Guild Wars 2

Just look at it this way: It was going to happen sooner or later. At some point, something was going to happen where you weren’t going to be able to complete all the living story achievements for that release in time. Maybe you’d be away on a trip, maybe your internet would go down, maybe an achievement would be too difficult for you to complete in time. Just know that, whatever the reason, it was inevitable. Makes it easier to swallow that way.

MatthewMedina.5419:

I was very pleased with how the puzzles eventually turned out. They started off being quite complicated and even esoteric, but as I was implementing them I really began to see the flaw in that design. Namely, that someone coming into the game during this release, who hadn’t played the previous releases would have NO idea or context for some of the solutions. So although you can still see the skeleton of the plans I laid out for those puzzles, in the end I erred on the side of making them as accessible as possible, so they’re simple, but hopefully capture the flavor of those prior releases.

The camera pan including the player character was most certainly a deliberate decision, and will be something that, at the very least, I will continue to advocate for. But I had a lot of fun creating some of the in-game camera sequences during this release, so I hope to be able to do more cinematics in a hands-on fashion.

All of those conversations and scenes in the post-release camp were done entirely by our writing team this time around. A couple of us on the content design side were able to sit down with them and actually teach them how to do basic spawning and scripting, and with that base of knowledge they were able to populate the camp with all those interesting characters, which I think of as a huge win for the studio. It’s not that we’ve not had the capability in the past, it’s just that those kind of things usually end up low on the list of priorities for those of us who do the bulk of the content authoring, because although it’s really not hard to do, it’s also usually not that intense in terms of setup and scripting. When you are faced with the decision to fix a half dozen Pri.1 and Pri2 bugs or implement an NPC with conversation, the former will always take priority. So I would like to think that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that the bar will continue to be raised on content like this.

I think you made the right call as far as making the puzzles as accessible as possible, at least this time around. I started leveling an alt this weekend, and I zoned into Kessex to do my personal story and suddenly being thrown in the instance again was incredibly jarring. It made me realize what it might be like for a new player, who would probably think it was a bug. “What happened? Why am I here? Who are these characters?” kind of thing. So making the puzzles easy enough to minimize this is probably good, although you did have the combat option as well. I would love to see some more complicated, indepth puzzles. It seems like there’s some untapped potential as far as real puzzles go, and I’d love to see what you guys do with it in the future.

I’m glad to hear that camera pan was a deliberate decision, and I hope to see more sophisticated cinematics over time. I’ve noticed that up until now, the actors in the in-game cinematics are largely static; what are the chances of getting a lot more character action in the in-engine cutscenes? Like, having our characters moving around, fighting, dodging, etc.? The most impressive cutscene I can think of in this regard at the moment is the end of the Aetherblade path of Twilight Arbor, with the Lionguard ziplining down into the dungeon. I would love to see more of that, and with more of a focus on our characters to show that we’re the ones driving the story.

I think the new approach with getting the writing team directly involved in setting up dialogue really had a noticeable effect, and I hope that becomes a more regular thing in the future. If you guys can find a way to really increase the scope of character interactions in this game, and have them carry over into future releases in such a way that it allows our characters to foster meaningful (and varied from player to player) relationships with the NPCs, I think this whole living story you guys have been pushing for could really turn out to be something special.

Regarding the “what about the early adopters?” question about making ascended gear easier to obtain and from multiple sources. As an early adopter myself, yes, we would in a way be getting cheated out of resources we didn’t need to spend like time, materials, and money. But the fact is, it needs to change anyway, and fast. It never should have been implemented like this. You guys have said the intention was for it to be a “bridge” between exotic and legendary, but that doesn’t make sense. The resources we have to use for this overlap with the resources we have to use for a legendary weapon, meaning it just makes the time gap between exotics and legendaries even wider.

Ascended gear has been a huge mistake and every incarnation of its implementation has been more poorly thought out than the last. But that subject has been beaten to death, and there’s no way fix what’s already been done without a portion of the playerbase getting screwed over. If you can come up with some system of compensation for those of us who busted our butts with the current, excessively costly methods, great. But ascended gear acquisition needs a revamp regardless, because right now it discourages alts and different builds, which completely goes against the entire idea of the game.

Crafting Ascended Gear

• Drop the time-gating on ectoplasm refinement.
• Lower the material requirements.
• Drop the reliance on laurels for recipes. It should be karma only.

Obtaining Ascended Gear as Random Drops

• Increase the drop rate.
• Rather than a stat drop with weapon/armor selection, make them weapon/armor drops with stat selection. If you’re feeling generous, allow us to choose both. They’re account bound anyway, so why not?

New Sources of Ascended Gear Acquisition

• Badges of Honor for WvW
• Fractal Relics/Pristine Fractal Relics
• Laurels (I hesitate to put this, because the entire laurel system has the same issue as ectoplasm refinement in crafting. We need less time-gating, not more. Plus, I would prefer laurel rewards being unique to laurels such as the endless cat tonic and minipets.)

New Content as a Source of Ascended Gear

I thought about putting dungeons as a way to obtain ascended gear with just a higher token cost, but that’s just more of a grind than they already are. What we need is brand new, difficult content that rewards ascended gear. Basically, a new tier of dungeon.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Izzy. I just wanted to highlight that last part about ascended creation time. There is absolutely no excuse that it should take 23 days to make a full set of armor if you have all the materials aside from the timegated ones. It’s ridiculous. This isn’t even factoring in not having enough laurels for the recipes. And that’s just for a single stat combination for a single character. We have alts, we have multiple builds, our builds get buffed and nerfed over time and one day we could have an effective build that we enjoy, and then one patch later, it’s useless. The way ascended has been implemented up until now cannot continue in its current form. It strangles our ability to enjoy multiple facets of the game. I’m sure the intention was “it’ll keep people playing longer” and “it gives people long term goals.” All it does is make us angry.

