Guild Wars 2

One of the biggest issues with this game, that’s creeping up as of late, is the lack of any feeling towards the characters or environment around me. Everything looks fantastic, yet doesn’t convey a strong enough sense of interaction that justifies the overwhelming design.

Before anyone starts to think they need to ‘white-knight’ this thread, remember that it’s meant to be constructive. You may not agree with the above statement in full, however, you can certainly see how there are aspects that could be improved. In which case, critiques are still available for the topic. So please mind your manners.

Story & Characters
This specific content is missing a lot of depth and emotion. The voice acting is great, yet every other aspect feels dull in comparison. The current form of delivery for our story is just simple NPCs standing around, cool voice acting and some random emotes we’ve seen a million times. It’s hardly enough to make one feel like they should care in the first place.

On the flip side, there were recent attempts that did a magnificent job at driving character and story. I’m, of course, referring to the gorgeous artistic-type cutscenes:
http://youtu.be/nRSN6Xm2MYw
http://youtu.be/g9SXF27LFyY

Those both had some great development and you can actually begin to relate to the characters involved. Why is that? One thing to consider is the level of acting. There’s much more emotion being expressed, versus some NPC standing around doing nothing and an obnoxious camera flying around like a Michael Bay film.

Environment & Atmosphere
It’s already been mentioned many times before but I’ll cite a more prominent thread anyways:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Role-Playing-and-Interactivity/first

Role-playing elements are indeed relative to the immersion within the environment. Having more interactions, like sitting in a chair (or just more emotes), will help raise the bar with how we can apply our own feelings about the things around us.

Personality & Customization
The most undeveloped aspect of this game has to be our hero’s personality. It’s such a disappointment and I’m still boggled by why you guys persist to keep those three little dialog options, when we all know it has such minuscule purpose… if any at all.

Although, instead of removing personality, it could be used to solve many other issues to this game. Take rewards, for example. Our character’s personality could be apart of how we earn rewards. You start by creating imperative interactions with NPCs that mark us for special unlockables etc. One way to approach this would be to turn the personality system into a point system, where we still have dialog options, but each option will be a one-time choice that gives a point. Earning certain levels of personality will make NPCs (that share the personality) like you and you could build a “friendship”. As a result, you’ll be granted special content via those NPCs. Tada! Rewards, character development and immersion all in one!

Now I’m going to stop there, as not to make too big of a wall. So hopefully I covered some basic elements.

Blackmoon.6837:

One of the biggest issues with this game, that’s creeping up as of late, is the lack of any feeling towards the characters or environment around me. Everything looks fantastic, yet doesn’t convey a strong enough sense of interaction that justifies the overwhelming design.

Before anyone starts to think they need to ‘white-knight’ this thread, remember that it’s meant to be constructive. You may not agree with the above statement in full, however, you can certainly see how there are aspects that could be improved. In which case, critiques are still available for the topic. So please mind your manners.

Story & Characters
This specific content is missing a lot of depth and emotion. The voice acting is great, yet every other aspect feels dull in comparison. The current form of delivery for our story is just simple NPCs standing around, cool voice acting and some random emotes we’ve seen a million times. It’s hardly enough to make one feel like they should care in the first place.

On the flip side, there were recent attempts that did a magnificent job at driving character and story. I’m, of course, referring to the gorgeous artistic-type cutscenes:
http://youtu.be/nRSN6Xm2MYw
http://youtu.be/g9SXF27LFyY

Those both had some great development and you can actually begin to relate to the characters involved. Why is that? One thing to consider is the level of acting. There’s much more emotion being expressed, versus some NPC standing around doing nothing and an obnoxious camera flying around like a Michael Bay film.

Environment & Atmosphere
It’s already been mentioned many times before but I’ll cite a more prominent thread anyways:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Role-Playing-and-Interactivity/first

Role-playing elements are indeed relative to the immersion within the environment. Having more interactions, like sitting in a chair (or just more emotes), will help raise the bar with how we can apply our own feelings about the things around us.

Personality & Customization
The most undeveloped aspect of this game has to be our hero’s personality. It’s such a disappointment and I’m still boggled by why you guys persist to keep those three little dialog options, when we all know it has such minuscule purpose… if any at all.

