Guild Wars 2

timmyf.1490:

Yetiyen.7269:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faowri.4159:

Psycho Robot.7835:

BobbyStein.2315:

Story Pacing & Continuity
There are some folks who feel that the Living World story is moving too slowly

Wait, what? Too slow? Is that what you got from the past 10 pages? All I see is person after person saying that the pace is too fast. Its nearly unanimous so far that the development feels rushed, and its not flushed out or properly refined. Plus, even the people who do feel that its too slow likely only feel like that because there is actually very little story in each patch. If you slowed down you could actually give enough story in a patch to last for a month, rather than deal with time constraints so overbearing that you can’t even fill two weeks worth.

I think what Bobby meant was the pace of the story is too slow. Separate issue to the pace of releases.

Correct. I’m talking about story pacing, not release pacing. Big difference!

Randulf.7614:

It’s possible it worth reading out the storyline as it unfolds to someone in private, much like authors do with a family member/friends.

We do table reads for our voiced content, and review plot points with each feature team at the outset. Things often change or are adjusted as development goes on, so some of what you’ve seen so far deviates from our original plan due to a variety of circumstances.

It seems what you are saying is that looking from your perspective the story meshes ( a good sign for things to come), but it isn’t unfolding that way fro us. Bouncing a chapter story off someone not involved directly with the project like a family member/trustowrthy friend for eg would help give the perspective we have without giving away spoilers for us.

Kind of like a usability test. Not a bad idea.

Glad to hear dragons are somewhere on the agenda!

Me, too!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks much.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who posted constructive and/or detailed feedback regarding the Living World story and characters in this thread. While I can’t post spoilers about future content, I would like to address some of the opinions that have been brought up. Bear in mind I may have touched upon these topics in other threads that were tied to previous releases (or mentioned within interviews on external Web sites) but I’ll put my most recent thoughts here for discussion.

Story Pacing & Continuity
There are some folks who feel that the Living World story is moving too slowly and/or that the themes and plots feel disjointed between releases. I somewhat agree with this sentiment.

We took a long time to build up the various alliances before we revealed Scarlet’s involvement. Some of this was due to factors external to the team, but some was by design. We first wanted to show changes in the open world with “teaser” content like in the Flame & Frost releases and then add the bigger content later once the teams and development pipelines were up to speed.

One of the challenges of the semi-monthly release cycle is that we’re limited in how much content we can put inside each one. This can be a good thing if the story is very focused and doesn’t have a lot of moving parts. The problem we ran into is that we needed to develop a larger cast of non-player characters to account for every playable race, and then create the content in which to put them. That sort of build up takes time and incurs an amount of long-term development debt.

The end goal was to have multiple arcs going simultaneously like on more modern television shows, but where a weekly drama might have 20 – 40 minutes of character time to get things moving, we have maybe half that (or less). So after a few releases it started to feel like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads out there and you (the player) had no way of knowing which ones would be resumed.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

The upside to all of this is that we are aware of the items that we introduced but haven’t finished yet. We’re planning on resolving as much as we can by the time the Scarlet arc concludes. (Yes, there will be a conclusion.)

Scarlet
If memory serves me, we foreshadowed Scarlet’s existence through a comment Mai Trin made during one of the summer releases. This got some folks speculating on who she was, her part in all the attacks, etc. Scarlet debuted in August during the Queen’s Jubilee and has continued to make appearances here and there that slowly reveal her role in the overall plot.

The operative word here is “slowly” and judging from all the responses, many feel that the plot is moving ahead at a glacial pace. That Scarlet is nothing more than a cardboard cutout villain.

I will readily acknowledge that her presentation has elicited some strong reactions in the community. Some people love her. Others hate her. While that kind of polarizing view can sometimes be an asset, it brings some polarizing baggage to the conversation every time her name is brought up. Here’s where I think we could have done a better job with her.

• Tone: Scarlet is crazy, but she sometimes comes off as over-the-top and madcap. While that works in a lot of scenarios, it’s not something that’s been extensively explored inside of Guild Wars 2 before. There is a reason to her madness but we haven’t revealed it yet. Perhaps it would have suited her character better to have shown that somewhere alongside her introduction. Scope had something to do with it in her debut, but honestly we knew she would be featured in multiple future releases so…

• Pacing: …we made the conscious decision to pace out her character development over multiple game builds. In other words, we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet, but since nobody outside the building has an idea of what’s to come I can understand the reactions that she’s “one-dimensional” or conveniently powerful. We’re aware of the perception and feel that future releases will have content that develops her character.

