Guild Wars 2

Feirlista Xv.1425:

saventis.1485:

sonicwhip.9052:

saventis.1485:

So i finally made my character look how i want him to… now what?
i dont really like pvp that much so what can i do?

New mmo called Archeage just released. Should try it out.

I tried it in beta but to me it just felt clunky and unrefined.
i think its partly the fact that when casting you cant move
and the th UI feels a little bit clutterd

GW2 has ruined other mmos for me lol

Good luck getting in to that game they are having major issues like 3 to 4 que times just to play and you can’t miniize the game client to do something else while you wait. No I think I will stay with Guildwars.

AA got a whopping 3.5 on meta critic. It has some serious flaws. It was one of the games I had been looking forward to (like ESO) but design decisions made by Trion or those above Trion destroyed it before it got off the ground.

It’s 100% phishing nothing legit about it.

Because if Anet was contacting you, they’d use your name. And they wouldn’t warn you first and give you a chance to log in and steal everything in the guild bank. lol

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Kurrilino.2706:

Vayne.8563:

snip

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snip

Sure, single player games aren’t MMOs. I agree 100%. However, Guild Wars 2 is a living breathing MMO.

Pretty disingenuous to compare different genres.

Single player games have more variety in their plotlines too.

Question : what makes Guild Wars 2 a living, breathing MMO in your opinion? The living story , the way the world evolves around a story, the fact it’s an open world MMO and you can potentially meet random strangers and help out eachother? Dynamic event system? Or something else?

A combination of things rather than one individual thing. I’ve played a lot of MMOs. You know…a lot of them. There’s a town in Rift that is on fire. It’s on fire all the time. It’s near a quest hub. You have to go into the burning town, and it’s locked in time. It’s never not on fire. It’s never completely burned down. It’s always in this state.

In Guild Wars 2, I walk through a zone and one day the centaurs have a fort, next time the humans hold it. Sure it see-saws back and forth along chains, but it’s still an improvement for living over other games. I don’t have a guy saying please help me or these guys will destroy my house…but it never gets destroyed. If guys are going to destroy someone’s house they DO destroy it.

There’s a ton of ambient dialogue, in the world and especially in the cities. The further you are from something, the softer the voice. It’s very cool. And sometimes, even now, I hear conversations I’ve not heard before.

There’s little things that just make the game very cool. There was a kid on one of the personal story segments who does a magic trick for you if you talk to him. He comes running up to you…want to see a magic trick?

And if you say yes, he does it. But perhaps better than I could ever explain it is this video. I don’t know any other MMO that has this or anything like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CyqGJHTjes

Unfortunately a lot of these things are in instance you could miss, I do remember a magician(It was/is in the open world) that turned his assistant into a Moa, after that he started to dance with 2 other moa and you had to tell which one was the assistant.
And agreed, open world is very detailed ,but I feel like they are moving away from that direction. Every time there was a living story I thought through what should I visit ,what could hide some hidden information. Two example comes in mind : the first was when (Don’t know how to do spoiler things ,sry) Rytlock went after magdear , after that I visited his quarters in black citadel and his assistant still thinks he is in bloodtide coast. Or when I visited the pale tree after the last episode and everyone there (expect the tree) acted like nothing happened.

On other notes I think you were too quick to judge Wildstar. I only played a beta ,but it does some thing intrestingly . If your complaint is it’s not living ,it does have a lot of great ideas, see the part when players can expand cities via Settler path, or the phasing which still enable you to play with anyone who didn’t complete it yet and it has player triggered dynamic events things as well as normal events.

I dislike phasing. The simplest example of phasing or something like it is when you chop down a tree in Guild Wars 2, it’s gone, but someone else can still chop it. What you see is them chopping nothing. A minor niggle in this game, considering how good the benefit of not competing for nodes is to me, but it gives you an example of phasing.

In Guild Wars 2, for the most part the world is the world. When you have a phased world and different people see different things, the game is effectively ruined for me.

If you’re on different quest steps on ESO for example, you can’t do stuff that someone else is doing. Put a cross through the game, I’m not interested in playing it, living or not living.

Maybe I want to help someone with a quest. Maybe I need help with a quest and no one in my guild is up to that quest part I’m up to. They can’t just go into my personal story. they’re not there and can’t do the things That I’m doing.

In ESO, my wife and I had a quest together. I didn’t step far enough into an alcove to trigger the quest. I followed her around for quite some time and she was doing things, interacting that I couldn’t see to interact with. Then, we get to the end of the quest she says, come on in. You just have to interact with that object. I’m like, what object? She said, did you get everything from the packs. I was like, what packs.

Not very immersive to me. And I had to go back and do the whole runaround while she waited. Phasing is not an improvement to me.

I think Anet devs are hard working, and deserve a lot of praise. I’d also like to thank the moderators of the forums, who have to put up with me.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Kurrilino.2706:

Vayne.8563:

But no other game I can remember had as much ambient dialogue in cities that you could just hear in passing. And that’s part of the living breathing world.

No game that I can remember have NPCs what walk from one event to the next, and you can follow them and see where they go.

That’s a living breathing world.

---

Oh i see you never played Oblivion then…..
They have living cities

Sure, single player games aren’t MMOs. I agree 100%. However, Guild Wars 2 is a living breathing MMO.

Pretty disingenuous to compare different genres.

Single player games have more variety in their plotlines too.

Question : what makes Guild Wars 2 a living, breathing MMO in your opinion? The living story , the way the world evolves around a story, the fact it’s an open world MMO and you can potentially meet random strangers and help out eachother? Dynamic event system? Or something else?

A combination of things rather than one individual thing. I’ve played a lot of MMOs. You know…a lot of them. There’s a town in Rift that is on fire. It’s on fire all the time. It’s near a quest hub. You have to go into the burning town, and it’s locked in time. It’s never not on fire. It’s never completely burned down. It’s always in this state.

In Guild Wars 2, I walk through a zone and one day the centaurs have a fort, next time the humans hold it. Sure it see-saws back and forth along chains, but it’s still an improvement for living over other games. I don’t have a guy saying please help me or these guys will destroy my house…but it never gets destroyed. If guys are going to destroy someone’s house they DO destroy it.

There’s a ton of ambient dialogue, in the world and especially in the cities. The further you are from something, the softer the voice. It’s very cool. And sometimes, even now, I hear conversations I’ve not heard before.

There’s little things that just make the game very cool. There was a kid on one of the personal story segments who does a magic trick for you if you talk to him. He comes running up to you…want to see a magic trick?

And if you say yes, he does it. But perhaps better than I could ever explain it is this video. I don’t know any other MMO that has this or anything like it.

@phys

Well, actually I think that the leveling experience is pretty good right now and the living story guides people further which seems to by the case.

