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Ideas to help with season 1 predicament.


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I am here to share an idea that many players, from the people I asked in Lions Arch and my guild anyways, agree upon. This idea pertains to the struggle many players face because they cannot play or replay the first living season. I have a potential solution to this predicament. Fractals of the mysts has a huge amount of potential when it comes to allowing the normally unallowable. For those of you who do not know, Fractals of the mysts is a special type of dungeon that plays through different parts of history so you can fix anomalies that appear that must be fixed. Fractals is one of my favorite parts of Guild Wars 2, and holds a lot of potential for something more than just dungeons. What I propose is that a new section of the fractals lobby is created, something that could be know as "Living Fractals" (Doesn't have to be this but it sounds cool and fits.) What these living fractals would do is allow players to play through living world season 1 without messing with the already current world. Now these would be instances, not an entire world, just small instanced areas to play through the story. Now for the events, I could see these going one of two ways. First, way one (and my personal favorite) would be to put mystlock singularities or some sort of activation to certain areas of the map, these would be the event areas such as Scarlet's twisted marionette event, or the siege of lions arch where you are attacking Scarlet, these singularities could be activated at certain times allowing players to join in an instanced event. This could also incorporate the Central Tyria mastery in the fractals section, mystlock singularities, making it so that only players with this mastery can activate, or could even go as far to make it so only those with the mastery could participate in these events, thus encouraging players to do more fractals of the mysts. Another way is to make a section in the fractals lobby for living events, basically match making players into the event like pvp does, but with pve. This could also allow for the same type of living world that season 1 was, the world could change without any major ramifications, more changes could be made to the world again, think about it, when were players most actively doing events together? when Scarlet attacked, from what I have heard, players would flood in whenever the Scarlet events would start, this also makes the world feel more alive. With changes being able to be made, we never know what to expect, anything could happen. We would have a real reason to have fear, and put forth more of an effort and bring a whole new amount of interactivity with the players, like when you had to vote between two representatives, or when Scarlet destroyed Lions Arch. I really hope this reaches out to people and that many of you agree with me on this. If you wish to share this dream with me, please spread the word. I truly think this could be the working idea to solve this. This would make Guild Wars 2 truly the most unique game out there, no game has ever had a constantly changing world. Bringing another appeal for future players. Thank you for your time if you read all of this, and I hope to hear from everyone about ideas and new possibilities.

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As someone who never got to experience Living World Season 1, this sounds like an incredible solution.I watched the LWS1 movie on youtube and it does not give the same effect as playing it would give me. As much as someone explaining the information of what happened in that time was nice, there are so many things I will not understand to it's fullest extent without playing it. Not even being able to play the instances is devastating, I missed a story because I was not playing the game at the time. I was not playing when LWS2 was released but I could still get it, even if it cost me money but I never understood properly who my companion's were and how I came to know them. I had no true idea Marjory and Kas were a couple and I just thought they were flirty and I was like "wow thats cute" but across all the characters, I had no idea who they were because I had no idea of how I met them. The story is more than just knowing what Scarlet did and how her actions impacted the world, but its how my characters meets people and what their stories are. Why are they here? Why do they help me?My experience between the base story and LWS2 is lost and it is very devastating to not be able to experience even the instances that could help tell a story and just viewing snippets of the huge world events as close replacements, but truthfully your idea is so much better. I thank you greatly for this idea and I hope more people see it. I intend to share this with my guild mates and have them at least give a thumbs up if they agree :)

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Yet another thread about LS1 (beats dead horse even more). There have been SO MANY through the years. Ah well was about time for 1 anyway. GL getting LS1. Though still very doubtful it's ever going to happen. I was there for all of S1 and it's by far the best season yet. GL

