Fortnite's Events is what GW2's Living world was supposed to be.

[Vanthian.9267]

@mindcircus.1506 said:......playerbase of 40 million.

Thanks for the laugh. Guild Wars 2 would be lucky to have 2 million concurrent players and even that is stretching it thin.

[Ultramex.1506]

@Dashingsteel.3410 said:The special events are what made season 1 the greatest in my opinion. I wish Anet hadn't listened to the complaints of newer players and instead kept rolling out special events for subsequent seasons.

Easy for you to say that when you get to experience it while some of us don't, the only way to see how those events play out are by watching youtube videos, I was confused as to why Lion's Arch looked different during PS instance.

[Dante.1508]

@Healix.5819 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Imagine trying to attract new people to this game now if they found out they couldn't experience any of the events of HoT, PoF, or any of the seasons. This type of system doesn't work for MMOs.

It is however the (distant) future of MMOs.

I'm not sure MMO's have a distant future honestly.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I'd like to know why gw2's events never reached this hype level that Fortnite has? Is there any sort of difference?

playerbase of 250k vs playerbase of 40 million.Yeah it's a puzzler.

Are you for real? 40 million accounts made maybe.. concurrent customers no.

[Zephire.8049]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Zephire.8049" said:You cannot do one-time major events in a game about story. Or at least one where you have the original starting story for new players/characters that then jumps into the current story after you finish it.

Arenanet tried that with the Southsun events and LW1 and they have not gone over well. They were a pain in the rear for people at the time (I wouldn't know because despite playing since closed beta, I was busy during that period of time so never got to play it) and completely messed up the flow of the story since you cannot replay them. LW2 may make sense if you played LW1, but if you haven't then you suddenly have characters you're expected to know and care about and references to a character and event that you never saw.

To do that for every event and story would be a monumentally bad decision for an MMO. You weren't there to kill Joko so now you can never play the first half of LW4. You didn't kill Kralk when he crashed so you have zero context for the branded or any plot to do with them. You were busy with work so couldn't be there where Aurene hatched so the first time you see her she's as big as you and apparently you're her champion but this is the first time you've ever seen her. And how to you work with expansions? Does all HoT content poof once PoF comes out? Are all previous LW episodes deleted the moment a new episode is released? And what about achievements and rewards tied to certain places? And how about how the devs feel about their hard work being deleted? Some devs don't have issues with their work being ephemeral, sure, but not everyone is fine putting dozens of hours into something that will last a short amount of time and will only be able to be experienced from Youtube after a week or a month.

A game with no consistent story, such as Fortnite, can do one-time events. Team Fortress 2, which is a far more apt comparison, did do one-time

story

events but left the maps up so people could play on them forever. An MMO cannot do that because you've forgotten the second half of the acronym everyone drops to keep it short: RPG. A roleplaying game where the story is fragmented and impossible to replay if you weren't playing between two set dates is not fun. Could an MMO be set up to always be evolving and removing content as other content is added? Yes, but it would need to be built from the ground up to do so. GW2 is not and LW1 is infamous among both players and devs as a bad design choice for not being replayable.

Ya that makes sense to me when you explain it that way.

But still i believe this is what GW2 wanted to be in the beginning, before Fortnite came along and "showed em all how it's done."

Never-the-less, i feel that gw2 should still come up with something to hype up the game...it seems to just be lacking in that department. I think it's plausible to think that they could still hype up their game in forums outside of the games dedicated media channels and reddit. The little 5 cent ads that appear on website footers just isn't cutting it.

It may be hard for GW2 to do at this point in its life. As it is Fortnite had to straight up shut down its servers and social media for over 24 hours this time to get media attention and build hype (and I don't know how or if they can top that honestly).

But for an MMO event you'd want to come up with something that

• Does not affect the story.
• Is not talked about afterward by NPCs outside of maybe a comment here or there.
• Is accessible to new players.
• A large time frame so people can play it even if they live in a different timezone or are busy. This also reduces the load on servers.

Getting people who don't play GW2 to start for an event would also be harder. You'd pretty much need to do a tie-in or something so big and different non-players will care enough to sign up and download 45+GB.

