Guild Wars 2

Seems like ANet needs to work on clearly labeling stuff as either seasonally temporary or one time only temporary.

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Not everything is temporary, the grand pavilion itself is permanent. Finally, out with that eyesore of a great collapse, we have a beautiful massive arena structure that can hold many events in the future.

I’m all for new locations, especially a beautifully crafted building.
Problem is if there’s nothing to do inside it after the Jubilee is done, then it was a waste until we get something in there.

I think that’s where some people are worried about the temporary part of this update.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

And how much sense would it make doing the personal story for new players if there are no Risen nor a corrupted Orr?

digiowl.9620:

Seems like ANet needs to work on clearly labeling stuff as either seasonally temporary or one time only temporary.

I think borrowing the ingame calendar concept from other MMOs would come in handy.

The holidays can be clearly marked allowing people to quickly ascertain if content is new, temporary, or recurring.

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

And how much sense would it make doing the personal story for new players if there are no Risen nor a corrupted Orr?

They need to to do what WoW did and have Phasing.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I wanted to take a moment and address this, it’s a totally fair question and something as a player (removing my GD hat) I’d wonder the same thing as well. As I covered in my blog post last month, a major focus of our living world releases in the second half of the year will be on focusing our living world releases on content that has a larger sense of persistence, and more permanent effect on the world.

You’ll start seeing this strategy come into effect with the release 2 weeks from now, and grow as the year continues. The story of these living releases will occur long enough for it to play out reasonably and then update as the story moves forward, while the content and playable experiences (except specific story beats) will persist forever as a result of that story occurring.

We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time.

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

As a reminder, this is where we’re headed and the goals we’ve given to our teams to accomplish, it just takes a few months until we fully get our projects on this track: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Well I feel much better reading this, however I AM still concerned about the queens gauntlet having so many gates involved. Since this is a temporary game I would much rather it have more easy access. This is from the perspective of someone who will have no trouble getting it done anyway. It has never taken me more than 3 days to finish all the LS achievements, but I do know players who can’t play as often as me and this seems to shaft them rather hard, especially if they can only play during prime time.

Meriem.3504:

They need to to do what WoW did and have Phasing.

Ah yes, I am sure people would love them spending months on doing a second version of 3 maps instead of actually releasing new maps

ColinJohanson.2394:

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

So basically what you did with Southsun Cove? Story-related stuff like the battle against Canach or the story-instances with Kiel go away and we’re left with changed or new events? First we had an abandoned island and now we see the changed island with new structures, a few events and a new meta event going on.

I wonder how this would look like on maps which already offer a certain amount of events. New events happening between existing events sounds good.

The thing which leaves me a bit confused at the moment: the living story content (which goes away) seems more quality to me than the things which are left behind (like the few Karka invasion events without any storytelling at all… ). From the current experience that stuff is much more indepth than the “leftovers”. This would mean that the amount of “leftovers” in the game grows, not the amount of quality content.

I feel a lot of people would like to see quality story-driven content, apart from the Living story. Quests that tell their own little closed stories (which would be permanently so that you can do these on your own pacing). So to say "classic open world content with story telling, which I haven’t seen in the latest implementations of Dynamic Events:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/would-story-driven-quests-be-bad/first#post2559025
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1jpeet/would_storydriven_quests_be_bad_for_the_game_mad/

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

And how much sense would it make doing the personal story for new players if there are no Risen nor a corrupted Orr?

Personal Story is instanced, so that’ not affected at all…as for the final battle, they can make something creative. But I am simply basing this on their idea behind the Living Story while this particular part of the map is “living” and evolving, other parts of the world are frozen in time.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Personal Story is instanced, so that’ not affected at all…as for the final battle, they can make something creative. But I am simply basing this on their idea behind the Living Story while this particular part of the map is “living” and evolving, other parts of the world are frozen in time.

So you would suddenly face enemies and see areas that do not exist in the actual world when doing the personal story then?

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

And how much sense would it make doing the personal story for new players if there are no Risen nor a corrupted Orr?

Pretty much in the same way that there are overflows, there could be two versions of Orr. People that finished the PS would be put on the new map, that would continue to be “healed” and developed. People that still have to finish the PS will go to the old map, all corrupted and full of risen.
They could do the same to Ascalon. Otherwise, we would never find a way of getting rid of the ghosts of Ascalon because of the Charr personal story.
I’m not saying that it is something that we MUST HAVE. I’m just saying that it would make sense. It would be nice to heal Orr, to rebuild Ascalon (on the Fields of Ruin only, since the Charr will keep the other maps) and/or Owl’s Lodge (the Owl is dead, but her teachings are not).

