Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I have a few points or opinions Id like to make about Living Story:
(these are my opinions and feelings)

1. The story itself, in contrast to the personal story, is severely void of any substance or continuity. The personal story had a nice ebb and flow. You had nicely written cutscenes that took you from one place to the other both in story and in the world. You knew what your objective was and you really got an idea of what the characters were all about. Currently, we have had some story on molten alliance, upset creatures on south shore, some delegates trying to get to Divinities Reach only to be stopped by some invasion force. Most recently, you had some stuff going on in Caledon regarding more scarlet. I just dont feel the continuity of the story. To sum this up: It feels disjointed and has been poorly explained. Hard to follow.

2. Why does every Living Story event/patch need to come with a dozen or two dozen achievements? It seems that all these patches contain are some disjointed story and achievements. They feel like a laundry list of things to do, almost like a chore. We do them because we want the shiny at the end..the meta-achievement. This goes back to a thread I had created a while ago…intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. Why can’t the content be intrinsically rewarding? If the content is quality, how come this can’t be the reward, in and of itself? I got burned out of doing the achievements and I bet I am not alone.

3. The cadence, I think is too much for two reasons. 1. I do not feel there is adequate time to complete all that is needed(especially more casual players). You feel rushed. You feel that you need to drop what you are doing, and stop playing how you want to play, in order to experience all of these content patches and everything in them. 2. I feel that conventional and traditional frequency of content updates have been more successful and widely accepted. Typically, 3-6 months has been the conventional frequency where you are trying to push content out the door in 8 weeks development time?(correct me if I am wrong). Maybe more of every month or every two months we receive content updates. That gives developers more time to write meaningful lore and story, more time to test bugs, and we get more with each patch. That gives us as players more time to freely explore the content so that we are not rushed, and once we are done we can play the game as we want to without getting hammered in a few days with more content. Its too much. Overwhelmed at the moment.

3. The substance of the living story updates seems thin and, forgive the term, ‘fluffy’. There are many themed patches, and many patches where a good portion of the content has been mini games. Id like to believe that most anyone would welcome new zones, classes, monsters, skills, dungeons, lore, personal story, etc rather than a few lines of story, some bug fixes, and a temporary open world content or dungeon, mixed in with some mini games.

Currently, I am not playing GW2. I am keeping a vigil watchful eye on it. I visit the forums several times a week, I log in every once in a while to peak around. But I am not playing. Largely because of Living Story for the points described above. Will I return? Maybe. I am currently enjoying other games and other genres. Maybe I will return again to the game, but I hope some development direction changes are able to be seen. Otherwise I fear that I’ll be in the same situation that I am in now..which is quasi disappointed with where the game is headed.

Thanks for your time.

There are lots of good lists of problems here, but I believe a huge number of them are tied to the same core issue:

Because of the Personal Story, the Living World can only modify the game in very limited ways.

(Ignoring the irony that story you shipped with the game has limited the story you can tell afterward,) I have a few suggestions/comments for how you may be able to handle this issue.

1) There is a reluctance to add new zones so as to not stretch out the player-base. I understand this, but you have to let this one go. For many of us, having new areas to explore is one of the reasons we bought this game! That sense of adventure, exploring someplace new, is my favorite thing about this game.

2) If you add new zones, you can build those zones to properly change based on the Living World. You can have cities build or destroyed over the long-term. You can have massive changes to the landscape. You can have enemy types wiped out. Give yourself a new region of the world with the Living Story in mind and you’ll be able to do so much more.

3) To keep players in the old zones, scale rewards for DEs based on the last time they were completed. You get small rewards for events that are finished every 10 minutes, but if it’s been several hours (or days!) since an event has been completed, the rewards should be significantly higher. This will keep players in old zones even if there’s a shiny new area.

4) Tie the new area into GW1 lore! For example, we could explore the ruins of ancient asuran civilization on the way to defeating Primordus.

5) These zones could be rolled out over time. For example, the journey to defeat Primordus could take six months: you have to travel to a specific rift and there’s a new zone that leads you there. Then, when you get to the rift, you have to build a safe way in and out, so that takes a month… Next month, the entrance is complete and you can start to go inside… until you find a gigantic cavern of enemies which must be cleared. (Hello, Queen’s Pavilion round 2!) Then, a month later, you’ve cleared the cavern and can push further… etc.

That’s the kind of stuff that I would find compelling, anyway.

The Living World must be a permanent addition in the game. It must pile up after the Personal Story. Start it from the Lost Shores. Players must be able to do all the pre-existing Living Stories and repeat them at their own leisure. And if I were a developer and saw my content to last merely two weeks then disappeared completely from the game, I would be upset. Please ask the Living World developers their honest opinions after their content is completely removed from the game after two weeks and thrown into archive, you will know how some of the players feel about the Living Story.

The world of Tyria should change constantly as well as we seen in Kessex Hills. That is a great example of a living and breathing world. You guys should put more of that in Guild Wars 2 despite of it not being released in the next two weeks. There will be a lot of speculations and theories to talk about in the forums and in the game. But, if the trees at Viathan Lake in Kessex Hills were to grow after the Tower of Nightmares, that is not how the Living World should be; there should be an event where people have to remove the stumps around the lake and plant new trees.

