Guild Wars 2

Malkavian.4516:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Most of the complaints were focused on earlier events though.

Mainly the fact that unless you play a sylvari you’re first introduced to Trahearne at the start of The Battle of Claw Island. At the end of the instance your mentor dies and Trahearne instantly takes their place. Very shortly afterwards he becomes the head of the Pact and you’re his second in command, following his orders from that point on.

It’s extremely jarring given that until that point you were lead to believe your Order mentor would be the one going up against Zhaitan with you.

The lack of new red posts here is my greatest fear…

Danikat.8537:

Malkavian.4516:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Most of the complaints were focused on earlier events though.

Mainly the fact that unless you play a sylvari you’re first introduced to Trahearne at the start of The Battle of Claw Island. At the end of the instance your mentor dies and Trahearne instantly takes their place. Very shortly afterwards he becomes the head of the Pact and you’re his second in command, following his orders from that point on.

It’s extremely jarring given that until that point you were lead to believe your Order mentor would be the one going up against Zhaitan with you.

Following his orders, huh? There’s that plus he let’s you decide the best course of action on certain occasions.

Malkavian.4516:

Danikat.8537:

Malkavian.4516:

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve had another playthrough, and while the same problems are still there, Trahearne’s voice lines have been updated. So while ANet still cares about Personal Story (of course they do, just see their “improvements”), unconfusing the end chapters appears to be another large patch away.

If that’s the case, it is what we have feared then, they wont return the missing arc, but will preform a hard edit, to cleanse its existence from the remaining chapters. Well, even this is better than leaving the story as it is though… But why Anet? Why fix what isn’t broken? What we all love and enjoy? And what contributes so much to the infrastructure of the story.

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

Most of the complaints were focused on earlier events though.

Mainly the fact that unless you play a sylvari you’re first introduced to Trahearne at the start of The Battle of Claw Island. At the end of the instance your mentor dies and Trahearne instantly takes their place. Very shortly afterwards he becomes the head of the Pact and you’re his second in command, following his orders from that point on.

It’s extremely jarring given that until that point you were lead to believe your Order mentor would be the one going up against Zhaitan with you.

Following his orders, huh? There’s that plus he let’s you decide the best course of action on certain occasions.

Who’s the leader of the Pact
Defending you and me?
T – R – A
H – E – A
R and N and E!

i know nothing about these dialogue changes (as i’ve utterly halted any story progression beyond the first lvl 40 mission to gey my key), but it seems like an idiotic thing to do just to “fix” the plot holes. you have on one hand, spend more money, slap a bandaid on the story, continue to have hundreds, if not thousands of complaints. on the other hand, press the story reset button, make it the way it was, spend little, if any money, satisfy EVERYONE…………if they took the first option, they have to be the craziest s.o.b’s in existence if they think that’s a good plan

Please bring this back and fix this anet. The removal of these quests don’t make any sense at all. You paid programmers, artists, designers, sound and music programmers etc to make these stories and now get rid of them… for what reason? Things don’t even make sense now. Characters are dead for the final stories then alive again b/c the order of the stories are now messed up. If you swap the order ie: killing zhaiten then cleansing orr, at least edit the videos, cinema, dialogue etc so it makes sense, you can’t just swap things and not change them when it messes up the lore and story that much.

This is your own game, your baby. Your product that fans have enjoyed for 8 years. Your legacy to changing the mmo generation. Please don’t pull a WoW and kill it yourself.

Chrono.6928:

Please bring this back and fix this anet. The removal of these quests don’t make any sense at all. You paid programmers, artists, designers, sound and music programmers etc to make these stories and now get rid of them… for what reason? Things don’t even make sense now. Characters are dead for the final stories then alive again b/c the order of the stories are now messed up. If you swap the order ie: killing zhaiten then cleansing orr, at least edit the videos, cinema, dialogue etc so it makes sense, you can’t just swap things and not change them when it messes up the lore and story that much.

This is your own game, your baby. Your product that fans have enjoyed for 8 years. Your legacy to changing the mmo generation. Please don’t pull a WoW and kill it yourself.

…and without the Greatest Fear Plotline, key plot points never even happen but are still big parts of the war in Orr. It just confuses people and makes no sense.

Rewriting everything is hard and costs money. Revoicing everything is hard and costs money. Recoding everything is hard and costs money. Checking that having done all that didn’t introduce even more plot problems is hard and costs money. Doing it all again to fix the new problems is hard and costs money.

Yes, putting the plot back in its original order but fitting it into the new system will be hard. And it will cost money. But when you compare it to all the things listed above that would have to be done (over and over again nonetheless), this option of putting it back and making it fit the new system has to be a lot cheaper. And it makes for a better story on top of all of that.

The third option, of leaving the plot incomprehensible (as it is right now), sends a clear message that, as others have put it here:

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

…A simple play through shows the plot is all mixed up… maybe the plot doesn’t matter?

