Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to state that I share the disappointment over this, and it feels like just one more thing to add to the pile… I would not like to say anything more about it.

congratulations

Reading all the discussion about ‘PvE reward-track’, I wanted to point out that PvE already has an Achievement Reward Track, just wanted to mention that so you are reminded of it…

Tbh. I find this an interesting idea. Even though it makes Tags more easily accessible, which was basically why they now cost 300g instead of 100g.

Still though, I don’t see me spend 300g for a tag. YET! There are times when I’m in WvW and there just isn’t someone around with a tag, or they just don’t want to tag up (because they are the only one and just done it for 3h straight, and would like a break from it). In those cases I would personally be inclined to tag up for a bit, until a better commander comes along, so a rental tag would be very helpful in those cases.

It could also give aspiring commanders a way to try it out, without committing 300g to something they do not yet know will suit them.

While I can see why humans would be most inclined to support ‘tourism’ I personally find it hard to see humans tour guiding in the black citadel…

So while humans do make a likely candidate, it would make most sense if they were say ‘Durmond Priory’ humans. This though would give these tours a Priory flavour, aka. the focus would be very historic, and from an objective view.

On the other hand, if you were to make these more ‘racial’ flavoured, it makes sense to then look at the races and figure out what ‘their’ motive would be to guide their own race through their city…
1. Humans, would likely have a strong focus on ‘tourism’, an historic, cultural, ‘art’ angle would make the most sense, as we (being humans) would relate these tours to the ones we see in our own cities. Seeing humans still live rather dispersed, the tours serve as a way to keep the human spirit up and bond humans culturally.
-> They wouldn’t mind taking visitors along as they would assume their interest is like theirs, a form of tourism.

2. Sylvari, guiding Sylvari around the Grove would serve a very distinct purpose, mainly to show new born their home. It would be more of an informational tour…
-> Still though, seeing how Sylvari are so interested to learn new things, I would not be amazed if they were to grant visitors the right to join these new born on their tour, as a friendly service and opportunity to teach other races about the Sylvari.

3. The Asura, would be inclined to have 3 tours, obviously each tour would focus on their respected college. Not so much that they won’t show other colleges, but their comments on them would differ a lot from those made about their own college. Likely these tours set the bar for new entries into a college. Focus would be on discoveries and the people making them.
-> They would allow other races along to mostly boast about how great their respected college is…

4. Norn, the Norn lead fairly secluded lives, they tend to be homesteaders or hunters. Having tours in their city would serve the purpose of preserving the shared history, so that if Norn were to visit their ‘capital’ they could be informed of what happened elsewhere. The focus would be mostly on Heroes and Heroic tales.
-> They wouldn’t mind taking visitors along, because somewhat like the asura, they love to boast about their great feats.

5. Charr, (like already mentioned, apparently), the Charr would most likely use guides as part of the Fahrar system, Charr do not strike me as ‘tourist inclined’, nor do they particularly focus on Hero warship (not that there aren’t important Charr, but its not really a cultural focus, aka. it’s not the Charr that is important, it’s what they did for the Charr). There are more things to point at why Charr Tours wouldn’t technically be meant for grown Charr. Yet, as part of the Fahrar they make perfect sense, the underlying knowledge of the Charr would be considered a valuable learning experience to cement the racial interest/culture into a society that is mostly Warband focussed. It would be a good way to introduce Cubs to the respected divisions in the society so that these cubs understand the choices they can make and the focus/consequences they come with.
-> Charr society seems to be open enough to allow visitors in their capital, but seeing how Charr society has this rather closed ‘warband’>‘legion’>‘race’ organisation, as well having a rather ego-boast undertone. They would see visitors being as ‘valuable’ to Charr society as ‘Cubs’. “You are of another race, and you are interested in the charr? you start at the bottom like the rest of us.”

Tbh. and also likely the reason why I typed it all out, the racial approach seems much more interesting than using a mere ‘human’ or ‘priory’ approach. Most noticeably because the tours stay within their racial confines, which makes perfect sense in a Racial Capital.

Having a few other races come along with these tours, which would run continuously or within like short timeframes, gives ‘you’ the writers opportunities to have them ask questions along the road, in order to answer certain interracial discrepancies. Taking say 2 to 3 individuals from another race along would make each tour feel less like a copy of the others (were you to take all the races along), yet still give interesting insight in the races asking the questions as well as the answers provided. So a real nice instrument to cement the racial background and to provide lore, to any player that is new to the GW universe, as well as those veterans that would like to see what the races themselves focus on, deepening of the races…

Just as a heads up, if you analyse all the professions and how the weapons work, you will soon find out that the most suitable places for ‘choice’ skills are the #2 and #4 slot. They should get 2 more skills associated with them, for a total of 3 in each slot.

For the ranger profession, this could look something like this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Were-there-2-4-skill-slot-choices/first#post4307904

I find this so counter intuitive… pointing at Nerelith’s post…

- Lvl80’s want difficult challenging content, as their end content (several people are even asking for a hard mode)
- But, you can’t give lvl80s more difficult content in lower level zones, because they should feel more powerful now that they are lvl80.

I dunno, but in my brain this just causes an ‘error’ … if anything, to give higher level players more of a challenge the content in lower level zones should become progressively harder, to such an extend that the higher level you are, and the bigger difference in downlevel you go, the harder the content should become…

But I guess I’m just entirely lost on this world of today, once games were to have fun and meaningful experiences, now it seems it’s about feeling uber and gain the best rewards in the least amount of effort and time. It’s like meaningful Human experiences have given way to hamsterwheel style, press X for Reward, type ‘what to call it’?

Tnx for linking… nice to have viewed…

One thing I noticed most, the amount of lore exposure seems to really have taken a huge hit from beta to release…

Ok, while I do not have details, the more easier way I could see this take effect but not be noticeable is a system somewhat like this:
var: Chance to roll usable gear = 0% – (aka the base is random stuff)
Check if any loot was usable after rolling
→ if yes, set Chance to 0%
→ if no, increase chance to usable gear +10%

Rinse and repeat…
- This will mean that while rolls are still entirely random, and you will not notice any changes, after X roles of loot, with nothing useful, you will roll something which is useful, and the whole thing resets.

That is a system that isn’t noticeable, yet still makes you notice that you roll some useful gear more often.

Ashen.2907:

I think that the comment about being required was in response to some posters in the thread not understanding that your suggestion was meant to be (clearly stated so as well) optional.

Nah, while most people just throw a fit because -its the internet-, there were some people with reasonable comments that pointed out the same thing. I think the whole Daily thing got adjusted not to long ago because people saw it as a ‘have to do all’ list instead of a ‘do w/e you want, you will likely finish 5 of these b4 you are done playing, so we are going to give you this extra thing’. I personally do not see why you would reduce other peoples options just because of the behaviour of some, but that isn’t my choice… In the end it doesn’t effect me much if anything, and if it helps others I am generally for it, same reason why I would rather have something that pleases all than have something that kittenes of various people, even if I think their reasoning is entirely irrational.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Zedd.8239:

The hearts are some of the most uninteresting PvE content in the game. They’re the GW2 equivalent of “kill X of monster Y and return to me for a terrible reward” that most other MMOs use as a form of questing. I really can’t get behind the idea of resetting those and forcing people to redo them or any other type of PvE content every month. The game should be becoming more flexible for veteran and new players alike, not more restrictive.

