Guild Wars 2

Chidori.9483:

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

You mean like a bunch of Destroyers coming out of a rift in Kessex Hills?

Chidori.9483:

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

I. AM. IN.

Lets start this party:

To use the tools we already have in game, I’d start this with a letter that in flowery language basically says “Return to your Home instance to see [someone] about a small problem they are having.” And nothing else. No trumpeting horns. Let players be intrigued. Ramp up from there as what looks like a little side bet escalates.

You could have a minutely different scene script for each race depending on which home you end up launching the sequence from, but they then quickly align into a single story path to move forward along. Maybe not a missing mother but a friend that has vanished (easily replicated and understood to be happening in all 5 starting cities). Half an hour later we’re onto a cross-species child-smuggling ring and myyyy goooodness, I’m ready to burn some villain bases down to the ground and save me some kids.

You don’t even need new assets. This is all a really sick plot by the Inquest to get lab samples, and they are using Aetherblade muscle to do the grunt work. Bam! Bases populated, enemy roster fully and deeply populated. Game on!

Chidori.9483:

Epicness

Nike.2631:

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

…

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

I feel the story itself is pretty good, but the content is designed in such a way to take away from the story. It feels difficult to experience and enjoy.

I LOVED how the NPCs at the end of the story for tower of nightmares would heal me back up if I was downed. Nice touch.

Epicness

Nike.2631:

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

…

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

Honestly, if I was going for an epic story I would start with something simple, no party crashing. I would have a little girl ask me to find her mother, and in doing so stumble across something so horrible that I cannot ignore it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep the story needs to more ‘Epic’, meaningful and better at evoking emotion.

Chris

I think this exact quote is what’s really hamstringing your writing team and the direction of the Living Story in general.

You don’t need to chase after Epic – epic is a natural outgrowth of scale.

What you need to focus on is ‘Compelling’.

In Kessex Hills there is a little stand-alone escort event in the Destroyer caves. A child from the nearby town has fallen into the caves and can’t get out. Lead her to safety.

Ok, first off, it’s a little girl and she’s surrounded by monsters that want to eat her. If you’re not a complete sociopath, you’re already committed to the endeavor just to put an end to this outrage. Second, I empathize with her: I fell down that same kitten crack while looking around – that’s how I found her in the first place. The monsters aren’t just after her, we’re totally in this together (yes, I realize I could just waypoint away, but that’s for chumps). Is time to hero up.

The fact that I’m on my rifle-toting engineer and I’m practically screaming lines from Aliens at the screen as we shoot our way out of there ("You want some of this? And you? How about that, come on! blam-blam-blam-blam!) is just a nice bonus.

And did you notice how I said ‘we’ there? She doesn’t do a thing except cower or follow along doggedly, but we are a party now, making our way out of the cave. Because I care.

There is NOTHING in the Scarlett Invasions that comes close to that. Nothing is under threat. Nothing says ‘step up, hero’. It may look EPIC-EPIc-EPic-Epic-epic-epic ((echo effects)), because it’s Big… but it has no heart. It’s a safari for big-game hunters, not a chance for heroism.

Give me a reason to care. I’ll suspend disbelief (no way pointing out just because), I’ll buy in if you let me. But don’t confuse scale with relevance.

Some of the finest victories are small.

Like seeing a little girl make her way home.

DreamOfACure.4382:

[…]

This means they can afford to reduce the HP of these mobs and tune them in more ways, whereas before, their main answer to making PvE more challenging is:

GIVE THEM MORE HEALTH

Hope that helps you see this topic from a new perspective.

This. Currently, in dungeons there’s spots with one too many elites. A couple of elites along a champion and a bunch of veterans and normal ones is fine. 10 elites spamming their two one-hit-kill skills is not.

By giving them downed state, they can decrease their stupid stats to something reasonable, and you can’t just stack and spam skills like now, as when you are centered on a target another enemy may use a revive skill and bring back the elite you just downed.
This forces the need to dynamically switch targets and adapt to the situation, and the more of that we get, the more engaging combat is, and the harder it is for people that just mindlessly use skills on recharge.

Lothirieth.3408:

DreamOfACure.4382:

Personally, I don’t see why PvE creatures didn’t have downed-states to begin with.

