Guild Wars 2

I wish Anet would be more focused in their storytelling. Right now it seems like they’re just throwing in any idea they can think of to see if it sticks. That means that no single plotline is getting the attention it deserves, and what should be important turning point moments quickly become irrelevant or fall by the wayside when the plot suddenly whiplashes in a totally different direction. Rather than half a dozen false starts and side stories, I’d rather see a simpler but more solid narrative arc with a build up leading to a resolution.

It seems they’re trying to make it all payoff with no breaks from the action – but without the leadup that’s merited to make it meaningful, the payoffs don’t count for as much.

I also think Anet needs to remember that even though they know in advance how their story all fits together, the audience does not, and it’s not like episodic television where you only have to wait a week between installments with a long hiatus coming only at the end of a season. There are months between every episode of living story, so with so many plot threads left in the air at any given moment, it can be a very long time before an idea is revisited, and by that point it’s hard to remember or care what’s going on.

What it all boils down to for me with the plot is that I would rather see Anet do less but do it better rather than do more but make it all so superficial. I think the pendulum has shifted way too far toward quantity of ideas over quality of ideas, and it would be easier for me to stay engaged if it could swing back a bit.

I finished the fight with some effort, but good grief am I motion sick right now from the spinning room!

I also play ESO, which is very phased – and there are positives and negatives of that too. On the plus side, you will only very rarely see even ambient content that doesn’t reflect your current progress in the world, and it’s pretty cool that the game world actually appears to “respond” to your choices. On the minus side, though, it can make it very hard to group up because to work together you have to match up both quest and phase, and it can be hard to meet up with friends who have done more or less in the story than you have. If GW2 fully phased everything (if that would even be possible,) it would solve some problems but cause other ones, so it would just be a trade-off rather than a clear benefit to the game.

That said, I wish Anet would do some updating of the world to reflect how much time has passed since the game started, things like the Zhaitan areas that refer to stories most players completed years ago. I think new players expect to do some catching up, and it would be neat if the world wasn’t completely static. Players should feel like our actions have an impact.

I think this sort of mechanic tends to work better in single player RPGs than MMOs.

If you want your character to be married, just pick an NPC and pretend the character is married to them.

coso.9173:

i dont get why so many people logged out rught after dronking the elixir. i saw it had a timer on it and just to be safe I did the next part that took 10 mins at most. you guys chose the worst moment to log out.

Making the elixir is a story step that shows as completed when you use it. A pretty logical way to time your gameplay when you’re getting to the end of your available time is to log out after you finish the story step you’ve been working on. If you don’t happen to notice the timer (I didn’t) it’s a natural stopping point because you’ve just completed a “mission” for the story and can in theory pick back up with the next goal the next time you play.

It’s not that making the elixir is super complicated or takes a huge amount of time, which it isn’t and doesn’t.

It’s that having to do busy work before I can start having fun makes me want to do something else where I can start having fun right away.

This frankly just isn’t an enjoyable mechanic, nor is it a necessary one – I’m not learning to play better or facing a challenge, I’m just mindlessly repeating something I know how to do because the thing I actually want to be doing is behind a completely arbitrary gate.

I’m not rage quitting the game or anything. I’m still going to be playing. I simply don’t have a huge amount of leisure time, and if something isn’t fun, I’m going to be allocating that leisure time more toward something else.

My biggest wishes right now are:

1.) A more robust LFG tool that makes putting together PUGs less of chore.

2.) More ability to customize the home instance along the lines of the guild halls.

My routine the past few days has been:

“I should really try to make progress on the living story chapter.”

((looks at Guild Wars launcher))

“I’m going to have to run around making another elixir if I want to do that.”

((opens Final Fantasy launcher instead))

My character would have named her Giggles, so it’s probably best that she chose her own name.

Okay, here’s another issue with this: My friend wants to hop on and do the story instance with me, but she finished it already and she would have to spend ~15-20 minutes repeating content to be able to group up with me because her elixir wore off.

