Guild Wars 2

Join one, join all to the spookyest run of them all,
Join the Guild <GRIM> as they take flight
Dragging the waking the undead of the night.

Meet us at Cursed Shore and
bring the proper attire,
For in costumes we will be running
for start to the spire.
So set the date and be on time
if you wish survive the Orrian run of your life.

Think you have style? well put your skills to the test with SBI’s first fashion show! Hosted by <GRIM> . Ten contestants will be chosen to go strut their stuff in front of a crowd to see who come up on top to receive a grand prize of 1200 gems!. Save the date! Feb 22 @ 5pm EST in Divinities Reach!

it mostly follows the personal story choices the player who starts the instance made, So if you had a norn, you have a much higher chance at Eir, if your a whisper agent, then tybalt and so on. Its still random but with a higher % at your personal choices,

Teege.4623:

This tri-key thing could just be another horrible implementation.

I’m more concerned about more backpacks and minis. Good gravy can we get something else?

its just easy for them, one size fits all kinda thing, but i do wish for more diversity too.

A Massive Headache.1879:

I could have sworn there was an official statement from anet that all the fractals take place in the past. As for factions, yes I liked the asian theme, but I don’t care for anime. we were essentially chosen because we were the heroes of tyria. There was more depth in shiro than a majority of npcs in nightfall, and it may have been a lot of flashbacks but that makes for a more entertaining game than reading the wall of text from an npc. I kind of feel like the writing style of nightfall is spilling over into these living stories and it’s atrocious

yeah they originally said the past then doubled back and said past present or possible futures( probably to cover all ground so they can keep it creative). But yes i mention the fractal not as a current thing but just a oddity that they would do a Abaddon fractal and now were seeing these trademark 6 eyes. Im not holding my breath or anything, just curious notion cuz like you said , it could have just as well been glint, but it wasn’t. why Abaddon specifically?

most of the time ppl dont like in game voice. They don’t use it cuz either they don’t have a mic or maybe antisocial? and then ppl how do have it on are usually trolling on it. In addition others have complained that if you did use it, it slowed down the game. These were at lest my observations when wow added them once upon a time. things could have improved. When i wanted to voice with friends then id skype.

well if you would have asked me a few months ago, id say no way, not related, just coincidence. I actually think alot of the gw1 lore was left in gw1 cuz either they felt they can work on new stuff (scarlet) or that the majority of the players wont know any gw1 lore. In any case is this Abaddon related? maybe and only maybe cuz Anet did say they would make an Abaddon fractal if it was voted in, so maybe that was due to the fact that the LS would somehow be linked to it? Who knows…

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I think where the failure is lies in the rewards. You don’t get nowhere near enough rewards for doing DEs compared to other things, because karma is not very useful. Also, doing something extremely short and simple like killing a champion gives the same if not more rewards than a long DE like escorting someone, so no one does the escorts.

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

This is true! and a perfect segway in to my next topic!
(continue…)
Rewards: (OOooO shinys) I don’t think it’s a secret, Gold is king in gw2, you need it, you want more of it and as much as you can get as quickly as you can spam the 1 skill. Why is this? Well the game revolves around it, there tons of gold sinks throughout the game from armors, to gems to waypoints and even the trading post, the game has the gold sinks covered. Why is this bad? Well it sets the farmer mentality and puts and empathizes on acquiring it. Now there’s the easy solution to solving this, which is DR, slap on DR to champs and call it a day. Nope the may hinder the gold inflation but does not solve the gold is king issue. You have other currency (Karma/Skill Points/Dungeon tokens/Laurels/Gems/Fractal/Guild commendations and Badges ), spread that wealth.

Possible Solutions:
Step 1. DE give Loot boxes (like champ boxes) upon completion, while decreasing the coin in champ loot bags. This essentially won’t be a nerf but an incentive to move the optimization. (Thou the money in champ loot bags was nerf, the money in DE was increased) Champ still give good loot for there efforts but finishing a DE, is even more rewarding.

