Guild Wars 2

1. Addition of ascended gear
2. Addition of living story
3. How crafting legendaries are handled. Skill is better than luck or being wealthy(precursor acquisition for example)
4. Dead open world. Lack of reasom to play how i want to where i want to when i want to.
5. Zergs..every patch fosters and encourages nothing but zerg content. The current LS(tower) is not as bad, however.

endless.1376:

Is that it is a pain in the butt to level. I have to practically do everything I can in a zone in order to progress. This concern is not at all mine alone. I have read many other concerns as such and hate having to chase down events, world bosses, and do all the exploration and story content I can in order to get enough xp just to get to the next zone. I would love it if you guys at Anet instead let people pick and choose their content and give them the xp boost they need to level faster just doing what they like.

Leveling in gw2 was the best leveling experience of any mmo. It is the engame thatis borderline atrocious…i.e. living story

Chris, when you return could you comment on the response and implimentation trnaround for some of the ideas we have put forth? Im not talking about exact timeframes but for things like adjusting the amount of achievement grind, for example…is that something that could happen relatively quickly like a mon or two…or are we looking at many months before we see and result of these discussions.

I know internal discussions need to happen, coding, etc… But on some of the topics we talked about for living story, the amount of my playtime may be determined by how quickly some of thisgetsput in. Thanks

So I am playing the game, on and off again. GW2 does a lot of things right, and enough things wrong that make me stop playing for a while.

In any case, anytime I move to a server it has been on the premise to join a specific guild. I have started on SBI, to IoJ for a guild(which died in a matter of months). Then moved to Dragonbrand because the guild I was previously in resurfaced and moved there, and died again. Then I moved to SoS where I currently am for a specific guild. That guild was quasi inactive when I returned to the game.

Looking for a solid PVE community doing events more than just champ trains. I don’t need an overpopulated server. I do like WvW and I want to move to a server where I can actually care about the success of WvW for the server (and where the people in WvW aren’t jerks).

Any suggestions? I dont have objections, necessarily, to returning to previous servers. Curious where theres a good balance between active PVE beyond champ trains in queensdale, and decent WvW with a nice WvW community (but does not need to be the best WvW server out there).

Looking for NA…
Thanks!

Azure Prower.8701:

People go where the coin is.

Up the coinage for events. Then the karma train returns to Orr again instead of a champ train.

There must always be a train.

Id honestly rather a karma train in Orr than a champ train in queensdale. At least them level 80s are doing content designed for them, and not roflstomping piddly content because its easier.

Dynamic events gave more coin for completion and scales more as you level?(more so than now)?

I.E. a lvl 80 DE in Orr or Frostgorge could give 10 silver. would that impact the champ trains?

Hannelore.8153:

First and foremost we need an underflow system. No amount of tweaking or hammering in any mechanics of the game will change the fact that all players are spread out on 24 different servers per region for a given map, of which there are 20+ in the world.

With an underflow system, all servers would share the same map until it maxes out. You may only see 6 people in Timberline Falls on your server, but imagine if you saw 6 people on it from every server at once…

The game has an absolutely massive population that is being sliced to ribbons.

I agree and have thought the same? But doing this or merging servers might look like population is shrinking and for a game that loves its PR…this is a nono

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

Qaelyn.7612:

Astralporing.1957:

Qaelyn.7612:

After that, you get greatly reduced rewards. Ta-da — champion farming is fixed.

Too bad that it doesn’’t help any in the problem that OP posed, right? Nor does it “fix” anything else, really.

It absolutely does, by balancing rewards and providing an incentive for people to do a multitude of activities rather than just one.

Take just one simple change: each champion drops a bag only once per character per day. Immediately instead of having huge percentages of players farming two maps, you’d have players all over every map.

Now greatly increase the first-time rewards for doing hearts or DEs. Again, you will see a lot more people exploring and doing different things.

What would actually happen is the complete abandonment of champion kills.

And what is wrong with this?

It doesn’t do anything to “fix” the problem.

By removing an incentive to farm champions, people are now free to do other things.
If they remove the incentive for champion kills, and placed that incentive in the open world participating in any dynamic event in the game, yes that might help.

Or another solution that has been suggested time and time again on these forums is randomize the spawn timers of the champions in every zone.