Thia.4891:

…if the plot no longer matters to them, then this game no longer matters to me. And it pains me greatly yo say that, but its the truth… the only thing left for me is the story.

AirimirOfGondor.9081:

…The point is, people in this thread feel like the gaping plot crater left by removing the greatest fear storyline is the problem and that it is a much a bigger problem.

…there are those who care about storytelling and can’t get into their main character if their main character is Mr./Mrs. Perfect and never makes any mistakes… It makes it a bad story from a narrative perspective. And we thought they cared about telling a good story. We all are starting to feel like we were wrong about that now.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

…It’s a mess. Worse, it’s obvious when you play these chapters. And yet this thread is a month old and nothing has happened.

Clearly it was okay to alter the plot without confirming it still made sense. Clearly it’s not a high priority fix, if it’s even on the list of things to fix.

Conclusion: The plot just doesn’t matter much.

and

Messenger.7450:

The silence from ANet on this matter is just deafening.

Mental Paradox.3845:

We know where the “eligibility line” is?

I stopped my characters right on the mission where you consult the pale tree, right BEFORE the vision. Is this too late? Will I be able to play the arc if they ever restore it?

No, you’re fine if they decide to restore it.

If you had started Chapter 7 (that is, you have completed the step “Forging the Pact”), you will have started on the old system involving Apatia et. al. (My Mesmer luckily is at this point.)

If you haven’t completed Forging the Pact, then unfortunately you will be shown the new mangled storyline. (Which my remaining 4 characters sadly are.)

Chrono.6928:

Please bring this back and fix this anet. The removal of these quests don’t make any sense at all. You paid programmers, artists, designers, sound and music programmers etc to make these stories and now get rid of them… for what reason? Things don’t even make sense now. Characters are dead for the final stories then alive again b/c the order of the stories are now messed up. If you swap the order ie: killing zhaiten then cleansing orr, at least edit the videos, cinema, dialogue etc so it makes sense, you can’t just swap things and not change them when it messes up the lore and story that much.

This is your own game, your baby. Your product that fans have enjoyed for 8 years. Your legacy to changing the mmo generation. Please don’t pull a WoW and kill it yourself.

they don’t need to edit the videos, cinema, dialogue, etc, they just need to put it all back the way it was. it made sense then. and it costs MUCH less to just reset it than to alter it further

After having played the new content for Living Story, I must say that I’m confused and having a hard time getting excited about it.

Why?

Because on one hand, we have a Living Story storyline that is lore heavy, and looks and feels incredible, and on the other hand, we have a Personal Story that is filled with plot holes, and makes no sense from level 70 onwards.

Worse, these changes were made recently, and on purpose. Much like the Living Story.

So which is it?

Are Anet feeling great one day, making great content, and hurting their own product the next?

What is that? Does that bode well for the future?

Is the Personal Story issue something that will eventually get the same love that Living Story is getting, or is this silence Anet’s way of hoping the issue will just die down and go away?

And should we really get behind one, and ignore the other? It’s the same product after all.

Tallybunny.4782:

After having played the new content for Living Story, I must say that I’m confused and having a hard time getting excited about it.

Why?

Because on one hand, we have a Living Story storyline that is lore heavy, and looks and feels incredible, and on the other hand, we have a Personal Story that is filled with plot holes, and makes no sense from level 70 onwards.

Worse, these changes were made recently, and on purpose. Much like the Living Story.

So which is it?

Are Anet feeling great one day, making great content, and hurting their own product the next?

What is that? Does that bode well for the future?

Is the Personal Story issue something that will eventually get the same love that Living Story is getting, or is this silence Anet’s way of hoping the issue will just die down and go away?

And should we really get behind one, and ignore the other? It’s the same product after all.

I think it’s probably poor communication between different teams, and/or different teams valuing different things.

Different teams work on different aspects of the game. The people who make Living Story happen probably aren’t the same people who made the Personal Story changes that went live in September, and neither of these groups are probably the people who made the Personal Story way back when that was developed prelaunch.

That’s a reality of having a large project and segmenting the teams to certain tasks. And on a project on the scale of GW2 I think it would be hard to make a (sane and reasonable) argument that tasks should not be split into groups like this. And if the problem is communication between these teams, that’s something they can try to improve internally moving forward.

But looking at it from a player perspective, it is all still the same game. And if we feel like an important part of the lore (any important part of the lore, be it Personal Story, Living Story, or something else) is being ignored and left as a pile of nonsense, then we feel that the game as a whole lacks that commitment to good storytelling. Even if everything else were perfect and amazing (and I’m not saying it is or it isn’t).

