Guild Wars 2

I’d take it if you don’t mind.

Haaznahnuff.1907:

I’d take it if you don’t mind.

That’d be 2 gold 50 silver.

I don’t mind the fact that NPC’s don’t acknowledge my past deeds, not everyone knows everything. But when my character gets to choose from three stupid dialogue options which I – or the character – would never say in the situation I don’t like it at all.

Yes I’m talking about Marjory’s stupid inappropriate “afterparty” jokes scene. At least one “go on.” option is needed in case all other dialogue is suited just for the type of PC ANet have imagined in their heads, not what we’re playing.

edit: Found the quote

Angel McCoy

but we’re now more comfortable with having your PC say things that commit to an idea or a knowledge or a thought that you the player might not have had.

This is wrong. It’s kind of puzzling how you guys can say this will deepen the immersion of a personal story. Doesn’t it rather take it away if your character does and says things that are completely out of your control and not what you’d want to do?

Traveller.7496:

I don’t mind the fact that NPC’s don’t acknowledge my past deeds, not everyone knows everything. But when my character gets to choose from three stupid dialogue options which I – or the character – would never say in the situation I don’t like it at all.

Yes I’m talking about Marjory’s stupid inappropriate “afterparty” jokes scene. At least one “go on.” option is needed in case all other dialogue is suited just for the type of PC ANet have imagined in their heads, not what we’re playing.

edit: Found the quote

Angel McCoy

but we’re now more comfortable with having your PC say things that commit to an idea or a knowledge or a thought that you the player might not have had.

This is wrong. It’s kind of puzzling how you guys can say this will deepen the immersion of a personal story. Doesn’t it rather take it away if your character does and says things that are completely out of your control and not what you’d want to do?

I suppose this depends upon how invested you are in your character’s biography. For those who have an idea of what their character would say from an RP perspective, or do, and the dialogue doesn’t fit that, it’s probably quite immersion breaking.

From my perspective, I don’t have an idea of what my characters would necessarily say or do when I read in-game text. It’s more immersion breaking for me for my character’s responses to be “Go on, yeah, will do. Uh-huh. On it. Yes. No.” than for ANet to actually give them something chunky to say. Eventually, if the technical hurdle with our PC’s talking in the world is overcome, then there’s going to be set things our PC says anyway…only they’ll be voice acted.

I suppose the best would be multiple dialogue options that show a different personality type, though these will never be complete. Unfortunately, they have a text budget to stick to each release.

I am fine with having the NPCs do all the talking to be honest. However, I do feel the writing is weak or lacking in a sense that shows the NPCs recognize the player as an important, respectable figure (Commander of the Pact). Looking at the current living story, the Seraph addresses the player as some random, unknown adventure or as his subordinate. This is widespread throughout the game outside of the personal story. Even pact soldiers outside of the personal story seems to be giving you orders (due to the way the dialogue is written) instead of the other way around.

I am not saying that NPCs should not ask the players to do stuff. But it should be addressed in such a way that mirror your rank. If I have time, I’ll log in and get some caps on some NPCs to show my point.

Tamias.7059:

Mister Midnight.9837:

Well it’d be really cool if the PC could talk again like the Personal Story, but that’s not really what I’m getting at myself. Apologies if my thoughts are coming across as jumbled or rambling.

The point I’m making here outside of all of this, is that I do not feel like the PCs are being brought to the forefront as the main protagonist. Maybe we’re not meant to be the main protagonist, but it still feels like we’re not even particularly important. Like I said, I feel like we’re the sidekick characters on The Superfriends being dragged around.

I didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, for the first time since the Battle for Claw Island mission, I’ve really actually felt a part of the story. I play a sylvari, and when I played through my character had to make it clear to Marjory that Aerin was Soundless. My choice of race was not only taken into account, but actually made important to the story! I’m sure the same thing would have happened had I played a different race, but what counts is the fact that it felt important that I was a sylvari. I really felt like I was adding an extra perspective to the group. There were numerous other moments like this in the new release, such as Kasmeer having to explain the human class system, and given that guildies who play asura engineers have told me that that race/class combo get unique dialogue with Taimi later on, I feel like it’s not just me.

I’ve already spoken my thoughts on this, but reading that thread should tell you that not everybody wants to be at the forefront. In fact, according to this poll, only 14% of players seem to want what you want. The trouble is, there doesn’t appear to be much agreement between anyone.

