Guild Wars 2

I decided to place this thread here because it involves both personal and living story.

Anyway lets begin.

In my honest opinion the writing and storytelling of GW2 is inherently flawed. In Anet’s pursuit of creating a game based on universal player collaboration, I feel like they forego important plot devices. The writers have created a cliche story that entirely lacks moral dilemmas and places the character on the backseat. Say what you will of games like TOR, its story had choice; not these mediocre arbitrary uninvolved decisions that are forced upon the player.
Playing the entire personal story I felt like my character had no personal progression, sure he became second in command for the pact; but there is no evidence of personality or dynamic growth. When I played TOR I could accurately describe my characters personality,aims, and goals. In gw2 he’s just a norn errand boy who ends up leading as second in command for a group( whose inception was rushed) that lacks any fleshed out materiel. GW2 simply refuses to embrace the mature plot points that make rps like the witcher and DAO enjoyable.
All that amazing opportunities to discuss political and moral state of the world are entirely forgotten. Don’t misunderstand me the setting is good, but it lacks focus. The conflict between the ministry and the queen, the charr legions, etc… These things are entirely forgotten. One I heard about the living story I was hoping perhaps that Anet would branch out of its writing shell. it didn’t.
Instead we receive more characters forced down our throat, I don’t want to be forced to like characters. Destiny’s edge characters are entirely one sided and fit into perfect boring archetypes. Braham and rox had no redeeming qualities. Scarlet is a poor antagonist that lacks any relatable qualities, the consortium simply can’t be sympathized with(AT ALL). Yes some things are being done fore the story by introducing characters like majory and kasmeer( Primarily their potential les relationship} but they’re simply still not fleshed out enough.
Now to living story and personal story integration. It doesn’t exist…. Second in command of the pact you should have a more formal role in the story. Their should be plot points where we use pact resources to help fight scarlet. the orders are completely ignored. Recent patches have begun to integrate a bit but still its no where near enough. A few lines of dialogue simply isn’t enough. I spent hours forcing my way through the personal story I’d like to see the fruits of my effort. I’m sick of the pc taking a backseat to poor characters with cliche storylines. Your character should have aims,desires, and goals that can be translated from the ps to the living world. Again second in command of the most powerful organization in the game shouldn’t feel like an errand boy, we’re important political characters that should be able to intervene and shift political events. A captain of the seraph doesn’t ask the second in command of the pact to do something. Its like saying that the director of the secret service could order the vice chairman of a UN( that has actual military power) to do something.

My advice to the story writers, move away from the cliche global peace and love story to a story that focuses on inter and intraracial conflcict. Address the immense power the player holds. Allow our character to decide its opinions on characters. Add more lore regarding the racial enemies( Why are there so much bandits, who leads the flame legion, what is the nightmare court doing, what are the inquests aims) Also makes these enemies more relatable.

Last of all kill off characters….

I opened this post to read it because the title caught my eye. But I am sorry guy, I just can’t read a wall of text like that. Normal people NEED bite sized parts and breaks. I’m not trying to be rude or smart either, nor am I saying it’s too long.

Please can you go through your post and just break that first paragraph up some? To me it looks like it should be 3-4 separate paragraphs…

Edit: it also looks like you put a lot of time and thought into this post (just by the length of it) , so you are only doing yourself a dis-service by turning people off from reading it because of that 1st paragraph.

Paulytnz.7619:

I opened this post to read it because the title caught my eye. But I am sorry guy, I just can’t read a wall of text like that. Normal people NEED bite sized parts and breaks. I’m not trying to be rude or smart either, nor am I saying it’s too long…

Ya sorry about that thanks for the feedback

I wrote a pretty lengthy post on the absolute bare basics of storytelling a while ago. That about sums up my personal opinion of ANet’s competence in that regard.

You rightly talk about so much of the missing potential – hell, I thought themes of unity and cooperation showed some genre awareness when I first heard of them – but the writing doesn’t go as far as meeting the minimum standards to begin with before it can indulge in something more profound.

From cliche perspective, there are some hints of things that GW2 does right, or at least knows should maybe be kinda done I guess, whatever. For instance, the story lets you hang around characters that are going to be killed off so that their death has some sort of impact instead of being a meaningless statistic. It’s not done well, but it’s a start.

There are hints of originality here and there. Little jokes, a few strokes of paint on some characters. Asura storyline in particular is allowed to be more interesting by virtue of doing away with any dignity.

But for the large part it’s such a boring grey slog that most people gave up on it in the very beginning (judging by the forum posts that I remember, anyway) and don’t feel any need to come back to…

So when something like Scarlet barges in proceeds to be completely horrible, people feel like the writing has taken a dip whereas it was never really any good to begin with.

Draco.2806:

I wrote a pretty lengthy post on the absolute bare basics of storytelling a while ago. That about sums up my personal opinion of ANet’s competence in that regard.

