Guild Wars 2

It’s not the first time I complain about the personal Story being poorly done, but every other time I did, I was met with comments of the “If you don’t like it, don’t play it” type.

With the release of HoT approaching, this issue is becoming more relevant than ever, as it can seriously bleed new players before they even reach the level cap.

A recent Video by WP who rarely does rants, expressed this issue and he is pretty much spot on on the problems.

• The ridiculously easy difficulty.
• Your choice in Orders and personality not mater.
• The bad writing. (Introducing a “new best friend” in every chapter)
• The boring talking cut-scenes.
• Not having substantial rewards besides XP (that recently became useless at end-level) and the occasional BL item.

As much as we hate to admit it.
As much as it looks like a lot of work.
As much as we old players have managed to overcome it.
As much as A-net improved their story-telling in their more recent content.
The original Personal Story is, and will be, the initial experience 99% of the new players, for the expansions to come!

Besides bug-fixes, the removal of loot to avoid exploits, the change in level restrictions, and the recent re-recording of some of Trahearne’s voice overs, there hasn’t been any substantial change to make the story more engaging. I made a suggestion post 2 and a half years ago on how to fix the personal story, and almost everything I wrote then, still stands today.

IMO:
A-net should hire some director who can do in-game mo-caped, cut-scenes (and not just move the camera) to replace the existing talking cut-scenes, and draw some emotion from the scenes despite the bad writing and acting.
Also a toggle-able hard mode that rises the level of the enemies for those who want a challenge would be welcome.
These are the easiest and fastest fixes I can think of!

I don’t disagree, but GW1’s narratives were never particularly strong either early on. Also, 3 years on is perhaps too late to be worrying about the core story putting off new players – we’ve all played through the PS and are still here despite it.

The philosophy of MMO’s these days is to make the early story easier and easier, quicker and quicker, adding in shortcuts wherever possible. This allows its players to access the newer content faster.

This is why Zhaitan probably became soloable
This why Lotro removed all it’s lower lvl group content and buffed players to ease through the once harder story elements
This is why TSW, once lauded for its challenging story arcs, nerfed the campaign story this year.

Will Anet improve the personal story? No, it really has no reason if the majority of players haven’t been put off by now. And it’s resources unlikely to be spent, when LS1 still needs rebuilding and the community clamouring for new content.

Will Anet improve its storytelling in all the areas you listed? I believe yes. There are precedents – Prophecies and Factions were God awful narratives (imo), yet EOTN was excellent in comparison. Living Story 2 was a big improvement from the get go on the PS and LS1. It still needs to avoid constant overuse off cliffhangers and amateurish “more questions than answers” as an approach, but improvement exists.

I thought the personal story was just fine. Each race having its own story and the 3 orders I enjoyed a lot.

As far as rewards go I think they give plenty. I do story in an mmo for the story not rewards. Personally the cutscenes where they just talk are fine, I think your looking for more of a single player rpg type game story in an mmo.

I think the personal story could have been better. It was hamstrung by the need to keep all the races on the same pace. So that you had installments in chapters of 10. Had it been one continuous story, it would have made for a better story.

Kite.2510:

As much as I hate to admit it.
As much as it looks like a lot of work.
As much as I have managed to overcome it.
As much as A-net improved their story-telling in their more recent content.

As they say.. “fixed it for you”. When expressing opinions, don’t get too inclusive. Some people might agree with you, others might not.

I don’t have any big problems with the story. Some of the arcs are better, some of them are worse. I find many of the asura story pieces quite amusing and fitting, and have enjoyed much of the charr side. I’m not particularily interested in human story, but that has likely a lot to do with the fact that I just generally don’t like playing humans. Sylvari on the other hand was quite interesting – and I’m glad of that, them being my favorite race.

And the norn? I like the style the story is written in. It’s kind of like.. I’m never quite sure how to take them. They have this peculiar mix of being naive, stubborn, irritating, but at the same time also kind of friendly, excitable and enjoying the life, living it to the fullest.

Overall, I think the storylines are fine. I recall they said somewhere they tried to make different races approach it differently, to cater for different preferences of people, e.g. ‘something for everyone’ – but I might remember this wrong. Could they be improved? Certainly. There’s always something you can improve. Would it be worth it? I think not. Anet has limited resources, and I feel there’s more important and useful places to put them, than rewriting the personal story. For starters, they could fix ogre wars.

As for the hard mode, they’ve said pretty clearly in an interview (which was linked somewhere else on HoT forums, I think the thread about dungeon improvements) that they’re not planning on doing hard mode (it was regarding dungeons, but I don’t see it being any different for personal story instances either).

