Guild Wars 2

Dragon.4032:

About living world stories, I noticed not a lot of people are willing enough to party up for these quests. Possibly due to how these quests are designed. Honestly up till now I forced myself to do the living world stories that I didn’t really enjoy doing them because they badly lacked in group fun. But with the Self Doubt quest I have decided to completely put a stop in doing these stories from now on. Its not entirely about how difficult or easy they might be, but because of their design that ignore group quest theme. A good example I can draw on this is the Scarlet event some years ago, and how exciting they were with open world group events. Sorry Anet I have no appreciations for solo theme.

They have a problem with such things and that is that no matter what they do, they will make people angry. I personally enjoy the single-player way of the instances (provided they are well made … what sadly they aren’t as the one thing that can be done best with such a way to deliver content … the story … is the weakest part of the entire game) but the open world events have been also giant ammounts of fun. The problem with those is, that they are not repeatable and people who join in later wont be able to replay that content.
Now I think that Anet should take a stand here and say that this is so and it is the living world and old content does not come back, but it is also true that it would be better to give new players the ability to expirience it as well. After all if they would stick with the living world model and advance the game like that, they would need to completely change the personal story with each expansion (what they should do anyway for the new professions at least … because the current situation does not make and sense at all).

I guess they would need both. Big open world events to make things exciting and create a sense of the impact the big events have on the world and the instances to actually advance the story and give the big events sense and meaning. And while the open world events are group content by definition, the instances should always remain single-player based (or maybe scale with the number of people doing them) so everyone can complete them in their preffered way of playing.

I guess I should start by saying that I have not fnished the episode yet and I am not sure I will anytime soon (especially if it is true what I read about the amount and need of jumping puzzles … please, please, please keep such things optional and also please, please, please reduce the vertical-map thing. I know you are proud of that mechanic but cut it down to some managable level). Eventually, maybe, but who ever designed that iniciation-part of the mission did not knew what he/she has been doing.
I apologize for being that harsh here, but my overall disappointment with the episode is only part of what, in my opinion, plagues GW2 from the very beginning. And this is the absolute lack of good storytelling.

From the personal story in the beginning, over the various seasons and the actual overarching story of the entire game you keep having great ideas and story hooks, but you never fallow up on them. You never keep things stringent and logical and almost every episode … and this is worse in season 3 … seem like it was written and done by people who had, at best, only some vague idea what the past episodes have been about. And I am not sure anyone making those is aware of or cares about the actual lore, because the mental gymnastics needed to justify a Charr joining the shining blade is simply mind boggling.

But you keep doing it. The personal story, the Elder Dragons, the Mursaat and now the Gods. You keep bringing things up and toss them aside to chase the next bigger thing only to toss it aside again without proper resolution.
Now I am not one to look at the past with rose colored glasses and prise everything in GW1 as the best thing ever. I actually think GW2 is the much better game. But it still lacks in one VERY important aspect and GW1 was much better there. And this is the story.

GW1 kept their story on tracks in the expansions. And through all the expansions it kept the overarching story on tracks as well. It had a beginning, it had a middle and it had a proper end. It did not simply abondoned everything to go for some totally different directions.

Where are the choices and where is the impact of the personal story? Where are the orders? Where is the Packt? Where are the Elder Dragons? Where is the old group of heros, and where is the new one? And the next will be: where are the Gods and why have they actually showed up in the first place?

Nothing has any significance in the story of GW2 as I am sure the next expansion will turn everything around again and suddenly nothing that happened before will ever be mentioned again. After all the Elder Dragons turned out to be totally insignificant apparently and the human Gods are in danger of suffering the same fate.
You are throwing out any good hook for a story away here! Don’t do that please! Use it instead. Build something out of it and keep to it until it has run its course.

I am not sure where the problem happens. Maybe it is the writers or maybe it is the director who gives out the guidelines. Or maybe it is someone else who looks at the money and has decided to gut any possibility of good storytelling in order to increase the profit margins … I can’t know that. That is something for you to figure out. But please for the sake of this game, figure it out! Fix it, change it, give us something this game deserves!