You rightly talk about so much of the missing potential – hell, I thought themes of unity and cooperation showed some genre awareness when I first heard of them – but the writing doesn’t go as far as meeting the minimum standards to begin with before it can indulge in something more profound.

From cliche perspective, there are some hints of things that GW2 does right, or at least knows should maybe be kinda done I guess, whatever. For instance, the story lets you hang around characters that are going to be killed off so that their death has some sort of impact instead of being a meaningless statistic. It’s not done well, but it’s a start.

There are hints of originality here and there. Little jokes, a few strokes of paint on some characters. Asura storyline in particular is allowed to be more interesting by virtue of doing away with any dignity…

I agree with about everything you said. And the thing is it seems like Anet either intentionally handicapped its story or simply gaveup on it. Its not that difficult to create a good story, its difficult to create a phenomenal story; but GW2 story is poor at best and the attempts to enhance it have been severely lacking. The living world was a perfect opportunity but all we received was the same old writing with a different skin.

I have probably done the personal story now too many times (8 to completion) to comment on all this, it just seems like a blur……

Having said that tho there were a few memorable moments, not many that really gave me that “oh this is awesome feeling” but there were the odd one or 2. I really think it’s unrealistic tho to have expected them to touch on a lot of the different factions/pact groups etc through the personal Story too much. I think the point of that was to set up the basic lore for future expansions and now possibly instead living stories.

Part of the problem here tho lies in the fact that instead of doing this they have chosen to bring in even more factions/groups just to add to the current mess. I think for the average player it’s too much too fast and not enough “oh so that’s who that group are and what they are about”.

So at the moment its like “I don’t care, just tell me where to go, who to kill and give me my reward” oh and “I hate Scarlett, kill her now”. It’s sad really….

Barsimoprimo.2759:

Its not that difficult to create a good story, its difficult to create a phenomenal story; but GW2 story is poor at best and the attempts to enhance it have been severely lacking.

That about sums it up.

Some may make excuses about hard it is to do this or that or what limitations could be put on the writer or how hard it is to come up with a decent story (and it really isn’t), but the fact is, even the bare basics of competent writing just aren’t there…

Barsimoprimo.2759:

The living world was a perfect opportunity but all we received was the same old writing with a different skin.

…And if you ever thought otherwise, Scarlet (Trahearne’s clone in every regard, yeah) and her endless “alliances” put the final nail in that coffin.

There was so much they could do with those updates. It was the format begging to be shaped by player feedback. They’ve done just about the opposite: purposefully and completely ignore it.

Paulytnz.7619:

Having said that tho there were a few memorable moments, not many that really gave me that “oh this is awesome feeling” but there were the odd one or 2.

I’m willing to bet everyone who played through the Whispers story remembers Tybald.

…and no one else…

I made this post about 2 weeks ago, and there are ppl saying they didnt finish personal story a single time for many reasons including the ones in your post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Am-i-the-only-one-that-hasn-t-finished-PS/first

Draco.2806:

Barsimoprimo.2759:

Its not that difficult to create a good story, its difficult to create a phenomenal story; but GW2 story is poor at best and the attempts to enhance it have been severely lacking.

That about sums it up.

Some may make excuses about hard it is to do this or that or what limitations could be put on the writer or how hard it is to come up with a decent story (and it really isn’t), but the fact is, even the bare basics of competent writing just aren’t there….

The thing is Tybald wasn’t even that good of a character he was just alot better than the others. He had a very minimal background, some pretty cringe worthy lines, and just wasn’t that interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I liked him. But in a game with a good story a character like tybald would have been a minor character.

Immensus.9732:

I made this post about 2 weeks ago, and there are ppl saying they didnt finish personal story a single time…

Ah! That’s the thread I was thinking of.

“Well guys, or internal statistics say almost no one played through their personal story … Oh well! Good job! Let’s do it again, right in people’s faces this time so they can’t miss it!”

Barsimoprimo.2759:

The thing is Tybald wasn’t even that good of a character he was just alot better than the others.

Spot on again.

Plus, he looked cute and had a good voice actor. Nothing to do with writing, but it helps.

Hell, I think the latter might be the only reason some people tolerate Scarlet: Tara Strong is always fun to listen to.

I think they need to make the LS if they continue with it like X-Files monster of the week episodes where even if you missed the story arc you’re not in the dark. The main story should never be a one time only limited chance of understanding deal. How many books in a series have missing chapters for new readers on purpose?

Maybe make LS episodes re-introduce the skill capping by adding a monster/boss with a story to accompany it where we can get new skills outwith the current “Here’s a new skill, build a bridge!” and have that boss stay around. Skill capping was excellent in the first game.

Paul.4081:

I think they need to make the LS if they continue with it like X-Files monster of the week episodes where even if you missed the story arc you’re not in the dark. The main story should never be a one time only deal. How many books have missing chapters for new readers on purpose?

At this point, I’m like half expecting a clone of Rita Repulsa to appear with all of the monster of the week stuff going on. Will Scarlet become another Rita LOL?

