Guild Wars 2

The game didn’t give our characters much options to change the story or build the characterization. Like our human characters must like Logan, not hate him for his choice in EoD. We can’t have choice to like or dislike any of the characters we met. We can’t make choice to save almost any of the NPC. I really hope Anet could let the PC character to truly get involved into the story and have more options to make choice.

That wouldn’t really work with the Living Story system seeing as that would basically require them to do x amount of variations of every single thing which simply isn’t really feasible in an MMO, especially not if you want releases more often than once every second year or something.

Unfortunately the story model you suggest doesn’t fit the MMORPG scenario.
For that devs not only need to add a story branch for every option but also make a story that makes sense for everyone and every NPC independent of what path/option you picked.
In MMOs the player character is usually only an important person among a mass of other really important NPCs against a problem, different from a single player RPG where you are the savior of the world.

Belzebu.3912:

Unfortunately the story model you suggest doesn’t fit the MMORPG scenario.
For that devs not only need to add a story branch for every option but also make a story that makes sense for everyone and every NPC independent of what path/option you picked.
In MMOs the player character is usually only an important person among a mass of other really important NPCs against a problem, different from a single player RPG where you are the savior of the world.

SWTOR would disagree. It’s totally possible to not change the big direction but still have a lot of options. Especially the main storyline is pretty much single player instance.

I came in going to make a joke about how the PC’s a jerk when they do get personality (ever talk to the lonely sylvari in the Grove? “I don’t like this feeling” she says, “luckily there’s a cure, good-bye” the PC says – what a jerk), but anyways…

What Slowpokeking seems to be wanting is the illusion of choice where the story presents choices, and changes the PC’s personality, but in the end all major stuff remains unchanged regardless of choices. If I’m correct, that’s what SWTOR does (note: I never played the game).

The thing is that ArenaNet was going in this direction. Most of the Personal Story is just illusion of choices where the other plots happen regardless, and the changes in the end have so little influence on the long run that it’s pointless to care about the choice (save Quinn or let him die? Who cares, we forget about him the next mission and he’s never brought up again ever!). But for some reason – probably a mechanical restraint in the replayability department – Season 2 lacks the story splits of the Personal Story (this is my theory for why the PS lacks replayability still – choices + replaying = clashes). And for some godforsaken reason (’it’s too hard’ most likely), they dropped the personality system which had SO much potential.

So you can complain and protest all you want Slowpokeking, it’s pretty obvious Anet isn’t going to do it, for they had the game set up for it but went away.

Guild Wars is not a story of choice – illusional or otherwise.

We don’t even have the voiceover of the PC in LS anymore.

Voice of the PC
The voice over stuff is a time and money problem.

There is a big difference in doing something like that for a game release or for singular characters in a continuation of the story (or expansion, one can only hope ).

However it is problematic for the PC, since he is not one character and one voice actor.
With the several gender and race combinations you would have to ask 10 voice actors for one role each time the PC is saying something.

While it is manageable the obvious time/money problem is strong with this one.

On illusion of choice
I have to say I am with you on this one.

Even if we do not have much impact on the overall storyline, I would like to see the affinity system back in for some unique conversation pieces.

Or at least some choice that stick with you to a certain degree and isn`t revoked by talking to a character again.

While I understand the reasoning behind these constrains now, it is just sad that they went in that direction.
Instead of building upon it, they reduced the unique experience they promoted the game with to a story where every PC is the same, with no way to express himself.
(That being said, they still have some character recognition in it, so not all hope is lost)

It would be nice if they would at least give us a bit of choice in how to react in some situations. In some cases I would really like to go renegade Sheppard on some characters, but I am somehow stuck in neutral, which is annoying.

If I had to describe the experience with my PC at the moment it is that you have with a bad RPG Dungeonmaster, since he tells you how you have to feel and how your character things and does not allow to make your own conclusions based on what he shows you.

The thing with Canach for example could be solved easily by allowing us to be nice to him.

If he turns on us, then the players who trusted him can be angry at themselves, because they fell for him, while players who mistrusted him can say: “Told you so.”

Right now that is not the case and we lost complete control over our character.

In fact he is even used by the game as a exposition-plot-device, which is just annoying.

The ironic thing is, they did it right in Season 1, with the investigation of Scarlet’s stuff.
We were allowed to make the wrong conclusions and Majory would point out the right one (or ask you to think about it again). It was a step in the right direction and it was one of the better moments in S1.

We need something like that back.

I’m all for the illusion of choice, and I think they are inching back in that direction (though they’ve got a ways to go to make up all the ground they’ve given up in the last year), but I would caution that the illusion is all we can realisically expect. Jaken drew a parallel to tabletop RPGs, and while I don’t think they were saying that they expect that of GW2, it bears mentioning that the MMORPG format can’t manage that level of personalization. Games like D&D are fueled by the imagination of the participants; video games, even RPGs, even MMOs, are fueled by the imagination of the devs (with a partial exception for the roleplaying community, but they still can’t affect the world outside their social circles).

Considering that what we’re seeing right now is theoretically the limit of what the resources they’re willing to devote to the Living World can do with a single non-branching storyline, any move to give us real choice would adversely affect either the quality of or the length of time between patches, and ANet already needs to deal with vocal detractors on both of those points.

All we really need are a few more dialog options here and there. Since our PCs still don’t have voices giving us a host of responses (even if they do little) would at least create the feel of us having a bit more agency in the story.