Guild Wars 2

First of all, let me say that I played rpg etc since the early stages of MUD on computers. Text based role playing games. So I been around.

I got a issue with the way the story is told in GW2, it is flat to me, lacks dept, lacks the UMPS that would actually care about what you do. They way ste storyline is made it is like an afterthought to the game itself.

Fpr sure, don’t get me wrong, the game idea is amazing, with events not needing raids etc, but can do a kittenton without having to raid, it is amazing. But the storyline….

Look at for example SWTOR, there is a storyline that makes you truly care about what happens, and with the idea of companions that is affected by your choises, and you can have love affairs etc, that puts you into a game in a way to make you care. Not just about look, but about your character.

A game fully utilizing what GW2 has and added the storyline of such games as SWTOR or Final Fantasy (not the online games, the console games) that would kick some serious butt and it would attract people from every corner of the globe.

I have played the initial game and I am going through LW2 and I am actually thinking it is to stupid to go through the storyline because in reality, I do not care about what happens to the characters, they are not “friends” or in any way related to me, I cared more about the initial game and beating the first dragon with Eir and the troops, and then LW2 and its like…ummm…Yawn….

I feel so disconnected with the game that had I not already bought the HOT then I would seriously not condider playing the game at all until there is an attractive vibrant fun storyline.

Thats how I feel about it, lots others may feel different, and its their right, but to be, the storyline felt dry and disconnected from the main character.

The main thing here is: “It’s all in the Eye of the Beholder.” Everyone will have different likes and tastes, in very few things is this as obvious as with “stories”. Met people in the game that didn’t know the game had a story-line! Others that tried it once and never touched it again. Others that keep making new characters to replay their favorite bits over and over.

Personally, I used to love all kinds of different cRPG stories etc, from basic hack and slashes, to more developed stories. Then I played a cRPG named “Planescape: Torment” back around year 2000, and since then I haven’t liked a single cRPG story since. Tried so much different games, but absolutely nothing interest me at all any longer, that game has the single greatest game story I’ve ever seen, and likely ever will… it makes everything else look like a bunch of kinder-garden kids pretend to play Hamlet.

So obviously, going into GW2 I realized that the story wasn’t going to be what mattered to me. Thankfully Combat and Exploration has been fun in this game, and kept me interested for most of 4 years.

My opinion on the Story-line:

• Way too generic, in order to make it work with all “characters” and not force the character into a style/role the player may not want. (This also reason for Treherne, but personally didn’t mind him, since I was already bored at that stage)
• Some good ideas for the early branching system, Race/Background/Nation/Order etc. And a few of them are pretty decent, but most of them get stale the further out you get in the line. Once you start with the Claw Island and later, I get so bored I tend to lose concentration and do other stuff instead of playing.
• ANet is not very good at writing characters you feel for. Which makes me detached to most npc’s, they just don’t feel likable or interest, just doesn’t make me care. And in some cases backfires (Tieran…. I regret even starting that storyline).
• ANet is actually pretty good at writing comedy characters, and have several decent to good ones. (Still laughing at Logan playing damsel in distress)
• They also have a few decent/good “gruff kittenes” that are well done, like Rythlok.

Should also mention that I like that you often get options, and they often play very differently. That is a very good idea, that unfortunately gets lost in that you often don’t know before hand exactly what you get yourself into. Sometimes you take a story mission that sound exciting to avoid combat, and end up in lots of combat anyways, often harder because you’ll have to defend something, or make something in time, or heck just use some random transformation item instead of your own skills which often makes you less effective in combat. (Stupid Priory artifacts!)

I honestly think ANet could make a pretty good humor based story, and would like to see them try that sometime. Not exactly sure how that would work or where it would fit in, but essentially make something completely silly, with lots of comedy and humor. Not quite Monty Python, perhaps more like Princess Bride ? Most of what I think they get right leads toward that direction.

Considering you may have missed the large chunk of story between Core Personal Story and Living World Story Season Two, namely LW Season One, it may not be surprising you don’t care about the characters in LW Season Two. They are just kind of dropped on players who missed Season One.

You may want to read up on Season One via the Wiki (link above), or catch up through other sources.

Good luck.

I think the storyline varies a lot based on which choices you make.

There are actually a lot of reoccurring characters who you can get to see develop throughout the story, but they’re only in certain branches. So if you pick the “wrong” option you may never see them again. And there is absolutely nothing to tell you which characters are linked to which choices.

