Guild Wars 2

I’ve been holding off testing the restored PS, mostly so a guildie who was away for much of old LA (and had a crap computer when he was there) could see what LA used to look like with his current much better settings. He was free tonight so we did the DE gathering at the fountain and the Vigil meeting in Fort Marriner. Both had a good wide area to run around in beyond the active part of the PS so my guildie and I were able to go up on walls and in buildings such as the Commodore’s mansion.

Of note, the “past LA” is in sepia tones, but you can turn off post processing in Options and then you see it in color. It was glorious broad daylight while I was there. That’s a question: Does the old-terrain instance still follow the global day-night cycle? Or do we always get an appropriate time of day for the PS we’re doing?

I took a lot of screenshots, though just one in sepia, but it’s too late at night for me to process them for posting right now.

here’s some of my feedback:

battle of claw island: the new VO’s for trahearne are much better. no longer does he refer to the fortress as Clawr Island or Claw Righland.

i haven’t played all the new VO’d story instances, but i presume they’re of the same improved quality.

Defense of LA immediately after Battle of Claw Island: seeing the old, pre-Scarlet Lion’s Arch in the story is breathtaking. we’ve asked for this ever since the living world started changing LA. the slight sepia tone hints that this is definitely in the past. this is a very nice touch.

[suggestion] the slight sepia tone could be a toggle effect for all personal story instances, due to the fact that all personal instances take place in the past, according to the time line.

Victory or Death:
~ i luv that i can solo it now, for two reasons. 1) i don’t need to find a group. 2) my character is in all the cut scenes.
~ the first part of the instance still feels epic. collecting the parts for the airship launch, fighting alongside Destiny’s Edge is pretty cool.
~ once the airship takes off, it’s still feels epic due to the view while flying. it’s different enough from the typical ground combat to keep me interested in the instance. (this is nothing new of course, but i think is worth mentioning)
~ and then all of a sudden, we land at the cliffs to kill a champ, and i leave the airship by myself, Destiny’s Edge twiddling their thumbs on the airship while i do all the fighting.
~ i return to the airship and it takes flight again, and before i know it, it’s time to man the turret and shoot down some dragons…. by myself. Destiny’s Edge just stands on the command deck watching me do all the work. there’s no other NPCs on deck at all.
~ once we transfer to the Glory of Tyria, it’s the same thing. Destiny’s Edge and the other NPCs just stand around watching me do all the work.

basically, once i board the airship, the instance no longer feels epic, because the NPCs no longer do anything to help.

[suggestion]
~buff the boss on the cliff and send Destiny’s Edge with me to fight him to maintain the epic feel of the first part of the instance.
~throw a few more mobs on deck during the dragon – airship sequences, but again, make destiny’s edge help me by fighting the mobs while i’m on the cannon.

thank you for your time. and bacon to you for the mostly awesome personal story restoration

Azurem.9468:

shadow.6174:

BobbyStein.2315:

Shun.4678:

Is there anything wrong with the personal story?
i just got the game yesterday and just started playing earlier with a human engineer but after finishing “Defending Shaemoor” theres no more quest for me.

From what I can see in your screenshot, it looks like you need to hit level 10 before you can access the next story “block.”

From the wiki:

“Each character’s personal story is divided into eight chapters, with each chapter unlocking every 10 levels.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personal_story

Yay, “user friendly” NPE strikes again :P

To be fair, on his screenshot it does say (in orange text to stand out) “This episode will become playable at level 10”.
I’m not sure how that could be clearer. Maybe it should be bigger?

My mistake, I didn’t see his screenshoot. But anyhow, I was just teasing with the change made for NPE. I still think it dumb to have PS in chunks based on level. But that’s another discussion for another thread.

One issue I noticed:

At the end of Forging the Pact, Trahearne used to (before the personal story changes in the feature pack) have a short, unvoiced (text box) dialogue with you where he discussed what your next assignment would be based upon your greatest fear. That was removed with the feature pack, and it hasn’t been restored in the restoration update. This means that you finish Forging the Pact and then randomly get sent off to your greatest fear arc with no real explanation for why you’re going where you’re going or meeting with who you’re meeting. Just one thing I thought Bobby and co might be able to take a look at.