Exp: After completing a DE:
(Lost)
Xp + sum coin
(Win)
Gold-> Karma/Xp + (rare) Loot bag
Silver-> Karma/Xp + (green) Loot bag
Bronze-> Karma/Xp + (blue) Loot bag

Step 2.Add value to Karma and skill points, currently there useless. The karma nerf wasn’t necessary, you just needed sinks, all the nerf did was hurt new players. Adding new skills in the future or tagging karma and/or skill points to weapon/armor skins is a great way to increase the need to go out there and do DE/dungeons etc for the exp and karma.

Exp: The new TA dungeon path ( keep the blue rare drop in path but add a red one you can buy)

Scarlet path: After completing you get Data Fragments that the priory wants.

• 5 fragments + 5,000 karma = A new weapon skin
  or
• 5 fragments + 10 SkillPoints = A New weapon skin

This creates a need to get exp and karma, its rewards players for doing ANYTHING in the game, to still achieve things they want to get. The adding of Ectos to items was the opposite; it again sets Gold as king and the need for more ways to get it.

Next till look into other kind of rewards, LS rewards (Aka backpack City)

(continue..)
DE is the future:
So I was perplexed that you main selling points of LS are not epic DE but instead instancing. So lets look back at this (and this just might be because they require more man power, I’ll leave the logistics up to the Devs). DE are what makes the world of tryria feel alive and thus they should be a common thing in your LS. Now most players feel DE’s don’t hold enough impact in them as in failure or consequence which is true but lets add that nifty feature of player choice and maybe we can get cooking. ( now the player choice doesn’t have to be HUGE, but def visible. A nice area where you know payers did “this” but the overall choice hasn’t kill the Devs last 2 months of work)

Quick Exp: The nightmare tower in kessex is being attack at all fronts,

• DE/1: Offshoots sawn, Payers zerg down the 4 main shoots (like they do now)
• DE/2: With the offshoots gone something comes out of the tower (boss fight) Large Krait warrior with Nightmare courts
• DE/3(win): players kill the Krait boss, and the nightmare court retreats into the Tower (large chest reward) and an npc appears at the door. After a while shoots will spawn causing the npcs by the door to run back to camp (DE/1)
• DE/3(lost): players wipe, large area around kessex is fouled causing poison dmg if you stand idle (think fire fractal) until the offshoots are destroyed again (DE/1)
• Player Choice: Servers that complete this event can then vote on where to go now, Up the tower, or head below.

This kind of dictates were the next LS is heading first, developers would have already made the tower complete but can now slow release 1 week player choice and the next the week the top lvl. Another player choice they can add in the same arc can even be the fate of the tower or which order they thing should guard it.

Exp: let’s say the tower is defeated and blown to bits and now only a stump remains, who should remain to guard said stump? Vigil/Priory? (Whispers want no part in babysitting it. ) if players vote Vigil in time, they can build a fort around it with guard post on the shore, If priory they can build labs to study the toxin.

After thought: In the end this can even be use for bigger choice, say down the line by choosing the vigil player can buy and new skill to add toxin to the next 3 attacks or if they choose priory then something like hallucinogen causing enemy to take a certain % of its outgoing dmg or something like that. Possibilities are endless.

Next I’ll touch upon Rewards (OooO Shinys!!)

DJSushi.5406:

Many awesome ideas. Here’s what I’m taking away from it:

Regarding the Living Story and Permanence.

The issue seems to be pairing a changing evolving world of new content with preserving that same content so the game “grow” rather than just “change”.
snip

lol, beat me to it. kitten office meetings.

So I skimmed around this huge thread and will touch upon different subjects so not to make a HUGE post of things in one shot. <Disclaimer: my views and suggestions>

Living wold
As the devs already know if feels disjointed, I feel indifferent about scarlet (not a good thing), 2 weeks to complete events can be a bit jarring for casuals, the meta rewards are a slew of one time use skins and ofcorse the lack permanent content ETC ETC ETC. lets stalk solutions.

