Guild Wars 2

I’m not some professional critic or something but holy crap after playing through the personal story I have to say that the overall plot is bad. I’ll list a few reasons why

1. Disposable characters – This is the biggest one. I swear all the characters in the personal storyline are either just thrown at you and told that they are “sooooooo amazing” and expect the player to stand at awe or something only to play barely any role. You see characters get shuffled around like their a cards being dealt in poker. For example, your ally that you start out with in the Charr storyline is suddenly never seen again after you join your order, gone and washed away like he never happened.
Constantly shuffling around characters doesn’t make the story feel more vast but only ends up weakening it because no one sticks around long enough to feel important.

2. Bad character development – Either characters never change or they become a completely new person in a split second. This is most likely because of how characters are just thrown in and leave as fast as they arrive.

3. Big gapping holes in the story – I am really not joking when it comes to this. There are so much missing details in the story sometime that I wonder if my quest line glitched an I missed something. For example In the human storyline when you talk to the female bandit about the queens authority and then leave without showing your identity, she shows up at the bar suddenly knowing that you were the one she was talking too.. The introduction to dragons was just thrown at you after you finish your race story. I barely remember but I think it was something along the line of saying how the dragons were a huge gigantic problem when you have seen absolutely nothing related to them before hand. Things like this are innumerable in the story and I feel should be fixed.

4. Glitches – Self explanatory. Happens every now and then, mobs don’t spawn, certain monsters become “invulnerable” for no apparent reason and etc.

5. Rewards – More than half of the rewards are terrible “fine” equips for the amount of work done in some of the quests is just a taunt with a slap to the face to your efforts.

6. Branching story line – Haha, I’m sorry but when I first saw this I was excited and was ready to indulge into my personal story line, boy was I disappointed at the end. What you haven’t branching story lines, what you have is a small detour option, everything leads up to the same point multiple times, whats the point of options in a story line if it all ends up the same? In the end of the story you are nothing more than a pawn that followed the orders of your superior, you don’t have any personal choice. The story probably would’ve been stronger if it was a linear no option story to be honest.

That’s all I have to say about the personal story, I love the game but the story is less than satisfying.

Completely agree, and what you said about the bandit had me shaking my head too…

Plus the whole end of the Story line i just lost interest, who cares when you become a nobody to an NPC etc…

Not to mention all the work and the loot at the end is atrocious, nothing anyone would ever want really, early on with keys etc its good but by the end a blue arms that look like a level 1 armor, wow Anet exciting that…where are all the exotics we deserve for this Story…

Let’s not forget to mention the voice acting that ranges from abysmal to fairly decent and the nearly as bad dialogue. Although I might could forgive the dialogue if the voice actors didn’t trip over it half the time. Being a theatre actor myself, I cringed a great deal throughout the personal story. I eventually got tired of hearing it and began to speed read the dialogue and skip the voice acting entirely. Also being a theatre actor, always constantly looking for work I must say “Da Kitten, Arena Net?” there are thousands of actors out there who are GOOD at their job who would probably kill for a chance to work on a game like this. I know I would. Why the mediocre voice talent? We actors work for dirt cheap, really we do.

I also though the voice acting was bad. Some characters were okay..

I really hated how only the characters that get killed off were fun and interesting, and all the others were boring. Why not make me care about ALL the characters, not just the ones that are going to die?

Everyone’s a critic. I find the personal story interesting and do not go over it with a fine tooth comb. I have yet to even play a game that has held my interest as much as GW2 has. Not even WoW with the 5 years I played has done that. Hey if you lot can do a better job then why are you not doing this type of stuff as a job?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game too, a whole lot in fact. I’d like to state that criticism isn’t a bad thing, especially criticism that’s not a scathing attack. There is a lot of this game that I can’t stop praising, but that makes the things that don’t work out so well all the more apparent when they do happen. This game is great, really great in my eyes, but it is not perfect and I shall voice my opinion on the matter, especially if I have expertise on the matter at hand. Acting is my job, it’s what I do. If I notice acting of any sort that doesn’t quite work I’m going to ask “Why didn’t that work?”.

Sadly story presentation has never been Anet’s strong suit. Actual plot and lore itself? Good and interesting, but the presentation is where it falls apart for them.

