Guild Wars 2

Kurrilino.2706:

So the we reached a peak of anger and frustration here at the forum.
So suddenly a “mysterious” blogger wakes up and decides… “oh yes, a good day to show up at A-Net”.
Of course he gets invited to a studio tour and sees all these “magical” things going on and all the Jazz.
We don’t have to mention that he can’t tell what he saw or what is important.
But he is allowed to tell that everyone is incredible busy and super stuff is going on…………….

As a “mysterious” blogger who recently got invited to take a studio tour while on vacation in Seattle, I would like to clarify that if I could just wake up and decide to go to Seattle whenever I liked, I’d be there right now. It’s 80 degrees where I am; please don’t tempt me to liquidate all my worldly possessions and hop on a plane.

The only reason I brought it up is that I think some people tend to inject a little too much “mystery” into how things work at ArenaNet, and it might help cooler heads prevail to know that they’re people doing their jobs. There isn’t some conspiracy to keep fans from understanding how things are going there and when they say they have hundreds of employees you can go ahead and take that at face value, because it’s true. Their office has several floors and those are full of people working on the game. I didn’t see any janitors, although maybe I was just in the wrong place.

Astralporing.1957:

Gaile Gray.6029:

That’s not in the cards.

I’m very sorry to hear that. I really am. Especially since it means that the whole “communication improvement” initiative is useless and was never meant to actually improve anything.

Oh well, i shouldn’t have had my hopes up that maybe something will change. Next time i will know better.

That’s taking what she said out of context, attaching your own meaning to it, and basically coming to the conclusion that because ArenaNet can’t “open the floodgates” and tell us everything that any attempts to improve communication must be worthless. In the very next sentence of her post she said that she would try to see what more can be done, but what’s off the table is a total reversal of the policy they have in place now. There is a wide field of potential improvement between there and what we currently have.

Torsailr.8456:

If that is the intent, then from what I’ve observed it has failed miserably. A roadmap shows what a company is/will be working on and planned release dates for the foreseeable future (typically a few years). I have seen nothing in the CDI to indicate that you will be working on the topic of the CDI and Chris has actually posted several times that the CDI is not a promise of things to come and isn’t an indication that the devs are even going to work on it. And, of course, absolutely no mention of a production period or release date.

The CDI is just a large brainstorming session by the players that the devs occasionally ask a question about. People don’t participate because they feel it’s useless. Why should we put the effort into outlining a feature if the devs aren’t going to work on it? (I know things do come out of CDIs but this is the feeling people have about them.) The CDI is a lot of work for something you won’t commit to.

The CDI is probably as close as we the players can get to the process by which ArenaNet itself comes up with ideas for the game. It allows people to not only provide suggestions, but to work with the developers to try to bring those ideas from a “It would be cool if…” state to one in which a proposal can be made to actually try to bring them into the game. They don’t promise that these things will make it in because it’s a preliminary step and untested. But a concept that has had developer feedback and input and discussion in order to direct the way it could fit with the game has a better chance than forum threads filled with “please add X” and that makes them immensely valuable.

I’d like to have more short-term information too, if only because we’ve seen several instances where something big and controversial was both announced and released within a period of a week or so and the upheaval might have been easier to contain with more advance warning and more room for discussion. But on the other hand, a lot of the trouble with something like the tutorial overhaul was only resolved when people were able to actually get in game and play it.

There’s also sort of a weird space where ArenaNet is not only not giving advance information, but also remaining neutral on whether or not players should be looking forward to big, exciting things in the future. This is understandable because players are as critical of “hype” as they are anything else; when the blog post came out saying that the end of season two would be big and to be sure not to miss it, the overall response I saw was “Meh, it’s just hype, no point in trusting it” even though ANet blew up a major city at the end of season one and that whole plotline was pretty exciting and well-received. But when ArenaNet avoids teasing or dropping hints, it leads to unsatisfying interviews and gives players the impression that they’re not working on anything (since a lot of other studios are open-handed with the wink-nudge comments when something big is on the design table).

It’s probably not a great position to be in, and it’s not really fun or exciting from the perspective of a fan, but I can see why the policy is there because ArenaNet tried making roadmaps, they tried giving ballpark release dates, they tried updating us when stuff wasn’t going to be coming around when they expected it would be (i.e. precursor crafting), and from what I’ve seen players overwhelmingly responded to that with, “You don’t get to make excuses, you should have had the content out the door when you said you would.” They’ve even told us they’re working on big projects apart from the living world several times—which conceivably might be taking resources that would otherwise go to stuff further down the priority list—and we go, “Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it” (I’m guilty of doing this myself).

The most we’re likely to get is insight from the developers on what they feel the game could use and what they feel is important on a personal level, and the CDI threads have quite a bit of that kind of commentary.

Johasthan.1327:

Anet must keep in mind that, after all, everyone who bought town clothes by gems never ever wanted it for combat, so there is no real need of give new features to this items. Don’t get me wrong, it would be awesome if this clothes could be used also in combat, but not if that destroys the original intention of this kind of item.

It’s not true that “everyone” who bought town clothes never wanted to have them in combat. I’ve been hoping for the ability to wear town clothes in combat for a very long time. I bought several sets under their non-combat functionality because I liked the skins a great deal, but I always considered it something of a waste of armor art which would have been very desirable for a constant look on a character, and admittedly bought them with the hope that they’d someday be useable in combat.

If the changes go through as planned, I’ll still be happier about it than if ArenaNet hadn’t decided to make them combat-capable at all. However, this is ideally what I’d like to see happen:

—“Outfits” would become a way to implement universal body armor without impacting PvP, since they would use a separate paper doll that could be disallowed if necessary in sPvP and WvW.

—Said paper doll would work exactly the same as town clothes do now, with the ability to mix and match on items that currently contain separate parts. Outfits which are already all-or-nothing, like the Bloody Prince set, would remain so.

—Head slot items that are sold separately would unlock a version for regular armor and for outfits.

What this would accomplish:

—People would still be able to mix-and-match town clothes sets.

—It would add immense value to items sold as outfits (particularly head slot items and mask skins), as they would instantly become desirable as universal costumes.

—It would provide a great opportunity to sell one-off armor designs which are not “themed” to any particular profession and don’t correspond to a specific armor set. Someone on the team comes up with a great single piece like the hoodie, but it doesn’t really fit as an armor skin? Gem store!

The only downside I can see to this is if there’s a technical limitation in what would basically just be preventing the current town clothes paper doll from removing player skills and reverting to armor in combat. I’m not going to assume that this isn’t the case, but if it’s not, I think this has exciting possibilities for armor customization in PvE. I’d be willing to pay for extra outfit pages to swap as I liked, or pages that would allow me to save and swap to more than one armor set, or pages that would let me wear different armor weight appearances in PvE…like, I’d be willing to pay a lot.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

So in the video I saw the dev wearing the seer’s top. Which is a skin unavailable in PvE. Is that just because the dev has it unlocked or will there be a way to get these skins now? If it’s just because the dev has it unlocked then the video will be there taunting us forever. “You can get any look you want now! Except this one.”

PvE and PvP skins will no longer be separate. That skin may only be earnable in PvP still—I’m not sure—but if you have it you can wear it in PvE.

Vincent Von Demetri.1450:

displacedTitan.6897:

Vincent Von Demetri.1450:

Shadow Blade.1324:

There was a time when the dye system was very different and at that time dye unlocks were account based, but we have since changed the dyes system and we really feel that character based is the right way to go and the system we have now is the best one for the game.

Customized dye should be something that denotes your characters progress, like better looking, more elaborate gear. As you spend more time on your character, they grow and gain access to more customization options. If we make dyes account based, this progression will only happen on one character. We wanted character customization to remain tied to the character but we felt that one-time-use dyes discouraged players from customizing as often as they would like, that is how we arrived at the current system.

There are 400 dyes in the game, we do not think of dyes as something that a character should unlock all of, it is not meant to be a collection feature. Each character should have a unique palette and we have made enough colors to make this possible. Dyes come from world drops, rewards, crafting, the Mystic Forge, and the Gem Store and we expect that over the life of a character you will collect a lot of them.

you may have deleted the posts but the internet always has copies

why are you removing character progression? (again) and what you described as the best dye system for the game?

people literally begged you to keep the account bound system when you announced character bound, the time to listen to that feedback was then, during beta before the game launched you told them that character bound was part of your vision for the game, where is that vision now?

im getting pretty tired of complete reversals on design. does anyone there know what they are actually doing? the development increasingly looks like an incompetent mess to me.

