Guild Wars 2

Sounds cool… except, now dungeon masters won’t have done all dungeons at least once? How does that make sense?

This is awesome! Thanks so much!

This is exciting. Guess i’ll complete my story now

Sounds good to me. Thanks!

While this does not apply to me involving the Arah Story mode it does influence my guildies and unless they speak up on here I can thank you for them! Thanks Bobby!

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

While most of your announcement is good, I would urge you to re-consider this part. Until PS replayability is added, you’re taking a piece of content that anyone can access at any time, and limiting it to only those players who have the story step active. Experiment with a soloable dungeon if you like, but don’t keep taking away content.

After doing 7x Arah Story with a group, I’m eager to see how it will be done for my solo 8th try…

Sounds great. Can’t wait to continue my story. Been holding it off due to the messed up plots.

Less teamwork required =/= good.

Just want to be absolutely certain.

Can I finish the story step Helping Hands, and leave my character ready to start chapter 6 without any issue?

I want to complete chapter 5, but don’t want to get locked out of this new experience. Since the changes are affecting chapter 6, I have some concerns that if I hit level 60 with a character ready to start chapter 6, that my character will be placed into the old story, even when this change goes live.

Let me know if I can complete chapter 5 now. Thanks a bunch.

I am sure many, many players will embrace the new content. There have been many threads/posts asking for just this. Thanks for sharing this information, Bobby! =)

Loboling.5293:

Just want to be absolutely certain.

Can I finish the story step Helping Hands, and leave my character ready to start chapter 6 without any issue?

I want to complete chapter 5, but don’t want to get locked out of this new experience. Since the changes are affecting chapter 6, I have some concerns that if I hit level 60 with a character ready to start chapter 6, that my character will be placed into the old story, even when this change goes live.

Let me know if I can complete chapter 5 now. Thanks a bunch.

As Bobby said, do not complete “A Light in the Darkness” and you will be ok. So you can complete Chapter 5.

“If your character has not completed “A Light in the Darkness,” (chapter 6) you should not encounter any issues. You will be able to experience the Personal Story in its restored order along with the minor improvements that begin with this story step.”

Additionally, the “Master of Arah” achievement is being updated to only require completion of story mode paths.

Is that supposed to be “explorable mode paths” instead of “story mode paths”?

Thank you so much for making the end of the PS soloable too while doing this, that’s fantastic!

Mireles Lore.5942:

Hmm Master of Arah only story mode paths? It already currently only requires exp paths.

Looks like they want to stop people from selling dungeon runs by removing the demand for them.

See above. =)

Olvendred.3027:

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

While most of your announcement is good, I would urge you to re-consider this part. Until PS replayability is added, you’re taking a piece of content that anyone can access at any time, and limiting it to only those players who have the story step active. Experiment with a soloable dungeon if you like, but don’t keep taking away content.

How many people do you know that have voluntarily initiated Arah story mode more than once for the same character? Further, this won’t stop any of us from joining someone else’s party and going through it again. And even further, it’s not as if we can redo any other part of the personal story.

To me, this change finally makes the final step in the personal story consistent with all the steps that led up to it: they are are soloable (if desired), they cannot be replayed (except by joining someone else doing them for the first time), and they don’t act as a barrier to any other content in the game.

“Q: What new voice-over is going into the game?
A: We wanted to update some key lines for several characters in the Personal Story, including those of Trahearne, the Pale Tree, Tonn, and Apatia. In some cases, we are merely re-recording the existing lines to get a more appropriate delivery to match context. In other cases, we are rewriting character dialog to better fit a particular scene.”

Please say this includes the lionguard’s shout in the cinematic on Claw Island where we sink a bone ship and she cries out “A small victory, Gods, there are so many of them.” The VA clearly didn’t know the context and “A small victory” comes out triumphantly rather than full of horror. I think that’s the only line in all the PS that grates on me so harshly every time I hear it. It’s delivered with an entirely wrong emphasis for the situation.

