Guild Wars 2

my answer is no, mainly cause of the cliche generic story decisions made for the sake of extended gameplay with the least amount of game development work possible.

When gw2 first came out i was rly into it. the story though, it was exciting at first….and had its moments but it wasn’t amazing. And the closer you got to the end and fighting zhaitan the more meh and boring it became I found.

The story to date: I can appreciate how hard it must be to somehow bring all these races and potential player characters together to form some kind of story about killing dragons…
I can also appreciate the need to keep the story inclusive to all play levels….
But the story itself? really dull.

Everything follows the same formula…..something happens….kill a crap ton of adds…..something happens…..kill more adds…..something happpens…kill more adds. Is there any kind of connection to the things you kill? no. i just kill them and the next thing happens. there any kind of sense of acomplishment in achieveing through things in the story….saving people…..whatever? no. Do you feel grounded in the environment and do you feel like you are apart of a living world? no. Ur npc companions….heavy hitters in their realms are completely useless incombat with the exception of some specialty classes helping you removing environmental obstructions that block ur path to the next set of adds. I don’t care what npc falls in combat….there is no pressing need to help that guy who is getting swarmed…i can just rez him later and he doesnt’ do any damage anyways. And they dont do damage and they use the same animation over and over……its just static feeling.

its basically you doing everything and a bunch of helpless lifeless npc that are on ur side happen to be scattered around. you have to put up with the fact that you do all the work, yet you have to give credit to the other npc in ur party and act like they are important (some like taimi for example are…..since they dont do combat).

All events are linear and scripted. And all scripts and events follow a generic predictable model to extend game time.

The dragon fights…the centerpiece of this whole affair…..are pretty meh. Zhaitan i appreciated quite a bit when we finally got to fighting him, I thought the story mode of arah was done really well. The story mode of dungeons are probably the best story components of the entire game imo.
Fighting the others in living seasons and hot was really dull. The living season 3 has just continued this monotony to max extents.
u go from point a to b…killing adds you won’t ever remember cause the fights are so grind slog fests. theres no failure state so the only thing u mess up is wasting ur own time if you fail….lol, that really says somthing horrible right there about the story.

didn’t enjoy having my own pet dragon. or pet to take care of. why? cause i can’t do anything with it lol. it just sits in a zone and i can do 1-2 limited things with it…..and it just sits there the hwole time, and i can repeat the stuff over and over and the same reaction ….the same sitting around. I mean u got this huge zone u created for playdates and theres nothing to do anything in other than the very middle…i cant get fish from teh streams all over…..i can find anything or interact with anything in this huge pretty zone other than the little area in the middle. and like i said theres literally only 2 things to do for interactions. Just I don’t get what the point in coding and creating a pet dragon is and a home zone for it IS if it exists just so you can smile at it or play catch with it……

In general I see these amazing zones and maps created…..and you can’t interact with them in any way! I just find that such a waste in teh story modes. There are better ways to extend gametime….making zones more interactive is one of them.

story is just a slog fest to get the rewards for completion. and at the end of it you get some info on what happens to some characters in ur party…..those babies that put on armour and pretend they can fight. and you get maybe a bit of funny dialogue to pass the time with.

That doesn’t make a good story though……gw2 just has a bad story model imo. I mean I don’t know how other mmorpg do it, but its so limited in gw2 compared to any other story experience ive experienced on the market.

I mean here’s a crazy thought: you lose a battle! an npc dies or is wounded because of you not taking the mission seriously. decisons you make (go left through the creepy forest or right through the unicorn happy lands) that inquire some basic logic net some logical reward/strife. my npc friends could maybe kill something..maybe?
I mean i still can’t get over how protective 1 character acts of another….and when it comes to protecting them they charge in and I sit there waiting and they do 0 damage to the things attacking the char they are insanely protective of…..and they r all generic adds at that. then the cutscene goes after i clear it and it acts like i didn’t do all the work lol.

dragons should kill things. the nps adds all over….theres – point in talking to them. theres 0 point in exploring the zones. I think one of the other problems is that the game lets you know what can and can’t be interacted with from 1000 yards away so theres no point in exploring anything without yellow text. and why should all interactables be visible from so far away? wouldn’t it make more sense that coming withint a short distance of something mightr activate the interact mode? would promote a bit more inclusiveness in terms of the envirnoment. u might feel like ur a part of the world around you.