This is literally the best post in this thread. Haha, and so truthful. Go watch the manifesto if you want serious design flip-flops. Simple fact being ANET no longer has the resources to develop AAA games so instead we end up with changes to the dye system as “new features”.

So in your opinion its better to make a mistake and then just stick with it forever rather than realize it was a mistake and correct it? ANet realized they were wrong and are correcting it. Do you also demand that when people change the way something works in real life that they also compensate you fully for past purchases? Did you demand Valve give you your money back for TF2 when they made it free to play? I love the way many people on this forum get bent out of shape when something doesnt go 100% their way but when you benefit from a change, like the new wardrobe with a legendary, people are AMAZINGLY ok with it. Lots of growing up to do on these forums for sure.

Think of all the unidentified dyes you are getting as an average value of all the dyes you have purchased. You gain value on the commons/masterworks and lose value on the rare dyes.

No, I think Shadow Blade is asking for some level of consistency in design philosophy. I think that’s a simple request.

I’m glad that ArenaNet is willing to change direction to make the game more player-friendly, and I think this attitude is counterproductive. If you want them to admit that they were wrong, the fact that it’s being changed is it. If you want them to hold fast to decisions just for the sake of standing by them, that would result in an inability to respond to player feedback.

Jabberwock.9014:

Bonefield.9813:

That’s not entirely true.

The preview system used to allow previewing all armor types at the same time. There were some clipping issues at times but I never noticed anything glaring like a giant gap in the midsection or anything this seam talk would seem to imply. Hell, if you are worried about that, you can already find minor examples within a single armor class: wear aetherblade heavy leggings and whispers heavy breastplate on a female human. I love the look but there is in fact a tiny gap on the backside where you can see the environment through your character. So if that is already tolerated, I don’t see a big deal with allowing you to equip town clothes with potentially “conflicting seam” armor. If something looks funky I just won’t wear it… and if there is really some huge problem (which I doubt) Anet can just make a restriction that you have to wear only town clothes if you decide to use a piece. Anything is better than this solution.

Yeah, I’ve never really understood it myself since you can make plenty of sets within armor weights which make it clear that two pieces were not meant to go together (unfinished seams that just sort of cut off, clipping everywhere), and I used to love messing around with the locker when that was an option. There is a difference, though, between previewing armor on a character and actually equipping it and using it, so I don’t want to assume that there are no technical limitations making it hard to do.

Fenrina.2954:

Bonefield.9813:

That’s not entirely true.

It’s moot point though. They could have said, “town clothes can now be used in battle. The wardrobe will support this like armor skins.” That would have made town clothes more valuable without taking anything away from them. They could even just share the hats and be ok.

In other words, they did not have to mix clothing and armor at all. The town clothing changes are completely anet’s decision now and not the consequence of past choices.

That’s true, and admittedly I didn’t think about that because it seems almost too obvious—I was mostly responding to the idea that making a skin useable is easy. I think you’re right and it really would add more value, especially if the hats and glasses could be unlocked for both outfits and armor. If it’s not possible to handle things this way, I would be interested in a clarification as to why.

Ezekiel.1985:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Ezekiel.1985:

let me go ahead and spell this out since you guys (devs) don’t seem to be getting the message

PEOPLE WHO WORE TOWN CLOTHES DID NOT CARE THEY ARE NOT USABLE INCOMBAT

Is that really that difficult to understand? We care a lot more about mixing and matching that giving a crap about them being usable in combat. Come on. That’s just dense.

Let me go ahead and correct you, since you don’t seem to understand you’re not speaking for everyone: A lot of people hated that town clothes couldn’t be used in combat. This is something I’ve been frustrated about since beta, and I’m supremely happy they are finally fixing it.

It is a perfect solution? No. I also wish that mixing and matching were still possible, but I understand and accept why it isn’t. I recommend you try to do the same, instead of ranting futilely about it and pretending you’re a spokesperson for the rest of us, which you aren’t.

Please read what I said carefully. I was talking about people who actually used them as they were, not “everybody as a collective”. Those among us that actually wore and used town clothes as they were, I can guarantee you the vast majority do not care they weren’t used in combat.

With that said, you say “not possible”, and that’s just not true. It IS possible, they just don’t want to bother with it, which is incredibly stupid. Skin replacement is one of the easiest things out there in coding, when the skins are already present. It’s essentially like turning a light switch.

That’s not entirely true.

Each of the armor weights in the game is constructed differently, which is probably one of the reasons we haven’t seen mixing and matching between different weights. It’s also likely the reason we see so many trenchcoats on medium armor—it’s specifically designed to support coats that go over pants. Light armor divides at the waist, and town clothes followed the same rules. If you read this blog post, you can pick up some hints as to how things were coded and why going back to change things would be more difficult than just find-and-replace:

In Guild Wars 2, weight classes determine the profession distribution and the seam rules for our armor coordination. We realized there were times when we desperately wanted to break those rules, so we developed a solution to do so. For example, town clothes work similar to the light armor system. There is a waist seam that allows mixing and matching to work relatively smoothly between pieces, which gives the player as much creative freedom as possible. But for clothing, it would be a travesty to never have a long trench coat, which has a seam overlap that would follow medium armor seam rules.

To solve this dilemma, we have created sets. Sets are two or more sections of armor fused into one to prevent mixing troubles that allow us to design with far less seam constraints. For example, we could have an outfit with a large trench coat, an inside vest and shirt, and pants. You’ve seen this before in my previous clothing blog post. That outfit is one piece.

I suspect this is why many town clothes pieces, such as the pirate captain’s outfit and Bloody Prince set, operate as one piece. And although I have zero technical expertise in this area, I think it probably follows that in order to make town clothes body pieces wearable in combat at all, it either works as an all-or-nothing system or they have to go back and change all of the armor in the game to follow the same seam rules (which might break several current armor sets, too). That would be a massive undertaking, and in the end it’s probably better that the lesser-used system takes a hit.

I’m not exactly happy with it, and I wish things hadn’t been designed that way in the first place (mostly because I’d like to see mixed armor weights), but establishing outfits as an overlay allows them some freedom to keep releasing costumes for holidays and making some sets of “universal” armor which don’t necessitate revamping the whole of GW2’s armor system. Since outfits use a separate system from transmutes, they can also probably be disallowed in PvP if it becomes a problem.

I can only speculate as to the choice to make some pieces tonics, but that might be the place to lean—respectfully—if we’d rather see them as outfits which can be dyed and used in combat.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

We just wanted to respond to the image that has been data-mined from the Edge of the Mists testing branch.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

As always, keep in mind that we test a lot more than we ship, so data-mining is no guarantee of anything. If we have announcements to make about future content, we’ll make them through the usual official channels.

Thank you for the prompt response! I assumed it was an April Fools joke because it seemed a little out there, but I’m glad to hear it’s not being tested for over here.

Barsimoprimo.2759:

that fact that you have the audacity to consider it for any territory is disturbing, to say the least.

Not every gaming territory regards the same things as desirable, acceptable, or fair. It’s one of the reasons many games have different models overseas.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The event idea is an interesting one, but it doesn’t feel like a “grand journey” so to speak. Do you feel like if we asked you to do 90 different events in a month, and that allowed your ranger to say become a Druid, you’d feel like that was a cool system?

Hello Colin!

I really liked the way Final Fantasy XI handled advanced job unlocks. They were story quests which provided a lot of lore and a sense of identity for the class. I think more than anything else it’s important to have each step of the unlock help define the story of the sub-profession.

Another poster mentioned that they’d like to see unlocks through story quests, but that implementation in WvW might be tricky. My suggestion is that this might be a good place to bring back the Signet of Capture (at least in spirit).

