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Why is Living World such a flop?


Firebeard.1746

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Living World isn't necessarily a "flop". It just doesn't pull in new blood like an expansion does. Yes some episodes are perhaps weaker in their delivery and content than others. However they do a decent job of providing existing players with plenty to do.

It also doesn't help that the Living World has held the sterotype of being "An hour of content and you're done." We have come a long way from the days of Flame and Frost starring the Commander of the Pact, signpost repair extrordinaire for those that were around back then. Sure maybe the Champions season finale so far is a little lackluster in terms of content, we at least know exactly why it is lacking.

People will see that the population will spike greatly when End of Dragons hits and it naturally will level off again. We will likely see another spike with the eventual Steam release and a leveling off again with whatever Living World, or iteration they create after EoD. This is just the natural ebb and flow of an online game. Nothing to be alarmed of.

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Kinda big to state that living world is a flop. I enjoyed a lot ls1, end ls3 and start ls4, well and ls5 prologue. (Lake doric, draconic mons, siren reef then istan and sandswept, grothmar)

Wasn't fan of ls2 at all, the dive in the past with the sylvari could have been cool, but don't like efforts were put in it. Worst infiltration, even transport facility of ls4e2 or e3 with bypassing awakened is better. My only regret of ls1 is not being able to enjoy anymore old LA or fighting the knights or prime hologram, really, attack of LA should be a fractal, you save citizens, you stop toxic/molten/aetherblade portal then you kill a knight involving the three atunement to end killing scarlet prime on breachmaker. You have your plot.

To me, living world has various quality depending on episodes, but it has the merit of giving you a map, a meta, events, nodes, possible armor pieces, gh decos, ascendeds.... what the kitten is that new form of release of DRM? No map to complete, no good rewards, nothing apart long instances with sponge boss and nothing to do in parallel. They better had sticked to continuing releasing episodes, it a very weird turn half of that season.

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Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

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@Zaraki.5784 said:Because 3 months of nothing from a release to another is devasting for a game.And no, 8 years-old festivals don't count as something in-between.

I wonder if that is really the case. Am I really the exception who thinks that it is not bad if there is no new content even after 3 months? Especially if it is content that you have in a few hours through and then only the achievment grind comes anyway?I would have nothing against it if Anet would take more time and would bring really good content. For me personally, everything that came after POF is a pure flop and before it has already indicated because POF were just mob hordes over mob hordes in my eyes.Personally, I'm good at finding my own occupations, if there are good ones. And I can keep myself busy with things for a very long time. But these last constant 3-month-updates never kept me in the game for long. In the meantime I'm even no longer one of those who are logging in on day 1 .... 2 ... 15 after a new update came.

Wonder what they could create if they would not let themselves be so pressured by the community.

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The problem is probably more that if there is no content for 3 months, you will get people saying the game is dead, Anet has abandoned it, etc. So even if the result is that after 4 months, there is a bigger/better release, Anet is fighting that perception for 3 months that nothing is going on.Releasing content, even poor content, perhaps gives some people solace that Anet is still working on the game.

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@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

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@Linken.6345 said:

@"Justified.9178" said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

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@Justified.9178 said:

@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

Because you want to play solo.

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@Linken.6345 said:

@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

Because you want to play solo.

You need to read the comment correctly before you continue this conversation

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@Justified.9178 said:

@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

Because you want to play solo.

You need to read the comment correctly before you continue this conversation

I might have mixed up the threads mate, still dont see, what part of the living world is rehashed group content tho.Thought you were talking about the DRMs

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@Linken.6345 said:

@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

Because you want to play solo.

