Guild Wars 2

Now, let me start off by saying I know I can bring a party into story instances. However, isn’t one supposed to be able to solo every part of the personal story? Some sections are impossible to solo without dying numerous times. I know of one human segment, and I just finished one of the ‘help x race’ missions you get after joining an order. Details below. Spoiler warning, and all that.

1) The final part of the human circus storyline. Three veterans, one champion, and several waves of standard enemies. There is no way, with how useless your helpers are, that the devs actually expect people to handle this by themselves. I can think of two ways to fix this. Have more Seraph troops spawn to help(and improve helper AI as well, please. As it is right now, they tend to stand around doing nothing), or reduce the champion to a veteran and the veterans to regular enemies. Just a couple suggestions.

2) Set to Blow, the last part of the ‘helping the skritt’ storyline. You have no idea how tempted I was to throw my laptop across the room at this. Destroyers are bad enough to fight by themselves, add in a large group plus a boss and this was almost as much of a disaster as the circus storyline. Again, these mobs either need to be toned down a bit, or the npc allies need to be not so useless.

I tried to make this as constructive as possible, hopefully it doesn’t sound too disgruntled. I just hope that, for the sake of both new players who have trouble with these quests and current players who avoid these storylines for these particular reasons, the devs can adjust some of the apparently over-tuned segments.

Hi,

I just wanted to add in my problems on storyline. I also just completed the “Set to Blow” quest. When I first attempted it, I was at the recommended level and just could not complete it. I went to level and get better gear.

At 53 (Engineer), I went back. I had the same problems, but I finally finished by luring each mob to the top of the hill and killing them one by one.

Needless to say, it was a nightmare.

Even though this was one of the more difficult storyline quests, I have had comparable ones in difficulty/frustration throughout my entire storyline. I certainly do not consider myself a skilled player, but I am not horrible either.

I had problems with both those quests too, actually with a lot of the personal quests. I was finally able to complete the circus quests, but haven’t been able to complete Set to Blow. I was able to clear out most of the regular destroyers, but by the time I did all my equipment had broke and I couldn’t get the boss no matter what I did. I was doing Set to Blow with 50th level thief. I have found I have a much harder time with the personal story quests with the thief than I have had with the other classes I have tried.

I just came on here to post something similar to this thread after enduring a personal story cutscene with my character in his underwear because I died so many times that my stuff broke.

I can’t remember any story missions that have combat that I haven’t died at least once. And I’m talking about early missions, too. I can be doing level 18 & 19 renown hearts on a level 17 character with no problem, and then get face-melted when I try to do my level 14 story mission. Just now I was getting 1-shotted in the level 14 Asura mission “Beta Test” playing as level 17 Elementalist. The second enemy that comes out of the portal hit me once and I was immediately down.

I’m not against the game having difficult challenges, but the story missions are not the place for it. That’s just not what people do story missions for. It’s frustrating when you’re alone, nobody’s there to revive you, and your banging your head against these unnecessarily tough enemies when all you want is to see what happens next in the story. It’s hard to convince people to help with a story mission because there’s not much in it for them, and more importantly they don’t want to be spoiled if they are playing a different race or chose a different story path.

I’m a pretty experienced MMO player, and if I’m having trouble I imagine there must be more casual players who literally cannot advance in the story because of the difficulty. You can’t even out-level the content and come back when you’re stronger because the game just cuts your level on you, so it’s real harsh to make the story content so tough.

I’m thinking one of the disconnects between personal stories and PVE in the open is that in regular PVE you get to set the rules of engagement more often than not. Sure, sometimes you turn a corner and run into a zerg of enemies, or an event springs an ambush on you. But by far and wide you get to determine the time, place and type of fight yourself. Which, if I remember my Sun Tzu right, is key.

In personal story missions, the rules of engagement have been predetermined. Enemies dig into positions they won’t leave or spawn and come straight for you, ignoring everything else in their path. They’re definitely harder than PVE out in the open. Sometimes annoyingly so.

I had a similarly frustrating experience with the Asura level 16 personal story mission ‘Free Rein’.

In the mission there’s 4 portals that constantly spawn groups of elementals once you defeat a group and they’re placed rather close together. Trying to fight at one of the portals would generally pull at least one other group of elementals and on my elementalist I couldn’t kill a whole second group of elementals before the first group respawned. Trying to play carefully I’d eventually get overrun and trying to just blast through to the boss would usually end up pulling three spawns of elementals at the same time with a chance of agroing the boss at the end.

I’d most likely do better on a class that could defeat the groups faster than they could spawn or on one that was sturdier, but on my elementalist that mission was just horrid. I nearly started to break armor I died so many times.

