Guild Wars 2

Matthew Oswald.3082:

(Somewhat related) There is a plan to allow people to playback cinematics through some sort of story UI. This should help people catch up on what they missed.

I know I post this a few times, but I figure since it keeps being brought up in terms of replaying cinematics / living story then I might as well post it again.

I have an old Suggestions post that had a concept of replaying cinematics and this thread has an image of the Marjory Journal in question. If it doesn’t show up in the expanded “My Story” that I have posted, it would be nice to see a Living Story tab added to the list. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/My-Story-Expanded-Living-Story-Concept/

Bottom line is that any ability of replaying the Living Story and seeing what has happened is a great addition. I attached the concept I created with Marjory in case you didn’t want to hop threads.

Not sure if this has been discussed already, but would it be possible to create a Blade Shard Collector that has the same items as the Lionguard Belongings Collector?

You can have it be a weaponsmith or lionguard that is forging the blade shards to create weapons for the assault on Scarlet.

I think it would be a good alternative for people who don’t want the back items or people who already crafted them instead of just throwing the items away.

I used Photoshop to create an example like this back when Last Stand was going on.

Attached a Marjory update using the “My Story” tab.

Link to old Suggestions Post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/My-Story-Expanded-Living-Story-Concept/first#post2137462

Well, they just stopped the champ farm – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-20-2013/first#post2683073

I am bumping my old post to provide just another updated concept of replaying cinematics since this is from the recent update. Didn’t feel the need to post another thread.

The image attached shows a way to provide background story as well as replaying the cinematic present during Dragon Bash. Other cinematics and stories would be in their appropriate event tab.

BobbyStein.2315:

DragoTheWise.7256:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Because members of Destiny’s Edge are so entwined with your Personal Story as well as the over-arching story with Zhaitan, and because the Living World plot lines are taking place at the same time all those other story threads, we couldn’t have the members of Destiny’s Edge splitting themselves between these other areas and what was going on with Living World. This is partly why we introduced these new characters.

I hope you folks are seriously not considering the LS is happening at the same time as the Personal Story, and this is just a slip up on the post. I also would hope that everyone on the team can get this stuff straight so that this confusion doesn’t happen.

What Regina means is that for players who are currently going through their Personal Story, the LW timeline will seem to be happening at the same time. Technically, they happen at different times in Tyrian history. Personal Story predates the current Living World season by approximately one year.

So when you’re playing your Personal Story and are in an instance with Rytlock, etc. the assumption is that this is happening “in the past” whereas LW events are happening now.

Our hope is to provide better distinction of these timelines within the game, but that would come with the release of a planned feature that we’re not ready to discuss in depth just yet.

Looks like CanadianZombie and I had the same idea. This sounds like the suggestion I posted back when the Southsun event was going on (almost a year now, wow). It’s archived now, but the post is here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/My-Story-Expanded-Living-Story-Concept/first#post2137462

Basically, it was a way to show the stories from the website, but also give people a way to recap the events of the Living Story via the “My Story” tab. There was several images in the thread but I reattached one as an example. I am excited to see how it turns out!

Just for the record – I don’t mind learning mechanics or hard fights.

So based on the following quotes:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I PUG dungeons quite frequently, and I often saw people not helping downed players, and not even trying to res people….

People really didn’t have to learn boss mechanics or communicate with each other to figure things out.

I am not saying that res-rushing was not a problem.

Some bosses – Lupicus being an example – have a habit of camping a person downed and causing the player to die anyways inevitably wiping other players trying to help (even if you aggro the enemy away – the red circles will get ya). That is why people were not helping downed players or they were in a spot that would get other players killed.

Yes, chances are you do not know the mechanic of the fight, but you still receive the death penalty without a chance of player redemption unless the group wipes and you all try again.

The new person trying to learn the dungeon suddenly gets booted from the group because they kept dying too fast for that fight, and the group finds someone with more experience. That is disheartening for the new players who want to learn the dungeons. (This can happen in really any MMO – just providing a scenario)

A question somewhat related to your class mastery comment:

What do you think about gear in dungeons?