Due to this mechanic I am playing solo even though I have someone of appropriate level who would otherwise group up with me. That’s… kind of not cool for an MMO.

Sure, I’d pre-order again. HoT wasn’t perfect and there were some aspects I didn’t care for, but it was enjoyable and to me it was well worth it overall. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the next one too.

If I’m going to buy it immediately anyway – which I would – I may as well take advantage of whatever bonuses come with the pre-order.

I don’t necessarily think adding raids was a bad idea, but I do think it was a bad idea to place so much focus on the raid for so long. I think it would be better to alternate raid releases with content that’s more accessible to the general community of players so people who aren’t interested in raiding don’t feel bored or left out.

Given the amount of time between story releases, I think ending on a total cliffhanger would be pretty unsatisfying because you’d feel like you were never getting a full storyline. It’s not like you can tune in next week to find out what happens. If you’re waiting six months, you tend to lose the sense of urgency anyway, cliffhanger or not.

What I’d rather see is a story arc with a solid end, but that leaves a few important unanswered questions to carry the momentum into the next release. I think that would be more satisfying and make the season a more complete experience than just cutting off in the middle of the action to be continued months later.

Their rate of employee turnover seems pretty normal to me.

Best of luck to Jeff in his future endeavors!

Story continuation is in the “long-term” category? So we have to wait till at least March to find out what happens next? That’s a bummer for me.

The new Shatterer and gliding in Central Tyria sound fun, and Lunar New Year is always a good time.

Still, I can’t help but be disappointed that LS3 is still so far off.

castlemanic.3198:

It’s been confirmed that interspecies romance doesn’t even exist, let alone such interactions between different races.

To me, having no romances between species at all would just be too completely unrealistic. The idea that multiple sentient and intellectually equal races are mingling socially and forming close friendship and companion bonds, but somehow not one single person ever has the desire to take that bond from platonic to romantic… people just don’t work that way. Regardless of how strong the cultural taboos are, there are always going to be a few outliers who will have those feelings and act on them.

Not being able to reproduce makes sense because the Tyrian races are so physically and genetically different, but having no romances at all crosses too far over my suspension of disbelief for me to accept, because even in a fantasy realm people should ultimately act like people.

I do but not exclusively. I don’t always feel like doing the same few maps, so I alternate HoT content with other things.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I actually disagree. As someone who rarely knows what’s going on, I would say that’s exactly what you should have, as long as it’s common. The best short hands will become the standard for the event, and so everyone will end up learning them anyway.

That completely defeats the purpose of an open world dynamic event, though. (As opposed to a dungeon or raid.) Yes, some people will want to try it over and over to figure out how to do it “right,” but some will only want to try it once or will see an event pop up in their bar and go give it a try… and all of those are equally valid ways to get involved. Participation in an open world event should be accessible to everyone on the map with some basic instruction from the commander(s), not limited to those who are willing to learn all the event-specific jargon, or else the whole point is lost.

Tigaseye.2047:

Kulvar.1239:

People will complain that harder mode loot more…
Or harder mode will be useless because maps will be empty because too much people are in easy braindead mode watching netflix while autoattacking.

The problem is that, while most people enjoy a challenge from time to time, most people can’t (and don’t want to) keep that level of concentration up for hours on end.

So, games have to choose to either make people work harder, for a shorter time, for lots of loot; or work easy, for a longer time, for less loot.

Or, ideally, a combination of the two – so, people can choose, according to their ability/mood at the time.

You can’t expect people to suddenly have to work really hard, for hours on end, especially for next-to-nothing.

Most people just won’t do it.

I agree. I also think there’s more middle ground than just extreme challenge or wanting to be able to play in your sleep.

