Guild Wars 2

This is my personal opinion and also it CONTAINS SPOILERS and it’s HONEST and for mature players so you can get offended. I try to be polite and you’ve been warned.
I’ve been playing GW2 for a bit over a year now. I came into some weird conclusions. I’d like to share some with the community. I don’t expect any feedback, I just have this urge to write this on the forum finally. I haven’t played HoT yet. I know the new content is different but I’m focusing on the “old” personal story. I’m not much into guilds and I’m still a noob in some cases. There is no TL;DR this is for patient people.

Also GW2 is my very first MMO . I have never played a game like that before it. I’ve been playing many games before though.

What hits me now, it’s that all the PS seems to be written by a totally different person (persons) than the one that wrote all the other world interactions.
I like all this weird and awkward dialogues characters have in Lion’s Arch or wherever. I like to stumble on something really cool, like that sylvari standing by the bridge in LA and calling me “captain famous”. This game need more of that! I like that conspiracy theory dude! These are great tastes and this is why I play (among many reasons). I also like all the sexual innuendos, that may or may not be intended (except outfits that make everyone run around half-naked). Oh, I’ve seen many sexual innuendos in the game, that now I doubt if my mind is so dirty or the game is just trolling me. Whatever, these all elements work together great and make something greater.
And the Personal Story… first, since we HAVE to stumble upon a noble death trope at the Claw Island, when I choose to go through this with yet another character (because I’m weird and I have many characters) before hat, I choose to go with the Vigil every time because I feel least sorry for that old warrior guy. I’m emotional and I get attached…
BUT why would you put a very awkwardly placed noble death in the first place in a story like that? It’s such a used up and boring motif. This is not original writing, this is lazy writing. It makes me NOT like the story. I guess it was supposed to make me feel more emotional towards the whole situation, but not, it makes me detest it. “Oh, here we go again…” If the characters interactions were more amusing and were saying something that would be clever and kitteny, maybe I’d be eager to play this PS over and over again? Here, this doesn’t happen…
So, I killed the dragon and I went further with another character. And what happened? A freaking another noble death! This time I can’t choose who dies, but it’s a sylvari woman! How about I’d get more possibilities to see?? Maybe I should choose who gets eliminated, to have some fun at least? “Oh no, the timer is destroyed!” Whaaat?! WHAT?!?! you got to be kidding me!
I was playing as a Guardian and I could provide sufficient protection, but I know game mechanics can’t consider that.
That’s not all. I know game engine makes things look a bit stiff and some things don’t click. But why would you make voice acting of PS so stiff as well? I’d be happy to hear some more emotion in these voices, they fight the frekaing dragon and everything sounds like they’re having an afternoon tea… I can forgive Trahearne, because he’s an old necromancer… but the rest? It all feels as if director of voice acting wanted to get a particular effect, but this effect makes me feel less enraged and interested in the characters I meet. Less and less…
Can’t my character at lest drop a stupid joke or try to hit on someone? That would wake me up… these are free advises! I’d hit on Trahearne if I could!
On the top of that, it all feels so kitten official, that it hurts.
ah, and I just stumbled upon Pale Reavers, they have super awesome guns that kill the risen so quickly! Why can’t I get one of these guns at least for a while? Why don’t everybody use them? We’d kill off the problem very quickly! I have powerful, exotic weapons with my Guardian, but the sylvari guns just… they dominated everyone.

Also, when I started playing “Dragon’s Reach” (the free episodes) I stumbled onto so powerful and hard to kill enemies, that it turned my so far smooth gameplay into a grinding torture! And again, a warrior with all exotic equipment. I don’t have anything legendary now and I’m a complete noob with these. But if I need such weapons to kill vines and a dragon at the Grove, I’d like to know that before I play!!!
The floor turns into lava, there is almost no place to escape, I’m alone with vines hitting me from close, from far. The difficulty level suddenly goes up as if expect me to be a pro gamer, which I’m not… I have killed a champion once on my own… but these enemies don’t forgive unless you have perfect aim, perfect timing and acrobatic skills. On the top of the floor turning into lava under my feet (not giving me any time to regenerate before next attack) and draining my energy, once the armor gets destroyed…. it’s a frustration nightmare.

That one night made me feel hate and rage towards otherwise a wonderful game that I love. And I still don’t want to play that part, and I don’t even want to pay for that. I hope HoT has a NORMAL combat.

Whew!

That is all.

Thanks for reading if you go that far. Of course, I’ll read every comment if such appear.

