Guild Wars 2

I’m not expert on videogame mechanics, but I’ve seen some work on “mechanics” directed to build and manage communities, and one effect of the Marionette event, that I can’t decide yet if is intended or not, is to divide the community using bullying methods.

In this case, the bullying starts when the event success is linked to the weakest member of the event. When the overall event fails because a player, or a very small group of players (1-5) cannot beat their champion, making sure everyone else is there watching them, and without any possibility of intervention.

Basically, the event put a big red signal in that small group of 1-5 players, and mark them as pariah or social outcast, “those who ruined your event”, “you could have been successful, because you’re good and excellent, but those other players, only those, have prevented you to success, so you must hate them quite a lot now”.

I’m sure this creates a community, but I’m not sure yet if this is the kind of community ANet wants to create. A competitive community that is put in a place to hate specific individuals for within this community. The noobs, the casuals, “the ones that deserve to uninstall and quit”.

I’ve been in the event twice. I want to help the others where they are in trouble in their platforms. I don’t want to see myself alone in a platform and not being able to defeat the champion, and ruin the event and the last 2 hours of waiting+game for 100-200 players.

I had enough of this back in school and confronted to bullyers and their supporters, and if ANet wants to create a community that encourages bullying, players need to be informed.

I’d like to see epic bosses and fights in open world, so players are not separated among instances and locked out of the world. But in a way that doesn’t throw multiple overflows in every server. The timers/wait seems a common problem for this. X boss respawns every x hours, and players that want to do it needs to be there, the waiting queues expand in time et voilá, 1hour waiting afk. Doesn’t sound good.

Changing times could work, for example, Tequatl arrives in a server, isn’t defeated, it stays there. Forever. Until defeated. There is no special hurry to defeat it, so players may not feel urged to go all at the same hour. Experienced players, guilds or strangers could assembly a group large enough to try. Scale the boss from 30-50 to 200 or whatever the cap is.

This would help, if done right, to make the world more alive. If every 60+ map has its own epic boss, that may stay there for days, the map should reflect the boss presence. Enemies are harder, some groups of minions raid the players, sky is darker, conditions apply on certain zones…. just avoid make the map not navigable as in Orr, that’s easy and feels cheap, and punish players in weird way, or punish them to not being in a elite guild dedicated to clean maps.

The event stays there, you can try to defeat, you can try at 22:20 if there is enough people there that want to coordinate at that time. If it’s already defeated, well, then wait until it appears again, search for another undefeated epic monster fight, whatever.

But to tell every player “This is up, stay there 1 hour in advance so you can do with group/friends/guild, otherwise, I will punish you” would continue in ignored epic monsters or overflow wars.

So, we have this contents that are new, run for two weeks (or a month? not sure) and then are gone forever (or not, or last some more weeks like the previous story).

The really temporal ones (the two weeks, gone forever) are easy to be missed by players, specially new ones (yes! there are new players!).

I think that maybe a respawn timer put in the UI, just where the achievements are, would be useful to try to gather more people. You see a yellow star there that was not existing some days ago, click, it says something about an event, it tells you to go to some location and then, you have to figure out to go to internet, and check forums until you find the respwan time, and wonder when the last respawn was, probably search some internet tool that make that checks, etc and form a waiting zerg, where half your server is there just waiting.

A reliable, integrated timer would prevent players to go out of the game, so the old-fashion single-monitor kind of player could just continue playing until the timer says “hurry! something happening there! it may be big!”, and if you find that there is still 1 hour left, you can somewhere else to do whatever you feel you want to do.

Basically, it could increase participation in events using in-game tools, instead of figuring out on internet if there is something to do.

It would also increase overflows, probably, but this is another problem (people required for events, zergs, etc…)

Yesterday there was a new patch/living story update, so probably everyone was in one of the two locations where the story update is happening.

But is weird, there should be some people on Lion’s Arch as usually.

