Guild Wars 2

This is not my first toon on GW2, and I can say it still won’t be my last. However, what I can say is that I’m tired of trying to do “personal story” lines when they just aren’t do-able without a severe amount of frustration on my part. I won’t say I’m a casual gamer, elitist, or any other term every other person has come up with. What I will say is this:

I am in a guild that I enjoy playing with.
I enjoy doing the dailies in hopes of better gear.
I love to do events, dungeons, and leveling.
Crafting? So much fun!

The only thing I don’t like the way it is right now is the Personal Stories. I am currently playing through on a human thief, but my last character is a lvl 80 norn guardian. I am stuck in both of them only at personal stories. Before you get upset with me I am not saying they are impossible.

They are entirely possible in two ways: I can bug people to come help me constantly to get through the story or I can die, a lot, and keep rezzing inside my personal story infinitely and pray it wears the mobs down enough to make it okay. I don’t want to do either of these things. Oh, and from my reading a lot of people suggest just leveling up and coming back when I’m 80 or something? No. The suggested level is the level I should be able to do it at, not to mention the de-leveling makes that a worthless suggestion in of itself. I should be able to do a quest at the level it says I should, and if it claims to be my story-line I should be able to do it with just me.

Some other people have talked about how it should be easy when they almost always give you NPCs. I have a few minor things to say in regards to that: Are you kidding me? I have sat in downed states watching as I try to survive by the skin of my teeth as my NPCs stare at the mobs and maybe, just maybe, will swing a sword every once in a while.

Now after all of my complaining I only really wanted to share a few things that I think will make it better for the average person. Please don’t take offense by that term or take anything I say and run off with it saying how I need to learn to play. I can play, very well, except for this one thing.

What I would like to see happen:
Tone down the difficulty
Make the NPCs do what they are supposed to(act like a party member rather than a random towns person who picked up a stick)
Change the way personal story de-leveling works(not my ideal option, I want to do it as it was meant to be done)

Three things, really only two…and I don’t feel like any of it is too much to ask. If we could maybe just address the issues at all that have been brought up I would be happy. I know that there are a lot of people who are not having problems with the system how it is. Kudos and more to those players, I envy you. However, I just can not do it anymore. I don’t want to be so angry at a game that I can’t play it. So, I am sad to say that unless something changes with the Personal Stories, I can not play this feature in the game any longer. It is too frustrating, and I like the overall game too much to let this one problem drive me away from the whole game.

Sorry for the overkill on the text. Sorry if I come across as whiny or offensive to any. This was not my attention, I only wished to get my feelings known in the proper channels. If this is not in fact the place to pot this, I will be more than happily to move or remove it. Thank you for reading.

Sierra.

I’m having a reading comprehension problem today.

Did you say that you are only having problems on your thief and never had problems on your Guardian?

Ellisande.5218:

I’m having a reading comprehension problem today.

Did you say that you are only having problems on your thief and never had problems on your Guardian?

I have do have a lvl 80 Norn Guardian, however I am also stuck with that character somewhere along the personal story path as well as my Thief. I say this only to give an example that it is not purely one character I am having troubles with this on. Albeit, my Guardian is much further along in the personal story then my Thief, troubles none the less.

I honestly haven’t had too many problems getting to level 72 or so in the storyline on my engy, but if you don’t like it now I’d advise to just give up: To finish it you have to do the Arah dungeon.

Just got as far as the Arah Wall on my elementalist, found it hard but generally possible, although I never really managed to keep my story up to the pace with my levelling. Pretty much all the rewards got salvaged on the spot – rather anticlimactic to finish an epic fight like Claw Island and end up with a pair of leggings 5 levels too low…

Also less far along with a Thief and a Guardian – the Guardian seems to be the game’s ‘ezmode’ by comparison with the other two.

The trick with getting the NPCs to do stuff for me seems to be not to try and rush. It worked best for me to stay at range, allow the NPCs to use their spells and tricks, and run away sometimes and watch how the fight developed without me, then step in once I’d figured how the monster/NPC AIs were set up.

Not too much I can say, OP, except that I feel your pain and I had already arrived at the same conclusion you did. I don’t bother with them anymore, either. You’re certainly not the only one who feels the way you do.

