Guild Wars 2

Chrispy.5641:

Imaginos.3756:

Brimwald.5894:

That’s some secret sauce. Time is not the only, or even the major part of something (tv show, novel, game, etc) being great. Having the best writers is what makes tv shows good or bad period.

Your getting the same quantity of Guild Wars 2 content on the 2 week plan as you would get on the 12 month plan, your just getting it as it is finished instead of all at once. The quality is not suffering since they are creating it the same as they would on the 12 month schedule; working on something and then moving on to the next thing. the reason the quality isn’t there is in execution and writing. Just imagine waiting 12 months and still getting the Scarlet arc. At least this way we can have input in the process, and they can make quicker changes to improve quality.

The shorter content release schedule is better.

No it’s not. The shorter release schedule makes everything feel rushed and like you have no time to rest and enjoy the game in general. The content itself is rushed. Southsun is the perfect example. When it was redone Hrouda<sp> said they didn’t have time to do skins for the weapons so they used the generic crap you can buy off of any vendor anywhere in the world. He also said it was far easier to create head/shoulder/gauntles/ which is why you see a deluge of that stuff as rewards. Because the teams are cranking stuff out too fast and don’t have enough time for polish or creating full sets of armor.

Look at all the bugs on each release. Not enough time to test it all properly. A slower schedule would insure higher quality content with fewer bugs and better rewards.

The rapid release schedule has already driven half the people on my friends list from the game including some RL friends. It’s bad when you’re hemorrhaging players.

Time Is the secret sauce that makes our favorite TV shows great. Having Good writers and people working on the shows are good and all, but rushing something is still rushing something. And seriously, if the Queen’s Gauntlet had those same bugs, whether the team had 4 months or a whole year to work on it, then there is something very, very wrong.

Look at it another way….In fact, we will. Lets use food as an example… My Dad is an executive Chef in charge of a High end restaurant. One of his best menu items, are the ribs. You can’t just throw BBQ sauce on a rack of ribs, throw it in the oven for twenty minutes and call it a day. You have to take your time preparing those things. You have to put the sauce on the ribs in a way that doesn’t overpower the flavor of the meat. You have to be careful that when you smoke them, you use a certain of wood, so the flavor of the wood gets cooked into the meat. You can just use coal, or it will taste bad. And you can’t just turn the temperature up, and cook those things in 20 minutes. It takes several hours of love and attention to make those things as perfect as they can be. The amount of time you spend cooking the Ribs can mean the difference between something that tastes good, and something that tastes extraordinary.

Videogames are the same way. You can’t just spend a week on something and call it done. You have to take your time. You have to make sure the code is correct. You have to make sure that the cosmetic armors and weapons that go into the game match with the story and is the sauce that people want with their video games. The story has to make sense. But above all, that stuff takes time, and if you rush it, there will be very obvious bugs and graphical errors, plot holes, basically stuff that can make a game go from something people want to play, to something that sucks. The Amount of time you spend making a video game can mean the difference between something that is just good, and something that is extraordinary.

….and now I’m hungry for ribs….

Simple solution to the bug issue is a public test server.

They don’t spend a week working on the content. Bobby Stein already confirmed in an earlier post that they create these things some 4 months beforehand (how’s that for marinating?).

I wish you would have used a different example; my mouth is watering now.

Imaginos.3756:

Brimwald.5894:

That’s some secret sauce. Time is not the only, or even the major part of something (tv show, novel, game, etc) being great. Having the best writers is what makes tv shows good or bad period.

Your getting the same quantity of Guild Wars 2 content on the 2 week plan as you would get on the 12 month plan, your just getting it as it is finished instead of all at once. The quality is not suffering since they are creating it the same as they would on the 12 month schedule; working on something and then moving on to the next thing. the reason the quality isn’t there is in execution and writing. Just imagine waiting 12 months and still getting the Scarlet arc. At least this way we can have input in the process, and they can make quicker changes to improve quality.

The shorter content release schedule is better.

No it’s not. The shorter release schedule makes everything feel rushed and like you have no time to rest and enjoy the game in general. The content itself is rushed. Southsun is the perfect example. When it was redone Hrouda<sp> said they didn’t have time to do skins for the weapons so they used the generic crap you can buy off of any vendor anywhere in the world. He also said it was far easier to create head/shoulder/gauntles/ which is why you see a deluge of that stuff as rewards. Because the teams are cranking stuff out too fast and don’t have enough time for polish or creating full sets of armor.

Look at all the bugs on each release. Not enough time to test it all properly. A slower schedule would insure higher quality content with fewer bugs and better rewards.

The rapid release schedule has already driven half the people on my friends list from the game including some RL friends. It’s bad when you’re hemorrhaging players.

I wasn’t talking about how long the living story lasts (2 weeks), I was talking about them releasing new content every 2 weeks, big difference.

As to Southsun, that was their first living story update ever, so you can’t judge the quality of new weapons/armor on it and ignore all the amazingly high quality skins they release with each new update. Southsun was nearly 1 year ago, but there have been an unprecedented amount of updates since.

I haven’t had any gamebreaking bug problems, but if the bugs are such a huge issue, then that could easily be solved with a public test server.

So you’re really telling me that if your friends did not have a content update at all in the last 12 months, they would have played more during the last 12 months? More likely, they would have quit sooner, then when the big patch hit would they love the Scarlet update? Of course not. But with this method we can help change the direction of the content if we don’t like it.

Now, if the content continues to improve in quality (and it has, as you pointed out from Southsun), and they shift away from Scarlet and toward the dragons while implementing just some of the great ideas in this thread, then this will change the MMO genre.

P.S. this a free content, unlike sub games were they charge $180 a year, the cost of the game ($60), and usually a $40 expansion.

Chrispy.5641:

I am also answering a question from many pages ago that was asking about comparing Guild Wars 2 to a television show…

The game can be like a T.V Show, very easily, but, honestly, I’d rather have less Naruto, and more Samurai Jack

Naruto is an Anime from Japan that has released a new episode every week uninterrupted, for the better part of 10 years. Some episodes and story arcs are amazing, and represent the very highest quality in what should exist in Animation and story telling in general. Others are terrible, should have never been made, and look like obvious filler content for the better stuff.
Other shows to compare this to would be Spongebob, Ben 10, and pretty much every soap opra ever shown on network television.