The personal story/main story in an MMO can’t have too many choices in it. Or at least not too many choices where the choice has any effect.

So there are few if any choose who dies steps. Few if any choices for flirts.

The story has to be fairly rigid for MMO’s. Because of the sheer number of combinations that would happen if they gave too many choices.

For example:

A game with 8 chapters. Each chapter has 3 sections. Each section has a choice with 3 options. For simplicity’s sake, none of the choices affect future choices.

That’s 24 times where you choose between 3 options. The total number of combinations is: 282,429,536,000 combinations.

That’s a lot of combinations to keep track of. And that’s not even considering chapters that branch out like the story here does.

Any major change tends to not be something that you can choose. You make tons of choices in the game already. But they only affect things in that chapter for the most part. There are a few exceptions where that does not hold true.

Personal story can be done with just exotics. HoT’s personal story is harder on average to the core game’s personal story. And this is intentional. HoT is aimed at the group players rather than the solo players more so than the core game is.

Avelione.6075:

On the top of the floor turning into lava under my feet (not giving me any time to regenerate before next attack) and draining my energy, once the armor gets destroyed…. it’s a frustration nightmare.

Whew!

You count to 3-4 seconds then dodge or use your warrior shield to block. Also, use your rifle for range attacks or your longbow, stay far to the sides. You don’t need any ascended or legendary gear to beat Living Story or Personal Story or even Heart of Thorns.

Seera.5916:

The personal story/main story in an MMO can’t have too many choices in it. Or at least not too many choices where the choice has any effect.

So there are few if any choose who dies steps. Few if any choices for flirts.

The story has to be fairly rigid for MMO’s. Because of the sheer number of combinations that would happen if they gave too many choices.

For example:

A game with 8 chapters. Each chapter has 3 sections. Each section has a choice with 3 options. For simplicity’s sake, none of the choices affect future choices.

That’s 24 times where you choose between 3 options. The total number of combinations is: 282,429,536,000 combinations.

That’s a lot of combinations to keep track of. And that’s not even considering chapters that branch out like the story here does.

Any major change tends to not be something that you can choose. You make tons of choices in the game already. But they only affect things in that chapter for the most part. There are a few exceptions where that does not hold true.

That explains the choices to me and difficulty of game design… but my main point is that the Personal Story itself is lazily written (mostly plain dialogues, lots of seriousness, using boring tropes as an emotional bait) and poorly executed ( good but very little emotional) voice acting. I’d be happy with even less choices if the story was better.
When hitting on a character in PS, I mean, it can be a dialogue line that has no choice in it. If things could get at least a bit spiced up in some ways! Just a stupid joke and an immediate (and funny) negative reply from am NPC. We have many moments in the gameplay when you can make a bit of an idiot out of yourself or get surprised by an NPC’s answer. Hardly anything surprised me in PS…. [As an example, I could listen to many dialogues from Prince of Persia Warrior Within every day because they are cleverly written and the main voice actor put all his heart into it!]
Everything outside the PS has some kind of drive to it and is not afraid to go freaky with the player, and in PS I had just a small taste of what it could be. even the voice acting of random NPCs feels much more emotional and dynamic. Even screams, shouts, coughing and moaning feels like it’s real! (My favorite is that asura panicking about the dragon and shouting orders at the Splintered Coast. This voice always makes me feel scared of the beast, even though I fought there many times.)
I’m pretty sure these two parts of the game were written by two different people (groups of people).

I didn’t find anything particularly hard in the season 2. I hear that a lot. I don’t know, you even play warrior – it’s really no big deal. Know what the skills do (like prevent damage), time your dodges wisely etc.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I didn’t find anything particularly hard in the season 2. I hear that a lot. I don’t know, you even play warrior – it’s really no big deal. Know what the skills do (like prevent damage), time your dodges wisely etc.

LOL, well I couldn’t expect less from a ProtoGunner…
Maybe I’m a worse player than I thought but then I feel as if the difficulty level was raised 250%….
I guess I have to tough it out :/

Avelione.6075:

Seera.5916:

The personal story/main story in an MMO can’t have too many choices in it. Or at least not too many choices where the choice has any effect.

So there are few if any choose who dies steps. Few if any choices for flirts.

The story has to be fairly rigid for MMO’s. Because of the sheer number of combinations that would happen if they gave too many choices.

For example:

A game with 8 chapters. Each chapter has 3 sections. Each section has a choice with 3 options. For simplicity’s sake, none of the choices affect future choices.