I know that from a developer standpoint it probably does not seem fair that we players make this association. And in the abstract like I’m writing right now I can appreciate the difference. And I do appreciate what the devs do. I truly do. And I know it’s not an easy job by any stretch of the imagination. But even still, I cannot shake this lack of enthusiasm that I and many others are expressing here. Because the way we experience it, the one rotten ingredient sours the entire meal…

…and seeing Personal Story in its current state? It is a sad, sour ingredient indeed.

they obviously messed up this one big time.
it was fine previously, why they go and break it?

Anet’s decisions continue to baffle me. I haven’t played since I decided to quit awhile ago, but I sometimes check back to see if they are ever going to move in the right direction and nothing has changed. Instead of adding content, they remove it!

only 1 red colored reply after 2 months.

this is extremely disappointing.

Such a shame. I won’t pretend that I know a thing or two about coding, but what’s the difficulty in restoring what is already there in the first place? I know they got a lot on their plate with the Living Story updates, but this is just silly. I have waited long enough and I think it’s high time we at least get some update. So far, Chris is still keeping it quiet telling us that once we got an update, we will be made aware. But so far, I think they haven’t even started fixing this. I’d probably be real kittened off if they add this fix on the next Feature Patch.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

only 1 red colored reply after 2 months.

this is extremely disappointing.

I dont get on the forums much, and I only just now caught wind of this personal story line change. It blew my mind that they did this. I literally scrolled through this entire thread to see what else the devs have said about this. Indeed, only one dev reply on this thread.

Next they’ll probably remove “VIctory or Death” all together and just give us a cutscene of Zhaitan being shot by airship cannons while we the players just stand on the ground and watch.

Sounds like the greatest fear plotline is still missing? I’ll have to keep avoiding doing personal story until it returns.

I have two new characters waiting for it to get fixed before continuing story.

Or is it gone for good and only a strange end for the story left? Feels like watching a movie and skipping after 1 hour straight to last 2 minutes.

It’s not that I am a big fan of GW2 story or storyterlling. There are much better games for this matter. But it really bugs me that they remove content and upon reception and several threads Anet just says nothing about it? Why that? What’s the purpose? Is it 42?

Ameepa.6793:

I have two new characters waiting for it to get fixed before continuing story.

Or is it gone for good and only a strange end for the story left? Feels like watching a movie and skipping after 1 hour straight to last 2 minutes.

It’s not exactly “gone” but more like locked out.

Malkavian.4516:

…what’s the difficulty in restoring what is already there in the first place?…

Just wanted to take a stab at answering this question because I think I can guess up an answer:

NOTE: I don’t even think or know if I’m right about all or any of this. I’m just speculating in the vacuum that is created in the absence of actual knowledge or fact. If you think I’m plain wrong about something, feel free to say so and I may even join you in undermining all the things I’m about to say right now – lol – shall we begin, then?

1. When they introduced this Feature Patch they (presumably) had some kind of roadmap they made for chunking up story missions into “chapters” (or whatever the proper term they are using now is).

2. This “chunking” process involved grouping several Personal Story missions together into groupings that are unlocked together. We do know this much.

3. Whether accidental or on purpose, everything related to the Greatest Fear plotline was not assigned into “chunks” that we players are able to get. Since players are not able to play the Greatest Fear plotline we know this much as well.

4. If the removal was intentional, this means that (presumably) no one has taken the time to chunk the old story missions into new chapter chunks appropriate for the new system. Depending on how well-designed the chapter system is (Was it rushed? was it designed to be modular, meaning adding or removing would be easy? Or were they hoping it was a one-and-done thing and therefore recoding it is like trying to reorder the bricks in a finished brick wall?)

5. If my assumptions in #4 turn out to be true (first leap to make next guess here) and if it’s more along the “recoding a brick wall” thing (second leap needed to make this guess), and if they are even aware of us and our plight in this thread (read: third leap – big leap), then they are (presumably) probably scrambling internally to justify the way it is now so they don’t have to start moving bricks in their new wall (read: it could be so bad that they might need to rebuild the whole wall from the ground up).

6. If they are in fact aware of us/this thread, they’re (presumably) probably going to remain silent, maybe MAYBE have an intern or something play through the story to see if it’s as bad as we say, and then tell themselves “these guys are blowing it way out of proportion, just leave it.”

7. If my wild speculations here have somehow lined up with reality, then each and every one of us is just going to have to accept that we care a lot more about the story and lore of Guild Wars than the people making it do, and that this is just a commercial product designed to milk us as long as we can tolerate it. (read: “Just” – of course I know it’s a commercial product and they need to make money from us – and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just like to think there’s some… art, or style, or creativity in the process as well – and that in order to achieve maximum milkage of us all, player retention is sought above and beyond “minimum required tolerance” to continue playing, lol)

…I never used to think about these things or think quite like this (or really post on the forums that much in general) until this whole thing happened. But at least it’s been a really eye-opening experience for me, and I feel like I’m in pretty good company among those who are a part of this thread.

tl;dr: It might be hard to fix so they might not do it even if it’s the right thing to do lore-wise/sense-making-wise/caring-wise. And that’s probably why they don’t want to talk to us here.

