Guild Wars 2

This is really garbage. I’m tired of either dying or running around in circles while npcs kill off everything. The personal story is terribad. I hate it and every time I have to face that many mobs I think of calling my credit card company and getting back my money for this game. I’m level 8 and facing waves and waves of mobs all alone. I can’t run that far away or I will be booted out of the instance, I can ‘t dodge enough because I have no endurance left. And you just had to copy WoW and give us breaking armor to make us even weaker. Really? I’m sure your fanboys will bash me for this but this game really stinks compared to the original Guild Wars. Those heart quests are incredibly dull and I miss having a decent story. Personal story isn’t worth the aggravation.

You’d think that considering your often with a known hero of your race in these story missions that the mobs would go for them as much as you, then again some heroes dont seem to actually work as planned in the story missions anyway(often just standing around whilst you get mobbed constantly, logan for instance really needs to be tweaked so he actually uses guardian skills that help the character instead of just using that one random buff then doing nothing of ntoe the rest of the time) so most likely they’d only be a slight distraction to mobs anyway.

I’ve been experiencing this, too. While I haven’t failed any missions yet, it’s still been annoying to have to solo all these mobs while NPCs just stand there.

For me, it started after I joined the Priory (I’m a Sylvari Elementalist; picked the moon option and researched the Hylek) around level 40. Sieran was helping me kill stuff at first, but then when I came to the quest to forge the sheathe, she just stopped doing anything and hasn’t done much in any of my story quests since.

I just did a quest yesterday where I have to clear enemies out of the path of the royal hylek procession, and was pretty much killing everything by myself while Sieran and the hylek dude just stood there.

The OP’s ranting diatribe aside, this is actually a real problem.

Last night, I was doing the quest to rescue the researchers close to Fort Trinity (sorry, can’t remember the quest name), and on nearly every single encounter, the second I threw an AOE, every single mob would turn from their current target and make a beeline for me.

A single trap, a single bouncing axe… doesn’t matter. Every mob in the group rushes me, and I end up having to circle-strafe for the next 5 minutes, trying to whittle them down. I feel like I’m in a freaking episode of The Benny Hill Show.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I need specific information to know which story step to look at.
- Your current story step
- Your current objective
- Your character’s class and level
- Any specifics on the issue (too many enemies at once, tough boss, confusing objective, etc.)

Every mission.

Every single one.

Another problem with the personal story and your NPC companions is that they do not do any damage practically at all. So, not only do the enemies completely ignore them and always come after you, but whatever extra “help” you get from the companions is nil because they do hardly do anything to the enemies when they hit them.

I think its ironic that some of your companions are either Champs or Legendary and they either die easily or don’t hit for anything.

I have to agree with this one. I also would say all of them, Logan doesn’t hit for crap in the early missions of the noble personal story and when you are fighting the general and his goons its a plain straight up jail gangkittenprison scene, it also sucks to not be able to level up for these to prepare because you are brought down. Don’t get me wrong, I love the downscaling system for being out in the world, but for the story events its a pain because if its a difficult personal story quest (which most of them are)and the npcs don’t really help its really hard to deal with when you get overwhelmed and no real solution. I’ve known people who have reached level 80 and have not finished the personal story quests because of the difficulty.

It would be nice to at least be able to be two or three levels above the goons and bosses at max at least. Then you can have a fighting chance. I love difficulty as well but the way I’m getting whooped in the personal stories is plain pathetic, and Logan should not go down that fast or seem like he is hitting the enemies with a toothpick and some chewing gum. I’m not saying he has to do all the work but at least let him be as strong as me in the scene.

I was doing The Sting. Human, Noble, looking for parents. I was at level, 16 I think, mesmer. There is a group of Seraphs, Logan, Countess Anise, two named Seraphs. They all go down and I died I don’t know how many times soloing, one at a time, the group of White Mantle cultists. 1s, 32 c or so worth. I couldn’t rez more than one npc and they were no help anyway. The Veteran Boss was much easier. Logan and Anise rezzed themselves for that.

Have you tried different traits or maybe even different weapon combinations? When I was dieing a lot, a weapon change and a visit to the trait page was needed. Usually had no problems whatsoever and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the challenge.

Sedaellus.6132:

Have you tried different traits or maybe even different weapon combinations? When I was dieing a lot, a weapon change and a visit to the trait page was needed. Usually had no problems whatsoever and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the challenge.

I don’t know about other players, but I don’t personally have any problems soloing the story missions. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve died in the personal story, and my ranger is about to ding 70.

But the way I have to approach the fights is ridiculous. If you saw how I had to do it, you’d laugh your kitten off, while you heard the Benny Hill chase music running through your head.

Having to abuse AI to win means the design team did something wrong, somewhere. That’s all I’m saying.

