Guild Wars 2

Unless this is somehow fake news, it looks like ANet’s brought someone on board with lots of experience telling non-linear stories. The link in the twitter goes to an unrelated article laying out background and design philosophy (unrelated in that it never mentions GW2, very related in that it shows intentions towards GW2).

https://mobile.twitter.com/LeahHoyer/status/509029824812183552

First, welcome aboard!

Second, I hope you were cleared to report your hire!

Third, are you here to help in the internal story writing or provide help getting external merchandising together? Real life Charr Backpacks, more books, etc?

What happened to the old writers?

Congrats, Leah Hoyer!

Don’t know this Leah Hoyer, or any previous works she did. So I’ll hold my judgment on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing (it’d be bad, imo, if there was a great discontinuity formed by hiring a writer who doesn’t know the lore of the game and doesn’t ensure that there’s no discontinuity in what she writes).

Though I am highly curious if she’s replacing someone, or if they are just expanding the team.

@Roybe: I highly doubt that a Narrative Designer would work with merchandising. Either she’ll be working on the main story, a backburner main story, open world dialogue, or a novel. But I’m guessing your comment of merchandising was a bit of a joke.

narwhalsbend.7059:

What happened to the old writers?

Trahearne ate them.

• Over fifteen years of experience crafting dynamic portfolio strategy, developing break-out IP and driving franchise growth for video games and television series.
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• Extensive contacts within the entertainment industry and exceptional ability to innovate, problem solve and tackle new challenges.

Specialties: Portfolio Strategy, Franchise Development, Video Games, Animation, Interactive, Creative Management, Team Assembly and Management
The Walt Disney ?
The Walt Disney ?
THIS IS NOT DISNEYLAND!!! im not happy with this

Disney has a much broader portfolio than the things that have the Disney logo on them directly (Marvel is owned by DIsney, for example) – just because she has a background there doesn’t mean we’re now going to be seeing princesses and anthropomorphic animals everywhere.

More than we already are, anyway.

A new Narrative director?
Sounds interesting, but still, too early to put out judgement yet.

If she is able to change the narrative from a focused to a world encompasing way, than I am more than happy.
The living story at the moment does not really create a living world and everything that changes it is the right way to go in my opinion.

Other than that. Good look and a thick skin, you will need it, because as with every MMO Forum, every flaw will be torn appart by the fans
But mostly. Enjoy the stay.

Hi all. Thanks for the welcome notes. I’m excited to be here.

To respond to a couple of your questions/comments:
• The old writers are still here and we’re all a team. This is a new position that ArenaNet created as part of their commitment to tell the best stories possible.
• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.
• Now that you mention it, I would probably buy a Charr backpack. But that isn’t my department or my focus. I’m here to make sure we have a strong overall story, that we find the best ways to tell it, and that Narrative works with Design, Art, Audio and the other disciplines here to create the best experience possible.

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

Need a strong male character. All the ones we currently have seem to be wusses….

He should be a tragic hero that is kittened off and full of conviction! Complex!

Sounds somewhat generic but I’m sure he could be molded into something great.

Anyway…Welcome and good luck. :P

Welcome Leah,
hope you enjoy your work. Hope you hop over to the Lore&Story forum as well and read up on some of what is written there.
The concerns and the praises of course.

Oh and I hope you get your red tag pretty soon.

Leah.1983:

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

Welcome Leah,

Plain and simple, stories with more complexity….most of us are adults here and we can handle some deep story telling, plot twists, elation, sadness and fear in a story.

MMOs have always been hit or miss on story telling and GW2 has been no different. The one thing BioWare got right with SWTOR was most of the story telling and how it affected your emotion with choices that had consequences short term of long term for your character. I would like to see the same thing for GW2 as well.

Current stories in GW2 have been at times great, other times not so great. In a way I felt like some were written for a kid. I would like to see more quality story telling become the norm across the board from this point on. During our personal story I feel it didn’t really start getting good for me till around the time I arrived in Orr…..It was a bit darker and mysterious and I enjoyed, but the end was somewhat lackluster, I expected it to be epic. I don’t expect the retelling of this story, but I’m just using this as an example of how story telling quality dips in and out throughout the arc. Quality should be a standard.