Their communication policy really doesn’t help them with these sorts of ongoing issues, where the central complaint is ANet does not care.

The initial change felt like ANet does not care. The lack of any fix feels like ANet does not care. How do you drive the final nail into this coffin? Let the complaint linger on page 1 for months and months without comment.

Thing is, I think ANet does care. But this iron-clad, never-talk policy makes us think otherwise. At some point you do more damage with silence. Greatest Fear is at that point, Traits is way past that point…

My greatest fear plotline would be more L.S done in less than one hour like the update of November 18th the smallest L.S 2 so far. Time to install Assassin’s Creed Unity and start to forget about the nightmare that GW 2 has been for the past 2 year. Where is the GW 1 staff when you need them?

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

Their communication policy really doesn’t help them with these sorts of ongoing issues, where the central complaint is ANet does not care.

The initial change felt like ANet does not care. The lack of any fix feels like ANet does not care. How do you drive the final nail into this coffin? Let the complaint linger on page 1 for months and months without comment.

Thing is, I think ANet does care. But this iron-clad, never-talk policy makes us think otherwise. At some point you do more damage with silence. Greatest Fear is at that point, Traits is way past that point…

Yes, the silence is doing more to hurt ANet’s reputation and create player resentment than they might think. I’ve tried a few times to get ANet reps (including Gaile) to look at this thread, but I’ve had no success. Most recently, there was a post on the Bugs forum that Jeffrey had looked at at least twice, but again, no further information was forthcoming.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the staff are under a gag order not to discuss this. Why? I can only speculate.

I am really surprised this has not been fixed already. But I am even more surprised that there has not even been a comment as to whether or not the removal was intended.

I feel like in this industry it is very unusual to keep your players this much in the dark. Not spoiling things is one thing. But not giving the players so much as a clue about very big things is another thing entirely.

This is getting really bad.

If the answer is: We are on a skeleton crew and can only deliver main features and quick bug fixes — maybe they feel silence is less damaging.

Novel idea: maybe they were going for a Tarantino-style story cut. You know, GW2 meets Pulp Fiction. Except with many glaring plot holes and omissions.

Any response from the dev cave other than echoes lately?

Okay, I’m done sitting here waiting for the ice to thaw in Greenland, its time to do something about this, and so I’ve resolved to unite the player base in a peaceful protest.

On every thread in which the topic is not an important issue, and yet ANet employees reply there while neglecting the real problems (you know the ones I’m talking about: the, ‘thank you ANet for being awesome’, or ’how many damage points can you get from jumping to your death?" type of threads; ie any thread that does not discuss core game mechanics, story and character development, features, or bugs), we will simply post this:

—While we enjoy seeing you post here, please reply to important issues too ANet.

My Greatest Fear, is that ANet doesn’t care.—

But for this to work, we must be civil, respectful, and friendly; remember, this is a PEACEFUL PROTEST, so I will outline a list of rules that will serve to guide you in that endeavor.
1. Each player in accord with our protest may ONLY post this message ONCE per thread (and only on mundane threads that ANet replies to), but ALL are encouraged to post on EACH THREAD THAT APPLIES, even if another player has already done so; for the more voices that resound, the more our cause will grow in strength.
2. You are to type no more and no less than the above stated entry, nor are you to add another post regarding our protest. (Explaining it, Encouraging it, and Justifying it, is NOT permitted)
3. If another player jumps in to argue with, or attack you for posting this statement, you will NOT respond. To do so would send the thread spiraling off-topic, which MAY result in the thread getting locked, and perhaps corrective action on the part of ANet’s staff; and WILL result in a negative regard for our movement from both the patrons of the thread in question, and ANet.
4. We are not here to to dissuade ANet from replying to such topics, or to suggest that these threads are ‘stupid’ or ‘not worth our time’, we only wish for them to reply to our more… sensitive… threads too.
5. We do not wish to come off as ‘whiners who only complain’, but rather, to present ourselves as players who truly love and care about this game, and thus cannot bare to see it destroyed. To those ends, after leaving the the post of protest, you are encouraged to take an active and positive roll in the actual topic of the thread.
6. We will not actively look for such threads, but will act upon them as we see them; we are not trolls.
7. This protest will continue until ANet leaves a statement on this thread; we’re not looking for anything specific, a simple “we are aware of the problem” would suffice if nothing else.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Okay, I’m done sitting here waiting for the ice to thaw in Greenland, its time to do something about this, and so I’ve resolved to unite the player base in a peaceful protest.