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@hellsqueen.3045 said:As someone who never got to experience Living World Season 1, this sounds like an incredible solution.I watched the LWS1 movie on youtube and it does not give the same effect as playing it would give me. As much as someone explaining the information of what happened in that time was nice, there are so many things I will not understand to it's fullest extent without playing it. Not even being able to play the instances is devastating, I missed a story because I was not playing the game at the time. I was not playing when LWS2 was released but I could still get it, even if it cost me money but I never understood properly who my companion's were and how I came to know them. I had no true idea Marjory and Kas were a couple and I just thought they were flirty and I was like "wow thats cute" but across all the characters, I had no idea who they were because I had no idea of how I met them. The story is more than just knowing what Scarlet did and how her actions impacted the world, but its how my characters meets people and what their stories are. Why are they here? Why do they help me?My experience between the base story and LWS2 is lost and it is very devastating to not be able to experience even the instances that could help tell a story and just viewing snippets of the huge world events as close replacements, but truthfully your idea is so much better. I thank you greatly for this idea and I hope more people see it. I intend to share this with my guild mates and have them at least give a thumbs up if they agree :)

I feel your pain. I came in during LS2 and at least I was able to go back and buy all of the season. I can understand the reasoning for LS1 though, as everything goes through migrations over time. As a programmer I know the 'fun' of explaining to someone that something they could do 5 years ago they simply can not do exactly with the current version of the software. Usually there is an equivalent function but with content it is another animal, it is like clicking on a random windows 3.1 program and just assuming it will work in windows 10.

My concern with putting it anywhere in fractals is you are mostly talking about PVE players who would be interested. Many will not go through the fractal gate after trying it once so you would need to make it clear this was not an ordinary fractal.

There is the argument that the devs should be working on new content and I agree. What I would LOVE to see though is putting some things from LS1 in that new content in some form. Maybe when we explore some new zone find stuff that relates to LS1.

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@Tasida.4085 said:Yet another thread about LS1 (beats dead horse even more). There have been SO MANY through the years. Ah well was about time for 1 anyway. GL getting LS1. Though still very doubtful it's ever going to happen.

Obviously it is doubtful and possibly difficult to implement considering all that was done.It sucks that so many people, myself included miss out on a HUGE section of story because we weren't playing the game yet.Maybe if a decent solution is offered and Anet feels a little sympathy for those who never got to experience and are missing such a huge part of the story, something may change.

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@costepj.5120 said:Unfortunately, encapsulating some elements of LS1 into fractals isn't a new idea and Devs have previously commented on some of the considerable challenges involved. It's not that it couldn't ever be done, but whether the effort required is worth the result.

How would you even gauge a result even if they did implement it?Many people really want it, but that still hasn't been enough.Surely there were instances with LWS1, did the instances tell the story or was it only events that told a story?

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It would take a ridiculous amount of effort to redesign these encounters to be used in an instanced format, even more so to build a new instance format just to support them. They can't just place the old code in the game, as the engine has changed and been modified extensively since then, so large parts of it will have to written basically from scratch based on the responses devs have given in the past.

I also missed LWS1, and as much as I'd like to see it return in tis entirety, I think its best to just request a few boss battles come back. I think that the marionette would make a great world boss, and the fight against scarletts hologram could make a good fractal, but that's probably it honestly. Anything else probably isn't worth the effort.

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@OriOri.8724 said:It would take a ridiculous amount of effort to redesign these encounters to be used in an instanced format, even more so to build a new instance format just to support them. They can't just place the old code in the game, as the engine has changed and been modified extensively since then, so large parts of it will have to written basically from scratch based on the responses devs have given in the past.

I also missed LWS1, and as much as I'd like to see it return in tis entirety, I think its best to just request a few boss battles come back. I think that the marionette would make a great world boss, and the fight against scarletts hologram could make a good fractal, but that's probably it honestly. Anything else probably isn't worth the effort.

You can still access original story instances even though some of them occur in Old Lion's Arch.Why does it not make sense to request instances either? Instances place you into a dedicated restricted zone for you to talk to characters and follow the scripted story section. If you can still play the base ones on the new system, why can't we access LWS1 instances at the very least and interact with the big events via fractals?

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What was amazing about LS1 wasn't a few bits of instanced content. That aspect has persisted through the later LS episodes. It was the the LIVING part of Living World. LA and other core maps were transformed. It was also the pace of the story. You had to do it immediately; within a few days it was over. I'm not saying that was all good, but it was certainly different. And it's that difference that makes people nostalgic, and that nostalgia which infects people who weren't even there!