Olvendred.3027:

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

While most of your announcement is good, I would urge you to re-consider this part. Until PS replayability is added, you’re taking a piece of content that anyone can access at any time, and limiting it to only those players who have the story step active. Experiment with a soloable dungeon if you like, but don’t keep taking away content.

Who cares? At this point, anet’s NOT going to drastically change the story mode boss fight beyond what it takes to allow a single player to win. PS replayability is also a defunct concept, considering that you’d basically need to delete your character and start all over to get the very first story instance.

Frankly, I can count on one hand the number of people I know that run story mode for anything OTHER than completion of personal story. And I dont see any fingers going up to count people. So… what’s the point of worrying about something that (imo) is an embarrassment to dungeons? I mean, come on, they might as well have made Arah story mode a movie. It’d have accomplished the same thing in the same time.

BobbyStein.2315:

Ltomato.8649:

Additionally, the “Master of Arah” achievement is being updated to only require completion of story mode paths.

Is that supposed to be “explorable mode paths” instead of “story mode paths”?

You’re correct. I made the adjustment.

Question: While I recognise that you are not making major changes to the Arah dungeon or the Zhaitan encounter in this update, could you please ensure that you are careful with Zhaitan’s health pool specifically? I say this because, when a change was made previously to Zhaitan’s health, it introduced a bug (which is still present in the game) where Zhaitan did not have the time to execute one of his attacks before he was killed, since the cannons simply dealt too much damage. Now that the step is being revised to be soloable, could you please take a look at his health pool and just make sure he stays alive long enough to actually execute his attacks? (The attack in question involves him swinging towards the ship and spawning Tendrils of Zhaitan on the ship to attack players).

Thanks very much for this!

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Less teamwork required =/= good.

It’s not the issue of lack of teamwork, but rather the number of people who are willing to play the story dungeon as it’s one of the dungeons that’s difficult to get an LFG for unless you are asking a guild. This way, a solo player can experience the final instance without the hassle of having to wait for 4 more people to join in.

Pifil.5193:

Loboling.5293:

Just want to be absolutely certain.

Can I finish the story step Helping Hands, and leave my character ready to start chapter 6 without any issue?

I want to complete chapter 5, but don’t want to get locked out of this new experience. Since the changes are affecting chapter 6, I have some concerns that if I hit level 60 with a character ready to start chapter 6, that my character will be placed into the old story, even when this change goes live.

Let me know if I can complete chapter 5 now. Thanks a bunch.

As Bobby said, do not complete “A Light in the Darkness” and you will be ok. So you can complete Chapter 5.

“If your character has not completed “A Light in the Darkness,” (chapter 6) you should not encounter any issues. You will be able to experience the Personal Story in its restored order along with the minor improvements that begin with this story step.”

Ya, I agree it is pretty clear, but he had made a previous post that was more conservative. Stating that if you want to be sure to be unaffected by the changes, to not start chapter 6. And since the mission starts itself when you hit level 60 (having finished chapter 5), I had some concern that finishing chapter 5 would prevent me from participating in the changes.

Thanks.

I’m partwise excited to see, what has been improved, and partwise I’m disappointed.

Personal Story Replayability is an absolute MUST and it urges me very much, that the whole game hasn’t be designed around this tiny but very important feature-
I absolutely can’t understand, why resetting the story progress for a Character to its state of begin does cause any Bugs for the game to appear out of a sudden.

A reset to zero shouldn’t do that and if its a bug, it should be fixable, taking the bug as unfixable for granted is just in my opinion unexcuseable.
A reset for the story shouldn’t force the player to delete the character to and start with a complete new one.
When the Living Story is unendlessly repeatable, then this should be the same way possible also too for the Personal Story.

