Guild Wars 2

Was the personal story designed with the assumption that it was OK for the player to die repeatedly? I find that constantly dying in a story ABOUT MY LIFE kind of breaks the immersion. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been jumped by 8 or more mobs who dogpile me so fast I am dead before I really get to do much more than start my auto-attack. Now granted, I am an old guy, so I’m not super reflex guy, but it seems like the designers were thinking, “well, if they die they can just go on from a checkpoint.” This is true, but it is also horrendously bad storytelling.

Repeatedly dying in WvW or even regualr PvE is OK, but getting ganked by piles of mobs in an instanced quest that is supposedly tailored for you is not.

thanks,
Matt

I had the exact same problem.
I´ve found the solution by changing my play style.
For instance, I´m playing as an engineer. I was just using my rifle in combination with my towers. Did not really the huge amount of dmg, but enough for the beginning.
With ongoing story I´ve found myself dying repeadly. I then switched to the grenade kit, just because I was in rage mode “See, not doing any dmg against them with my rifle, how should my grenades even touch them!”
A few seconds later:
“W00t? They´re dead! Those tool-kits aren´t as bad as I thought they would be.”

I´m using only grenades since I discovered them

I changed my play style several times, but unless you know what’s going to happen by reading spoilers you’ll probably go in with your “regular” build, die, then change your build and start from a checkpoint. Again, I think this is poor design. They had five years to balance this stuff. It would be one thing if you died now and then, but I’m talking about quests where you die six or seven times through no fault of your own.

Thanks,
Matt

I’m sorry but I die repeatedly in almost every step of the story. Take the attack on Claw Island for instance. How on earth are you going to survive when undead jump at you with 3 or 4 at the same time, and this wave after wave? Maybe you have to take a good look at the NPC’s again – they hardly do damage, or stand around being idle.

The OP is right, this turns the PS in a meaningless and downright annoying experience. When I finish this once I’m staying away from it.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

For any difficulty issue (or bug, or any comment on a particular story step) please provide the name of the quest, your current objective, your class, and level. There are hundreds of different story steps, so I need specifics to know which one to look at. (Just remembering an NPC or moment in the step doesn’t help, either, since many appear in multiple branches.)

This is a problem with every story quest. It’s very obvious the only balancing was done for guardians and warriors using greatswords to spam things to death.

You need to tone it down on a general scale.

Agreed. I just recently died twice on the Battle for Fort Trinity step, and I’ve died several times through story missions leading up to this point. You throw numerous mobs at us, at our level, with often either no NPC help, or NPC’s that are completely ineffective(I.e. they barely attack, they hardly do any damage with each attack, they have no skills they use, etc.).

If you wanted to make us feel kitten for killing lots of mobs, then you have to weaken them, or strengthen our NPC support.

I play as a mesmer and do all of my personal story quests at level. I agree with you, snakeboy, the personal story quests are very difficult. I died ~10 times trying to kill the abomination in the “Dead of Winter” quest, and the only reason that I didn’t die many times on Mazdak himself was because I already had a walkthrough open to tell me that I shouldn’t try to use any of the sword’s melee abilities on Mazdak.

“The Battle of Claw Island” is, yes, very difficult. Lots and lots of kiting respawning mobs. The NPCs don’t do significant damage, and the mobs pretty much ignore them. So it’s a lot of 4+ vs 1 fights, which can be very tough if there’s 2+ brutes with knockdown (“Blink” saved me).

My girlfriend enjoys MMOs, but I help her whenever she does a personal story instance that sounds like it’s going to have a big fight. I know that, as a long-time “gamer”, if I’m having difficulty with these instances (arguably supposed to be the most “casual” part of the game), she’s going to become frustrated and quit.

Just so this isn’t all negative, I loved the quests “Bramble Walls” and “The Ghost Rite”. So much fun.

snakeboy.3062:

I’m sorry but I die repeatedly in almost every step of the story. Take the attack on Claw Island for instance. How on earth are you going to survive when undead jump at you with 3 or 4 at the same time, and this wave after wave? Maybe you have to take a good look at the NPC’s again – they hardly do damage, or stand around being idle.

The OP is right, this turns the PS in a meaningless and downright annoying experience. When I finish this once I’m staying away from it.