On every thread in which the topic is not an important issue, and yet ANet employees reply there while neglecting the real problems (you know the ones I’m talking about: the, ‘thank you ANet for being awesome’, or ’how many damage points can you get from jumping to your death?" type of threads; ie any thread that does not discuss core game mechanics, story and character development, features, or bugs), we will simply post this:

—While we enjoy seeing you post here, please reply to important issues too ANet.

My Greatest Fear, is that ANet doesn’t care.—

But for this to work, we must be civil, respectful, and friendly; remember, this is a PEACEFUL PROTEST, so I will outline a list of rules that will serve to guide you in that endeavor.
1. Each player in accord with our protest may ONLY post this message ONCE per thread (and only on mundane threads that ANet replies to), but ALL are encouraged to post on EACH THREAD THAT APPLIES, even if another player has already done so; for the more voices that resound, the more our cause will grow in strength.
2. You are to type no more and no less than the above stated entry, nor are you to add another post regarding our protest. (Explaining it, Encouraging it, and Justifying it, is NOT permitted)
3. If another player jumps in to argue with, or attack you for posting this statement, you will NOT respond. To do so would send the thread spiraling off-topic, which MAY result in the thread getting locked, and perhaps corrective action on the part of ANet’s staff; and WILL result in a negative regard for our movement from both the patrons of the thread in question, and ANet.
4. We are not here to to dissuade ANet from replying to such topics, or to suggest that these threads are ‘stupid’ or ‘not worth our time’, we only wish for them to reply to our more… sensitive… threads too.
5. We do not wish to come off as ‘whiners who only complain’, but rather, to present ourselves as players who truly love and care about this game, and thus cannot bare to see it destroyed. To those ends, after leaving the the post of protest, you are encouraged to take an active and positive roll in the actual topic of the thread.
6. We will not actively look for such threads, but will act upon them as we see them; we are not trolls.
7. This protest will continue until ANet leaves a statement on this thread; we’re not looking for anything specific, a simple “we are aware of the problem” would suffice if nothing else.

i only have one problem with this: they said they’re aware of the problem…………..2 months ago. by all means, we should make it known to anet whenever possible, but i’m starting to lose hope in them ever going and fixing any of the PS, they’re too busy locking things behind pay/grind walls and adding to their precious (and now going downhill story-wise) living story.

JusticarArkiel.1564:

i only have one problem with this: they said they’re aware of the problem…………..2 months ago. by all means, we should make it known to anet whenever possible, but i’m starting to lose hope in them ever going and fixing any of the PS, they’re too busy locking things behind pay/grind walls and adding to their precious (and now going downhill story-wise) living story.

Hah! One poor update (and it wasn’t horrible, just depressingly short), doesn’t mean they are going down hill, it appears lacking due to how amazing their previous update was, but that doesn’t mean it serves as a turning point, for all we know the next could be their best yet; its too soon to judge.

And if they have said as much, it wasn’t on this thread. I know they have regarded the confusion caused by mixing up chapters 7 and 8, as an error they intend to fix, but to my knowledge, they have said nothing in regard to the loss of the ‘my greatest fear’ arc.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

JusticarArkiel.1564:

i only have one problem with this: they said they’re aware of the problem…………..2 months ago. by all means, we should make it known to anet whenever possible, but i’m starting to lose hope in them ever going and fixing any of the PS, they’re too busy locking things behind pay/grind walls and adding to their precious (and now going downhill story-wise) living story.

Hah! One poor update (and it wasn’t horrible, just depressingly short), doesn’t mean they are going down hill, it appears lacking due to how amazing their previous update was, but that doesn’t mean it serves as a turning point, for all we know the next could be their best yet; its too soon to judge.

And if they have said as much, it wasn’t on this thread. I know they have regarded the confusion caused by mixing up chapters 7 and 8, as an error they intend to fix, but to my knowledge, they have said nothing in regard to the loss of the ‘my greatest fear’ arc.

it was mentioned on the forum thread about the “possible NPE bugs”, which included the mixup and removal of the greatest fear arc, it’s pretty buried now and i can’t find the link, but it was started by the devs. as for the going downhill, i should’ve been more exact – to me personally, this doesn’t seem to be capable of going anywhere good in sense of story after the latest update, just a personal opinion on the going down-hill thing.

First time posting on the forums, but just want to add my disappointment to what already seems to be a pretty big chorus. I reached the lv80 portion of the Personal Story and got the dialogue about some guy called Tonn dying. Went to look up the wiki and realised that I missed out on this fear plotline. Then found out that also the lv70 portion was out of sequence.

It’s probably too late since I’m well into the glitched part of the story, so I’m inclined to delete and start again. Just this time completely avoiding the personal story until it is resolved. But honestly, the personal story is the biggest draw for me. I was actually enjoying it more than the mmorpg aspect of the game itself. I took great care in picking story paths for my characters, almost to obsessive levels. Took a couple of aborted attempts until I got the right set of personal story choices for my characters. Without it functioning poorly, I don’t see much motivation in playing the game.