This is my problem. Some heart quests are absolutely boring me to tears, such as the one in Snowden Drifts where you have to trade rabbits and ore to the Jotun; or the one where you have to pick up rabbit food and take it here without getting beaten up by a rabbit (srsly?? this is so dumb). I would have no problem redoing renown hearts or any other events for some special XP or special rewards, but my lord ANet, rework them to be remotely interesting. It’s because of heart quests that I detest world completion. I would take getting my butt kicked by entire zergs in WvW any day over redoing those awful, boring, quests.

Thank you for listening.

Funny, you name two hearts that I had great joy in doing, the Jotun one was actually a nice change of pace, and the bunny one was both challenging as well as frustratingly fun and funny, also in a way that didn’t involve ‘hit 1 to succeed’.

So really, why only look at yourself, resetting hearts (in a personal choice model) will not effect you, why oppose it? Really, I’m interested to know…

Thanks for your input Anthony, but seeing how you formulate some of this, mainly the thing that this thread is about, I do think you miss out on some things… and one thing is still going way over my head…

- Some people would like to an option repeat hearts. Many people are opposed to being required to repeat hearts which is probably enough reason not to require it. In the future we ought to consider repeat rewards or even a prestige system for voluntarily replaying one-time content.

Required? The only person I can sort of feel for in this regard is the OCD guy, who will either have to be very careful not to complete a single heart, so that he then has to do them all, or just do them all, and be busy grinding hearts every month instead of other things… Seeing that would ruin his enjoyment I rather not see something that would cause this.

To me the rest are just using w/e argument to not have hearts reset, and ‘why’ entirely eludes me, they seem to not have the faintest idea what hearts do for the game, nor do they seem to be empathetic enough to see what it could do for somebody else. All I read is ‘rewards rewards rewards’… they won’t do w/e you put in this game if it doesn’t at least reward as much as what the latest FotM reward chain gives. The other ‘sollution’ is “well I don’t want to redo them, so you go make a new character”… as if they ‘have to’ do something? They choose to do w/e they do and don’t do all the other stuff by choice, so why would they choose to redo hearts if they don’t want to!
( sorry that I have to share this frustration in this manner but it’s really frustrating to see this attitude towards something that could help or please others ) And it’s not that I discard their opinion as un-valuable, I would love to see a solution that pleases all of us (it be nice though if they were to have the same stance on that) but anyways:

If I were to take anything from this thread than it would be:
- A global reset of hearts would give to many people the impression they would have to redo them. This is not what this heart reset thread wants to achieve… While I initially thought an addition to the Daily/Monthly could provide people with another choice, apparently people see them as ‘Have to do’ lists, which makes this fit the same category.

- By having a ‘one time’ heart, the function of the hearts is lost after the heart is completed. This means that this function is now lacking in the game. This is most noticeably: a way to give people some background information and regional lore (after not having been to an area for an extended period of time); and provide players with a place to go to pick up DE’s.

-!- The ‘best’ solution suggested so far would be to give people the choice to reset a single heart for themselves so that they can redo it, gain access to the background information, and enjoy doing that bit of content while they ‘wait’ for DE’s nearby to kick off.

As it would not compel anyone to feel like they ‘have to’ do these hearts, it would give this OCD guy a way to not be compelled to grind out hearts every month. Yet it would give those that want to do Dynamic Events, a way to find them, and a way to have some background to them, as well as give them something to do while they wait for the DE. It would also give players that help out others to level a way to participate in their friends activities. It would do all the positive things that hearts provide, yet provide non of the negative things people come up with.

All the other stuff that came up in the thread is good feedback, I agreed with most of it, some ideas were better than others, but non solved the issues that this thread hoped to solve by making hearts repeatable. Another thing I worry about is that I personally hoped for a somewhat easy solution, something that wouldn’t take an actual rebuild of all the areas. Esp. with all the upheaval going on about ‘content added to the game that ANet has to ’show for’ after 2 years’, I doubt any addition to the maps that does not give very good rewards will be reason for people to throw a fit. With a somewhat easy solution you would be able to put efforts there where people mostly seem to want it, and by doing so please me (and the some ) as well as please the many .

While I like most of this backpack (from what I have been told – and yes I liked the ‘scavenger hunt part’ of it), there was one major flaw in it’s execution. The basic fact that it screwed over everybody that is not a heavy crafter, most noticeably for the first instalment of the backpack, which means I will not get this backpack (not even the base skin) for a considerable amount of time…

I do not realy understand why there is a 5 page thread on something that basically said:
- During levelling
- Higher Chance

A lot of the responses here seem to imply, ‘this will effect my lvl80’ and ‘a higher chance will mean all my loot will be geared to my profession’. Both of which I did not seem to get from the profession geared loot announcement at all?

As far as the LS goes, I personally think (hope) this in part due to how LS1 was set up (with the large open world events), to then move towards LS2 with largely instanced story and the systems to support that. Which sort of diffused the ‘living story’ bit as far as agency is concerned. My expectation is that these things will improve for the continuation of the LS as ANet finds out what works and doesn’t work within their new LS-diary setup.

One major concern though, I made 2 threads:
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Implementing-Storytelling/first#post4225443
- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/PDPSI-How-to-put-MMO-back-into-LS/first#post4334149

And from the participation I got in these threads (being 0) it would seem that the large majority doesn’t give a kitten’s tail about having choice or agency, nor would they care whether or not open world stuff returns. Actually based upon the hearts-reset thread I made, it’s fairly clear to me that people only care about rewards, aka. loot & gold. Hopefully ANet themselves care enough though…

About the LW I have to agree with you, and this is one of my bigger peeves, instead of a ‘living’ world, we get a world in stasis/limbo. While I can see that rotational DE’s lift the world over the ‘set in time’ experience of GW1, it is still far off from an actual Living World. Or at least the association I personally have with the words ‘living world’.

I have taken the liberty to reword the OP as I think a lot of people didn’t comprehend what I am after. After rereading the OP, after seeing peoples responses, I think it had more to do with my comprehensive writing skills, than with other people’s comprehensive reading skills… so I thought, for the continuation of this thread, it would be better if I reworded the OP.

I do not think this new wording will change anybody’s opinion, nor does it make any response look out of context. Thanks for your responses so far…

Ok, after reading Majik’s post i think perhaps i should specify more what i would want from hearts:

1. I would like the initial dialog to be available to reread it, so that i can use it to regain direction in the area that i am in. (aka. what’s going on here; because that functionality is lost after completion)

2. I would like to redo the activity that the heart provided, mostly to have something to do while i wait for a DE to spawn or pass by.

What i do not need specifically:
3. A visual indicator of which DE i repeated
Explanation to why i thought a visual indicator would be preferred
- I thought it would make sense to empty the heart periodically so that it would become clear that they can be repeated.
- I also thought that by having them periodically reset, it would ‘drive’ people around the world, as they could only do the heart one time during the period, meaning that you would have to move around the world to complete more. Which would obviously mean that more maps get some attention during that time period.

4. A complicated system to replace what is simple and already there…

5. Special rewards, how ever cool, although i know some of the hearts already give nice rewards that most people have not gotten when they did the heart and by now have simply forgotten that they exist. Sure it be cool if this system could be expanded by draping some more expensive karma rewards in them, but like i mentioned earlier, i mostly want the hearts ‘back’ for their initial purpose.

