Showing current year upon map travel

I used to find it hard to keep track of the chronology of the lore when hopping between maps. Even now I'm sometimes surprised by the supposed time skips between story content. Maybe it would be a good idea to show the name and year of the map you are in when traveling to it. I can imagine newbies to the game will find things even harder the more areas are added that take place in different years. One second you are in Fields of Ruin where the humans and Charr are still almost tearing each other apart, the next you're in Lion's Arch and don't understand how they get along there just fine. Lion's Arch is a particularily nasty example of how this is not handled very well in the game - if I'm not mistaken there are at least three versions of it depending on what content (open world, personal story, living world) you are playing, and newbies may only understand the chronology of events by chance through their story journal.

If I'm correct showing the name and year was how it was done in GW1. Not sure why it wasn't taken over into GW2.

Does that mean that every time we swap maps, we're time-travelling? o.o

Yes, we do. The maps do not take place in the same years. This isn't necessarily too obvious in Central Tyria but even there you have places that have been changed by events through the Living World that takes years after your personal story.

There have always been friendly charr and humans in Lion's Arch (and Divinity's Reach and the Black Citadel), even in the original version of Lion's Arch which was in the same time frame as the Ascalon maps.

Just like large groups of people in real life the GW2 races are not 1 homogenous group that all share the same thoughts and beliefs on everything. There's a lot of differences between individuals even if they're the same race. The humans and charr fighting each other in Ascalon are Separatists and Renegades - splinter factions who don't agree with their governments decision to sign a peace treaty and want to continue killing each other. (And I suspect if they stuck to only killing each other they'd be allowed to get on with it, but unfortunately they want to kill peaceful charr and humans too.) Meanwhile many of the charr and humans in Lion's Arch are pirates, smugglers and other 'outsiders' who have denounced any ties to Kryta or Ascalon they may have had and consider the war and peace treaty nothing to do with them.

I've actually pondered this exact thing numerous times. It'd be nice if they told you the "moment in time" that the map and the various stories and the like in it are in. Some maps have evolved over time, others haven't been changed at all since launch. Kessex is a good example of how things have changed. It'd be nice if they told you the moment in time that whatever instance you enter is as well as the zone you're in. You get NPCs talking about things that should be well in the past. Like the random human woman that keeps saying every thirty seconds that she'll take her cleaver to any Charr that enter her bar. The city at large has changed, and even some of the main NPCs, yet for them it feels like they're living five+ years in the past.

The story of each map is set in a specific time, they make that somewhat obvious, it'd be really nice to see exactly which time each map's story is set.

This has been suggested before on the forums. Hopefully at some point a dev will notice it and agree it's a good idea and find a way to do it, because it really would be nice to have given their time-freeze on all the maps.

I can see how a new player might be confused. Siren's Landing looks lime it would be after Straits of Devastation, but it's actually 5 years later. You can see Rata Sun from Dragon's stand but if you go into the city they don't even know Mordremoth exists, etc

I've been playing for 5 years and this is something I have never noticed nor thought about.

@"sephiroth.4217" said:I've been playing for 5 years and this is something I have never noticed nor thought about.

there are massive time skips even in the mostly instanced story content. the pact commander must be on his conquest against the dragons for I believe a decade now or so. you never realized how "old" your characters were?

@Fenom.9457 said:I can see how a new player might be confused. Siren's Landing looks lime it would be after Straits of Devastation, but it's actually 5 years later. You can see Rata Sun from Dragon's stand but if you go into the city they don't even know Mordremoth exists, etccan you actually see it? there is this achievement that tells you you could, but ive tried to see it squinting my eyes but all i could see was fog.

This is something that bothers me every single time I change zones, and twice whenever I visit Lion's Arch.

Yes! We absolutely need this.The worst example of weird time traveling we have is Lake Doric in my opinion, in Queensdale and DR everything is fine and from Lake Dorics perspective that entire region is locked into a hefty conflict with the White Mantle... I don't really like the way those time differences are beeing handled but I understand how difficult other solutions would have been.

instead, or additionally, the year for each map could be shown on the world map. i believe this is how it was in gw1 too? i dont believe a line like that on the screen upon map travel would be very hard. after all i get oversized leyline event notifications i dont necessarily care too much about regularily too, right on the middle of my screen.

@"Enoah.1956" said:One second you are in Fields of Ruin where the humans and Charr are still almost tearing each other apart, the next you're in Lion's Arch and don't understand how they get along there just fine.