You need to read the comment correctly before you continue this conversation

I might have mixed up the threads mate, still dont see, what part of the living world is rehashed group content tho.Thought you were talking about the DRMs

The DRMs are instant versions of the content that came after Battle for Lion's Arch when Brisban Wildlands was attacked. That was group content to introduce new systems in the game that were not available as nothing like that existed before

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@Justified.9178 said:

@Justified.9178 said:Its because the content is rehashed group content and at the heart of it players are primarily solo, its just a bonus when you have people that you can group with. The only part of the LW that is designed as solo content is the story and because the story is unique to its season it takes to long to produce and leaves massive voids in game.

You can solo both forging steel and the DRMs so whats this about it being group content?

Are the core hot and pof stories group content just becuse you can enter with 5 people?

I never said you couldnt but why would you bother when you only get bronze rewards ? Its rehashed systems and locations nothing new and very bland content for the time it took to produce its not worth the investment in "my opinion".

Because you want to play solo.

You need to read the comment correctly before you continue this conversation

I might have mixed up the threads mate, still dont see, what part of the living world is rehashed group content tho.Thought you were talking about the DRMs

The DRMs are instant versions of the content that came after Battle for Lion's Arch when Brisban Wildlands was attacked. That was group content to introduce new systems in the game that were not available as nothing like that existed before

Your talking about living world season 2 now?EditCant say I remember any other attacks on brisban wildlands but its been awhile so please refresh my memory mate.

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@Solvar.7953 said:The problem is probably more that if there is no content for 3 months, you will get people saying the game is dead, Anet has abandoned it, etc. So even if the result is that after 4 months, there is a bigger/better release, Anet is fighting that perception for 3 months that nothing is going on.Releasing content, even poor content, perhaps gives some people solace that Anet is still working on the game.

Yeah sure, now it wouldn't work either way. Also this whole, free LW if you log in a certain period of time....And I'm not talking about subscriptions. I think it would have made a lot of difference if they had just produced the stuff longer and bigger and then charged a sum for it.But the train has left the station and we will never know how successful, or not successful, they would have been. Unfortunately.

People always like to forget that such things take time. Large paintings are not painted in a few days.But nowadays everything has to be produced yesterday with super much content.

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I think many people, especially in the later posts, forgot what the OP was about and only replied based on the, not accurately chosen, topic title. They are talking about the lack of hype and how the living world doesn't pull players in, although the quality is there, even gives an example of a high quality "quest" in Jahai Bluffs. And I agree finishing the Elegy armor collection was a good experience. They aren't saying that the living world is terrible... but I guess the word "flop" in the title can lead players to think otherwise, especially those who don't bother to read the actual posts.

There are many high quality collections (GW2 version of "quests" from other RPGs) that have well written dialogue and some interesting developments. Also some meta events (before you repeat them a thousand times) have interesting storylines and ideas. Episodes can be hit or miss in that regard. As for the "Hype" part, I think they overhyped the game in the past, especially pre-HOT, and are now very cautious about it. Which leads to the other end, lack of hype. We only get a trailer 1 week before the release of an episode and that's it.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:I think many people, especially in the later posts, forgot what the OP was about and only replied based on the, not accurately chosen, topic title. They are talking about the lack of hype and how the living world doesn't pull players in, although the quality is there, even gives an example of a high quality "quest" in Jahai Bluffs. And I agree finishing the Elegy armor collection was a good experience. They aren't saying that the living world is terrible... but I guess the word "flop" in the title can lead players to think otherwise, especially those who don't bother to read the actual posts.

There are many high quality collections (GW2 version of "quests" from other RPGs) that have well written dialogue and some interesting developments. Also some meta events (before you repeat them a thousand times) have interesting storylines and ideas. Episodes can be hit or miss in that regard. As for the "Hype" part, I think they overhyped the game in the past, especially pre-HOT, and are now very cautious about it. Which leads to the other end, lack of hype. We only get a trailer 1 week before the release of an episode and that's it.

TE has not commented since his first post and in the course of the discussion a new theme emerged. Not the first and not the last time that something like this will happen. Especially because the topics are not so far from one another.