Granted – everyone realizes the higher the tier, the better. So exotic / ascended is great.

However, there is a separation now where people are requesting Berserker geared people to take out Simin. If someone is a master of using Knight or more of a tanky build (less dps) – they now are missing out. I know some people are thinking to switch to Berserker gear just because they don’t see a point for the others. Next thing you know – everyone will be rolling a berserker geared warrior for everything.

Possibly developed that way because people don’t understand the mechanic of Simin? I am not sure but it shouldn’t be that way.

Here are my thoughts:

Living Story Meta Rewards Become Account Bound Unlimited Use Skins like Achievement Weapons / Armor
I believe in the terms of Horizontal you can allow players to be rewarded with their unique skins they have earned from past living story releases. You were able to do this with the Super Adventure Box and allow players to earn a new meta reward for completing the old release. All of the achievements are being tracked and most of them already had a meta so it would just require an adjustment to allow meta rewards in the unlimited skin box.

Living Story Rewards in Home Instance
An alternative to this would be to put the meta rewards in the home instance for us to grab like a PvE locker.

Certain achievements you have completed in the main story add certain characters to your home instance. Why not implement that with certain achievements in all of the releases?

• We have this already with the Obelisk Shard, Quartz, and Candy Corn node
• Have a building with armor displays or pictures of previous events where we can interact with the armor set and pick up previous Living Story skins such as the Karka Back, the Injector, the Slickpack, etc.
  • This building could also be incorporated to implement a way of replaying previous living story releases or cinematics like the scrying pool / Hall of Monuments

Variety to Getting Ascended
Ascended should just be like any other tier of gear in my opinion. There should be multiple ways to obtain it, take a bit longer to get than exotic, but not as long as a legendary like you have stated before. That means:

• Fractals should have a guaranteed method of obtaining ALL Ascended items (Explained down below)
• Remove Account Bound limit
• Allow us to salvage Ascended Gear (Rings we no longer need or get from Fractals that we don’t want for Ascended materials)
  • Introduce an Ascended Salvage Kit?
• Remove Time Gating as it serves no real purpose (Also explained down below)
• Jewelers should be able to craft Ascended Amulets, Rings, and Accessories

Everything in this game has multiple ways of being obtained. Why should Ascended be any different?

Guaranteed Methods of Ascended in Fractals
Fractals in my opinion should have guaranteed methods to obtain Ascended items just like you can get the rings. Not only does that increase the desire to do fractals, but if you split up the rewards, you have other ways to get Ascended items other than crafting.

• Add more rewards in the fractal difficulties, but allow purchases of Ascended Accessories, Amulets, Weapons, and Armor using Pristine Fractal Relics. Give people even more incentive to go up to higher difficulties.
  • Level 1 – 10: Chance of Rings
  • Level 11 – 15: Chance of Infused Rings
  • Level 16 – 20: Chance of Amulets and Accessories
  • Level 21 – 25: Chance of Weapons
  • Level 26 – 30: Chance of Armor
  • Level 30+: Chance of Infused Backs
• Add a gift to dungeons that allows players to mystic forge exotic dungeon purchases into Ascended dungeon armor / weapons
  • Possibly add the gift of ascension to dungeon gear and mystic forge it

Remove Time Gating for Ascended Weapons / Gear
I really do not think ascended weapons / gear time gating is needed. The ecto refinements, although a small part of the crafting process, just delays the process in making ascended tier for no real reason. For people that have the money, they can easily buy all of their materials to bypass this system while the people that have all of the materials and not so much money are stuck

You can craft from 1 – 400 without any delays so why does 400 – 500 have limits? Ascended is suppose to be the missing link between Exotic and Legendary, but Legendary weapons do not have a time gate on them.