I mean by the time someone is 80, and this point, they shouldn’t really need a guide to get to new areas. They should at least understand events by then.

If they’ve done the personal story they’ve been to Orr which has no hearts and just events.

No, I don’t believe Anet saw the story as the backbone of the game. I think they saw the game as more amorphous with people just running around and doing stuff without a backbone. After all, they only added hearts when they realized people didn’t go places without map markers of some kind.

I think Anet wanted something more sandboxy than they ended up with.

phys.7689:

Elsdragon.5109:

I must say your post sounds very selfish and close-minded. Those are simply your opinion that you somehow consider a fact. I am a former GW1 player and I will disagree with your points completely. Though I am a “veteran player” if you consider the time factor, I would still consider myself a casual player based on the play-style as well.

Your expectations are not for what the game is but rather for how long it can keep you entertained. They’ve said that there wouldn’t be boxed expansions for GW2 when they released it and yet you still had expectations that it would. That is what I call delusional, believing something will go your way despite being told it won’t.

You claimed that your passion for the game came in huge part to expansions in GW1 (which were campaigns as stand-alone games really, there was only one expansion and that was Eye of the North), but all that tells me is that your passion isn’t about how different or wonderful the game is but rather that it gave a lot of content to play with. If that’s all you’re after, you’re better off playing multiple games rather than expecting one game company to crank out tons of content to keep you pleased. The longevity of GW1 wasn’t due to the added campaigns I would argue, but rather its uniqueness and deviant from the standards of what an MMO was back then, but you either failed to see that or conveniently left it out of your statement.

As for how the LS is, that is also a matter of opinion. I have said it before, and I will say it again, it is a far better option design-wise to implement this sort of LS content rather than a boxed expansion to go with their model of a living world. If your idea of content is simply “new races, new classes, new weapons, new skills, new maps, new dungeons, new pvp modes” then you’re missing out on a lot I have to say. The races and classes they have now are fine; adding any more may be more harmful to the game than you would think. The new maps and dungeons bit, we got a new map that kept extending as the LS progressed, who knows they may just release a new dungeon as well.

actually, pretty sure they started off saying they would definately be expanding the game through expansions. Shortly after release, they decided they were unsure how they would deliver it. Then they later decided they would see how living story does at delivering content.

As for content, yeah its important, most games, even good games, cannot continue to thrive with their initial content. That is why there have been like 100 streetfighter games, and demon souls, dark souls, and dark souls II. MMOs generally deal with this concept by continuing to improve and expand the same game with new content. Keep in mind most people are willing to pay for this, So its not as if they want something for nothing.

new races/class/proffesions would not be any more harmful to the game than anything else. FFXI was like 10ish years ago, and they managed to add 11 jobs without destroying the game. Gw1 added 4 proffesions, whom as far as i can tell attracted many players, and are still some favorite classes for many people. Assassin, dervish, ritualist were highly popular classes, and people still ask for them today.

No, gw2 has not truely captured all playstyles.
Keep in mind each job is firmly attached to its proffesion mechanic.
mesmer will always be tied to illusions and shatters
ranger will always be tied to pets
theif is always going to be controled by initiative, steal and stealth abilities.

point is, they may have hit some broad archetypes, but they are all limited in their playstyle by their class mechanics.
a thief cant really be a monk/martial artist, because he is dependent on stealth for defense, his mechanic is based around stealing, not combos, and initiative is made to front load his damage rather than build it up.

A warrior cant be a death berserker type because his mechanic is about 1 special attack he builds up over time, and his theme is to be highly variable with weapons and generally to buff enemies

necro is tied to 4 skills on his life bar, which favor one playstyle.

point is, they have a lot of room to grow when it comes to proffesions.

I don’t ever remember them saying anything about expansions except that they wouldn’t have stand alone ones like Guild Wars 1 did, because they didn’t want to divide the player base.

If they did talk about expansions they didn’t talk much about them.

Kurrilino.2706:

Vayne.8563:

But no other game I can remember had as much ambient dialogue in cities that you could just hear in passing. And that’s part of the living breathing world.

No game that I can remember have NPCs what walk from one event to the next, and you can follow them and see where they go.

That’s a living breathing world.

---

Oh i see you never played Oblivion then…..
They have living cities

Sure, single player games aren’t MMOs. I agree 100%. However, Guild Wars 2 is a living breathing MMO.

Pretty disingenuous to compare different genres.

Single player games have more variety in their plotlines too.

Penarddun.6827:

Vayne.8563:

Penarddun.6827:

snip

I’m not sure how much of an impact this is going to have on my experience with gw2 in the long run, and there are a lot of other leveling issues that I think need to be addressed first, but it was something that I didn’t expect to be an issue yet is.

I think you’re missing the point though. The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were. They’ve always said that was the main thrust of the game.

By having the personal story there all the time,. what they did was give people the wrong message about the game. Because at some point personal story ends, and then there’s nothing.

They’re retraining people to play the game differently for a reason. I used to see people post all the time about how they felt that they weren’t high enough level for their personal story, and they felt they were doing something wrong by being underleveled. Having it there, as it was, affected those people, in addition to affecting people like me, who feel like it breaks immersion to have to stop doing important stuff to do not important stuff. Save the city…but help some farmers first, because you’re not good enough to save the city.

But again, the thing you’re talking about here is probably the very thing Anet is trying to prevent. That’s why the brought in the new content guide.

Didn’t see this reply until today.

You mentioned “The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were.” That seems like a strange comment since the PS had so much effort put into it. A different origin story for each character, merging into a tri-fold order choice and culminating in the ending story arc. That’s a lot of content. Backbone (I don’t agree with the use of this term, from what I remember of the original GW2 release notes, this game was all about the different types of content provided), or no, there are so many hours of fun from the PS, and that’s what I enjoyed most about the early game.

Also in response to another poster’s statement that the previous PS was too “hand-held.” I did not think of it as hand holding at all. I can explore and roam when I choose. Which I did, when I felt like it. It’s not telling me I can only do the personal story now, it’s giving me story driven content to mask the fact that I have to level to 80. It gave me something to focus on during the leveling process when I didn’t have all my traits yet. I felt like my character wasn’t complete until around level 60 or 70, since I was lacking my end game traits. So the PS helped me not get bored while gaining my final character specs. I didn’t feel like I could do events, dungeons, or WvW because I was handicapped by not having my final build. Had I had all my traits by level 50ish, I may have felt differently about the Personal Story’s impact on my gameplay. But that is a whole other topic.

There is plenty to do after the personal story. I considered the PS early game content. When I reached level 80, I started to do more map completion, really work on my achievements such as diving and jumping puzzles. I started investigating WvW, and doing dungeons with friends, and finally doing some world events (which I find the least fun, personally).