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Lw it self is fine if you take it for what it is, content between major releases (expansions). When you take expansions out of the equation lw has to carry years and years of no new class gameplay or systems and the rest of the game is hardly getting anything, so the cracks start to show.

Gw2 woupd be in a much better state if after se4 we got an expansion (on clock for tye 2 year schedule that hot and pof had set prior).

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I like it. The end of LWS4 and The Icebrood Saga was what drew me back in. It was the writing, generally. I mean, for the first time in the game's history they've been trying to write something different and I find it very compelling. The story is quite unlike... If I'm honest, it's unlike anything in video games right now, not even just the mainstream. It feels abstract, strange, and unusual. It has a certain dream-like quality to it with how fantastic it can be, whilst also having a certain soulful depth. It's difficult to articulate precisely what's so enthralling to me—beyond just Jormag, because it's no secret how much I adore that ice dragon—but... It speaks to me. This is the most "hype" I've been about Guild Wars 2 in a long, long time.

Fantasy always retreads the same bloody stories, over and over. There are only a few subsets of fantasy tropes, if I were being cynical I could narrow it down to three and say that if you've read one? You've read them all. They all follow the same basic narrative path. Sci-Fi has the same problem if I'm being true to myself—simians in sardine cans, and the sardine cans have windows! Transparent materials are heavy! I mean, in an advanced setting, you'd expect morphological freedom and for everyone to have gone completely off the rails. Frankly, by the time we start to colonise I... strongly suspect that due to growing ecological concerns, we'll have shed our bodies in preference of living in virtualised spaces that can house many more people with a smaller footprint.

Where was I? Oh yes. Fantasy tends to be very... predictable. It grants the average mind the same plot points every time. It's a world of horrors where everyone is a psychopath, oh the political intrigue; It's a hero's journey through an untamed owrld of magic; et cetera. Guild Wars 2 is the only setting I've seen in a long time that dares to be a little less... predicable, that has the courage to tell a story outside of the usual comfort zones, something a little more risky. I appreciate it.

I'm not even certain if the finer nuances have been picked up on by a lot of players. I enjoy it, though. Who really invaded the Vigil Keep, was it actually Jormag? Why trust the spirits when they eat children? Drakkar actually is a baby and we haven't really given them a chance, so why is the Commander so desperate to murder them. Why is the Claw of Jormag so deathly afraid of the United Legions? I get the feeling he's only there since he's worried that a gaggle of abominations are about to slaughter his mother.

It's an interesting play on perspective. Certainly, we might be the hero—yet we might also be a murderous tyrant, acting on tribal instinct, one who doesn't bother to logically consider the evidence available to them.

It's a refreshing change of pace as it sidesteps the usual glorified human sanctity that so many fantasy settings direly need to move away from. I mean, we're not narcissistic sociopaths, we don't need to be told how fantastic our species is every few minutes. A sin that the original Guild Wars was also all too guilty of. There are many things GW2 does that I find very refreshing.

So I disagree. I'm very "hype." I have all of the positive energy. Even if their resources are limited as they develop an expansion, this is the most interested I've been in a fantasy book, film, or video game in some time.

The last time I was this pleased was when a man yelled the names of various sciences at a demonic entity to defeat him.

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As I see it people will not excited about anything in an MMO, unless it provides them with a reason to do stuff in the game.

So if you have an incredible reward that is sooo good that people will start no-lifing your game just to get that reward. That's exciting, because rewards rarely fail to motivate people.

If you introduce a new gameplay layer, like adding in a complete new gathering/crafting system to your game, where you can find nodes in the game and send little NPC workers there to harvest plants, chop trees, mine ore etc that you then can sell for profit etc. This will make people to log in an spend the next 20+ hrs to explore the map all over again, to unlock these nodes and then spend the next 100+ hours theorycrafting and experimenting to find the best ways to make as much money as possible.So, people will be excited about that because it wants to make them play the game.