Recently with the new Living story I feel anet has almost grasped this concept, but I still feel it needs a push to become more alive. So, with that said I hope that is what you can bring to the table.

TLDR: Most MMO stories are boring, GW2 almost has it nailed but it still needs more cowbell.

Leah.1983:

Hi all. Thanks for the welcome notes. I’m excited to be here.

To respond to a couple of your questions/comments:
• The old writers are still here and we’re all a team. This is a new position that ArenaNet created as part of their commitment to tell the best stories possible.
• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.
• Now that you mention it, I would probably buy a Charr backpack. But that isn’t my department or my focus. I’m here to make sure we have a strong overall story, that we find the best ways to tell it, and that Narrative works with Design, Art, Audio and the other disciplines here to create the best experience possible.

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

Congratulations and I hope you enjoy your time on the forum before you get the red tag and become subject to endless rants and enormous lists of ways the game is forever ruined.

First off, I implore you to please read the plot of the original Guild Wars games. Though you may not have the time, actually playing the games would be even better. If there’s one thing we need, it’s more stories like GW1.

My second request is that you try to learn everything about the lore of the game. Lore is very important to those of us that played GW1 and I would hate to see it be even more inconsistent than it is now.

Leah.1983:

Hi all. Thanks for the welcome notes. I’m excited to be here.

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

First and foremost, welcome!

It is excellent to hear that Arenanet is stepping up their efforts to deliver a solid narrative, especially when it comes to bringing all the various storytelling elements together. I hope you enjoy your stay and do excellent work bringing the world to life.

We will likely be holding you to that last sentence, though. Fair warning.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

Welcome to the fight Lea

I wish you luck and a creative mind.

2 advices i can give you to help ANet turns this around:

1. “If you build it, he (us) will come”

2. Come up with a quick way to scrap current heroes, drunk yourself to oblivion with Guild Wars 1 lore and bring Destinys Edge to us. We need more significant dramatic and heroic content.

2. Bring Destinys Edge to us. Thank you.

:) Best of luck

Leah Hoyer.1983:

commitment to tell the best stories possible.

I’m sad to say that there’s a long way to go with how the living story is going.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

Can we have this as April’s Fools video?

Leah Hoyer.1983:

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

I could give you a huge list.

Most recent offender was the unnecessary changes to the personal story – removal of the greatest fear storyline and moving the very end (the climax of the story) to just before the final chapter.

The storytelling has been sub-par with far too many cases of stories being unfold offscreen. Take Season 2 Episode 2’s sudden mention of Mordremoth, or most of Season 1.

I really don’t have much issue with the characters – the only one I could really say has issues were Scarlet Briar – who felt like a generic Harley Quinn that was turned into Scarcrow who was turned into something entirely different – and Trahearne – who came into the personal story out of nowhere for non-sylvari characters.

The issue comes in the storytelling and the lore contradictions. So if you want to improve the story, I have one word of advice:

Learn and love the lore. All of it.

If you prevent contradictions, then the amount of hatred and complaints towards the story will decrease incredibly. Some of the greatest complaints of Season 1 was Scarlet’s rather confusing constantly-changing personality, the off-screen storytelling, the forced “players don’t know” to attempt mystery (it doesn’t), and the lore continuity errors.

There’s little to do to fix the problems and disdain that was raised due to story made, but hopefully you can help improve future story, which in time will lessen the at disdain.

If you can prevent any lore continuity errors, then you’ve made a huge step towards improvement. If you can prevent stories being told off-screen, then you’ve made a bigger step towards improvement.

I wouldn’t listen to Clerigo, as he just represents a portion of the community (not everyone dislikes the biconics). Just as some dislike the biconics (Braham, Rox, etc.) some hate Destiny’s Edge.

Also, belated, but welcome to the community. I’m Konig, a connoisseur of GW lore and stories. I look forward to seeing improvements, though you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not hopeful – there’s been far too many disappointments from ArenaNet this past two years.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

If you want some help in getting to know what the community knows of lore, just let me know. I have a reserve of old interviews (even as far back as 2004!), links to all the stories written and published, and even have access to the manuals and artbooks that contained well-hidden lore.

I hope you make a visit periodically to the lore forum, they’re quite deprived of dev posts. And of those that show, it’s sadly “sorry, in hindsight we could have done better, this is what we meant/why we did that!”