The Living World should also continue the story that was left in Guild Wars 1. We would like to know about Livia’s whereabouts. Where is Lazarus the Dire? Will we ever visit the Wizard’s Tower and speak with Igarren? Guild Wars 2 may never have an expansion but “According to Jeff Grubb, the bloodstones’ fate will not be revealed in the initial release of Guild Wars 2, but may ‘have an influence in future expansions.’ " Will we ever know the fate of the Bloodstones in Guild Wars? And there several more posted on this thread. The Living World just does not give it all, it is kitten. Plus there is a sylvari lady slowly ruining the lore of Guild Wars.

In Guild Wars 1, my character felt heroic because I became ascended and ultimately felt responsible for unleashing the titans. I want my feelings to be swayed again. Seeing Gwen Thackeray grow up was beautiful. We want those wonderful and epic moments in Guild Wars 2. And some of us don’t like how apparently a cackling sylvari lady is behind all the uprising of the Molten Alliance and Aetherblade Pirates. So really where are the Elder Dragons? The last Elder Dragon fight was underwhelming in my opinion, kill minions, and sit on turrets and spam #2.

The Living World must be about Elder Dragons and not petty Tyrian affairs. The story of Guild Wars 2 must be darker because the Elder Dragons are slowly closing in. Tyrians should not held parties in the hour of their imminent extinction. And nothing has change much in Tyria. Past Living World content just popped like a bubble.

Im with the others who posted here:

Living story to me should be exactly that…a living story that is working towards something. Right now the “story” is over every two weeks and a new one begins, even if they are related, they feel like a bunch of disjointed “one off” events…

Some suggestions based off what my friends and I have been discussing we would love to see.

Content that doesn’t disappear and achievements that do not disappear. Why not leave the Molten Alliance dungeon, or the aetherblade one, or the queens pavilion, or the Bazaar of the winds….and make achievements that can still be gotten to this day that tell us about the areas and what is happening. (like the utilizing each of the powers of the bazaar, or jumping for the crystals achievement). Make achievements (with “prizes”) that can be gotten by the new players, once they get to a level to actually do the new dungeons and areas.

You can still do your “quick” events (like the Aetherblades suddenly attacking, or the Karka attack on Lions Arch) but then after that quick event is done, the actual content (the “living part” of the living story) stays permanently within the land.

If done correctly, NONE of this would impact the personal story or the world that is already in place for new players. If anything it adds to it. Make the new dungeons have a “story mode” in addition to explorable that explains their place within the world. Did the molten alliance break up? Nope, they are still around, so why cant the dungeon be around. Are the Aetherblades gone? Nope, so leave the retreat. The bazaar makes a fantastic “jumping off” point for future content…so it could stay also. You could slowly introduce entirely new areas with new “story” content that would grow the world.

As an example, we already had the two-week “event” where the Aetherblades attacked, we know they came from the west of Lion’s Arch, in the next “event” we help the lions guard push the aetherblades back to their island (adding another small island to explore filled with towns full of aetherblades, with aethership factories on it, (the aetherblade retreat dungeon could be placed back here)). Achievements could be simply “go to the island” and defeat X number of Aetherblades", and “enter the Aetherblade retreat”…with other acheivements related to that.

By virtue of this fight and this “event” we are forcing the aetherblades further west so then the Tengu come out of hiding on their new island and open the gates within the Caledon Forest inviting us to come and help them with their fight against the Aetherblades. “Aiding the Tengu” and “visit the Tengu” could be achievements. Once we free them from the aetherblades during the next event, now the Tengu area is open. (if you wanted to make the Tengu a playable race, it could be introduced at this time also…unlocked…and then make it a race that was only choosable for players who have first run through an entire personal story as well as the Tengu acheivements). Once the Tengu event is done maybe another event that leads characters further south in the ocean, and then further (helping the quaggan?), and then further (fire island?) to eventually lead all the way to the deep sea dragon in its deep sea cave.

Each of these “events” should encompass both temporary content (defeat the Aetherblades and drive them from the Tengu island) as well as permanent content (opening of the Tengu island as a place to go and explore). They would have both temporary achievements that would perhaps only grant a title “defender of the tengu” while also permanent achievements that would grant achievement points (visit the tengu island for 5 points), or items, or even a new playable race to choose at character creation. If done correctly, this additional story also (by virtue of being in new areas) does not effect the current personal story at all…and people can still enjoy the game from the beginning to the end without feeling like they missed out on anything (since acheivements can still be gotten for the “new” content, new players can still catch up to older players)…they can still enjoy the Zhaitan story on their way to eventually heading to the Tengu island and eventually fighting the deep sea dragon.

You could do this with each of the four corners of the world (jormag north, Jungle dragon west, Kralkatorik southeast, Primordius northeast, and bubbles in the deep sea). Eventually GW2 would be a HUGE world that players could start at level 1 and then play on and on and on with the new content until they finally catch up to the “Living world” without feeling like they were lost or missing anything.

my 2 cents on what I hoped the living story would be and still could be.

What I like about Living Story so far:

• New Places.
  (Southsun.)
• Monuments.
  Things that are impacted and left onto the world in a permanent way, that carry a bit of the story of what happened. (Karka Queen’s Corpse, Labyrinthine Cliffs in an odd sort of way).
• Holidays Events as a side-story that gets progressed once a year.
  This year’s Halloween was different from last year’s Halloween, it involved reoccurring characters that were a lore bonus to veteran players, but didn’t rely on that knowledge to understand the story for new players. (More like Kingdom of Loathing’s Crimbo than WoW’s Lunar Festival).

