Guild Wars 2

Good evening, everyone. Today I’d like to ponder the future of the personal storyline (in the proper subforum), particularly where it can be improved in relation to the past. Rather than focus on certain elements commonly repeated, vegetable or otherwise, it might be wise to consider the overall tale as it relates to our hero. First and foremost…

Bring It Home

One of the most significant narrative problems with the personal story is its disjointed nature. By breaking off each storyline every ten levels, the game couldn’t bring back many of the NPCs you met early on and use them to interact further with your character. There were a few exceptions, but they had usually forgotten about you by the time you got to that point in the story and did not recall anything prior. Not feeling the love. Likewise, the story had a particular problem in regards to focus, becoming less about you the longer you progressed.

To fix this, begin the next phase of the story right back where we started with the Journey Home. All this dragon fighting has doubtlessly changed the hero, and the best way to explore that growth is by taking them back to the beginning. Return the player character to their race and let them deal with the changing face of Tyria in the wake of an Elder Dragon’s defeat. Nobles and commoners of Kryta will return to the city, soldiers of the Black Citadel report back to their legion, academics of Rata Sum swagger in to their colleges in search of recognition.

In doing so, you can return the personal element of the personal story, writing dialogue from an individual’s perspective rather than the same lines for everyone. Likewise, it will allow the return of NPCs from the first few level brackets for further development. Finally, it will help further demonstrate the changing nature of both Tyria and the hero.

Similar steps can be taken in each future expansion, returning a player to their place of origin for a time. The initial choice may no longer be important (once you decide to be a Seraph/Shining Blade/Vanguard, it doesn’t matter if you were a street rat or noble), but the return to your people will help keep everything grounded and personal.

The one exception should be a system of callbacks. An ideal storyline system should have moments designed to act as references to what has come before. There may be a moment when the Racial Sympathy spells out who comes to your aid in a dire moment, and the consequences of orders given during the assault on Arah may have repurcussions. By planning these moments into the general storyline, the hero’s journey will seem far more cohesive.

Find Our Voice

Writing and voicing enormous amounts of dialogue is tough. We get that. Yet at the same time, it is simply unreasonable for a barbaric norn from the savage north to eventually end up talking like a chivalrous-yet-naive Sylvari or a sweet talking Asuran lady’s man. Likewise, it’s even worse when an engineer is told that a machine is too complicated for them to understand or a Sylvari who rescued someone thirty levels ago is told how they were valiantly saved by someone else.

We need a reasonable amount of selective voice acting.

During dialogue writing, I humbly suggest that Anet get used to adding bonus tags to just about everything. One special line just for necromancers conversing about death magic? Done. Special line if you’re norn and chatting about spirits of the wild? Jot it down. Need a reaction from the player, and not sure if it should be Charming, Ferocious, or Dignified? Do all three.

It will take more work, more effort, and more money. But at the end of the day, the Personal Story won’t be personal without it.

Awaiting Orders

The 10-level-gap method may have worked for the path to level 80, but it’s time for sidequests and diversions to have their day. We’ve joined orders, forged friends, established bonds of kinship, and now it’s time to capitalize on those endeavors. I suggest that future storytelling structure itself a little bit more like Eye of the North, allowing multiple tales to run in succession. That way, Anet can focus on writing a unique long form storyline for each Order, running alongside the home storyline focusing on friendly factions.

And while we’re at it, the tale can use the mentors to better effect. Do you wish to avenge Forgal and help his kinfolk seek vengeance? Do you want to learn how Tybalt escaped his untimely demise and what kept him from returning to the Order? Do you want to assist Sieran in coping with the fact that she is now a ghost haunting the living, a state which she is enjoying with far too much cheerfulness? The continuation of the Order storyline allows far more development between the player character and the friends they have forged.

Now then, there’s one more thing we have to talk about…

A hero is defined by their villains, and that is where we have a bit of a problem. Observe, if you will, the Elder Dragon Zhaitan…

This will not do.

