Now I HAVE done the PS on all 9 of my main chars as well as all the LS and etc. Now here’s a funny tidbit for you. warning spoilers follow regarding the newest LS:
When taking my alts through the latest LS after my main had done it. Speaking to the ringmaster at the circus BEFORE being up to that part of the story let me enter the area where the 3rd machine thing is. Thus people, if you have alts you can speak to the ringmaster on them and glide from there to take apples to Hal without even needing to do the story on them!
So how’s that for an example? However I would still prefer they added my idea instead. Just give us a couple more new maps for these areas AFTER the fact so they can be consistent with the stories (well in the example of Orr at least anyway as I think this is important).
Anyway, they had 4 years to do something with Orr and unfortunately we didn’t get any update on that.
I just hope they’ll take care of the living world problem I described because it’s much more recent. It would be plainly disappointing if they didn’t. As Dantert said everything would feel fake. Why should you care about the things happening in the story if they don’t even exist correspondingly in the open world?
Its too bad that there was no cinematic.
The one upon arrival to bloodstone fen (and verdant brink) made me breathlessly watch it.
It was such a gripping and terrific work of art and story.
It is too bad there was none on arrival to Ember Bay, on the boat or something.
These cinematics give you a true sence of adventure, as if your character was an explorer.
What suprises me is one thing: Taimi found out about Primorduses activity while the pc was in BF, now ifyou consider it story-wise, he was there for less than 2 days.
How did all that krewe make so many bases of operation and tuned in gates, when its said that it takes a long time to retune them? Let alone, get to the island, secure a zone and man up defences?
Eighter the asura have made huge progress during the past 2 years or i dont know.
That’s a major point right there: First they had to get there – looks like a longer journey. Then they had to find a safe place and set up a portal for us at the same time.
Unfortunately we didn’t get any information on that, we don’t even know how they got there. To the airship theory: are there any working airships they could’ve used? The one in Bloodstone Fen (Pride of the Pact) seems to be damaged and also it’s still floating around there. Don’t know about the Aerodrome.
With no information in the story itself, it’s even more important to hear an official statement from the story department of Arenanet.
The majority of players might have done the story to the end, but not the majority of characters. I have 10 level 80s and I know that 9 of them are highly unlikely to ever do the full personal story. Too long, I’ve done it once already and doing it again and again and again and again isn’t worth my time. I have a feeling that a lot of people have not done the story all the way through for more than a couple of their characters, and they may never do it. It would be immersion breaking for many people if most of their chars had the post Orr map when those chars hadn’t finished the story.
In that case they could just give us the opportunity to choose. If you already finished the story with 1 character, you know what happened and how you got there. Then you could choose whether your new character should start directly at the post-cleansed Orr map or not. That way, you’re not forced to play it through over and over again but still got the opportunity to play it through for immersion reasons (if you’re a roleplayer e.g.).
It is much more immersion breaking if there’s no cleansed Orr map at all – so no player ever had the chance to see what it looks like after the story. It’s even worse with the current living world episode – as I said it’s like we’re time travelers.The events simply didn’t take place in the open world.
Changing maps after you’ve done a certain story would just show progress along the story. Actually everything a living story is about (like the destroyed Lion’s Arch, Kessex Hills, etc.).
That’s how it works when it’s changing live but if it’s story based it’s different. You can’t have a “living” story for everyone that is also based on YOUR story progress. Imagine what would happen in a zone once the majority of the playerbase passes that point in the story and newer players can’t see anyone to play with.
That’s the problem we’re discussing right now, as I said earlier maybe they don’t need to work out 2 completely different maps. And again: not changing anything and leaving it as it is right now isn’t a solution either. Everything has its negative points to it. But as you say: The majority of players would’ve done the story at some point. So it would be logical to adapt the maps to the majority of players.
I looked through more than a dozen Google-search pages, but I could not find the quote from the Dev about phasing. It explained why they can’t or won’t use it in GW2. Sorry.
As for the Guild Chat, it’s the most recent one…September 30th.
As soon as I heard we were going to the Fire Islands again, I imagined my characters being on an (air)ship heading to Ember Bay.
The story brought us there through a portal which was set up by an asuran crew which somehow got there. Is there any information on their journey? How did they reach Ember Bay?
Sadly, it feels like the new map is more or less thrown into Tyria, without any further explanation. It would’ve been nice if we got an actual ship standing at Southsun Cove e.g. which would serve as an entrance to the new map. Or maybe use the Aerodrome in Lion’s Arch.