The story overall is pretty meh to be honest. I ran through story as a mes and roped my friend in for all the Orr parts. After that and Arah I said “welp… first and last time I’m doing that.” I get my story to at least 20, maybe beyond for black lion keys and just to see the other race’s story, then I stop unless I want quick exp.

Theyre a quick way to level, and pretty easy too. I don’t see why anyone with all 10 fingers and a brain struggles.

Mind you, I do use a 6-squillion button mouse so I can attack/activate skills while moving.

chibishewolf.6730:

Ellisande.5218:

I’m having a reading comprehension problem today.

Did you say that you are only having problems on your thief and never had problems on your Guardian?

I have do have a lvl 80 Norn Guardian, however I am also stuck with that character somewhere along the personal story path as well as my Thief. I say this only to give an example that it is not purely one character I am having troubles with this on. Albeit, my Guardian is much further along in the personal story then my Thief, troubles none the less.

Are you using a greatsword on your Guardian? If not that might be the problem because quite frankly I found that the GS really helps a ton with the personal story missions that throw packs of 4-5 mobs at you nonstop.

The other weapons kinda suck. I know people will say differently but the other weapons really do suck in comparison when it comes to doing the personal story missions.

minbariguy.7504:

Not too much I can say, OP, except that I feel your pain and I had already arrived at the same conclusion you did. I don’t bother with them anymore, either. You’re certainly not the only one who feels the way you do.

/signed

The stock response to being able to solo ones personal story seems to be – get a few levels – ask friends and guildies to help.

I refuse to do the latter as this is supposed to be ‘my’ story not anyone elses and the former advice to get a few levels doesn’t work either as the levels level up as you do. I acquired ten levels on a char then went back and tried to do the mission. It automatically had leveled up to one level below my current level. I still couldnt do it.

I too give up on the personal story as life is way to short to waste time being irritated and frustrated.

Good luck! Happy Gaming

Make sure your gear (weapons, armor, jewellery if poss) are somewhere close to the story mission level.

Supasilvafoxy – the only way the mission would level up to one below your own level after gaining ten, is if you were 9 below the requirement in the first place.

EG – lvl 50 trying lvl 59 mission. Your lvl shows as 50. You lvl to 60, suddenly it is one below your level. But your equipment, if not upgraded is still 50 or maybe less…

If you are lower than the recommended level for that mission, you should get a warning banner. You can probably beat a mission 5 above your own, with difficulty, but 9 is a bit much.

Personally, I think the level marker in the bottom left should tell you what area lvl you are in, even if you are below that level. Would stop a lot of complaining about being buttwhupped!

It is important to say that different stories have different levels of difficulty.
For me story of human guardian was well balanced, sometimes to easy.
Sylvari ranger appears to be even easier so far (I’m not too advanced in it).
BUT norn thief story was like despair on levels 8-18 or something like that. It was approximately seven times harder then human story. I don’t have exact numbers but this is how it felt. Of course difference between guardian and thief is significant but still few times more enemies is not okay. It was like rez spamming.
And to find it still not fixed is very sad.

Bother with them up to the point you get the back piece armor, then they’re optional.

Supasilvafoxy.1247:

minbariguy.7504:

Not too much I can say, OP, except that I feel your pain and I had already arrived at the same conclusion you did. I don’t bother with them anymore, either. You’re certainly not the only one who feels the way you do.

/signed

The stock response to being able to solo ones personal story seems to be – get a few levels – ask friends and guildies to help.

I refuse to do the latter as this is supposed to be ‘my’ story not anyone elses and the former advice to get a few levels doesn’t work either as the levels level up as you do. I acquired ten levels on a char then went back and tried to do the mission. It automatically had leveled up to one level below my current level. I still couldnt do it.

I too give up on the personal story as life is way to short to waste time being irritated and frustrated.

Good luck! Happy Gaming

Actually the levels really do a make a difference, at least at the moment. The reason is because the extra stats you get from traits don’t seem to be getting scaled down alongside your base stats and equipment stats.

But Guardian I really think it all comes down to using the Greatsword and making sure you choose one of the utlity skills that can create a fire combo field so that you can pull all the mobs into melee distance, throw down the fire combo shield then press 3 to create a fire shield from the finisher on the fire combo field and then hit 2 for the aoe damage spell. With a few more whacks of the greatsword all the mobs should be dead.

