Guild Wars 2

Lore is very important to me, that’s why I quit playing this game. Somehow the lore in this game just never got to me. I really tried looking for it in the story, in the world, via wiki, but it’s just to diffuse, to unclear to me for it to work. I still don’t quite get what those dragons are all about. So they consume magic and now they are asleep? That just doesn’t tell me anything about what they want, what’s really at stake here. (I didn’t play GW 1, so all I know is from what’s in this world).

Then I read some developer interviews and it became clear to me that they don’t have a clue where they want to go. It just feels like they make it up along the way, and imo that’s not a strong point. I think you should have an ending in mind, somewhat of an arc in order to tell an interesting story instead of producing content for the sake of content that leads nowhere. That’s soap, not storytelling. And that’s exactly the feeling I got from the LS I played up untill Cutthroat politics.

I’m still following it, because I’m curious as to where it leads, but the Scarlet arc hasn’t convinced me that Lore and story in this game are solid, tight and focussed. And when it’s not treated seriously why would I bother to delve in and connect the dots?

Traveller.7496:

But I can’t help but feeling that they know that the level of world building, writing and immersion was superior in the original game and they’re frustrated that so many people aren’t feeling their chosen approach on GW2 (read: Living story) compared to traditional expansion style.

This. I am almost tempted to say that Scarlet is representative of Anet: they subconsciously faced a terror (the fact that they failed their own game with the LS) and by repressing this truth they now willfully accomplish it by destroying their own game. Almost

zamalek.2154:

Not data mined, but tread carefully

hide spoiler

LA is definitely the next target (penultimate). http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/11/prepare-to-escape-from-lions-arch-in-guild-wars-2s-next-conten/

This trailer hits the right button. I stopped playing 6 months ago because I found the LS pretty meaningless, but if they have the guts to wipe out LA they are planning for some highly emotional storytelling. ‘Remember LA?’ – ah, the nostalgia.

I quit playing the LS and I haven’t played in 2 months at all. Tired of the achievement driven direction this game has taken and the absolute lousy story. Which wasn’t good in the first place (the PS that is, I love the dialogue in world). I liked exploring Tyria and I might come back when they release new landmass, but I’m very happy I quit playing this clueless soap opera item infused lightweight content.

Vayne.8563:

In a writing class I taught, I used an example from Shakespeare…“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou, Romeo” and asked the class what it meant.

100% of most classes said she was asking where Romeo was. They were all wrong.

This is semantics. We were talking about interpretation.

I really doubt your teaching skills then.

I’m a very casual gamer and I didn’t play GW1, hadn’t even heard of it. What got me to GW2 was their Manifesto – it was all over the place: how this mmo was going to be different, how your PS affected the world in a meaningfull way, how there would be no gear treadmill. But the game I play now is far from that spirit, and with how the latest LS installments are progressing I don’t see it changing, but getting worse: this is becoming an achievement/reward driven game, based on, in my opinion, meaningless activities.

Many people see a big difference between the manifesto and the game as it is now. That is not up for debate I think. Like indigo said, it is a moot point how people interpret a manifest and value what a game delivered.

For some it does, for some it didn’t. For me, based on the manifesto, it absolutely didn’t and it’s getting worse.

I get the feeling they don’t have a clue yet where they are going. All they say is, yes, good question, or ’we’re laying the groundwork’, or ‘we like to have many plates in the air’.

I like the questions, but really, the answers are as thin as air.

I found this answer interesting, regarding the question about the LS and the lack of story, Ree answers:
‘Is the lore there? Well, because you can’t answer the questions, I guess you can say that no, the lore is not all there so far, but I assure you it will be and you can see where it will be.’

Guess I have to wait another 6 months or so.

You´re not alone, there´s several topics discussing this.

I agree, I´d like to see more story and less achievements/jp´s/minigames. A lot of people enjoy them, and I’m fine with that, but to me they are meaningless activities that are pretty unrelated to any story or character progression. Just there to keep you playing.

Vayne.8563:

Using the word “community” the way you do is dangerous. Which community are you talking about? There isn’t just one community here.

I’d say a bit rhetorical, but dangerous?

When I scroll the forums I see people who take the time posting how they like stuff, like the minigames, and I see people taking the time tot tell what they don’t like. So treating the fora as a representive survey is not so harmful I think. Besides, it’s the only thing we have to make assumptions.

