Guild Wars 2

CureForLiving.5360:

My questions:
What exactly happened to Rata Novus?

I think it’s kind of implied/said that Chak overran the city?

any ETA on this today? Is there a time they usually roll out patches?

So this is partly the internet ruining the story for me because of a relatively new meme, but I got thrown out of it nonetheless. So it’s not your fault, it’s just a matter of the internet zeitgeist and the time the expansion came out.
PRESS F TO PAY RESPECTS/HONOR EIR.God I had real tears just before then I saw that honor eir popup and I ended up laughing and annoyed that the immersion broke. I mean it's not your fault, a year ago no one would have associated that meme with it, but god did it ruin a good moment.

SPOILERS AHOY

maybe this could be a good place to gather info about the map and its events/bosses?

I got into tangled depths, but the map couldn’t figure out how to get into dragon’s stand.

Signed.

I didn’t get to play the previous betas, but going from the personal story alone, It was rather boring.

The content did not encourage me to look deeper into my DragonHunter build, I just kind of blindly clicked buttons and got through the instance.

I’ll echo the sentiment of not feeling like this is dangerous territory – story and atmosphere suffer greatly. I felt very passive in the fight where rytlock comes in, it felt like I was in the Ascalon Settlemrnt or Harathi Hinterlands just waiting for mobs to appear and mow them down.

We aren’t in Kryta anymore, so it shouldn’t feel that way.

GUYS GUYS GUYS

Dances/animation as raid rewards.

EH EH?

So, maybe. . . HOW TO DANCE VOLUME 2.

Yeah? Right. Looking forward to it.

Hi!

So I think the Youtube version of the trailer has some pretty bad compression issues, I’d like to know if there’s an official place to get the highest quality version of the trailer?

Wooden Potatoes was using a video in his breakdown that had barely any of the compression issues I saw in the original trialer, so it has to be out there somewhere.

Maybe we can get a 4k version of the trailer? (I can dream right?)

So with the new information we had today, how do we see Malyck now?

Many have said that the Sylvari’s Dream is akin to other Dragon’s hive mind, yet there’s suspicion that Malyck’s tree may not have had a dream at all.

I have a theory I’d like to know if it’s plausible or weak – I still think there’s a possibility that Sylvari on the whole aren’t dragon minions. It might be that those seeds that were specifically in the cave where the pale tree comes from were tampered or specifically bred to be dragon minions, infusing them with the ‘dream’. Malyck’s tree may not have come from that particular cave, and has grown independently of mordremoth’s influence (yet being plant based, there is still the innate possibility that he can still turn to Mordremoth, but not because he’s inherently a dragon minion).

I dunno, loremasters what do you think?

This might be too much info to dole out, but can we get a quick summary or something on how the last animatic was made? I understand it’s part 3d models, part non-photorealistic rendering, and part hand-drawn animation – is there anything procedural about it all, or is pretty much all the roughness handcrafted?

Disclaimer, I’m a very casual player that doesn’t usually play dungeons or raids, but I really liked the mechanics of this fight.

For my guardian, I had to manage 3 things in the fight:

Aegis (which was useful when setting up the flame walls)
Dodge (which you needed reserves of for evading quickly)
and Haste (so you have enough speed when you don’t have dodge capability)

Actually attacking the dragon was a bit too easy IMO, but the in-between stages were great and not too punishing (but that might be because I was a guardian, I’d like to see other professions thoughts)

I look forward to something like this in the future that is hard enough to warrant actually looking at your skills beforehand and optimizing your traits and such.

smart != wise

The first time we got introduced to her she was at the marionette, not exactly a safe place for kids, so this isn’t really setting a new precedent.

A person refuting your claim doesn’t mean that he/she is an Anet Fanboy/girl.

Cyclical catastrophe is nothing new. It’s been a thing in science fiction for ages, and even a thing in religions (remember the Mayans and all that 2012 hooplah). The reason people aren’t taking your side on this is, is that it’s such a shallow connection to make, when considering all the stories of the world.

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks for the kind words. It’s the same group of writers (Angel, Peter, Elan, and myself, with help from the designers on the team who also contribute a large amount of text for us to work with). The Living World would not be what it is without proper planning and collaboration across all disciplines on the team (writing, design, art, audio, QA, and programming), so I definitely want to say that it’s been a group effort in improving story presentation overall.

We’ve learned a lot from season 1 and I’m thrilled that people are enjoying season 2 so far. Keep the constructive comments coming. We are always looking for ways to make our future releases even stronger.