To appeal to current players is easier, and during beta they actually did do some one-time events for fun (Hunger Games-style battle royale; random legendary creatures such as a giant legendary bunny; a branded event where you tried to survive and if you got branded you'd go around trying to brand other players). Though that was in 2012 and I doubt the code for those still works.

@Ultramex.1506 said:

@Dashingsteel.3410 said:The special events are what made season 1 the greatest in my opinion. I wish Anet hadn't listened to the complaints of newer players and instead kept rolling out special events for subsequent seasons.

Easy for you to say that when you get to experience it while some of us don't, the only way to see how those events play out are by watching youtube videos, I was confused as to why Lion's Arch looked different during PS instance.

I left before LW1 came out and came back mid-HoT and was so, so, so confused by everything. I had no idea who anyone was, LA was totally different, there were so many items that I had no idea what they were there for or how to get them (and were impossible to get outside of LW1). It was not fun and I very nearly left again because there was no way to catch up on the story without watching a Youtube video, which still does not let you connect to Taimi, Braham, Rox, Kas, or Jory on the same way meeting and playing with them does. And to this day I find little things here and there where, upon looking into it, I learn I can't do or get because it was part of LW1 and Anet decided to leave it in there.

Not to mention the Kessex Hill loading screen is a random grey blob if you didn't play LW1, and the toxic events are a nightmare when leveling and break the flow of zones.

[DoRi Silvia.4159]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I'd like to know why gw2's events never reached this hype level that Fortnite has? Is there any sort of difference?

playerbase of 250k vs playerbase of 40 million.Yeah it's a puzzler.

basically this OP

theres no point even trying to compare the two games.

[Trise.2865]

Comparing an arena shooter to an RPG. You might as well be comparing McDonald's to a... restaurant.

[Firebeard.1746]

The marketing department could definitely do better and anet stinks at hype.

I think seasonal rewards and mechanics for various different game modes would keep the game more interesting. I've probably played this game on and off for 3-4 years and sPvP for example hasn't really changed at all. I realized i only play it for rewards and even then i can't always keep going. They don't need to make the story go away, but they could definitely make playing at particular times both more interesting and rewarding. And they're really bad at marketing.

I actually realized there's only one thing they've done well and that's metas and to an extent living story. No other part of the game has really had sustained innovation. (Barring new especs).

[DoRi Silvia.4159]

@Dante.1508 said:

@Healix.5819 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Imagine trying to attract new people to this game now if they found out they couldn't experience any of the events of HoT, PoF, or any of the seasons. This type of system doesn't work for MMOs.

It is however the (distant) future of MMOs.

I'm not sure MMO's have a distant future honestly.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I'd like to know why gw2's events never reached this hype level that Fortnite has? Is there any sort of difference?

playerbase of 250k vs playerbase of 40 million.Yeah it's a puzzler.

Are you for real? 40 million accounts made maybe.. concurrent customers no.

nope, I would say 40 million would be possible as to current playersAs of March 2019 fortnite has recorded 250 million accounts madeAugust 2018 recorded a mass amount of 78.3 million accounts active

250 million accounts vs 11 million (gw2) accounts....

The OP is basically comparing a apple to a watermelon. Lol.

[mindcircus.1506]

@Vanthian.9267 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:......playerbase of 40 million.

Thanks for the laugh. Guild Wars 2 would be lucky to have 2 million concurrent players and even that is stretching it thin.

read for comprehension.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:I don't play Fortnite...but i'll be honest, I'm following the whole Fortnite seasonal event thing as if i did play it. Each event that Fortnite does is always a worldwide mystery, endeavor, or just highly anticipated for. Each event ONLY happens at one point in time and you can NEVER experience it again.

I'm pretty sure that is what GW2 always wanted to do with it's own events...a single, once in history style events (this is what the living world was supposed to be at the beginning with season 1)

I'd like to know why gw2's events never reached this hype level that Fortnite has? Is there any sort of difference?

nah we been down this path before by having content that developers make that is only temporary and never seen again in the game.

Thats wasted resources. This is not a Battle Royal. This is a MMORPG which is a genre built around long term play.

Remember this great meta event?https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Marionette

Well wasted resources because it was never seen again and we can never play it now.

I dont want development like that.