Gabby.3205:

Pretty much in the same way that there are overflows, there could be two versions of Orr. People that finished the PS would be put on the new map, that would continue to be “healed” and developed. People that still have to finish the PS will go to the old map, all corrupted and full of risen.
They could do the same to Ascalon. Otherwise, we would never find a way of getting rid of the ghosts of Ascalon because of the Charr personal story.
I’m not saying that it is something that we MUST HAVE. I’m just saying that it would make sense. It would be nice to heal Orr, to rebuild Ascalon (on the Fields of Ruin only, since the Charr will keep the other maps) and/or Owl’s Lodge (the Owl is dead, but her teachings are not).

Oh I know how they could do it technically. But do we really think people would like the idea of them spending months on making new versions of already existing maps rather than working on new maps?

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Personal Story is instanced, so that’ not affected at all…as for the final battle, they can make something creative. But I am simply basing this on their idea behind the Living Story while this particular part of the map is “living” and evolving, other parts of the world are frozen in time.

So you would suddenly face enemies and see areas that do not exist in the actual world when doing the personal story then?

What are you asking? I am not suggesting them to do anything other than make the “Living” story/world spread out throughout — you know — the world?

If there will be issues about the mobs, then that’s their problem not mine, but the fact that they choose to have a living story and not apply it to the “world” is lame.

It’s obvious that the living story will conflict with the personal story, but that’s the path they’ve chosen.

My question is, how is it that some events in the living stories are temporary because they evolve, but the story in Orr does not?

I think this is a bad move overall, and doesn’t even make sense for your plans.

You don’t want this to be temporary. You want it permanent. You want to add leaderboards, too. Who did it the fastest, who survived the longest (yeah, really, you should drop the 2minute time limit, while you’re at it – the game is too focused on Berserkers or bust as it is), all this seperated by class.

Make the leader boards server based and permanent.

BAM. Players now have a reason to keep beating this. The difficulty is not just in the kind of enemy, but also in beating the times of other players. Being at the top of the list doesn’t need (nor should get) any rewards other than being on the list. No achievement.

The prestige of that alone will make people redo this content a lot in the years to come, especially when you diversify the leader boards by class, and give different objectives that can be leaderboarded.

It even fits with the original design philosophy of prestige as rewards. Since the boards are permanent, good players have a chance to get their name permanently in the game.

It’d be such a cheap, but effective way to add lasting appeal for a section of the playerbase. By contrast, I see no benefit whatsoever to make it temporary. Not even for you.

Sure, you get a 2week event you can repeat in the future, but… this event really isn’t a good fit for that.

Just bring a couple of huge dragons in new world events as part of the living story and everyone is gonna love you and all your temp contents…

lordkrall.7241:

Hyung.6140:

… just like the way no-one runs CoF anymore because it’s been there since the start of the game?

If something is fun (or – at least – rewarding) people will keep playing it. People don’t play Keg Brawl not because it’s permanent, but because it’s not especially fun.

How many people run CM, SE and HoW?

The only reason people are running CoF is because of the fact that it is fast rewards for little to no work.

See my point about it being fun! This arena sounds awesome, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have at least an overflows worth (75) on both US/EU constantly even if it remained in the game for ten years.

lordkrall.7241:

Oh I know how they could do it technically. But do we really think people would like the idea of them spending months on making new versions of already existing maps rather than working on new maps?

You are right, I can’t speak for everybody. I know I would LOVE it, but that’s just me. It is just that if feels so weird that we helped cleaning Orr, but nothing changed.

Ah yes, I am sure people would love them spending months on doing a second version of 3 maps instead of actually releasing new maps

If the second version is permanent and different enough, then yes, people would love it.

I would prefer more zones to explore instead of HUGE AMOUNT OF CONTENT on a miniscule (instanced) area. You have built the open world, now let us in there.

As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

I understand you are trying to change your pattern but you do realize that majority you’ve done so far with the living story falls under the “no impact” category?

Zefiris.8297:

If the second version is permanent and different enough, then yes, people would love it.

So people would rather have peaceful (?) pointless maps that we have already visited than venturing deeper into Maguuma or towards the Crystal Desert?