For example, when I come home tired from work I like to play the game to blow off steam. I’m not multitasking or just hitting 1 over and over, but at that point I also don’t necessarily want something that requires a lot of coordination between players or twitchy alertness from me. An extended difficult meta-event is probably not going to happen for me right then, not because I want everything in the game to be faceroll easy but because at that moment I just don’t have the energy to do something hard or the time to get involved in something that will take an hour and a half to finish. On a day off, though, I would be happy to tackle the harder stuff.

It’s good for the game to have varying activities and difficulty levels – not only do different players want different things, but the same player may want something different depending on what’s going on at the time.

MeNDoX.8031:

Maybe at that time it has some sense, but right now, they should just unlock all the chapters so new players and old ones that don’t have them, can play that important part of the story, story that, is like you said, part of the story of this expansion, expansion that is a FAST conclusion of a story that was in development through this years (still waiting to be able to play season 1). I mean, I know they have to make money, but, charge for play the story? Help us with this Arenanet please.

I don’t see the issue with Anet charging for LS2. It’s additional content that is entirely optional. If you don’t want to or can’t buy it, you’re free to read a summary or watch a Let’s Play. If you want to go through it yourself, why shouldn’t Anet receive compensation for their work? There was an opportunity for players to unlock it for free, but if a player missed that opportunity for whatever reason, that doesn’t mean Anet has to give it away for free forever. I think being able to unlock it for gems is a pretty reasonable compromise actually… again, it’s not required and you don’t have to buy it.

Arius.7031:

That death was completely and utterly unnecessary for the story. Completely.

It had a story impact, though. Judging by the community reaction, the death seems to have packed an emotional punch for a lot of people. For many it made the victory bittersweet, which I think was intentional.

I would like for our characters to have an epilogue where we get to honor him in-game, along with Eir and all the Pact soldiers who were killed fighting Mordremoth.

Kal Spiro.9745:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

The current spam system does a repetitive check… so if you link more then 3 things in a row, you get surpressed… even linking waypoints or POIs that people need to go to does this. anything repeated more then 3 times within 5 minutes gets this treatment. It makes it hard to organize mapwide events when you cant speak to the public to issue quick, general orders or locations… It should be changed.

Or you could just learn how to short hand it, like most good commanders should.

But that can cut out new players or players who are trying the event for the first time – you shouldn’t have to be able to decipher a commander’s shorthand to participate meaningfully in a large public event. Those events are supposed to be for everyone, not just players who are already clued in on what they’re supposed to do and understand the code.

I don’t regret pre-purchasing it at all. It’s been a lot of fun so far. It’s not perfect and I think that some of the criticism is fair, but overall I’m enjoying it and it was money well spent.

I have no issue with characters being killed off if that fate best serves the story. A writer needs to be able to “slaughter their darlings” as necessary and should not hold back from making the hard decisions the plot requires.

That said, I don’t think death should be the default way of removing a character from the spotlight; death becomes cheap if it’s just used as a way to clear the stage. It’s fine for a character to just fade into the background, go off on a different mission, or retire if their death doesn’t advance the overall storyline.

Basically, I don’t think the writers should be afraid to kill off characters, but I also don’t think they should fall into the lazy trap of killing them just to avoid having to keep track of what they’re up to when they aren’t the focus.

I guess it is bugged for me, then, because I’ve never had Destiny’s Edge leave their instances. I’ve attached a screenshot for confirmation.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Destiny’s Edge home instances are coded to react to your character’s individual progress in the personal story.

Mine didn’t change in response to my personal story and I’ve completed everything. They’re the same as when I started the game.

This is a really good idea! It would definitely help keep things organized and reduce frustration.

Farzo.8410:

People who tries to play an MMO as a single player RPG are the ones who got him killed.

They just don’t understand how crappy the lore will become when writers have to cater to player characters.

No, the writers were the ones who made that choice, not the players.

Giving customer feedback some honest consideration is a good thing for any entertainment creator to do, but ultimately the developers are responsible for their own decisions, and if they do start making decisions that are detrimental to the game, they can’t blame their mistakes on the fact that their customers dared to voice their opinion about what kind of media they want to consume.