It shouldn’t be so hard to implement a gameplay mechanism, that if the player activates it after getting several times asked by the game, if you seriously want to reset your personal story, that if you decide yourself for doing that after being asked for the 3rd time in the row, if you are really really sure about your decision, that the Game does then the following things with your Character:

• 1) Resets your Character back to Level 1 with Starter Gear on and puts you back into Tutorial
• 2) All your previous Equipment stays bound to your Character, but becomes first useable again, if you reach your old Characters State back again. So if you resetted a Lvl 80 Character, all your Level 80 Equipment naturally becomes useable for your Character again only, if your resetted Character becomes Level 80 again, meanwhile all your equipment wil get placed into your Account Chest (ATTENTION: If your Account Chest has not enough space for all your earlier equipment at Character Progress Reset, then you will lose it!!)

• 3) Your complete Personal Story Progress gets resetted back to the point, as if you would have just freshly created that Character, you will have to replay everything from point zero, thats why the game seriously will ask you several times first, if you are dead sure with the decision if you want to reset your personal story, to prevent the QQ from people that might say, they sadly misclicked something and unwantedly resetted their whole character story (we know, it would happen otherwise, there are always stupid people like that xD, if its funny made, we will laugh all about it, when the game asks us alot of times if we are serious about that decision, like saying at the last moment, that we got warned, now live with your decision)

Personal Story Reset is an absolute Feature, that has to come one day as a big QoL improvement of the game within a Feature Pack.
Making it possible to make PS resetable would aloow it for you devs also to improve the personal Story also in general and make it more rewarding, so more oftenly you rest and replay your personal story for instance, like adding also achievements in the same way, like you added achievements for the Living Story, if you replay a segment of the story, giving the player a more rewarding experience, if you do the story more than just once.

By making the personal Story replayable, you could add a feature to it, like “Hard Mode”, that you could replay it the next time if you want in a harder difficulty, that could also be more rewarding the next time, if you do it successfuly in hard more and reward you also again with new achievements, the same way and style, like how you did it already in GW1, where also the whole story of the game and its missions were basicalyl unendleslly replayable and where later you added Hard Mode to the game, that simply added so much to the longevity of the whole game, giving the whole game with it like a second breath of fresh air, because everyone and their mum was out of a sudden doing the story of the game again, because that time they wanted to do it all on the new difficulty and get the new rewards from doing it successfully.

So I please, no I beg you, please reconsider this and do what you can to make Personal Story Resets/ and more rewarding difficulties for it do happen.

PLEASE PUPPY EYES

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Olvendred.3027:

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

While most of your announcement is good, I would urge you to re-consider this part. Until PS replayability is added, you’re taking a piece of content that anyone can access at any time, and limiting it to only those players who have the story step active. Experiment with a soloable dungeon if you like, but don’t keep taking away content.

How many people do you know that have voluntarily initiated Arah story mode more than once for the same character? Further, this won’t stop any of us from joining someone else’s party and going through it again. And even further, it’s not as if we can redo any other part of the personal story.

To me, this change finally makes the final step in the personal story consistent with all the steps that led up to it: they are are soloable (if desired), they cannot be replayed (except by joining someone else doing them for the first time), and they don’t act as a barrier to any other content in the game.

Plenty, not that the numbers overly matter. I’ve personally done it a heap of times – it was my go-to story dungeon back when that used to come up in the dailies. No, it’s probably not the most popular content in itself, but that’s not a good reason to restrict access to it.

I don’t see that ‘consistency’ is a good excuse to restrict access either. As I said, they can make a soloable dungeon if desired (though my preferred solution to the ‘group content surprise’, was to add all the other story dungeons into PS progress. But that’s also irrelevant to the current argument).

The lack of replayability is one of the major flaws of the PS system, AND Anet recognises this… but they’re nonetheless choosing to remove replayable content. I consider this a bad thing.