I know some disagree, and that is okay by me. I accept that different people enjoy different aspects of the game. I only posted my original post here to give my personal perspective about the lack of a PS objective while leveling, since this thread is asking for feedback about the NPE. I don’t really want to be “retrained.” That’s an off-putting phrase. I play games to have fun my way, not to be trained to enjoy it in a particular way.

I’m not going by my opinion. I’m going by what Anet said about dynamic events. Anet said they were the center of the game. Everything was supposed to be driven around events. The personal story was supposed to get you to places where events happened.

That’s why you couldn’t just do the personal story to level. The gaps were always supposed to be intentional. They had plans to add more events and take some out and change up the game, but it never eventuated.

Bhima.9518:

Stooperdale.3560:

The problem with an expansion is that the accountants in charge of the content will always decide that there must be “must have” content inside the expansion. It makes financial sense for the company to induce all players to buy the expansion. So whenever people talk about an expansion I know that I will probably stop playing because I will not buy the expansion and I will not get the “must have” content.

At the moment we receive updates to the wallet, trading post, cosmetics, etc through free updates. If an expansion is released then all quality of life improvements will be put into the expansion instead. The best cosmetics will require the expansion. New skills would be put into the expansion. However the big “must have” content that is usually put into expansions is a level cap increase (or some other way of boosting character power through gear treadmills and grind). Virtually all MMOs do this. Any claim that a GW2 expansion would not include a level cap increase, power creep, gear grinds, gear treadmills, is unrealistic speculation. These are the most favored tools of the accountants to make players expansions. That is what you ask for when you ask for an expansion.

You are also forgetting what expansions also give their players: A big chunk of new content to play. This game is the cheapest form of entertainment in this industry. Full stop. If you can’t afford a $40 expansion after 3 years or don’t like to spend money in the game, you may not be the target demographic for the game.

Maybe some people can’t afford after over-spending on black lion keys. Just saying. lol

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

Every MMO has similar situations where devs try things and it doesn’t work. Wait till you see the changes that are going to come to AA. I hope you come back and less us know what you think of it in six months.

More to the point, you’re not playing this game but you’re still commenting on it. The elite skill now unlocks at level 31, not level 40. That’s the first thing. Much of the information you’ve been seeing online about stuff being locked out is factually wrong. But you wouldn’t know because you didn’t test the system.

So if you’re going to complain about the game, at least try to stay current with the information. There’s really no reason to spread misinformation.

There have already been changes to the NPE based on fan response. For example Skill point challenges now unlock at level 13, but once unlocked once, it’s account wide. So for new people it will be first character only.

There’s changes to the levels skills unlock out too. Nice that you’ve found another game, but if you’re not playing this one, you’re out of the loop.

That’s exactly my point. First it’s level 40,..Now it’s 31. It should have been 31 from the get go. And…

While I expect tons of changes In 6 months after release…I don’t expect the core of the game to be changed drastically over and over and over…2 years later. It simply makes me feel that the developers are still experimenting.

As I said Closed Beta. Not so ready for release as it should be.

Secondly. My complaint wasn’t ONLY how long someone needed to wait for an elite, that was intended as an example. level locking weapon skills…is Just another trial and error. Moving elite to 40…. trial and error. You can see it cause they tried it… saw it was an error, then changed it to a Lower level….

That is what trial and error means. And in general… while Trial an error in the early life phase of any MMO is expected. I rarely expect to see it this late in it’s development.

If this is something other players are content with, then Gw2 is working fine.

Or was the NPE change rolled back? Are weapon skills No longer level locked? if the entire NPE fiasco was " Trail-and-error" tested, and they realized it was a bad idea, then maybe I might return, who knows. Then again… In a couple months they may take another core area and change that as well.

Anet had gained a lot of cred with Guild Wars. Lately, I can see Not just how personnel has changed, but it’s very philosophy. As such, until I actually feel the game is worth playing for me, I will be trying other games…

Lastly " Why gw2 is not working". They had an awesome oppurtunity to get a large influx of cash from players that wanted desperately to pay them for an expansion, an expansion in the true sense of the word. Instead some of these players are spending their money elsewhere.

Maybe not enough that Anet cares? Maybe most players are content to unlock Living Story chapters they missed at the gem store, and that is ok. Maybe that more than makes up for the cash that went to other developers.

I Just feel that Gw2 has become too experimental to my tastes, as such… I’ll be lurking to see where the game goes for a while,

As to the rest I wish you happy gaming.

But even games like WoW changed the core game several times, dumbing things down, making skills easier to build, making the skill tree so simply even a donkey could make a build, and you know, that’s WoW. Lotro had major changes over the years. So did DDO. There were major changes in AoC, in Vanguard. Anyone who played SWG will tell you there was a major change there that sunk the game. It happens…all over the place.

And it’ll happen with AA too, because no one can ever really predict what will work until it goes live in an MMO.

Nerelith.7360:

Boneheart.3561:

How convenient, your last post on ArchAge without explaining Labor Points.

AA, Labor points, and pay2win, are not the subject of the thread. I became aware that It is derailing the subject of the thread which is " Why gw2 is not working"

As such, believe what you wish.

I am not going to derail the thread. As such I will not be discussing this any longer.

Back on topic. I believe that MMO players have become accustomed to getting expansions every so often. As much as " Living Story" and it’s " expansion-like content of which the developers seem to have fallen in thrall, may add some additional content, it is not an expansion in my mind. I can only speak for myself, but I believe I have seen other posts from other players saying the same.

Living story is a cheap cop out by Anet. it is supposed to convince players they don’t need an expansion.

Maybe Most players are content with Living Story. Some are not.

Another problem for me…. is the “Paid for beta” nature of Gw2. They try one thing, then another… they change how traits work, then change how skills and weapons work. It just feels that, all of the current changes should have been either added at launch, or shortly thereafter. It just feels to me they don’t know what they are doing, and doing trian-and-error.

Also, They seem to be both dumbing the game down, and pushing abilities BACK, higher and higher. First traits were dumbed down, … now skill acquisition is dumbed down… I Just feel that the target demographic is getting … more and more the Loest common denominator.

For someone that has been playing MMO’s since EverQuest, to be told.. that I need to wait til level x…to use skills y and z, is a Bit…. Not even sure of the right word.

It feels Like they assume I need all these levels to know How to use certain skills. Now I hear elites are pushed all the way to 40?

I think that the nature of the changes, and the frequency with which they mess with the core of the game…. leads me to conclude that gw2 is not ready for release yet. Which leads me to wonder, what have they been doing the past 2 years?

Paid for Closed Beta testing?

Every MMO has similar situations where devs try things and it doesn’t work. Wait till you see the changes that are going to come to AA. I hope you come back and less us know what you think of it in six months.