The “Source of Orr” section still displays as being for level 70, not level 80, along with level 70 rewards.

Lasur Arkinshade.4107:

One issue I noticed:

At the end of Forging the Pact, Trahearne used to (before the personal story changes in the feature pack) have a short, unvoiced (text box) dialogue with you where he discussed what your next assignment would be based upon your greatest fear. That was removed with the feature pack, and it hasn’t been restored in the restoration update. This means that you finish Forging the Pact and then randomly get sent off to your greatest fear arc with no real explanation for why you’re going where you’re going or meeting with who you’re meeting. Just one thing I thought Bobby and co might be able to take a look at.

I noticed the same issue. It does make for a jarring transition to have a big discussion about a new HQ fort in Straits and then suddenly find your next objective is to go fight krait in Timberline, lead a mortar team in Mt. Maelstrom, or blow up towers in Sparkfly.

But, aside from such nitpicks, it’s great to have Greatest Fear back and be experiencing the story in proper order. Thank you, Bobby, and everyone else involved in putting this right!

Personal story is not working properly for me on two characters. The first issue is part of my Story Journal has been deleted on one character that had completed the entire story and final dungeon. The second involves missing huge chunks of the personal story that should have been available despite the changes. According to the dev’s post, I should not have any issues with continuing the story from “Forging the Pact”, yet I have run into a massive problem that involves skipping more than 80% of Chapter 7 and Chapter 8.

More precise info included within my bug report:
Personal Story – Skipped every mission in Orr

I seriously hope this malfunction can be reversed, because I don’t take much pleasure in the thought that my two main characters are permanently bugged because of this.

BobbyStein.2315:

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

Art changes… you mean like this snazzy new detailed floor texture in old Lion’s Arch instance for example? Since it didn’t fix itself for the duration of the entire instance I assume it was not caused by some kind of rendering hitch or slowdown.

Edit: looking at the screenshot after the fact, it could probably be a lighting issue, this happened few days ago so hard to say. That said I am absolutely positive the cave didn’t look like this when I completed this instance for myself prior to the story journal coming in the game.

I’m pretty sure this is a long standing bug, but when I got to the last conversation after the Tank Escort mission, I think in Chapter 8, it just hung and wouldn’t display characters, text, nor play audio. I was able to escape through it, but it means I never got to experience that last cut scene. I sent in a bug report about it, but thought I should bring it here too.

BobbyStein.2315:

Did others in your party experience the same visual anomaly or just you?

Just me, as far as I know, but the people in that party were on significantly different hardware. I would like to see if it happens again using my settings but that story step is too far in the story for it be reasonable thing to do.

I am running the game on a fairly low end system, but I have been doing so for a long time… plenty of performance bottlenecks but no graphical glitches, until recently. For what it is worth the above ground portions of the instance and the few other instances on the old LA map we played looked fine. I didn’t even notice something was off until we were about to leave the instance and I was just standing there.

GPU: Geforce 675MX, attached a screen grab of my GFX settings.

Having now played through the solo instance of Victory or Death here’s my thoughts for what it’s worth

> I miss the champ bags and the little bit of loot you get from the chests. Had hoped to get something for finishing the instance, but you don’t. I know that the mobs won’t drop loot due to it being a story instance now, but it would have been nice to at least leave the dungeon chest spawns in there so you get something along the way. (or give players 3 champ bags plus a couple “bags of loot” at the end after you kill Zhaitan)

> Overall, the Kill Zhaitan mission feels shorter with a lot less standing around.
> The giants were a bit of a pain on my elementalist, but doable.
> The two dragon fight gets really bad when you’re by yourself if you die or are really squishy as I was on my ele. It felt very overwhelming at times and was hard to get back to having things dead so I could operate the canon at the dragons. Tough, but still doable solo.

> I like that you get the arah headpiece for the mission after arah story, and the other loot for finishing personal story is appropriate and nice to get. Though I don’t have much use for lvl 17 anythings, it’s nice you can salvage what you get.
> The Loot Bags from the Hero’s chest were very underwhelming.

