Guild Wars 2

BobbyStein.2315:

timmyf.1490:

Yetiyen.7269:

You’ve completely ignored the biggest problem with the living story, most players WANT PERMANENT CONENT! You’ve got 10 pages of people telling you that they want new zones and more permanent content. Yet you haven’t responded or provided an answer to these players at all. I’m not trying to be rude, but I thought the idea of this thread was for you to listen to the community and provide us with feedback. You still need to address:

1. Permanent content! We want new areas!
(New zones and areas etc.)

2. The pace of the Living Story!
(2 weeks is too fast!)

It would be really appreciated if you could address these issues.

1. Demanding things from the developers will get you nowhere.
2. Bobby Stein – correct me if I’m wrong, guys – is a writer. He can’t address those issues because that’s not what his job is.

Your first point is true. When feedback is phrased like a demand it usually gets ignored. Constructive, thoughtful commentary is what we need. Thankfully, there’s a lot of it in this thread so I and the other devs appreciate that so many of you are taking time to formulate your thoughts.

Regarding your second point, yes, I’m the lead writer. I manage a team of narrative designers and writers who are currently tasked with writing plot, advancing character development, and drafting dialog for the Living World releases. I do not set the release schedule or contribute meaningfully toward critical design systems like rewards, skills, combat, etc.

That stated, comments about the release pacing (a.k.a. how frequently we put out Living World updates) and related features (task tracking, replayable content, etc.) are extremely useful to others at the studio.

I didn’t mean for it to sound like a demand, and for this, I apologize. I respect how hard you guys work on the Living Story, however it’s frustrating to see so much feedback regarding LS release pacing and world features unanswered. Especially as these are questions and comments that have been ignored in the past.

BobbyStein.2315:

Player Agency
For many players, their feelings of “playing second fiddle” likely began with Trahearne’s introduction in the Personal Story and have persisted somewhat with the Living World releases. This is partially by design and partially due to constraints both budgetary and technical. The quote below is from a forum response I posted after launch.

“Q:What do you guys think about the incredible negative feedback you got for Trahearne?
A:Narrative Designer Scott McGough and I talked about this very topic some time ago. In short, Trahearne was intended to fill a very specific role that, in terms of both gameplay and story, the PC could not fill—an order-neutral character with extensive knowledge about Orr and the magic of undeath who could coordinate a global war effort and make the necessary plans, thus leaving the actual gameplay up to the player. Further, Trahearne’s character design was intentional in that he would be a reluctant hero who, through interacting with the player, evolved into someone who could step up to lead the Pact.

This didn’t resonate well with some players for a variety of reasons. We’re comparing external feedback with our own, since we have plans for Trahearne and other existing characters in future live updates and expansion content. We won’t spoil what we’re discussing, other than to say we’re looking at many different options for his current implementation and beyond.”

In regards to the Living World constraints, there are a few factors at play that prevent the player from speaking:

• With our current tech, the PC cannot speak outside of a cinematic conversation (which were featured inside the Personal Story at ship) or contextual chatter (crippled = “My leg!”). We intend to explore possible solutions in the somewhat near future.

• Our revised cinematic technology does not currently support player voice variants (i.e. 10 different PC voices).

• The text of every player line has to be translated 10 times per language to account for each player race/gender combination.

• The VO of every player line has to then be recorded 10 times per voiced language. (In other words, it’s freakishly expensive to voice the PC as 1 PC line in English = 10 English voiced lines + 10 German voiced lines, etc.).
  That stated, the player doesn’t need VO in order to have agency in the story but we are limited in what we can track since it gets added to the player’s record, which is already large.

We have a few things planned for upcoming releases that should make the player feel like more of a driver and less of a passenger, but please remember that it takes upwards of four months for content to go from concept to completion. Nothing I say here will happen immediately due to the nature of how we build things.

Thanks much.

You’ve completely ignored the biggest problem with the living story, most players WANT PERMANENT CONENT! You’ve got 10 pages of people telling you that they want new zones and more permanent content. Yet you haven’t responded or provided an answer to these players at all. I’m not trying to be rude, but I thought the idea of this thread was for you to listen to the community and provide us with feedback. You still need to address:

1. Permanent content! We want new areas!
(New zones and areas etc.)

2. The pace of the Living Story!
(2 weeks is too fast!)

It would be really appreciated if you could address these issues.

Temporary content is a real issue with the game in general. After scrolling through several pages of opinions from fellow players, it seems that everybody wants Permanent content. You’ve got such a great game, and you’re ruining it by rushing out Living Story that has no impact on the world. Personally I’d like to see:

1. Permanent content – In the form of new zones
(What happened to labyrinth Cliffs? Why delete that place? It’s just stupid. We all know it’s there on the blurred map.)

2. Temporary content – ALONGSIDE PERMANENT CONENT
(Halloween and Wintersday are festivals, they don’t need their own LS quests. You can still add all the fun challenges, jumping puzzles, skins, dungeon-like instances, but you really don’t need to give the festivals their own story arc.)

3. More personal story
After you’ve levelled a character to 80 and killed Zhaitan, what have you got left to do that relates to your personal story?

I guess what it really boils down to is, most players here really want to experience NEW ZONES that are PERMANENT. We’re talking new hearts, new points of interest, new vistas, and new personal story within the new zones.

Basically, the majority of people want the equivalent of an EXPANSION onto the game. (By expansion I mean and expansion onto the map.)When I bought Guild Wars 2, I thought that living story would mean that you would add updates into the game that added new zones and new personal story quests. And those story quests would relate to the other dragons. That’s the living story I wanted, and that’s the living story that players want. Temporary content is great, but it’s not a substitute.

IMPORTANT
On another note, 2 week LS updates are far to fast. I’d rather wait a month or 2 and have a better quality permanent content update that includes new zones and personal story.

Give me some new zones and some more personal story that relates to dragons!