I also want to chime in and say that I really liked a lot of what you guys did with this release. The puzzle was an awesome change of pace and it was actually fun figuring out the solutions, even if they were pretty simple. And a small touch, I liked that you guys did that panning cinematic around Marjory, Kasmeer, AND our characters when you first talk to Marjory. It was a small thing, but it was inclusive to us, which is something I’ve felt the living story (and even the personal story) hasn’t been. Usually I feel like I’m just along for the ride, and the story hardly acknowledges our contributions. This release, steps were definitely taken in the right direction to rectify that (although there’s still a ways to go). The cutscene at the end of the tower exploding was also, as everyone has already noted, completely awesome. Easily the best cutscene you guys have produced.

And finally, I wanted to mention that you guys did a great job with the dialogue, both ambient and direct interaction, at the camp in Kessex. I spent a good 30 minutes just hanging around there listening to the ambient dialogue and exploring all the conversations. I particularly liked how some conversations you could have would affect others. For example, when I first talked to one of the characters, she asked me if I had heard anything about the fate of a particular skritt inside the tower. The exit dialogue option was “I’ll ask around,” and I specifically thought to myself “Yeah, not like it’ll affect anything.” But I was wrong. Another character did know the fate of that skritt, and I was able to go back to relay that information to the original character. It might not have affected anything (although in the future it would be amazing if this kind of dialogue interaction carried over between releases) but it made everything feel more substantial and fleshed out.

This release has given me a bit more hope for the living story model. Good work guys, I hope we continue to see improvements like those I mentioned.

I know a few people have brought up similar ideas, but I’m just going to throw a couple indepth things that I think would contribute a lot to progression, as well as to the game as a whole:

Personal Housing
Teased long ago along with guild halls, these would make for an excellent form of horizontal progression. Ideally separate from the home instance, there are a number of ways this could work for progression.

• Upgrades – The size and style of the house could be changed through a progression system. Players could choose a style of personal house from the start that they feel best goes with their character, and over time they could upgrade to more impressive versions or new styles altogether.
• Furnishing – The ability to customize the house with furniture (could be craftable, creating an entirely new market), trophies from achievements, etc.
• Bonuses – Reaching certain thresholds of progression with your personal house could give you special bonuses. You have the standard XP, Karma, Magic Find, and Gold Find as possibilities to work with, and I’m sure you could get creative with some others. Crafting stations, mystic forge, the ability to rewatch cutscenes, access to special instances, there are a number of creative things you could do with it.
• Incorporation with living story – Characters could visit the player homes (instead of sending mail all the time), and certain aspects of these visits could change based on interactions. It opens up a lot of possibilities in the living story. And how exciting would a special instance be where you get attacked in your own home?

New Weapon Skills
Obviously everyone would be excited for their classes to gain access to new weapons entirely, but I’m talking about something different. New weapon skills for existing weapons. Just like we have the option of reslotting our utility skills, why not give us the same option for weapon skills? New uses for old weapons would be fantastic, and would exponentially increase build variety.

As an example, the Engineer pistol set is a very condition-heavy build with low power scaling. What about an alternate set of skills for the pistol that’s more power-based and works with a different playstyle? Here’s an example.

• Static Shot alternative – Static Shot deals minor physical damage and inflicts blind and confusion to multiple enemies it bounces between. The blinds helps mitigate damage to the player, while the confusion works with the player’s condition damage to deal the main damage component. As an alternative, say we’re given the option to replace it with a Max Payne-style shoot dodge skill. The player dives in their currently moving direction, or backwards if stationary, and fires off a single high damage power-based shot while evading. The skill is similar in the way that it gives the player the damage mitigation (an evade instead of blinding multiple targets), but different in that it works on an entirely different playstyle and is tailored to a different kind of build (power versus condition).

Make these new weapon skills unlockable as a form of horizontal progression, and you not only give players more to do, you give us a ton more options to approach combat and builds.

I’ll try and keep it simple.

The primary type of progression we want (and apparently ArenaNet is on the same page with this as evidenced by the post regarding it) is horizontal progression. This primarily means new traits, new skill/abilities, and cosmetics. Let’s take stock of what we currently have with regards to this:

• No new traits (not including the traits added/changed in balance patches, as they’re not tied to progression).

• For skills and abilities, we currently have one new healing skill per profession, and one global healing skill. On the WvW side, we’ve gotten various new skills for siege weapons with the world rank system.

• For cosmetics, we have a single set of armor for each armor class that isn’t tied to the gem store since August of 2012, released this last patch. We have a handful of new weapons that aren’t tied to the gem store since August of 2012, the ascended and fractal weapon sets being the most notable. There were also the various weapons from champion boxes and a few temporary living story related ones (SAB, Wintersday, and Sovereign sets). We also have various backpieces, helmets, and gloves that have been rewarded for living story meta achievements or as rare drops during the living story.

Now, obviously this push towards more horizontal progression seems to be a more recent development, but I don’t think I really need to take too much time pointing out that this is a pretty grim state of affairs. The issue is pretty simple, and luckily, so is the solution. Hopefully you guys are fast-tracking getting new abilities and skills in as we move forward in the vein of these new profession healing skills, and will be extending this effort to new traits as well. As far as weapons and armor go, I don’t know if you need to beef up your modeling team, but for a game where cosmetics is one of the single biggest factors when it comes to progression, the current situation is unacceptable. The gem store is largely to blame. There are some great implementations of the gem store: character slots, bank tabs, collection expanders, makeover kits and name changes, town clothes, etc. But weapon skins? Armor skins? Why weren’t they implemented in the game as rewards for actual content? Just as the playerbase has been clamoring for more permanent content, we need more permanent rewards for said content, which in turn creates a permanent addition to the options for horizontal progression.

