Guild Wars 2

I have a few points to make, so I’ll try to keep them brief.

Players have been desirous of a roadmap for quite some time. Even in this thread people are calling for one, but I haven’t see anyone bother to post one. If someone did and I missed it, sorry. There was a lot to read here and I may have missed it in skimming. This is a purely hypothetical roadmap, but it’s an example nonetheless of something I’d like to see Anet do.

• February 2015: end of LS S2.
• March: Feature Pack: craftable precursors, 500 Jeweler/Chef, etc, QoL patch: hobosack fix, LS vendor-tokens moved to Wallet, trait rebalance
• April-May: WvW tourney
• June-July: housecleaning: sweeping bugfixes. Ideally, the list of bugs in the bug forum would all be solved in this time.
• August: 1st expansion: New Playable race (see note 1)
• October: Halloween
• November: Feature pack: traits back to pre-April 2014, except keep the free, on-the-fly respec,. 1 new additional weapon for each class.
• December: Wintersday
• January 2016: LS S3 starts, has nothing to do with the story of the Expansion. (see note 2)

• Note 1: New race is only unlocked after the player finishes the Personal Story and beats Zhaitan. This will encourage players to finish the PS and allow Anet to avoid having to program the new race into Zhaitan’s story. If each expansion introduces a new race, the previous expansion must be completed in order to unlock it.
• Note 2: LS S3 could explore Malyck’s tree and what happened to him after he exited the Sylvari personal story, then LS S4 could focus on humanity’s establishment of New Ascalon around Ebonhawk following the peace treaty. You should be using the LS to tell important, lore-rich side stories that don’t involve the Elder Dragons, while the dragons themselves are the subjects of each new Expansion.

If this were to be announced on Tuesday with the new LS chapter, you will not have given away anything of the current story. There’s no spoiler for how LS S2 ends, nor is there any info given at all on the expansion, but you’ve told us that it IS coming, and that’s enough to get people interested again. You’ve also shown that issues the players care about, like hobosacks, traits and precursors, are not just vaporware topics of fleeting discussion but cold, hard things that you plan to make happen.

As always any of the roadmap is subject to change based on problems with design and programming. If, say, a hobosack fix wasn’t going to be finished on schedule, the proper procedure would be to immediately get on the forums, facebook, twitter and every other communication outlet you can find and tell everyone:

“Hey, we said we were going to get this, but some problems have come up. Every time we do X, bad thing Y happens. We’re not going to get it out as scheduled, but we’ll keep working on it and get it patched in as soon as we can. We’ll keep you updated.”

The problem with this type of roadmap is that it will necessarily compel Anet, as a company, to dispense with the “no talking until it’s done” policy. I think many posts in this thread and others have made it clear that we the players, by and large, don’t like it and don’t understand why you folks at Anet put it in place. We just don’t think silence is a good idea, and don’t understand how you could possibly think it IS.

When you don’t tell us things, we have to assume. That’s rarely a good thing because we’re prone to assuming the worst. Gamers are pessimistic and melodramatic like that. And worse, when we assume the worst and you don’t correct us, we have to assume that “oh goodness, we’re RIGHT! If we were wrong they’d tell us!” For example, there has been no information from Anet about new game modes for sPvP. We therefore assume that not only are no new modes coming, but that you don’t have any plans whatsoever to make more. We have to assume that sPvP will remain stale in perpetuity.

I think that’s why you saw a sigh of relief, disappointed thought it was, from the dungeon crowd when Anet finally, albeit accidentally, let slip that nothing was being planned for dungeons for the foreseeable future. Dungeon players don’t like that they aren’t going to get anything new, but at least they KNOW they aren’t getting anything new. That’s an assurance the rest of us don’t have, and one we desperately need.

dlonie.6547:

Gaile… do you think there is a likelihood that we might hear from a Decision Maker at ArenaNet about this? Maybe someone who could put the silence policy in perspective with our concerns about the damage it is doing to the community? This issue comes up over and over again, I’m curious how folks who call the shots feel about it.

Snipped for the important part. We need someone with authority to tell us why this policy exists, and why Anet thinks it’s a good idea. Ideally, for me at least, I’d like to hear it straight from Mike O’Brien himself.

Xukavi.4320:

Will will get Belinda’s Greatsword and give it to Trahearn because obviously he needs a new greatsword to fight against Mordy, since he doesn’t have Caladbolg anymore.

