Guild Wars 2

Wow, so I finally got around to redoing the personal story since the changes. What the… Anyway, I’m glad to hear they are restoring it, but my friend who went through for the first time was totally confused; even I was confused as it had been over a year since I did it. Has it been like this since april? Anyway, I hope they don’t wait until the expansion to fix it.

Also, it almost feels like Traherne is more annoying the second time around. XD

Traherne, Scarlet, Caithe, Faolain… pretty much every Sylvari NPC has become increasingly annoying in my eyes. I really hope after HoT that Sylvari aren’t hogging up the limelight so much.

I know they’re the ‘new’ race…. but god dang, everything has to be about them up until this point. I’m hoping that other races receive similar praise and focus when they go after their respected dragon nemesis (Charr vs Kralkatorrik, Norn vs Jormag, Asura vs Primordius… and I guess Humans vs The mysterious Sea Dragon?)

Anyway, yes, I too want to throw Traherne and the rest of the cabbage patch kids into a wood chipper.

I’m at the end of the Personal Story, having just played it for the first time, and I gotta say the entire Level 75 & 80 chapters were a complete mess that just screwed with my understanding of the story so far.

[Spoilers Ahead]

So first off, I’m at Fort Trinity having just found the source of Orr, and this random butterfly-lady directs me to TraHearne’s airship, and my character speaks to her like we’ve met before.

Huh, okay. Weird. Perhaps it’s meant to be this way.

Then we purge Orr from the Dragon’s corruption, I kill this Eye of Zhaitan, which turns out to be the spirit of the Orrian King. Cool stuff, except all he talks about is me “killing the other eyes” and freeing his bloodline. Wait, what? What other eyes?

Anyway, then Trahearne bestows me the entire Pact, because he’s finished his Wyld Hunt (something he continues to babble about for a few missions) but nothing really changes? Okay, whatever.

THEN he does a major speech, and talks to me in private about memorialising Zott’s death. Who? What? Ah?
(Game Spoils itself about 5 missions early somehow).

Anywho, at this point I’ve invaded Orr, purged the dragon’s influence, healed the land…

But wait, apparently we’ve got to kill another Eye? And a Mouth? And actually reinvade Orr? and I get told about some airships I had already been using to purge Orr to start with? Then I get introduced to the butterfly lady AFTER we’ve talked like we’re friends?

Whatever.

Oh, and then when I do finally invade Orr’s west coast (second time running), and Agent Zott actually dies to an arrow in the back, Trahearne then speaks to me at the end of the mission about “purging the source”. WTF? We did that like 10 missions ago!

SO yeah, for a first-timer, the personal story is an amazing and hilarious contradictory, self-spoiling, mess. It was getting really good up until that point too.

Despite this Sylvari centered PS discussion currently… as mentioning to the main topic that stands above this, which is just Personal Story and the mentioned screwed misisons that Anet wants to fix…

I hope this “Fix” will be one of high quality and not a cheap “we simply resetted everythign back to how it was Pre NPE”

Hopefully Anet puts the necessary effort, tiem and ressources into the whole thing not to come up only with a quick, simple and cheap reset kind of solution, but instead uses this self made chance they gave basically with it themself a reason to completely rework the whole Personal Story System and merge it into the Living Story System completely, so that we get at the end out of it a new Dynamic Story System as single system thats left after those changes, which would be also a very good chance to use these reworks and redesigns to reimplement also the Season 1 history back into the game under the same style of Season 2 with added achievements for replaying it, turning basicalyl thepersonal Story that we know into Season 0 basically, so that all characters that we know of, also have they roles already from begin on.

With this change, Anet should give all players with characters that have ended their stories already a 1 time story reset function via rebirthing the characters (equipment stays useable, but is level locked and becomes useable first again, once we regain back our max Level (what is with level tomes 0 problem)

I seriously hope, anet will do this, to brign the whole game back on its right path by its story design, so that it won’t be anymore such a switzer cheese full of holes.
This way will become also all characters like Marjory, Braham ect. alot more meanignful, because then they played also all their own personal roles while the Zhaitan Arc was active and not first after we have beaten that dragon.

To come back now to the sylvari discussion, this kind of story rework woudl allow for anet also to fix other things about which the players got enraged very much.

1) that stupid Trahearne = like Kormir, steals all our Player Characters attention repeat of Game Design, via adding more desicion options that could lead to our character becoming Marschall instead, and be it just only for so long, until we give that rank over to Trahearne later, so that he can fly the pact army into its death against Mordremoth, like seen in the ending trailer of season 2

2) redesign the whole end boss battle against Zhaitan to make it a true epic endboss and not a boring uncreative 2 minute perma clicking of 1 skil lto shoot some air ship cannons without that the dragon really defends itself …

I understand why Anet switched the Trahearne and Zhaitan story arcs in order, but it was badly done. This is why the change was made in the first place…spoilers ahead.

