Showing Posts For Chew.4810:
Hello everyone,
I was playing Living Story Season 2 again, together with my girlfriend, to experience the whole story up until the end of Heart of Thornes in one single stream. While this actually is a good experience and I like the progression in content quality very much (voice-over quality has improved massively since the original very wooden and kind of out-of-context spoken Personal Story) there are some issues that darken the experience a bit.
First of all it really bothers me that – at least all over the Living Story Season 2 – only the main character (the one that entered the mission) is able to interact with mission objectives. When we search for a book in the library and I – as a joined character – find the correct book (you know, the journal about Turai Ossa) the game would not even tell me that this was the correct one. Perhaps this is done to avoid confusion but then, please, display some kind of message like “[Character name] has found a journal about Turai Ossa” or something. But let the charakter take it. Otherwise, I can just stand around and wait for my (girl)friend to finish the mission on her own.
This issue of course generalizes to all mission objectives in all instanced missions.
Then, a small idea to improve the way dialoges are handled: At each dialog, give all players the opportunity to select an answer. If there only is one answer, this would work as “I am finished reading, you may continue”. With multiple answers there could even be a voting system (like dungeon paths) with the main player having the right to overrule the voting.
Currently, we do it this way: Main player opens dialog; second player reads and then tells the main player “done” (via Teamspeak or just because she is sitting right next to me). When there are alternatives, we discuss them briefly. But this requires audio contact at all times which might not always be given. And just clicking would be more comfortable.
Then, it happened two times that after a cut scene, the main player along with all NSCs is teleported into another location but the other players are not. This is very prominent in Living Story, Season2, “The Mystery Cave” where a rather large distance is traveled during the cut scene.
But what really bothered me – twice now – is doing the Prologue: Rally to Maguuma with multiple people. After helping at Amber Sandfall, we continued to the jungle portal. My friend accepted the mission right in front of the portal which cannot be passed in the instance. We played the story instance (we freed the Pale Reavers from the cave). As we were done, my friend remained in Verdant Brink (as intended) but my character was set back deep into the Silver Wastes. As if this wouldn’t be annoying enough, the character does not end up in the open world but in the instanced mission-version for the prologue. So I just wanted to go to Verdant Brink. But when I got to the portal, it still could not be passed. I even did the defence of Amber Sandfall again, just to still find me unable to continue. Then I got the “good idea” to just leave the instance, walk AGAIN to the portal at the other side of the map and FINALLY enter Verdant Brink. I think all this trouble is just not necessary.
All in all I am a bit confused how lackluster the support for multiple players in these missions is – in a game that, by nature, is a multiplayer game. I know that this is solo-content, but seriously, it should be possible to play with friends without making them obsolete during missions, right?
The first, but very nice, moment was when in the prologue to HoT, the second player character actually commented on the situation, that Mordremoth would want us to fight each other and if we would really want to play in his hands. I don’t know if this was intended, though, since the main character had already left the camp (not the map, she just went ahead).
I know this was a lot of text for something seemingly unimportant. But for me, those are really issues that bother me and that could make the game – from a story mission point of view – better.
Thanks very much for reading!
(edited by Chew.4810)
Dear ArenaNet team,
finished the “Entanglement” storyline yesterday and was very pleasently surprised. I thought I’d let you know.
First of all durinig the whole first episode I was missing the cutscenes. So it came as a surprise when there were multiple, sometimes even quite long and on top of this quite good (vision!! great!) cutscenes. Thank you! Those really enrich the story telling!
I would only which for one more thing (I know, this is supposed to be all about nice feedback and now comes constructive stuff all the same, sorry ;-)): For the scenes where the payer is just standing around while the NPCs are talking, why not making a cutscene out of this, too? We can’t really do something useful in this time anyway. The voice-overs are already there. I can imagine that it would add quite some work to adjust the characters and the camera for such cutscenes, but as far as I’m concerned, this extra mile is really worth it. I would like this so much because it really adds to the immersion into the world and the story.