They made a huge deal about it, yet their PvE wasn’t build around it. Why not?!
If (sentient?) creatures had downed states, their basic AI could have been made more interesting – Like more frequent auto-attacks (letting us make use of confuse/retaliation), or shorter aggro + longer leashing, etc..

<snip>

I, for one, am glad they are introducing Downed-states and “Finishing” to PvE.

Well I can think of one good reason:

how do you think you’d rally if you’re playing on your own… you’d be stuck in a downed state with the mob, with no way to rally, slowly trying to kill each other whilst lying there, except, oh.. the mob has a friend who will rez him.. but you have no friends to rez you.

Seems like a bad idea for soloers in PvE.

I solo PVE’d many a toon to 80. This is called strategy. If youre fighting enemies that you think might down you, maaaaybe you should tag a deer or something first and bring it over to the enemy so you have something to rally off of. I did this with lvl 60 toons in level 70 and 80 areas. AOE everything and kite a neutral in case I need to rally. I know, I know, its too hard for most people. Its beyond pressing 1. silly me

Wow, rewards finally come to PVP and people complain ? Lol GG pvp community.

This topic is precisely what they meant by “cleverly disguised” personal attacks.

Fan vs Staff

Mak.7625:

Oh my god…wood logs sink……….

They appear to be bound by ropes.

A simpler explanation, obviously, is that the Krait are just TP speculators stalking up on Soft Wood Logs. I mean, just look at the current price!

I’m loving this foreshadowing sort of thing! Please keep doing these! I’m having fun with the Halloween patch but I’m already thinking and speculating etc about what’s coming next! These small(or big) things are the start to actually making Tyria feel like a living world!
ANet, Maybe overlay future LS hints like these? for the next 2-3 LS chapters, considering(if I’m not mistaken) you’ve planned months in advance!
We could have something suddenly happening like this Kessex Hill thing, and then something happening around Ascalon, etc depending on where the LS would take us in the next weeks!
The tension would start to build as players, as Hero’s, wouldn’t even know where to turn to!
Well done ANet, loving this!

hedix.1986:

Marjory Delaqua […] back yay!

After going through the Bloody Prince’s dialog and thinking, “Yes ANet! More of this!” and then you bring back Marjory it’s starting to feel like my birthday. Can’t wait to get home and go see what she has to say.

More of all of this ANet, really. I don’t know what you decided to change in your creative process but the change is good: really good.

If you do this type of stuff to Scarlet you will probably fix her bad reputation with all of us. Just keep doing what you are doing right now.

Marjory Delaqua and Kasmeer are back yay! And this foreshadowing works really well, +1 for finally doing some decent lore presentation Anet.
Whatever is coming next seems to have a lot of potential. I just hope there’s more in-game than on blog posts.

For those curious, the picture I include here has me swimming around the barrier, bumping into it most of the way around.

That is… huge…

I was just walking through here without knowing anything had changed. Started to notice that things were … off. I must say that the 5 minutes i spent exploring and looking for things that have changed has been my best experience with the living story!

Plllllssss more of this! It actually feels like a dynamic world where things change. Cant wait for the next living story!

I’m guessing that krait witch is up to something. We let her stay there too long without bothering to stop her. Maybe an updated event, or a new world boss here.

No matter what it is, this is a nice little tease. The map change is definitely an attention grab, and the NPCs give you just enough to want to learn more.

grave of hearts.7830:

And i was on the 3rd floor going from platform to platform scanning for where kome is going.

So, you admit you didnt sweep the perimeter and was assuming someone else did. And to let you in on something. If your eyes was fixed on Kome and was watching us jump out from the south-western side, you did exactly what we wanted you to do, and that was to leave the north-east area unchecked.

So dare anyone from sos come out and swear that they swept the entire perimeter of SMC? Or for that matter, swear that they saw the mesmer pop out of nowhere. When we went in, it was empty. A scout eventually came after we accidently made an orange cross clearing the guards

And you still didn’t answer the question. If a glitch was involved, why did we not just go straight to inner, instead we gave you a chance to come back to defend?

Lesson. Don’t be lazy, do your server a favour and do any sweep yourself instead of assuming someone will do it.

grave of hearts.7830:

AtomicSponge.6537:

Our guy hid in SMC, you guys failed at sweeping.

Whats his name?

At least 200g plus a prec of my choosing, and then we’ll talk.

Our guy hid in SMC, you guys failed at sweeping.