Unless I was seeing things, he clearly had Caladbolg strapped to his back at the summit, at least before the procession.

No, there is currently no way for you to go back and play Season 1. It was one of our biggest complaints when it was going on.

Sorry.

Shriketalon.1937:

Tobias Valin.5893:

Here’s where I think we disagree, if only in technicality. I think that Guild Wars 2 is, or should be, strictly about the dragons. Once they are defeated it seems more prudent to begin Guild Wars 3 and go into other lore content. If we take 1 year for each dragon that means we’ll finish them in 2018, assuming Mordremoth is a real dragon. That’s 6 years-4 months of life, compared to GW1’s lifespan being 6 years-10 months. That’s pretty consistent.

While I’m hesitant to recommend this from a lore standpoint, you have a rather valid point. Technology is going to progress in the next half-decade quite a bit, so it’s possible that reinvigorating the game would take more effort. Personally, I would prefer for the events to happen in this game, since things like a Mursaat invasion or Palawa’s attack would transpire within our character’s lifetimes. The 250 year jump between GW1 and GW2 allowed a mechanical leap forward to take place at the same time, but it would be rather weird if all our characters retired immediately after the dragons were defeated and new heroes had to rise five years later. Maybe they just got amnesia.

Regardless of personal preferences, I think your observation is quite wise. We’d just have to see what the best course proves to be sometime in the future.

Indeed we will. And it was wise of you to post in the CD thread, since this one’s not seeing any dev traffic.

Also, when I read through the OP I was still a little confused as to why, exactly, the Pact had to dissolve, but honestly I focused less on that and more on content delivery. Now though, given your elaboration, I whole-heartedly agree that it needs to go. You are right: Trahearne has no reason to run the Pact anymore. Or more accurately, the Orders have no reason to follow him. It’s a good way for the devs to write off a character no one likes. Win-Win. Logically our character, being Trahearne’s right-hand, should become the leader but that re-introduces the original reason he was made Marshall over us: one Order commanding the other 2, given that the PC is a member of an Order. So there’s a choice to be made: make the player quit their order and keep command of the Pact, or the Orders fail to agree on a common leader and thus the Pact dissolves. I find the latter more preferable otherwise we’re just setting up for Trahearne 2.0, which is almost certainly going to draw more ire than goodwill.

You’ve got a really solid handle on your concepts Shriketalon, with well-supported arguments for why they are necessary and how the game will benefit. We can only hope the devs take notice and start communicating on it.

Moshari.8570:

… I don’t think that ANET really needs to change their current personal story other than to instance the whole thing as a sort of “this is my story” out of phase history of you.

You could do your entire personal story in your “home” instance traveling around the Tyria of yesteryear (a piece of dialogue to establish that you are not in the here and now)….ANET wouldn’t have to change anything with the personal story…and they could add to it by adding additional “Home” instances every year re-playing (provided they are scalable) the events that take down the additional dragons so that even a new player on year 5 could re-play the events that lead to the destruction of all 5 dragons…leading into the “current” time-scene of the living story. These “home” instances could be run with a party which would make them almost essentially a giant “history” or “Chronocle” dungeon that you could enjoy with your friends whenever you want. Loved the battle of Jormag? RE-play it in your “home” instance.

The only problem with a phased, or instanced, game is that it seems to go directly against what the developers want the game to be. They want everyone to experience the world together, such that everyone experiences the changes at the same time. Colin himself stated that in the Colab. Development thread as one of ANet’s core pillars: that “When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone.” So, that said, there’s no re-living it.

Other people have brought up the fact that by instancing, or phasing, the game it fragments the playerbase. If you are off re-running the death of Jormag, even though you want to because you found it fun, you’re not present in the same world, doing the same content, as everyone else. ANet doesn’t want that. They seem determined to force everyone to take on the same threats. That’s why none of the new Living World content has talked about Zhaitan’s defeat. If it did it’d force them to acknowledge that the LW takes place, chronologically, after that and would inevitably confuse new players in the future about exactly which content is ‘present’ and which is ‘past’.

Believe me, I agree with you. Instancing the content in the form of a Chronicle, a history book, or something would be wonderful. But things like that cant happen until they work out the foundation of the problem: they need to decide first if they ever want to have the content be repeatable, and then if they do, how to do it.