Hyung.6140:

lordkrall.7241:

^ Because if something is there permanently it is more or less abandoned a few weeks or so after release. If on the other hand it is temporary people will keep doing it before it will go away sooner or later.

… just like the way no-one runs CoF anymore because it’s been there since the start of the game?

If something is fun (or – at least – rewarding) people will keep playing it. People don’t play Keg Brawl not because it’s permanent, but because it’s not especially fun.

I don’t play Keg Brawl because, like ALL the mini games, I can’t actually party with my friends and play.

lordkrall.7241:

Zefiris.8297:

If the second version is permanent and different enough, then yes, people would love it.

So people would rather have peaceful (?) pointless maps that we have already visited than venturing deeper into Maguuma or towards the Crystal Desert?

It doesn’t have to be peaceful or pointless.
We can still face krait, hostile hylek, wurms, bandits, separatists, renegades, pirates, spiders, giant crabs, barracudas, sharks and/or whatever that used to live there before it sunk. Besides, Orr was beautiful, and I certainly want to see some of that beauty to come back to the game.
And the point would be making the personal story have an impact. Otherwise, someone should probably warn Trahearne that he did something wrong x)
I would like to see new maps, of course, but I prefer to have fewer maps that make sense (lore-wise) than a lot of maps with many loose ends. Again, this is my personal opinion.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
…
We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.
…

I can’t agree with this. IMO, only festivals (which are seasonal and therefore temporary by nature) should be something that come with on/off switch and the rest (SAB, Gauntlet, Labyrinthine Cliffs – Zephyr Sanctum can go but leave the map behind!) should be permanent additions to the game which get updated whenever appropriate (new levels to SAB, new bosses to Gauntlet, new events/storylines/areas to LC). Honestly, if SAB was still around, I would be in game playing it instead of writing this.

Zefiris.8297:

You don’t want this to be temporary. You want it permanent. You want to add leaderboards, too. Who did it the fastest, who survived the longest (yeah, really, you should drop the 2minute time limit, while you’re at it – the game is too focused on Berserkers or bust as it is), all this seperated by class.

This is a great idea. I had similiar in mind, just like the mission challenges in GW1. You could even add new enemies or rewards every quarter of the year.
The gauntlet could enrich the game as permanent content in so many ways. It is sad that you want to keep it temporary. Maybe add a temporary boss every once in a while.

ColinJohanson.2394:

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Really? Most of these are necessary changes that shouldn’t have taken a year to implement, like improved champion loot (whose idea was it anyway, to have powerful monsters drop the same as any other lame mob?), improved culling system, leaver penalties and an actual decent reward for doing dungeons…

Wanted to put a rant about the content in here, but whatever, it’s not like it will change anything, or we would have actually seen any change.
Just one thing: Where be dragons?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I wanted to take a moment and address this, it’s a totally fair question and something as a player (removing my GD hat) I’d wonder the same thing as well. As I covered in my blog post last month, a major focus of our living world releases in the second half of the year will be on focusing our living world releases on content that has a larger sense of persistence, and more permanent effect on the world.

You’ll start seeing this strategy come into effect with the release 2 weeks from now, and grow as the year continues. The story of these living releases will occur long enough for it to play out reasonably and then update as the story moves forward, while the content and playable experiences (except specific story beats) will persist forever as a result of that story occurring.

We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time.

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

As a reminder, this is where we’re headed and the goals we’ve given to our teams to accomplish, it just takes a few months until we fully get our projects on this track: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Made complete sense and completely understandable. Thank you.

Gabby.3205:

lordkrall.7241:

Zefiris.8297:

If the second version is permanent and different enough, then yes, people would love it.

So people would rather have peaceful (?) pointless maps that we have already visited than venturing deeper into Maguuma or towards the Crystal Desert?

It doesn’t have to be peaceful or pointless.
We can still face krait, hostile hylek, wurms, bandits, separatists, renegades, pirates, spiders, giant crabs, barracudas, sharks and/or whatever that used to live there before it sunk. Besides, Orr was beautiful, and I certainly want to see some of that beauty to come back to the game.
And the point would be making the personal story have an impact. Otherwise, someone should probably warn Trahearne that he did something wrong x)
I would like to see new maps, of course, but I prefer to have fewer maps that make sense (lore-wise) than a lot of maps with many loose ends. Again, this is my personal opinion.

