Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone!
So Living Story Season-1 has ended!
Hurray!!!!!!!!!!

Now does this mean ArenaNet will release or work on extending Personal Story for this year? I think so!

What I hope to see on the next, extended version of our Personal story is more Personal story about our characters and past choices we made to reflect on it from were we left off.

Think along the lines, level 1-20 PS where every mission was different for each character choices you made, but getting this content every 2 weeks permanently.

A good, indepth story should be told in 2 methods, Personal Story & Story Dungeons.
This is why I bought GW2.

Dynamic Events should be filler story, the story of the world & lore which you explore. I like this, however, the Living Story tries to merge, Dynamic Events, Personal Story, and Story Dungeon into 1 huge temporarily content which we wont get to play again. And for some new players who enjoy playing for the story, gets frustrated to get into the world.

So will we see Personal Stories 2014 (Begin?)
I think so!
I hope so!
Do you?

I’d rather have a personal story to fight the next dragon than a living story with limited time content.

DaShi.1368:

I’d rather have a personal story to fight the next dragon than a living story with limited time content.

Yeah me too!

(Spoilers)
I hope our new Personal stories will lead up to the next elder dragon we saw from the final cutscene of the LS event.

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

LOL! So one person posts on your thread and you think the majority are against? The majority apparently don’t come to forums, and if they do they don’t post.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the Personal Story shaken up a bit. I enjoyed Living Story 1 and am looking forward to Living Story 2. So I want both!

Actually, the way I want to see it is this:
1) Personal Story Arc
2) Living Story moves the timeline forward.
3) Personal Story Arc 2 (based on initial choices which haven’t been used, and choices that have been made from PSA1)
4) Living Story 2, moving the timeline forward again.
5) PSA 3, based on choices which haven’t been used yet from PSA 1 and 2.

Now, admittedly, there’s a limit. You can’t keep making more and more branches, you’ll need to bottleneck some things, but that’s fine. Basically, for human (as example), the god who blessed your birth plays a role at some point. If you’re Order of Whispers, you may have to deal with Cadaceus at some point. Perhaps if you had to fight the White Mantle, you get another encounter with them down the line.

I’d really like to see that – your personal stories expanded on at least a little, and the timeline moved forward for the entire MMO as well. The only problem I see with that, though, is if the timeline goes too far forward, then new players coming in to do the PSA1 may find their information… a little dated.

zenleto.6179:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

LOL! So one person posts on your thread and you think the majority are against? The majority apparently don’t come to forums, and if they do they don’t post.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the Personal Story shaken up a bit. I enjoyed Living Story 1 and am looking forward to Living Story 2. So I want both!

Okay so you got a point.
But still, why isn’t posts about Personal Story ever get popular on the forums at least?

It seems people talk about Living Stories more because that’s what they want instead.
ArenaNet will add and priorities what people want and the forums help them see that.

I might as well change the title of this post to:
“Do people even want (Personal Stories) anymore?”

Because nobody seems to want to discuss about this topic.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

zenleto.6179:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

LOL! So one person posts on your thread and you think the majority are against? The majority apparently don’t come to forums, and if they do they don’t post.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the Personal Story shaken up a bit. I enjoyed Living Story 1 and am looking forward to Living Story 2. So I want both!

Okay so you got a point.
But still, why isn’t posts about Personal Story ever get popular on the forums at least?

It seems people talk about Living Stories more because that’s what they want instead.
ArenaNet will add and priorities what people want and the forums help them see that.

I might as well change the title of this post to:
“Do people even want (Personal Stories) anymore?”

Because nobody seems to want to discuss about this topic.

Dunno. Maybe Personal Story is too old news? Or when you posted this originally there was something else that caught imaginations. Let’s see how it goes this time around.

zenleto.6179:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

zenleto.6179:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

LOL! So one person posts on your thread and you think the majority are against? The majority apparently don’t come to forums, and if they do they don’t post.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the Personal Story shaken up a bit. I enjoyed Living Story 1 and am looking forward to Living Story 2. So I want both!

Okay so you got a point.
But still, why isn’t posts about Personal Story ever get popular on the forums at least?

It seems people talk about Living Stories more because that’s what they want instead.
ArenaNet will add and priorities what people want and the forums help them see that.

I might as well change the title of this post to:
“Do people even want (Personal Stories) anymore?”

Because nobody seems to want to discuss about this topic.

Dunno. Maybe Personal Story is too old news? Or when you posted this originally there was something else that caught imaginations. Let’s see how it goes this time around.

The thing is, they could make a Personal Story Expansion pack and sell it in the gem store and unlock new zones with Living Story.

Living Story Platform works well as a filler but not as a main method of telling a good, complex and deep story telling. Personal Story, however, actually does well at this.