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@costepj.5120 said:What was amazing about LS1 wasn't a few bits of instanced content. That aspect has persisted through the later LS episodes. It was the the LIVING part of Living World. LA and other core maps were transformed. It was also the pace of the story. You had to do it immediately; within a few days it was over. I'm not saying that was all good, but it was certainly different. And it's that difference that makes people nostalgic, and that nostalgia which infects people who weren't even there!

I get that. But we know that doing that kind of content was taxing on them and becomes too inconsistent for new players.I could continue happily without the large events but if you got a lot of story information from instances then why can those not be implemented?Like I want to meet all of my team and if that occurs in story instances, that would be nice to experience.I am in this a lot for story and other stuff too, but a story captures me all the time and if most of the actual story is in instances, it sucks that I can't experience those instances.Like, they included a summary filled with cut scenes from it and I would be happy if those cut scenes occurred between bits where you were supposed to go and fight an event or something but otherwise those instances are something that kind of cripple my understanding of the story by not being able to experience them.

Obviously I have no clue about how things properly occurred during that time and would require second opinion on the whole of how much story was actually obtained through instances because LWS1 movie made it seem as if there was a fairly decent amount of instance based content that gave fairly decent story to carry you into season 2.

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@hellsqueen.3045 said:

@costepj.5120 said:What was amazing about LS1 wasn't a few bits of instanced content. That aspect has persisted through the later LS episodes. It was the the LIVING part of Living World. LA and other core maps were transformed. It was also the pace of the story. You had to do it immediately; within a few days it was over. I'm not saying that was all good, but it was certainly different. And it's that difference that makes people nostalgic, and that nostalgia which infects people who weren't even there!

I get that. But we know that doing that kind of content was taxing on them and becomes too inconsistent for new players.I could continue happily without the large events but if you got a lot of story information from instances then why can those not be implemented?Like I want to meet all of my team and if that occurs in story instances, that would be nice to experience.I am in this a lot for story and other stuff too, but a story captures me all the time and if most of the actual story is in instances, it sucks that I can't experience those instances.Like, they included a summary filled with cut scenes from it and I would be happy if those cut scenes occurred between bits where you were supposed to go and fight an event or something but otherwise those instances are something that kind of cripple my understanding of the story by not being able to experience them.

Obviously I have no clue about how things properly occurred during that time and would require second opinion on the whole of how much story was actually obtained through instances because LWS1 movie made it seem as if there was a fairly decent amount of instance based content that gave fairly decent story to carry you into season 2.

I played during Living World Season 1 and my memory is a bit foggy since it was over 4 years ago, but I personally don't really remember much instanced content at all for it. Most of it occurred in real time which is why it was a "living world". It wasn't instanced content you could go back to and play or replay whenever you wanted. The story played out and unfolded in real time events like the destruction of Lion's Arch.

I loved that it was like that personally as it truly made the game feel like a living world that changed as you played, not instanced. The way season 1 played out was their original intent for the game if I remember right. I quit the game for a while so I don't know why they changed it. I recently returned just a few months ago. I'm conflicted honestly. On one hand, I wish it had stayed how it was because it gave the game a different dynamic and feel of excitement. On the other hand, I can kind of see why they changed it so they could give others the chance to enjoy the story they otherwise would miss. But I could see how it would be a huge undertaking to make Season 1 available like the others since how they are now was not the original intent.

I would not be against them doing it in some way of course as it would be nice for those who did not get to experience it have that chance. But as I said previously, seeing how the majority of, from my memory, took place in real time instead of instanced, I couldn't see it being easy to implement at all. I mean yes, in order to take part you needed to be online during certain times, etc., but I truly preferred the original format of Living World.