I know the farmers hate the idea, as well as people trying to get the materials needed for ascended weapons and such, but zergs need to be broken up. Yes, its my opinion and countless others share it as well. But without zergs in one or two zones, we might have a population spread out a bit more throughout the world. I think that is a far better alternative.

Randomize the champ timers, and lengthen spawn times on a handful of them so that the zerg cannot bounce from one to the next to the next,etc.

Phy.2913:

Qaelyn.7612:

Astralporing.1957:

Qaelyn.7612:

After that, you get greatly reduced rewards. Ta-da — champion farming is fixed.

Too bad that it doesn’’t help any in the problem that OP posed, right? Nor does it “fix” anything else, really.

It absolutely does, by balancing rewards and providing an incentive for people to do a multitude of activities rather than just one.

Take just one simple change: each champion drops a bag only once per character per day. Immediately instead of having huge percentages of players farming two maps, you’d have players all over every map.

Now greatly increase the first-time rewards for doing hearts or DEs. Again, you will see a lot more people exploring and doing different things.

What would actually happen is the complete abandonment of champion kills.

And what is wrong with this?

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

Yeah, it’s amazing how empty zones are at 6am EST on a Friday morning! ANET has failed, the game is dead.

FYI, they were as empty at 8PM EST last night too because I zoned into the same areas last night. Any any other night.

Lets not be too sarcastic.

Then lets look at from another angle. If everyone was spread out equally it would appear that the entire server is empty instead of just the low reward zones.

How did you come to that conclusion? Because Lion’s Arch and Queensdale would have thinned out?
I might be running through fireheart rise and see a living soul every few minutes.

Draknar.5748:

I’d say that in every MMO I’ve ever played with a large number of zones that are level restricted certain zones are just empty. That’s just part of MMOs. Starter zones will be highly populated, zones with the best farming will be highly populated, mid-range zones will be empty, zones with difficult mobs will be empty. This isn’t exclusive to GW2…

Part of the reason behind downleveling is to combat this, I thought? Yes, they wanted to enable you to play with low level friends, but they also wanted the zones to be still somewhat interesting and a small challenge. Unless they do indeed intend the zones to die. If thats the case, then the core concept of this game is dead to me and I’ll delete it today and look onto the next game completely. Im still holding out that one of their top priorities is making the entire world feel alive, which they have not done yet.

Phy.2913:

Yeah, it’s amazing how empty zones are at 6am EST on a Friday morning! ANET has failed, the game is dead.

FYI, they were as empty at 8PM EST last night too because I zoned into the same areas last night. Any any other night.

Lets not be too sarcastic.

Meglobob.8620:

You forgot, just for fun, relaxing after a rubbish day at work/educational facility…

Which could be why most people play?

Personally, only WvW motivates me now, but I have played since release day, so that’s not surprising…

With the direction of PVE content and with it not showing any signs of slowing down, if I continue playing it will be in WvW..and even with that Im not sure if I can devote myself to it. Its nice when you are killing people defending keeps or camps. But there are more than enough luls in the fighting to make me just want to log off.

We’ll see.

As for my previous motiviations for playing: gearing out my toons for cosmetics, and exploring the world..every nook and cranny, with the occasional materials farm.

Morrigan.2809:

cesmode.4257:

Morrigan.2809:

Well I spend most of my time in game running DE’s on various maps because that is what I enjoy.
It is also why I am very poor.
That by itself is fine with me because I refuse to farm.

I have some suggestions about how to make DE’s rewarding.

Have unique armour and weapon sets per map and reward a piece or token per event chain

This is a good idea but only good if they do this for all zones simultaneously. If they release these rewards for one or two zones every so often, then all you will see is people farming those one or two zones to the bone until the next batch of newly rewarded zones are released.

oh definitely!
They can’t go about it piecemeal or it will be useless.

Which is also why I don’t think they will do any of that because it very resource intensive- but it would be great if you are a player who likes DE’s

I dont think it would be anymore intensive than anything else they have done. The problem is they have four teams of people working on living story. IF they devoted THOSE resources to places of the game that sorely needed attention(like activity in open world, bugs/polish, dungeons, etc) we wouldnt be having this discussion.

I really do think the problem is living story sucked a lot of good resources and man power from core parts of this game. Every patch, more or less, revolves around the living story in some way. A lot of times it seems the other aspects of the game fall by the wayside and are just crumbling, just so they can get their LS patches out in time.

