Guild Wars 2

So I was surfing the forums today and I saw this post,

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

The part that really struck me was about how they added all these events in and on one did them. It got my think about this game’s open world, the living story, and the general feel about it. I’m in a large guild, I’m one of my guilds “PvE commanders”, if you want to call it that much, and I go out into the open world a lot and do random events, help random players out, things like that. I am in the ambassador or have connections to many other big guilds and when I do open world things I try to contact as many people as I can. But before we start, let me say one. Unless you state exactly where those events are, people will not do them. We can walk by where they spawn and have no idea there is a chance for a new event there.

So first lets talk about the open world.

1. Dynamic Event Rewards are not good incentives to get people into the open world. Right now the progression for end game players is centered around one thing, gold. You want a legendary? You need lots of gold. You want that cool skin from the mystic forge? You’ll probably need lots of gold. So people naturally find ways that best earns them gold. This is why we saw CoF, shelter, and other farming areas done so much because they were most effective at earning gold which allowed them to progress their characters. You’re recent patch has done a terrific job at getting players to spread out and not just farm one thing. The game is still pretty reliant on gold, however crafting mats, SP, and more are becoming more accessiable to players without needing a ton of gold or time, allowing progression to be less focus on gold. Still the problem persist with dynamic events. Still im seeing a problem. Since patch i’ve done a March of Ascalon (going around ascalon looking for champions) and Southsun Chest Run. Each time I had people whispering me “Dude, why dont you just go to pavilion, its so much easier to farm!” or “Hey man, I found this champion that spawns like every 10 mins, you should come here with your group and just farm it with us.”. Players if given the opportunity, will always go after the easier route. Just how it is. It is why we have DR and what not on a lot of things.

2. Fights are not challenging. Once you become level 80, going into lower level zones it is pretty easy to fight. You kill things very fast. Once a certain amount of players joins in (usually 5 or more) it just becomes a cake walk. Then you have world bosses in which players just auto attack. They don’t interact with NPCs or the world, they just sit there. Even in pavilion you still sit there autoattack. Sometimes you may die, but you get quickly rezzed or waypoint.

3. Many events don’t feel like they’re part of the world. Sure they unlock a waypoint or a useless vendor that sells something you don’t need.

4. Zergs. You can’t fight them, you need to be creative. Every open world boss will attract a zerg. There is no mechanic that you can give the boss to “solve zergging”. You must give mechanics to the WORLD to solve zergging. Giving bosses massive one hit AoEs or stuff like that wont do anything against a zerg. Spawning a ton of other enemies will only cause lag an frustration. You must convience players to spread out in a zone to fight a world boss, and you must make these spread out events effective/needed.

5. Timers ruin the community, don’t rely on them. I did world bosses way before rares were even rewarded. I was part of the small community that did them for fun. People teased me in my guild about it, said it was a waste of time for lack of rewards, but I didn’t mind I had fun. Then came the Rares and people took an interest in them. I got excited. I worked with other guildies and players to roam around the world and find world bosses, we’d community with each other to tell people when they were up. Community and social interactions with players were plentiful, it was fun. Then the timers arose. People didn’t need scouters or other players help to find bosses. They just watched a website and went to that. Those social interactions when poof and now players pretty much ignore one another for boss fights. It really took away from the experience and highlighted the problem with timed spawns.

Now lets talk about the living story.

I feel like that every 2 weeks the overarcing storyline for the living story should be progressed. Instead this year it seems like you keep giving us block after block of a foundation for a wonderful story that aren’t connected. For example, the baazar. I though this was really cool event. The voting system was cool. The zeyphyrites and Canthan feel was awesome. However the over arc storyline of Braham, Rox, and Scarlet was not progressed too well. I got really interested with the zephyrites and their connections to glint and I thought “Oh man, this could be really cool”. Instead we get a new festival that has nothing to do with kiel or the previous story arc except that the Aetherblade pirates are involved. Flame and Frost was the best story line so far in terms of progression. Sure it was a little too spaced out, but every update you answered something in some way. First we start seeing refugees and we help them, then we discovered what the main enemy force is, then we go save some more refugees, then we raid a main base of the force and destroy them. We learn of a person known as Scarlet, then boom we’re in southsun dealing with an almost entirely new set of characters where the only connection to the previous storyline is the settlers.