Come to think of it most of my deaths on my elementalists have been in personal story missions or in WvW.

Ah, forgot to mention the class I was playing. Thanks for reminding me Jeffrey. The circus storyline was on my Mesmer(sword + sword, traits geared toward damage. Don’t remember if I had any points in one of the defense-oriented lines at that point or not), and in Set to Blow I was on my thief(sword + Pistol, traits geared toward damage with points in the vitality line). The main issue was that I was overwhelmed in both cases, though the enemies in the final part of the circus storyline felt a bit over-tuned on top of that.

Engineer here. Set to Blow and Claw Island were deathtraps with slews of armor repair fees afterwards. Even using a turret-focused build which SHOULD be a “Hold this point down, solidify it, and kill anything coming at you” I couldn’t hold a point worth anything.

The problem with the personal story isn’t that the fights are exceptionally hard. It’s that AI behavior sucks. NPCs do jack-all to help, and enemy mobs make a beeline for the player. Every. Single. Time.

I’ve managed to get through most of my story quests without dying on my ranger, but I’ve had to resort to circle-strafing while a huge pack of mobs follows along behind me for minutes at a time, while I whittle them down one by one, the NPCs looking on stupidly at the spectacle.

Yeah, Greyfeld, that is an important point. Some of the story missions even pair you up with your race’s Destiny’s Edge hero, so you’d expect them to blitz through at least a couple of the packs quite happily. Yet in practice these renowned adventurers can’t hit for toffee. That’s pretty depressing! I kinda want to be in awe at how powerful they are, knowing that one day I too will be that strong.

But the way it works now, they just feel neutered.

Agreed for Free Rein. Way too hard. Between the one-shot enemies, the infinitely respawning one-shot enemies, no way to turn off the infinitely respawning one-shot enemies, your useless companions, the fact that the target of the quest REGENS HEALTH, so you can’t suicidally charge up the hill and wear him down, etc, etc., as an elementalist there is no way to beat this one.

I’m literally dying 15-20 times on a playthrough of each story mission. Normally, I can use my deaths as a positive event, but here, there’s no way to beat it. Play cautious and get swarmed because you can’t kill them FAST enough. Charge in and get swarmed harder.

Jeff keeps asking for specifics so we need to start flooding him with them. There are several threads about this and the general concensus about what needs tuning is “all of it” which he claims isnt helpful. So, instead we need to start listing them mission by mission, class by class.

Like most of you Im tired of it. I can deal with the bugs at launch, having to try 5-6 times on several quests to get them to work correctly, but then, even when it does work, its still costing me money and making me frustrated. So, Just start giving him what he wants.

Level 73 Guardian, spec’d into toughness wearing toughness gear. greatsword sword shield. The personal story for level 71 where you deliver the sad news about tonn. Mobs spawn, all are marked invulnerable, I die, I reset from checkpoint, run down the hill, entire camp is dead, I get swarmed. I kill 2-3, die, run back, kill 2-3, die, run back.. etc until the entire camp is clear. Quest reward? Boots worth 49 copper that I can use, and no extra money, I was perfect before I started the quest as there is a heart there in Trinity, screen shot of my cost for doing this quest. My personal story is trying my patience, and its costing me money. I’m following A-net guidelines, they said as a player we should ask ourselves if “we are having fun?”. This.. not so much.

Through the looking glass, same char as above.

I chose quaggan line, after first part when you respawn, quaggan are nowhere to be found, saved one or two people before moving into that hallway leading to eye for second fight. took some pics. Trahearne just stands there after convo (see pic, thats him in the back scratching his head), not sure if intentional. Died, when running in I saw quaggan dead outside the instance border, by shuffling along the border trying not to get kicked i finally got 3 of them rezzed before heading down that hallway. again getting swarmed and my friends (quaggan) go down super quick. by the time i can rez one, more rizen have respawned. again, not sure if this is intentional, but it doesnt feel like im fighting through a swarm of risen, it feels like im fighting the same repawning mobs over and over because all my help is getting two-shot. I have to die and run back, finish anything still alive, rez, fight respawn.. inching forward. Went to turn in quest and did air ship quest, didnt have problems with that part. No deaths. This is from through the looking glass. another 6 silver and 38 copper.

I’ll be honest, the story quests do not seem tuned for one person, they seem tuned for a duo.

I play in a duo 90% of the time. We’ve managed all the story quests, and sometimes with a bit of nail-biting when we get flooded with mobs. A frequent comment over our little mumble server is “whew! I can’t imagine how someone is supposed to solo this!!” Because we’ve always got the ability to rez/support/guard each other, depending on the duo.