We all know that this is the climactic battle of Tyria against a great Elder Dragon in name only, but it’s another thing to discuss what to do about it. Thus, I need to talk a bit technical. I’d like to take a bit of time on the soapbox to discuss ways to enhance the more dramatic moments of the Personal Story, specifically regarding motion, bosses, and moments of cinematic flair. It will be a tad disorganized, but please bear with me.

To make a better boss battle, we need three different elements. First, we need a better way to present a massive foe in a way that human sized players can fight. Secondly, we need an enhanced illusion of motion to allow a more physical battlefield between airship and beast. Third, we require an alternate approach to player power as it waxes and wanes, specifically in regards to down states and the battle’s end.

Fortunately, GW2 already has the coding for all of these. It just needs to be used to full effect, which is what I’d like to discuss today.

Rethink the Body of the Boss: one of the conundrums of designing a boss battle is the way the foe must have all its power crammed into one package, a single foe meant to take on many.  But like all good theater, one doesn’t actually need a single player, only the illusion thereof.  A more fantastic foe can often be crafted by blending multiple entities or mechanics into a thing that seems like a single foe rather than the sum of its parts. For example…

Hydra Style: create a boss composed of multiple “heads”, each of which is a separate enemy.
Giant Enemy Crab Style: create a boss with weak points hidden on its body, must open it up or flank.
Chimera Style: create a boss with multiple parts but a single healthbar. Each part fires independently to attack multiple targets.
Colossus Style: interlace physics objects into the boss’s body, allowing players to climb up body parts.

Add Drama to the Mix. Certain simple effects can vastly improve the tension and excitement of a battle by making it look far more epic than it might otherwise seem. Cinema has known about these for decades, and they should transition easily into actual gameplay.

Enhanced Illusion of Motion: the ability to animate the background and make it spin is a nice way to make it seem like a still object is turning. For better results, allow the background to be spun horizontally and vertically (thus allowing dipping), and use sudden movements to correspond to impacts (something hits the airship, and it shudders under impact).
Induce Physics: forced movement effects can make the illusion of motion seem real. Throw players and NPCs around in response to the battle going on around them and the shaky camera effects.
Shoot to Thrill: as demonstrated by the diorama, blowing things up is rather fun. By making many portions of the environment destructable by enemy fire, it is easy to show the opponent tearing a ship to pieces and seeming far more dangerous.

Finally, there’s one other undervalued mechanic in the game that can be used to great effect: the Downed State. Consider it’s most basic description, a mechanic that transforms the player’s skillbar completely in response to a certain state while changing the way they control their character. At the moment, it’s just used to avoid death, but there are other amazing things it could do, including…

Grappling Attacks: the boss grabs you and hoists you into the air. The camera zooms in dramatically, and you have four skills to use to attempt to struggle, slice, dice, and squirm your way out of a jam, entirely based on your chosen profession.
QTEs Done Right: quick time events are usually loathed because they are purely reactive, but the multiple buttons would allow a psuedo-downed state to empower the player to leap obstacles, climb cliffsides, or perform other cinematic movements.
Hyper Mode: when the going gets tough, the tough call in force multipliers. Certain cinematic moments could allow players to become larger than life, gaining a bar of elite abilities to blast away the nonplayer competition.
Finishing Moves: At the climactic moment, players could latch onto a boss and proceed to murder it in a most heroic manner using a profession-specific finisher set.

Using these simple techniques will allow the production of far more cinematic combat. For example…

Want the dragon to slam into the side of the ship, latch on with its claws, and attempt to tear it apart? Use an induced physics effect when the dragon hits, tilt the horizon and camera just slightly to make the ship appear off kilter, and split the body of the boss into multiple parts. Players must attack the claws of the beast that are gripping the hull while avoiding or slaying the serpentine heads of the dragon that strike from all sides.

