Guild Wars 2

Rather then being hung up on the current story, lets focus on future stories. Compose things we would like to see in any major expansions. May contain spoilers.

Let’s start were we left off. People griped about Trahearne, but he gave you command before the story ended. This should not be forgotten. This makes the personal story redeemable for those who didn’t like not feeling more in control. In future games, the player character should take center stage.

I also think that story should be more solo friendly. Even in an MMO, not everyone is social or can simply get a group together any time of the day. This includes the final boss. You could always adjust the rewards to be better fro group play.

Needless to say any expansion needs it own rewards. New armor and weapons are a must. New craftables as well. This I would expect. Just make sure they are unique and worth having.

1)Less death of important characters you come to love or about to come to love.

2) Have a plot that will cover what happened to our friends we made before we joined the Order in our Personal Issue Act.

3) Improve Trahearne’s character and maybe add deeper look on why all Order Members respect him and his past history with the Orders. It not his place in the story I have issue with since they stated in the story that Trahearne had to become leader of the Pact due to the conditions of Pact Leader must not be a Order Member and all Orders must have respect for him. However, they repeatedly show Trahearne has a long history with each Order but never bother covering it in the story.

I think they should stop with the commander stuff. My characters never went to military school, never learned strategy.

I’d rather the story be portraying my fighter as a skilled fighter, perhaps within the top 5% of the allied army, but not an overall commander. What credentials do I have to inspire others to follow me? Next to none.

I’d rather Trahearne’s story (aka everything from the Orders up to but not including Victory Or Death) be one of many combining factors into the defeat of Zhaitan, with him being a skilled intelligence agent and my character being one of his officers/guards.

Yes, I know that games are supposed too make you feel like The One but when you can have multiple characters… there cannot be 5 The Ones, or however many overall player characters that have now finished the story. This is supposed to be an EPIC battle, a war perhaps, with tens of thousands of participants. And yet each of my characters has played a pivotal role in the death of Zhaitan, less than a month after stepping out of The Grove/Divinity’s Reach.

It feels like the Ragnarok Dimension on DC comic’s lore, where members of the JSA enter limbo to fight Ragnarok continuously so that Odin can learn how best to defeat it. Each character I make feels like a JSA hero, defeating the undefeatable over and over again ad neuseum.

There should also be more varying paths to the end goal, wherever the story leads us to next. Yeah you can choose which sub plot to follow in the 60+ missions, but they all lead to the same conclusion, even merging on a frequent basis. Whatever the next task is, whichever dragon we fight, needs to have many different approaches and lines of attack to prevent the story becoming the same drudgery towards the end.

GuzziHero.2467:

I think they should stop with the commander stuff. My characters never went to military school, never learned strategy.

I’d rather the story be portraying my fighter as a skilled fighter, perhaps within the top 5% of the allied army, but not an overall commander. What credentials do I have to inspire others to follow me? Next to none.

I’d rather Trahearne’s story (aka everything from the Orders up to but not including Victory Or Death) be one of many combining factors into the defeat of Zhaitan, with him being a skilled intelligence agent and my character being one of his officers/guards.

Yes, I know that games are supposed too make you feel like The One but when you can have multiple characters… there cannot be 5 The Ones, or however many overall player characters that have now finished the story. This is supposed to be an EPIC battle, a war perhaps, with tens of thousands of participants. And yet each of my characters has played a pivotal role in the death of Zhaitan, less than a month after stepping out of The Grove/Divinity’s Reach.

It feels like the Ragnarok Dimension on DC comic’s lore, where members of the JSA enter limbo to fight Ragnarok continuously so that Odin can learn how best to defeat it. Each character I make feels like a JSA hero, defeating the undefeatable over and over again ad neuseum.

There should also be more varying paths to the end goal, wherever the story leads us to next. Yeah you can choose which sub plot to follow in the 60+ missions, but they all lead to the same conclusion, even merging on a frequent basis. Whatever the next task is, whichever dragon we fight, needs to have many different approaches and lines of attack to prevent the story becoming the same drudgery towards the end.