Thank you very much, as of now, the new LS season comes as a really nice surprise to me (and my friends!).
Best,
Chew
My experience of the last updates (well “last” means since April) is, living story is not about the story rather the achievements. The story is just something, that defines the kind of the content, but the way the content is played is defined by the achievements. This is even more extreme since the account rewards.
Yes, that’s true. Instead of playing some story with characters I like, I get an intro video, then a good dozen of achievements to fulfil and perhaps an ending video. Story density: minimal. Grinding for achievements: maximal. Fun: near minimal.
I’d like to enter the discussion since I feel a great gap between the greatness the original GW2 world represents in contrast to the shallowness of the living story. I think all important things have already been mentioned multiple times in this thread, so I will just enumerate my major concerns briefly (in all subjectivity!):
1) The “story” part of the “living story” is its greatest weakness. Not only you have to read it on the web page instead of experiencing it in-game, but it is also arbitrary to a very high degree. There are no specific tension points, let alone a curve of tension with some climax. Characters which could be interesting when the player gets to know them better stay always on the surface (Rox, Braham, Majory, …). Immersion into a story can be generated be emotional bonds to characters and their fate. But there ist nothing really to tell in the current LS (which is a grand contrast to how the characters were presented in some presentation videos where the creators of the characters spoke about them! I see there was some sort, but I don’t need to just see it in a video, I need to experience it in the game!)
2) The foes of the LS are not worthwhile. I do not even necessarily need to fight dragons, but I need some mystical, dark and evil foe. The Aetherblades are a joke, no pun intended to the creators. But in my opinion they don’t look anywhere scary or dangerous, I even find their look rather ridiculous. I have killed them by the dozens alone. An example of truly terrifying, mystical foe: The Iron Ones of Spellforce. Aetherblades? Scarlet (don’t get me started on her…)? Nah.
Now, to really get some discussion, let me stress my consent with this idea:
To be constructive: why not put something like >phasing< to the world. In this stage of storyline (Zhaitan has been killed) there could be 2 instances of orr. The first as it already is, for players who haven’t fought him, and the second with maps on which we can clean orr from his henchmen. That should pretty well fit a serverwide cooperative content for weeks in which orr would change its face completely. Put hearts to it that firstly have to be unlocked by fighting a big boss or something else that needs a lot of players (for instance collecting 10000 whatever). Finally make orr a “normal” questing zone, before opening another say 3 maps that lead the players to the next elder dragon (content to last one year or so).
I have thought about this myself a few times and have actually come to a very similar conclusion on my own. I’m not exactly a fan of phasing, but how else could you REALLY make the world living without taking the old content from new players? Why would this idea be a great thing in my opinion?
1) The fate of Orr really touched me since I heard from it in GW1. In GW2, the whole story is told in even more detail if you want to see it. It is such a great tragedy! So, what do we have: Something the player (at least me) is really interested in, something I really like to fix (as I always wanted to reconquer Ascalon for the humans, but I guess this isn’t gonna happen ;-))
2) The personal story talkes about “cleansing Orr” the whole time in the second part. And we actually succeed! How great is that! Now – how thrilling would it be to actually cleanse Orr, fight the remaining undead, re-build cities, help settlers live there in all the ruins and tormented land?
3) The cleansing, building, defending could be perfectly modelled in living story where one stage comes after the other. You could even get more detailed, making LS episodes about a major attack of one just-built base or city players must repel. AND you could even set some score that must be reached by the players and when it’s not, the city FALLS and will be ruins after the episode.
I know that we have – even with the phasing-technique – a major technical problem here since of course players would like to participate in the current dynamic events that are going on. I don’t have a solution for that, I just want to try and show what would get me excited. That is, while this reads like a really concrete and perhaps not realisable idea, the whole thing is an example. You could do something similar easily with a complete new territory right now, no phasing required. Only then we have to tell are story beforehand that gets players excited to fight for the new land… :-)