All right, I’m trying to parse out which of my alts I need to advance and which I need to hold still until the revision. Of those not yet done completely with PS, I have these pending steps for my alts:

— Temple of the Forgotten God
— Further into Orr
— A Light in the Darkness
— Marching Orders
— Starving the Beast
— Ossuary of the Unquiet Dead

And one alt who is at level 70 PS but I don’t have noted which step.

Can anyone more savvy than me say which of these I should advance, and to which step, in order to get the most PS steps?

Side note to those saying it’s bad we can’t just go do the dungeon whenever, and others asking who repeats it on an alt already complete: I occasionally offer aid forming a group and leading a run through for people who have stumbled on the fact that suddenly they must do a dungeon, and I use alts that have finished it for the purpose. However, once it is turned into soloable content, I imagine that service won’t be needed, or I can simply join their story instance to help if they don’t want to solo.

Question:

I have a character that was in the middle of the Apatia mission before the September feature patch, and, after hearing how those missions were being skipped now and continuing might make me miss out on the conclusion after Battle of Fort Trinity, chose to put PS progress on that character on hold at Willing Captives, which is where it’s at today. Will I encounter any problems with the story flow when these changes are live, or will it be like the old changes never happened?

Holy crap, solo personal story instance? Wasn’t expecting THAT. Awesome. Now I can finish it at my own pace without worrying about making other people wait around.

Adding my support for the change to Arah: Story. This makes a great deal more sense to me, and I think it’s a good change. Looking forward to completing my personal story.

Looks good! glad you took the time to do this, the base story is a very important part of the game even if not a lot of people are on it anymore.

The only downside I see to this is not being able to replay Arah Stoy Mode. Other than that, so glad I read this. Leveling up a new main and just started chapter 5, now I know to hold off my story until the changes come in.

A question that jumps my mind also first:

Has the Zhaitan Battle anyhow been improved within these works?
Can we ever expect to see there improvements in this very underwhelming battle to become a serious epic battle, that will become absolutely memorable???

Because currently in its state it is now, it will be just memorable forever only as a joke of a battle.

Are they any plans at all to make some bigger changes about the End Battle?
Because i seriously can’t beleive that any of you Devs are “happy” with the design of this battle, which got criticized from the very first moment on until today as a

“2 Minute Pew Pew Pew "Battle"" cough, if there is even anythign about its deesign, what I would call a battle there, because half of it is just viewing two sequences in which you do nothing and the rest is just boring pew pew pew without any actual serious defense of Zhaitan, which just watches being shot for two minutes into virtual dust …

You worked for so long on it, I doubt so much time is required for just resetting the game to its original state how it was and doing some new voice over replacements from a hand full of characters, which is stuff, which could be done in like two weeks. You’ve proven it for now for several years.

So I am very interested in ,what took so long to make the reset happen, if not something like a redesign of the Zhaitan Battle or redesigns of the Orr Dungeon ect. ???
I’m very curious about that.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Olvendred.3027:

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

While most of your announcement is good, I would urge you to re-consider this part. Until PS replayability is added, you’re taking a piece of content that anyone can access at any time, and limiting it to only those players who have the story step active. Experiment with a soloable dungeon if you like, but don’t keep taking away content.

How many people do you know that have voluntarily initiated Arah story mode more than once for the same character? Further, this won’t stop any of us from joining someone else’s party and going through it again. And even further, it’s not as if we can redo any other part of the personal story.

To me, this change finally makes the final step in the personal story consistent with all the steps that led up to it: they are are soloable (if desired), they cannot be replayed (except by joining someone else doing them for the first time), and they don’t act as a barrier to any other content in the game.

I’ve done it at least 4 times in my guardian. Its a fun dungeon, and i usually go to the aid of my guildmates in those need 1 more for this dungeon situations.
Also i’m sure lots of people did it to unlock the reward tracks.

On that i’d like to say, that i’m also apprehensive about removing more replayable content from the game… It just feels kinda icky.
On the same note, if you’re changing the reward track for arah to unlock on explorable mode, its only fair to do so on other dungeons as well.