For example I was genuinely shocked and a bit upset when a character was killed during my norn’s Invasion of Orr storyline. But only because I knew her from my sylvari’s personal story and some instances I’d done on my human. If I’d only played the norn I’d never have met her before and she’d just be another random character who was introduced, killed, and forgotten.

There’s also a lot of variation in the type of storyline, ranging from almost pure combat to dialogue heavy intrigue plots and even romance and I think the quality of the writing varies between choices as well (not necessarily link to the type of story). I definitely have my favourites and others I don’t really enjoy, and I suspect everyone else would as well but again there’s no way to know what you’re going to get until after it’s too late.

As a result the only way to really appreciate the storyline is to play it multiple times so you get to see all the different versions, and from different perspectives. For example even though there’s only actually 1 line different in the instance Traherene coming into the story at Claw Island feels a lot less forced if you’re playing a sylvari.

But obviously people aren’t likely to do that if they didn’t like the version they got the first time around.

Yeah, I get your point, but it is HOW the storyline is presented, a game the size and hype of GW2 should have better way of telling the story to get those lore people caught up in a grasping storyline.

Yeah, I understand I missed some in the LW1 but since thats gone and not playable, then why is the LW2 and current stuff so tightly combined with that, a person joining the game today would have hard time connecting to the storyline.

and yes, I read the LW1 catchup, and the way that was presented was a boring and unemotional as the storyline so far.

Bring the masterminds of the events and other stuff into it and create something better, with a living vibrant storyline that can be breathtaking AND still keep all the mechanics that makes GW2 the special game it is.

It does not take much, just graphics dpartment rethinking how to present a storyline and get good writers to actually write the storyline and then create it. If you do. If you bring the storyline closer to whats in SWTOR and you bring character choises and character development as in (also swtor) and companions and such to bring emotional attachment, then you got a recepy to pwn every game out there.

I agree that the story telling is uneven, and that more could have been done to help people catch up with the story. On the other hand, I’ve also been around for a long, long time, and I remember games where the story wasn’t in your face, you had to go out and find it and figure stuff out.

There’s a linear sort of story telling that goes on in most games, and then there’s a web of story telling.

The personal story doesn’t really come together as a story until you’ve played one of every race and you can get the background from different perspectives. Only then can you see what Anet was attempting, with mixed success in my opinion.

But comparing it to SWToR? That’s like comparing the games player base to WoW. SWTOR was made by the industry leader in story telling. That’s what Bioware does. Naturally the focus was on story and the rest of the game was a reskinned WoW. Anet is a company of artists and so the focus is quite different. This is why every game has strengths and weaknesses.

I’d have been stunned if Anet could have pulled off the story telling of SWToR> For one thing they didn’t have nearly the budget. SWToR is by far the most expensive MMO ever made. Anet did have to cut corners to stay in budget, which is why the personal story doesn’t use CGI. That’s very expensive.

At the end of the day every game does different things better. That’s what makes some games better for some players than others. Bioware created a great story in what is, in my opinion, a mediocre MMO…essentially WoW in space.

Guild Wars 2 created a better MMO with weaker story presentation.

That’s sort of how it works. No MMO is going to be great in every aspect. No MMO has the budget to be.

“I honestly think ANet could make a pretty good humor based story, and would like to see them try that sometime. Not exactly sure how that would work or where it would fit in, but essentially make something completely silly, with lots of comedy and humor. Not quite Monty Python, perhaps more like Princess Bride ? Most of what I think they get right leads toward that direction.”

Well I for one would love a new Monty Pythonesc daily/seasonal activity or standalone mini game option… Characters having to battle in the style of silly walks with parrot style weapons ie… axe is a perch with a parrot nailed to it… maybe a rubber chicken for a sword… all the while avoiding the dreaded “big foot” dragon…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Considering you may have missed the large chunk of story between Core Personal Story and Living World Story Season Two, namely LW Season One, it may not be surprising you don’t care about the characters in LW Season Two. They are just kind of dropped on players who missed Season One.

You may want to read up on Season One via the Wiki (link above), or catch up through other sources.

Good luck.

And that’s a huge problem. This is the first time I join an MMO and I feel deatched from the story, even owning the expansion pack, because it turns out I “joined too late” and in order to enjoy the rest they make you BUY the old story…

In Tera story has changed, but if you’re a new player, they solve that making you feel like the hero of the new events and slowly retelling the old ones via NPCs. GW2 ties you to the old events and then unless you have a nice wallet you get lost on the in-between.