If you’re still wondering about your character commander skills those were developed through your journey with your Order Mentor. Each Mentor has their own issues that you help them finally settle but each one did teach you in different ways.

Tybalt taught you the cunning of a leader through how he uses strategy and deception

Forgal taught you the Military strategy of a leader through how he always been a frontal assault and military defense.

Sieran taught you of responsiblility of a leader through how you always had to help he become a bit more mature and responsible despite that you’re the disciple.

Not really a lot on which to base a reputation as a military commander, though.

And what military force chooses a marshal based on “Well you’re the odd one out”, spoken by a rookie who has never commanded any number of soldiers before (unless the Charr storyline includes such a rank).

What I would like to see in future stories is for the story writers to avoid some of the flaws in the current story. Specifically, we need to have more personal involvement, so it feels like OUR story as it was advertised to be. We need to have improved dialog writing and voiceovers. While a lot of the dialog and voiceovers were great, too many of them were substantially below par even for a game (where as gamers we often expect them to be bad). We also need more cohesive story arcs. I don’t mind moving from one arc to another, but they should blend better, rather than COMPLETELY changing the cast from one arc to the next. And lastly, we really need to have better emotional interest in the NPCs, which means they need to be written in such a way, and stick around long enough, for us to care what happens to them (whether that means we are sad when they leave or die, or want to kill them ourselves, or whatever). In the current story lines, other characters are around for a few missions, and then they’re gone, but cutscenes are written like our character actually is greatly upset by their loss, when we players really didn’t have much reason to care one way or another. That HAS to change in future stories.

. . . I want to see the Pact, Destiny’s Edge, and a place my character should care about put into actual . . . real . . . tangible-feeling danger. I want body counts which make my character cringe when the next elder dragon target decides Zhaitan was too much of a kitty-cat to make a proper thread “so let’s show you how it’s really done”.

I want to see Jormag air-bomb corruption over Hoelbrak, and the Sons of Svanir surge out of their caves having hidden a large force in there to attack with.

I want to see Primordius surface destroyers at the gates of Rata Sum. And I mean the asura gates; he still has the Central Transfer Chamber, right?

I want to see Kralkatorik and the Shatterer pull a pincer on Ebonhawke and bottle it up so they can do whatever they want with eastern Ascalon.

I want Destiny’s Edge to be put on the ropes, not having any substantial victories but being forced into a retreat over and over where the only victory they can count is “we’re all still alive”.

I want the Pact routed, I want their faith in Trahearne and each other tested so they wonder if this can really work against an enemy who knows what they can do after watching Zhaitan get schooled like a baby.

What I would expect in GW2 Expansion is level cap raise to final level of 99, 90 total trait points and crafting level of 512, as well as new cooler looking armor that makes your characters look like kicking butt is all they’ve ever known. And of course the Personal Story would rather than give you more choices make the previous choices tie into the story better giving you more of a roleplaying experience. Also solo friendliness is a must!

I don’t know how to fix this but…

I find it quite immersion breaking to have a major battle in Lions Arch, come out of the instance and find that LA is doing very nicely for itself, tyvm. Seconds after fighting undead nasties in the centre of the town, I can go and buy some lovely snacks from the vendors in front of the trading hall.

I guess I do not have the discerning eye that most of you have…I really enjoyed the entire thing, including Trahearne. I would probably preferred to see fewer characters killed off. It seems that, especially toward the end, they were dropping like flies. In the event that I were to actually do a future expansion of the PS, I cannot think of a lot that I would change. The deal breaker for me, though…and the reason I quit this PS before it ended…was bumping up against the dungeon requirement. If they change that approach in future iterations, that would be great.

I want the ability to hide the personal story from my screen. I no longer want a thing to do with Anets personal stories.

I would like to see more Cats….
Cats please!

What I mean is More Charrs and less Mice and Plants…. =)

There will be spoilers in this post.