Samurai Jack when it was still being made, put out way less episodes every year than Naruto and other cartoons ever did. Each season ran for 13 episodes, that aired once a week uninterrupted for about 4 months. Then it was 8 months before we saw a new episode. You would think that because Samurai jack put out 1/4th the content of those other shows, it wasn’t as good? You would be wrong! Because the story writers and animators have had much longer to work on it, almost every episode that aired represented the pinnacle of what can be achieved in Cartoon animations and story telling.
Other shows to compare to this would be Legend of Korra, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, the Sporanos, and most other shows that you see on primetime television, in the timeslots that get the most viewers.

Guild Wars 2, currently, is More like ‘Naruto’ or ‘One life to Live’… You have been pushing out content regularly since last year, and while some of it is amazing, and represents the very best that you can hope to see in Video Games and Story telling today, other releases leave much to be desired. Some releases have much more content than others, and some have much higher quality content than others.

I would have to say that the Southsun releases are the low points. last year’s Halloween, Wintersday, and Bazaar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics are the high points. Everything else fell in the middle.

What you should be aiming for, is to make every release, everything possible that you make for the game, to be Top quality. That also means giving yourself enough time to test the new releases until there are no bugs, so you don’t run into the issues that we had during the Queen’s Jubilee release.

If Releasing the very highest quality content 100% of the time means transitioning away from a bi-weekly release, and moving to a monthly, or even bi-monthly/seasonal release (Yearly festivals excepted), Then please do it! Even if I see no new content at all from July-December except for the yearly festivals, because all the new releases and story telling is getting showed to us from January-June, I would take it!!! Because I know that you put the same amount of effort in those 6 months as you normally would for a whole year of living world releases, and that would make all the content you release much better all around.

I don’t want everything at once like in an Expansion, but I also don’t want it trickled to me so slowly that I lose interest. You should also realize that Quanti(t)y Does not equal Quality! Your current release schedule is releasing new content at the pace you desire, but not at the Quality we, as gamers want, or deserve.

That’s some secret sauce. Time is not the only, or even the major part of something (tv show, novel, game, etc) being great. Having the best writers is what makes tv shows good or bad period.

Your getting the same quantity of Guild Wars 2 content on the 2 week plan as you would get on the 12 month plan, your just getting it as it is finished instead of all at once. The quality is not suffering since they are creating it the same as they would on the 12 month schedule; working on something and then moving on to the next thing. the reason the quality isn’t there is in execution and writing. Just imagine waiting 12 months and still getting the Scarlet arc. At least this way we can have input in the process, and they can make quicker changes to improve quality.

The shorter content release schedule is better.

Theftwind.8976:

Many years ago I was involved in a game that had what I would term a truly living world. If a bridge needed to be built to get from point A to point B, the community would have to band together, gather the resources and use their skills to build that bridge. After that point in time that bridge became a permanent fixture in the world. Although the game had its own flaws the “living” aspect of it was awesome. We built communities from the ground up, we built bridges and mines, all of which had functionality after the fact.

What you are calling “living” in this game is not the same. There is nothing that will permanently change and once the event is over what remains behind becomes mere “clutter” and nothing that truly adds either functionality or usefulness to the game. We get recipes that require certain “drops” from the “living world” and once the event is over they become once again, clutter, this time in your vault and if you require those items you have to go hunt down that remaining “clutter” to get them.

For example, the Scarlet thing. Now we get a pop up on our screen telling us where an attack is taking place but if the story were truly “alive” we would have defeated Scarlet and moved on. However with the current design you have to leave “bits and pieces” around to satisfy the requirements for the recipes. So to satisfy the requirements for a recipe you have to go out and “grind” for the components.

In that previous game once that bridge was built, it was complete. You did not have to go back and rebuild it, new people to the game would miss that part of the content but there was always something else to be done that would build the world.

The problem with the current design of the “living world” is that you have far too much in the game, be it armor recipes or weapons or what have you that depends on the content from one installment of the living world. Looking forward, after a year or so of these types of releases, you are going to end up with a whole lot of disconnected pieces and yet nothing in the world will actually change.

If the world was truly alive then Orr for example, would have seen a drastic change after the defeat of Zhatain. It did not because it is not truly alive.

So do you have a solution? When Scarlet invades and the players drive her off, maybe her resources are constrained, and when she wins she gains more troops? Then once she runs out of troops after enough success, she is defeated? What then could the draw be if the no special mats?

Also what is your solution to the item clutter issue?

Einlanzer.1627:

Nike.2631:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Shinzan.2908:

I’m more convinced turning to a traditional content release concept rather doing this episodic thing would be better for GW2. The instances with Roxx and Braham, Scarlet’s playhouse etc could have been triggered after one finishes their living story as the next chapters so people can do them at their own pace and experience a personalized story. Doing it that way would allow for things like recognition from NPC’s or slight alterations based on our characters past choices.

Meanwhile the Molten Facility or Aetherblade retreat would have been better as new permanent dungeons, with explorable paths as well as their own rewards and armor.

In my opinion a game just shouldn’t try be a TV show.

I’m not sure the two need to be mutually exclusive. What if every X amount of time that seemed reasonable, the story simply kept being expanded in the way you’re discussing rather than be released in one big chunk?

But if you’re not up to that point in the story arc, you can play it when ever you get there.

Then that story has to exist inside of instances rather than your open world, and while your Living Story accumulates content (good) your Living World stagnates (bad).

The problem you’re running into is your pivot point for the Living Story has been so unwelcome, many people want you to direct your attention back to the Living World.

Its a resource allocation puzzle, to be sure. Hopefully this thread inspires you to shift priorities to a more middle road, and new insights garnered here allow higher quality on both tracks.

But the Living World is not working the way they wanted it to, and I have doubts it ever will. Part of this is a due to resource limitations, and part of it is due to the way the game was designed for launch (i.e. a personal story rather than a world one) causing a conceptual clash within the game that hinders the story-telling aspects.