What I don’t like about Living Story so far:

• Lack of lasting Impact on the World
• Pace
  Is a bit much. Seemingly on production end, on the player real life scheduling end, and also on the story end. You can’t have a good story that exists on Rising Action and Climaxes all the time.
• Content not doing enough.
  When the website writings or clickable NPC optional dialogue conveys the plot or characterization more than the content does. When Achievements become the content instead of supplementing it.

Suggestions:

• Multi-chapter Living Story updates (like Scarlet) follow Story Structure to control the Pace and emphasize Impact; Exposition/Rising Action -> Climax -> Falling Action/Resolution.
  It’s alright if all updates are not created equal, you should be spending more resources on a Climax than on Rising Action. Don’t be afraid to devote two whole weeks to Resolution, because while it should be easier it shouldn’t be nothing. If you can’t keep a non-crunching team of people busy showing us how we impacted the world; we aren’t impacting the world nearly enough.

• Multi-chapter Living Story updates have two kinds of achievements;
  the ‘Meta’ achievement which you fill out over the course of the entire story Arc from start to finish, and achievements you need to get during each individual phase.
  This should be a good way to make sure the people with limited schedules can feel like they’re participating in the event as a whole and see some measured progress towards a goal over the course of months, but people who can sign on more frequently don’t get bored. You’re sort of halfway doing this already, you just need to commit the Meta to the entire story Arc.

All of the LW patches over the past year were no story parts, that played really a role to the game’s lore at all, nor our personal stories, nothing of it left really great permanent marks to the World of Tyria by changing significantly something and that for a longer time, than just silly 5 Minutes, until the next permanent repeating dynamic event restarts its cycle.
I surely can’t talk here for everybody, but within the following things I want to sum up my thoughts, what I personally expected from the living world feature, how it should have influence on the whole game:

• Persisting long lasting changes to complete maps, that aren’t enchained to a dynamic event row, but changes to the world that come and go only through living story patches.
  Example:

A Living Story patch lets occur are huge Tidal Wave caused through the final appearing and named elder sea dragon, which totally annihilates large parts of a coast line and completely changes large parts of the surrounding maps into which that Tidal Wave flooded into, letting everywhere appear new monsters from the corrupted influence of the elder sea dragon that the tidal wave brought to the lands.

• After that Living Patch, it will let the changed maps stay that way, until Anet brings up a new Living World Patch, that changes slowly again how the maps will look, by letting us players do tasks on those maps, that will help to change the maps back to their former states.

• If something like towns ect. got totally destroyed, let us work on rebuilding them, changing them that way maybe also and IMPROVE THEM, developing the environment further by building up something, that could withstand the next time better such a tidal wave through learning and evolving from the past.

• I expected from the living story to stay alot more nearer on the main story, like the Living Story being alot of different “Side Stories”, which just show us aspects of the world, which happen all over Tyria as a kind of preparement, until Anet continues with the main story.
  Every living story should give us the feeling, that it has a kind of connection somehow at least a slightly bit to the main story, that they prepare the path for the next main story part slowly step by step and are connected with each other somehow at least a bit, like a chain, so that you could grasp the story as a matter of resulting consequences from decisions.

• Decisions is also really a good key word here, please alot more of this. Cutthroat Politics was a good beginning. Please let the community be more oftenly part of the Living Story so that we can have influence on how the living story will change caused through our actions. Games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect for example can have many different outcomes within their storyline, it feels each time you play different, because you get very oftenly confronted with decisions you have to make that can have more or less dramatical influences as regard of upcoming consequences from your choices.

• To make it brief – please reconsider your patch rate and change it like from 1 patch every 2 weeks to 1 patch like every 1-2 months and make sure, that those patches are of higher quality, than quantity. This would solve also other problems, like feeling permanently having to rush through the games content.
  That way would be every patch alot more meaningful. Make differences between Living World Patches, that come every like 1-2 months and other Content Patches, that come just for Holiday Events.
  Bigger scaled patches could be also used to implement with them alot more meaningful improvements to the game in one go together with new story elements.

The way that Southsun evolved was beautiful. We found it, fought back some of its most pressing dangers, settled it, and are now dealing with ongoing threats. So I have confidence that Anet can execute on the living story concept and I think when you start opening new areas to play in it will go well.

The challenge comes where we have zone already full of dynamic events. For example, the molten alliance is just gone? There is no trace of them; no artifacts, no hold outs, no left over technology, no salvage, no norn/dredge babies, nothing? Something happened in those zones we should be left with at the very minimum a new dynamic event or two.

My only suggestion is to use the systems that you already have because they are good. Dynamic events are awesome and the game needs more of them (which means implement them in a way that allows you to leave them in once the episode is over). I would even like to see new hearts related to the living story. What about vistas that retell the story? These are the things that made me love the game in the first place. Please make more.

Tie Living Story into the original Guild Wars

I personally played GW1 for 6+ years. That was the one and ONLY game I played over that time. The story was full in both depth and breadth. It was both intriguing and thought provoking. It engaged me daily for 6 years straight, which is pretty darn impressive. Now granted towards the end it was just a matter of grinding to get my titles ready for GW2 but the anticipation of the upcoming game kept the drive alive.

Now that I think of it the grind that lead up to the release of GW2 seemed to carry over into the new game but the fleshed out storytelling style did not seem to follow.

I think it is time for the Living Story to get back to basics. Let’s start tying into the rich content base that is already ripe and ready to be picked from the well-stocked archives of GW1.