More to the point, you’re not playing this game but you’re still commenting on it. The elite skill now unlocks at level 31, not level 40. That’s the first thing. Much of the information you’ve been seeing online about stuff being locked out is factually wrong. But you wouldn’t know because you didn’t test the system.

So if you’re going to complain about the game, at least try to stay current with the information. There’s really no reason to spread misinformation.

There have already been changes to the NPE based on fan response. For example Skill point challenges now unlock at level 13, but once unlocked once, it’s account wide. So for new people it will be first character only.

There’s changes to the levels skills unlock out too. Nice that you’ve found another game, but if you’re not playing this one, you’re out of the loop.

Draknar.5748:

Vayne.8563:

She asked nicely in chat if people would let her get the achievement.

Asking if someone will let you do something, even nicely, at least to me, is still asking for permission.

“Will you let me do X” and “Will you permit me to do X” are synonymous.

But now we are getting off topic.

Okay, I was paraphrasing, because I didn’t actually see what she typed. She simply made it known she needed the achievement, however she did it. I’m pretty sure she didn’t ask for permission, because she wouldn’t. She’d have said something like, I need the achievement.

Whatever the case, we’ll never know because I’m sure she doesn’t remember what she said. I wasn’t quoting her verbatim, I was just trying to thank the people who were nice.

fireflyry.7023:

Arcadio.6875:

I know the Living World updates have added a couple of new maps, a story, and many new skins. But two years of this doesn’t compare to what we expect an expansion would have added.

This.

For right or wrong I expected more, after 2 years. Maybe it’s a false expectation or my personal bias as a GW1 player at fault but…..a handful of hours content most nailed in two sittings at most….with a side of grinding out a backpiece in recycled content and mat grinding as a “reward” hardly constitutes substantial or rewarding content for me personally.

In this regard the LS is a huge fail. Drip-feeding content is not the way to go thus far, I’d rather nothing for a year and then a serious dose of awesome….but it’s already been 2 years. If this is a test bed and we get a massive hit of content in 3-6 months all good but I’m not holding my breath.

I love the franchise but boredom is quickly setting in.I’m having more fun and surpises in terms of content playing Skyrim for the upteenth time. Sheesh.

But you took a long break and missed most of the first season of the living story…most of which’s content is removed. I was here and I played it.

It was a mistake for Anet to have removed that content, but it’s done. So yes, those who took long breaks have reason to be less satisfied than some of us.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You have a good point, but it’s a shame that they never allowed the personality system to reach it’s full potential. And I blame that entirely on the writing. They never allowed the player to be anything but “unfriendly but good”, “neutral but good”, and “goody-two-shoes”.

They should really have gone the Mass Effect approach:
Renegade (hitting people in the face, shoot first and ask questions later) – Paragon (Try and talk things out), or the BaldursGate approach, by allowing you to be either good or evil.

But by forcing the player to be these boring three shades of good, it is very hard for the player to tell the three apart. Plus it forces the game into a very immature writing style, where everyone is nice to each other, and there is no edge to anything.

It could have been better, if they had been willing to be less PG.

My guess is they had neither the time, nor budget to do that. It would have taken a lot more work, a lot more responses, even changes to the story. The story makes you a goody two shoes. It would have to change to make you bad…and that’s a lot of work.

shadow.6174:

Vayne.8563:

I’d feel a lot happier if people stopped referring to level gating as if the game hadn’t launched with level gating…and no one said a word. Level gating wasn’t just introduced to the game with the NPC. It was in the game from day one.

The ability to switch weapons was gated at level 7…but it was still gated.
You got your 3 skill at level 20…but it was still gated.
You got your elite at level 30 (now it’s 31)…but it was still gated.

If it’s abysmal now, as some claim, why weren’t their complaints during the first two years of the game’s life about it. I’ll tell you why.

Because it’s not leveling gating people are objecting to, but the CHANGE in level gating.

By skipping the first 15 levels, people don’t really how fast most of that level gating goes by.

The issue isn’t having level gated things, at least I’m fully aware the game already had it (as the examples you gave), the issue is how they are being used. The way it was before was less painful and boring than now. Level gating things like utility and elite skills, switching weapons and such was fine, but level gating things like map completion, merchants, each one of your basic weapon skills, trading post and several other things is what is bad. Some of these stuff don’t have the necessity of being level gated. Again, the main complaint isn’t having level gating, but how they have been implemented.

A: “Can someone help me with a vista?”
B: “What’s vista?”
A: “It’s something required for map completion. Open your map and you will see the items you have to grab for it”
B: “Hmm, I don’t see anything about completion on my map… must be broken?”

But not all that stuff you listed is level gated. You can use the trading post for example from level 2. Who said you can’t use merchants?

The text at various levels gives you information about various things in the game, but most aren’t locked before them. For example, they tell you about Asuran gates at level 20, around the time you need to use them. But you can use them from level 2.

I’d feel a lot happier if people stopped referring to level gating as if the game hadn’t launched with level gating…and no one said a word. Level gating wasn’t just introduced to the game with the NPC. It was in the game from day one.

The ability to switch weapons was gated at level 7…but it was still gated.
You got your 3 skill at level 20…but it was still gated.
You got your elite at level 30 (now it’s 31)…but it was still gated.

If it’s abysmal now, as some claim, why weren’t their complaints during the first two years of the game’s life about it. I’ll tell you why.

Because it’s not leveling gating people are objecting to, but the CHANGE in level gating.

By skipping the first 15 levels, people don’t really how fast most of that level gating goes by.

Draknar.5748:

Vayne.8563:

So my wife needed this achievement and got onto a farming map. She asked nicely in chat if people would let her get the achievement.

Not a single word of dissent. Everyone stopped, finished the event, let her get her achievement (2 actually) and nice as pie.

Thanks to those farmers who are helpful. You don’t deserve to get painted with the same brush as those who think they own the map.

I think the issue is that she had to essentially ask permission to do an event that she should be allowed to complete to progress her Living Story without any other players’ permission.

I’m curious what would have happened if they said “NO GTFO NUB.” Would you guys apologize and then try to taxi to a different map?

Need should take priority over want.

She didn’t ask permission. She simply said, politely that she needed the achievement. There is a difference.

So my wife needed this achievement and got onto a farming map. She asked nicely in chat if people would let her get the achievement.

Not a single word of dissent. Everyone stopped, finished the event, let her get her achievement (2 actually) and nice as pie.

Thanks to those farmers who are helpful. You don’t deserve to get painted with the same brush as those who think they own the map.

I’m sure as a new customer Anet will exchange the armor, but you don’t get infinite use on it. You can use transmutation charges to keep the skin, but I wouldn’t use it, if you plan to keep it till you’re 80.