IMO, it’s much better to shift their focus with it to improving the systems and content behind the DEs, and let the large-scale stories be told through PS style content additions (primarily new instances and dungeons). There is still a lot they’d have the freedom to do with the LW – tons of recurring events/festivals, new DE and meta events, world polish like seasonal weather, and the occasional temporary low-canon mini-story for novelty value.

Personal story is far too expensive unless they remove the player character’s voice actors and make us silent protagonists (which I am fine with). They would also can’t have alternate story arcs for each character (as much as I love it) because it is an MMO, so their costs in so many other areas are so high.

PS clashes with the dynamic event system. I see the living world (large scale dynamic events with consequences) mixed with living story (dragon centric story moments like instances and dungeons) as the way to go. The world changes based on these regional DEs and then the story is created to work alongside it. Hence players driving the story.

FOR EXAMPLE: Jormag invades the Shiverpeaks, players respond, once beaten back (a long struggle with capture points, siege, and rebuilding broken keeps across multiple maps), the story instance is opened where the players can move the story forward, learning more about the dragons and fighting a dragon champ. This is followed by new zones opening up and the ability to fight Jormag (and fail) which opens a new story point where the players need to find a way to kill the dragon using the tooth in Hoelbrook. This whole thing would be server based, so each server needs to progress the story and the war themselves.

Zaxares.5419:

ColinJohanson.2394:

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?

Perhaps another look is needed at long-term rewards and goals that players strive for. It seems a lot of angst is directed at long-term rewards that players feel are “too grindy”, such as Legendaries, Ascended gear, and more recently, festive content such as the Halloween items. Of course we want to have long-term goals to work towards, as this heightens the feeling of satisfaction when we finally do get it. However, to avoid creating that feeling of “grind”, requirements for these rewards could be spread out across a variety of game content with lower tiers of completion. For example:

- Instead of relying on a Precursor to drop by chance, the player could acquire one (per character) by undertaking a quest to defeat a number of powerful bosses scattered across the world. This includes not just World Bosses, but also foes that are rarely tackled, such as Lieutenant Kholer in Ascalonian Catacombs, or Guild Bounty targets. This would encourage players to seek out foes and dungeon paths that are unpopular or rarely seen.
- Once they have defeated all of these foes, the player is then sent to a special solo instance where they have to defeat one last powerful enemy (a Doppelganger, perhaps?), after which they receive their Precursor. This Precursor can then be sold or kept for personal use as usual.

Another idea might be putting special NPCs in a player’s Home Instance that grant special rewards based on the player’s activity in-game. For example, suppose there is a Seraph Liaison in the Home Instance who tracks how much effort the player has put into the war with the centaurs. Completing Hearts/Dynamic Events/bosses linked to the Seraph/Centaur war grants karma (increased from the current amount) and increases the player’s “renown”. Depending on their Renown level, karma can be spent at the Liaison NPC to obtain materials, weapon/armor skins, or even special items that are used for Ascended/Legendary crafting.

For instance, to reach Renown Level 1, the player must have completed all Hearts in Queensdale linked to the centaurs, completed all the centaur-linked Dynamic Events in Queensdale, and killed the three Veteran Centaur Chieftains at the Righteous Hoofmoot. To reach Level 6 (the highest level), the player must have completed all Hearts in all maps linked to centaurs, completed all centaur-linked DE’s, and slain the World Boss Ulgoth the Modniir.

At each level, a new tier of rewards is unlocked at the Seraph Liaison, allowing the player to purchase things like Centaur weapon skins, Vials of Blood fine crafting mats, Onyx rare crafting mats, special minis etc. for karma. (Possibly also gold.)

Similar systems could be set up for wars against the Nightmare Court, Flame Legion, the Sons of Svanir/Icebrood, Destroyers etc.

To encourage players to return to past maps they’ve already completed, utilise the Daily system! Having a Daily task like “Centaur Crusher: Fight the centaurs by completing <X> centaur-related DE in Queensdale/Kessex Hills/Gendarran Fields/Harathi Hinterlands” would encourage players to go to a specific map and aim for particular events.

This is actually a pretty good idea. You need to accomplish certain things to get a precursor (not a legendary). e.g. complete ALL paths of ALL dungeons which will reward one precursor of your choice, but only one dungeon master precursor per account.

cesmode.4257:

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,
Earlier in this thread I suggested a system called Global Dominance where as a server, we need to control the world map(all zones, all towns..as much as possible) against onslaughts of enemy NPCs. If an enemy NPC like a band of centaurs take over a town, they gain a foothold thus increasing their presence. After a short while they attack another town, and gain another foothold. We have to defeat these footholds and drive them back. Our world dominance % dictates a server-wide bonus, or something to that effect similar to WvW,

This does at least two good things:
-Allows the player to truly play in any zone they want without following the champ train
-Spreads the population out to all zones rather than just a few

Search for my post earlier in the thread. I explain it a bit more.

If you give bonuses for keeping the world free of NPC invaders, then you should get server wide negative bonuses for areas being conquered. ie -12% magic find because the enemy controls too much of your territory (obviously having less territory means less resources). This encourages people to fight, and people should have to fight, the world is in conflict after all.

timmyf.1490:

Colin-

I’ve suggested this a couple times, but just in case it’s been overlooked… If you want to make doing Dynamic Events more rewarding, just increase the rewards! They don’t need to be different. Gold, Experience, and Karma all have useful sinks/conversions in game already.

I think that, rather than flatly increasing the rewards, you should scale the rewards based on how long the event went uncompleted. For example, an event like Champ Boar that gets fired off as soon as it’s ready will give the same rewards. An event that is often neglected, failed, or uncompleted, (like most of the escort quests), would scale gold, experience, and karma up based on a timer.

For example, if it goes 30 minutes before completion, you get double the normal rewards. If it’s 4 hours, you get 5x rewards. If it’s 8 hours, you get 10x rewards. That kind of thing.

This means that zones with low player population suddenly become very rewarding for groups of players who want to run through and complete events. Suddenly, these zones which are mostly empty are full of people. Players on high-population servers are guesting down to less-populated servers for the extra rewards (and those on the low-pop servers suddenly have open-world friends).