Dragons
Guild Wars 2 has a dragon on the box cover. The primary motivation for players on their 80-level journey is to kill a dragon. So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

Thanks for the constructive feedback. We’ve got a few things planned for upcoming releases that should clarify some of the story confusion by putting more of this information in the game.

Shala Jarias.9456:

Regina, who did the VO of The Bloody Prince?
His voice sounds awfully familiar.

Bloody Prince Edrick Thorn was voiced by Neil Kaplan. He’s done various voices in Guild Wars 2 (charr, norn, etc.) but we figured he’d be a good fit for this character.

Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

The only problem I have with Scarlet is her motive. She’s been behind so many things, and the only motive we have is “she’s crazy”. That just doesn’t cut it.

We haven’t revealed her motive yet. I can understand the confusion and/or frustration surrounding that so we’re looking at ways to accelerate the plot and implement some features that will make it easier to track Living World content. The first phase of that system will be implemented before the end of the year.

eekzie.5640:

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks, as always, for the feedback.

And thank you guys for not having a fight with scarlet where she just escapes randomly after you kill her. That was some class A lamesauce. Twice.

You’re welcome.

Thanks, as always, for the feedback.

Gabby.3205:

It is funny how one person’s “best update in the history of ever” is the other person’s “worst possible thing since World War 2”.

It kinda shows that we can’t really claim that “nobody likes update x” and stuff like that.

That’s what makes the feedback so interesting. There is no content in any game that is universally appealing, but it’s helpful to know how people are reacting to each release, just the same. So we have to take every post with a grain of salt, and also compare that with posts from other sites, and then compare it to player behavior in the game.

It paints a very interesting picture. Forum comments are just one small part of it, especially since the number of active posters is a tiny fragment of the overall player base.

As always, thanks for sharing your opinions.

DiogoSilva.7089:

To be honest, I feel that this tequatl’s release makes for an excellent build up for something “dangerous” to come in the future. But based on your post, BobbyStein, it feels like there’s no story planned for this, and that the new details behind the new Tequatl are just marketing hype.

Maybe I wasn’t clear in my other post. Tequatl becoming stronger (and Rox being present) are both tied into the overall LW story. More will be revealed later.

Korval.3751:

At least tell us the direction the story is going. You don’t have to give away big details. It can be something vague like: “With the assassination attempt on Queen Jennah’s life the Seraph and Shining Blade are joining forces to find the real power behind Scarlet Briar.” Something like that would be more than awesome. It would give me something to look forward to from each release and it give me some idea where the story is going.

P.S. I’m not playing GW2 for any other reason than the ongoing story. If the story dies what reason do I have to keep playing?

We’re planning to put Living World story summaries into game UI, but I can’t say when that system is coming online just yet. (It’s a more complicated system than that, by the way, but one component of it will include some of these story details.) Regarding something that bridges the releases more clearly, Design will have to continue to work closely with Marketing to hit that sweet spot. Inside the game, we’ll continue to explore ways to do this in various forms (cinematics, conversations, lore bits, etc.).

I realize that, for a lot of people, the LW release stories don’t feel connected. They are, but we’re not always making that clear to players. It’s something we’re always looking to improve. That stated, we have deliberately held back some story details for pacing reasons. More dots will be connected in the coming months, so I will continue to encourage folks to let us know what they think with each release. We appreciate the feedback.

The story component for the Tequatl Rising LW update primarily deals with helping Rox fight Tequatl and finding dragon minion clues. You can also interact with Warmaster Narru to get a few more details.

Narru will remain behind, though Rox will leave the area with the next Living World release.

The narrator for the Tequatl trailer is Julie Nathanson.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I think the problem with the “tidbits” is the pacing and temporariness. And that they’re a bit too subtle in cases (made worse with the temporariness).

Things need to be in the game longer, especially the more subtle things. And things happen with too much in too little time. You basically give us 10-20 achievements to do, on top of the story itself, which again is on top of the “subtle tidbits” – which in turn is on top of the mini-games you introduce each month (sometimes more than one), and effectively give us only two weeks to do all of that.

The hardcore players will end up skipping over those tidbits. The casual players won’t have the chance to get at them because they’re too busy doing the more obviously-to-do things.