But before even that they need to decide on a chronology. Right now they’re getting away with no timeline because there is only been one dragon: Zhaitan. If a new player comes along and starts playing tomorrow, then to him the Pact hadn’t been formed for last year’s Halloween, or Wintersday, where for you and I it was. But, once they introduce dragon #2, they’ll have no choice but to lay down a timeline and say when Zhaitan was killed, when the Pact (or whoever) moved against the new dragon, and what all happened in the interim. You just can not have a living, evolving world without a timeline.

After reading what Colin had to say in the thread linked above I’ve mostly given up on the idea of replay-able story lines. Honestly, from the way he worded it, I don’t see how they can be true to that principle and continue with the Personal Story at all given that its nothing more than a series of instanced events wholly isolated from the open world. If they don’t want players removed from the living world to do instanced content, then the PS has to go, which is what the OP has done. A personal story can only progress at the rate which the person plays it. They want the world to progress without regard for you, or me, or anyone. By that logic the PS should not have been put into the game in the first place.

It would seem that they want this game to be nothing but an ever-evolving, non-replayable world. Maybe I don’t understand MMOs (having never played any other than GW and GW2) but it seems to me that a game with no capacity for replaying old content is doomed to fail. Or perhaps I was spoiled by GW1 and my ability to take a lvl 20, who had defeated the Lich, Shiro, and Abbadon, and go back to Ascalon to run the Great Northern Wall mission again.

Back on topic though (sorry for the tangent) it’s nice to see this thread getting some more traffic. I noticed someone else linked to this thread over in the CD thread and it seems several people came and took a look, but responded over there instead of here. Comments were pretty positive though.

Shriketalon.1937:

If we spend the next ten years fighting dragons, it’s going to get dull, fast.

fair point.

Shriketalon.1937:

Once the dragons die, the real game begins. It’s not game over. It’s the beginning of Chapter 2.

Here’s where I think we disagree, if only in technicality. I think that Guild Wars 2 is, or should be, strictly about the dragons. Once they are defeated it seems more prudent to begin Guild Wars 3 and go into other lore content. If we take 1 year for each dragon that means we’ll finish them in 2018, assuming Mordremoth is a real dragon. That’s 6 years-4 months of life, compared to GW1’s lifespan being 6 years-10 months. That’s pretty consistent. Starting over with Guild Wars 3 would let the developers take what they have learned from this game and improve the way they deliver content. We all know the problems they’re having right now trying to mesh the conflicting presentation methods of Living Story and Personal Story; better to start over with a new system than to try and keep the old system limping. It also allow the developers to leverage new technologies and make the game even more impressive. GW2 is such a step above GW1, at least graphically and mechanically, that I think GW3 would be a step above yet again.

Nevertheless, I do like how you’ve arranged the content and how you steadily move from one dragon to another. I also can appreciate how you left out the larger bits, like liberating Elona from PJ or revisiting Cantha. It’s things like that which I could see being anchors of the story in GW3.

References for above timetables:
April 2005 – Guild Wars launches
Feb 2012 – final Guild Wars Beyond: Winds of Change chapter released

Aug. 2012-2013 – Guild Wars 2 Launches, Zhaitan
2014 – Kralkatorrik
2015 – Primordus
2016 – Jormag
2017 – Bubbles
2018 – Mordremoth (if confirmed to be real)

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

… Had ANet never introduced the personal stories, but started off with the living stories from the start, we might have seen a completely different Tyria by this time. Queen Jennah might have died and a struggle for a new ruler would be going on. Lion’s Arch would be in ruins (due to the Karka attack) and would slowly be rebuilding, while the pirates would be a lot more numerous.

After a few years, we might actually see the Brand be removed (after we kill the dragon that caused it, I can never spell his name :P)

I wholeheartedly agree. If the Living Story was their plan from the start, and it certainly seems that way, then they should not have made the personal story instanced like it was. The PS demands the world remain static so as not to confuse the player with differences between the PS and the open world. Shriketalon certainly seems more the capable in his/her story delivery to make things interesting for all players without resorting to instanced content.

I tried to get some of the bigger critics of the Living Story to take a look at this thread, even posting about it in the Collaborative Development thread, but it would seem few people are taking notice. Anymore the only thing that seems to get attention is a red-post.

Edited to add: Regardless of the tweaks I’d prefer to see made to Shriketalon’s suggestion, if it was implemented as-is I would play it in a heartbeat without hesitation. It’s just that good.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Our take on phasing, and why we never did it to begin with is: the world isn’t progressing, it’s just fake progressing for you and the person next to you isn’t seeing it progress simultaneously. One of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Gw2 is that the things that happen do matter, they happen for everyone, and everyone experiences them together. This is really putting the social aspect of the game and immersion, above the personal aspect.