Very good idea. This will encourage players trying different events and has the added benefit of making leveling in places we hardly visit more enjoyable.

Colin, instead of just increasing these rewards, you should increase the skin diversity you can buy with them. For example, Karma only buys one exotic armor (temple). Gold only buys basic looking exotic armor sets on the TP. If you give us more to buy, then the rewards will feel more important like Karma did at launch (which is why players were farming karma in Orr).

The Tower of Nightmares is located in Viathan Lake. The lake is named after a leviathan which a fisherman claimed he caught there. So it’s safe to assume that the Krait work with/worship these things and we will be fighting one in the next release. I’ve attached a picture. I believe that the leviathan will be a dragon champion.

Regarding the tower itself, I am going out on a limb and saying that the giant toxic offshoot is actually the tail of Mordramoth and the smaller toxic offshoots are part of his body rising out of the ground. If you remember Kralkatorrik’s back was a mountain range in-between the Dalada Uplands and the Grothmar Wardowns (which can be clearly seen in-game and on maps from Guild Wars 1).

The ‘nightmare’ of the Nightmare Court comes from Mordramoth, so I think the inclusion of so many nightmares surrounding these toxic offshoots is a hint. Also the toxin functions so similar to branded or icebrood that I have to assume this is directly related to Mordramoth.

Scarlet’s goal is stated in the short story, "The forces that push us this way or that can be redirected. They can be set against one another to the detriment of both, and now I know how.” Is she setting dragons against eachother, or is she setting the Tyrian races against themselves? I don’t know.

The main hole in my theory is that the Krait and the Leviathan fit so much better with Bubbles than Mordramoth.

Conncept.7638:

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

Sure. A short time in to the games release, before the LS, the developers stated that they wished to spend development time and resources expanding on the existing ‘core’ event system over the whole game world, everybody loved the idea and I haven’t seen players so excited since. Note that when it was announced existing events was the wording used.

Cue the Modus Secleris events. While they did have some interesting combat mechanics they didn’t scale properly, and had no story; but more importantly they (and whatever events were implemented with them, players still don’t know what those 60 events were) couldn’t be found by any method except scouring the entire bleeding world, and none were in any way related to the existing event, stories, characters, and areas we loved and were hoping to see expanded. They were just… there… they could have been placed anywhere in the world without actually feeling like they were part of the world.

In short, the design team completely botched it. What was implemented was not what players wanted or had in mind when they asked for expansion on the DE system.

And then seemingly without any feedback whatsoever, from which they may have concluded that these events failed for reasons that could be easily addressed in even a single subsequent attempt, the expanding of the event system just seemed to piddle off as southsun came and went, hard-stopped for the holidays, and a few months later the LS started with its temporary content and side-story rather than the expansion of the core content and existing stories I believe most players hoped for.

What I believe players wanted can be summed up as: Expansions on the existing stories and event mechanics already within the world, to the end that these stories feel more alive, expanding outward based on more advanced event mechanics, more story steps, leading to more varied story steps, player choice, and player success or failure. That expansion can come by way of the LS updates, or just retcons of new content into existing areas.

I don’t want to see a giant tower out of nowhere on the front lines of the war with the centaurs nearly as much as I would like to actually see the story of the war with the centaurs. I don’t want to see the dredge and flame legions ‘powers combined’ as much as I would like to see the stories which the flame legion and the dredge are already a part of continued. 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.

(Sorry I’m saying ‘them’ as if you aren’t part of the conversation but I have no idea if you were a part of the team of developers at the time or not)

I want to see the politics involved in the Flame legion, all their leaders bickering with eachother while slandering the other legions. I want to see their plots to take control of the Charr again, I want to see them steal the claw of Khan-Ur and create another Charr civil war with many of the other legion’s seperatists siding with the Flame legion. I want to see specific and unique characters in the group and then choose a side with either the Flame Legion or the other legions (or at least fight them as a type of story plot).

I don’t want to see them team up with the Dredge unless they are playing the Dredge for fools (because the Flame legion Charr are actually quite clever).

Each faction is interesting, and I would rather see them fleshed out more. To see them all come together makes the world shrink somewhat. Let’s pick a dragon, then take the biggest non-dragon antagonists and create a story during the dragon conflict that will get in the way of us taking down the beast.

DJSushi.5406:

Many awesome ideas. Here’s what I’m taking away from it:

Regarding the Living Story and Permanence.

The issue seems to be pairing a changing evolving world of new content with preserving that same content so the game “grow” rather than just “change”.

I see a new player logging on a year down the road. The open world is in whatever state the current Living World releases have brought it to (perhaps a new Khan-Ur is invading Kryta, about time). The new player stumbles into Lions Arch plaza and sees some drunken Norn with a LW marker.

Drunkard: “I wuss right here when it happened! Captain Theo Ashford himself, fried to a crisp!”
Player: “When what happened?” -> Que Instance

The player (and party) is now in the Dragon Bash instance. Upon completion, he is spit back out into the open world, where heralds are still yelling about Khan-Ur Slagtusk’s Invasion. The player can now continue on the old story from his current point (steampunk pirates? Yes, please) go back to the beginning (I obviously need to catch up) or just skip ahead to anywhere in the LW story up to the present release (oh THAT Scarlet. Yea, no thanks).

If it functioned this way, I think it would create a game that felt like it had the true depth of a living world. I hope ArenaNet can find a way to do this. Just think of playing an alt and leveling this way; I could level to 80 only playing through the most epic moments in GW2 history.

Shakkara.2641:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Well let me answer this one, as I was very underwhelmed by the dynamic events as well.

My expectations for the dynamic events and the game as a whole were quire different, mainly due to all the promises in the manifesto. The whole “the game cares that you’re there”, for the most part.

I expected much more of a sandbox world driven by player actions and player choices. I expected that all the servers would diverge and become different, because of all the different choices made by players (much like Ultima Online). I expected players/guilds to be able to hold non-instanced territory (like owning towns in GW: Factions but better) and shape it as they’d see fit. And the dynamic events tying into that in order to force the owning players/guilds to make fresh choices to develop it further, perform ‘maintenance’ on their holdings or to transfer ownership of territory to better performing players/guilds.