I cannot think of any system that can explain it, other than you telling us everything and not giving us a chance to find it out for ourselves. Like those guides you post for the content, before the content’s even released.

Understood. I am hopeful that some of the new systems that we have in development (the LW tracking system, journal tracking, etc.) will make it easier for folks to make sense of the long-term story.

I think the biggest challenge for the writers right now is getting enough story into each release such that people can understand where we’re going with everything. The fact of the matter is that we have a short amount of time to write, voice, and implement the content for each LW release (3 months on average up to maybe 4 months under ideal conditions). We also have limits in how much written and voiced content we can handle each month (text and VO budgets, essentially) due to limited resources (i.e. people) and a fixed deadline.

The LW story pacing is very slow in that it takes months for all the pieces to come together, whereas in the core game everything is available at once and you simply play through it in the proper order until you reach the conclusion. You consume it at your own pace. In the LW, you consume it at ours and I think that’s hard for many people to get used to, especially since we don’t have the right tracking system in place yet.

You’re right in that the temporary nature of the previous content also made it hard to experience at a comfortable pace. Some people raced through the content in an hour or two and then complained that the update wasn’t big enough. Others didn’t know where to go or what to do first. Some people missed it completely and lost out on a piece of the story that they can’t experience unless we bring it back or give them a mechanism to play it outside of the release window.

I’m happy to say that these comments haven’t fallen on deaf ears. I’ve been in many meetings about these very concerns. We have some solutions planned, but they will take time to build. I can’t be more specific than that.

I don’t expect you or anyone else to change your opinions based on this information. You’ll just have to wait and see what happens. If these new story bits and features improve the game for you, then I’ll be happy that we’re making the game better for everyone. If they don’t, then I’d like to know why so we can figure out ways to improve.

Diovid.9506:

BobbyStein.2315:

If you only knew how hard we’ve been working these past six years…

I want to believe that, I really do but this interview happened:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Angel-McCoy-Interview/first

Angel drafted a follow up to this interview that will be posted soon. It’ll put some things into perspective.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A new interactive book object in the Durmand Priory library (or multiple if need-be). Welcome to Paradise? That would have taken a bit more effort, best placed as an intro instance like the one made for the Bazaar of the Four Winds. What Scarlet Saw? A journal item dropped by Scarlet during one of the invasions, just change the writing to first person.

They don’t need to add anything to the gameplay. They add something to the story, and that’s enough to include them in the game.

I suppose I haven’t explained this clearly enough. We don’t have UI or tech to do this. The only thing we can do in the game currently is attach a short description to an object that is triggered by interaction (F to read, for example) or put that information inside a conversation tree. Those are our options. Neither solution is ideal for large chunks of text due to size limitations and usability restrictions. We’ve used both approaches on occasion to present details as you’ve described. But these current solutions are hard limited with how much we can display onscreen. They aren’t really appropriate for the amount of text information we’d put in proper books.

In other words, we can’t put these short stories into game UI because none currently exists that would support it. I know that sounds odd since we’re essentially talking about showing text in a window, but it’s a bit more complex than that. There is a lot of design, programming, and art that goes into building a system like this.

Do we turn the book into an item? If so, is it stored in your inventory? Do we build a separate tab for book storage? Is there value attached to it? Can you trade it with other players? How many characters per page are we limited to? How many pages? Does it have image attachment support? How would you navigate the pages? Does it scale from lowest to highest resolution properly with word wrap? Would we simply convert the Bonus Mission Pack book design over, or are there restrictions or dependencies with GW2 code that would make it difficult and time consuming? Can we attach items to the books? Can they be used to replay content or watch cinematics? These are just a fraction of the things that go into building a new feature.

Would I like us to provide in-game books so interested players can immerse themselves in the history of Tyria and the important characters of each release? Hell, yes! I’ve been asking for them for years. We wrote a bunch of them! But right now our UI and programming resources are booked on other projects. Will we eventually create these books? I hope so. But for the immediate needs of the Living World story, a tracking system is more important, followed by some type of journal support. We’ll build those first before committing to anything like books because our lack of a LW tracking system is making it difficult for people to follow the LW story, plain and simple.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Or does ArenaNet no longer care about their lore?

If you only knew how hard we’ve been working these past six years…

Elbegast.6970:

BobbyStein.2315:

Elbegast.6970:

We have never met face to face but you have played my games and I have played yours. There’s a good chance you wouldn’t be in your position if not for my career.