For the bosses its just a matter of kiting them around while using 5 for the pull to knock the boss on its butt, 3 to blind it and 2 to do damage while you are running in circles.

Every single personal story fight on a Guardian can be done using 1 of the 2 strategies above.

Ellisande.5218:

Actually the levels really do a make a difference, at least at the moment. The reason is because the extra stats you get from traits don’t seem to be getting scaled down alongside your base stats and equipment stats.

But Guardian I really think it all comes down to using the Greatsword and making sure you choose one of the utlity skills that can create a fire combo field so that you can pull all the mobs into melee distance, throw down the fire combo shield then press 3 to create a fire shield from the finisher on the fire combo field and then hit 2 for the aoe damage spell. With a few more whacks of the greatsword all the mobs should be dead.

For the bosses its just a matter of kiting them around while using 5 for the pull to knock the boss on its butt, 3 to blind it and 2 to do damage while you are running in circles.

Every single personal story fight on a Guardian can be done using 1 of the 2 strategies above.

Just wanted to say thank you, Ellisande, for this post. It was constructive and helpful (at least to anyone playing a guardian, lol). It doesn’t really change how I feel about the frustrating nature of the Personal Story, which I feel is more of a puzzle game involving points allocation and finding the right weapon combos rather than experiencing an emmersive storyline (it just, flat-out, isn’t my idea of a good time) but your helpful attitude, advice, and input is still appreciated.

GuzziHero.2467:

Make sure your gear (weapons, armor, jewellery if poss) are somewhere close to the story mission level.

Supasilvafoxy – the only way the mission would level up to one below your own level after gaining ten, is if you were 9 below the requirement in the first place.

EG – lvl 50 trying lvl 59 mission. Your lvl shows as 50. You lvl to 60, suddenly it is one below your level. But your equipment, if not upgraded is still 50 or maybe less…

If you are lower than the recommended level for that mission, you should get a warning banner. You can probably beat a mission 5 above your own, with difficulty, but 9 is a bit much.

Personally, I think the level marker in the bottom left should tell you what area lvl you are in, even if you are below that level. Would stop a lot of complaining about being buttwhupped!

You misunderstood my response, my fault Guzzi for not explaining myself more clearly.
I tried to do the mission at it’s correct lvl – I was at the same level – in this case lvl 14, I failed miserably, probably because I’m not very good I thought . In order to complete it I followed the advice to wait for a couple of levels then go back and try again. I was distracted for 10 levels then went back to try again. I found that the mission which was level 14 the last time I did it had upped to lvl 23, I was 24 at this time, so all I had gained by waiting was one level. I still could not do it – so the advice to wait a few levels didn’t help at all. Even though my powers, armour and weapons were bang up-to-date. At this point I accepted defeat and gave up.

minbariguy.7504:

Just wanted to say thank you, Ellisande, for this post. It was constructive and helpful (at least to anyone playing a guardian, lol). It doesn’t really change how I feel about the frustrating nature of the Personal Story, which I feel is more of a puzzle game involving points allocation and finding the right weapon combos rather than experiencing an emmersive storyline (it just, flat-out, isn’t my idea of a good time) but your helpful attitude, advice, and input is still appreciated.

I normally don’t like that the personal story missions seem to require specific weapon combos either, especially when that particular weapon combination may offer either mediocre or inferior performance in regards to the rest of the pve you encounter while leveling outside the personal story mission. Plus I really feel that players should have a choice of what weapons they are using and either the content or the weapons should all be balanced accordingly. It is pretty silly to offer someone a weapon choice and then turn around and shout “Just kidding!” by making that weapon only useable in a very tiny number of circumstances.

I realize that with only 2, 3, or 5 skills to allot to a weapon it is very difficult to both make all weapons feel unique and make them offer equal levels of utility (using the economic defintion of utility here to mean something along the lines of happiness or satisfaction) to the player. However if it really is impossible to achieve those 2 goals then maybe the concept of assigning unique skills to each weapon was actually a bad one.

