Id like to say thanks to everyone who posted constructive and/or detailed feedback regarding the Living World story and characters in this thread. While I cant post spoilers about future content, I would like to address some of the opinions that have been brought up. Bear in mind I may have touched upon these topics in other threads that were tied to previous releases (or mentioned within interviews on external Web sites) but Ill put my most recent thoughts here for discussion.
Story Pacing & Continuity
There are some folks who feel that the Living World story is moving too slowly and/or that the themes and plots feel disjointed between releases. I somewhat agree with this sentiment.
We took a long time to build up the various alliances before we revealed Scarlets involvement. Some of this was due to factors external to the team, but some was by design. We first wanted to show changes in the open world with teaser content like in the Flame & Frost releases and then add the bigger content later once the teams and development pipelines were up to speed.
One of the challenges of the semi-monthly release cycle is that were limited in how much content we can put inside each one. This can be a good thing if the story is very focused and doesnt have a lot of moving parts. The problem we ran into is that we needed to develop a larger cast of non-player characters to account for every playable race, and then create the content in which to put them. That sort of build up takes time and incurs an amount of long-term development debt.
The end goal was to have multiple arcs going simultaneously like on more modern television shows, but where a weekly drama might have 20 40 minutes of character time to get things moving, we have maybe half that (or less). So after a few releases it started to feel like there were a lot of unresolved plot threads out there and you (the player) had no way of knowing which ones would be resumed.
Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.
The upside to all of this is that we are aware of the items that we introduced but havent finished yet. Were planning on resolving as much as we can by the time the Scarlet arc concludes. (Yes, there will be a conclusion.)
Scarlet
If memory serves me, we foreshadowed Scarlets existence through a comment Mai Trin made during one of the summer releases. This got some folks speculating on who she was, her part in all the attacks, etc. Scarlet debuted in August during the Queens Jubilee and has continued to make appearances here and there that slowly reveal her role in the overall plot.
The operative word here is slowly and judging from all the responses, many feel that the plot is moving ahead at a glacial pace. That Scarlet is nothing more than a cardboard cutout villain.
I will readily acknowledge that her presentation has elicited some strong reactions in the community. Some people love her. Others hate her. While that kind of polarizing view can sometimes be an asset, it brings some polarizing baggage to the conversation every time her name is brought up. Heres where I think we could have done a better job with her.
Tone: Scarlet is crazy, but she sometimes comes off as over-the-top and madcap. While that works in a lot of scenarios, its not something thats been extensively explored inside of Guild Wars 2 before. There is a reason to her madness but we havent revealed it yet. Perhaps it would have suited her character better to have shown that somewhere alongside her introduction. Scope had something to do with it in her debut, but honestly we knew she would be featured in multiple future releases so
Pacing:
we made the conscious decision to pace out her character development over multiple game builds. In other words, we havent gotten to that part of her story yet, but since nobody outside the building has an idea of whats to come I can understand the reactions that shes one-dimensional or conveniently powerful. Were aware of the perception and feel that future releases will have content that develops her character.
Dragons
Guild Wars 2 has a dragon on the box cover. The primary motivation for players on their 80-level journey is to kill a dragon. So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, theyre core to the game, and we havent forgotten about them. That stated, I cant say when well return to themonly that we will. There is a plan in place.
Player Agency
For many players, their feelings of playing second fiddle likely began with Trahearnes introduction in the Personal Story and have persisted somewhat with the Living World releases. This is partially by design and partially due to constraints both budgetary and technical. The quote below is from a forum response I posted after launch.
Q:What do you guys think about the incredible negative feedback you got for Trahearne?
A:Narrative Designer Scott McGough and I talked about this very topic some time ago. In short, Trahearne was intended to fill a very specific role that, in terms of both gameplay and story, the PC could not fillan order-neutral character with extensive knowledge about Orr and the magic of undeath who could coordinate a global war effort and make the necessary plans, thus leaving the actual gameplay up to the player. Further, Trahearnes character design was intentional in that he would be a reluctant hero who, through interacting with the player, evolved into someone who could step up to lead the Pact.
This didnt resonate well with some players for a variety of reasons. Were comparing external feedback with our own, since we have plans for Trahearne and other existing characters in future live updates and expansion content. We wont spoil what were discussing, other than to say were looking at many different options for his current implementation and beyond.
In regards to the Living World constraints, there are a few factors at play that prevent the player from speaking:
With our current tech, the PC cannot speak outside of a cinematic conversation (which were featured inside the Personal Story at ship) or contextual chatter (crippled = My leg!). We intend to explore possible solutions in the somewhat near future.
Our revised cinematic technology does not currently support player voice variants (i.e. 10 different PC voices).
The text of every player line has to be translated 10 times per language to account for each player race/gender combination.
The VO of every player line has to then be recorded 10 times per voiced language. (In other words, its freakishly expensive to voice the PC as 1 PC line in English = 10 English voiced lines + 10 German voiced lines, etc.).
That stated, the player doesnt need VO in order to have agency in the story but we are limited in what we can track since it gets added to the players record, which is already large.
We have a few things planned for upcoming releases that should make the player feel like more of a driver and less of a passenger, but please remember that it takes upwards of four months for content to go from concept to completion. Nothing I say here will happen immediately due to the nature of how we build things.
Thanks much
is not the same as the one we had last week.