A friend of ours who is frequently in the same mumble is insisting on soloing her quests. She’s having to outlevel them in order to do it.

majik.2035:

Through the looking glass, same char as above.

I chose quaggan line, after first part when you respawn, quaggan are nowhere to be found, saved one or two people before moving into that hallway leading to eye for second fight. took some pics. Trahearne just stands there after convo (see pic, thats him in the back scratching his head), not sure if intentional. Died, when running in I saw quaggan dead outside the instance border, by shuffling along the border trying not to get kicked i finally got 3 of them rezzed before heading down that hallway. again getting swarmed and my friends (quaggan) go down super quick. by the time i can rez one, more rizen have respawned. again, not sure if this is intentional, but it doesnt feel like im fighting through a swarm of risen, it feels like im fighting the same repawning mobs over and over because all my help is getting two-shot. I have to die and run back, finish anything still alive, rez, fight respawn.. inching forward. Went to turn in quest and did air ship quest, didnt have problems with that part. No deaths. This is from through the looking glass. another 6 silver and 38 copper.

I´m stuck at the same mission, but I went with the skritt. I play as a human elementalist. Gave up after I entred a maze with corridors and lots of risen in it. Made it to a stair, there we got swarmed and all my fellow skritt followers died. And without support I died pretty quick as well. And the Trahearne NPC was´nt much help since he did´nt do any damage at all, useless… I tried to fight my way back to Trahearne and the skritts to rez them, but I never made it. The risen kept spawning in previos clearad corridors, and I could not kill them off before they started to respawn again… sigh. I´m starting to hate the personal missions… It´s not fun to die over and over again…

As my ranger I can run him pretty well, I can kite, I can dodge; I have also been known to solo a group event (a large boss on his own) and that is without dying or even getting downed but the personal stories are far too difficult for solo work. There was a particular quest late in the game involving guarding a shipment of mortars to take out some undead, the first couple of enemies were veterans….. i think i was downed once and killed outright three times without even having a chance to be downed and this all under a minute or two…. a bit ridiculous as far as I am concerned. As I said above I know how to handle my ranger, I still had trouble. I hate to imagine these quests with a squishy character or some character I am terrible with. They should either tone down the difficulty or make it relevant to the profession, perhaps both.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

What class are you playing?

I don’t think it’s an issue of class. And even if it was, it SHOULDN’T be. If it’s a personal story it should be doable with any class without major issue.

But they’re ALL like this. Every personal story is absolutely insane to solo. My girlfriend and I just did the battle on Claw Island last night alone and it was RIDICULOUS. I can’t even count how many times we died to complete swarms of Risen spawning endlessly and randomly pulling aggro.

That was one of the worst examples, but many, MANY story quests are like this whether you’re at-level or not.

So so so very much agree. I’m an Engineer, circus oriented, Dromund Priory membership seeking guy trying to get through Queen’s Justice, a level 28 quest. I’m now level 42 and still can’t complete it solo. I have screenshots of me lying on the floor dead while about 8 or 9 (sometimes more) mobs hover over me.

Honestly, I’ve just given up the personal storyline. I play solo because of odd hours and this is just too frustrating. The rest of the game is great but seriously, I can’t face that mission one more time or my monitor will suffer the consequences.

Twoflower.3176:

Engineer here. Set to Blow and Claw Island were deathtraps with slews of armor repair fees afterwards. Even using a turret-focused build which SHOULD be a “Hold this point down, solidify it, and kill anything coming at you” I couldn’t hold a point worth anything.

Guardian here. stuck at claw Island level 50, i have given up gonna gain a few levels and come back to it, the repairs are just to much

TheGHammer.1962:

Yeah, Greyfeld, that is an important point. Some of the story missions even pair you up with your race’s Destiny’s Edge hero, so you’d expect them to blitz through at least a couple of the packs quite happily. Yet in practice these renowned adventurers can’t hit for toffee. That’s pretty depressing! I kinda want to be in awe at how powerful they are, knowing that one day I too will be that strong.

But the way it works now, they just feel neutered.

yea Forgal Kernsson is down pretty fast in the (battle for claw island) you seem to do way more dmg than he does and that shouldn’t be

Set to Blow was easily the worst for me. It was the only time I died so much in a row without repairs that my armor started breaking. I play thief, and even switching to shortbow and kiting the destroyers around didn’t help much, as five enemies’ lava AoE would box me in, or I would run into the boss, etc.

I won when I was downed, after poisoning the boss and waiting impatiently to see if it would kill it off or if it would reset. Thank god, somehow I managed to pull it off.

