Guild Wars 2

Let me say right off the bat that I’m not here to bash on the living story at all, nor am I here to rant about the flaws in the personal story— I’m here to advocate a redo of the personal story by offering well-thought-out and practical solutions for how to make the second half of the story (Claw Island and beyond) as great as the first half was.

I understand why none of the huge storyline issues have been resolved in the year that the game has been out. It would be a major expense to get all the voice actors back here to read a new script, and it would take a lot of people, time, and money to redo the entire second half of the storyline. Plus, the devs are taking the game in the direction of the living stories in an ever-changing world, which is a fine idea and I have no complaints about it, except that the living stories are coming at the expense of fixing the personal storyline.

I care a lot about storyline and so does everyone else who has posted on this forum section. On behalf of the entire community who cares anything about storyline, I can say with confidence that everyone would gladly go for one month or even two months without a living story at all if it meant that half of the living story design teams would instead revamp the personal storyline and fix the issues that have been there since Day 1.

I will not spend this post complaining, and the issues are already well-known; rather, I will lay out some practical solutions for how to improve the story in 4 categories (not necessarily in order of importance, as that differs from person to person).

1st main issue: Our story is taken over by Trahearne’s story
Solutions:

1. Let us be the person to unite the three Orders and be in charge, not Trahearne. Yes, Trahearne is a neutral party— never having allied with a specific Order— but all three Orders actively wanted my character to join them, meaning they’ve all heard of me and they all respect me. Back when deciding on an Order, we had the chance to work with each one to solve a problem, so we know what they’re all about, they know us, and we have a good reputation with them. With some good writing, our character can convince the Orders (either through charm, dignity, or ferocity depending on our character creation choice) that although I chose this particular Order, I can and will respect all three and we can work together to defeat Zhaitan. And show this throughout the Orr quests by having the Order representatives give us the options for which paths we choose, and alternate between which two Orders present us with options (i.e. Vigil and Durmand Priory, Durmand Priory and Order of Whispers, etc.) the way they did when we were deciding which Order to join.
2. No need for a Pact, we only need the 3 Orders to work together for this time, and our character is the glue that accomplishes this. Fort Trinity is still a good headquarters and will still be an appropriate name for the fort.
3. Keep Trahearne in the story and keep his Wyld Hunt the same, but keep him in the adviser/scholar role and as the expert on Orr. We can still help him in his quest to cleanse Orr, which is a really good quest in my opinion, but he doesn’t need to become the leader of a Pact to do so. His role can also be to tell us more about the lore of the game, of Sylvari, and of Orr specifically, showing his expertise and freeing us as players from having to search wiki posts to find out about the basics of the lore.
4. Especially once we are in charge and we are in Orr, change dialogue slightly so that rather than someone telling us, “These are your options; which one will you choose?”, it’s our character saying, “Let’s hear the options,” and then our character chooses one. It changes our character to being proactive rather than reactive, which makes our character more of a leader and more in control of the situation.

(continued in the comments below due to length restriction).

2nd main issue: Early story arcs play no role in later storyline
Solutions:

1. Once we are close to fighting Zhaitan (say, level 70 or so), have our character go recruit the people from our previous storyline choices to come help us:
   — our Order mentor (who doesn’t die at Claw Island, but rather has been with us since we joined their Order and perhaps has a glorious and meaningful death while fighting Zhaitan)
   — our contact and their second- and third-in-command from the tribal race we helped
   — the ally or allies we chose for retaking Claw Island
   — Destiny’s Edge (more on that in the next section)
   — the NPCs close to our character in Parts 1 and 2 of our race arc (if they lived). Those can be people we didn’t actively recruit, but they show up and volunteer to help, which is a surprise to our character and means a lot to them.
2. The quest we have, based on our “A Light in the Darkness” choice, is a good one and I think it’s well-done. At the end of that arc of the story, don’t just talk about honoring the NPC affected by our decisions, but have a short 5-minute scene where you go to their race’s main city and you actually do honor them and we can see our character being truly sad and grateful for them, like they actually meant something to our character.