This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

Well, I agree with Events being the bulk of the repeatable open world content, the thing is, I currently find it hard to just ‘walk out’, and when i do it’s very hard to find out what exactly is going on, meaning i get the feeling of just pressing 1 to down red things in order to get something completed… Instead of finding myself involved in this story that I picked up from things happening around a heart, which then led me to this DE, which consequently now makes sense, I’m no somewhat immersed fighting these bad-guys because X, Y or B, when it’s completed i feel satisfied because i foiled the evil plot.

And while i see a lot of players here hammer on ‘reward reward reward’; honestly, i couldn’t give a kittens tail for rewards, my reward is that i logged in to have some fun, i managed to find some interesting story (heart, or DE near one) that led me along this path of DE’s to some plot, and finishing them all was something worth fighting for. And, and this was a nice analogy, the heart gave me something to do while i waited for the DE to start, sure it wasn’t engaging or hard (though i am rather emphatically motivated, so picking apples to help somebody out, is all fine by me), but at least it was better than checking out the ceiling, or twiddling thumbs…

My real ‘dream’ for any game (or GW2), is for it to have seasons that each last 1,5months, for a total of 2 cycles in 1 RL year; Each season would come with it’s own (hearts and) DE’s and change the scenery. Sure foes may not always change entirely per season, but each season would give rise to new events, or change existing ones. Along side this over-arcing DE’s would tell more intricate stories, and many of these over arcing DE’s would come within a Tiered system, so that player actions or non-actions would change which DE’s would spawn.

But seeing that seasons would mean building 3 more times the amount of content that GW2 has now, not to mention that it needs adjustment of most of the textures and plants, not to mention that (well this sort of depends on the technology behind the game engine) the amount of ‘resources’ available on each map are likely not to be enough, meaning you would more then likely need to manually set an entirely different map to be loaded for each season. Yeah, not likely ..

The over-arcing tiered system to events might see it’s light someday, though that too relies heavily on how events are ‘set’ in the world currently, at least how i envision them. And the maps/tech may not be suitable to have different events in the same location, where only one is active based upon the Tier the over-arcing story is set to.

Anyways, I digress… I hope it’s more clear as to why i want hearts to reset, to fulfil their function, which is currently (after completion of them) lacking in the game. I would go with other sollutions, sure! but this seemed like an easy and straight forward fix and a manageable goal for ANet along side all their other plans…

First off, thanks for taking the time to respond to this issue…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content.

Upon personal experience I would say that it can still function that way, but when I think lets do some DE’s, I think where do I go, then I think ‘hearts’, after which I immediately think, I’ve done them all, so I’m back at ‘where do I go’… ‘well anywhere really’, well sure but:

They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area.

Just going somewhere, without any hearts means that most of the stuff is just lost on you. I have actually tried talking to some NPC’s around hearts to try and figure out what was going on around there, to basically fail at it because their dialoge is now set to ‘tnx for helping me, here take this’ … sure that is fine ’n all, but what did I help you with exactly, and why? … aka. the Hearts helped understand the area, but after not having been to an area for 1y or more, how will I figure out what exactly was going on there …

There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

Seeing I just mentioned the issues I experience with the hearts ‘completed’, let me try and clearify once more that I do not want the hearts to reset because I want to do hearts! I want the hearts to reset so that I have an incentive to go out and run into DE’s again, that I can get a bit of a backstory to why I’m there doing something… aka. I want them to reset in order to fulfil the function they were intended to fulfil.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals.

I think the DryTop approach is a risky one, mainly for what others have already pointed out. And while the events in DryTop currently fit the story, and could be reverted to keep doing so once the LS moves on (aka. the zone becomes a place where the Zepherites start to rebuild their fleet, and they would want to collect as many of Glint’s remains as possible). The events in other maps do not always lend themselves for such a structure, though as some-one mentioned ‘Hintari Hinterlands’ I could see something like DryTop work there. But what about all those maps that do not have these all encompassing stories?
- Also, for each DryTop equivalent in the game, people are needed to complete them, for each you add, the population is spread and it becomes harder to complete.

@LanfearShadowflame, while I see your ‘problem’ in regards to feeling the need to ‘grind’ them, I do not agree with your notion of it being a problem. I actually think they should put in MORE stuff like that, why? only if you feel that you can NOT do all of it, will you ‘hopefully’ be stimulated to do the things you LIKE to do…

I do agree that the discrepancy between rewards is a problem, but if you are after a reward then doing anything on the daily list specifically is the wrong way to go about it? Most of the time you can complete the daily from doing one World Boss event, which would then complete the daily AND give rewards. But besides that, sure it wouldn’t hurt to increase rewards for hearts a tad. Not really the scope of why I made this thread though…

Ok, like I said, even in the tl;dr, put a green outline around hearts to signify progress for map completion! … So, I don’t understand why halve the people here say that they wouldn’t like ‘their progress’ to reset ?!?

Sigh, yup, if you do stuff for your rewards you are best of grinding path X of dungeon Y, obviously this solution would not get you back into the world. Unless a better (blix or w/e) short path is found, you will not move anywhere else but where you get the highest reward for your time. Fair enough, but don’t use it to deem other approaches to experiencing a game of lesser importance…

Lastly, perhaps some numbers:
- there are a guestimate (just pulling this out of my you know where) of 20 maps.
- there are 24 hours in a day
- completing 5 hearts (and being drawn in to some events) will take 1 hour of your time. 5 hearts is the ‘daily’ target.

If 20 people do this, ever hour, that would make for 480 people (20×24), if this would be the case for every map, it would involve (20×24×20) 9600 people a day. With this amount you would have 20 people on every map during the whole day, and seeing we have the mega server going, it would influence the experience of nearly everyone that is in the open world.

So sure, 9600 is maybe what 1% of the gaming population? And while it seems weird to do something for just 1%, at the same time… having 20people on every map for every hour, will increase the experience of everybody alting, of new players, and to everybody that actually goes out and do some hearts to expose themselves to new events…

This suggestion isn’t at all about doing the hearts! It is about creating an incentive or ‘trigger’ to get the people that are not enticed to do so with out one into the world.

Shared Goal
This is a way go create large-scale open-world content during the LS, that can be consolidated into a single player replay-LS as well. This idea comes from the LS2:Win over the Norn story step, which I think had great potential to be turned into an open world shared effort, while the actual steps as they were in the LS now would need very little adjustments to relive that segment on a replay.

So how could it have worked? Well, we are asked to deal a blow to the svanir, and this could have easily been turned into an open-world full scale war declaration on them. A simple ‘bar’ with say 4-5 segments could keep count of the amount of Svanir slain during a certain (2 weeks obviously) period. All contributions in all instances (seeing with the mega-server, I can no longer say ’on all servers), would count towards the common goal, and based upon the amount of svanir killed in that timeframe (based upon the segments completed) we could have had a increased reward.

The story step we had ‘now’ instead, could have been a follow-up on that shared effort and conclude the ‘win over the Norn’ after the timed open-world large-scale common goal event…

replay
The replay could have captured that same effort by having people complete a certain number of Svanir Events (of which there are plenty), to then finalize on the same end step (though arguably that one might be better suited to do in an instance, as there is no guarantee that a single player can complete that in-game event on their own.

