Guild Wars 2

A Few Points…

1. Holiday content is supposed to be short term. Else it would have no meaning if it was around all year long.

2. Your point that previous releases are not open past their release is valid. The problem with the “Living Story” is that the content ends up being short-lived. Imagine if WoW’s expansions “went away” after the new one was released. A small game it would be indeed.

3. If you have only been here for a month or so it might be too soon to understand ArenaNet’s non-traditional strategy. However they favor small changes on a theme of a bigger story. The goal is to get players to focus on the “real-time” of the event; and during the Scarlet Invasion release this effect was most effective. For new players this does leave you only to “read about the past on wiki”.

In either situation the “wars” that gives this game its name (Guild Wars) has indeed thus been “discontinued”. This thread thus is vaild in its nature.

Indeed it is so…

Hey Nightshade,
glad to see you’ve hopped on board the RSS Tyria!
Holidays: You’re right, holiday events are great fun! Anet puts a lot of effort into dressing up Lion’s Arch, holiday dynamic events in regular zones, and themed mini games. However, the temporary nature of those is the one thing keeping them fresh and interesting. Because you can only do these for a month once a year, everybody flocks to them and it’s easy to find people to play with and have fun. If you could do them whenever you wanted, those places would be deserted and really nothing special.
If every day of your life was Christmas, Halloween, or Valentine’s Day you wouldn’t care one bit.
Living Story: The temporary nature of the Living Story is a bit different but follows largely the same logic. If all content was available at all times, there’d be no incentive to actually play the content when it comes out. Anet don’t “expect” all players to play from the start “or miss out”, they want new players to hear from the things that happened a year ago and say Dang, that sounds cool! I’ll definitely be there for the next update!
Also, if the new releases would just stay in the game as is, it wouldn’t really be a “Living World”, just an inflating one.

What players are asking for in terms of the Living Story is a way to experience the story parts of it after the the event has finished. So a new player could play through some sort of instance to experience the major story elements and get the gist of what happened before.

I hope you understand why temporary content is necessary for the Living Story to continue.
Cheers!

While I do agree that holiday content shouldn’t stick around 24/7, I don’t see any harm with it recurring every year, but with new stuff to do. For example, Halloween 2013 could have been a repeat of 2012, minus the Mad King bursting out through the fountain. The scavenger hunt? Tassi can send you to re-visit the ghosts, and the Ascent to Madness dungeon could also have been done via a “flashback”:

Player: “So, tell me the story of how we defeated Mad King Thorn in his own realm in years past.”
Tassi: “Now that’s quite a tale! After we forced the Mad King back into the Mad Realm, we sent adventurers through to beat him into submission…” [Replay the Ascent to Madness dungeon]

With the added Bloody Prince chapter, it would feel like Halloween got bigger and better every year, instead of now wondering which of our favourite activities won’t be coming back next year.

Zaxares.5419:

While I do agree that holiday content shouldn’t stick around 24/7, I don’t see any harm with it recurring every year, but with new stuff to do. For example, Halloween 2013 could have been a repeat of 2012, minus the Mad King bursting out through the fountain. The scavenger hunt? Tassi can send you to re-visit the ghosts, and the Ascent to Madness dungeon could also have been done via a “flashback”:

Player: “So, tell me the story of how we defeated Mad King Thorn in his own realm in years past.”
Tassi: “Now that’s quite a tale! After we forced the Mad King back into the Mad Realm, we sent adventurers through to beat him into submission…” [Replay the Ascent to Madness dungeon]

With the added Bloody Prince chapter, it would feel like Halloween got bigger and better every year, instead of now wondering which of our favourite activities won’t be coming back next year.

100% agree Halloween this year was a complete and utter disappointment compared to last year. They did the Bloody Prince stuff, but that dungeon paled in comparison with last year’s Mad King encounter. Outside of the dungeon, Halloween was nearly identical, except with less achievement opportunities, less skins, and a slightly harder, while at the same time much less rewarding, Labyrinth (which I thought was an odd way to go). I have very low expectations for Christmas. I fully expect a complete rehash of last year, but with more grinding, less skins, and less achievements.

Just to clarify, even the original Guild Wars got it’s name from a war that was over by the time the game took place lore wise so it really was Post Guild Wars and this is Extra Super Duper Post Guild Wars 2 Ultimate Extra Overness Edition. If Anet uses that title for GW3, I don’t even want a check, just a character in my likeness voiced by Claptrap.

A Lion’s Arch that is decorated in Halloween, Wintersday and Dragon Bash decoration, overrun by Aetherblades as well as flame and frost refugees, with the pirate council election taking place forever but never having an outcome…. wouldn’t work for me.

nightshade.1950:

Content should never be removed

The point of the living story is that you see the world change (sometimes based on the community’s decisions). This change means that something new comes and something old goes away.

The things that actually happen in the game’s present WILL be the things of the game’s past. Otherwise anything you do in the present would begin to feel pretty pointless. I already know that the game does not care one bit how many times we fight the dragons, we can never defeat them… and guess what, I don’t bother with the dragons anymore. (In the context of the living story it would be similar: Why fight the molten alliance if we knew that it never went away, no matter what we do?)

There are other concepts already in place that allow (or will allow) us to relive part of the content (through fractals, quest items that replay cinematics) and I agree with many here who think that we need more replayability like that, for instance through historian NPCs that give you access to long-gone story instances.