BTW, you guys hiring another writer?

So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

… So disapoint ;_;

narwhalsbend.7059:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BTW, you guys hiring another writer?

Konig4Loremaster 2014!

I thought we were backing Shriketalon . . .

You have my vote Konig. Anyway, what I’m hoping to see in further writing, is a lot less cases of npc’s holding the idiot ball. Throughout the Living Story (both season 1 and 2) we’ve seen several cases where the npc’s simply acted ignorant for plot convenience.

For example, we were warned way in advance that Scarlet planned to disrupt the festivities at the Queen’s Pavilion, yet there were no precautions taken. No extra guards, and definitely no air defense (despite everyone knowing that the Aetherblades were involved, and have airships). For a nation at war with dragons, it seems inconceivable that they wouldn’t have siege weapons to fend off aerial attacks.

The same happened with Scarlet’s attack on Lion’s Arch. We already knew she would attack LA, yet no precautions, no counter measures. No way to warn anyone.

And it also happened at the end of the most recent Living Story. It was already clear that Mordremoth was targeting locations of strategic importance (Fort Salma, Fort Concordia), and we knew he was targeting an important leader, and it was already clear that Mordremoth was some how tied to the Sylvari or the Dream. It was clear that the Pale Tree already knew about Mordremoth, yet kept it from everyone.

And so they decided to gather every single important faction leader in one place, at the Pale Tree. I immediately turned around and said to my traveling companion: "This would seem like the most stupid and illogical plan right now, to gather every important leader at the Pale Tree, who withheld important information from us.

It’s especially odd how the convenience of way points was ignored, even though way points were/are heavily involved in the plot. With the capability of instantly teleporting to any place on Tyria that has a way point, there would be no need to gather every leader in one place. And even then, there are safer places to gather, that are further away from Mordremoth.

Typical cases of idiot ball syndrome. Please none of that.

Welcome on board! Are you doing the dialogues for the expansion?

Leah Hoyer.1983:

I’m eager to hear what you think is working and what you think needs improvement, so let me know. I look forward to more chats.

My first suggestion would be to limit the scope of the Living Story. It’s trying to be a story about world politics, a story about an adventurers, a story about multiple enemies and allies and nations, and so on. It’s too much and this means all the details are omitted or are just wrong. The Dragon’s Reach pt1 was the worst of LS2 so far and it was because of the massive scope.

The other suggestion would be to look at the conversations involving the player character. It doesn’t feel like the player’s character, it feels like any other character in the game and a player just clicks through a lot of text that they would never choose to say.

Xillllix.3485:

Welcome on board! Are you doing the dialogues for the expansion?

LOL—nice try, but I don’t think you trick the new staff member.
A for effort though!

Welcome aboard Leah Hoyer!

I’d be curious to see stories where people are rebuilding cities and forts, as well as their splendor come back to life, bigger and better. Though that can wait until everything is mashed to a pulp and mostly inexistant

Setlements and cities tell stories too

…though I would like to see our characters be able to evolve through skin changes depending on what they chose to do in a story line and at variable degrees depending on how much they succeed or fail in a life changing mission of sorts…that could also heal to some degree on the long run.

Cheers to you and God Speed to make Guild Wars 2 the Best MMO man and woman has ever soon!

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

Welcome!

As a fellow writer, I can say the story in this game has a lot of potential. The lore behind it is solid for the most part, and there are plenty of fans who know it by heart.
Don’t listen to the most negative voices on the forum; as on any game forums there is plenty of hyperbole to be found on here.
What I can say for sure is that you have a host of good to great characters to work with in a vibrant world with plenty of backstory, and that the people you’ll be working with are great.
Thus far, game stories in general have not been able to reach the level we can find in film and literature, so there still is a lot of work to be done. Perhaps that should be a long-term goal?

I wish you good luck.

What’s with the controversy about Disney? Just because the company execs are a bunch of Dredge-holes, doesn’t mean the hard working writers and film creators at should be held to the same level.

Quite the contrary, the team which makes Disney films are quite amazing. Who could forget “Aladdin” and the “Lion King”? They are classics for a reason. Even their recent film, “Frozen” is pretty impressive.