Conclusion
Common goals set for everybody in the LS first run, may well be translated into individual goals for the replay of the LS. While the scale in the experience may differ, it would not diminish how much sense the content makes in relation to the story.

Based upon feedback in this thread I reformulate my initial suggestion to serve as a new topic starter. Feel free to leave your comments after this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/6#post4359338 this links to this same post, but posted further into this thread, so you don’t have to read all through the thread.

Personal Heart Reset
The hearts in the world should be able to be reset by players individually, so that they can access that bit of content ( be it to participate with a friend, to regain background for the area, or to have something to do while one waits for DE’s to spawn in the vicinity ).

1. Talking to the NPC resets the heart ( ‘Need some more help?’ -> ‘If you have some time, all help is welcome’ -> ‘Sure, reset the event’. )
2. Once you reset a heart it will visually indicate you reactivated the heart, ( f/e a * will be displayed on the heart, or a green outline is added to the heart .)
3. Once reactivated you can finish the heart again, for one time, after completing it you won’t be able to do the heart until the system resets. ( This to prevent people from ‘farming’ the same heart over and over, or even feel compelled to do so, and to make people fan out through the game if they prefer to do more hearts .)
4. After a month the hearts you ‘reset’ during that month will reset itself, or if possible the hearts will reset individually after a month, so you can do them again.

=> Because the hearts are not considered main content, there is no real need to adding them to achievement lists.

I hope that with this new OP the suggestion is fleshed out, dealing with most if not all concerns raised in the thread so far. And as such can function as a new discussion starter for the rest of the thread.

… If you are interested in the original OP’s you can find it here:
1st. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/3#post4341272
2nd. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Revitalize-the-Game-World-Resetting-Hearts/page/6#post4358803

This is something that is still somewhat alluding me, and perhaps I misunderstand what is what exactly, if there is a difference…

See from my perspective these are two separate things, but from how the forum is set up, as well as where the focus of the updates is concerned, it seems these two are very much related, to a point where I am wondering if they are being perceived as the same thing. What is your pov on this?

See, most of what the ‘Living Story’ entails I fully understand, the whole ‘the story continues regularly’ is captivated very well in the words ‘Living Story’. So that’s pretty clear to me…

But the ‘Living World’ is where my brain starts to produce ‘syntax error’ like effects. Sure in LS1 I could see how the living story effected some parts in the world to make it more then apparent that the story wasn’t something happening on some illusive story plane, but had true implication on the game world as well. But is that it? I mean, ‘living world’ seems to imply way more than just an influence of the Living Story upon the game world? At least in my mind it does… What about you all?

So, mostly I wondered what people here thought about what these terms imply and whether they are reflected as such in the game…

@Nerve, hey, you are the one that bolded ‘Expansion’ … as far as your, well it wasn’t so much about an expansion, but… check out who started this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/2-weeks-enough-What-about-when-its-done/first#post4261915

The Karka Queen, as a cinematic?
This was a single time large scale open world event (that I missed due to having a family weekend ), while it was sad for those that missed it, I am sure that for those who were around it was an epic and fun experience…

This I think is one of the strong points to this kind of content, it’s a one time epic deal that truly gives that ‘you should have been there’ feeling to those ‘that were there’. For those that were not there, well not so much … in fact, I never even got to see it :/ … I have no clue what it was about, other than a big Karka.

Now I can personally step over my disappointment of not having been there, but I find it somewhat ‘sad’ that even though I can not relive it, I can also not ‘review’ it … this gave me the idea that perhaps:
One time deal events could be used to explain the story in a cinematic, for the replay session.

But! This would (I think) only work if the event took place at the very start of the LS, see, it doesn’t make much sense if midway there is a large-scale open-world event taking place in which you the player can not partake, and now you have to watch the tldr instead -!?!-

Yet! For an opening cinematic I CAN work. See, if we were to assume the whole of the Karka Island experience was delivered in the replayable LS format. And you were to start that storyline, a cinematic of the actual Karka Queen event would have made perfect sense, and after it had been killed, it would make sense that ‘you’ could not kill it again. Sure, people would be as disappointed by that, as they would be for missing the actual deal, but at least that part of Tyrian history isn’t lost on them. It sets the tone for the content, and it would actually bring up the stories:
new player: ‘man I wish we could kill that boss in that cinematic’
veteran: ‘we did, it was a one time deal though, but man you should have been there… etc… etc…’
new player: ‘wow, how cool, wish I could have been there ’
veteran: ’well get your character to LvL80, new LS:chapters come out on a fairly regular basis, and surely there will be one time fights like that again…’

Conclusion one time large scale open world events could be used in the LS as an opening event, the actual play troughs could be used to serve as cinematic material for the replay of the LS that is to follow after that one time event.

@Thobek, as I pointed out in my [PDPSI] thread on this subject, the current mechanics to make the LS replayable, which I think is a good step forward, does not lend itself well for this large scale open-world events…

And, I think that due to resources going to the replayability systems, while also needing to make content that can be replayed. The result was less content due to less resources for content, and content that was sure to be replayable. For figuring out how to achieve replayable large-scale open-world content within a replayable single player setting just needs a lot of time to come up with, construct and then test if it would work. Which would have taken even more time, while nothing could be done in the meantime (except for the LS:diary system itself)…

At least, to me that sounds like the most logical explanation, so, as we move forward I will assume that ANet will find ways to achieve both (possibly with our help, see aforementioned thread), and all can be happy ^^

Let me just say that I would love an expansion, as this was a wall of text to merely say ‘expansion is the only saviour’ but I do not agree with the OP and some of the statements in this thread…

There was a lot of work put into everything after release, there were several QoL updates, serveral entire maps, armour/weapons/etc tid bits, as well as various memorable temporary big fights. The ‘problem’ is that the QoL work, while major in some cases, isn’t considered ‘content’, while it does eat budget/resources. And where I do agree is that the LS1 with all it’s temporary stuff, left Anet with very little ‘TO SHOW’ for their work…

So the LS delivery method changed for season 2, we don’t even know how many maps we are getting, but from analysing Dry Top, we are somewhat running out of Room to do anything remotely interesting and permanent in there. And for those that still know what ‘covered up map’ looks like, as opposed to ‘non explorable map’, it looks like we are going further into the Maguma…

Now, if this is the way that the LS will go forward, where the story is used to guide people through new maps of the game, similar to how Karka Island and DryTop were unravelled, and these new maps show up at the same ‘speed’ as LS:Chapters, then I do not need an expansion! Sure it be cool, but it’s not really needed from my PoV, we could just unravel an expansion as we move through the LS, which was actually how I though the LS would work in the first place!

So to me it’s not about ‘only an expansion can save Tyria’, no, it’s about ‘how can ANet use the LS to unravel meaningful, gameplay/’expansion’ worthy content’. And seeing a lot of LS1 was likely already planned out before it even started, and was a miss as far as ‘expansion’ worthy goes. For I found it meaningful and gameplay worthy… LS2 takes an entirely different approach, and while it comes closer to ‘meaningful & replayable’ content. It is not yet up to standard of the goal… But from my pov that has more to do with the fact that resources went to ‘replayability’ instead of ‘content’; so now that that part has been somewhat tackled, it’s all about how to design meaningful, gameplay&expansion worthy content within that framework.

The Marionette
Taking some of the more iconic steps from LS1 (I think) can be a great way to find both inspiration as well as possible solutions. The Marionette content (in my views) has some things in it that would make some of the mechanics of that fight suitable for this Problem. Why?

