Guild Wars 2

I think one of the (many) flaws of the Living Story, or at least it’s delivery, is that the allied NPCs have no reason to be around. Usually when you have a story you have characters that are relevant to that story. The allied NPCs (Rox, Braham, Marjory, Kasmeer) had reasons to be around when they were first introduced, now I see them and I think “Why are you even here?”.

I found these characters more interesting when I thought they would have an actual story. Figuring out what happened with Mendel’s death, tracking down Kasmeer’s father (or figuring out more about that if nothing else). When it became clear that Marjory and Kasmeer are just pretty pictures that move around Tyria with skills added whenever the story needs it they became much less interesting to me. I honestly don’t even know why Kasmeer exists at all other than to be the fanfic partner to Marjory, she doesn’t do anything that an existing character doesn’t already do (Faren was the noble who mixed with heroism, Anise, Jennah and countless others are actual accomplished mesmers etc). Even Rox (who had a strong introduction in Flame and Frost) was linked to Tequatl with a flimsy story reasoning (“Rytlock sent me on the most general mission ever”). Braham was only at the Queen’s Jubilee because Rox invited him. I feel like these characters (as enjoyable as they can be at times) are weakening the overall narrative because they waste so much time with flimsy reasonings for why they are present in it at all let alone the most prominent characters in these conflicts (it hurts the scope of the conflict when such minor characters take leading roles when more accomplished Tyrians should be in the spotlight). Kiel had her thumb in every pie and the personality of a wet napkin but at least it made sense with her position in the Lionguard.

As far as where does Marjory come from, it was answered in he short story on the website. Where does Scarlet come from? Short story on the website. A lot of your questions can be answered on the website. Talk to the NPCs at the camp after doing the new Kessex Hills instance. They tried to shoehorn the Scarlet short story into the game so that more of this information is available to players, but I agree that overall the story has not been communicated well and in many cases it simply doesn’t exist yet (to the player).

I could craft ascended weapons today if I wanted and I play most days so even laurels wouldn’t be a problem for me to acquire a single set (I agree about the alt issues, before you even consider alternate sets for alternate builds) but ascended is being horribly implemented. It’s like a systematic attempt to make the game worse.

I could craft ascended today but given how the crafting dev designed the grind and acquisition of these items, I’m beginning to wonder if ArenaNet knows what “fun” is any more. When I see a system that’s as unfun as ascneded crafting I just have to opt out. Ascended weapons and armour need a wake up call, just like WvW ranks.

I think they just decided that opinions on armour are subjective and that all the negative feedback on the new skins was just one opinion, other players would like them. Even if most people disliked the new armour skin, I doubt they intended for most people to keep it over every other appearance in the game.

I wouldn’t accuse them of money grubbing or a cash grab over this (there are several other areas where that argument is much stronger) but it does seem to me like a flawed design. The reality is probably that most players won’t like those skins and most of them probably purchased transmutation stones to transmute old skins onto, at the time, best in slot gear that was made redundant this patch. It seems to me a superior design would be to craft an item than can apply stats to any skin (like the opposite of a skin item) or be turned into the ascended skin. That seems a lot fairer to me.

Karma was supposed to replace quest rewards. Instead of doing a quest and getting a piece of armour without your stats or even armor class, you can exchange karma for armour instead. Or so they said before launch. Karma armour was insanely grindy and had terrible stat distribution. The effort required to acquire a karma item was far greater than a single quest item. They also put in next to no items worth purchasing with karma. Very limited exotic armour sets, no novelty or trinket type items (mini pets, balloons, kites, town clothes etc) just a bunch of redundant junk which resulted in players stockpiling karma.

Yes the game eliminated quests but then they made the Living Story and essentially used achievements as a worse way to perform the same function of a quest but with achievement points as rewards instead of something unique or valuable (because all those items are given to the cash shop).

That sounds good. The spear would be worth more today than it was in the past.

Kasenai.9418:

Maybe not the most attractive character but he’s beautiful on the inside!

As cliche as he might be, I think he looks like a better villain than Scarlet and Faolain. There are some visually striking looks you can create with the customisation options available that could really help create some distinctive characters to reinforce the story.

Why is underboob immature? Personally I find it less mature to have issues exposing normal parts of the human body than it is to want to do so. There’s nothing wrong with the body, people should be proud of it. There is a line to cross and it’s a very subjective one, but I honestly don’t believe this does it. Judging from how popular this armour is, I suspect a lot of other players feel similarly. Some people find raw sensuality empowering (both in game and in real life – historically it has been as powerful a weapon/tool as any other) so for them, this armour is an attractive option. Some people like a bit of eye candy.

Dog.1472:

If anyone claims the dungeon is too difficult, the reality of it is that that person is just very, very, very, very bad.

I’m not kidding you, or trying to troll you. Learn how to play the game and develop your strategy properly. If you find AC difficult, you do not understand your class.

For the record, this argument about the difficulty was settled long ago when a group of 5 people made level 35 characters and cleared the dungeon with extreme ease.