And we've seen that indeed that's also true for GW2 community. Adding new gameplay layers like Mounts, that fundamentally change the gameplay in the open world, when they announced that, this got people incredibly excited, since they want to log in and unlock and find every single mount that there is and use their fun skills.

Exact same thing can be said about new elite specs. New gameplay layers added to the game.

But adding the same thing over and over and over again, sparsely spread out with a few releases over the entirety of the year, talking about living story maps and events, samey, generic and boring rewards. On top of that a story that is (imo and in the opinion of pretty much most of my gamer friends) even for MMO standards merely "okay" for the most part.

I am sorry, this does not get me excited at all. It's barely enough to open my client and download

I'd rather spend my time on playing an actual story driven singleplayer game or check out some other MMO update/patch that released with actual and meaningful content (like BDO releasing a new class for example), or just watch a movie/show instead

Afterall the reason I play MMOs is progression, customization and at least some form of social aspect.And since all my characters have the best gear, the shiniest armors and weapons that fit my style exactly and the content that would be social is too much hassle for the reward, while the content that isn't social is far too easy for still no reward, I just can't get excited with living story.

And unless the new xpac has super cool cosmetics that I want, incredibly fun elite specs, super cool new gameplay layers, I won't get excited about that either

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@"Hypnowulf.7403" said:I like it. The end of LWS4 and The Icebrood Saga was what drew me back in. It was the writing, generally. I mean, for the first time in the game's history they've been trying to write something different and I find it very compelling. The story is quite unlike... If I'm honest, it's unlike anything in video games right now, not even just the mainstream. It feels abstract, strange, and unusual. It has a certain dream-like quality to it with how fantastic it can be, whilst also having a certain soulful depth. It's difficult to articulate precisely what's so enthralling to me—beyond just Jormag, because it's no secret how much I adore that ice dragon—but... It speaks to me. This is the most "hype" I've been about Guild Wars 2 in a long, long time.

Fantasy always retreads the same bloody stories, over and over. There are only a few subsets of fantasy tropes, if I were being cynical I could narrow it down to three and say that if you've read one? You've read them all. They all follow the same basic narrative path. Sci-Fi has the same problem if I'm being true to myself—simians in sardine cans, and the sardine cans have windows! Transparent materials are heavy! I mean, in an advanced setting, you'd expect morphological freedom and for everyone to have gone completely off the rails. Frankly, by the time we start to colonise I... strongly suspect that due to growing ecological concerns, we'll have shed our bodies in preference of living in virtualised spaces that can house many more people with a smaller footprint.

Where was I? Oh yes. Fantasy tends to be very... predictable. It grants the average mind the same plot points every time. It's a world of horrors where everyone is a psychopath, oh the political intrigue; It's a hero's journey through an untamed owrld of magic; et cetera. Guild Wars 2 is the only setting I've seen in a long time that dares to be a little less... predicable, that has the courage to tell a story outside of the usual comfort zones, something a little more risky. I appreciate it.

I'm not even certain if the finer nuances have been picked up on by a lot of players. I enjoy it, though. Who really invaded the Vigil Keep, was it actually Jormag? Why trust the spirits when they eat children? Drakkar actually is a baby and we haven't really given them a chance, so why is the Commander so desperate to murder them. Why is the Claw of Jormag so deathly afraid of the United Legions? I get the feeling he's only there since he's worried that a gaggle of abominations are about to slaughter his mother.

It's an interesting play on perspective. Certainly, we might be the hero—yet we might also be a murderous tyrant, acting on tribal instinct, one who doesn't bother to logically consider the evidence available to them.

It's a refreshing change of pace as it sidesteps the usual glorified human sanctity that so many fantasy settings direly need to move away from. I mean, we're not narcissistic sociopaths, we don't need to be told how fantastic our species is every few minutes. A sin that the original Guild Wars was also all too guilty of. There are many things GW2 does that I find very refreshing.

