Guild Wars 2

I think GW2 did a good job on story telling overall. The Living Story also improved on NPC’s characterization compare to the Personal Story. However I think the PC, our own character is kinda “out of the story” like most of the MMO, you don’t have much choices, you don’t even have much dialog to build up your character. Although people call you hero but I think the character is quite bland. I hope the PC could get more dialog, more choices to make and more relationship to create.

Well this is my hope as well, although proper characterization can be complicated and difficult. How many different dialogs would a single character require? A good, neutral and bad response? Well there’s 10 different personality types so obviously not that many. But whatever number you’d have to multiply it for each race and each gender. So even if they sort of the technicalities of getting the PC to talk you’d still probably only see a one or a very limited number of dialog options appearing.
However we could see more branching in the purely text-based dialog (which I find odd that we don’t already have). Although the text-interface isn’t particularly well designed for something like that (or maybe I’ve just been spoiled with those Mass Effect style dialogue rings). Of course there’s also the question about the the value of giving us response options, that is to say what impact would it have? It’s not as if ANet has the time or manpower to create multiple paths of progression through the Living World episodes and still release a new episode every 2 weeks.

So yeah, I’d love to see this but I’m not going to hold my breath on getting this sort of a system to any sort of large scale. I guess that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss the sorts of systems we’d like however.

Technically the PC did develop during season two (one?) it just happened off screen.

Angel McCoy.1832:

The whole “Commander” topic is another discussion entirely.

Bottom line is that, at the beginning of the Pact (almost 2 years ago in-game time), you were “The Commander.” After Zhaitan was killed, the Pact continued on and you went off into the world to do stuff. At that point, other commanders were brought on, and you become “A Commander.” And you became a commander who had lots of other things to do besides running an army that was repairing, preparing, and stocking up for the next big battle with the Elder Dragons. We could not build a story on that alone, not a good one that made sense, not considering where we want the story to take you. Any time anyone calls you “The Commander” now, it’s someone being nostalgic. It’s perhaps more correct to say you were “The First Commander.” That helps us explain why you’ve been running around the world saving people as opposed to being locked in a war room with Trahearn. I’ll see what I can do to get this explanation into the game.

Similar to Mordremoth’s reveal happening off screen, to me this development happening off screen was really bad. Not only does it not make sense and has no supporting context (imo) but it’s arguably one of the most significant character development moments/decisions in GW2, and we only know about it because of the forums. When the writers of the current story thought it was OK to reveal Mordremoth off-screen then dramatically alter the PC’s role in Tyria off screen simply because it didn’t fit that writer’s vision for the story they wanted to tell, it’s very concerning about how the story of the game is being handled.

Personally, pun intended, the Personal Story has been very lack luster since the start. I think they tried to hard to fix what wasn’t broken and in doing so really under-delivered on their promises. That being said, yes the Living World has improved since half way through Season 1 but while they’ve made some minor mistakes that I myself aren’t too offended by, there’s still this underlying sense of the lack of immersion. I just don’t feel it, it feels forced.

And while I could suggest ideas, probably repeat things I had stated in the past, it would be a huge undertaking to tackle any one of those suggestions.

Shiren.9532:

Technically the PC did develop during season two (one?) it just happened off screen.

Angel McCoy.1832:

The whole “Commander” topic is another discussion entirely.

Bottom line is that, at the beginning of the Pact (almost 2 years ago in-game time), you were “The Commander.” After Zhaitan was killed, the Pact continued on and you went off into the world to do stuff. At that point, other commanders were brought on, and you become “A Commander.” And you became a commander who had lots of other things to do besides running an army that was repairing, preparing, and stocking up for the next big battle with the Elder Dragons. We could not build a story on that alone, not a good one that made sense, not considering where we want the story to take you. Any time anyone calls you “The Commander” now, it’s someone being nostalgic. It’s perhaps more correct to say you were “The First Commander.” That helps us explain why you’ve been running around the world saving people as opposed to being locked in a war room with Trahearn. I’ll see what I can do to get this explanation into the game.

Similar to Mordremoth’s reveal happening off screen, to me this development happening off screen was really bad. Not only does it not make sense and has no supporting context (imo) but it’s arguably one of the most significant character development moments/decisions in GW2, and we only know about it because of the forums. When the writers of the current story thought it was OK to reveal Mordremoth off-screen then dramatically alter the PC’s role in Tyria off screen simply because it didn’t fit that writer’s vision for the story they wanted to tell, it’s very concerning about how the story of the game is being handled.

Stuff really shouldn’t happen off screen, especially not to the PC (our characters!)

Slowpokeking.8720:

and more relationship[s] to create.

What about the ones we’ve already made? The home instance needs some periodic text updates and options.

Hahaha, home instance. You mean one of selling point of game, that should represent our journey through land with various trophies? I think it was forgotten long before switching from “This is your story” to “This is story of Biconics and you are just tagging along”

“Great to see you again! When are you going to stop all this wandering about and come in for a hot meal and a cold drink?”

I’d actually be up for that now…oh…I can’t? O..ok then…

This one gets me the most though.