I personally did not want Trahearne to die, but let’s keep some perspective here: the writers are in control of the storyline, and ultimately they decided his death would serve the story. Judging by the amount of emotion in response, it seems they were right.

MyriadStars.5679:

Joining Amazon seems to suggest that some key persons really needed a way out of Anet in a hurry.

I would have to disagree with that. Those Amazon jobs are highly sought after and competitive, and are generally well-compensated. It’s not like they left to go wait tables or something; they left for what is by industry standards a prime job that doesn’t come around every day. If they didn’t jump on that type of offer, they might never get the opportunity again.

I hope Mordemoth is really dead. I liked it as a villain and enjoyed the storyline, but it came to an end. I think having a “Nope, gotcha!” about the progress we made would be kind of frustrating, and would call into question anything our characters achieved because we would know the writers might casually undo it at some later point.

I also don’t want to endlessly fight the same elder dragon. I’d rather move on to new opponents and new stories. Mordremoth got basically two seasons of living story and an expansion. As I said, I enjoyed all of it… but at this point I’m ready to move on to another story.

Runiir.6425:

This would mean if we became the pact leader our story would stop being about fighting and would become all about being in a board room moving pieces on a map and hoping the soldiers on the front lines are winning. The tacticians are the head leaders, the absolute leaders, and they never get to be in the thick of it again unless things go badly.

I completely agree with this… but the problem is that the game did not do a good job of actually showing that. Even after becoming Pact leader, Trahearne tagged along on almost every mission and seemed to have endless time to chat with the Commander about what was going on in his life. The writers didn’t actually show that he was busy or let us see his role holding him back from being boots on the ground whenever he felt like it. He would comment on it occasionally, but what we actually saw didn’t bear out what he was saying.

It’s what I was getting at in my previous post – I think the leadership of the Pact should have been more in the background like it was with the Orders rather than front and center for the whole last section of the game.

I don’t see any major difference between my character firing an arrow or firing a canon – either way, the weapon was just the weapon, and the character had the intent and used it.

battledrone.8315:

so, they lost some important persons..but still, you claim, that it isnt a problem?
that would only be true, if they magically conjured some new workers , with the exact same skills, but for a smaller wage

Look, no one is irreplaceable in a company. It sounds harsh to say, but that’s just reality. Yes, having key employees leave is a loss, but having new employees coming in with fresh ideas and skills can also be a gain.

Most people aren’t going to stay with the same company for their whole career. Companies adapt. Having employees move on to new challenges is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is having new blood coming in and seeing the project with new eyes… in fact, it’s a lot better than having employees stick around past the point of caring just to hold onto a job.

Divine Flavor.2016:

I dunno, it sounds like the two guys who left for Amazon got recruited out, and people in general start looking for new challenges after 3-5 years. They were working on GW2 for about what 5 years before release? It’s been 3 years since then? I think a certain level of turn-over is to be expected, even in a healthy company. Not saying I disagree, but I don’t see the sky falling, either.

Yeah, this strikes me as a fairly normal employee turnover rate. People leave jobs for all kinds of professional and personal reasons that have nothing to do with the health of the company. Three or four people leaving for other opportunities over the course of a year really isn’t shocking.

I’ve never been especially fond of Trahearne, but I wasn’t hoping for him to die. I thought a nice happy retirement in Orr would be an appropriate fate.

That said, I felt his death served the story well, and was a good emotional punch.

Overall I don’t actually think the issue with Trahearne was that he was leader and your character was not – it was that that portion of the game became so focused on how the Pact was being led, and you were not the one doing that.

No one complains about not being the leader of your Order even though you’re much farther down the hierarchy during that story section… because the main focus of that section is about a couple of footsoldiers out having adventures, and the people in charge are just in the background.

During the Pact storyline, though, the leader was front and center and got shoehorned into every mission, so it felt more like you were being usurped – not because of your rank compared to his, but because the focus shifted onto his issues, and because how the organization was being led was never allowed to fade naturally into the background of the player character’s story but was always kept prominent. For me, Trahearne was not written strongly enough to carry that.