I think it’s legitimate to say that a large amount of people don’t like the way the LS is evolving.

I´m adding in here: I don’t like the LS either so far. It’s too much achievement/reward-focussed for me, than story/explorer-driven. This last one for instance: remove all the minigames and you have zero story progress. Just one tiny dialogue between Kiel, Evon and the Master, with a little info about Sanctum.

All the games around it, they don’t feel meaningful at all. Now if you like minigames, fine, many people find them fun. But they don’t contribute to the story or character progression. What does the Arena tell us about the person Kiel is? Nothing. What do the trials tell about our candidates? That one is bad, and the other good. That is very minor storytelling.

I was hoping for more lore, story and exploring, but lately it seems all there is is JP, achievements, skins, and minigames. I don’t say remove them, but if they are in there, please connect them to the story in a meaningful way.

To sum it up: the LS so far consists mostly of meaningless activities. Is this what the community wants? Based on the topics lately I don’t think so.

I don´t care about Kiel, Evon, or any of the ´characters´ that are leading this story on. Even children´s books have more ambiguity nowadays than these cartoons.

The only one that I started to feel invested in was Canach.

GuzziHero.2467:

I think that the story designers haven’t done a great job of casting him in a villainous light, but rather given him plenty of justification for his angst.

I do not want to help the Consortium. I want to help the settlers. And if that means being wrong in order to be right, I want to fight alongside Canach.

You raise some interesting points about immersion OP. The short story is that much more immersive than the ingame LS, that I now feel more invested in Canach than in the Consortium.

So when doing the story the 28th I will have to unidentify myself with my character. It’s not really a problem because the LS wasn’t that immersive for me, but it shows how difficult storytelling and character creating can be. If we have to fight a villain he better be onesided villainous or I might want to join him and not fight against him. But if he is too onesided, or too onesided good or childish like Braham or Rox, I lose my interest.

I’m curious how Anet will continue with these stories and LS, it’s nice to see this evolving.

Baeyne.9584:

Even though I have not met Canach during the Lost Shores event. The way he is presented really makes me want to know him more. Unlike the previous other two.

This. I couldn’t care less about Braham and Roxx, but Canach really got my interest.

Funny you should say that OP. I had the exact same vibe. Somehow this story stands out. I like it.

I think the OP’s reasoning is flawed.

The achievement is NOT for the JP, but for 25 achievements, of which 11 are the samples. You get the achievement for getting the samples, not for doing the JP. So if the game offers a possibility to get to the sample without doing the JP, then that’s seems perfectly valid to me.

What I don’t find just is that upon porting I got the Skipping Stone achievement. Now that is cheating.

@all nighttime LOTRO lovers: and don’t forget the hoot of the owl! I could sit outside the Old Forest in Bree by the fire for an hour and listen tot the night sounds. Lotro is master of atmosphere.

Thank you guys!

Just found dirt items on Gandara as stated by Bil.

Also confirmed snow items on Whiteside Ridge server (in the north)

On Gandara I did find the logbook in Diessa, NW of the village in the north. But nothing else. Couldn’t find anything on Vabbi and Jade Sea either. Ran around for more than 2 hours.

I found the logbook in Diessa: NW of village in the north. Gandara server.

knives.6345:

SundayTrash.9562:

So Anet is just going response or are they gonna let this play itself out?

Oh they’ll give you a response. “Thanks for the feedback.” or “Thread merged.”

:)

Or: woopsie, we lost your feedback in a glitch!

phantomdust.4729:

Egon Vidar.9125:

StevenMah.9854:

Guys, if your expectations are that high, start paying $30 a month, or else please appreciate what ANet has done and stop complaining that much. They obviously don’t have to bring out new contents in such a short time.

If you run a business and start selling a service, people who pay for that service generally expect it to be in proper working order. When you buy an MMO, people also usually expect there to be content updates and events over time. It’s not like buying a console game, which tend to be static.. and even those usually have reliable updates, these days.
And before even selling it, Anet mentioned there would be content updates. It wasn’t some neat bonus you found out about after buying it, it was one of the selling points.
It does not make a lick of difference whether you paid $60 one time or $15 every month for the rest of your playing experience. It wouldn’t even matter if you only paid $5 for the game, you still dished out your hard earned cash for a service that isn’t working as implied when you paid.

