Guild Wars 2

Khisanth.2948

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Seraph and Asuka had some awesome ideas relating to global token rewards from events that allowed users to receive items from across all of our current global reward paradigm unifying our currency in this area.

There is already a currency for that! It’s call karma. What is missing is not the currency but useful stuff to buy with the currency.

Right now it’s:

legendary weapon crafting
ascended weapon crafting
some armor skins
cooking ingredients

There might be a few other things but overall the list is very short.
Before you try to add another event currency do something about the existing one first.

YES.

Karma could be a solution for some zerging-problems, too.
You should get karma for solving quests only, not for killing champs.

And we need more opportunities to use karma in a usefull way. There should be much more specialized karma-traders.

And karma should be used not only for buying things, but as a source of esteem from npcs. Some of the none-karma merchants should generally only trade with you, if your karma-level is high enough, or they change their prices if your karma-level is very high or too low.

Maybe some Asura-Waypoints cost karma, not money. If waypoints cost karma and zerging does not gather it in, that would be the end of zerg-trains.

BobbyStein

Ohoni.6057:

Part of the reason we’ve been including Scarlet in multiple releases is so we can build on her character. It’s kind of funny that we routinely get two types of feedback on the Living World story. From some people it’s, “Stuff feels random. I don’t know these characters.” From others it’s, “Stop using X character. I don’t like them.” So we’re presented with two competing bits of feedback (usually from different people but it’s hard to track opinions on a forum).

It’s not actually conflicting advice. It’s saying, in summation, “stop using characters we don’t like, but continue using characters that we do to tell a cohesive story.” I don’t personally have a problem with Scarlet, but it is tough to consider her a worthy character to build a year of stories around, at least as she’s been presented.

Understood. Thanks for clarifying.

I think villains exist to be hated by the players, as long as they have no deeper tragic in themselves, like for example Snape in Harry Potter, which allows to compassionate with them. Villains can be curious/strange too, maybe thats one reason why they are going postal.

The provocative in Scarlet is that she seems to have no weaknesses and to be undefeatable, ubiquitous, and in some way almighty by the constantly repeated invasions showing no progress in story. That is maybe not a matter of her character, but of her technical presentation by LS – so that is important for any other villain in Living Story too.

Zaitan and Caudecus in Personal Story acted indirectly and in a more devious way, that offered more substance for both, storytelling and implementation. If there are repeating events (except Arah), the villain itself isn’t directly opposed.

One of the best ways introducing a “dark force” is to keep the true villain anonymously as long as possible. So I’m excited what follows.

Seras.5702

An unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on who you’re talking to) result of the current LS design is zergs. If you release temporary content in a concentrated location, you will inevitably have zergs mobbing the zone. Examples: Scarlet Invasions, Mad King Labyrinth, Grand Pavilion, Toxic Offshoots in Kessex.

New LS releases need to figure out a way to not discourage zergs so much as promote small groups spread out. The Scarlet Invasions were a step to that end, creating multiple rifts throughout the map simultaneously. But of course, they were exploited and eventually zergs just mapped from one champ location to the next for max loots.

The last events conditioned people to zerg, so you need something to teach people working together.

How would it be to introduce a new type of event with greater groups, not with killing champs etc, but solving an event where players have to coordinate only to win, something like a GIANT SEESAW which have to be balanced/equilibrated by many players to open a door for next level or to fire a special asura-weapon, or a “magic letter on floor” build up by a specific FORMATION of 20+ players sorted by asura/norn etc. characters?

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’d like the game to react to you on a more personal level, such that people, places, etc. respond differently depending on your accomplishments, decisions, and so on?

YES. I would really appreciate that.
It would deepen up the game-experience if some more of the npcs would “remember” you and your former decisions.

Some ideas for a Living World beyond combat:

- occasional changing weather events (storms, floodings, fog …)
- astronomic changes / phases of the moon
- ingame calendar-system with feasts and anniversaries of LS
- name-scheme for all npcs (no anonymous “citizens”)
- (only) once a week a farmer’s market in some smaller villages with special merchants
- a travelling circus moving through Tyria
- vagabonds & moving caravans
- a scripted newspaper, posters or advertising columns for the events (one day before)
- a theatre or puppet show for children telling the great LS-History-Chapters
- more seasonal bards / moving artists in cities
- occasional “musician groups” on “live-tour” in Tyria playing LS-Songs
- occasional birth, weddings, cases of death of npc-people over time
- occasional family celebrations of npcs dedicated to the above
- occasional random personal quests, starting in home instance
- changing vegetation: seasonal flowers, sprouting or dying plants
- some more unforseen little changes in landscape to round up the setting

Elbegast.6970

For a Living World, we need:
Seasons
Better Weather Effects
Dark Nights (no, not Christian Bale)
Purchasable Real Estate
Player Owned Shops
Player Owned Farms (for Livestock and Produce)
Fishing, Hunting & Farming Professions
Player-Generated Dynamic Events

For a Living Story, we need:
An In-Game Calendar that lists recurring festival events and distinguishes them apart from the Living Story releases.
Shorter story arcs, more zone-by-zone storytelling and less focus on larger player-funneling zerg events.