Both PvE and WvW players could be required to hunt for the actual tools necessary to learn the skills they want. In a hypothetical scenario where each sub-class access to a unique weapon (as well as a selection of other weapons), players could start out with an item that summons it as an environmental weapon with no skills. By either following the storyline and playing related content in the world, PvE players would be able to use the Signet as a bundle similar to the Tassi Box to the skills needed to handle the weapon. WvW players could capture skills in a similar way, only through defeating other players and keep lords.

I think that a scenario like this might be adjustable for length and difficulty, depending on how challenging you’d like unlocking the sub-classes to be.

Edit: Whoops, I didn’t read closely enough—Signet of Capture is already a hot topic!

Orpheal.8263:

But I believe, that it is an assumption too, to think Sub Classes would be too restrictive, when they in fact just expand our options to diversify our characters under certain “flavors”
Its just taking “Builds” and turnign them into gameplay mechanics and features, that could improve fundamentally the overall gameplay design ofa chosen class by either improving somethign, that is already there, or by changing something that is alöready there and exhangign it with a different working mechanic that simply makes more fun than the old “basic” version of that mechanic.

This is what I imagine when I think of sub-classes. I feel like the different trait lines which correspond to various disciplines already move in that direction, and that sub-classes or sub-archetypes would be a good way to let players express what type of character they’re playing.

The Secret World does something like this with their deck system, which is basically just a way to guide people in building their character. However, it gives names, concept art, and unlockable outfits to each deck, therefore creating unique identities for builds. That adds a lot of flavor to a character, as other people have mentioned before; it was a lot more fun to play a “Spirit Lord” in GW1 than to think of my character as a “spirit spammer” or to define the build by the skills equipped to it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To be clear you guys and girls don’t have to pick the ones I put forward. I was just contributing to the thread with what I would like to see as a player. You can pick an ideas from the thread. Just wanted to make that clear.

Chris

I think most of my ideas fall under the “sociopolitical” heading anyway—it’s useful as a category!

My personal belief is that games which can incorporate player creativity will define what counts as a “next gen MMO.” Themepark content definitely has a place, but my ideal game would combine themepark and sandbox content. This was the main reason I loved TinySpark’s Glitch so much; even though it wasn’t successful financially, it got glowing reviews for its ability to encourage cooperative and creative play. GW2 has also made steps in that direction by removing barriers to cooperation, but most social play is still very structured.

This is why I support content which gives us the ability to develop parts of the world to suit ourselves. I’m not suggesting EQNext-style voxels or anything, but when it comes to player housing, guild housing, and other semi-sandbox content, I think it’s imperative that players be allowed as much freedom as is technologically possible. and the ability to show off our work. My guess is that the amount of resources required for this sort of thing would be tremendous, but I think it would be worth it.

1. Improvements to the cosmetic system

I think that refining the way we collect and store skins for use is necessary for cosmetic progression to be viewed as a legitimate and supported endgame goal. My ideal version of this would be a system that would allow us to store armor pieces for permanent, account-wide use.

If it’s not a huge technological barrier, I hope we’ll someday be able to mix town clothes and different armor weights through the cosmetic system, at least in PvE. It would expand the existing customization options greatly. I remember when previewing armor of different weights together was possible in the sPvP lobby, and I came up with some really awesome looks!

2. Player housing (and player-generated content)

If possible, I’d love to see a system with as much freedom as EQ2’s housing or Rift’s Dimensions. People have spent tons of time designing amazing areas for their characters to live in, and some players will even stick with a game solely for a housing system that has a lot of depth.

My fondest wish is for the ability to design and script our own story instances for other people to play, or to be able to create interactive items through crafting or other means that can be left in the world for others to find.

3. Greater options for character customization

This goes hand-in-hand with the cosmetic system, and it’s a pretty broad category, but anything that lets us express greater individuality through our characters would be excellent. More titles, different combat voices, ways to show off the biography choices we made at creation, tangible effects of the personality system, more idle stances and emotes to choose from. Being able to have a rough and aggressive character look and sound rough and aggressive at first glance would be amazing; right now all characters sort of express that personality in combat while their idle stance and animations are race-specific. Variations that we could unlock and choose from would be outstanding.

HiddenNick.7206:

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

Crazy ideas are good! But for my own part, when I think of things to suggest I want to stay in the realm of things the developers could run with easily. That usually means improvements to current systems and ways to branch off from those. It’s hard for me personally to get as excited about wild new stuff as I do potential quality of life changes to things we currently have (such as the cosmetic system), because something that is just now percolating as a concept might be a very long time in the making and is likely to change a great deal between conception and implementation.

Darmikau.9413:

BobbyStein.2315:

Hey, Dott. I get that you’re passionate about the game and that you’re not a fan of Scarlet but you’re not living up to the collaborative spirit of the forums. I’d take your feedback a lot more seriously if you weren’t so hostile and personal with your comments. Let’s keep things civil here.

Or you could let players express their frustrations in an impactful manner. I played Guild Wars 1 for 7 years and am passionate as hell about both it and Guild Wars 2, and I’m tired of every bit of real criticism being drowned in a shower of “let’s hold hands and work together.” People aren’t mad because they can’t be rational, people are mad because they try and level their complaints and get ignored until it’s too late.

The original designers of GW1 would be ashamed at what this game and your company have become. The fact of the matter is, you can phrase any argument as nicely as you like, but it all boils down to a few simple points: We don’t like Scarlet, we don’t like butchering Guild Wars’ vast and extensive history and world in favor of shoeing in steampunk-esque villains, and we don’t like the general direction this all has taken us. We want more of what Guild Wars 1 gave us. We want a rich world and a believable enemy. We want the dragons we were promised. We want to be heroes, not sidekicks to a menagerie cast of shallow “empowered” females. There’s so many ways that the community can and is willing to help, but none of it ever works if the only rhetoric that ever gets through is “you’re doing good and you’re so brave for coming to wade through these forums filled with hate.”

I almost never post on these forums because it’s so bogged down with this “collaborative” mindset that no real discussion is ever given just response. What is so hard or controversial about being real with your players? Eating criticism, not shunning it, should be part of your job. You’re in the career of writing, one of the most accessible outlets available. Not everyone can code, not everyone can design a game, but a great deal of people can write, and a great many of your players are writers and roleplayers themselves who come here to tell you where you’ve gone wrong because they understand the game and they understand good characters. When every legitimate argument they have is ignored, they get frustrated, and then the response is to ignore their frustration harder? Where does that take you?

The “collaborative mindset” is meant to be a positive thing for both the devs and the fans, and it boils down to not feeling entitled to lash out and be hostile to the developers just because you have a negative opinion of their work. Collaboration and sharing feedback will get positive changes made. Taking a stance of treating the ArenaNet staff as enemies makes it more difficult to communicate and it means that they can’t have meaningful discussions with us. The CDI threads have been full of useful discussion between the writers, the other developers, and the fans; don’t disdain it just because they don’t ask how high when you demand that they jump.

In this thread alone we have people expressing frustration because ArenaNet won’t just follow what they think is obvious and correct feedback—they see it as stubbornness when at the same time none of us can even agree on what exactly ANet should realistically be doing inside of extremely broad categories (it’s all well and good to say that they should go back to GW1 lore, for instance, but it’s not going to happen in the next patch).

I don’t always agree with the direction the writers take the story, but in your post you imply that they’ve ruined their own lore and insinuate that anyone could do their job. It’s not their job to roll over and take blatant insults under the guise of feedback, especially since it’s entirely unnecessary to say that kind of thing to get a point across. What kind of information does that give them aside from “I’m angry”? What does that actually accomplish? If you want to see things changed for the better, collaborating with the developers respectfully (as I sincerely hope that you would with any other adult in a professional context) is going to help. Trying to make them feel bad for not doing what you’d like them to is just a thinly-veiled excuse to vent.

I’m actually very much in favor of cultural armor being able to be worn cross-race (more options are a good thing, in my opinion), but I’m very disappointed with these skins. Putting an arguably enhanced version of a prestige skin in the gem store is exactly the sort of thing I hoped we’d never see. The fact that they’re reskins at all is disappointing as well. Finally, we have a lot of sets with an orange fire theme now, and plenty of weapons to match. Flame Legion, Dredge, and Hellfire all have this theme; it’s difficult to find armor with particle effects that aren’t orange flames.