As for me, I am simply asking for consistency. If they want a living story/world, then make it so.

Meriem.3504:

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You know what needs to disappear? The corruption in Orr.

While the Living Story evolves, Orr is frozen in time. Just doesn’t make any sense.

And how much sense would it make doing the personal story for new players if there are no Risen nor a corrupted Orr?

They need to to do what WoW did and have Phasing.

I’ve no idea about WoW and maybe my idea was the same thing, but additional “the year after the Fall of Zhaitan” Orr zones would be great, only accessible to those players who completed the personal story. Seeing that place after Trahearne’s cleansing would be great.

With reference to Colin’s post. When the Jubilee is over, patience will be wearing thin, my friend. I would like to think ANet will deliver some great, permanent additions to the game as your post implies, but for now I will have to remain skeptical. Personally ( as someone else already said) I’m hoping for more Lost Shores style stuff, but with larger, more fleshed out explorable zones. More importantly, zones that add to World Completion…

Wait a second, it’s not permanent? I thought the Crown Pavilion was going to be a permanent addition for certain.

Then what will happen to it when the Jubilee ends? Is it going to be an unused space? Will it become inaccessible? Or during the last day we’ll have a giant fireworks display, during which they will blow it to pieces to create The Great Collapse 2.0…

For some reason I had the idea that even though the event is ending, we’ll still be able to do the whole arena fighting, but without the achievements though. Was looking forward to having some Coliseum type events in the game… Color me disappointed.

Wanted to add another thing and since no one reads edits anyway, here we go:

I honestly hoped that Anet would pull through with the “next level mmo” stuff and when I first heard about the living story, I was pretty stoked that the world would actually change with the actions and decisions we would do
But in the end they are to scared to actually change anything or leave anything permanent, since new players need the same experience, right?
In the end that is what makes almost every mmo terribly boring, especially if we only get fed so much temporary content.
At this point I’d rather go back to expansions with huge new areas to explore and new dungeons, once a year. That would probably bring us more content than we get now, permanently.

Fractals are still pretty much untouched, still only go till level 48 and are terribly unrewarding (and yes, rewards **** matter, after all), the only new armor/weapon sets up till now were pretty much Gemstore only, which is a terrible concept in a game that is supposed to have a lot of optic progression. Actually it’s only terrible for the player, so carry on.
I will hail this update as one of the best, regardless, since you finally improve some of the biggest flaws in the game, which I highlighted in my last post.
I just hope you get off the shivers and do some drastic changes, not to sink in boring old-style mmo.

ColinJohanson.2394:

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more!

I love seeing that all these features are being released – this shows that you do listen to the player community. I hope that now that you have completed your living story portfolio, you will be able to address more of the core content that desperately needs to be updated.

Since the living story events are already quite well polished, I hope that you will now put them on the back burner and give priority to implementing all the content that affects everyday gameplay: Guild Features, LFG, Duels, Alliances, Hard-Mode Dungeons, TP Filter Improvements, New General/Fun Achievements, and eventually Guild Halls and GvG (to name a few).

ColinJohanson.2394:

We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time.

I have to say though, I’m jumping out of my skin at the idea that GW2 will start getting some actual Tyria centric celebrations. Thank you Colin!

To know that Bazaar of the Four Winds, Queen’s Jubilee, and I reckon even Dragon Bash will become a staple of the Tyrian calender (P.S. add an in game calender) is great news. I’d prefer more unique events like these to ones than festivals that mirror our world, even though I thoroughly enjoyed Mad King and Wintersday.

What I like about Mad King is that it played on the idea of Holloween, but still made it feel like a Tyrian thing. What I dislike about Wintersday is how unabashedly it copies our tradition… albeit a flying ship (an ‘asuranized’ sleigh, you might say) that goes around Tyria, delivering presents to children…
I really like the Wintersday feel: the snow in LA and fun games, but please, this year change it around a bit to make the parts I mentioned different in such a way that it becomes more a Tyria thing than a blatant ripoff of a known convention. Because last year, whenever I was reminded of the whole flying ship presents to children deal, I wanted to /facedesk the living hell out of myself…

Sarie.1630:

When the Jubilee is over, patience will be wearing thin, my friend.

^^^^This.^^^^

Sarie.1630:

I would like to think ANet will deliver some great, permanent additions to the game as your post implies, but for now I will have to remain skeptical.