I know saying every mission doesn’t help but every mission I’ve done has been more painful than challenging. AI abuse running in circles hoping regen kicks in. The first few were bad. The later into the game the worse it gets.

oh ele, human, parents unknown. vigil.

I really want to enjoy it but its not a challenge. Its hitting your head against a wall until you knock it down.

My guildies and I have been discussing this a lot lately. It seems that every story mission is basically the same. If there’s any fighting to be done, you have to kite way too much, your companion npc’s are totally useless (ie; they do no damage or put up buffs), and the zerging is out of control.

I’d like to feel powerful as I play through my story mission but I feel like I’m playing through a level 50 mission with a level 1 character most of the time. I know it’s a bit better when you have a friend play with you but sometimes there aren’t any guildies or friends online to help out. So I’m just going to ignore the story from now on which is something I really don’t want.

Greyfeld.7104:

Sedaellus.6132:

Have you tried different traits or maybe even different weapon combinations? When I was dieing a lot, a weapon change and a visit to the trait page was needed. Usually had no problems whatsoever and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the challenge.

I don’t know about other players, but I don’t personally have any problems soloing the story missions. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve died in the personal story, and my ranger is about to ding 70.

But the way I have to approach the fights is ridiculous. If you saw how I had to do it, you’d laugh your kitten off, while you heard the Benny Hill chase music running through your head.

Having to abuse AI to win means the design team did something wrong, somewhere. That’s all I’m saying.

There you go right there.

Ranger.

I have a friend who has a ranger and has only had problems with two missions. I imagine my engineer will not have the problems I am having with it and other characters once I get the trait that makes turrets take 30% less damage and drop a thumper down.

I had to wait until level 12 and I had more utility slots and skills along with better armor to be able to do my level 8 Human street rat mission with my mesmer.

veritech.1048:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I need specific information to know which story step to look at.
- Your current story step
- Your current objective
- Your character’s class and level
- Any specifics on the issue (too many enemies at once, tough boss, confusing objective, etc.)

Every mission.

Every single one.

Absolutely this. If you want specifics, everything involving Risen past level 50.

The Vigil/Priory/Whispers mobs are terrible allies that seem to generate little to no threat. They only have one ability, it looks like, which they can barely use well. You’re carrying almost all the weight, and it’s no fun. If you aren’t playing a class with heavy AoE abilities, or something tanky like a Guardian that specializes in taking on multiple foes at once, it’s nightmarish.

Please, improve their damage output and threat generation, or at least lower the health of personal story Risen in general. As a Mesmer, I try to blank out the latter half of my personal story due to the trauma it caused.

Anyone who designed the “Against the Corruption” personal quest should be brain checked.

We don’t all play Rangers. Who plays Elementalist already has to spit gallons of bile to kill anything because in BWE2 sombebody decided that melee Ele critting for 3k was OP but warriors / thieves critting for 6k+ was fine.
But wait, in this mission the mobs reset (and refill health) as you begin to kite so you have to redo the pulls 10 times.
But wait more, in this mission you are SWARMED by armies of mobs that trucidate all your allies (useless anyway, they do 1 DPS) and then the same swarm plus veteran abomination (that is, knockdown + huge damage) all aggro to you.

In case the allies don’t insta-die, they do no damage so YOU have to kill the mobs and guess what, the mobs all come to you 5-8 at a time. With snares and all those things that make Elementalists possibly even kittenier than they are.

High Marshal.2185:

Greyfeld.7104:

Sedaellus.6132:

Have you tried different traits or maybe even different weapon combinations? When I was dieing a lot, a weapon change and a visit to the trait page was needed. Usually had no problems whatsoever and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the challenge.

I don’t know about other players, but I don’t personally have any problems soloing the story missions. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve died in the personal story, and my ranger is about to ding 70.

But the way I have to approach the fights is ridiculous. If you saw how I had to do it, you’d laugh your kitten off, while you heard the Benny Hill chase music running through your head.

Having to abuse AI to win means the design team did something wrong, somewhere. That’s all I’m saying.

There you go right there.

Ranger.

I have a friend who has a ranger and has only had problems with two missions. I imagine my engineer will not have the problems I am having with it and other characters once I get the trait that makes turrets take 30% less damage and drop a thumper down.

I had to wait until level 12 and I had more utility slots and skills along with better armor to be able to do my level 8 Human street rat mission with my mesmer.

I’m not really sure I understand what you’re implying. Having a half dozen mobs beat on you is no less fatal as a ranger than as a cloth-wearer. My pet didn’t take any aggro. I’m a condition-based shortbow user, so having the mobs chasing me meant I was plinking away with my pitiful shortbow damage, rather than getting my conditions up and ticking.

Hell, elementalists have more mobility options than rangers do, depending on their weapon choice.

I still had to run around in circles to keep from getting my face beat in. I ended up having to switch to Axe/Torch so that I could hit more than one enemy at a time to speed up the process.