You can be really bad at the game but have the right build, allies and strategies and stomp this dungeon (or most other GW2 dungeons). You can be good at the game but have the wrong build, allies and strategies and have a great deal of difficulty with this dungeon.

Guild Wars 2 dungeons favour learning content over skill, they favour build wars over dynamic combat and they favour exploiting mechanics (stack here to prevent spider AoE AI, stack here to avoid final boss mechanics) over playing as intended.

If you have difficulty in the dungeon, it’s not because you played poorly, it’s because you didn’t exploit enough design flaws or take advantage of the build wars dungeon meta.

It’s not that different from a normal Living Story reward which Season 1 is supposed to emulate. A bunch of achievement points, a title and a unique item (mini pet or back item). It shouldn’t ever be like the Karka Queen chests which were horribly OP rewards.

Don’t forget you get chests for individual tracks (with crappy rewards inside them too). All up this rewards isn’t much different from the Living Story, in some ways it’s better. When you put it into perspective, a lot of the dissatisfaction is just false entitlement.

Stillmoon.6894:

a net put the shinies in wvw just enough for armor repair, buy siege and upgrade tower. if you want shinies go pve.
dont bring your casual pve champion farm to wvw because it mocks people who really want a serious game that feature strategy and not getting devoured by mindless blob (seriously a net should consider removing bags from all tower and keep champion so the kittens will return to queensdale and their pathetic farm routine)

Most WvW players are just PvDoor karma training which is no different from champion farms. That was also the best way to get the WvW meta achievement.

The way players transfer, a large chunk of the population on JQ used to be on SBI. There is very little server loyalty in GW2. The way WvW was designed, guilds just transfer to wherever they think they will win (or stay “relevant”). The top three servers might change, but the players and guilds on them don’t.

I ended up getting a little annoyed with my guild at the end because the way they play did not progress towards the achievement very well. It’s a small guild that specialises in capturing and holding the corner of an enemy borderlands (keep and tower) and trying to upgrade. We try to hold out against large numbers and we use mesmers and thieves to instantly retake the keep or tower if we lose it. This still amounts to large amounts of time spent actively playing in WvW but ironically it means the better we do, the worse our achievements progress. The season 1 achievement track seems to be tailor made for karma trains, zerg farming and PvDoor. A lot of times my guild will ignore sentries because they flag your location and holding them does almost nothing at all. I found myself at the last week of season with several tracks to grind out and I never want to capture another sentry again.

Chasing the achievement track was a hindrance to my enjoyment of WvW. The way it was designed favoured zerging over simply playing WvW.

Ugh. Spirits are either terribad or outright boring in PvE. Passive DPS increase? Of course people want it, but it’s incredibly lame to cast and forget it compared to another class which has more active or strategic utilities. Sometimes I wish sPvP didn’t exist at all because it’s the crutch that stops them from reworking spirits all together. They might be powerful in sPvP but they are a joke in WvW and PvE.

This is probably the least interesting heal simply because it’s a spirit and spirits as a mechanic need a robust redesign.

Pyroatheist.9031:

SpehssMehreen.5897:

Its partly everyones fault, especially in NA S1, money was offered, people took it, what can you do?

I can’t speak for henge, but I can say that FA bought no guilds. We had multiple large guilds transfer to FA just a day or 2 before seasons started once it was sure that we would be in silver league simply because they wanted that top spot, and that sure did clinch it.

FA didn’t need to buy guilds, they tanked their way to silver. FA should never have been in silver league and the match manipulation prior to leagues was embarrassing for the server and for the WvW team at ArenaNet.

I think it’s a big mistake to have a Living Story cast at all. It forces the writers to write bad reasons for characters to be present when they shouldn’t be and the entire story is weakened as a result.

Why was Rox at Tequatl Rising? Because Rytlock sent her there? It would have been better for the story to have a sylvari or hylek NPC (or a Vigil NPC) relevant to the story being told. That character would aid in giving a face to the story (instead adding something else to their Living Story resume) and there wouldn’t be a need to force them into it. All the resources could focus on that character and their symbolic role in the story (similair to how Zei Ri was the point of contact for the player in Winds of Change and he himself made the story stronger by representing the people’s struggle side of the story).

Forcing in character’s like Rox just seems like wasted story time. Then you have characters like Kasmeer that have shoddy writing when all of a sudden she goes from being the fallen noble struggling to work her way through the world to a renowned master mesmer (remember Scarlet’s magic back story?) because one was needed in Kryta – home of two of the most prominent mesmers in Tyria. The whole world feels cheap when Kasmeer is given such see through plot powers simply because she’s on the Living World cast and they wanted the two of them to be involved for that release.

Braham and Rox worked well in Flame and Frost – it made sense that Rox was working for Rytlock and that he would be interested in that particular threat, Braham’s motivations were obviously very strong as well. I was interested in Kasmeer when I thought she had a plot or reason for existing but it seems she’s just a fanfiction character for the writers with no real prominence or relevance to Tyria beyond what they create for her. Marjory was a good quest giver type of NPC – never in the fight, but helping driving the plot forward – but she still gave room for the player to be the hero. Keil was terrible. She was the most prominent protagonist in the story for the most releases and she did nothing with it. She consistently took the credit from the player (or other characters) and the story felt like it revolved around her and not the incidents she was involved with. As with all NPCs she’s not even a good fighter so it makes more sense to limit NPCs to quest givers – putting the action focus on the player but moving the story along in ways the player themselves can’t do.