You will get some free transmuation charges by playing the game.

fireflyry.7023:

The only time I cared about the plot in this game was when my guildies passion for the story overwhelmed my sense of not caring, which I admit was highly enjoyable. Outside that I just clicked on the “skip” button as soon as I could find it.

So you admit some of your guildies are passionate about the story. Good to know. lol

When I saw the topic, I thought the first line would be “the Rock has come back to Tyria!”.

I agree it’s better that communication is going on and we have seen changes to the NPE and the commander tags based on player input.

But I think it’s unfair to say we haven’t seen stuff being put into the game that players have asked for all along.

Omar Aschi Popp.7496:

Vayne.8563:

You say people who are against change are the enemies of games. I say more games probably die from devs listening to people than doing what they want.

Vayne, I thought you’d never admit it)))))

You mean, like NPE?
You mean like townclothes removal?
You mean like Queensdale?
You mean like the new “facebook” Trading Post?
You mean like every update ever?

Funny guy.

I thought you loved those things.

Those are all things people asked for. And so yes, you are right. “more games probably die from devs listening to people than doing what they want”

You are sadly very right.

Change is the enemy of comfort.
Change is the enemy of home.
(You are the enemy because you praise every invasive and intrusive change ever rolled out)

The NPE, over all, was a positive change for the game and I believe time will prove it. It will need adjustment. The trait system is not good for the game and I’ve been against it since I tried it…not before like some people.

The townclothes removal I was not “for” or “against”, however, I understood why it was done. It was badly designed from the outset (which I’ve also said before) and yes, I’d never ever buy an outfit to stand around in town. Not happening.

The new trading post is brilliant and more people, probably many more, like it than not.

There were plenty of people who hated the Queensdale champ train. I don’t believe it ever belonged in a starter area. It gave new players ideas about the game, without teaching them how to play the game as intended…and yes, there is a way Anet intended us to play the game. That’s part of why the NPE is long overdue.

But yeah, some people like this game and the updates. If you don’t, that’s okay. But don’t try to make it so one-sided. It’s really not.

fireflyry.7023:

I agree to disagree.

This game has many faults, and many awesome features but if LS is the future it will die a slow death.

Expansion please.kthxbye :P

Well, if Anet isn’t working on expansion content, I’ll eat my hat. However, just to be safe, I’m going to get a hat made of chocolate.

fireflyry.7023:

This over-analysis is BS imo.

It worked in GW1, it will work here, and on a tangent many like me expected this to be the format. $60 for a years fun, heck yeah GW2 players will pay that. I’d pay a lot more. I was a passionate GW1 player for 8 years, due in not large but huge part to the expansions. It ended up releasing my fav class, Sin ftw, and was so instrumental to the longevity and success of the franchise.

Anyone who disagrees is not a former GW1 player.

The excitement, speculation and gratification in both the PvE and PvP realms was what separated this game from the other games on the market.Sure no sub but we all couldn’t wait to hand over our coin for the expansion.

I’d class myself a casual player in GW2, played 6 months PvP on release pretty fiercely but that got way boring way quick, then got sucked into PvE mostly thanks to my guild and have had a blast but…..it’s stale. No I don’t have ascended gear or any legendary weapons, I don’t have the time or inclination for such things….which is why I used to play GW.

Now that’s all it seems to be about. 2 friggin years later. Either grind out gear, re-roll, or play a stale one format PvP. I guess my biggest question is are my expectations at fault?

In conclusion I do know one thing, the LS is a poor excuse for new content and if that is a substitution for an actual expansion I won’t be playing this game for too much longer and I would hate to see the game go that way.

Lol Ry. I know this will stun you but I’m a Guild Wars 1 player, and I disagree with you. I don’t disagree that I’d like an expansion. I don’t disagree that an expansion would bring people back to the game. But I definitely disagree with the idea that something that worked in Guild Wars 1 will work in Guild Wars 2. We’re talking many years in ago, in industry that changes all the time.

Point 1. When it worked in Guild Wars 1, the only multiplayer fantasy game that was out there was Guild Wars 1. There were no free to play MMOs (more than the dozens now available) to take people away from a buy to play game.

Point 2. The staff and offices of Guild Wars 2 are far larger than what we saw in Guild Wars 1. So yeah, buying a game that had no competition only had to support a staff of 50, with smaller headquarters. Hell the voice acting alone for this game puts a strain on the budget.

Point 3. There are many other complaints by people aside from just no content. People complain about lack of viable builds, the lack of play cooperation due to lack of a trinity, the lack of multiple PvP types and various other things. Having an expansion wouldn’t necessarily solve any of those problems.

You just can’t cut and paste a past solution and expect it to work now. That’s not saying it won’t work now…it might. But it’s by no means a sure thing.

History doesn’t always repeat itself.

Elsdragon.5109:

Not saying it’s a bad idea all around, I’m saying the current system (the LS system) is probably the better choice than having a huge chunk of expansion at one point then long pause in between.

The LS season 2 is from my point of view, their alternative to expansions, and a very suitable one I have to say. If your thread is about how to implement expansions in GW2 and what they should consist of, I will say the current system is doing great.

It’s a big gamble though, because you don’t really know if enough people will spend money in the cash shop to pay for the creation of that content.

New expansions bring new people to buy the original game as well. That’s an influx of cash big enough to pay for an expansion. That’s why I say only Anet knows what they can afford.

Depends on the game, but it’s not the size of the cities that make the difference. Aion has some big cities. WoW had some big cities.

But no other game I can remember had as much ambient dialogue in cities that you could just hear in passing. And that’s part of the living breathing world.

No game that I can remember have NPCs what walk from one event to the next, and you can follow them and see where they go.

That’s a living breathing world.

The other day, an NPC finished an event for me. I watched him do it. He handed in the last metal scrap that was being collected in an event in Diessa Plateau.

In a world where NPCs can finish events, I’d say you have a living, breathing world.

I don’t think anyone really believes that Guild Wars 2 isn’t due for a big dose of content. Even people who don’t play as much as I do have basically done what they want in the game that isn’t a huge grind to get done.

The question becomes how should this content be delivered.

The advantages of an expansion are clear. It brings a lot of excitement back to the game. It brings in a lot of money in very short order. And it gets people playing for a period of months.

The downside of an expansion is that not everyone will pay for one and it would divide the player base.

The problem is one of finances. If Anet can afford to release an expansion through the living story, with new weapons, skills, professions and/or races, then that would keep everyone playing, because there would be nothing to stop them from playing.

If they do the boxed expansion, then some people wouldn’t move on to that content…which is how most MMOs do it.

There is a middle ground most people don’t discuss and that’s not a big boxed expansion but smaller DLC packages, that include possibly races and stuff. If they do it that way and put it in the gem store, people can farm gems to get it, people can buy gems to get it, everyone can move on, but that would possibly make the game feel more like some of the other free to play games. It would no longer feel like buy to play.