The poll I linked above tells us that if you go into the game with an expectation that ArenaNet build the game that you want, not only will they fail to please everyone, but they will fail to please anyone. At some point in the last few months, the community has collectively decided that because ANet is a company that listens and gives the community a voice, that the community is entitled to the game that they demand. Except, as the threads about jumping puzzles in Dry Top will tell you, nobody can agree on what the community is demanding. So rather than telling ArenaNet how they should develop their own game, let’s just all stop, take a step back, and let them create their own vision.

You are giving a skewed interpretation of the poll. As you can see, only 7% of the vote wants to be nameless soldiers and only important NPCs should be recognized. The rest 93% wants to be recognized in some way such as recognizing as a group, one hero amongst many, central figure, etc…What the majority of the dialogues throughout the open world/living story has shown is that the player is a nameless soldier/sidekick that other NPCs order around (and yes, there are a few occasions that you may get recognized but can be easily overlooked because they’re very subtle).

If Anet add something like “Hi Commander”, “Greetings Commander”, “Welcome Commander”, etc…when they address the player then it would be more noticeable that the player is an important figure (one of many). The way it is written at the moment makes me feel that the player is a subordinate of the NPCs instead of their equal or superior.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know how you begin to think this is about the father, in this case. I don’t even recall them talking about the father except to note he was a Loyal Soldier.

Read your Story Journal again, it says; “The chest contained a Diessa Chalice…” which is a human artifact. That items tells nothing about the Charr nor about your character, the only connection it had to you is that your father and his warbard were the ones who found it.

Again, it starts with the parents, and while it bookends with the parents . . . the middle is about how my character handles the trouble. It’s not about the parents beyond the initial impetus . . . like the Loyal Soldier path, it’s the seed which starts the story but not the story itself.

This is why I said in my previous posts that it is only a “personal story” only because you choose it to be personal, even though the story had nothing to do with your character in a personal level. The unknown parent’s path could have been more personal if it elevated my position. Example, as a noble, the queen offered me to be an agent also but turning it down; as a commoner, my parents status made me a noble but refuse to live that way; as a street rat, my parents left me with fortunes to only distribute it to the poor. Instead, the unknown parent’s story was inspired by the story of Peter Parker (hence the spiders) with an “uh ok” ending.

Ah, but they took in Tobias Trueflight and helped raise him.

I don’t know about them taking you in, no mention about that that I recall.

Eh, I only half agree. It’s about my character’s journey, even if the plot doesn’t revolve around them.

Like I’ve said, it’s a subjective matter — you choose it to be personal and it was so.

I don’t agree, I think the choices which are made through the course of the Personal Story define the character and are supposed to show a path.

I’m sorry but GW2 lacks a story-based character definition. A good defining moment would have been my example above about the unknown parents.

Eh, I don’t know. Again, it may be the writer and tabletop roleplayer in me but the story is more in the journey than the details, and it is compounded by how you handle it. Are the Personal Story bits just minor bits to get done and move on, are they small-stage pieces of story, or are they singular points out of a whole tapestry you choose to weave together from those events and what happens with your character between Green Star Nodes?

In any given story, there’s a character development process that makes the audience sympathetic to the character. If this key process is missing, the audience feels detached. Reflecting on my noble human Thief, nobody has a problem that I am a noble and a Thief. This should raise a red flag and my good friend Lord Faren should be nagging me to change profession and I would reply with some noble goal why I choose the profession. That would have defined my character and separate him from other human nobles. And if my character is a street rat and my unknow parents left me a fortune and I choose to give it to the poor — that would have been the greatest moment for my character because that deed is more noble than being an actual noble.

The game isn’t about one character (and never was), and the story is still not about one character (not even Trahearne or Zhaitan) . . . it’s about a lot of characters, and ours happens to be in there as well.

It’s a start, not the whole thing.

The idea of the game being about you is nothing but an advertising hype. The game as we both agree was never about one character.

(1/2)

I think the main reason why they don’t let random NPCs in the world refer to you as commander is because of the fact that you can play through the whole game without even coming near the PS therefor technically never being part of the Pact of a Commander of the Pact.

Angel McCoy.1832:

The whole “Commander” topic is another discussion entirely.
[spoiler=Personal Story spoilers] 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. [/spoiler]

That’s interesting, I have always played it imagining that the Pact had a number of Commanders from the start. Take the defense of Fort Trinity for example; there are three seperate storylines, but they all verge at one point; while the third is a bit ambegious, two of them (the orb and the betrayal) have a definite effect on the battle, which, could not have taken place or arrived at the same conclusion, if one or the other did not occur/was not properly carried out. In other words if I chose to search for the traitor, there still had to be a second commander searching for the orb. With this taken into consideration, while prehaps still the primary(from our perspective at the very least), we have never been the ONLY Commander.