[miraude.2107]

You are comparing a battle royal game to an MMO. That'd be like me trying to compare Animal Crossing to Halo. What works for one genre does not necessarily work for the other. Why do you even think that WoW Classic exists? Because people didn't know that Naxx was originally in the Eastern Plaguelands, people didn't know you could get Ashbringer, people didn't know there were these hazmat looking sets you could get. It wasn't until the Black Market Auction House in Mists popped up that those original items were offered again and well, guess what? A small number of people that did the content when it was current were now upset that people could just buy it off the AH without doing the work of the Naxx60 raid.There's also the whole thing with story. There's a lot of people (myself included) that have no attachment to the main cast. Because their introduction was tied to season one and it's gone, you could kill Kasmeer, Braham, Rox, Marjory, Taimi and Canach and I wouldn't be bothered. Gorrik, on the other hand? I have an attachment to because I got to see how we met, and everything since then. SPOILERWhen you have to find him in the Prologue and can hear him getting hurt? Lord, it was rush for me to save him.END SPOILER See, when I started playing, it was after season one was pulled. Going through the personal story, dealing with getting Destiny's Edge back together, etc...I honestly thought I'd be replacing Snaff. That I'd be the Flash that got the League back together. Then I finished and suddenly I had this whole new array of people talking to me like they knew me and I'm just going 'who are these and where's Logan, Zoija, Eir, Rytlock and Caithe?'And WoW is a good example of screwing up a story. Illidan, Kael'thas 'it was just a setback!', Cairne Bloodhoof murdered off screen, trying to figure out why all of a sudden Lor'themar Theron was wanting to defect to the Alliance. Even if you don't do the roleplay, MMORPG is the full title for GW2, WoW, and ESO and story does play a part. The reason that this event works for Fortnite is because of it being a battle royal game. People already knew the map inside and out, people knew which places to go etc and, as pubg found, the same map for that type of game becomes stale after a while. A whole new map means people have to relearn everything and thus keep shoveling money into a game that would have died a long long time ago.

[Ashen.2907]

I am not necessarily opposed to the general idea of temporary content...

But if you are going to build future story on a foundation that is removed, expect that future story to be on shaky ground. Everything that has come since was lessened because of the treatment given to season one.

Writers should take a hint from construction. Dont build on a faulty, or nonexistent, foundation unless you want a disaster.

[Westenev.5289]

The idea of a living world that changes over time was what made me pick up this title. Sure, you can sit around and say ls1 was bad because you can't replay it... But, realistically, that sort of hype only occurs once anyway (unless you suffer memory loss). A twisted marrienette in 2019 would probably be about as special as a bandit executioner.

I am sad I missed out on ls1, but I'm more sad that Anet are afraid to commit to world-changing stories that effect current maps.

[miraude.2107]

@Westenev.5289 said:The idea of a living world that changes over time was what made me pick up this title. Sure, you can sit around and say ls1 was bad because you can't replay it... But, realistically, that sort of hype only occurs once anyway (unless you suffer memory loss). A twisted marrienette in 2019 would probably be about as special as a bandit executioner.

I am sad I missed out on ls1, but I'm more sad that Anet are afraid to commit to world-changing stories that effect current maps.

Having an event like WoW had with Deathwing's Stood in the Fire achievement wouldn't bother me as much because well, you had to be there to see the sky go red, go wut? and then get roasted alive by dragon and something like that makes sense as a one time event that goes away. However I also remember the gripe of how some maps got updated for/after his arrival (why was Silithus untouched was one) and how long it took for Stormwind to be repaired (destroyed in Cata, wasn't rebuilt until Warlords and even then another part wasn't rebuilt until Legions). You also can still get the achievement if you screw up in the raid with Deathwing so it wasn't completely removed. So if they do world changing story effects, I'd prefer something that could be quickly implemented and yeeted off the map into like an upcoming event/raid/etc so that we can boast 'I was there when it happened' but others can still experience it after the fact but in a different way.They also cornered themselves on changing up the maps. The Shatterer/Teq/etc are great examples of this. We have Aurene healing brand scars and what has one big old scar? Blazeridge Steppes. They'd have to a complete rework of healing on that map and that is something I don't think Anet has the teams nor the time to commit to. Even Blizzard with their robust team still haven't changed maps that were affected by Cataclysm unless it advanced the story so you still have broken dams, smoldering ruins, etc. So Anet, unfortunately, realized that having a true living map is really hard not only on the player side but on their side as well of coding, retextures, pathing, mob ai, etc.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Remember this great meta event?https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Marionette

Well wasted resources because it was never seen again and we can never play it now.I can think of a lot of ways to describe the Marionette, but "great" isn't really one of them.