^^^^This also.^^^^

Seems like most of the information coming from ANet is about what they want to do, or would like to do, or are really really just about to do, just you wait and see.

Please, guys, enough already. Let’s see some action to back up those pretty words. I’m not thrilled that we’ve spent the whole year watching you folks develop your portfolio of temporary content, rotating mini-games and once-a-year events. We have to rush to finish the temporary content on your schedule, then we have to turn around and wait for the rotating content…again, on your schedule.

TL;DR: I have never felt my gaming schedule so dictated by game developers in my life. I don’t like it. If it doesn’t stop soon, I will find another game that doesn’t make me feel so frustrated.

“Ow, another useless WarioWare update, so funny.”
This is the reaction of all people i know who quit gw2.
Anet should learn from the players, making a game casual does not mean pointless updates.

Nilyth.7621:

“Ow, another useless WarioWare update, so funny.”
This is the reaction of all people i know who quit gw2.
Anet should learn from the players, making a game casual does not mean pointless updates.

Ironically, only hardcore players can keep up with the fast paced updates and events. :/

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
(snip…)
We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.
(…snip)

One bit in particular that stuck out to me was this. This, in my opinion, should not be “a ways off”, it should be a priority. I love the content that’s been put out, and I love that it’s been both fun and challenging, and I love this game in general. The way they’ve done things differently, encouraged grouping to happen automatically, and made fun mini-games, is very nice. What I don’t like, is the idea that if I need to miss out on a couple weeks, all I will have to go by for what happened content-wise during those weeks, is the small changes in the world. I will be locked out of that content forever at worst, and need to wait another year at best.

The latter is not such a big problem, but the former certainly is. The worst part is that it’s not just a problem for players that miss out due to whatever circumstances may arise, it’s also a severe problem for new players. If a player joined just yesterday and was told that Kiel had won a council seat, and that Braham had helped save his village with our help (really the other way around, but we’ll just go with what the story says he did, instead of dying like a wuss because he was an NPC fighting dungeon mobs, give these guys Determined status, and have it vanish if the party wipes or something!), then how exactly would this new player go about finding out who these people were? If the answer is “Check on the wiki” then the game has failed at telling a good story. Any game where you have to check an external source to find the lore for something that happened within the game? Is by default not doing a good job at telling a story.

In addition, some of the most fun content has been done during these stories. Molten Facility and the Aetherblade Retreat are coming back as Fractals, and that is fantastic, but players need a way to experience the story, even if it has already happened. Have some mystic archiving box that a player can access which lets them go to instanced versions of the past areas, offer it as a single-player version of Fractals, something that lets a new player experience the story parts of the events, even if they can’t get the time-locked rewards. This will overall make a more fun game, one that has LOADS more permanent content to play through, and which is easier for newer players to understand and get into. The Living Story is supposed to be about building the relationships between our characters and the world around them, a new player or one that missed out on the content should be able to have the same experience that everyone else does. Just my 2 silver.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I wanted to take a moment and address this, it’s a totally fair question and something as a player (removing my GD hat) I’d wonder the same thing as well. As I covered in my blog post last month, a major focus of our living world releases in the second half of the year will be on focusing our living world releases on content that has a larger sense of persistence, and more permanent effect on the world.

You’ll start seeing this strategy come into effect with the release 2 weeks from now, and grow as the year continues. The story of these living releases will occur long enough for it to play out reasonably and then update as the story moves forward, while the content and playable experiences (except specific story beats) will persist forever as a result of that story occurring.

We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time.

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Soon, you won’t need to ask “is this permanent or temporary?”, you’ll simply be able to look at story specific parts and know the story goes away when it’s done, and the playable core content remains and changes based on the outcomes of the story. As a player, I’d rather login and experience an event knowing the outcome and the results of the story will create content I can see and experience for years, than have it all go away 2 weeks later, and have no impact.

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

As a reminder, this is where we’re headed and the goals we’ve given to our teams to accomplish, it just takes a few months until we fully get our projects on this track: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Returning content is sitll a tempolary content.

We need new maps(with PoI, Vistas, HEarts, minidungeons, Jps), new long personal story quest like Wizzer tower, new dragon to kill, Glint story, dwarves story etc.
New maps with their own history, new races and classes to play, races with new capitals.
Pernament mini-games, for me I’m bored of the constant new mini games. I would like to play on new maps like on the begining of the game.

