Guild Wars 2

I love the concept of “The Living World,” things changing and not always knowing what to expect when I venture out into the land.

But a while back I was stuck and blase about the game and couldn’t figure out why. I loved the graphics, the setting, the skills, etc. But I just couldn’t get excited and went to play The Secret World instead.

Then it hit me: my lovely Necromancer had gone as far as she could (interestingly) go. I had hit max level, had all my skills unlocked and had some cool equipment. There really wasn’t anything else compelling to do.

I could have chased down more skill points – but for what? I’m not insane enough to try to craft a legendary. I could have explored more of the world – but why? What would that do for me, aside from harder-core pursuits that I wasn’t interested in?

Then it occurred to me: the issue was that my character was essentially stuck in a rut. She had nothing else to achieve, and her personal story was just window-dressing. She had no personality, really, aside from the surface-level voice acting and diary entries from her story mission. Her choice of God didn’t seem to mean anything, nor did her “decision choices.”

When I dumped the Necro and switched to Guardian, I suddenly was interested in the game again. It wasn’t the Living World that brought me back, it was the fun of building a character again.

I would love to see the GW team continue to innovate by turning their attention to the avatars themselves. Haven’t these little digital people been stuck in the same place for too long in MMO history? My Guardian, as cool as she is, is basically just a doll, an action figure.

What if instead GW2 gave players a platform to create characters like other media do, like books or movies?

What if there was a game system – not just a silly diary that no one else would read – but a game system that allowed players to explore their characters’ pasts, make choices that impact their personalities? What if you could “unlock,” like you can today with skills or weapons, pieces of your character’s past, with real consequences? Maybe if I discovered my parents, for instance, I could actually go visit them, and perhaps inherit their house as a base of operations? Or if I met my long-lost sister, and discovered she was evil, and she became a nemesis to stalk me throughout the game, as in Champions Online?

Or maybe the Living Character system could unlock emotes, dialogue options, armor sets, costume sets, pets.

Just some thoughts as I wait out “Error attempting to sell!”

I know the reason that I got bored with GW2 was essentially the same reason as yours. There was nothing left for me to achieve, I couldn’t get more powerful, and the Living Story bored me out of my mind.

I like your idea of unlocking certain armor sets for whichever personality you choose to have. At any rate, the personality aspect of this game needs some heavy improvement.

Yes! We need the Living Story to be more about our characters. The best parts of the personal story were the truly personal parts, pre-Pact. Once it became about dragons and Trahearne and the Pact, it became less compelling. Sure, it was fun the first time, seeing how I’d fit into the machine that stands against a dragon. But I’m no longer evolving. There’s nothing new about me. Sounds selfish, but the tale of my heroism needs the ability to continue and to grow. Living Character would be complex, but is absolutely what’s needed.

Yip, would’ve been nice to have horizontal progression more like GW1.

They could do it too, screw more stats, just more options like when they add new runes, that’s horizontal progression.

I think the promised implementation of the horizontal scaling mechanism of skill/ability progression will breath new life into the game. I’m hoping they do at least as good a job with it as they did in GW1. That, and when they ditch temporary content for a longer term, deeper story, permanent content and achievements, I believe we will find more to do of a meaningful nature in the game. And, of course, they could add fishing—that would keep me engaged through the down moments.

To the OP, not sure if you missed out on this or not, but the SEER program in UO allowed “volunteers”- folks who told stories, or worked on story lines in game- to set up behind the scene and actually play, manipulate, change appearance of NPC’s, set up their own towns, live events with GM managed spawns. Amazing game play, the only time I ever RP’d in an MMO.

Sadly, a law suit against AoL and the way they handled the volunteers that ran their forums brought an untimely end to the UO SEER program.

One example, we had to go to a dragon (imagine Tequatle), but not to kill it, but to answer riddles to move to the next part of an adventure. And Tequatle was one of the SEER’s or GM’s manipulating the dragon, asking us the riddles, one shotting anyone stupid enough to attack it, etc..

Sadly, I don’t see that ever coming back.