For me, this game was all open open world exploration, open world content, and the journey. For the servers that I have played on and that I am currently on, those things are all but gone. So for me, the desire to keep playing is gone. I continue to post on the forums in hopes that sooner rather than later, something will change.

Morrigan.2809:

Well I spend most of my time in game running DE’s on various maps because that is what I enjoy.
It is also why I am very poor.
That by itself is fine with me because I refuse to farm.

I have some suggestions about how to make DE’s rewarding.

Have unique armour and weapon sets per map and reward a piece or token per event chain

This is a good idea but only good if they do this for all zones simultaneously. If they release these rewards for one or two zones every so often, then all you will see is people farming those one or two zones to the bone until the next batch of newly rewarded zones are released.

Sea of Sorrows currently. Been on dragonbrand, SBI…same thing.
And yes, I track the events on the website, but im talking normal non meta events.

Either way… I am pretty much done with Living Story. I can’t stand it any more. Its horrible. I may not agree with some design decisions regarding other areas of the game, but I was able to at least stomach it…now I just don’t want to play the current content patches which mostly revolve around LS.

So, I turn to the following:
-Dungeons
-Fractals
-WvW
-Open world play(DEs, etc)

I like to do things in moderation, so I don’t just want to farm any one thing. But I do know that I want to play more in the open world, in many zones. I want to log in to see people completing dynamic events(DEs that were in the game at launch) in zones like Timberline Falls. Maybe then I zone into Sparkfly and see people completing events there. I would be in heaven.

But on any server I play on, I see very few, if any people at all. Its disheartening, disappointing, and depressing. So then if I can’t participate in the open world content the way it was meant to be(with other players and not only solo), I turn to WvW, Dungeons, Fractals. Only so much of that I can do.

So..Im at a loss. I want to continue playing the game. Arenanet got so many things right with GW2, but one or two things just ruined this game for to the point where I am looking to the future for a new game. Don’t want to let go of GW2 just yet, but <shrugs>..theres no one around in these zones to play with. Why bother with the game at all?

I was just thinking…

Obviously, the biggest culprit is zergs whether it is the queensdale/frostgorge zerg or LS zerg.

A possible solution:
-Make all dynamic events reward the same things that the current champion bag reward system does. So if you are doing a DE in fireheart rise, you should be getting better stuff than a DE in queensdale.
-Remove champions from the game, so that the changes to dynamic event rewarding actually make sense.

Would this work? Yes, this hurts farmers, but promotes more open world playing.

Yes, another topic about empty zones. I zoned into a few lesser played zones, didnt see a soul. Im trying to play the game how I want to, in the open world, and I need to solo it all unfortunately.

Could arenanet please do something to revitalize some of these lesser played zones? Im not asking for an LS arc to funnel hundreds of people into one or two zones. But this needs to be addressed. The game is meant to have an ebb and flow of player interactivity, but when you run around these zones and see dead NPCs and failed events, I wonder why you bothered with the dynamic event system in the first place? If you had no intentions or capabilities to get everyone into more than a small handful of zones, why not just build the game around traditional quest hub content, rather than dynamic events?

Please do something about this.

daros.3407:

I did my own search too and Class balance is another most wanted. But i found a little problematic thing. Lot of people wanted to talk about ascended gear, grind and alt unfriendliness and lot of people actualy merged them together like ,,Acended gear and grind" or Gear grind and alt unfriendliness". And it has logic becouse huge part of grind and alt unfriendliness is represented by Ascended items and vice versa.
Becouse of this i would suggest to merge those in to one topic becouse if we will disscus them separatly we will probably discuss same things all over again. In thread for ascended items people will be talking about how much gring it brought in to game. In thread for grind and farming people will put many posts how they have to grind and farm much more then before becouse of Ascended items and in thread about alt unfriendliness people will again mention many times how ascended items make game much more alt unfriendly.
I really see reason why to disscus those 3 things together. And those 3 together gives more votes then class balance.

I think class balance is an important topic too. But it will evolve into a PvP centered “XYZ class is OP”.

I hope that when we do a class balance CDI, it is more intellectual than that.

Kaos.9162:

Right after…I think it was the Sandwichmancer?

These exist in the game. Its a necromancer that runs around with sammiches instead of minions.