Many of players are tired of temporary content.

“We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.”

Just do tab in Heros Panel like this one from personal story line/quest.

Nilyth.7621:

“Ow, another useless WarioWare update, so funny.”
This is the reaction of all people i know who quit gw2.
Anet should learn from the players, making a game casual does not mean pointless updates.

Speak for yourself. Some people like different things. My friends and I love these updates; the game still feels fresh, and I still feel like the game is exciting and the PvE is interesting. Literally every 2 weeks I get either Christmas Day or the catalog for Black Friday. It’s a crazy pace and I love it.

The whole game is pretty pointless; it’s just there to entertain you for a while. The fact that the content is entertaining is the entire point. If it does anything for you outside of that, great.

Do I want expansion-level content (e.g. a large dump of all-new areas with new monsters, new skills, new events, new vistas, etc.)? Yeah I do, but I’m still having a good time with the current content and the frequent updates.

Ok people LETS STAY ONLY ONE TIME TOGETHER AND SAY : NO !!!!!!!!

We want have the arena Permanent and not a temporary one Year cycle event.

If the devs want this for there portfolio ok im fine with it, add every year some new chalenges in the arena and everyone would be happy. Problem solved we had a permanet arena and you somthing for your portfolie with less work to do for the future.

The arena is a comunity crucible
the benifits of a place people can come together to have some chanlenge and learn something new about the classes they play. It CANT be only a one year cycle event.

So thumb this kitten up and spreed the news to your guilds, to people in lions arch to everyone you know to come to this forum and vote for a permanent arena.

THIS IS THE REAL PIRATE VOTE

I have a feeling they keep those temp event running so people will visit GW2 every now and then and dont forget about it.

There is no core pve game after you complete your map.
I’m a dungeon master, 100% map explorer and even though I wish I could play more, there is simply not a reason to.

We need enduring challenges that would make us COORDINATE to overcome, with real rewards in the end.

Molten Facility, FotM (aside the grind to get one level, silly concept), Aetherblade Retrat, Guild Challenges/Puzzles are all good steps in the right direction.

But still, we need more of it.
Unlike most people, I didnt like Candidate Trials. It seemed awfully umbalanced as those mobs were too tanky.

I fear the gaunlet will go the same path.

Blaine.4251:

ColinJohanson.2394:

As to the point of this specific release, there are a ton of permanent features and content. From the update of mini-games becoming permanent on a rotation, champion loot, solo queue PvP and leaderboards, dungeon reward changes, currency wallet, PvP leaver penalties (dishonorable), the FX culling system and more! However, we do recognize one of the components is returning content rather than constant, we need one more core event in our portfolio to fill out our ability to pull off the ambitious plans we have for next year. We too want to have an even larger playable content impact as stated in our goals for the second half of 2014, you’ll be see seeing that play out shortly.

Really? Most of these are necessary changes that shouldn’t have taken a year to implement, like improved champion loot (whose idea was it anyway, to have powerful monsters drop the same as any other lame mob?), improved culling system, leaver penalties and an actual decent reward for doing dungeons…

Wanted to put a rant about the content in here, but whatever, it’s not like it will change anything, or we would have actually seen any change.
Just one thing: Where be dragons?

This community is so annoyingly unreasonable. Maybe the changes should have taken less than a year to come out…but they didn’t and thats a mistake they’re correcting right now.

Your rant probably wouldn’t change anything because either you have useless ideas or they’re already ideas expressed by everyone that anet is likely already working on.

He said they’re building their temporary content portfolio in order to focus on bigger and better things for the future…how can you argue against that? you just guna whine about everything they haven’t done yet with absolutely no regard for what they plan on doing in the future?

I can hear it now…….

June 2014——-“didn’t we destroy the Molten Alliance last year? Why are they back”
" I’m tired of these kitten repeats" “When are we getting something new?”
yada, yada —-———————AND—————————yada

jayb.1329:

This community is so annoyingly unreasonable. Maybe the changes should have taken less than a year to come out…but they didn’t and thats a mistake they’re correcting right now.

Your rant probably wouldn’t change anything because either you have useless ideas or they’re already ideas expressed by everyone that anet is likely already working on.

He said they’re building their temporary content portfolio in order to focus on bigger and better things for the future…how can you argue against that? you just guna whine about everything they haven’t done yet with absolutely no regard for what they plan on doing in the future?