Olithia.4635:

It would be nice to at least be able to be two or three levels above the goons and bosses at max at least. Then you can have a fighting chance.

The problem with that is 3 level difference in this game is actually pretty extreme. You can start vaporizing things in 1.5 hits with a 3 level advantage.

How is it possible for someone at level 8 to have trouble with the personal story;/ Only issues i’ve had were bugs. There are repair costs for armor to counter inflation. I have a level 80(mesmer), 52(engy), 66 (thief)and never had issues with the personal story being hard you can’t just facroll your keyboard most of the time.

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

I’m a Ranger and while I could complete the personal story quests so far, all of them became a run-in-circles-like-a-poisoned-rat experience after the saving Flametail (Charr character with a rogue shaman for father background) sequence. Pets are borderline useless both in instances and in regular outdoor PvE as they can’t hold aggro for more than 3 seconds.

Funny thing is that I can be considered lucky as I have a pet to distract the baddies and medium armor to take a few hits before biting the dust. I can’t even imagine what the heck squishy clothies do. The quest where I had to defend the Vigil from the hordes of undead was hilarious. Massive waves of mobs, ALL friendly NPCs dead, cannons destroyed and I’m getting backed into a corner.

The whole thing ended up in me running around the courtyard in circles, farting crippling traps, blindly shooting with short bow and sending my pet on anything that moved IF my beloved fleasack wasn’t dead with the swapping on cooldown. Also, furiously bashing the key for Troll Unguent whenever it was ready as my health was constantly dropping below 15% and a single, non-veteran monster hitted me for anything between 4 and 6%. And there was 20 of those monsters running after me at once.

Thank you Anet, for providing me these nostalgic experiences, all of them mimicking the Arishok battle in Dragon Age 2 with a mage character. Memories I’m SO INCREDIBLY fond of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLPSV0fb9vQ

This. Exactly this. Couldn’t have put it better myself. However, I was far less fortunate, in that I was a thief, thus no pet… -_-;

Hi. I would like to leave my personal feedback here. I thought it would be amusing to read people whine about personal story being too hard. It’s not.

I have played GW1 when it released and it’s safe to say that anyone that has ever played Prophecies campaign could never complain about GW2. But I understand not all players are used to that level of difficulty (sometimes it was hard for me).

However I also know what apart from some quests which were clearly broken (I have reported them and they have been fixed), the rest of the personal story fits the usual difficulty of the game and mirrors the expectations the game has for it’s players – know how to push buttons. That’s it. I simply don’t get how people can get confused about these quests – especially at low levels. Someone explain to me, please, how it is wrong for the game to demand that you know how to handle multiple enemies when that is what you will be doing most of the game.

I don’t expect new players to know that they can perform combos by themselves, eat food, have a balanced build (stun breaker, condition removal, some form of mitigation, etc). Luckily, neither do most personal quests before level 20.

I remember back in GW1 how advancing through the campaign was virtually impossible until you had a correct build and a plan. Later in the game, many ever required a good party. I have enjoyed those quests immensely, especially the Stealth based ones. I hope you don’t rob us of these experiences because of a vocal minority of “bad” players.

I have a few players in my guild that constantly need help with their personal story and complain that it’s impossible. Even though I explain the mechanics to them they still fail. They have problems with: Golems (silly asuras can’t drive a golem), which admittedly are VERY clunky and annoying to use – moreover, the game doesn’t tell them that they CAN dodge, and there is no animation to tell players that they are indeed evading attacks, just the lowered endurance; many players don’t switch weapons. Either the ones currently in hand or the ones currently equipped. I know a lot of people that find a favorite weapon and stick with it until the end of time. I have a lvl 60 ranger in my guild who has never touched a greatsword. While this is fine in many cases, sometimes you see a huge wave a mobs approaching you need to get some defense on and change your equipment.

There are of course some issues that specific classes have (I think the game needs to better teach rangers that they should use tank pets when soloing, for example, and that squishies need to be taught that they will die unless they CC), but I think the focus should be on fixing those and teaching players how to play via the in-game client (can’t expect all of them to read posts here), rather than lowering difficulty. I was thinking that more tips could be introduced during first few personal story missions. Unfortunately, many players don’t read tips at all. I think it’s safe to call those bad and move on with our lives

These are my thoughts. There are many like them but these are mine etcetc

RoRo.8270:

How is it possible for someone at level 8 to have trouble with the personal story;/ Only issues i’ve had were bugs. There are repair costs for armor to counter inflation. I have a level 80(mesmer), 52(engy), 66 (thief)and never had issues with the personal story being hard you can’t just facroll your keyboard most of the time.

I had my first death in my level 8 personal story when the game just randomly decided I should face off vs. 3 mobs + 1 elite at the same time.

