Guild Wars 2

For a long time now, I’ve gotten no karma from helping my wife with her personal story instances. Likewise, she confirms that she receives no reward for helping me. Is this a bug or one of those unannounced-but-intentional changes?

If it’s a bug, I’m surprised it hasn’t already been addressed. It was working fine at launch, but in one of the early patches, all karma rewards for helping with others’ personal stories were apparently removed. I’ve heard very little discussion about it, despite the apparent demand for karma (necessitating the introduction of jugs of it, I mean).

If it’s intentional, I can’t fathom why that would be considered a positive change. In theory, the game is designed to encourage teamwork and cooperation, yes? As it stands, there seems to be absolutely no incentive to help anyone with personal stories aside from a genuine desire to assist them. There is no loot to speak of, averaging less than a typical walkabout in a lower-level area. In many cases, both of us could slaughter dozens of undead and receive no drops whatsoever, which brought the loot average down even more. The drop rate (even for junk items) was so low, we’ve come to believe that the lack of loot in these stages was somehow by design. Is the lack of karma similarly by design?

I’m just confused, I suppose, because I expect “karma” to be something gained by helping others. I could be wrong about this part, but I thought we originally received karma upon completing Tasks (formerly Renown Hearts), in addition to helping with personal stories. Now, we receive karma by completing daily/monthly achievements, or to a lesser degree, by completing dynamic events. It almost seems to me like it should be called “reputation,” not “karma,” because it’s more about our characters’ PR than about helping people.

I know there’s a lot of discussion potential here, but I really just want to know what’s going on with the karma gain from personal story assistance. I don’t really need it now that I get ten times the karma from killing lots of different things, harvesting resources, and completing a handful of dynamic events, but it’s the principle of the thing. “Karma” should be gained by helping others, and as far as I can tell, it should be the perfect reward for helping someone with a personal story. So, why was it removed? And is it coming back? An official statement (either original or quoted) would be very helpful.

No replies after a week? Am I really the only one having this problem, or simply the only one who cares?

I’ve noticed this as well when helping fellow guildies with their personal story quest. I am not sure when the change happened, but hopefully they’ll fix it.

Last night, my wife helped me with “A Pup’s Illness,” and she said she received something like 60 karma at the end. I guess it was fixed in the recent “maintenance” update? I can’t be certain since there were no update notes, but whatever changed, it’s now possible to receive karma for helping someone with a personal story. Excellent! I hope it’s consistent.

My friends and I have helped each other with their personal stories all the time and have never gotten any reward from doing it (besides helping a friend).

My guess this is something they intended on doing but never got around to doing it or decided it would create an imbalance…..

It’s one of the smaller things in the game I wish they had brought in but again it’s small compared to the rest of the stuff they promised but isn’t in the game.

Never mind… I just helped her level-71 elementalist with two installments of her personal story, but my level-80 guardian received nothing at all for it.

Maybe it has something to do with relative levels?

I’ve been wondering about this as well. I know that in the Betas you would get karma for assisting with the personal story, but my friends and I haven’t gotten any karma when the game actually came out. None of us have finished our personal story, because we’d rather play together and don’t get anything else for playing in someone else’s story.
I really wish ANET would put this back in the game so there would be incentive to continue the story WITH people.

I’ve been wondering about this too! I always used to get karma for helping out a buddy with the personal story. I can’t remember exactly when it stopped. I just realized one day it wasn’t doing it anymore. Surely this wasn’t just a beta thing?

It would be great to have an answer about this. Granted, there are many new sources of karma in the game now (such as daily jugs). But it would be nice to know if it’s working as intended!