Now I’m intrigued. Which of your games have I played?

You tell me.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,23689/

Pleasure to meet you (virtually, at least). I played Brute Force years ago while at Microsoft. It was fun. I watched some friends play Wing Commander when I was in high school. I didn’t have a gaming Windows machine until I entered the work force some years later, so I missed out on some of the classics.

Elbegast.6970:

We have never met face to face but you have played my games and I have played yours. There’s a good chance you wouldn’t be in your position if not for my career.

Now I’m intrigued. Which of your games have I played?

Drakkon.4782:

moronwmachinegun.3815:

The giant tent over the Great Collapse is a great idea, but a real jamboree like that wouldn’t have been so secretive – there should have been NPCs – citizens, children, guards, etc – excited, happy, and concerned about the large event before it happened.

That’s called a “preamble” in narrative terms, and it is quite useful in moving a story along. ANet has been effective at keeping a story going into the next segment for stragglers who were just one achievement behind, but they also should be foreshadowing the next part of the living story, both to give the living story a narrative link through events, but also to reveal details that will become important in the next section and tie up loose ends in the previous one. Any loose ends not tied up could and should be considered a foreshadow in and of itself that it will come back later to be revisited. Annual events don’t need to be tied up in any way other than seeing NPCs cleaning up from the event, whereas build up beforehand would be nice to give a sense of impending excitement.

And don’t be that store that starts playing Xmas music in September (I’M LOOKING AT YOU LOWES!). That’s a bit too far in advance. Just a little foreshadowing and preamble would be nice.

We do this when we have the bandwidth, but it’s sometimes difficult to find the time and resources while juggling so many self-contained releases. I agree, though, that it’s an effective way of connecting things together, and we should strive to implement them more often.

Elbegast.6970:

R. L. Stein Jr. is no ‘Jovial Bob’…

I don’t believe we know each other outside of the forums, so that statement is a little…strange.

Elbegast.6970:

…but I could really get behind a trail of in-game books. Providing, of course, those books are logged into an interface that would put them in order and allow me to read them at my own leisure.

The original plan was to have in-game books somewhat like the ones made available in the GW1 Bonus Mission Pack content. We wrote nearly 100 of them but were unable to implement them due to the book tech getting cut from development in the months leading up to GW2’s release. We may revisit the idea one day.

Elbegast.6970:

I’m just so sick of website-exclusive stories that are not even hinted at in-game, aside from the launcher window, that is.

Design discussions regarding the updated story interface are ongoing, but the plan is to group narrative information and player progress together like how we handle the Personal Story entries, but for other content types.

Just to clarify, while the character named Moto is an obvious homage to Shigeru Miyamoto, his personality and behavior within the SAB story context are not at all inspired by any real life person or events. Don’t read into the character expecting some sort of life commentary or biographical similarity to the legendary game designer. It’s simply not there.

To quote an oft-used phrase: “All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

Good suggestions, JayMack. Thanks for taking the time to share that here.

The scenes in outside of Ketto’s lab go into some of these details, but I agree that having additional, optional items that add more depth to the story is always a good thing. We sometimes include this type of content in our LW releases (Southsun had journals) and other times we rely on dialog. The more we can include, the more people can better understand the story.

I also agree that having lore-dump NPCs is rarely effective, and often annoying.

We’ll keep trying to improve with each release.

Elbegast.6970:

@BobbyStein
Don’t be condescending.

I don’t believe I am. Please explain.

Elbegast.6970:

You accuse us of misunderstanding the purpose of the website stories while the in-game storytelling is so poor as to be nonexistent.

Who did I accuse? Some people have expressed confusion or anger over some supplemental short stories on the official Web site. I was merely responding to that. Also, while I appreciate your honest opinion, I should remind you that not everyone shares it. I know that may be hard to believe but it’s true.

Elbegast.6970:

Then you tell us that it would be better if we don’t read the web stories?!? If that’s going to be your attitude, why bother to even write them?

Because some people appreciate them. If you don’t, that’s fine. If that stresses you out, don’t read them. It’s OK. Seriously. This stuff is meant to be enjoyed, not to annoy anyone.

Elbegast.6970:

The in-game plot, what little there seems to be, is stretched so thin that we, the players, are forgetting the ‘tidbits’. Your ‘pacing’ is far too slow. You may eventually give us some answers but only after we have forgotten the questions. Where does a player have to go to understand what is happening in this game? Because the game itself isn’t providing any answers whatsoever.

