Hello everyone,
I was playing Living Story Season 2 again, together with my girlfriend, to experience the whole story up until the end of Heart of Thornes in one single stream. While this actually is a good experience and I like the progression in content quality very much (voice-over quality has improved massively since the original very wooden and kind of out-of-context spoken Personal Story) there are some issues that darken the experience a bit.
First of all it really bothers me that – at least all over the Living Story Season 2 – only the main character (the one that entered the mission) is able to interact with mission objectives. When we search for a book in the library and I – as a joined character – find the correct book (you know, the journal about Turai Ossa) the game would not even tell me that this was the correct one. Perhaps this is done to avoid confusion but then, please, display some kind of message like “[Character name] has found a journal about Turai Ossa” or something. But let the charakter take it. Otherwise, I can just stand around and wait for my (girl)friend to finish the mission on her own.
This issue of course generalizes to all mission objectives in all instanced missions.
Then, a small idea to improve the way dialoges are handled: At each dialog, give all players the opportunity to select an answer. If there only is one answer, this would work as “I am finished reading, you may continue”. With multiple answers there could even be a voting system (like dungeon paths) with the main player having the right to overrule the voting.
Currently, we do it this way: Main player opens dialog; second player reads and then tells the main player “done” (via Teamspeak or just because she is sitting right next to me). When there are alternatives, we discuss them briefly. But this requires audio contact at all times which might not always be given. And just clicking would be more comfortable.
Then, it happened two times that after a cut scene, the main player along with all NSCs is teleported into another location but the other players are not. This is very prominent in Living Story, Season2, “The Mystery Cave” where a rather large distance is traveled during the cut scene.
But what really bothered me – twice now – is doing the Prologue: Rally to Maguuma with multiple people. After helping at Amber Sandfall, we continued to the jungle portal. My friend accepted the mission right in front of the portal which cannot be passed in the instance. We played the story instance (we freed the Pale Reavers from the cave). As we were done, my friend remained in Verdant Brink (as intended) but my character was set back deep into the Silver Wastes. As if this wouldn’t be annoying enough, the character does not end up in the open world but in the instanced mission-version for the prologue. So I just wanted to go to Verdant Brink. But when I got to the portal, it still could not be passed. I even did the defence of Amber Sandfall again, just to still find me unable to continue. Then I got the “good idea” to just leave the instance, walk AGAIN to the portal at the other side of the map and FINALLY enter Verdant Brink. I think all this trouble is just not necessary.
All in all I am a bit confused how lackluster the support for multiple players in these missions is – in a game that, by nature, is a multiplayer game. I know that this is solo-content, but seriously, it should be possible to play with friends without making them obsolete during missions, right?
The first, but very nice, moment was when in the prologue to HoT, the second player character actually commented on the situation, that Mordremoth would want us to fight each other and if we would really want to play in his hands. I don’t know if this was intended, though, since the main character had already left the camp (not the map, she just went ahead).
I know this was a lot of text for something seemingly unimportant. But for me, those are really issues that bother me and that could make the game – from a story mission point of view – better.
Thanks very much for reading!
(edited by Chew.4810)