BobbyStein.2315:

Melliarc.5870:

Subject : Pacing of the Living Story using the latest two patches as examples of what I think should and shouldn’t be done.

My biggest gripe I think with the story in the Living Story is the pacing of it. As many discussed before, me included, we’re getting too few tidbits of story per patch to make it worthwhile story-wise. So it feels like there isn’t any progress at all. The back to back releases of Tower of Nightmares and Nightmare Within are a prime example of this.

So you’re saying that the contents of each release are too light, and that you’d rather the two thematically related releases be part of a single build?

One thing that I very much enjoyed about the monthly-ish cadence was the idea that the story could continue at any time, with new stuff being dropped in as a surprise. With the two-week cycle, it seems like there’s much less opportunity for that sort of thing, and so the progression of the story doesn’t feel as organic.

Having guaranteed updates every two weeks is great, but I’m not sure that it’s great for the story. I don’t want to speak too far from under my armchair developer hat, but I think it’d be better overall if the story pacing had more flexibility and didn’t have to be tied to things like gameplay polishing and basic feature additions. Those things are great to have on a two-week schedule, but maybe not having to make stuff fit thematically would give everyone more freedom?

Black Regent.5897:

The tower was a “hey neat” moment at first, but now it’s just Orr from back before Orr was pointlessly nerfed into the dirt. Zerg after zerg after zerg. The “story” instances were no such thing. Each one was the same and didn’t advance the story at all, just needless side events that distracted from the climb.

The final Chamber was neat, again, the first time, but on repeated runs is just another chore forced on players in lieu of actual content.

The one thing I absolutely HATE however, is the keys. It’s just more nesting RNG BS that this game needs like another hole in the head. I’ve run the tower bottom to top repeatedly and gotten ONLY pink drops from the third floor. Six in a row. There is a 0.13% chance of that happening assuming the same number of enemies killed on each floor, but it’s not at all unlikely when you consider the broken way the drop system for it works. The odds are not bad that any one floor will give zero keys, so it only takes one loopy floor giving a lot of keys to create this stupid situation where you wind up with a ton of completely useless trash key pieces.

Please… for the love of all that is good and holy… STOP NESTING RNG ANET. It’s bad enough you give these crap chances to get good things, PLEASE stop making the odds extremely long by doing things like having to collect multiple key pieces with their own RNG. Just. Freaking. STOP IT.

Edit: My mistake, I thought you were talking about getting only pink keys from the third floor, but you meant that you’d gotten only third floor pink keys despite running the entire tower?

Chessrook.8643:

Thinking about it for a bit, here’s an idea I had to get a concept I mentioned earlier across. I’ll have to bring it up in several parts, mind you.

CRYSTALLIZED ICE

The wars against the Elder Dragons are increasing, with their forces pushing harder than ever. Branded from the Crystal Desert are pouring out into the Fields of Ruin, threatening Ebonhawke with deadly creatures such as Branded Hydra and Branded Wurms. Even the stalwart old ascalonians need help pushing back the forces of the Crystal Dragon. But that is not all… Icebrood of Jormag have pushed into Frostgorge Sound with surprising force, threatening the hardiest Norn and some of the last ice ships of the Kodan. Both sides need help in this war, but there isn’t enough to push back everyone. Who will you save from destruction?

What Players See:
The regions mentioned will get increased numbers of the related forces, with the areas mentioned even getting specialized events to defend it from the invasions. (Events to defend Ebonhawke from the Branded, or the Kodan Iceships like Blue Ice Shining from the Icebrood). There may also be specialized vendors, who will give items like special weapon skins in exchange for war supplies.

What Players Don’t See:
Behind the scenes, something keeps track of what the players do. Perhaps which side gets more events completed, or which side gets more war supplies is donated to them. The players will not know who has more, or even that such numbers are being tracked. Why is this important?

What Happens After:
Because the side that gets less will be decimated. If the Fields of Ruin gets less support, Ebonhawke and the regions around it will be destroyed, or overrun with Branded. If Frostgorge Sound gets less support, the last Ice Ships of the Kodan will get decimated, or even destroyed by Icebrood. But that’s not all.
The side that gets more will have succeeded so well, that those within that area may even be able to push back, opening a new region to the North of Frostgorge, or pushing into the Crystal Desert, starting a steady progress towards the next of the Elder Dragons.

Through this, you give the players choice over what they can see next. Players see the results of their actions and their impact in the world. And they will feel harder the effects of what they do, with the potential loss of major areas.

And it all happens naturally. Instead of a clicked vote.

I think something like this has the potential to make players very upset. Because one side will always lose out, it would feel really arbitrary to help Ebonhawk, for example, and put a lot of work into saving it, and then see it destroyed anyway just because more people wanted to play in Frostgorge. I think that was one of the things that made tempers run high during the voting, because we weren’t just voting for one side to win, but also for the other to fail.

BobbyStein.2315:

Einlanzer.1627:

In particular, more attention needs to be given to the conundrum of the conflict that exists between the PS and LW. Reconciling those two on a conceptual level should be the top priority of this conversation, IMO. I feel like most people actually prefer the former over the latter, but regardless of which one Anet chooses to roll with, something needs to be done so that the disjoint between the two isn’t controlling the evolution of the world and the lore going forward.

This is something that we’ve been discussing extensively. We’ll share more details when we’re able.

This is immensely encouraging. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I feel like shackling the living story to events that had to have happened at a fixed point on the lore timeline will eventually cause more continuity issues than just establishing the personal story as being in the past.

This might sound kind of out there, but bringing the personal story characters and plotlines into the open world a bit might help resolve the disconnect. Then people know where to place the personal story in context. If they see, say, Malyck running around in the world, and then later choose to go back and replay their sylvari personal story because they skipped it or are on an alt, then they instantly know they’re seeing the backstory of the character. If they haven’t met him yet, it serves as an introduction.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

Very much so. Those are the kinds of improvements to the core game I’d like to see. There are a lot of systems in the game that had a great deal of potential, but were not fully realized, such as the personality system and the effect of biography choices on characters. Karma might be in that category, too. I remember talk pre-launch about how NPCs would physically respond differently to characters based on their personality, by being wary if they were ferocious or joining up with them if they had a compatible personality type. Some of the creation biography choices (such as human gods) really don’t have any effect, even in the personal story.

I would rather see smaller, more intimate stories leading up to something big than a blockbuster movie every two weeks, if that makes sense. My absolute favorite parts of the personal story are the first three arcs, where we get a huge injection of culture and lore and learn so much about the world we’re going to save. That sort of story that layers detail and depth into the world—through both mechanical changes and lore—would be amazing, with the climax of the arc being the sort of huge “big bad” update we get now.

(Edited to make what I was trying to say make some kind of cohesive sense. Oh words, you so crazy!)

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

Hi, Colin! One option I’ve heard many people suggest is more unique rewards from event completion, possibly connected to heart vendors. In FFXIV, certain harder FATEs (DEs) award a special minipet on completion. The Secret World awards zone-specific vendor currency for repeatable missions. Even though WoW left a lot to be desired for me due to zone outleveling, I could always find reasons to return to specific zones because there were things to get there that couldn’t be found anywhere else—and they were desirable even at max level because they were prestigious and cosmetic.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Conncept.7638:

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc…

Why couldn’t the design team have this attitude when they attempted and failed to expand on the event system? I swear it seems like they barely even tried…

Hi Conncept,

Can you provide some more details please in order to add more value to the discussion. Can you explain what you mean by attempted and failed to expand on the event system? Where do you think we failed and what do you see as success?

Chris

Hello, Chris! I think this is an important area of discussion. Pre-launch, it seemed as though ArenaNet was very excited about adding more and more events and greatly expanding on the variety out in the world. I believe Colin made a comment to the effect of hoping to see 300 events a year later in an area that had 100 at launch; I don’t hold him to this because I know that development plans change, but I bring it up to illustrate the sort of thing that I was excited about in regard to the expansion of the DE system.

Unfortunately it didn’t come to pass, and later Anthony Ordon made a post explaining that the release of more DEs had been attempted in the first patch, and many players in the thread and elsewhere took what he said to imply that one attempt had been made before moving on to different ideas. I won’t belabor the point here because the other thread discusses it in detail and the feedback has most likely already been noted, but while I don’t know the specifics behind the reason for the development shift, it did disappoint me. One of the things that first attracted me to the game pre-launch was the idea of these events updating, changing, and being added to; the system is one that I enjoy and that has a great deal of potential.