Kite.2510:

• The ridiculously easy difficulty.

Agreed. Would love to see some of the boss fight lesson from S2 be applied to PS.

Kite.2510:

• Your choice in Orders and personality not mater.

Choice of order does give you some different missions, so it’s not meaningless. I think the main criticism has always been: they could have been more.
Personality however… yeah…

Kite.2510:

• The bad writing. (Introducing a “new best friend” in every chapter)

I feel more the writing was rushed a bit. Like I remarked on the video, I think a lot got cut out, so the a lot of characters don’t get the time they deserve to be fleshed out.

Kite.2510:

• The boring talking cut-scenes.

Subjective, but I do feel that it does take away from some of the immersion. A lot of RPGs have successfully used more cinematic angles to portray conversations and I do feel that Anet could benefit a lot from following a similar approach.

Kite.2510:

The original Personal Story is, and will be, the initial experience 99% of the new players, for the expansions to come!

If nothing else this is the biggest possible issue.

Besides bug-fixes, the removal of loot to avoid exploits, the change in level restrictions, and the recent re-recording of some of Trahearne’s voice overs, there hasn’t been any substantial change to make the story more engaging.

Kite.2510:

A-net should hire some director who can do in-game mo-caped, cut-scenes (and not just move the camera) to replace the existing talking cut-scenes, and draw some emotion from the scenes despite the bad writing and acting.
Also a toggle-able hard mode that rises the level of the enemies for those who want a challenge would be welcome.
These are the easiest and fastest fixes I can think of!

Doing mo-capped cutscenes are easy and fast :P
It’s a nice suggestion but probably not all that easy.
As for difficulty, this is probably where we can introduce something like the achievements from S2 hand-in-hand of course with a redesign of some of the fights.

After all the reworks of personal story pacing, personal story rewards and the entire leveling experience, I don’t think will see many more chances to them. Even though I agree with most of the criticism I don’t want Anet spending much more resources on changing those further. Instead let Anet focus their attention on new content, new story and new features.

Meeh, I only Play PS when I hit 80 for the loot. And skins you can’t get any other way.

And as for easy, if after 3 years you don’t know how to make a class and play it well, you are doing something wrong.

My personal take on the PS…I enjoyed it. I played through with five characters under the “old system” and just finished with one character last night, seeing new ending. It is not the most challenging content in the game but neither is it the easiest. Seemed about right to me.

i actually liked the ps MUCH more then i do the current sylvari cyrclejerk and watching the destiny edge v2 go on wacky adventures and getting new powers and do all sorts of things that i cant. In the ps i atleast had a choice what to do and atleast a part of it was racial. Now the story is watching the destiny edge v2 grow in character and blending in with the furniture…and a few mins of fighting… if even that cough cough party politics cough cough. In the ps i had a choice on what to do. (from a charr perspective): Wanna make turrets or a kitten cannon out of your anti ghost weapon? What about your dad, is he a traitor or a soldier who cares about his fellow men?…Or is he even alive anymore? What about the orders? Wanna join the whispers or the durmands? Or are you more of a vigil? How you wanna tackle the attack of orr? Wanna do this or do that? Up to you. Now its just watching chars who “forced” themselfes on me and sorta are a pretty lame replacement for rytlock, eir, logan, zoija and caithe…why cant i do more stuff with them? They are awesome…well cept logan i dont like him and caithe…ehhhhh she is on my watchlist for the egg theft. Atleast rytlock is coming back in HoT… so there is atleast a chance the coolness returns a little bit

Vayne.8563:

I think the personal story could have been better. It was hamstrung by the need to keep all the races on the same pace. So that you had installments in chapters of 10. Had it been one continuous story, it would have made for a better story.

Honestly I think the weakness was their using the “rule of 3” in the Personal story branches. Some paths are actually very fun, while others were seriously lacking… but the consistency simply wasn’t there. Its a problem seen in big single player games (where choices ultimately don’t matter), boiled down to 3 mission segments that makes it very noticeable.

What I think would had been a lot more interesting, albeit more complicated to story board, is having crisscrossing branches from a pool of regional stories and uneven pacing. The intent of the personal story is to travel the world anyway, so it would help immensely if story lines between various races and orders intertwined slightly; With each path telling a different part of the same story.

Granted solo stories can be great. But it would had been epic to have a moment like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Vizunah_Square in GW1 Factions, where the Canthan heros go to meet the newly arrived Tyrian heros, and combine forces to fight off an Afflicted invasion. (Comprised of 2 full parties, each with a different starting point on the map)

Given the Pact’s origins, this would had gone a long way to forming a great story; where their agreements and disagreements could be used to formulate the same mission or story arc from different angles. They played on this lightly during Part 3 (where you side eventually side with an Order), but the “choices” were very unimaginative in their presentation. But ultimately the lack of awareness of what the other sides where doing made the story kind of myopic. At least until Trahearne became Marshall, and the Pact became one unit in the story context.

