Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

Raine.1394:

I think one of the fundamental problems with the current model is an event-driven framework for emulating an evolving living world. The problem comes from the fact that it’s a bad model.

Consider, the trans-continental railroad which was built in the USA in the 19th century. You can argue that it was an event and I’ll give you that one, perhaps a series of events. But, the key is that it didn’t come and go as, say, a concert would. It came, stayed, and forever changed the lives of many people. I’ll argue that that is how a living world evolves. There is continuous change, but a perception of permanence.

I think everyone agrees that an expansion satisfies the requirements of an evolved game world. A new major story emerges, new lands open up, the are new side stories, new characters, expanded old characters, etc., etc. I would really like to get away from the episodic TV, event-driven model for evolving a LW because it simply fails to model an evolving world. I would much prefer a model where the content of an expansion is delivered over time. Epic storytelling would then be possible in the context of evolutionary change that would engender anticipation rather than burn-out.

I agree with most of this. I can’t shake the feeling that Anet is clinging to an idea that isn’t as sound as they want to believe it is. I will repeat what I said above here:

The LW should not be focused on disrupting the world, it should be focused on expanding it. I think that’s the key piece that keeps getting lost. Unite the Living World and the Personal Story into one upgraded Personal Story concept. Make new instances and dungeons permanent (including retroactively adding back ones that have been removed in some cases). Limit temporary content and alteration of existing content to special events that are disconnected from the larger plot of the game like holidays/festivals and the occasional side story.

You ultimately gain little and lose much by changing what’s in place already versus just adding on to it. I don’t see any reason why you need to dramatically alter zones or dungeons to fit with new lore instead of just opening new zones and dungeons. It really doesn’t make much sense. The narrative of the game should be expanded by Anet, but not driven by them – that should fall to the player/character. Development driving the narrative just results in players becoming disengaged from the world and losing interest in the story through a lack of immersion

Both these posts resonate with me. Raine’s analogy is fitting for the “temporary” LW issue. There will always be a mixture of temporary changes and permanence in a real LW, but Anet seems to be taking more of a “concert in town” approach, where once the band has finished playing, the concert hall is changed back to the way it was before, and the hardcore fans and groupies carry on out of town along with the tour. No one stays behind (the NPCs related to that LW all go). The town’s folk move on and don’t talk about it (except for the occasional nostalgic reference by players). Some garbage from the partying is left behind for cleanup duty (continuance of Scarlet invasions in random zones at a lesser frequency). I think this is fine with holiday events like Halloween, but for the rest of the LW, the pioneer concept is ideal. I hope Nike saved the text within his post.

I was quite impressed with a number of posts in this thread.

Nike.2631’s Pioneer post was particularly brilliant. It covers a lot of issues with temporary content vs lasting impact. It’d also be nice to have more titles in this game as a reward for people putting in effort (in conjunction with the Pioneer Marker idea from Nike). A lot of the best titles in the game still come from GW1 (God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals).

I also really like the following ideas:
-separating out some of the achievement points
*casual players have more time to finish the meta
*bi-weekly AP + chest etc for hardcore / grinders

-motivating players to spread out throughout the world (similar to the Global Dominance idea)
*corrupting Champions, and then giving an achievement for killing them, wasn’t the best idea due to the fact that you want to discourage the Champion trains in Queensdale and Frostgorge. Too many LW events keep people in Queensdale.
With the ToN, I adventured out for a short while to complete Global Toxic Gardener, Krait Historian, and Krait bane, but then for the remainder of the achievements I was basically in Kessex and Queensdale.

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An issue that I would like to discuss more in future threads is the reward system vs the time and risk invested. I could apply this to anything in the game (dungeons, fractals etc for future discussions), but I’ll try make this as relevant as possible to the LW.

For bosses like Tequatl, I would suggest adding a token reward system similar to Pristine Fractal Relics, so that even when players with rubbish RNG luck only get junk greens and yellows, at least they get something worthwhile in the long run. This would be fairer than allowing 2/100 people to randomly receive some Ascended loot. I know that random “rare” drops add excitement to a game, so by all means keep the RNG loot in, but add a guaranteed reward to balance it out for other players.

Pristine Toxic Spore Samples are a decent “currency/material” with the current LW. Watchwork Sprockets didn’t really amount to anything special. There are much better skins out there.

I’m not saying a token system is the only way to reward effort, but it’s a possible way to go about it. Token systems do pose a risk of feeling “grindy,” but I’d say that grinding and farming will exist regardless. I’d prefer turning in some tokens from bosses and crazy LW events for some awesome rewards to just farming out champions or doing the same dungeons everyday. It would be Anet’s job to provide some balance between rewards that you can collect (through tokens, meta AP, etc) and rewards that you can attain from participating randomly in large scale events.