gw2 has just become a very boring lackluster story. tehre doesn’t seem to be any indication that we will get a return to the story arcs presented in dungeons. that level of detail and stuff just doesn’t exist anymore it seems. plz return to the dungeon model for future story content…..where you don’t have useles npc all over….where characters have noteworthy interactions where you feeel connection…where npc do meaningful things…where the fights are meaningful and the enemies are rememberable to some extent….not just slog fest adds alll over….where you can activate bonus events and stuff by exploring a little.

srsly spend less resources/money developing these giant fancy beautiful environments we can’t intereact wiht and spend hardly any time in. You made everything pretty to look at. You just need to work on making a game….a game is somehting with interactive environments.

We seem to be going backwards back to gw1 where the biggest issue was amazing things in all the environments but no way to interact with them in any way…u just killled the enemies in the zones, if there wasn’t any enemies there was 0 point in going somewhere outside of pretty pictures. combine this gw1 thing with the fact that the story is lackluster….the overall character development is becoming more and more lackluster, the enemies and living world are completely generic slogfests and staticly lifeless affairs. Its boring. don’t make games this static in the future. seriously just make new dungeons….u can put all the serious bosses and primary story content in them. you can put the running around stuff as is in the current lame model. if keeping the story accessible to all skill levels is an issue…..then why the kitten don’t you just make the npc useful?
I’ll give you a basic example:
we enter a new zone. adds spawn and start attacking. i run in alone and they just swarm me completely and im about to die, an npc friend plants a shield on me and starts auto attacking the nearest enemies. another npc heals me and boons me, another does this…another does that. they can be all basic moves that the npc do! doesn’t have to be anyhting overly special. I honestly have no idea how you could make such great gw1 ai companions and now were stuck with such brainded ai in gw2. Take the ai from teh gw1 party members youcould hire, and put them into the npc party members….eez. If you are bad at the game…..stand close to ur ai guys, or do a backline thing and let them do the heavy hitting, or build tanky so u don’t get swarmed. if ur good…go damage and just go ham with ur build doing massive damage and timing ur dodges and whatever to mitigate incoming damage. the current story system is just so bad compared to what you’ve done in the past. u spend too much resources creating giant new maps…..I mean you don’t make a map the size of a small planet and then litter it with nothing but slogfest adds every 20m^2 of land.

rant over

tl,dr

Its ok. LS 3 was kinda lame having to listen to both the slow talking kodan and quaggan though.

Justine.6351:

tl,dr

Its ok. LS 3 was kinda lame having to listen to both the slow talking kodan and quaggan though.

why though? what makes it okay for you? what would continue to make it okay for you?

Cerby.1069:

Justine.6351:

tl,dr

Its ok. LS 3 was kinda lame having to listen to both the slow talking kodan and quaggan though.

why though? what makes it okay for you? what would continue to make it okay for you?

Killing off the dragons, moving on to new villain. Want to attack palawa joko in the desert and save elona… again. If we kill these two currently, ignore sea dragon, and palawa joko kills crystalline dragon, boom new storyline.

I enjoy the Story for what it is.

Are there clichés? Sure, what Story doesn’t have them.
But i like the character interaction, i want to see where it all goes.

Honestly, i want you to point me to a story that has no cliché, trope, or whatever anywhere in it.

The story is hilariously terrible. It’s a complete confusing mess as well.

Now, ignoring the story, their are tons of interesting lore things in the game world – I much more enjoy all that stuff.

I am more upset about the drastic character changes, I.e. Marjory not listening to the P.C. Almorra becoming a comedian.
Braham turning completely Emo and jumping to action (lol @ the Pact and jungle). Did Anet forget about the human personal stories, More so about finding your parents? Don’t even get me started on Lazarus.
Also trying to tie Guild Wars 1 into the stories, by just throwing loose ends in, and hoping it makes sense to gw1 vets and new players.
They could of done so much more, than hunt for more dragons. It would of been a welcome respite.
Though I doubt the budget is helping with these arcs

I like the Story. Especially everything from Season One on.