In that quote by Bobby in a thread in the entanglement forum, It seems Bobby, Angel, Petr, and Elan were the big writers at least in this early stage of season 2.

I’m curious as to what the other writers have been doing so far? Scott McGough was very prominent around the beginning of the 2-week roll out last year, but we haven’t heard from him recently. The other two bigwigs, Jeff and Ree, we only see sparringly, and we barely hear what they’ve been working on.

SHIREN THEY WHAT?

So after reading and lurking on this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Interesting-things-in-Scarlet-s-Room-Spoilers/first

It seems like maybe ArenaNet should consider working this into their lore pipeline, and add a few key people like Konig or whoever ArenaNet can trust outside of the company without spilling the beans to keep the lore consistent with itself. I’m reminded of George R. R. Martin (game of thrones writer) in one of his interviews where he regularly checks with someone like Konig for details and timelines just to keep his descriptions consistent.

I think the hard part is that in a video game, writers aren’t the only people who have input ingame. Map designers may have a lot of indirect influence, and what could be an artistic whim of the map artist can be interpreted as pre-meditated lore by players, and the writers have to shoehorn those creative decisions back into their lore somehow.

I should clarify that I was thinking more of the early concepts, creation of story beats, overarching themes, rather than those groups you said which seem to be more for ‘polish’ towards the end of the process.

BobbyStein.2315:

What sort of stories would you like to see?

I would like to see the kind of story that would make people buy Guild Wars 2 just to experience the story.

I would like the kind of story and characters that spawns rabid communities around them like the show ‘Community’,

I would like the team to explore small stories as well, and not be afraid to flesh out small dynamic event story chains without audio, because it seems audio always costs so high logistically.

I would like to have the story/game get so good that I can brag to random people that I was there from the beginning, and they will actually be jealous of me.

These are all really ‘after effects’ of the story, but I leave the details up to you guys.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Pixar braintrust is a group of people that get together and speak frankly about their films, to get them from “suck to not-suck”, usually by very honest and frank discussion about the state of the story.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/lessons-learned/inside-the-pixar-braintrust

Anet, do you guys have something like this?

If you do:
Is there anything you guys can share about the process without spoiling much?
If you don’t:
Are you familiar with the concept, and do you think it could be worked into ArenaNet’s workflow?

Thanks.

I agree with the ‘epilogue’ sentiment. Eggman, would you feel different if you framed that last instance as just a very juicy ‘epilogue’?

Thinking about it, I think if they broke into Scarlet’s room first, then went to get Aerin, that would’ve been worked better in terms of structure.

Eirian Direstorm.9748:

Would this issue be addressed by going to the story journal and toggling back to the regular personal story?

I won’t have a chance to test it myself for awhile as I’m traveling and haven’t had time to play all the way through once yet, but throwing it out there in case it helps.

Nah I tried clicking a few of the different tabs, and no dice.

Thanks for the replies, at least I confirmed with you guys that right now there’s no way of cancelling the current ‘story’.

After I finished the story, I decided to see how it would look if repeated it: I saw the different instances, and thought that was great and all, but is there no way to ‘cancel’ or get out of the living story in this repeatable mode? Or do I have to go through the entire thing so that it will say I’ve completed it again?

because money.

A lot of the problems people have with the game are because of monetary and logistical constraints that ANet has to deal with.

Many of the Voice Actors of Destiny’s Edge are extremely busy and highly paid people.

That’s the main reason really.

About the Jumping Puzzles, honestly, it’s a level 80 map.

I used to play on an old laptop, and I couldn’t play WvW or high level pve content because my laptop would die – did I whine to anet that it’s not fair? No I didn’t.

Now for you guys who do have a good PC and still complain – breathe. Take it slow. You are developing a skill, stop complaining that you can’t do it. Like playing the piano, you have to take it slow at first, and ignore the people who can do it easily. Visualize where you’re going.

Aside from the LS, most of the platforming isn’t even required – just jump down when you get to dry top, and then you can access most of the map from there aside from one high jump which isn’t that bad.

Patience people, learn.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

And the fact that you even say that underlines how this material is OLD!

Hah. Crafting is old. Killing mobs is old. Travelling is old. Games are old.

Hate it all you want, but I love the way it was integrated with the story, especially with the big fight.

Honestly, it’s a level 80 map.

I used to play on an old laptop, and I couldn’t play WvW or high level pve content because my laptop would die – did I whine to anet that it’s not fair? No I didn’t.

Now for you guys who do have a good PC and still complain – breathe. Take it slow. You are developing a skill, stop complaining that you can’t do it. Like playing the piano, you have to take it slow at first, and ignore the people who can do it easily. Visualize where you’re going.