Reliving the living world:
As of right now, you miss an episode, there no way for you to know, or relive that moment. Having, scryers, historians, lore masters or even books that allow players to replay instances you already had in game as a way to tell the story is a good start without taxing the development.

Exp: Player heard of the adventure of last xmas with the toy factory and wish to see it himself. Goes to his local scryer/book (could even be in home instance):

“Tis a tale of the great toymaker Tixx and the naughty toys that went on a fritz”
Do you wish to relive the Toypocalypse?
-> Yes (can bring up to 5 friends)
-> not this time

Thus you essentially took a temporary content that has long passed and made it permanent with no ill effects to the outside world. You can do this with all the instance events. Wanna relive the events of dragon bash? Sure, your put into the death of the council member or the aetherblade dungeon.

Arc! and Structure:
2nd topic is overall LS structure, and your doing a lot better on this. Your trying to do too much all at once and its coming across as a mess of stories. I understand what your trying to do, have multiple stories going on at the same time so you can have multiple threads kind of like Game of Thrones. Unfortunately it feels more like you read one book up to page 5 drop it and pick up another. You could do this but also reinforce your original or main Arc as you pick up others.

Exp: the nightmare tree has brought upon disarray in kessex, as the orders work to get in , new trouble arises and the centaurs use this distraction to bring down all of the human outpost in Kessex

And there’s your mini arc, with a DE (leading to an all out attack on fort Salma) which brings me onto DE + player choice + LS + failure. Ya you can do it all and have your cake too. Im at work, now but I’ll try to wrap this up later tonight.

How about killing the same champ over 5 times and get nothing for the rest of the day per toon on that champ. kinda like diminishing returns on DE, force ppl to move on to another train zone/champ/etc. Either way in indifferent about zergs/trains

my bet is it will be instance, now if its going to be a zone instance like we have for kessex ( 100+ ppl pre zone) or 5 man dungeon instance, we will have to wait and see. if its true open world then expect lag up to the eyeball as everyone crowds the tower. Is that what you really want?

2 weeks updates over 30-60 day spans

i like how you think getting a precursor any other way is going to be easy. If its not RNG, expect a HUGE grind. i mean….otherwise they just be handing them out no?

Yo listen up here’s a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue like him inside and outside
Blue is his house with a blue little window
And a blue corvette
And everything is blue for him and himself
And everybody around
‘cause he ain’t got nobody to listen to

But ya i think Scarlet arch seems to be blue weapon themed, hence why we seen alot of blue and will continue to see blue items connected to her. me thinks.

Delvoire.8930:

Man… I’d hate to be at ANET right about now.

When there is group content, people complain that there isn’t a solo version. When you make solo content, people complain that there is no group version. When there is open world battles, people complain they want an instance. When you make an instance, people complain that they want it in open world.

the thus the forums are born.

when you let everybody have a say you hear nobody.

you know not everybody plays a warr…..yet. Im on an alt, ranger (lvl 35) and i have to kill the kraits 1st before i deal with nightmare courts. Krait have no down state and there main purpose seems to support the courts. Ive had situations where i downed the court 1st only to have the krait bubble around her while the 2nd one rezed (i had to go melee). Also situation were they will put red circles on the downed allies making it hard to go up there to finish her without taking hits.

maybe cuz there being used more frequently now. As for why , its prob to increase the difficulty curve and not making a champ farm, thus making champ even harder for there rewards.

Champ= 5+ players to take down
Elites =4-5 players
Vets =1-3 players

its almost the same notion of them having to turn off champ loot, in boss fight to keep ppl focused on the fight rather than the champ loot. (tech waddle, Shadow behemoth etc)

I’m not in game but maybe its Account bound? i haven’t tried on an alt. Seems silly if they want you to share one transcription device.

the zerging will die down, its just the new content everyone wants to do. in 4-5 days it will be much less populated and as they open the 2nd part of the tower, even less ppl will bother with the outside. anything new that gets put out there will be zerged but only cuz its the new thing, not cuz thats the desired mechanic. ppl make zergs, not games.

