Guild Wars 2

The issue: Personal stories are set at specific levels and never give enough EXP to achieve the levels you need, and heart quests and events also only give so much EXP. This creates a very jarring stop-and-go with the personal story, even if the last quest ended on a very urgent notes.
The only apparent solution would be to grind (and yes, even if it’s called ‘a heart quest’ or seeking out an event, it is still a grind) up to past twenty to thirty levels and then start your personal story from the top and pray the storyline’s EXP can carry you through to an appropriate stopping point. (One that doesn’t end with you needing to save Quinn from immediate death but can’t because you’re three levels too low.)

The Solution(s):
1. A step back and trying out more traditional instanced quests like those that had been used in City of Heroes, Champions Online, and such. If repeatable and rotating, these instanced quests could even be used to trigger larger events within the zone, helping to keep it distinct from traditional MMOs and give individual players a sense of influence over the world.

2. Change personal story quests so that they are held within a level RANGE (say 1-5, 5-10, 10-15, etc.) rather than a single level bar to allow smoother progress.

I make this request not for my own sake but on behalf of my best friend who has had increasing trouble playing through the game due to the stop-grind-and-go of personal stories, and I do not want to play this game without said friend.

So, all that said, I’d like to open this thread for scrutiny, peer and professional review, feedback, or added suggestions.

So, no one else has had similar problems like this?

It isn’t so much as a lack of problem as it is an understanding of the limitations of MMOs. Levels are used to equate power level and they don’t want you to feel as though your story is not progressing your power.

Then perhaps option 1 might work better? I’m also not sure Anet’s fully realized what they’ve done by making every level require roughly the same amount of time. That’s great at higher levels, but at lower levels it means a personal story can end up painfully dragged out.
And again, from a story standpoint. Why do we need to spend hours for additional levels if Queen Jennah’s been kidnapped?

Good point. In GW1 you could do the primary quests and mission and go through the story from one end to another – especially if you had heroes with good skills,
Now you need to stop the story and grind quests until you can beat the other part of it.
Besides, as they said in another thread, the story isn’t consistent. Every 10 levels you go to a different episode that has none or very little connection with the previous.
Ok, you saved Quinn, where is he now? why isn’t he coming with you to join the Order? How about Riot Alice? She is your sort of friend now. Why she suddenly disappeared form your story?

I agree that the system could use improvement. The biggest issue is when you are in the middle of a story arc, something pressing and urgent is taking place within the story itself, but you can’t do anything about it just yet because your level and gear are 5 levels below the recommended level for the next step and even though you’ve tried to do it early, you simply cannot survive.

But I think the OP’s suggestion to change to the underlying game mechanics would be prohibitively difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to develop and test. And as Runiir pointed out, level progression is a key component of MMOs.

I think a possible solution might be to set the recommended level and difficulty level of each sub-arc (sequence of quests that should be performed back to back without a level break) all be the same. So say there is a sub-arc that involves 5 quests that should be done without a leveling break for the sake of continuity, and say that the current level range for those quests is 25-30. ANet could take such a sub-arc and make the whole thing level 30 recommended and level 30 difficulty. That way, once a player is sufficient level and gear to do the first quest, they should also be able to accomplish the other 4, without having to stop in the middle to increase their own power.

I do see a problem with even that solution though. If ANet made such a change, the time spent level grinding between story arcs would be increased. The overall level grind amount would not be changed, but it would come in larger and lengthier chunks. The monotony of that could be reduced by adding in new story-drive side quests that are more involved than many of the current dynamic events (which would require time and money spent on content development, but would be much easier than revamping the game mechanics).

Drake Phoenix.6158:

but I think the OP’s suggestion to change to the underlying game mechanics would be prohibitively difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to develop and test. And as Runiir pointed out, level progression is a key component of MMOs.

I do see a problem with even that solution though. If ANet made such a change, the time spent level grinding between story arcs would be increased. The overall level grind amount would not be changed, but it would come in larger and lengthier chunks. The monotony of that could be reduced by adding in new story-drive side quests that are more involved than many of the current dynamic events (which would require time and money spent on content development, but would be much easier than revamping the game mechanics).

Part of why I’m actually in favor of just more instanced side quests, to be honest. I mean if we ‘out level’ something, we just get leveled down for the quest. But if you’re too low, you’re out of luck. I recall once person suggesting repeatable quests linked to your Order to raise your standing, delve more into the story, do more with the order outside of the pact, and a few other things.

Doing something similar with your racial nation outside of the typical heart quests and such, as well as with the Lionguard could prove very engaging.

I must apologize for this shameless self-bump, but I feel this is an important matter, at least to me and my friend.
Said friend is the whole reason I got into this franchise.