I only started playing after the September patch, so I don’t know what the game was like before but I feel pretty annoyed that whatever care and planning I took within the game was for nothing. I probably should have checked the forums first for any story breaking bugs but since the game has been out for 2 years I didn’t think there would be any problems with old content.

Probably for the best to take a break from GW2 and to hold back on any further purchases.

ANet is not the master the polishing their content. They mostly have great ideas, one after the other, develop and implement some of it, get it done in a limited timeframe hoping that it sticks, release them, fix the absolutely gamebreaking (and i mean gamebreaking, like CTD levels of breaking) bugs in a week or so, then move on to other ideas.

Then they have the ideas that could be implemented on old content, and as if by an impulse they do so with barely even remembering that old content enough to fully realize the implications of this implementation. But its not gamebreaking, it just makes enjoying that content rather difficult. So they move on to other ideas…

If we are lucky the third feature patch might look at this. To the same extend that the second feature patch mitigated some of the damage the first feature patch caused.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

I take it that restoring the PS to its pre-NPE state as an interim measure is off the table?

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

Thank you Gaile, these are the sorts of specific, qualified progress reports on development activity that we should expect from every aspect of game development.

If they are fixing things in the latter half of the PS, I really hope they fix the content itself.

I barely remember any of the specific chapters or the storylines in the Zhaitan parts of PS, because the most memorable thing that stuck in my mind was wanting to throw my keyboard out the window because of the boring, tedious, timesink fights and scenarios that fill the PS.

I remember the idiotic boss that spammed veteran spiders, I remember rolling my eyes and wondering when the Claw Island scenario would finally end, I remember constantly thinking that the PS content is not challenging, it’s just drawn out and tedious.

Maybe some players who like this kind of timesink ‘challenge’. I’m here to say that there others who play the PS because they want to see the story not waste their time jumping through hoops. If they are going to fix things in the PS, if they want more people to actually DO it, they should to fix this.

Simple solution – something that has been in single player games for decades and is already part of GW2’s engine – scaling/difficulty settings. Every single player game for the last 25 years offers this choice to players. GW2 already offers difficulty settings in dungeons with Story and Explorer mode. Since the PS is meant to be an instanced, solo experience with GW2, this would be a logical thing to offer.

I could care less about the changes of PS because after running through it once with one character, I never want to go through any of that content again. Offer an option to make the content less tedious and less of a timesink (and take away the rewards for all I care), and I might be inclined to play it again to see the other branches.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

Thank yoou for taking the time to check this for us, Gaile.

Is there any chance you could clarify this statement a bit further? I understand that you can’t tell us all that much, but it would be nice to know if putting things back in the proper order (including MGF) is what’s on the table in some form… OR if all these resources are being put into rewriting everything >70 to make sense in the new format.

I tthink many of us would be happy to wait a month or two more if we knew at least the direction of the intended fix, no details needed.

perilisk.1874:

I take it that restoring the PS to its pre-NPE state as an interim measure is off the table?

I don’t get why it has to be “interim”. Was anything wrong with the pre-NPE Orr-part of the story except for the terrible Zhaitan fight (which wasn’t changed, anyhow)?

Restore the Orr-chains, then use dev resources to re-implement Zhaitan and make him a boss-fractal while we’re at it. Done.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I believe I understand you’d like to know if the Personal Story can be “reset” to a previous state. I have sent an email to ask about that and will let you know when I get some info for you.

More or less. It could still be in the new chapter format, just with the individual story steps back in the order they were in, including those currently missing.

I really do appreciate your efforts.

JusticarArkiel.1564:

Deli.1302:

Did anet ever give a reason for the removal?

something about making the personal story less confusing to new players, but then they changed their stance to “it’s a bug” after everyone went up in arms about the story changes………..still don’t get it, if the story changes are a “bug”, why has it taken 2 MONTHS to fix it?

I know this is an old comment but:

The confusing part was for the hearts and events in the level 1-10 areas. They NEVER ONCE gave a comment about why they changed the Personal Story’s order.

The “it’s a bug” was player hopefulness over the matter. All ArenaNet said was “we’ll get back to you on Monday” (this was said on a Friday… over two months ago).

Mental Paradox.3845:

We know where the “eligibility line” is?

I stopped my characters right on the mission where you consult the pale tree, right BEFORE the vision. Is this too late? Will I be able to play the arc if they ever restore it?

You’re in the clear there. You must ensure one of two things to not be set-in-stone:

• Do not reach level 70
• Do not complete story step Retribution. I suggestion not completing A Light in the Darkness as that is when you choose what fear plot you’ll have (and this may or may not get messed up).

If you’re past 70 by the time you hit Retribution DO NOT COMPLETE IT. If you have completed Retribution but haven’t hit 70 DO NOT LEVEL UP.

You can do one, but not both.