Just as long as Logan and Rytlock don’t break out into a song… PLEASE, Leah… Save the musicals for Hobo-Tron and chickens…

Kain Francois.4328:

Quite the contrary, the team which makes Disney films are quite amazing. Who could forget “Aladdin” and the “Lion King”? They are classics for a reason. Even their recent film, “Frozen” is pretty impressive.

Lion King should be impressive – it was “Hamlet”. Heh. But there is an agreement of Disney not being . . . terrible. I mean, anymore.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward.

The red banner is strong with this one.

Keep the comments coming!

Well, if you absolutely insist. These are a bit rushed, since the thread caught me a bit unprepared, had to create them on the fly without editing. Thus, they lack silly cartoons for embellishment.

The three main concerns for the moment lie in the role of the player character and the resulting perspective, the way the story focuses almost exclusively on a small group of people at the detriment of the bigger picture, and the integration of gameplay mechanics and incremental improvements with the actual story content itself. I’ve omitted going into too many examples to avoid a ridiculously long list of potential characters, and I’ll hold off on the assemblage of short stories and campaign arcs. For now.

That said, hopefully these three points will help…

So, no singing Elder Dragons?

Can we at least get a Sons of Svanir recruiter breaking into a song and dance version of I’ll Make a Man Out of You?

Ahai, Leah!

First, let me join the others in welcoming you aboard. Unfortunately, you’re probably going to be fighting against a sea of pessimism at this point – however, while others may disagree, I’m inclined to think that the general outlines of the various storylines have been solid. The problems have mostly been in their execution and how the various parts have worked together with each other and with pre-existing information. It sounds like addressing that sort of thing is pretty much on your job description, so your arrival is itself a hopeful first step!

Second, on a lighter note, I concur with Konig regarding April Fools musicals. Maybe come up with some sort of weird magical effect that means people can only communicate in song. It’s cliché, but it’s April Fools. :P

More seriously, use of music has generally been among ArenaNet’s strong points. GW1 had excellent background music, and songs in GW2 such as Fear Not This Night and the Zephyrite Lament really serve to establish the characters of the Pale Tree and the Zephyrites in much the same way as Let It Go characterises Elsa in Frozen. If musical numbers are something you like, don’t be afraid to put them in appropriate places… or even, with sufficient lampshading, inappropriate ones. For instance, I could see Kasmeer composing a song about what the loss of her family and home meant to her and singing it at the person ultimately responsible when that person is cornered, while that person is shouting back ‘Why are you singing! STOP SINGING!’ – kind of a musical version of ‘Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’

Third, as Konig says: Assimilate the lore as much as you can, including the GW1 lore. There’s apparently a 400-page lore bible, which has probably only grown bigger since, so that’s going to be a daunting task if you weren’t already familiar with it. A lot of anger from the lore community has come about because of a feeling that the lore, particularly GW1 lore, is being treated as inconsequential – if you can turn that around, that’d be a massive improvement.

Fourth, as Mad Queen Malafide says – try to avoid ‘idiot ball’ style plots. S1 was full of them – the most glaring, of course, being the Captain’s Council stubbornly insisting that lightning wouldn’t strike in the same place twice (it certainly does, that’s the whole concept behind lightning rods). In general, in S1 it’s felt like the good guys were always reacting, never even attempting to seize the initiative. S2 seems to be improving in that respect, but it needs to be kept in mind.

Part of this is that while foreshadowing – such as the veiled Tower of Nightmares and the ‘Do Not Touch’ probes is nice for drumming up player interest in what’s coming, it needs to be handled properly. Tower of Nightmares was a good example – the hidden tower drew NPC as well as PC attention and there was a clear reason why it couldn’t be investigated further just now. The probes, however, I’d have to say were handled very poorly – due to poor timing (the Christmas break) they were around in their effectively invulnerable state for over a month IIRC, and despite one being literally on the Order of Whispers’ doorstep, there was no evidence that anyone was even attempting to investigate them. In fact, the lack of investigation, with the hints that Scarlet had a base in the Mists, made me think at first it was an effort by the Pact to locate Scarlet, and that the good guys were finally taking the initiative. Basically, if there’s something out in the world that’s expected to gather PC attention, it should be gaining the attention of the orders as well… unless the orders are responsible for it. In which case, odds are they’d tell the PC what they’re doing if asked anyway.