So I disagree. I'm very "hype." I have all of the positive energy. Even if their resources are limited as they develop an expansion, this is the most interested I've been in a fantasy book, film, or video game in some time.

The last time I was this pleased was when a man yelled the names of various sciences at a demonic entity to defeat him.

I really like the Living world too, but I feel like it's obvious from Google trends and other things that it fails to garner the attention of most players. Doing the requiem quest chain in Jahai bluffs was one of the most beautiful quest experiences I've ever had in an MMO: it featured a lot of hatred, eventual character development and reconciliation. The IB story is great imo. I was not expecting that one charr general to go awol and Rytlock to permanently lose his son over it. The story is really good imo as well. but I feel like looking at the data, there's something missing.

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The problem with GW2's Living World releases is two pronged: it's an arbitrarily long-winded, "seralized" story that is written without a concrete roadmap; due to its indefinitely long development cycle, GW2's high internal turnover rate (as well as Anet's recent shake-up due to... embezzlement of a sort, I guess?), it's probably difficult to ensure staff continuity between individual Living Story releases. For instance, compared to GW1's expansions (which were self-contained stories which shipped with endings already established) or even GW1's Wind of Change releases (which were done on a much more concise timescale: 3 releases; about 7 months total time between initial release and final release), GW2's Living Story has historically been muddled between weird, dead-end plot lines that didn't really impact anything (big symptom of pre-HoT LS) as well as its lack of focus (pinballing around greater Tyria, often using nostalgia and macguffins in order to justify or facilitate plot progression toward a rather vague end).

Basically, LS has no goal as a story, and Anet's anemic staff can't do anything but recycle the same mechanics over and over again (every zone is just another mastery grind and zone-specific currency farm).

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@"Hypnowulf.7403" said:Guild Wars 2 is the only setting I've seen in a long time that dares to be a little less... predicable, that has the courage to tell a story outside of the usual comfort zones, something a little more risky. I appreciate it.

As much as I hate the Saga, I agree with you here. In general, I appreciate GW2's willingness to strive for something other than generic fantasy formulae.

However, the problems I have with GW2's writing at times is when it begins to mirror ANet's bad habit of chasing new things without sufficiently developing what they've already put on the board.

The story as of late reflexively defaults to "omg we can only win with the power of Togetherness and Friendship and Diversity yay" and seems utterly allergic to exploring how deeply tied particular threats are to particular races. They started an incredibly interesting dark horror mystery motif in Bjora that went absolutely nowhere, and turned the Spirits of the Wild into sideshows. There was yet again another botched chance to have a compelling "rally the Norn" moment that could have seen Braham more directly confronted by (and seek redemption from) his people, rather than have two random Svanir and Jhavi mention (but fail to discuss at any depth) the perception that Braham abandoned his people. The story is immediately swamped by the Charr Civil War and its miniature twin, the Cre/Ryt/Ryland story... which in turn is giving way to Primordus, Primordus (potential) new champion Braham, and the mess that is Dragon Response Missions.

I get that chaos can be effective storytelling at times, especially with a manipulative power like Jormag at play. Having us yo-yo from one thing to another might be what Jormag wanted all along, to direct (or misdirect) us.

I just don't credit ANet for doing this on a narrative chaos basis. Instead, I can't help but see this as a narrative version of their gameplay ADHD. So many promising systems are introduced, then abandoned, never to be touched or iterated ever again. I see the current story, lurching from one thing to the next without really addressing the stuff it puts out, as much the same thing.

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The post about GW1 (and each release having a full story) reminds me a problem with LS story, which is that with 2 months between installments, it is pretty easy to forget various details about what is going on. I know some folks re-play the previous episode shortly before the next release to refresh their memory.But it also feels like a lot of the more recent stories have characters just running around the map doing mostly pointless stuff, just as a way to stretch out the release. GW2 has never been very good about side stories - it is pretty much the main story, or various map events which are things going on, but don't add much to the story.

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