It is what it is. Some appreciate parts of the game, others do not. The Devs can’t please everyone, all of the time…or even part of the time. Just a fact of life.

I love the lore, the story on the on the other hand… well… it’s passable.

I do enjoy the story. No it’s not great literature, or even the best storyline I’ve seen in an RPG. But I like multiple books and movies, not just the single best one I’ve ever read/watched, and similarly I can enjoy multiple games story lines even if I know others are better.

I like exploring the lore and both history and current events – which is mainly done by speaking to NPCs both inside story instances and outside of them. I like playing through the story multiple times on different characters to see the different versions. (Which mainly applies to the personal story which can be almost completely different based on your race and the choices you make, but the HoT and living stories have minor differences too.)

I also find a lot of the dialogue amusing, so even if I’m not that interested in the overarching plot at the time I can enjoy the way it’s presented.

I think the big problem with the Guild Wars 2 storyline is actually that it’s quite complicated. You need to pick up on and remember a lot of details in order to get the full experience (like characters who are introduced in one instance, won’t be seen for a while and then appear again periodically – the game assumes you know who they are from meeting them before but players may not remember). And that generally means either playing it multiple times so it sticks in your memory or playing it all in a short space of time which is not how it’s designed.

Which I think might be part of the OPs problem. The enemies that are attacking you usually do have something to do with the story and who and what they are and why they’re attacking you is explained. But if you see it as “kill some adds, something happens, kill some adds…” you’re not going to pick up on that. You need to follow the details.

Likewise Aurene is not a pet and they have not created an area specifically for you to play with her – it’s an instanced version of Tarir – the same place many earlier story chapters and open-world events take place, a city specifically created to house the baby dragon.

The purpose of having her in the story is not to give you a tamagochi to play with, that’s just one tiny part (which is why there’s not much to it), she’s going to be a reoccurring character who will literally grow as the story progresses and presumably will play a much bigger and more significant role once she’s not a newly hatched baby.

I’m not quite sure how you could have missed all of that but if you did I can understand how everything else would seem like a mess because you must be missing a lot of the details and reoccurring characters.

(I’m also a bit confused about these multiple dragon fights you mention in HoT and the living story. We’ve only fought 2 dragons so far – Zhaitan and Mordremoth. Any others bosses you’re thinking of are not dragons.)

Same again with intractables. If you assume that everything worth investigating is labelled and anything without a label can be ignored then you’re going to miss a lot, like objects which are deliberately hidden because they’re part of an easter egg or achievement, jumping puzzles (not story related I know), NPCs to speak to… And then yes, the maps will seem quite empty. (And this is assuming you are aware that the maps are designed to be played outside of story instances too. Many of the things which appear non-functional inside an instance are used outside of it, so again if you only do the story and then never go back there ever again you’re going to miss a lot.)

Short version. I like the game story. And I love we finally got out of Destiny´s Edge shadow. Could be certainly better, but for me it accomplishes what it should – it gets me through the new zones.

Compared to some other MMOs (cough cough WoW cough cough) it´s even great!

It’s an MMO. It’s expected. The story caters towards MMO tropes. It’s not a book.

This is why we are getting new, explorable maps. New content. Incentive.

Quality-wise, GW2’s writing is RPG-like (e.g. not at its full potential due to RPG qualities such as combat, quests, and the like). It’s geared towards map and lore rather than the plot itself, which is why the story feels lacking.

Many MMOs have disjointed stories so I don’t see what the issue is. Though it would be quite a feat to pull of an incredible story with great characters and structure while maintaining the MMO formula.

Cerby.1069:

I mean here’s a crazy thought: you lose a battle! an npc dies or is wounded because of you not taking the mission seriously. decisons you make (go left through the creepy forest or right through the unicorn happy lands) that inquire some basic logic net some logical reward/strife.

I wanted to address this point separately, which I think you referenced a few times but I’m not going to quote them all.

They can’t do the kind of branching storylines you see in single-player games because they have to keep the same continuity going for years and it becomes a huge amount of work. Single-player RPGs have the advantage that they’re writing and creating the story all in one go and then it’s done.