Fifth, and related to the above: One thing that I think really needs addressing is the feeling that the world is frozen in stasis whenever the LS isn’t focused on a particular part of the world. Now, obviously there’s a limit to what can be done in terms of actual map changes – but I think a lot can be done by reframing the situation when it’s referred to in the LS.

For instance, consider Queen Jennah at the Summit. She states that the centaurs are on Kryta’s “doorstep” – a line that can be interpreted as meaning that the situation is still just as bad as it was when the human PC first stepped out into Shaemoor, which is pretty depressing considering how many times some players have killed the Ulgoth. Now, consider if she instead said “The Seraph is busy dealing with centaur holdouts that remain even in Queensdale itself” – the Queensdale map as it currently stands remains correct, but the centaur events are reframed as an insurgency rather than the front line of an invasion that has left Nebo and Ascalon Settlement far behind enemy lines.

(5000chars)

As another example, she also mentions the troubles she’s having just forming a treaty with the charr – a treaty that is now still in negotiations after three years. That would have been a perfect opportunity to demonstrate some progress in the treaty – if instead she had said, say, “I only managed to get an agreement on a permanent border between Ebonhawke and charr territory last month, and only because I turned over all our knowledge of the Ascalonian royal swords” – we get a hint of progress at the negotiations as well as a tie-in to the previous episode. There’s lots of similar things happening elsewhere in the world that should be developing over time. Let them develop, and refer to them every so often in the LS so that we know that even if the spotlight is elsewhere, they’re not simply waiting for the spotlight to return to them.

Finally, one plea I’d make:

At the moment, it feels like as races, charr, asura, and sylvari get much more opportunities to be special than humans and norn. Charr get to be awesome with their technology, asura get to be awesome with their magitech, and sylvari have their resistance to dragon corruption, ability to breed and control specialised plants, and the Dream.

I’ll spare you the full rant for now, but it feels a lot like humans have suffered from overcompensation for the time they had the spotlight in GW1. We’ve seen them having cool things in the past – Stormcaller, the Ascalonian teleporters, the Ascalonian swords, God’s Vengeance in Factions, the Juggernauts, Siege Turtles, and so on. However, these are all in the past – human contribution nowadays seems to pretty much be in the form of a handful of impressive individuals and providing extra cannon fodder – nothing really that some other race couldn’t provide. They really need a solid niche – something concrete, not something indistinct like ‘resilience’ (which other races have, particularly the charr), ‘knowledge of the past’ (undermined by how many times that knowledge has been shown to be wrong, especially by the asura) or ‘bringing disparate groups together’ (as a race, the sylvari actually seem to be doing a better job at that, even if you don’t count Scarlet). It’s been implied a few times that one thing humans do have is that they approach magic differently to asura, in a more artistic rather than scientific manner, and this does allow them to do things with magic that asura find difficult to understand, particularly when it comes to making more ‘classical’ magical items such as magical horns and swords rather than magic-powered guns – but if this is true, it needs to be spotlighted. It’s also implied that humans might be the pioneers of lighter-than-air flight (the airships are described as being partly human technology but what part is human has never been defined, and it’s Kryta that has all the balloons) but again, if this is so, it needs more of a spotlight. It’s an unfortunate fact that the biggest achievement of humanity in recent times was taken away from them one update later by Scarlet, and then later proved to have been reverse-engineered from her work to begin with.

Another possibility is bringing back the gods in a limited fashion. Clearly, they can’t play the central role the did in GW1, but if introduced at a similar level to the Spirits of the Wild in terms of how much they influence the storyline, I think it’d work. Certainly, I don’t see how a future vision or revelation coming from an emissary of Lyssa or Kormir can be worse than them all coming from the Pale Tree.

The norn have a similar problem, albeit one where it’s less that they’ve lost what meant they provided a special contribution, and more that they didn’t have one in the first place. The best answer I can come up with here is increasing the importance of the Spirits of the Wild. At the moment, they play parts in the norn personal story, and right near the end of the Orr sequence, but otherwise they pretty much might not exist. If the idea of all forms of animals having a spirit was expanded on and if that wasn’t something that was unique to the Shiverpeaks, then I could see this being the norn schtick – that they are to animals as sylvari are to plants. Imagine if, at a critical moment in the fighting against Mordremoth, a norn shaman manages to invoke the Spirit of Ceratadon resulting in a significant portion of Mordremoth’s army ending up as chow for a herd of armoured saurus.