Supasilvafoxy.1247:

You misunderstood my response, my fault Guzzi for not explaining myself more clearly.
I tried to do the mission at it’s correct lvl – I was at the same level – in this case lvl 14, I failed miserably, probably because I’m not very good I thought . In order to complete it I followed the advice to wait for a couple of levels then go back and try again. I was distracted for 10 levels then went back to try again. I found that the mission which was level 14 the last time I did it had upped to lvl 23, I was 24 at this time, so all I had gained by waiting was one level. I still could not do it – so the advice to wait a few levels didn’t help at all. Even though my powers, armour and weapons were bang up-to-date. At this point I accepted defeat and gave up.

Ah, I see.

How very odd, story missions should not up-level themselves! I don’t suppose you know the name of the story or what it was about? I wouldn’t mind looking into this a little deeper.

Of course I want you to enjoy the games’ personal story as much as I do but posts like these actually sort of make my scared.
For me the difficulty level is perfect so if they are to tone it down one way or another I hope they offer 2 difficulty modes so it doesn’t become overly easy and therewith boring for me.

GuzziHero.2467:

Supasilvafoxy.1247:

You misunderstood my response, my fault Guzzi for not explaining myself more clearly.
I tried to do the mission at it’s correct lvl – I was at the same level – in this case lvl 14, I failed miserably, probably because I’m not very good I thought . In order to complete it I followed the advice to wait for a couple of levels then go back and try again. I was distracted for 10 levels then went back to try again. I found that the mission which was level 14 the last time I did it had upped to lvl 23, I was 24 at this time, so all I had gained by waiting was one level. I still could not do it – so the advice to wait a few levels didn’t help at all. Even though my powers, armour and weapons were bang up-to-date. At this point I accepted defeat and gave up.

Ah, I see.

How very odd, story missions should not up-level themselves! I don’t suppose you know the name of the story or what it was about? I wouldn’t mind looking into this a little deeper.

I still haven’t clarified this have I? Let me put it another way.

Cant remember the name of the mission sorry. I have deleted the character so I cant check.

I was lvl 14 and the mission was 14, I could not do it and decided to wait a couple of lvls in order to try. I inadvertanly got side-tracked and didnt get back to try the mission again until I was lvl 24. When I did do it the level of the mission was still set at 14 and I was only one lvl higher at 15, but in reality I was lvl 24,. Because my powers, weapons and armour were at the higher level I should have been able to breeze through it – but I still couldn’t complete it.

Alright! I probably suck at the game but I seem to manage fine with everything else except the personal story and like a lot of folks who struggle with their story-line missions I think that some of the missions in the story are too hard.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Which story step? Stories don’t “uplevel” at all, so this is very odd.

Oh dear! I’ve got myself in a frightful muddle haven’t I?

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was saying the story upleveled, I didnt mean it literally, I meant that as I was lvl 24 it felt like the mission had lvled up to 23 when in reality, though I was lvl 24 I had been down-leveled to lvl 15 the mission was still at 14.

Phew. Sorry about the misunderstanding. Now I get it. I thought you meant it had physically uplevelled!

Sorry if it felt like I was doubting or criticising you.

If you happen to be on Dragonbrand, I would be more than willing to help you (or anyone) through any PS missions.

holska.4127:

Of course I want you to enjoy the games’ personal story as much as I do but posts like these actually sort of make my scared.
For me the difficulty level is perfect so if they are to tone it down one way or another I hope they offer 2 difficulty modes so it doesn’t become overly easy and therewith boring for me.

I would hate to be instrumental in destroying your enjoyment of the game holksa and am happy to work around it as it stands atm.

However, I think your idea of 2 difficulty modes is a sound one. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement as lots of games have varying levels of difficulty. By reading this and similar threads the cans and the can’ts – so to speak – are about evenly balanced and varying the difficulty levels would keep everybody happy.

chibishewolf.6730:

This is not my first toon on GW2, and I can say it still won’t be my last. However, what I can say is that I’m tired of trying to do “personal story” lines when they just aren’t do-able without a severe amount of frustration on my part. I won’t say I’m a casual gamer, elitist, or any other term every other person has come up with. What I will say is this:

I am in a guild that I enjoy playing with.
I enjoy doing the dailies in hopes of better gear.
I love to do events, dungeons, and leveling.
Crafting? So much fun!