That’s 24 times where you choose between 3 options. The total number of combinations is: 282,429,536,000 combinations.

That’s a lot of combinations to keep track of. And that’s not even considering chapters that branch out like the story here does.

Any major change tends to not be something that you can choose. You make tons of choices in the game already. But they only affect things in that chapter for the most part. There are a few exceptions where that does not hold true.

That explains the choices to me and difficulty of game design… but my main point is that the Personal Story itself is lazily written (mostly plain dialogues, lots of seriousness, using boring tropes as an emotional bait) and poorly executed ( good but very little emotional) voice acting. I’d be happy with even less choices if the story was better.
When hitting on a character in PS, I mean, it can be a dialogue line that has no choice in it. If things could get at least a bit spiced up in some ways! Just a stupid joke and an immediate (and funny) negative reply from am NPC. We have many moments in the gameplay when you can make a bit of an idiot out of yourself or get surprised by an NPC’s answer. Hardly anything surprised me in PS…. [As an example, I could listen to many dialogues from Prince of Persia Warrior Within every day because they are cleverly written and the main voice actor put all his heart into it!]
Everything outside the PS has some kind of drive to it and is not afraid to go freaky with the player, and in PS I had just a small taste of what it could be. even the voice acting of random NPCs feels much more emotional and dynamic. Even screams, shouts, coughing and moaning feels like it’s real! (My favorite is that asura panicking about the dragon and shouting orders at the Splintered Coast. This voice always makes me feel scared of the beast, even though I fought there many times.)
I’m pretty sure these two parts of the game were written by two different people (groups of people).

But to the flirting, I don’t want my characters to flirt with NPC’s that I do not want them to flirt with. Which means I don’t want them flirting with anyone. It’s better to leave that out if it’s not a voluntary choice. And unless its a meaningful romance, I’d rather them not put forth effort into putting that in. Otherwise it’s a meaningless choice and I’d rather only make meaningful choices.

MMO’s aren’t the genre to find super well developed stories. Sure, there are probably one or two MMO’s out there with a good story, but in general, MMO’s are not the genre to go to for great story writing. The story parts don’t keep the attention long enough for the average player for anything but the common tropes to be effective.

Claw Island is where it falls apart and stays sitting on the floor in pieces.
And those pieces are nothing but risen zergs with Trahearne spouting cliched pep talks.

For those who didn’t play their PS yet, yes the whole game after claw island is risen zergs with Trahearne spouting cliched pep talks. I wish I was kidding.

Seera.5916:

But to the flirting, I don’t want my characters to flirt with NPC’s that I do not want them to flirt with. Which means I don’t want them flirting with anyone. It’s better to leave that out if it’s not a voluntary choice. And unless its a meaningful romance, I’d rather them not put forth effort into putting that in. Otherwise it’s a meaningless choice and I’d rather only make meaningful choices.

MMO’s aren’t the genre to find super well developed stories. Sure, there are probably one or two MMO’s out there with a good story, but in general, MMO’s are not the genre to go to for great story writing. The story parts don’t keep the attention long enough for the average player for anything but the common tropes to be effective.

Welp, we can skip the flirting part. That’s just my personal preference.

But saying that MMO are not suppose to have super well developed stories… huh? I’m not saying it’s supposed to be developed. I’m saying it’s supposed to be good and engaging. And thee PS cut scenes are all but that (except maybe the 1st time you play it).
And above I wrote a few paragraphs how a common trope exactly makes the story boring and forgettable. Common tropes repeat so much in media that they’ve became boring.They don’t catch my attention that much at least. I’d rather be surprised with something, even if it’s the simplest story in the world. Maybe they should swap Trahearne with a talking goat. I’d rather stand there and stare at a talking goat That would grab people’s attention for much longer.

Redfeather.6401:

Claw Island is where it falls apart and stays sitting on the floor in pieces.
And those pieces are nothing but risen zergs with Trahearne spouting cliched pep talks.

For those who didn’t play their PS yet, yes the whole game after claw island is risen zergs with Trahearne spouting cliched pep talks. I wish I was kidding.