Only Anet knows Anet’s finances and what is and isn’t practical though. All we can do is theorize.

LMAO! Way to exaagerate.

Anet did change the game. They did destroy a major city. They did add a new map and more is coming. The world change changed. Kessex Hills has, certainly. It’s not change super fast, but it is changing.

Do you remember before the LS 2, when waypoints were being attacked? Before the Nightmare Tower when we found the invisible wall in the lake.

There’s nothing false about the ad copy you posted. You may not like the speed of the updates, but you can’t say there’s not a changing world.

Edit: Having played some of the new games like ESO and Wildstar, yeah…this is a living breathing world by comparison.

Champs at Jormag don’t drop bags. No one is farming champs there.

But there are leechers. That’s for sure.

OP, I have a question for you. How is “this game isn’t for you” and more dismissive than “you white knights will defend anything even if it’s bad”.

Both sides of the equation dismiss completely legit commentary. Human nature at its finest.

I’d like to see longer/more involved quest chains. They don’t have to be standard quests like in other games. Scavenger hunt type stuff is okay too, but there are some “rules”.

You need to be able to figure out what to do without going to a wiki or Dulfy.
It has to be “fair”, in figuring it out. Might even be good if there were puzzles involved with a randomized element so you had to solve something on your own.
It should fit into or expand lore or story of the game.

A set of books you have to collect that tell a story would be perfect. It could even become a collection.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Vayne.8563:

Ish.2846:

Vayne.8563:

So spend the 10 silver and 2 skill points to unlock your blue trait. Problem solved. For blue traits especially it’s not that much.

Soon you’ll accept anything if you keep accepting the little things. Don’t you have any principles.

I have principles. However they don’t extend to spending some in game gold on something that once cost me in game gold anyway. My principles are you know about more significant things than the price of a skill in a game.

But let’s be reasonable. The trait books used to cost what? 16g? And no skill points. That was a walk in the park compared to what it is now. When I was a new player, I had no gold, or very little. And not enough skill points to get skills AND traits. I feel very sorry for new players now. They ARE at a severe disadvantage, whether they realize it or not.

I’ve complained about the new trait system for a long time. That has nothing to do with the response I gave. Someone accused me of having no principles over skills in a game. Aside from the fact that I’ve been vocally against how the trait system was implemented, it’s an irrelevant statement.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

In you know, that was Guild Wars 1 too. Until they did War in Kryta, that game was completely self contained. Every time you did something, you entered the past. Abaddon was still alive no matter where you played in Nightfall, even up to this day.

Except Domain of Anguish.

Correct and that was locked in time too, just locked in the time before you killed Mallyx and after you killed Abbadon.

It’s always locked in time, even if it’s a different time.

TheFool.4589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

TheFool.4589:

The whole idea is to get the one feature people want sooner. And yes if you are the 10% vs the 90% then I’m sorry? We get what we vote for. If the majority wants flying toilets then we’re getting flying toilets. Sorry.

No, no, don’t apologize if you’re not really sorry. You mean this proposition seriously, while I don’t think many would take it seriously or even think of it.

Then move on to the next thing we want and agree on. It’s not only getting what we want but this allows when we get them.

Don’t contradict yourself in the same post, that’s always going to look sketchy. You already admitted “we” aren’t going to get all the things “we” want, but one of “us” might if we voted “the right way”.

Democracy is not always the answer to making something better.

Then what is the answer? It’s the people that don’t want change that kill games.

Is this a factual statement? Are you sure about this? Because I’ve been looking it up and I can’t find this at all.

For example, you might know me as a defender of the game. I like certain things about this game. But there are certain things I do wish would change. They’re just very different than things you’d wish to change. There’s a thread on the first page with some targetting suggestion right now that I agree with. I think it should change.

But I think many (if not most) of the changes I see suggested would change the game in a way that would be worse, not better. That’s the problem with change. Just because someone likes something doesn’t make the change good.

You say people who are against change are the enemies of games. I say more games probably die from devs listening to people than doing what they want. And you know, I can’t prove it…any more than you can.

WoW did completely redo the early zones to make them better for people, many years ago.

I think the OP is quite right. In the past I’ve said this very very infrequently…hardly ever…but the only time I have said it, I said it to help someone. It was simply suggesting that the stuff they were looking for wasn’t ever likely to appear in this game…ie open world PvP. I suggested there are games already existing that center on that, and they’d probably be a better match.

But I think, over all, it’s too easy to say this to dismiss legitimate complaints.

Yes you can get them on the same day.

TheFool.4589:

Vayne.8563:

TheFool.4589:

Vayne.8563:

Designing games by committee never works. Most people aren’t as good at game design as they think they are.

You get more bees with honey then vinegar. Us as one can make a choice. And how can it not work when all of the community and players as one want the same thing?

Its not about game design, its what we all want in the game. This is why we vote. if it ruins it for the 10% in favor of the 90% thats a win. that 10% isnt gonna pour money into anets wallet. the 90% will.

But everyone doesn’t vote. The people that post on the forum, traditionally anyway, are a minority of the playerbase. The company has to look out for the whole playerbase, not just the forum nobility.

Read original post of mine.
They can use FB and the in game mailing system to promote it.

Again, you’re still missing my point.

The people who vote will be the most vested in the game. Who understand the game best. They’ll vote for what’s best for them.

Many people, probably most, don’t think deeply about their gaming experience at all. They don’t KNOW what they want. Some might think they know, but it doesn’t mean they do.

A lot of people say you shouldn’t nerf OP builds, you should build up all the other skills in the game, so that they’re on par with the OP build. From a design point of view, that’s ridiculous. It’s a huge amount of work, that will trivialize everything in the game. But it’s amazing how often someone will post it.

People aren’t game designers. I wouldn’t write a novel by committee and I wouldn’t design a game by one. I don’t trust people voting to vote for what’s best for the game. It doesn’t even stop a bunch of people from troll voting, and you know it will happen. This isn’t a feasible idea for a themepark MMO.

I’m sure that they’ll announce it. They just put the page up. Give them a few hours. lol

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

Yet season 2 is 90% instanced and if they want to continue to tell a decent story, they have to stick to instances and ignore everything in open world, or maybe even worse, make changes to open world and confuse everyone who isn’t at that part of the story.
Like I said, my problem is not with the open world , but that their highest priority is something that’s not an open world material.

Have you played Season 2?

There is instanced content, being backed up by the zone. Dry Top is open world, not Season 2. But what’s happening in it is tied to the Living World instances.

The only real downside to it, is that it will probably be locked in time like Orr is. But it’s more effective for story telling than just instances.