Malkavian.4516:

I got a theory. If memory serves, people vocally complained on the forums about how Trahearne stole your character’s spotlight on the last half of the Personal Story, which I honestly do not see considering that he never joined my character and Destiny’s Edge towards the attack on Zhaitan and was just perched atop his ship on the Straits. This change was meant to address this, although I think it backfired. I may be kitteny for saying this, but if this is true, then I sincerely blame the people for voicing that out and we eventually got what we got right now.

If I had to give a motivation for these changes by Anet, then this is what I think happened.

They wanted Trahearne’s plot (his Wyld Hunt – aka The Source of Orr) to be over sooner so that it won’t feel like he stole the spotlight. Though in all honesty, I never got that feeling myself.

They likely removed the fear plot in order to reduce the amount of senseless deaths that lack emotional ties because characters die too fast.

In all honesty, the PS’s greatest problem is that we never got to know characters.

Rather than removing story steps, I think Anet should have added some – a new chapter between Chapters 4 and 5, before we get our second promotion after aiding the minor races. Such chapters could easily involve Trahearne, with just a small need to change Battle of Claw Island dialogue and place it in the new “Chapter 4.5”.

I’m not really sure if it would be possible to add a sense of attachment to the greatest fear plot, aside from redoing the chapter and expanding the number of instances.

And all the other deaths all depend too greatly on your early PS plots, determined by your biography. The only solution then would either hard-set the Further into Orr story splits, or to extend the number of instances.

Anet went the easy way – “if they complained about it, let’s remove it” – rather than the proper way – “if they complained about it, let’s improve it”.

Which is what they did with the NPE throughout. Players who left the game complained about something, so Anet went and removed it, even though players who kept with the game loved that then-removed thing. All done to increase their playerbase… but what it really does is switch it out if they can manage to bring back the lost players (which there is 0 guarantee of, thus the best guarantee is that you just ran off most of the players that remained).

JusticarArkiel.1564:

i know nothing about these dialogue changes (as i’ve utterly halted any story progression beyond the first lvl 40 mission to gey my key), but it seems like an idiotic thing to do just to “fix” the plot holes. you have on one hand, spend more money, slap a bandaid on the story, continue to have hundreds, if not thousands of complaints. on the other hand, press the story reset button, make it the way it was, spend little, if any money, satisfy EVERYONE…………if they took the first option, they have to be the craziest s.o.b’s in existence if they think that’s a good plan

From what I saw that that_shaman pulled out of the gw.dat, Trahearne has had some battle cries and greet dialogue altered.

“This won’t end well.” for example, has been removed entirely. I don’t know why, because while people made fun of it, it was iconic to the game.

It would be like taking Captain Jack Sparrow out of Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

It feels as if my eyes are deceiving me, to see a red response this far into the whole ordeal.

Removal of complete non-seasonal content has always been a sore spot for me, particularly for the Greatest Fear arc since the only reason I never did it was because I had faith in Anet as a new player and waited for the NPE “improvements”; reverting such a thoughtless mistake would be appreciated, even if it took over a season to rectify.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

Gaile, as a long standing lover of the game series’ lore and story, I would like to request from you, a request:

Can you please ask how they’re intending to fix this? Because it seems like their fix will be to completely overhaul the dialogue – going off of your post here. However, if this is so, there will STILL be glaring plot issues even with such, and I find it hard to believe that reverting to how it was prior to the NPE would be requiring a “good deal of resources”.

This said, if they’re putting a lot of resources into it, I humbly request a rework of the gameplay mechanics throughout the personal story. There are – even today – many buggy instances, and even minor details that occasionally jar me (for example, when they removed champions from the level 1-15 zones, they also turned the Champions at the end of Chapter 1 PS arcs into veterans, however if you meet said champion before the final instance of Chapter 1, they still appear as champion – example being Commander Serentine from the human Commoner storyline). Zhaitan is another obvious. The boss fights in the PS compared to those in even Season 1 are vastly different, where the former (the PS fights) feel like the bosses are just standard mobs – with rare exceptions like the aforementioned Commander Serentine and the Mouth of Zhaitan.

Edit: Saw your second post in the thread, seems you’re already going to ask them for more specifics on the how they’re improving. My full post still stands though.

Thanks for the feedback!

ANet would make lots of folks happier with just simple stuff like this. Most of us don’t need to know exactly what and exactly when. We simply need to know our issues are understand and something will eventually happen. Then we know we can stop complaining.

Otherwise, we get 2 months of Greatest Fear and 7 months of Traits.

I leveled a character to 80 for the first time since shortly after launch over the last week or so. I agree that the sequence issues are a problem. I do like the way chapters are grouped together now though.

perilisk.1874:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I inquired about these concerns, and our narrative director shared the following:

Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.

I take it that restoring the PS to its pre-NPE state as an interim measure is off the table?