-!- The Marionette divided us all up into smaller groups.

This means that for a replay version you can replace a lot of the ‘other players’ by NPC’s, and use DE2.0 NPCs to assist the player to tackle a more manageable problem. This goes for both the passage ways, as well as the direct confrontation. Especially in the direct confrontation I think the experience of looking around and seeing NPC’s on the other Pads, instead of Players, would not diminish the actual epic feel of having defeated this big boss in a collaborate effort.

Problem?
There is the problem though as to how (or if) to let the player choose his/her own lane. With this I mean that you could, but if you do you can not let the player ‘get out’ of that lane to check upon others, as they would be empty :P (in the replay of course). At the same time, a lot of the fun was to try and achieve all the lanes… perhaps this could be solved by splitting up said fight, and have the player ‘choose’ a lane, to then put them in that lane. The story itself could continue after completing one successful lane, the ‘achievement’ could be to replay that boss and do all lanes.

conclusion
I think the Marionette style content would be very appropriate to do as a Massive Multiplayer event during a story, as it can be divided up for the replay, your NPC hero band can be your assistance, and other NPCs can give you that group effort feel.

Boss Fight
One of the more obvious ways, that I think we can all somewhat see coming, is the addition of a big Boss fight, aka fighting the Champ of Mordremoth. While this is a great way of doing this, as it also adds more permanent content to the actual world. There a few ‘problems’ that I see with this (otherwise fine) solution:

1. It can only be used 1x in a whole story arc, because else each map will have Several Super Bosses, and not before long the whole world is just ‘Super Boss’ content.

2. If this Super Boss is part of a story step, where completion is needed to continue the rest of the story, then how are your Alt’s or New players going to complete it? I mean, it is going to be on a couple of hours of rotation, and come with Guild Activation. But if you are just some player, are you really going to have a good time having to wait until that boss spawns, ’AND" defeated, in order to continue your story?

So while this works, it is much more suited as an ‘story end boss’ scenario, if the story ends at this point, then it doesn’t become a huge hurdle in an otherwise manageable story. But… Surely we would like some more big multi player fights during a LS chapter…

3. While we have seen that it could be possible to transplant the boss into a single/small group instanced story step (aka. the attack on the summit) for the replay. I think we can agree that it doesn’t give nearly the same experience; some strange stories will come from that: “What you mean that fight against the Shadow was this epic MM-battle that took several days to figure out and complete, where you just ‘had to be there’, I just solo’ed that thing on my thief”.

4. Any more problems that anyone can identify?

ending So yeah, while this is a more obvious solution, it only works in a 1-time end boss scenario. Surely there are more ways… ?

Player Driven Problem Solving Initiative
How to put MMO back into LS?

With the change in scope of the LS one very obvious problem has arisen. While the new approach (in my view) is a good change, as it somewhat extends the personal story, makes it possible to live through the events on Alt’s, and it also makes it possible for new players to live through the history of Tyria and through that come to understand what happened and why X or Y is in the world.

BUT!

With that change comes the problem of how to put Large Scale Massive Multiplayer Events into the story, in a way that they can be relived/replayed by individuals or small groups later on… So the problem goes both ways, how to put MMO back into LS, so that we can have big multi player story steps, but at the same time, how to translate those big multiplayer events into the current LS format?

While I am sure that ANet is thinking hard to come up with solutions, I thought it could be nice to try and collaborate as players to come up with ways to achieve this. Obviously ANet dev’s are more then welcome to chip in, but this isn’t a CDI thread (which seem to be broad and feedback driven). This is a thread with a single problem that we all have to deal with, and hopefully we can come up with ways to solve this problem, so that the LS can be all that we hope it can be…

Before I get out and get me some dinner, I had another thought about communication I wanted to share…

While I said earlier that ‘taking people along for the ride, with arms & legs inside at all times’ was as valuable as an explanation in hind side; That doesn’t negate the fact that sometimes an honest explanation is all that is needed… Seeing I have some clear examples for this I thought idd share that as well:

- The amount of content in LS2 is by some experienced as ‘rather low’. Though when looking at the actual LS2 as a whole, it is hard to see that a decent part of the resources for this episode, have also gone into creating the Story Log. People do not see this, nor are they likely to recognize this as part of ‘the content’. And even less, do they seem to realize it comes as a direct result from a CDI.

So, while I fully understand that the blog posts on the official forum do not provide much room for this, would it have hurt if some ‘dev post’ would have addressed this in the LS forum. Something akin to:
" Based upon the CDI for the LS we identified that people want a chance to replay the story on their Alts, as well as give new players the opportunity to play through these events. We recognized that this could be of greater value for the comprehension of the actual state of the world ‘in the future’ for any new player.

So we have devoted a great deal of our resources to constructing the Living Story Diary, so that now most of the LS content can be replayed. We are still figuring out what impact that has on the kind of content we can offer within the Living Story, and the kind of content we want to provide to you.

As an unfortunate result of the finite nature of resources, as well as a total shift in how to deliver the story, the amount of content for the LS2 start isn’t entirely up to our standards, while we think it is enough to release and have you enjoy it, we hope you realise that once we ourselves get more acquainted with this new approach to delivery of our LS content, we intend to see the amount of content in each release bounce back to the level you experienced in LS1.

We hope you enjoy this new system, with all your characters, and as ever any honest and respectful feedback is welcome, and valuable as we move forward."

- Another example could be a simple response to the ‘mid season break’
" Hello Tyrians, as you may well know, the summer time is also the time of vacation, and while we realise that the internet is around 24/7/52 our staff do need their rest and have earned their vacations.

While we try and plan these as much as possible, to be able to keep development going, we do hope you understand that it will have an impact on our development. As a consequence we are planning a mid-season break for our Living Story… While you might not see any new story content over that period, like I said, it doesn’t mean development on it is halted entirely.

Actually, seeing we had the recent change in our delivery system with the Living Story Dialog, and the consequent realisation that the amount of resources spend to create this feature somewhat diminished the actual content in the previous releases. We plan to also use this small intermezzo to get our content back up to standards with those that are still around, so that part2 of LS2 can be all we expect ".

Hope these two examples show how an explanation after the fact (or even ‘beforehand’) can shed a lot of light on what is going on, while at the same time not really spoiling anything, or promising something you can not deliver on. It basically shows a decent amount of ‘self-awareness’, and I think these kinds of posts can go a long way to at least create some understanding.

Seera.5916:

tigirius.9014:

Not sure how they will fix this but I do know that the system they were using before the magic find change was flawed in that it used a system of DPS to guage rewards instead of participation. I think that they should probably add other methods to manage this like in events where there’s a big boss they could add a scaling reward for those who actually resurrect people who are downed, those who are hurt they could add a healing chart and those who are attacking they could add an algorithm to measure if they’d participated early sometime in the middle and the end to make sure people aren’t just end tagging.

But that punishes honest players who arrive late who aren’t just doing it to be leechers.

I wouldn’t say no to them getting a reduced reward if they don’t participate in all parts, but not an all or nothing proposition.

It will also hurt people.trying to get more people for an event with a timer but not enough dps. What health is he at? 50%? Sorry, I won’t get any reward so I’ll pass since it would be no reward for my time, I’d rather go do temple defense again, as I’ll get a reward.