They’re better then they were in GW1 mind you. Case in point………..Danika….I am so sorry for this…but skip to 3:52

After watching that GW1 storyline….lmao “may the Gods watch over your pursuits..”

that was very bad.

Though I am a newb to GW2 – still trying to figure out which toon I actually want to play, and so far only narrowed down to theif, ranger, elementalist, and Necro…lol, I still have enjoyed the personal story line thus far. Which is to say, not far at all.

I think it is a good effort and clearly it has come a long way since GW1. That being said, I do not expect an epic tale, nor epic gear from a PVE series.

My past online gaming experience is Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC), which pretty much makes every other online game a simple matter of ‘rock, paper and scissors…’

This game has beautiful graphics with a pretty low end cpu/gpu demands. That is an accomplishment in itself. My only critic this far is how they have made it so race does not matter – sort of a reverse discrimination thing. All races are equal in PVP. Whats the point? I like the Charr skins, and storyline so thats what im playing. But I see no advantage to picking Charr over any other. What I loved about Dark Age of Camelot, is racial choices mattered. It seems online gaming has lost the rough edged competativeness that made DAOC the best PVP game in history – in my opinion.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the unfolding of what may be a flawed personal story.

Is it just me or is the writing also really really bad? It’s just sooo cheesy and I believe this contributes to how bad the PS is. The OP mentioned that characters personalities change at the drop of a hat. For instance...in the Sylvari story line there is a pair of twins who are complete opposites. After a few missions they magically learn to work together and accept each other for their differences. Like, really?! How cheesy is that?! It's just sooo sappy it's overwhelming. While GW1 didn’t have the best script or voice acting I think it did a better job of creating memorable and believable characters than GW2.

I generally just skip the PS to be honest. It doesn’t help that my main characters story line is bugged and will not be fixed for a while. Guess it’s back to the cursed shore for some karma/gold grinding.

/rant

edit: I should also mention that I love the game. I just find some areas to be very frustrating/disappointing. Case in point.

Agree.

Though high level weapon rewards are decent because you can salvage them for runes that are half a gold

Pathetic story-line, crappy looking Armour and especially at lev 70-80 the quest bugs are horrible!!!!!! I Nearly had a heart attack @ quest The Steel Tide the tank is dammm useless im gonna zerg this crappy story to the end and be done with this joke asap.

I love the rest of the game but the story is ruined by crappy bugs and crappy rewards most of the Armour in this game are fuggglyyyyy what happened to all the nice Armour like gw2 wallpapers.

I think the personal story had some real potential, but with so much branching I think they just bit off a little bit more than they can chew with the realisation of it. I love the Sylvari and Asura personal story lines until 20, but after that they all just fall apart into random things with no proper introduction.

I do belive Anet have stated that they are looking in to improving the personal story for the future however.

LOL, I came to the forums to complain about the story and I found out that somebody actually had written what I had in mind

Very good post. I totally agree.

To that I’ll add that the story steps are tragically scripted.
Here are some screenshots from my story:
1) Horde of giants that was supposed to attack tanks of the pact. The script writer assumed that the player will long be gone and will not see this? WTF?
I saw the horde, so I thought that I’ll assist the tanks because the NPCs are very weak in the game and can’t handle the giants alone. Then I’ll go where the story want me to go. Imagine how I’ve felt when I saw what happened.
2) Boss fight, extramally easy. Boss was down to 1/2 hp in the matter of seconds and was constantly under CC (I was playing alone, npcs did the CC). Suddenly the cutscene. Me and most of the NPC except 2, dissapear. One of the NPCs is shouting “Oh no, we can’t beat the boss, it is too hard”. Then the npc is standing in front of the boss. Boss hits it. After a while, another NPC breaks in and says: “Leave her alone”. And stands still. After several seconds, it shoots from pistol. Boss turns and approaches the NPC. Cutscene is over, Boss stands in 1 place, 2 NPC from cutscene in 2 other places. Me and rest of NPCs kill the boss in few secons. Then I saw this scene from screenshot. Sad music. And the txt: “Oh poor sam.” I guess he was supposed to die? But from what if the boss was no threat at all? And why we didn’t rez him? I was rezzing npcs all along the way… and during the boss fight, but not now?