Actually, there are a lot more details in the game than you realize. Either you’re not catching them because they are subtle, or you may have missed the content entirely. I’m not sure in your case because I have no idea what you’ve played, what you’ve seen, or what you remember.

Some people understand what’s going on, others don’t, and some of that is due to a distinct lack of direction in regards to experiencing the Living World story. We’ve been aware of that limitation since day one, and we’re currently working on a system to address that before the end of the year. I sympathize with that. Trust me.

Can we improve on our storytelling or means of delivering plot? Sure. Who couldn’t! That’s why we appreciate honest, critical, and constructive feedback a lot more than rants or straight-up complaints.

Again, thanks for playing the game and taking the time to post. It means a lot to us.

It seems like there’s some misunderstanding regarding the purpose of the short stories that we publish on the Web site. They are not meant to “write outside the game” such that the game is unplayable without them, nor are they meant to provide vital information to the in-game story for a particular Living World release. They are purely optional stories meant to provide additional context and lore for those who care. If we felt that the inclusion of this information was critical to understanding the plot or playing the content then we would put it inside the game, plain and simple.

On a related note, some of the lore stories use imagery or situations that would be more difficult, time consuming, or expensive to replicate in the game. Some wouldn’t add anything meaningful to gameplay. So if you’re finding it stressful that these optional pieces exist external to a Living World release, I suggest not reading them.

You also have to keep in mind that we’re pacing the Living World stories such that you may not understand the full picture inside a given release. For example, Scarlet made her first appearance in August but she was hinted at in prior months. Her story has not resolved at this time, therefore we haven’t divulged some significant details about her origins or motivations. It’s understandable why some people would be upset or impatient by not getting these details all at once, but rest assured that we’re not conveniently forgetting about these tidbits—we’re just saving them for later.

Regarding SAB World 2, there is a story that is presented in-game. To experience it, first you must beat World 2 and then preview World 3. I won’t spoil it, so I encourage you to figure out the rest.

Thanks, as always, for the feedback. We read as much as we can.

This is a cool idea. Thanks for sharing.

We’re currently discussing ideas on how to “catch people up” with past Living World events to give them context on current events and recent history. The system that’s currently in development will hopefully go a long way in presenting a clearer picture of some of the story content in the game. That stated, having a newspaper is a neat concept.

We’re currently working on a system that will better direct players through Living World content. Eventually, it will also provide story context for LW and other content types. The first phase of the system should be ready before the end of the year.

Glad you liked it. I was worried that no one would find the story bits of SAB since we tucked them away.

Did you get that locked achievement?

Doggie.3184:

Who does her voice again? I can’t seem to find the thread where Anet said it.

Tara Strong. (The answers get buried sometimes.)

:)

Traveller.7496:

Well, regarding the story: someone (I think it was Colin) said that this update would knot the plot threads together from previous installments of the LS. And then we get a reassuring message from Bobby saying that even though we have shown you nothing, he’s certain that the villain will have some motives … in the future… sometime! Just you wait!

Only thing that was “revealed” is that Scarlet is behind all the attacks, and that she’s some kind of technical genius. It’s not quite what I was expecting from a storyline that was supposed to tie up the previous threads together.

I don’t recall saying that everything would be tied up by August 20th. Can you refresh my memory?

BrunoBRS.5178:

BobbyStein.2315:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Seriously, what is the big rush?

Each team has a fixed amount of development time and limited resources to build the contents of a Living World release. Sometimes things get cut or changed because of constraints or other circumstances. Our ship dates for LW don’t usually change.

i think what bobby is trying to say is “there will always be deadlines, and there will always be things that don’t make the final cut”.

Indeed. Thanks for translating my post.

LameFox.6349:

lol. I just assumed her lips weren’t supposed to move.

I have to do some more investigation, but I think it’s a bug that’s tied to how the game generates lip flap at runtime. It’s possible that the way in which she was implemented during the flythrough bypassed that system. I think it’s safe to say that her mouth should have moved during that cinematic.

Traveller.7496:

Well make that time longer, then! It’s your own decision to squeeze these events out every two weeks! I’m sure players will be more than happy to wait a bit longer to get polished and not rushed content.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that decision isn’t mine to make.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-world-in-guild-wars-2/

We’re committed to releasing Living World updates every two weeks. As always, thanks for the feedback.