I think we shouldn’t have a Living Story cast but rather new characters relevant to each release. If the story revisits something relevant to a past character, run with it, but stop shoehorning characters into the world. It makes the world feel smaller than it is, it makes established characters feel static and the Living Story cast becomes unbelievable.

A lot of Scarlet’s actions also happen in low level areas. I believe part of this was so they could include as many players as possible in the Living Story. If they had put large Living Story elements in higher level areas, many players would have been excluded. There have been a few cases of content being level 80 but utilising the level scaling system (Southsun Cove, the Crown Pavillion) and minor Living Story elements taking place in mid-high level zones (krait obelisks) but I believe the only real break from the trend is Tequatl which was built by the features team not the Living Story team. It’s possible that the location of Scarlet’s bases was dictated by a line between Chaos Crystal Caverns and Thaumanova but I suspect it’s more likely that’s (at best) a happy coincidence and the real reason is those locations are in low level zones that give increased access to as many players as possible.

If there is a correlation between Thaumanova and the Chaos Crystal Caverns I doubt it was created as part of the Scarlet plot but rather it’s a loose thread they had in the game at launch. The Thaumanova Reactor was largely undeveloped as a plot point but I believe there are links with it and the Chaos Crystal Caverns long before Scarlet was even conceived. If this does pan out, I suspect it’s another case of Scarlet wedging herself into a pre-existing piece of the world.

As Draxynic pointed out, that line intersects with much of the playable world as it is available to us today.

Justin ODell.9517:

Admiral Zombie.8624:

A lot of people are misunderstanding what is happening. People who have earned their rank emotes and finishers will get to keep them as they are.

If I understand what people are saying, and I may be wrong, many people are treating ranks as more of a lifetime achievement. That is certainly something to consider in regards to the future reward system replacing them.

Why do you need to replace them at all? When achievement points were made more robust (included in the Living Story, rewards given every 500 points etc) ArenaNet didn’t remove the existing achievement points or reset anything. Ranks don’t need to be mutually exclusive with any new systems, you can still have rank progression as a passive progression for people already invested in them.

It seems the sPvP dev team views ranks as a fixed achievement – wherever you are now is what you wanted. Many players view ranks as ongoing achievements – continuous progression, the current steps only mean as much as the next step. If you freeze that in time, the past progression will mean nothing for a lot of people.

Think of ranks as long term goals like a legendary weapon. For a year I’ve invested my time in saving up to make Bifrost (permanent plain Bear finisher), the legendary staff. All of a sudden you retire Bifrost and I can’t make it any more, but instead offer me the ability to start from scratch and make the new legendary raven staff (Bear finisher with silver sparkles that resets every season and has to be re-earned), but I don’t want the raven staff, I want Bifrost and that’s what I’ve been working towards for over a year. Now I’m stuck with the legend precursor (Dolyak finisher) and all that time was wasted because you’ve made my progress obsolete by freezing progression.

The thing about ranks as a lifetime achievement is they aren’t a lifetime achievement if you remove the last 15 months (or more) of your time in the game to implement a new “lifetime” achievement reward – it’s too late. Our lifetime in the game started over a year ago, our progression has been tracked for over a year now. Even if we keep our current rank, it’s going to be the same as throwing out our current progression if you create a new system and freeze the old one. The finishers might stay but the progression is gone.

Just don’t touch ranks. Implement new systems but leave ranks as they are.

[quote=3303383;felivear.1536: ]A way to differentiate between a PvP and PvE version of an item* – Is there any way to possibly add a blue glow or some other easily identifiable way to see that the version was earned in PvP? There is something prestigious about being good at PvP in games, and it should show aesthetically. [/quote]

Anyone can get full Arah armor from PvP by random chance from tournament chests. If you do enough PvP you can obtain pretty much anything you want. The PvP reward system is essentially a massive grind, it has very little to do with being good (especially when you consider that the match making system attempts to place you with similair skilled opponents). There is nothing presitigous about the aesthetic rewards from GW2 PvP in its current form, it’s merely an indicator of how much you’ve played sPvP no matter how poorly you played. Many of the higher ranked people did so via Skyhammer farms, the others simply played more than other people.

I see no reason why PvP gear would be more prestigious than PvE gear. In fact the reverse is usually the case. Obtaining Arah armor in PvE (baring paying someone to run you through the dungeon) is arguably more prestigous than PvP gear. Many PvE armour sets show accomplishment in specific content. The PvP gear is all currently generically awarded for participation. You don’t have to master any content, you just have to turn up.

On topic. I wish the people in charge of skill balance across the game would make more of an effort to communicate about skill balance specifically in areas outside of sPvP. I get that sPvP is a format that struggles and needs care but it seems like other areas of the game are consistently neglected when it comes to developer communication about skill balance and the PvE meta.