Well, not always killing everything around is the best choice :P
Solution is: DONT FIGHT xD

Seriously. In this mission only thing you have to defeat are the first few minions. Than just avoid any battle and do the objectives. Crowd of Lion Guards will tank the mobs for ya :>

I play schoolar and I just runned around trying not to be hit and to kill the closest enemies.

Sometimes it is the right thing not to touch them, but it’s not always clear. The part I was referring to is about clearing the square near the end. You just have to fight and fight and fight, untill you killed enough to advance to the cutscene.

Anyhow, I made it in one go, but the point is that dieing repeatedly in the PS breaks the immersion completely.

@Jeffrey – Thank you for being so responsive.

snakeboy.3062:

I’m sorry but I die repeatedly in almost every step of the story. Take the attack on Claw Island for instance. How on earth are you going to survive when undead jump at you with 3 or 4 at the same time, and this wave after wave? Maybe you have to take a good look at the NPC’s again – they hardly do damage, or stand around being idle.

The OP is right, this turns the PS in a meaningless and downright annoying experience. When I finish this once I’m staying away from it.

Yeah I got to this point last night and I have the same problem. So many mobs and I constantly die. I am a ranger and even with my pet tanking 1 mob I get ganked by 3 others. So far I have not been impressed with the personal story at all. The difficulty of allot of the choices you make is extremely Difficult and takes away from the fun.

Instead of specific examples, just look at any personal quest where there are:

1) large groups of monsters that zerg the player, especially right after dialogue.

2) single uber-mobs that can one-hit cloth wearers

3) Invulnerable mobs. If it is red, let me kill it. Don’t let it get two or three hits on me while it’s still invulnerable. In fact, don’t use invulnerability at all, it’s a kludge.

4) waves of mobs with no time in between for health regen.

5) “allied” npcs that do nothing at all to help cough Trahearne cough

6) monsters that you kill that miraculously pop back up at full health after all the abilities you sued to kill them the first time are still on cooldown.

7) monsters on leashes. This doesn’t work right anyway, they just go invulnerable, run away, then come back at full health and kill you.

This is a PERSONAL story. Ideally you should be able to do the whole thing without dying, especially since the lore never mentions how we keep coming back to life over and over again. :P

So far I’ve found the story missions to be fairly easy, but I may have just gotten lucky. Or it may depend on the class you play. I am a ranger and my bear does help a lot. On some you have to use different strategies or tactics. On the Battle for Claw Island, I found that if you move up the ramps to the top of the wall, the enemy will start to focus on everyone in the middle fort area. Then you can pull a few groups at a time. The Battle of Fort Trinity also did not seem that difficult. I died once because I basically got one-shotted by a nearby explosion.

The only mission so far that I think is difficult is Estate of Decay where you have to kill Zhaitan’s Mouth. The difficult part is when you have to eliminate the Orrian Spectral Guards surrounding him but also be trying to avoid damage from the mouth’s attacks. The NPCs are dead at this point; so you have no help. Plus you have to deal with undead bringing food to the mouth; lots to deal with solo. Once the surrounding guards are eliminated it becomes easier as long as you use the right weapon combos.

I have to agree with the general concensus that the story quests are just overbearing. The last one i (just barely) managed to complete was Kellach’s Attach (Level 30 Human Warrior) and the sheer damage output of the foes i was fighting made it nigh impossible.

Theoreticaly, you’d expect it to be possible to make it through any particular fight or instance without dying and the personal story should, in theory, be some of the easier intanced content, no?

With that particular quest, i wouldn’t have thought the (relatively) large numbers of enemies would be an issue, since there were four vigil soldiers, the Vigil representative (who’s name i forget) and Logan all present to even out the numbers in the fight, but none of the NPC’s were even halfway helpfull. i understand the desire to not have them just kill off all the enemies by themselves (that would be boring, obviously) but they clearly need to be far more surviveable than they currently are because they barely slow the enemies down before they are all dead and there is no way that one player could hope to handle that many mobs alone.

For that, (and all the personal story quests in a similar vein) I’d suggest that the NPCs you’re fighting with need to be both more surviveable and equal targets for the enemies. After all, if the NPC’s survive but you die because all the mobs are ignoring them to just go after you (something else that seemed like a problem here) the problem persists.

If you are dying in your storyline, its time to put it away for awhile and go catch a few levels before trying again. That or get some help from freinds or guildies.