To this end, I like to think that the other characters on my account and the characters of my friends, all worked together as Pact Commanders to achieve the death of Zhiatan, and such are all heroes/main characters. Well, I could care less about the other thousands of players, from my perspective they are just enlisted pact soldiers; after all, 2 billion pact commanders really wouldn’t make sense. So if we look at it from this perspective I think everything works out. Its still your adventure, you’re still the hero, only, your not the only hero, like any good adventure storry, you’ve got companions and friends.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I still think Tybalt jumped into the ocean and swam to Istan where he is drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.

No, not really. I think it’s just stupid how each and every one of the mentors decided they had to stay behind, when Tybalt is an engineer and could have come up with a way of rigging the gate to stay shut, Forgal could have held the line until the last minute, and Sieran could have used sylvari vines to reinforce the gate.

It’s unnecessary pathos.

Yeah that death was unnecessary. Never really add anything to the story, just takes away. I for one suspect that Forgal isn’t dead because Thrahern and I didn’t go to Hoelbrak like we did when Apatia died. We went to Hoelbrak because we’ve seen the proof that Apatia died — no proof about Forgal.

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Wow! That is some interesting news. Just one team now, instead of 4. How does the scheduling work now? Before each team had 4 months to ready their particular release, from start to finish. How does it work with just one team? Are the releases started 4 months in advance, still? Longer? Shorter? Are the team members working on the beginning of a release at the same time as the middle of another release, and the finishing touches of yet another release, all at the same time?

Inquiring minds want to know! Please. =)

At least we know roughly how many people are on the LS team. ~20, give or take a couple at any given time….. out of the 300+ that work at Anet. I guess those that keep crowing that LS takes up the majority of the developers have been proven wrong definitively (finally).

They may still have sub-teams within that larger group, so that each one gets ‘x’ amount of development time. Maybe not though. Would be interesting to hear how they work the schedule. Somehow I don’t think she’ll elaborate on their system though.

Shardelyss.4807:

BobbyStein.2315:

Zin.1673:

The character is indeed voiced. Did you ever played your personal story ?

Warning: nerdy devspeak ahead!

The player character (PC) hasn’t had new voice recorded since the game launched, so you’ll only hear your character speak in the following circumstances: conditional chatter, in cinematic conversations in the Personal Story, and in painterly “full” cinematics. We retired cinematic conversations with the Living World, so right now the PC can only “talk” through unvoiced dialog trees.

We’re exploring some technical improvements that may allow the PC to speak under new circumstances, but it’s actually a bigger undertaking than one would imagine due to the complexity of player voice implementation (10 possible voices, currently shared lines of dialog that we want to split out, scene timing per language, etc.). That’s about all I can say at the moment.

In short, we’re looking to make the PC speak again, but it’s going to take a bit of time to redo the code and content pipelines to make it work, not to mention updating our tools to allow us to generate PC lines that deviate based on race & gender, prior accomplishments, etc. We’re not ready to announce what those changes will actually be or when they might be deployed, but we’re seriously looking into it.

As always, thanks for playing.

If this is true, then you have no idea how happy that made me to read. I had the first fan girl moment of a lifetime and I don’t normally squeee at all considering I’m usually so pessimistic.

But yay! This would be incredibly awesome if my characters can speak again. Even if it starts off as being generic dialogue at first…. but to just have a voice again and not be the invisible person holding the door for other characters to walk through.

?

?

?

Braham: Hey there.

Me: Hi, how are you doing?

Braham: Did you… just talk?

Taimi: What’s going on?

Braham: I think he just talked.

Me: Hi, shorty.

Taimi: HEY! He did talk. Hey wait a minute, did you just call me shorty? You do remember I have Scruffy here.

Me: (laughs) Never Change.

Kasmeer: Hey guys? Ready to move on? Is something wrong with our friend here?

Me: Taimi is threatening to flatten me with her Golem.

Taimi: It was only a warning.

Kasmeer: Did… he just speak?

Braham: Yeah. All this time and I thought he was a mute.

Jory: I heard talking, what’s going on here?

Kasmeer: The Commander just…talked.

Jory: Right. You didn’t just talk, did you?

Me: I might have, the verdict is still not in yet.

Jory: @#$%?! Does Rox know?