Well, this is what I can give as feedback to the episode. It might be more of a feedback to the entire game, but for me, the episode kind of showed all the problems I see with it.

At this point, I would apploud if you if you announce to pull the episode and release a proper, corrected version of it in two weeks or so (maybe with the option to slap some sense into Livia … that is another great thing you had but instead of expanding on it, you abondoned it: choices in conversations).

Please .. please .. please .. do better next time.

Big hugs for cookies to ANet for doing this.

And some of the comments show why it is so important to include such things in the most normal way possible. Because existence is neither a problem or political issue. It is, well … normal.

Now we need some mentioning of walking on Anise and Cranach in a situation that invovled ropes, chians and other items … because I swear those two are the least vanilla couple in the game right now ;P

Oh.. and I actually liked Kas and Jory. I found their flirting rather enjoyable in all its cheesy glory. And I actually think they are a sweet couple.

Of course I would always like to have actual armor skins more then outfits, but I don’t mind them too much. They look mostly good too.

However the Nomad-look takes it a big step too far. Pauldrons have always been a problem (is it some sort of fantasy trope to make them as big, unpractical and ugly as possible?) but those crystals more or less ruin it.
I love the rest but being unable to hide them makes me not want to buy it. It is just too much and I am sure that some crystal-decorations can be applied in a more simple and practical looking way.

Or just to make it possible to hide them.

I actually liked all those things because they tend to just happen while I play without (much) trying. Of course alternative ways to get anything (in this case the laurels) are always welcomed but I muss the daily as it was.

I have to say that I did liked the old system of te dailies better. Of course, this comes from the way I played, exploring the map and doing the daily on the side, happy about the fact that almost all of it could be done in whatever location of the world I happened to be. I usually also just tend to play one or two of my characters for a time before switchig to some others when I feel like progressing with the personal story of them (I like the story).

The new change takes this away and while I am not hunting for AP or anything, the daily has so far been a small but integral part of my gameplay. And since I exclude anything PVP or WvW and absolutely does not care about this part of the game, the options are not only very liited, they also take part in other places of Tyria that … and I try to use the portals only when there is no other way or I have no time. So moving to those zones just for the daily and to interrupt what I am doing would be time consuming to the point of disruption of my … very causal … gameplay.

The main point of this is of coure ‘my’ gameplay, what means that of course I wish everyone lots of fun to everyone who likes this change and will have to adjust my playstyle somehow (maybe even deciding to stop doing the daily … actually I think it would not be ‘maybe’ but ‘most likely’).

But overal I hope that this will be changed again soon or adjusted to being more similar to how it has been, making it possible to complete it everywhere with more options to choose from.

Not scared … just totally uninterested. PvP is something I do not consider any fun and there is nothing I can think of right now that Anet could do to make me want to play this part of the game.

For anyone who likes it:

Have fun!

It can’t change because new palyers will always have to replay the first missions and their personal story as well .. unless that all gets changed too what would mean to rewrite the entire game. And I don’t beleive that it will happen or that it even should happen.

It is great to have a changing world but they can’t keep rewriting it. What would happen with people who are half way through their personal story of the first part and then, once the second comes out, it ends suddenly and they have a whole new story set in front of them without getting the chance to finish it? Or anyone who wishes to replay it or .. as already mentioned .. new players who want to play the entire game and not just the current part of it.

Orr is the ending area of the first part of the game and has to stay as it is. New parts of the story will get their own ending areas.

1) Sylvari – Female – Engineer
2) Sylvari – Female – Necromancer
3) Human – Female – Warrior
4) Asura – Female – Elementalist

The last thing the members of the nightmare court probably are is being free. Once they join, they have no choice anymore, are unable to leave and they are bound to do anything to spread their ideals by any means available. They get stuck into a rigid structure and can’t simply decide to act differently.

If a Sylvari want to be trully free they have to stay with the Grove-side of life. Be it either with a dream or as a soundless. Since those can happily decide on how they want to live, if they want to follow the teachings or if they want to spend whole days discussing the implications of the ideals of the tablet compared with the harsh realities of the world. Or they can just decide to follow a completly different life even to the point of trying to get away from the dream.