Yeah, I understand, but then imagine that GW2 is on top 3 of the most hyped games around, it is on everyones lips and I am sure Anet makes a bunch of money from GW2, imagine how much it would make if it starts to rival games like SWTOR for storyline.

To me, the only thing that would even keep me around is the events, not special events like halloween etc, but the non-player driven events like something is always happening.

If that was not the case, there would be nothing keeping me here, crafting is not all that fun, nor is gathering or going into instances, there is no real wow (not the game, the expression) factor in anything except the events.

and I got to be honest, it is a major turnoff that the storyline is flat, unappealing, it is an afterthought to the game. It feels like they said “Hey lets make a game that runs itself, no need for raids etc, just make event after event after event of stuff happening” and then realised that they got to actually fill the surrounding with stuff and then through “Hey lets make crafting and gathering” and then somewhere on that list far down they came up with the idea of making a storyline. That is sad, because the game has great potential

if storyline was made appealing, immersive(sp?), long, involed, intriguing then this game would rival all other games and the hype would be even stronger.

After reading through the posts here, I agree here and there with most of them.

I do agree that the story is mostly generic and predictable. And while overall flat, there are some characters that I did find myself caring about. Tybalt comes to mind for pulling at the heartstrings. Canach, Taimi, and Phlunt are all characters that made me laugh and enjoy when they are in the story. Trahearn and Scarlet were both characters that I couldn’t stand although Scarlet did make me laugh at times. So I even cared about them in the “hoping they go away” category.

Anet does know how to make a compelling story as evidenced by the original, Guild Wars. There were many characters in all three games and in EOTN that you were engaged with and cared about. I know the GW wasn’t a real MMO in the traditional sense, but they could tell a story. Even the festivals had small stories attached that you would enjoy and want to repeat.

I don’t think GW2 stories are bad. I don’t think they are great. I believe they have the capacity for great storytelling, but I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves because they have to concentrate on so many other areas.

I think one of the issues is that the story is one long arc rather than smaller campaigns like GW1 where the same type of generic narrative could be kept tighter and be less of a problem. The result has been a bit of a mess of threads going in all directions and not always being tied up.

HoT was a massive opportunity to expand on the sylvari lore, explore the internal strife with the race and delve into the new conflicts with other races born of their revelation as Dragon minions. Instead, the entire lot was thrown to the wind for a quick race through the jungle and to set up the story of Glints Scion and the effect of growing magic from dead Dragons.

Guild Wars 1 had its fair share of poor storytelling and forgettable characters. Both Prophecies and Factions were utterly dire and at times a complete mess, but they were succinct and for the most part tied everything up so a new story arc could begin.

On the flip side, they are very good at telling the little stories. Dynamic events, metas etc. These are often engaging stories and often do a better job of painting the bigger picture than when they try to write a full sweeping story, which usually ends up missing all the necs details and logic required to hold together cohesively.

@ Jotunhammer.7029

Really comparing it to SWTOR is a bit much, BIOWARE lives on story, and tend to botch everything else There is no way Bioware would make a MMO with as great combat as GW2 for example. I’ll take combat over story, so I pick gw2. Friend of mine prioritize story over everything else so he plays SWTOR and can’t stand GW2 (much same reasons as you list).

Unfortunately, they likely don’t have the resources to re-do story mode now, that’s a lot of money, especially when they’re dependent on releasing new content to get people to use the gemstore. Since this game has no monthly fee etc, they don’t have a fixed plan-able income they can budget around. So we’re kinda stuck with what we got.

@ Vayne.8563 +1

@ Jotunhammer.7029 (again)

The events can be fun, and feel very under-used. Love some of the event chains where they push and pull back and forth depending on how it goes etc. Unfortunately they really made these too simplistic and generally way to limited. Example the Centaur event at west side of Kessex, it’s a fun even of pushing centaurs battle lines north and south etc. But it’s only 4-5 events long, and most of the time because of MegaServer you won’t see 2-3 of them, and only see the “kill the centaur officers” and “kill the centaur warlord”.

But on the other hand, MMO’s never really been known for storylines, GW2 was actually considered pretty good for a mmo story, at least back before SWTOR, that really is an unfair comparison. As someone said above, that’s like expecting all MMO’s to have WoW’s population, and GW2’s combat system etc.