Asura are funny as hell, and it seems than Engineers are a good fit, theme-wise. Not sure about medium armours on them, but you may find something appealing, or just cross random armour elements until it looks god. Asura fashion may not be ready for the booka tastes!

An industrial Engi Charr is also a good thematic fit. Probably there is some skin or armor that looks good enough

I’ve to point that, being in the traditional RPG side of Legend of the Five Rings, their method of world construction with tournaments is really annoying and horrible from the RPG/Story point of view, because we have to deal with many arbitrary storylines that are only justified by “someone won a tournament”.

So, when planning a campaign, you have usually to pick the story so far, and choose which elements to discard and which ones to adjust, just to have a believable world constructed (not a realistic one, but a coherent one).

But I have to admit that the card and the tourneys scene is more much stronger, and every card player loves the idea of being able to affect the setting. It does not create a great, coherent story, but the current Living Story implementation neither does it, and at least it creates an interesting one.

That said, the ability to affect story would be only in the most power-hardcore-players, so probably the most able to grind something would have more chance to affect something, so my very very early prediction is that the story would be affected by some sort of StoryZerg, that would create a train to chain the selected events, grind champions/materials/whatever needed to vote/affect. This would clash with mechanicals nerfs/bluffs (like the current berseker one).

But it would create an interesting world, nonetheless

I’d try to analyse past events to connect dots and see what can be delivered that respects cohesion with the past stuff.

But as the past events are forever gone, we are dealing with “we want you to do theories about a series of book in which we totally destroy any existing copies of the past even if they were at someone’s else library and the only thing that remains are the memories of those who read it in the past”.

Which makes the story creating and experience weird, in the best case.

she creates a new race, the scarlets. All members of this race have the exact same appearance, and they can infect other races to become scarlets. All scarlets are perfect and extremely good at everything, so in 1 week all GW will be only populated by perfect scarlets.

The resistance is futile

I didn’t worried until XBOX LIVE.

People likes to happily pay extra fees for the same thing they were not paying before. Just to show others they can pay and the others may not, so they are elite and the others are crap.

In this case, ISP are grouped from years ago to try to break neutrality, so they can charge additional fees for everything, like:

We offer basic internet for 10$: gmail, yahoo, wikipedia, amazon and microsoft stuff
Plus social pack! for extra 3$: facebook, twitter, whatever
Plus Internet gold for extra 5$: basic websites that agree to pay us a fee in order to appear somewhere.
Plus Internet Platinum for only extra 15$: ok, we’ll let you navigate more or less as the pre-we-broke-neutrality era, but of kitten the pages will be slow when we detect that you use them often. You will cry over us you kitten user.
Plus gaming light pack! 5$ extra so you can access steam, wow, whatever
Plus gaming hardcore pack! 10$ extra and you have the most popular MMO that will pay us a fee in order to be serviced or we will destroy them!.

Etc etc

OP got it right, I think.

I’d like to see the LS as something that is released periodically, but you can jump in at any point in ‘real life time’ and play the parts with actual story. Even if you miss global events that can only be made by zergs, or elections or whatever, there should be a cinematic of someone remembering them and telling it to you.

And being a game, introduce gameplay/RPG stuff. How the character interacts with NPCs? This should affect further dialogues, or even missions. Or make some NPC available or not (it doesn’t need to have mechanical consequences, but for example just determine a kind of reward or skin or something).

I cannot imagine GW1 with the pre-searing being only available for 2 weeks and after that everyone starting at post-searing. It was there forever, available to everyone who starts later.

Also, I found the overlap of events distracting, like now having funny snowmen and gift boxes and snowball launching in the same area where the tragic-epic-villain nightmare whatever just attempted to destroy Tyria.

It feels weird, it’s like having Save Private Ryan and, in the first scene, the Monty Python is doing funny scenes in the beach while the kitten army is commanded by Rowan Atkinson in WWI Black Adder outfit. YEah it’s fun and I’d buy that, but then we cannot pretend to be serious or care about all those dead or the tragic stuff. Just separate this stuff.