Say for example there’s an instance where Braham either lives or dies depending on what you do. Some people will let him die, others will save him. From that point on they need to make 2 versions of every single storyline he would be in, which means it’s twice as much work. And every single time they add a choice like that they need to add another version of all the follow-ups.

After a while you’d get:

• One story for people who let Braham die but saved Marjory and kept Caithe in the group,
• One for people who saved Braham, let Marjory die and kicked Caithe out,
  One for people who saved Braham, let Marjory die and kept Caithe,
• One for people who let Braham die, let Marjory die and kept Caithe,
• and so on. If my math is correct offering just those 3 choices means you need 9 different versions.

Even single player games tend to cut corners with this when they come back to a storyline. Like Dragon Age Inquisition promising to carry over all the choices you made in the first 2 games, oh, except if Lelianna died she’s back because…magic…or something….she’s too much of a major character, it was too difficult to make different versions of everything that involves her.

In that case and my example above they could maybe go with an easy version – like keeping the overall plot and dialogue the same and just assigning those lines to another character (so they only need 2 versions of the voice acting and animations) but I suspect that would disappoint a lot of people who want to see choices in the storyline.

Or they could make the choice largely meaningless immediately after it happens – for example maybe we could have found a way to save Traherne but then he takes the desk job we were offered and is never seen again. But again I don’t think that would please people.

And even then you’ve got the problem of people who made different choices grouping up. If Braham is alive in my version of the story and dead in yours and we decide to play together what happens? (My other MMO “solved” this by making it so that you can never group with anyone who has made different choices to you in any area where that choice matters…you can imagine how popular that was.)

To be honest branching storylines are still relatively new to games in general, beyond basic things like ‘do you play through Map A or Map B, after which you go onto Map C regardless’ and I know from friends in the industry that many people still see it as hugely complicated and daunting even for single-player games without all the complications of an MMO.

I think it will start to happen more often, but it’s going to take a while.

I suppose this topic would have been better in the lore section… Whatever…

I empathize with what the OP says. HoT and LWS3 feel staler than the rest. We only got 3 episodes so far. 3 new maps with a nice flavour, sure, but on the story topic, it’s poor. First : each story is finished very fast. First one was ok, and led to interesting questions (Lazarus, Caudecus, what exactly happened…). Second and third one are more of a disappointment : the most part of the “story” is “the map tour and how to do hearts”. Moreover, side characters are behaving in a frustrating way (Braham and Marjory…), and the overall dragon plot seems too obvious.

What feels disappointing in that is I don’t feel involved. I can’t possibly want more than “see what happens next”, because I don’t have any choice. In GW2 core story, there were choices : character creation choices, and orders choices (2 for each missions !). Currently, there’s no such thing. There used to be a “crown/heart/fist” dialog system, that was let down. I’d have been happy to have various answers for Braham or Marjory with “crown/heart/fist”. Even if it’s cosmetic ! Even if it doesn’t change the outcome… Of course, I understand that the “tree of possibles” grows exponentially with each choice.

Like someone above said, I’d also enjoy NPC’s to have more dialogs, and maybe dialogs that change with the episode you are in (and the exact place in episode). That’d give the feeling the world evolves as the player gets farther in the story.

Last thing about LSW3 : there’re too many pending questions (pale tree, Caudecus, Malyck, Kasmeer, just to quote these ones). Of course, some will have answers in the upcoming updates, but maybe this feels too messy. Likewise, the overall plot seems too obvious, even if I anticipate Braham or Marjory to do something silly that’ll require the player to get things fixed.

LWS1, to me, had two major qualities :

• The plot was somehow more appealing. I mean : there were the obvious things, and at the same time, everyone was positive there was a bigger scheme, that was later unveiled. LWS2 didn’t have that feeling, because it was an in-between. LWS3 doesn’t have that feeling either for now, partly because of the “too many pending topics” issue.
• The plot took place in existing maps. Don’t get me wrong : I like new maps, and I like these ones. Yet, bloodstone fen is now mostly empty (hard to do Jade events here), ember bay is a big grindfest, as bitterfrost frontier is. And I bet those maps will eventually become empty when everyone will have ascended trinkets. Now, think about LWS1 : just 2 things : twisted marionette and kessex hills. (I’m not even mentionning Lion’s Arch !). To me, these were real success.