While Anthony’s post doesn’t rule out the future addition of more events, it does seem to indicate that large-scale plans to add to them were moved away from, and I hope that it’s something you’ll consider giving another try at some point. Incorporating large-scale changes and additions to the DE patterns in zones could really help the world feel alive, as well as allowing for more opportunities for permanent content.

For example, living world additions usually don’t affect the landscape in the sense that currently-running dynamic events tend to ignore them. If the Molten Alliance spawns in the middle of a Flame Legion camp, the existing Flame Legion enemies don’t change their behavior despite the fact that they technically just got a huge influx of reinforcements. As part of Flame and Frost it would have been really cool to see DEs added to current Flame Legion and dredge camps that show them collecting resources for the Molten Alliance, ect.

I think it’d be really exciting to see the world respond to new events like that. The foreshadowing in the area of Viathan Lake before the Tower of Nightmares patch was fantastic, and I love that toxic krait have been added to normal krait spawns in places. But the centaurs right up the hill keep trying to rebuild the bridge and attack the Seraph as though there isn’t a giant death tower 100 feet from their doorstep, and I think that hurts the feeling of permanence and impact on the world a little.

To add, I also agree with what Conncept says here: “Tyria already felt like a living world on release, those feelings just needed to be continued, but were instead diverged away from, and in some cases wholly ignored.” There have been nods to continuing storylines, but the story actually feels more “epic” to me when it’s kept on a fairly intimate scale and the cosmically earthshattering events are doled out sparingly.

BobbyStein.2315:

DarksunG.9537:

BobbyStein.2315:

If some folks “won’t listen or care about anything related to her” then they’ve already made up their minds. For the rest of the people playing the game, I would imagine that they’re curious as to where her story is going because we haven’t revealed as much as people have wanted. The truth of the matter is that we’ve been planning an epic conclusion to Scarlet’s story for a while now. I really wish I could say more but that would spoil what’s to come.

That seems a bit unfair. It’s like saying “the devs won’t listen & just drop her for something better because they’ve already decided she’s a good character”. I think many people won’t pay attention to her story because it’s been annoying so far. That’s not unfair. A story needs to earn the viewers attention & investment. I think most people will see what the story brings & accept it for good or bad. But I think that it’s extremely unfair to pre-lable people who are probably going to find her just as stupid as they do now. So far, every time you’ve explain more, it’s actually made her character more painful.

I feel like it’s a matter of quit-while-you’re-ahead. I’m surprised that the team quit adding DEs because there “wasn’t much fanfare” but when a character is so despised out of annoyance, lore-breaking ,meh visual design & wierdness, the team just sticks with her. I don’t get it.

I think I can sum up a lot of the fears of the future of Scarlet by saying: If you explain to me in harrowing detail why a character is annoying & groan-worthy, in the end they will still be annoying & groan-worthy. I’m not sure how that is a non-valid viewpoint.

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

I’m glad, because I would be disappointed if Scarlet’s story were dropped. I find the character herself less interesting than the implications of her existence, but I’d really like to know what she found when she peered into the void and I’m very interested in finding out where and what is on the other side of her portals. Maybe I find her interesting because I’m hopeful that her story is a doorway to big ideas, in the same way that Varesh’s story was a setup for revealing the extent of Abaddon’s influence on the story of GW1.

I think she might have the potential to be a useful storytelling device because she’s hinted to have insight into huge secrets the general population of Tyria has no clue about, and no reason to keep those things secret in the long term. The most fascinating thing to me about her short story was the Pale Tree appealing to her and Scarlet refusing to listen; there are long-buried things in Tyria that are probably better off left hidden (but great for the story if they’re uncovered). Scarlet is a character who would, I imagine, happily reveal those secrets—but she also strikes me as the type who would lead the PCs to discovering those truths for ourselves rather than stating them outright, if only for her own amusement.

Nike.2631:

timmyf.1490:

mercury ranique.2170:

The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever (still beating Trahearne AND Scarlet with a landslide).

You hated Prince Rurik! Prince Rurik!?

Wow. He might have been petulant, but he was also right. But maybe I’m just sympathetic because I think my father is wrong about everything too.

I loved Prince Rurik- but not at first.

In my first encounter with him in the instance, I was sighing and hanging my head a little at this overblown, pompous snot…

…Then I got into the Labyrinth and started to listen. Ok, right off, Mad King Thorn is my hands down favorite piece of voice work in the game. So to have Rurik and him practically spitting invective at each other was priceless from the first second on. Then when you really listen to it… Wow. That kid is MESSED UP.

You made me sympathetic to someone who just tried to kill me (not very successfully, but he did try…). Usually when people try to kill me I consider that instant and permanent suspension of their breathing rights. Rurik actually conviced me he was doing it more out of duress (and distress) than any real urge to be “The Bloody Prince – muhuwahahah!”

When I moved on to the climax instance, It was a lot less “I am SO gonna put you down!” and a lot more “Alright, Rurik. Just get back in the box. It’s better for everybody this way…”

I think you’re thinking of Prince Edrick. Prince Rurik was a character from Guild Wars 1, although he also had a difficult relationship with his father.

Seras.5702:

I will concede that the game can broaden itself if properly implemented, not trying to be everything to everyone but simply offering a wider range of tasks other than “go forth hero & slay stuff!” However, a primary concern I have (and Brimwald touched on it) is Anet’s resource allocation. They have a finite number of man-hours and dollars to work with, and broadening the scope of the game too much (subjective, I know) could water down the time and money spent on each facet of the game. Every 2 week releases is quite fast, but if a large chunk of Anet’s available resources are allocated for player housing and the like, then will balance, traits, new gear, LS events, new zones, gem store get less attention as a result? Will we see balance/skill/trait updates less often? Will we see LS patches every 4 weeks because the other weeks are reserved for updating the array of vegetables to plant in your farm?

It’s worth noting that ArenaNet has more teams than we regularly see the work of doing things we haven’t gotten any information on. I do think resource allocation is an important consideration, but ideally the sort of living world content I’m advocating would be helpful in forestalling complaints of “nothing to do.” When I refer to it as an investment, I mean that content of that kind typically has a longer shelf life than a boss fight or dungeon, when done well; I won’t claim that people who enjoy it would never want to see updates to it once it’s in, but they’re things that tend to be a little bit fiddly and investment of time is part of the charm.

There are people who still play EverQuest II and Rift solely for the housing, and have spent months or years creating fantastic things with the tools they were given. During a dry spell between WoW expansions, I roleplayed and leveled up my fishing (a fairly difficult feat at the time) to tide me over. Long after I’d burned out on endgame in Final Fantasy XI, I gardened and raised chocobos and collected things for my house, and all of that maintained my love for those games and kept me in the community and let me find a social niche (as the Chocobo Information Guy, but c’est la vie). That’s why I think adding sandbox and player generated content elements to themepark games will catch on in the near future; when your players have at least a few tools to use to entertain themselves and each other, it gives developers a bit of breathing room.

You can see where ArenaNet has taken steps to give themselves that breathing room when it comes to combat-oriented players. They’re developing ways to keep that type of player engaged over longer-periods of time without having to constantly throw exhaustible content at them. I personally could not be less interested in Ascended gear, but for some people that was apparently exactly what they needed to stay engaged. Similarly, the fact that my attention can be held by repeatedly pretending to cast a line is going to sound nuts to pure power gamers, but it works.

The final thing I’d like to make note of is that this variety wouldn’t be nearly as important if there weren’t crossover between fans of fighting dragons and fans of smelling the virtual roses. I’m very much in favor of fighting dragons, and running dungeons, and being a hero on an epic adventure. I also find it very engaging to have places for my hero to kick back and simply do something interactive and gentle while enjoying the lovely scenery. Having both extends the life of gameplay for people who fall under varied gaming types.

I’d class jumping puzzles as an example of non-combat gameplay activities that make the world richer and more three-dimensional, actually; they’re not required, and their appeal is somewhat specialized, but the people who love them really love them and it increases their affection for this particular game world.