I like that ALL, but some things may be harder to make them fit with the existing system. (especially the very usefull ingame-calendar, which collides with the Personal-Story-Quests).

Maybe some features need a careful scaling. Its no great thing to put a gardening-pot into the home instance (and for my sylvari-characters I wonder why it doesn’t exist yet) and should be lore-compatible to have a “commander of the pact” to have at least a front-door of an appartment with a mail-box with his name on it in his home instance. But to build up real personal housing is some greater deal.

Some of the bigger things like farms or estates are to much to be owned for a single person. You can’t keep a farm on yourself. That would be something for guild with more people – like a guild estate. So guilds would become more important again. It possibly has to be instanced.

I DISAGREE with the people that doesn’t want such ressources like housing, gardening or fishing in the game. I’m doing this game not for zergs and mass-destruction only, but to be a hero, what for my purposes means, to explore and TO BUILD UP something personally dedicated to my character or to my guild. The constructive aspect should be Living Story too. I don’t just want to be ordered to fight against a new invasion of XY every two weeks.

To have CHANGING WEATHER in Tyria would be a very interesting completition of Living Story. I remember last Wintersday there was a zone with snow-storms, so you got frozen and died if you kept to long in. New weather-related events could be blizzards, thunderstorms, sandstorms an floodings. Maybe such “elemental” storms could be a new random element of Living Story. Some of its components (like tornados) already exist in the game. A bridge could be broken by a flooding instead of bandits in future, with seams to be more “natural”. On a sunny day, there maybe sprouting more plants.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I think this raises an interesting question, what do you consider to be “temporary” content, and what qualifies (in your mind) as content that occurs and drives the living story forward it makes sense to have go away, vs. that which remains?

That depends on the content. If something is changed and just removed, a player, who missed the chapter of LS, will not see anything “living”.

There are two main cases:
A) An additional new zone – that should remain, but can be altered
B) An incident in an existing zone, that touches the Personal Story

New zones (also LS-added zones like SouthSun-Cove) are easier to use for Living Story – they can und should be altered with permanent changes – I really like the idea written in “WANTED: PIONEERS!” above.

B) is more difficult. If you alter Kessex Hills, this touches the personal story and lore. Its not logical, that Centaurs and Humans keep their conflict when such a great opponent appears. It wouldn’t be logical either, when the tower of nightmare just vanish with an game-update leaving no traces. To be consistently “living story” the LS also has to alter the existing quests nearby.

Maybe there should be “CHAPTERS” in Living Story:
1) Prearrangement/Preparation (something secretly happens, like in Kessex Hills)
2) Announcement (a event is noticed through greater chances and by the npcs)
3) Occurrence (“the invasion begins” or something like that)
4) Conclusion (an event is “finished” and has his primary consequences)

5) Long-term Effect (changing of depending zones/quests/npcs as consequences in the whole world)

Untill now, steps 1-4 are solved with Living Story and Tower of Nightmares does 1-3 much better than any other before. But I think the long-term effect is missing yet. I’m very curious to see how Kessex Hills will develop afterwards and what will happen to nightmare-tower. Even if its destroyed, things can never be the same as before. If its not destroyed, who gains this fortress?
So the whole Kessex Hills have to alter – including the surrounding countryside with its population.
(All the necessary side-effects are much easier to handle in a zone, that isn’t related with the original personal story or many existing heart-quests.)

Another part of the long-term effect is, that Living Story has to keep the greater incidents recognized in Tyria in a lore-compatible way (ingame).

For logic, you have to remove content, which finally concluded, but you must not remove all traces and the memory about it.

I have not yet formed an opinion about making the LS playable afterwards with something like a “time-machine”. I think, “Living Story” is not only about new content, but about developing a player-community-game. So this will not work, if you replay it solo. On the other hand, some content as the holiday-events is already saisonal repeated.
Well, I would predict, that someday a bestof-collection from Living-Story-Quests is available through the store.

But quests probably are not the summary of “Living Story”, as in your vision? Are they?