The original fight with Zhaitan, not being a boss battle and all, was massively anticlimactic. Anet saw it as a whole story. You’re weakening him all along, and then he’s basically made vulnerable by the antidragon magic weapon designed by Professor Gor. By the time you fight him at the end, he’s basically already done for. But before that you’d cut off it’s food supply, partially blinded it and taken away it’s ability to make undead.

However, the Trahearne healing Orr bit, his wylde hunt and a seperate storyline altogether came between the stuff you did to weaken Zhaitan, and you going to kill Zhaitan.

Five six stories later, half the people didn’t remember. It would be like hey let’s kill this dragon, weaken it, weaken it, weaken it, okay now that it’s weak let’s do a bunch of unrelated stuff and come back to him. It was bad storytelling in my opinion.

But to edit it so that it makes sense, you can’t just shuffled them around because stuff in those stories refers to other things that happened. Plus apparently some of the rest of the story was lost in the reshuffle too. That’s why I say it was badly done.

If they restore it perfectly to what it was, you’ll still have the problem of having this big build up to the battle with Zhaitan and then a whole hiatus to a new story line for several stories, before going back and fighting Zhaitan.

The whole thing is a mess really.

Thats why I say, please no cheap resets…
Best thing Anet can do with this messed up story that they fabricated is instead of throwing it into the bin is instead to redesign it basicaly half way from scrath, because the game and its story was absolutely good to the poinmt, until everythign orr releated starts after the Battle on Claw Island, fro mthat point on, the whole story of the personal story segment of GW2 became just from mission to mission more and more awful.

So basically Anet has mostly to redesign the half Personal Story, just so that the game isn’t so messed up anymore.
And if Anet would take this chance to merge the personal Story’s second half together with the living world season 1, then the whole story would look also more fluid, the characters of season1 that got introduced woudl be instantly alot more meaningful, because anet could show us then also how the battle against zhaitan and everything what happened could have been seen through their eyes too and not just only through ours

Naturally such an undertaking will require more time, but if the result of such a rework is worth it and the result is then of a much better quality, then I’m sure, I and many others are very willing to wait longer, than to get just a cheap low quality personal story reset solution back to its old state, or do I see this wrong and am the only one, who would prefer it, if Anet would put more effort into this for a better and more satisfying solution, rather then going for the quick and simple one???

I just don’t see them redoing it completely. The time and money spent on something most players have already seen is probably a bad investment as much as a small percentage of the player base would like to see it.

I’d like to see it. But I’m sure it won’t be completely redone. It’ll be restored with some changes, though.

While they’re fixing the story, maybe they can include the bits of character biography that are present but serve no real purpose. Also, I’d like Charm/Dignity/Ferocity to be included once more, in perhaps a more meaningful way.

I think Charr were the only race that the Dev’s put more thought and effort into, there seems to be plot holes and missing links all over the other stories. And to be frank, the Human and Sylvari stories are just plain BORING! you know? ooh, bandits… political corruption… oh look, that Nightmare problem that’s on our doorstep but we do nothing about… ughh… come oooon.

Orpheal.8263:

With this change, Anet should give all players with characters that have ended their stories already a 1 time story reset function via rebirthing the characters (equipment stays useable, but is level locked and becomes useable first again, once we regain back our max Level (what is with level tomes 0 problem)

I agree that we should get a complete story reset if we want it, but I don’t think that needs to include character rebirth or level reset. Just a reset of the story journal. A character reset that retains the same birthday and gear would be fine also, though.

It’s really one of those things that’s ruining my enjoyment after having recently come back to the game and finding it really fun.

Ya I miss the personality system. I just liked having a tittle for my character based on what I said to npc’s around the world. They could just rename ferocity savagery, energy or asperity.

Sorry, didn’t want to sidetrack the thread, as I just wanted to make sure the devs are aware a lot of players would love to have the fixes to the leveling systems (PS/traits, etc) sooner rather than later.

Similarly I just recently did the changed Personal story. At first I was like “Oh they shortened the whole thing, you complete the Source of Orr and fight Zhaitan much faster”.

But now it’s reintroducing me to Sayeh…aaand Trahearne consoled me on the loss of Tonn…who wasn’t even the plotline I chose to begin with. I picked the one where a Risen Mesmer wreaks havoc on your reputation.

I had the very same bug happen back at launch. Wow.

I DO like that all the missions during the first part all launched from the airship. I’d love for more plot-lines to follow something like this.

I came to the forums to see if the appearance of the story going effectively back in time so jarringly was a bug. I am surprised to find that appears to have been intended.

Personal story is trash useful only for quick XP now.