Guild Wars 2

I’m refering to the 6 achievements involving “story” intances.

We get:

- 1 achievement for hearing a conversation between Rytlock and Rox.
- 1 achievement for hearing a conversation between Rytlock and Braham.
- 1 achievement for hearing a conversation between Braham, Eir and Knut, that is basically the continuation of Braham’s introduction from the previous one.
- 1 achievement for fighting in a mission along Rox.
- 1 achievement for fighting in a mission along Braham (that mechanically is very similar to Rox’s in that it’s clear waves, protect area, clear waves defeat boss).
- 1 achievement for doing all the previous achievements.

The last 3 ones are right, 1 for each mission completed and another for completing all missions in the chapter. Ok, that’s great and you have to fight to get them.

But was it really necessary to add an achievement for each conversation we hear that are basically the prelude to each of the “real” missions?

Not that I’m against gaining more achievement points… but it feels excessive. Even Braham’s side got an aditional achievement just because his prelude consists on 2 different conversations even if his mission is basically the same as Rox’s.

Even in our story mode there were missions with conversations on different places of the world to finish the mission and it would still be part of the same mission.

I’m just curious about why so many marks in our achievement historial… is this some way for the game to keep track on your personal progress and not let you start one part without doing the previous one or something? Without those conversation hearing achievements the game have no other way to identify your progress in the campaign?

It’s the only logical explanation I can find and even then I think it could be done outside the achievement pannel, having achievements just for hearing conversations “kills” the achievement concept a little bit. You get achievements just for the sake of it and not because you achieved anything.

Thanks for the answer Matthew. I guessed something like that would be the case.

Is it possible for you to create a pannel like the one used in Personal Story but for the Living Story? I’m not sure how it works internally or if it would take too much to make a second progress tracking pannel without messing with the one in Personal Story.

PS: I love how the way there are “replay” options like they were in GW1 for those missions. Do you think it’s possible to implement something similar for story mode? The pool at Hall of Monuments would be perfect to give “visions” of those missions (though maybe eliminating the “choose this path” from each of the repeteable missions would be problematic, idk). I would love to be able to replay some missions and the Hall could get some extra use. It could even let players that weren’t there for Living Story play the missions through the pool (if the replay NPCs aren’t permanent).

Kinda off the topic’s question, but are these Living Story’s missions and achievements temporary and available only during certain period of time? Or I can still get them all, even if I haven’t played GW2 for months?

Paul Belz.7351:

This does not mean that Rox and Braham won’t continue to be important characters once this story ends though.

Important important or Treehurn important.

Frankly I’d rather they took a long walk off a short cliff and stayed in their instances. Hopefully they wont be the ones getting credit for the next Elder Dragon we push 2 at.

At least with them being in race-neutral story-lines we actually get to know them.

And the baby devourer too.

Paul Belz.7351:

Brutal Arts.6307:

Paul Belz.7351:

This does not mean that Rox and Braham won’t continue to be important characters once this story ends though.

Important important or Treehurn important.

Frankly I’d rather they took a long walk off a short cliff and stayed in their instances. Hopefully they wont be the ones getting credit for the next Elder Dragon we push 2 at.

Well to be honest, there are other characters we want to introduce too, so Rox and Braham will need to step into the background once Flame and Frost ends, at least for a while.

We were actually talking about this in a meeting a few days ago. We want the characters we are introducing to continue to live their lives once they leave the forefront. But what we do not want is for them to end up in an instanced map with no development for months at a time.

We do want to provide motivation for players to check up on these characters when they are in the background but I cannot provide any details (or spoil anything :p) on that yet.

Don’t pay attention to only the people who hate on Braham and Rox, I actually like both of them (Rox more personally), I do want to see what happens with them in the future, and I think GW2 specificially needs more “named” characters than just destiny’s edge.

Ps: I want to see more of the Albino Baby Devourer too. Keep him around.

Although I have shown a lot of (hopefully constructive) criticism I love a lot about Flame and Frost.

It’s not that bad to use the achievements to guide players instead of using a story-tab. Personally I haven’t looked a lot into the Personal Story tab because it’s not that interesting to me. I have the feeling that something is missing. Wouldn’t it be a nice place to put in some decent related concept art? With how much praise Anet got for their artwork… it could be used much more in the game. Using it, for example, only in few dungeons instead of every dungeon was a disappointment for me… it felt unfinished.

Is there still a concept art team or was it closed when Kekai left?

I’m happy about the decision to bring more important characters to the game. You should make use of them in more varied gameplay-situations though… defeating waves the 1001st time won’t keep them hooked like that one Norn in Orr who defeated hundreds of angry Risen who were made angry by the players in an interesting event. Don’t only use the story to make characters interesting, use gameplay too