Seras.5702

The personal story was one of my favorite parts of the game. I say “was” because soon enough it ends and you simply get into the same Order/Pact story as everyone else. And despite the multiple-choice instances, it’s still the same story. If we could get some releases that add to our hero’s personal storyline, that’d be wonderful. Make them race-specific, just like the initial ones, but without attention to our Order/Legion/College/Cycle, etc. Let the choices we make dictate which storyline we go down. For instance, at a celebration party after the main storyline is completed, a messenger brings you a letter saying that you’re needed urgently in your home instance. Upon arrival, an altercation breaks out that forces you to make a choice (like save him or her, follow the courier or the soldiers, eavesdrop or capture and interrogate, etc) and the choice begins your choose-your-own-adventure storyline. The story will then unfold and be about you, feel personal, and be epic. It could reveal something about the hero’s past and eventually lead to an epic quest. Possibly even leading up to the next dragon we’ll have to take on.

That’s my opinion too. Quests should be more specific to the character-choices. I even liked the “present” from Scarlet for it was somewhat “personal”, but it would have been more convincingly, if it had been offered by a shady npc-messenger or a mailman in the home-instance.

GW2 should become again more personal with Living Story with some little “personal” quests. That needn’t to be epic, when it has a convincing personal background-story.

Additional, actually it has no impact on gameplay, in which of the three orders of tyria our character is. The Personal Story suggested, that it would have some ongoing impact. That isn’t personal too. Is it possible to get a new, specific skills, depending on which order you are, conntected with gameplay, in ongoing LS? Or some repeatable order-specific missions?

Maybe Vigils can get/buy something like temporary commander-skills, Priory something connected with exploring-tasks and the Order of Wispers something with investigation? That probably need not be exclusively, when its buyable, but you should get some kind of “discount” for being member of a specific order.

BobbyStein

We’re also looking into ways that we can better communicate backstory and lore inside the game.

I like that. Next month I go on world travel for three month and will be offline for that time. It would be very nice, if after that there would be a nice way ingame to get informed what happened in the meantime.

Maybe books, newspapers, illustrations or more funny bards.

Or why not a puppetry, doing a puppet show or a stage-play for children with the minis of the LS-heroes, that already exist in the game.

It would be nice, if you could ask the puppetry or the bard to play a specific chapter of the living story for you.

gidorah.4960:

BrotherBelial.3094:
I’ve never done that event as I’m not a big fan of Orr. Maybe I was not being as creative as I first thought.

you really need to do the balthazar event then. it is almost exactly what you describe. maybe someone reading this is in a big guild and can help you out. while i think the game could use more events like it it is sometimes hard to find 100+ people who want to do it now that you don’t need balthazaar for legendaries. it would work great with the current living story model though as tons of people would rush to do it the first few weeks and it wouldnt sit unused for a long time. although with how buggy balthazar was i don’t know that the living story format would give them enough time to test it before they released it and it would be terrible if a bunch of servers couldnt complete it because of a bugged event in the midle of the chain or bad npc behavior.

Maybe it’s the problem with Orr (which I don’t like either for that reason) that you never get the 100+ people to do such an epic quest. But there is another example how it can work in the Traumanova Reactor – the quest with the hidden steam-ogre – you can do it daily, because you need only one person who takes the DE for getting the key, then all other people can do it. This should work in LS to: A special longer quest-row, done by one or a small group of “expert-players” and when its done, all players that are present can connect. That’s already working.

In the LS, the event-boss then should scale, depending on how many players participate. But the achievement should not scale depending on the number of players, but be a percentage of expenses (quests) the single player did to take part.

So profi-players, who did the preparatory work, get their “epic medal” and also casual players, who only slated the end-boss, get some gimmik for fun.

To get things not to buggy, they should be not too complicated. What matters is not, that the event is very complicated and lasts as long as possible, but to have as long as possible fun with playing it.

Maybe you get more fun with several smaller DEs, playable with smaller groups.

I would definitely not like it when all areas in Tyria would become flooded by new enemies. Yes, as for now, that may be great for farming purposes and looting, but I love queensdale, gendarran an I loved Kessex for their beautifull landscape and fantastic architecture. Please do not waste all that!

On the other hand, if you conquer Orr or Southsun, you see no ongoing changes. Cleaning or building Forts maybe great for warfare, but it would be precious if the landscape would heal too, so that you see a change over some days, like a a sprouting forest or fields of poppies …

What to my opinion was a great advantage of GW2 against other MMOs was the aspect of differing quests, like the hearts, which where not only collecting XY. I wish there was more of this funny ideas in the LS. Maybe that’s not such great event like an epic boss, but it was fun.
To force players to do this there should be an economic building-aspect too (build up a farm, a lumper-mill, a mine), so they should get some recognitable economic advantages, such as additional ressources (plants, ore, wood).

To the B-plan-ideas: Maybe if the player fails, another enemie-faction could get partial controll over the area, so that not everything is totally wasted by the same enemies. If this changes over time, that would be a Living Story too.
For example: If players fail to conquer the karka over longer time, another hostile or neutral faction like the tengu, some pirates, inquestur etc … do a partial invation instead build up their economy and so get more powerfull. So that there would be a system of changing political powers in Tyria.