These are the major things I’d like to see:

1) More realism. I realize this may sound silly when referring to a fantasy world, but I what I really mean is self-consistency and not using deus ex machina. For example, in “The Source of Orr”, right before the final chamber where you fight the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan, you’re faced with a pack of Champion Risen Royal Guards, which, based off of experience fighting mobs like them elsewhere, would be more than sufficient to fight you off. Instead though, FOR NO APPARENT REASON, the Eye invites you in to kill it. Really? Additionally, the purpose of the quest itself is pretty bad as a deus ex machina. Trahearne, out of nowhere, tells you that he can randomly cleanse the corruption of an entire continent, by himself, against the power of an Elder Dragon. There’s absolutely zero evidence that this is something that could ever happen in the game world.

In general, the way that you so easily fight through Orr and kill Zhaitan is ridiculous. Zhaitan raised an entire CONTINENT from underwater, the entire population of which is now under his control, and there’s plenty of evidence that Zhaitan can, and will, corrupt people or raise the newly dead into his armies. This means that every Pact soldier that dies, is a potential recruit for Zhaitan, which means that the Pact would have to kill two risen for every death of their own, something nearly impossible to do given factors such as morale and supply lines that the Pact has to worry about and the risen don’t. Thinking about the story in these terms just highlights how ridiculously easy the victory is.

2) More hard choices and more grey areas. Right now, the choices offered in the personal story are essentially meaningless; all they really do is reach the same goal with no real differences or lasting effects, with a few exceptions. Anet has stated that they don’t want to give you the option to be a villain in the personal story, which is fine, but you can be a good guy without being this white knight character they seem to want to force you to be (again, with a few exceptions). What I’d really like to see is more options to be pragmatic, and to have to CHOOSE to be. The perfect example of this is in the human personal story if you choose to come from the streets. When the bandits are both going after your childhood best friend and poisoning Divinity’s Reach’s water supply, you have to choose between saving the city, or saving your best friend. The choice is actually difficult, because regardless of what you choose, someone WILL die. This is what I’d like to see more of. More hard moral choices that have no real “right” answer and that have a lasting effect on the storyline. What if you had the option to actually save your order mentor? But what if that option came at the cost of sacrificing an entire squad of soldiers under your command instead. This would also add a greater depth of meaning to the way tht Anet likes to kill characters off; something you CHOOSE to make happen will affect you much more than something that happens no matter what.

Short version: “zhaitan” and “orders”

Long version:
1) After the defeat of zhaitan, Trahearne calls that day ‘Trahearne killed zhaitan’ day and every year there will be a massive feast on that day. But then zhaitan stills seems to be alive. The dragon you killed wasn’t zhaitan … it was his 3 month old son. The people are angry … with trahearne (he did claim that HE did kill zhaiten).
The people want him dead so you (happily) kill that annoying, good-for-nothing guy. And then you go after zhaitan and discover that he is now working together with Jormag…

2) Order specific missions that somehow work together in the bigger picture.
For example: there is some evil creepy castle where (living) humans serve Jormag.

• The ‘order of whispers’ has a few missions about sneaking into the place, learn a few secrets (like where some of the hidden passageways are located, who owns the castle, how many soldiers does it have and why are they serving Jormag?). The ‘order of whispers’ hands that data to the vigil.
• The vigil has a few missions where they receives the data from the ‘order of whispers’ and attack (and conquer) the place. (Shouldn’t be too much of a problem, since they are living human, norn, char, etc.. and NOT those undead)
• After the vigil conquered the castle. The ‘diamond priory’ has a few missions to search the place for some “new” ancient data (and kill some “left-over” enemies at the same time). Their findings get’s handed to the order of whispers to do something else with…

3) 2 or 3 order specific skills. You can only have (and use) the skills from your own order.