Although, instead of removing personality, it could be used to solve many other issues to this game. Take rewards, for example. Our character’s personality could be apart of how we earn rewards. You start by creating imperative interactions with NPCs that mark us for special unlockables etc. One way to approach this would be to turn the personality system into a point system, where we still have dialog options, but each option will be a one-time choice that gives a point. Earning certain levels of personality will make NPCs (that share the personality) like you and you could build a “friendship”. As a result, you’ll be granted special content via those NPCs. Tada! Rewards, character development and immersion all in one!

Now I’m going to stop there, as not to make too big of a wall. So hopefully I covered some basic elements.

I will admit, I didn’t read most of this post due to laziness and complete tiredness, but I read the part about character personalities and how it should affect gameplay. As of the moment, the character’s personality does nothing. Ferocity, Dignity, and Charisma are what I’m talking about. They’re useless and they do not make me feel like it’s a valuable part of the game at all. Who in their right mind cares if I go full ferocity or full dignity? It doesn’t affect anything.

I propose creating armor for each type of personality and having it available to purchase with gold at a vendor in LA. Wicked-looking armor with spikes for ferocity. Kingly-looking armor for dignity. Pure white armor for charisma. Royal armor for neutral personalities. This would work with weapons as well. For now, this is the only idea I could come up with that utilizes personality. Without this, there is a complete lack of connection between my character and me.

As much as people say I’m a white knight (and accuse of of whiting knighting) immersion is probably where Guild Wars 2 is at its weakest. Stories aren’t deep and I don’t feel a lot for characters, even my own. There’s a long list of games I’ve felt my characters more in, including Guild Wars 1.

I don’t know that there’s any magic solution to solve this problem…it’s not just story. There’s more to it than that.

Making a customizable home instance might help to some degree, or seeing your home instance grow more than just a few gathering nodes. The hall of monuments was a better “home instance” in Guild Wars 1 than our entire home instance is currently.

Blackmoon.6837:

Story & Characters
This specific content is missing a lot of depth and emotion. The voice acting is great, yet every other aspect feels dull in comparison. The current form of delivery for our story is just simple NPCs standing around, cool voice acting and some random emotes we’ve seen a million times. It’s hardly enough to make one feel like they should care in the first place.

On the flip side, there were recent attempts that did a magnificent job at driving character and story. I’m, of course, referring to the gorgeous artistic-type cutscenes:
http://youtu.be/nRSN6Xm2MYw
http://youtu.be/g9SXF27LFyY

Those both had some great development and you can actually begin to relate to the characters involved. Why is that? One thing to consider is the level of acting. There’s much more emotion being expressed, versus some NPC standing around doing nothing and an obnoxious camera flying around like a Michael Bay film.

And this is doubly unfortunate for GW2, because even GW1 did significantly better in this department. They didn’t even just stick with the same formula, which would have been bad enough; no, they found a way to make it worse.

Oh BTW OP, I think the word you were looking for in your title was “constructive” rather than “constructure”.

Blackmoon.6837:

Story & Characters
_This specific content is missing a lot of depth and emotion. The voice acting is great,

I agree with your proposition but I don’t agree that the voice acting is great. Some characters here and there are good but by and large its pretty bad.

Well written and explained. I would love to see some ingame that will give your personality some use.
Maybe also add something extra for DE events that are already here. (I Don’t want to hi-jack your post + its just a little idea)

Ferocity:
All events that require attacking a city or killing a foe will be on your minimap
Dignity:
All defend city/capture point events will be on your minimap
Charm:
All escort/protect events will be on your minimap.

Like i said, just a little idea to expend something that really needs some extra work in the future.

While I actually have no problem with the talking heads in the personal story I do agree with your OP and I think you have a good idea going about making the personality choices have more impact.

I have long felt that an emotional connection to our characters are largely missing.
Add in those things and I think a personal space in the form of guild halls/ player housing will go along way towards a more personal world.
No I am not talking about your home instance

So far, so good. Here’s some other ideas that sprung to mind:

Personality & Customization
To add more depth, there could be a good/bad system implemented. Where our choices will build up a meter in regards to being good, bad or neutral. As a result, NPCs will end up hating you or loving you depending how good or bad you’ve become.