These are just a few ideas, but I think something that needs to happen is for the story and lore teams to come up with at least one thing that makes humans and norn special that other races don’t have (being the most tenacious doesn’t help when charr are tenacious too and they also get tanks; having legends of the past doesn’t help when there are asura dissing or outright debunking such ‘quaint superstitions’ every chance they get; and being the most heroic doesn’t help when every race has heroes) and then making a deliberate effort to showcase it. At the moment, it feels a bit like humans and norn are the redheaded stepchildren of GW2 – every so often they get some attention, but they don’t get any cool toys of their own.

All great points, I agree completely. Also, as a side note regarding the Asura. There have been a lot of Asura Ex-Machina’s lately. And when we use that word, what we mean is that the Asuran limitless magical capabilities are often used as a poor plot device. I would love to see more stories that don’t hinge upon some sort of contrived Asuran invention.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

Please, if you can (I obviously don’t know how much impact you have on the future story telling), try to bring back some “old” characters like Laranthir of the Wild and shift the focus away from the biconics.

You can find a whole thread about the previous problems of the Living Story here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/The-Biconics-cannot-carry-the-GW-Franchise/first

EDIT: This basically sums up all the problems I have with the LS.

It struck me that since most of my last posts were criticism (albeit constructive, I hope!) I didn’t go into some of the things the story team has been doing well, and I really should. Honey and vinegar and all that:

First, one thing I’ve been liking with Season 2 is that while S1 often felt like it was pushing its own story through at the expense of older stories, S2 feels like it’s combining pre-existing story elements with S2’s own narrative in a much more organic way. The bandits holding over a mining town for resources makes a lot of sense – although given the materials actually minable by PCs in the region, it’d have made more sense (and been more strategically important for both the bandits and Kryta) if it had been a mithril mine rather than copper. The Inquest, which has already been shown to have links with the bandits, moving in on the Zephyrites to steal their stuff and use the survivors as guinea pigs also fits in nicely with their modus operandi, and the friendly Maguuma centaurs are a nice touch that has the potential to become very important in later storylines. Where Season 1 sometimes felt like it was running roughshod over the Flame Legion, dredge, Nightmare Court, and krait storylines by pushing them into alliances, the appearance of pre-existing groups in Season 2 feels much more like a natural reaction of those groups to the circumstances.

Secondly, I think Season 2 has done a bit to re-establish some of the mystery of the world of Tyria. Where in S1 it became increasingly obvious that the answer to every question was ‘Scarlet did it’, in Season 2 we’re actually starting to see glimpses once again into the wonders of Tyria. There’s still a while to go I think before the feeling of wonder from GW1 or the opening months of GW2 can be restored, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Third, there’s the foreshadowing. While as I mentioned above foreshadowing needs to be coupled with some sense that the people who should be doing something about it are doing something about it, each of the episodes has ended with an interesting revelation and mystery – the Master of Peace’s mission that’s taken precedence over looking after his stranded people, the vision from Omadd’s device, Rytlock diving into the Mists, and finally the Pale Tree’s vision. These have, I think, done an excellent job of stirring up interest and speculation in what’s to come in the future. However, keep in mind that this could be a double-edged sword – great foreshadowing needs a great payoff to avoid disappointment, and arguably some of the issues people have with GW2 can be described as GW1 and prerelease information on GW2 foreshadowing things that GW2 has thus far failed to deliver on.

Another thing to keep in mind is the things that S2 appears in the minds of the players to be pushing towards which the writing team may have missed – for instance, the implication from GW:Beyond and Brisban Wildlands that the White Mantle proper may still be hiding out somewhere in the Maguuma. My gut feeling, although I’d love to be proven wrong, is that the focus is going to be on Mordremoth and that putting in the Mantle may be an unwanted distraction – but if they don’t make a direct appearance, see if you can at least put in some teasers (for instance, if the next part of Season 2 involves extending the map further, perhaps there could be a destroyed WM outpost somewhere.)