Going to pass on any new personal story unless the design is vastly different. If it remains similar even slightly to the current style of the personal story I won’t bother doing it. I’ve already done Trahearne’s personal story for him, so I suppose I’ll just let him do it himself in any continuation.

Hybrid.7059:

Going to pass on any new personal story unless the design is vastly different. If it remains similar even slightly to the current style of the personal story I won’t bother doing it. I’ve already done Trahearne’s personal story for him, so I suppose I’ll just let him do it himself in any continuation.

Yeah, I’d like to see the personal story return, but the truth of things is that the personal story is god awful. I mean, it’s not bad for the first two parts, but as soon as you start moving towards the ‘orders’ it gets crippling boring.

It’s really only the two parts of the personal story that are actually personal, as far as I can tell… after that the paths keep merging into one thing.

Tashiro Kurosawa.7481:

3) Personal Story Arc 2 (based on initial choices which haven’t been used, and choices that have been made from PSA1)

It would be nice. However,there are no unused Charr choices. You could reuse some of the choices (your warband is still there, after all).

Xomic.5792:

Hybrid.7059:

Going to pass on any new personal story unless the design is vastly different. If it remains similar even slightly to the current style of the personal story I won’t bother doing it. I’ve already done Trahearne’s personal story for him, so I suppose I’ll just let him do it himself in any continuation.

Yeah, I’d like to see the personal story return, but the truth of things is that the personal story is god awful. I mean, it’s not bad for the first two parts, but as soon as you start moving towards the ‘orders’ it gets crippling boring.

It’s really only the two parts of the personal story that are actually personal, as far as I can tell… after that the paths keep merging into one thing.

What made the Personal Story epic was from lvl1-20 in my opinion.
They are totally personal and this is exactly what I want with improved cinematic presentation while branching the story with different choices you make.

The Personal Story as a whole, is much better than the Living Story’s system when it comes to story presentation.

Do you prefer the Living Story or the Personal Story when it comes to actually enjoying a story with mission structure that you can play at your own time?

One reason your thread topic might not get much attention is people usually post (on the forums) about things they don’t like, i.e. The Living Story.

You may not see more Personal Story, at least with improved cinematics, or much in the way of cinematics, at all, because it takes so much time and resources to do cinematics.

If they haven’t already been working on another PS arc, it may be quite some time until you see another.

Extra personal story phases are too expensive and difficult for them to develop, and don’t fit neatly into the two-week release cycle, so they’ll never happen.

Here’s what I think.

Continuation of the story as “personal story”

• Limited to one format (instances of 1-5 players)
• Said instances are a couple of minutes long, each
• Little replay value (if replaying is even possible)
• If it is released at once, I would burn through it in a weekend and then be bored for the rest of the year
• Spoilers would be inevitable

Continuation of the story as “living world”

• Regular new content would mean that I can’t burn through it, no boredom
• Much time for speculation, little chance for spoilers (except datamining)
• A surprise every few weeks
• Various different game modes and formats, including: cinematics, solo instances and boss fights, party instances and boss fights, dungeon paths, fractals, raids, zerg content, PvP maps, riddles, etc…

The personal story concept is way too limited – I like how an overall story ties new maps, features etc. together.

I’m not against personal stories, however they should be “more” than what they are right now. Missions are short and waaay too repetitive.

IMHO, there should be less missions but longer and deeper. For example, when you choose an Order’s plan, it should be one whole mission and not three. I know many people always rant about “GW1 > GW2”, but I agree on that particular point: missions were long, needed some strategies, told long part of the story, and were different from one another. Now it’s “walk 5 steps, kill Risen, walk 5 steps, cutscene, kill Risen, kill Veteran, reward”.

Also these missions should be a bit harder, because I’m not playing an MMO to be able to finish the game all by myself… I liked the time when I had to wait for my friends to come online to advance within the story!

So if personal stories were to come back, I would like to see them improved. If they are not improved, I guess I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it and I’d play anyway

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

I can’t believe majority of people don’t want Personal Stories to return.
It was a better platform to give good challenges and story telling than Living Story content.

It gave no good challenge, “retry from a checkpoint” just respawned you with all the mobs still dead and let you run off and continue. It gave no good story telling, the cinematics from GW1 were vastly superior to the lifeless two-character conversations we have as “cutscenes” in this. Not to mention the personal story is designed as a single-player thing (or so it looks). I never want it to return. Ever. Give GW1-style multiplayer missions that are actually a challenge, and with proper cinematics actually competent of telling a story, and actual failure on party wipe please.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Here’s what I think.