• Bring on the Mursaat
• Crumble a wall of the Eye of the North and let us wander into the wild overgrown and untamed experience of Gwen’s Garden
• Allow the Jade Sea to start melting and run off into the Echovald Forest
• Imagine how majestic The Falls have become not to mention how they would have been affected by Zinn’s Secret Underground Lair
• Palawa Joko has surely turned the Desolation into a veritable lush Garden of Joko by now

There is just so much history just waiting for the right storyteller to pick it up and run with it.

Remember – It’s not cheating building on a well thought out premade platform. Heck… it was your idea in the first place

Okay, I’ll bring out a few of my issues with how the Living World has gone.

Repeatability
The living world is based almost entirely on account wide achievements. All too often, it seems like you can log in every other Tuesday, and click through most of the content. This is not a bad thing, per se. No matter how big the content release some people will storm through it in no time. (I think it took ~14hours for someone to beat Nightfall after it was released?) The larger issue is that once you’ve gone through the content once… there is very little reason to go do it again. Many times, it’s nigh impossible to do it again.
Many times, you can’t even see how the battle would go with a different class!
Where this gets particually ugly is when later in the week, people who have less flexible schedules come in to play, and all of the more active players have no reason to play with them in doing this content.
There’s no point in making permanent content (which everyone seems in favor of), if you can’t meaningfully play it again.
Then salt gets added to the wound, when every single character you have, even ones created after the event is over, get thank you letters from Lord Faren for something you can never do.

Jump It / Zerg It
Far too many of the LW installments quickly boil down to doing one of following things:
- Crazy mad jumping puzzles (SAB 1&2, Zephyr, Aether Retreat, various metas)
- Joining a juge zerg which just steamrolls any and everything (Jubilee, Clockwork, Labryinth, Karka)

Doing these things from time to time is okay, but there’s far too much of them, and frankly, it doesn’t appeal to everyone. I never set foot into SAB2, because I had no more desire for more jumping puzzles. Mad King Labyrinth? That is an incredibly solo/small group unfriendly area… and once I got my meta done, I haven’t gone back.
Part of the problem here I think is that in both of these modes, you’re not really playing your character. I can pick any class I want, and it doesn’t change how it plays out. The jumping is the same… zerging is just a question of which weapon you sit back and auto-attack with to tag the most foes.

Cohesion
One fortnight we’re zerging karka in Southsun. Then we have this detective story surrounding the LA assassinations, which does bleed into the Aetherblade attack, and there’s a bit of a seque to the Zephyr Bazaar and followup Election… and then poof it’s gone, and we’re riding Queen Jennah’s royal balloons. And when it’s time to reveal Scarlet, do we have some tie in where Majory had discovered a plot and told Logan, which led to Anise being prepared… but nope. Rox and Braham are just tagging along…

And then we just put all of that on hold, and go play in Moto’s box. WHAT?!?
And then Tequatl just instantly becomes harder to kill than Zhaitan. WHAT?!?
Oh Look! back to Scarlet!
Oops, forget Scarlet! Here’s Halloween!

This doesn’t feel like I’m reading a long novel, and getting one chapter a fortnight. I feels like several different books got put in a shredder, and now we’re getting random excepts from each book, but sometimes a page from another book tossed in the middle. Sometimes you get the next chapter in your story… a few months later.

Knowing What To Do
There have been a great many achievements and/or plot points in stories where quite frankly, the game provides essentially zero clue as to what you’re expected to do. Example: Flame and Frost’s “Lost and Found”, where you basically are expected to just wander all over the zone and “happen upon” these items? The clue is “Return 6 belongings to refugees”. Clockwork Chaos’s “Portal Invasion Closer” had /everyone/ confused, thinking it was five portal events, in particular because when the event completed, it said “Portal Closed” (or the like). And then the achievement for doing all 13 zones… with no tracker for which ones you’ve gotten credit for….
I honestly don’t know how we’re supposed to complete some of this content without something like Dulfy’s site. IMO, it’s rather poor game design to rely on external sites to fill in the blanks.

The World isn’t Changing
There’s still bandits raiding Queensdale. The Seraph and Centaur are /still/ going back and forth in Kessex. The Risen are still, well, everywhere, even though Zhaitan is dead. There’s only one new map, which seems to gain more reasons not to go there all the time. The world was changing in Flame and Frost… until it all just went away…

Things I enjoy most about the Living World:

• Seeing/exploring new locations
• Changes like those currently in Kessex Hills that are subtle, non-fanfare, mysterious and generate genuine community intrigue and enthusiasm. They also genuinely change the map, which in the longterm makes core gameplay like the progression of alts much more interesting because the maps will be different over time as you complete them repeatedly.
• Some of the cosmetic rewards – I’m less a fan of the novelty ones that look pretty silly on most characters, but the flower backpieces etc. have been really nice.
• We now have fewer excessive grindy achievements than we used to get (see Halloween 2012 vs 2013) although rewards are hit and miss (see Halloween 2013 20-slot bags)
• We now have a smaller emphasis on RNG ticket-based rewards per event, which is awesome. Dragon Bash drove me mad trying to get a Jade Ticket, which I never did manage despite sinking hours and hours into the attempt.
• EDIT: I’ve also appreciated the range of difficulty in content in releases such as the Queen’s Gauntlet and Tequatl.
• EDIT 2!: Jumping puzzles

Things I dislike about the Living World:

Writing/Story

• Scarlet – as a villain, as a character, as a plot device. She’s poorly written, shallow, uninteresting and much, much worse than anything Tyria deserves in its lore.
• The lack of development of existing factions/characters/locations/races/plot elements from the personal story – instead we often seem to get some new flavour of the month villain, like the Aetherblades. This is partly an extension of my Scarlet hate.
• Poor framing of the player character in the story – we often have no idea what is going on. Take Halloween, for example – we could have been the characters discovering the Bloody Prince’s existence. Instead, some much smarter character does it instead and we just get to play personal assistant again.
• Critical story information only being available in prose on the website – this should 100% be IN the game.