But to summarise, the most standout points that come to mind in S2 are:

1) A more organic mix of story elements both old (such as bandits and Inquest) and new (the Mordremoth threat).

2) The re-establishment of a feeling of wonder at the mysteries of Tyria.

@Mad Queen Malafide: Agreed. Part of the problem is that it feels like basically every problem that isn’t specific to a race is solved by an asura, even when it might make more sense for it to be solved by another race (for instance, part of the rant I held back on regards the asura interrupter devices being used in cleansing the temples in Orr rather than given human priests a chance to do it – and that just proved to be a start of a trend). At the very least, give the other races an opportunity to jump out of the figurative machine on occasion – I know asura are the most scientific race, but regardless of what they may claim they don’t have a monopoly on brainpower, and besides Tyria seems to me to be a world where the scientific method doesn’t always give the best answer.

Hi Leah,

Hope you’re having fun in the Guild Wars universe!

I suspect the “missing” personal story parts being reworked currently and added later on? As many have mentioned before, it is a mistake taking away those missions from the story both in context of those missions and the overall quantity of content.
It feels like thrown away capital.

Are you allowed to comment on this?

As far as the story goes, LS2 is an enormous improvement, more coherent and better paced within its’ story chapters

My biggest issue currently is the “2 weeks” format. The Living Story wants to deliver those great cliffhangers but they only make sense if the time to the next chapter is kept short enough in relation to the story.
Having the pale tree mortally wounded while nothing else happens over the course of months is a really bad idea. The time it took to organize the summit was more appropriate, compared to the pale tree now.
You could be more free with condensing or stretching the story where appropriate.

Mordy felt really threatening when it attacked several spots in the world at once, the build up with the vines was fantastic and created a very unique atmosphere I hadn’t experienced before in games.
Now it is just there?

What would be nice is identifying which chapters need what amount of time between them for the story to make sense. If you need more time to work on other releases, choose a different finale?

The story telling has been close to a TV series even though this makes little sense to me as the audience of a TV show doesn’t have the option to move around in that universe.

You also don’t need to include the entire framework of the story in the release. Instead of telling us that we were exploring a new map and suddenly caves opened up and we can descend to fight mordy, you could just release the map without anything in it and after 3-4 days have the map update to include those entrances.

I got the impression that I was following somebody who came before me and already explored everything for me, set up waypoints and the necessary amenities such as merchants.

I’ve had the idea of waypoints not yet being built and since they also function as progression markers, you could use them more like that. It makes exploring a bit more tedious but also more progressive and rewarding after those burdens have been taken away. I think this would be very nice for the beginning of the chapters, less so for the “farm status” latter part.

have a good one

Welcome Leah. I think you’ll find in the Guild Wars community (both the first game and the second) a passionate audience of fans who care a great deal about the world our adventures take place in. A big part of that world is always going to be characters, but this is also an MMO and so much of the story of the game is not simply character arcs and growth, but the world itself, it’s factions, races, environments and history.

I read the interview and I’m looking forward to how an expansion of their story team benefits GW2. One of the things that caught my eye was the heavy focus put on characters. When I think of Guild Wars and the events of Ascalon, I don’t think of Adelbern, Rurik, Gwen or Devona, I think of the time I spent wandering through Regent Valley, taking in the scenery, observing the NPCs and absorbing the lore of the world. I think of the gentle soundtrack, the leaves falling from the trees and the idyllic landscape. Then I think of the searing and having all that torn away and destroyed followed by a years long journey in game to get some kind of closure (because we never win that war). To me the story wasn’t about Adelbern’s fall (he wasn’t the true heir but he earned his spot, so seeing him fall is meaningful) or Rurik’s rise to leadership and tragic end, it’s not about Devona following in her father’s footsteps as one of Ascalon’s Chosen and her growth through Factions and Nightfall, it’s not even about Gwen becoming a prisoner of war as a child, growing up with that pain and trying to piece together a life in the rubble.

Guild Wars has always had good characters and some of them (like Gwen) were truly iconic characters (as a child she was iconic of the innocence of Pre-Searing Ascalon, as an adult raised as a prisoner of the charr and now fighting against them, she was iconic of the battle-torn landscapes of Ascalon and the reislience of its people, none of the biconics are truly iconic), but the story is about the world of Tyria and the adventures of the players. NPC stories were important but the narrative of an MMO is so much bigger than that. I feel like Living Story loses site of that at times. In an effort to constantly include a core cast, other characters are forgotten or appear to be stupid and the world doesn’t feel like a world, it feels like a sitcom.