Afterwards there was a hilarious glitch (probably because I was “defeated” when the next cutscene happened) where I was laid on the floor as if dead but could still walk (slide?) and jump and stuff. The hilarity of it almost made it worth it.

could be the classe or/and the choices made,
on my ranger did not have much trouble so far would even find it too easy if the parts i choose were made easier unfortuantely i have not recorded the names of the choices i choose whispers order as human

claw island was hard had to use repair canister (the first time) but i was also under the requiredleel and in the end i saw that they were so slow that i could kite them choosing one in the pack and runnign around but i wonderd how a non ranged classe could do this, warriors have bows but i think guardians dont ahve any ranged weapon

oups read “under the required level,”
well i think the personal quests should be adapted to the class, i may find them harder when playing on other characters and making other choices
i do update my armor before each personal quest, i found some places for instance some caves harder than the personal quests

Agreed for Free Rein. Way too hard. Between the one-shot enemies, the infinitely respawning one-shot enemies, no way to turn off the infinitely respawning one-shot enemies, your useless companions, the fact that the target of the quest REGENS HEALTH, so you can’t suicidally charge up the hill and wear him down, etc, etc., as an elementalist there is no way to beat this one.

This mission was hard for my mesmer, but certainly not impossible. For sure I died a few times, but I thought it was fun. Some of the story missions are laughably easy, and they’re boring. Maybe my approach won’t work for elementalists for some reason.

The key was to recognize that the real threats are the fire and ice elementals, which are located at the first two portals. The boss is accompanied by sparks (if I remember correctly), which don’t kill you nearly as quickly. Just charge past all the enemies; there is enough space in the instance behind all the portals that you can run far enough and the monsters stop chasing you.

Then turn around, pull the sparks and the boss, and take them out. After you kill the boss, it becomes possible to take out the portals, so you can work your way backwards, killing each group one by one.

I just got to “Set to Blow”

I don’t know why someone would ask what class you are playing like it would matter. I just quit without finishing a quest for the first time ever. I had 2 trolls, 2 harpies and 3 destroyers plus the queen after I was able to single pull about 3 or 4 out of there. Each one routinely hit me for over 1k on 6k health.

As a guardian I cant even really damage anything in there, and I made a record stay alive 25 seconds just spamming immunities. All NPCs die in 3 hits.

Can’t kite reliably up the ramps. Got a couple to work, the others got maybe a dozen tries before I rage quit.

Playing ranger level 56, I had some issues too in the mission where you go see the Pale Tree with Trahearne – sorry, can’t remember the name. I know some friends with various classes had difficulties there too.

The first groups of mobs you stumble upon, those magic weapons floating in the air, are horrible. First, I felt they do really much more damage than other ennemies. Then I couldn’t use bleed on them – and my build is based on condition damage and bleed – so I tried to kite them, but I couldn’t slow them down either it seems. I ended up noticing how you can see the weapons on the floor before they pop and attack you and avoided them. This was the only way I managed to finish the mission.

If those weapons were not meant to be avoided, then I think they should be toned down a bit.

Adding the most recent one I had issue with:
Rat-tastrophe. Did it as lvl 45 thief. The problem is the amount of destroyers you get saddled with in each wave, and there is no letup between each. Stacking burns quickly killed the npc’s and then I had to run around kiting using dual pistols. Still left me with a handful of deaths.

Norn lost heirloom arch, if you choose to follow kodan advice:
the amount of enemies spawning during the ritual is ridiculous. At least you have kodans to help you during the first parts (though they hjelp little, as usual with NPCs in PS)… But at the end, when it’s only you, Eir and one bear and kitty-loads of enemies, it’s not funny any more. I had to kite like a headless chicken and the fact that I was a guardian, defensive and over the target level didn’t really seem to help.

I freakin’ hate kiting, it’s the most anti-climatic mechanic ever, and GW2 seems to be full of it. Not fun, but boring and annoying.

The mechanics in the story quest instance is probably the worst I have ever seen in an MMORPG. Mobs aggroing at you with no reason. Even if you just try to start the encounter by approaching them, without even harming them. They just don’t care who is hurting them, they all just want to kill you. No one would want to play a game like this.

If GW2 does not have this story quest, I won’t mind and I would probably give it a score of 90 regardless of so many bugged events. But with all those nightmare experiences and frustration from the story quest, I would give it at most a score of 50. We pay and play for fun. Tons of frustration would just eliminate all those fun and make the game worthless to play.

Even now, I am running away from the game due to a level 8 story quest that makes me mad. Still unable to complete it and I gave up. It might take me a day if I come back for the game. But I guess I would never try to do the story quest for that character anymore unless they fix the whole mechanics.