Nike.2631:

cesmode.4257:

-Please tell other posters to refrain from using formatted posts. It was completely obnoxious to see some people make font 50 titles, with huge underscores and uniquely formatted posts, just so their post stood out and took up the most room. I skipped right over most of those.

…

-There were many, many posts that were wall of texts. Im sure you folks didnt have time to read through each post that was 2 or 3 posts long. Maybe come up with some sort of structure for us to get our ideas across. A bulleted list, a question and answer. While some people had some great suggestions, they had some long winded posts that probably could have been shortened(myself included).

You owe me a new irony meter. Because that just bent the needle on mine. We can (and apparently SHOULD) use formatting – as long as its the formatting you approve of. And all other formatting is to be verboten.

When you’re looking for a plethora of ideas enforcing conformity is not a good first step .

Wait a second.

Concerning formatting, I simply think it is a bit obnoxious to make the titles of subtopics in a post a font 50, bolded, and underlined. Just sayin…

Secondly, concerning the walls of text… I admitted I was guilty of tihs myself and Im sure devs would appreciate more concise writing rather than books that they then need to sit down by the fire and read with a glass of wine because the post is so long.

I wasn’t pointing you out. There were a few people that formatted their posts so that they jumped out at you when the majority of posts were just normal posts with regular font size text.

You can achieve formatting without the obnoxious font sizing and all of the ‘doo-daas’.

The objective to making posts a bit more concise, uniform, and free of excessive formatting is to assist Mr. Whiteside and the developers in reading the hundreds of posts that we came up with.

Id be thrilled. Even if they removed ascended and put the infusion slot on exotic. Id be thrilled. They would have nearly completely won back my business. Id spend in the gemstore again, on day 1.

lordkrall.7241:

Did anyone actually think that they would somehow magically be able to create something that is impossible?
It is completely impossible to create something that is infinite, since sooner or later the scaling would simply make every single attack 1-hit kill the player.

Then why tell us its infinite? Just to hype it up? More PR? “Oh wow did you hear? GW2 has a dungeon thats infinitely scaling in difficulty. First of its kind in an MMO!!” No..sorry, thats only till lvl ’bra!

Why bother? Why not just say “The dungeon scales in difficulty up to level 80”.
I can’t even count on my hands the amount of times arenanet has walked this fine grey line between what they mean and what they say. Since launch.

DusK.3849:

I see a lot of complaining, and absolutely no suggestions.

There have been suggestions for years man, what are you reading?

When we got ascended gear, people complained and some offered up solutions. Simply infuse exotics with AR, and be done with it. Why create a new tier, and a massive grind for this gear?

When LS became a cornerstone of the game, people complained saying the cadence is too fast, the story is too disjointed, all we have are achievement grinds and the world doesn’t feel any more alive than it did. People offered up solutions. Instead of two weeks of small story content, give it to us in 1 or 2 month bits with more story and content. Instead of an achievement grind, give us actual content like hearts, dynamic events, etc.

There definately has been suggestions, and Im not even talking about the massive CDI thread that exists.

To the OP: you are correct about everything there. If you don’t like the LS, if you dont like achievement grinding, or WvW..theres not a lot for you. The open world doesnt offer anything that a single player Skyrim doesnt, since no one plays in a zone that isnt tied to the LS.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

cesmode.4257:

lordkrall.7241:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

I why I was supposed to be somwhere I did scale 81 when they said it’s an infinity dungeon before any agony cap at scale 50 … ooooo Boy don’t speak if your not informed … Show me a single post that a dev Posts that I shoulnd’t be on 81… when I hit 81 … I asked em they didn’t answer guess I’m supposed to be there… why are you sooo jalous ?

Why do you think you can’t mitigate the Agony at lvl 51 no matter how much AR you have?

Late to the debate, but they did say the dungeon is infinite. The levels can go on and on. Being limited to a max agony cap prevents this. So, the dungeon is essentially soft capped at 50 or 55 or whatever.