@draxynic I’m tired of the human filled plots. Two of the five biconics are human, Belinda was human, Jennah has been the most prominent racial leader despite the Pale Tree being the most relevant to both Mordremoth and Scarlet, Anise got a lot of screen time last year and this year, the Master of Peace is human and the Zephyrites are almost exclusively human (their survivors make this increasingly so) and Ellen Kiel was the primary NPC protagonist for a long time. I agree humans as a race seem less impressive than the other major races (and I do like the idea of emphasising human’s magical history), but I am so over human NPCs as the status quo for Living Story. We are dealing with a sylvari heavy plot atm (Mordremoth, Soundless, attack on the Pale Tree) and we literally don’t have a single major sylvari protagonist with a voiced line in the first half of the season.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

• The old writers are still here and we’re all a team.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

I’m not expecting any significant, lore and story redeeming improvements while those responsible for the current, more than underwhelming state of the Guild Wars universe are still in power.

Anyways, the above paragraph was in no way directed at you, Leah. I also offer you my greetings, and hope you will still have an enjoyable and constructive time at the company.

Since I forgot to post it earlier…

The customary warmhearted (and slightly sinister) welcome from the entire community to the new dev!

Leah Hoyer.1983:

consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal

/me jumps up and cheers

Morsus.5106:

Leah Hoyer.1983:

consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal

/me jumps up and cheers

Careful, dear neighbor, a goal is something which may not be attained despite any amount of heroic efforts.

Best of luck to doing it, though, especially in the medium we have here. It’s always difficult to pull off nuance over the first two. Complexity is easy (Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear), consistency is easy (Zelda, Halo). Nuance? Tougher, because it is much easier for it to go unnoticed.

Shiren.9532:

@draxynic I’m tired of the human filled plots. Two of the five biconics are human, Belinda was human, Jennah has been the most prominent racial leader despite the Pale Tree being the most relevant to both Mordremoth and Scarlet, Anise got a lot of screen time last year and this year, the Master of Peace is human and the Zephyrites are almost exclusively human (their survivors make this increasingly so) and Ellen Kiel was the primary NPC protagonist for a long time. I agree humans as a race seem less impressive than the other major races (and I do like the idea of emphasising human’s magical history), but I am so over human NPCs as the status quo for Living Story. We are dealing with a sylvari heavy plot atm (Mordremoth, Soundless, attack on the Pale Tree) and we literally don’t have a single major sylvari protagonist with a voiced line in the first half of the season.

Sure, I’d be happy to propose a trade – more important NPCs that aren’t humans (sylvari and asura are probably pushing beyond their fair share as well, compared to charr and norn) in exchange for more importance for humans (and norn) as a race rather than just a couple of special individuals the story is focusing on. Doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, after all.

Leah Hoyer.1983:

Hi all. Thanks for the welcome notes. I’m excited to be here.

To respond to a couple of your questions/comments:
• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

^^ This is disappointing…

I was very much looking forwards to a duet between Kralkatorrik and Primordius full of jubilant destruction as they revealed their plans to team up in order to defeat the heroes.

’Tis but a shame that it is not an option.

Welcome Leah! I hope you have fun and great success at Anet.

For advice: watch out for cheesy tropes and you should do OK.

Especially watch out for redshirts and Sophie’s choice situations.

Welcome Leah, and good luck with your new position.

If I may, I’d suggest you check the history of Shriketalon.1937’s posts and read everything he’s ever written on the forums. I’m a huge fan of his ideas, as are many others on these forums.

Welcome Leah!

:)

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Thank you for all the comments and thoughts, everyone. I really appreciate the warm welcome and your feedback on what you’d like to see. I’ll also say that many of your comments mirror discussions that we’re already having here.

It’s about how to make Trahearne more popular with the non-sylvari demographic isn’kitten I told them, it’s not going to work.

Cat ears do not belong on a sylvari.

Oh good maybe you will finally be bold enough to kill trahearne off.