Oh yeah, this was a level 10 elite….for some reason….that roughly 3-shotted your character. (Asura personal story).

(Why do I only see “Permalink” options below posts? Would have been nice to have quoted the entire post I wanted to respond to.)

Every mission.

Every single one.

Pretty much this. Every time I try a character’s personal story quests, I spend nearly the entire time running in circles trying not to get destroyed when the game spawns 7-8 enemies to attack me at once. I’ve pretty much given up on my personal story quests. Aside from the issues others have mentioned, here are a few spots that stood out to me:

-On my Norn Guardian, I was doing my story quest to get back the stolen heirloom horn. When I got to this dude’s inn, I got a cutscene where this guy blew the horn to summon monsters. Okay, end cutscene. I am now surrounded by 7-8 Ice Imps that deal 300 damage per hit. I have 800 HP. My first death happened very quickly.

As I discovered, the only way to complete this mission is to, before the cutscene plays, RUN AWAY! Now the enemies will spawn and not own you instantly. Now you have to wait for Eir, Garm, and the Inn owner guy to get killed. Then, you can pull each monster individually.

I expected the mission to be over after killing the Ice Imps, but no. Next, I had to deal with 7-8 Ice Elementals. After that, 7-8 more Ice Imps and a Veteran Ice Imp. All one or two at a time. Eventually I got it done, but that was not fun at all.

-Later on that same guardian, there was a quest that involved some Dredge sonic weapon. I was at the Priory headquarters and to kill some Dredge attacking the Priory. It was difficult, but doable. I still had to run around for my life a couple of times, but that’s not the real issue.

I was tasked with killing the leader, whose name was Russian-sounding and I don’t remember. I had to cross a bridge to get to him. There were mortars firing at me constantly, each hit doing about 30% of my life and with a HUGE AoE. On the bridge, I kid you not, were about 30 dredge in formation. WTF?

So I was like “Okay, I’m obviously not supposed to go across the bridge. I’ll be killed instantly! I’ll see if I can find a way around.”. There was a path down the mountain that led to another path up the mountain behind the dredge forces that seemed like it would have made a good solution EXCEPT it was barely outside the bounds of the instance. Fail.

Eventually I gave up and decided to simply run through the dredge forces on the bridge and hope I could get far enough away from them on the other side that I could lose agro. It worked. But it didn’t work because I’m some sort of godly blockade runner, but because none of the dredge other than the leader even agro’d me.

I couldn’t believe it. Apparently that legion of dredge was content to simply sit there while I walked through them and killed their leader. There’s no way that could ever be how they planned it, there’s just no way.

-On my Asura Elementalist, there came a time when I had to rescue krewe member B after krewe member A betrayed us. Going through the complex to retrieve the code for the jail was difficult, but fortunately I let Mr. Sparkles draw agro while I finished them off one at a time. And then came the end.

As soon as I freed my krewe member, the area boss came in with his two companions. Senior Inquest Engineer, a ranged enemy with some powerful ranged attacks. He was level 10. I was downleveled to level 8. You all know what happens when you have to fight something two levels above you when you’re that low of a level, right?

So after dying once, but managing to kill his cohorts, I attempted three or four more times to kill him, but ended up running away because his attacks took a huge amount of life because he was higher level than I. I thought I was going to have to give up for the first time, but by some miracle, he suddenly decided that he would stay agro’d to Mr Sparkles and I was able to kill him.

That engineer had a tendency to appear out of thin air next to you after you ran away. I’d be like “Okay, I got away, time to start rezing Mr. Sparkles again”, and then he’s appear out of thin air next to me and I had to run for my life again. Eventually I got him rez’d, but it was a real juggling act. You could not PAY me to go through that again. I dread to see what lies after that.

Edit: While I was writing that, Dee Jay came in with his post. I think we’re talking about the same guy. Maybe.

I have 2 personal stories that were very painful. Both oddly enough happened around lvl 8, when people should just be learning their toons, and not be expected to be experts of their class yet.

The first one was with my Asura Engineer. There was a member of the council that programmed I believe it was 3-4 waves of 4 hard to kill robots followed by the last wave which was 4 robots and an elite Lvl 10 robot, which could 2 shot me. There are many classes I don’t think I would have made it out of that one. My only solution was to run in a continuous circle around the council, while dropping my turrets everytime they recharged, then blowing them up and dropping grenades 2 steps behind me. I could swear it took me almost 20 minutes them off doing this. It was not fun in the least. I think Zooja and Mr. Sparkles fought a single robot the entire battle, leaving the 4-5 waves for me to take care of alone.