Vargamonth.2047:

It makes total sense to me.
They allow events to correctly scale when there’s a lot of people around without spawning champions that would encourage zerging.

This^ . They wanted a tuff mob to provide challenge without it turning to champ farm

KrisHQ.4719:

I believe that was because they were telling the story to your character in the present, while what you were watching was something that had happened in the past.

its true, they are talking to each other as they tell the story on how they revieled the tower.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Nightmare_Unveiled#Dialogue

i think they want to empathize your heroic work, as more ppl feel they do all the work and get non of the credit. so this might be building up for personal growth of your character withing the living story.

I agree i like where this is going, with the new addition to elites, it finally gives mobs a little more AI. I mean till now its just been red circles and dogging 1 hit kills. Adding more elements to the combat like this can prove useful to counter the dps race. Back in gw1 healers were a pain in group mobs, yet here there almost non existent and def not something ppl focus fire on or anything, I know there no holy trinity for us but group dynamics in enemy AI is always a plus.

I’ll agree with you that there story arcs can/should give players a full 30-60 days to complete but that doesn’t mean the updates should dwindle. how do you complete both? by having 1 story last over a month and let player play throu it all (from start to end) during that time period. kinda like how they have Halloween still going except i should apply to stories:

Example: (and this might be what there doing in TON)

• 2 weeks (into to new arch)
• 2 weeks ( conflict/antagonist shows)
• 2 weeks (resolution)
• 2 weeks(fluff/hints on next arch)

players can join in at any point of these 6 weeks and do the whole story. If you need more time than that, idk what to tell you

Gw2 doesn’t revolve around you. If you don’t have the time, that sucks but to demand less content cuz you cant keep up is as selfish as ppl demanding more. keep that in mind

i stopped caring about post like this. i mean there’s 1000x others. Next time start it with Dear diary…

Then it might need to be higher or the drops lowered, either way its a system they had which at lest gave ppl a chance to get skins. In a perfect world there would be 3 sets one they can keep in there RNG boxes, one that’s a rare drop from mobs and one you get with the spore currency. You can even copout and just change the color between them, so ppl can instantly know “oh man you have the red one , that’s the rare drop right?”

So i was happy to see during Zephyr sanctum rewards that gave 2 ways to get it. You had the options of trading in tons of fortune scraps for helmets/back items and even a random rng box or for those that didn’t want to farm tons of fortune scraps there were the BL tickets. Why not give these options again? Reward ppl who want to spend the time in your game but leave the option for ppl that don’t.

500 spores + 1g = 1 weapon skin or 1 BL Ticket = 1 weapon skin

• i don’t know the spore drop rate or anything, im just wondering why haven’t we return to this system

• Some sylvari cultural armors have been upgraded to glow as was originally intended and has been highly requested. To give the most flexibility in the armor design, the dye masks have also been altered so that players will have more control over the results of the armor glow. This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for glow and dye alignment) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

~https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-29-2013/first#post3114570

Gnat.9405:

I want you to stop playing the game if you dislike it so much

but then they will have nothing to complain about…. i mean what will they do?

angelpaladin.7921:

This thread makes me sad why do people wanna so willingly throw money at arena.net. Why cant they release things for free? They released 3 new armor’s + pvp finshers + new RNG chest item’s for people to collect I think the community deserves some freebies. I dont see us getting them thought sadly.

Wait, you just said a few post up you’ll be willing to pay 15 a month for full content (which btw is 1500 gems a month, more than you can use after a few months) but now your saying this should be free? gotta pick one or the other dude.

Zoltreez.6435:

ever start to use phasing ?.

they could but i don’t think they will any time soon. They don’t like splitting the player base. It was already suggested to them as a way to clean Orr but they seemed to shy away from it. Who knows maybe in the future.

