Narrative Lessons From 15 Months of Scarlet

Shriketalon.1937

#1 - March 23, 2014, 4:09 p.m.

Greetings and salutations.

With Season 1 of the Living Story drawing to a close, it seems appropriate to offer review and reflection of everything that has come thus far. Sadly, there is much to consider, as the brand new path trod by Anet has many missteps and mishaps along the way.

Rather than talk about individual flaws, I thought it might be best to take a stab at the overall writing style of the Living Story and the narrative flaws it continues to exhibit. Plot holes come and go, individual complaints will always remain, but the best way to help Season 2 is to consider the pitfalls of Season 1 from a writing and gaming perspective. And so, I thought I would offer up a bit of constructive criticism in silly infographic format.

For your consideration, Fifteen Lessons From Fifteen Months of Scarlet Briar.

ColinJohanson

#96 - March 27, 2014, 9:34 a.m.

Great post! Though we did a CDI to discuss Living World and covered many of these topics and concerns in there as well, I think it’s always good to stop and brainstorm and give feedback on how to improve the living world experience. A lot of very valid points in there, and things we generally agree with as well in retrospect on season 1.

Constructive criticism with great feedback and suggestions is exactly what these forums exist for, +1 to you OP!

BobbyStein

#103 - March 27, 2014, 10:51 a.m.

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?