One area I found interesting and it seems is not reflected in the proposal is to investigate a change in sigils/runes, making them collectable/unlockable and working as dyes do, so it allows for more customization.

In general, it may be worded as thinking in customization options than affect mechanics + QOL instead of just looks. In a way like the improvement in the dye system that is GW2 when compared to GW1

Our Guild is 3-3, in fact, 3 couples.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A lot of the ideas boiled down into variations of one of these two options, and really both have a lot of cool concepts and ideas. Can folks think of anything else that’s a bit more outside the box for something bigger?

Let’s try.

Assuming current professions/skills state of things.

What about adding a secondary 6-10 skill bar? That could be linked to the advanced profession, and be used like the alt weapon for warriors/guardians/etc.. with a button to switch between normal skill bar or advanced one.

In that advanced bar you would have a heal skill (or it could be a 7-10 bar and force to use the same heal skill for both), 3 utility skills and 9-10 could be Elite skills.

If two elites at once are way overpowered, then only 1 Elite and 1 “Advanced” a new kind of skill limited to the advanced professions.

Advanced professions could be linked to Orders for variety, so each Order could offer 2 or 3 Advanced Paths. To help players to not feel restrained, there should be an option to change your Order (maybe limited). Some of the Advanced Paths could be shared between orders, for example:

Explorer: Whispers or Priory
Assassin: Whispers or Vigil
Defender: Priory or Vigil

Etc…

Each Path can offer:

Exclusive healing skill (or abandoning this idea and use normal heal skill for everything)
Path “Advanced skill selection” (only one in use, like Elite), it would be the 9 slot.
7-8 would be the usual utility skill set by profession.

So with some few different Path skills, there could be some different combos, depending on race/profession/path, without doing it very overpowered against other players. Every path could as specific or generic as desired, and adding new paths should be easier than adding entire professions.

I’d totally play this story modes with all cutscenes, killing all enemies and totally accepting that I have 0 experience in dungeons and no desire to be super competitive.

I had the idea that such players didn’t exist, but it seems I’m wrong.

I decided to not care about Living Story events or any other kind of periodical events that requires forced repetition for 2 weeks in order to achieve something. Achievements like “complete puzzle x 100 times” or “try to kill scarlet but not really kill her like 10 times today” are not, IMHO, the way to follow any kind of a story.

I didn’t knew the winter stuff would last for 1 entire month, knowing that in advance I could have tried the nightmare tower or whatever is currently going on. But making dungeons that last for some very limited time doesn’t sound any interesting for me, because when I can complete it or reach the skill to do it, it’s already gone forever.

IF Living Story events are more similar to Southsun Cove, in the way that after ending there is something permanent left there (an area, a dungeon…), then I would not mind to try something, or to follow the story arc if there is any.

Also, it would be nice to have some easy way to check the story so far, missed videos or cutscenes, etc.. probably there is already one (as far as we’re reached, the story in the events is not interesting for me, so I didn’t checked).

Also, I think that humoristic events should be more limited. Yesterday I was doing events in Shiverpeak Mountains and had to retake a fortress, with enemies all around, epic music and a big pink present package in the middle. Either take out the joke or change the epic tone for some festive music and put Santa hats on all the grudge.

Trying to develop an intense story about an archvilian epic salad mastermind while there are a lot of halloween stuff, wintersaday stuff, joke stuff, presents with letal funny toys and so… well, it doesn’t seem to make the world serious enough to care about those characters.

How would I like all this to implement?

1. Add more than replace. Let new players replay the “Scarlet Epic Whatever” when they reach certain level, for example after finishing Personal Story, or in parallel. Make the non-festivities content as instances, missions, quests, dungeons or whatever fits. But something I can play and care at my own pace.

2. Separate the grinding part of the events and Living Story more than now. I have not use for all the ugly hats and ugly whatever I accidentally collect from those festivity boxes. I checked that I needed hundreds of thousands of them to build even the less useful bit of content. Basically, crap taking space.