Content

• The temporary nature of content – hate this as GW1’s strength was that you could play at your own pace. Even now you could go back and complete all of the content (bar seasonal festivals). While I like the idea of world actually being ‘alive’, what we’ve mostly been getting with the LW is not world change, but an episodic story. Miss an episode, and you have no idea what the hell is going on.
• Gating story progression behind achievement grind (e.g. recent Halloween content)
• Too fine a focus on achievement-driven, checklist-checking playtime and throwaway content that will be played only until people have got their achievements and then abandoned. Focus on content that will be played persistently because it’s fun and has longterm value.
• Meta-achievements that can only be achieved through combined use of daily and static LW achievements – this is extremely inflexible if you can only log in one or two days a week and forces players to play to the game’s schedule instead of their own. See the current Halloween meta, which not only blocks story progress but also requires multiple days of play to complete because you have to complete dailies.

Things I would change:

• Reduce the pace of releases. I’ve seen development quotes bemoaning the lack of resources to put into stuff like cutscenes, but I would quite frankly rather see FEWER updates of HIGHER quality with a focus on that layer of polish which cutscenes would add.
• Even more permanent content (this has improved recently, but I still grimace when I think of the permanent expansion we could have had by now if the LW resources had been spent on that instead).
• Reduce the amount of time-gating. If some of the LW content sticks around permanently, make sure the achievements and rewards stick around permanently, too.
• Work on the story delivery system. This is desperately needed if you want players to be more invested in the LW than “Have I done all the achievements yet?”
• Make meta-achievements more accessible – the best LW instances in this respect have been e.g. the Bazaar, where you could complete the meta via multiple static achievements, all daily achievements, or a combination of both.
• Make sure that critical story info for a LW episode is not lost in a written piece on the website. Either put the prose in the game, or make it more available via cutscenes/dialogue/discovery in-game. Either way, it belongs in-game!
• EDIT3!: Account-bound/reusable cosmetic rewards, via a skin bank or something similar to the Achievement skins panel.

I’ve actually been incredibly impressed with Living Story lately. I feel like it’s been getting consistently better and better throughout the span of the game and that everything you’ve said you want to do with it is exactly what I want to see you do with it.

Perhaps even more overlapping ongoing stories could be good. For example, something like Ronah.2869 said above with the community building something big. That’d be awesome, I think, and it could continue to happen even as other living story updates came out. Achievements could be based on bringing in supply, and maybe even WvW could have an additional set of dolyaks delivering supplies to guard or something, though that might be a bad idea.

My only complaint is when updates feel too separated and like they don’t connect to each other. I like how every update is different though — scarlet, new dungeon, dragon/bosses, etc. I never know what to expect, and that’s super exciting.

There are a couple of ideas I’ve been thinking about for the LW. First thing that does come to mind is how “alive” the world is. I don’t think the Living World feels very dynamic and alive. I had a suggestion that I thought might help. I won’t summarize it here, to keep this post as short as possible. And I’m not saying go with my idea, I am saying that something should be done to give the world a sense of current events and goings on.

On the achievement/story side of things, I usually finish what I’m interested in (which, admittedly isn’t always everything available) in only one or two days of playing any particular release (about 2 hours for each of those days). And I’m not a person who has the attention span to grind achievements. Usually achievements like “open X bags of Y” I won’t do. If a longer development cycle means less “X and Y” achievements and objectives for Living Stories go for it. Also, I wish the actual story was better connected. I keep hearing how things will connect eventually, but I can’t imagine how that could be accomplished without being a big stretch of the imagination. But I guess we’ll see when the time comes…

I think the problems of the LW could potentially be fixed with maybe a different release schedule. Someone (who’s post I can’t find) suggested that there shouldn’t be a fixed schedule for releases, period. That they should be released when they’re good and ready, and I agree. If there’s a way to make more substantial and less gradual two week releases, go for it, but if having an inconsistent schedule means “meatier” updates, I’d be all for that even more.

I think the LW concept is workable and a nice, free alternative to yearly expansions you have to pay for. I don’t at all think the current system is horrible or broken, it just doesn’t keep my attention very long. All I want from the Living World is just more going on with each release, in terms of story and lore, and in terms of features.

runeblade.7514:

• Quality Dynamic events, not Quantitative. Quality Dynamic event is one of the strength of Guild Wars 2 and it is extremely fun. Do not abandon this design. Story-driven Dynamic events makes it less like a grind and more of a adventure. Why do Aetherblades appear out of nowhere? Dialogues helps a lot. I rather have 20 good Dynamic events every week than 100 grindy ones. Have those 20 DE be the achievements required to finish the Living Story achievements instead of killing 100 stuff.
• I found that exploration in Zephyr Sanctum fun. I didn’t like finding the Tequalt stuff in Tequalt rising.
• First Halloween scavenger hunt was fun because of quality Dynamic events. I prefer if it was linear so that I don’t have to port as much. Waypointing is immersion breaking.
• No more Scarlet, she is the Jar Jar Binks of GW2. Instead, I want to kill more Dragons.