At the moment I just do not feel my characters or my guild is having any kind of impact. The way dynamic events are now are just fundamentally lacking and focussed in an area that doesn’t interest me. It feels like it is just a silly push-the-lever-and-get-reward random slotmachine system; no wonder that players end up in two groups: those that look for optimal runs to get the most reward out of the system per hour, and those that become bored by it and burn out.

I think the focus shouldn’t be on gold and item loot at all. But rather reward the player by having meaningful influence, a way to change the world around them, make meaningful decissions, etc. I do not want to feel like a faceless Power Ranger beating up the villian-of-the-week over and over. I do not want to feel like playing through a time travel episode of Star Trek, which always has a big reset at the end, rendering the actions of the crew meaningless. I want hardcore choices and painful consequences. Think Game of Thrones. You failed? Too bad! Off with that head! No character shields!

-Yes to guild ownership of keeps in the open world and let them fight on set “siege times” (so we don’t take away from WvW).
-Yes to actions that influence the world.
-Yes to consequences.

Xar.6185:

I’ll flesh this out if I have time or if more people would like more in depth details but I’ll try to get across my point.

The living story steps need a way to be replayed that fits into the world / lore. I also think that this replayablility should apply to the personal story and even parts of holiday events.

I think a good way to do this would be to utilize the main cities in certain ways.

Lions Arch has portals to every city, portals to WvW, easy travel from the heart of the mists, the mystic forge, all the dungeon vendors and fractals of the mists. Oh and Moa racing. It is chock full and needs no more stuff to make peolpe travel there.

In the Grove. Use the pale tree and the dream to ‘see / participate’ in the living story steps or replay personal story parts (perhaps even choosing differently, though this wouldn’t affect your actual PS, just let you see more parts without creating another character of the same race). The pale tree actually does something similar to this for you and Trahearne in a story step. Doing it this way lets people select what they want to do. Want to do the Molten Facility? Don’t hope for a random fractal, put it here selectable in the Grove. Same thing for Aetherblade retreat. This would allow the living world / story to continue at whatever pace it wants without rushing and herding players from map to map. Players would be able to step in and out of the story without fear of missing anything.

The Black Citadel is the perfect place to host warband vs. warband… Er…. Guild Vs. Guild rather, on a neutral field so to speak. Guilds could post on an in game ‘bulletin board’ for challenges or schedule matches or even recruit.

Hoelbrak should be where all of the ‘pvp’ activities portals are located. Like southun survival, crab toss, sanctum sprint, keg brawl and maybe even add on a special rotation of the limited time activities like reapers rumble, dragon ball or snowball mayhem.

Rata Sum needs to have the Super Adventure Box become permanent. There could still be a ‘living’ focus brought to it once or twice a year when new levels are added or tribuilation mode is altered or new skins are cycled in and out. Also the polymock arena is there so if and when that is implemented that make two strong reasons to visit Rata Sum.

That leaves Divinties Reach. This is where we leverage the Queen’s Gauntlet combined with the heart quest in plains of ashford, Help Paenula train the troops by fighting in the pit and capturing creatures. Players would be able to go to DR speak to a ‘Big Game Hunter’ of sorts and choose first by location, then by type etc a specific PvE mob to fight solo or in a group. These could be bounty targets, wandering champs, dungeon bosses etc. All unlockable by doing specific things. For example if you wanted to choose the cave troll from queensdale you would have to have queensdale map completion or have killed a certain number or type of trolls. To unlock Kholer from ascalonian catacombs you would have to have completed AC story mode first etc.

This would help to spread out the population from LA and allow people to replay the living story steps in a non immersion breaking way.

Ah! Another good idea. By seperating places out like this, you give specific types of people with similar interests reasons to go to these amazing cities. This idea will actually give players the feeling that the world is bigger and more expansive, filled with all kinds of adventure. Currently we are always just hanging out in Lion’s Arch, and when we think about these other cities, we just see a “wanna be” LA without as much to offer.

And to expand on my earlier post, these cities can get attacked (infrequently) and if the players fail to defend it, they lose access to the city and whatever it has to offer until it is retaken. And unless all 5 cities are free, players can’t access the Fractals in LA (giving players incentive to participate in these events).

DarksunG.9537:

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…

This is exactly my thought. I think stopping at 60 new events “around the world” was bizarre. Honestly, did the team expect people to even get a sense for added DEs until they got to almost doubling the # in the game? I’m surprised at that.
The current DEs repeat so fast & with such an obvious cycle that the world isn’t dynamic. we were told that certain events would be on month-long cycles. It seems pretty obvious that the current number of DEs, in terms of making a dynamic world, is not NEARLY enough.

If they don’t add regular DEs, i’d love for them to think about doing something that is actually more free-agent or battle-plan type stuff. I think Rifts invasions are far superior to the Scarlet invasions & I think using tech like that where, say, Centaurs actually build up forces, then move out(like, actually move), taking control of certain points on the map & disrupting current DEs & towns, would be more interesting. Especially if they vary their strategies & order & it only happens like twice a week.

I think it would behoove them to think of certain PvE maps like WvE.. with push & pull, roaming mobs, mob zergs, keeps, upgrading..etc.. but they need to do it in a way that is not scripted. the mobs need to be free-agents with agendas, not rail-following, spawn-at-this-time mobs.

I’ve been saying for a while now that they need to add WvW mechanics (especially supply and siege) to PvE in dynamic event form. In fact when Colin was talking about adding dynamic events to the world post launch, I was thinking this is what he was talking about. Hirathi Hinterlands is probably one of the best examples of DEs working really well. I had so much fun there, but since it’s so far out of the way and the rewards are not any better than other places no one goes there in numbers that would be fun.

I think Orr has some of the best dynamic events with actual consequences for losing (contested waypoint and no access to the armor karma vendor or losing access to Arah). I would like them to expand these two ideas (map conquest and consequences) to certain regions with dynamic events that matter to players.