Somewhat related:
> The rewards for the restored story missions only give 3 bags of loot and nothing else. It would have been nice to have had a few other things added. Not sure what, but after what you get for all the other story steps it just felt lackluster.

Thanks for everyone’s hard work on fixing the story to make sense, make the final instance soloable, and everything to get this back in game. <3

I have finished my personal story LONG ago, why am I in chapter 7? And why there ain’t a green arrow to show me next step?

Donari.5237:

I’ve been holding off testing the restored PS, mostly so a guildie who was away for much of old LA (and had a crap computer when he was there) could see what LA used to look like with his current much better settings. He was free tonight so we did the DE gathering at the fountain and the Vigil meeting in Fort Marriner. Both had a good wide area to run around in beyond the active part of the PS so my guildie and I were able to go up on walls and in buildings such as the Commodore’s mansion.

Of note, the “past LA” is in sepia tones, but you can turn off post processing in Options and then you see it in color. It was glorious broad daylight while I was there. That’s a question: Does the old-terrain instance still follow the global day-night cycle? Or do we always get an appropriate time of day for the PS we’re doing?

I took a lot of screenshots, though just one in sepia, but it’s too late at night for me to process them for posting right now.

Thank you very much for the tip to turn off post-processing to see LA in colour

BobbyStein.2315:

We are also updating the Ruined City of Arah Dungeon Track to be unlocked by story mode or explorable mode completion.

Can someone confirm for me that the new way to unlock the spvp track is to do just one path of the explorable? or do you need to do all of the paths?

It should be any one path. But I’ve already unlocked the track long ago so I cannot confirm.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It should be any one path. But I’ve already unlocked the track long ago so I cannot confirm.

It is just one path

I dont understand . I was doing lvl 80 quest of main story , and now i was redirected to lvl 70 quests? should i repeat again the quests??

Thanks so much for this update! As one of the players who soloed all of GW1 content, and was extremely disappointed to find that not being an option in GW2 (and as a result taking a lengthy hiatus from even playing GW2 at all), finally being able to finish the main storyline solo is a long awaited addition!

I’m not sure if this has been requested yet in this thread, but I know I’ve seen several other threads about how awesome it would be for other dungeon instances (most especially Story Mode Dungeons) to be adjusted to be soloable as well. Is there any hope of that happening anytime soon?

Thangorodrim.2748:

I dont understand . I was doing lvl 80 quest of main story , and now i was redirected to lvl 70 quests? should i repeat again the quests??

They put the story back in order but the story steps they moved didn’t get fixed to be the right level. So yeah the story is in the right order but the end bits don’t reflect what chapter they’re supposed to be in. I just finished the story again yesterday and it does go to lvl 80 story then some steps are still level 70 (with level 70 rewards) and then back to level 80 again. It’s weird.

BobbyStein.2315:

For those experiencing Personal Story issues, please submit a support request and provide as much information as you can.

https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Useful info:

• Account name
• Character name
• The name of your current story step
• The issue
• Repro steps

Keep screenshots handy. While you can’t attach them to the initial support request you may be asked to provide them later.

As like your request I made a support ticket about the PS. I had it all finished but now it only shows chapter 7 Forming the Pact and I cant continue.

I got an answer back from support that I was not to make a ticket that way but needed to make an in game bug report (which I did three times already).

I’m getting a bit confused now

BobbyStein.2315:

khani.4786:

Thangorodrim.2748:

I dont understand . I was doing lvl 80 quest of main story , and now i was redirected to lvl 70 quests? should i repeat again the quests??

They put the story back in order but the story steps they moved didn’t get fixed to be the right level. So yeah the story is in the right order but the end bits don’t reflect what chapter they’re supposed to be in. I just finished the story again yesterday and it does go to lvl 80 story then some steps are still level 70 (with level 70 rewards) and then back to level 80 again. It’s weird.

The following steps were restored to their original position in chapter 8.

• Against the Corruption
• Cathedral of Silence
• Romke’s Final Voyage
• Source of Orr

Did you experience the issue in one of the story steps listed above?

