Story Steps Like DRMs After End of Dragons

[rrusse.7058]

So Dragon Response Missions haven't exactly been a fan favorite in the community and that's fine. For some it's because of the reward structure, or perhaps it's because they don't feel rewarding enough, the content isn't engaging enough and so on. I am not here to get into why some dislike them. I want to consider the idea of having DRMs or something similar to them in a Living World season, after EoD has been released.

Consider this, Between Icebrood Saga Episode 2: A Shadow in the Ice and Episode 3: No Quarter we had a handful of missions like DRMs that involved breaking supply lines, evacuating locals and establishing a base camp for the Charr Legions in and around the area near Drizzlewood Coast. Having a sort of miniature story step that helps bridge the two episodes together could work nicely and offer a little more to do for the playerbase.

Granted we had something to do and a bridge of sorts with the Visions of the Past story step, but having something similar to DRMs might just work in this case instead of spacing out a season/saga finale in 4 story steps.

I get that the Champions update and DRMs are not the best, but I believe it would be a shame to see the storytelling model disappear completely. The story beats told so far haven't been bad and keeping them moving like this helps Living World feel like it is well, living.

What are your thoughts? Could you see a LW season with DRM like beats in between episodes?

[Fueki.4753]

We have gotten DRM because Arenanet felt the need to cut off 99% of the development costs for Season 5, so they could use most of their funds for EoD.Unless Arenanet is in dire need of funds for an expansion again, I do absolutely not want to see them cut Living World short and use this kind of story presentation and insufficiency of actual content again.

[Infusion.7149]

Strikes (Forging Steel in particular) were a test to "public" 5 man instances. Prior to that you had to join a party first similar to fractals or dungeons or even story in general. I expect that the next story instances will use the public and private system, where private allows you to coordinate your own party and turn on challenges.

It is extremely unlikely any additional 10 man content is introduced into the story as devs stated that it is far harder to balance the scaling.

[Atomos.7593]

I certainly hope not. For me personally, DRMs have done nothing to keep me interested in the game until the next expansion. I still only play because of the same reasons before DRMs were introduced. I would rather see them save the resources for a better (even if less frequent), more content-filled update or for the next expansion itself.

[rrusse.7058]

@Fueki.4753 said:Unless Arenanet is in dire need of funds for an expansion again, I do absolutely not want to see them cut Living World short and use this kind of story presentation and insufficiency of actual content again.

Maybe I worded my thoughts poorly. I didn’t mean to suggest Arenanet should cut a Living World season short in exchange for DRM like content.

I meant that it should be incorporated into the previous structure of Living World. They would work like miniature story steps in between episodes.

LW Ep.1 -> Response Mission -> LW Ep. 2 -> RM

Now whether or not this would affect the content and quality of the episodes themselves I obviously do not know. I was just proposing a possible means of telling the story after EoD.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

I kind of like DRMs but also kind of wish they took place on the open world proper. It would make early maps feel more populated again. That would be harder to do though obviously. But could be cool to show a schedule of invasions, or actually have the commander contacted periodically to notify of an impending attack.But if they did that, then they couldn't integrate the story elements. So I dunno what to think.

The rewards suck really bad though. And strikes just aren't really fun.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Wouldn't they be competing with Festivals, then?

[Poormany.4507]

I don't think DRMs will be used much, if at all, after Champions. To me, they just seem like content made purely to fill the gap until EoD is released and replaced the rest of the Saga halfway through after the expansion was given priority. I do think its more likely we'll see other previous types of content make a comeback, such as raids, strikes, LWS1 scrying pool episodes, and possibly visions of the past (or some kind of Canthan counterpart), as those seemed to have an overall much better reception with most players than DRMs did.

[Pifil.5193]

DRMs were added purely because they are focused on the new expansion, didn't want a new map and didn't want to update older maps.

So they created instanced, dialogue-heavy, event chains and stuck a boss into each. Then they dragged out an episode over 8 or so months.

I hope were don't see more of these.

[rrusse.7058]

That’s fair, so the general consensus at this moment is that DRMs and anything like it does not and should not have any place in the Living Word?

Is that a reasonable assessment?

[Poormany.4507]

@rrusse.7058 said:That’s fair, so the general consensus at this moment is that DRMs and anything like it does not and should not have any place in the Living Word?

Is that a reasonable assessment?

I feel like they would actually have been good had they been supplements to actual living world episodes with full content/new maps or as releases in the 3-4 month gaps between regular episodes. As a complete replacement for full episodes (i.e. Champions,) big no.

[Fenella.2634]

I hope we never ever have to deal with split episodes again. Wtf, locking our characters in an episode for half a year where we lose ALL progress if we dare to replay old stories.

DRMs are not a bad design for simple story instances every now and then, I think. I just don't like the ridiculous grind attached, but if the collections and endless replays were cut and it was just a normal instance played maybe a few times per character max, why not.

[rrusse.7058]

@Poormany.4507 said:I feel like they would actually have been good had they been supplements to actual living world episodes with full content/new maps or as releases in the 3-4 month gaps between regular episodes. As a complete replacement for full episodes (i.e. Champions,) big no.

Right, that's the point I was trying to make. This wouldn't be so bad if this was a supplement to an already existing Living World season that was in progress and there was Response Mission added to the end of Episode 1 for example about 1.5 months into the approximate 3 months we get between episodes.

This is certainly no replacement, we know why this is currently the situation and I agree that I would not want this to be the case ever. On top of that, as others have said, the reward structure of this finale leave a lot to be desired as much of the content are weapon skins. Expensive ones that require a huge commitment to make.

[ugrakarma.9416]

the DRM's is so cheap that they even cut the renow heart draw from the mini map... by gods, this again no,.

DRM is just a very budget versions of strikes, which is a budget version of raids. enough of this "short content" pls.

[radda.8920]

honestly if the drm continues after the saga, I stop this game for goodI have never seen such boring missions in my life, there is not even a possibility to develop a scenario in there

I have the impression of having fillers, the history does not evolve, on the contrary it is impoverished and guild wars deserves better than that ..

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

DRMs is an obviously missed mark on what should have been done. Making all previous story content farmable or have some kind of dailies.

DRMs is fine content if one drops in the middle of releases, instead of a two week period where nothing happens or a festival ends leaving a part of the month dry.