Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure how much time has passed, since I stopped playing. Anyway, I played enough of this game to put two characters at the level cap, and equip em with all available exotic items (and i never had the patience to look at better gear, because the “no need” of them was precisely what made me play the game in the first place).

Anyway, my biggest problem with GW2 has always been the lack of immersion.

The first problem is with my characters. Aeron for example, i never knew exactly how he became a guardian. Who taught him the first steps? And to be honest, what is a guardian? Where the heal power came from? What about my mage, Galedel?
I just feel disconnected… How my characters became who they are at the beginning of the game?

But anyway, that’s not the point here.

The biggest problem is regarding the interaction of my characters with the world. And that’s what I like to write about.

The first time i noticed this problem was exactly when i decided to leave “Queensdale” and explore a new 1-15 map. Ascalon.

Knowing the tension that existed between humans and charrs in the story, i was extremely excited to see how i would be treated in the house of an almost hostile race.

Unfortunately, as soon as my character arrived in Ascalon, i found out that the NPCs there treated me like i was a Charr. That experience left a very bad taste in my mouth.

But worse than that, is return to the game few years later and see that nothing has improved in this regard.

Come on ArenaNet, it can not be so hard to change some text lines based on the character’s race as parameter. “If human, say ‘X’. If Charr, say ‘Y’.” It does not seem hard to me.

And what about personal story?
It has absolutely no impact on the open world. As soon as you leave an instanced area, the NPCs talk to you like an ordinary guy, but you were a commander a few seconds before.

It can not be so hard to create an “individual parameter value” that grows as the character progresses in the personal story and modify the speech of NPCs according to to something pre established. Again, it does not seem hard to me.

The reason I writing these criticisms about the game, is because it bothers me the fact that so much time has passed and nothing has improved. And I really believed it would.

I just hope that one day ArenaNet will give a little more attention to the roleplay crowd, that needs immersion in order to have fun.

Truewarlord.8346:

The first problem is with my characters. Aeron for example, i never knew exactly how he became a guardian. Who taught him the first steps? And to be honest, what is a guardian? Where the heal power came from? What about my mage, Galedel?
I just feel disconnected… How my characters became who they are at the beginning of the game?

Why not make you’re own back story?

Given how there are potentially hundreds of reasons why or how your character may become something, it’s not feasible to expect ANet to provide all of them reasons.

Truewarlord.8346:

The biggest problem is regarding the interaction of my characters with the world. And that’s what I like to write about.

The first time i noticed this problem was exactly when i decided to leave “Queensdale” and explore a new 1-15 map. Ascalon.

Knowing the tension that existed between humans and charrs in the story, i was extremely excited to see how i would be treated in the house of an almost hostile race.

Unfortunately, as soon as my character arrived in Ascalon, i found out that the NPCs there treated me like i was a Charr. That experience left a very bad taste in my mouth.

But worse than that, is return to the game few years later and see that nothing has improved in this regard.

Come on ArenaNet, it can not be so hard to change some text lines based on the character’s race as parameter. “If human, say ‘X’. If Charr, say ‘Y’.” It does not seem hard to me.

And what about personal story?
It has absolutely no impact on the open world. As soon as you leave an instanced area, the NPCs talk to you like an ordinary guy, but you were a commander a few seconds before.

It can not be so hard to create an “individual parameter value” that grows as the character progresses in the personal story and modify the speech of NPCs according to to something pre established. Again, it does not seem hard to me.

The reason I writing these criticisms about the game, is because it bothers me the fact that so much time has passed and nothing has improved. And I really believed it would.

I just hope that one day ArenaNet will give a little more attention to the roleplay crowd, that needs immersion in order to have fun.

Most Humans and Charr – Separatists and Renegades excluded – have actually lived in peace for a while now, since Dougal Keane retrieved the Claw of the Khan-Ur as part of the ceasefire agreement.

As for adding parameters, that would involve resources being devoted to going through all of the code and testing it for very little in the way of gain.

How many games do give you your character’s entire life story?

Both Dragon Age: Origins and Inquisition, games with a lot of lore and background, covered my characters training in one sentence: “before joining the [insert organisation] you were a hunter for your clan”. As far as I remember in Neverwinter Nights I got “you joined the academy because you wanted to”. All of the Elder Scrolls games give you “well you were in prison, you must have done something”.

I actually like it because it gives me room to make up my own backstory.

My human ranger comes from a martial family, she was expected to learn to fight and always liked escaping from the city so becoming a ranger was the obvious choice. Her parents encouraged her, even arranging an expedition into the jungle for her 11th birthday so she could tame her first pet. At 12 she made her first solo overnight trip (without permission admittedly). She would never admit it but in a way she’s kind of happy the dragons gave her an excuse to really get out and explore.

My norn engineer on the other hand is practically the family pariah. Her parents are very traditionalist norn warriors and were disappointed that she didn’t show any inclination towards melee weapons, or even bows. She was set for a respectable, if less exciting, life as a crafter when a trip to the Black Citadel introduced her to the possibility of using her own inventions in the field, and she’s never looked back since.

Truewarlord.8346:

Anyway, my biggest problem with GW2 has always been the lack of immersion.

Immersion has never been ArenaNet’s strong suit. For me the biggest immersion breaker is the way in which zones get caught in endless time loops where large scale attacks occur and you fend them off only to have them occur again minutes later. Judging by their HoT blog posts, they’re actually doubling down on that in the future.