No it doesn’t punish, it just rewards you for your participation! Why should you get 100% reward if you come in late? What is that for a non-sense… And he did say ‘scaling!’, he never said an all or nothing deal?

@ProtoGunner, while I understand your admiration, like I said earlier, some games are just better at hiding their ‘loading’ then others. And yes, WoW did a real good job at this, but! technologically it’s still a bunch of instances glued together and loaded separately… sure there were no ‘loading screens’, but that is because they used really low resource area’s (like a narrow cave system f/e) as a ‘loading screen’, so you didn’t experience that loading (persee) while going through the world.

Also, and some (like those on older computers) may know this about GW2 as well… it does have a render distance. So GW2 is actually more of a hybrid, while it loads a basic map and a lot of information with it, a great deal of the actual stuff in that map are not rendered unless you get close. I personally think this is pretty clever, as it allows the game to run on a really wide spectrum of computers, while offering a decent quality experience on each respected spec. Doing it this way also gives them the opportunity to put resource usage elsewhere, as well as keep their bandwidth and server-resources low, reducing cost for an essentially FtP game…

Ashen.2907:

Well, since it was my post you quoted as part of your response on the subject I shall address the matter with you.

Gene Archer’s post gave the impression, to me at least, that he thought the devs who do the actual production of the game are customer service personnel. It has been pointed out to us, on these forums, in the past that this is not the case. That these individuals post on their own time, that forum activity is not part of their job.

…snip…

I am not a member of any Anet fanclub. I am critical of the company when it seems appropriate to me and supportive when that seems appropriate. Generally more critical than otherwise of late.

I am sorry I misinterpreted your post; I were to venture and guess that some of that may have to do with the limitations of the written word to convey intention and emotion. I reacted the way I did because of how that post came across to me, and it felt like a snarky white knight ‘attack’ on some-one that from my pov tried to voice his opinion in a fairly respectful way. My problem btw. was less with your post, as I viewed it as ‘a rather normal’ level of expression on the internet, but more with the validation by Chris based upon how I perceived it (which was apparently the wrong way, but it’s hard to fault someone on a perception based upon what someone reads, like I said, the written word has it’s limitations)

Then again, your response above here, to me (at first), came across more like a cast of ’ http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Riposte ’, instead of ’ http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Spring ’. But seeing how you both responded to each other in the resent posts, I apparently entirely misinterpret your stance and intentions :/ . And from the discussion as a whole I think we would have to conclude that we pretty much agree with one another.

So again I am sorry, as apparently this all originated from a misunderstanding due to the limitations of the written word. Yet on a positive note, I think it resulted in what I think is a valuable addition to the discussion on the topic at hand.

add While taking a small break it dawned on me that it might seem awkward if I do not also say ‘sorry’ to Chris, seeing he might well not have read that post like I did. And while I have no problem doing so, I personally think that he read and understood my reaction to it fairly close to how I intended it … if he didn’t, then I were to venture and guess that based upon the whole discussion it must have become clear by now. Still so we can move on with the discussion and leave no awkward things hanging in the middle: Sorry I jumped the gun there

@Shriketalon, foregoing the quote…

Well it’s not entirely true that we do not get introduced with other characters? Actually a lot of the characters you mention made an appearance at some point in the story or open world. While true, they do not get a full spotlight, but they are developing in the background. Even your Evon has evolved somewhat, and quite frankly I think he would be more concerned with his wares than going on an adventure…

But I still somewhat agree, the scope feels somewhat narrow, and I personally suspect that as the general story progresses we will loose some people in our group… Taimi likely to go back ‘to school’, Kasmeer being reinstated and Marjory choosing to stick close to her. Giving some room for fresh blood, it mean, it has to, or else the story would go stale…

Funny how I’m to tired to know the regions name atm. But the map north of Brisbane wildland. Actually those 3 Flesh Reavers and that broken bridge with the portal behind it have been lurking in my mind ever since I first saw them… and that’s been nearly 2y ago… I just wanna know what’s behind that gate !

@Chris, addition

Another thing, which has more to do with the way you design content, than it has to do with communication, is the following…

You have a game with PvE (open world, dungeons, fractals, festivals), PvP, WvW … and in all these formats you have to deal with ‘Novice, trainee, Veteran, skilled & High Skilled’ players. And within these the ‘casual’, ‘regular’, ‘focussed’. The problem is that you somewhat have to please them all, and thus take all of them into account. Now I do understand that taking on everything at the same time (PvE, PvP & WvW) will just drag development out. So in a sense you have to do a lot of this consecutively (though it may make sense to drop in something for another category, every once a while, f/e a mordremoth inspired PvP map or a very expensive multi token dungeon armour)…

What then remains is trying to take into account which kinds of experience levels/types you have within each category. And there I think you focus to much on a certain group to much, so that others feel left out… Two areas where that is most apparent to me, and only as examples, there are numerous threads about them so no need to rehash them:

- The recent backpacks, all focussed on end game, leaving novices/casuals out. But the bigger culprit is the most recent mordremoth backpack. Why? Would it have hurt to make the initial craft a 100lvl, the 2nd 200, the 3rd 300, etc. That way the first backpack would have been available to all fairly easily, and still be a longer term goal/item. It wouldn’t have matter for those with 400+ crafting in all disciplines, but it would have mattered for those far behind.

- The other is ‘skill balance’ and ‘build options’, these are mostly important for the skilled and highly skilled, yet ‘viable builds’ are at the same time very important for the novice and trainee. Currently it seems (based upon feedback) there is a lot of effort towards the novice and trainee levels, while the veterans/skilled/highly skilled run into the limitations of what is possible, and see novice strategies being ‘the best strategies’. This is a system design problem more than a balance problem, and I think it may stem from an over focus on entry level play.

;tldr: It feels like you try and focus on specific groups to often, which makes the other groups feel left out, and in a sense leads to an over focus on some aspect while the others suffer from it. Some of that just can’t be dealt with, as development is a linear process and time can only be spend on one thing at a time, or it will just drag on forever. But in other cases it’s more of a matter of taking all the groups into account, and finding a way (sometimes even very simple) to please as many of them as possible by making the content suitable to at least achieve parts of it on their appropriate level and be rewarded for it, without making it less hard/challenging for the overall thing (people like a challenge and long term goals are fulfilling).

anyways that’s been a part of some feedback that’s been drifting in my mind for a long time, and so far I had not found a suitable place/format to share it. Seeing it felt appropriate here… clarification: it felt appropriate here because the communication issue is part of disappointments, and part of those disappointments are (from my pov) also related to what I described above.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to post and thanks for the honesty in your comments.

The reality is that we probably spend to much time thinking before discussing and not enough time sharing the journey with everyone.

I am still thinking this all through and the conversation is really useful so thanks.

Chris

I dunno, perhaps some of it is because I’m dutch (I am also ’ ’ told we are generally perceived as being very direct in communication), but I do know I am passionate and have my heart on my tongue. That combination doesn’t always go well, but I try my best to be aware of the impact my words may have, and edit accordingly.