Aside from the LS, most of the platforming isn’t even required – just jump down when you get to dry top, and then you can access most of the map from there aside from one high jump which isn’t that bad.

Patience people, learn.

Aedelric.1287:

Definitely an improvement, not amazing, but definitely good enough to keep me interested for more.

The only thing that really did bother me was them stuffing more Scarlet rubbish into the storyline. So many people hated everything about her, even though she is dead Arena Net’s writers feel compelled to stuff more of her nonsense into the story line.

We hated a lot about what she did, but I liked this particular Scarlet bit because really, it showcased Taimi fangirling, and our team discovering info was more the point of it. It was her reactions that made the segment great. It’s like a slightly better version of Scarlet’s Lair.

+1 to everything.

Who was Aerin’s VA? Aerin and Taimi stole the show IMO.

Belinda is anet’s way of including seraph interests without necessarrily using Logan – who is voice by Troy Baker, who like Felicia Day, is hard to schedule for.

I’m calling it, Belinda will probably die.

While Belinda herself doesn’t really seem all that interesting in terms of personality, story-wise it enables Anet to re-affirm human cultural issues, re-affirm Delaqua’s(and the working class’s) distrust of nobility, helps us see that her family is very accepting of Kasmeer, provides interesting story-telling opportunties for Logan, Belinda, and Marjory (since Belinda is a subordinate of Logan, and Marjory has worked with Logan before), and lets us know that Seraph has interests in Brisban, all with the introduction of one character, strategically placed.

Yeah, more than likely, we’ll go to Brisban, and we’ll get a few teases about White Mantle, but they’ll probably save meatier White Mantle Content for later. For now this ‘triad’ is our ‘alliance of the month’, but at least this time it’s been in the game since launch, and is actually more plausible than say the nightmare alliance.

Yeah, this is one of the first times they mentioned human bandits in the Living Story, right? Since it’s black market, I’m thinking it could lead down two paths, possibly both being interrelated -

White Mantle supporting bandits and possibly this black-market, as per your theory,

or Consortium is back in the picture, or maybe even both organizations are connected?

IMO this was actually a very smooth tie-in that connects human interests, Destiny’s Edge 2.0, and possible dragon locations. I thought the interaction with Belinda also provided a very good grounding that the Delaqua family is indeed working-class, and that class divisions are still a dominating force in human culture – after all that lore-bending molten-nightmare-alliance stuff, it’s good to see the laws, dogmas, and group dynamics of the world are still informing the story.

You should have posted this in the Lore and Story forum, you’d get a better response; no one would say you are overthinking it, people might actually congratulate you for being so thorough, point out a few corrections, and you might get a lore response from a Dev or two.

I feel like the living world forum is a bit too general, so a move would be beneficial for the thread – you guys would get to nerd out with fellow lore-aholics, and people will post replies and thoughts that at least will entertain your thoughts a bit more seriously and thoughtfully.

I for one am glad that there are people who are getting back into the game, and not only that, but fully exploring the lore potential of the game.

I hope that this imbalance forces Anet to put implement a few changes into normal WvW, sooner rather than later.

It’d be nice if some of the LS went to Ascalon, but I don’t think the Ascalonians themselves would be an interseting focal point of LS.

I think if they did go back into Ascalon, it’d have something to do with dragon minions getting stronger, or maybe have a few LS there as a build to opening up the Crystal Desert. (That door beside Ebonhawke is just waiting to be opened).

Nah, not really. I mean they were working together, and even on the first introduction of delaqua at the dead end bar, you could have suspected something going on even then.

Hi Bobby.

To even show up in a thread like this, where people are openly hostile to you and your team, man you have guts. For that, I commend you, in that you’re not afraid to read and converse with your most passionate critics, head on.

My only disdain with lore in this update, is that discussion of the lore is being stifled because of the Scarlet Hate. There are IMO much more interesting reveals this update that are just utterly buried by the never-ending stream of scarlet vitriol.

Narcemus.1348:

It would make more sense that Malyck’s tree came from the same cave full of seeds that the Pale Tree’s seed came from.

But not all of those seeds will grow with the same circumstance as the pale tree, in that the pale tree was planted on top of a human grave, and was imbued with ventari’s tablets.

What if the tree Malyck came from is actually a seed of the Pale Tree, and it has only recently matured. It would explain why Malyck still has human characteristics like the Sylvari of the Pale tree.