Keep Legendaries as Stat Switching Only
Having the Legendary gear be the only gear that allows stat switching is a big incentive for people to make Legendaries with the exception of it being best in slot. Making Ascended stat switch will kill the interest in people making anything Legendary

By reading the forums, it seems that the Blue Assault knight is resetting to full again. Autumn, can you confirm if this is bugged again or if the Menders are healing it? Are the Menders suppose to be healing it?

I agree though that the toughness on the fights / scaling seems off still. It is going to make the fight much more difficult and if it isn’t fixed until after the weekend, I am afraid people will just ignore it until it’s gone. Marionette attendance dropped a lot on the second week and if people have the meta already…

As for rewards, I would hope the new system is a bug as each knight should reward everyone helping in event much like the citizens if they want to promote this new gameplay. If rewards are not changed, people will not bother playing it which I am sure some are already seeing lower populations on their instances because of it.

This is a living story with a 2 week timeframe. The main point of this story is to be facing Scarlet in a major fight. The Assault Knights should not be the focus of this content. Just smaller mobs to get power cores from to get to the Scarlet fight, but that is my opinion. I have faith that ArenaNet will fix it, but I wanted to leave some feedback.

Based on the quote from Colin Johanson: “We’re also looking into options that would allow players to experience the story sequences that will go away as the story moves forward for those who missed them, but this is still a ways off as we look at various options.”

I felt that it was appropriate to show a new design on how replaying certain events could work. This can work on the instanced missions from Flame & Frost, boss events like Canach, the recent instance of the Queen’s Jubilee as well as a few other things.

So a group of us just did CoF Path 1 so 60 tokens. We changed to alt characters, ran CoF Path 1 again, but this time 3 out of the 5 people in the group only received 30 tokens. The other 2 received 60. Same group of 5 people though so I am not sure if this was intended.

BobbyStein.2315:

Actually, we have metrics on every LW release. While SAB was indeed successful in terms of participation, so were the other releases (Scarlet ones included). I understand that forum feedback can color perception on which releases were the most popular/best received/most enjoyed but opinions on this are largely anecdotal. Please keep that in mind.

Now to your question: will we see a return of SAB? That’s not for me to say, but if it were to come back, what would people like to see from it? Harder/easier content? New world? More/no Moto story?

Or would you like future LW releases to cover other topics? Share your thoughts, but please keep it constructive. Thanks.

I think the SAB is what made April Fools for Guild Wars 2 so keeping with that trend like all of the other holidays I think would be a step in the right direction. I know the patch after the Scarlet arc is a big features update. Would it be possible to add the SAB to that patch as well just for 2 weeks?

I think expanding what is already there is also good. You need to progress to World 3 for the most part, but leave a little story about Moto, the Genie, and the other krewe. Nothing major, just a new bit about Moto’s history, have the Genie appear in World 4 preview, and checking in to see what the other krewe is doing after the incident would be enough.

I will admit that World 2 had some issues at first, such as the gong room and the rapids, but these problems were resolved. It was said somewhere I believe by Josh that the SAB was designed to get harder as you progressed, taking what you learn, and applying it to the next World. This should still be the case despite the complaints.

People like the SAB and I can see only 2 reasons as to why people played it less:

• Rewards were capped
• The event lasted a month

I think why SAB 1 went so well was because it lasted for a short while, people didn’t expect it, and it allowed them to farm it for as long as they wanted to during that 2 week time. With the troubles that started in SAB 2 and the change in rewards, the players didn’t have a need to play through the SAB once they finished it.

I could be wrong, I would have to look at the metrics of SAB 1 vs. SAB 2

This also concerns me. I only have a certain amount of time during the week to play the game and if you ever were to release a new world boss during a living story update, I would have to play it at a certain time.

In which case, Teq, Karka, and Wurm are all later at night so I would only be able to play during the weekend or when a guild were to kick it off (if they decide to do that). Doesn’t this timegate new content when it’s released so not everyone can enjoy it? With the current system, it happens often enough where people can enjoy it no matter their time.