I’ve learned not to believe the hype in GW2 machine. I knew that some how this dungeon was not infinite. It was infinite so long as there is enough agony resist in the game, and there isnt.

not quite true it isn’t infinite the scaling of Mobs and my experience Shows it is finit at scale 80 every scale that you open higher than 80 will port you back into 80 so if you open 81 81 or whatever you will get ported back to 80 instance.. what happened to us on thrid fractal when we wanted to finish 81 is I think a rare bug ( there are several things that bug out on 80 so I think it was designed to be 80 caps same for Mobs that aren’t 85 and should be 85)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_igZIivu3E

nope I take your Illusion it’s not only because of gear you can’t Progress the dungeon itself isn’t designed infinite.

leaderboards would only make sence if the dungeon was infinite and not geargated so ppl with highest Levels that are fighting actually fighting over the challenge to complete that Level.

Then you further proved the point that the dungeon itself is not infinite despite what arenanet touted when the dungeon was released. They claimed it was an infinite dungeon. It isn’t. Instead of a soft cap determined by agony resist, the dungeon itself hard caps at 80 it seems. So..to be blunt..was this another misleading attempt from Arenanet to create excitement amongst the ‘progression’ based playerbase into thinking that they now have a dungeon that infinitely scales, when in reality it doesnt?

lordkrall.7241:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

I why I was supposed to be somwhere I did scale 81 when they said it’s an infinity dungeon before any agony cap at scale 50 … ooooo Boy don’t speak if your not informed … Show me a single post that a dev Posts that I shoulnd’t be on 81… when I hit 81 … I asked em they didn’t answer guess I’m supposed to be there… why are you sooo jalous ?

Why do you think you can’t mitigate the Agony at lvl 51 no matter how much AR you have?

Late to the debate, but they did say the dungeon is infinite. The levels can go on and on. Being limited to a max agony cap prevents this. So, the dungeon is essentially soft capped at 50 or 55 or whatever.

I’ve learned not to believe the hype in GW2 machine. I knew that some how this dungeon was not infinite. It was infinite so long as there is enough agony resist in the game, and there isnt.

Mash Hog.5672:

Dragonbrand has a great PvE community…

Ill agree with this. Dragonbrand had a lot of people running around. I might go back there…

From August through November, I was.
Thats when this game was at its height.

Now, yeah I like it.. I like certain aspects. The classes are a huge draw. My Main is a thief, as is in most games, but I absolutely love the idea of the mesmer. Loving that class a lot more. I love the spell effects in the game, the graphics, the gorgeous landscapes.

Its just the direction of content development and design focus that is obliterating my desire to play the game.

Hi, I’ve compiled my feedback below.

The good:
-A lot of good suggesitons, a lot of good positive and negative feedback. I hope you guys have a good reporting team to compile everything.

-Thread moderation was either non-existant or kept to a minimum. Maybe this is because we as players and posters stayed on topic and kept it civil(which is great) or the mods eased off the whips a bit.

-It is good to see that a lot of our feedback aligns with your perceptions and views (aside from the cadence!!!)

The Bad:
-Obviously, please make more time to interact with us. The ocassional post with a “what if” or “whats your favorite XYZ” was good, but more interaction with out individual ideas and feedback is needed.

-Please tell other posters to refrain from using formatted posts. It was completely obnoxious to see some people make font 50 titles, with huge underscores and uniquely formatted posts, just so their post stood out and took up the most room. I skipped right over most of those.

Room for Improvement:
-There were many, many posts that were wall of texts. Im sure you folks didnt have time to read through each post that was 2 or 3 posts long. Maybe come up with some sort of structure for us to get our ideas across. A bulleted list, a question and answer. While some people had some great suggestions, they had some long winded posts that probably could have been shortened(myself included).

Looking to the future:
-One thing I would like to know is when can we see some action, in game, that derives from the CDI? I know that each suggestion, fix, etc takes a while to talk about internally and develop, but as a broad timeline without committing yourself…do these things take 3-6 months, 6-9? A year? I mean, there are some great suggestions and I truly think that the Living Story can and NEEDS to benefit from these suggestions rapidly. The current iteration of LS is horrible by many standards, and there were many people in the thread that overall, were not pleased with LS for one reason or another. I think that after many months of the current LS, these people(myself included) are getting burned out on the current version of LS and we need to see some changes quickly in order to keep interest, so please move quickly with some true action. The open world of Tyria is dead to me, and the game development direction seems nothing more than funneling us like cattle to one or two zones for a grind. Its killing my desire to play the game, so I need to see some changes quickly. (sorry to be blunt).

Thanks for your time.