3rd main issue: Destiny’s Edge and the story mode dungeons
Solutions:

1. Have meeting between Destiny’s Edge in Lion’s Arch lead right into the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon story mode, and have our Order introduction happen after that.
2. Make the story mode dungeons a required part of the personal story rather than a separate option, and make the story mode dungeon soloable.
3. In the soloable story mode of the dungeons, make part of the quest, for example, “Talk to Logan and Rytlock”, because it’s only in those dungeons where we really see and understand the conflict between those characters. As the dungeons are now— optional and needing 4 other people who often want to rush through it— we don’t get the depth of understanding into what happened between Destiny’s Edge members and how they are feeling unless we take the time (and hold up our group) to talk to them on our own while in the dungeon.
4. Spread out the storylines evenly to make room for the dungeon story modes, and so that the level 80 quest of the story isn’t comprised of about 5 separate quests.
5. To help with the flow of the story, have the story mode dungeons happen closer together, and spread out within the part of the story before we go into Orr. That way our character isn’t taking a break from Orr business to go chasing after Destiny’s Edge members around Tyria. Also, this will give the reunited Destiny’s Edge time to come up with something epic to help us fight Zhaitan (I get into that in the next section).

(continued again)

(last continuation, I promise!)

4th main issue: Fighting Zhaitan
Solutions:

1. Keep graphics the same, they’re awesome.
2. Make this soloable as well, with the option to have up to 4 other players join if they want to, but it’s not a requirement.
3. Have with you in the fight:
   — Destiny’s Edge (back together and now you know who they are and why they’re a big deal because we’ve done the story mode of the dungeons)
   — the leaders of the Orders
   — your mentor in the Order you chose (who can have a glorious death in this fight)
   — the NPCs that were important in the story arcs so far.
   All together that’s anywhere from 13 to 16 or so characters depending on your previous choices, and that’s a full raid. A fight with allies like that can have the same epic feel of an end-game raid in other MMOs where you need at least a dozen players. Give each one of those NPCs the stats of an average level 80 character so they can do their part.
4. Fight Zhaitan on the ground, not in an airship, using the weapons and skills that we’ve worked hard to get, learn, and perfect while playing the game. This fight should have the epic feel and attainability that fighting a World Boss (like Claw of Jormag, Tequatl, or the Shatterer) currently does, but on a much grander scale.
5. Have strengths of Destiny’s Edge members play a part in the Zhaitan fight, so that fighting him on the ground is possible. They were Tyria’s “Dream Team”— the six of them almost took out an elder dragon by themselves; with the five of them, our character, and the NPCs from our previous story arcs, we can take down Zhaitan if the dungeon is designed to allow that.
   — Side suggestion on that last point: after the Crucible of Eternity story mode dungeon is done and we’ve headed into Orr, have your herald tell you that Destiny’s Edge has gotten back together and that they’re forming some kind of plan, and he heard them talking about Zhaitan. When the Zhaitan fight comes, this would explain what they’ve been up to for the past 20 levels or so while we’ve been in Orr, and how they all come prepared with something that plays to their strengths and helps us find and defeat Zhaitan.

A minor issue but an easy fix: Personal story rewards
Currently the rewards for completing sections of the personal story are underwhelming, specifically armor and weapons, whose skins you can get on the TP for really cheap.
Solutions:

1. Create an armor set and a weapons set that are unique personal storyline rewards.
2. Rather than getting only 3 Black Lion chest keys throughout the entire storyline, give us one at the end of each arc of the story. It’ll be, what, 8 or 9 total? It’s not much, but it would be nice perk for us as players who have dozens or even hundreds of Black Lion chests sitting in our bank.
3. With the decrease in the amount of karma we’re now getting from dailies, monthlies, etc., at the end of each story arc give us a keg of karma. Many of us, myself included, still want to buy things that cost a lot of karma (cultural weapons, Orr temple items, etc.), and the keg of karma every 10 levels or so (or wherever the natural breaks in storyline end up taking place) would be a nice treat.

A long post, I know, but believe me when I say that these are the solutions we need to fix the personal story problems, and everyone in the PvE community who cares about storyline will be glad to give up a month or two of living story in order for this to be done. When it’s all done, everyone’s personal story will be reset to the beginning regardless of our character level or the place we’re at in our story, and we can play through the stories again on our characters and see what a great job you’ve done. It will definitely increase the reputation of ArenaNet: not only does GW2 have great gameplay, but the devs listen to what’s important to their players, and they’ve revamped their personal story part of the game to make it AMAZING, a great game all around.

First of all, nothing wrong with walls of text, sometimes they are absolutely necessary. You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought and for that alone, the effort is appreciated. I am writing this as I am reading through the post and will try to offer an alternate take on some of the suggestions you make. As a whole, I agree with you that the personal story needs reworking.