Iason Evan.3806:

1.) I would like to see skins that drop exclusively in PvP, but have the ability to be converted for use in PvE.

Do you think exclusively PvE players (the format you want this skin to be usable in) would want to see this? I don’t, and I do play sPvP.

A skin that can be worn in a certain format should be obtained in that format.

Four points come to mind immediately (although not my only concerns).

1. Some limited-time-only items give out one skin for PvE but three skins for sPvP. Specifically I’m talking about items like the Twisted Watchwork shoulders (I assume the recent Nightmare shoulders – sold for 400 gems -and the Fused Gauntlets also worked this way). Some players invested in a single use PvE version of these items while sPvP players were able to generate three versions (one for each armor class). How are you going transition existing locker skins to PvE skins without essentially rewarding these people with an item worth three times as much as the one the earned themselves (some of these items cost gems and potentially real money)?
2. Many prestigious PvE skins are trivially easy to obtain in sPvP. I obtained almost full Arah armour on all classes in sPvP before I was even rank 20. I don’t run Arah in PvE and thus I haven’t earned that skin in PvE but I did a handful of tournament matches and skins were thrown at me freely. Currently there exist many skins (all of which have prestige) in PvE which can only be earned via specific content. This new system risks abolishing that content specific requirement for a selection of legacy players (possibly more depending on how it’s implemented) and awarding them a very diverse skin locker with options they never earned in PvE. How can you implement this without trashing the value of existing dungeons (or other content specific rewards) which no longer even award best in slot gear?
3. Some skins are already unique awarded to sPvP (the masquerade “tribal” light armour was never implemented in PvE) and others are obscurely available (the commando medium armour is exclusive to a late game story mode quest, it can be missed all together if you choose a different option and it’s gone forever if you delete it without knowing it’s value). It seems unfair to have certain skins that seem to be mistakenly left out of or were poorly implemented in PvE suddenly become available in PvE but only to high ranked sPvP players. Are these skins going to be made more fairly available in PvE (maybe through a karma vendor) to accommodate PvE players who were never given access to them before?
4. Do you think the focus has shifted too much towards the carrot for sPvP as opposed to the experience? A competitive game like League of Legends does have rewards although they are limited, the primary motivation to play is usually the experience. Currently the experience of GW2 sPvP has proven to be limited in its ability to capture an audience. If players do play more because of rewards and achievement points, isn’t that just proving players aren’t playing for the experience but rather the carrot? It feels like you are throwing in the towel on making a truly rewarding gameplay experience and have instead opted to make a gold/item rewarding system to simulate the former (imo, more desirable) system. Edit: this point was misleading. I don’t think you’ve given up, just the focus has shifted (too much) too rewards as opposed to the integrity of the formats themselves. I think the carrot is being used too heavily.

The same kind of writing is happening to the heroes as well. Kasmeer was suddenly a master mesmer summoned by the mesmer association to remove the veil on the tower. Prior to this she was a noble who lost her status who was somewhat naive to the ways of the world, we didn’t even know she was a mesmer. Now that a mesmer veil needed to be removed, she suddenly has that skill despite the veil in the backyard of arguable two of the most powerful mesmers in Tyria.

They are trying too hard to fit the story around Scarlet and are using lame excuses to bring in their Living Story cast to the story to the detriment of its overall quality (as is most obvious with Rox in Tequatl Rising).

Walhalla.5473:

And to the ones who have a problem with the layout. Remember, its a fractal. Fractals aren’t 100% accurate, some fratcals are more accurate than others. The mists tend to add, remove or replace details. Things that aren’t really affecting the main event. The mists could have replaced some of the rooms.

This actually annoys me about this update. They’ve abandoned the original style of FotM (which was a huge success, especially compared to the hostile reception this update has received) and done a hatchet job on the two Living Story dungeons despite them not fitting the style of FotM. Now we have three fractals with NPCs, story and dialogue, all of which are established canon instead of actual Fractals. It was cool to see fractals as this glimmer of something, now they’ve outright plonked an actual story component into them (Scarlet’s presence at the reactor) which makes that fractal different from the originals.

I didn’t want the fractal but I had higher hopes for something other than what we got.

When I imagined it, I expected a facility where reality was being torn open. As the meltdown occurred, rifts and portals would open up and visions of the past, present and future of Tyria could be seen through them. The actual scenario presented (regardless of Scarlet’s presence) didn’t seem to live up the potential of a significant research facility that caused tears in reality. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but I felt like it could have been any other asuran research facility and most things would be the same. The potential of dragon research and the potential of a tear in time/space/reality seems completely wasted in this fractal.

All it seems to be is a generic research facility with a couple puzzle rooms and an appearance from Scarlet to acquire another piece of technology. I feel like they completely missed what was compelling about the Thaumanova Reactor when creating this fractal.

If dredge was a dungeon path, it would have been replaced by the Thaumanova path because “it’s one of the least popular paths in the game” (ala TA F/U). Instead it’s a fractal and many players are forced to abandon one or two paths progress or play through it.