I hope someone is reading this stuff. Most of these posts have been hitting the same point home from subtly different angles. The living story isn’t enjoyable. You’re introducing some grindy new activity to keep hardcore players busy for a few weeks, casual players can’t enjoy it, the story isn’t very good, and its far from fun.

For instance: Something like “Centaurs invade Lions Arch/Divinity’s Reach” would be way more fun than “Tequatl is more difficult. Please run around 4/5 zones looking for something for a few days. Thanks.”

You could unlock items by participating more in the event, but you could participate and enjoy the story without defeating 350 centaur waves.

Like, why am I closing the doors? Aren’t the mad king and the bloody prince fighting? Why aren’t their minions fighting each other?

Thanks again for providing us this opportunity to engage in open discussion about the game we all enjoy and would see become even better.

For Living World, I tend to think it comes down to 4 major issues:

(1) Replayability and/or revisitability (yes, those are now words). As several have mentioned, the pace of the LW installments and their subsequent removal either creates a sense of “better do it now before it’s too late” or, particularly for new players, “you weren’t here, so you just missed out”. I’ve seen it mentioned in several other threads that people who have missed different chapters would love to be afforded the chance to revisit the previous chapters for the story/lore, even if they weren’t able to complete to metas/obtain the shinies/etc. So even if it wasn’t possible for the content to be replayed several months later (ala GW1 Bonus Mission Packs), if it could be included within game as tomes in a library that woul;d allow players to still keep up with the story, many folks would be greatly appreciative.

(2) Additonal Depth — While each chapter may be moving towards a point that draws together all the separate pieces into a cohesive conclusion, from many of the threads that have been created there is a significant opinion of the LW not possessing any depth. NPCs seem shallow, villians seem weak, the player seems to be more of audience member than a participant — these are all points that have been brought up and, as someone else mentioned, the writing team is more than capable of addressing. I think over all, it would be that folks would prefer to be actively involved in something complex and perhaps even a bit twisted, rather than feeling as if they were parked on the couch watching a Saturday morning cartoon.

(3) Less Achievement/More Accomplishment — many have stated each chapter feels like a race to rack up achievement points, not only to increase their AP total, but to complete the X number of Y that will be reward them with Z. If the focus shifted more towards accomplishing a particular goal rather than amassing the required number of AP, players might feel a greater degree of satisfaction in the end result. And what I mean is that the LW chapter would not be bash x number of pinatas, or collect x number of dragon teeth, but have several “missions” that involve actually accomplishing something — take the clockwork invasions, for example … the LW chapter could have begun with them actively taking over portions of maps and the “missions” would involve coordinating and then initiating the effort to repel them, taking back the maps. And, at the end of the chapter, the invasion would be pushed back and the zones would return to how they had been before … to an extent, which brings me to the last point …

(4) Lasting Impact — very little changes in the world with the chapters that have been released. True, Southsun and Cragstead were added, Teq and TA were updated, the Tower of Nightmares could be permanent, but there doesn’t seem to be any impact to what the LW chapters present for the players to do — the new areas are added for the LW, not because of what the players have accomplished in the LW chapters. And the chapters don’t appear to impact the overall world itself. For example, there was an attempt made on the queen’s life … an impact of that would be an increase in the number of lionguard actively patrolling the Upper City and the Royal Palace, perhaps being more suspicious of “unsavory” looking individuals, maybe even stopping and asking the players who they are and what they’re doing. While nothing spectacular, it does demonstrate that something that happened during one of the LW chapters had an impact on the world.

So, those were my four contributions to the discussion and I honestly thank you for taking the time to hash these issues out with us.

Shanaeri, back in the original Collaborative Devleopment thread, he said if the initial topics were productive, they’d continue on with others in the future.

I want to second Xar’s post above.

It’s obvious part of the goal of specific rewards like cosmetic backpacks is to motivate getting involved with that LS installment. I like what we’ve heard about the new skill coming with the Krait installment tomorrow… namely that it will be easier to get during the two week chapter, but available afterward.

It’d be great if that could be true of every reward that is part of the LS. Festivals that repeat yearly are no problem, if you can work toward last year’s reward a year later. Other stuff, like molten alliance items, should be available forever. Make it harder to get, so there’s still motivation to do them during their chapter, but development needs to be creating more and more options for players of the game, not steadily mothballing each bit of variety after two weeks has passed.

Along with the backpacks, we need some way to store novelty items like the journal or zephyr model. They’re just not useful enough to use up bank space for, but it’s painful to delete them after earning them during a chapter. We really need some sort of trophy case in our home instance along the lines of the Hall of Monuments so that we can display these kinds of items, and interact with them years later, rather than cursing them for cluttering up our bank space.

Imo, the current direction and pace of the living story is off. I don’t feel like there is any story at all currently. We have so many parties, celebrations, and random mini games that we need to repeat ad-nasium that the whole idea behind the living story is being lost.

Scarlet is a villain no one asked for and it is becoming evident that she is a villain no one wants either. The game was advertised as set in the GW1 universe but with more dragons! It seems that vision has been completely lost. There were tons of interesting, deep, and thought provoking stories and lore in the original GW, and instead we are currently fighting a crazy clown lady who yells DIE DIE DIE.

The biggest change in the living story needs to be the story itself. Tie an old GW story that was never resolved into the next dragon story arch and have it span about 6 months, culminating in facing the next elder dragon. It can involve meaningful DE’s, “mini-boss” style villians who are used, fleshed out and then killed. Chasing one villain around who does the same thing every time is boring and uninspired.