3. Add permanent content. Or permanent changes. If there needs to be permanent changes affected by the events, let us know in advance how can we affect, and which decisions can we make (other than ¡vote for her! ¡vote for him!). For example:

Orr rebuild:
During 2 months, the 3 Orders will conduct events in different parts of Orr in what they call the “clean phases”, every Order has his own plan and they started to do stuff in a different area, for example 3 areas in the first Orr map. Those Order events can chain other bigger events and are all done at the same time, you can be supporting one at time. There is a global count of success events and chained events done for every Order.

During the first month, all Order members can vote for the next action, this vote will define how that area will change if they are successful. After the first month, the events change to reflect the result. If the Order events are successful enough, that area changes in the voted way. It may be more competitive (only one Order can be successful) or cooperative, and there can be a result in which the Evil wins, making the zone more difficult for example.

This would allow to develop NPC’s, make a significant change over a zone and allow the creative teams to receive input from the game itself.

Probably there was some previous explanation of her background somewhere else, in a previous Living Story instance that I missed (that’s easy), but I first saw her in that Queen Jenna Jubilee thing, out of nowhere shooting at things, and leaving me a ‘meh’ impression.

If that was the introduction, I think is not a great introduction. Sure that MMO format has it’s limits to show fluff and plots, but there should be some way to construct a character other than “TACCHAAAAANNN SHE IS VILLIAN!!”. I mean, you could make the same previous events and put someone else as the Major Evil Mastermind, anyone you want. If you can substitute your character by anyone else, it doesn’t seem great.

For example, in a similar situation, watch Maleficient entrance in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. You know she’s the villian, and you know she’s great because what she says is right. They didn’t invited her. They offended her. They will pay the offense.

Scarlet, otherwise ¿why she does things?

And, basically, as said before, is an easy target for everyone who doesn’t like current Living Story implementation, because it seems that there are a lot of resources dedicated to this sole character and doesn’t feel great.

I’d like to see easy access to different sets of armour, aiming to encourage to own different full sets and to quickly change from one to another once the sets are done by any of the current ways. For example with a personal wardrobe for every character with spaces to be used only for sets of armour.

That could be located in a personal housing instance in the racial city and/or Lion’s Arch, allowing the armours to be displayed (so, instead of being only additional bank spaces, this wardrobe could be a fashion display). Additional uses could be to transform soulbind pieces to account bind, allowing to share some armours with other characters for example.

For characters customization, I’m not quite found on the trait system. Being not-reset-free it doesn’t encourage too much to play with it and explore options in play instead of calculating it or going to forums to search for pre-builds.

A way to add diversity could be to allow three sets (for example) of traits, with custom names. You could change from one set to other by free, either in a selected location (trainers) or while not in combat, as weapons do. So you could develop totally different lines of traits for the same character.

Companions, as GW1 Heroes, is something I’d like to see with a “GW2 light”. For example, instead of full-growth big kitten heroes, those companions could be novices, low level characters with limited set of skills, and a lot of visual customization. You could craft weapons and armour for them, script some actions and develop their behaviour (attack, protect, etc…). An example of limited customization would be to make them with limited slots (for example, 4), labelled as “healing skill, attack skill, protect skill, support skill”, and some easy scripting made in sentences, like "when an enemy attacks me, you should [choose: attack the enemy, heal me, protect me, support me] and so with 5 or 6 sentences and some default sets. It should be a low level set of skills without a lot of impact.

I’d put those companions in the personal story, after finish the current one, in a new set of personal history made to learn this system. After that, the companion could become available for PvE, not sure if it should be allowed in WvW.

MEGABONUS is you could also define appearance, gender, personal story, etc of those companions.

I’d like also to see more explorable areas, there is plenty of areas in the map to open and explore, and it feels weird that after this time none of those areas are likely to be opened at any time during 2014. More permanent zones could increase the interest in the PvE part and the use of characters in the non-competitive modes of play. New areas could provide with new armours and weapons, skins available for karma, etc