Heta.8629:

Who is we? I like scarlet and know others do too

I agree there are plenty of people who seem to like her.

I thought it was interesting, as soon as she appeared in the Thaumanova Reactor story mode, two of the people in my party instantly complained that she was involved (before she even finished speaking). A random group of four other people and two of them instantly groaned at the site of her.

I think this most recent patch proves that Scarlet has polarised the community. Regardless of which side has more people (more people disliking Scarlet or more people liking her) it seems clear now that the writers have lost a large portion of the audience. A lot of people don’t care about her any more (as lame as “everything must be about Scarlet” is, the Thaumanova plot fits into Scarlet building something which is a story, just one many people don’t seem to care about any more) and her presence alone is enough to lose player interest in the story.

All we can hope for now is that it’s over soon, lessons were learned and what comes next is much better because of it.

Did I miss the destiny side of the sylvari culture? It never came across to me that sylvari have predestined lives, only guidance and suggestions. I am pretty sure there are at least two sylvari NPCs that mention they don’t have to do what their dream or wyld hunt tells them to do, and the entire existence of the Nightmare Court implies the sylvari are free from destiny.

Did I massively misunderstand the sylvari situation when it comes to destiny?

lordkrall.7241:

What makes you think we will kill her at all?

Optimism.

Marble Daemon.7350:

ProxyDamage.9826:

I don’t hate Scarlet. She’s not even good enough to hate. I hate that she keeps being put in the story in detriment of a more competent/well written antagonist. I don’t care about defeating her. I just want her gone.

You just show how successful Scarlet as an antagonist and in the way she makes you hate her. Villains are not invented to be defeated, they are there for people to wish them to go away

There’s a difference between people hating Scarlet because she is boring and wasted story telling time in a game and a world that people enjoy very much and people hating Joffrey from Game of Thrones because he’s so well constructed as a villain you can’t help but hate him and ultimately hunger for his demise. They might look the same (people want both of them to die) but the reasons are not the same (people want hate Scarlet because she’s so poorly written you can’t help but hate that she’s wasting time in the story, people hate Joffrey because he’s so well written you can’t help but hate him and want justice).

Kiel didn’t win, the players did. With her promotion she has left the Living Story alone (admittedly Scarlet isn’t doing better) and her burden on the story has been lifted (the average fanfiction has more interesting characters than what Kiel put across as lead of several Living Story arcs). Another election would push her back into the spotlight, something I hope we never have to endure again.

Honestly, I don’t think the election worked well. It got some players engaged (in a way, some of it was negative, some of it was positive) but the caricatures that Kiel and Evon represented were insulting and a low point for the story. The election had so much baggage (cheaper WPs, good vs evil, pachinko box hate tied to Evon, Fractal choice – the list goes on) it is impossible to determine exactly what it is players decided. We know Kiel won, we will never know why. There were too many variables for the election to fairly represent any of the specific issues, like an unpopular law that gets passed because it was tacked onto an irrelevant bill. The GW2 election really emphasises some of the worst things about American (in particular, but not exclusively) politics.

I think the story is better off dealing with more traditional conflicts, leave the politics for the real world. If they want to give players choice in the future, there has got to be a better way.

Didn’t level 80 players exploit to get there?

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Ever watched Wooden Potatoes’ stuff on youtube? He is very spot on on the lore and knows what he is talking about.

He’s often wrong with lore and his theories have consistently been wrong. His original theory was that Scarlet was Ellen Kiel’s alter ego from the dimension that the asura character was linked to in the personal story and the Aetherblades weren’t from this dimension either. Just read that and soak in how wrong it is.

Scarlet isn’t linked to a dragon (at least not directly). She’s not a minion, she’s not a champion, she’s doing her own thing. The writers said they don’t want Tyria to be all about dragons all the time. Scarlet and the Living Story cast are their tools for telling smaller scale stories in Tyria and exploring the non-dragon side of things. It goes against that idea if they make Scarlet a dragon champion.

Scarlet is just combining a bunch of stuff so in her final encounter she combines all her combinations to a super combination because she’s smart like that. There is no dragon here, just “clever” combinations of technology all leading towards a super “clever” combination of technology.

Who cares about invulnerable spots? They are all at the edges of spawn, if you are forcing them back to spawn they can’t really hurt you.

Any delivery that has players realising her involvement is a blind date between two evil factions every other month and an inconsequential appearance of Scarlet herself before we defeat them all and send her off two play match maker with two more villanous factions with no other consequences, that kind of delivery I would describe as bad.

We expect Scarlet to fail. We expect her to be harmless. We expect her alliances. That’s not good.

This is by far my favourite open world content and one of the more enjoyable placed in GW2 period. I’m fine with the tower leaving but I’d love for the tower climb platform to return in a more robust and permanent form in the future.