I find this concept is grossly underutilized in a lot of MMOs, despite having huge story telling value or becoming a real shared experience for 2 groups that otherwise aren’t associated with each other. To have a conversation with someone, and suddenly realize that person was on the opposite side of events, and hearing their story. “So thats why that rock fell!” or “It was your team that sent the golems?”.

Now that I think about it, GW1 did like to separate partys in the high level dungeons to perform different tasks in support of the main group.

As usual, many of you assume that players think the same way you do.
Don’t take the people of this forum as an example of how the potential new player will think. After all we are the ones who forgave the bad PS, or happen to not hate it as much and remain in the game!
We are actually the Minority.

If you want to attract new players:

• You have to think like they think!
• Assume that they have Zero Hype and just trying the game out.
• Think as a new player, what’ll they try first.
• how easy will it be for them to follow it.
• What impression will it leave them.
• And how much this impression will count for the rest of the game!

Stuff like, a bad intro screen, annoying music, lack of intro, and bad storytelling can make or break an MMO even if they are insignificant in the long run.

Kite.2510:

The original Personal Story is, and will be, the initial experience 99% of the new players, for the expansions to come!

ArenaNet is not going to fix the old PS. They barely have resources to make new content (see everyone complaining about how HoT looks like it will only have a couple maps), much less to fix old content.

It would be better if they just hide the PS so most new players won’t even find it. Remove the content tracker about it and make the first step unlockable only at level 10, without telling players about it. Then the great majority of new players would be spared playing through the PS.

Test.8734:

ArenaNet is not going to fix the old PS. They barely have resources to make new content (see everyone complaining about how HoT looks like it will only have a couple maps), much less to fix old content.

That’s some very poor deduction. You can’t make objective deductions based on subjective opinions. People think and feel there is only going to be a couple of maps, but this is not yet proven to be the case. No matter how likely it seems, it is not yet been proven to be the case. So ignoring the fact that number of maps might not be an accurate measurements of content or development resources we cannot remark about how much capacity ANet has or hasn’t.

Test.8734:

It would be better if they just hide the PS so most new players won’t even find it. Remove the content tracker about it and make the first step unlockable only at level 10, without telling players about it. Then the great majority of new players would be spared playing through the PS.

Personal Story wasn’t that bad. A lot they could have done better, but at worst you can call it average.

Test.8734:

Kite.2510:

The original Personal Story is, and will be, the initial experience 99% of the new players, for the expansions to come!

ArenaNet is not going to fix the old PS. They barely have resources to make new content (see everyone complaining about how HoT looks like it will only have a couple maps), much less to fix old content.

It would be better if they just hide the PS so most new players won’t even find it. Remove the content tracker about it and make the first step unlockable only at level 10, without telling players about it. Then the great majority of new players would be spared playing through the PS.

And you’re basing this off of what? Nothing?

You’re also assuming that there is actually something broken with the PS. What the OP listed were all subjective items that they personally did not like about the PS. This isn’t the same as something actually broken.

I’m very noob. I only just log’d into forum here. But, I have not completed my personal story. I have to kill Zhaitan, but I don’t know how. If it’s in a dungeon, I’m not good about dungeons. I play alone. I’ve looked at groups and I see something about wanting gold or pay-for-runs and that kind of turns me off.

I would like to be able to finish my personal story.

But to stay on topic with this thread, for what it’s worth, I really liked my personal story and I’m doing multiple personal stories on alts and having fun. But, that’s kind of because I play alone.

Electra.7530:

I’m very noob. I only just log’d into forum here. But, I have not completed my personal story. I have to kill Zhaitan, but I don’t know how. If it’s in a dungeon, I’m not good about dungeons. I play alone. I’ve looked at groups and I see something about wanting gold or pay-for-runs and that kind of turns me off.

I would like to be able to finish my personal story.

But to stay on topic with this thread, for what it’s worth, I really liked my personal story and I’m doing multiple personal stories on alts and having fun. But, that’s kind of because I play alone.

The Zhaitan fight is no longer a dungeon and can now be soloed.

Oh, thank you very much. But, I still seem to have to enter the instance because that’s where the marker is. I guess I haven’t figured everything out yet. The marker is sitting right on top of the dungeon doors for ruined city of arah. It says I have to speak to Caithe in ruined city of arah.

But, thank you.