This has nothing to do with the passage of time. If you pay closer attention to the story, there are two factions of humans and two factions of charr. There are Krytans who are loyal to the queen and support her peace initiative and renegade separatists who want to continue the war (this is the backdrop of the LS3 Caudecus plot chain, not to mention the initial CM story mode). Similarly, there are the allied legions of charr, who support a truce as exemplified by Pyre Fierceshot from GW1, and the Flame Legion, who are the direct descendants of the charr enemies from GW1. Nowhere should this be more apparent than in Fields of Ruin, where one of the hearts is an allied charr asking you to fight Flame Legion charr, hearts inside Ebonhawke are human soldiers asking you to help fight human separatists, and the central camps in the map are all about a peace delegation of humans and charr who are alternately being attacked by separatists and Flame Legion. Time cues aren't going to help if you remain completely oblivious to the presentation of lore.

Lion's Arch is a particularily nasty example of how this is not handled very well in the game - if I'm not mistaken there are at least three versions of it depending on what content (open world, personal story, living world) you are playing, and newbies may only understand the chronology of events by chance through their story journal.

I would agree that the "renovations" to LA didn't make much sense from a lore perspective but that is a bigger issue. The whole concept of a makeover that stripped the original map of its key design elements (grounded ships being converted to use as buildings) was a bad step IMO and not necessary to any plot element. Fortunately this was back when Anet was still in its "delete old content to make room for new content" phase which I believe they have outgrown (with assistance from players).

If I'm correct showing the name and year was how it was done in GW1. Not sure why it wasn't taken over into GW2.

I don't seem to recall this. You could have verified it yourself before presenting it as an argument.

As there are many maps that lack internal consistency with regard to time period, I think it only serves to exacerbate the problem by claiming a specific date. Just as the latest example, some old maps now have invading Joko minions in them. As the game wasn't really designed to strictly separate zones by time period I think you are only asking for more trouble by asking this to be done. Everything in the game happens in a sort of fuzzy continuum. Like how the Fort Trinity gate guards in the Order HQs will recognize you as the commander after you get to that point in the story, but will otherwise refuse you entrance. For that matter, they have Fort Trinity gates for a Fort Trinity that doesn't exist yet... If the date was fixed for the map, there is no way these could be present.

I logged into GW1, and changing the map only shows the map name and type of map (explorable, mission, ...) on screen (at least in Prophecies, I didn't bother loading a Factions map and I don't have access to the other expansions). But that doesn't mean it can't be done now.

However I see your point with Trinity gate and stuff. I guess it could add up to things being more messy than they already are. I remember things now like seeing refugees in Gendarran Fields from Scarlet's War and talking with NPCs there who knew me like we had been old war buddies but who I had evidently never met or heard of before (I completely missed Living World Season 1). Same goes for the Nightmare Tower in Kessex Hills. I sure was confused by some places being all tangled up by vines in Brisban Wildlands, Lornar's Pass and some other maps as well before I finally got to play Living World Season 2.

Another thing that sometimes feels messy is your choice of order in your personal story. Some dialogues change depending on that choice, but even there things never felt 100% consistent. Some order guys will talk with you regardless of your order choice even if they are clearly thinking you belong to them. I guess the complexity of keeping such things consistent throughout the entire game is why they have been scrapped. Choices related to boosting now hidden/meaningless stats like Charisma go into that category too. I for one somewhat admire Anet for at least trying I guess, but at the same time they could perhaps try to clean these things up a little more.

guild wars2 compared to guild wars honestly does not have very much lore in the game and other wise. and even more honestly at this time in the games life it be far more work for the dev,s . then to go and fix all the game bugs that been in the game since 2012 when the game came out. as well as the new game bugs . sad part of it all really is not one of them things will be fixed or changed at all . unless it is really breaking the game all together as a whole .

I would love to see sth like this in-game. I think wht is stopping them is places like kessex hills that had permanent changes done into them on LS1 that it is also part of the map rotation for new players. So officially declaring it as having a specific date makes things confusing depending on which part of the story you are. Thus they just keep the concrete dates on the journal.

Btw has anyone ever made a fan made map that shows dates?

@Enoah.1956 said:One second you are in Fields of Ruin where the humans and Charr are still almost tearing each other apart, the next you're in Lion's Arch and don't understand how they get along there just fine.

I think the differences between those areas isn't time, but culture. Fields of Ruin is a long time battle zone over Ascalon. With hatred that just kindof breed there. Generations of fighting at that spot and feuds (between families and species) just don't change. Lions Arch was built on a diverse group of people. There just wasn't the animosity there.