Better Writing

Personality taken into account

Better Writing

Past decisions taken into account

Better Writing

It would have been cool if the personal story changed a bit. By this I mean, first run through I chose Whispers. Get to Claw Island and Tybalt gets the bullet. Second run through on an alt, choose Priory. Sieran takes the bullet at Claw island. Third on vigil alt and thought, mentor is probably going to take the bullet at claw island. And that is what happened. I still have not completed the game yet though. In future, maybe they could change the way the story runs a little based on your choices or the order which you take, else it just becomes repetitive and one playthrough on an order is enough.

Coopziana.1802:

Yes let Trehearn die… Perhaps though in a little more humane way, rather than mutiny, perhaps he ACTUALLY joins you and Destiny’s edge to kill Zhaitan in an additional mission (See my suggestion above).

I don’t care how Trehearne dies, as long as I end up being the one to kill him. Maybe make it into a story choice: secretly kill trehearne and then fight zhaitan, or let zhaitan do it

~ I think the idea of the dragon we “killed” being Zhaitan’s son would be a little bit silly IMO. Again see my post above, it’s a little more believable and it makes sense that you can then kill an elder dragon face-to-face.
~ Zhaitan and Jormag joining forces… oh please, they are dragons for crying out loud, I don’t think negotiations and alliances are a part of their mental thinking… Being the strongest force in Tyria I think they would be a little bit more arrogant than forging alliances!

Maybe a little silly, but it would be an unexpected plot twists (I hate it, when I can predict what will happen.). Also I don’t see why 2 dragons couldn’t work together. Wild animals do it all the time (emperor penguins share heat on a cold day, vampire bats share their food, Mule deer females look out for each other’s fawns when the mother is absent grazing, etc…). There is no negotiating, just working together for the greater good (in this case it would be killing all humans as it are the humans/char/… working to kill the dragons)

Also (to get back on topic): I just hope they do more with the orders. Currently you choose an order, just to unite them :/

I would like them to not force us to go into dungeons for our personal story. Sorry, but if it’s my story I should not be forced to group up. It’s fine if it’s an instance that allows 1 person and scales so you can bring friends. It’s not ok for it to be shoved into dungeons that absolutely require groups.

Other then that, I’d just like a better story in general. The original GW1 did a good job with story, but I feel GW2’s story (both personal and especially in the open world) is extremely lacking. The dragons are just boring, impersonal enemies. I just don’t care about them.

More GW1 lore: Human gods, mursaat, white mantle, etc.

Better challenges
Having played Guild Wars 1, I was pretty disappointed with the challenges provided in the personal story. Most of the story was dead easy. The few times it did get tough, it felt more as if the designer accidentally added an extra digit to the attack stat of some mobs. An unbalanced kind of difficulty, that didn’t feel consistent with the rest of the story’s difficulty.

Almost none of the stuff we fight in the personal story is interesting. It was just basic mobs upon basic mobs. The stuff we fight in the overworld. Almost all of the boss fights were extremely easy, up to the point were I could simply go afk on auto-attack, because the boss was either not doing any damage, or NPC’s were tanking all the hits for me.

I’d like to see the personal story introduce more advanced gameplay mechanics, maybe to serve as preparation for dungeons. Make bosses more challenging, but make their weaknesses obvious. I guess it’s not easy doing such a thing, since it needs to be balanced out for 8 different professions… But I’d rather have ArenaNet focus on giving us interesting gameplay than giving us a bunch of story choices that won’t matter in the end.

Unique stuffs
Some of the missions I liked most were the ones that gave me unique stuff to play with. The one were my character transforms into the avatar of Balthazar comes to mind. I loved that mission, getting to smash hordes of undead like a badkitten. Or the mission in Orr were my character controls a Gundam – I mean a golem… And then shoots massive laserbeams to melt away waves of enemies.

Fun characters
Bring back Sieran for me, and I’ll love the personal story again. Having Trahearne replace her sucked. A lot. I love fun characters in my story, makes me want to play more of it. Don’t give me dry, boring, bland characters like Trahearne. At first I didn’t mind him so much, but after a while it just made me want to skip the dialogues, even on my first story playthrough.