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

emphasis mine. Thank you, thank you, thank you for finally telling us what one the core game pillars is! In the CD topic request thread we asked you guys to tell us what your core game pillars were so we could understand the game from your perspective, before going into discussions. That never happened, to my knowledge.

I’ve been a fan of phasing the game ever since I was introduced to the concept, because it seemed like the perfect way to allow new players to get the full story, from the beginning, while still letting you evolve the world over the years. I couldn’t understand why you seemed willing to deny new players that ability. Now I get what you’re trying to do. You want changes to happen for everyone, at the same time, so phasing simply isn’t an option. If I miss the next release because of work or something, well, I guess my character was in a coma or something.

It’s a little frustrating that the LW will move on without my involvement, but I guess it’s not really “my story” anyway.

Any chance we could get a blog post outlining the core defining pillars of ArenaNet’s game design philosophy?

Encarton.3985:

The only complication would be that your character shouldn’t be able to replay a mission, choose a different option than they did originally, and play it through since they’d be seeing things they never did. Although, I suppose they could explain around it by having your character ‘fall asleep’ during the reflection and dreaming up the alternative choice and results.
I don’t think I’d mind if they limited us to the missions based off our original choices however.

Why not? We were able to do that in Nightfall. Choose path A, then after you beat the game you can go back and play Path B. Same in GWEN with the Scrying Pool in HoM. It was just understood that you were “watching history” as it were, rather than having to be explicitly told such.

I actually find part of the greater discussion about Living Story rather hilarious. Usually it’s players demanding updates to content and not considering how new people would experience the old, while the devs have to say “Yeah, but what about 2 years from now?” In this discussion WE, the Players, are the ones considering the future while the devs seem to only be thinking about the present playerbase.

CHIPS.6018:

I will counter argue: How can a child born in 1946 live though WW2?

He can’t. He is born after WW2.

Same thing with the Living Story.

A new player is born after certain events. So he can only read up on it and watch old videos (e.g. re-live though it by playing the mission, knowing full well it happened in the past) on it. He cannot experience it anymore in real time.

The world must change for this whole Living Story concept to work.

Wrong. Every new player starts at the same place mine did: fresh out of the tutorial and ready to begin the same personal story the rest of us have already played.

With your analogy, WW2 as the living story, then the Personal Story would be WW1. So a new player would be born at the same time I was, during WW1, then skip WW2 and show up in the present, where I actually lived through WW2. This is a major disconnect of Captain America proportions, and is one of the things we’re trying to solve here. Everyone starts at the same point in history, but there is no way to bring those players up to speed: They have literally skipped through time, and cant be expected to understand what is going on in the world around them. Surely you can see how frustrating that is.

And unlike with Steve Rogers, who had no choice in the matter, a new player can simply choose not to buy the game, or using your analogy, choose to never be born.

Disclaimer; no disrespect intended to any of the service men and women who participated in those 2 terrible conflicts. Those events were used here simply as focal points of history to illustrate the point of the topic. We thank you for your service.

I linked it in one of my posts and asked the Devs to take a look. Unlikely that they will, but worth the electrons to try.

Lvl 80 Guardian – Living Story, Armorsmith/Weaponsmith crafting
Lvl 48-ish Ranger – Huntsman/Leatherworker crafting
Lvl 35-ish Elementalist – Jeweler/Tailor crafting
Lvl 26-ish Thief – Chef/Artificer crafting
Lvl 11-ish Engineer – just trying to finish Charr personal story, then will be deleted and replaced with a Norn

Don’t get to play every night, and no more than a few hours when I do, so I spend 99% of my time doing Living Story junk because I don’t want to miss out and sneak a little crafting in here and there when I have the mats. Want to WvW, finish map exploration, maybe start on a legendary, but the release cadence for Living Story just doesn’t leave me the time. I really wish they’d slow it down.

Please check all that apply.