The only thing I don’t like the way it is right now is the Personal Stories. I am currently playing through on a human thief, but my last character is a lvl 80 norn guardian. I am stuck in both of them only at personal stories. Before you get upset with me I am not saying they are impossible.

They are entirely possible in two ways: I can bug people to come help me constantly to get through the story or I can die, a lot, and keep rezzing inside my personal story infinitely and pray it wears the mobs down enough to make it okay. I don’t want to do either of these things. Oh, and from my reading a lot of people suggest just leveling up and coming back when I’m 80 or something? No. The suggested level is the level I should be able to do it at, not to mention the de-leveling makes that a worthless suggestion in of itself. I should be able to do a quest at the level it says I should, and if it claims to be my story-line I should be able to do it with just me.

Some other people have talked about how it should be easy when they almost always give you NPCs. I have a few minor things to say in regards to that: Are you kidding me? I have sat in downed states watching as I try to survive by the skin of my teeth as my NPCs stare at the mobs and maybe, just maybe, will swing a sword every once in a while.

Now after all of my complaining I only really wanted to share a few things that I think will make it better for the average person. Please don’t take offense by that term or take anything I say and run off with it saying how I need to learn to play. I can play, very well, except for this one thing.

What I would like to see happen:
Tone down the difficulty
Make the NPCs do what they are supposed to(act like a party member rather than a random towns person who picked up a stick)
Change the way personal story de-leveling works(not my ideal option, I want to do it as it was meant to be done)

Three things, really only two…and I don’t feel like any of it is too much to ask. If we could maybe just address the issues at all that have been brought up I would be happy. I know that there are a lot of people who are not having problems with the system how it is. Kudos and more to those players, I envy you. However, I just can not do it anymore. I don’t want to be so angry at a game that I can’t play it. So, I am sad to say that unless something changes with the Personal Stories, I can not play this feature in the game any longer. It is too frustrating, and I like the overall game too much to let this one problem drive me away from the whole game.

Sorry for the overkill on the text. Sorry if I come across as whiny or offensive to any. This was not my attention, I only wished to get my feelings known in the proper channels. If this is not in fact the place to pot this, I will be more than happily to move or remove it. Thank you for reading.

Sierra.

You might be at 80, but what level is the storyline instance? You’ll be downrated to that level, and if your armour and weapons are not at level 80 they’ll get downrated too, so you’ll die a lot. I found this out a while ago and have made sure I keep everything up to date before continuing a storyline, and so far I’ve only died a few times, and that’s mainly due to not having got the right strategy the first few attempts.

I just noticed GuzziHero says the same. It really does matter – if your armour is below par, you will die, simple as that.

I’ve got 2 lvl 80’s at the arah story mission (Not doing the dungeons untill Anet release their third novel and I get to read that before doing SM of all the dungeon in the oder from AC-Arah), I also have a lvl 42 Necro and a 26 Theif. I’ve personally never came across a personal story quest that i’ve not been able to complete, although I know someone that had a very different experiance of personal story missions and had to get help in a few of his missions in order to complete them so I can see why people do get stuck. Maybe it’s because my two characters at 80 are warrior and guardian, as I admit playing with my theif does if more of a kiting game, which is another issue I have with the game, but that’s for another day.

From my experiances, the difficulty of story missions are all over the place, you have some that are so easy you can do it naked, yet you have some that you have to kite 99% of the time if you want to have any chance of staying alive. There are some missions at higher lvls that are so much easier then the low lvl missions, it doesn’t feel like the missions scale with your lvl at all, instead it’s just different missions have their own difficulty. This may not be the case, but as I said, from my experiance this is how I felt. Didn’t stop me from getting to Arah and enjoying the quests though (apart from the cutscenes I really hope you change that in the future Anet), to the OP just try and tackle the missions in a different manner. Try and kite more, try and pull mobs from groups on their own and slowly kill them off one by one.
I remember the mission where you kill that champion destroyer after you choose to aid the skrit, that missions was deadly, I had to use my bow to pull each mob at a time untill I killed them all.

It really requires minimal amount of player skill to do stories :O
I actually run stories 3 levels above me without a problem o.O. NPC helpers are pretty buffed up so sometimes you just have to stay back and assist them, rather than leading the fight.

I did the first few on my first few chars. Not for me. This is a great mmo, but it’s not a great single player RPG. Story mode just feels bad and tacked on imo. Breaks the immersion with all the scripted crap and instances.

