Guild Wars 2

While the current personal story is a bit unengaging there are already threads on how to fix it’s bad delivery.(including mine).

Instead I’ll suggest a way to continue it beyond Zaitan, to the next/rest of the E.Dragons.

My suggestion:
Have the player be asked after the lvl 40 story “What dragon they want to take care of first”, and at lvl 50 it will branch before the “supposed” battle for fort trinity. If they choose Zaitan, then the story will continue the same way it originally did. If they choose another Dragon (for ex. Jormag), then the story will continue deferently, with Jormag being the main focus till lvl 80, and a deferent leader to lead the Pact against him.
Once the players complete the personal story with the 1rst Dragon, (like mosk players will already have before the release of the next dragon patch/expansion) then it’ll immidiatly recicle it self from the Dragon choice of lvl 50 with a deferent Dragon, but this time it’ll be for lvl 80, and the other dragon will be considered/mentioned as defeated.

Result:

• The story will get some nessassary branching beyond level 50 where it currently becomes very linear with choices efecting only individual missions.
• Will add lots of replayability, since players might want to experience the possibility of defeating a deferent dragon before Zaitan.
• Existing players won’t have to make alts to get to the new story with the next dragon.

I agree but I wouldn’t finish it there. Let they make such choice as you described and player kills particular chosen dragon. For instance, Jormag is really big deal for the Norns and it could be creation of new lore where Norns can forge strong alliance with Koda. Sylvari player can relive what happened in their dream but these stories shouldn’t be mandatory. After that, I would give opportunity for the player to choose “next personal story” that should be also very long and make whole game as it began “This is MY story!”. So players could choose their focus on other dragons by interacting with Trahern/Destiny’s Edge and make it as real long standing faction not just “yeah I been there”. Or players could return to their Priory/Wispers/Vigil guild and pick some of the personal stories there that could handle some other non-dragon issue but wuld be heavily lore based. Or players could return to their home capital city, dedicate victory over chosen dragon to their leader and pick up some of the personal story there.
– humans have plenty of issues with centaurs and bandits, player can restore that ruined part of the city (the whole area can be instanced for that player and those who helped him), improve human settlements as they are devastated as race, dealing political problems with Codecus…
- norn player can do more on expanding norn legends doing epic quests, learning about spirits, interact with koda, start taunting with priory, but then uniting against dredge…
- sylvari player can look more for the nightmare, can even become nightmare and return to dream again, interact with asura and find Mursaats
- asura player (still haven’t played them) can also reveal some secrets, or even in funny way interact with Mursaat, thus making silly funny scenes with clash of science and magic
- charr player could work on further extinguish of Ascalon ghosts, become closer to humans of Divinity’s Reach (maybe even helping humans with the political agenda from Codecus against queen but from charr point of view), exchanging technology and faith, dealing with rebirth of flame legion in Black Citadel that would be different depending if player chose blood, ash or iron legion…
– also player could go into Ebonhawke and pick some story lines there like making it joint settlement of humans and charr, dealing with rise of join forces of charr and humans opposing peace between Black Citadel and Divinity’s Reach, Having more interaction with trolls in the area, helping them survive shaky grounds…
– layer could go pick up story from koda or tengu that are barely have any role in GW2
– there is possibility to go back in Lion’s Arch and improving city trough adventure, making entire map more useful (not just that northern corner). Player could choose to make new trading routes/deals with other cities/places, conquer uninhabited areas… as a result it will increase wealth of the city so they restore it’s previous glory.
- also, in Kessex hills there is ton of possibilities. I saw that city in south East corner, took that skill point and few events and never returned there. I think there is great possibility for mages city to be with lot’s of lore that includes new player hub in that nearby island tower.

In all those stories, player should interact a lot with NPCs and those interaction will deepen the knowledge of lore and make new but also make character memorable. Players should be able to loose some of them this or the other way that will make impact on players – make some emotion. Well, just a things from the top of my head…

Inkubus.7529:

“Wall of text” (try to use more paragraphs)

Well… I’m trying to be realistic.
It would be fun to advance the story mode of each individual race, but if they where to go that far, then it would mean to completly double the story mode. While it is possible to do that through an expansion, since we’ll have high expectations there, I doubt they’ll ever do it through a patch in the near future.

However I think they could tie up loose ends and focus a bit more on each race’s individual problems through optional side-stories. But this is a new topic on it’s own!…

My idea with these extra personal stories is to make player forge ingame character with various choices trough these stories and could lead to some nice rewards (nothing OP like but unique costumes or extra but specific utility skill which I don’t find to hard as we have that wolf). This would make game really RPG as I see on YT many players did have with GW1.

I am programmer myself and when look upon these stories they made so far, it would be much more difficult to program each story individually. Instead, I assume Arena Net made parts of the code (Classes as we call it) that handle things for them and then they pass some (internal) script to certain methods (tech term again) in those classes and those classes handle the issue. How this work? Great! This is basically what Bethesda did with Skyrim and creation kit and all previous Elder Scrolls games. There is huge modding community creating extra content – just want to say it is possible and not fiction. The difference is if someone from the company uses such tools, he would be much faster and better than community guy. Now, here is the problem voice acting as we got used to. To me, that would not be that important, even if with plain text dialogs replace all of cut scenes for these extra stories.