Having multiple maps dependent on where you are in the story line would split the player base and could cause immersion problems.
It’s the opposite of that, we need different maps to prevent immersion problems. As I said you’ll finish your personal story, seeing all those plants grow in the cutscene and as soon as you leave the instance, Orr just looks the same as before. That is immersion breaking.
If there are 2 Orr maps and if having the post Orr map requires having the story done on that character then not only does it force people to do the storyline to the end on every single level 80 they have if they want access for all, but people who haven’t done the story on that char can’t play with those who have. Or it forces them not to do the story on that char if they don’t want to be switched over.
You’re right, that would be like Ascalon pre- and post-Searing. Maybe we don’t need to go all the way because the events would have to be changed accordingly to Zhaitan’ s death. Maybe it would be possible to remove the depressing foggy weather in Malchor’s Leap e.g. and let the sun shine through again, also add some smaller details such as some plants growing. That could be done client based without changing the maps completely.
Plus, not everyone is going to want to be moved over to a new map after finishing the story. Maybe they like the events on the old map better or like the way it looks.
Changing maps after you’ve done a certain story would just show progress along the story. Actually everything a living story is about (like the destroyed Lion’s Arch, Kessex Hills, etc.).
The Devs already commented on phasing, if that’s what is being referenced.
Also, OP might be interested in the latest Guild Chat; the Devs talk a bit about how maps can now show different things to individual players, at the same time.
Good luck.
What did they say about phasing?
To the Guild Chat: If that is the case, it would be interesting to see how it worked out. Do you mean the Guild Chat which started 13 hours ago or the one before that?
Let’s start with our personal story. At the end we could witness Orr being cleansed but as soon as we left the instance, everything went back to normal. Especially now it would be too much work to revamp every Orr map. This would also mean we needed 2 different instances for each map. But right now it feels like your hard work didn’t change anything in Orr.
A much more up-to-date topic is the new season of the current living world. At the end of the second episode Aurene hatched. But if you're trying to visit her in the open world you'll stumble upon the egg again. So it seems like we're time travelers now!
Of course there will be some parts of the game that can't be changed (Mordremoth is dead, so should we shut down Dragon's Stand? I don't think so). But smaller details such as the egg should be possible to work out. Will we need instanced maps to solve this problem?
TL;DR: There’s no actual progression in the open world maps compared to the (same) instanced maps in the story. Will we have instanced open world maps in the future?
Why not both? It’s working in TESO e.g. (I didn’t like many other things in that game though).
Are mounts still considered as evil in Guild Wars? If we had a larger variety of cosmetic mounts (yup, we already got mounts such as the magic carpet, broom,…) maybe we could experience a new feeling while roaming through Tyria. If we didn’t waypoint every 5 seconds it could provide much more authenticity to the world our characters live in..
I recently jumped back into Guild Wars 1, it’s a different feeling walking through the maps by yourself compared to teleporting (+ loading screen) all the time (gw1 had outposts though, so you could easily reach distanced areas). I don’t want to remove waypoints in gw2 because they’re very useful but mounts could be a good thing for a different purpose.
P.S.: I want to ride drakes and dolyaks and things just as Dagnar Stonepate and the dwarves of the Stone Summit already did in gw1.
Like, basically the entire LS episode was dediced to tying up loose points from HoT and the White Mantle. It was a cohesive whole for the most part. We even got a cliffhanger for that plot point with Lazarus’ appearance and Caudecus’ escape.
The mention of Primordous being active seemed so tacked-on, like the developers suddenly realized after developing the whole thing that the Current Events stuff involved the White Mantle AND dragon minions and said “Oh bugger, we need to tie into that somehow!”. I’m sure that’s not what happened at all, but that’s almost what it seems like. And it just doesn’t seem necessary at all to me. We had one cliffhanger, we didn’t need another. I’m sure Primordous would have waited to get a better buildup to his activity than 1 line of dialogue at the very end of the story.
This is exactly how I felt about it. It should have simply ended with the escape of Caudecus. The introduction of Primordus was completely out of place. I expected them to build it up slowly over the next episodes. We could have chased Caudecus while Taimi gave us some new information about unexpected activities in Kryta. We would have checked that and bit by bit find out that these activities are related to Primordus. They could have added so much more suspense to it compared to introducing an elder dragon in one single sentence (which had no effect on me at all).