Want the beastie to look fierce and terrible? Let is sweep the decks of the ship with necrotic breath, destroying cannons and killing NPCs. Amidst the shattered glass and wrecked debris, let the bodies of Pact members rise to their new master’s call and attack with undead fury. For added drama, let Zhaitan blow up smaller airships in between passes, tearing the Pact to pieces.

Want the players to feel like they actually contribute to the fight, rather than just watch Pact weapons tear the Elder Dragon apart? Have Zhaitan destroy the main cannon when he is injured and rip the engine of the Glory of Tyria to pieces, forcing Destiny’s Edge to ram the elder dragon. Use induced physics effects to make the ship shudder and spin, then jolt forward towards the dragon and slam straight into its chest. “Ride” the beast down through the clouds by making the environment move around the ship until the entire continent of Orr splays out below them. Bust out your entire cinematic budget, letting the music roll in just as the clouds part and the sun rises in the distance. End the conflict of airship and dragon as the two fall like a metor into the center of Orr, then fade to black.

Fade in a moment later to find the PCs in the wreckage of the airship, the elder dragon pinned beneath it but very much alive. Let the final conflict be a simple duel to the death between an elder dragon and five heroes, both injured, tired, and very, very angry. The grand finale of the Personal Story should be an intimate and brutal affair, tearing victory literally from the jaws of death incarnate.

Heroes are defined by their villains. To build a better personal story, we need a better baby-feline dragon.

For the Zhaitan fight: Wouldn’t it have been cool if it grabbed the ship with its tentacles and in order to defeat it, you had to defeat its “tongue” comprising of dragon heads?

Why give it such a cool body with so many possibilities, and have it only sit on a tower having a seizure?

Risen are not cool anymore. I fought them for 90% of the story. I wanted to fight Zhaitan!

My hopes are ANET will let us fight the “soul” of Zhaitan in the second chapter of the personal story.

Shriketalon, your Zhiatan boss fight sounds incredibly epic. Instead of a wimpy, scared animal that seems like it has no idea what’s going on, Zhiatan would be a huge beast that would wipe out a quarter of the pact, destroy their flagship, and nearly kill the Destiny’s Edge and our heroes, before finally falling not to big cannons or fancy futuristic weaponry, but to courage and strength of five heroes.

As long as this boss fight was hard as well as spectacular, I’d have no problem with it.

@Shriketalon, from what you described it sound like dragon age Origin end boss fight with the archdemon. But yeah that would have been much epic that way if we could have had such an end. I hope Anet read this thread because they could use this to improved the next ED that we fight in the next big expansion.

I definitely think, that in future stories, we need to just kill off Trahearne or just pretend like he doesn’t exist. We need to be the hero, or it’s not our story. I understand why Trahearne exists. The developers want to be able to reference the obviously huge events of the game in future lore, for example, “Zhiatan was slain by Trahearne” instead of “Zhiatan was slain by the leader of the pact”. There’s just one problem, though: In Skyrim, there’s a whole, readable book describing the events of the previous game, and it managed to do just fine by referring to the game’s hero by just their title. So they really can’t use that excuse for Trahearne existing when Skyrim does just fine when not using it.

Also, I really love the idea of returning to our hometowns before we gear up to take down our next Elder Dragon. It’ll be nice to see how the characters from all the way back in act one are doing after our characters haven’t seen them in in-game months, possibly years.

OMG, Shriketalon, your ideas are genuinely inspiring. I wish the final fight against Zhaitan was how you described — and it really should have been. I’m sure it would have been a nightmare to create and fund, but it sure would have been worth it in the end. What we actually got in the final battle of GW2 was inarguably underwhelming.

I almost wonder if it was a mistake to even allow us to defeat Zhaitan and reach the story’s conclusion, right from launch. If they’d taken their time with it, and released the last few chapters periodically through future patches, they might have been able to take the time to craft an epic final conflict like you described. Maybe they would have gotten complaints, I don’t know — but as long as it was free and was in the pipleline, I don’t see how anyone could really complain about that.