I like the megaserver idea, I like repopulating old zones, and I like having guilds being able to queue events, but I believe you are cutting out part of your player base. The part that can’t do primetime and the part that does not have a guild or a guild that has no interest in world bosses (it can happen).

The double waypoint cost does also seem kind of steep. The champ trains and events are getting toned down on gold to compensate with the repair costs, but I use waypoints more than I repair.

Will there be a livestream Q&A to address a lot of these concerns? The one tomorrow seems to just be focusing on WvW and the Future

I posted this a while back but I will copy it in here:

This issue appears to be random as some people complete the mission after their first try while others take multiple attempts.

Problem 1: Enemies in 1st Shrine Room
After the first cutscene and first fight, we go into the first Abaddon Shrine room. This room from what I gather has you kill 4 (3 and the rotmouth) enemies before the “Activate the switch” option appears on the shrine. However, after killing all 4, the text box does not pop up. The enemies in this room have a tendency of hiding in the walls, floor, and pillars of this room, but again, the issue appears to be random.

Problem 2: Dialogue
This is where everyone is getting stuck even after killing the enemies. An audio dialogue pops up for Sayeh after you take out the Orrian Crab group (first group of enemies you face in the mission outside of the Shrine). After you defeat those enemies, Sayeh should say the following:

• The Risen have reactivated the temple defenses. It may slow us down.
• However, they did find the altar. We can do the same

She needs to say those 2 statements above before she says:

• A most interesting shrine. What is its purpose?

After scrolling through the main chat log, it only successfully worked when she said that which means something is stopping her progress in that dialogue for some reason or another

I think it would be interesting if the Mad King had a Mad Maze run. Take aspects from the Super Adventure Box Tribulation mode, but make a Halloween theme to it. You start at one end of the maze and head to the other side while dodging traps and learning the maze.

• Run through the maze, big candy corn drops and kills you
• Reach a dead end, a wall falls on you
• Have an invisible floor with acid underneath
• Possibly add a PvP element like Sanctum Sprint to it with leaderboards

I agree with you though that the doors need some tweaking, but the story is good with the missions they added. I was also a fan of the Mad King hunt last year.

Blackmoon.6837:

It doesn’t work.

The ‘My Story’ tab is supposed to be strictly for your character’s development. It’s the collection of events that lead your character into who’ve they’ve become to date; character development. So having some random info of an interview with Canach is completely out of place.

The tab name would be changed to something relevant with the living story. The “My Story” will still exist, but living story content can be provided. All of the “My Story” content can be seen via a drop down by clicking on “My Story” in my example.

So it’s adding extra functionality to the tab without compromising character development. Future expansions and personal stories can still be thrown into the “My Story” mix.

Blackmoon.6837:

Then there could be a third tab which cites all of the events you’ve currently been through, such as battling the Claw of Jormag or helping Farmer Diah in the Shaemoor Fields. It could list times etc.

I think that would be a cool tab to add to the Hero Panel for sure.

locoman.1974:

No bug, the dragon ball achievements don’t count:

Reducing “The Dragon Bash Experience” meta-achievement required total number from 10 down to 8. The Dragon Ball Achievements do not count towards its completion.

from today’s patch notes

Right. I am saying that if we only need 8 now, and I currently have 7 of the 8, it should not say 70%.

The Personal Story mission Temple of the Forgotten God is bugged. Based on previous forum posts: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/BUG-Temple-of-the-Forgotten-God/ and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Temple-of-the-forgotten-god-Bugged/. Posting again as one is located in “Personal Story” and the other is 4 months old

NOTE
This issue appears to be random as some people complete the mission after their first try while others take multiple attempts.

Problem 1: Enemies in 1st Shrine Room
After the first cutscene and first fight, we go into the first Abaddon Shrine room. This room from what I gather has you kill 4 (3 and the rotmouth) enemies before the “Activate the switch” option appears on the shrine. However, after killing all 4, the text box does not pop up. The enemies in this room have a tendency of hiding in the walls, floor, and pillars of this room, but again, the issue appears to be random.