Jeffrey,

I was playing through the personal story quests with my (staff) elementalist up to the level 40 quests and I’ve since stopped playing the personal story because nearly every quest has been an experience of frustration. Most quests are designed around the idea of either throwing lots of mobs at the player or throwing champions and/or veterans at the player. This often leads to the situation that I’m forced to kite around to stay alive and playing those quests feels very much like running around like a headless chicken. There are often NPCs with me in the quest instance but they either:

a) fail to engage in combat and just stand there, two paces away from me and twiddle their thumbs while watching me getting downed. His majesties most useless soldier Logan is a prime example of this behavior,

b) engage in combat but deal no noticeable damage to their enemies and/or are incapable of taking aggro off of me,

c) they get downed in less than 5 seconds.

I very much believe in the idea that a personal story should be primarily about telling a story. It should not be about challenge because challenge can be had in places like dungeons which are isolated pieces of content. So if a player either chooses not to play a dungeon or faces a too high challenge level there then that’s not a big deal. But in the case of a personal story it means blocking the player from playing to the end of the story.

Because of this I completely disagree with the view that you expressed in another thread that it would be acceptable that a player has to show up with a specific weapon and/or a specific trait setup to get through a quest. It should never be the case that a quest that is part of a personal story requires that a player has to retool his character just to get through it. Instead the personal story should be:

a) about telling a story in an engaging way and allowing the player to take the story in at his pace,

b) personal. A player who chooses a particular class, weapon set and trait setup has made a personal decision what makes his character his character. A personal story quest should not force him to throw his personal decisions over board just to get through this quest.

The main problem with the personal story in GW2 is really that it is simply not about telling a story. The central design idea seems to be “let’s see how fast we get the player to the floor!”. That’s the opposite of what I expected it to be. I’ve played the epic story in Lotro and I would honestly recommend that you check out how the epic story is implemented there. It can be played by any class with any choice of weapon and any trait setup because the epic story there is really about telling a story. Players who want primarily a challenge can go and do a dungeon or raid instead or in addition to the epic story. But the epic aka personal story is about telling a story. What Turbine also does differently is that for many epic story quests the player can choose whether he wants to do it in a group or solo. The quest is balanced for 6 characters in the former case and in the latter case the player receives an “elf stone” from the quest giver. The player can activate the elf stone in the quest area and it drastically increases the player’s stats while he remains in the quest area to the point that he can defeat elite mobs solo. This may sound a bit weird but works very well in actual practice and it allows players to play all quests solo if they so choose.

The thing is that I still know every single epic quest that I played through in Lotro and I have very good memories of them although it has been years that I played the early ones. I still get goose bumps when I replay the “We can not get out” session play although I know that it is deliberately designed in such a way that I can not win this quest because it is about the small group of dwarves that tried to retake Moria and they failed and you play as one of those dwarves. But here in GW2? I don’t even know why some NPCs address my character as “advocate” or where I got that title from because the majority of my worry and energy is focused on staying alive and this drowns out the story aspect.

If you want to fix the personal story then the way to fix it is to replace the design goal:

“kill the player”

with

“give the player good memories of a well thought out story with plot twists that play out over many levels. Also, although the character is considered to be a hero, this still does not make him perfect and unable to screw up”.

My champion (basically an offensive warrior) in Lotro failed to help safe the daughter of one of the rangers from the witch king in Angmar. Every time I meet her father he reminds me of that fact and how much he misses his daughter. In that game I’m a hero but not perfect. In GW2 I’m apparently a perfect hero but for some mysterious reason still spend a whole lot of time on the floor – throwing rocks at my enemy.

I think maybe the objectives aren’t clear enough sometimes and you end up thinking you have to kill everything to move on. I died countless times on that “revive Deputy Mira” bit on Claw Island thinking I had to elimiate the risen first, but I have a suspicion they are in fact endless. In the end I ran straight to her, popped Shadow Refuge, rezzed her…objective complete. Same with the Pale Tree vision one (whatever its called) I died loads of times before I realised I could just avoid 90% of the mobs by outrunning them and use the NPCs as risen fodder. But that Eye of Zhaitan at the end of that was a real pain and thats a fact. I think I mostly poisoned / bled it to death while hiding behind pillars.

Well said, Korval.

I mainly want to see how my personal story plays out. If I want a solo challenge, there are Skill Points for that. If I want a team challenge, there are dungeons for that.

The main fixes should be:
Make the NPC’s useful – give them some AI worth a crap and ability to actually do damage
Either have the story instances adapt to the profession or tune them to the squishiest profession
Do not allow armor to be damaged while in a personal story instance. It is not fair that cloth wearing classes are saddled with huge repair bills after doing a personal story instance. This game does not hand out gold left and right (which I am glad about actually) so the repair bills are a real deal breaker.