Re-play story
Finally, I’d like to see an option to re-play story missions. I really did like some of the missions, and I’d love to play them once more some time. Unfortunately that’s not possible on the same character…

Slayer Lord.5023:

I also think that story should be more solo friendly.

I solo’d the entire personal story near to release, when some of the story steps were much harder than they are now. I don’t think that the personal story isn’t solo-friendly, except how it ends in a dungeon.

Anyways, what I want to see in the future personal story,

1. First and foremost, I want a return of the biography options mattering. Not just how Orr did things with “the NPCs will recognize if you did xyz story steps/chapters” where you have absolutely no idea beforehand if you’ll even meet those returning NPCs or not, but rather I’d like story chapters which occur if and only if you’re a human noble or some such, where then you’ll see a return of Faren. Or as a charr your warband (in full) will return.
2. Future Elder Dragon fights to be done in mini-dungeons, akin to the Braham and Rox instances now. Returnable instances that work possible as solo but better with others; I don’t like how Arah’s story mode is Zhaitan, then we got the Giganticus Lupicus in explorable being tougher than his master mechanically – when we go to face Jormag and the rest, I want them to be the top dog in fights, I don’t want to return to where we kill them expecting a tougher foe which worked under them. It makes no sense.
3. The dragon fights should be more interactive than “spam 2” – I don’t mind using cannons to end the dragon, but rather than it being 2 stationary objects firing at each other, I’d rather have (using Zhaitan’s fight as an example), dragon champions coming in on the opposite side while the airship circles around Zhaitan, forcing you to not only move away from the cannons, but change the angle of the cannons too – that’s the least which should be done.
4. Fewer deaths of liked characters. If they keep killing the characters we like, we’ll be left with the dull boring folks. Orr already over does the aspect and by the end I only cared about the mentors’ and Tegwen’s deaths because outside them… I just stopped growing attached to even the more likable NPCs.
5. Either improve Trahearne’s voice acting, or have him give command of going after other dragons to other Commanders (we’re called “a” Pact commander by Smodur if you’re of said rank when visiting the defense quorum) – Sigfast or his brother for going after Jormag, for example – who lead due to being knowledgable of the location and the threat (while we, the second-in-command, lead the attacks as equals to these Commanders).
6. Some personal storyline plots that are chosen by our profession, profession biography question, personality, and/or the third racial story option that didn’t get a big focus already (human gods, charr warband member, etc.). For example, charr who chose Maverick will get a plot revolving around a mess Maverick made or about his past.
7. Have Destiny’s Edge part of the personal story as well, and not just dungeons. It felt very silly that Destiny’s Edge are all over Tyria, then all of a sudden they’re united in Arah after the Pact has done all the work. It feels like they just let others do all the hard work for them (I know that’s not the case but still…).

In short, the main things are to make things more personal to the players’ choices and make the biography more important, and keep the good NPCs instead of killing them off.

GuzziHero.2467:

This is supposed to be an EPIC battle, a war perhaps, with tens of thousands of participants. And yet each of my characters has played a pivotal role in the death of Zhaitan, less than a month after stepping out of The Grove/Divinity’s Reach.

Storywise, it’s a lot longer than a month from beginning to Zhaitan’s defeat. The preparation of and invasion of Orr takes over several weeks alone.

Just because you can experience weeks within hours of playing doesn’t mean that it’s a fault of the developers or story.

Kalona.9508:

Additionally, the purpose of the quest itself is pretty bad as a deus ex machina. Trahearne, out of nowhere, tells you that he can randomly cleanse the corruption of an entire continent, by himself, against the power of an Elder Dragon. There’s absolutely zero evidence that this is something that could ever happen in the game world.