The other total headache for me was a Norn quest for my Guardian. I choose to get the wolf’s blessing in order to defeat the Jotan King. I went to the wolf spirits advisor, and found out that the wolf’s dear friend was turned to the dark side, and I had to take him out. I ran into a cave (At lvl 8.) only to find a wolf constantly 1 shotted me. I decided to wait until I was lvl 11. Got all the best Lvl 11 armor and a Great Sword with good stats, went in, and yep the wolf’s 1 special attack 1 shotted me through Heavy armor everytime. I got him down to around half health a few times before he attacked, and then jumped right back to the revive point. The NPC was still shooting arrows at the wolf, but it’s HP had regened to full health in the maybe 5 seconds I was away. Eventually after many many deaths, I was able to kill it before he launched his 1 shot special. Maybe he was full from eating me so many times. Either way it was more then painful, and I found no enjoyment at all.

Personally I think the Personal stories should be mildly challenging stories to give your character some meaning / backstory. They should not be quests for only the top end players or masochists to complete. Leave the hard stuff for the dungeons and end game content (Or maybe at least the Lvl 50 ish personal stories, when you know your character inside and out.)

Greyfeld.7104:

The OP’s ranting diatribe aside, this is actually a real problem.

Last night, I was doing the quest to rescue the researchers close to Fort Trinity (sorry, can’t remember the quest name), and on nearly every single encounter, the second I threw an AOE, every single mob would turn from their current target and make a beeline for me.

A single trap, a single bouncing axe… doesn’t matter. Every mob in the group rushes me, and I end up having to circle-strafe for the next 5 minutes, trying to whittle them down. I feel like I’m in a freaking episode of The Benny Hill Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ACUJ-0ARY

LMAO @ the Benny Hill reference! That’s the exact music I hear in my head when circle strafing a bunch of mobs by myself while the npc stands there.

For anyone who doesn’t know the Benny Hill music it’s the music from the video above. LOL

I’ve stopped doing the personal stories at all for the reasons listed above. After getting chain stunned and swarmed by multiple mobs whilst the accompanying NPC stands around doing nada. It’s not worth the frustration nor are the stories all that compelling to make me change my mind any time soon.

Just adding my own two cents as well. Either make the NPC allies do more, drop the mob levels, or reduce the number of mobs, as it is the personal quests are just maddening to try and do alone.
And for the benefit of all, this is not because I’m just standing there either. I’ve tried it with multiple weapons and utility skills, used CC and dodges, tried to kite and play tactically, but it comes down to simple overload when it is just me versus 6+ mobs.
To be perfectly frank, for the foreseeable future I have lost all desire to do the personal quests on any of my characters.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I need specific information to know which story step to look at.
- Your current story step
- Your current objective
- Your character’s class and level
- Any specifics on the issue (too many enemies at once, tough boss, confusing objective, etc.)

Any story that involves waves of enemies.

Too many enemies at once – It’s always this. As Sylvarri Mesmer, I honestly cannot do personal story quests at my own level for Crescent Moon and Green Knight options. It was better when I was a ranger since I had a pet tanking – but not by much.

I’ve resorted to not doing personal stories at all because of the difficulty level. It needs toning down – across the board!

ANet, please do not ask players to cite specific story step and objectives. As an earlier poster stated, you need to recheck all stories where waves of enemies are involved. They really don’t get that much easier as well even when you do them at a higher level due to dynamic scaling (I don’t mind being scaled down – what I DO mind is that the difficulty level is not comparable to the quest level).

I enjoy the challenge that the story missions pose. It makes you think more carefully about how you approach a battle and so rules out the gung-ho attitude that other MMOs promote.

Please don’t butcher my story quests by making them kitten-friendly (I actually used the word kitten there btw).

Yes, you’re right Jeffrey,
I apologize.

Hi Jeff, is it not possible from your end to query which steps across all story steps involve encounters with waves of mobs? It seems less efficient to be asking players to specifically cite instances/situations where they encounter difficulty considering that:

1. a lot of people (me included) cannot remember the exact Quest Names/steps when I encountered insane levels of difficulty. However, most of the difficult steps have one common factor which is what the OP has written – waves of enemies. Regardless of whether you have NPCs on your side or not, most of them are useless so these encounters need to be toned down

2. not all of GW2 players read the forums. Some of them will just give up on it out of sheer frustration

The quick response ANet have given so far is very much appreciated. I think it would just go faster on your end if there was a systematic way of bringing up all steps that had wave encounters and just implementing a general fix somehow that would scale properly (just by toning down the encounter to a level that’s challenging but not frustrating) with a single player at the given level of the quest instead of doing it on a case by case basis.

Of course, maybe I’m oversimplifying this but surely there must be a tool or a way for you or the developers to call this data up.

