Guild Wars 2

If I were to take a guess, it would be around the same time as Lion’s Arch getting fixed completely.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s been roughly eight weeks since I started this thread, so here’s an update. All major assets for the Personal Story restoration are in place in our development environment. We’re testing and bug fixing now.

While I don’t have an official release date to share at this time, I can say that you have a little more time to get your characters into the desired state of Personal Story progress. Please refer to the details in the original post when making your own evaluation.

You might be asking yourself why I don’t have a date to share yet. It’s because we’re looking at a few potential release dates on the calendar. We also want to factor in some wiggle room in case we discover any big issues during our testing pass or we encounter any other technical or resource surprises along the way. You know, game development stuff.

As always, thanks for your patience and support.

Thank you so much for that update!

Holy bejeeses, we got an update. See, that wasn’t so tough. Now if only a few other issues could get a quick update on these forums.

My Warrior will just continue to sit and wait in front of the pale tree I guess.

Ok, so I’ve recently completed Source of Orr, is it ok to start Chapter 8 now or wait a bit?

So it’s safe to assume that it will be after the Lion’s Arch restoration update? Whether it is definitely the case or not, I do appreciate the updates.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s been roughly eight weeks since I started this thread, so here’s an update. All major assets for the Personal Story restoration are in place in our development environment. We’re testing and bug fixing now.

While I don’t have an official release date to share at this time, I can say that you have a little more time to get your characters into the desired state of Personal Story progress. Please refer to the details in the original post when making your own evaluation.

You might be asking yourself why I don’t have a date to share yet. It’s because we’re looking at a few potential release dates on the calendar. We also want to factor in some wiggle room in case we discover any big issues during our testing pass or we encounter any other technical or resource surprises along the way. You know, game development stuff.

As always, thanks for your patience and support.

So, the closest potential release date is the time I’m looking for. Giving us that date would mean that the release will be released at some point AFTER that date.

Is there a chance for you to tell us that date so we don’t bother you asking questions or asking for updates until that moment? If it’s not possible for you to do so, we (or at least I) understand that it’s not your decision to share that information or not.

And I hope we can get what I’m asking here. Anyway, thanks for the update you’ve already given us. Have a good day, Bobby

PS: If you don’t have a date don’t bother answering this >:( … jk ;P

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

When the PS was refactored, all the rewards in the existing chapters were changed, nearly always into something a little more powerful but with a generic skin. Will Chapter 7 rewards be revamped the same way?

Thanks for the update! I’m excited to finish the PS on my more recent level 80’s

Sariel V.7024:

When the PS was refactored, all the rewards in the existing chapters were changed, nearly always into something a little more powerful but with a generic skin. Will Chapter 7 rewards be revamped the same way?

Definitely hoping this was looked at. I am so tired of leveling up a character and getting a dozen sets of ugly clogs

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s been roughly eight weeks since I started this thread, so here’s an update. All major assets for the Personal Story restoration are in place in our development environment. We’re testing and bug fixing now.

While I don’t have an official release date to share at this time, I can say that you have a little more time to get your characters into the desired state of Personal Story progress. Please refer to the details in the original post when making your own evaluation.

You might be asking yourself why I don’t have a date to share yet. It’s because we’re looking at a few potential release dates on the calendar. We also want to factor in some wiggle room in case we discover any big issues during our testing pass or we encounter any other technical or resource surprises along the way. You know, game development stuff.

As always, thanks for your patience and support.

I’ve nothing to add. I just wanted to say cheers for providing occasional updates regarding this, it’s been a pleasant change.

cries tears of joy

Yay, good to see Bobby back to keep us updated xD Thanks for the update, looking forward to continue my PS. My main has been waiting to punch some orrians for months now :P

(now just NPE is left to be fixed/reverted… Well, one can hope :P)

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this. Under the original system I got up to Ships of the Line and haven’t touched the personal story under the current system. Am I fine to stay there and then when this rolls out will I just be able to carry on the story as if nothing had happened or am I going to get bumped to a different mission?

Similarly my other character got to Temple of the Forgotten God under the old system, are they ok to just stay there?

BobbyStein.2315:

[SNIP] It’s been roughly eight weeks since I started this thread, so here’s an update.

Bobby,

Once again, I have to express my appreciation for your commitment to communication. As far as I’m concerned, this is perfect:

1. You gave a very loose and tentative time frame
2. When that time frame was nearly expired, you popped back into the thread with an update to let us know that it will be a bit longer yet.

And the best part is that, contrary to the beliefs of some, the world did not end. There was no rioting and looting of the forums. Imagine that.

It’s such a simple thing, but what you’re doing in this thread goes a loooooong way to reestablishing my trust and goodwill in ANet as a company. If the standard of communication in this thread were the norm, I would be a totally happy and loyal ANet customer.