I wouldn’t call the actual items you receive tokens, but of course it would function in that sense. I would also suggest to create more than one type of token. One type should be account bound, and then the other could be bought and sold on the TP like with the Pristine Toxic Spore Samples. It goes without saying, but of course the account bound tokens should amount to better rewards than the tokens that can be bought.

I have never really enjoyed crafting in MMOs, but I know a lot of players who do. It’d be nice for me to have other ways of getting some nice gear without relying on crafting or my vast amount of gold. I can easily buy things from the TP, but that’s not very exciting.

I’ll reiterate some points:

1) The LW is purely temporary and with no lasting effects after “the story moves on.” At least add some kind of impact and perhaps access to uncontested content – even if it’s just in a rotation like with temples (I am not talking about in the boring sense, where people guest over to buy obsidian shards from uncontested temples. Make people on that server feel proud of their accomplishments).

2) Everything feels rushed. The content feels rushed by the developers, and that results in weak character development, weak story development, and weak game play (mainly with bugged content). The set up of achievement points and the time limit to get meta achievements makes the players feel rushed and furthers the “grind” feel to the game.

3) There is no hook. This is directly linked to problems #1 and #2, but it’s also to do with the reward set up. If you don’t have compelling plots or adversity, at least give something better than some lame looking back pack skin. If you really want to put out back pack skins, make them cool like the holographic dragon wings. The achievement points don’t feel rewarding enough because of the grind and scavenger hunt to get them. Most people just go to Dulfy to find the fastest way to get boring content out of the way.

4) Don’t do things the Microsoft way. Don’t rush to get out the next Windows before perfecting the current platform. I understand it’s a monumental challenge to be pumping out content, but we’d rather you (Anet) take the time to develop well-thought-out content. Leave more time between new LW implementations. That way, we don’t feel rushed as players to grind out some meta achievements, and we can enjoy the game at our own pace. It’s a win-win situation for both the players and the developers. If hardcore players who blow through content complain, I can bring up issue #1 again. If it’s not overly temporary in its nature, and the existing impact and challenges are there, players will have something fun to do. However, more importantly, I’d rather you fix existing content. There are a ton of flaws and bugs in existing dungeons, fractals, and so forth. Keep the releases far enough apart that you can put equal effort into both existing content and future content.

I understand the mentality behind this change, but I feel it’s another example of Anet doing some lazy patch up work, rather than focusing on the big picture.

It amazes me that they are still doing this a year after the game has been out. I played at launch, and one of the easiest ways to make money back then was speed running CM (could do it in 9 minutes or so, no diminishing returns). They eventually nerfed dungeon rewards down to a daily so that you can’t run the same dungeon over and over. That’s great, but they never tried to dangle a carrot in front of the other options. In a game where you can buy most of the top end gear through gold, of course people will farm for gold even more than in other games (where you can get some loot through raiding etc). They merely took away the most “unintentionally” enticing carrot of the time, but they never added other carrots (alternatives) to lure people away from such habits, so the problem still exists today.

People tend to run the same dungeons over and over (once a day of course, but the monotony persists). CoF path 1 (10 minutes). AC P1 and P3 etc.

Why create all this content in other dungeons and in other paths, when no one wants to do them? Anet merely encourages farming by creating disparity in rewards for time and risk invested. There are challenging and entertaining paths out there (eg CoE path 2) that only give 1 gold for 45-90+ minutes, when CoF also gives 1 gold for 10 minutes effort.

Rather than punishing people who don’t mind grinding it out for their gold, mats, etc. they should be focusing on incentives and rewards for players who seek “treasure” through other content available in the game. The reason people feel compelled to do things like the Frostgorge and Queensdale train is because there are no worthwhile rewards elsewhere in the game. World bosses are dreadfully boring (as well as zerg based). Dungeon rewards are terribly imbalanced.

The LW situation is no different. It’s a grind fest for AP and rewards. I thought this is what Anet wanted to discourage? Grinding and farming out rewards with a zerg. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case with the style of Scarlet’s invasions and the Tower of Nightmares. Either Anet is bipolar, or they are being quite hypocritical.

1) Rewards need to match the risk and time involved (especially for Dungeon Paths and Fractals).
2) More build variety in gear, traits, and skill sets. It’s too easy to find one optimal build that trumps the rest. I could also say the same about class balancing and role diversity.
3) Boring world bosses (100 people tickling a dragon’s foot to death. Tequatl revamp was a step in the right direction, but issue #1 affects #3).

I would love to elaborate in the follow-up discussions.