Raf.1078:

If you are dying in your storyline, its time to put it away for awhile and go catch a few levels before trying again. That or get some help from freinds or guildies.

Agreed. I haven’t had any problems dying during my personal story. I actually think the difficulty is well balanced. I usually complete the missions by the skin of my teeth. It all feels very epic each time.

I thought that was what the developers were going for. If it was, they nailed it for me.

Raf.1078:

If you are dying in your storyline, its time to put it away for awhile and go catch a few levels before trying again. That or get some help from freinds or guildies.

If you have to out level the story in order to do it, then it is not balanced.

If you have to get friends to help you then it is not personal.

My friends have decided to skip the ‘personal’ story quests until they are 80 and have nothing else to do. If that is the design intent then WAI.

OK, now for my story.

I am on the Human street rat mission The Greater Good which is level 8. I am supposed to meet Logan Thackeray and stop the bandits from poisoning the well.

I meet him and go to the bottom of the ramp when bandits come down thetwo ramps opposite me. Between the whirl of death, melee, ranged and the bomb girl, I died a few times before I won through battle of attrition.

I am joined now by six Seraph so Logan and the Seraph follow me up to the top when we are supposed to stop them. A wave of bandits later and I am dead again. By the time I respawn and run back, the bandits have killed Logan and all six Seraph.

I figure I will be smart since they are standing near the bodies of my allies and move up the ramp so that when they come kill me they will be away from the pile of bodies. Strangely enough I manage to pull them one at a time until several more spawn behind me and I am dead before I know they are there.

I come back and finish the last bandits near the boss and the the ones that killed my are further up the ramp. I engage Doc Howler and die. I try again a different way and die. I try rezzing some Seraph, while dropping some clones and phantasms on her so I can get some more people up and die before the bar lets me rez another Seraph. I try different weapon combinations and tactics just to kill this one mob and die. At one point I popped my clone when I went down and Doc Howler even though I am at a different spot and supposedly invisible for a few seconds, Doc Howler shoots me killing me and then goes after my downed clone.

I have now died so many times that my character is butt naked, so I rage quit the game for the rest of the night.

I am a mesmer and this is my story.

Killing Fields – defend the Beach – Human -Worrior

The Vigil NPC are dead way to easy so it is just me and the salvary against the big Abominations xs did that part more then an hour to just kill 2 of the six (they are 2 hard to kill if you and the salvary npc are the only ones alive) you can’t revive any npc due to interrupts.. AND, the arrow carts don’t seem to do any damage, despite clearly hitting? the target 8 of the 10 times.. and if the Abominations are nearly dead they just walk awey and regain there health.. And like the others said claw island, to many risen and they realy only jump to you whit 4 and the loinguard npc just stand there..

I can think of one immediately that was un-soloable that was the level 11 norn quest as part of the Lost an Heirloom line. Scores upon scores of imps are thrown at you and anyone who has played knows imps nuke very hard, and these are imps on steroids like in BWE1. To win this me and my partner had to graveyard rush it.. and Eir is basically no help she doesn’t seem to do much damage for a member of Destiny’s edge! I was pretty disappointed in general by her “help” in the story.

Also battle of claw island was a bit ridiculous with so many undead, I find that ignoring everything and just running past them toward your objective was the only way to get it done. Even the “clear a path to the ship” part you can speed past them and there’s no need to clear a path.

The NPC’s that are supposed to be your allies seem to just be filler and can’t kill anything on their own. I don’t feel like they are my allies at all or even a point to rezzing them when they die.

Another thing is that I find there is too much grinding mobs in the personal story (this also relates to the player killing everything alone without any real NPC help) In the later quests there’s just wayy too many undead to kill back and forth even into area’s I have already cleared like the cave in Defending fort ranik (sp?)
I would rather the stories were actually more about story rather then just most of the quest being about mass killing.

As a Ranger I die, but eventually get by. I don’t die that much. My strategy when I get overwhelmed and with claw island. Kite a lot, dodge a lot, have pet work on mobs while laying traps. Especially frost and spike to slow them down. Switch pets as much as possible. Don’t stay with bear. I use hyena and raven. Rampage as one when mob tries to slow you down (ie cripple etc.).