Furthermore, if we had the technology for me to embed delicious pastries into this post for you, I would do so to emphasize how completely stellar you are, and to tempt everyone else at ANet to follow your lead. Perhaps you can pass that idea along and encourage the powers that be to give us a rough idea of when this forum pastry technology can be ready for a beta test?

Thanks ever so much!

One of the best news I’ve seen today on my birthday. Yus!

Something I think that needs to be fixed in the PS is being mindful of where you put those little green diamond markers. Sometimes I’m helping other people and they keep getting in the way and asking if I want to leave.

During the fight in Orr where the player puts on the mech suit, it’s right in the middle of the battlefield. I got asked if I wanted to leave somewhere in the neighborhood of 72 times.

So basically when I hit Victory or Death for the first time I will be able to solo the story once for the sake of personal story? Am I right on that?

Levetty.1279:

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this. Under the original system I got up to Ships of the Line and haven’t touched the personal story under the current system. Am I fine to stay there and then when this rolls out will I just be able to carry on the story as if nothing had happened or am I going to get bumped to a different mission?

Similarly my other character got to Temple of the Forgotten God under the old system, are they ok to just stay there?

If you haven’t touched Personal Story since it changed, you will be fine and won’t miss anything.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s been roughly eight weeks since I started this thread, so here’s an update. All major assets for the Personal Story restoration are in place in our development environment. We’re testing and bug fixing now.

While I don’t have an official release date to share at this time, I can say that you have a little more time to get your characters into the desired state of Personal Story progress. Please refer to the details in the original post when making your own evaluation.

You might be asking yourself why I don’t have a date to share yet. It’s because we’re looking at a few potential release dates on the calendar. We also want to factor in some wiggle room in case we discover any big issues during our testing pass or we encounter any other technical or resource surprises along the way. You know, game development stuff.

As always, thanks for your patience and support.

This makes me happy.

shadow.6174:

Levetty.1279:

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this. Under the original system I got up to Ships of the Line and haven’t touched the personal story under the current system. Am I fine to stay there and then when this rolls out will I just be able to carry on the story as if nothing had happened or am I going to get bumped to a different mission?

Similarly my other character got to Temple of the Forgotten God under the old system, are they ok to just stay there?

If you haven’t touched Personal Story since it changed, you will be fine and won’t miss anything.

This is questionable. I highly recommend you log into those characters and check out to confirm which story steps they’re on. If they’re still on the same steps you should be fine. If they’re not, then you might have difficulties.

Gulesave.5073:

Sariel V.7024:

When the PS was refactored, all the rewards in the existing chapters were changed, nearly always into something a little more powerful but with a generic skin. Will Chapter 7 rewards be revamped the same way?

Definitely hoping this was looked at. I am so tired of leveling up a character and getting a dozen sets of ugly clogs

Likewise, I’m hoping it slipped under the radar and doesn’t get ‘fixed’. ;D

I have 5 max level chars before the first PS change; all of them with personal story completed. When I heard the horrible things they’ve done to the already fragmented, inconsistent personal story, I vowed to never create another character again no matter what new race or class GW2 gets later. With this, I can finally start a Revenant and anticipate the PS in its better state, and looking forward to see the tweaks to key character’s lines and voice over.

But this setback will not be forgotten. It shows bad things can happen in a completely unexpected and arbitrary way while the person did the change think they made some improvement. The biggest problem with the PS was never chronological order or difficulty anyway. I hope next time ANet does something drastic thinking it’s good for the players and can “reduce confusion”, a reality check should be commenced and public feedback should be consulted.

kgptzac.8419:

But this setback will not be forgotten. It shows bad things can happen in a completely unexpected and arbitrary way while the person did the change think they made some improvement. The biggest problem with the PS was never chronological order or difficulty anyway. I hope next time ANet does something drastic thinking it’s good for the players and can “reduce confusion”, a reality check should be commenced and public feedback should be consulted.

Very well said and agreed. Sadly, Personal Story wasn’t the only thing to suffer of that but at least it’s what’s going to get a “fix” for now.

Well I’m ready.

I’ve got two characters just about to start A Light In The Darkness, another two about to start the Order stories (so I can see the whole of the ‘Pact’ storyline together), a spare character slot to do all the other instances and a chart to keep track of which ones I’ve done.

Just need that update!

Is the final reward changing?

Thank you for the update Bobby.

I have just one question. I love to role-play in the world of Tyria and the personal story has been fantastic for that. I’ve held off from finishing the personal story mission against Zhaitan since the creation of this thread in hope that I could do it solo. Would I be advised to wait a little while longer? I’m not asking for a date, just a very crude speculation, will it be two months more? Half of that?