If a commissioner paid me to draw or paint them a picture and I drew it how a five year old would, I sure as hell wouldn’t be surprised if they called me on it and told me to fix it. Since they paid me for a service and they definitely did not get what they paid for. I can’t just tell them “tough kitten” and move on with their cash in pocket. That would be absolutely shameful and I would expect lots of people to jump on me for it and for my business to suffer. And I would deserve it.
I have had to fix commissions before, even though I was tired of the piece and I really just wanted it to be done with. Because I’m the one that screwed up, I’m the only one who’s responsible for that. I’m not going to punish my customer for my failing.

Well written, and well reasoned.

I agree as well.

Although this game is nice, I really think you fail to deliver your promises. Maybe you should tone down a bit, get things working. I paid for something which was and still is not properly working in many cases. If you guys were selling broken televisions, I would have rightfully gotten my money back.

And don’t start with the ‘you know how complicated an MMO is’, ‘every MMO has bugs’, because: no, I don’t know. And I don’t care. You make a promise to your customer, you have to deliver.

Provieh.9782:

[PART 4]What am I actually doing? What am I playing for? It’s all useless in the end anyway.

That’s it. You got it. Now start having fun.

Thank you Wintyre Fraust for clarifying Anet’s philosophy. I was looking for a post like this, because I had trouble understanding why they wouldn’t just let people decide themselves what they like to do in the game. I wasn’t for or against, I just thought it was totalitarian.

Something in me is still resisting your claims, but your reasoning is very solid. I don’t know if I agree, the main counter argument being that it’s perfectly normal to have a correlation between fun and reward – but I understand their philosophy now. How it holds up for me now that I’m lvl 80 remains to be seen. I think I might be someone who needs a goal in the form of some reward that makes my character progress to have a sense of fun.

Anyway, thanks for this excellent and decent thread.

edit: Hmm.. So in a way Anet is saying: Hey guys, this is just a game, don’t expect it to save your life, or spent countless hours on it. It actually tells you to play less (..and ‘enjoy’ more). That might be the true revolution of this game.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I added some additional redundancies so the quest will continue whether or not the scenes fire off successfully, which will also be in the 9/24 update.

Jeffrey, does this mean we will pass this quest NO MATTER WHAT?

Since I am not going to try this quest if there is still a chance it might bug out, could you answer this?

And if not, could you consider giving everyone a pass somehow? I think it’s only fair after almost two weeks to enable us to finish our storylines. I am lvl 80 now and I already missed out on all the story quests while doing Orr. I do respect your work and I’m understanding of bugs in a game this big, but this is gamebreaking and it’s only fair we expect anet to deliver it’s promise to us by now.

That’s great, gonna try tomorrow.

I hate Orr and that´s exactly how it should be; it’s an invasion, not an excursion. Just lower the spawn rates and lower the costs for waypoints, that´s what makes it from challenging to annoying.

Sometimes it is the right thing not to touch them, but it’s not always clear. The part I was referring to is about clearing the square near the end. You just have to fight and fight and fight, untill you killed enough to advance to the cutscene.

Anyhow, I made it in one go, but the point is that dieing repeatedly in the PS breaks the immersion completely.

@Jeffrey – Thank you for being so responsive.

I’m sorry but I die repeatedly in almost every step of the story. Take the attack on Claw Island for instance. How on earth are you going to survive when undead jump at you with 3 or 4 at the same time, and this wave after wave? Maybe you have to take a good look at the NPC’s again – they hardly do damage, or stand around being idle.

The OP is right, this turns the PS in a meaningless and downright annoying experience. When I finish this once I’m staying away from it.

O boy I hated this one. I don’t like the jumping/puzzle stuff in the personal story. I expect story, not agility. Add in all the mindless waves of undead you have to defeat again and again in almost every chapter and it’s highly unlikely I’m going to do the PS again on a different character.

Thanks for answering finally; I understand you have a lot of bugs to deal with, but this is the personal story and a lot of people have been stuck for a long time because of this one.

Bugged for me too today. Near the end the explorers don’t follow to the south gate, only Trahearne does. But when I reach the green marker with him, nothing happens.

I really hate doing this all over again.