You are:

[ ] Married
[ ] Have Girlfriend
[x] Single
[x] Employed
[ ] Have Pets
[ ] Have Children
[x] Are an Adult
[x] Have a Life
[ ] Have no Manual Dexterity

You Think Living World is too:

[ ] Hard
[x] Time Consuming
[x] Temporary
[x] Disjointed
[x] Grindy
[ ] Full of Jumping Puzzles

You are Currently Threatening to:

[ ] Quit
[ ] Uninstall
[ ] Kick Colins’ Dog
[ ] Tell the Internet That You are Upset
[x] continue playing even though I dislike a great deal of what is going on
[x] dissuade others from buying the game

Since they insist on maintaining this foolish 2-week release cadence, they need to reduce the amount of play required for the meta, thereby leaving players time to play other content. You know, dungeons, fractals, DEs? You know, the GAME? That’s been my biggest gripe: I spend all my time playing LS and don’t get to level my alts, or do WvW, because if I don’t do the LS it’ll be gone in a few days and I miss out. If they insist on releasing every 2 weeks, make it possible to finish the meta in 1 week. Reduce the meta requirements from 10-14 achievements down to 5-6, so I can spend that other week playing other parts of the game.

There are a few portals like that around the game. Most likely they are pre-designed points from which to launch expansions. This one looks like the one inside Fort Vandal in Brisban Wildlands, if you know how to get inside without being killed. Another in Brisban is north of the broken bridge that the bandits are trying to rebuild in the NW corner of the zone. Speculation is that the Vandal portal will open a zone west of Brisban, and the Bridge portal will open a zone north of it, next to Queensdale.

Side note: Ft. Vandal has a functional Asura gate too.

Edit: here’s a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY-PziTkLeY

Both. I want 2 weeks worth of content and 4 weeks to do it in. That way I can spend some of my time doing Living Story, and some of my time doing Personal Story, leveling alts, WvW, etc. Right now 2 weeks is barely enough to complete just the LS meta, and then BOOM we’re into the next release. Give me some time to play the game I bought in addition to the LS.

The only problem with that, timmyf, is that if you kill a dragon and his minions disappear how is someone who comes along 2 years from now going to experience killing that dragon? What you are suggesting is that the devs make content aimed at current players with no thought of future players or how to catch them up.

That’s currently one of the biggest problems with the Living World; the inability of brand new players to experience the stories. They play through the personal story, kill Zhaitan, and then are thrust into Nightmare Tower with no way of knowing who Scarlett is, where she came from, why she’s the villian, what she has done previously to make her a threat, etc… it’s like coming in to a TV show half-way through the season. Do you watch the remainder, or wait for it to hit Netflix so you can start from the beginning? Problem is, there is no Netflix for old content, so new players are simply out of luck.

As far as favorite releases:
I don’t really have any. They all run together for me in the achievement grind’s mindless zerg, and the story is forgettable because of how disjointed it is. I guess Bazaar is probably my favorite because it introduced Sanctum Sprint, which is my favorite activity and something I actually enjoy doing.

Least Favorite release:
Tequatl Rising. Never made an effort to kill Taco before the update. I figured I’d get around to it one day but there were plenty of other things to do instead. What does Anet do? Make him several orders of magnitude more difficult, guaranteeing that I will NEVER do it. I did try it a few times during the release, but never could get the guy below 60% and promptly gave up after getting my wings. I should probably go run Claw and Shatterer before they too get revamped into something I make a conscious effort to avoid.

Maybe MMOs aren’t for me, or I don’t understand their intent. For most of the game the requirements for success are low and the chance for success high, so people play. Personal story & Champ trains, for example. For events where the req. for success is high and the chance low it’s much, much harder to get people together. I play on SoR, one of the highest-populated NA servers, and I don’t see many people doing Teq anymore because it’s so hard to get enough people there to do it, and even then the success rate isn’t great. And this isn’t even taking rewards into account which further skews players toward things like champ trains instead of world bosses.

To Collin, comparing the game to a TV show is a bad idea in the context of player interaction. In a TV show you’re a spectator; you just watch what is happening and consume. In a game you’re supposed to be a participant actively moving the plot along, creating rather than consuming. I’m supposed to be the hero of the story, not a spectator or a sidekick.

There’s another thread going on about how to merge the Personal and Living Stories into one cohesive plot, enticing the players to actually care about the story again. It’s got some flaws (what doesn’t?), but it’s worthy of attention. I’d love to see the devs comment on it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/To-Merge-the-Personal-and-Living-Stories/

Mungrul.9358:

One of the things that would bring me back to GW2 would be the removal of the achievement hamster wheel and untangling it from so many gameplay elements. At the moment it’s the driving mechanic behind all new content.
———-
If you play Guild Wars 2 at the moment, you’re unconsciously deciding to join the race to get the shiniest stuff or the most achievement points. This causes stress with the 2 week release cycle, and it makes people anxious when they miss out on something because they didn’t have time to dedicate to playing.

Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been playing since pre-release and still haven’t finished the main game, because I don’t have time. If I try to run those missions, that’s time I’m NOT grinding out Living Story achievements, which means I might miss a limited-time reward item. I can only imagine the lament of people who want Celestial gear but don’t have a quartz node to farm because they weren’t around for the Bazaar release.

I didn’t care about the achievements when the game first launched. There was no reason to care other than simply having the points. Once APs were revamped and started giving rewards, I suddenly started caring about them. If I needed to slay 10 more drakes for the drake killer achievement, I’d stop what I was doing and go somewhere just to kill those 10, because it was 1 more point toward an AP chest, and its associated boost, gold reward, etc… APs were meaningless to me before they were attached to reward chests and I rather preferred it that way, because I was free to play the game instead of feeling like I had to go grind an achievement or I was wasting my time.

These days I don’t play the game for the story. I can’t play my alts because I’m always running LS with my main. I work full time, like many others, and I don’t get to play every night. Even when I can play, though I can spend 4-5 hours in one spurt, I still don’t feel like I have a lot of time to get things done. I used to see chat of people talking about running dungeons, or fractals. I don’t see that anymore: all I see is chat about living story. Maybe the dungeon chat went away with the LFG too, I don’t know, but I know I don’t see people talking about it anymore. On the forums here I don’t see people talking about dungeon bugs or difficulties like they used to, or event bugs, or much else: it’s all about Living World. Seems like I’m not the only one that is essentially ignoring the rest of the game and spending all my time on Living World grind.

As I pointed out in another thread, the story is not casual-friendly. Mechanically it is, sure: many have said it’s one of the easiest games for a casual to play. The story though is anything but. Miss one LS release and you have no idea what’s going on, with no way to go back and find out. The game may be rated T for teen, and geared toward that demographic, but the reality is a lot of the base is older, in the workforce and feels the only way to enjoy the game casually is to actively, consciously, intentionally IGNORE the Living World. Is that what you want? Do you want people ignoring the content you work tirelessly to build, just because they don’t feel they have the time to complete it?

We need a break, Anet. I think I could live with the 2-week cadence if it was 2 weeks of LS content, then 2 weeks of nothing so I could play my alts, run Personal Story, etc. Is this not preferable? Am I the only one that wants time to play the game I bought?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

Obviously it would appear a great number of people on this forum are not happy with this stance. But, you have made it clear that you’re not going to change it so we’re just going to have to accept it, or quit the game. However, perhaps you can explain to us exactly why the team decided on a 2 week cadence and why you think it’s the best route to go. If we understood why you chose this route, perhaps we could better frame our suggestions as to how to make it better, because without that frame of understanding our only real solution is the one you do not want to discuss: slowing the cadence to 3 or 4 weeks. Again, why is the 2-week release non-negotiable?

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Why are you sticking to the bi-weekly release schedule? If you know it hinders you, why keep at it? That makes no sense to me. I know you’re not the guy to set it, but I’m sure you know why it’s set there and who sets it and can explain to us this befuddlement – if not get the players’ opinion on it to the person or people who set the schedule.

That’s not my decision to make. That stated, feedback regarding the cadence is useful and constructive to others so I think it’s good for people to tell us how they feel about the release schedule.

We’ve told you how we feel. 19 pages of it in this thread alone. Some of us like it. A lot of us don’t, we think it’s too fast, and we don’t understand why you stick to it. Enlighten us, please, as to why it’s non-negotiable.

edited to add quote from BobbyStein

Shriketalon.1937:

Imagine, if you will, how the Charr, Norn, Asura, Sylvari, Humans, Tengu, Largos, and Kodan each wage war. Rather than doing the Pact thing over and over again with the same airships and same harpoons, each race could get its chance to shine in one of the wars. Picture the Charr military machine rolling out every tank, every artillery, every metallic behemoth in their kitten nal, backed by human troops bolstering their army with divine artifacts and ancient rites. Think of the battle with the Icebrood, skirmishing through the shiverpeaks alongside shapeshifting ambush squads, or brawling in a massive fight where a shaman-summoned, forty-foot Spirit of All That Is Bear grapples with a Claw of Jormag and tears out its icy throat. Envision holding the line alongside tengu summoning Star Celestials, buying time for the asura to plug in a certain famous golem into an ancient abode, transforming an entire cubic city into the almighty Sparklemus Prime!