If I where to expect Planesape: Torment quality to stories in every game, well I’d stop playing games, that’s for sure! Heck after playing that game I’ve moved more and more towards action based games with less story, simply because I can enjoy combat/game mechanics even if it has no story or the story is bad.

Random idea:

Those 3 personality traits you can use in the game: Honor, Compassion, Force. If they had developed these into giving a personality in your Personal Story, you could have gotten a more “personal” feel to it, rather than the “generic” one we have no. If my Norn Guardian is Honorable all the time, have the Personal Story conversation reflect this and give me a more Honorable lines, perhaps even alter how the character stands and reacts.

Way too late to implement this now, but it might have solved some of the issues. Looking at it now, this might have been what they planned from the start, but had to drop?

For sure, it would be a massive overhaul of the game, but look at WoW(the game) they come up with stuff(not the word I was thinking) every new expansion it seems, goes from guild halls down to playerhousing(garrison) and they manage to do that kind of oten, come up with “gimmiks”

For sure GW2 does not have a subscription based game, but what it does have is item mall and I am pretty sure Anet is making a killing of those things.

So…. since LW2 was purchasable….how about making other gimmisk the same, such things as companions, interactable persons or things that comes around with you.

and it is not such a great leap to get into more storyline gameplay, but you hit the nail on the head, people that likes GW2 is here because they are not lore buffs or storyline players, they like GW2 as is…. and would not want changes

So I am slowly drifting towards changing again, and regreatting the purchase of HOT because it really did not bring any of those things I value into the game, it brought more gear, more colors, more bling bling, but no soul to the game.

I am suggesting Anet sit down and start thinking of how to add those things because that would make the game greater than it is today

Yeah discussed this with said friend today, he also mentioned that WoW originally had pretty poor story as well, but has overhauled it in several expansions. But WoW has the funding to do that. I also think they moved a lot of the story to later in the game now, not entirely certain how that works.

Gemstore makes money, but at the same time, it is unpredictable, seasonal, and is driven in good part because of their constant content, stop the content, and the gem sales also weakens. If they take a year to re-haul the story, that is going to take a lot of dev’s away from making the new content.

Combine that with most people seemingly being happy (enough) with the story, why should they ?

On the other hand GW1 was generally considered to have good story, well at least some of it (Prophecy can go kitten!), and there is a surprisingly large amount of Lore-players in this game. But GW1 was designed entirely different. Heck they even had Henchmen and later Heroes that you could bring along to fill parties etc, some of them had interesting personalities (Herta, I will always miss you!).

But anyways, it really sounds like you’re more interested in a single player cRPG, something like Witcher or whatever Bioware is making. MMO’s never been the best Story-game market, and honestly in my opinion the WORST role-playing media in gaming :p

But I understand you, there are many things to like in this game, and when you find one that sticks out like a sore thumb, you really want to see that fixed. I’ve had plenty of those over the years in this game. Starting with Ranger 1 hand sword ruining the entire class for me at launch, no idea how many hundreds of deaths that sword caused me in the mountains of Wayfarer Hills…

Of course, it’s only your opinion the entire story is terribad. Maybe, you’ve not progressed far enough in the story. Others feel it’s heartwarming and exciting.

Here’s a different opinion: http://massivelyop.com/2016/11/15/flameseeker-chronicles-five-reasons-to-buy-guild-wars-2s-heart-of-thorns-while-its-on-sale/

Good luck.

the story is not that terrible, although what makes bioware stories special is that they are character driven, mostly through npc.
they have the lore and everything but they tell the story by showing it and by how it affects characters. they manage to make the story always very personal for you, you want to see the end because you care.

for example in dragon age inquisition we’ve never seen the tevinter empirium, but they tell the tevinter empirium through dorian, through prejudice other npc may have, through the villain you encounter, from the backstory (and through the codex for the fan of reading parts)and this goes from the very first game up to the point you know a lot of the world to make your own idea although they also make sure that until you see it for yourself you can never be sure if what told is what actually happens.

i see a little of this happening in gw2 from season 2. the npc are becoming more lively, they have a way to react to things and to aid you in your adventure and it is great, i want more of this. also it is a pity you can’t meet them anywhere else than story instances because it would be good to be able to talk to them in between stories, ask them question, see how they feel, develop the relationship with them, maybe fall in love, make our character more part of this world through npcs.