• While zerging was still the easiest method, I had many times where I would be split into either solo exploration or small group co-operation. This is why I play MMOs – to play with other people. Unlike champion zergs or Scarlet events I felt like combat was interesting in the tower beyond auto-attack.
• The champions used diverse combat mechanics. Rather than just being a giant damage sponge the champions in the tower felt like dungeon bosses. Attacks to dodge and learn, people to res and different tactics for them.
• It encouraged partying. Even if it wasn’t a formal party, progressing with a handful of people was very rewarding. I often found myself in a two man unofficial party until we resed someone or solo runners caught up to us. Often we ended up creating a small group of players working together. Rarely does open world PvE feel like this any more. I felt like a hero when I came along someone downed and resed them and together we worked together to get to the next floor.
• Exploring was fun. The environments aren’t as diverse as they could be, but climbing the platforms, finding your way through the maze, discovering chests and taking on the different bosses, all these things were fun. I’d love to see that expanded later on in another form. A tower climb open world dungeon has so much potential.
• Elite mobs are so much more fun than generic champions because defiant is bad. The removal of defiant but still having powerful enemies means that CC skills are useful. Watching for a powerful charge attack (like the double dagger stab from the krait) and pulling, pushing, stunning etc was a lot more interesting that DPS the HP sponge or wasting CC on a weak mob that you may as well kill instead of control.
• Scaling worked well. Small groups were capable of taking on a boss and as more people bottlenecked it usually got easier, but it wasn’t just annihilated. Small party gameplay felt more co-operative than dungeons.

I still have some issues with the content.

• Solo runners can ruin your day. If you have two people (or you are solo) taking on several mobs, you are forced to run if a solo runner with a massive aggro tail drags mobs onto you. Because the AI just switches target, runners will often ruin the experience for everyone else.
• It can suffer from population issues. It sucks to play in if you go for 20 minutes at a time without seeing an ally come through. As the content dies down, I can see this becoming more of a problem. I like accessible content and this can easily become inaccessible if not enough people are coming through.
• The rewards are lame. I spent a lot of time in there and I have almost no rewards to show from it. I feel like I am using similair effort and skill to dungeon runes and a lot more effort and skill than champion farms but I have very little to show for it. I think tuning it into a champion farm would ruin it (zerging is incredibly boring) but at the same time I think the rewards are poorly balanced for this content. Even the content specific rewards (the mini, the recipes, the back pack) all feel unatainable because of the intense grind or the incredibly low RNG. If I want any of these I’m better of farming dungeons or champions for gold than spending time in the tower.

I think this was the best open world content we’ve seen so far.

Astralporing.1957:

Chaotic Storm.2815:

say maybe the separtists…

Oh, i know: the next alliance will be between ascalonian separatists and charr warmongers! Perfect!

That’s a significant plot point in the open world and the Personal Story. Going off of what they’ve said in the past, they can’t touch it in any meaningful way. The Living Story is static by design.

I posted this when the Queen’s Jubilee was happening, it shows Braham and Rox both recognising me (I was playing on the character that did Flame and Frost). The issue okittennowledgement and credit is a common one in the GW2 story, people want different things. I honestly don’t even know why any of these characters are present at all.

I noticed the krait chaos storm skill can be cast through walls which is pretty lame.

You saw that and somehow jumped to “she must think I long for Logan” when all of her lines in these instances are references to character conflicts? If you read Edge of Destiny (or played the story mode dungeons) you would see this is a dig at Logan’s decision to abandon Destiny’s Edge during the fight with Kralkatorrik to rescue Queen Jennah when she called for help. Their decision left Destiny’s Edge down a member resulting in the deaths of Snaff and Glint, the disbanding of the guild and it was the central conflict of the Story Mode dungeons (Rytlock in particular blames Logan for choosing the Queen over his guild). Scarlet is poking at old wounds (this particular one is weird because it’s personal for the members of Desinty’s Edge, not for the player) and that’s all.

megakittytron.5971:

I learned that Scarlet has captured Tybalt’s soul and made him fight me! Nuuuuu, not again! Tyyybaaalt! sniff sniff

I don’t think it’s his soul, just an illusion (whether it be a mesmer illusion or a fever-like illusion brought on by the toxin). That’s why you see currently living people (such as Eir) as well as the deceased.

VOLKON.1290:

BobbyStein.2315:

Errant Venture.9371:

We’ve had another 4 weeks of (fairly fun) ministories, but there’s still been NO PROGRESS in the storyline. There’s still no PLOT to Scarlet’s Story.

Here’s the point for the story writers: for every piece of content please ask yourself, “How does this fit into the story and how does it advance the plot? What new information am i giving the players to keep them interested in the meta-arc of the Living story?”

If the story writers can’t give good answers to these questions, and the players themselves can’t find the answers to these questions IN GAME, then you’re failing at the PURPOSE of the Living Story.

This is mostly good, clear feedback. Thanks for sharing.

In the future, please ditch the overuse of caps, as that’s not constructive and reduces the chance that we’ll respond. We read this stuff. You’re not posting in a vacuum.

… which is good… nature abhors that after all.

I’m not sure what the intended take was from this with regards to the story as a whole, but to me it felt almost like a window into the mind of Scarlett, where instead of being to push the story forward, the content was more designed to fill out the character somewhat, to give a taste of the twisted inner-workings of this character. I almost get the feeling a lot of what she does is not only because she’s a bit off, but rather bored as well. Or maybe she’s more like The Brain in “Pinky and the Brain”.