I just want to know so I can decide where to go with my role-playing.

Many thanks. Good luck.

Welp, guess I should’ve read the forums before continuing my Personal Story. Just started playing again after a long break, so I didn’t know the story was messed up.

I just finished Chapter 4 a few days ago and finished The Source of Orr yesterday. I guess I should’ve figured something was wrong when the story didn’t make much sense at parts (Like how The Battle of Fort Trinity immediately followed Forging the Pact, or how the choice in A Light in the Darkness didn’t influence anything), but I didn’t.

So now I’m confused, because it’s not clear from the updates.
Does finishing The Source of Orr before the Restoration update mean that I’m forced to replay that chapter and the few ones before it after they are moved back to Chapter 8? Because I really don’t want to do that, especially not The Source of Orr, as I feel that will ruin that chapter for me.

It would’ve been great to have this communicated to me in-game (via mail, perhaps) as I didn’t think to check the forums before playing again after that long break, but it’s too late for that now.

PS missions are not replayable. You’re stuck with playing out the old, unfixed story once you’ve gone as far as you have.

So this update won’t really affect me, then? Should I just finish Chapter 8 now instead of waiting on the update?

Was the rationale behind the storyline reorganization explained somewhere? Wouldn’t the continuity errors have been caught in QA or something?

The story was reorganized into 10-level units as part of the New Player Experience. In the process, the last couple of chapters got scrambled in order and the Greatest Fear elements were omitted. I don’t know why this wasn’t caught or some objection raised by someone on the story staff. QA is probably more concerned with looking for code that actually breaks something than in vetting lore and story continuity.

I think you would be best off to go ahead and finish on that character. Just don’t take any other characters past the earlier chapters until the revisions are released.

You might want to wait to do Story Arah, however, as that’s being changed to a solo instance to which you can invite friends. If you don’t have any other alts near that this will be your chance to see the new version.

Ugh. Good to see Arena Net and its famous “Anet time” hasn’t changed one bit. 10 weeks and counting for a kitten bug? I’ve had enough, I’ll just go ahead and finish the campaign.

Also there’s a pretty bad bug where the story dialogues are meaningless and there’s nothing worthwile going on, you might want to look at it.

Nostra.3069:

Ugh. Good to see Arena Net and its famous “Anet time” hasn’t changed one bit. 10 weeks and counting for a kitten bug? I’ve had enough, I’ll just go ahead and finish the campaign.

Also there’s a pretty bad bug where the story dialogues are meaningless and there’s nothing worthwile going on, you might want to look at it.

When they intentionally change content, I’m not sure it is considered a ‘bug’. If you so desire, you can wait for the restoration of the parts of the PS, with new dialogue…or, go ahead and finish the final arc.

Either way…good luck.

Unfortunately, it’s more than 10 weeks. It was 10 weeks since a fix was announced, but we’re going on 9 months now since it got introduced.

And sadly, it isn’t a bug. The September Feature Patch update notes stated the changes, thus it was intentional. Not thought out, idiotic, and rather sad, but intentional.

If they are going to make the maps the same as they originally were during each story instance, are they going to do the same for season 2 maps?

The first time you get to Prosperity it isn’t supposed to be full of vines and that’s something that happens right before Entanglement, right? I’d be really confused while playing season 2 if it wasn’t for a friend that told me how the world was during every story step.

Knudow.1683:

If they are going to make the maps the same as they originally were during each story instance, are they going to do the same for season 2 maps?

The first time you get to Prosperity it isn’t supposed to be full of vines and that’s something that happens right before Entanglement, right? I’d be really confused while playing season 2 if it wasn’t for a friend that told me how the world was during every story step.

I can’t state for sure but I could say possibly yes.

With the Lion’s Arch changes upcoming, and the trait lines being changed to core specializations in said update, will we be seeing the personal story changes then too, Bobby?

Or will we have to wait longer?

BobbyStein.2315:

Knudow.1683:

If they are going to make the maps the same as they originally were during each story instance, are they going to do the same for season 2 maps?

We made art changes to Personal Story instances, not season 2 open world content.

Knudow wasn’t asking about open world maps, but the instances for Season 2.

That is: should in the future Fort Salma, Town of Prosperity, or Fort Concordia ever be fixed in the open world, would Season 2 instances follow the open world versions or how they ought to be.

Or, more direct to the present:

Would the final instance of Episode 1 use a pre-destroyed Prosperity instance, as it is weird to trust Taimi to be alone there when it’s destroyed and periodically attacked by Mordrem, then be suddenly ‘oh my, Taimi are you okay?’ in the next instance. (which Knudow mentioned)

There’s currently only one situation, but should you ever decide “it’s time to fix this”, it’ll affect the instances in the long run. With the entire ‘we affect the open world every season/release’, it seems like a good pre-emptive idea to have all story instances – not just personal story instances that currently use a now-changed map – to have their own copy of a map (thus one map per major/story based change).