Providing feedback isn’t ‘annoyingly unreasonable’. This is a large and diverse community. Everyone has a right and I’d say a duty to provide positive and negative feedback to ArenaNet. I do believe ArenaNet even wants this feedback!

The feedback just needs to be a bit more specific and constructive in some instances. Instead of a blanket “this is garbage” statement, what specifically don’t you like, why don’t you like it, and what would you have done different.

I think there were many people who provided excellent negative feedback in this thread. You don’t have to agree with them, and you definitely can post why you don’t agree, but that doesn’t make their comments unreasonable.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.

Why not a Library in each city? Easy way to make a detailed overview of the Living Story and what happened. Work that Asura tech to include archived cutscenes as well.

Atlas.9704:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Not everything is temporary, the grand pavilion itself is permanent. Finally, out with that eyesore of a great collapse, we have a beautiful massive arena structure that can hold many events in the future.

I’m all for new locations, especially a beautifully crafted building.
Problem is if there’s nothing to do inside it after the Jubilee is done, then it was a waste until we get something in there.

I think that’s where some people are worried about the temporary part of this update.

They actually stated somewhere that the queen would use the pavilion for more than just the current arena that it is. (dont remember whakittens called)

Azjenco.9425:

I have to say though, I’m jumping out of my skin at the idea that GW2 will start getting some actual Tyria centric celebrations. Thank you Colin!

To know that Bazaar of the Four Winds, Queen’s Jubilee, and I reckon even Dragon Bash will become a staple of the Tyrian calender (P.S. add an in game calender) is great news. I’d prefer more unique events like these to ones than festivals that mirror our world, even though I thoroughly enjoyed Mad King and Wintersday.

What I like about Mad King is that it played on the idea of Holloween, but still made it feel like a Tyrian thing. What I dislike about Wintersday is how unabashedly it copies our tradition… albeit a flying ship (an ‘asuranized’ sleigh, you might say) that goes around Tyria, delivering presents to children…
I really like the Wintersday feel: the snow in LA and fun games, but please, this year change it around a bit to make the parts I mentioned different in such a way that it becomes more a Tyria thing than a blatant ripoff of a known convention. Because last year, whenever I was reminded of the whole flying ship presents to children deal, I wanted to /facedesk the living hell out of myself…

I’d have to agree with a lot of this. One thing that does concern me, though, is how concentrated these festivals are. We’ve got Dragon Bash in June, Bazaar in July, Queen’s anniversary in August, Halloween in October, and Wintersday in December – that makes five festivals over the course of seven months, three of them happening in a row. SAB is in April, leaving a three-month ‘bye’ in Jan-Feb-Mar – if this isn’t deliberate, it might be worth consider shifting the Sanctum’s arrival to February (in the Season of the Zephyr, fittingly enough) to get a more even spread.

I’d also like to see Wintersday being made more Tyrian, and the festivals in general spreading to more of the capitals. Let’s bring back the competition of the gods in Divinity’s Reach, even if it’s in the form of purely ceremonial reenactments. The charr historically have considered it a time of death – how do they show this? And so on.

silvermember.8941:

added: ninja’d by colin.

Hey, if you’re going to get ninja’d… :P

Thank you, Colin. That post helps to clear up a lot of things. I approve of festivals like the Jubilee/Dragon Bash/Wintersday etc. returning regularly, although I hope that the achievements and rewards associated with these festivals will also be available once again for players to complete when they come around again. I think it’s a great shame if a new player were not able to obtain the same rewards that I or another veteran player has, just because he happened to come along to the party late. Knowledge that there will be another chance again in the future will also help ease concerns of players who want to be present for a festival, but due to real life concerns or commitments, have to miss out.

There’s more I could go into about making Living Story content more permanent and accessible, but I’ve covered that in another thread on the Living Story forum.

Colin for Council!
Go become a pirate Colin, you don’t have a boat.

EDIT: I’ll handle Kiel. Go.

On the topic of ‘cleansing orr’ wouldn’t it be possible to have a different map depending on whether or not you completed the personal story? They did something similar with winds of change, so it should be possible since it’s all instanced.

Getting access to a ‘Cleansed’ version of Orr. Even if it just has reskinned mobs and looks prettier, it would at least make a bit of sense.
And plus, it’d give more people motivation to finish the personal story, at least on multiple characters, if someone were to put some of those new materials they mentioned there…