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Paul.4081:

I think they need to make the LS if they continue with it like X-Files monster of the week episodes where even if you missed the story arc you’re not in the dark. The main story should never be a one time only deal. How many books have missing chapters for new readers on purpose?

At this point, I’m like half expecting a clone of Rita Repulsa to appear with all of the monster of the week stuff going on. Will Scarlet become another Rita LOL?

That picture makes me think of two words (syllables?) “TA DAAAAAA (jumps out of Birthday cake)!”

Dark Catalyst.1028:

At this point, I’m like half expecting a clone of Rita Repulsa to appear with all of the monster of the week stuff going on. Will Scarlet become another Rita LOL?

I honestly wish I had some knowledge of Power Rangers so I could make fun of Scarlet.

I swear they’re basically the same thing. They even dress the same.

Scarlet joins the army of Rita clones, right after Maghda…

The problems with stories in this game isn’t the stories. The problem is the design decisions around how stories were to be implemented.

Take the personal story as an example. Anet wanted everything to be equal no matter what race or option you chose. That meant breaking the story into 10 level bit sized chunks. It’s not cohesive, because after ten levels you move to the next part. This to me as a bad design decision.

Because of this, writers have to write to a very specific spec…essentially five story instances to tell one complete story which has to have a beginning middle and ending.

I do understand why you can’t have bad or evil characters. The amount of options Anet could create is directly dependent on how much time and effort could be put into the story. Take the SWToR example being given. Even though you could make choices, within the choices you make, none of them affects the game at all. They’re meaningless in the big picture no matter what you do. Unlike single player RPGs which can change the world just for you. MMOs aren’t really good for single player storylines.

But there’s more. SWToR put huge effort into their storylines and the game didn’t do nearly as well as people thought it would…because there’s such a thing as putting too much emphasis on story at the expense of gameplay. SWToR overbalanced to the story, and Anet overbalanced to other concerns.

But once that decision of making stories into bit-sized micro stories was made, the game was going to have a fractured personal story that didn’t build effectively. In my opinion this was a bad decision.

I also dislike how the story of Destiny’s Edge is told through dungeons. Because people don’t usually end up doing every dungeon in order or even that often, so you lose the whole thread of it. It’s not really a very good vehicle to tell a story.

Of all the story aspects, I find the story telling in the Living World better than the story telling in either the personal story or the dungeon story mode instances. For example, in the current Kessex story, the opening and closing instances really did give me a good feel of what was going on. The characters are better than in the personal story (particularly some of their side dialogues if you listen to them) and I felt more involved in what was going on.

I don’t see any way for the personal story to be fixed at this time, because it wouldn’t be worth the resources to go back and fix it. But the Living Story is definitely improving, Scarlet hate aside.

The personal story was alright, up to the point of Traehearne. After that, it fell off hard. He’s the weakest hero i’ve ever encountered. I got the vibe of, “let us bring peace and work together, and we can all sing and dance”, blah blah blah. Ugh. Just terrible.

And Logan is second to worst. He’s always whining and crying about everything, and mentions Jennah in every scene.

A-net should just get rid of the Personal Story in an expansion or something.

Vayne.8563:

The problems with stories in this game isn’t the stories.

They are though. The writing in this game is a joke.

You could raise a point about how hard it is to get around design limitations and imposed restrictions, sure, but only if the writers were making the best of what they have – and they don’t.

There’s no reason for Destiny’s Edge, or Trahearne, or Scarlet to even exist. There’s no reason to water down dialogue into forgettable slog. There’s no reason to make cut-scenes droll and meaningless – the one place where you’d think writers would have full freedom.

Worse yet, shoving the player aside so the story can revolve around someone else actually contradicts the very idea of an interactive experience with the player at its center, so that’s the area where the writers had to actively sabotage the game designer’s work rather than the other way around.

These problems have nothing to do with writing around gameplay or struggling with restrictions on the way story is delivered. It’s out-and-out bad.

I honestly believe that prior to meeting Traeherne, the stories have been decent or serviceable (unless you are Human, the story paths in Human are pretty lame). And the lore building is pretty good in that rather than relying on races being at throats it created unity.

Ookamikun.6472:

I honestly believe that prior to meeting Traeherne, the stories have been decent or serviceable (unless you are Human, the story paths in Human are pretty lame).

Yeah, they’re not terrible. It’s probably the contrast to how much worse it gets later on that makes them look good though.

I think when you think back to it, the main differences between before and after is that the first stories weren’t exclusively focused on heroically saving the world, and that the player character still had some sort of agency in them. As in, well, the bare basics.

Otherwise the standard of writing was more or less the same, just made a little less dull by being more down-to-earth. You’d think it would be the other way around.

Ookamikun.6472:

And the lore building is pretty good in that rather than relying on races being at throats it created unity.

Well, sort of. It’s fairly original. But the thing is, a tale about unity and cooperation is meaningless without overcoming adversity and division because then it doesn’t go anywhere.

“Once upon a time, everyone lived together happily ever after. The end.”