The other approach is to sometimes add permanent content along with the temporary content, such as a new jumping puzzle or dungeon path or a new boss fight mechanic, which is already being done and ANet says they’re exploring possibilities and trying to get better at this.

Draknar.5748:

Zaxares.5419:

While I do agree that holiday content shouldn’t stick around 24/7, I don’t see any harm with it recurring every year, but with new stuff to do. For example, Halloween 2013 could have been a repeat of 2012, minus the Mad King bursting out through the fountain. The scavenger hunt? Tassi can send you to re-visit the ghosts, and the Ascent to Madness dungeon could also have been done via a “flashback”:

Player: “So, tell me the story of how we defeated Mad King Thorn in his own realm in years past.”
Tassi: “Now that’s quite a tale! After we forced the Mad King back into the Mad Realm, we sent adventurers through to beat him into submission…” [Replay the Ascent to Madness dungeon]

With the added Bloody Prince chapter, it would feel like Halloween got bigger and better every year, instead of now wondering which of our favourite activities won’t be coming back next year.

100% agree Halloween this year was a complete and utter disappointment compared to last year. They did the Bloody Prince stuff, but that dungeon paled in comparison with last year’s Mad King encounter. Outside of the dungeon, Halloween was nearly identical, except with less achievement opportunities, less skins, and a slightly harder, while at the same time much less rewarding, Labyrinth (which I thought was an odd way to go). I have very low expectations for Christmas. I fully expect a complete rehash of last year, but with more grinding, less skins, and less achievements.

when the hell was there a dungeon?

You should check out the collaborative development thread on the living world under general discussion. A consistent theme is how temporary content is both grindy (in terms of achievements and rewards) and a poor model for evolving a living world. OP, many people share your concerns.

Kalastraer.8264:

when the hell was there a dungeon?

There was one last year related to the Mad King Tower. This year was the one located in Charr city land that was short. A Dungeon by traditional definition? No but something like it nonetheless.

The Master.2893:

Kalastraer.8264:

when the hell was there a dungeon?

There was one last year related to the Mad King Tower. This year was the one located in Charr city land that was short. A Dungeon by traditional definition? No but something like it nonetheless.

Oh that wasn’t the dungeon that was just an intro to the story.

Kalastraer.8264:

The Master.2893:

Kalastraer.8264:

when the hell was there a dungeon?

There was one last year related to the Mad King Tower. This year was the one located in Charr city land that was short. A Dungeon by traditional definition? No but something like it nonetheless.

Oh that wasn’t the dungeon that was just an intro to the story.

Yea I know but I think the poster above was referring to this as “a dungeon”.

Kalastraer.8264:

The Master.2893:

Kalastraer.8264:

when the hell was there a dungeon?

There was one last year related to the Mad King Tower. This year was the one located in Charr city land that was short. A Dungeon by traditional definition? No but something like it nonetheless.

Oh that wasn’t the dungeon that was just an intro to the story.

Last year you actually had a dungeon to go and fight the Mad King. This year we had an “encounter” that I called a dungeon. The first was simply an intro, but once you completed the Meta this year you could go back into the same instance as the intro story and fight the Blood Prince. <— that was the dungeon I was referring to.

Jinn Kazuma.2163:

Just to clarify, even the original Guild Wars got it’s name from a war that was over by the time the game took place lore wise so it really was Post Guild Wars and this is Extra Super Duper Post Guild Wars 2 Ultimate Extra Overness Edition. If Anet uses that title for GW3, I don’t even want a check, just a character in my likeness voiced by Claptrap.

Well, name after the guild wars era is irrelevant. This one is supposed to be about fighting the elder dragons….. and ALLL of these ‘updates’ have been about everything BUT fighting the elder dragons. At this point, I’ve completely abandoned any hope they will introduce any of the other elder dragons into the mix. All they will do is make the lieutenant dragons so hard to fight they will end up like Teq. Dead zones that only get done by a few die hards and cross server alliances to get enough to do it. And once people get to the point, as with Teq, that the wait to reward ratio for doing the event is totally borked, it will be the same.

At the start of LS, I was jacked. I thought with the Flame and Frost stuff it might be leading to either Jormag or the Devourer Dragon being introed. Nope. Tho I loved the Molten Facility stuff. Now….. Still haven’t bothered with TA, what do I need with another godawful fugly back skin? Didn’t do the Aether dungeon either, past one attempt. Just couldn’t summon up the give a kitten .

Honestly, the should just use the same exact storybook system that the bonus mission pack used in GW1.

For added coolness, make sure those books are in logical/different places in the world per mission (e.g. the Rox/Braham ones in their instances, Southsun ones from the bartender there, etc.) and that the “nameless adventurer” you play as in those missions is your build and gear, but in the flashback is substantially altered appearance wise.

You could really just stick to the instances for these, and skip the open world stuff as those things aren’t ever all that expository, and in the instance they are, again, you’re using the storybook model so just blurb a paragraph about “Then some people helped the refugees by hitting signs” or whatever. Give players a hefty dose of karma and XP for completion (these are two things new players need lots of, and two things that are useful to everyone)

Finally, add an achievement track (because people love them!) like the goggles for the storybooks. Rank it by years completed and expand it every time a LS update goins dark.

For extra EXTRA coolness, have the books added to a library… wait for it… in the player’s home instance So that the “well read” can take budding young adventurars and teach them about history if they like.