Handalf.1894:

I really like the scenarios described by Nike.2631, and would like to direct your attention to the also brilliant ideas developed by Shriketalon.1937 in his thread To Merge the Personal and Living Stories .

Read it before he is infracted for putting his text into JPGs :-)
It’s really good.

Wow. This guy has really thought this out. Some would be relatively easy, and other parts would be much more difficult, but I think it is the direction the living story should take.

Revamping the story mode dungeon path would be the easiest part (they’ve done this for dungeon paths before). Zhaitan now knocks the airships out of the air. Zhaitan is hurt from the cannons, and now the heroic players need to finish him (with Traherne helping) after crash landing. We triumph, but the pact is severely weakened and incapable of fighting any other dragons. Inspired and afraid, citizens of the kingdoms force their leaders to confront the dragons.

As for separating the personal story from the world; it can be done, but there will be risks and trade-offs. That would be a big decision for ArenaNet. But I would like to see an integrated living story in a changing world while still maintaining the ability to go into an instance and enjoy what I’ve missed.

That guy has a lot of good ideas though. I hope everyone takes a look.

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 _.

I agree, the game design lends itself to certain things more than others, and ArenaNet only has limited resources to commit to things that won’t serve the greatest part of their playerbase. They already have WvW, personal story, sPvP, PvE, Dungeons, Crafting, and the living world/story. I’m not saying these things wouldn’t be nice, but they need to focus resources on what will make the world feel like it’s actually changing and not…fishing.

But I do like the idea of player driven events and weather that affects maps. Those can go a long way in making the world feel like it’s living. But as long as there are no consequences, it will never truely feel alive.

Moshari.8570:

I see a lot of people posting ‘persistent world’ ideas that would involve armies of enemies taking over areas if events fail.

Keep in mind that on low-population servers (I know, I know, I constantly bring this up) these events will fail more often than succeed. I saw one person who posted that if these events fail, it would make these areas more difficult content (more champions, harder fights, etc)…I think this is a bad idea for the same reason, the servers that will fail at these events are the ones that could not get enough people to do the events, if you then make areas harder after the events, you will further encourage this disparity.

The amount of players that simply “play the game” are far far more numerous than the amount of players “looking for a challenge”. This is evidenced by Tequatl. It is a ghost town on most of the servers. Those servers that have the players who are “looking for a challenge” are precisely the ones who will win the event and thus not trigger the challenging content…sure, you might have a few of those permanently switch servers to get the challenging one, but you will have far more people switching servers to go back to “easy mode”…particularly if “easy mode” has +% to mf as suggested by the OP. Why do you think most people run champs instead of fighting Teq or Karka queen.

Instead, any events or LS that changes areas for the better or worse should be done not as a single server, but as an average of servers, similar to the way the votes for Kiel were tallied. This also makes it easier on developers (single code-base to work from). So if all of the servers combined only succeeded in pushing back 40% of the advancing enemy, then yes, the area should now be filled with SCALABLE events to keep trying to push it back (if they succeed, then it will go back to normal).

Everything in LS (and in GW2 in general) should utilize the scaling abilities they already have in the game. You have no idea how difficult some of this content has been to complete on low-pop servers (my server is mid and I can see this). Believe it or not, there are actually people who cannot get achievements (like killing the lich in mad-king laby) because there simply are not enough people doing that event to succeed at it. This trend of introducing boss’s that are ridiculously over-powered even when there are only 5 people on the map has got to stop. I miss being able to do Tequatl on my own server, with my own server’s people rather than with TTS, or guesting to a high-pop server. I miss going to southsun to just roam around killing Karka’s without being annihilated in the camps which are constantly over-run by so many Karka’s that a solo player cannot even run through them without death. And like I said, Borlis Pass is considered a “mid” server….I cannot imaging how bad this is on a truly low-pop server.

SCALING must be used in LS content…and continue after the LS is over with whatever is permanently left behind. Currently the LS has made my world smaller (no longer go to southsun or SW sparkfly) because of the LS. I want a world that grows, not shrinks.

The solution is to improve the scaling that is already in the game. Low pop servers will need scaled down mobs and mob sizes, so even small servers can succeed (but still be able to fail). They could also scale up the ally NPCs on low pop servers. I still think fail conditions and consequences are crucial to a living world.

P.S. guest on a high pop server to kill the Laby Champs.

Elbegast.6970:

Seras.5702:

Elbegast.6970:

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)

• yes to the above *

Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions

• no to the above. this isn’t The Sims or an RTS *

Player-Generated Dynamic Events

• explain *

For the Player-Generated Dynamic Events, for example:

Okay, lets say I own a farm and have saved enough grateful NPCs around the world to hire some farm hands. How would my goods get to market?

From a drop-down menu or from a quick chat with my Farm Boss NPC, I send out some pack Dolyaks to carry my goods to town. This would start a scripted dynamic event. Other players could jump right in and help guard my caravan. If the goods make it to town, I get gold and the players get a standard reward of karma, xp, gold, random chest, etc. If the event fails, they get a little xp and I lose my goods to bandits.

^^This is THE answer to living world content (not living story). These player-generated dynamic events give the players a stake in how the event turns out.

To add on this I say remove the idea of player housing and create guild keeps within the zones (limit each zone to ~4). The guilds need to build the keeps using these player-generated dynamic events, but it takes time and significant resources, and you only build a little at a time (it could take a year to get close to the size of Vigil Keep). Meanwhile they get attacked by dynamic event chains (making it hard to build because things keep getting destroyed).

This also paves the way for…wait for it…GUILD WARS (can you have guilds warring in a game called Guild Wars 2?). You will need Specific siege times two nights a week where guilds can fight each other (no constant WvW war here), and smaller guilds can choose to ally with one of the large guilds on the map, stealing supplies, destroying the enemy keep, farms, etc. The goal is for a guild to get dominance of the map, so they can control the map, resources, whatever.

But even if you don’t like the guild battles idea, you can definitely do the player-generated Elbegast mentioned in some way.