Worst personal story event so far: Rat-Tastrophe (Anka above also talked about this one)
Profession: Staff Elementalist (Fire)
Level: 44
Recommended Level: 42
All the NPC’s died in the first wave of tiny destroyers. No breaks between waves so that I could rez at least one of them. By the sixth or seventh wave, all my armor was broken and I couldn’t fight without dying immediately. Also when restarting from checkpoint – the mobs were right where I respawned instead of remaining where they were supposed to be. I think I died at least 10 times.

For some personal story quests, you just need to swap your utility skills around, or even your weapon sets, for the situation. I ,through my entire experience, never had to leave the personal story instance after entering it at the required level. I have died, and I have had to restart, but I have never needed to leave and come back when I’m a few levels higher. Oh and that does include the “Rat-Tastrophe” quest mentioned in the last post. As for all the killed NPCs in that quest, I think that’s just to give more of a sense of urgency and how without the explosives, this is a losing battle. Remember that this game is meant to have difficulty to it, it’s not just a slew of gear checks like other MMOs, as that level gets higher, your gonna need to play the game better or you will get eaten. When I played my elementalist I just stayed in the fire attunement for a good while, but once the level 30 content started hitting me, I started to realize I actually need to cycle the attunements if I had any hope of surviving. If what you are doing isn’t working and the game seems to have hit you with enemies you can’t beat, it’s time to start experimenting to find the optimal way to clear the content.

I know it sounds kind of heartless and more like I’m trying to mess with you guys, but if you find yourself having a lot of difficulty with the Personal Story quests (which are designed to be solo able) then you need to get better at the game, it’s as simple as that.

There are Personal story quests that are broken (with items vanishing, NPCs getting stuck and occasionally an invincible mob that will fight you forever without ever taking damage), but “these fights are too hard” is not one of these issues.

Have to say I agree completely with Korval.

The only quest I’ve encountered on my Sylvari Engineer so far that was completely broken was Source of the Issue, where there’s a bout 4 square yards of out-of-the-water space, and I got killed in around 15 seconds while trying to avoid damage, my party members being totally useless of course.

I went and read suggestions online on how to complete it (the wiki is actively misleading, suggesting a method which must have been patched out — attacking the enemies from a place where they cannot attack you, which just sets them invunlerable.) I tried a variety of methods. At my 10th attempt or so (with a long run back each time), I managed to pull the enemies underwater pretty much one at a time. A technique which could not have been possibly attempted on the first attempt.

So I view this quest as completely broken. Impossible to succeed at the first time.

However, over 50% of the story quests (mostly those involving combat) leading up to this point were also not fun. I chose the moon as a Sylvari so my first sequence involved the knight and his betrothed. The NPCs were never helpful and the number of opponents extreme, so if i played “to win the battle” i just wound up dead. Instead I had to do silly kite and pull techniques which went directly against the story context.

Meanwhile, my experience with “Source of the Issue” soured me enough on the Story events, that I’m dreading doing another, and may just never do so unless I hear they get fixed.

Kurodius – I understand what you are saying but not everyone enjoys doing what you suggest. It’s a game and I’m supposed to be having fun. The personal story instances have gotten to the point where they are simply not fun.

The point that a lot of posters above are trying to make is that they aren’t interested in proving their skill during a personal story – they are interested in story. There are plenty of other places in the game to show how leet you are.

Korval.2197:

I very much believe in the idea that a personal story should be primarily about telling a story. It should not be about challenge because challenge can be had in places like dungeons which are isolated pieces of content.

Definite agreement. I like a challenge now and then — couldn’t have been a tank during my entire time in WoW otherwise. I haven’t rage-quit a story-mission yet even though I came close once or twice. But there’s a difference between a fair challenge and a “spawn half a dozen hard-hitting enemies with ranged attacks right on top of a lowbie player in an open area” or “endless instant respawns out of thin air” or “10+ Usain Bolt zombies with knockdowns and conditions out the wazoo”.

Also, changing utilities and whatnot doesn’t seem to do a whole lot because of the long cooldowns (and short durations) on many of those things.

If you want to fix the personal story then the way to fix it is to replace the design goal:

“kill the player”

with

“give the player good memories of a well thought out story with plot twists that play out over many levels. Also, although the character is considered to be a hero, this still does not make him perfect and unable to screw up”.

Again, full agreement. Seriously, the story missions are should be what engages us emotionally. They shouldn’t be 95% running around and (sometimes badly overtuned) combat and 5% conversation with disposable NPCs whom we will never see again — or if we do, they’ll remember neither us nor how close we were nor what we did for them.

zonkeroo.7918:

Kurodius – I understand what you are saying but not everyone enjoys doing what you suggest. It’s a game and I’m supposed to be having fun. The personal story instances have gotten to the point where they are simply not fun.