Gabby.3205:

She stole Canach’s credit and then threw him in jail.

To be fair, he was responsible for the deaths of many innocent consortium employees and settlers when he knowingly and intentionally set crazed karka on the settlements. The man is severely disturbed and clearly places no value on the lives of those he was “saving.” I think you’re giving the guy a little bit too much credit! But I agree, he could have been a much more interesting villain if the story was developed better.

I’m generally entirely neutral about the living story characters. As you said, there’s little to no character development, and it’s made worse by the fact that we aren’t given any real opportunity to foster ongoing, significant relationships between our characters and the NPCs.

If you’re considering personal story characters that have also appeared in the living story, I would say my favorite characters have been Logan, Rytlock, Anise, and Faren. Logan and Rytlock are the only two characters in Destiny’s Edge that seem to have any appreciable personality and are both pretty likeable. Faren makes for some good comic relief, and he generally makes the scenes he’s in more fun. His voiceactor’s delivery of “Husband…!?” during the Queen’s Jubilee when he was hitting on the married woman was pretty great. As for Anise, they’ve done a good job of making her a mysterious character while showing off both her manipulative seductress side as well as her stone cold, all business Leader of the Shining Blade side.

He’s right about the general issues regarding the living story as a whole, but Scarlet is as bad a character as she’s been made out to be. It’s two problems that compound on each other to make things worse. If Scarlet’s backstory was believable and better thought out, it would absolutely be more tolerable than it’s been. Conversely, if the delivery of the living story was better, Scarlet still would make the plot offensively bad based purely on her backstory alone.

It’s not a one or the other issue like he makes it out to be.

Back during the Queen’s Jubilee, there was a thread in which people brought up the subject of having a title attached to the “Light Up the Darkness” achievement. A dev responded and agreed that the achievement should award a title and that it was an oversight that it didn’t. He said he would look into retroactively awarding a title for the achievement, and that he would get back to us.

Was there ever any update on this? It’s a shame that one of the rarest, demanding, and most prestigious achievements in the game has nothing to show for it.

Yeah, this revamp has been a pretty unpleasant experience regarding the handling of agony resist. I main a different character than I was maining when I had made all my fractal progress before. I was very happy about the decision to make fractal progress account-wide, but the character I main now didn’t have any (infused) ascended gear, putting him on a much lower level as far as agony resist. I was lucky enough to get an infused ring drop on the night of the patch with stats good for my build, but the empty agony resist slot pretty much sucked any positivity from it. Now we’re expected to spend money and time we didn’t have to spend before to get the item back to the same level it was on Monday.

As someone said above, it’s a gold sink and a grind. Even worse, it’s a gold sink and a grind where one didn’t exist before. New infused fractal ring drops should come with the +5 preinstalled just like they have been before, with the option to go higher. That still gives us the gold sink and the grind ArenaNet wanted to inflict, while making the account-wide fractal progress more relevant and still allowing for a sense of progress when we get the “lucky” drop versus the standard drop. I don’t understand why this wasn’t the route they took.

Cathgar.7581:

No, as you can only buy things from store with gems you pay with cash to make that possible. So you are still paying RWM to buy that item.

You can buy gems with gold, not just cash. When you’re paying cash, you’re getting gems, not an item from the gem store. If you go to an arcade, buy $10 worth of tokens, but find that the game you wanted to play is broken, you’re not going to get your $10 back. They’re going to expect you to spend those tokens on other games.

Cathgar.7581:

Cliff.8679:

TFeldt.4560:

Cliff.8679:

But at the end of the day, buying something off the gem store gives you no more rights than someone who doesn’t. Everyone playing Guild Wars 2 is a paying customer, because they bought the game. Utilizing the gem store gives you no privileges, and you should not expect special treatment.

I expect no special treatment whatsoever. I expect to be given what I paid for, not something else.

You paid for gems, which you’ll be refunded if you so choose. It’s a terrible situation and ArenaNet desperately needs to hire a “Common Sense Manager” to oversee a number of aspects of the game before pulling something like this. I sympathize, but as I said, this is the best and only course of action they can take that preserves the integrity of the game.

Actually that is incorrect, he paid cash for the item but a by product of buying things off of the gem store is that your cash is converted to gems.

He bought gems with cash, and he bought the armor with gems. It’s no different than buying a gem card with real money. Intention of what item you wish to buy has nothing to do with it.

TFeldt.4560:

Cliff.8679:

But at the end of the day, buying something off the gem store gives you no more rights than someone who doesn’t. Everyone playing Guild Wars 2 is a paying customer, because they bought the game. Utilizing the gem store gives you no privileges, and you should not expect special treatment.

I expect no special treatment whatsoever. I expect to be given what I paid for, not something else.

You paid for gems, which you’ll be refunded if you so choose. It’s a terrible situation and ArenaNet desperately needs to hire a “Common Sense Manager” to oversee a number of aspects of the game before pulling something like this. I sympathize, but as I said, this is the best and only course of action they can take that preserves the integrity of the game.

TFeldt.4560:

Cliff.8679:

If you don’t like the new skin they give it, then you can get a refund. You’ve lost nothing. This is the best possible solution.

And will they refund the skin I overwrote with the flame skin? Look above in the thread. Many people have bought an original set of cheap exotics. Skinned it. Applied the flame skin over the old skin because it just looked better. Reverting to the original exotic will remove all the effort of obtaining the original skin and, again, real money we paid for the original transmutation crystals.