I don’t remember all of them as I did it over a series of days. But definitely Source of Orr was listed as level 70 and I got level 70 rewards from doing it and I’m pretty sure the other three restored sections were also lvl 70.
I’m working on the next character’s story now so I’ll pay better attention to where the levels change from 80 back to 70.

BobbyStein.2315:

The following steps were restored to their original position in chapter 8.

• Against the Corruption
• Cathedral of Silence
• Romke’s Final Voyage
• Source of Orr

Did you experience the issue in one of the story steps listed above?

Against the Corruption and Cathedral of Silence were definitely level 70 for me, I took screenshots and stuff. Don’t remember what level Source of Orr was.

After the PS restoration plans were announced, I decided to get my lvl 80 chars to the story part at lvl 70 “forging the pact” and then waited for the restoration in the June patch. These are my results after starting chapter 8:

On the first character I created after the June 2015 update I noticed that I lacked rare/exotic rewards in some chapter 8 quests and merely got trophy/reward bags. And then I noticed, if I got a rare, it was lvl 70. I was puzzled, but did not know why/where/when this started. (Name: Rowan Ivysting, race: Sylvari, prof.: necro)

I then used a character I had created after the NPE Change and started to write down each PS choice in chapter 8. Everything seemed ok (lvl 80 rewards), until I reached “Against the Corruption”. From then on up to “Source of Orr” I got bags and lvl 70 rares. (Name: Siri Jinks, race: Asura, prof.: ranger)

My last experiment was on a very old character who had started the story before the NPE Change and got the same results as on Siri Jinks. (Brooks Springfield, race: Human, prof: Necro)

I still have 7 lvl 80 chars parked at “Forging the Pact” and 2 lvl 80 parked at “Temple of the Forgotten God”. Some are old chars, some created after the NPE change and one came after the June patch.

I am unsure what to do now – wait? – get them all to one step before “Source of Orr”? – proceed and trust I might get the lacking rewards as a sort of “refund”?

Thank you in advance for any kind of advice.

PS: if it helps you I can post my story choices on chars 2 and 3.

Squeeks, see the post above yours. Bobby Stein has informed the design team of the bug and it should be queued for a fix.

Seems like a relatively simple issue, I’d imagine, so we are likely to get it fixed soon™.

I would wait.

I’ve heard reports that the Greatest Fear (restored) story steps are giving only bags of loot – which is downright strange. Should be looked at, I think.

Hmmmm….. so far, I am still at the Greatest Fear stages of the Personal Story. Good thing I took a look at the forums regarding problems with the last few pieces of the story.

Thanks, König, I did read Bobby Stein

Apart from the lvl 70 issue from corruption on, I am also puzzled about my poor Sylvari, I wish I had made screenshots. She mostly only got loot/reward bags in chapter 8. Whereas my other 2 labrats had items additionally. It was not only “greatest fear” (in chapter7, right?

IIRC I mentioned my plight in the guild chat that day whilst I was standing in front of the tombs of Azabe Qabar, ready to enter and kill.

While I honestly am not concerned with the loot, I think it should be deemed appropriate that players get something beyond bags of loot.

I don’t think I ever pay attention to the rewards, except when I have to choose an item, then I check to see if any of them are skins I haven’t unlocked yet.

I can’t honestly remember what I’ve gotten from any of the story chapters, except of course I know the level 10 story gives a black lion key and you get a token for a special weapon when you finish Victory or Death, like GW1 did.

Personal feedback towards the changes so far.

In the Attack on Fort Trinity cutscene which plays after defeating the Risen, I noticed that the music differed from haunting to uplifting (plus the added speech of Trahearne) which in my opinion feels more out of place. Other than that, I had little problems with it. And I noticed from one of the posts here that the Romke quest still hasn’t been rectified yet, which I think does merit some attention while you are working on fixing the rewards for the Personal Story bits.

Sorry if this has been answered before, but seems to be plain ambiguous to me.
Are these changes live?

xaunpy.9081:

Sorry if this has been answered before, but seems to be plain ambiguous to me.
Are these changes live?

