Showing Posts For Drynwyn.8924:
I’m quite happy with the amount of updates in GW2, but I wish more of it was permanent.
We’ve been playing around so far this year with a lot of different concepts to see what works for a living world game, and see what players liked and didn’t like. Based on all of your feedback, you’ll be seeing a greater degree of permanent content built into future living world releases in 2013. And of course, some things you’ve seen before may return again, in its current form but updated like SAB or holiday festivals, or in a new form entirely….
We’ve got a few more updates coming more along the lines of what we’ve done so far in the vein of holiday festivals, but as the year progresses we’re going to layer more permanent changes and content as well with each living world release. I’ll toss a blog post up in a couple of weeks that outlines high level, where we’re taking our living world style updates specifically in the future for more clear transparency once we’ve got it all ironed out.
As always all of your feedback and comments are greatly appreciated, we’ll continue to adapt and grow this strategy and concept as we go. As we’ve said before, we’re trying something very new and different here, and in some ways we’re learning along with all of you how we make a living world style game work.
I think the Arenanet team is doing a good job in terms of updates and fixes. As far as a need for permanent content, I really feel it is not at all needed. The current living story model is just fine. The reason for this is simple: players will get bored if the added LS elements are permanent and not return to them. This is the same situation as what players are given now, only the option to move on from said content is decided for us.
I would argue that some aspects of the LS are kept. Most notably some of the achievements and the highest quality parts of the events such as the Flame and Frost dungeon. Some should just be thrown out though, the 200% MF buff is great at first glance but, it leads to the most boring situation. Players just farm constantly with the buff on and it lasts 23 hours. I find myself not enjoying other parts of the game because I want to farm in South Sun Cove with the MF buff which makes my experience with the game boring.
Right now I think the game needs some quality of life improvements more than anything else. I’m quite happy with the LS story updates, it is a lot more than some former subscription based games provide and they occur much more frequently. The MMO market is heavily saturated with games many of which have content updates that are significantly smaller than a single LS update and have a micro-transaction scheme to sell players power. The Arenanet team thoroughly steers clear of some of the major pitfalls of other developers and provides an enjoyable experience with no momentary requirements beyond the box purchase.
TL;DR: LS model is fine, keep some parts of temporary content like F&F dungeon, avoid stuff like 200% MF buff, more quality of life improvements, go look at other MMOs to get an idea of how bad it could be.