PS:
“Phasing is a technique commonly used in MMORPGs. This refers to the technique of having a certain area look different to different characters. When something is “phased” it means it exists in the same virtual geography as other creatures or objects, but is not visible and can not be fully interacted with."

So there seems to be an overlying trend going on here and its :
Living story problems:

• Too fast of a pacing
• Have no substantial long lasting effects
• Temporary content,
• No information on lore or past LS
• No serious undertones
• Story feels flat/not epic/ 2 dimensional/rushed

People will keep repeating this till your mind goes numb and you stop reading everyone’s post. You need to suggest people to up vote which post resounds most with them vs them posting another version of the same thing. This way we can get the “I know” problems out of the way and people can talk about resolutions or at the very lest narrow what exactly you want from us? what your plans are? tell us what works and what doesn’t cuz as of right now post like these have been made 1000X over.

“The black wind howls… One among you will shortly perish…”

Ah, good times.

This is why I believe they should introduce a character able to control the flow of time so we could go in the past, and do old content without contradicting the living story. I think there’s already a device close to that in gw2, the fractal of the mist. I think arenaNet should take this opportunity to exploit it more.

I agree if maybe Dessa (FOTM inventor) found a way to make the fractal more stable story wise and then let players choose one of these locations/times, it would be great!

Mystic.5934:

I just realized… they said the updated TA Assault path is permanent. it has scarlet in it – sorta. meaning she isn’t going away any time soon.

Not exactly, i read somewhere that the scarlet arch will end this year but that doesn’t mean the dungeon has to go too since its just like all the other paths. Even thou i killed Kudu, i can still go back there and kill him again, as long as its not out there in the open world (like scarlet invasions) players can suspend their disbelief. hence why dungeons(instances) can be immune to decay.

The tower issue will probably be resolved in some way. Its hard to have a death tower threatening the world and let it be there permanent forever(at lest, as is). That kinda negates the living world no? then its just content being dumped without any resolution cuz if its resolved then there’s no problem and ppl yell “temporary content!”

The adventures of Scarlet and the giant Krait tree

we just don’t know.. we don’ even know what it is yet! is it a jumping puzzle, a dungeon, a tree, a obelisk, a raid, a rendering of scarlet? (shrug) its all hush hush right now.

id say probably, its already come back once this year, if not during the holiday then definitely next year.

I think eventually it will be defeated but the broken down tower will remain, then anet can add LS on fixing the dmg done by the tower itself and new players can wonder what happen in that tower in the middle of the lake so long ago.

You have to remember anet is trying to push out a living world so in a sense the time moves forward hence its why not everything can remain as is forever, just like wars and empires of our past, things change and move on.

i think this is a pretty cool idea and nice change from back packs, i mean really how many of those we need? But if we get momentos in our home instance showing off what storylines we been through, then im ok with that too. I think queen Jenna owes me a clockwork guard for my home instance.

Larkir.6502:

Shouldn’t this be in the “Living World Discussion” forum? ..

^this, and.. we just don’t know. Anet probably thought on paper that this would entice intrigue in the player base but instead its been more of a disconnect. Its one thing to have a villain who’s out to get you by hurting you directly or things you hold dear, even if you don’t know the reason why, you’d want vengeance. Its a completely different thing to have a villain hate everyone and terrorize things you don’t even care about.

they need to focus a month an a full arch vs random stories being thrown at us.
i put something in there suggestion box

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Living-Story-Monthly-Arcs/

i have a feeling it will be either
A) the krait found something and are indeed building an obelisk and about to release a whole lot of evil onto kessex
or
B) Scarlet has fooled the krait into thinking shes a prophet and made them build her an obelisk which she has clocked with her hologram tech.

if its B, and i have a feeling its B, i hope this will just explain once and for all what shes up to and not another, obelisk clockwork corrupted thing we know nothing about but blow it up and to find out the princess is in another castle.

sorudo.9054:

this just came in and i have to say, this is what i expect for GW2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr4KnUSGOtI

i also expected this, no one will do what APB did, sorry. just like developers are wary of picking up the Aion one cuz of the unrealistic 2d, 10 foot heads walking around the game. ESO picked the best character creator imo, Age of Conan. Soon as a saw it , i was like “oh i know that CC”.

