Guild Wars 2

WARNING: The following topic contains a lot of spoilers, I won’t hide them all so this is the forewarning.

I’m sorry Anet but what happened? While the personal stories start off by throwing you in at the deep end you soon gather yourself up and get involved. Your chosen race of hero starts to befriend you and you feel like you are a part of something growing. Then the orders come into play and you excite us with the possibility of learning of the orders and their secrets, finally letting us join one and pleasing us immensely. Then, the inevitable. You get introduced to your buddy fairly soon and your initial friend is soon forgotten about, never to be heard of again. While I can forgive the fact that your buddy gets overly friendly with you from the get-go, I believe Seiran was a PG rating from humping my virtual leg.

The first step in your destruction of the personal story is the speed of your advancement. I met my buddy, helped the skritt for a quest or two and then was promoted to the highest rank of the order? Surely the quests helping the skritt could be considered only 1 mission by the order, I must have done a real good job, is the rest of the order that useless then? (this is my main peeve with the personal story in my opinion, the advancement needs more hoops)

What next? Claw Island and dragons, while the set up to this area is done nicely, that is the final improvement on the story, it’s all downhill from there. The first steps on to the islands is perhaps the worst writing i have seen since Twilight and that was written by a 12 year old; at least in your writing the spelling and grammatical errors are minimal. The NPC’s are completely incompetent based on their responses considering the “kind of” important job they have. I know if random people managed to make it on to my island fortress without first knocking on the door or going through a minister for permission first I would be wary, no matter how much I recognise them. Also if someone mentioned a dragon on the way I would be a bit more believing considering I already know them enough to let them walk about my fortress by free reign. The charr leader was ridiculous, he refused to trust that an attack was happening and stands by the entrance the whole time and at the end of the quest his dialogue states “We did all we could.” Completely ludicrous! The mission ends with you buddy being removed from the game, I would have liked to see them become a mini-boss fight before fighting the dragon or perhaps a cutscene where you find their mangled corpse hanging above the gate when you come back to the island.

The future quests I did enjoy as it felt like you were really preparing for war and felt like you were doing something rather than running around with skritt for no apparent reason. The reason this does not save your PS though is due to the difficulty of the missions as you are on your own, I won’t get into that here, and the fact that Trahearne becomes more of a focus than the dragons. While the writing has gotten better this is largely not noticed due to those two factors. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen my fair share of random characters added to a story and taking all the credit before but those characters tended to have unique characteristics. I find absolutely nothing defining about the character, also the only mention of him before Claw Island is available to sylvari characters – could he not have been introduced once or twice from meeting with other high-ranking officials or even references made to him during the storyline? The writing is there to make him great but it has been executed badly. The dream Arah was great but hampered by the difficulty, Syska the Mesmer was a beautiful piece and was of the calibre I expected the whole way through but Trahearne just seems to put off everything you do as trivial compared to what is expected of him and the dragons.

I have read my fair share of fantasy books to know a character that should be killed off within the first 3-4 chapters. I have also played enough games, MMOs and others, to know when a character is presented badly. I personally bring it all down to your dialogue, my suggestion would be to hire writers and re-write from Claw Island onwards, what about R.A. Salvatore? He has been writing fantasy for years and knows how to write a storyline with characters that have feelings. I read that you had different writers on different areas, the writing about Divinitys Edge was written correctly even if players don’t like the characters because they had their own image of them from reading the books – it’s hard to fulfil the imagination of every player. We have background and growth in those characters, Trahearne is really just a kick in the teeth as he is nowhere near as interesting as the DE members, perhaps people were imagining fighting Zhaitan with Logan by their side?

In Guild Wars 1 your stories may have been cheesy butkittenwere they good. Every single little quest was interesting enough to play and the lore was enough to drive you forward before the quest began. To reference my above piece on Trahearne, let us look at Rurik. Cheesy, overshadowing and a horrible NPC to quest with, he was not called Captain Suicide for nothing. Now, ask the player base who they prefer. Rurik was known to the character almost as soon as the game started, his story was interesting and you didn’t feel like you were a backseat player. He was done right and his dialogue written correctly.

Let us look at Kormir, she is introduced as someone important, is with you from the start and even takes all of the credit for your work but at least the rest of the world still acknowledges you and while both Kormir and Rurik were hated by a few people they are both far superior to Trahearne due to good writing and a correct sense of uniqueness. Good writing is the key to the personal stories, without it, it feels as if they drag and you are only there to go through the motions and that is the way the personal stories have ended up.

They are motion, not emotion.

In closing I would ask that you return the option to vote on quests like you had in the Beta, the earlier portions of the game were available in betas and they feel the most polished while end game story areas were untested by players and are a bitter disappointment in the value of dialogue.

Dude. Paragraphs. No one is going to read that as it is. From what little I was able to read before my eyes started to bleed, I agree with you. The first 30-40 levels of personal story are pretty good. Your choices from character creation actually matter, you get to chose an order and choose missions for that order, it actually feels “personal”. Then, Claw Island kicks in, the story homogenizes, your choices cease to matter in any way, and what was “your” story quickly becomes “The Trahearne Show”. He becomes the focus, you cease to matter, and the story begins to suck wind. Once claw Island kicks in, I don’t do personal story at all until my late 70s, to supplement my xps and get that final push to 80. I end up doing it purely for the xp rewards and nothing else. I just don’t care about the story once claw island starts. They need to fix that. Create more branches to the story. The fact that EVERY SINGLE RACE OR CLASS HAS THE SAME EXACT STORY after level 40 or so, completely ruins the entire concept.

Just my thoughts.

