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Living world season 2 and living world generally


trev.1045

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Hi All

I briefly played GW2 a year or two ago, got to 80, bought the expansions and played a bit (i think i got to Vabbi) before life got in the way and i stopped playing.I didnt do any of the living world stuff and hardly any of it is unlocked.

Roll forward a couple of years and i have more spare time on my hands- and i have started with a fresh character and just hit 80 and about to finish the personal story (most of which i had forgotten)

This time i am of a mind to do the story in the right order, ie with the living world content, but looking at the price of the first purchasable content (LWS2) i am a bit surprised at the price?. It is £17.00 for one season? that is about half the sort of price id expect to pay for a complete season??. mIf i am unlocking all the seasons it will get a bit pricey just before xmas.

How much content are in these living seasons? are they worth it? Is HOT going to make sense if i jump straight in without getting LWS2?

Thanks

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Well, it's a way for ANet to make money since new players get the two of the three campaigns for free these days.

I think it's worth it, but it depends on what you consider "worth it". The GW2 story has its ups and downs qualitywise, but it's true that you will experience knowledge gaps if you skip story content.

Season 2 was pretty decent I'd say, but unlike Season 3 (which was awful storywise) and Season 4 it doesn't provide easy access to valuable equipment like ascended trinkets and the like.

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@trev.1045 said:Hi All

I briefly played GW2 a year or two ago, got to 80, bought the expansions and played a bit (i think i got to Vabbi) before life got in the way and i stopped playing.I didnt do any of the living world stuff and hardly any of it is unlocked.

Roll forward a couple of years and i have more spare time on my hands- and i have started with a fresh character and just hit 80 and about to finish the personal story (most of which i had forgotten)

This time i am of a mind to do the story in the right order, ie with the living world content, but looking at the price of the first purchasable content (LWS2) i am a bit surprised at the price?. It is £17.00 for one season? that is about half the sort of price id expect to pay for a complete season??. mIf i am unlocking all the seasons it will get a bit pricey just before xmas.

How much content are in these living seasons? are they worth it? Is HOT going to make sense if i jump straight in without getting LWS2?

ThanksSeason 2 is a very uneven experience. While there are two or three great instances, the entire season is marred by lengthy attempts at character development delivered only via giant walls of text. It also includes some very poor open world integration. Budget constraints keep your character from even talking through the bulk of it (there is no voice over for the player character) It spends a good deal of time explaining the fall out of events from S1 and referring to events which you cannot play any more

Is it worth it?If you really love the story of this game, it certainly is.If you ever plan to make a legendary weapon, I would argue the easy core Tyria Mastery points you get from just running the story are essential.But if neither of those apply and you think the price is bit steep?Probably not.

Is it fun?Not really.

Will the story make sense if you skip it?It's not that much worse than just missing s1(which you can no longer play).

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Season 2's story is actually pretty decent, it's just got poor production values as it didn't have voice acting and they were still trying to rectify the mess they made with LS1. What devalues LS2 the most is that you are just buying the story and associated achievements. The maps I think are already available to play in (Silverwastes still arguably the best designed meta map)

There are things to note

  • Achievements can only be done on a character after that character has done the relevant story episode. It's not like HoT onwards where any toon can do any achievement at any time
  • LS2 entirely sets up HoT. It also fills in almost all of Scarlet's background, whilst doing nothing to really reintroduce what were at the time, new characters. That cna be a little jarring when playing through in the right order. It doesn't really recap LS1, but does at least fill in the motivations that were missing from it
  • LS2 was designed similar to todays Icebrood Saga, except each map launched with 1/3 of it's content at a time. That's why there is only 2 maps attached to the Season

I would say you get less value than S3 or S4 and prob S5 as well, but the story at least keeps together (unlike S3 which jumps all over the place) and it has some decent boss fights throughout the story. In fact prob some of the better ones in the game imo. Personally I think it should be reduced in price or packaged better with the expacs, but I don't think it is something most would regret buying

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I personally didn't like the LWS2 missions - I think the story was fine, but in a lot of the missions, you are playing a different character, as you assume Caithe is a flashback form. And then it is an odd thing where you have to control the character, fight things, can die, etc, but it is a flashback so you can't do anything but follow the strict path set forward, so it felt like an odd narrative to me.So it fills in a lot of the story, but adds very little content. You may be better off watching the video that fills in these stories, and saving the money for LWS 3 or 4, which at leads adds a new map for each chapter, instead of the total of 2 new maps for all of LWS2 (which as noted, you may not even need LWS2 to access)

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@"Ashantara.8731" said:wWell, it's a way for ANet to make money since new players get the two of the three campaigns for free these days.