Conflict creates an interesting world. Where does conflict come from? People. If you want something to be “living” you need to have real people in conflict. But how do you do this in PvE content you ask…

Transform already existing zones into Dragon Conflict Areas (no new zones necessary…yet). These zones already have small outposts and keeps built, so the designers will not need to add to them. Turn keeps into capture points, introduce WvW siege and supply mechanics, then let the dragon minions loose.

The dragons turn people into their minions, so why not let players be the minions and work against the players trying to free the map? BUT you can’t have players from the same server working against each other since that would go against ArenaNet’s design philosophy to have players work together. So you bring in a limited number of players from the WvW match-up to be a thorn in the other server’s side. Give those players some special powers and loose them to capture points.

WIN CONDITION: Retake the map, allowing players to kill the dragon champ, and giving them access to a dungeon that they can’t otherwise access. That dungeon is a huge story dungeon that brings forth the next story arc. (of course players must continue their vigilance like the lionguard, or the map may be invaded again)

LOSE CONDITION: The map is locked out (that’s right, l-o-c-k-e-d). The dragon minions then proceed to the next map and start a huge invasion. Eventually this can lead to taking cities from players (new players would get a sliver of the city, but unless they take back both the city and the starter map they can’t access their personal story or the normal quests).

To Summarize:
-A map gets turned into a “Dragon Conflict Zone”. Insert Living Story here.
-Players must start reinforcing choke points and keeps with supply and siege.
-A small amount of players from WvW match-up come to the map as dragon minions.
-Dragon champs are locked out until the players beat back most of the minions.
-Dungeon unlocks at the end where another story moment happens.
-Losing locks the map until players can retake it.

This idea is only the start because a living world will need to change the landscape, the races that inhabit the area, the way players interact with the region and other players.

This idea also has the added benefit of being super fun.

Grimthagen.6019:

Brimwald.5894:

Hey Jaken, why would you want a 6 month content release schedule?? They would lose too many players to other games. 2 weeks is great, though monthly would also be fine. This makes the players feel like the devs are constantly trying to update the game with new content. The content isn’t perfect, but it’s better than not getting new content for six months. Besides the whole company isn’t working on a single content release for two weeks; after the Halloween release that group (the holiday event team) probably started on the Wintersday content (that’s a 2 month content release).

Most MMOs don’t release content patches much more than a few times a year. EVE Online for instance only does a Summer and a Winter release.

There are constant patches and changes and improvements between major patches, but the big ones only drop a few times a year.

There’s no reason other than philosophical that ArenaNet has to do releases at this pace.

You’re correct, most games don’t do content releases every two weeks. Most games release new content usually about 12 months apart, which is why I stop playing them because the current content alone is not enough. I usually don’t come back when the new content finally drops, or I come back and don’t play 80% of the new content.

ArenaNet is treading new ground here, and it’s obviously going to be a bit bumpy. New things always are. I am trying way more new content than every other game with the two week release schedule. I think in time we will see that this is the best method.

With two new MMOs and two new consoles coming out ArenaNet can’t let up on the gas now. This method has the possibility of giving them an edge over the competition (besides that no monthly sub thing).

Jaken.6801:

Brimwald.5894:

Hey Jaken, why would you want a 6 month content release schedule?? They would lose too many players to other games. 2 weeks is great, though monthly would also be fine. This makes the players feel like the devs are constantly trying to update the game with new content. The content isn’t perfect, but it’s better than not getting new content for six months. Besides the whole company isn’t working on a single content release for two weeks; after the Halloween release that group (the holiday event team) probably started on the Wintersday content (that’s a 2 month content release).

That was not what i was implying.

I was saying that the “big content” that actually evolves the world. The big story parts, should only be released when the whole package is ready.

For that they should pull back their teams to focus on the big picture.
Right now they have four teams working at the same time on different projects under a deadline.

I never said that they should stop releasing content, but if they want to create this world changing events they should go with smaller “events” while creating a big one in the back.

The stand in releases don`t have to be massive, but should be able to advance the world and it`s narrative.

Okay, I agree with this Jaken, assuming they don’t already have another team working on the bigger stuff. I really hope this is what they are doing, and that the bigger stuff is just taking a lot more time than they thought it would.

Grimthagen.6019:

Honestly, I can get better storyline and dialogue from a lot of different entertainment sources. Only in video games (and MMOs in particular) is there the potential that I can personally interact with the progress of the story.

That’s very good and simple way to put it. I agree.

Jaken.6801:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

Well. That is actually your problem to be frank. You decided on this shedule, that is nothing we can really do there, isn`t?

We don`t force you to do anything, however you have a vision you want to come true. It is your baby. The living, evolving world, however it feels like you stand in your own way here most of the time.

If it really takes time to create an event (not a DE, i mean a story event, where the whole world reacts to) then take your time.

No one forces you to publish in the matter you are now. Several here ven begging you to slow down the pace.

You can still push out updates, events, etc. however if you create worldchanging events then take your time.

You have enough other things you can explore in the meantime. So many elements in the game untapped.
Every “alliance” you created could have been the second step and we could have explore each member throughly through indevidual events, before they are beeing mashed together for example.

You are so focused on immediate release (because it pulls people in, of course) that it feels like you don`t step back.

If possible i wish for the enxt release, have two of your LS teams just focus on one big event, that has a lot of story content, goes over wo months, with every step actually building up to the climax. This would be 4 acts. introduction, failure, comeback and final.

in the meantime, flavour events could happen. Even “small” things change the world. They don`t have to be all grand. However, they have to be entertaining.

Hey Jaken, why would you want a 6 month content release schedule?? They would lose too many players to other games. 2 weeks is great, though monthly would also be fine. This makes the players feel like the devs are constantly trying to update the game with new content. The content isn’t perfect, but it’s better than not getting new content for six months. Besides the whole company isn’t working on a single content release for two weeks; after the Halloween release that group (the holiday event team) probably started on the Wintersday content (that’s a 2 month content release).

Stramatus.5219:

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. I love GW2 to death, but it can’t hold a candle to GW1’s story, atmosphere, lore.

^^This is exactly how I feel.

I hope GW2 adopts that atmosphere while maintaining player cooperation (it is possible). Music that perfectly fit each zone, the epic struggle for survival against unforgiving and brutal enemies, the depth of heroes and villains (each had their own strong motivations for doing what they were doing), the humanity of Gwen as a child seemingly dying but then fighting and hating the Charr, etc.