Me: Well -

Rox: Oh I knew already. Why do you think I’m sitting way over here. That guy can’t shut up for two minutes.

Me: O:-)

Thanks for putting a smile on my face

draxynnic.3719:

Sir Vincent the Third:

By your logic, the only thing that can truly be a personal story is something like The Old Man and the Sea, where the protagonist is completely isolated from the rest of humanity for much of the story.

Not at all.

People are always going to be influenced about what family, friends, neighbours, and enemies are doing and have done.

Exactly, and it shape who you are. Compare that to the in-game personal story, none of the outside influence shape your character — even choosing to save the hospital instead of the orphanage has no effect — your in-game character is just numb and mentally and emotionally detached.

I am who I am because I was born in a first world nation, to parents who made certain choices, and they are who they are because their parents made certain choices, all the way back to the first amoeba which somehow ended up trading genetic material with another amoeba rather than eating it. Does this mean that my life stops being about me and becomes about everything else instead? No, it means that those other things have become part of my story.

Your heritage, environments, and up bringing are not about you.

What’s about you is how you react after learning your heritage. Do you reject or accept your heritage? Are you proud or embarrassed?

What’s about you is how you interact and adapt to your environment. Do you succumb to the influence of the culture around you or you reject it completely?

What’s about you is how you turn out based on your upbringings. Do you choose the same path as parents or pave your own path?

You see, those elements are missing when it comes to your character in-game.

Xukavi.4320:

I think the main reason why they don’t let random NPCs in the world refer to you as commander is because of the fact that you can play through the whole game without even coming near the PS therefor technically never being part of the Pact of a Commander of the Pact.

Speak to Seraph Belinda to dispel that idea.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Your heritage, environments, and up bringing are not about you.

What’s about you is how you react after learning your heritage. Do you reject or accept your heritage? Are you proud or embarrassed?

What’s about you is how you interact and adapt to your environment. Do you succumb to the influence of the culture around you or you reject it completely?

What’s about you is how you turn out based on your upbringings. Do you choose the same path as parents or pave your own path?

You see, those elements are missing when it comes to your character in-game.

While this is true, the issue has already been addressed. there is no time or budget to include the affects of each and every detail of each and every branching story into the game. They do their best to include the most they can, prioritzing and focusing on the important events and turning points, but lets be realistic, they can’t include everything from the past and still have time to weave the present story. These tid-bits of ‘forgotten’ content still have an emotional effect on you, but those emotions will have to be played internally.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

That’s interesting, I have always played it imagining that the Pact had a number of Commanders from the start.

The big reveal was the fight against Zhaitan — you can’t do that without partying with other commanders.

lnguy.5127:

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

You actually buy that? If that is even true, I guess seeing Kiel’s and Evon’s face plastered all over the place during the election was just my imagination.

But never mind that, in Ebonhawk, the resistance are mass printing their propaganda and the Whispers have a mass printing machine.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Your heritage, environments, and up bringing are not about you.

What’s about you is how you react after learning your heritage. Do you reject or accept your heritage? Are you proud or embarrassed?

What’s about you is how you interact and adapt to your environment. Do you succumb to the influence of the culture around you or you reject it completely?

What’s about you is how you turn out based on your upbringings. Do you choose the same path as parents or pave your own path?

You see, those elements are missing when it comes to your character in-game.

While this is true, the issue has already been addressed. there is no time or budget to include the affects of each and every detail of each and every branching story into the game. They do their best to include the most they can, prioritzing and focusing on the important events and turning points, but lets be realistic, they can’t include everything from the past and still have time to weave the present story. These tid-bits of ‘forgotten’ content still have an emotional effect on you, but those emotions will have to be played internally.

That’s my point, because of the development constraints, the personal story is missing the “personal” part of the story. It was their main goal as it was advertised, but they never delivered that’s why our characters are numb and disconnected.

In the Living Story, their goal is to focus on the world and let the players role play their characters and create their own history and personality — which I believe should have been the goal in the first place. Them trying to define our characters will only lead to failures.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Read your Story Journal again, it says; “The chest contained a Diessa Chalice…” which is a human artifact. That items tells nothing about the Charr nor about your character, the only connection it had to you is that your father and his warbard were the ones who found it.

. . . you are deliberately missing my point it seems. The item itself does not matter, the search for it is what the chapter is about. It is not about the father, it is not about “what’s in the box”, it’s not about where the treasure came from.

It’s about my character searching for it, because he wants to. Not because it’s a powerful weapon needed by the greater plot, not because anyone else is pushing my character into doing it.

