Guild Wars 2

It’s like the thing with Jormag and the fang or tooth or whatever… If pops up some Random son of Randomness, son of Plot no Jutsu the 3rd, rightfull owner to the throne of the Eye of the North, Hand of the King and master of the mytical sword Greyskull, I swear the only way A-net is gonna see my credit card again is by looking to a photo of me that I will send to them in that case: with my credit card in a hand and my finger in the other.

I told you before, you know it’s going to happen already. There’s going to be someone who moves into the limelight and strikes the Tooth. The question is, are they going to have a significant plot or are they just going to be the thing that makes the norn decide to actively move north and fight back against the Icebrood?

Seriously, that’s the most possible thing I see from here. A person steps up to take their swing at the Fang and they succeed in cracking it. The norn stop, take notice, and can’t wait to pull on pants before rushing off to fight Jormag’s minions. And it turns out the “great hero” isn’t anything special, isn’t some unstoppable warrior of legend, but just the one spark to light a flame and it’s your character pushing forward. They go down in history as the person who broke the Fang, you go down as the one who won back the North.

This is really the extent of what I have to say on this topic to you, so I’m going to let it stop here. I get the feeling you and I aren’t going to entirely see eye-to-eye but I’m okay with that. It’s just a sign that what I said above is true – not everyone is going to react to your story the way you envisioned when you wrote it.

Vengerin.6013:

But the guy lived, like a freaking threat from A-net to include him, again like a protagonist, in another part of the story.

They’ll probably make him a princess. :-/

Planescape! Yep, that’s pretty much the gold standard. What a brilliant idea to occasionally give you the same dialogue option but with “(Truth)” or “(Lie)” after it, so you could tell the NPC the same thing to get the same reaction but choose whether your character was sincere or not.

Every single story-based RPG should have taken its cue from that – that moral choice needs to be more complex than saying whatever you think will reward you with the good ending. Imagine a game that detects when you’re choosing options just to get a particular outcome and effectively treats you like a cynic or a selfishly motivate character because of that, instead of assuming that you’re ‘good’ just because you always pick the obvious good option!

But back to GW2 – the conflict whereby every single player is the hero of the story is somewhat easily resolved, I think, even if it requires a very brave bit of decision-making from on high. Don’t make the player the hero. Let them be a hero. Let them influence, help, hinder or play a part depending on their inclination, make friends or enemies with a variety of NPCs and alter the destiny of Tyria that way.

It’s not true that everyone wants to be the big shot who wins every battle; it depends on how you set their expectations. People complain about Trahearne because the game expends so much effort trying to convince you you’re somebody special and then pulls the rug out from underneath you. Instead, a game should make you feel you have a vital part to play in events, but not that you’re some generic chosen one who everyone loves. I mean, why would a thief character want to be famous for their good deeds in the first place? Or a necromancer?

It’s just like real life, really – you don’t get anywhere in a culture where everyone thinks they’re more special than everyone else, but you can give people immense satisfaction and good feeling from letting them be part of the team.

Focksbot.6798:

People complain about Trahearne because the game expends so much effort trying to convince you you’re somebody special and then pulls the rug out from underneath you. Instead, a game should make you feel you have a vital part to play in events, but not that you’re some generic chosen one who everyone loves. I mean, why would a thief character want to be famous for their good deeds in the first place? Or a necromancer?

Really, you are still someone special even when Trahearne is standing next to you.

- You are the Slayer of Issormir, and have completed very impressive hunts afterwards. And Eir Stegalkin vouches for you personally.

- You are the Hero of Shaemoor, and one of Captain Thackeray’s/Countess Anise’s prospective recruits. You serve the good of Kryta, be it with the Queen’s wishes and blessings or not.

- You’re the winner of a prestigious award among the Asura and have shown great inventive skill.

- You’re a Valiant of the Wyld Hunt and completed it successfully by playing a part in defeating the dragon Zhaitan. You also helped many brethren along the way, and enriched the Dream with your experiences.

- You are a legionnaire of a High Legion, leader of a skilled warband, and a capable warrior on the field of battle. Ebonhawke is lucky you’re not at war with them.

- You are the Commander of the Pact forces and have the unwavering devotion of many who were saved by your presence on the field of battle in Orr and elsewhere.

I know, it may not be quite as cool as the Dragonborn, the Nevarine, the Nameless One, Revan, or Defender of Tristram . . . but you still are a hero You’re just not the only one who is walking around.

It will be interesting to see what was learned when an expansion comes our way.

In light of what M. Stein has shared, I’d like to say that I’d be very interested in reading a blog post or something about the personal story. I know we’re probably not looking at more story missions until the expansion, but I think it’d be great if Arenanet shared a little of what they learned about the personal story: what worked, what didn’t, what general direction they’d like to go for next time. Also, what it could have been if the developers on the personal story were not on huge time constraints. (Given how the “work in progress” tag was there even on the last beta, the amount of bugs in the story missions, or how the home instance or personality system seemed vastly unused, I have no trouble believing that there was a time constraints.)

Takahach.5476:

The game is made so you can do whatever you want and enjoy in the game. If you dislike doing the story, just don’t do the story, you don’t have to, man!

This is what I like about the game, I do only what appeals to me, and have not felt pressure to do things I don’t care for. I stopped my story long ago, just not interested to do it. Having fun doing what I like.

Other games pretty much compel/require many things. For some, maybe most, players they are fine with it. Makes it a job for me. So here, I really like that change, and only do what I find appealing.

Xriah.5743:

No. ANET failed at making anyone care. You can see the quality of the personal story fade as you progress. It starts strong and gets buggier and more poorly written as you go.

Agree with this. Dialogue and voice acting is so bad that you have to will yourself to make a connection with characters (except Tybalt, love that guy). Toss in the disjointed story telling and sectioning off important storyline info in dungeons people may miss due to lack of a LFG mechanic, and the storyline falls flat.

Bhargo.5306:

Dialogue and voice acting is so bad that you have to will yourself to make a connection with characters (except Tybalt, love that guy). Toss in the disjointed story telling and sectioning off important storyline info in dungeons people may miss due to lack of a LFG mechanic, and the storyline falls flat.

It could be I’m used to really stilted, unnatural-sounding dialogue from games but I didn’t think this was that bad off. Again, it seems really hard to get natural dialogue to actually work well in a game . . . much as it is terribly hard to write a natural conversation as it would happen in real life.

(It was a writing exercise I had to do. It stunk.)

The piecemail storyline is something I do agree with enough to voice a mild complaint. The first mentor you have, the member of Destiny’s Edge, disappears as soon as your Order chapter begins. And you only hear from them through mail and have them show up at the end. I get the idea of being interested in what’s going on should lead you to the Dungeons but I haven’t found all that many interested in doing some of these places story mode.

I’d wish there was the story stretched to fill two more chapters and some effort put into transitioning through the first act (Your personal story acts one through three), into the second act (the bit centered on your order pre-Pact) and again into the third act (where the Pact gets moving). Putting one chapter between each act as an interlude to allow some development and introductions to take place would have been good. Heck, you could have small dialogue events such as Trahearne being present discussing something at your order headquarters so you could meet him before he “just shows up” as people put it.

(Yes, that is a real issue for everyone but Sylvari.)

Heck, you could be recalled home to deal with a minor issue based on your first act events. Say you’re human and you find out that something happened which means you get to come in and take action.