Even transmutation splitters won’t solve the problem. There was a problem with infusions vanishing, will people lose laurels?

We’ll find out when ArenaNet addresses that question, but the point remains. You’re talking about being a paying customer, and you’re not losing your money. If you lose some of your in-game assets, that’s unfortunate and I hope ArenaNet is capable of accounting for that for your sake and for anyone else affected. But at the end of the day, buying something off the gem store gives you no more rights than someone who doesn’t. Everyone playing Guild Wars 2 is a paying customer, because they bought the game. Utilizing the gem store gives you no privileges, and you should not expect special treatment.

TFeldt.4560:

Spawne.3128:

It’s funny listening to people defend a mistake that undermines the methodology of the game.

Do you honestly believe that the methodology of the game is more important to a company than giving customers what they paid for? Anyone who had the human cultural t3 armor has lost nothing but a sense of exclusivity from others having the flame skin. If they ruin the light flame skin then I’ve lost €20 (yes, I bought it for two characters).

You can argue the value of abstract concepts (even feelings) and I might very well agree with you, since many invested a lot of time to grind that gold (and arenanet themselves offer a gem to gold conversion). But you’ll never convince me that I’m not entitled to the product I paid real money for. They screwed up, I didn’t.

If you don’t like the new skin they give it, then you can get a refund. You’ve lost nothing. This is the best possible solution.

DeWolfe.2174:

Many of us find the concept of cultural armor ridiculous. Many of us prefer choice and choice is extremely limited in game. Especially when the art department has a very quirky sense of style.

For those whom already own the T3, they bought it because they liked it. All that I see in these complaints are spoiled individuals wanting to deny others. It’s as simple as that. You have and you don’t want anyone else to have it too. There’s words for people like that….

If you have a problem with the concept of racial armors, that’s another issue entirely. If that’s something they’re ever going to change, it shouldn’t be done through the gem store and it certainly shouldn’t be done for only a single race and armor class.

It’s not about people being selfish, it’s about preserving integrity.

MisterEction.9382:

But, the proposed solution, the the one ANet has settled upon, isn’t fair to those who are having something they like being taken away from them without fair compensation (unless they miraculously pull off a fantastic skin that appeals to all the people that bought the first one).

The nature of this mishap inherently was going to result in things being unfair for one side of the argument. This was a no-win situation, and their solution is the best possible damage control they’re likely capable of.

Hot Boy, I think you’ve missed the point of why they’re changing it. What you’re essentially asking for at this point is an optional upgrade to a new version that you like better down the line, with nothing else changing if you don’t.

This armor simply cannot exist as it does now, because it completely undermines something that a very large portion of the playerbase worked hard for since the game’s release, as well as undermining the entire concept of racial armors.

Risingashes, I would argue that it has less to do with presentation than the character itself. I think her voiceacting, and even dialogue, is perfectly fine. I think she would make a great addition to the living story under different circumstances.

The problem is too many aspects of her as a character make little to no sense, and she comes off as an adolescent fanfiction character. She’s a sylvari (the only race that I could have remotely accepted for this would be an asura) who somehow graduated from all three asura colleges and goes on to become a star pupil of just about every race under the sun, and manages to transcend any and all prejudices that the members of her alliances would have had with her. She’s insane and mentally unbalanced, yet she commands the loyalty of what appears to be the single largest unified group of villains in the history of Tyria.

It’s absurd. If the explanation does indeed involve alternate realities and manipulation of the Eternal Alchemy, which at this point is the only thing I can come up with that even approaches some semblance of a coherent story, it still doesn’t fix the problem. The very fact that she as a character was set up in this way cheapens and damages the lore and world of Tyria.

She would have made a great recurring minion for a better and more realistically constructed villain if she didn’t have the outrageous background. She is a fun character if you take the personality, voice acting, and dialogue by itself. It’s the combination of everything else that has poisoned the entirety of the living story arc and has left such a bad taste in players’ mouths.

As someone with no investment in this issue (no intention of buying either T3 human armor or the gem store armor), I still have to speak out in support of those human players with T3 light. It’s pretty offensive to think a conscious decision was made to completely trivialize the closest thing this game has to prestigious armor that many players spent a lot of time and money obtaining. I can’t believe no one would have anticipated this reaction. I’m very, very eager to hear Arenanet’s response to this issue, because it’s frankly outrageous.

Arewn.2368:

They can certainly do what ever they want with the story, and their obviously letting Angel do so, but they have to deal with the resulting fall out.
If the story is crap, people aren’t going to like it. If it continues being crap, people are going to leave, and Arena Net doesn’t want that.

There’s no need to call out specific people. They work as a team and it’s a collaborative effort between them. No one person is responsible for any failures of the story.

Darmikau.9413:

She can and should eventually be phased out, and will hopefully be lost to history as “that weird thing that happened once.” The true failure of Guild Wars 2’s writing won’t be in what Scarlet does (though what she does isn’t helping), it will be in how she is remembered. And if she or anything she has caused is remembered in any significant way, THEN she interferes with the natural foundations of the constructed world and becomes the subject of ire forever more.

Unfortunately, this is already a problem. Remember that there’s an entire dungeon path in Twilight Arbor now that will forever stand as a monument to Scarlet’s involvement in the world of Tyria. Also, apparently she appears in the Thaumanova Reactor fractal every time, not just the story instance. She’s here to stay, even after her arc is gone. She won’t get retconned, and I agree that this isn’t necessarily the answer. Hopefully ArenaNet is currently brainstorming a great twist that will somehow fix Scarlet’s ridiculous backstory and explain her past and future actions in a believable way, but I’m not counting on it. As has been said many times already, too much damage has already been done. It’s a big, lasting black mark on the lore of Guild Wars and we’re just going to have to deal with it. At this point, the only thing we can do is hope that the writers learn from their mistakes, and that they take the time to make sure they fully understand the complaints.