Just throwing in my “Me too.” here. I’m a human Mesmer, I took the Noble/Carnival/Whispers/Skritt story paths. The personal story lines involving the Skritt and Destroyers are uniformly awful. Destroyer Crabs use a bubbling lava attack that gives no warning, appears directly underfoot, deals a fair amount of instant damage (as in, the moment the circle appears) AND requires the use of a dodge to avoid additional hits. These enemies spawn 6-7 at a time and all use the skill at once, so as soon as they “hatch” I am at half health before I can even move. The NPCs on those missions are useless, dying almost immediately (mostly from standing in the AoEs) and dealing no damage while they are alive. There is no safe place to stand that doesn’t give you chains of “Invulnerable!” while attacking. The only way I beat one of them was by dying, which apparently breaks aggro, so I was able to rez Tybalt long enough to be a distraction without doing the Benny Hill thing. It was taking me about 5 minutes to kill each wave…

The human Carnival missions were pretty awful, too, particularly the fight with the Ringmaster. The most frustrating thing was being 4-5 levels above the recommended for the mission, but still dying repeatedly because of the stupid, STUPID level cap.

Every RPG since ever has given the player the option to, if they get stuck, just go and grind a few more levels until they can smash the troublesome mobs to bits. GW2 takes that option away. It’s really my sole source of frustration in the game thus far, and is really causing me to avoid the personal storyline quests. The simplest solution, to my mind, is to increase the level cap on storyline missions to at least +2/3 over what they are right now, while keeping mobs and everything the same.

Edit: I have /bugged all of these things in-game. Are those read by the right people?

Off the top of my head, one quest that comes to mine is the one where you have to rescue the researchers, after establishing Fort Trinity.

Barring the “stuck NPCs” issue, I ran into a lot of waves during this quest that would beeline straight to my ranger, despite having 3+ other characters that the mobs can attack. Every single pull during the search for the researchers devolved into a Benny Hilly impersonation, as I circle-strafed in the small branching intersections, spamming my traps and axe skills.

It wasn’t quite as bad once I got all the researchers and Trahearne’s flesh golems, but even with a dozen or so other targets, I still had 2-3 mobs breaking off to attack me on each wave. Granted, this wasn’t nearly as difficult to handle, but I’m not sure that it should take over a dozen targets to whittle the oncoming wave down to something manageable.

I understand it’s hard to have to make adjustments to 400 story missions, but in my experience it’s the majority of them that are out of whack. Just as vague answers like “all of them” are not helpful, asking players to make a report on each and every story mission they find out-of-balance is also unhelpful. That would mean we have to make something like 300-400 individual reports. I would have to make a forum post after almost every story mission I played, or create a spreadsheet to list the name and level of almost every story mission in the game. Frankly, I don’t have the time and I think it’s too much to ask paying customers to do this. Maybe if I was a beta tester I would take on this task, but this is not a beta.

Here’s another problem with asking us to report on specific missions: once I’ve played the mission and endured the hardship of it, I really don’t care anymore if you fix it or not. I’ve already played it and chances are I’m never going to play it again. Sure it would help the next guy to come along, but what good does that do me? Maybe that’s selfish, but hey I paid for this game. This isn’t beta, so we’re not in a “I just want to help make this game as great as possible” state of mind, we’re in the “I payed $60 for this game and I want my personal experience to be as great as possible.” That means I really don’t care about the story missions I’ve already played and can report about, I mostly want you to fix the story missions that I haven’t seen yet so they won’t suck by the time I get to them.

From the posts I’ve seen it seems to me that a pretty clear message has been given from the players to the developers: the vast majority of story missions are too hard and needlessly frustrating. There must be a more efficient solution than to wait until someone posts a message on the forum about every single story mission in the game before you act on it.

Here’s a suggestion: don’t down-rank player levels for story missions. That way if people love dying a thousand deaths in story missions, they can still play them when they are at or below the level of the mission for the full challenge. Those of us who just want to enjoy the story without headaches and huge repair bills can do our story missions when we’re one or two levels over. You can put a cap of maybe 3 levels over the mission so it doesn’t become a total cakewalk.

I understand why people think this is hard but its not impossible.

I play a lvl 60 guardian Sylvari (Dusk Born).

I’ve solo’d every story quest given to me. Was it is easy? No. Do you want lower difficulty? Hell No. The story kept me on my toes during the fights. Enemies spawning on top of you, consistently losing your NPC allies, even enemies sometimes get bugged and phase out of combat, half-way run back to their default location and regen most of their health only too regain aggro back on you. Yes, i’ve dealt with this all.

I still succeeded (so far lol), BUT! The way the enemies are spawned and launched at you (even if you factor in perfect-working-order AI NPC Allies) it can still be easily overwhelming.

Which brings me to a question for the Devs….

Although im not asking for change or a fix or complaining, im curious to know if this is how you designed it to be?