This current krait story line would be a good chance for us to find out why the krait left their homes, why they are consolidating their power, and more lore on the krait. It can tie into the rise of bubbles, and other ancient monsters that bubbles has pulled under his power. After a month of krait we can figure out where this monster is and go face him in his lair. After we kill him the next update can lead us to the lair of bubbles second in command. This can lead to more information on the kakra, all finally culminating in finding and defeating bubbles himself. As this story progresses we should see his corruption spreading throughout the current world, and meaningful DE’s popping up.

What I suspect we are going to get instead is that magic crazy clown lady used her insanity to get two races who hate each other to magically work together in some alliance and then that alliance will magically fall apart after we climb a tower and scarlet will get away… again… And that is the problem.

Finally I would say the 2-week schedule is a bust. The content is made to focus on a 2-week grind to keep players busy instead of actual content. Move back to once a month updates with meaningful content instead of endless grind that is driving players away.

TLDR;

Living story is using shallow repetitive story telling to keep people playing instead of using established lore and the actual threat of the dragons. Additionally the pace of the LS is off due to the literally dozens of celebrations, elections, parties, and mini-games that segment each story.

1. Move to established unfinished stories from the original GW, add depth to the stories, reintroduce the dragons.
2. Reduce updates to once a month to give more polish, more content and less grind
3. Kill scarlet and stop doing the same story every month (alliance→disaster→repeat)

Continuity of Story

The biggest thing that I see missing from the Living World experience is story interconnection. The continuity between each two week release is either not there or oblivious to the player base as a whole. Players seem to be floundering thru the releases in a mad scramble to get the achievements for each one but missing the background storyline the release was built around in the first place.

There is two different versions of connectivity I would like to address here, within each month AND across all Living Story releases.

Monthly Inter-connectivity:

I would propose you continue to make your huge beginning of the month Theme Release. In that patch have most of the long-time requirement items and let them run for 4 weeks.

Now 2 weeks after that do an Update Release, using a “similar variant” theme as the first patch but with the less time requirement stuff. This way you have a month long theme but continue with your 2 week content updates. This will allow for a longer time to complete the content and tie the whole theme together inundating us with plot fortification the entire time.

Stream of Consciousness:

This would be the way to tie ALL of the Living Story monthly releases together so we can see a progression of events that makes sense over a few releases and across all releases.

Instead of a Living Story of stand-alone chapters we would have a Living Story of interconnecting plot building installments, each standing on the framework of the story to date, locking previous, present and future content into a interwoven tale epic and intriguing adventure.

As an player with play time somewhere in the 10 to 15 hours a week range, I find GW2 at odds with itself when it comes to the Living Story, two week rotation.

Back when it was pretty simple to get geared up, this wasn’t as big of a deal. I ignored the long-term legendary goal, and simply jumped into LS updates as they came available, and played them as long as they interested me. There was some tension, as my goal of getting world completion often felt sidelined while I was doing LS content, but that goal wasn’t pressing enough for it to be a big issue.

Now, however, that ascended weapons (and soon armor) is in the game, I have to way the LS content against my pursuit of crafting and replacing my gear with the new BiS.

Why does the LS always have to have it’s own set of specialized currencies and crafting materials that exist for that update only? With only a couple hours to play most days of the week, I can use my entire time getting my daily collection of dragonite ore or pursuing completion of LS achievements, but usually not both.

The two week LS rotation would have been a great idea in the hard gear-plateau game that GW2 looked like shortly after launch. Now that we have these long term goals that give gameplay advantage, it feels like the LS is competing with them. Since ascended gear is here to stay, and presumably not going to get any easier to achieve, it’d be nice if there were more synergy with the LS. The Living Story should be at least as profitable in gold and mats as doing champ trains or world boss farms.

Why have the dragons taken a back seat? I would much rather a long buildup of fending off primordus & jormag while trying to uncover more about the deep sea dragon and the jungle dragon all while kralkatorrik runs amok.

I ask this question in all seriousness. What do you forsee as the lifespan of this game?
5 years? 8 years? 10? It can’t go on forever.

Zhaitan’s corruption is still all over Orr while his minions are still all over the place. There are 5 other elder dragons out there as well.

If the living world built up to each dragon (even overlapping their storylines a bit) over 12~16 months time, that would mean in just six years from now we would be fighting the last elder dragon.

So a 7 year lifespan for the just the dragons. Plus there is so much more going on. Murssat, White Mantle, etc. Plus whatever is unleashed through the mists.

The current build up in kessex hills is sort of what I am talking about.
Oh and if it turn out scarlet is a dragon minion or something… that would not be what I am talking about.

We need to be fighting the dragons and cleansing their corruption, while knowing that is what we are doing.

P.S.
The updates schedule is a little rough. It is so rapid that myself and members of my guild are actively choosing to either not log in or skip the events completely. I truly believe that the 2 week schedule is a lesson for players in ‘be careful what you wish for’ when aksing for more ‘stuff to do’.

OK.

So, it might be really useful from our point of view to hear about the pillars of the LW that have often been mentioned and the reasoning as to why we went to such a hectic 2 week schedule completely out of the blue. It’s pretty tight from our playing point of view (for example the TA meta which was also removed after 2 weeks despite being advertised for October) and it often feels we’re playing to a set schedule – one that doesn’t take into account that we all play to different speeds, styles and timescales. In fact its very design appears to assume that we all invest identical amounts and should someone miss a 2 week chapter, the chances of them going along with the rest of the story is lessened.