Issue 1: Trahearne’s Story
1. a) What you are suggesting would make perfect sense, save for one minor issue. Despite what the Personal Story may have us think (and I have issues with that in general) our character is not a unique snowflake, it’s just one of the many champions that arose to fight the Elder Dragons. There has to be a neutral party leading the war effort, so that future lore can safely deal with the events that took place. Destiny’s Edge as a group would work quite nicely, they are already respected in their cultures and known throughout Tyria.
1. b) Having the Orders suggest different ways to tackle problems is entirely desirable, no issues there and it would actually show just what each of them brings to the Pact, which… brings us to point number 2.
2. The Pact was formed for a specific purpose, dealing with the Elder Dragons. It stands to reason, that once, if ever, the Dragons are gone, the Pact will be deployed to deal with global threats of the same scale, which any individual Order would be unable to counter on their own. At no point in the Personal Story did I get the feeling the Orders were disbanded after the Pact was created.
3. Yes, yes, yes. No arguments there whatsoever. Trahearne would work beautifully as an expert in all things Orrian and/or Risen. He should be the Pact’s go-to guy for any information that can help.
4. A minor change in dialogue, but quite needed, if just to set the tone.

Issue 2: Disconnected Arcs
1. As much as I’d like to see the Order mentor come back for a final bash, I’m torn on this. I wish we had seen more of them, but I am not sure I want to risk their awesomeness by more exposure. Otherwise I agree, with the option of people from the other personal stories showing up as well, to show how interconnected the whole thing is.
2. No arguments there, would really be nice to show that.

Issue 3: Destiny’s Dungeons
No arguments whatsoever, beautifully said. I agree with every single point here.

Issue 4: Zhaitan’s Fall
Mo real arguments here either, except that we should fight Zhaitan on the ground -after- the whole airship thing (but without spamming 2).

Bonus Issue: Rewards
All sound like good ideas, no arguments here.

I have to say that your heart is in the right place however I would have to disagree with a few things that were mentioned. After playing through the personal story many times I would agree with smekras in saying that your character is only one of the many champions that fight against the elder dragons.

This is quite important considering as you play through the personal story you are either accompanied by your races Destiny’s Edge member, a friend, a mentor or alone. During the Pact missions it makes it seem like you are an elite operative that specializes in small unit tactics which is quite similar to how the members of Destiny’s Edge are handled. All the members of Destiny’s Edge are also important and influential characters however they are always the second-in-command or basically the people a race or group goes to in order to make sure a difficult task is completed successfully.

Mentors
Next, I disagree with the idea of the mentors being brought back so they can die in the final battle. As much as I dislike our mentors fate on Claw Island I do admit that the dialogue, timing, their voices and many other such things were done well at that time as it was unexpected and the event had impact. In my opinion if we ever see them again it should be in a storybook that allows you to play through a few select missions as the mentor, telling more back-story on them, with it ending with their last stand on Claw Island.

Destiny’s Edge
I liked how their interactions with each other were relegated to the dungeons rather than the personal story though that is my opinion. The reason is that the personal story is mostly about your characters rise from an exceptional no-body to a champion that is on par with Destiny’s Edge. Think of it this way, the story dungeons tell the story of Destiny’s Edge while the personal story tells the story of your character with them uniting with you during the last parts of the personal story. As for making the story mode dungeons more accessible for those interested in the story then I agree though I disagree with making them a requirement.

Trahearne
Finally, we have Trahearne. His story is fine for the most part though the problem with him is not just the droning voice it is mostly about his overexposure. Seeing a character every so often is fine though if someone is forced to see, and listen to, that character constantly then people will start hating the character. So all that would need to be done would be to make him appear at major battles only with his orders being relayed through other npc’s to the player. That way there is no overexposure and it would give other npc’s more purpose other than cannon fodder.

Ironically, Trahearne reminds me of Rurik, Togo and Kormir from Guild Wars.

Zhaitan
I agree with revamping the Zhaitan fight, the actual appearance of those that we recruited for the Pact and Order being in the last battle and the personal story rewards. I mean if we receive unique armor for our race and order choice you would think something as important as the defeat of an Elder Dragon would warrant a unique skin. I would also agree with the idea of having a few additional stories to be placed that connect a decision you made in a previous arc to the story arc you are currently in.

I do believe if storybooks were brought from Guild Wars then they could be used for the aspects of the personal story we would want to see more of like our mentors and Trahearnes history with the Orders. It should be noted that all of this is my opinion since the OP was well thought out though I think that such a overhaul would take more effort than its worth. The way the Living World is working at the moment makes me think that they are being used either as distractions or a way to lead the story to the next dragon or major event.

The mentors should not have been killed. Eliminating interesting characters is just lazy writing, and is done to avoid doing serious character development.