Right now im basically using every stair/wall/anything i can use to expose/bug/magically make enemies get off of me or get away while i regen and kite so i can throw in quick hits on a couple enemies without the mob swarming around me. It takes more then just well-timed dodges. I know im pushing the game to its limits, and it feels like im trying to “break” the enemies rather then actually fight them. And (being honest here) in the case of completely OVERWHELMING ODDS, in the case of the story quest for the Whispers where you fight off Risen and Warships on Lions Arch Island(Fortress?) the amount of enemies was insane (you didnt have to kill them all, but that didnt stop them from aggroing), I was actually trying to find areas that enemies couldnt reach me (or where there attacks wouldnt register) and i could regen my hp and CDs peacefully. Then jump back out and rinse/repeat. I don’t know if what i did was exploiting (i hope not…) or not but i only did what i had to do to complete it.

Again im not complaining, i’ve survived thus far alone. Personally, I like the difficulty. The feeling of looking at mobs and actually feeling fear, haha no other feeling like it!

So my question is…. Is this how the fights were designed to be?

@Wizardauz: I haven’t played a Guardian past level 3 but the way I’ve heard it, Guardians are one of the more better tuned (read: not kittened, or at least not as kittened as Mesmers) classes for PvE right now. Aside from having innate defensive abilities as class mechanics, you have pretty good AoE/Heals. You have to consider, however, how other classes will do against the same challenges. Not all classes can handle waves and waves and waves of enemies as competently.

As an example, on my Ranger, I find doing personal quests of equal level much easier than when I’m on my Mesmer considering the Mesmer is 10 levels higher than the ranger.

Is there even a point to these missions other than to make people throw out the game disc in frustration?

Digging Up Answers was absolutely impossible unless I pulled enemies to me one at a time because any more was suicide. And one of my NPC allies vanished completely leaving only me and Clawspur. He of course, was downed several times during the fight leaving me to struggle with a boss.

Now I’m trying to do Defend The Keep and it’s completely impossible. There is absolutely zero way to fight as many enemies as there are in that instance who not only swarm over the entire area in seconds, but each and every single kitten one of them causes poison and cripple. Want to run away and heal up? Too bad, they spawn EVERYWHERE YOU GO. The NPCs are completely worthless, being KO’d in seconds so they don’t even work as distractions. Is this someone’s idea of fun? Take them to see a doctor right now.

I Wanna Be The Guy is more fair than this game’s “personal” quests.

“Honestly, vague answers like " all of them" are not going to get addressed efficiently. "

The thing is, it does feel like “all of them”.

On my human mesmer (who I leveled to 16 before changing to a sylvari guardian – who’s now 80, and my mesmer is now 34), I stopped playing the class because I was trying to do the personal stories at the proper level (if it was 12 and I was 11, I’d level up and do it), and they were awful.

They were awful in the “waves and waves and waves of enemies” kind of awful, and coupled with NPCs that were useless. I chose circus/street/whatever else as my backstory.

On my sylvari guardian (who’s 80 and the last personal story mission was the one that got me the Fort Trinity POI – and that’s the last personal story mission I plan to do on any character in GW2 for the time being), they were more survivable, but still the same. Bad ally NPC AI (I always found it more effecient for them to be dead), and waves of enemies.

In the first Claw Island mission, an Important Thing happens at the end, done by your NPC mentor. I gather I was supposed to be emotionally touched by what happened. I wasn’t.

See, the NPC in question and myself had to go outside the walls in an earlier phase, and when the phased ended, I was magically teleported back inside. I looked around for said NPC, and could not find them. Well, they were dead outside the walls, and there were quite a few mobs in between me and the NPC, and I had no reason to venture outside the walls again for the mission – the only reason would be to revive the NPC.

But it, IMO, simply wasn’t worth it. I was better off with the NPC dead, where he couldn’t pull extra mobs for no apparant reason.

Except that NPC somehow magically does something Very Important later.

I just laughed at the situation.

But, saying “all of them” is pretty true. Most of the personal story missions are designed in a way that, to me, is about as unfun as they could be. It feels like there was a minimum time that missions were decided they had to last, and the way to pad that time was to simply throw more waves at us and our stupid (in AI terms) NPC allies. And buggy missions that have to be repeated don’t really help to generate a positive impression.

Overall, I am enjoying Guild Wars 2 immensely, but the design and bugginess of the Personal Story missions are easily the weakest aspect of the game. So much worse than GW1 (in design and also writing and voice acting), and I don’t intend to do another one unless I’m desperate for the Fort Trinity POI or a level 80 back item.

The level up process through PvE (disregarding broken Orr) was amazing, and if I disregard the long queue times for WvW, WvW is awesome (but 3 hour queue times aren’t). Personal stories are neither amazing nor awesome.