From my pov. I do not think you take to much time thinking, some things just need more or less time. But what I miss sometimes is the argumentation behind a certain decision, which is indeed the moment you decide to communicate, and seeing that moment tends to be a blog post announcement, it has to be in a certain format… And seeing that moment generally also means that things are definitive, all there is left ‘for us’ is to complain if we do not agree with a choice we seemed to have no impact on. Even if we did have an impact on the choice actually being made. This, to me, is most clear in the whole ‘Commander Tag’ discussion in the WvW forums…

If you see this as ‘part of the journey’, then yes, not having an influence besides providing the initial parameters, and just having to deal with the output. Thus ‘missing the journey’, makes things hard to understand. But if ‘being taken along the journey’ is a mere ‘along for the ride, but keep arms and legs inside at all times’, then there isn’t much value in being taken along… an explanation of why you decided something in hind side would be of equal value.

The problem then, is that we just can’t all agree, so some people will always be disappointed. Yet, some earlier communication, and some leeway towards feedback midway from ANet’s side, might reduce the amount of people in that corner, and while they might still be disappointed, they may well understand ‘why’ something is the way it is. Which will not reduce the disappointment persee, but might reduce the amount of negativity on the forums about it.

unfortunately this isn’t yet possible in current technology, even though there are games that ‘claim’ a seamless world, they are in fact not! They just use clever ways to disguise that they are not, some doing a better job at it than others… f/e:

- WoW, used small gateways or large viewpoints to disguise crossing a loading point, in other places there was basically a big portal…

- Mortal Online, if you have anything but a beast of a computer you will notice lag spikes when you cross from one section to the next, they also use corridors, and while you can see beyond corridors, you can not see players in that corridor ‘on the other side’ of the loading, so they just pop up (same as wow basically)

- Rift, also used mountains to keep maps apart, but they used them to also disguise crossing them, as an ‘far view’ of your surroundings was quickly loaded, it felt like seamless, as far as crossing roads, the same ‘thunnel’ or corridor approach was taken, so that on initial loading you didn’t have to load up a lot of details and models.

All these worlds are said to be ‘seamless’ but they are not, they just disguise where the seems are… And almost any game has to function like that, or normal computers just cant handle them…

Only exceptions, ‘MineCraft’, which uses (from what I can tell) a different technology, as it only renders the world ‘in view’, while keeping the rest to simple coordinates. The low resolution helps there as well to keep resource usage low. Also not a true multiplayer, from what I understand, as in it’s multiplayer there are still limits to what can be handled, so perhaps ‘coop’ game is best to describe it.

The other would be Far Cry, I’m not sure how that handles worlds/maps, but I’m also not sure if it actually has a multi player environment, besides ‘coop’ 30-player or so maps. Also needs a pretty decent computer, just for playing the actual single player game (from memory, might be ok in recent computer terms). But seeing I hardly know this game & engine it’s hard for me to be definitive…

So yeah, while that would be really cool, and Anet could have used a different approach as to handling zone crossing, using this approach they were able to spend more attention to detail elsewhere (as you have to design each zone crossing specifically to create a smooth experience). Also sticking to the way they did it in GW1 sort of gives this GW vibe to it, I certainly don’t mind

Personally I hope the whole MineCraft approach to loading worlds (at least if I understand it right) will eventually make it’s way into MMO design, as loading the world based upon your location in the world makes for a truly open world experience. Seeing that it isn’t yet, might be a bit of a clue as to how hard that is to accomplish when your world consist out of more complicated artefacts than just squares.

Except for the burst skills, I agree, although the details allude me

Yeah that whole topic header, even if I had plans to release this armour to the public, I would have trashed that idea based upon that header… if it were up to me, obviously…

@Filovirus, tnx for giving me somewhat of a rehash, guess that wasn’t such a big deal after all, or was it? Now a little less personal frustration directed at objective and non related ‘me’ and we might have some sort of respectful discussion going on… but seeing your personal stance I don’t think either of us would like to bother with that, still though, tnx for your response.

@Saventis, in this case you could view it as an illusion of choice yes, but not less meaningful to the person making it! … what he would choose I do not know, I’m no vegetarian, and bacon is pretty good… but he has no choice in consuming protein and fat. Sure he could go with fish instead (still killing an animal though), but why? if he likes bacon and there is bacon flavoured tofu, why not eat that?

I don’t fully get the rest of your post tbh. I basically argued that the choice of all vegetarians to not eat meat has little to no impact on the amount of animals slaughtered for their meat, simply because that works on an economic principle. aka:

The cost to raise the amount of animals to be slaughtered < the amount of meat sold for a certain price… and that price is based upon demand.

Now sure, all the vegetarians lower the demand, but more then anything, that lowers the price, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are less animals raised for slaughter, given that the amount of meat still sold returns more money than it cost to raise that amount of animals.

And if everybody would be a vegetarian, than less animals would be bred ! So there would be less animals around. It’s not that it results in there being more animals actually living a normal live… actually, it’s very likely we would just kill them to attain the amount of land to grow crops instead…

@Tobias, exactly my point … so ok it’s not really scamming, because it’s the choice that counts at that particular moment, and knowing there is a different experience lying ahead. That’s one of the major things I ran into while doing the thread that I linked earlier, how can you supply an interesting choice, leading to a different experience while keeping the same outcome… and do so in such a way that you don’t supply the player with the same stuff every time, so that (s)he starts to feel the choice is just arbitrary.

It’s dang hard, and the options are (so far) fairly limited, mechanic wise, but I am sure that if you practice at it the actual context in which these mechanics are presented can be both meaningful as well as lead to interesting experiences. Heck, if that wasn’t the case then there would not be any table top RPG worth playing …

(on that note and slightly off topic, it’s still somewhat sad that our current society is more concerned with the destination (aka. reward for minimal effort) than it is about the journey and maximum immersion and enjoyment – but I guess that’s a whole different discussion all together.)

saventis.1485:

Arghore.8340:

you reached the limit of …

And actually, whether or not you actually do have ‘any’ choice in life is a matter of philosophical debate. Sure there are a million things to eat, but you got to eat, and you will choose upon what’s available to you and what your taste buds tell you to, do you have any agency over that? The success of fast food restaurants basically shows that your the level of agency hardly has anything to do with your ‘free will’ to choose… but like I said, that’s a whole different discussion…

but by that example how would you explain a vegaterian who may love bacon but chooses not to eat it because of there love for animals?

sorry, not trying to be annoying. Just curious as to your answer.

Yup, while a strong personality and indeed in a sense taking ‘agency’ over his own actions. He will need to eat fats and protein, so his choice not to eat bacon while he loves it, will lead him to eat bacon flavoured Tofu. So yes, he has the choice over which kinds of fats and protein he takes, he doesn’t have a choice over actually eating fats and protein.

And, even though he experiences a personal satisfaction of the idea that no animal was slaughtered for his consumption. In the grand scheme of things, I am fairly sure there wasn’t some pig that didn’t get slaughtered because of it. Even if the amount of vegetarians had any impact, it would be that less pigs would be bread for slaughter… but the economic reality is that the amount of pigs bread is related to a certain amount of scarcity that warrants a price per pig that makes it profitable to raise pigs for slaughter (this may include government funding to secure a certain level of food security).