Nike.2631:

On the use of DEs to create a Living World:
-snip-

I think I agree with your statement that close proximity(both temporally and spatially) of DEs does make things feel better.

I know ANet is limited in their resources, but for DEs that are more ‘battle’ oriented and less story oriented, I think making them less linear and more dynamic between the events themselves would make for a LOT of intrest in moment to moment play. Anet hasn’t said this as a buzzword since before release, but I believe the term would be ‘event webs’, as opposed to ‘event chains’

Example:
There are 2 events going on close to each other. One is stationary, one is moving towards the other event. The stationary event is a bunch of enemy healers, defending themselves. The event moving towards the healers are a bunch of Krait Warriors or something.

Once both events overlap, both events fail. Who ever is left of the healers and warriors join forces, and a new event comes up to stop the new, combined force.

Thoughts?

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.

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.

Nike.2631:

Dunan Atreides.5436:

Here’s an idea that I hope doesn’t get buried:

change the background in the character selection screen to reflect the current living story

In the entire process of booting up the game and logging in, This is the most visual and impactful thing you guys can change (I think) that clearly signals something is new in the game. It fills up the entire screen, and hypes the player for the new content. You’ll definitely notice, if last time you logged in there were floating ships, colorful banners, and a bright blue sky representing the bazaar of the four winds, but when you logged in this week, everything was a deep red and you see Divinity’s Reach in flames in the background (Maybe, clockwork chaos). I’ll be honest, I don’t read the text on the patching window.

This idea gets many, many thumbs up from me.

[APROVED]

Question is, will ANet approve it?

I had another idea that came with this idea when I first thought of it – the idea of collecting these backgrounds on each release. Of course you’ll always have the default, but as the living story releaeses occur, completion of the achievements mean permanently having access to that background.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The thing that’s different about this is that there’s no real rewards to winning or losing, which makes it a bit different from the traditional sense of PvP. unless you cared about your order than much anyways.

Unfortunately it probably won’t happen, as it’s not a matter of rewards, it’s a matter of design philosophy. One of the few goals they’ve kept true to, is that PvE should on the whole, remain a place where people work together, not against each other. It’s why we don’t have big opposing factions in PvE, and why they have had a hard stance on dueling in PvE(meaning, not gonna happen bud).

Here’s an idea that I hope doesn’t get buried:

change the background in the character selection screen to reflect the current living story

In the entire process of booting up the game and logging in, This is the most visual and impactful thing you guys can change (I think) that clearly signals something is new in the game. It fills up the entire screen, and hypes the player for the new content. You’ll definitely notice, if last time you logged in there were floating ships, colorful banners, and a bright blue sky representing the bazaar of the four winds, but when you logged in this week, everything was a deep red and you see Divinity’s Reach in flames in the background (Maybe, clockwork chaos). I’ll be honest, I don’t read the text on the patching window.

You sure you’re not just making the gw1 connection because the area looks like post-searing ascalon and that post-searing ascalon music was playing?

But yeah, I do like this way of encounters.

It’s like you guys have never heard of concepts of building up to something, or even practice.

This is practice. Feedback from this first revamp will be used to better inform decisions for the next one. They’re building up experience, eventually work up to Zhaitan. Rinse and repeat until we get to the Zhaitan revamp.

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/arenanet/9615993971/sizes/h/

I was going through the entire thing, recognizing familiar faces…when towards the end, I noticed someone was missing.

Where’s COLIN? Did he take the picture? What happened to our poor Colin. :/

It’s getting a bit crowded in the hero tabs. I’d like to be able to just assign Ctrl+a to be achievements, as that’s incredibly efficient.

If anyone knows of a shortcut to move through the tabs in the hero panel, I’d like to know.

“Queue Sequentially”, the new British inspired update!

featuring numberwang, and the George VI ruleset.

Since no one has really made one.

Comments on what happened during the instance?

Comments on dialogue/script?

and so much more…

I for one look forward to this type of story delivery – it was meaty enough that it provided a good backdrop for the content, had recurring characters that are slowly starting to develop, and yet laid in enough new breadcrumbs to keep people like me interested.

An arguement we’ve heard with southsun a few months back will come back rearing its ugly head when permanent content comes a knocking: dead zones.

Part of the reason why Anet initially pushed for temp content, was that it kept things fresh and zones didn’t get stale. Look at southsun now. It may still be available, but where are the people who want to do it? They’re in whatever new living story we have, or out doing WvW/PvP/dailies.

Players, is this what you really want? an expanding portfolio of dead zones?

EDIT: This doesn’t apply to all living story content updates, of course. This speaks more to the addition of new maps in general.