Yes, but if you look at new players, it will be confusing to see tybalt selling apples in a burned down city or having a meeting with the pact in a fort destroyed by mordremorth. And on the locked time thing: yes that’s a big downside too , they can continue to introduce new parts of a zone ,which is great, but if they change anything outside of newly released zones that won’t make sense for those who aren’t cathed up with the story. I wouldn’t call that a living world.

It’s living AND locked in time. That is to say, within that time frame it’s alive. It’s living because it evolves with the story as the story evolves. Orr feels quite alive to me. But it’s locked in time.

In you know, that was Guild Wars 1 too. Until they did War in Kryta, that game was completely self contained. Every time you did something, you entered the past. Abaddon was still alive no matter where you played in Nightfall, even up to this day.

Looks like it’s a short trial again.

https://register.guildwars2.com/trial

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

@Vayne

The tequatl example has as much downsides as upsides. Like you said , it’s not always there, but what if I want to defeat it? Maybe I even gotta wait hours for him to appear. If Tequatl were to added to GW1 I could kill him whenever I want, but this is also true for Scarlet.

And I never said I have problem with DEs and not seeing the same thing twice when I enter a zone. My problem is their highest priority is the story in a world which isn’t the best to tell it(And they had a better system to tell it). And it is not unreasonable for me to assume, they created a new world which isn’t better for storytelling than the previous just to have their top focus in this world as the living story.

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

Yet season 2 is 90% instanced and if they want to continue to tell a decent story, they have to stick to instances and ignore everything in open world, or maybe even worse, make changes to open world and confuse everyone who isn’t at that part of the story.
Like I said, my problem is not with the open world , but that their highest priority is something that’s not an open world material.

Have you played Season 2?

There is instanced content, being backed up by the zone. Dry Top is open world, not Season 2. But what’s happening in it is tied to the Living World instances.

The only real downside to it, is that it will probably be locked in time like Orr is. But it’s more effective for story telling than just instances.

I would love something like this.

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

Clearly Anet will soon have more regular free weekends, or a refer a friend thing and they want people to stay with the game. They tested this and this is what works.

Latest patch notes:

Bug Fix:

• Configured free trial accounts to block access to World vs. World maps (Eternal Battlegrounds, Borderlands maps, and Obsidian Sanctum). Free trial players may still enter the Edge of the Mists.

Looks like you were right on this one. They wouldn’t patch that and just that if it wasn’t about to become very important very soon.

It’s logical. There’s not reason to put in an NPE without actually having NPs. lol

On that topic my old friend who couldn’t get into the game tried it again. He’s level 10 now and he thinks the game is addictive now. Last time, he didn’t have any desire to play it again…he got up to about level 5.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

On liadri, I’m not sure about NA servers, but I often could find empty arenas on EU to complete it.

On other changes: anet had to make changes to launch their game in china. The games are quite different there , and they play their games quite differently. I even read about a dev’s opinion when people discussed about the new NPE ( If you want I can send you the link in PM ,but I don’t want to make trouble for that dev by posting it here) . We know anet has been busy with the chinese launch at that time, which means they had to work on something. Probably not on localization, since that’s not an average devs job ,but on something that affects the game. We know most of the september feature pack was already available on the east ( Global guilds, crafting backs, NPE , not sure about the rest) which means those were ready before april. When I say I think the NPE changes were made to make the game eligible for the chinese launch I’m just connecting dots .

But these changes don’t really affect me, so I try to not care. But what I really care about is the company policy and the living story not being up to bar. Like I said, just by numbers, anet could produce maps, dungeons etc much faster rate prior to launch . Since Living story doesn’t provide that amount of content what will? And about the company policy… why? The only reason I could imagine for this kind of policy is because there is nothing in the background to talk about , to keep people dreaming, hoping they will stay .

Company policy could be simple. You know they announce something and if they change it, the forum runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. Easier not to say anything. Particularly with regards to something like an expansion, you announce it when it makes sense to do so from a business point of view. Usually to combat what some other game is doing.

Rift went into a promo black out when SWToR was released. They realized they couldn’t advertise as much as EA so they didn’t waste money trying. They waited 3 months until people were annoyed with SWToR and then got a bunch of people to come back. It’s about timing a lot of the time.

No company can put out enough content to keep people busy anyway, particularly in a theme park MMO. However, it’s not just the living story. Drytop was pretty cool and I spent an awful lot of time there. So did many in my guild.

It’s like anything else. If you like the content you can get hours out of it. The Marionette fight was like that. If you liked it, you could do it a lot. If you didn’t like it, you had no content.

It’s one thing to say they are working on something and another when it will be ready. They said almost a year ago pre cursor crafting is coming and they tried to release it in half year, but when they couldn’t people went mad. On the other hand they’ve been saying new pvp modes incoming at least 1.5 year now, yet people don’t riot. My point is, they don’t have to say dates when they talk about something ,but people want to know what to expect. For example it is public information that blizzard is already working on the next expansion after the new hits. They really don’t need to go into details, some words could be enough. ( yet I feel like the term “expansion worth of content” is a bit overused by now and I wouldn’t take it for granted if they say that again)

And also sometimes I feel like it it’s not just the company policy, its like the devs choose not to talk about something. For example is the recent interview at gamescom about SAB/Dungeons. If that interview doesn’t happen would we ever know they are not working on SAB or dungeons?

I’m not actually arguing that doesn’t play their cards too close to their chests. I made a thread about it. But announcing an expansion is different. That’s gold and has to be timed by the company.

The problem is, if an expansion is what they’re planning, they can’t talk about it, until NCsoft gives the go ahead. That’s why I think that’s what they’re doing.

Scipio.3204:

@Vayne

The tequatl example has as much downsides as upsides. Like you said , it’s not always there, but what if I want to defeat it? Maybe I even gotta wait hours for him to appear. If Tequatl were to added to GW1 I could kill him whenever I want, but this is also true for Scarlet.

And I never said I have problem with DEs and not seeing the same thing twice when I enter a zone. My problem is their highest priority is the story in a world which isn’t the best to tell it(And they had a better system to tell it). And it is not unreasonable for me to assume, they created a new world which isn’t better for storytelling than the previous just to have their top focus in this world as the living story.

Well, there IS a schedule for Tequatl. But if you want a truly living world, you have to trade something for it. One of the things you trade is predictability. If you want predictability play a game that’s always exactly the same, there are plenty of them.

But Anet has said from day 1, before even, their goal is to produce a living breathing world and that has to include some level of unpredictability. We knew before launch that events would ping pong along time lines, but we also knew we could intersect that event at any time and we knew some events even interacted with each other.

Having a world that’s not instanced, means other people can enter it and that creates unpredictability too. Someone triggers an event, or doesn’t changes what’s happening. I’ve been on death’s door, ready to be defeated, when a complete stranger pops up and helps me win. Try that with an instanced lobby based game. It can’t happen. It’s a random element.