Some comments stated that in Living Story too much quests are only done for looting champs or zerging for getting archievements and the story comes too short.

I think it’s human nature that people always do the most profitable with less efford as possible, which is looting now. Masses always will zerg for looting.

To change this a little bit, you could create a specific new type of quest in Living Story, that forces the single player to make a CHOICE with his habit EITHER to lot items OR to get a gratification like karma. Don’t give them both at a time.

Karma should be more than just another currency. That would make the world more living too. Let some NPC get angry or happy in response of the single players actions (or karma-level), so that they refuse to sell him items or change their item-list for a specific time.

So looting for profit wouldn’t be the only profitable way to play the game anymore, but people had the chance to do this, if they want to.

BobbyStein:

That’s among the many things we discussed doing, but we currently have technical limitations preventing us from making such a drastic change because it would break Personal Story dependencies. Until we have a system in place that separates the timelines of the Personal Story and Living World stories we are limited in the kinds of changes we can show in the open world.

Maybe you can’t kill the leaders of the playable races, but similiar to the meta-events with the unnamed skritt-king it should be manageable to install a DE-path with changeable politics using the neutral factions – like the dominion of the winds. Just let the tengu-emperor be assassinated, who resides in the heart of tyria, and you get a perfect political chaos with changing alliances.

(I wonder why the tengu do not mention the toxic alliance damaging everything – including their merchants – directly in front of their own home.)

It’s difficult to say what events of LS I like because I hadn’t enough time to play them before they where gone.

Maybe Bazaar of the Four Winds would be my favorite, from what I read, but I never had the chance to see it myself. I hadn’t time to play Southsun but I visit it regullary for collecting materials and like the setting and the beach.

I played “Queen’s Pavillon”, “Clockwork Chaos”, “Tequatl”, “Blood & Madness” and I’m playing “Nightmare Tower”.
I haven’t played “Twilight Chaos” because I don’t like dungeons, which can be only solved in groups. (I’m generally a solo-player and prefer to play PvE.)

I definitely most dislike Tequatl, because the event lasts too long and you didn’t get enough for the efford. I fed up after the second time.
Clockwork Chaos was better, but I have generally technical problems when too much players are at once in a mass slaughter – I often get disconnected then, or the game reacts not quick enough so that I get killed in the meantime. So I prefer to kill champions with fewer players.

There was I good aspect in “Queen’s Pavillon” that there was a couple of different types of archievements for different sorts of players. I was very proud to get the little balloon-trophy by visiting several balloons in the world – that was my very first achievement in LS! I think there is no need to get every type of achievement but you get lucky, when you have the chance to get one of differing rewards.

I also liked the background-story behind Blood & Madness and Nightmare Tower, but you did not use their possibilities. The Bloody Prince may had more potential for storytelling. The possibly most interesting part of Nightmare Tower – its uncovering – was told in a one-minute flashback. It’s a pity…

I would like to see new regions of tyria, like southsun-cove, and would be very lucky if the players would become the chance to build up something in tyria via the Living Story, so that you can see and feel some kind of progress/development/evolution, not only to fight every time against new enemies. (Maybe the progress can be realized per instancing, like in home-instance.)

I agree with the others that the background story in the lw-events comes too shortly. Information about events should be given in the game, not in the patch notes.
I would love beautiful and funny cutscenes for my character as in the personal story. However, the internationalisation would be difficult and the updates would get even larger (now I need always a very long time to download them).

But why there are no little NEWSPAPERS sold ingame in the cities by newspaper-boys, quagans or mini-golems? GW2 is a semi-industrialized world, when there are asura-portals and flying machines, why there are no book-stores selling books about the past living story and no newspapers for actual events, just some heralds, that most of the time have no news? The GW-Graphic-designers did best work with illustration, I think the pics of Scarlett etc. would fit in some newspapers too (with hints, rumors, help-wanted ads, norn-poems and some more of the comedy-style, like in the personal story). And because newspapers need news that could be a new type of task for explorators (find hidden changes in the world and inform the office).

I like GW2 even more than GW1 because of the exploring-factor and the vistas. After one year it would be precious to see something really new. The existing areas would keep interesting, if they would be a more changing without great events. Maybe there could be some slight seasonal alteration in nature, or traveling merchants, caravans, a circus or a fair outside of the great cities. That doesn’t need to change the whole world, it just would be more interesting for traveling around old places.

When you actually play the game, it seems many player prefer to do champ trains. Maybe you could institutionalize this with something like a variable “hunting sprint” in queensdale with trophies. It’s more fun to move through the area with a not too great group of players than to do a static mass slaughter with too much enemies at ones.

Another feature would be if we could do something usefull with the seasonal minipets or town clothing, maybe some minipet-games, a carneval or a costume-contest.

I would like living world to be more than just fight against new enemies.