Other than that, good job on realizing a mistake, and reverting it.
I would just, personally, prefer to have the option to review the arah dungeon story at leisure, specially since its not only the conclusion of the personal story, but also of the dungeon story mode.
The story of the reuniting of Destiny’s Edge is there within the story mode dungeons, and culminates in that.
So if someone does personal story all at once, and then does dungeon, he can never have the chance to replay arah to experience it within that light.

That’s the kind of communication that I (and I’m sure, many other players) really appreciate. Comprehensive, preliminary, to the point – and not “Here, we just changed some stuff, go figure out why!”

Will this information also go to the webpage and/or a link to it into the game launcher, so that more people can be made aware of this?

This is a much needed change. No idea why idea even messed it up in the first place.

Thanks for the updates, Bobby! I do want several bits of clarification regarding what happens, first of all, if you have completed “Forging the Pact” and have the first step of “My Greatest Fear” up but have not yet started it. My necromancer is in that exact position – according to the schedule you posted, she’s at C7 Step 2 Failure “Shell Shock” – so I wanted to be sure that once she completes “My Greatest Fear”, she’ll be able to proceed with Chapter 8 according to the new/restored personal story schedule.

Also, my mesmer and warrior completed “My Greatest Fear” a long time ago, and have been at C8 Step 1 “Temple of the Forgotten God” for a long time but hasn’t done that episode yet. Am I correct to assume that they will be able to complete Chapter 8 according to the new/restored chapter schedule?

Finally, I have two other characters who haven’t yet gotten to selecting their greatest fear – my guardian (Forewarned is Forearmed, not yet started) and elementalist (Battle of Claw Island, not yet started) – so I assume that they won’t be affected by this change. My ranger and thief are in the level 20-30 range so aren’t affected.

Bah, was hopeful that this patch would maybe fix my Personal Story on my hero window. I finished the Personal Story 100% back in December of 2014, but for some bugged reason it stopped showing progress on the written story part of my hero window. It just stops at “Battle of Fort Trinity.” It’d be really nice if this bug was fixed and it fully listed all of my completed story for me to enjoy/read/not be OCD over it being incomplete.

Heck, I wish we could just re-do the Personal Story now that you re-added the Fear arc. Sort of feels bothersome. Wish we at least had some way to go back and do that re-put in content, especially since you removed it before. It’s nice that you all reverted something to it’s previous way that players preferred and enjoyed but now those that did the Personal Story in between this miss out.

I’m not trying to tell you all at Arena Net you are bad, even devs make mistakes but I feel bummed that I and others miss out because of this mistake you “fixed.” It’d be nice if you could at least find some way to allow people that finished the Personal Story between that Sept patch and now to maybe do the fear arc or at least maybe just do everything all over maybe?

or at the least, hopefully fix my story to show what all I’ve done after Battle at Fort Trinity. Thank you.

P.S. I’m wondering if the reason this whole time since December that my story doesn’t show anything after Battle at Fort Trinity, could be from me picking a fear? I do recall picking a fear back in December so maybe that’s what bugged the game to not list everything I did after Battle at Fort Trinity.

BobbyStein.2315:

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players.

Wow – thank you very much for this!

Can you make all the story mode dungeons scalable for 1-5 players please? Leave the explorable as is. It is really difficult, almost improbable, to find people to do the story mode of those dungeons.

Orpheal.8263:

A question that jumps my mind also first:

Has the Zhaitan Battle anyhow been improved within these works?
Can we ever expect to see there improvements in this very underwhelming battle to become a serious epic battle, that will become absolutely memorable???

Because currently in its state it is now, it will be just memorable forever only as a joke of a battle.