Seras.5702:

The way I see it, this is an example of a game trying to be too much to everyone. The game is created, it has an identity, a playstyle, a focus. To introduce all of those ancillary things now would be to broaden the scope of the game to beyond its identity. It would cease to be GW2 and become GW2+v2.0, the new & improved fantasy steampunk virtual hero life simulator. We’re trying to nail down exactly how we think the LS should progress, how it can be presented, how it can improve. To add things like player farms would (in my opinion of course) cheapen the essence of the game, reducing it from an adventure game to a mundane way to spend every waking minute logged on to the game just because.

A game needs to be focused or it will just be a bunch of watered down things here & there. Too many mini-games and it becomes Fusion Frenzy with better graphics. Was that game fun? Sure, but that’s not why this game was created. Pick a focus, stick to it, make it the best ever. Don’t try to make a game that does everything.

Besides, if I need to take a break from the game, then shouldn’t I actually take a break from the game and enjoy real life rather than fish or farm avocado in-game? Just my $0.02

These are good points, but it depends on how they present it. There are, I think, several games out on the market which strike a good balance, and I want to make it clear that I’m not talking about taking GW2 and making it into some kind of pure sandbox where these sorts of activities are the primary thrust of gameplay. GW2 is and will probably always be about players being big darn heroes, and that’s not a bad thing.

However, the developers have several goals for the game that they’ve clearly stated. They have tried to add long-term activities to help give people things to do; most of these have been combat-oriented (Ascended gear, achievements) and while they certainly have their good points, the reaction has been mixed. They want to create the feeling of a world instead of just a game as well, and I think that there’s only so much you can do in that area by presenting players with things to kill. I don’t dislike combat at all, but when it’s one of the only options it really drives home the impression that we’re playing a game. There are things they can do which involve combat that can make the world feel more alive, and many great suggestions have been offered already. Things like housing and other downtime activities, however, encourage a sense of persistence, ownership and relaxation in people who enjoy them.

Of course you should take a break from the game if you get bored. What I mean by the builders maintaining the population of the game during downtime is illustrated by one of the stated purposes behind the two-week content cadence: ArenaNet discovered that players log in more frequently when they’re excited for upcoming content or when it’s new to us. They wanted to maintain that level of excitement more frequently. However, I would say that they’re pretty much at the peak of what they can do in terms of update frequency, and even at this point some players have expressed a desire for more downtime and a sense of burnout from the flurry of activity.

Not trying to make the game all things to all people is a valid point as well, but Guild Wars 2 has made some interesting overtures toward expanding the depth and breadth of gameplay out in the world, and I think that it could benefit from adding more variety. That’s not synonymous with homogenizing gameplay to appeal to all people; I see that more as something where a neat feature or some complexity is stripped out or discarded because it might not have totally universal appeal.

In short, having a focus of some kind is good. Having too narrow a focus—to the point where one style of gameplay drives most content additions—is not desirable, I don’t think. Games like WoW and FFXIV and Rift and EverQuest have all benefited by offering some variety beyond “You’re the hero, so go fight things!” From my own perspective, I have more fun in games where my options for interaction with the game world are more complex than “fight things,” because it increases the joy of discovery and can be an adventure in itself. I’m in no way suggesting that GW2 become a farming or interior decoration simulator, but instead that ArenaNet revisit some of the ideas they’ve had in the past about interactive objects and player agency and experiment with making them richer and giving players more of a sense of ownership.

Seras.5702:

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!? I don’t want to be a shop keeper or farmer or zookeeper or fisherman. Am I retired? What’s next? Laundering my armor? Vacuuming my player housing? Entertaining small parties with hors d’oeuvres?

Personalization of the Home Instance is fine, if it shows my progression as a hero. But I don’t want to manage shops or go to market. That’s not what this game is about to me.

As for Player Initiated Events (PIE), I’m all for it. But I’d rather them be adventure based rather than defending a market-bound cart of radishes I grew. Can’t I challenge new hunters to a great hunt? Or spread the tale of a lurking evil in a cave? Or challenge others to a contest of _.

This is a good example of how different activities appeal to different types of players. The goal of the sort of thing I outlined in my previous post would be to provide a range of gameplay types; even if they don’t appeal to you personally, they appeal to others. When you and other players with your taste in gameplay are between dragons to slay and wrongs to right and you take a break from the game for a few days, the people who do enjoy “menial things” might find the downtime enjoyable instead of boring because they always have things to tinker with. This keeps the activity level of players in the game relatively high instead of rolling in and out in waves without the developers needing to frantically push out content even faster than they do now.

Appealing to different types of players is an investment in the game’s health. I have little to no interest in sPvP, but I recognize that resources put into it to make people happy with it and keep them playing are not wasted.

BobbyStein.2315:

Einlanzer.1627:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

I’m a fan of this post. This can all happen in conjunction with larger lore/world updates that are merged with the Personal Story and focused on expanding the world with new content rather than changing or disrupting it through alterations to existing content.

Yeah, these are some interesting ideas.

I’m really happy to see a positive response to that, because I think one of the best things you could do studio-wide to promote the feeling of a truly living world is to add more opportunities for player investment on a personal level. Things like housing, player-generated content, non-combat activities that require some involvement (fishing and farming/gardening) and the like are all things that have made me feel in other MMOs as though my character is really part of a world.

GW2 is, at present, a very combat-oriented game. That works well for people who are primarily interested in that sort of content, but I believe that a wider range of involved, expressive social activities would provide a great deal of needed depth and give players more variety in long-term goals.

As an example, crafting in GW2 is designed to be convenient, and it accomplishes that wonderfully. It’s important for it to be convenient, because it’s a necessary part of high-end gearing; if you want Ascended weapons or a Legendary, you need to level crafting. This puts crafting in a difficult place, because making it more complex or involved to increase the appeal for people who love crafting risks making it frustrating and annoying for people who don’t love crafting, but need to do it to get the gear they want. In contrast, activities like fishing and farming in other MMOs are often regarded as downtime hobbies rather than a necessary means to an end. By adding that sort of thing you would have the opportunity to layer in things that appeal to the “builder” class of players—people who gravitate toward activities like cultivating, pet raising, collecting and decorating—without disrupting the previously-established convenience of combat-crossover systems.

The key in this scenario, I think, would be to set out to design those new systems with the builder players in mind, and not to attempt to make them palatable or compulsory for people who simply don’t enjoy that type of play (very combat-oriented players often refer to fishing as “grindy” or “boring” in other MMOs, for example).

I hope that this isn’t too far off topic, but I strongly believe that creating niches and welcoming spaces for the builders, cultivators and roleplayers (the social class of player, essentially) would be extremely valuable in creating the feeling of a living world. They’re the people who will be there in the quiet spaces when nothing is attacking and we’re waiting on the next update. The election was an attempt to let players make their mark, but I think allowing people to do that on a more intimate scale is really key to keeping the world alive. That’s the sort of depth I’d love to see added to the core game.

It might sound strange, but recent 3DS games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Pokemon X and Y may be great places to look for inspiration. Some players will deride those as kiddie games and fluff, but they’re very popular with the type of gamer who delights in constructive activities and who will test a game thoroughly to see where it responds to their attempts to interact in positive ways. X and Y in particular earned great praise for the way the games reward players for exploration and emotional investment in their digital fluffballs.

videoboy.4162:

I’ve noticed that it has been mentioned several times, that the LS is somewhat hindered by the personal story and new players. So, I was wondering if anyone has considered following the GW1 path and basically giving GW2 a Pre-Searing (Zhaitan) and Post-Searing (After killing Zhaitan) phase?

New players could still complete their original story, while older players could begin to see the fruits of their labors.

Would something like that be possible?

I think the difficulty with that is that pre-Searing was a relatively small part of the overall game, and as a tutorial area it could easily be separated. There were players who chose to stay in pre-Searing indefinitely, but it didn’t have an impact on the overall game due to how isolated it was.