I think it's worth it, but it depends on what you consider "worth it". The GW2 story has its ups and downs qualitywise, but it's true that you will experience knowledge gaps if you skip story content.

Season 2 was pretty decent I'd say, but unlike Season 3 (which was awful storywise)Ls3 awful? Why?This is my favorite one, white mantle, mursaat, fire islands.. And for the first time, no boring dragons.Yes balthazar cliffhanger ruin everything but the rest is really goodFar far more better than the actual boring saga

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@radda.8920 said:

@"Ashantara.8731" said:wWell, it's a way for ANet to make money since new players get the two of the three campaigns for free these days.

I think it's worth it, but it depends on what you consider "worth it". The GW2 story has its ups and downs qualitywise, but it's true that you will experience knowledge gaps if you skip story content.

Season 2 was pretty decent I'd say, but unlike Season 3 (which was awful storywise)Ls3 awful? Why?This is my favorite one, white mantle, mursaat, fire islands.. And for the first time, no boring dragons.Yes balthazar cliffhanger ruin everything but the rest is really goodFar far more better than the actual boring saga

The problem for many was that ls3 jumped around never staying on track, had a bizarre Balthazar reveal and a completely awful final episode which actually allowed you to join the shining blade as a charr followed by a far too rapid tie up of the Mursaat plot. It simply tried to do too many things whilst still heavily focused on the Dragon story and raising Aurene (ugh)

It wasn’t all bad. Some great maps (except bitterfrost and sirens landing imo), lots of variety and seeing Primordus despite his huge model change was pretty epic. (The dragons did feature in ls3, two episodes entirely devoted to them)

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@"radda.8920" said:Ls3 awful? Why?

Because a lot of the dialogue was quite terrible (for most of the characters, friends and foes alike), because Taimi was annoying beyond words, and - most importantly - because they made such a joke out of Balthazar. They portrayed him as a sulky kid who started to throw a tantrum when he didn't get his candy. It was so cringeworthy seeing him behave like that, not worthy of a God.

And then the whole thing with Omadd's Machine - please, can you make a fantasy tale more absurd than that? (Having a God turn to a magi-tech construction to absorb a mortal being's magic?)

Not to mention the huge disappointment with Lazarus and Livia, the latter being reduced to a mere shadow of her GW1 self, also with truly bad lines of dialogue, making her look like a b**ch rather than the smart, seductive, sassy character we knew from GW1.

Furthermore, LWS3 included the most embarrassing moment in GW2 history: the "Shining Blade initiation ritual" - I lost all respect for them right there.

Yes, the maps were okay (some even great) and fun to explore, some of the mission fights and mechanics I liked too, but the story was not my cup of tea, sorry.

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For my two cents on S2, I think it's fine. It expands on the world and the lore, and it develops Caithe in an interesting way imo. GW2 has always been pretty experimental in how they tell stories and deliver content, so it might not match other mmos but I think it has entertainment value. I don't remember the story being "bad" or frustrating. It sets up HoTs pretty well and is longer than other seasons. It really is dependent on how invested you are in GW as a franchise and what you personally find appealing. But as someone who can be critical of the writing/implementation of the story in this game, I didn't have any personal issues with S2 as opposed to the qualms I have about story beats in S3, S4, and Icebrood Saga.

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Mindcircus put it well. I've been after LWS2 for 4 years, on and off. I really disliked the Personal Story, but found HoT quite fun, and wanted to get the full picture of what's going on. LWS2 doesn't seem to do that...

LWS2 is much closer to the Personal Story: lots of meaningless fights with weak mobs, lots of cringe-inducing, poorly directed+written dialogue, but with the admixture of a whole bunch of the unexplained. Who are these people? What are they talking about? Who are they talking about? Why should i care?