Shriketalon’s posts are chock full of wonderful ideas! I feel that bringing the characters back to their homelands is an especially important idea because as the personal story goes on, you lose more and more of your unique ‘identity’ that you had so chosen. Races and orders don’t matter at the very end of it all, which while I understand was meant to be in the name of unity against a common foe, kind of damages some of the unique touches chosen by your race, profession, and personality.

I’m in love with your ideas, it all makes so much sense and I whole heartly agree.
And dang, if THAT was the fight I fought against Zaithan… It would’ve been really epic.

Those are some very good ideas. Well the story is done Zhaitan is dead, but I hope Anet enhances future personal storylines. Making the story branch off into houndreds of directions means nothing if they don’t feel connected. It’s funny how the GW2 storyline reminds me so much of the Prophecies one, many different stories stuck together, to what can barely be called a continuous narrative, with a rather disappointing boss fight (get lost Lich, I’m hear to fight Mursaat!).
If history repeats itself, we will get good ideas, but a ridiculous villian next and after that finally a great storyline with great characters. Let’s all get our hopes high for the second expansion!

Shriketalon.1937:

Enhanced Illusion of Motion: the ability to animate the background and make it spin is a nice way to make it seem like a still object is turning. For better results, allow the background to be spun horizontally and vertically (thus allowing dipping), and use sudden movements to correspond to impacts (something hits the airship, and it shudders under impact).

I agree with every word you said except this point. A fight should be challenging because of the mechanics, not because the camera is uncooperative or the background is disorienting. Like the “shaky cam” found in a lot of action movies these days, it ends up feeling like a cheap gimmick used to disguise other flaws.

Also, there’s the issue of motion sickness, which is already present for some people in static jumping puzzles because of the wonky camera issues GW2 seems to have. Putting what basically amounts to deliberately nauseating mechanics into a ten-minute boss fight required to finish the game would be pure torture.

Another, cheaper way of making the personal story more personal is making NPCs from previous chapters appear in later chapters.

The Battle for Claw Island had the Sonic Ray cannon in it on my elementalist, but Professor Gor on my Engineer. Both were significant parts of my earlier stories respectively.

This concept could be expanded upon by adding let’s say, the starter NPCs as fighting buddies (with maybe 1 or 2 lines of text as dialogue, no voice acting). The difference would be which NPC it actually was. For a noble humand, it’d be lord Faren, whereas a Charr could get an NPC from their starter warband, etc.

That way, the story matters, even if they don’t actually contribute to the story, at least they’ll be there.

Or like how the Hylek/Quaggan/Skritt you help earlier in your story appear to rescue you later. Things like that, are great (and cheap to implement compared to branching stories and extra voice actors).

Yes, please. (15 yes’s)

The ideas in this thread are hella good. Frill doe.

ThiBash.5634:

Another, cheaper way of making the personal story more personal is making NPCs from previous chapters appear in later chapters.

This concept could be expanded upon by adding let’s say, the starter NPCs as fighting buddies (with maybe 1 or 2 lines of text as dialogue, no voice acting). The difference would be which NPC it actually was. For a noble humand, it’d be lord Faren, whereas a Charr could get an NPC from their starter warband, etc.

This is an excellent idea. Tie-ins would help ground the player and make them feel like part of a living world. Watching these NPCs change and grow over time would help represent how Tyria changes overall, while also adding the personal touch.

Bringing back the racial sympathy NPCs would be particularly nifty.

Shriketalon.1937:

Shriketalon.1937:

Enhanced Illusion of Motion:

I agree with every word you said except this point. A fight should be challenging because of the mechanics, not because the camera is uncooperative or the background is disorienting. Like the “shaky cam” found in a lot of action movies these days, it ends up feeling like a cheap gimmick used to disguise other flaws.

This is a legitimate point, and I fully understand the potential problem of mixing cinematic effects with actual challenge. It would be quite terrible to include moments of serious gameplay tension with gimmicky tricks, since that would make them far more frustrating than interesting.