Edit: The more I think about it, the more I honestly can't remember any of LW1 being instanced at all. I do remember a few cinematics after big events, but as far as the changing of the world and the story itself, it was all in real time. Now to be fair, there were a couple things I missed out on because I was unable to be online during those times, but I did experience the majority of it. I remember the big karka or whatever it was attacking Lion's Arch. That was a real time event, not instanced. I have the volunteer title from another real time event that went on for a number of days helping survivors. But honestly, I don't remember any of the content being instanced, only some cinematics. So to answer your question about the story itself being instanced, it was not. It was very different than what we have today. They even advertised the game as a living, breathing, ever changing world. The world changed in real time, not instances.

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@SummerRayne.4672 said:I played during Living World Season 1 and my memory is a bit foggy since it was over 4 years ago, but I personally don't really remember much instanced content at all for it. Most of it occurred in real time which is why it was a "living world". It wasn't instanced content you could go back to and play or replay whenever you wanted. The story played out and unfolded in real time events like the destruction of Lion's Arch.

Recently I have found a youtube series covering the entire season showing gameplay of how they met Rox and Braham, etc. Link here:

This chain of videos, shows that there are story instances that you do go into, where you meet Rox for instance, or meeting and then helping Braham. So yeah, there were actually quite a few instances. But after watching this series, I am kinda satisfied with the story. I would however LOVE for them to add Scarlet's hollogram and her twisted marionette to show up in fractals, that would make my day.
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@RsxTheKings.9304 said:@SummerRayne.4672 said:I played during Living World Season 1 and my memory is a bit foggy since it was over 4 years ago, but I personally don't really remember much instanced content at all for it. Most of it occurred in real time which is why it was a "living world". It wasn't instanced content you could go back to and play or replay whenever you wanted. The story played out and unfolded in real time events like the destruction of Lion's Arch.

Recently I have found a youtube series covering the entire season showing gameplay of how they met Rox and Braham, etc. Link here:

This chain of videos, shows that there are story instances that you do go into, where you meet Rox for instance, or meeting and then helping Braham. So yeah, there were actually quite a few instances. But after watching this series, I am kinda satisfied with the story. I would however LOVE for them to add Scarlet's hollogram and her twisted marionette to show up in fractals, that would make my day.

I did watch a living world season 1 thing and I felt like I saw A LOT of instances. Maybe because I saw a lot of times where I saw the red border on the players mini-map in it doing content that involved key character NPCS and those are the kinds of things I wish to experience. This is because an event can only progress a story so much, which is why I thought maybe those events could be simply covered by cut scenes like the ones we get for the whole of LWS1 today and the actual instances used could be replayed. Because presumably, you meet your friends in instances and you finish scarlet in an instance. And even things like that would be a bit more satisfying to understand LWS1 with.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6pj6wm/one_path_ends_devs_here_ask_us_anything/dkprv68/

"Will season 1 ever be playable? There are players like me who would love to play it and even pay for it."
wrote:It's a question that comes up a lot. I have favorite moments I'd love to play again too. But we researched it a while back and realized that restoring and updating Season 1 content, and putting it into episode format, isn't particularly easier than making new episodes. And we think the community is better served with new episodes.

I don't think people recognize just how much effort it is going to be to make a repeatable version of LS1. Of course it's possible; it would just take an enormous amount of resources. And that seems like an unnecessary distraction, given that people are already jealous of ANet diverting any resources to anything that doesn't fit their idea of a better game.


Out-of-Game, Historical Context

LS1 was designed and implemented as temporary content. It was part of a (since-discarded) plan by ANet to constantly introduce new content and gradually evolve the game, so that many existing maps would be unrecognizable (in terms of challenges, foes, etc). The idea was: much better use of resources to re-use the same zones and so much more exciting to keep adding new life to the existing world. Hence: the term Living World.

It was a great, epic idea and I wish it would have worked. I think part of the issue was ANet's implementation (they bit off more than they could chew and there were lots of scaling, technical, and reward issues to start with, leaving a bad taste in people's mouths about the concept). Part of the issue is also what we're used to: we like repeatable content. We like being able to be absent from a game, without feeling that we missed something important (reward and lore both). We like having the chance do ALL THE THINGS in the game.

LS1 disrupted all our expectations and its implementation was rough (whether flawed or just slow to get going no longer matters). And ANet, sensibly, dropped the idea and turned LS2 into repeatable content.