Unfortunately, for better or for worse, the public has embraced open worlds, as opposed to instanced content. It’s what makes MMOs MMOs. That’s why Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO and Guild Wars 2 is. The existence of a persistent world. A world that isn’t created when you leave the city. The other day I watched an NPC finish an event for me. I thought that was awesome.

Story telling does suffer, which is why most MMOs have lousy stories. And the ones that have good stories can only tell them through instances, where the world itself isn’t part of it. It’s part and parcel of having an MMO.

Anet wanted to make an MMO, and there’s no way to do it while instancing everything.

TheFool.4589:

Vayne.8563:

Designing games by committee never works. Most people aren’t as good at game design as they think they are.

You get more bees with honey then vinegar. Us as one can make a choice. And how can it not work when all of the community and players as one want the same thing?

Its not about game design, its what we all want in the game. This is why we vote. if it ruins it for the 10% in favor of the 90% thats a win. that 10% isnt gonna pour money into anets wallet. the 90% will.

But everyone doesn’t vote. The people that post on the forum, traditionally anyway, are a minority of the playerbase. The company has to look out for the whole playerbase, not just the forum nobility.

Aguri.2896:

Vayne.8563:

Aguri.2896:

Vayne.8563:

Aguri.2896:

If they can make dungeons they have the technology to fix LA.

Sure they can. We have the technology now to put a manned outpost on the moon too but it’s not worth the cost involved in doing so.

No one said it can’t be done. But if it is a major undertaking, that means that it would take people away from other projects. If you’re new to the forums, you may not have noticed that everyone wants more content.

That doesn’t come under that category. That comes under the category of improving old content.

I’m guessing the cost/time to fix this issue would set back other plans.

How hard can it be to paste an already existing map into the game? Unless each individual map has some sort of ID or something tied to it that prevents the new Lion’s Arch from co-existing with the old one, I don’t see why it would be that difficult. Continuity is important for story and story seems to be important for this game. They took the time to re-do the trading post and hero’s tab, neither of which needed to be changed except for maybe the option to look for class specific armor, so why is this a problem?

They also need to do something about the other areas of the game that have been altered due to story, something that is really confusing if you aren’t there yet in the story. I realize that they probably don’t have the technology to fix the open maps for certain players as we haven’t seen an example of it in the game but it’s important too.

At the moment time is all messed up in the story. I don’t want to bash the game or the devs, but this lack of continuity breaks immersion and makes the game look sloppy.

It’s not a matter of pasting it into the game. It doesn’t work that way at all. When you enter an instance, you’re entering the world. It’s designed that way. To have it not default to the world requires programming. How hard would it be? Anet has already said, straight out, that they’re talking about what they can do, but that it would take a lot of work. The question was already brought up.

How hard can it be. Very, depending on how its set up now. Ask any programmer how hard stuff like that can be.

Even if it takes time and resources it is something they should iron out before there are more inconsistencies to deal with from growing LS. It’s no less important than the other feature pack stuff we have gotten and should get attention.

Since I don’t know what else is being worked on, I really don’t know how I could prioritize the work flow.

It could well be that the issue is so complex, it might take months. Is it important enough to take a team of guys to fix for most people? That I’m not so sure about. Without knowing the complexity of the fix required, and why it’s complex, I can’t try and dictate a company’s priority list. It’s like back seat driving while you’re not even in the car.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Orr was already a giant champ train before then.

Champ trains wouldn’t make sense, karma trains perhaps, but I don’t think that had anything to do with the creation of living story. Trains are not really a fun way to play the game and people aren’t playing them to have fun. Southsun cove was probably already in the works not long after release which means they had plans to do that without any information on what is going on in the game.

Yes I meant a karma train. There was a train. That’s the point. It probably wasn’t quite how Anet envisioned the game going.

The point is, trains or no trains, they released a new area with one time events ~ 80 days after release, which means they had to work on it not long after release or maybe even before release, which means the creation of the living story wasn’t based on anything going on ingame. (and during that release I was part of the biggest train ever ingame which means during the creation of it they didn’t count with the downsides of the trains. Only releases after this they tried to break down the train somehow. )

Okay, I agree with this. You may very well be right.

Thanks
But now the real question remains. If they had a system in which they could tell better stories easier, why create an entirely different system in which it’s much harder to tell any story, and on that new system even focus mainly on story?

Because having an open world is better than having an instanced one to a whole lot of people, including me. If you’re only talking about story, and that’s all that matters, instanced content is better. I dislike instanced content as the main content of the game fora whole lot of reasons.

It doesn’t tell stories better, but it does other stuff better.

For example, every time I walked out into Guild Wars 1 into a zone, I knew what was in the zone, where every creature was, and I knew for a fact that I was on my own or with the people I was with.

Some of my favorite moments in Guild Wars 2 have been coming upon someone who randomly needed assistance and helping them out. Rezzing them during a champ fight, or whatever.

That can’t happen in an instanced game. It’s not as alive. If you want to make a living breathing world, instances are not sufficient, even if they do tell a story better.

I don’t deny having open world is a bad thing, but the the last two years was “Living story is our highest priority” , which, like we said, isn’t the strongest part of an open world. And that doesn’t look like it will change. If they wanted to create a world in which the story is the most important , open world shouldn’t be the way to go, even if some people wouldn’t like it that much that way.

And I gotta disagree " I walked out into Guild Wars 1 into a zone, I knew what was in the zone, where every creature was," part. If we put the living world into guild wars (See GW:B) it is much easier to change the world. You could see different things based on your previous accomplishements. You could take part in building cities , extinct enemies , make new allies in a better way we see it now with the living world. Temporary content is even out of question , the content will wait for you as long as you want. And when you complete specific content the whole world could change by it. Yeah , Season two is now waiting for you too , but what exactly changes when you complete it?

and when you said "If you’re only talking about story, and that’s all that matters, " that I think perfectly describes the direction of GW2 . See the most recent SAB statement: “SAB won’t return because it doesn’t fit the story” . Or any statement about the future. If this system does better at other stuff, why does it focus on something it doesn’t do better?

Okay even with the new stuff, if I was up to War in Kryta, I always got War in Kryta. Same bosses in the same locations. Same mobs patrolling the same road.

In Guild Wars 2, I could hit an event I didn’t trigger at a time that I haven’t seen that event for a while. In Guild Wars 1 you literally trigger everything.

When I’m in Guild Wars 2, someone would have summoned Tequatl. In Guild Wars 1, Tequatl would always be there if he was there. The instanced zone may have became a new instanced zone, but that zone was then as static as the first zone.

I knew in Ring of Fire example where the pop ups where. Exactly how long to wait for the hydras to pass. It was completely 100% programmed.

The complexity of the dynamic event system means you’ll eventually see everything, but entering the same zone twice in a row could produce different results.