tl;dr :
The Open World needs more incentives for people to go out into it. In a game where endgame progression is heavily reliant on gold acquisition, simply karma/silver/experience rewards isn’t big enough when you can farm one area. World bosses need to convenience players, almost need players, to spread out in the entire zone to defeat them. You will never be able to counter zergs by spawning large amount of enemies or one hit AoEs. Use your dynamic event system more in world bosses! Remove timed bosses. Put more reliance on chain events and meta chains. My most fun world bosses are flame temple tombs, catacombs, and modniir. They are done the least cause they dont have set spawns or timed spawns. They have a large chain of pre events. It’s awesome.

The living story needs to be more connected. Everything feels so disjointed. You’re taking way too long go progress the story. I feel like im getting mini game after mini game or filler after filler. It doesn’t feel like it’s having an effect on the world at all. The pavilion is cool and all, but I feel like you just literally gave the farmers and “island” to farm on leaving the rest of the open world with new champion rewards and awesome visuals “not as efficient”.

Suggestions:
For World Bosses. Put events around the map that help defeat the final boss. Balthy for example. Remember that base you captured in the northern assault? Well they launch a special projectile that will cause balths new skill that decimates players to be ineffective. So defending it is viable. I have loads of ideas that i can go on and on about, in a lot more detail. Remove timed spawns. Put more reliance on chains and surrounding events to spawn a boss. Make it so you can fail it (through timers perhaps) so that it’s harder to farm. Making failing it have a noticeable effect. Queen fails, nothing happens. It’s really lame.

For the living story. Just connect it more. It’s becoming so disjointed I’m starting to lose interest. I feel like im seeing filler after filler. First the molten alliance, an alliance between two unlikely foes. Whoa cool, can’t wait to see what happens next. Oh look another alliance between 2 more unlikely foes…really?

I really want to see this game flourish and I feel like you’re turning the things that make this game unique and special (open world and living story) into something that uses a ton of the run of the mill mechanics that we see in a lot of other MMOs.

Beautiful Synopsis!
Please read, ANet!

This living story is just taking too d*mn long!
This time again, we get a 15 minute “live action movie” that actually got interesting then..
BAM!
To be continued in 2 weeks…

Seriously?
I´m reading web comics that routinely provide 10 times the content in this time frame.

The Living World stuff they spent all their development resources on the past year was horribly ill-conceived. Tons of very similar temporary content that is put in then removed 2 weeks later? What’s left after a year of hard work? Similar gimmicky content repeated ad nauseum and nothing to show for it but useless item bloat and unachievable achievements when in the same period of time they could have added multiple new zones and/or permanent dungeons. It’s not that a lot of the content wasn’t cool, some of it very much was, but it’s waayyy too gimmicky and doesn’t really fit in with the grander design of the game.

The game would have benefited far more from focusing on permanent, cohesive expansions to the world and PS using some of the same ideas they’ve used for the LS, but integrating it better and leaving it in permanently to allow it to be character driven rather than development driven. MWF and AR should have been permanent storied dungeons that are unlocked by playing through the lead-up story just like how it is with the PS.

Am I also the first to talk about the cognitive dissonance stemming from the fact that the PS and Zhaitan fight and launch dungeons/DEs are all permanent while everything else is ‘living’?  It’s internally inconsistent which is almost worse than just not having access to certain content.   I just don’t feel their LS idea is good for the game and they need to give it up. Hopefully they’ll have their act together more for year 2.

Einlanzer.1627:

Am I also the first to talk about the cognitive dissonance stemming from the fact that the PS and Zhaitan fight and launch dungeons/DEs are all permanent while everything else is ‘living’?  It’s internally inconsistent which is almost worse than just not having access to certain content.   I just don’t feel their LS idea is good for the game and they need to give it up. Hopefully they’ll have their act together more for year 2.

Yeah, so much this!