However, I do think there is a place for cinematic effects in the more dramatic sections of a mission. Proper pacing of a conflict requires a bit of ebb and flow, times of extreme adrenaline mixed with moments of calm and respite. Cinematic tricks would help make the latter moments be more thematic and cool, for lack of a better word, allowing players to ease off of the controls and be swept up by the ride for a moment before plunging back into the thick of it.

It’s one thing to have a battle where Kralkatorrik attacks your airship fleet. It’s another to have him whip up a branded sandstorm, smash into your allied ships causing them to careen down in flames, shrug off a megalaser blast like it was nothing, ram headlong into your capital ship, smash it to pieces and leave you hanging onto the tip of his tail by a few strips of stray rope. It’s all well and fun to say you’re standing on a dragon’s back, but it’s far more fun if the beastie is animated with a Phantom Train* technique to ensure that he can juke, turn, and roll midflight, forcing you to cling for dear life as the body upon which you stand whirls hundreds of feet above the ground. And it’s all well and good to say you’re slaying an Elder Dragon, but it’s another to be trying to reactivate Snaff’s device to lobotomize the great beast while holding off his minions atop his own shoulder blades, all while it rams into any reasonably sized mountain, canyon, cliff, or city it can find to scrape you off.

Sorry .. but trying to keep a foothold on an Elder Dragon while it twists and turns … trying to scrape/scratch you off like some parasite … seems to defy natural physics.
You’re gonna have to find some way to anchor your character on it or fall screaming to your doom.
But, it’s a pretty cool idea though.

PLEASE! Just make it go away. The writing is lousy, the voice acting is worse. Anet is NOT Bioware or even in the same league. Just make a general storyline with cut scenes like GW1. And spend more time working on scripting events and gameplay mechanics.

Shriketalon is right on the money with her/his suggestions and ideas. I just reached the final step of the personal story, and having to find a group to finish it has really turned me off, so instead of doing the last piece, I just watched it on YouTube. I’m very disappointed with how anticlimactic it is. Shriketalon’s depiction has me sitting back in my chair daydreaming that the fall back to Tyria was what actually happened.

The personal story had me going for a while, but the closer it got to the end, the more tedious and boring it became. I don’t care about Trehearne as a character and there just isn’t much of a sense of building tension towards the finale. It doesn’t feel like the fate of Tyria hinges on what I’m doing.

A better way to put it: I don’t feel like a hero.

Really well-written post full of amazing ideas, ST…I was practically watching the “epic movie” you described in my head, and it looked (and played) amazingly, with the best elements of games like God of War definitely shining through.

This is one awesome thread. Really hope Anet sees this.

Quite simply I’d like to more personal story that features our characters as THE hero, not A hero.

What I’d want to see in the story is more choices. No, not those little “what mission do you want to do” choices that really have next to no effect on the plot. I mean big choices.

Let’s say that after Zhiatan’s death, the Pact runs into some problems. Trahearne disappears while exploring Orr, and is presumed dead. As his second in command, you have several options:
-Take over leadership of the Pact, strengthen its organization, deal with underlings, and fight against internal and external threats
-Lead the search for Trahearne, attempt to find and rescue him
-Leave the squabbling factions of the Pact to continue your journey alone

BIG choices like these should not only have a huge effect on the storyline, but effect other parts of the game. Take over leadership of the Pact? You get Trahearne’s office and the ability to redecorate it, along with new dialogue and event options from Pact npcs. Or maybe you left the Pact, and they got a new leader—one that doesn’t particularly like you.

ok this is a concept from kekai http://www.theroundtablet.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/gw2-zhaitan-the-undead-dragon.jpg
wtf happened to our zhaitan?

Hec.8413:

wtf happened to our zhaitan?