I’m fine with my character being a footsoldier instead of a leader… as long as the game is about footsoldiers instead of about leaders.

I have not seen this myself to confirm, but was told by other players it’s Trahearne if you don’t have an Order partner.

Please for the love of all that is good, do this! It’s so frustrating to lose a huge amount of progress due to a few second glitch.

We need this for story missions, too. Especially for the long ones, it can be really frustrating to have to start completely over due to a net blip. There used to be a grace period for missions in GW1, and I really think we need that back.

I would like to see Bubbles get more buildup before we fight it so it won’t seem like it came out of nowhere while long-term threats continually get overlooked. I’d like to see at least one more established dragon be the next target while we learn some sea dragon lore.

Personally I’m hoping for Jormag.

Shuzsie.9263:

Really disappointed that your making things easier because of the whinging few who want things easy. Whole idea of Hot was to make things hard for me u have spoilt the new content and Im not the only one that thinks so. Really bad move.

Itzel 4 was never difficult... you got it by doing the same basic activities that got you to, say, Itzel 1, but for longer to hit a higher XP bar. It was just tedious for people who wanted to progress in the story without being interrupted by such a large time sink. It did not increase the level of gameplay challenge; the gate is just there for pacing, and Anet realized that it actually made the pacing too slow.

If you want to get your Itzel to Level 4, nothing is stopping you. You can level it exactly the same way you could before the change. All Anet is doing is recognizing that the pace of the plot ground to a halt for too long because of making it a story requirement, and so for the story you can proceed without it. It’s not like Itzel 4 was removed from the game or something; you can work on it whenever you want to.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Thank you both for your replies. I shall try again today at some point. You both must be more skilled than me lol

It took me a bunch of tries to get it right, if that makes you feel any better.

I used a combination of running around the pustules and jumping over them with the #3 skill when they were clustered close together.

eldrin.6471:

They force me to grind 5mill xp then have a little meeting and come back and laugh at the players dum enough to do it.

I’m sure it’s frustrating to have the requirement removed after you’ve already completed it, but they’re not doing this for their own fun – they’re doing it because something in their game isn’t working well for players and they’ve decided it needs to be adjusted.

They can’t go back in time and change the past, but it doesn’t make sense not to fix issues that arise just because some people have already pushed through them.

One of the risks of being among the earliest players of any game is you might not benefit from changes that are made as the result of player feedback, that’s just a fact of life and a risk we take.

I’m not getting burned out. I’ve had several RL commitments going on this weekend, so I haven’t had large chunks of solid playing time to burn out on.

My suggestion would be to take breaks. Not saying this in a judgy way (you could even take a break with another game) but when it starts to feel like work, it’s probably time to walk away and do something else for awhile.

Personally I don’t mind having some gating, I just think some of the XP walls are set a bit too high, especially in situations where the gates limit which content you can do to earn the XP you need to progress.

Thanathos.2063:

It kinda confuses me, since I unlocked the first masteries in gliding and Itzel while exploring the starter area of Verdant Brink and doing the first 2-3 story missions with two of my toons.
I’ve got 4 masteries now and I haven’t even seen half of the events here…

(I’m not sarcastic or anything, I’m really wondering how it comes that so many seem to need grinding mobs/events)

It was a Level 4 mastery that was eventually required. That’s significantly more effort than a Level 1, which yes you can just get easily by exploring.

That said, the requirement is being removed as of tomorrow.

Thank you! This will definitely improve the story pacing.

I don’t really get the whole refund thing unless the product won’t run or is defective. Buying a game or expansion is always a risk that you might not like it. I think some of the negative feedback is fair, but I guess I’m not seeing where that entitles people to their money back – you paid for an expansion, and you got one.

I would say a solid 8 so far – very good and I’m enjoying it, but there are a few minor frustrations.