Trust me Chi, I don’t think the personal story was worth it. I enjoyed reading your wall of text and when you were talking about the npcs it made me feel all nostalgic for GW1 npcs who actually earned their keep and had fascinating backstories as well. Ahhh Mhenlo and Cynn, how I miss your bickering (and healing and damage).

Take heart! I think Tyria is a far more interesting place with Zhaitan around so screw the personal story (you don’t even get an exotic for completing it anyway – I mean….. what’s that all about????)

@OP

I hear you and I’m glad to see it’s not just me.

I’ve only got 1 character and I haven’t even finished the storyline.

I made it to The Source of Orr. Now I have no intention of doing it – not solo, not with help, not with strangers, not with friends. I’m sick to death of the personal story and given a chance I’d stab Trahearne through the heart myself just to never have to listen to him again.

I LOVED the actual “personal story” – the early levels. The Durmand Priory was ok and by the time it got to the entire Risen/Orr line they became a painful chore.

It’s not even so much their difficulty as their repetitiveness – hold off a horde of trash mobs (and get CC’d around like a ragdoll) while Trahearne does something; or fight a horde of trash mobs (and get CC’d around like a ragdoll) for a while until a battle is won. Then fight an overpowered boss (while getting CC’d around like a ragdoll). Then watch yet another cutscene to find out where to go to fight more trash mobs and another ridiculous boss while getting CC’d around like a ragdoll. yawn

At this point, as far as I’m concerned, Zhaitan and his minions can have whatever they want. I’m tired and bored of them.

I didn’t have any difficulty with them on my ranger until around Claw Island. It could have/should have felt like an epic battle with an emotional twist, but I didn’t have the NPC support for that. Instead it was running around like a crazy person trying to avoid getting killed by waves and waves and waves and waves of Risen until the objective was finally met and I could run away.

My elementalist (now level 19) has so far been too squishy to survive ANY personal story, except the one early on where I chose Logan to be my “second” in a duel. I just let him take the threat and nicked away at the bad guy. I’m not sure if I’ll do any more on the ele.

Hmm I found them to boring and much too simple. Not saying this in a “I’m better than you” way and I have to agree with people saying Arah shouldn’t have been a required mission to finish the story. Since I’ve finished all personal stories on two character now, I’ll try to make some suggestions. Try to go through the story at lv80 if you find it too hard at your current one, keep your gear updated, master dodging, and maybe spec for more defense until you finish (only costs 3.5s to respec). If you still have trouble, I hate to say it but it’s your skill level. The stories are very simple for the average player and a joke to a lot of us. Find someone who can help you learn your class maybe?

Sorry if I sounded rude at all. Don’t mean it. I found them too easy so I have trouble finding advice but wanted to try and help.

Seeing how you are mad at stories being hard, all i can say is that the personal story was WAY too easy for me. At some points i couldn’t stop laughing over how ridiculously easy some parts are. I finished it with:
-an order of whispers mesmer (mind wrack aoe got all the mobs down)
-a durmand priory engineer (mines and grenades did the trick)
-a vigil thief (shortbow and dagger storm… enough said)
as for everything else, just keep a range and evade every now and then and yes it is that simple.
The only thing i am mad at is that now, i kind of want to level up a guardian and warrior but i am too lazy to finish the personal story quests. I wish there was some way to just fill up a survey the 4th time you’re doing the personal story so that you don’t have to bother with it. Like for example, i make a warrior and the system notices that i have all three paths done and that i do not wish to repeat any of them in which case it just gives me a questionnaire where i pick which order i want and some other minor things. Or to even turn it off completely at character creation (or later on through an npc)

Depending on your spec and class, several of them up to the final arc (Trehane’s a Super Star :p ) can be quite challenging. If you have NPC assistance it’s usually just one, and they suck it and die pretty quick in most cases. Once you reach the final arc with The Pact, you usually (admitting that I’m just about to take the ruins on the border of Orr), have 3 or more NPC’s to help.

There have been a few PSM’s that just wrecked me due to the stacking or reapplying of CC/conditions from multiple sources (I’m looking at you Dredge).

