Hi everyone.
Long ago ANet writers wrote what they called short stories, which were basically pretty chunks of Guild Wars 2 lore told outside the game, through blogposts, and as such added some depth to soon-to-come characters (such as Marjory and Canach). These stories were well-received by some (like me), while others hated them because for them these stories were an excuse to add lore to the game which were supposed to be told in-game. The devs listened, and stopped writing those.
Later on they introduced the Story Journal, a tool to track each step of personal story and upcoming Living World-related stories, the framework is used to this day and works like this:
- Tracks Personal Story by default, containing 8 chapters
- Tracks Living World season one summary
- Tracks Living World season two
- Tracks Heart of Thorns story
Each tab contains its chapters.
Since the stories tend to focus on Elder Dragon related stuff and sometimes the central plot rushes towards the end (Heart of Thorns arc, Eir’s part to be specific), it may make the story a bit lacking because some details go missing, and sometimes a character lacks depth or backstory (like short stories).
I would like to suggest devs add a tab to the Story Journal called “Tales”, in which they could add small side stories to add weight to the narrative, and the world itself. This idea is inspired by the short stories because I loved them so much.
I’m going to list how it would work mechanically, but I know that this may be difficult and $$$-consuming to produce, so if things are too difficult and not worth it, I’d understand. Here’s how it would work:
- One (or max. two) instance(s) that would start somewhere in the world of Tyria, with a few NPCs that make up the ambience.
- The story would not be focused on us, the player, but on some other figures or characters either well-known or random in the world.
- The instance would have voice-acting to add immersion, and maybe just one cinematic or none (if this is too expensive).
- To accommodate the player in the story as not to interfere but still make a play, depending on the story and to make sense we could be transformed into another race (don’t hate me on this, the focus is the lore anyways). The class/gear/skills/etc would be retained of course.
- Each tale would reward with (one-time only):
- 5 or 10 Achievement Points
- A Package of Tale Reader (1 Class Specific Box such as the one sold be laurel vendor, maybe 1 cosmetic stuff such as mini or back skin, and 1g)
- Each story would cost 100 gems (for revenues).
- I’d like to add one more thing for revenues, and hopefully this next suggestion is fair considering tales would be optional: additionally the Package of Tale Reader would contain 1 Tale’s Paper token, amassing tokens would lead to a vendor that sells weapon skins. (Warning! no one is forced to do these stories, it’s just another more forgiving way to profit, specially when you compare to Black Lion weapon skins)
And that’s it. I’ve attached an image of how I imagine it would look. If you have constructive and respectful feedback I’d appreciate.
Thanks!