VOLKON.1290:

BobbyStein.2315:

Glad you liked it.

So, if I may ask Mr. Stein, … more to come? (Regarding this incident…)

I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Hobo-Tron.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Seriously, what is the big rush?

Each team has a fixed amount of development time and limited resources to build the contents of a Living World release. Sometimes things get cut or changed because of constraints or other circumstances. Our ship dates for LW don’t usually change.

Gnat.9405:

Can we expect to lean Scarlet’s motives or are we to assume that she’s just crazy and is doing this for the lols?

People will learn more about Scarlet’s motives in time.

Uruz Six.6594:

And we have to know exactly everything about them in the first chapter too.

I think you’re on to something…

Rouven.7409:

BobbyStein.2315:

Aeolus.3615:

Lord Faren will become Batman!

He already has the tight outfit. Now he just needs a cape!

Newsflash: Capes confirmed! Coming soon! High priority living story project! Lord Faren apparel and more in the store!

I think Faren’s speedo would make a great microtransaction item.

Just kidding. (Or am I?)

Traveller.7496:

Well, I guess the only way to find out is to actually make a LS about a man who’s not-so-mild-mannered nobleman by day and a Krytan crimefighter by night. Maybe he was bitten by a skritt, and turned into … The Skrittman.

Interesting. What kind of wagon would he drive?

Traveller.7496:

Sadly, it would be way more interesting than the story you have going right now.

For some, and not for others.

Aeolus.3615:

Lord Faren will become Batman!

He already has the tight outfit. Now he just needs a cape!

Glad you liked it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

…I think we still have much to find out rather than “we know all we will ever find out”.

There is a lot more to come. The Living World story is paced very differently than other content in the game, partially due to the nature of how we build and release it. I won’t spoil anything other than say that we’ll reveal more in time.

Man In Zero G.8312:

Murderous Clown.9723:

Man In Zero G.8312:

I’ve loved it so far – the only complaint I have is NPCs referring to Divinity’s Reach as “DR” in dialogue…. that’s extremely immersion breaking, to be honest. Otherwise fantastic event!

Why? We use initials like that in real life e.g. LA and KL. I don’t see why Tyrians wouldn’t do the same.

Mostly because it’s all of the sudden. Never in the history of the game until now has an NPC referred to Lion’s Arch as LA, for example, (though players do) – or BC, or RS – it’s the same with Divinity’s Reach; never before now has it happened in game (or in the fiction as far as I’ve read). And it wasn’t just Scarlet, I’m pretty sure I heard Rox and/or our new asura sidekick do it too.
It just felt like poor editing on the scripts before they got to the voice actors is all. (i.e. it was meant to be Divinity’s Reach, but was shorthanded while writing, and never got changed in editing – pure conjecture, but that’s what it feels like.)

I’d have to check through old content, but I’m pretty sure we’ve had ambient NPCs referring to some cities with nicknames since launch. I understand why it might sound jarring to some, but we’re experimenting with dialog to make it sound a little more natural.

SquirrelKing.8964:

I would like to add that I do not have a low spec machine. I have a core-i7 processor with a radeon 7950 HD and 16gb of ram. My fps was over 40 for the duration of the cutscene. I don’t think it is anything wrong on my end.

What was your latency?

Sarrs.4831:

Make them all painterly?

Isn’t that why the personal story has the stylised conversations?

That was the original plan, but a variety of factors led to the decision of shortening the painterly cinematic and doing the rest via the in-game systems.

Thalador.4218:

The problem is that Jeff and Ree are either very busy with building the overarching lore (and giving into the subpar ideas of the new writers) or are held back so the LS writing team can have their “fun.”

I can’t comment on what Ree and Jeff are working on, but I can say that I’m ultimately responsible for the quality of the Living World story. I don’t imagine we’ll please everyone with our new direction, but that’s true of any story. That stated, I encourage people to leave their feedback. Just please be respectful.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mm, no, the problem might be that the LS writers are trying to have it be “fun and entertaining” as opposed to “stirring and exquisite writing”. Which is good, because people shooting for “stirring and exquisite writing” sometimes risk missing the mark and moving right on into “boring and pretentious” or too far into “just plain boring”. Like shooting for Inception and instead getting Minority Report.

This is true.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . on a semi-related note? Who is voicing Scarlet Briar?

Tara Strong

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0152839/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1