The game would be better without the personal story. It is so low quality that it destroys immersion that I would have from simply exploring the world. I try to not do the personal story for my character but from time to time I’m hoping that story was fixed… and give it another try. Then I’m just angry I wasted time and destroyed my own fun from playing the game for a week. I’m sorry but I never seen such a kitten in my entire life of playing games.

Most of this has been mentioned before, and I agree. What it mainly boils down to above all is the mind-boggling, complete and utter lack of continuity. It’s beyond my understanding how the “story” could have been released in this state. Nothing I do matters because everyone will have forgotten about it, and me, in the span of like five minutes. Every character I even begin to bond with either vanishes just as quickly, dies or (again) doesn’t remember me anymore. There’s also no “character” or sense of cultural identity and immersion after the first few chapters. Why even have five distinct species if everyone talks, acts and is treated in exactly the same way, i.e. a generic bland human in a funny suit?

It’s really killed my motivation to log in. A lack of story isn’t as bad as an utterly butchered one.

I was rather enjoying the story up until Claw Island. The narrative just becomes mind-bogglingly awful after that. Pointless deaths, bad voice acting, incredibly stupid decisions made by the NPCs, ect ect…

A lot of these complaints I see, other than Trahearne, is how Act 1 doesn’t finish the story and leaves questions.

Well that is the point of Act 1. This part of the Personal Story is to set the stage for Future Personal Stories. Act 1 was never meant to be a complete book but only the first chapter of the Book.

I have to agree with most of what has been said here.
For instance in most of the missions after you join your order, you are introduced to some companion, and BOOM at the end of the mission that companion is dead, or captured, or turned into an undead and I must kill him….man I must be the worst partner ever, yet I’m still called hero and commander and stuff.
Another thing that bothers me is the little amount of missions you get to do with your order, they’re like what…2? and then you join the pact. When I was told I had to choose an order I thougt “Cool I’ll have to do many missions according to the order’s way of doing things”…but no I had the introductory to the order one and the one recruiting some faction for the pact and that’s it.

RakaNishoo.6071:

2) Boss fight, extramally easy. Boss was down to 1/2 hp in the matter of seconds and was constantly under CC (I was playing alone, npcs did the CC). Suddenly the cutscene. Me and most of the NPC except 2, dissapear. One of the NPCs is shouting “Oh no, we can’t beat the boss, it is too hard”. Then the npc is standing in front of the boss. Boss hits it. After a while, another NPC breaks in and says: “Leave her alone”. And stands still. After several seconds, it shoots from pistol. Boss turns and approaches the NPC. Cutscene is over, Boss stands in 1 place, 2 NPC from cutscene in 2 other places. Me and rest of NPCs kill the boss in few secons. Then I saw this scene from screenshot. Sad music. And the txt: “Oh poor sam.” I guess he was supposed to die? But from what if the boss was no threat at all? And why we didn’t rez him? I was rezzing npcs all along the way… and during the boss fight, but not now?

This was, indeed, utterly ridiculous. I just can’t think of a means of fixing it, at least certain other deaths make some sort of sense … this was so poorly implemented that I was too angry at how little sense it made to feel anything at all for the NPC.

I agree the personal story was generally awful.

I personally really enjoyed the Charr story level 1-30, and like everyone else I liked Tybalt’s character, but the second that emotionless nitwit Trahearne elbows his way into my player character’s role the only way you can survive the dialogue is to laugh all the way through.

It’s strange too because the script for non-cutscene dialogue (talking to NPCs etc.) is generally very well done, as are the story scenes in dungeons.

I agree with the sentiment that no personal story mode would have been better than this personal story mode. It was and is not release ready.

i find some personal storylines to be quite engaging and others to be downright boring. human street rat story is awful. find my parents? random. but others like the asura are actually quite fun. and some sylvari stuff is pretty engaging, if it is a bit cheesy & sentimental.

Also another thing to note is that we can’t replay certain parts of the story, this is a bit irritating.

The biggest problem is that the story is clearly separated into “stages” and nothing ever comes back from a previous stage. So once I helped out my friends in home city, it’s on to join an Order, and time to abandon my friends forever. Then who cares what Order I was in? Now Trahearne and I are best buds.

Feels more like Trahearne’s story than mine.