Erebus.9276:

You guys don’t understand.. starting out at square one with nothing… I have to get to level 30 this week or I’ll be behind my friends and we won’t be able to play together? I thought I could play how I want?

You definitely have a point, then again this game doesn’t care about that sort of thing anymore. Arenanet has pretty much abandoned all of its pre-launch principles. Its pretty much a whole new game and philosophy.

My fractal level is 24.

Making your personal difficulty and reward level account bound means there will be less people running low level fractals. Which means people who are late to the fractal party will have a much more difficult time finding a group since a lot of people are already above 30…good luck trying to find groups under 10 now.

I pointed this out as a potential problem exactly one year ago.

Scrambles.2604:

i think for a lot of people WvW is endgame.

Sadly, I think this is rapidly becoming my only enjoyment in the game. I don’t want to tag along the zerg trains for every LS patch. I want to play in other zones…complete random DEs with a few random people. I can’t do that…there isnt anyone around to do it with.

So, I’ll try my hat in WvW. If that fails and/or LS doesn’t improve rapidly based on our feedback in the CDI, I don’t think I can play this game anymore.

bAss ackwards.7205:

That was a fun trailer to watch, great job!

Matthew Oswald.3082:

It was decided that we sit on the cinematikittenil there was a big update to the Fractals.

I think you forgot a space between “cinematic” and “until”.

Icwutudidther. Haha.

But onto the subject: Mr Matthew Oswald, good job sir. Kudos to you and your team.

Fror.2163:

We have loads of shards, globs and vials of Mist Essence. What will those serve to now that we can’t infuse anymore?

Wow Ill take whatever globs you dont use.

Please don’t complain that you have too many of these.

I cant seem to get my hand on enough globs…every black lion salvage kit that I use on an 80 rare seems to yield 1 or no globs. Im broke.

It was a good trailer. Not sure about the best GW2 trailer, but it was good. If only the swampman guy was really like that in the game…really large and half submerged, swiping at you.

Well, this is good. Attention has finally been applied to something other than Living Story, even if there are a few changes to the LS.

While I dont frequent fractals very often, this is good. Now onto dungeons, scavenger hunt, new skills…etc

Becka Williams.4978:

Just make the time for spawning longer. Like, say, 30 minutes. Done and done.

Make the spawning random.

Why on earth don’t they do this? Why do they have it set up in such a way that people can almost time when champs can be triggered like clockwork?

Stop developing LS and fix this stuff already please. There are other aspects of your game, such as champ farming, that are in dire need of attention..(along with dungeons too!)

Lopez.7369:

Wow. I watched a bit farther into it, and three ArenaNet tags have to give up on the event and find something else to do after they’re unable to fix it.

There is always living story to go play.

But yeah, I agree with what someone said in this thread. They are so focused on living story updates every two weeks that they abandon every other corner of the game. If I dare venture out of the living story zone of the week, it is depressing.

For reasons previously stated here, we spend our time in one or two zones mostly, following a zerg. For reasons unknown, I feel that arenanet abandoned true open world gameplay in favor of this. There was little dev work to be done with the actual content. It was there already. Just design a reward system or incentive system, much like you have created around Living Story, and get players to play the content you have already developed.

You spent months or years developing the hundreds or thousand different dynamic events in the game, from mini story arcs to voice narrated exchanges, to the actual content itself. Its there. You don’t need to add a single dynamic event. You dont have to do anything to it. Just create a way/come up with a reward system or incentive to get everyone into a multitude of zones. You would still be free to release things into the gem store. What is to stop you?

I for one think this would be easier and require far less development time than pumping out zerg and achievement grinding content with a poorly connected story.

Smith.1826:

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Curious why develop direction and the main focus has turned to living story, instead of making the world seem alive, as was the goal? If you visit any zone that is not connected to the current Living Story, you find an empty zone.

I am currently standing in Fireheart Rise, I see no one. I see events kicking off, expiring, failing, dead friendly NPCs because no one is doing any events. The world feels dead. If you are not playing in the small handful of zones…Queensdale, Kessex, Frostgorge, sometimes Orr. Thats about it.

I am curious what anyone thinks why the development direction went to living story, instead of giving us a real reason to play the game in these zones, when the whole idea was to create a living world. I truly feel that Living Story has had the opposite effect on the game. Its sad to see such fantastic content and dynamic events go to waste.