Haha! That’s a pretty good description. I have 9 characters (don’t judge me) and I slowly grind the PS with all of them (just to get some items and have it checked, for the sake of it).
Advice: if you’re sick of PS just mute dialogues, skip all the cutscenes, play music you like and make your character dance if you have to wait through another speech of Trahearne. :P

And Claw Island is the point that I always put off as long as possible. Especially because of that noble death. This is why I go with the Vigil, since the old warrior guy can die in a battle – hey a pretty good way to go for him. I don’t want to see the silly sylvari or awkward charr to die like that again :/ I don’t understand why would they give us a “friend” to be killed off so soon. But sometimes I want to pick Durmand with that stupid sylvari. “Let’s just go to this kitten island and why don’t you just die already!” This is what a bad writing does to you. Makes you bitter and/or bored and not caring about the kitten NPC. I was disappointed and baffled the first time I played Claw Island.
“WTF Anet?! This is not some cheap TV show! I thought you could do better than that : ]”

Few random thoughts. Some might not be intended to be taken too seriously.

The only NPC in the game that I really liked was to be found in the Asura PS:-

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agent_Batanga

I was gutted when I found out that I wouldn’t be seeing her ever again. Her writing was pretty in tune with the usual, quirky, charming and fun writing that there’s lots of in the non-Story game, as mentioned by Avelione. I expect that my main wouldn’t have been above a little flirting there….

The actual fighting missions on Claw Island are the high point of the game for me: glorious! I didn’t mind the Vigil noble deathTM. One RP gripe I had was that my Asura was a bit of a rogue (with a heart of goldTM), who would have gone Vigil but wouldn’t have suddenly and instantly embraced all that militaristic, hierarchal garbage.

The way that Vigil dude spoke to her, she’d have put her hands on her hips (totally coincidentally not that far from her pistol grips…), folded her floppy ears back, and had words.

When he died, she thought, ‘He was a complete tool, but at least he died well.’

Similarly, when she finally took on the role of Commander of the most powerful military force the world had ever seen, she fully embraced that role and all that went with it. So she wasn’t too keen on a bunch of NPC grunts, that she waaaay outranked, beckoning her over like she was a dog. Grrr….

Thought that some of the missions towards the end were a bit odd, where she was expected to both single-handedly man the guns and fight off the annoying adds that were attacking her on the deck… while everybody else in the ship just watched… ‘Guys?.. Guys?!!’

And the usual game thing where the Illustrious Heroes that you constantly hear about… turns out that they can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. The humorous ref to this, in the LS2 made me chuckle… which was about the only thing in the LS2 that did make me chuckle, or enjoy myself in any way. The PS was like the Golden Age compared to that.

Loved the fuzzy, victorious glow at the end of the PS though… though that only lasted until I then read the ‘It was all for nothing, you failed, and you weren’t even playing’ LS1 summary that you then instantly get. Really bad story-telling there… buzzkill.

Playing it through again, I find it funny when my char is running about, fighting and doing stuff while Trahearne keeps waffling away to himself in the background, totally oblivious, like a rambling old man. Was pleased that they averted one trope here: a char with a well-spoken English accent… who doesn’t turn out to be the evil villain.

In that dance scene at the end, I kept my eye on him; expecting him to turn into a dragon or something.

Okay… is Season 2 designed for groups only? I don’t know how it works? Do I get some special buff in the locked episodes that I dont know about?
Because I tried the World Summit again and the difficulty level is RIDICULOUS once the dragon appears… I’ll NEVER be able to go through it without outside help. I should have 20 NPCs there running as a bait so I can focus on actual fighting the enemy! Maybe I suck, but how the hell I went through the rest of the PS?? I think I’m a pretty good player. I buffed up my warrior as much as I could. All exotic. Tweaked my build as much as I could and… it still sucks. IT JUST SUCKS! He dies after 2 minutes, why ALL the floor turns to lava? How am I supposed to protect him from that? Once the armor gets damaged it all turns hopeless. He may as well get killed at the very beginning… oh well, the hero died, you stupid NPCs have to figure it out yourselves!
I’m soooooooooooooooo disappointed :/

Avelione.6075:

Okay… is Season 2 designed for groups only? I don’t know how it works? Do I get some special buff in the locked episodes that I dont know about?
Because I tried the World Summit again and the difficulty level is RIDICULOUS once the dragon appears… I’ll NEVER be able to go through it without outside help. I should have 20 NPCs there running as a bait so I can focus on actual fighting the enemy! Maybe I suck, but how the hell I went through the rest of the PS?? I think I’m a pretty good player. I buffed up my warrior as much as I could. All exotic. Tweaked my build as much as I could and… it still sucks. IT JUST SUCKS! He dies after 2 minutes, why ALL the floor turns to lava? How am I supposed to protect him from that? Once the armor gets damaged it all turns hopeless. He may as well get killed at the very beginning… oh well, the hero died, you stupid NPCs have to figure it out yourselves!
I’m soooooooooooooooo disappointed :/

There are very few parts with that difficulty, don’t worry. You may just need to invite a friend or guildie, or put a request in LFG for that bit. If you are having that much trouble I’m sure others out there are stuck too. I remember it taking me a couple of tries when I first did it, hang in there.