Also the Vinewrath is pretty much a straight-up refined version of the Marionette fight, so they reused the basic idea later on anyway.

[Dante.1508]

@DoRi Silvia.4159 said:

@Dante.1508 said:

@Healix.5819 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Imagine trying to attract new people to this game now if they found out they couldn't experience any of the events of HoT, PoF, or any of the seasons. This type of system doesn't work for MMOs.

It is however the (distant) future of MMOs.

I'm not sure MMO's have a distant future honestly.

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I'd like to know why gw2's events never reached this hype level that Fortnite has? Is there any sort of difference?

playerbase of 250k vs playerbase of 40 million.Yeah it's a puzzler.

Are you for real? 40 million accounts made maybe.. concurrent customers no.

nope, I would say 40 million would be possible as to current playersAs of March 2019 fortnite has recorded 250 million accounts madeAugust 2018 recorded a mass amount of 78.3 million accounts active

250 million accounts vs 11 million (gw2) accounts....

The OP is basically comparing a apple to a watermelon. Lol.

I think Anet are fudging their numbers, quite extremely...

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@"Knighthonor.4061" said:Remember this great meta event?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Marionette

Well wasted resources because it was never seen again and we can never play it now.I can think of a lot of ways to describe the Marionette, but "great" isn't really one of them.

Also the Vinewrath is pretty much a straight-up refined version of the Marionette fight, so they reused the basic idea later on anyway.

I have to agree there i have not missed living story 1... it was horrible.. Karka was pretty bad as well.

[Dashingsteel.3410]

@Ultramex.1506 said:

@Dashingsteel.3410 said:The special events are what made season 1 the greatest in my opinion. I wish Anet hadn't listened to the complaints of newer players and instead kept rolling out special events for subsequent seasons.

Easy for you to say that when you get to experience it while some of us don't, the only way to see how those events play out are by watching youtube videos, I was confused as to why Lion's Arch looked different during PS instance.

so what we got in subsequent seasons was story episode that was basically single player mode...… There wasn't anything to draw a bunch of players

Marionette and battle for lion's arch made the story feel epic very unlike the next seasons

[Ultramex.1506]

@Dashingsteel.3410 said:

@Ultramex.1506 said:

@Dashingsteel.3410 said:The special events are what made season 1 the greatest in my opinion. I wish Anet hadn't listened to the complaints of newer players and instead kept rolling out special events for subsequent seasons.

Easy for you to say that when you get to experience it while some of us don't, the only way to see how those events play out are by watching youtube videos, I was confused as to why Lion's Arch looked different during PS instance.

so what we got in subsequent seasons was story episode that was basically single player mode...… There wasn't anything to draw a bunch of players

Marionette and battle for lion's arch made the story feel epic very unlike the next seasons

Can't say i agree that it is epic because you know.....I Wasn't There When It Started>

@miraude.2107 said:So Anet, unfortunately, realized that having a true living map is really hard not only on the player side but on their side as well of coding, retextures, pathing, mob ai, etc.They can make another same map but changed it to fit with the story, just an idea don't know how difficult it can be though

[Michram.6853]

GW2 suffers because developers care too much about the audience and feels like they have no real vision for raids or fractals, so they keep asking players which leads to disapproval of another part of the audience, and it's been like that for 7 years.

We still don't exactly know what exactly raids or challenging content in Gw2 means to the devs.

They are more focused on what players feel, rather than what they want to do with THEIR game. There is no balance between both sides, so it is just spike after spike of disappointment.

People after HoT wanted something that won't be challenging, so they made PoF super casual, but then it turned out that people really wanted challenging content, not casual.

So basically... this game is meant to fall, because of this constant change of targets, instead of doing equal content for each audience.