The Sylvari are not ‘programmed’ by the teachings of the tablet or ‘corrupted’ (of course who knows that the devs will reveal later on) by it as they freely choose the degree of how much they follow them or if they follow them at all (I suspect Caithe not being one who put that much weight into the tablets teachings but I am sure she recogniezes the ideal those teachings would represent).

The Naightmare Court on the other hand is totally bound by it’s opposition to the tablet and twisted beyond anything that could be considered reasonable. They go way away from simply being against it or wanting to ‘free the Sylvari’ from it. They want to press their ideology on the others against their will and – to put it simply – remove the Sylvari ability to freely choose their individual way of life.

Joining the Court would however be a very intereting thing from a Role Play perspective (and there are Nightmare RP guilds around that do just that) but since there is no way out of it and they havve this outright crazy-torturer-serial-killer kind of mentality it would be difficult to get them tied into a game (outside RP game-mechanics and setting) where the setting it that the world of Tyria needs to unity against a overwhelming common foe.

Making the Court playable would also require to give the same attention to the other ‘opposite-groups’ of the other races. It woudl also need to have them changed to allow the players more freedom in acting (and the Sons of Svanir would need to get some daughters and stop following a dragaon .. what of course would make the gorup implode and remove the reasons for it’s existance). It might be more possible with the Inquest or the bandits since those can decide on their degree of evilness.

I would not be playing GW2 if I wanted a all out classical ‘high fantasy’ game. The technological and actually also social evolution within the various races is one of the factors that made me like this game so much. It fits very well and I have to say that the usual stagnation of fantasy worlds that artificially always keeps them on the same level of development is one of the factors that makes them less interesting to me.

I am very happy that the GW-team moved away from that and allowed the world and those living in it to advance and develop. Otherwise it would have just been another game following the same basic rules as so many games before. Doing the same things over and over again with just changing names and looks gets rather boring over time.

I usually also joke about how in GW5 or 6 the races will go out into space. So development is great and allowing the races to do it creates the feel for a real history behind them too. Not just some tales of ancient heros.

And I am sure that the spaceships the various races would come up with would look awsome ;D

It might be interesting, that I would also say, that I would like to see more events like this one. It was a good idea, and the fact that it has worked for some people (no phase has worked properly for me and I only participated in bits and pieces here and there totally being lagged out of phase 1, phase 2 never starting on the server I was on and crashing at the end of phase 3 and loosing the revard) might indicate, that it is (at least) a workable concept (and that is a start I guess ;P ).

The technical issues would need to be solved (there have been way too many of thouse and actually I think the problems got so bad, that some hard questions should be asked within the company), the servers need to be improved or set up differently to handle the load and the time frame need to be changed so that different time zones get the chance to participate. The one time event had too many problems and I hope that they will evaluate everything and have a good plan next time such a event will happen.

The first point was sadly, at least on my side, caused by a very unnerving delay in everything that was happening. I tried to dodge and roll, but most of the time I still got hit by the attacks or have not even seen the attacks comming as the beasts appeared only after killing me and those around. That made the fight rather difficult.

The second point was something I learned to be careful about once I tried to come back and crashed. Luckily I managed to get back and into a server where I could still take part in the event (later I crashed for good -.- ). So I rather hoped for someone to heal me then to risk moving to a waypoint. Besides, the waypoint was too far away and I had to run across the entire island to get back.

I treid to circle around the fight to get to a waypoint that was closer, but by that time it was all too late and I joined the unlucky masses who got disconnected shortly before the end.

So I guess those observations had more to do with the lag-problems then with the players. At least from my point of view.

I have lost out on the revards as well. Crashed not long before the ancient Kankra went down and never seen the chest. So now I hope that they will figure out some solution as they said they are trying to do in the forum post.

I was at the event, I endured it, crashed, lost all progress and never even got to see the chest let alone the revards in them … but take them away from the lucky few who did not suffered the same problems I an so many others had?

No chance, I would consider that to be unfair, very bad form and possibly even more difficult to do then to figure out who was at the event and crashed so they can be send their revard chest.

(I hope they figure something out because having some revard for the event would be great and I totally admit to wanting something)