Problem 2: Dialogue
This is where everyone is getting stuck even after killing the enemies. An audio dialogue pops up for Sayeh after you take out the Orrian Crab group (first group of enemies you face in the mission outside of the Shrine). After you defeat those enemies, Sayeh should say the following:

• The Risen have reactivated the temple defenses. It may slow us down.
• However, they did find the altar. We can do the same

She needs to say this before:

• A most interesting shrine. What is its purpose?

After scrolling through the main chat log, it only successfully worked when she said that which means something is stopping her progress in that dialogue for some reason or another

As someone who has done the last Halloween event, I believe that this felt a bit lacking compared to last year. Although, that was our first event, and they did add a lot, we were told by Colin the following:

“We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time."

I think a lot of people interpreted that as there would be a lot more things to do this Halloween, just as the Super Adventure Box did. They released the old achievements while adding new ones. However, I think the focus this Halloween was the QoL changes they implemented as well as whatever the focus is for the end of October (the Kessex problem) + the future (ascended armor / new fractals). Halloween in Guild Wars should be focused on the Thorn family AND the Mad King, but new players are only experiencing the Mad King as a tall giant that stands in the Mad Realm.

Really the only things that I saw were:

• They added several missions regarding the Prince
• They removed the old scavenger hunt that gave background on the Mad King (which I believe could be expanded and should be a start for Halloween)
• Clock Tower improvements are a plus, but no incentive to go in there if you have no interest in the gloves
• Removed a popular PvP game and brought back the old one
• Removed old skins and added new ones
• Less grindy achievements, but easier overall
• Removed the “Mad Realm” world boss
• Removed the Mad King boss fight
• Items from Halloween vendor is expensive

As of today when the daily resets, you can complete all of the Halloween achievements and Halloween is going to last until November 11th.

I think we need to start looking at this first from the foundation with a few questions. I am in no means an expert, but this is what I am thinking.

Foundation Questions

Who is the event intended for?

• Newcomers vs Veterans
  • Do you want this to be for level 80’s?
    • Can we drop the market on a certain crafting material?
    • Can we bring back some unique skins that haven’t appeared in a while?
  • Do you want this to appeal to everyone?
  • Can FTP accounts participate?
    • Will they be able to afford the reward pricing and the travel costs?
    • Can they level from it in preparation of a new expansion or another event?

What does the event require the user to do?

• Will they have to travel through the whole map? (Do they need to use waypoints?)
  • If huge travel time – consider adding gold to compensate WP cost
  • If low travel time (small area) – gold not as important as WP cost is no longer thought of
• Can these events be completed via solo, small group, or big zerg? Explain one versus the other
  • Can a solo person or small group do the same as a big zerg?
  • Does it require you to be in a big zerg?
  • How much should the event scale if a big zerg appears?
• Will they clearly understand where to go and what to do?

What will be the ROI for the user compared to what already exists in the game?

• What are the Rewards?
  • Can they earn XP to level their characters?
  • Can they earn gold / karma to buy new items or skins from current in game vendors / the TP?
• How will users get the rewards?
  • Completion by map as a whole
  • Individual Event Completion
  • Mix of Both Individual and Map-Wide
• Does this provide an incentive compared to other current events in game
  • Halloween Maze farms are quick and enjoyable
  • Silverwastes drops a lot of material / items for users to break down or sell

What is the time frame?

• How long does the event last? (A week, few days, a month, permanent)
• Reasonable based on the event? (drop rate)
• Reasonable based on reward structure? (vendor pricing)

Problems: Promotion and FTP

I am not insulting FTP. It was a good move. The problem was that I believe this event was invented and developed before FTP accounts were considered based on the reward structure.

Another issue could of been the promotion of the event. First intended for Guild Recruitment and then appealing to the FTP / new players. This type of an event is not something to start a new account on.