As a conclusion, I’ll add that we only got 3 episodes, so I suppose the dust will settle, and the fog will cleanse. Yet, I’d really appreciate to be more involved into the story, get more choices, and less grind.

no, it only bores me and want to skip it entirely, it’s bad enough that i need to get through that hell just for the new area.

nope, its boring

I don’t like the current supporting cast of characters so it is hard to like the story.

Dashingsteel.3410:

I don’t like the current supporting cast of characters so it is hard to like the story.

Not even Taimi? I admit I’ve never been a fan of most of the new characters (or many of the old story characters either) but Taimi is undoubtly the best character Anet have created.

After the first mission of the current Living World story, I just gave up on the story. I’ll probably end up doing it, what with hearing there’s a new map, and all, but my caring for the story has reached an all time low. There are just too many little negative points that culminate to my overall dislike of it. I’m really not a fan of the human female voice acting. Like… really. I don’t like it. I only really have an issue with it in the story, and not so much just exploring, and whatnot. There are too many characters that I just don’t care in the slightest about, or just outright dislike. I hate how my character is as far away from my personal image of her as possible. I know people love it, but I don’t care about Aurene. I hate the forced attempt at trying to strike an emotional connection with the Aurene from the player character. From what I’ve seen things are changing, but I personally had very little issue with Caithe, and she was my favourite DE member, so my characters kitteniness towards her was off-putting. On a similar subject, Eir was my second favourite DE member, so naturally I wouldn’t have liked how things turned out. Very few characters rub me the wrong way like Marjory does.

I know it can’t be easy to make a story that caters to everyone, in an MMO, but this just hits too many bad points for me that it’s just a chore.

You know, back in Guild Wars 1, a lot of people used to take the time to see the cutscenes if they never saw it. In a Story dungeon, many new players simply skip it as soon as they’re able to. Just that should give you an idea.

To be honest, the first personnal story missions that are linked to your race were and still are the best ones. Because you make decisions, and different outcomes are present even if limited because it’s just a MMORPG. Once you leave with your new faction Order of Whispers/Vigils/Priory, the quality of the story or at least my interest in it seems to get lower and lower.
Hell even in the last mission of HoT I just laughed at a poor sylvari who was supposed to be a close character to ours. Meanwhile, I’m still quite sad about Rurik death from Prophecies.

It’s not that the story is bad, but it lacks some “oompf”, everything feels very predictable and cliche.

Really bad voice acting in the current LS release is probably done to distract from the clichéd writing style.

The story has always left to many dangling plot lines that do not move at all. Did this release have any update on Ritlock, Margorie or the status of Zoja? Any new info on those anomalies?

The first LS# release had promise. The second went ho-hum. The latest was a flop from a story perspective. The map itself is slick which is the only win I see.

Nope

It falls to Logan when you have a character as despised as Logan and yet this isn’t a build up to a future death but a character your supposed to look up too then there is a major issue with the story.

As for the current story I simply couldn’t care less you don’t start reading a trilogy from the second book and yet Anet finds it onto themselves to toss out the first book regarding those random NPC’s tat kidnapped my character.

That’s right since season 1 isn’t available my character has more or less been kidnapped and held hostage by a group of lunatics right after Zhatians destruction. That do nothing more than follow me around and shout how much they hate me while calling me boss and making up adventures that never happened. Apparently they kidnapped Eir and Rhytlock too.

Bits of it. The personal story in the base game was decent. However, the Living Story editions have less redeeming qualities about them.

Wasted opportunities to reintroduce existing characters in a meaningful way, while having a solid story showing more and telling less.

Overall, they could have saved time and budget with smarter narrative choices. Instead, they have ambitions to do more, and lack the of sense to be reserved and coherent.

The story is ok. I find myself liking scarlet more and more and I REALLY want to find out what’s happening with Mai trin, last we heard she escaped into the mist..

Anyway, those are my favourite two

No. the lore is great…in concept. The issue is the way the story is being told. the story is very simple with obsolutely no depth, or very little. I have faith that arenanet will figure out a solution to this very hollow story telling soon.