1) Orr is not a continent. 2) It’s not out of nowhere. Trahearne spent 25 years trying to figure out how to fight off Zhaitan’s corruption. And he could only do so with the Pale Tree’s help via Caladbolg as a catalyst. 3) The Forgotten had anti-ED magic too, you know, and then there’s the Blue Orb, the Pyrite Peninsula golden orb, and sylvari on a whole that are anti-ED. So “absolutely zero evidence” my kitten Pay more attention to the game’s story and you’d realize your wrong.

Kalona.9508:

In general, the way that you so easily fight through Orr and kill Zhaitan is ridiculous. Zhaitan raised an entire CONTINENT from underwater, the entire population of which is now under his control, and there’s plenty of evidence that Zhaitan can, and will, corrupt people or raise the newly dead into his armies. This means that every Pact soldier that dies, is a potential recruit for Zhaitan, which means that the Pact would have to kill two risen for every death of their own, something nearly impossible to do given factors such as morale and supply lines that the Pact has to worry about and the risen don’t. Thinking about the story in these terms just highlights how ridiculously easy the victory is.

Again, ORR IS NOT A CONTINENT Tyria is the continent, Orr is a nation – a peninsula. Also, we see Zhaitan turning the Pact’s fallen into soldiers in both the personal story and in the persistent world. So I don’t know what you’re complaining about. But if you paid attention, you’d also see that the Pact burns their dead before they can be turned into Risen – or they bring the dead back to Fort Trinity which has the Blue Orb which prevents Risen creation.

Milennin.4825:

Re-play story
Finally, I’d like to see an option to re-play story missions. I really did like some of the missions, and I’d love to play them once more some time. Unfortunately that’s not possible on the same character…

Not really something in the future story, but a mechanic I do want to see – for both future and old personal (and living) story.

I don’t want Trahearne to die. I do want him to get more depth, better voice acting and a personal crisis because he completed his Wyld Hunt which took him over 25 years and he has nothing to do now. Which of course isn’t true. But I found this pretty lamp-shaded at the end of the story. He has no clue what to do next.

- I want people who i think are awesome not to die every time i go this npc is awesome
- I want more drama
- I want more comedy
- I want more WTF moments
- I want less sylvari importance and more of the other races
- i dont wanna start seeing Destiny’s edge all the time in my personal story

I wanted more involvement with my warband, especially on character development on my warband (Love Samona Ironclaw, really want to see her more and hear her more she was fun to listen to) I want more introduction to charr history and lore and do skirmishes with them.

I would like the same multiple choice like you did with your father, the honorless gladium was definitely very heart wrenching for me and a difficult choice, but I loved that, I actually cared about my choice by the time I had to choose his fate.

Sube Dai.8496:

More GW1 lore: Human gods, mursaat, white mantle, etc.

+1

I wish the personal story could be something more like the Walking Dead (the 2012 game).
Basically, in that game, you have to make a lot of tough calls, like who to save, who to befriend with, or how to proceed the story (e.g. cut off ur own hand, yes, no?) However, the results of all your choices do not change the occurring of major events or the major plots and ending of the story itself. In that game, your choices affect only the dialogues and how certain character dies.

Anyway, back to the main topic. Gw2 has personality system, but Anet never utilizes it fully. The dialogues of our character and NPCs are all the same, no matter we are charming, honorable, or ferocious. And, I really dislike that there is a personality sign that indicates that the statement will increase my certain personality if I pick it. Why should I get notified that my choice of words will change my personality? That does not make sense.
Also, the choices of the personal story are getting more and more pointless as the story moves on. I find the beginning (0 to 30) is the best because all those choices are all about me, ME! E.g. in the charr story, there is a part that I am given the choice of either killing my gladium father or setting him free. But, as I move on to the saving-the-world storyline, my choices become less and less important. It becomes more like how I save the world (by punching enemies in the face, stabbing them in their backs, or burst them up with magic). Then, there goes Trehearne’s story, which I don’t even want to talk about, since there are already so many negative posts about it.

I guess that’s all I gotta say.