The Pact had its turn. Let’s let the other forces of Tyria flex their muscles and show us what makes them amazing.

I giggled at Sparklemus Prime. :P

I like this concept of allowing each of the races to take a kind of leadership role in dealing with respective dragons. The Norn have the most experience with Jormag so it only makes sense to follow their lead. Same with the Asura and Primordus, Charr and Kralkatorrik (via the Branded) and maybe the Sylvari and Mordremoth depending on how the devs tie him into the story. No one has experience with Bubbles so it could be another Pact-like thing to deal with him, which could possibly lead to the opening up of the southern and western landmasses. Each race being able to take a leadership role might also bolster the number of players in the less-populous races (I’m looking at you, Charr.)

One thing that is important, that bears repeating again and again until the devs acknowledge it, is that the content must be replayable, without having to reroll. One of the most annoying things right now, to me, is that if I want to go back and play through the Human Noble storyline again, I have to roll a new character. Or if I want to run “A Vision of Darkness” again as a Sylvari, I have to re-roll and then level until I can do it. I don’t want to do that: I just want to re-run the mission I have already beaten. A new player 2-3 years from now should be able to go back and beat Zhaitan, Kralkatorrik, etc. That was one of the great things about Guild Wars 1; you could go back to old missions and re-live the content, without having to level an alt.

They really do need to increase the post size: this is just silly having to split posts.

Talissa Chan.7208:

The other thing is – I’ve read it, seen what the plan is and it makes me want to play it even more. It’s far more interesting knowing whats coming in the story rather than keeping it all super hush hush.

This is a very, very good point. Knowing what is coming, if not how, makes it a lot easier to get excited for new content. We knew in beta that we would be taking on a huge undead dragon. We didn’t know how, or in what context, but we knew it was going to happen and everyone was excited for it. Compared to now, with the constant mysteries and vagaries, and no one is interested anymore. We don’t feel, at least I don’t, that we are ever going to get resolution so why bother getting excited only to be strung along yet again? That was one of the comments made in the Collaborative Development ideas-suggestion thread: we asked the devs to tell us where the game is going, and what we can expect, because the constant unknown is just making everyone upset.

Back to the OP and discussion of his idea, I think part of the problem with the story, at least with its known end, is the fact that we have a known end. We know that once we kill all 6 dragons its game-over. Nothing left to fight so no more game to play; bring on Guild Wars 3. I’ve been thinking about this the last few days and there may be a way to extend the longevity of the game’s dragon-related content. Instead of killing a dragon every 5 months, as the OP’s plan shows, why not progress through the taking of territories every 5 months, culminating in taking down a dragon?

Example: when it comes time to take on Kralk, the first 5 months is phase 1 where we make a push into the desert regions south of Ebonhawk and establish a foothold there. Then we have 7 months of off-season, filler content about other lore-stuff, like the Wizards’s tower or the Blood Legion homelands, or Malyck's tree. Then the next 5 months, Phase 2, we push toward the Bone Palace and make a deal with Palawa Joko. 7 more months of filler. Phase 3, 5 months pushing to Tombs, and killing Kralk, 7 months putting Joko to rest for good and freeing Elona.

Didn’t Blizzard do something similar with WoW’s story? Introduced Arthas in the first game but didn’t actually fight him until 2 expansions later? I’ve never played WoW so I only know from talking with friends that have, but that was the impression I had.

Anyway, that’s 3 years worth of story and only 1 dragon dead. Do that with every dragon and you could triple the lifespan of the game. Now, personally I’d rather kill 1 dragon a year and then have new stories based on other lore as Shriketalon suggests, but if ArenaNet is determined to keep this game about the Dragons then this would allow them to have a great amount of longevity doing so.

Fallout.1798:

I think that Anet needs to just realize that there are people who will never do their personal story missions (yet still know the lore that happens). Anet can’t put in a requirement that you have to have completed all personal story to be able to do the living story missions that involve the Pact, so go with alternatives that still include the Pact.