My hope…. changes to the scoring system. If the way scores are calculated are changed, it doesn’t matter how they do the tiers. Servers with the most number of players should receive fewer points than less populated servers. That would result in a more even match-up (score wise) between T1 and T4.

With the utmost respect to you Devon I believe you are so wrong.

I am a proud Yaks Bender and have spent too many hours in WvW. I am the WVW guild leader of a larger gaming community. Once upon a time I would have 20 or so running NA prime time up to 30 Oceanic and a smaller but not insignificant 10-15 EU.
At reset we could have 30 plus controlling ybbl. Great fun was had week after week and reset was party central for ever so many. I am not the best player nor am I a theory crafter on builds if I run out and die so be it but I have had fun. My money has been well spent and provided me with great entertainment.

Like it or not the ranking system was a failure right from the start. Matches got stale and boring for many servers but were locked into their tiers. The open free transfer destroyed it even further. Even when it was stopped gamers had already got the idea that the grass is greener and continued to move. We saw the rise fall etc of the bandwagoners. The idea that the higher you are the better the game is. Different yes but not necessarily better.

Then the culling stopped. A great fix or was it!!!! We can now see the enemy so the blob wars started. I have no complaints the players developed their own ESport GVG. This appealed greatly to a large section of the community. For those like me who organised the defences, build the siege, did the upgrades and repaired the gates and walls. No love was shown to us. little reward for hours and hours of behind the scenes work but we did it for our server. I do not use the term loyalty lightly but it was exactly what I felt and many like me. Even today with all that Yaks has gone through over the last few months those of us out there day after day are amongst the greatest people I have played with in almost 35 years of gaming.

The new matchups began as far as Yaks was concerned we had some of the closest matches in the history of the game with the 3 places being decided in the last 12 hours. However it very quickly became obvious the the ratings were never going to close that much. Over this period the once stable server of Yaks began to loose whole guilds. With only one or two exceptions they all moved to higher servers in TC SOR DB. Now I am not talking a few people. I am talking over 50 and nearer to 100 if indeed not more. We have been on the shortlist for many potential guilds but they too went to kitten. My own guild lost many firstly to SoS because we had little or no oceanic presence and they were getting no play time worth a cracker. then another group to TC. they just needed a new experience. When I speak to some of them today they moved they saw and now they are playing something else or waiting to do so.

I went to have a look and as I write this is my Alt account which is based on TC. A great server but no more fun to play on than my dear Yaks Bend. However the sheer numbers I wish we had just half as many.

So the recent changes well what can I say that hasn’t been said already. I am one of the silent majority but it has been said by everyone else. The map great the buffs well I wont comment. GvG the players game not mine personally destroyed such a shame. No longer did PVT matter more the fight or the battle. I came out from behind the walls and fought Pyro from Mags and had a blast—-but died even more hehe

So at last we look to the leagues as you have said will be as you envisaged them. I am sorry Sir as someone and the end of their career of 45 years in senior management I would sack you on the spot. If you ran a shop selling yesterdays fashion you would be broke. If you sold a lemon of a motor car you would be washing dishes to earn your rent. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that if 1,2,3,4,5,6, plays the remaining 6 there is only 1 winner whilst the rest will be spawn camped. Look at our matchup this week if we were not off killing a dragon or trying to in overflow what do you think the score would be. As much as I hate being stomped week after week I hate doing the stomping also.

It is not too late to re-consider your plan or the plan of your seniors. It is flawed ill thought out and it wont take 7 weeks to work that one out. Blind freddy can see it and I for one can but hey my opinion doesn’t matter. Or at least that is how Anet makes us feel.

Finally I want to thank all those many players on all servers that have stuck with their server since day dot Do not move for the sake of a meaningless award. Follow that Dorito that you love and respect. They are the ones that make this game worth playing. Yaks Bend has great commanders that make my non work time so enjoyable and I thank you for all your work. I am sure all servers have commanders to thank also

I once ask Evan Lesh what he thought about Longbow and he said " I don’t have a kitten between my legs. I have a massive two handed weapon and i plan i using it."

How dare any of you ask for “punishment” if the Dev’s get a little snarky. With the amount of hate, vitriol and absolutely ridiculous comments I’ve seen flung at the dev’s, you should point your fingers at yourselves before pointing anywhere else. Respect is a two way street. If I were a mod, I’d have banned half of you off of here.