Yes.

I hope that’s not too ambiguous. The changes went live with the update that brought us the new trait system, hero points, etc.

Restore the original, non-level locked way of doing the personal story, that’s a better option.

The last mission: Victory or Death

The cannons aren’t working.
We aren’t able to use the cannons to block the attacks to continue the story.

Hey Bobby. We recently attempted to do a Personal Story instance of Victory or Death but encountered a bug on the stage where you are supposed to use the cannons to reflect incoming projectiles from the giants. For some reason, we were completely unable to interact with the cannons. I appreciate you taking the time to do the instance with me and get a personal look at the bug.

-From Skinny Mike

Valmis, your post makes little sense to me.

The current recap is the only recap that was ever placed in-game for Season 1 – quality of S1 irrelevant.

And why would you want another item cluttering your inventory when an NPC-triggered repeatable cinematic is there? It serves the same function in the end, but is less cluttering.

And there was no change to the story anywhere, just a chance for new players to get a recap of events they missed until it can be made permanent (as Anet has said they wanted to do multiple times). They can’t/won’t/don’t want to divert resources from working on HoT to bring S1 back in S2’s format, but intend to after HoT’s release.

The current recap is literally just a placeholder using old video footage Anet made that focuses only on the plot relevant to S2/HoT (Scarlet’s stuff).

This is annoying, how long does it take arenanet to fix a bug that involved the last part of the personal story? everyone’s having the same problem with not being able to interact with the cannons or anvil.

As a first time player, I’d really love to finish this quest. After all that build up it really takes the wind out of my wings to wait for the final quest.

KillsLess.1674:

BobbyStein.2315:

For those experiencing Personal Story issues, please submit a support request and provide as much information as you can.

https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Useful info:

• Account name
• Character name
• The name of your current story step
• The issue
• Repro steps

Keep screenshots handy. While you can’t attach them to the initial support request you may be asked to provide them later.

As like your request I made a support ticket about the PS. I had it all finished but now it only shows chapter 7 Forming the Pact and I cant continue.

I got an answer back from support that I was not to make a ticket that way but needed to make an in game bug report (which I did three times already).

I’m getting a bit confused now

And still no fix for the Living story issue?

I have logged in every day and hoped it to be fixed. I send in numerous bug reports in game but no actual feedback as of yet.

Could someone provide a fix or maybe an ETA on when it will be fixed?

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding the Victory or Death turret bug: we investigated the issue and have a couple of folks working on fixes for it. I’ll post an update when I have more info.

Another bug in Victory or death!!!

It is not possible to use the anvil.

Adding to this thread about Living Story issues. I had already completed the 4 story missions that you rearranged and was just waiting to do the ships before finally finishing the story. From what I understand my character (Warden Nightray) should have been pushed forward to Victory or Death but now I’m being directed to re-do these four again: Against the Corruption, Cathedral of Silence, Romke’s Final Voyage & Source of Orr. I’m effectively stuck because I shouldn’t have to redo missions I’ve already completed.

Also they show as LVL 70 Missions still which I believe someone else has already mentioned.

Having to repeat the missions was something stated would be a side-effect of the re-ordering back when it was announced that they were fixing the order to its original order. Well, the opposite was: that if you were on the formerly-earlier steps then you’d miss the formerly-later steps. But reading between the lines indicates that it was a planned unintentional side-effect.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Having to repeat the missions was something stated would be a side-effect of the re-ordering back when it was announced that they were fixing the order to its original order. Well, the opposite was: that if you were on the formerly-earlier steps then you’d miss the formerly-later steps. But reading between the lines indicates that it was a planned unintentional side-effect.

Guess my main won’t be finishing the main story then. I really don’t feel like re-doing 4 missions. If you have credit for it and it’s clearly already showing up in your sidebar as completed they should just progress through it without you actually having to do it. It’s exactly like being able to do the LW2 missions even if you haven’t done one mission of the Scarlet story except in this case anyone who being forced to do this at least has actually already put in the effort and dealt with any bugs or mishaps that happened their first play through.