Guild Wars 2

Throwing this out there:

The personal story goes through three different ‘phases’, all of which are quite different from each other, but it’s also a bit janky and there’s been a question mark over whether it’ll be supported or expanded in the future. Nevertheless, the tech for a storyline with linked instances is there and available.

What if we added a new branch, a fourth ‘phase’, and had a personal story adaptation of the living story, once it completes? To extend the TV analogy, it would serve as kind of a ‘box set’, allowing players who started playing recently to see a previous, complete storyline. It’d likely be more engaging than a text summary, and could serve as an alternative to the cleansing of Orr.

I see this as branching off from after the Order storylines, with single-player recreations of the living world events that Scarlet was involved in, and reusing the assets already created. These would be abbreviated, to give the sense of how the event went without trying to recreate it faithfully. For instance, a Clockwork Chaos instance might still have waves of minions, but in a smaller instanced area, with NPCs ‘fighting’ groups until the player runs in and assists. The connective tissue would be order-specific, and presented in the context of the orders investigating the disturbances (maybe also giving the writers a bit of a mulligan, allowing them to insert information not properly presented in-game the first time around). It would be more focused, so events like Tequatl and the election probably wouldn’t feature, and events like Dragon Bash and the Arena that featured Scarlet’s work would focus on the attacks.

Players wouldn’t be able to earn previous rewards or achievements from this; like watching Breaking Bad now, you missed the zeitgeist but at least you can see what happened.

As someone who stopped playing for a while because of a crappy PC and missed a lot of the story, yes please!

I honestly don’t see how a lot of the “story” content can’t be accessed through a Historian-Type NPC like they had for a short while outside the Tower of Nightmares. Some of the group stuff (like the Marionette, for example) I can see being bothersome, though.

chemiclord.3978:

I honestly don’t see how a lot of the “story” content can’t be accessed through a Historian-Type NPC like they had for a short while outside the Tower of Nightmares. Some of the group stuff (like the Marionette, for example) I can see being bothersome, though.

Ah marionette would be easy, have you defend a portal against small waves of enemies with a couple veterans, then do weakened versions of the 5 wardens in order, then enter scarlet’s secret lair.

For fitting all of this into the game, an Asuran virtual reality simulation device would be amazing.

bwillb.2165:

Ah marionette would be easy, have you defend a portal against small waves of enemies with a couple veterans, then do weakened versions of the 5 wardens in order, then enter scarlet’s secret lair.

For fitting all of this into the game, an Asuran virtual reality simulation device would be amazing.

Well, that would require reworking old content… something I suspect Arena.net won’t be particularly keen putting their manpower towards. They want to move FORWARD with this moving story, not BACKWARDS.