I have to agree that the personal stories are just a tad too much. I’m all for a challenge but the mob placement and lack of actual support from friendly NPCs is horrible. One prime example is the Claw Island story but in general you can’t ranged attack because all of them start coming after you (if you’ve got NPC help) or you’re just bombarded with mobs that can each stun and it ends up being one right after the next. I’ve had a couple where I’ve been stunned for over 30 seconds and just had to wait to die because there was nothing for me to do.

After the Claw Island quest you do a one that is fairly easy but after that I just got to…

Magic Sucks: There is limited room to move and the weapon needs far too much charging in order to be effective against the number of mobs coming after you. More importantly you respawn directly in them so you’re not only resurrection sick and damaged but you’ve already got mobs on top of you.

A Light In Darkness: This actually makes me not interested in the game. I’m bored with running around and wanted to work on my story line more. You get 3 invisible mobs attacking you that repeatedly stun you so you can’t do anything. If you try to dodge (which the limited amount of dodging a thief can do is kind of silly – you should be able to get 3 or 4 at least without running out of power) but if you dodge or kite too much you run into the Risen Bulls or Risen Chickens. The plant dude there to help is just pathetic and rarely actually attacks; name starts with a T. Further to this, when you die, you have two of these invisible things directly on the spawn point – again, resurrection sickness and damaged gear + instant mobs = no fun. Lastly with this one, not only did it take me far too long to get down such a short path but after the ‘war’ the quest would not update so I’m left with having to do it all over again.

I actually liked Claw Island because there was so many enemies. :/ (like use stun-breaker?)
Any chance getting hardmode-version for story?

Surely the Personal Quests should have been balance tested properly before release, it is pretty clear to me that no proper testing was done at all.

The quests up to and including Claw Island were tough but doable with careful pulls and if the NPC’s did not go and do something stupid like aggro everything.

Past that point I have hit a wall, I am a level 75 elementalist who joined the priory and I am currently trying to do the level 60+ personal quests and the numbers of adds that spawn on top of me when I am suppsed to be protecting the researchers just makes it impossible.

Tbh it really is a disgrace and by far the worst personal storyline experience I have ever had in any game.

Rumors of Trouble in the Norn 10-20 Lost Heirloom story also needs to be looked at, if it hasn’t already. When I did it with a pal we got absolutely swarmed by Varg’s hard-hitting minions. I tell you, all drama and momentum vanishes from that quest the minute you have to respawn, respawn, respawn. We eventually did it, but not without feeling like the point of the quest was ruined.

Estate of Decay needs to be seriously toned down. I’m not a hardcore player or a FPSer. The npc “helpers” are usually dead fairly quickly and I cant deal with that amount of incoming ranged damage from the mouth of zhaitan. Currently playing my level 77 ranger. (markmanship specced )

Kenk,
You can hide behind a column to avoid most of the Mouth’s attacks and range the enchanted weapons. After weapons are all dead the NPCs get up on their own.

For mesmers: do NOT use Phase Retreat behind a column. It will port you underground and kick you from the mission.

The thing about personal quest is that when you fail the first time, than you have to look at what setup you have and how to over come it. i look at the adds the spawn on me and what damage them quickly. secondly i look at the type of boss i got. to me i never use the same trick twice. those that are still have problems to “Dead of Winter” i have explain how to best kill the bosses. kill the minions as fast as possible, then blind and stun and quickly kill him. let Iowerth tank since he is a guardian. It all about finding the weakness.

Some classes have only one viable PvE solo build, so they have no choice but to graveyard rush.

How am I supposed to get survivor achievements as a thief when my only viable build is good for 1v2 at the max and missions throw 20 enemies around like it’s normal.

It’s clear what they wanted to do, they wanted battles to feel massive. The problem is they give you mobs of equal level with powerful abilities in waves, and it’s too much to deal with.

Yup, as a necro (bad enough already, am I right?) I’ve struggled to scrape by most missions, often having to blow everything at each fight to get through. Companion NPCs are astonishingly useless. I honestly can’t begin to imagine how this wasn’t picked up and fixed during testing but we are where we are.

The point which has now made me just stop doing PQ missions at all is the Forge the Pact mission where you help the priory excavations or something. NPCs get stuck (not really much of a difference since they don’t do anything anyway) but this time since they’re not there they don’t even act as meat shields! Anywho, I eventually get to a huge group of risen since some excavators appear and soak up some damage. However they eventually die and these two risen krait veterans and their Risen army jump and destroy me in literally a couple of seconds. All my NPC “allies” are dead and respawning at a checkpoint just puts me right where the risen krait are programmed to arrive at, so I die instantly on respawn. The mission becomes literally uncompletable since I have no way of destroying these two guys or taking the damage they deal out.