Theres a lot of coding work for the personal story that you will only see if you play every class, join every order, and opt to play all the differant variants in the personal story.
Most MMOs dont even have a personel story or anything like it.
About the only minor irritation I see is that you cant tell the NPCs to stop doing what they are doing when they are doing something totally stupid, such as running into large mob of bad guys and trying to kill them all single handed.
Same goes for some of the escort quests.
Just being able to tell them to stand where you are would help a lot.

Avelione.6075:

Okay… is Season 2 designed for groups only? I don’t know how it works? Do I get some special buff in the locked episodes that I dont know about?
Because I tried the World Summit again and the difficulty level is RIDICULOUS once the dragon appears… I’ll NEVER be able to go through it without outside help. I should have 20 NPCs there running as a bait so I can focus on actual fighting the enemy! Maybe I suck, but how the hell I went through the rest of the PS?? I think I’m a pretty good player. I buffed up my warrior as much as I could. All exotic. Tweaked my build as much as I could and… it still sucks. IT JUST SUCKS! He dies after 2 minutes, why ALL the floor turns to lava? How am I supposed to protect him from that? Once the armor gets damaged it all turns hopeless. He may as well get killed at the very beginning… oh well, the hero died, you stupid NPCs have to figure it out yourselves!
I’m soooooooooooooooo disappointed :/

I’ve never played any game quite like GW2; where you can think you’re doing fine, even getting through the PS without too much trouble… and it’s only a few hundred hours in that you can get that realisation that, ‘kitten, I really suck! I need to rethink this and L2P!’

For me, it was spending a lot of time in the Silverwastes, getting insta-recked all the time; and then learning how to stop that happening – really sharpened my build and skills. Still got a long way to go too. I personally like that aspect of GW2, but YMMV.

For that mission, I imagine that you must be just missing a particular mechanic – maybe not getting the timing right on your dodge, when the floor turns to lava? And maybe not doing enough burst damage to the dragon each time that you can harm him, so he comes back with that annoying attack more often?

I say this because I did it with my ‘made of wet tissues’ gunslinger Thief, back when I sucked, and didn’t have as much problem as you’re having… despite it being pretty much the worst possible type of fight for a ’slinger, as many of the LS2 fights are.

[Confined space where you can’t use what scant mobilty you have, where you can easily fall off the edge, with AoE everywhere (Thief having low HP pool and medium armour) and loads of mobs everywhere when you have no AoE of your own, and only so much initiative to spend.]

So there’s probably just one little thing that you’re missing. I’d watch a playthrough or two of that mission on Youtube [as I had to do for some of those missions – ugh, Hidden Arcana!], and you’ll most likely figure out what the problem is, and ace the mission the next time you try it.

Best of luck!

I just finished the PS with one of my characters recently. And I found it alright. I’m actually fine with common trope usages as long as it’s done well enough.
What I didn’t like that much was how the Vigil after you joined them seemed to be more a faction longing for a fight, instead of the inital impression before you actually joined a faction. The opposite was the case for the Order of Whispers. The quests and interaction with Tybalt were pretty funny and great.

During the final bits after the Pact was formed, the various character deaths were at times rather unspectular. With some you couldn’t even get a strong enough inital impression to “feel” anything, unless the point A-Net tried to make was simply to show that causalties are to be expected (and common) – the latter is nothing bad by itself, mind you.

Lastly, Trahearne. I didn’t really mind him, let alone going as far as hating him <lol> for “stopping” your character to become the special awesome snowflake in the PS or for “stealing” the sword. You may question why he was made the leader as a simple scholar(?) or if it happend simply due to the vision the Pale Tree provided, or why he appeared so late in the story for every non-Sylvari but he certainly didn’t stole it from the player. Your character actually recommended him for the position and Trahearne was – as far as I am concerned – most of the time grateful for what you had done and for your (moral) support and gave credits when due. Now, all the above is ignoring the question/complaint/concern whether he’s actually an interesting character or not. As I’m apparently quite easy to please in that regard, I won’t comment on it.

So yeah, the PS had its weak parts but it could be worse. I didn’t expect a SWTOR level of story telling (unless you totally hated it ^^).