Yes and no. At times I find it interesting, even compelling…and then something is introduced, or introduced in a manner, that spoils the story for me. I guess I would describe the storytelling here as very mixed and often lacking in momentum.

Danikat.8537:

Cerby.1069:

I mean here’s a crazy thought: you lose a battle! an npc dies or is wounded because of you not taking the mission seriously. decisons you make (go left through the creepy forest or right through the unicorn happy lands) that inquire some basic logic net some logical reward/strife.

I wanted to address this point separately, which I think you referenced a few times but I’m not going to quote them all.

They can’t do the kind of branching storylines you see in single-player games because they have to keep the same continuity going for years and it becomes a huge amount of work. Single-player RPGs have the advantage that they’re writing and creating the story all in one go and then it’s done.

Say for example there’s an instance where Braham either lives or dies depending on what you do. Some people will let him die, others will save him. From that point on they need to make 2 versions of every single storyline he would be in, which means it’s twice as much work. And every single time they add a choice like that they need to add another version of all the follow-ups.

WEll obviously they can’t have some people with dead main characters and some people who did stuff that didn’t kill the main characters….that would really be to much work.

I’m talking about little things. Like say you have to guard a camp or caravan or something from the enemy…….you go off stand and do cloud watching instead. Maybe the mission leads to that 1 scene npc guy who’s only relevant in this particular episode….maybe he dies! And since they are such small cahracters they dont even need to be repeated or mentioned afterwards…..although th ey could reference it as a horrid event here and there ijn the text or as a failed even or something (that wouldn’t take much work in terms of branching).

I mean here ill make a scenario:
-you arrive a generic camp, and generic commander greets you. you are tasked with defending the camp from an ambush, u and the npc guards fight the attackers off…
the npc actually help with killing some of the adds off, and npc actually die from it too if you don’t support them….
-Then after you clear the adds a cutscene happens where a miniboss appears and lunges at the generic commander guy. He’s pinned by the miniboss and you need to figure out a dumb little puzzzle on how to get the boss off of him before it eats/kills him. maybe you light some fire somewhere or man a cannon or something idk…..if you take too long figuring it out he dies though. alternatively if you lose too many allies in t he raid maybe that causes the commander to die in an enemy push automatically….thats not hard either.

Anyways the outcome is a bit of specific text based on what happened: successful defense, mournful loss. Then maybe later at the end of the season or later in future episodes….the death under ur watch is mentioned VS. THE save under ur watch is mentioned, how u save that idiiots life. There don’t necessarily have to be any aftereffects from that mention, it could be a fleeting mention from any npc really….

ITS NOT HARD to create lazy branches. its not hard to introduce generic npc, its not hard to kill them off. ITS NOT HARD to create episodes where the branch content doesn’t matter outside of that specific episode.

Didn’t they do that kinda stuff here and there?

Like with Tonn being mentioned in HoT when you enter Auric Basin for the first time?

Scar.1793:

You know, back in Guild Wars 1, a lot of people used to take the time to see the cutscenes if they never saw it. In a Story dungeon, many new players simply skip it as soon as they’re able to. Just that should give you an idea.

To be honest, the first personnal story missions that are linked to your race were and still are the best ones. Because you make decisions, and different outcomes are present even if limited because it’s just a MMORPG. Once you leave with your new faction Order of Whispers/Vigils/Priory, the quality of the story or at least my interest in it seems to get lower and lower.
Hell even in the last mission of HoT I just laughed at a poor sylvari who was supposed to be a close character to ours. Meanwhile, I’m still quite sad about Rurik death from Prophecies.

It’s not that the story is bad, but it lacks some “oompf”, everything feels very predictable and cliche.

+1 This said about everything I’d like to add.

• The overarching plot is has been one-dimensional.
• We all know that the story needs a moral dilemma and meaningful betrayal. The current season is the best thus far in this regard. If Braham doesn’t go full evil I’ll be disappointed.
• The main enemies (Dragons) are boring when they are just combat encounters (regardless how intricate) with no/meaningless dialogue.
• In terms of combat, it seems that Arenanet are focusing on producing raid-style fights – which seems to be an effort to make them interesting while at the same time production-lining them.