Personally I hope for this, even knowing that the long route would require more time, effort, and in overall ressources…

But if they would rewrite the Story, would merge the personal Story with the Living Story as a “Project Zero” as Prequel Season so to say using that as a big overhauling restart, it would naturally come also for its disatvantages of costign more and taking more time therefore with its own huge advantages that you can get only, if you completely redesign the story plot of the game as much as possible and more so said better – needed

• They could fix the whole Story, so that it feels again from its begin to its end continued, understandable and like being made out of one piece.
  The current LS2 already feels like being interwoven into the PS already and I abdsolutely believe, ANet doesn’t do themself somethign good with it to keep that pointless concept of splitting the Story between 2 Systems, when just 1 System could also work very well, because for the personal own decisions, just every player could just replay the Instance as Leader and then you’d progress with your own made decisions. There is effectively really no need to do a split between LS and PS. Period!

• They could implement and include the biconics right from begin on and make them right from begin on more important characters, that get slowly more and more involved into your actions instead of being so suddenly thrown into the action with you just after having beaten Zhaitan.
  A TV Series also doesn’t start with just only 1 Main protagonist and gets then out of a sudden after its first Season like half a dozen more Protagonists.
  No, they all have their roles to play somehow from the begin on and the begin is, when we create our character and awake at the present time getting out of the TUTORIAL, where everything NPE related should end right after THAT POINT. So put in everythign NPE related into the Tutorial Start Instance and return the Level 1-15 Maps back to their Pre-NPE dumbed down version that feel only like being a big insult to human intelligence.

• They could improve naturally the whole story by adding more Side Tracks to broaden the Story to make the Story more interesting so that the Story Telling doesn’t come over so weak anymore. They could use the broadening of the Story to set more focus on the relationships of certain characters and kill not off important characters so quickly right after we have met them….

• They could fix with this alot of the VA Bugs in one go, like a way too fast talking Trahearne which interrupts its texts while you move forward in various Missions (German Version at least, can’t talk for other languages naturally, but I’m sure every VA language has its own issues among this point)

• They could redesign the whole Zhaitan Endbattle and design of the last mission, to make it more epic and not a laughable 2 minute pew pew pew pew with Ship Cannons.
  Seriously, they should have known it, that people expect something much better of the grande finale battle, than that what they did have delivered there – a battle, that is 50% just only watching two cut scenes, 20% dodging weak cheap AoEs, 20% fighting off some cheap Trash Mobs and the final 10% giving Zhaitan the rest with the cannons.
  We all know, that you can do something much better, than this ridiculous battle ANet.

And when they would do all this, the final end result would absolutely feel more right, impressive and fittign together, than just revertign the personal Story only to Pre NPE Patch would feel like.

Sure, it goes faster, sure it costs lesser ressources, but therefore it also surely lacks then on massive QUALITY, if the story plot gets only reverted to its old state.
I, for myself can say only, – I’m happy to wait longer for changes, when the spend ressources give me then also at the end a HIGH QUALITY RESULT, which definetely will be much more satisfying, than just to rehash and reset the story plot to its low quality earlier state. When the story of this game would get improved, lengthened and get broader in its depth of story telling so that individual choices could lead to more different story paths than before, then this can be only good and would make the game only better.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I believe I understand you’d like to know if the Personal Story can be “reset” to a previous state. I have sent an email to ask about that and will let you know when I get some info for you.

Thank you so much Gaile! Your dedication and concern for the player base is a refreshing light in the darkness, and means more to us than you may ever know! I can’t tell you how excited I was when I saw your post, and even more so when I read it, not another off-topic or cryptic message, no trolling or snark, but you actually touched the issue and are doing your best to resolve it for us, that means a lot to me! Since you have joined, the comunications between ANet and players has improved ten fold, and I’m excited to see where you are leading this comunity. Really, thanks for the hard work!

And, I appologize for the relentless assult of negative -and, sometimes quite demanding, emails and forum post I’ve launched towards your staff, your reply shows us I have truly misjudged you(ANet, not you specifically) and you really do care; about us, and your game.

What you told us is exactly what we wanted to hear; that you are awear of the problem and doing your best to fix it. Even if it may take a long time, or isn’t restored to its original order as we prefer, knowing that it will be fixed, no matter how you do it, is all we really needed to hear. That alone, while prehaps not our favorite answer, is enough to make us happy, because while we prefered the original order, what we want the most, is simply to have a personal story that makes sense. (Because the storyline is one of the things we love about this game) So thank you again!

Thanks for the information. It’s good to know that fixing the broken flow of the personal story will be addressed in a couple of months time. I’ll make a point to hold off playing any of it until it’s fixed. I might just play through the Living Story season 2 until then. Knowing that it will be addressed does give me hope, I’ll just try and make the most out of the game’s basic lore and hold off any big story plots until there is confirmation.