BobbyStein.2315:

Knudow.1683:

If they are going to make the maps the same as they originally were during each story instance, are they going to do the same for season 2 maps?

We made art changes to Personal Story instances, not season 2 open world content.

Like Konig said, I meant season 2 story instances, not open world.

When I was playing my first mission in Prosperity, inside my story instance, the town was already full of vines because it uses the same town as in the open world.

Then you leave the town and the next time you get there in the story they are all like “Oh, what happened here!” and it looked exactly the same as the previous time, so I was confused.

Then a friend explained to me that the first mission happened before the vines overruned the town and the next mission was after the vine attack. If someone playes the story without knowing the living story changes before hand it’s really confusing.

Is this live yet? I finished up the personal story on one of the characters that were halfway through chapter 8 and got tracked into the restored order of quests, i e getting Victory or Death after completing the Source of Orr. Entering Arah I do indeed get to choose between a solo instance or to find a group for the group instance. However, the actuall dungeon doesn’t seem to be altered in a way to allow for solo play. Of course it was ages since I did play the story mode and I might remember wrong, but the whole pressure plate thingy seems quite impossible to do when being only you and Destiny’s Edge.

BobbyStein.2315:

Q: Can I reset my character’s Personal Story progress, or revert my story progress to an earlier state?
A: No. You cannot reset your character’s story progress, either partially or fully.

It seems like a poor design choice to tightly couple the personal story like this to other systems. No, I don’t mean poor design choice as an insult. Considering the amount of work you guys have on your plate it’s understandable that, in the heat of the moment and crunched for time, code decisions would suffer. It’s time to go back and clean up those hasty choices though. This should be abstracted out in the code and refactored to be independent of other systems in the game so that we can eventually have the core personal story as replayable content much like the new stories work.

This might not seem important right now, but with all the new features, new content, reworked systems, etc that are coming in the future, each one makes this system look more and more dated.

The excuse that “we tried it and it broke stuff” won’t fly for long. The answer to that is, fix it. Yes, it takes time, but it just sounds lazy for you to say “We tried it and things broke so we decided not to do it.”

I recently read this awesome article on code complexity and the complications it causes: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/998910/Why-You-Must-Tame-Complexity-to-Become-a-Better-Pr

It’s well worth the read, and I think relevant to this response regarding personal story replayability.

They seem to be letting aspects of the update – mostly dialogue has been caught – slip into the smaller updates. I think Bobby would announce if it went live given the thread so I would expect that it isn’t and what you encountered is just a slip-through-the-cracks thing which happens from time to time.

Either they’ll revert it, or just let it be until the next update.

Anka.3675:

Is this live yet? I finished up the personal story on one of the characters that were halfway through chapter 8 and got tracked into the restored order of quests, i e getting Victory or Death after completing the Source of Orr. Entering Arah I do indeed get to choose between a solo instance or to find a group for the group instance. However, the actuall dungeon doesn’t seem to be altered in a way to allow for solo play. Of course it was ages since I did play the story mode and I might remember wrong, but the whole pressure plate thingy seems quite impossible to do when being only you and Destiny’s Edge.

It has not been, as of today.

You forgot to trademark your “soon!”

It’s good to hear this is coming along. I’ve kept all my unfinished PS alts static in that regard since the announcement as I am keen to see the changes. I’ll just have to restrain myself from leaping into the LA instances solo, as I’m sure I can find friends who want to see what it used to look like.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

They seem to be letting aspects of the update – mostly dialogue has been caught – slip into the smaller updates.

We’ve made some minor text and VO changes to the Personal Story since last fall (e.g. rewriting and rerecording select Trahearne lines) as a live test, but none of the PS restoration changes have been released yet.

I was in the recording studio with Matthew Brenher (the actor who plays Trahearne) recently. We had a good discussion about his character and talked about why we were redoing a bunch of his lines. We gave him better context this time around, and I think it shows in his new performances. I’m looking forward to hearing the feedback once people have had a chance to play it.

This is exciting to hear! I mean Traherne is sylvari….but that doesn’t mean his lines had to be so “wooden”. The few new things from Traherne I’ve heard in the living story are much more alive and make Traherne seem much more of a decent character. I can’t wait to hear & see what other changes get done.

As always, thanks so very much for your updates on this. I’ve gotten all of my characters that haven’t finished personal story up to where I want them and now just anxiously awaiting when we get to see the restored story. Thank you.