Gabby.3205:

Did she say something like that about Trahearne?

Strangely enough, no, not that I saw. Kind of a bummer. Here’s one more to show you the starting dialogue.

For those who haven’t yet been lucky enough to get the Trahearne fight, I took a couple screens.

I don’t think this was the case with the other characters, but you actually get a ‘FINISH THEM!" prompt with Trahearne. I know I didn’t get one for Logan. I get the feeling Anet knew we’d all want to end him with a finisher, so kudos on that.

EDIT: Nevermind, I saw a screen with the “FINISH THEM!” for Tybalt so I guess it’s not exclusive to Trahearne. Oh well.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s one of the more prevalent theories floating around at the moment, that she’s his champion. Of course, there really isn’t anything specific to hint towards it, but it’s as good a guess as any.

Just to point out though, the plan with Dragon Bash was actually to get Mai Trin onto the council.

(Continued from previous post)

If we’re going to have recurring characters in these living stories, we need to have ongoing relationships with these characters.

Examples:
Lord Faren is a fun character and our own characters can react to him in a number of ways. Maybe your character is totally into his antics and is happy to be his wingman and would jump at the chance to hit the tavern with him to try and score with some ladies. Maybe your character finds him disrespectful and wants to voice disapproval, possibly working towards turning him into a proper gentleman. Maybe your character wishes he’d show the same interest as he does in other women to her. Each of these approaches opens up a lot of possibilities for meaningful character interactions that would make us actually care about Faren more, and by extension, any of the stories he’s involved in.

How about Anise? She’s a pretty interesting character, and as the head of the Shining Blade, she’s got all sorts of potential. In the Queen’s Jubilee, she and Logan had a disagreement on how things were handled. Where does your character stand on the issue? Why not let us talk to Logan about it, agree with him and let him vent his frustrations? Or try to convince him to see her side, and that it was the best call? She’s a very secretive type; maybe if we had been given the chance to get to know her better throughout the personal story and living stories up to that point, there could have been more to that event for us as players. She was awfully flirty in the personal story; if we had had the option to flirt back, could we have gotten closer to her over time and been able to get more information out of her? Or if her manipulative nature had turned our characters off from her, she may have cut back on how she interacted with them.

Hopefully you guys are getting the picture. I understand what I’m proposing is a lot more work than has been put in up to this point, requiring a lot more variables and persistence when it comes to NPC interaction. However, I think it’s necessary to get us really caring about the living story.

To summarize, we want to feel like we play a part in the story, and not just one dictated for us. Give us the ability to play our characters the way we want to play them. We want to feel like we actually make a difference in the story, and aren’t just along for the ride. NPCs shouldn’t just be information dispensers who drive the living story forward when needed, they should have meaningful, ongoing interactions with our characters. “I remember you from Southsun,” isn’t enough. No more forcing our characters to regard other characters the way the story dictates. No more 20 questions with NPCs without any branching dialogue whatsoever. This would be a huge step forward for the living story.

And thank you very much for this collaborative development initiative. I hope a lot of good comes out of it.

I’ll try to keep this relatively short, as I’m sure what I have to say has been discussed to some extent already.

First, just to get this out of the way, there are many, many issues with Scarlet. The biggest is the same issue that plagues Trahearne: positioning within the context of the story. I think you’ve gone to excessive lengths to try and make these characters seem impressive and important to us (the "graduated from all Asura colleges, greatest disciple of every race, etc. for Scarlet, and every character in the personal story tripping over one another, including our own PC, to shower Trahearne with undeserved praise and adulation). It’s over-the-top, and the absurdity of it makes these characters into a bad joke. We can’t take them seriously, and when the story calls for us to, it falls flat on its face. One eye roll after another turns into resentment, and it isn’t particularly surprising to see such violent backlash from the players regarding these characters being forced on us. I’m not going to harp on the Scarlet and Trahearne stuff though, because I’m sure you’ve all heard the feedback on them loud and clear. I just think it’s important to continue restating it, because unfortunately, it’s mistake that’s been made multiple times now.

Now, on to the bigger issue.

One of the biggest things holding back both the living story and the personal story is a lack of ongoing character interaction between us and the characters that populate these stories, combined with a lack of ability to actually roleplay our characters. The best way to get us caring about the stories is to get us caring about the characters involved, and the best way to get us caring about the characters is giving us the ability to have meaningful interactions with them.

How are we supposed to really foster any attachment to the characters in the story when the extent of our interactions with them is asking questions for clarification of the task at hand? I think most players would agree with the sentiment that as a player, it kind of feels like we’re just along for the ride. Let’s get some meaningful character interactions going that actually have an effect on the relationships between our characters.

Let’s have some charr characters who won’t give you the time of day if you’re a human. And let’s not forget about the completely underutilized personality system. You could try and placate them (Charming, Captivating), appeal to their sense of duty (Militant, Diplomatic), goad them on by being smarmy rogue, possibly resulting in receiving no help at all (Scoundrel), or even beat them into cooperating/simply out of spite (Brute). Give us options. And make these options actually matter. Now, that’s just a quick one-off kind of example.

(Continued in the next post)

The new path doesn’t give credit towards the Hobby Dungeon Explorer achievement. Just wanted to get that reported, thanks!

Thanks for the reply, Angel. It feels like we’ve gotten very little new lore in GW2 (and unfortunately, most of it seems to come from interviews rather than the game itself), so it’s nice to at least have some conversation going on the lore forums. I’d like to see it more often.