Again, this has been the prevalent theme across almost all missions. Please fix this!

Attached picture: Trahearne and some sylvari vigil member offering the typical level of assistance one might find coming from NPC companions in story quests while I get pummelled into a fine paste by angry undead people.

I have to add my story here as well, I just finished the Claw Island story, I’m a level 62 elementalist, but I get dumbed down to 50, and I’ve tried every combination of weapons to finish this, and it’s nearly impossible. I’ve had to use 2 instant repair canisters because I died so many times and there is no repair anything in the instance. If i left it would reset and have to start all over. This is no fun at all. I’ve hated doing my stories so far, mostly because of the difficulty level in them all. I should not be having 10 mobs on me at once, It does not matter what I do I can’t handle 10 at once. For instance in Claw Island when you have to revive Mira. I basically ran in, revived a few points of health, got killed, checkpoint, ran in, revived a few more hit points, died, checkpoint etc etc etc ad nauseam. NPC that are supposed to be helping are useless, the cost in repairs are not covered by the rewards. I don’t want to finish my story if they are like this all the way through.

I play warrior, I’m only lvl 39. But I. Have to say gear is a big help. If you have lvl aproprat gear is a god send. Trying to do a lvl 20 quest with lvl15 gear is going to get you killed a lot. That is what I was doing wrong early on in my PS. Once I started using gear lvl to the PS I found I only died if I messed up.

High Marshal.2185:

OK, now for my story.

I am on the Human street rat mission The Greater Good which is level 8. I am supposed to meet Logan Thackeray and stop the bandits from poisoning the well.
…

I find this one to be particular hard as well. Played it in beta so knew what I was getting myself into during release, but I got myself killed again a few times in this one. I played this on a necromancer, not sure if I was level 8 or higher as I was a bit afraid from beta I might have outleveled the instance first. So far this is one of the few personal stories that I think are really hard.

It’s possible to do it without dying, but it’s very difficult! You need to know how to tackle each and every enemy for the situation without any learning curve. For example, I switched out my utilities on my thief for Speed Signet, Caltrops and Attack Signet when dealing with the Veteran Abominations.

The problem I think is there is no learning curve, the new enemies need to be thrown in slowly at first so we can adapt to them, just like in any action RPG, and then introduce more and more later on.

Edit: Thought I’d mention the first Warhorn Heirloom quest for Norn at level 10+ or so. It was one of the hardest missions through my 80 levels of personal story on my norn. They throw several ranged imps at you, as well as a Veteran Ice Imp, who becomes invulnerable whilst constantly spawning ranged mobs at you.

For me, it seems like the difficulty varies widely. So much so that I have no idea what to expect for any stage of the story.

Consider two Asura that I had during the BWE3. One of them had to fight Inquest. Three or four Inquest, but the rest of the krewe was nearby, so it was a breeze. The other had to go pick up a capacitor from a lab, and had to fight Inquest. Three or four Inquest, but the rest of the krewe was out chatting with the Snaff judges, so fighting alone. And this was just the very first quest in the personal story lines, with characters that have very very few abilities (I was doing fine out in normal PvE, so I should be fine in the personal story, right? No).

Or contrast some Sylvari story lines. I forget exact names of the story quests, but one had to rescue the White Stag from the Nightmare Court. Waves of Nightmare courtiers and their hounds came in, so quickly that my character didn’t have time to start healing between fights, much less have skills off cooldown. Another character was on the Green Knight story, protecting an NPC. Waves of Nightmare courtiers came in, with plenty of time to heal up between waves. Guess which one was considerably easier?

I do understand a sense of urgency for these quests, but some time frames are far too small. For instance, with any turrets that need to be deployed for the defense — we’re given several turrets/traps, each with two or three ways to be deployed. But almost no time to read over what they do. I’m not a slow reader, but ended up throwing down whatever I could simply because I had no time to see if what I was doing would actually be helpful.