The “Zhaitan” killed at the end of the PS is actually another construct like the Mouth and Eye; a ruse created by the real Zhaitan to get the Pact to back off so It could rebuild Its power. Orr is still stuffed to the gills with minions and the war rages on so I find it hard to believe Zhaitan’s actually dead. At least that’s how I think it should be treated going forward. Please Anet, a little retcon can be a good thing. Here are my thoughts…

Note – I’ve not completed the slaying of Zhaitan and after watching the video linked above I’m glad not to. That’s almost as uninspired an ending as the finale to ME3.

Start by adding little hints that the Pact is waning and becoming slightly complacent. Rumors of Zhaitan’s death are making the Orders squabble over how to proceed with the rebuilding and even Trehearne is in seclusion in the Orrian cleansing spring and he keeps muttering to himself.

Eventually Trehearne actually succumbs to Zhaitan’s influence (he’s had the most opportunity considering his five year proximity) or allowing for Sylvari immunity, Trehearne is plagued by the lackluster victory as much as we are and the idea that his calling is incomplete is actually straining his sanity. Our character is required to subdue/persuade him into returning to the Mother Tree where it is hinted that Zhaitan’s death has not actually been achieved. (As ED of Undead Magic, shouldn’t a Life based weapon have been the true death for Zhaitan? What’s with Trehearne’s insignificant sword that was SO necessary to acquire? Are those plot points in the final instance?)

Then, just before the next expansion, create a more epic/“realistic” battle to the death with the Elder Dragon Zhaitan and let us feel that our efforts truly meant something. Make this soloable (this is our story; friends are great but should not be required) with all our allies, including Destiny’s Edge, joining us for the final fight along the way. Allow us to act as commander, choosing tactics and sacrifices and otherwise directing the assault. When things go bad, allies are dying, Destiny’s Edge is on the ropes, and it looks as though Zhaitan may actually gain the upperhand, Trehearne finally steps up to be the heroic character he’s implied to be throughout and throws himself into the fray. End it with Trehearne falling and the player having to wield his sword to give the final blow. Trehearne can live or die but give us the satisfaction of killing Zhaitan instead of the feeling that we are a spectator to his death.

With the expansion replace the War for Orr (maybe even make pre-Zhaitan Orr an ‘overflow’ area for new toons to experience the lead up to Zhaitan?) with hearts for rebuilding the various areas, studying Orrian ruins, cleansing the salted earth, removing the residual undead menace, putting to rest the spirits of a once great Kingdom AND add hints of the next great ED threat and how to destroy It. Anet brags about this being a living game. Life evolves so let us experience the fruits of our labors and bring Orr to life… or life to Orr as it may be.

Finally, go back to the personal story of both the starting areas and Orders. Run them in tandem or sequentially but both are truly lacking at this point. There are already a few great suggestions in this thread but I would hope they would be a way to introduce new content in already existing but infrequently visited areas.

Dreamwalker.3617:

What I’d want to see in the story is more choices. No, not those little “what mission do you want to do” choices that really have next to no effect on the plot. I mean big choices.

Let’s say that after Zhiatan’s death, the Pact runs into some problems. Trahearne disappears while exploring Orr, and is presumed dead. As his second in command, you have several options:
-Take over leadership of the Pact, strengthen its organization, deal with underlings, and fight against internal and external threats
-Lead the search for Trahearne, attempt to find and rescue him
-Leave the squabbling factions of the Pact to continue your journey alone

BIG choices like these should not only have a huge effect on the storyline, but effect other parts of the game. Take over leadership of the Pact? You get Trahearne’s office and the ability to redecorate it, along with new dialogue and event options from Pact npcs. Or maybe you left the Pact, and they got a new leader—one that doesn’t particularly like you.

Agreed. I’d love it if during “Phase 2” of the personal story, it takes us back into the character creation screen, maybe has us select a few more things in our past, or what we’ve done since we (SPOILER) killed Zhaitan.

In my opinion, the choices in the PS lost their edge when it was just Trahearne staring at me telling me I have to do one thing or the other. The 1-20 levels of the Personal Story were the strongest, and then the further along you went, the weaker it got.