I find it odd that I seem to have more knowledge of good writing than Arenanet does. Trahearne is the perfect example of that he is made leader of the pact solely because he is an expert on Orr. That makes an advisor not an leader. I love the personal story but it is never well written at times it is hilarous but it is not well written. I have a new best friend every ten levels. Clawspur, who? Tybalt doesn’t ring a bell. Trahearne oh yes me best friend. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the pre-Pact personal story but I wouldn’t ever classify it as well written.

Pretty much agree with what has been said by everyone here, just wanted to add, in the hope that they improve this part of the game … the personal stories are really badly written, overly cliche and way to cheesy … makes me wonder who their target audience was ?, it feels like its a Saturday cartoon show for 7-10 year old’s (even this feels too generous, maybe 4-7 year old’s).

About the voice acting… what made me nearly delete my character was that it turned out male sylvari have the exact same voice as allistar in dragon age. And as my character was female in that game I couldn’t stand his nagging.
Sorry voice actor, the sound of thát voice will now forever annoy me x). Like the female monk in diablo 3 has jaheira’s voice (baldur’s gate, naggy druid “that’s enough waking hours, you slave driver” — arrrgh). I never finished with that character haha. I love voice acting in general, so I tend to remember.

I haven’t finished the story lines, but so far they are okay. Depends also which one you start with wether it’s interesting, some or better than others. Don’t know about the past 60 part though.

I like the idea of the personal story and wouldn’t say that it would have been a better game without it … but then again I’m only level 21. So far I’ve found it pretty amusing in parts, fun and interesting in that it allows you to do things that otherwise wouldn’t be possible in an MMO (unless you just wandered into random instances and these things happened in an undetermined order, but that would have to be worse). I’m playing a human commoner who regretted not joining the circus as a child, and the parts of the carnival story (especially Clown College) were genuinely funny. I have already noticed that my childhood friend is kind of left behind, but then again she does appear in scenes, even if she doesn’t do anything much. (Well, I saved myself from dying by throwing rocks at her to rally when she was hypnotized, which was pretty hilarious.)

So at least on the early levels I give it a B+. The only thing that’s bothered me so far is that Logan Thackeray is super boring and two-dimensional, but maybe he’ll become corrupted or something. Oh, and the fact that monarchy is represented as being a super awesome form of government, and parliamentarianism as evil. Can’t there be some reasonable folk who don’t like having a queen?

EdwinLi.1284:

A lot of these complaints I see, other than Trahearne, is how Act 1 doesn’t finish the story and leaves questions.

Well that is the point of Act 1. This part of the Personal Story is to set the stage for Future Personal Stories. Act 1 was never meant to be a complete book but only the first chapter of the Book.

Then why do choices made in earlier acts not matter at all in later acts? I had an asuras help to save Carys (the other choice was to seek the help of trahearn) from the orrian mirror, yet when I meet carys again in a quest in orr, its as if she doesnt know me and even claims “trahearn helped me get out of the mirror”. Its as if the story writers were lazy and just assumes “meh, players who did that part of the sylvari storyline wont remember anyway, sod them!”.

I really like the gaming concept brought up by anet and I enjoyed playing this game a lot, but what the OP said, I can’t disagree at all.

There is no branching in effect, no choices are to be made to determine your character.

Everyone is the same. Another race, another profession, another choice, no, none of them will change a thing.

Another thing to note is that in the missions the difficulty range is absolutely enormous.
In some missions I could’ve beted that I would’ve been able to beat the entire mission with the screen covered and with only the mini map open.
While in other missions there would’ve been no way I could’ve defeated the enemies without the use of 5+ npc revival on my warbanner.

Personal stories are sooooo bad. SO BAD. They failed to immerse (at least me) and they do not feel like a “personal story” at all.

A lot of these complaints I see, other than Trahearne, is how Act 1 doesn’t finish the story and leaves questions.

Well that is the point of Act 1. This part of the Personal Story is to set the stage for Future Personal Stories. Act 1 was never meant to be a complete book but only the first chapter of the Book.

Where a story is supposed to be one continuous chain of events then the events which were of immediate importance in one act must maintain the same immediate importance in the next act.

Similarly some problem of high importance which was the sole cause of action in one act cannot be completely forgotten of and replaced by some problem of little or no importance in the next act because the act.

When the acts are not presented as independent storylines but instead follow a continuous chain of events then the designation of acts is simply arbitrary and potentially should not be made at all.