It also feels you guys are suffering under the workload and pressure which risks content being released before it’s refined. For example, not having any way of tracking the story or catching up with what is going on. I know this being worked on, but we risk going into a year’s LW cycle without it being implemented and I’d have expected LW to launch with it.

I’m also seeing it shut out so many new players. My impression was the Living World would be just that, new content to evolve the world, not simply a story cut into chapters which doesn’t appear to link together at each stage. Tequatl (despite its pitfalls as a too difficult open world raid) was closer to what I expected the LW would be. Potentially the upcoming tower too.

A LW is admirable aim – one I would expect could be better accomplished by fleshing out the existing strengths and unique flavour of the world you launched with incl;

1) Additional DE’s or ones changing/being replaced to reflect the changing world

2) DRagons. OK not them directly, but dragon minions aren’t currently posing a threat. A LW would develop them a lot more. The invasions are good example, but they currently lack motive or reason. They would work so well for minion attacks

3) The World is meant to move on, yet some things haven’t changed at all (Charr/Human peace treaty in the tent outside Ebonhawke. A mini story could be going on here and there could be a whole “where were you when the treaty was signed” rp kind of thing.)

4) Underwater. I love it…but as many thread stated, it needs improvements to mechanics and maybe even a UW heavy zone.

There ya, go…much ramblings

I’m a casual player, not by choice (baby), and I find that I’m missing a lot of the content because it is behind achievement walls or for a limited time only. I’m currently trying to finish the Halloween story (the content itself is great) but I’m not sure I’ll finish in time (Nov 11th or something?) — currently at 7/13 achievements.

It doesn’t feel like a living world to me. I wasn’t able to beat Tequatal(tried a few times and failed), I wasn’t able to finish Scarlet (tried a few times and failed), I did catch the start mission for closing ceremonies and this was GREAT. Everything before that I’ve missed.

I’m not asking you to make content easier, but right now I’m just not sure that you’re really accomplishing anything.

Honestly, Scarlet is a very weak villain, her story was dropped on us out of nowhere and it has dragged on for far too long. We have a background story for her on the website with a hilariously over powered origin that ended up being partially contradicted by a German interview. She’s been getting help from the evil races of Tyria, even the ones that specifically don’t work with outsiders, she has an entire world full of expendable pirates and tries to randomly invade zones around the world with basically no point except to ‘cause chaos’ or something.

Please, end the Scarlet part of the LS, there is no reason it should have lasted any longer than a couple months. Do something with the dragons, they’re actually interesting.

Also stop with the grind fests for LS achievements. They aren’t fun.

Edit: Make some single player dungeons, both in and out of the LS.

And: If one of your team members EVER comes to you with a plan to revamp a world event that they think will take the playerbase weeks to complete, tell them NO.

One more thing: No more crazy 10k/15k/100k mat requirements for ANYTHING. That’s absolutely silly. Mats should never have requirements over the 250 stack size that your bank will hold.

We all know that since the birth of Ascended items and laurels, Alts have been hit every patch release. More and more content is locked to ‘once per account’ Rewards that are not, are tied to laurels that can only be earned once per day per account, with a bonus 10 per month per account. Laurels themselves are essentially soul-bound on use in terms of usability, as any rewards you purchase with them can only be used on one character.

Unfortunately with the way the achievement system is, there is not much hope for us alt lovers. Any change that would increase the number of laurels gained would likely be unable to distinguish between a player with many characters to gear, and a player with only one increasing the progression difference even further.

Many devs have said its something they are looking into, but nothing has really been done or even hinted of yet and my best guess is that they don’t want to devalue laurels by making them more available for everyone just to please people with alts.

Introducing the Bonus WvW Laurel.

Every 24 hours of game time in WvW will reward the player with a bonus laurel. Obviously this isn’t a HUGE bonus because it is based off playtime not real-time and on its own this wont help our alt issue.

However, if a player plays with two different characters on the same account, each character would contribute 4/3rds of an hour per actual hour played in wvw. What this translates to is 18 hours of in-game time earning the bonus laurel instead of 24 hours.

This contribution amount could continue to increase if you play with more characters allowing people with many characters to earn the bonus laurel more frequently. This intern allows them to pay for the extra items they need to gear their alts more easily.

Obviously a threshold would need to be implemented so that people don’t just log in for 5 mins on WvW per alt to get laurals for their main quicker. Attached is a quick excel example with 3 alts being played. Obviously the numbers are just pulled out of my head, its just the concept I am trying to provide.

As you can see the time taken to earn laurels decreases when more characters take part in wvw. The thresholds applied are an even split of playtime between all characters so that if you have 3 characters you like to play it will take you only 15 hours to earn your extra laurel providing playtime is even so the system can not be abused. In my example with 3 characters, you can see that as a player tends to focus purely on one character the Effective hours earned towards the bonus laurel decreases.

Obviously this system requires you to play 100% even across all characters to gain the most benefit which sounds restrictive but is not the point. The idea is that a reward which is very restrictive can now be obtained quicker by players who use more characters, which is something not currently available in any way shape or form. A byproduct is that as it is implemented through WvW it bolsters the rather poor rewards WvW offers per time spent when compared with PvE.

Thanks for your time.

Agree with Herly.We are to few in numbers vs other zergs and most of the times we cant even defend our borderland.Sometimes also we run when we see other zergs cause we know we cant handle them and we will have instant death but i like this challenge and the fights if you give your best lasts longer but sometimes there is no fun when you wipe constantly.Im glad that the Commanders at least do their best and dont quit.GJ to those Commanders and keep up the good work.