It’s a far easier and malleable undertaking than adjusting the near entirety of the game world. They could absolutely put effort into making the current map of Tyria strongly dynamic, immensely replayable, and as close to “living” as you could get in a game. But the time and effort it would take to do so would be astronomical, moreso when they’re relying on continued microtransactions as the lifeblood to the game.

Hence the current form of the “Living World”: Getting the players in centralized areas and rewarding their continued play with progress bars.

Well, maybe maybe not. Id say the foundation is already there. Why have dynamic events, with voice narrated chatter between NPCs, event chains, etc. They put dynamic events into the game instead of traditional quest hubs to be just that..dynamic. The make the world seem a bit more real, malleable, living. The framework is there. All they have to do is give people reason to go adventure in any zone they like instead of being herded like sheep into Kessex, for example.

It might not be as lage of an undertaking as you might think. Maybe if the content was traditional quest hubs, but we have dynamic events that have chains, some with success/failure branches. We just need to play them.

Vayne.8563:

ProtoGunner.4953:

We don’t know. No one has any idea why the develop this Living World no one asked for instead of developing the story they started with (dragons etc.). It makes no sense. It’s like Christopher Nolan started with Batman Begins and then never went on with the story, instead he made 30min episodes with Joker and Harley Quinn dancing in a field of flowers where butterflies and honey bees fly to the stars hand in hand.

Sorry but it’s nothing like that at all. Anet has said from the beginning they were going to make a Living Breathing world. They tried doing it with dynamic events and it didn’t work, but the goal never changed. They have always set this as the bar.

Fighting dragons was a backdrop against which the tale of Tyria would be told, but I never believed there would never be other stories besides dragons.

More people have asked for Dragons rather than Living Story, as quite evident in the Collab Dev thread. I personally, don’t care what the bosses or villains are. As long as they are well done. They do not even need to be large in scale.

Also, not everyone feels that the dynamic events in the world failed to make a living world. Maybe to you they do, but not everyone. If no one is playing the original DEs, thats only because Arenanet put them into the game at launch and abandoned them. No, adding a few more after launch isn’t what Im talking about either. If arenanet placed the same sorts of incentives, at least, on the original content with the game(the original DEs that came with the game in the open world) and did not focus their efforts on LS, I’d bet we would see a lot more participation.

Not everyone thinks that the original dynamic events in the open world are a failed product.

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Vayne.8563:

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

What reason do they have to be there? Once I complete the map for Timberline Hills, why should I stay there? There’s only so many people on a server.

Then you missed the point of what Guild Wars 2 was meant to be. It was hardly meant to be “go find all of the POIs, waypoints, vistas, etc”. Im pretty sure the developers wanted us to get more out of their lush zones than that.

I’m not missing the point, the point just isn’t well executed, and yet you guys want more zones to ignore? Why?

You phrased this so much better than I have in the past.

Everyone wants new zones, that will become old in a couple of months, taken for granted, and no one will care about them.

You can’t endlessly feed the need for this. It’s not realistic.

If arenanet took away the incentive to zerg around in little LS events and in one or two zones, and placed those incentives all across tyria in any zone, then maybe the zones won’t be ‘old’.

Yes I want new zones. I want heart events in new zones with new dynamic events.

If Anet increased all rewards so all rewards would be equal, people would spread out everyone and maybe, just maybe, at primetime you might see some people, but I’d question even that.

You don’t seem to get the idea that I don’t believe there are enough people to populate dungeons, WvW, 25 zones, personal story and minigames. If everyone could go anywhere with no direction, we’d see a whole lot less people.

And you are entitled to your opinion. I simply disagree. I think there are more than enough people to populate many of the zones, if not all of them. Think of all of the overflows that have been created due to the various LS patches that funnel you into one zone, for instance during the invasions, or queen’s jub, or now into Kessex. Think of the amount of people running around the Queensdale Zerg or the Frostgorge Zerg. Spread those guys out along with everyone forced into overflow from the LS patches, and I think you’ll have people running around each zone. You may not see as many people as you would in Queensdale at the moment, but you would see more people outside of queensdale than you would at the current moment.

Vayne.8563:

Phy.2913:

cesmode.4257:

Phy.2913:

What reason do they have to be there? Once I complete the map for Timberline Hills, why should I stay there? There’s only so many people on a server.