Part of the problem with a persistent world is that you’ll never be able to do all the content. As the world changes and old content gets overridden, you cant go back and experience it the old way. New players to the game will never be able to see the Great Collapse in DR, because it’s been built over. New players will never get to do Twilight Arbor Forward/Up, because it’s gone. Persistent games are not made for new and future players: they are made for the players playing right now. That said, the Living Story should be made on the premise that everything that has already been released has already happened. New players playing through the ‘time capsule’ stories will just have to live with the notion that the instances they play in the ‘time capsule’ are considered the ‘past’ of the persistent world. It’s the only way to allow new players to experience old content AND acknowledge that veteran players already have.

Anet should not force people to play the PS as a requirement to play the LS, this is true, and so far they haven’t. However, if they implement the Time Capsule as stated by the OP they would never have to. It would allow players to go back and replay all the “dragonslayer” content, including (ideally) the original Personal Story involving Zhaitan. The side stuff would be temporary (couldn’t go replay Zephyr Sanctum, or Lost Shores, or Twilight Assault, or SAB) but they could play any dragon-related content, whenever they want. This would allow all future players access to all the dragon-related content so that they could get caught up to where the current LS would be.

Say a new player starts in late 2015. Under the OP’s idea, that new player would be able to start a personal story and work his way through killing Zhaitan, Kralkatorrik, and Primordus at his leisure, while still taking part in the then-current, non-dragon-related content. Eventually he should be caught up to the veteran players and be ready to take on the next Dragon in early 2016.

Again, this is a brilliant concept for maintaining a persistent world while still allowing new players the ability to experience all of the content. It’s a little immersion-breaking, bouncing between the ‘past’ and the ‘present’, but better that and having a coherent story than the disjointed mess we have now.

Initially, during or after Lost Shores the developers did state that Living Story was set after Personal Story. Later, they rolled that back to the current, vague, “it can be any time during or after the PS” arrangement. The lines you saw referencing you as the Commander of the Pact only happened because you had made it that far in your PS. Those characters that had not reached that point in the PS did not receive that dialogue. This was intentional, to keep with Anet’s vague timeline.

I agree that ArenaNet needs to establish, clearly and plainly, that the Living Story is set after the fall of Zhaitan. However, what the OP is talking about is not just the Pact: he’s saying that the current LS has no relation to the dragons, which are supposed to be the core, primary antagonist of this game. His suggestion is in how to bring the LS back around and make the dragons the bad guys again, instead of having completely unrelated and, frankly, silly cartoon villains like Scarlet.

The suggestions are very, very ambitious and may be totally opposed to the direction ArenaNet wants to take the the game. This is why I said they need to see it and respond here with their opinions. These ideas are great, so they need to tell us what their ideas are and why theirs are better. That, the apparent lack of direction (from the players’ perspective) is what part of what has driving so much of the animosity and vitriol on the boards of late. Players have wanted to know where the game is headed ever since the first players killed Zhaitan. Players have been looking at the recent LS content from the past few months and see no direction. So they come on the boards to complain and voice their frustrations over the apparent lack of direction, and, like the OP here, offered their suggestions. Only recently have the devs actually stepped up to the mic and said “We hear you, here’s our response, please tell us more.”

This is probably the single best, most well-thought out suggestion for getting the story back on track and making sense that I have ever read. I love the way you formatted it and tied in a lot of the old lore. Your idea of having 5 months of ‘dragonslayer campaign’ followed by 7 months of lore-centric, one-off content is brilliant, and the time capsule is absolutely crucial to allow future players to experience all of the dragon-related content. Sure, they might miss out on some of the one-off content, but at least the meat-and-potatoes, dragon-related content will be permanently accessible.

However, I suggest you dial back just how much of the old lore is expanded on in the first year. Your suggestion covers a lot of things, certainly things I (and I’m sure others) would dearly love to see, but I fear it covers too much, too quickly. Leaving some things till later would give longevity to the game.

Also, your suggested structure of dragon-slaying content, if strictly adhered to, would only permit 5 more years of guaranteed game longevity. Kralkatorrik in 2014, then in no particular order Primordus, Jormag, Bubbles & Mordremoth, 2015 thru 2018. After that there are no more dragons to kill. What then? Perhaps Anet would finally decide to open up Cantha and let us see what has happened there, but I digress. The other big MMO has been around for almost 9 years now and shows no signs of stopping, so getting 6 years total out of GW2 isn’t impossible, but I’d like to see some thought given to what would be done after we run out of dragons to bash.

Overall I love what you’ve done, and I think ArenaNet would be wise to take a long, hard look at it, discuss it with the various leads and directors, and then reply here with their opinions. This is too good a concept to ignore.