That though, doesn’t make his choice less commendable, nor does it diminish his personal experience. But in the large scheme of life, it is like taking the route through the forest or through the mountains, both end up in the same place… and if anything he accomplished a pig not being born, sure it’s different from having another bred for slaughter, big question is though, would it have? More then likely no more pigs would be bred and he would have made bacon a 0,000000001ct more expensive if he would have eaten it, with how supply & demand works… but again, his choice is commendable, and his experience rewarding on a personal level

@Darmikau, that was an interesting thread to go through, I skimmed through 7 pages, but from what I got from that the discussion was very interesting, insightful, respectful (both ways – though possibly the rating system helped there as well), and here I thought LoL was rage hell on earth…

Also nice to see how he used a simple format to address his own work, clear and easy to go through, and even though he didn’t go into full detail, he also didn’t go into a full ‘well I been doing stuff’ either. It was enough to comprehend what he was dealing with, and that is coming from somebody that hasn’t even see the LoL installer up close (aka. me), yet on the other hand he didn’t spoil anything either.

Really good example of how it could be done…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lheimroo.2947:

Oh, we know Anet reads the forums. I’ll stick to my criticism of this ‘no talkies’ policy with my belief that seeking specific input earlier in the process would lead to lots fewer forums blowups, though.

So for the CDIs.. Anet, pick your own topics. Forward looking topics, as general or specific as you like.

And in general.. no offense intended, but stop acting like dopes.

You draw this huge lesson about early announcements from the precursor hunt scandal. Lesson drawn: don’t do early announcements. Instead, my lesson? ‘Keep folks in the loop when plans change or get delayed’.

You introduce a changed dungeon path and a new SAB world. Lesson drawn, “New dungeons don’t work.” – My lesson? “Fiddle with the recipe, cuz we recognize how different those two new experiences were from ‘standard’, and yet Molten Facility and SAB world 1 were massively popular”

.. and so on and so forth. Maybe you’re too terrified of user reactions, cuz you’re drawing a lot of timid conclusions.

No that isn’t the case at all.

I have taken the time to answer loads of questions in this thread and many comments around your points can be found in my previous responses.

No idea what you mean by ‘Dopes’ but overall it isn’t conducive to healthy discussion in that i Have no idea what you mean.

Hopefully you will find some of the answers to your questions and assumptions.

Chris

Being a former dope-head I might be able to explain, and I actually wanted to point this out as well in a thread, but might as well do it here (aka. your 180degree turns) …

Anyways: dope is all about the rush (which can be positive (good high) or negative (bad trip)) but both will be this experience of a rush. So how does that apply, well it sometimes feels that when you face criticism or critiques, you react all ‘doped up’ take a complete 180, and fully rush the other way… perhaps, ‘hyped up’ is about the same experience as ‘doped’ implies…

F/e the LS, where it was this mayor 1x big open world ordeals, to now, a timid stream replay-able mostly instanced personal story expansion. While I hope it will pick up some steam, and even though I think in part this solved some issues. It is a full 180… and if you check feedback, there are numerous people missing these big open world things… (a permanent big boss open world event would certainly help here but that aside)

Same with SAB, so ok, part 2 wasn’t all people expected, some things are hit and miss, no need to just abandon it. Analyse why it was received so differently than part 1, see if you can rediscover/recapture that part 1 spirit. Or, simply acknowledge this is it, and just put it permanently in the game, with a ‘if we find that spirit again, we will pick this up, currently our priorities lie else where, and we don’t think we have enough inspiration to do a full part 3 at this moment, but enjoy what is there…

That is ‘what I think’ he means with doped, you get this idea in this rush and go with it like a headless chicken, because you think it’s the best idea you ever had. Being all Hyped up, is probably the best equivalent to it, if you aren’t inclined to get intoxicated. But ‘you know’ even alcohol does this, just write down your great ideas at the bar, and read them again the next morning… doped is a bit different, but still…

;tldr: So really, the full 180s you make based upon feedback are sometimes hard to comprehend, not everything needs a full 180, sometimes a 10-30 degree diversion from the original idea is enough to deal with the concerns.

first off, not to be a smart kitten, but I think you mean:
“What if every sub-forum offered a dev sticky at the top that summarized the key discussion points around that sub-forum’s topic, that we’re aware of as a dev. team and hope to solve at some point.”

As a reply: I think this would be helpful to us, especially if at some point some of our feedback/concerns were to turn up on those lists. And quite personally I would find it interesting to read what other people might discuss on those topics, as you can be assured threads on each and every one will arise…

Do realize though, that you will also find yourself in many “why isn’t this on there” discussions, and that just putting things on that list will not make it less likely for us to at some moment ‘point out’ that X has been on there for so long, why isn’t it dealt with already … which at some unfortunate point may lead to a ‘carrot on a sticky’ kind of feel towards these lists.

So yeah, pro’s and con’s, from my personal pov. I see the benefits over the negatives, but you guys should likely be well aware of those negatives, and make sure you deal with them properly.

Here I was thinking that this thread was another whine about the LS, should have checked the author a couple of weeks ago, as then I could have read along. I will likely take some time to do the entire thread justice some other day, but just by reading the OP:

Even though I personally enjoy the LS from a casual gaming point of view (which happens to be how I enjoy GW2); I had to agree with pretty much all counts, or at least acknowledge your view on it, there is actually a thread still up in my keyboard (like they used to say ‘pen’) that sort of deals with this and more frankly your solution, only based upon a simple ‘this is how I expected the LS to work’.

Now I will have to say that you could do the same analysis on an approach where you change the characters every time. As not binding with them, not having enough time to flesh them out, etc. And we did sort of get introduced to Kasmeer during the Karka ordeal. The other characters sort of jumped on the bandwagon as the story progressed, so to me it feels somewhat natural asto how our band formed. I take the whole ‘boss’ thing for granted, as I can see how it would make it impossible to address us differently in voice acting…

I also find it nice that the characters are developing to a point where they can stand their own. Like, hopefully after this LS, we get paired up with some other assemble of people, but then, as that story unfolds, I would find it very natural to ask Braham along as a scout in the shiver peaks, or go to Taimi over ‘Zoja’ when some sort of technological device is concerned. If I wasn’t in the order of whispers (or maybe still), and the story hadn’t already escalated to a major proportion, I would ask Marjory to accompany me to some shady bar for some observational detective work. Or get into contact with Kasmeer where it concerns dealing with human politics and royalty. Or goto Rox for anything related to the Charr.

All of that would have been rather impossible to do, given these characters were not so extensively introduced and formed, as they are now. Just think how weird it would have been to go to some unknown un-introduced Asura to make a waypoint stabilizer, though arguably that is also because Zoja (and all other DE1 characters) are caught up in their own stuff…

So yeah, I agree with every point made (except one, but ill leave that for last), and I do hope they will continue to flesh out side characters into the story so that we can later on assist them (when they need our help) or group up with them. And as we do, we can now call upon some properly introduced characters for help along the way…

Lastly, I watched Scooby Doo a lot when I was a youngster, thing is, that little dog ?!? I mean, I know he got introduced at some point, but the early Scooby Doo’s didn’t come with him. So that point sort of totally got lost on me! :/

I would prefer making a list, then have a vote, and you pick one from the top 3 or 5 (bit depending on the size of the list). Or you come with a list and we vote for 1… either would work.

As far as the current options go, I see the following ‘problems’:
1. You pick something we think isn’t appropriate right now, we get off on a wrong start.
2. We pick something you are not ready to talk about, we get off on the wrong start.

So best we find an intermediate way, where we make sure it’s something you want to talk about, and something we think we should talk about. The best way would likely be, we make a bit list, you pick 10, we vote on the actual one. That way we all are assured getting off on the right start.