Then you missed the point of what Guild Wars 2 was meant to be. It was hardly meant to be “go find all of the POIs, waypoints, vistas, etc”. Im pretty sure the developers wanted us to get more out of their lush zones than that.

I’m not missing the point, the point just isn’t well executed, and yet you guys want more zones to ignore? Why?

You phrased this so much better than I have in the past.

Everyone wants new zones, that will become old in a couple of months, taken for granted, and no one will care about them.

You can’t endlessly feed the need for this. It’s not realistic.

If arenanet took away the incentive to zerg around in little LS events and in one or two zones, and placed those incentives all across tyria in any zone, then maybe the zones won’t be ‘old’.

Yes I want new zones. I want heart events in new zones with new dynamic events.

Phy.2913:

What reason do they have to be there? Once I complete the map for Timberline Hills, why should I stay there? There’s only so many people on a server.

Then you missed the point of what Guild Wars 2 was meant to be. It was hardly meant to be “go find all of the POIs, waypoints, vistas, etc”. Im pretty sure the developers wanted us to get more out of their lush zones than that.

They have means at their disposal to encourage us to play in whatever zones we want. I’ve detailed a few suggestions in the Collab Dev thread. They can build on that fundamental idea.
It CAN be done.

lordkrall.7241:

Well the Living story IS doing just that.
It makes the world more living.

How many people did you see in Kessex before The Tower of Nightmares?
How many in Queensdale before Queens Jubilee?

So. Fireheart Rise
Iron Marches
Caledon Forest
Metrica Province
Wayferer Hills
Mount Maelstrom
Timberline Falls

Log into any of these zones and tell me the world is alive.
Don’t mistake the illusion of zerging for LS achievements and coin for a living world. Yes, these two zones, along with MAYBE Orr and Frostgorge, are the only zones considered populated. All other areas are as empty as a beer glass on Thirsty Thursday.
Not even opinion anymore. I guested to some servers, checked out these maps. Empty. Go on your home server and look at some of these zones. Maybe you find someone leveling or map completing. I bet you won’t find someone completing events because he/she genuinely wants to complete events there.

Xae Isareth.1364:

cesmode.4257:

They need to give us, the players, a reason and incentive to play in ANY zone that we want. And make it all equally rewarding for a time spent, risk vs reward. If I want to play in Fireheart Rise, I should be rewarded as much as I would if I decided to play in Sparkfly.

Instead, they have made adjustments and pump out living story that funnels people out of the world and into one or two zones. Most of the game world is dead.

The rewards need to be uniquely different, not just better or the same. If its the same, what’s the point of moving to Orr instead of just staying in Queensdale when Orr is more difficult?

I addressed this very issue in the collaborative development thread.

Build a system called Global dominance. Forces the playerbase to spread out into all of the zones. The more zones that we control(vs enemy npcs), or something to that regard, the better our overall server reward will be. Similar to WvW. This way, you can play in your favorite zone, even if it is something currently abandoned like Fireheart Rise.

There should be a minimal amount of zerging up to complete the easiest content the quickest. If the server wants the highest reward, the population needs to be spread out the most.

Hi, I had created another thread but figured I’d put this here instead…maybe a dev can respond.

Curious why develop direction and the main focus has turned to living story, instead of making the world seem alive, as was the goal? If you visit any zone that is not connected to the current Living Story, you find an empty zone. You find events failing, dead friendly NPCs, towns taken over…You find a dead world. Which is the opposite of what the Living World is supposed to be. And I think the main cause is the Living Story, which takes us out of these zones and funnels us into a select few.

I am curious why arenanet thinks the development direction needed to go the living story route, instead of giving us a real reason to play the game in these zones, when the whole idea was to create a living world. I truly feel that Living Story has had the opposite effect on the game. I am currently standing in Fireheart Rise, I see no one. I see events kicking off, expiring, failing.

I know arenanet has much invested in living story, but my ultimate wish would be to dismantle the Living Story as we know it, and get us into zones to play the content thats already there. We dont need a story or breadcrumb achievements to chase after. We just need to play the content thats there.

If I am not logging in to run with the zerg in Queensdale, or in Kessex, the game feels like a single player game and I get the urge to quickly log out. Thats not right.

Its sad to see such fantastic open world potential and dynamic content that is already developed go to waste.