I think a Festival like the Queen’s Gauntlet would of been a better move.

The event itself has:

• No XP / Money / Karma Gain
• Quick events that you hope you can tag in a mindless zerg but would take too long individually
• A reward buff that pushes the “tag event” mentality to new players to get more blooms
• Small reward output based on time sync needed for everything in a limited timframe

If I was a new character, I would go back to the normal story or events. If you are a new non-FTP account, you get all of these Tomes and level up scrolls for a daily login. Does the XP gain in a limited event really hurt the game? Does the small amount of gold per event to help with the WP costs hurt the game?

Yes, you could walk, but you then are not getting to all of the events fast enough.

Season 1: Scarlet Invasion Comparison

From a design standpoint, I would say a good majority of people liked the Scarlet Invasions. There was a few different types of events going on in the map that scaled to how many people went there. At the start, yes, there was a champ train problem, but that was fixed. You had to spread out in the map to divide and conquer to win which results in the best rewards. This was reflected in the Battle for Lion’s Arch and the Scarlet / Assault Knight battle.

• There were elements in place that required coordination (some of it tougher than others)
• There were elements in place that contained unique experiences compared to the rest of the game
• There were rewards in place that allowed players to feel like it was worth the effort to participate in this event (also achievements, but that is a minor detail)
• There were elements in place that compensated you in traveling across the map to complete the event

Improvements to Mordrem Invasion

Quick Wins

• Add XP / Karma / Mat Drops (No Champ Train)
• Lower Vendor Pricing on Both Gold and Blooms

Crazy Concept

Idea 1:
This would take A LOT more time to implement, but when I see Mordrem Invasion, I think Silverwastes. I can see somehow taking one of the Forts or Outposts in Diessa / Brisban / Kessex and holding that from waves of enemies. Brisban I can imagine a camp down in The Gallowfields with Mordrem attacking from both directions or a Husk throwing rocks from up above.

Idea 2:
Again, A LOT more time to implement. Using Kessex as an example. There is a giant train of enemies coming from Lychcroft Mere that marches through the map to Delanian Foothills where you have a main base of operations. Think of it as the Mordrem are escorting a Dolyak and that Dolyak has a bomb.

In between those 2 points are small checkpoints you can create to slow down / kill the horde of enemies. This can be an endless supply of respawns or a large amount of enemies at a time that would eventually go down to 0. It’s an event against overwhelming odds type of scenario where you hold off until the time is up or you clear them all out.

They ignore players or some of them do to rush to the next objective. To prevent scaling, they destroy the checkpoints faster / hit harder when there are way too many players. Think of it like an “Outmanned buff” in WvW but the Mordrem get the buff.

Interaction with the World

One thing that would also take a long development cycle would be the interaction of characters in these maps already with new events that appear later.

For instance, in the Tower of Nightmares, I would of liked to see the Centaurs attacking the Toxic Alliance in some way using their siege weaponry. Another idea: there would be several events where we aided the Centaurs or they came to rescue us in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” scenario. To go along with that – the Quaggan could of attacked the Toxic Krait in a new events underwater by the Tower. Maybe even some of the Bandits by the shore could have an event where they request assistance.

Basically, taking the characters that are in these maps already and making them feel a bit more alive like they are dealing with the same problems the character is dealing with. The events that normally transpire can either still happen or they halt entirely because this threat is lingering.

Take that idea and apply it to the Mordrem Invasion. (Easier said than done – I know).

I understand that bugs happen in the live environment versus the testing environment and going through QA, but there have been some serious bugs introduced into the game since Season 3 launched when there was talk about quality content being produced with the 2 – 3 month episode timeframe.

I do not believe Guild Wars 2 had such a serious problem before even back when you were on a 2 week schedule on Season 1 or Season 2. I wish you all the best in fixing these issues and preventing them in the future

So my issue with the luminescent gloves have been fixed. This issue fixed for anyone here?