For some quests, you’re given choices… but the information is lacking, so it’s a blind toss of the coin. For instance, my noble human thief had to choose a second for a fight. But I didn’t know what the choices I had were aside from names. Is this NPC a Necromancer? Mesmer? Elementalist? Another thief? Yep, could be any one of those. Pretty sure that one of my choices was warrior. But he may also be a guardian. In the end I chose poorly, and got slaughtered. The only reason I won at all was because the respawn point was close enough that I could attack again before the targets had fully filled their health bars.

At this point, my approach for a personal story line for a new alt is to level the character to 20. I then have some nicely upgraded armor, a few utility slots, and several trait points. Play through to the level 10 personal story missions, and… well, maybe I’ll get back to them later.

Aenanet,

Here is a suggestion which I believe can really help when playing any of the Personal Stories. Do not allow the enemy to come within striking distance from where the human character resurrects after he or she dies. In one of the Personal Story quests, every time I died and then resurrected, the enemy was right where I resurrected, and I was soon dead again. I never had a chance to fight or to think of another strategy for fighting the enemies that remained. I cannot remember the name of the Personal Story quest, but it contained a lot of flying Imps and a boss Imp that produced an idol that had to be destroy in order to kill the boss Imp. I and friend eventually won that quest, but we were both 11 levels above the quest level and died nine or more times before winning.

My Norn Thief died about 8 times trying to kill that Jotun spirit of the past, until I finally just started circle strafing with almost nothing but Headshot. Until I did that, I couldn’t whittle away even 1/4 of his life before he’d kill me. That was when I was two levels higher than the recommended level for the quest.

And now I’m on a mission with (IIRC) dozens of Sons of Svanir at the end of a bridge. I’m trying to take it slowly and make sure I don’t pull more than I can handle, when suddenly about six of them come from the bridge behind me and overrun me.

I actually quit playing my thief because I’m getting annoyed at this.

My sylvari Mesmer died several times in the white stag rescue, but I blamed myself for that because I tried to run for the exit rather than picking off everything — other than that mission it’s seemed to be very well balanced. Challenging but not insane.

With my Engineer I occasionally ran into difficulty, but nothing overwhelming; I’ve died maybe three times in the last 50 levels of personal story. The quests seemed well balanced and I greatly enjoyed them. Thumbs up ArenaNet.

I agree that some of the personal story quests really need to be toned down. Their difficulty seems to vary WILDLY though, depending on your profession, your specific story, what NPC helper you picked, etc. So those that think personal story quests are easy and “fine” probably have had a different experience than those that find them too hard!

Some examples/comments on quests I’ve done:

1. “Seek Logan’s Aid” lvl 11 quest on my human noble Elementalist, the step where you kill the traitorous Seraph and Captain Tervelan: ridiculously hard, even 4 levels over and in very nice gear. Logan is fairly useless. I basically had to die my way through this one as I just couldn’t deal with 4 mobs trying to kill me at once (oh, but Logan might pick one up — the one with the most HP of course — when I was almost dead).

2. “Deeply Tangled Roots”, lvl 8 quest on my Sylvari Necromancer (Shield of the Moon), the part where you have to defeat the nightmare courtiers and escape the gathering: this one was tough mostly due to the fact that it wasn’t clear that you had to kill all the courtiers to make Renvari killable. Also, it seemed a bit buggy. The first time I did it, I had killed everything that came at me but Renvari was still not taking any damage. The next time I tried it (at level 10, I was frustrated and came back later), when died I res’d outside the cave at the check point . . . the mobs followed me there this time! Renvari came out there too though and was vulnerable, so it worked fine. Caithe, one of my NPC helpers, was not completely useless; I suspect that is because I could stay alive long enough for her to actually do something.

Even without the possibly-buggy things, this quest was challenging but nowhere near as hard as the first one. I think this is mostly because my Necromancer is way, way more durable than my Elementalist was and won’t go down in a few seconds if I get a small group of equal level mobs beating on him. Also, quest #2 had a good amount of space to maneuver around in, while quest #1 did not (at least, not for the first phase of the fight, the parts downstairs were fine in that regard).

Take-Away Points:

1) Not all professions can handle being beat on by multiple mobs equally well.
2) NPC helpers (such as Logan) are often not very useful at all, so reasoning such as this: “well, a player can take a group of 3 normal mobs if they really try, so if we give them this super-strong helper NPC, we can add a super-strong mob to the group!” is fail, because apparently enemy NPC’s are better at their jobs than our helpers. xD
3) Small/enclosed spaces make dodging and avoiding damage harder.