It might as well be a sled named “Rosebud” for all the significance the item has.

This is why I said in my previous posts that it is only a “personal story” only because you choose it to be personal, even though the story had nothing to do with your character in a personal level.

Again, don’t see how that chapter isn’t personal. Someone tried to kill the character, and the story stopped being about the parents until the end when there’s a final capstone of “do you really want to know”.

I don’t know about them taking you in, no mention about that that I recall.

And there’s no mention they didn’t. That choice is mine to make, as it should be.

Like I’ve said, it’s a subjective matter — you choose it to be personal and it was so.

. . . so if that’s the case, then how can you say it wasn’t personal before and now say it is if I choose it to be?

I don’t agree, I think the choices which are made through the course of the Personal Story define the character and are supposed to show a path.

I’m sorry but GW2 lacks a story-based character definition. A good defining moment would have been my example above about the unknown parents.

Hold on, I’ll come back to this.

In any given story, there’s a character development process that makes the audience sympathetic to the character. If this key process is missing, the audience feels detached. Reflecting on my noble human Thief, nobody has a problem that I am a noble and a Thief. This should raise a red flag and my good friend Lord Faren should be nagging me to change profession and I would reply with some noble goal why I choose the profession. That would have defined my character and separate him from other human nobles. And if my character is a street rat and my unknow parents left me a fortune and I choose to give it to the poor — that would have been the greatest moment for my character because that deed is more noble than being an actual noble.

Well if you want to play that card, the game should remember it set aside the names “Tobias Trueflight” and other ones from my GW1 account and reference them, but they don’t. So there’s absolutely no consistency of the world because it “forgot” there was a “Tobias Trueflight” two hundred and fifty years ago.

There’s even less since people who know my character for a long time don’t know he is a ranger. Or that he had a lost sister until the relevant chapter. Or have anything to say about a mesmer turning his grandfather into a moa permanently because of an argument, which is why Tobias never uses moa pets.

There’s a lot of holes in the narrative, and it . . . to me . . . seems like a conscious choice because it allows players to scribble in their own notes and make up their own individual stories.

The idea of the game being about you is nothing but an advertising hype. The game as we both agree was never about one character.

I thought you said earlier if I choose to make it personal then it is? So if I choose to have my own journal which details everything which goes on (everything) and keeps it in-character, then how is it not my story? If I wrote in there how my charr joined the Vigil because he didn’t trust the other two orders to be capable enough of keeping Tyria safe, then that’s his story. If I choose to write Tobias joined a different order because he believed in their methods, then that’s his story. If I choose to write about my maniac asura engineer wanting to beat Taimi with a spanner because of how clueless she is, that’s his story.

No offense, but I do want the option of defining my characters more sharply to be in my hands and not someone else’s.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Michael Walker.8150:

Angel McCoy.1832:

We have lots of conversations here about the many places we could take the story, and ultimately, it comes down to what we think would be the most fun. We can only make so much content, so we have to carefully choose which content we make.

Hi Angel,
Who is “we”? I got curious the last few days how the interaction between game designers, narrative designer (can you explain what this mean at Arenanet? or have you already somewhere? the search function on these forums is useless), writers and visual/audio artists work for the Living Story Season 2, what have you learned or changed from Living Story 1?

I got a rather incoherent feeling from the first seasons’ storyline and its implementation. the overall feeling of the second season, at least the start, seems way more polished now.

Hi, Michael,
I am just one small member on a very large team that creates the Living World content. Our team changes in size, but there are just a little over twenty people on it at any given time. This includes artists, designers, QA people, project managers, audio engineers, composers, leadership, programmers, and writers. The Living World is very much a team effort. We have a series of meetings as we’re developing each release that start big picture and gradually hone in on exactly what we want to do. We all have our areas of expertise that we bring to the table, but everyone is invited to give opinions and ideas.

My responsibility as narrative designer for the team is to keep the lore in check, to ensure the dialogue for the iconic characters is in voice, and to guide us through the overarching storyline, so that each release keeps us moving toward our final story goals.

We’ve made a lot of changes for Season 2. We’re continually improving our processes with each new release. The most notable being that we no longer have 4 Living World teams, each making their own content; we have 1. This has allowed us to create much more cohesive releases, and I think you’ll find that our story hangs together quite well in Season 2.

Hi Angel

Very interesting information, thank you for taking the time to reply! (how do you measure the size of your team members?)

