Guild Wars 2

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/170508581 @ 02:28:55

“Your Guild Wars 2 story begins when you create your character. […] The humans, a noble proud race surrounded by enemies. The charr, masters of warfare and conquest. The norn, heroic shapeshifters from the frozen north. The asura, beings of small size and great intellect. The sylvari, a mysterious new race of plant people. […] When you’re ready, you will enter Tyria, a massive, ever changing world. […] Because these dynamic events evolve and change, depending on the actions of players like you, each time you log in, you can find something new. […] personal story. This unique, customizable adventure changes and branches with every choice you make. No two players will have the same experience. […] It’s a living, breathing fantasy world. A deeply customizable role-playing experience.”

This was one of the first trailers released for the game, and I don’t know about you, but I found it a slap in the face to have it featured on the 5th anniversary Guild Chat. Because they’ve completely erased this game mechanic by making every player experiencing the exact same content, following the exact same path, forcing them to make the exact same choices (for there are no choices).

I want that GW2 back, with personalized content, where race (and perhaps profession and personality as well) matter, where you were able to choose your path. Nowadays, I hardly recognize my charr or my norn for their human behavior, tone, language, and emotional responses.

I hope the devs will get back to this vital part of GW2 that used to make your character feel special and provided a lot of fun and variety.

Generally speaking, no.

It rarely happens that a new expansion fully reinvigorates the “new game world”-feeling of starting a new MMORPG. But it’s utterly rare.

By and large, once you “know” a MMORPG, it’s a long-term video game time filler, meaning you’ll analyze it, you optimize it, you abstract from it.

Ashantara.8731:

I want that GW2 back, with personalized content, where race (and perhaps profession and personality as well) matter, where you were able to choose your path.

The “personalized” content stop at around level 50, or even earlier if you count the limited choice when you join an order.

I doubt so.

Creating specific encounters which depend on personal story would be certainly nice, but a total waste of time if compared to a single episode of living story.

Ps: because i have a human character i see no problems in my character’s speeches, but if you think that other races tends to be too much “humanized”, you can propose some variants. I am talking about LS and S.

Carighan.6758:

It rarely happens that a new expansion fully reinvigorates the “new game world”-feeling of starting a new MMORPG. But it’s utterly rare.

For some reason, I feel like you did not get my point.

Maybe the title was misleading, but if you read my post, you should understand that it’s not about “the new game world feeling”. That’s an entirely different topic.

Shirlias.8104:

Creating specific encounters which depend on personal story would be certainly nice, but a total waste of time if compared to a single episode of living story.

That might be so, but nonetheless, I wanted to point out that ArenaNet has broken their promise made in that trailer, and it was quite a sarcastic move to put it in said anniversary chat.

No I did understand it, but the specific content you mention factually never existed. It just felt amazing because it was all new and fresh. The veneer of “your choice matters” was enough at the time, we were all amazed by how amazing the game was.

Nowadays we have less actual choice, but much better systems, but it’s all a wash.

Carighan.6758:

The veneer of “your choice matters” was enough at the time, we were all amazed by how amazing the game was.

Nowadays we have less actual choice, but much better systems, but it’s all a wash.

Exactly. It is no longer amazing that way, and the reason is not the fact that the game isn’t “new” to us.

Ashantara.8731:

Carighan.6758:

The veneer of “your choice matters” was enough at the time, we were all amazed by how amazing the game was.

Nowadays we have less actual choice, but much better systems, but it’s all a wash.

Exactly. It is no longer amazing that way, and the reason is not the fact that the game isn’t “new” to us.

There’s no “fact” either way.

It’s demonstrably true that new games feel fresher to more people than expansions and it’s also true that some people feel reinvigorated or enjoy expansions more for similar reasons.

I never felt that there was “choice that mattered” in GW2 and I was pleased by that. I don’t want to worry about whether choosing an Asura Warrior hurt my playing experience, outside of deciding I don’t like the voice acting.

So each new update, it’s easy for me to be amazed by all the other elements presented, because (to borrow a phrase) the veneer of choice isn’t that important.

So for me, the content is always “personal” and potentially exciting; it just doesn’t depend on the sort of thing the OP is hoping to find in this game (and in my opinion, that GW2 never really had).