Background, In Game Experience

There are three aspects that made LS1 epic:

  • It was not repeatable. You had to be there at the right time. (Notice this is exactly one of the primary issues that got ANet to drop the original concept: it was both a great idea and a fatal flaw.)
  • The open-world battles were epic. Unlike Auric Basin (which has an achievement for defending the city one hundred times), getting in a single victory was a combination of great mapwide teamwork, individual skill, and a bit of luck. It felt amazing each time (compared to DS, which feels disappointing if it's not over quickly enough).
  • The instanced content was extremely challenging for nearly everyone. People scrambled like crazy to find ways to beat it. Depending on who you talk to (and how good their memories are), many would say it's comparable to today's fractals (perhaps T3-4 or less).

Final Background: To Make it Repeatable

To make it repeatable, we'd have to drop all three of the things that made it epic: it won't be dynamic, it won't include open world mega battles, and it won't be super challenging for five people. So let's presume that the only thing we can get is a facsimile of the story, told in chapters.

The original instances were designed for the mechanics of the day. They were designed to be temporary, so little thought was given to making them last. That means: they'd have to be redone, nearly from the ground up.

There were dialogues that took place in the open world, in areas that don't exist anymore (or have different NPCs, foes now). Those would have to be turned into instanced content.

The open word battles would have to be included somehow, so that's new cinematics or entirely new encounters meant to model the idea, with shorter cinematics to show the impact on Tyria.

To do all of the above requires rewriting parts of the story, rewriting the instances, redesigning encounters, adding new cinematics. All of that would need to be translated into French, Spanish, German, and Chinese. Some of the voice actors are no longer available, so ANet would have to hire substitutes (and decide whether to redo old dialogue or not -- probably not).

In short, it's an enormous amount of work to get us ... another Living Story, which some people have already seen (and can't possible meet expectations for epic-ness).


So, sure, it's possible. It's just not practical given the pressures on ANet at this time.


Developer Quotes

Without saying anything definitively about a re-packaging of Living World Season 1 (because that's the domain of studio heads to make such decisions) I just thought I would chime in as a story team lead to say that the work to do this would be a significant undertaking, and may in fact be harder to do than creating a new Living World season, given how much has changed in our pipelines since then.

A simple, but specific example is how we do all our VO, which is now in a totally different format that is a lot more flexible for us (it's how we got player VO back, as well as the ability to have characters walk and talk). Going back to those old content objects and converting them over to the new format would be weeks of work by themselves, not to mention we'd probably want to add player VO to get around the awkward way we had to tell story in that season.

I've also taken a look at what it would take to update all the story beats and convert them from using the special event UI to living in the journal and since none of those objects exist (Season 1 didn't use QuestDef's which are the objects that show up in the journal) there's weeks of work there too, as the quests would all need to be created now, and everything would need to be unhooked from the event system and plumbed into the story journal, which on some levels is starting over from scratch given how the underlying story structure is scripted. Some of the gameplay can just get ported over without too much trouble, other things rely on actions/skills/etc. that we've since deprecated for perf reasons or to address bugs, so even the idea of copying and pasting encounters isn't "free".

I don't say all this as discouragement for those who would love to see a Season 1 Redux - but I just wanted to clear up any misconceptions that the community might have about the challenges that such an effort would entail. To my knowledge this is still something that we've kept on our backlog as there are plenty of devs who also want to see us make such an investment someday. As some have pointed out, we haven't said no to this, but it hasn't yet risen to the top of our priority list given our other releases and plans for Guild Wars 2.

I hope that offers a bit more insight into this question.

@"Bobby Stein.3612" wroteTo add to Matthew's point, IF we were to undertake such a project I would like to revise, add to, or rewrite sections of that story to make it stronger (similar to how we improved the Personal Story last year). These things take time. Just including voice-over on a project instantly adds two-to-three months for recording and localization and doesn't include things like prototyping, iteration, script revisions, etc. We couldn't (and wouldn't even if we could) simply "port" Season 1 into the new framework. There would be a substantial amount of revision involved. Anyone who thinks it would be "easy" to redo Season 1 doesn't fully understand the process or the time investment. I wouldn't expect them to.