In the case of doing something like that with GW2, huge areas of the world would have to exist as separate versions, and any way they could pull that off as far as technology goes would probably cause bigger problems for the game and the playerbase than it would solve. I do agree that the personal story potentially hinders the living story, and it’s one of the things I’m most concerned about, but I think the most straightforward solution is to not insist on preserving the world for the sake of one piece of content while the goal of the entire current marketing and development strategy hinges on the idea that the world is constantly changing. It might cause some awkwardness, but so did doing GW1 campaigns out of order (as well as GW Beyond content) when the timeline had clearly established certain things as having happened in the past.

Amstel Steel.2058:

CodeE.4857:

I know there’s a lot of Scarlet hate on the lore forums. I feel a lot of it is exaggerated, but I have to agree with it because we have not been told one specific important thing.

Her goal.

We know she convinced the flame legion and dredge to work together. We know she got the inquest to develop weapons and equipment for her pirate army. We know she was behind the assassination of Theo Ashford(It was that guy right? I’m bad with names…). When we finally get to see who’s behind all this, she just seems like a crazy person with godly powers and no plan. The short story telling us she wants to write her own destiny that’s not bound by the will of the pale tree or the nightmare was not enough, and we have waited waaaaaay to long for this character to really be fleshed out.
You have the dots. Connect them. We don’t have to put a stop to all of Scarlet’s plans right at this second, but at least let us know what her plans actually are.

That’s all I feel is missing from the living world. The story.

She tells you what her goal is in the short story. Scarlet for me was way too easy to figure out.

We know that her goal is to create chaos, but we don’t know why. We also don’t know why she went from being simply sociopathic and self-centered to sadistic and murderous. I think it’s clear from the writers’ comments and the context of the story itself that the “why” is very important and far more complex than “Some plants just want to watch the world burn,” but I agree with other posters that it hasn’t really been apparent in the game.

Chris acknowledged earlier that Scarlet tends to be a little over-the-top, and I think part of the issue is that it’s easy to see the shape of what she’s doing, but a lot of her dialogue is dedicated to establishing the fact that she’s unbalanced and wacky, and that’s (to me at least) the least interesting part of her character. She does get some good dialogue that establishes how dangerous and intelligent she is—and we can see that despite her personality she’s capable of being very organized and methodical—but I think the biggest pitfall of her character is that she just seems to be talking to herself. She taunts, but it doesn’t appear to matter to her what’s said in return. She obviously likes to hear herself talk, which is a valid character trait, but we hardly ever see her interacting with other characters—that’s even more apparent with the Scarlet holograms, which are literally just her saying things at us from a distance. Her entire backstory is like that; people say things to her and she just refuses to interact. Even her big villainous turn in the short story is marked by her chatting to the corpse of her mentor, who of course can’t respond.

I’ve said this in other places, but she’s very much like the Joker, as opposed to Harley—and that type of character needs interaction and strong challenges to their worldview to make them compelling. I don’t think she’s a Mary Sue (the term is overused), but I do think the way she’s been written as holding herself above interaction probably contributes to that perception. Whether there’s more to it or not, what we’ve seen of her paints the picture of someone who is perfectly content to act at other people instead of with them, and instead of presenting as a character flaw, it’s worked out pretty well for her. As far as we’ve seen, she has no friends or emotional ties; in fact, she walks away humming without a care from everyone who ever invested time or emotional energy in her. And because she displays no emotional investment, it’s difficult to reciprocate, even if I find her motives interesting (which I do).

Dunan Atreides.5436:

I think something that could really alleviate this, (Bobby if you’re reading, wink wink), is to have more NPCs and dialogue that openly question her goals. In this way the story acknowledges, yes there are blanks, and we know it’s not there, the NPCs are thinking about it as well.

Anet, you guys need a way to define the ‘unkowns’ when it comes to the story, that you want us to focus on. We need the ‘story meta’ that the NPCs are operating on. I think, that while not actually outlining the goal, this will improve storytelling and make players more involved.

This is an excellent point. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a difference it made in the Tower of Nightmares dialogue to have the NPCs as baffled by the actions of the krait as we are.

Infamous Darkness.3284:

I am confused why the vigil got involved in that update though as they are dedicated to fighting dragons but they seemed to be the major force in destroying the Molten alliance laboratories.

The Vigil is also the main force involved in charitable/humanitarian (well, not solely human in this setting) works. Their primary goal is fighting dragons, but they’re also highly idealistic in general and will reach out to help where they’re needed.

Rym.1469:

Walhalla.5473:

Sarie.1630:

There had better be good reasons for why the Krait are on her side. Let’s face it though, whatever those reasons are, we wont find out for maybe half a year or more. This much we know from Flame and Frost.
.

There is nothing that says, that Scarlet is working with the Krait.

“Working in secret, the sinister reptilian krait have created the Tower of Nightmares with the help of the Nightmare Court and some other mysterious benefactor”

Guess who is "mysterious benefactor…yeah…

Link to source: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/editorials/tower-nightmares

I think that may be speculation on the part of GW2Hub, or a misunderstanding. I work for Massively, and the press release sent out encompassed exactly what’s on the official release site. Unless it’s an event where press (typically all press) are given a sneak preview, we basically get an advance draft of what’s publicly announced so that we can prepare news posts. The post on GW2Hub is almost word-for-word the same as the press release we received—along with the same screenshots—with the exception of some wording changes. It looks as though the writer maybe read between the lines that the Nightmare Court was involved and assumed that it was meant to be obvious, and so thought that the “mysterious benefactor” must be someone else.

I wouldn’t say anything about it except that these things tend to get legs and people may still be wondering in a few months who was being referred to if it turns out that Scarlet or the Nightmare Court aren’t even involved.

For PvE my list is:

1. Roleplaying
2. Living World
3. Character customization

Thank you!

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks for the constructive feedback. We’ve got a few things planned for upcoming releases that should clarify some of the story confusion by putting more of this information in the game.

I really enjoy the website stories, and I think they do a good job with exposition that might be hard to do in game. The only thing that bothers me about them is that the stories often handle big characterization/motivation reveals that aren’t touched on in game (or at least, not in obvious ways). I think the stories might be received better if they weren’t the only clue to unlocking the finer points of what’s going on; as it is, the game seems to handle the action while the stories handle the strong character development, and that naturally results in the game elements feeling less engaging (to me at least). Evon is one example: I thought he was very interesting in the story, but in game he just came off like an arrogant jerk.

It’s not that we get no characterization in game, but the characters get relatively few lines of dialogue per release. That’s understandable because of how much of it is voiced, but it’d be cool if during living story releases, nearby ambient NPCs gained changing dialogue options to help deliver some of the context we get in the stories, so that they feel more connected. Similar to the living story heralds, but more organic—kind of like the wandering NPCs during Dragon Bash who talked about the controversy over the festival. I thought that was really well done.

Healix.5819:

milo.6942:

Zanthrax.6538:

Best pvp dodge ive ever seen…..I dont see this game ever getting pvp to a competitive level now….god kittening dammit

I missed it, what happened

Someone asked if there’ll be other SPvP types such as assault, capture the flag, etc.

Colin answered that they want to make SPvP easily watchable so that you can see the score, know who’s winning, etc. He ended it by saying adding different modes isn’t out of the question, aka one day it might be added. (all of what he said has been said before)

The first part of his answer didn’t really make sense, since capture the flag and assault are easily watchable? If you have no clue what you’re looking at, those two are much easier to watch imo.

His answer was a little more positive toward it than that. He said that they were looking at more game types, but that they have to be careful to make sure that whatever they add is really good because it will mean splitting resources. They don’t want to harm the current game modes, and he mentioned one of the problems with GW1 PvP being that not all of them attracted a strong enough playerbase to keep them healthy.

Nuka Cola.8520:

notice how many thousands of players asking for gvg while devs show more stupid zerging

It’s not “thousands of players asking for GvG,” it’s a handful of people spamming the chat over and over again. The same names keep scrolling by, spamming the same copy-pasted stuff.

I’m sure an insane engineer focused on spreading chaos and terror is deeply concerned with how “smexy” she appears to the random people she sets her horrifying clockwork monstrosities on. I’ve compiled a list of other villains who have had the audacity to lack sex appeal while attempting to kill us:

Kudu
Mad King Thorn
Gaheron Baelfire
Giganticus Lupicus
Shadow Behemoth
King Adelbern
Big Nose Ted
Zhaitan

This is just for starters, although I suppose there’s someone for everyone and I won’t question your taste if you happen to find any of these individuals attractive. Clearly, ArenaNet should get on this right away.

