is to have an instanced library and keep adding there all the stories there, probably at the home instance. Looks like an easy way to improve the story telling.

For the record, I personally would find it annoying to have to go to a certain location whenever I wished to check in on the lore. I get that it would be somewhat more immersive to have to go to the Priory library or the home instance, but all-in-all I would rather be able to access the lore compilation (whatever form it takes) from virtually anywhere in the game world rather than one specific spot.

Given that there is rarely a reason to go to the home instance or (even moreso) the Priory, having the lore-bot or whatever stuck there likely wouldn’t actually get many more eyeballs on the storyline than just having it all on the website would (IMO, grain of salt and all that).

ColinJohanson.2394:

While we love the website stories and they won’t be going away, we are working on ways to try and get more of that experience (and story) available to see, and read in game.

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

I believe you already have some tech/tools for this. In early beta you had books you could find, i think related to skill points. These books when clicked would show some history and an image, usually a model. II believe i saw one featuring the thieves of queensdale or something.This would be perfect to add with lore and create it in a collectible fashion, and should be fairly inexpensive. The cost per book is to use premade models, that rotate, perhaps posed/situated, or you can even use illustrations, and the text which you are writing anyway.

The only thing i would add, is a seperated collection tab, or just a different part of the UI for the books. (we dont want these using inventory) This would also act as another thing to collect and a good reward for certain content, and take a lot of the lore you guys have generated and put it in game to make the world richer. Even existing content could benefit. Imagine you do a hard jumping puzzle and find a book relating something that happened in that area.

If the tech was giving problems, or was scrapped, it shouldnt be that hard to do, all you are really doing is referencing text, and an image or a model. Getting large quantities of text in game is already done by the BLTC, and i believe BLTC used a somewhat web based ap, or at least had web based functionality. Heck, come to think of it, you could do it with the same base tech as the mail system.

Johasthan.1327:

ColinJohanson.2394:

More of our high-quality cinematics isn’t really an option, since they take months and many people to make and we’re at max (or over) capacity on those at is most of the time.

Any solution will likely include our plans to try and make Living World, and stories around it easier to access, understand, and find out more about even once they have past.

Keep the suggestions coming, we’re always listening and do want to resolve getting stronger, more approachable, easier to understand stories as part of the Gw2 experience.

As you are at max (and over) capacity, the most obvious suggestion / solution is to slow down. As a software developer, I am pretty sure that making releases you seem to pretend are impossible, at least with the intended quality, when the product is as complex as an MMORPG. Because as we all can see, each release it’s plenty of bugs, and the hotfixes usually comes with bugs too, and you have problems with the comunication with the players, problems with the narration of the story (wich is what this topic is about), a lot of uncertainity and are generating a ton of frustration to the players. Frankly, it’s obvious you are at overcapacity.

You hit the nail right on the head sir. Completely 100% agree with this, i never even think about attempting new content the first day it’s released.

As far as cenimatics go, I’m not expecting some glorious cutscene one might find in a single player RPG such as Final Fantasy. I’m thinking more along the lines of the dialogue scenes that transpire in dungeons and personal story chapters between the NPCs and sometimes the Player Characters. Are these not prerendered character models in front of a static background? I do not work in the business so i can’t possibly grasp everything that goes into making this game, but if it takes a while to produce something like this, then that’s fine by me. I don’t mind to wait for it, as Johasthan says you guys need to slow down. I think there is a growing concern about too much too fast when it comes to LW.

I won’t read any story. I only bother to open emails to see if there’s anything needed for the event. I would listen to an audio recording of stories that I can play while I move about the map. It doesn’t even need to be voice acted that well, regular staff would be a great improvement over reading anything.

The best place to hero panel achievement then living story and historical. With the play button up on the title bar, or pull down wizard if multiple recordings.

Whatever the media format, the story should be told in that format. This is a video game, the story should be told interactively. It’s fine to have supplementary story material to read outside of the game — but when the in-game story is not adequate, then we have problems. That is the case here.