I’m on Northern Shiverpeaks and though I’m still in the 60’s for my PS I am 80 and willing to help anyone out.

I remember having a bit of difficulty when I first started playing, but with practice 3 separate storylines have been a breeze.

Tips:
-Keep your armor, trinkets, and weapons up-to-date. Otherwise, life will be painful.
-If you rely on your group to fulfill a certain role in dungeons (healing you, doing heavy damage, etc), you might want to use different traits and weapons for your solo content E.g. my ranger is not going to use a buff/spirit build for story missions, because it’s only good at buffing a full group. There’s no way to balance story missions for non-solo-viable build; doing so would make such content trivial for most players.
-Evaluate your weapon/build against this particular story mission. Is there one extremely strong enemy? Groups of weaker enemies? An AoE build will be weaker against a champ, and single-target-kiting setups may leave you vulnerable against groups of ranged combatants.

I’m at 71 now (my highest character right now, i’m fairly new to the game) and I’ve been doing my personal story quests at the appropriate level (sometimes a couple levels earlier than recommended) and I’ve died only around 4? times in a personal story. I stopped doing them actively at around 63 so I’m playing catch-up now, but everything before that wasn’t really difficult at all for me.

edit: I felt that i should probably mention that I’m a Charr Thief (if that even makes a difference)

I seriously cant understand how any story mission is hard, if you do them at the recommended level…
Did story with 3 different races, using only drops to equip my chars, and the only thing that killed me is BOREDOM. No seriously, they’re just tedious but in no way hard.

Hell, on my warrior i’m doing story with mobs 2 level higher then me, because i didnt feel like leveling a bit before trying…i’m dieing one or two times per mission, but still completely doable

I usually have some fun with stories at the start. Pre lvl 30. but after Trehaerne gets introduced I loose all interest. GW2 transforms into boring 1 dimensional fanfic level storyline about evil dragons and boring characters with no depth.
Sylvari and charr story lines before lvl 30 are actually quite interesting and there are a few nice characters with some kind of personality. but anything after that is terrible.
Sadly they aren;t even that good from gameplay perspective. most of the time it’s kill everything in sight but do it slowly b/c the mission must last x-minutes. then come back to npc to talk and go back to almost the same place you’ve been to. There are moments when i spend more time in loading screens than doing story line.

I never found them difficult at all.
I completed them on my necro; my warr, mesmer, guard and ele are waiting for me to build up patience to finish arah story and my ranger is already in orr and expecting to be like the warr & co. by the end of the week. After that i’ll just do the same to my thief and engi which i barely played so far.

I’m not saying they’re not difficult just because I completed them with a bunch of chars, but because i did it so while watching movies/anime/series for most of them, pausing only to watch the cut-scenes i didn’t watch before.

Supasilvafoxy.1247:

However, I think your idea of 2 difficulty modes is a sound one. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement as lots of games have varying levels of difficulty. By reading this and similar threads the cans and the can’ts – so to speak – are about evenly balanced and varying the difficulty levels would keep everybody happy.

I think if 2 difficulty modes were implemented, the ‘hard’ version should offer a better reward than the easier version.

On topic: Varying story lines have varying difficulties. That said various players have varied experiences playing said story lines.

Tangent to topic: After lvl 50 all the stories merge and completing it on multiple characters it becomes redundant. I’ve done the Battle for Claw Island on 9 toons (keys), played 2 to 59(400 letter), 2 to lvl 73 (helping guildies), and 1 complete the story. The only reason I can see to repeat after 50 would be the letters at 59, the letters at the end, and the pact weapons, which imho are not worth the time spent. Breaking it down it’s 1400 influence and a pact weapon or the equivelent of 1.4g+1.6g=3g. Since you can buy both influence and pact weapons, one’s time is better spent elsewhere.

Ellisande.5218:

minbariguy.7504:

Just wanted to say thank you, Ellisande, for this post. It was constructive and helpful (at least to anyone playing a guardian, lol). It doesn’t really change how I feel about the frustrating nature of the Personal Story, which I feel is more of a puzzle game involving points allocation and finding the right weapon combos rather than experiencing an emmersive storyline (it just, flat-out, isn’t my idea of a good time) but your helpful attitude, advice, and input is still appreciated.