I only played the original Guild Wars for a few months in preparation for GW2, so I don’t know nearly as much of the lore as the other fine folks that frequent this board, but I do agree that it does feel like a huge letdown with how the old lore (specifically regarding humanity) has been handled. I think it’s important to make things work for a multi-racial PC cast now, but it does seem like the “retconning” for lack of a better word of a lot of the human lore in an attempt to do this has been a bit excessive. Especially because the human lore was genuinely fascinating. It’s kind of a letdown to see just how much of it has been toned down from what it was in the interest of putting the other races on more equal footing. I feel like it’s really cheapened humanity, the Gods (once my favorite part of the lore, but at this point they’ve become pretty unimpressive), and the impact they’ve had on Tyria. It also doesn’t really help that the Eternal Alchemy is apparently the de facto “correct” way of understanding the world all of a sudden.

I guess at this point there really isn’t anything that can be done about this, but I think it’s worth noting. I mean, maybe they’ll throw us a bone and actually do something awesome with the Human Gods sometime down the line. Have the Pact get absolutely decimated by one of the Elder Dragons and when all looks lost, the gods bust in and help save the day in some grand, kitten fashion. Although at the rate things have been going, I’m more expecting a casual “Oh yeah, the risen weren’t lying. Zhaitan really did kill the gods. That sucks, huh?” in some random blurb when they get around to doing a revamp of the Arah dungeon.

Josh, you’re on a roll with all of these responses to us players. Thanks for taking the time to talk to everyone, it’s pretty clear how much you care about our experience with your content.

Just wanted to throw my feedback into the mix. I can definitely see where a lot of the complaints about difficulty are coming from, as my guildmates and I were joking about “if this is normal, what’s tribulation going to look like!?” as we were making our way through World 2. It’s definitely a massive difficulty spike coming from World 1. That being said, I’ve still been having a blast. Despite the complaints, I’m positive that the majority of the people complaining now will get much better over the next few days if they choose to soldier on, to the point where what was “too difficult” before will be relatively easy to get through. Those dart traps in zone 2 are a perfect example. After a few deaths, you start knowing where to look for them, to the point where I could get to the gong pretty quickly without incident.

My feeling is, I don’t necessarily think nerfing the difficulty of World 2 is absolutely needed, and that this isn’t the disaster that many impatient players are proclaiming. However, based on what you’ve said about your intention for Normal mode, it might be a good idea to tone down some of the more difficult areas. Especially if the difficulty is going to continue ramping up in worlds 3 and 4.

Overall, I’m really impressed with how well you’ve designed SAB. It’s difficult, but it’s fun, and the sense of accomplishment you were going for is certainly there. I’m planning on finishing World 2 this week, and I’m looking forward to having a horrible, horrible weekend trying to make it through Tribulation Mode!

Glad you posted this, I was actually planning on making the same thread. It’s very, very easy to imagine them forgetting to bump engineer kits’ base damage to Ascended levels with the patch next week, and it would be very nice to know that they’re not forgetting (or that we reminded them).

BobbyStein.2315:

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.

I’m almost positive there was never a single instance of Divinity’s Reach being referred to as “DR” until Faren called it that in the Southsun event. Since launch, every NPC that ever called it by any kind of shorthand simply called it “Divinity.” I may be wrong, though. I agree that it feels very, very jarring when referred to as “DR.”

Just wanted to add my personal feedback.

I think Tara Strong does a brilliant job with the voiceacting for Scarlet, as well as whoever’s been writing her dialogue, and that alone really elevates her into a character I’ve been enjoying as being part of the story. She’s a fun character.

That being said, I’m also bothered by her background. It’s just a little too ridiculous, and it’s definitely where the whole “Villain Sue” accusations come from. A sylvari that got special dispensation and graduated from all three asura colleges in record time? Who’s apparently more intelligent and devious than any character we’ve met in the game (even compared to asura?) Come on. Especially considering she’s the insane type, which already brings down her credibility as being the mastermind; she seems like she would work better as a prominent minion that carries out the mastermind’s plans. Trahearne was bad enough, and now we have another sylvari that has no business being portrayed the way the story portrays them. Honestly, I think there’s a pretty big problem with how the story positions sylvari characters throughout the entirety of GW2 (second-in-command of the Vigil, for example) but that’s another topic entirely.

I’m really, really hoping that there’s a good explanation for Scarlet’s outrageous and unrealistic backstory. I’m having trouble coming up with one myself, though. If there isn’t, and Scarlet’s background is exactly what it seems, then I really hope you guys can temper your future story characters to be more believable within the context of Tyria.

I do want to mention that you guys do a lot of things right. The way you’ve handled Faren in particular, has been very enjoyable. I wasn’t really a huge fan of him during the personal story, but you guys really made him come into his own during the living story. I also like what you’ve done with Logan (the cutscene with the bomb going off and him using his guardian magic to protect the child was a great touch). The cutscenes have been getting a lot better, and Rox and Braham’s banter has been fun (if a little cringe-worthy sometimes…Kuh-Braham!). Revisiting places like Cragstead, North Nolan Hatchery, etc. that show a lasting impact on the story is when the living story really shines. And even though you guys have had some bugs preventing it from triggering at times, characters recognizing you and what you’ve done in previous living story events really go a long way to include us in a story that very easily runs the risk of making the player just feel like they’re along for the ride rather than being a major influence.

Looking forward to seeing how the story plays out, and I’m sure you’ll continue to improve your approaches to the living story and the characters you populate it with. Thanks again for all the hard work.