SlaYer.2138:

I wish the personal story could be something more like the Walking Dead (the 2012 game).
Basically, in that game, you have to make a lot of tough calls, like who to save, who to befriend with, or how to proceed the story (e.g. cut off ur own hand, yes, no?) However, the results of all your choices do not change the occurring of major events or the major plots and ending of the story itself. In that game, your choices affect only the dialogues and how certain character dies.

+1

I /loved/ the way how that game made me feel like I had actually something to say (even if I almost always regretted my choice afterwards) and I feel like every game should have this level of interactive-ness.

My unrealistic wishlist:

- More of an actual impact of choices. My last choice was to a) try to find a relic or b) study the books to come up with another plan. It felt irrelevant as a choice as I knew both paths WOULD succeed in the next instance. Make failure a possibility with a new story arc that spans over more than one instances.
- Take into account my character’s creation choices such as upbringing and other things to determine the dialogue and voice acting.
- When friends join me in personal story instances, NPCs shouldn’t complete ignore them.

My semi-realistic wishlist:

- Inclusion of guild in story.
- Replay chapters (but with the “roads not taken” greyed out in dialogues)
- More impact of early character choices later on; the second half of the story felt awfully generic.
- Impact outside of personal story instances (logical choice would be home instances and/or player housing).

I don’t need the ultimate epicness in my personal story (I never asked to be “The Commander” or “The Slayer” – not everybody strives to be the hero of the story) – dragon fights should be large scale and open world. I’d rather have more personalised stories on a smaller scale – like the first 20 levels of the personal story, just more of that. So:

- Smaller scale personal story chapters that are episodic and can be played in any order, so the hero’s journey just continues in random directions. Not race-based; by level 80 you would have made personal connections in all of Tyria.

Re: Solo friendly – Except for the very final mission in a story arc spanning from character creation to its conclusion everything was soloable. Thats soloable enough really, I dont begrudge one group mission throughout all that, after all this is a MMORPG.

What I want to see in the future: I want to see more independent chapters that each character can choose to do or skip. You could only skip the last chapter simply because there is none behind it so far and end your story prematurely, but not joining an order wasnt possible. I liked that about the living story, if I wanted to help one those npcs I could do that and skip the other one, or do both, or none.

So several mostly independent chapters that maybe sometimes weave through each other is what I want to see.

1) Less “You are the One” stuff. One of the things I really liked about the Prophecies and Factions storylines was that you weren’t the hero who single-handedly orchestrated the demise of the big bad villains; you were part of a group (Mhenlo, Cynn et al.; Master Togo and his students/adventurers from across the Unending Ocean) who worked together. It really kills the personal story for me knowing that every other player is going to be Commander of the Pact, Trahearne’s right-hand, Lightbringer/Warmaster/Magister, and everything else.

2) More racial based stories. If I play a Charr, I want to feel like a Charr, not a human in a costume. Same goes for the other races. The first 30 levels of the current story are the most enjoyable to me, as they all have their own distinct flavour. I’d like to see more.

3) More Destiny’s Edge. I dislike how the current DE story is confined mostly to dungeons. Considering that they are the first important NPC that every new player encounters, it’s rather disappointing that they disappear almost entirely from the personal story after a certain point.

4) More GW1 lore. Forgotten, Seers, Mursaat, Druids, Dwarves. All these races could help play a role in the story, either as villains, powerful allies, or a source of knowledge about the past.

Combining them, maybe we could see something like:

The Pact, in high spirits after defeating Zhaitan, set their sights on [insert next Dragon here], but the assault ends up a spectacular failure. As a result, the Orders resort to in-fighting and bickering once again. Trahearne, unable to contain the tension, steps down as leader of the Pact, and it subsequently disbands. Trahearne finds himself struggling with his failure, and seeks a way to come to terms with it.

The newly reunited Destiny’s Edge decide it is therefore up to them to confront the Elder Dragons. Each member issues a call to arms to the players, and requests their help in rallying noteworthy individuals of their race to the cause.