The Benny Hill theme is properly titled “Yakety Sax”, and in my experience, it can make nearly ANYTHING funny when used as a soundtrack.
http://bennyhillifier.com/

One part of the destroyer quest that was absolutely terrible was killing the mother (or whatever it was called; the last quest in the chain) in the skritt village. The help text reads something like “stun the mother near the bomb”, when actually what you have to do is “reduce the mother to 0hp anywhere on the map”. I spent about 4 deaths kiting the boss to near the bomb, then unleashed every blind / knockdown / whatever attack I had in an attempt to “stun” it.

This is a case of the help text being too cute for its own good

Heh… actually stunning the mob near a bomb would have been an interesting change from the normal, “Kill everything with a red name over its head. Proceed to next cutscene.” approach that every single personal story quest takes.

Heh, Greyfeld is right. Personal story missions where players are supposed to use environmental objects are always fun, but as a whole they are pretty lacking in fun mechanics. I’m trying to enjoy avoiding mob packs in the Priory and Whispers storylines. Like members of those orders should.

On a related topic, there’s a Priory mission where the player is supposed to choose between manpower and firepower. That’s like choosing between Vigil and Priory again. What self respecting Priory member would rather throw Sylvari at a problem rather than technology?

OT, the text is indeed “Incapacitate the Queen”. But I’ve also tried to stun her near the bomb Because that would have been fun. And I was also desperate because I was gettingkittenby my fiery overlords.

For the record, she doesn’t actually need to be near the bomb. I’ve killed her on the “stairs” and still completed the story objective.

One solution I’ve found that helps with almost all missions, don’t follow the NPCs to closely. In one of the younger Norn missions, The NPC charges the enemy boss while the boss summons waves of mobs. I tried 2 or 3 times to help him before I realized it was suicide so I stood back, and pulled the mobs in small groups. I didn’t have to kite and didn’t die although I came close a couple times.
The Fort Trinity mission was no problem for me also, just control your AEs, pull the mobs in as small a pack as you can get, and never get in front of the NPCs.

Personally, as a level 80 ele, I find that pretty much any story sequence where the mob spawns right on top of you, esp if they’re thekittensuper-sped up risen, were annoying as hell… as an elementalist going around solo, its hard to survive engagements if you didn’t get the chance to start it from a distance…

Usually what happens is the following:
1. If enemy mobs spawns in front and is engaging NPC, you attack once, the aoe attacks splashes even so slightly and you’re now doing the mad kiting for your life.
2. The enemy mob spawned right on top of you, proceed to summon a meat shield if you can and start doing the mad kiting for your life since they’re all going to aggro on to you at once

It’d be nice, you know if the NPCs actually did something as someone said, or if the enemies don’t all suddenly make a mad dash for you because you’re an elementalist and almost all your attacks are aoe attacks and NPCs can’t seem to damage/hold aggro for giggles….. or maybe some sort of enemy composition/placement variation based on your character class would be nice too…. or maybe some more room for kiting or something….

The higher level the story, the more it seems to be easier on my or my friend’s non-elementalist characters…. Whilst I haven’t died many times in my story quests, it always feels like I have to put in a lot more effort to accomplish the samething on my elementalist…..

Silvermink.1456:

The Fort Trinity mission was no problem for me also, just control your AEs, pull the mobs in as small a pack as you can get, and never get in front of the NPCs.

Control your AEs is a fine thing to say, tell that to a necro who has only a very few actual non auto attack skills to choose from that aren’t AoE. I did fine through everything going dagger/dagger spec with wells for the survivability, but in the level 50+ missions of story, I was hard pressed to do anything other than go minion master and let the buggy ai of minions fight the constant mob packs that attacked while I mostly just stood and watched because most of the necro abilities are AoE and made for group combat by hampering enemies and making it easier for allies to kill them. Which kind of sucks considering as most people have stated, the allies you get die to easily and have crap damage output compared to the damage input and can’t hold aggro of a mob for anything.

I think the main problem with the personal stories is the zerg mentality of the designers, it really seems to me that the designer thinks that swamping and killing you in 1 second is fun, or that fighting 6 waves of elementals, which in order to survive you have to try and kite in a confined space is fun, it isn’t, its boring and annoying,

I have tried various classes and the stories all go the same way, insane waves of mobs that swamp you, the MOBs where they all have an AOE skill are the worst, the whole area around you and the slight server lag make it almost impossible to avoid at times.

All of this was pointed out in the beta’s, players asked are these really made to be solo’d and Anet replied yes, we told you then that the personal story are over the top, yet you have done nothing to address it.

trying to make each stage of the personal story EPIC just does not work, The personal story should be fun, the game as a whole will be Epic not each fragment.

This really reminds of the Bad old days of poor DM’s in D&D who designed their games to kill/wipe the party instead of giving them an enjoyable experience.

the personal stories lack any imagination, they all resort to the same wave after wave of over the top BS. This is really surprising as overall GW2 is very good.

Anet should refrain from employing any one who programmed Console Games/Played or Programmed Diablo :-))…… there lies the crux of the problem :p