Guild Wars 2

I’d like to put forth the notion that the rewards for completing the personal story ought to be accelerated up to the character’s true level.

My first character went to 80 before doing much past Claw Island as I did things with crafting and exploring more than quest. So for that situation I knew I had not done things exactly the way ArenaNet had envisioned with their design.

With my second character, I’m attempting to keep up with the personal story as I hit the recommended level (i.e. the level that the gear reward is going to be). Something as a challenge to myself, and something as a test to see if it can be done.

What I’m finding out is that some of these quest locations for each subsequent personal story quest lie in such contested and gradually more difficult areas that by the time you GET to the quest you are likely to be overleveled for the quest reward. It might be possible if you do nothing on your way to the quest, but there are hearts and events thakitten ’s natural to pick up on. For example after the Lich quest, I headed south. I hadn’t had to explore the zone just to the south of Lion’s Arch because I was Vigil, so I had to explore that zone to get to the exit south. Then I had to explore southwards through Sparkfly Fen. The quest was at the asura outpost right by Tequatl. I was very much over leveled by the time I got to the quest marker.

And really the overleveling is fine. The scaling factor makes the personal quest a challenge frequently in various situations, however the REWARD at the end is more or less completely useless. One can argue that the story itself is the reward and the kit is a bonus, but even in a rather flattened non-gear driven MMO like GW2, there is still pleasure in getting something USEFUL out of an event and one would think that their best shot of providing something useful actually comes from the personal story questline as it’s very much NOT random.

Anyhow, perhaps ANet will read and rethink this. Given all the myriad ways of getting kit at the end of the game, I don’t think there’s much that could be exploited by someone delaying all personal story til 80, and that wouldn’t have to be the only answer. Perhaps the level scaling only happens on missions past Claw Island where the destinations become far more spread out.