Honestly, it’s kind of sad seeing how conditioned so many players have become at this point that the first thought is “put it in the gem store for us” rather than just “put it in the game as an obtainable reward.” I’ve got nothing against the gem store and it’s obviously an important part of their business model, but every single new piece of armor and weaponry can’t be introduced through it. It’s ridiculous.

We’re coming up on the game’s first birthday, and what non-gem store items have they added? Molten Gloves, Dragon Helm, the SAB skins, the monocle, the Southsun backpacks, the fractal weapons, and the guild weapons? That’s it, right? And how many of those weren’t limited time things? The fractal weapons and the guild weapons.

Honestly, that’s pretty pathetic. How about introducing the Aetherblade weapons as permanent, obtainable items in-game? Make them obtainable from the Aetherblade jumping puzzle chest and as possible drops from Aetherblade enemies. If you’re feeling really inspired, add in explorable modes for Aetherblade Retreat/a new Aetherblade dungeon and make it a permanent dungeon in another release. Finish Aetherblade versions of the currently unrepresented weapons like dagger, torch, etc. and make them purchasable with dungeon tokens. But throw us a bone and give us some new, permanent gear that isn’t tied to the gem store for once. It’s getting a little out of hand considering how little we’ve gotten in the last year.

I just wanted to take a moment and voice that I hope you guys are being cautious about the dungeons-to-fractals thing from these living story events. Obviously the Molten Facility is too long of a dungeon to just be thrown into the fractals as is, so I’m sure the Molten Facility we experienced during Flame and Frost will never be seen again in its original form. With the upcoming Aetherblade dungeon, it sounds like you guys are planning on giving it the same treatment.

Do you guys also consider bringing back these living story dungeons as permanent additions? Rather than relegating them to fractals, creating explorable modes for them and rewards? Not everyone is going to run fractals in the hopes of randomly getting the dungeon they wanted to replay. And considering we’re set to have 3 sets of armor and Aetherblade-themed weapons coming out, the Aetherblade dungeon seems to be a perfect candidate for this. It’s no secret that people are clamoring for permanent content based on all the groans and eye-rolling we see when a release indicates that something that sounds fun and exciting is only available for a limited time, as well as new rewards that don’t come from the gem store.

Basically, I’m hoping you’re not using “we can put it in fractals” as a crutch when you make new, temporary content. Personally, I would be much more interested in seeing the upcoming Aetherblade dungeon return at a later time with a new living story release, like “Revenge of the Sky Pirates” or something that introduces the explorable modes and new sets of dungeon gear, turning it into a full-on, legitimate dungeon alongside the current ones. For fractals, I’d rather see new fractals being built specifically to be fractals, rather than converted from some other content.

Just wanted to say, you guys did an incredible job. Super Adventure Box is an absolute blast, and everyone involved in putting it together should be proud. Seriously some of the most fun I’ve had in GW2, and it went completely above and beyond my expectations.

Also, that commercial you guys put together? I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.

Awesome work guys, can’t wait for the entire SAB experience to be complete!

UnderdogSMO.9428:

I think most of the player’s actually like having things to work for >_> it keeps them in the world and logging on. or that seems to be the case if you look around in game…..

Can you honestly tell me that you look forward to the time investment it will take to get multiple sets of ascended gear for one character/gear out multiple characters in ascended? So far, there’s only 5 slots that have ascended gear in them, with many more to come. At this rate, imagine how much time it will take when we have full sets of armor, weapons, accessories, even rebreathers.

It’s ludicrous.

And I reiterate, a small guild “working” towards Guild Missions is ultimately pointless the way they’re currently implemented.

And just to add, having something to “work” for shouldn’t be what keeps people logging in. Having fun should be.

Greibach, very good post, and I suspect you’ll be told it’s “off topic,” but it’s really not. The whole ascended fiasco is beginning to pervade every aspect of the game, and the reliance on guild missions for the most efficient (although still entirely unreasonable) method of obtaining the new pieces is a major aspect of people’s discontent.

That being said…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Every guild can—so long as they research the appropriate upgrades, recruit enough members or outside assistance, and work together to finish the content. This is quite similar to saying every character can kill Zhaitan—as long as they’ve leveled to 80, purchased gear, found a group, etc. Keep in mind that content is often in itself something to be achieved. In this case we’ve taken that concept from character progression and applied it to guilds, and now we have guild progression (which should read as something new for guilds to do). That’s on top of all the other things guilds are already for.

But it’s not similar at all. What sense of achievement is there joining a large guild for the sole purpose of using them for rewards? Or grinding out influence as a small guild to be able to access this content, only to find it impossible to complete without outside help (and who would help? No one outside the guild gets rewards for it, so why bother?). With your Zhaitan example, it’s something that someone can achieve at their own pace (leveling and obtaining gear is not time-gated. Aside from ascended gear, as we’re coming to find out). Finding a group can be done on-the-fly, doesn’t require any kind of extended association, and anyone who participates gets the reward.

The reward structure for Guild Missions (and laurels, and all ascended gear) is insulting enough. Inaccessibility of content for, I suspect, the majority of the player base, is just ridiculous.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Cliff.8679:

Not only that, but ArenaNet’s notion that the main engineer weapons should be intentionally weak due to the existence of kits is baffling.

That made me realize something. Engineer already paid the price for their kits with not being able to weapon swap, so why do they have to pay more by having weak weapons?

Yeah, they shouldn’t. And frankly, there shouldn’t be a price to be paid for kits at all. It’s not like Elementalists where it’s necessary to deny them a weapon swap due to the attunements being their class mechanic. Kits for us are just an option, one of many choices we can make regarding how to build our characters. At least, they’re supposed to be options.

Love the display name, by the way.