The way to make the living world feel like it’s alive is to tell us about something coming in the future (a dragon invasion) and then having us do things in the present that will help us in the future (think GW1 Hall of Monuments). We need to be building up for a future event, but we occasionally get attacked destroying some of that which we saved and built making us understand how much more we need to prepare.

FOR EXAMPLE: the Kodan and Norn start building fortresses in the mountains that change the map somewhat, gathering crafting supplies and gear and supply (yes, WvW supply for building castles and siege), but are targeted by dragon minions while they are being built. If in 3 months we don’t maintain those defenses, the Kodan soldier’s weapons and armor, and stockpile enough supply, then the players may not be able to stop Jormag when he sends his armies. Every map of the Shiverpeakes is invaded until the players and NPCs stop them. Then they have to push them back out of every map that was successfully taken by Jormag pushing into new maps that include Jormag’s lair (this will include epic living story).

Features include:
-Turning the players into enemies of other players like the beta event with the Shatterer. Please do this again.
-Rewards would be based on participaton, not acheivements. This encourages building up keeps and holding points instead of just attack, attack, attack.
-An NPC who tells you in VO about where the battle lines are currently drawn. Not the eyeglass guys, but the NPC hero leading the NPC armies.
-The end dungeon cinematic would be an epic character driven event.
-Add a renown mechanic for these giant events that awards players who contribute the most in some way. This could be the commander who led you to victory (having celebrity players can make the game very interesting, but it is based on in-game fame, not real world)
-Make the event difficult to gain ground especially due to the turning you into a dragon minion problem. It takes good commanders to retake a map.
-Several different event types: survival, capture, rescue, build, etc.

RANDOM PLOT IDEA FROM THIS: killing Jormag frees many icebrood, and some of his minions are ancient, preserved in ice. Some of these are heroes and villains from the past…you know the ones I’m thinking about…But in general, beating a dragon should bring about lesser villains and other conflicts in some form (eg Norn fighting Kodan).

In general, LW/LS content needs to be easy enough to obtain the meta acheivement, but there needs to be harder acheivements (with chests) for guilds and individuals who want the challenge (I mean really hard).

P.S. I’ve attached a picture of one of these celebrity commanders on Yak’s Bend.

Here is a list of changes I want to see (I reference Guild Wars 1 throughout because it provides a more relevant example than random movies or novels):

-A noticeably changed world that feels as bleak as the GW universe actually is, especially now that dragons are ravaging it. This provides a contrast of our characters working together in an evil world. Like a diamond on a black cloth.
-Include more of the Tengu as we work toward them becoming a playable race. They are very interesting and my favorite race from GW1.
-Introduce interesting characters that make the world feel bigger than Logan and Queen Jenna (remember all the NPCs, heroes, henchman, and bosses with personalized names from GW1). Also improve the “feel” of the world, so it seems like there are armies and lots of interesting NPC characters in it that are doing things.
-Introduce more interesting enemies. Not necessarily new enemies, but change their looks and their combat style, and make them more skilled like the NPCs from the sPvP area.
-Change the cutscenes from side-by-side talking to characters walking around and talking (like GW1) which will create a more engaging story and more realistic characters.
-Make our characters silent protagonists. It’s fine to do in an mmo.

As I am playing through the Tower of Nightmares I realized that all these things were done. I definitely noticed the greatly improved cutscenes (GW1 style) with interesting characters walking around talking about what’s happening. The zone has been destroyed and ravaged, and it looks awesome. Patrols of Tengu =). Enemies with down mechanics, champion boss fights with adds and other skills. And I never said a word, so now I can determine how my character feels. This is what a living world should look like. So please continue to do more of this.

Thank you ArenaNet development team. I love this game.

This is the big time my fellow Yak’s Bend Heroes. We move up and we win this matchup.

As I work to get 100% map completion, I find that there are so many small castles and towers in the PVE side of the game. They are occupied by NPCs, but seldom do events happen within them.

Event: We should have one of the maps be overrun by some dragon’s minions and have to repel enemy attacks [siege placement on the walls(place supply on the map)], take our strongholds back, and retake the map.

Timer: Make it an incredibly difficult (really hard so zergs don’t steamroll it) event one or two days a week, where a map is just overrun. The players have to retake it by 10pm PST or else…pick a consequence to put in (world needs to feel like it changes)

Rewards: Level 80 map completion rewards for players successfully retaking the map (lvl 80 transmutation stones, Mystic Coins, a chance at precursors, etc). Plus Karma, gold, and xp.

PLAYERS MUST BE ABLE TO LOSE If not, then everything is just another event for grinding whatever currency system the player currently wants. There need to be consequences.

Continued below are more interesting ideas!

Put in some old structure or castle from lore that is the stronghold for the dragon champion or some Mursaat warlord, or some lower lich lord. Or make this even more interesting by pitting 2 villains against eachother [top of map(Sons of Svanir), bottom of map(Centuars)] and put the players in to bring peace with the lionguard, or army of whatever nation this map is a part of.

Make Tequatil[or another DC sinces bosses should be defeated and not return unless there is a specific storyarc for that boss for them to retake something(I miss GW1 boss names)] show up on the map and fight over different keeps, but not be killed until the final assualt by the players. Destroying keeps, would be nice if the engine can do it(ie wipe it off the map).

Conclusion Orr is supposed to do this, but the end boss is Zhaitan, and the fight is instanced, so the battle for Orr can never truly be won. Orr must always be this way becuase of the instanced story arc, but other maps don’t have to function like it.

Another good question for this thread is, “How much vitality is good to go along with all that toughness?”

I liked Trahearne alot. The idea of being the main character, BUT instead of everything being about you leading great armies, Trahearne does and you support him.

That’s a cool story idea unlike Mass Effect where Shepperd seems to be the only being (out of tens of billions) in the galaxy that can save everyone, and everybody keeps telling you that.

Contrast that with GW2 and needing everybody to work together to overcome challenges and save the world. Your character gets to play a role within the leadership.