The whole game world is stuck in this weird schizophrenic timeloop between the Personal Story, the Story Dungeon tale about Destinies Edge´s “revival” and Zhaitan´s Death.
I actually have no idea where to even place all these (albeit cool) short stories or the living stories in general.

If Anet is serious about their “Living World”, then they simply have to split the Orr and the adjacent Risen influenced maps into pre and post Zhaitan´s Death.

That would of course mean a splintering of the server populace, but that´s not that big a deal anyway IMHO.
Technically it sure isn´t, as the current pre Zhaitan Death maps could just become overflow maps that everybody gets gated onto when their char´s PStory isn´t finished.

What about slow down and relase LS every month instead of 14d?

They actually are doing this already, but with 4 teams each on its own month-long development cycle and staggering their releases by 2 weeks.

I’m being patient with the living story. I see this as a new strategy which needs time to work the kinks out. I think there is a lot of potential here.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Thanks for the feedback everyone and please keep it coming. Personally, I find that one of the hardest parts of being a desginer on GW2 Live is coming to terms with the fact that not every update will please every player. We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee. I think we have a lot of room to keep growing. But our team isn’t done yet. We’ve got some exciting things coming later this month. Things you’ve never seen in this game before.

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I appreciate you sharing your feelings on the matter. First, addressing your statements about the content met with little interest – did you tell us about it? Did you advertise it or did you advertise the next achievement chase instead? The priorities here are misaligned. Week after week, a release is doled out and we’re expected to chase after a set of achievements. There are so many problems with the current approach in GW2:

I don’t want content every two weeks. I don’t want to rush through it and eschew my long term goals. Making long term, permanent content should be the first goal of the content delivery. This will keep players entertained and keep them buying things. If you’re going to release Living Story content, do it once a month. If there’s a dungeon or something incredibly well received, leave it in the game. Tell us the Asuras have found a way to preserve those memories or events – something, whatever lore you have to stretch. When you look at other games, especially WoW, LoTRO, and Rift, there’s a wealth of content that is legacy content, yet it fills the gaps.

To further discuss the topic of disinterest. Ask yourself, why should I care about this content? There is a decided lack of incentives to explore the world once you’ve leveled one character. Living Story should address this. Living Story should slow down on the releases and expand the regional stories. I don’t care about achievements. I care about using the skills my character has with other players.

There is no personal character development in the Living Story. We’re chasing the shadow of someone else. That’s cool for a while – but one of your main selling points was the Personal Story. That’s all been forgotten about it, seemingly. Furthermore, as I mentioned before my skills are not used in the Living Story – at least not to the extent that they’d be used in Orr or WvW. That’s not fun.

Mini-games add to culture, but the game’s culture needs to rest around its core systems. I love mini-games, they’re a nice break from dungeons, pvping, and otherwise combat driven activities. However, they cannot take the place of core gameplay – dynamic combat, open world bosses, and dungeons. Chasing achievements does not leave a lasting legacy on the game and should not be the primary focus.

The mystery isn’t necessary. Throw out some ideas to players, get our feedback. I know you’re trying to temper expectations, but it’s painfully evident that ArenaNet is unsure of themselves. There are so many philosophical hindrances to implementing standard MMO features. Just because something has been done before, doesn’t make it bad. That doesn’t mean you should not do it or throw it away. Case in point – raids. I’m sure many of us would love to play with more than 5 people in an instance. Yet we’re told that doens’t fit into the game philosophy. When looking at what content to implement, look at what a lot of players already love. I’m a PVEer, so I love the Orr events, the Dungeons, open world bosses. Give us a open world boss with multiple boss fights or waves, give us a 10-man, 2 team dungeon. Look at what players spend their time doing and what their long term goals rest around and you’ll know the direction you should go.