Continuation of the story as “personal story”

• Limited to one format (instances of 1-5 players)
• Said instances are a couple of minutes long, each
• Little replay value (if replaying is even possible)
• If it is released at once, I would burn through it in a weekend and then be bored for the rest of the year
• Spoilers would be inevitable

Continuation of the story as “living world”

• Regular new content would mean that I can’t burn through it, no boredom
• Much time for speculation, little chance for spoilers (except datamining)
• A surprise every few weeks
• Various different game modes and formats, including: cinematics, solo instances and boss fights, party instances and boss fights, dungeon paths, fractals, raids, zerg content, PvP maps, riddles, etc…

The personal story concept is way too limited – I like how an overall story ties new maps, features etc. together.

Counterpoint:

I generally burn through LS content in about three days. I might continue grinding it for a week or so for loot or because it’s an efficient way to get dailies, but let’s face it – at that stage I’m doing it for the extrinsic, not intrinsic, reward. Different people have different tolerances than others, but there’s only so many times you can do the same thing in a given 2-4 week period before it gets old.

Compare to GW1… there was pretty much always something you could find to do that wasn’t “old”. Maybe you’ve done it dozens of times already… but when those dozens of times are spread out over years because you have the option to, well, go back and do something from years ago, it’s not something that burns you out like fitting a dozen runs into a fortnight because that’s all the time you’ve got can do. Sometimes you feel an itch to go back and do something you did months or years ago, even if it isn’t “fresh” any more.

‘Course, the real issue there is probably the temporary content that can’t be replayed. That applies to both PS and LS.

I think they should do an in-game poll on if people want the LS or the PS.

The PS was poorly written and very repetitive were every mission was you killing an elite or veteran at the end of every single mission. It didn’t show its full potential but even so I feel the LS has alot more things to offer us and also brings the community a lot closer. Comparing pros and cons between LS and PS shows at least an obvious winner for me. And that is LS.

Personal Story was a single player experience of low quality story telling that mostly consisted of you using WP to travel around Tyria get into a scene kill 5 guys, get out, rinse and repeat.

LS flaws:

• Singleplayer in an MMO game
• Poor story telling
• No challenge, its difficulty is addressed at newbies

So please, I don’t care how next living story will be called, but if they do call it personal story please make it not in any way like the original PS, PS is doubtlessly the lowest quality part of this game.

The biggest problem with the LS for me was that you can’t replay past chapters. Which means if you’re a new or returning player, your only option is to read about it on the wiki, which really diminishes the experience.

This why I didn’t really care much about the second part of the story, took a 3 month break, came back and just went meh.

The other thing is that it seems under the LS, the game mainly only has temporary content, which basically forces you to do them by setting deadlines on it.

First of all, I got enough deadlines at work and the last thing I want is more deadlines when I get home.

Second of all, it doesnt add anything to the core game. The last major thing they added to the core game PvE-wise was fractals, so outside of the LS, there’s little variety. It gets old after a while.

On a side note, if they choose to restart the PS again, please stop with the paper-cutout ‘cutscenes’ where two characters stand dude by side in front of a static background just talking to each other with minimal motion. I didn’t really get the story because I skipped every one of those, I just can’t help but find them boring.

If they really want up make more cutscenes with just people talking, watch some of The Secret World’s cutscenes of that variety, that’s how you do it right and make them interesting.

I’ll bet every gold coin, orichalcum ingot, ancient lumber plank, and bolt of gossamar I own the next dragon is handled by the Living Story rather than Personal Stories? Why? Grab a seat and I’ll tell you.

First, it’s much easier to write a story that revolves around NPCs than it is PCs. The developers don’t have to worry about player interaction; they can simply write the story as if the players are bystanders rather than players. They can also save a lot of money by not giving PCs spoken lines. Right now every line of dialogue for PCs requires a ten voice actors. That’s in addition to any NPCs that have spoken lines. Delivering the story through the LS requires just the NPCs.

Second is the money. The Living Story is used to keep players logging in at least once every two weeks. There’s a reason each LS chapter is temporary, and there’s a reason the rewards (skins, mini-pets, achievement points) are temporary too. They want you logging in as often as possible. Why? “New Items in the Gem Shop!” The LS is a tool to keep players logging in more often, increasing the likelihood of them spending money in the cash shop.

So I’m afraid anyone hoping the next story is Personal, rather than Living, is in for a disappointment. It’s just not going to happen. Sorry.

Actually, I didn’t mind being second to Traherne in GW2. It made sense from a logistics perspective. He’s busy handling all the logistics and planning and all the overhead involved with running an organization. You’re sent on the active missions and have time to fight the good fight. Does he take some of the glory? Sure. But then, he should, as well. You’re given glory as well, since you were a big part of the battles involved, and credit was given where it was due every step of the way.

Seriously, in any organization which has a command structure, it’s always better to be the second in command, rather than the first. You’re given much more leeway, and it makes sense the way they played it out.

And on top of that, why shouldn’t NPCs get a story arc as part of the bargain? That usually makes said NPCs more interesting. They have lives outside of that of the main character.