Previous Quotes by Developers on Bringing Back LS1:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/698qju/anet_we_have_to_talk_about_season_1_again/dh4oxys/ANet Ben wroteIt would [take] longer than 6 months.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/698qju/anet_we_have_to_talk_about_season_1_again/dh4uzeq/ANet Ben wroteIf things went smoothly, with the entire living world team plus extra veteran developers working on it, maybe 6 months is theoretically possible. But with old content, things rarely go smoothly. Issues pop up that you weren't expecting that increase the amount of time required. And even if it was feasible in 6 months, taking all those developers off of new content just isn't worth it IMO. We have way cooler things that we can work on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/698qju/anet_we_have_to_talk_about_season_1_again/dh4qbi2/ANet Ben wroteone of the problems is much of the content is not instanced, and theres also a TON of bugs in that content that would need to be fixed, since our game code and tools have changed so much since then.

ANet Ben wrote

Question:
If it had been even a minor priority when this was first requested back at the start of Season 2 -- nearly three years ago! -- it'd have been done by now, surely?
Answer from ANet Ben:
That would have pushed back everything a lot. Season 3 would be behind, the expansions would have been behind, new content is a better use of developer time. I wish Season 1 had been built differently, but alas it was not.

Question:
Any chance that we as players (and surely lot of us are programmers, 3D modelers and coders) could help?
wrote
ANet Ben's Answer:
As cool as that sounds, there's a lot of logistical issues with something like that, and it would still require a lot of dev time to coordinate. Plus, more leak potential.

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@RsxTheKings.9304 said:What I propose is that a new section of the fractals lobby is created, something that could be know as "Living Fractals" (Doesn't have to be this but it sounds cool and fits.) What these living fractals would do is allow players to play through living world season 1 without messing with the already current world.

It's a creative idea to bypass the Wall of Text issues above, except that unfortunately it doesn't bypass the issues noted above. The original content cannot be simply shoehorned into instances. The instances were designed for the developer tools of the day, for the skills of the day, for the game engine as it had evolved to that day. All of it would have to be rewritten. It might, in some cases, be even more work than starting from scratch.

As I've said every time I've posted about this: it would be great to have LS1 in the game or even just a better recap. The problem is that those same resources could be used for new content instead. And given that LS1 can't possibly live up to its hype or nostalgic memories, it's doubtful that it's a good use of ANet's time to try, at least not in the next year or three.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@RsxTheKings.9304 said:What I propose is that a new section of the fractals lobby is created, something that could be know as "Living Fractals" (Doesn't have to be this but it sounds cool and fits.) What these living fractals would do is allow players to play through living world season 1 without messing with the already current world.

It's a creative idea to bypass the Wall of Text issues above, except that unfortunately it doesn't bypass the issues noted above. The original content
cannot
be simply shoehorned into instances. The instances were designed for the developer tools of the day, for the skills of the day, for the game engine as it had evolved to that day. All of it would have to be rewritten. It might, in some cases, be even more work than starting from scratch.

As I've said every time I've posted about this: it would be great to have LS1 in the game or even just a better recap. The problem is that those same resources could be used for new content instead. And given that LS1 can't possibly live up to its hype or nostalgic memories, it's doubtful that it's a good use of ANet's time to try, at least not in the next year or three.

It's not that it isn't a good use of Anet's time, it would simply be a side project to work on if someone doesn't have anything they are working on right away.Sure, there is lots to be made but there are always times where someone may not have something to do who could at the very least brainstorm ideas to make sure a huge portion of the fan base isn't missing out on such a huge section of story.The fact is the story and the characters don't make any sense without living world season 1, I don't necessarily care if it takes ages to implement, just knowing they are working on it over time just trying to get the instanced content in the game and filling the in between stuff with decent cut scenes that actually inform you of the story would be enough to satisfy a lot of people because they wouldn't feel like some of their characters lost their memory for a huge section of time.It would essentially just be the actual instances and better summaries like the one we have now but more informative on a single section of the LWS1 experience.

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