Scroll down a little on the first post of this thread, it gives some insight on what they intend to do with the LS and why the current LS is not really up there yet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/So-EVERYTHING-in-this-patch-is-temporary/first#post2560578

Hearing this gives me some hope, he clarifies quite a few things that felt like ‘what are you guys even doing there?’ before that response. I do realize they have a much smaller team working on the game now but I, like many others really really wants to see more permanent content. New zones with lore from GW1 or new lore, or expanded lore. Something that allows the player to find out things that explains more about the world that we play in. The current zones all have loose dynamic events, yet they could link events through entire zones to tell stories. This could be added on top of current events and would honestly make levelling alot more fun to me, but also to just go to a zone and find out which story plays out in it. There is also not very much character attachment at the moment as the NPC’s from one LS don’t appear right in the next, or if they do, they don’t get much spotlight. And not only that, if they would make NPC’s from dynamic events appear in multiple zones a player may go ‘oh hey it’s that adventurer again!’ or something along those lines. Personally I am just going to wait and see how things will play out in the next few months, because they have definetely been listening more to feedback than many other companies I’ve seen out there.

DarcShriek.5829:

I’m being patient with the living story. I see this as a new strategy which needs time to work the kinks out. I think there is a lot of potential here.

Yeah in other post they recognize the mistakes and are working towards fixing it. Apparently the next LS patch is when things are going to get intense/good. We will see what the following year brings us.

Destai.9603:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I appreciate you sharing your feelings on the matter. First, addressing your statements about the content met with little interest – did you tell us about it? Did you advertise it or did you advertise the next achievement chase instead? The priorities here are misaligned. Week after week, a release is doled out and we’re expected to chase after a set of achievements. There are so many problems with the current approach in GW2:

I think this is a very valid response, and a question worth asking. I also feel that adding Dynamic Events to the world is not really something that should be viewed as a major content addition, at least not in the same way. Not that they don’t take resources, effort, etc. to implement (I’m very aware that they do), but DEs are never going to be something that takes eyeballs off LS content or makes headlines. DEs are a quality of life addition that breathe a little more life into the standard experience of being out in the world, they are very rarely going to be showstoppers unless you stick a boss at the end of them with major loot.

Think of it this way, you go to your usual grocery store and you find two things. First, they have changed the aisles around a little to make shopping more enjoyable. Second, they have an item you’re interested in on sale for 90% off but only for a limited time. While the rearrangement is something you’re likely to find longer term appreciation of, the thing you’re going to run out and tell all your friends about is the 90% off sale.

It doesn’t mean one is more valuable or desired than the other, it just means your expectations have to be different.

StriderShinryu.6923:

Destai.9603:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

But in the mean time, please keep telling us what you’re thinking. We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative. Despite this, there are many events I would still like to add. Many zones and bosses I would love to revisit. As we get better at the living world, I strongly suspect we’ll have room to get around to them as well. Assuming that’s what our players really want. You are all the second half of the collaborative process, so thanks for helping!

I appreciate you sharing your feelings on the matter. First, addressing your statements about the content met with little interest – did you tell us about it? Did you advertise it or did you advertise the next achievement chase instead? The priorities here are misaligned. Week after week, a release is doled out and we’re expected to chase after a set of achievements. There are so many problems with the current approach in GW2:

I think this is a very valid response, and a question worth asking. I also feel that adding Dynamic Events to the world is not really something that should be viewed as a major content addition, at least not in the same way. Not that they don’t take resources, effort, etc. to implement (I’m very aware that they do), but DEs are never going to be something that takes eyeballs off LS content or makes headlines. DEs are a quality of life addition that breathe a little more life into the standard experience of being out in the world, they are very rarely going to be showstoppers unless you stick a boss at the end of them with major loot.

Think of it this way, you go to your usual grocery store and you find two things. First, they have changed the aisles around a little to make shopping more enjoyable. Second, they have an item you’re interested in on sale for 90% off but only for a limited time. While the rearrangement is something you’re likely to find longer term appreciation of, the thing you’re going to run out and tell all your friends about is the 90% off sale.

It doesn’t mean one is more valuable or desired than the other, it just means your expectations have to be different.

Yeah, I agree with you. I dont think DEs are a major part, but I’d like to see them become more important in an endgame. See them incorporated more into the zone and world bosses. See them become more important in LS. Add in some special bosses at the end that drop a unique skin, things like that.