To illustrate even more, look how quickly they are packing this new extra content and now we will have this new content from December 14th. This suggest they already have such tool(s) and can make these “injected” stories but the stories themselves must be well written. After all, when come down to a personal story it is technically green point on the map where you need to go, usually you end up in instanced area and after that you need to go to next green dot that is connected with story, thus making things as combination of exploring (run to the green point) with possible side adventure (dynamic event that is not related to a story in anyway), then action and talky part (instanced parts with combat and talks in cut-scenes or in bubbles) ending up with reward and unresolved part of story directed for next green dot (mystery and curiosity for “What happens next?” thus creating in player satisfaction with what just happened and desire for more).

Meanwhile I got an idea for new dungeon system. Here
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/
Chris is telling about revamping dungeons – meaning I am a bit late with this idea but will post it anyway. I just need time to illustrate it better yet unlike these stories, it would require a bit of work.

I explained my idea here in detail
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Dungeon-mechanic-example-much-different/first#post875202

The main problem with this however is that we have a good reason to go for Zhaitan first. Zhaitan is currently the biggest threat to Tyria.

Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that we NEED everyone to attack the Dragons since they are too strong to face alone. Splitting up would most likely lessen our chances to win.

Changing a storyline after loads of people have already done it is a rather bad thing to do as well.

I think Kite refer to idea making other dragons have a lot of impact on the world as well and make them more evil than they are. If you inspect original personal story, Zhaitan attack only Lion’s Arch, other cities factions are unaffected. If payer chooses different dragon story will present it equally evil and threatening. Zhaitan is not Dragon leader and they are independent in some way so I think Kite’s idea is quite good. I would go even further. I would force player to pick home city and by doing so, every city has one dragon that is big to them and if they loose he will consume everything. So if player chose Lion’s Arch for home, Zhaitan is still focus, if Hoelbrak then Jormag would be big threat equally dangerous. so player go for that dragon

But that is the thing:
The other Dragons are not that much of a threat AT THE MOMENT.
This is made quite clear in the game. The reason we go for Zhaitan first is because it is the one that is doing the most harm to the races of Tyria. The whole point of the game is that everyone is fighting together.
If people suddenly starts fighting different dragons it would not make sense whatsoever in the story.

Let us take player who didn’t play personal story at all. To him, this particular dragon is totally irrelevant and has no impact on their gameplay.
I understand your concern. But you need to take one step back. Let us have setting “dragons are returning” in such manner that we don’t know any magnitude of threat. So if one player choose different dragon we must take in consideration this is an MMO so it doesn’t matter to other players. NPCs could speculate which one is greater threat but for that player it will be big thing and unique personal story. As story progress, that player realize his chosen dragon is the biggest threat.

But if you actually look at the game you SEE that Zhaitan is the biggest threat at the moment.
There are huge amount of Risen around in the world, especially the coastal areas such as Lion’s Arch, The Grove, Rata Sum.

The fact that it is a MMO means that they NEED to focus on a specific story goal for everyone, otherwise it would not make any sense.
Had it been a single player RPG it would have been no problem, but now it is a MMORGP, which means that all players are involved with that is happening.

I like the story as it is and chaning it now is a bad idea.
Suggestions for what to better in the next expansion would be better.
But I personally always like the stories Anet made.

What about my first reply as suggestion here? More stories after completing original story?

What makes you think that we have completed the story?

I find it quite clear after the last mission that this is not the end, simply a part of the story. We will most likely get continuation of the Personal Story before we face the next Dragon and so on.

Point is, game doesn’t have classic quests and I love that concept A LOT! But downside is that there you can’t introduce more story and lore to the players. GW1 was full of it. So, without expansions, game should have a lot more stories to pick up and do things, an appendix to player’s “This is my story”. As player do these extra player stories, more of the lore would be told to the player. This sounds blunt and plain but as you play it, these small things suck you in that virtual world. Also, on completition of multiple of these stories or group some very nice rewards. This leads to making player spend more time in game across multiple zones not just mass in Lion’s Arch and “LF[x]M FotM lvl[y]” all the time and grind.

Look some videos how last year people still play GW1. They do it in old fashion quest way. I don’t want come back of quests, but can make something similar that will still be fun to play in a long time.

There are stories outside of the Personal Story quests.
There are at least one meta event in each area. All these have stories around them.
Each dungeon have several stories (one for each path, including Story Mode)
There are loads of lore out in the world, with statues, places, people talking and so on. You don’t need personal story in order to get information about lore.

GW2 have MUCH more Lore in-game than GW1 has as of now (and that is with 3 campaigns, 1 expansion and 3 mini-expansions)

Yes but this is very new concept with events so most people mist them. Also, many many people coming form other MMOs and often they are biased. They do it usually as in other MMOs and miss a lot of lore. Characters are not so memorable. Except Destiny’s edge members, I can name only Leftpaw from Order of Whispers campaign and noone else.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/9470/tybalt_leftpaw.jpg

If they get extra goal to pursue, better memorable characters and challenge – they would be more interested to do it. You can’t deny that most of zones are empty now. I am leveling my third character and things are very different in comparison when I was leveling my first. If they get these extra goals, it would make players wander a lot and some will stick to their capital cities. In anyway, it would give optional dedicated content for people to do it. Many people said GW2 has no good story, no endgame etc… This would be one contribution to fix those issues because GW2 has more, much more potentials than we actually do have and see today.

Never said anything about changing the story. Only improving and increasing it.
Also, it’s clear that the story hasn’t ended. Only the Zaitan Saga!
What I’m saying is: When the personal story for the next E-Dragon is added, it should be playable both a branching path from the personal story, and as a continuation after whatever dragon you beat first!