I agree the story itself didn’t seem to push forward, but I think the character did.

People are currently talking about the story pushing forward in terms of Scarlet acquiring more hybrid technology (a theme has been present since Flame and Frost). The Molten Alliance tech was part of what made them so threatening, from my perspective this plot point becomes less interesting as it repeats. When she does it with the krait and the Nightmare Court it’s not a new threat, it feels like a lucky dip of evil factions covering ground we’ve already been over, another item on Scarlet’s shopping list (that doesn’t do justice to the factions involved). The combined tech theme was actually at the core of the Personal Story (the ship that takes down Zhaitan was a collaborative effort between races, something that is built across several Personal Story paths) so heavily featuring it in the Living World might be overexposure.

The other thing the story reminds me of is that cliche “it’s about the journey not the destination”. It feels like the Living World is very much about the destination, because the journey isn’t giving us much to invest in. Whatever the end game is, that’s where the story is. Up until that point it’s like a mechanical acquisition of technology, almost like a formula with no discernible depth. I don’t think the individual alliances are given enough of a role in the story (they come off as pawns for Scarlet and not fleshed out factions of their own) so they can’t carry the story until Scarlet is ready to reveal more, and Scarlet’s only development seems to be adding another alliance to her resume (with no indication of a bigger picture, even if there is one). We aren’t seeing her build a master device, we didn’t find a former ally (slave?) of hers telling us about a master plan, even our allies seem to be in the dark.

When I don’t want to see Scarlet involved it’s not because I don’t want a resolution to her story (I desperately do) because her involvement means the story isn’t doing anything. Without her the krait might have had their own goals, something might have been accomplished. With Scarlet there is an artificial cap on what the story will accomplish because Scarlet’s not ready to finish what she’s doing and the krait were never the reason we are in Kessex, Scarlet is. I don’t want to see more of Scarlet’s alliances because they don’t do justice to the factions involved and Scarlet herself isn’t giving me anything to invest in.

Or they could just accept that the Personal Story is historical content. I don’t understand why this is a constant issue. I can go and play any Guild Wars campaign or expansion in any order, why should GW2 be any different? The personal story has to be historical at some point otherwise the Living World can never be anything resembling alive.

Freezing the world in time simply doesn’t make sense.

RyuDragnier.9476:

The nightmare bosses in the instances are random, Shiren. I only fought Trahearne after 20 chambers.

I know. I believe that knowing he’s a possible spawn (or one of the other mentors) removes the emotional impact of the revelation. People might be reading the forum about pugs or trying to figure something out, this thread title is going to spoil this for them.

Qawsada.4251:

We learn that all the writers from Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 1 Beyond didn’t took part of this atrocity of a mess of a story.

Bobby Stein said he is ultimately responsible for the Living Story (or something along those lines) and I believe he was involved in Guild Wars Beyond (I don’t know how much of the writing was done by someone like Bobby or whether Murdock and Stumme took the reigns during their run, I believe Stumme had a lot to do with HotN). I don’t know who wrote War in Kryta but the situation was really interesting, the portrayal of the White Mantle and the Peacekeepers was Saturday morning cartoon villain though. Hearts of the North was a desperate attempt to salvage Gwen’s character after she was trashed post EotN. Winds of Change was really awesome. The factions felt real, it reflected the world as it should be, multiple levels of the story was told. From the personal story of Ashu and Miku, the struggle of the Canthan people empowering themselves to do what the bureaucracy wasn’t doing, the rise to power of the new Ministry and their subsequent corruption leading to Cantha’s isolation and a sympathetic villain (former ally) that reflected that the enemy wasn’t some dude twiddling his moustache as he tied a girl to a train track.

Comparing how the White Mantle (they weren’t an invading army, their numbers were made up of Krytan citizens who joined to protect their people and their country) were portrayed to how the Ministry of Purity was portrayed and you’d think it was a different game. The later was written so much better.

Regardless of all that, I believe they have some real writing talent on the Living Story team and I know I’ve liked work that they’ve put out before (I enjoy most of the short stories and I’m coincidentally reading a Scott McGough book) I think they just put all their eggs in the Scarlet basket and it’s not turning out well (imo) and we need to wait out this storm before they can right the ship. I’d really like to see the Living World turn towards what Shriketalon proposed in the Living World forum. That kind of investment in existing GW2 lore (even if it’s not the Elder Dragon stuff – the other plots pick up on old lore from the first game and new stuff from launch all of which I would enjoy more than Scarlet’s meaningless appearances) is what I want to see more of. I was disappointed to get to the top of the tower and find nothing new happened. Sadly I wasn’t surprised.

PolishSausage.1279:

Steve.5197:

If anyone of you watched Sword Arts Online (anime), Then you will see the resemblance of a tower with levels to clear.

The only way for the tower to be anything like that godawful series is if there was a mary sue protagonist who LITERALLY could not die and game mechanics that had no place but to progress the plot. Oh, and don’t forget the creepy incest.