Caveth.3268:

“Her skin was hot to the touch, and the faint golden glow that surrounded her had shifted to vivid crimson.” This was a line from that story about Scarlet…

Now, here’s a screenshot of Kormir after she took Abaddon’s powers: http://i.imgur.com/TOt1MIa.jpg

Very similar to the description of Scarlet.

Here is the rest of the scene with Kormir: http://imgur.com/a/YM1D0

Scarlet, like she calls herself now, is somewhat of a different person after seeing these powers; perhaps she took over one of the god’s powers like Kormir? Kormir acted like a new person after she took Abaddon’s powers, almost not even recognizing her own name it seemed.

Sylvari have a bioluminescent glow. I think it’s just referring to the fact that she used to have a golden glow, but changed it to crimson after awakening to reflect her new self.

Pacifica.9576:

Chrispy.5641:

Three points I want to make, then I’m gone for a few more weeks again…..

1) The opinions of the most vocal among us is not the opinion of the majority. Just because the forums were on fire doesn’t mean that I and many others hated the Living Story. Totally the opposite.

2) Anet just Introduced the Character, and again, we have the most vocal among us trying everything they can to dismiss the character as the most cliche evil villian ever, when they don’t even know anything about her. (Seriously…, The Elder Dragons are probably further into cliche territoty than Scarlet is.)

3) There is MORE to come. How many times does someone at Anet have to say this? Seriously, do people watch the first 30 seconds of a movie, say its horrible, then leave the theater, and waste 14 bucks(If you do this, it might explain your lack of gold in Guild Wars 2)? Or is everyone going to stop crying over everything you see wrong with Guild Wars 2, and wait for everything to play out?

People are complaining because anet stated that this would be where everything got tied together and we got answers about who was behind everything. The issue isn’t that scarlet is a mysterious insane villain(she’s alot of fun in the invasions and instance), its that the “answer” living story is just another question. I’d wager that if anet had never stated this was an “answers” living story, the forums would be full of praise(because like i said, she’s a great villain)

This event does tie everything together. ArenaNet never said or even suggested that this particular event would be a resolution of the living story; what we know now is that Scarlet is behind everything, that she has access to portals (that have possibly let her access other realities, as shown by the fact that she’s got steam creatures in her army), and that she’s both powerful and totally out of her gourd. Yes, the information raises more questions than it answers, but they’re questions that cut a lot deeper than “whodunit.”

We were told that we’d start to be able to grasp the shape of where things were going with this update, and I think that’s true. There’s a big picture being built here—Scarlet may seem erratic and unpredictable, but she’s clearly intelligent and most likely has a goal in mind. We now have enough information to start to guess. A good story has a structure, and I’m willing to bet that we’re at the end of the exposition and heading into the rising action.

It’s just luck, OP. Even running with 200%+ MF I’ve gotten a handful of exotics (all worth 2g or less) since the game started, and I don’t even try for things like weapons from lockboxes or exotics in the Mystic Forge because I know it’s just going to be a waste of money and time. But it’s been that way in every MMO I’ve played (and I’ve played a lot)—my wife is the one who consistently manages to roll an astonishingly fortunate character who swims in rare drops. I don’t know how MMO superstitious I am, but it has taught me to never count on luck for anything and to let go of things I absolutely need luck to achieve, so in the long run it’s probably been good for my peace of mind. It’s definitely saved me a lot of money and gold I might have wasted on gambling. :P

I like Scarlet. I don’t think she’s a “villain Sue” or a bad character at all; if I got a copper for every supervillain who did mindblowingly improbable things, I’d have a Legendary. She has an interesting personality and I want to know more about her.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

If you have one of these sets and an exotic mini, you might have noticed some unusual behavior. Miniatures should not be fighting , or taking hits. We’ll be investigating these rogue toys and removing their free will. We do want to add more usability to miniatures, but we wouldn’t do it by putting that usability in quietly without an announcement.

Awww, but it’s so cool. Can they keep their free will if they just do zero damage?

ColinJohanson.2394:

This is totally our fault, we dropped the ball on this plain and simple. We planned to have this messaged ahead of time to be fair to everyone, communication broke down between those who knew it was supposed to be messaged, and those who were supposed to message it and it simply didn’t happen.

As game director this is ultimately my fault first and foremost, and I’m sorry for those who potentially lost some karma as a result. It is our policy to message these kind of changes ahead of time with lots of warning, I’ll do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.

I’d recommend not using your karma consumables yet, give us a day or two to try and see what options we have available to help mitigate the issue.

Thank you so much for responding to the issue, Colin. I used mine already (whoops, the one time I respond quickly to a patch note change :P), but my guildmates are going to feel a lot better if something can be done.

Gwynal.5024:

Ah, yet another disappointment from Arena-Net then. Let me guess, are running around fixing signs?

It actually sounds like it’ll be really neat, but you’re going to be disappointed if you expect anything like a new class. That’s the type of thing that we’d see a lot more information on in advance.

Hello Kristen!

Kristen Perry.5260:

I’ve noticed for faces, most requests are at the end of the spectrum… folks seem to want pretty or creature, not as much in between. Interesting. Out of curiosity, why not? The race was designed to live in the in between. Any thoughts? :}

I think it might be because the faces we have exist in a middle ground, and so when people think of what they’d like to see more of, it’s easier to conceptualize in one direction or another. Since we have kind of “in between” already, people are maybe branching out (har har) into ideas that reflect their preference to skew a little more one way or the other. I love the combination of beauty and alien traits in the sylvari, but I admittedly like the faces best that are creature with a touch of pretty, rather than pretty with a touch of creature. My favorite sylvari face is the male leaf face, which is beautiful, but also unsettling and distinctly inhuman.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Failing to complete an event is not an exploit. You can continue to try and label it as such but it is not and just make you look foolish no matter what kind of spin you are trying to put on it just to make yourselves look right.

I don’t think it could be considered an exploit, but ArenaNet has changed other events in the past that rewarded players more for failing an event than completing it. If nothing else, the fact that people are arguing over whether or not it’s a good thing to actually complete an event should be a pretty good indication.

I tried the farm last night, and through every step of the process it’s obvious that this event is not meant to be played the way it’s currently being played. I’d be surprised if anyone got banned for it (Snowcrash was farming with us and said that he was trying to relax during his off time), but enjoy it while you can, because it’s definitely not going to stick around in its current state.

Chopps.5047:

Ya but it’s not April Fools. If I can’t trust stickied posts, I can’t trust it at all. But hey, if you enjoy being trolled with false information from what bill’s itself as a source of information, I say: Have Fun! Credibility and the fact that devs post there are two things that rate highly on my criteria for what a good source for information is. They’ve failed one of the most important criterion, if indeed this is a troll. They might as well push their community away even more! Why stop there?

All I’m saying is that it’s not really “their” community. They made a bad decision, IMO, but it’s rare that we even see mod action on the subreddit, for better or worse.

Gnat.9405:

They did, and I’m not even so sure that if they introduce the mantle they will be fighting against us. What if they are trying to counter the Aetherblades?

The Mursaat are also known as:
“Bringers of Wisdom”
“Eyes That Watch All”
“Silent Saviors of Kryta”
“The Divine Caretakers”

From GW1 Mursaat wiki entry

They call themselves a lot of stuff, most of it positive, and very little of it based in reality. :P They always attempted to promote themselves as benevolent leaders and saintlike religious figures, all while terrorizing Kryta’s people. It’s propaganda.

Chopps.5047:

If the mods on that subreddit are trolling, I certainly won’t patronize their page anymore. They’re setting people up for disappointment.

Eh, I don’t think it’s worth that. There’s a pretty good community there and a lot of interesting content, and it’s not as though the mods are hurting at all if people stay away.

Plunder.8195:

If it’s worth anything, doing a reverse image search on the white mantle logo doesn’t give any good match. The logo does exist, but not in a resolution this high.
So it’s a troll, then it’s a good question how he could get this logo, at this resolution

It’s a wallpaper from the official page for the Guild Wars 1 War in Kryta content.