I do understand how difficult it must be to balance personal story quests for ALL player characters, since unlike SW:TOR, your story quests are based on your race and not your profession. However, I would prefer that some of them be “too easy” for certain professions instead of “too hard” for others. These are personal stories; I want to do them by myself and at the appropriate level, without having to die so many times my gear breaks, which is how I thought they were designed to be done.

Sorry for the length, I critique because I care.

I can’t figure out how to quote here, but I think there’s some kind of bug in most of the stories. Someone just mentioned the Sylvari White Stag quest where there were so many enemies they couldn’t heal.

I didn’t have that problem, but that’s because I didn’t have all those enemies.

I did have problems the first two times with the krait quest in Act with Wisdom – I was mobbed by krait, no chance to kite out on that little platform and was dead before I could try to pull them to land or some other abuse of the AI that might have helped. Tried with a group and we all got slaughtered just as quickly – all five of us.

Did the same quest the next day and it wasn’t a problem – there weren’t a dozen krait ganging up on me at once, there were only two.

Same thing happened with Mazdak (the version where you kill him in the graveyard). Waves upon waves of Risen, the NPCs didn’t even survive to the graveyard. I was in there with Mazdak and 15 Risen, died, by the time I ran back he was at full health and there were more RIsen and another wave on the way. After the 10th time with 30 Risen in the graveyard, more on the way, and Mazdaz at full health every time I restarted from checkpoint, I called it quits.

Next day I tried it again, there was only a small fight before the graveyard, all the NPCs survived, there were maybe 6 Risen spawned in the graveyard and one more wave of 6. I got killed in the second wave, but when I came back, Mazdak was at the 10% health I’d left him at, and downed him easily.

The worst for me are the gimmick quests when you don’t have your skills, and sometimes not even your own body – it’s not fun. It’s extremely disorientating to find yourself thrown into pitched battle with no idea what to do, and in the case of To The Core, the golem suit is so big you can’t see – and you need to be able to see when you’re wandering tiny paths through lava pits.

Currently stuck on Starving the Beast. I can’t fire the Charr turret because every time I try I get either ‘out of range’ or ‘you can’t fire in that direction’. That was an hour of frustration, and I don’t know if I want to do it all over, possibly with the same results. If you must put quests like that in the PS, please, please, please put in some kind of easy to understand controls or some explanation before people are swarmed with mobs. This is not fun.

Quest: A Light in the Darkness
Objective: Follow the Pale Tree through the vision of Orr.
Class: Elementalist
Level: 73

As others have stated, getting constantly stun-locked by 3 things at a time, plus not being able to kite effectively with exploding chickens and bulls in close proximity makes this considerably difficult for those of us trying to enjoy a personal story on a level that is, well, personal, rather than extreme competitive duress.

Mazdak…I attempted numerous times at the appropriate lvl on my Sylvari Elementalist. I died so many times I had to leave twice and go to Ascalon almost naked for repairs and start over again. The third time I left after 3-4 deaths I was almost totally broke from repairs, I didn’t go back. It is not worth the frustration.

I have not attempted it again, although I know I should. The sword we are forced to use is not enough, there are too many ads, NPCs are useless and there should be no equipment damage in any personal story quest. ~just my two coppers worth

I noticed a recurring theme here. Would GW2 devs pls reveal whether or not the PS missions involve a random set-up. I did The Defense of Fort Trinity (sic)one time and found mobs everywhere and respawning Knights by the half-dozen. After considerable “fail” after 40 minutes I decided that my attitude toward the quest was as much the problem as the NPCs. When I came back to do it one day later, none of these things occurred to the same degree. I took the same path, killed a mob mentioned in one of the walkthrough spoilers and in about 10 minutes the quest was done. If that is not buggy (unless there is a randomness to the mob spawns and difficulty), then I don’t know what is. I feel for the devs, they really thought this would work, but unless there is some “fine tuning” done, one of the major allures (to me at least), The Personal Story, is flat disappointing and disheartening.