Seriously, though, go watch Log Horizon if you want a MMORPG themed anime that’s actually good.

Well the Living Story certainly isn’t of danger of having that. The plot never progresses. It repeats.

The other things… plenty of Sue writing in GW2 (Kasmeer and Marjory are crossing into fan-fiction writing in the last two updates) and apparently everyone in the Personal Story is immune to death, then again, none of the new Living Story protagonists (Rox, Braham, Kiel, Marjory, Kasmeer) seem to be in danger of death either.

I really liked the tower and level clearing feel. It was probably the best open world content the game has had. More than anything else it encouraged forming parties but it didn’t just degenerate into giant zergs (because of the fast respawns it becomes very difficult to keep up). I though the concept of a tower with levels to be cleared was kinda lame from a lore point of view but in game it was incredibly fun. I really want to see this idea return in the future in a much more substantial form.

Please change the thread title. This is a massive spoiler for anyone who hasn’t done it yet.

Glass is just optimal, some people just aren’t very good at playing glass. I did it on my glass mesmer using a build I’ve never used before. If you want to solo it, make sure you have the skill and build to do so. If you don’t want to solo it, it’s not hard to acquire allies as you go along (even in overflows).

Honestly, until you have to take some damage and the most threatening attacks aren’t dodge or die, glass is always going to be optimal. This game doesn’t weigh defensive and offensive stats equally, the value of offensive stats is almost always great than defensive stats and this content is no different.

Eszett.6950:

People really have it against Scarlet. She’s not half bad really. At least she has a personality unlike Traherne. Treharne…. whatever his name is.

I loved the cutscene, I think it’s a build up for the final battle with her. Finally you get to end her!

Trahearne gets hate for overshadowing the player in the personal story. It stops being a Personal Story and it becomes Trahearne’s Story. I don’t dislike him as much as many others seem to.

He has a personality, it just comes off as meek or restrained. A part of the Personal Story deals with his burden (cleansing Orr is his Wyld Hunt, note that doesn’t mean defeat Zhaitan, his job isn’t done yet) and his many doubts about his ability as a leader. For all of his flaws, Trahearne is a lot more than what Scarlet is.

Personally I wish I hadn’t of read this thread before watching the scene. Obviously there were no spoilers (nothing new is established aside from in-game confirmation that she was behind the Molten Alliance) but the hype in the thread had me expecting something good. It was nice animation, I like the style (I personally prefer the scenes from Flame and Frost and the scene where Kasmeer removes the veil over this kind of thing) but I was expecting something with substance. Maybe a big revelation, some awesome action, anything more than a stylised “Previously on the Living Story”.

I think it’s important they establish in-game she was behind the Molten Alliance (it’s still not explicitly stated if I recall correctly, merely implied again I did it a second time, I recalled incorrectly, it’s fully stated in-game now, most of us knew, it was just a case of confirmation). I also think a lot of people didn’t follow that she’s been behind everything all year long, and others simply missed it, so connecting the dots for them is useful. I have doubts how useful minimal flashes of scenes from the last year are going to be at delivering information to people who weren’t there at the time, but It’s better than nothing. Hopefully this means they are about cap off this story for good now that everyone is caught up.

I enjoyed it, but I wonder why it even exists. The resources for this could have been better used to tell some of the story that didn’t exist in the game – something important like “What Scarlet Saw”. Such an important piece of the plot never made it into the game (I agree that many of the website stories don’t need to be animated or put into the game but “What Scarlet Saw” is the turning point for the central character of GW2 right now, it should be in the game) and this style of animation would be perfect for delivering it.

Nothing about the decision to lock the achievement until you’ve done the instance once makes sense (to me anyway, it’s possible they have some reason for it).

Personally I don’t see why doing it on the first try shouldn’t count. What is different about doing it twice? I know this is an MMO and MMO devs try to fit in as much pointless repetition into the game as possible, but this is a little confusing.

Atlas.9704:

I no longer care about Scarlet’s alliances and plans, assuming she has one.
I still care about the Living Story in the sense that I don’t want to pay for expansions.

I would love to pay for an expansion. Expansions have a massive influx of content instead of a small trickle. You work through their stories at your own pace instead of being forced to return every two weeks or miss out. They sell the expansion so there is no need to leech all the rewards from the content in order to monetise it. You do the Molten Facility? Here is a vendor you can use tokens to buy the dungeon’s weapon and armour set. You don’t permanently miss out on the Sclerite Karka Shell or the Fervid Censer, they are built into the expansion and can be obtained any time you like. Overall the content is more rewarding and would involve less RNG boxes because they sold the expansion instead of breaking it up into micro updates and scavenging it for micro transactions.

I don’t really care about Scarlet any more. That ship has sailed. I’m still interested in the Living Story. Once they move on from Scarlet it will be nice to see what kinds of stories they can tell. I’m sure they learned a lot from this first year, they have been making a lot of improvements already. The best is a ahead of us.

Having said that, I still prefer expansions over micro updates. I like to earn my rewards in the game, not buy them from a cash shop or gamble for them from Pachinko boxes.