Are they any plans at all to make some bigger changes about the End Battle?
Because i seriously can’t beleive that any of you Devs are “happy” with the design of this battle, which got criticized from the very first moment on until today as a

“2 Minute Pew Pew Pew "Battle"" cough, if there is even anythign about its deesign, what I would call a battle there, because half of it is just viewing two sequences in which you do nothing and the rest is just boring pew pew pew without any actual serious defense of Zhaitan, which just watches being shot for two minutes into virtual dust …

You worked for so long on it, I doubt so much time is required for just resetting the game to its original state how it was and doing some new voice over replacements from a hand full of characters, which is stuff, which could be done in like two weeks. You’ve proven it for now for several years.

So I am very interested in ,what took so long to make the reset happen, if not something like a redesign of the Zhaitan Battle or redesigns of the Orr Dungeon ect. ???
I’m very curious about that.

I wouldn’t expect a complete rework on Zhaitan’s fight anytime soon. Though we could expect that Anet has learned from their setbacks and would eventually improve future Elder Dragon fights starting with Mordremoth.

I actually like the change of the story instance of Arah very much. But I’d take it further.

I’d make all story paths doable for 1-5 players and a mandatory part of the personal story.

Hurrah! Hurrah!
And once more…. HURRAH!

Will you make certain skins (which we cannot currently get) available as rewards by these new story missions? (Stalwart hat for example)

Question 1
When the September update went live, I was during The Greatest Fear chapter on one of my characters. Even though the content got removed, my character stayed on her step — I figured you had let people like me finish the chapter instead of advancing us forward. For some reason I decided not to continue the story on that specific character, maybe because I was curious how things would go down in the future (hints of future restoration of TGF were already there). Therefore the character’s next mission at the moment is Wet Work. What will happen to her story progression after the update? Will she be moved somewhere forward for some reason? Should I be afraid of some nasty bugs such as blocking further completion and it would be safer to complete Wet Work now (and: am I able to do the rest of TGF now)? Am I safe to stay at the step and complete it after the update (i.e. her step after the update will still be Wet Work)?

Question 2
What is the reason of moving players who are in the middle of the “moved” chapter 8 straight into Victory or Death? Are the reasons strictly technical, such us letting them stay on, say, Source of Orr could create a mass of bugs? Also, if we complete all those moved steps and get to the mission Temple of the Forgotten God, does that mean we will have to complete the missions in question once again after the update goes live (they were before TotFG, after the update they will be after it)?
Just so you know, I was wondering about potential solutions to this problem, and the second completion of those missions (such as Source of Orr) seems like the only natural one, but I’m curious what you ultimately decided to do.

Orpheal.8263:

A reset to zero shouldn’t do that and if its a bug, it should be fixable, taking the bug as unfixable for granted is just in my opinion unexcuseable.

It sounds like most of the PS is hard coded a certain way, which is fine if what you’re doing is going to have some fixed way of doing things. The PS was very linear and gave them that fixed way of doing things so they hard coded it in the belief that some value would never change.

Changing the PS to being replayable involves introducing a lot of variables where there weren’t any AND catching all the hard coded elements and changing them to the new variables. This can be a nearly impossible task and definitely will introduce an insane amount of game stopping bugs.

In such a situation it’s almost never worthwhile to attempt such a thing and by far better to remake it from scratch. When S2 was released it was mentioned that the devs wanted to make S1 replayable; given that would require a similar rewrite to the PS I would imagine they’d do both at the same time.

I wouldn’t expect any such rewrite to happen any time soon though. Possibly another year or two out, if it happens at all.

Great changes! I have a character waiting at the last story step, so I’ll save it to try solo!

I do have one observation to share. Medium armor classes are rewarded CM dungeon armor at various steps in their personal story. Light and heavy, as far as I’ve seen, do not get to choose a dungeon armor for their reward. It would be awesome and really helpful if you added dungeon skins to light and heavy personal story reward, as it would help greatly with my Dungeoneer achievement

I have three 80’s, my last two are waiting on the “Battle for Claw Island” part, so if I read it right they will not have any issues seeing the new and returned content.