I normally don’t like that the personal story missions seem to require specific weapon combos either, especially when that particular weapon combination may offer either mediocre or inferior performance in regards to the rest of the pve you encounter while leveling outside the personal story mission. Plus I really feel that players should have a choice of what weapons they are using and either the content or the weapons should all be balanced accordingly. It is pretty silly to offer someone a weapon choice and then turn around and shout “Just kidding!” by making that weapon only useable in a very tiny number of circumstances.

I realize that with only 2, 3, or 5 skills to allot to a weapon it is very difficult to both make all weapons feel unique and make them offer equal levels of utility (using the economic defintion of utility here to mean something along the lines of happiness or satisfaction) to the player. However if it really is impossible to achieve those 2 goals then maybe the concept of assigning unique skills to each weapon was actually a bad one.

This. I didn’t use bow on my thief for the longest time cos I just don’t like them. What are the weapon reward choices for theives? Well you can havea short bow with one type of stat or a short bow with slightly different stats. Every kitten time.
With my engis I prefer rifle, yet only one weapon reward was a rifle, the rest were pistol or shield.
Some of the quests are terrily designed with seemingly only these weapons as the way to beat them without extreme hardship.
The NPCs which do no damage and are of no use doesn’t help the situation. Levelling my Asura Engi has been the most tedious, difficult and expensive (game gold for repairs) experience in GW2. I think ranger, guardian and warrior are the only classes that don’t really have this issue at all but I’ve not played mesmer/ele/necro to a high enough level to tell.

Truthfully I have no idea what’s so difficult in the story quests; other than perhaps the very last one, since you need a group to do the instance.

I’ve completed the personal story three separate times; on an elementalist, and two guardians (including Priory, Vigil and Whispers stories). Some classes do make you pay a bit more attention while doing things, but it’s never impossible (unless it’s bugged).

As for the content though; after the “About you” parts; it does really fall flat in terms of interesting.

Honestly I only needed help once in my personal story so far.

I didn’t finish my story yet but this was the only point I got stuck at as elementalist (d/d build).

I just wish there was a way to switch the story off. I decided not to do it (a third time) on my Norn, yet there it is, top of the to-do list.

I have been amazed at how hard some of the chapters of the story are. My Norn Warrior has soloed with relative ease to seventy-three or so. Granted, some instances were respawn hels. Some of my other toons, and my guildees toons have had some instances that were nigh impossible. I have specifically bad memories of giving up on one because our toons were naked.

I also don’t like how the story choices can become so contrived. There is no “None of the Above” choice. If it were up to me, my warrior would be dead along side her mentor on Claw Island.

quickthorn.4918:

Supasilvafoxy.1247:

However, I think your idea of 2 difficulty modes is a sound one. It shouldn’t be that hard to implement as lots of games have varying levels of difficulty. By reading this and similar threads the cans and the can’ts – so to speak – are about evenly balanced and varying the difficulty levels would keep everybody happy.

I think if 2 difficulty modes were implemented, the ‘hard’ version should offer a better reward than the easier version.

But of course! Maybe this would encourage the can’ts (myself included) to try just that little bit harder…..sticking a carrot on the end of a stick usally makes the donkey go faster.

Of the 4 times I’ve completed the personal story I’ve never had a problem with difficulty. Are you dodging things that you should and killing those damnable risen plague carriers?

I don’t believe an easier difficulty is a good solution. Not to sound like an elitest, but if you can’t complete the personal story at it’s current difficulty, you don’t deserve to complete it. Get better at the game if you really care about it, that or over level it or get some friends to help or both.

Malthurius.6870:

Not to sound like an elitest, but if you can’t complete the personal story at it’s current difficulty…

Wait for it…wait for it….

Malthurius.6870:

…you don’t deserve to complete it.

ROFL! Deciding who “deserves” to complete content? Noooooooo, not elitist at all.

I feel for you OP. I managed to do the personal story without too much difficulty as a guardian; however no matter how you struggle to complete your personal story expect to be disappointed when you arrive at the last task.

For some reasons, our friends at Anet have deemed fit to ensure that you can never complete your personal story as a personal story. You will be required to group at the last instance as it occurs in a dungeon.

Now, while I agree that this is an MMO and all, the premises of the personal story is that it is a character based story and all of it should be feasible as such.

/rant