Meanwhile, each of the Orders is conducting their own research into alternative ways of defeating the Elder Dragons, or at least putting them back to sleep.

Ideally, I’d like to see three simultaneous personal stories (racial, Order, and Trahearne) which interweave with each other before coming together at the end. Whether they be like the original personal story, or more similar to the Flame and Frost instances, doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe a mixture of the two, with the racial story being in the traditional style, and the other two having each instance as a self-contained story arc.

5) More difficult encounters. I recently did the Flame and Frost instances, and they seemed more difficult than the usual content. I found the extra challenge quite refreshing, and it’s something I’d like to see more of in the future.

1) Better writing.

2) Non-flat VO.

3) Cutscenes that have the patience to just keep the camera in one position instead of “dramatically” swooping in every single scene.

All i want is so few bugs that i don’t dread starting the quest.

The epic-ness of the original GW story missions, I loved them and they kept me engaged, would like to see similar things to these as opposed to the current setup.

My idea is to make the personal story linear, but to make it richer.

I think a problem with the story is that there are so many different choices you make, but the options don’t particularly wow you with the delivery.

I’d really like to see three layers of personal, regional, and world.

Personal could be friends, family, romance, rivalries, and getting into the mind of your character and how their culture, order, and their lives affect them. Every decision doesn’t need to be taken into account, but because there are major choices those do, like your order, and the 1-20 storylines.

Regional would be race-specific, and would serve to be both a geopolitical progression as well as an exploration of their culture on a deeper level. These could generally focus on the culture, religion, history, politics, etc. The player needs to be involved because you don’t just disappear from your homeland, and every race has their issues they need to solve.

World would be the Pact, Dragons, and affairs of your Order. If you are in charge, which I am not totally sure if that’s what is the case, then you could have the reps from the Orr campaign be sort of a Commander’s Council that runs their ideas by you and takes orders.

I would like for there to be zero grouping or 5 mans needed to complete a personal story.

GuzziHero.2467:

Not really a lot on which to base a reputation as a military commander, though.

And what military force chooses a marshal based on “Well you’re the odd one out”, spoken by a rookie who has never commanded any number of soldiers before (unless the Charr storyline includes such a rank).

The same kind that allows their leader to have 50,000 ‘second in commands’, but only allows them in to battle the major menace in groups of no more than 5, instead of fighting it as an army themselves.

Kemina.7812:

I would like for there to be zero grouping or 5 mans needed to complete a personal story.

Agreed—but on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing another story told in dungeons, made for the people who like that sort of thing—just don’t ever make the dungeons mandatory for the solo story, or vice versa. That’s the primary problem with both the Personal story and the current Living story.

Generally, just a better sense of continuity. Simple transition lines from one story arc to another would really help, like if you finish the 1-20 story lines, your friends wish you luck in your order and those things you will be doing.

And more lore. Specifically, more background details since not all of us who play GW2 played GW.

What I’d want more than anything is for my character to gain some sense of actually being a character instead of a generic, bland, faceless blob whom nobody knows or remembers and who spouts the same generic, bland “hero”-lines as every other generic, bland, faceless blob. I want to feel like a sylvari/charr/norn again, like I did in the early culture-based quests. I want that unique immersion in my own culture. I want my Dream, my warband, my spirit animal to actually matter. And I want actual choices and RP options instead of being forced to spout the same BS with every character even though their species, culture, life experience and personality are worlds apart.

Tied into that, and just as important, is actually having a sense of story-flow, of coherence and continuity — instead of the disjointed, uninspired mess we have now, with characters and events coming and going faster than fashion trends and being just as meaningless and quickly forgotten.

I would like my Necromancer to be evil. Or atleast an anti-hero.

I want my character to actually be the person in command instead of some lackey who follows orders. Along with that, I really liked the relationship established with members of DE. Why not continue that relationship instead of introducting random characters we wont remember.

Make the Personal Stories have cutscenes where you can choose what to say like the one in SWTOR!!!!!!!!!!

=D