The point that a lot of posters above are trying to make is that they aren’t interested in proving their skill during a personal story – they are interested in story. There are plenty of other places in the game to show how leet you are.

Then I’m sorry sir, but you are in the wrong artistic medium. Every game expects you to learn the mechanics and get better at the game as you progress, that’s the nature of games in general. If you just want a story with no contribution of skill, watch a TV series or a movie. Or at the very least, there’s youtube. The continuation in the story is a reward for completing that section of the story. When I face a hard personal story instance that killed me multiple times, I feel triumphant when I finally win and I’m immediately gratified with story, experience, and occasionally and upgrade to my current gear. If the game was easy through out the personal story, then it wouldn’t be nearly as engaging to me or to a lot of other gamers.

Besides, if you can’t clear the content in the instances that are designed for one person to play them, then how can you expect to face the meta content? The dungeons in the game are more difficult than anything in the personal story, and the later level dynamic events also crank up in difficulty pretty hard.

Oh, and another way to make it so you can clear the content even if your lacking in skill, is the ability to invite people to help you. Problem solved.

@Kurodius, please be respectful of other players. “Well games are not for you” is basically trolling.

Note that even the “l2play” crowd encounters and states the problem without realizing the significance of what he just said. To wit, this is not a case of dying over and over until you smarten up and learn the mechanics of an architected fight. Rather, this is a case of winning via attrition; resurrecting and whittling down the mobs enough to eventually prevail.

The critical thinker will not confuse “skill” with victory by way of attrition, and the non critical thinker can safely be ignored, as always.

The problem people are encountering is one or more poorly tuned encounters compounded by technical flaws, such as when the mobs follow you to the resurrection point. Period.

I’ve been gaming for as long as computer games have existed and I consider myself “good” at it. I was able to do the Eye in one go. I mention this only to provide background and “street cred” for stating unequivocally that there are some very poorly tuned encounters scattered throughout the story. If I find myself saying “Geez, this is kind of silly” I can only imagine how the average player is faring in that encounter.

If you’re really struggling you might try holding off on the story until you’ve leveled past it. Even though you’ll be downleveled you’ll still have access to more skills and trait points/bonuses, so a downleveled 60 pretending to be 30 is more powerful than a natural 30.

Okomi.8693:

@Kurodius, please be respectful of other players. “Well games are not for you” is basically trolling.

Two things:

1.The definition of “trolling” is to intentionally express fallacies with the intent of making others angry over your pseudo-ignorance. Trolling is not just doing something to make people angry, just to let you know.

2. I don’t believe I am wrong that games by nature require the player to improve in actually playing the game I order to complete it. I acknowledge that there are some Personal story quests that do turn into a battle of attrition, but not to the extent that it should push you out of doing any Personal Story instance as others in this post have suggested. I also gave tips for people who are having this issue such as inviting friends to help you beat the Personal Story segment, so I don’t believe I was being disrespectful.

Offtopic but…

The original definition of trolling (circa usenet 1990) was to intentionally introduce discord into a discussion without meaning to seem to do so. This could be by producing false statements (a clumsy method) or to simply state seemingly innocent views with the intent of triggering a flamewar among the participants.

Over the years, usage has shifted. Nowadays it is used rather loosely to mean either intentionally introducing discord via any means, or to simply be ridiculously hostile to the point of humor (from someone’s perspective, not all).

I meant it in the means that you’re rather intentionally introducing discord. Which you were.

However now you’re straw manning the discussion by suggesting people here don’t want to improve, which is more classical trollish action.

Your NPC help literally stands around doing nothing in many of the storyline quests.

Like…the one where you retake claw island. I had a huge party of norn adventurers I recruited. They wouldn’t attack any of the risen except directly inside the cap points on the ramparts.

They also wouldn’t attack the undead dragon at the end but would attack the grubs he spit out.

mighty heros indeed.

One way to ease the toughness woudl be to change the rate gear gets damaged in story missions to say one piece every 2-3 downs that way people wont get to a point where youve effectively bankrupted them via ridiculously overtough mobgroups, i just got the the lvl 53+ story missions(magic sucks and the prophetic vision one in the grove) and so far each time ive been downed 2 pieces get damaged not the usual 1, im not sure if higer lvl missions are suposed to do this or if its a bug but after a couple of downs im starting to think it’s not worth the effort or cash i’ll have to use for repairs which is sad as im actually enjoying the storyline so this roadblock is kind of annoying.

Another option would be drop repair oils more often in the story missions that’d help ease the problem and keep people on their feet with gear that isnt bust.