I don’t think this is a bad game, but I agree with everything here. They should have done more to tie the three arcs together, even if they had to take another year or two to do so. I’m not going to bother repeating myself so here is a link of what I thought the little things they could have done to tie the arcs together more.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/We-don-t-like-Trahearne-Spoiler-Warning-merged/page/7#post1247036

Joining the orders felt pointless to me, when I joined the Whispers I was expecting to do more espionage and infiltration based missions. What they could have done was have our future recommendations of what to do be based on what order we joined beforehand.

For example, if someone joined the vigil the player would be more likely to recommend the pact take a direct approach. Or if you were in the Priority you would recommend acquiring or using an ancient artifact. With one choice being an action from another order, after all sometimes the best choice isn’t the one from your order. There is a reason why the pact was formed.

Too many disposable characters agreed. I understand at some point they would need to tie everything together, but not at the cost of essentially erasing everything we have done before.

ANet could have kept us busy with the Nightfall storyline of the beginning of the rise of Palawa Joko and Ebonhawk being built. I don’t think too many people would complain about the delay, maybe some grumbles and moans, but as long as they kept us busy with updates I think we could have waited.

Agreed about disposable characters being thrown at us. Take human storyline for example. We start off with Lord Faren/Quinn/Andrew and Petra. However, after we’ve done with the starting story branch (poor/moderate/rich background), these characters just disappeared, no words from them ever again (not even a mail wishing us good luck on our journey ahead).

Then we’re given a mentor according to which order we chose. Mentor then dies with us having no options/choices to choose their path for them. Finally, we’re stuck with cabbage Trahearne.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

I’m not some professional critic or something but holy crap after playing through the personal story I have to say that the overall plot is bad. I’ll list a few reasons why

3. Big gapping holes in the story – I am really not joking when it comes to this. There are so much missing details in the story sometime that I wonder if my quest line glitched an I missed something. For example In the human storyline when you talk to the female bandit about the queens authority and then leave without showing your identity, she shows up at the bar suddenly knowing that you were the one she was talking too.. The introduction to dragons was just thrown at you after you finish your race story. I barely remember but I think it was something along the line of saying how the dragons were a huge gigantic problem when you have seen absolutely nothing related to them before hand. Things like this are innumerable in the story and I feel should be fixed.
.

That’s all I have to say about the personal story, I love the game but the story is less than satisfying.

In the norn storyline, they do take the time to introduce you to the dragons- Jormag, that is. In the norn storyline, you’re left wondering " Wait, why Zhiatan all of a sudden? I thought I was gearing up to fight Jormag!" I presume it is the same with all the other races: a ton of build up for one enemy, then suddenly YOU MUST FIGHT ZHIATAN. I think the Sylvari storyline is the only one where this doesn’t happen.

Many story lines are hidden inside npc conversation through world… Its a good and bad idea

Eh, everyone has their own opinions. I have absolutely loved the personal storyline thus far, and every time I get within two levels of the next chapter, I drop whatever I’m doing and go play it. Sure, it’s not the most efficient way to play (supposedly the exp scales with level so I could technically save all the personal story events until late-game when I need a boost), but I just enjoy the story too much and really like seeing where it goes.

I pretty much agree with everyone. The personal story is easily one of this game’s weakest points. For me, I couldn’t really give two craps about any of the characters as they would just come and go anyway. I also don’t really like the pacing, as it’s usually do one part of the story, grind a few levels, do the next part, rinse and repeat. I know GW 1 stories had their flaws, but they were at least memorable.

Honestly, I hope they ditch the PS with future EP’s and just focus more on one single storyline, one that is well-written, well-thougt out, and interesting instead of a bunch of forgettable ones.

To be fair, the bridge from the Race to Orders is a lot more well done in the Asura storyline because you lose your home in Rata Sum and because the Dragons are presented as a more important problem.

The worst is probably the Charr or Humans. Charr is bad because you forget your warband, and the Human storyline just plain has nothing interesting going on. Which is a shame because most players use Human.

I personnaly like the story line, I HATE HATE that you have to have a group to finish it. I really wish everything was able to be done by one or two. I love doing dungeons, but I would like to be able to finish my story without begging for a group of people I dont know. Please add single or at least 2 person dungeon capabilites.
In GW1 I loved being able to hire npc’s to add to my group.