Living story (monthly arcs!)
So I like the living story but it feels sometimes like a jumbled mess of short stories being thrown at us. I think the concept is great but you still need to work the pacing and actual content being delivered. If we can bring back the acts and divide that in the month, we can have a much more completing living story. Giving ppl a lot more time to finish the content and yet still keep ppl interested in what’s going on in the world. Here’s an example.
Scarlets Twilight assault
Few days before the month of the new arc. (unannounced)

• Aetherblades are spotted in Caledon forest, with the nightmare court.

Act1 (2 weeks): Caithe suspects something up in TA, needs hero’s to investigate the area (ingame mail).

• Aetherblades have begun building fortifications around TA,
• New dynamic event (evolving breaking down fortifications, stopping the AE waves, holo waves) eventually leading to Spurs introduction as the head of the operation, (quick dialog) does battle with players, at half life, sick and sparki show up and creates a fire wall in which the Aetherblades and Spurs retreats (all immune) into TA.
• Add the usual achievements (defeating x Aetherblades/nightmare courts/Spur etc), and have Aetherblades drop map pieces. 5 pieces complete the map which you take back to Caithe
• Caithe tells you she might know where this map leads, drops some hits on how she knows scarlet and that she’s heading to TA. Caithe suggest you to take this map to Captain Magnus.
• Find Magnus, show him what you found, he says he knows the perfect person for the job, Thanks for you intel and will let you know of further development.

Act2 (2weeks): Magnus lets you know (ingame mail) that preparations have been made to assault the scarlet base.

• Players head to TA, you meet Caithe and Turma. (you know the rest)
• Concludes with you going back to Caithe and she lets you know more about scarlet or faolain.(insert sum lore here) and that she need to continue to investigate to find out what scarlet knows. And players can also talk to Cpt Magnus about being disappointed that Scarlet was not found

A few days before the new monthly arc: (unannounced)

• Players are reporting seeing doors appearing at night, and the mad moon hanging over kryta. (doors don’t open, just spawn for a little while, not indicated on map)

PS: ( also at the end of the month the dynamic event is removed, won’t make sense to see spur continue to push out or fortify )

As you see its still 2 releases a month, but its one whole cohesive story with an intro, conflict, climax and conclusion, vs “here’s a new path, go at it!!” this will give more players time to complete there metas and for players to catch up on whats happen as they will be able to do all parts of the story till the end of the month.

TLDR; Continue to make 2 week updates but about the same story in order to get a cohesive story vs a random event.

We’ve said it time and time again and they know but apparently its harder to implement than we think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Living-Story-Lore-vehicle-needed/first

yes, this needs to be addressed, its an old mechanic that needs a change. Why its there? cuz back in the day you needed no prep to take him down , just show up and zerg him till he died, the end. The window was so ppl don’t camp him and to give the feeling “of oh, it can show up any time, its always different” feel. Tech needs a better exact timer if your going to require coordination.

you also have to remember anet has written themselves to a dead end with the personal story. Most of it takes place fighting undead and saving orr to fight the dragon. If they move forward then the undead shouldn’t be there, orr would be safer, the story wouldn’t make sense. Thats what they have to fix in order to really push the world forward. sadly the easiest thing to do is instance orr to ppl doing the story and once complete they get to see the new orr, where all the 80’s are, but that will fracture the community and make ppl feel they need to complete that huge long personal story with all the alts just to get to the new orr.

TLDR: So they have to think of a way to push the world forward without mucking the personal story for the new player base,