To further this, developing your three main attributes (dignity, ferocity & charm) might actually have difficultly to it. So let’s say I want to have Dignity, but also become more bad than good. This might be possible, but it’ll require a lot of work with the NPCs I choose to interact with, as most Dignity options might be aimed more towards good conclusion over the bad.

Or better yet! Perhaps there could be a kind of preemptive option system, where you first choose between good/bad options before you get to choose between dignity etc.

So your three main attributes (dignity etc.) would essentially be required for how you earn unlockable rewards and the good/bad system is more like the keys required to obtain the options for your main attributes. So you’d need to develop a good/bad meter before you could interact with certain NPCs, this then leads to your ability to develop friendships (via Dignity etc.) and then ultimately rewards.

Having a good/bad system would limit who you get to befriend and therefor it would limit the rewards you could earn, making these personality based rewards feel unique.

The good/bad system could also offer special interactions just for fun. Like, because I’ve chosen more of a bad route, my interactions will Queen Jenna might be that she throws me into a prison cell on first site. Whereas, having a well developed good meter might allow you to dance with the Queen.

Remember, there are more than just 3 personalities:

Noble, Captivating, Barbaric, Brute, Unpredictable, Charming, Honorable, Scoundrel, Militant and Diplomatic. There would, then, need to be many, many paths and choices.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Remember, there are more than just 3 personalities:

Noble, Captivating, Barbaric, Brute, Unpredictable, Charming, Honorable, Scoundrel, Militant and Diplomatic. There would, then, need to be many, many paths and choices.

Actually, those are labels (or “titles”) given to the specific meter levels you can earn. Charisma, Ferocity & Dignity are the main.

The immersion of combat was mentioned just recently in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Are-GW2-Player-Skills-Boring

Figured I’d chime in a word about it.

Combat & Mechanics
The overall system is somewhat solid, although after a few months of game play, you can easily find yourself bashing your head against the keyboard due to redundancy. This can be true for almost any video game, yet one way to notice how this is actually a problem is by realizing the lack of immersion even after taking a long break from playing. I’ve took a good month off and when I got back, it wasn’t more than 20-mins worth of spvp did I already start to feel the numbing sensation return.

I honestly believe this game could use another level of depth to the combat. Something to drive the complexity and ultimately the immersion of such. One way to amplify the combat would be to add something like charges that all professions can build up to turn their skills into a “super skill”. This system could also be used to create solid counters, such as absorbing the energy of an opponents skill to give you a new skill to use in place (for a brief moment, of course).

Actually, Charisma, Ferocity, and Dignity are aspects of Personality that (depending on what their level is) can change your Personality. You start with either a Charming, Honorable or Brute Personality depending on your choice in character creation. Each Personality enables (or would enable) a different response from NPCs or other inter-actable things within the game. Each of the 10 personalities is distinct.

I also want to point out that one of the greatest problems with this game’s storyline is how disjointed it is.

I know who you are, Treahearn, we worked together before. Hey, does anyone else besides a random event in Bloodtide Coast remember Tybalt? Or Sieran? Or Forgal? Hey, Faren, I think you’re a pretty cool guy, but why can’t Riot Alice appear since I’m a streetrat? Or, you know, Quinn since I let half of Divinity’s Reach get poisoned to save his sorry butt?

Nope, none of that sort of stuff matters. What happens in one personal storyline arc holds no impact over the other, and it adds to depressing sense that our characters contribute nothing to Tyria. This also is upsetting after the promises of our choices having impacts, our failures carrying weight and our victories being meaningful.

Instead, the storyline becomes increasingly generic, such that I have not proposed continuing with the personal story on my level 80 character post-order mentor death to my friend with her level 80 character because things see destined to go as Treahearn says: not ending well. Nor climaxing, nor building up, nor continuing well either.

Agree (pretty strongly) with OP on pretty much all except Personality & Customization.

I just find that tying personality options to possible rewards might not be a good idea, it may end up like what the alignment of order in Personal Story becomes. I do not see how that might improve the immersion, although I do acknowledge it might enable me to get better acquainted with more NPCs.

Instead, I think personality could affect the quotes or tones of the same quotes that our characters make (from time to time), by aligning them to the specific personalities. This might be a superficial and subtle change, but I feel it adds more to the immersion of our characters in the world. In addition, it adds another dimension to the lines that our characters say, which currently is already different from race to race.