I am an elementalist and I’ve died during many of the above story-telling missions countless times. I’ve learned to minimize the amount of frustration by simply blaming my sometimes out-dated gear, skill setup or bad luck… but when you face (for example, take Forging the Pact) 4+ mobs that not only occasionally stuns you, runs faster than you, AND most of the time ignores any NPC in favor of the player… I fail to see what I am doing wrong. I am aware that I am a glass cannon with all my points in fire / air – but still when you cannot outmaneuver an enemy OR survive long enough (or even have the time) to nuke them down before you bite the grass… what do you do? I can only pop so many Hounds of Balthazar and Elementals every now and then to get the mobs off me and give myself a fighting chance. Too bad the game is so incredibly awesome, otherwise I could just stop playing.

I hardly died in PvE contents (other than dungeons) while leveling to max level in other MMOs. I also died only a few times in this game, most of them death from falling, except the story quest. Over 90% of my deaths all come from story quest.

I thought it would be better with a warrior (always with best gears), still there are some encounters that will get you killed quickly. 5-6 Mobs (some are ranged) spawning from nowhere, maybe with a veteran, all firing on you regardless of aggro, even you are just a guest helping the NPC who is supposed to be their main target.

All these look like a setup to kill you. Does not match the story. Does not consider how these mobs can appear from nowhere suddenly. Most of all, you are not given the time and fun to think and plan for the strategy for the encounter, which is really terrible. You just die and reset, and situation can be completely different when you come back. All NPCs might be dead or enemies get bugged and it becomes incredibly easy with them being bugged or very hard instead …

BTW, are you supposed to Report any insanity of imbalance in these story quests as Bugged? I did them frequently but I have no idea whether they have been fixed or not, considering you usually do them once and you might want to avoid the same story just to check it out.

evilishu.9318:

I noticed a recurring theme here. Would GW2 devs pls reveal whether or not the PS missions involve a random set-up. I did The Defense of Fort Trinity (sic)one time and found mobs everywhere and respawning Knights by the half-dozen. After considerable “fail” after 40 minutes I decided that my attitude toward the quest was as much the problem as the NPCs. When I came back to do it one day later, none of these things occurred to the same degree. I took the same path, killed a mob mentioned in one of the walkthrough spoilers and in about 10 minutes the quest was done. If that is not buggy (unless there is a randomness to the mob spawns and difficulty), then I don’t know what is. I feel for the devs, they really thought this would work, but unless there is some “fine tuning” done, one of the major allures (to me at least), The Personal Story, is flat disappointing and disheartening.

I’ve wondered about this as well. The Fort Trinity that I managed to finish – no aggressive mobs at the docks or anywhere else during that last bit before the final cutscene – just some near a door that were fighting NPCs but were invulnerable to me. I rezzed a few NPCs, and the final cutscene began.

But as I posted before, this isn’t the first time a quest in the PS has had spawns and such radically altered from one attempt to the next. Occasionally I’ve even gotten different cut scenes from attempts of the same quest.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“Dead of Winter” will be adjusted in the 9/17 update, and I’ll be taking a look at “The Battle of Fort Trinity” later today (for the 9/24 update.) Again, thanks for the specific info.

But still nothing for Forge the Pact?

MrFlash.1764:

Killing Fields – defend the Beach – Human -Worrior

The Vigil NPC are dead way to easy so it is just me and the salvary against the big Abominations xs did that part more then an hour to just kill 2 of the six (they are 2 hard to kill if you and the salvary npc are the only ones alive) you can’t revive any npc due to interrupts.. AND, the arrow carts don’t seem to do any damage, despite clearly hitting? the target 8 of the 10 times.. and if the Abominations are nearly dead they just walk awey and regain there health.. And like the others said claw island, to many risen and they realy only jump to you whit 4 and the loinguard npc just stand there..

I literally have been trying to finish this for the past hour. i can get 2 to 3 killed but after that i am just done because they can go back and heal, then your gear is screwed up so bad you are pretty much forced to leave, then, the vigil can’t even last. mission is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy OP. I like everyone else, feel i shouldn’t have to get help when doing PS. other than that though, I have thoroughly enjoyed this game.

If you managed to kill all the mobs, what’s the point of Sirean’s sacrifice? The mobs cleaning before the final stand told you how tough each mob is. You know how hopeless it is when they swarm over to your area. So aggro them with ae is pretty much certain death. It’s a scene of desperate battle, desperate and hopeless that you were forced to run.

Of course it could be done with more grace. Say cut scene the immediately when you died and make Sirean do her things.