[Michram.6853]

That's the mistake that Blizzard made with Battle for Azeroth, and finally after 1 year people that wanted challenging stuff got what they wanted - epic encounter with Azshara.

But before that it was just content for casuals.

If there is no balance in pleasing the whole audience with REAL features, people will be eternally disappointed.

[Henry.5713]

That old Karka event... remember logging off because I couldn't be bothered dealing with the server lag. So I got no precursor myself, others stayed and later got sent a second one when people complained about not having received their first one. Good times. Still don't feel like I missed anything.

I assume one-time story events were eventually deemed to go against what they wanted Guilwards 2 to be, a game you can pick up and play whenever you wish and at your own pace. Long breaks aren't supposed to hold you back on gear or make you feel like you missed out on some part of the story. Any of this story content is supposed to be avaible to you to play and experience on your own terms. Even seasonal content is returning each year to allow you to experience it if you missed it last time. There might even be a chance we get to replay Season 1 at some point. Any roleplay reason like a temporary rift in time would suffice. Never say never. But I highly doubt they would introduce new one-time story content for the many reasons people mentioned.

[Danikat.8537]

One important question I haven't seen addressed: what did all this "hype" actually achieve for Fortnite? Did their players enjoy it? Did it attract new players? Or did it just get a bunch of people going "Huh, that's interesting." Maybe clicking on a video, then going back to the games they were already playing?

It's all very well to talk about hype in marketing but unless it actually pays off in the form of more players and/or players feeling happier about the game it's wasted effort.

[Rauderi.8706]

Two completely different play experiences. FPS games are built on competitive rounds and small time commitments. They have almost no persistence beside the little unlockable skins or whatever false-leveling aspect they add.MMOs require persistence to be successful. Content persists to be replayed, and temporary content is just a waste of assets. It might be fine for a new story step to add to a chunk of the world or superimpose over it, but that's about as far as it'll go. You might be able to use WoW's progression as an example, but there are still going to be long-time veterans who will say "I remember when," and even with that, those huge, sweeping changes didn't happen that often.

[Randulf.7614]

@"Danikat.8537" said:One important question I haven't seen addressed: what did all this "hype" actually achieve for Fortnite? Did their players enjoy it? Did it attract new players? Or did it just get a bunch of people going "Huh, that's interesting." Maybe clicking on a video, then going back to the games they were already playing?

It's all very well to talk about hype in marketing but unless it actually pays off in the form of more players and/or players feeling happier about the game it's wasted effort.

It was meant just as a cool send off to switch to a new map and herald the new season. And I imagine lapsed players logged in to play the new season, so it prob spiked in players. It got people worldwide talking about, incl people who never played it. And all for an in game event. I imagine many games would love such media attention and ill guarantee we will see other high profile copy-events from others.

[XatraZaytrax.2601]

Having short-term events that altered Tyria was a lot of fun. It truly revitalized old maps and felt historic.

Like before scarlett showed her face, metal pylons with force fields showed up inexplicably across Tyria. There was no announcement, it just happened. A hint something was coming. You can still their remains today.

Before the plaza with the glass dome was constructed in Divinity's Reach, there was just a huge, mostly-unexplaned hole in the ground surrounded by ruined buildings. You had to jump on one of those ruins to see the vista. Suddenly it became the city's show puece

At one time Kessex Hills was an idyllic map, with a huge, beautiful lake, Fort Selma was a fairly peaceful place. It felt devastating when Scarlett plunked her grotestic tower in the lake and poisoned the area. Players flooded the map for weeks to climb the towers and fight what was within. Equally devastating was the wreckage left behind, that will forever scar the landscape.

Lion's Arch was a fun place, more like an old time place, where pirates were welcome and the rich and poor alike could mingle in structures built from old ships. The day the city was destroyed me had my friends and almost anyone who could attend gathered in the city, taking screen shots, partying, and saying goodbye. When we were let back on the map afterward, it was true sadness and anger I felt. It was a pleasure to kill invaders and rescue people. But we all knew the city was changed.

Is it regretful new players can't experience those moments? Maybe. But it made the world feel alive. People want dark story telling with real consequences, well that's what season one had. It wasn't just one character's death, but the destruction of whole ecosystems. I would have liked to see what anet would have done if they weren't hampered by the ideal that the world can't changeG