Guild Wars 2

Story quality aside (I happen to like, most everything I’ve seen so far), I have a major beef with “My Story”; actually, I guess I have a double beef (mmm, burgers…).

There’s all this time spent on decisions related to my character and some choices in game as well that I get to make in regard to my story. Awesome stuff.

I do the story and story mode dungeons (not totally done with either yet), I find it compelling and enjoyable; w00t, this is a happy guy.

Story mode dungeons are repeatable, awesome. Story and Story mode dungeons give pretty good rewards, double awesome.

Negative Nancy time…
Story isn’t repeatable (barring creating a new identical character minus the name). This guy is sad, but word around the water cooler is ANet’s looking into resolving this. Sweet.

Story mode dungeons have “rewards?” when completed more than once? Word around the water cooler about this is that there’s a bug preventing rewards from being what they’re desired to be. That’s unfortunate, but even when fixed what’s the incentive for me to go back and help someone with a story mode dungeon?

Don’t know what the hope of diminishing rewards are for repeating content, but in my mind I have a conversation that goes something like this…
Me: “Hey, I want to do Sorrow’s Embrace story mode. It’s cool, I give it a ‘Thumbs Up’ and the rewards were decent the first time through.”
Reward System: “Ooooh, you kinda did that one yesterday. So, I’m going to have to charge you X amount of coin when you complete it. Don’t worry, it’s going to a charity for the orphanage you saved.”

So, if story mode doesn’t provide rewards worth the time, what’s my incentive? The goodness of my heart doesn’t work with everyone for some reason… just kidding world, I love every one of you equally ( <.< >.> <.<).

This isn’t just a double beef with Repeating Story Mode or Explorable Mode dungeons though. I guess it’s a triple. For content in general what’s my incentive to go through an area with a buddy and 100% with him when I have it done already? Besides the goodness of my heart. What’s my incentive to be in any area besides the four areas that are level 70+? Is every area besides the four 70+ areas going to end up with a diminished population when everyone gets to the point that they want “shineys” and they can only get them by getting things that can only be found or are most lucrative in the level 70+ areas?

tl;dr
There’s 3 issues I’m bringing attention to.
1) The idea of “My Story” is supposed to be strong, yet it’s not repeatable. -Fix in the works?
2) Dungeons’ story modes aren’t worth the time compared to other activities (so people are less likely to appreciate the connections between the stories or help others through story mode).
3) Incentive to revisit content in general? Helping someone else only goes so far with it consumes your time and you’re compensation is minimal. Eventually people will want items that can only be obtained in level 70+ zones or at least are most lucrative in those zones.

Played out Conversation with ANet
Me: Issues known?
Anet: Yes.
Me: Cool, thought so.
Me again: Timeframe and actions to resolve?
ANet: In the works
Me: Not communicating much information, so as not to commit?
ANet: Yes.
Me: Cool, thought so. Good talk.

Ya this game suffers from lack of high level pve, plain and simple people want something different after they did hearts, dynamic events, and and ran through the boring 5 mans. sucky fact is this game doesnt have anything there yet.

Fyi, my intended meaning for “High Level Issue” was not literally in regard to character levels, but that kind of fits indirectly. My intended meaning was Issue present due to the game’s design model. Hurray for dual meanings!