Engineers should have had weapon swapping at the very beginning. Not only that, but ArenaNet’s notion that the main engineer weapons should be intentionally weak due to the existence of kits is baffling. Kits make up just one of four major pillars of the engineer’s utility: Kits, elixirs, gadgets, and turrets.

Why balance the entire class around kits alone? I would love running a viable build based around the main engineer weapons that had more of a focus on elixirs and/or gadgets, but that’s not an option at the moment due to the inherent weakness of our main weapons, our lack of a weapon swap, and the underpowered nature of most of the engineer’s utilities that aren’t kits.

Engineer has needed an overhaul for a long time, and it’s got a long way to go before it’s where it needs to be.

Please no mounts. They add nothing of value and will only serve to destroy the believability of the world as people run around on giant turtles, rhinos, crabs, and whatever else ridiculous possibilities they come up with as time goes on. Mounts end up becoming incredibly obnoxious, and they add nothing of value to the game.

As someone in a small guild that has no hope of ever unlocking guild missions, I just want to say that the implementation of the guild mission content is pretty shameful.

Why spend so much time adding in content that could be fun for everyone and set it up so only large guilds will ever benefit from it? I have no incentive whatsoever to assist in a guild mission I see going on, nor do I even have the ability to participate in some of the content if I wanted to. If ArenaNet wanted to enhance guild-related features, they should have focused more on prestige type stuff, like guild halls. Actual gameplay content should be something open for everyone to enjoy, regardless of the kind of guild they’re in.

On top of that, adding in ascended accessories and making the only method of obtaining them aside from guild missions require 50 ectos and almost a month’s worth of laurels each is just insulting. And based on what I’m hearing, the once-a-week nature of the merits is bad enough.

This is just stupid. And where’s the communication on this? Wasn’t 2013 supposed to be when they wanted to make a better effort communicating with the playerbase?

Heijincks.9267:

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

I dunno, I define a grind as performing the same monotonous task repeatedly, over and over, for a reward. Time gated or not, as far as I’m concerned, fractal after fractal for the chance at rings is a grind. Daily after daily to amass laurels to turn in for one piece of gear, resulting in having to continue doing daily after daily for your next piece is a grind.

Are we sitting in a single camp spot for hours killing the same enemies over and over for exp or hoping for a rare drop? No. But it’s still the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s still monotonous, it still isn’t fun, and we’ll still be stuck doing it if we want our characters to get ahead.

Just wanted to add my opinion. I’m sure it’s nothing new, but the more feedback, the better.

Something a lot of people don’t really consider is that a lot of players want multiple sets of gear for different roles/playstyles/builds. That’s a big aspect of Guild Wars. But by attaching such a high cost and time investment on ascended gear compared to exotic, it really kills this philosophy for players that don’t have the time and/or resources to spend every moment of their playtime grinding out dailies and monthlies for laurels or slogging through fractal after fractal. Especially if this means being forced to do content they’re not interested in, which ArenaNet themselves say is a big no-no to them.

Personally, I’m completely burned out on fractals. There isn’t enough variety at the moment, and they take too long (especially when it’s just a random chance at a random ring once a day). Dailies feel more like a chore to me, something I need to get done before I can go out and do what I actually want to do. You can apply that to the pristine fractal relics as well.

The original philosophy surrounding explorable dungeons is still nowhere to be found in GW2, and it’s sad. Very difficult content that, if completed, guarantees you a reward that you want. I’m tired of grinding tokens, laurels, and fractals. It’s not fun. We need rewards tied to completing actual content, without the ridiculous RNG. Now we’ve got the guild missions, and not only is that another grind with commendations, it’s a slap in the face to anyone who isn’t in a 100+ person guild. It’s actually pretty telling that I was nearly about to post this without a word about guild missions, because they’re so out of sight, out of mind.

tl;dr Obtaining a single set of ascended gear takes way too long thanks to relying on RNG, terrible pacing with the daily crawl, and is far too expensive in both a time and resource for people to gear out multiple characters or obtain multiple sets of ascended gear for different builds. Worst of all, every method of obtaining them at the moment is mind-numbingly boring unless you absolutely love slogging through the same fractals every day or you’re in the minority who’s actually able to be participating in guild missions (assuming they’re actually fun).

So I recently bought a friend a copy of GW2 and suggested that she try linking her account to my GW account in case she could get my HoM rewards. This didn’t work, but I think it had a strange side effect; it changed my display name to hers! At least I assume that’s what happened. Either way, my old display name has been replaced with hers, although the 4 digits following it are what they used to be.

I contacted support about this and was told that it’s not possible for our display names to be changed unless they violate a naming policy, but that we might be given the option to change our display name in the future. So I’m stuck with my friend’s display name now? Please tell me something can be done about this. I read a post a little while back that the concern with players being able to change their display names is that it could be abused by people trying to avoid disciplinary action or something. That’s understandable, but can’t it be something like you can only change it once every 2 weeks? Regardless, if I’m stuck with someone else’s display name because of a glitch in the system, that’s pretty ridiculous.

Either way, hopefully this post is helpful in case this glitch was caused by the account linking attempt so that you guys are aware of it. If something can be done about fixing my display name, all the better. Thanks!

Garenthal.1480:

I despise Tybalt. He’s an excellent character, though in no way was he suited for a secretive order that accepts very few failures. The fact he added an element of comic relief to almost every Order of Whispers mission was a little annoying, too – especially since it came at the cost of the giving the more important and intriguing lore figures much less screen-time.

Gotta agree with you there. Tybalt was definitely a likeable character (although they took the whole “apples” gag way too far), but I really would have liked to have seen him used somewhere outside of the Order of Whispers storyline. I couldn’t take the OoW seriously because of him.

Yes, same issue here.

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