It also suffers from the annoying choices they made between instanced vs open world, where they seem to have at the time made changes to the open world as the chapters were released, but in the instances, the world's different. So the town of Prosperity has a hanging dead Droobert outside the bar and loads of vines impaling villagers everywhere as you're tasked with going around asking survivors inane questions in the open world. Then a few missions later, "Commander, i think the town has been attacked!"

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i am pretty much in the same boat as the OP. SO i just logged in two days ago after a 5 year hiatus due to life and losing my computer. My laptop can somewhat handle it it seems.

I played up until the end where we go to part of the desert which I think was living story 2. I have a lot of amber weapons.. I got HoT a bit after it came out. Didnt really play for i am at Virdent Brink and i am on step 3 for glider stuff. T So i am going to tackle that. I am trying to figure out if i should get the Path of Fire and get ready for Cantha for I love it. I have stay away from all GW2 related stuff from when i saw that dragon that awoken from when i last played and saw the wall of gold.

I m enjoying all the input for people. so i might buy the PoF

Thanks

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  • 3 months later...

I am about to finish LS2, and i am disappointed, been playing gw2 for about 6 years now. I cant get any achievements.. read somehwere you have to replay it or play with a character who is more advanced in the story, also, no voice acting from the commander plus we add the unachievable achievements.. I cant believe i payed actual money to play this, I wanted to support the devs ( and yes no one asked me to do that so it's my fault i know ) I guess I'm not going back to those murky waters of the game.

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@Balid.6981 said:

I am about to finish LS2, and i am disappointed, been playing gw2 for about 6 years now. I cant get any achievements.. read somehwere you have to replay it or play with a character who is more advanced in the story, also, no voice acting from the commander plus we add the unachievable achievements.. I cant believe i payed actual money to play this, I wanted to support the devs ( and yes no one asked me to do that so it's my fault i know ) I guess I'm not going back to those murky waters of the game.

Living world season 2 you have to do a second time on the same character to be able to get achievement, they recogniced the complaints and changed that for the living story seasons 3+.So there is no unachieveable achievements, talking from commander was added in later seasons.So this is buyers remorse from someone who did not check what they were buying or what?

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@Ashantara.8731 said:Season 3 (which was awful storywise)

That's your opinion. Heart of Thorns and Living World Season3 have been the best content and personal history releases for me so far. Especially episodes 2, 4 and 5. And I think the teaser trailers of the whole Season 3 are best ones that they've made.

I am not profident enought with english to detail why I find it so good, but I can tell you that I've played Path of Fire, Icebrood Saga, and now I'm playing Season 4 and I am not enjoing the content as much as I did with HoT and S3.

Anyway, I love Eye of the North and I've never fancied Factions, and back then I found more people that had the oposite opinion in that regard x).

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@Follyfoot.2803 said:I don't find the story's all that compelling but find it's a agony you have to bare for the rewards they offer. I would much prefer to be able to skip them and simply claim the reward.

We would all like something for nothing!!

The rewards really are secondary most of the time, if you don’t like playing the content then who cares about the rewards?!??!

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@Mungo Zen.9364 said:

@Follyfoot.2803 said:I don't find the story's all that compelling but find it's a agony you have to bare for the rewards they offer. I would much prefer to be able to skip them and simply claim the reward.

We would all like something for nothing!!

The rewards really are secondary most of the time, if you don’t like playing the content then who cares about the rewards?!??!

nothing? most people have paid for the game. and even a F2Per is giving them their time and attention.in what world is money and time nothing?

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When I came back from a 5 year gap I wanted to do the same thing and see things in order, what I did was just play the game, bit of farming here and there then when I could I changed gold to gems and did the next bit of story, by the time I had completed hot I had enough gold to buy a few of next ls and then repeat till that was completed then hit pof. Worked well that way for me.

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Actually I liked Canach + Anise. And I think they had their moments in the story of S3? (Or was it S2 as well? But later than S4 he was "free" again.)

Had my own thread(s) about those older story seasons. And I think s2 actually had some nice story ... I mean regarding the story missions itself: Loved the slow progress and the backgrounds (where you played stuff from Caith's past). Imo the best - pacing-wise. In S3 I still liked Taimi. (Like her the most.) Braham though was annoynig - the most annoying one ha ha. (Just started Icebrood and I hope a certain female Norn will become his wife later and change him a bit. :D)

Must also have been nice to see those maps getting added slowly on their release back then. (With different parts getting added to S2 maps.)

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