Oh im a thief so i get that im abit more squishy than other classes but uptill these 2 missions ive had no real troubles with the storyline.

Vorpal.4683:

Your NPC help literally stands around doing nothing in many of the storyline quests.

Yeah, you can’t rule out the effect of this and other technical problems. If the mission was designed to include your NPC allies and they end up spending a lot of time not fighting, rather like Ranger pets, then obviously the intended difficulty and the actual difficulty will differ.

Okomi.8693:

Offtopic but…

The original definition of trolling (circa usenet 1990) was to intentionally introduce discord into a discussion without meaning to seem to do so. This could be by producing false statements (a clumsy method) or to simply state seemingly innocent views with the intent of triggering a flamewar among the participants.

Over the years, usage has shifted. Nowadays it is used rather loosely to mean either intentionally introducing discord via any means, or to simply be ridiculously hostile to the point of humor (from someone’s perspective, not all).

I meant it in the means that you’re rather intentionally introducing discord. Which you were.

However now you’re straw manning the discussion by suggesting people here don’t want to improve, which is more classical trollish action.

I never intended to cause discord of any kind. I simply stated a dissenting opinion. If there is one thing that get’s under my skin, that’s when people take honest criticism and dissenting opinions and put them in the same category as those who just want to spread bile over the internet. All open discussions need room for dissenting opinions and criticism.

When I saw this post and read through a number if the posts, very few were simply saying “it seems kind of weird how some of these quests are harder than it seems they need to be.” What I saw was people claiming that the game is being completely unfair in what it asks of the player to the point that they find the personal story to be broken and something to completely avoid due to its difficulty. From my experience, the Personal Story is far from perfect and has numerous issues, but I don’t find the difficulty to be one of them, at least to the extent that some people on this post suggest.

I agree with the OP. The storyline quests are ridiculously difficult in relation to their -alleged- level. While this is an MMO, no one likes to be forced to beg for a partner of group to help them do a few minute storyline quest and the older the game becomes, the harder it will be for newer player to find someone. A lot of adults who play (and pump in some real money, I might add) don’t have the kind of schedules that lend themselves to the time needed to beg for groups/partners etc and then, maybe if they’re lucky and get one, play a two minute storyline. The storyline quests -should- be entirely soloable at the level they are given. They should also NOT be forced into a full grouped dungeon to do them or get stuck not being able to finish the very thing that helps make the player feel more immersed in their place in the game.

well i ripped throu the story right at launch on a warrior and have gone throu it again recently, i can assure you they have made some huge changes and greatly improved them.
perhaps more to come but theyre doing good work.

I’m about to complete the story on my Staff Ele. I’ve done about half of the quests solo, and about half in a duo or trio. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed the challenge in the story quests. I like that they’re not a face roll, and I have several friends who have solo’d all theirs (mostly on Ranger, War, or Guardian). However, I also have some friends who struggle to complete them even in a duo, so I have to agree they probably need some balancing to up the fun factor and decrease the frustration.

I’ve had most trouble when there has been either a bug and/or a flawed game mechanic. For example, the first Claw Island was my toughest challenge. I can’t tell you how many times I died. Two things contributed to this:

(1) The means to the objective were unclear. I engaged mobs I didn’t need to, which brought even more down on me, dying ensued.

There was no way to distinguish between “you must kill the finite number of things in this area to progress” and “these mobs will keep spawning forever, noob” until I had killed quite a lot of them…and been killed. This is because, very often, in the first case, the finite number is large so they appear the same for awhile.

(2) As someone else noted, where Mira dies makes a HUGE difference to the difficulty.

In my case, she died right where the mobs spawn, so I could only rez her by running in, rezzing a bit, dying, running back, repeat. It was horrid, not fun, and costly. I subsequently helped friends with this quest, and she usually died where she could be easily rezzed without engaging the spawn pack.

A similar thing happened to my group doing Armor Guard last night. The key NPC needed to progress the quest died while we were defending during repairs. Only we had no way of knowing it wouldn’t progress without her – she didn’t seem important. Mobs just kept spawning forever. We ran ahead to the green circle, which appeared to progress the quest, only it didn’t really.

(Those circles should not appear when you’re not supposed to move forward, BTW).

By the time we figured out it was probably tied to the NPC, and rezzed her, the quest was bugged. We had to suicide and start over. This time, we made sure to keep an eye on her and not let her die. The quest progressed as it should have.

With vistas, I usually figure out I’m doin’ it wrong when it seems too hard to get to. I’ve come to apply the same rationale to the story quests, but it’s been a painful learning experience. That’s an OK mechanic for vistas. It is purely annoying (and expensive) in an infinite floodtide of mob spawns.