Ha ha, sorry was writing it up at lunch in word, did a copy and paste but the paragraphs must not have carried, will fix that now.

Honestly I am fine with the stories converging, they needed to for the sake of an ending. It would be too costly to make things continually branching out, my problem and point I hope I made was the fact that it is extremely badly written for the last 30-40 levels so that means almost 50% of your levelling is done in a mediocre setting :/

It’s funny you mention the “Trahearne Show”. I’m up to a few missions after claw island (first time through) and we started quipping at story branches “What would Trahearne do?”

Well considering you have spoilers in here and well this is kind of a flaw all it’s own. Their are people that like the whole personal story, but, the whole personal story kind of sucks considering the end of your personal story is in the level 80 game dungeon, which sucks for anyone that hasn’t done the previous dungeon stories, because the dungeon stories are all linked, and your personal story isn’t really linked to the dungeons. So yeah there’s that to.

Turial.1293:

what about R.A. Salvatore? He has been writing fantasy for years and knows how to write a storyline with characters that have feelings.

Please not him! Anything but him! …Ok, not anything… But if we had R.A. Salvatore then we’d end up with dark elves all over the place. Just think of Kingdoms of Amalur which started so promissing and then you had this scantily clad dark elf chick, dual wielding of course, simply forced into the story.
The only difference then would be that Traehernia would be a dark elf instead of a Sylvari.

Back on the rest of the topic though, it is a shame that the personal story takes sucha turn. Character creation and the first part of the story (except apparently for the poor sylvari who get him who will not be named hijacking their story from the get go) were so promissing.

My reasons why the personal storyline is a huge disappointment:

1. It’s boring. Forensically boring. From start to … well, the invasion of Lion’s Arch. Maybe things become better and more interesting when I reach Orr or wherever the personal storyline will lead me to, but so far the personal storyline was a huge disappointment. Apart from a few interesting choices early in your storyline you always know what is happening next because you have seen it in countless games before.

2. Difficulty. Was fine for me as warrior (who has learned that signets suck and that the tactic-line is very helpful), but there where many moment where thought “Phew, glad that I’m not a thief or mesmer!”. And judging by many comments in the forums I don’t see me doing all the stuff again with my thief and engineer.

3. It’s not the promised “game changer”, it’s a “game interrupter” that distracts and separates you from the persistent and dynamic game world. It’s strange. They develop a dynamic game world, that reacts to the players and then they remove the players from the game world to force them through cut scenes, that tell a boring and foreseeable story, and battles, that take way too long and can be the most challenging (or literally unfair) content you will see in the game.

4. I hate the personal story line. I hate it to watch boring cut scenes. I hate it to kill 500 waves of undeads until the quest tracker finally tells me that I may advance – to see another boring cut scene and kill another 500 waves of undeads (I can’t even remember other enemies than undeads anymore). I don’t want to be forced to leave the game world to experience boring, foreseeable and tedious story pieces. But I have to if I want to complete the game.

Why did they not let the personal storyline unfold in the game world? The reactions of NPCs on your presence and actions could vary depending on the choices you make. You could receive different rewards and accomplishments depending on your personal background. Access to special locations depending on your background.

Let’s assume you start as a thief who grew up on the streets. Guards could be suspicious of you, but you could be a hero for the poor, gain access to the “beggars hideout” and so on. As a nobleman the guards could treat you with respect, you could gain access to the high table of the upper society, but you could be a target for criminals as well.

You can’t tell detailed stories like the invasion of Lion’s Arch outside of instances of course, but shouldn’t such events happen in the persistent game world anyway? That’s another thing that disappoints me as well, but that’s a different story.

And the players would play more or the less the same main story line. But that’s the case anyway, isn’t it? We all play the same instanced story.

Bottom line: I think it would have been much, much better for the game, if the players would follow a main line of big events that leads through story and the world, that takes place in the persistent world and that has a personal touch for every player based on their choices during character creation and the decisions they make during the game.

Agreed. It is visible in every part of the game. From Personal Story to Locations and Dynamic Events and Dungeons.

The closer you are to the begining of the game the higher quality of everything.
At lvl 80 I feel like I’m playing an early alpha build of the game. Playing Queensdale beta on May was more polished and had more content than Straits of Devastation now.

Personal story is riddiculously bad scripted, glitched and bugged. It gets worse the more you progress. And it is not only about writing.
I got quest objective: Find NPC, but this NPC was standing next to me then started running. I followed next to it. Then I heard: “Oh you found me!” WTF? Even intro/cinematics are dull.

Ascalonian Catacombs has great introductory movie. What happened to next dungeons? CM has no intro cinematic at all. It has no boss encounters either maybe excluding the golem that could be counted as a boss encounter.

Dynamic Events repeat in very frequent chains because there is just not enough of them. When you follow NPCs in straits of Devastation → they just dissapear and re-spawn somewhere else. This is not what happens on Plains of Ashford. On Plains you can follow NPCs and they will never dissapear, they will reach destination and talk there, they will maybe spawn next events. Events will be different and a lot of them are in every given location. NPCs are shouting to you, letting you know about Dynamic Events. But not in higher lvl locations. There are either no events, or bugged ones. or simple repetetive ones.

What happened to “when it’s ready.”?

I can understand bugs. But I don’t understand this level of quality on end-game locations. You would need to be blind to not notice tons of glitches that the high lvl locations have. I mean → Just play once through Battle of Fort Trinity. There is at least dozen of totally immersion breaking glitches there. From towers that are blown up before dragon flies by → to dragon itself that just resigned and flew away.

Meh….

I’d like to know if this ever gets fixed? Or maybe ANet is now working on next expansions and these locations/Personal Stories will never get more love?