Vayne.8563:

Electra.7530:

I’m very noob. I only just log’d into forum here. But, I have not completed my personal story. I have to kill Zhaitan, but I don’t know how. If it’s in a dungeon, I’m not good about dungeons. I play alone. I’ve looked at groups and I see something about wanting gold or pay-for-runs and that kind of turns me off.

I would like to be able to finish my personal story.

But to stay on topic with this thread, for what it’s worth, I really liked my personal story and I’m doing multiple personal stories on alts and having fun. But, that’s kind of because I play alone.

The Zhaitan fight is no longer a dungeon and can now be soloed.

Currently in the game right now it can be solo’d? Or future patches? I heard about this and I didn’t know it happened already

It was changed into a solo instance during the last big patch.

And yes the entrance is right on top of the entrance to the dungeon because it used to be a 5-man dungeon and still uses the same map. But you can do it alone, just follow the marker as normal.

Thank you very much! I’m off to finish my story!

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Vayne.8563:

Electra.7530:

I’m very noob. I only just log’d into forum here. But, I have not completed my personal story. I have to kill Zhaitan, but I don’t know how. If it’s in a dungeon, I’m not good about dungeons. I play alone. I’ve looked at groups and I see something about wanting gold or pay-for-runs and that kind of turns me off.

I would like to be able to finish my personal story.

But to stay on topic with this thread, for what it’s worth, I really liked my personal story and I’m doing multiple personal stories on alts and having fun. But, that’s kind of because I play alone.

The Zhaitan fight is no longer a dungeon and can now be soloed.

Currently in the game right now it can be solo’d? Or future patches? I heard about this and I didn’t know it happened already

I’ve solo’d it twice this weekend (you also now get the exotic dungeon headpiece as a reward). So yes. Balancing is a bit annoying (when you have to kill tequatl’s cousins… since you need to shoot and defend at the same time) but otherwise yeah do-able.

I did the final chapter of personal story and it was challenging and took me a little bit of time. But, I learned the dungeon and can run it now confidently with parties if I can find parties that aren’t selling or story mode now.

I want those runes of Orr for my necromancer.

I really am put off by the selling, 5g, 6g when I just want to farm it for relics. That’s the price you pay I guess if you play alone and don’t have a bunch of friends running them with you.

To the guy that started this thread, I’m kind of sorry to see what he had to say about personal story. I made myself sit through all the credits at the end and it seems this was a massive undertaking and hundreds of names scrolling by and lots of time and talent put into the project. I really liked the personal story, I’m doing it on other classes and have started the Living Story 2.

The one thing i didn’t like about the cores personal story was you could do everything solo “but” the final mission to take down Zhaitan. I got 17 lvl80’s and only finished the final mission on one character.

If they pull the same stunt for taking down Mordremoth I’m going to be kittened.

Niyati.4215:

The one thing i didn’t like about the cores personal story was you could do everything solo “but” the final mission to take down Zhaitan. I got 17 lvl80’s and only finished the final mission on one character.

If they pull the same stunt for taking down Mordremoth I’m going to be kittened.

Umm.. you do know that killing Zhaitain can be done solo now? When they restored the storyline, they also turned the Arah dungeon story into a personal instance. I tagged along with a guildie to see what was changed and quite a bit was simplified. The mission took about an hour to complete.

Too bad there are no chests anymore.

Teleoceras.1298:

Niyati.4215:

The one thing i didn’t like about the cores personal story was you could do everything solo “but” the final mission to take down Zhaitan. I got 17 lvl80’s and only finished the final mission on one character.

If they pull the same stunt for taking down Mordremoth I’m going to be kittened.

Umm.. you do know that killing Zhaitain can be done solo now? When they restored the storyline, they also turned the Arah dungeon story into a personal instance. I tagged along with a guildie to see what was changed and quite a bit was simplified. The mission took about an hour to complete.

Too bad there are no chests anymore.

None of the story instances drop loot unfortunately.

CureForLiving.5360:

Teleoceras.1298:

Niyati.4215:

The one thing i didn’t like about the cores personal story was you could do everything solo “but” the final mission to take down Zhaitan. I got 17 lvl80’s and only finished the final mission on one character.

If they pull the same stunt for taking down Mordremoth I’m going to be kittened.

Umm.. you do know that killing Zhaitain can be done solo now? When they restored the storyline, they also turned the Arah dungeon story into a personal instance. I tagged along with a guildie to see what was changed and quite a bit was simplified. The mission took about an hour to complete.

Too bad there are no chests anymore.

None of the story instances drop loot unfortunately.

At least tell me that they bother to redesign the fight so it won’t be as broken!…