I enjoyed the PS up until Claw Island. After that, it lost most of it’s appeal unfortunately; I couldn’t get behind the Pact arcs so much, and the final fight with Zhaitan was a disappointment frankly.

Another problem with Zhiatan was that he was a faceless villain. As said in another thread, he was supposed to be an Eldritch Abomination, but he never gives off any real sense of threat, menace, or horror needed to create one. Unlike Alduin or Hermeaus Mora form Skyrim, Cthulhu of Lovecraftian fame, or half the bosses in Dark Souls, he never really seems like a threat. He never taunts us, threatens us, or acts in an arrogant way towards us. In fact, he doesn’t even show up until the end. How can we be expected to actually fear him when we never even see him? Finally, when we do see him, he’s a very, very, very easy boss.

Because of all this, Zhiatan fails as a villain on almost every level. He’s not very threatening or menacing. He is never even given any personality. He’s a very easy boss. He’s just there to be evil and give us something to root against. That is the very definition of a bad villain.

Now, how would we improve on this in the expansions?

1. Make future Elder Dragon fights challenging using mechanics mentioned by the OP. Pretty simple.

2. Have the other Elder Dragons appear throughout the storylines simply by having them show up and cause destruction during missions before leaving. Throwing in a hopeless boss fight early on in the story would help as well, with the player character being forced to retreat and recover from their wounds (In-storyline, of course. There would be no change to actual gameplay. Just have us pass out when we “die” and re-awaken several in-storyline days later. Kinda similar to the opening of the human storyline, only we pass out in actual gameplay instead of in a cutscene). This would really set up these dragons as actual threats and make them intimidating.

3. Give the dragons a voice. If this breaks some lore law, than retcon that lore law. Just give them a personality. This is very important to creating a good villain. If a villain has no real personality, then they really are just there to be bad.

Thanks to all of those who read through this whole post. I really think villains are important to a story.

Honestly and I don’t want to be negative like this… But I’ll echo once again what has been said over and over. And my apologies to those who developed it, but it just didn’t work on pretty much every level.

The story, the missions and about everything involved with it, it just bad, really bad. Almost indescribably bad. If there had to be a story in GW2, it would have been better served with one top-notch story for all, we would have had quality and ease of progression with groups. GW1 is like a light year ahead of this effort. For an expansion unless you guys have overcome all the issues, I’d just go back to what worked in GW1.

Bullet points:
The writing. I can’t believe the how bad it is. I don’t know if I’ve seen worst prior. Scattered, non-sensible, no memorable lines, no memorable characters, everything feels rushed along, simply no magic here. Almost a case study on how not to.

How you are doing something one moment and the next thing just doesn’t join well at all. It’s like ok…. now I’m doing this.

The mission objectives, so much of it is scrap, too little effort/action/steps to move it along. Go here, press something or a couple things, takes 1 minute… on to the next story. Ehh.

The part where the group see’s the cut-scenes while talking, but then this secondary subset of dialog where the leader talks additionally to NPC’s and that doesn’t break to a cut-scene and leaves the others in the group a little short changed. All the NPC dialog should have stayed with the teams cut-scene view. Also choices on what to do next should have been on those same cut-scene screens. Bioware has showed us all eons ago how to do this.

The way cut-scenes are presented one person on one side, another on the other… That to me didn’t work out well. Boring. GW1 in game was better and industry wide that is common and little complaint from the players.

The voice acting… after how bad other parts are, it becomes sort of one of the better things, they can only do so much with what is given. But still not very good comparing it industry wide.

Running stories of different members within a group and how that works out. Too much repeating. Another reason why I would favor just a single story. I know a multi-branching story sounds sexy and sells. But executed like this, uhhh… be careful what you ask for, comes to mind.

The rewards pretty much stink, the XP could be a bit too high.

The only thing good really is that it’s something different and something to do. But woah boy…