I didn’t quite realize how varied a team has to be for these releases to come together, basically 2 devs per area of expertise, tough position to be in but it seems to be working now. Does that mean there are 15ish teams like this?

So you are the cake pan?

Yes, judging from this release the story steps have a clearer beginning, better development and a transition to the next story step that is nicely integrated in the game world and mechanics.
The Pacing of the Episode and the steps within was great! This added a lot to the overall coherency.
I did the first 2 steps in one go but then took a break and did the last part later. I have done it a second time on my Asura (first toon), to get alternative dialogue and to see the hologram I missed.
It was a little short but more is always more.

Glad to hear you found a team composition that works for you. LS1 did seem very scattered and detached, and while this works as a scarlet pun, didn’t so much for the player.
Looking forward to the next episodes!

Michael

PS.
Whoever had the right idea with the vines for the living world instead of living maps, give him two cookies please.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In the Living Story, their goal is to focus on the world and let the players role play their characters and create their own history and personality — which I believe should have been the goal in the first place. Them trying to define our characters will only lead to failures.

My bad, I was feeling lazy and didn’t read previous post (except the ones by Anet). I do understand your point now, the complaint is not that the current personal story is not personal enough, but that the previous personal story wasn’t, and that trying to do so caused problems latter on in the game.

Though… I don’t think there would have been these ‘problems’ if they had concluded personal story properlly; if they had tackled the emotional aspects of our characters, and tied up their loose ends. For example, we lost Forgal, the only bad-kitten in game with a witty sense of humor and the strength to back it up… and there is certainly emotions there that it sturs within our characters, but they never addressed or touched up on them.

This could have been resolved by transforming forgal into a Risen, and forcing us to slay him, allowing them to really dwelve into the emotional depth of our characters, and yet… he died, and we moved on; that was it, the issue pushed under the table and forgotten, despite us having strong personal bonds. That left the matter unresolved, no, far worst than that, they devaluded our relationship by ignoring it. If that’s the case then it truly would have been better to avoid personalizing the story all together.

Then there is claudicus, who is set on dethroning the queen, and the bandates, who have a strong tie to the white mantle… and yet, these too, die off when we join an order, left unconcluded. Though, I still have hopes living story will touch up on these matters.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . you are deliberately missing my point it seems. The item itself does not matter, the search for it is what the chapter is about. It is not about the father, it is not about “what’s in the box”, it’s not about where the treasure came from.

It’s about my character searching for it, because he wants to. Not because it’s a powerful weapon needed by the greater plot, not because anyone else is pushing my character into doing it.

It might as well be a sled named “Rosebud” for all the significance the item has.

Again, don’t see how that chapter isn’t personal. Someone tried to kill the character, and the story stopped being about the parents until the end when there’s a final capstone of “do you really want to know”.

And there’s no mention they didn’t. That choice is mine to make, as it should be.

. . . so if that’s the case, then how can you say it wasn’t personal before and now say it is if I choose it to be?

Isn’t that my original point all along? — that the personal story is not about you instead you simply choose to believe in the illusion that it was, even though the story states otherwise? The “personal story” is nothing but an instanced “heart” quest.

You can write in your journal how you completed the heart quest and log every heroic deeds, but the reality is, the heart quest is not about you. If someone else is reliving your adventures through your journal entries, then that would be about you, but not about that someone else.

There’s a lot of holes in the narrative, and it . . . to me . . . seems like a conscious choice because it allows players to scribble in their own notes and make up their own individual stories.

That’s my point! The “you” are missing in the story, thus it become necessary to fill in the “holes”. The “you” is not part of the story and now you admit that you have to scribble it in your individual story.

I honestly have no problem with that approach to the personal story. I get it. But to say to myself that the story is about me is a bit moronic because the “me” is not in the story, the “me” is whatever I do in the game.

I thought you said earlier if I choose to make it personal then it is? So if I choose to have my own journal which details everything which goes on (everything) and keeps it in-character, then how is it not my story? If I wrote in there how my charr joined the Vigil because he didn’t trust the other two orders to be capable enough of keeping Tyria safe, then that’s his story. If I choose to write Tobias joined a different order because he believed in their methods, then that’s his story. If I choose to write about my maniac asura engineer wanting to beat Taimi with a spanner because of how clueless she is, that’s his story.

I’ll repeat what I posted above;

“You can write in your journal how you completed the heart quest and log every heroic deeds, but the reality is, the heart quest is not about you. If someone else is reliving your adventures through your journal entries, then that would be about you, but not about that someone else reliving your story.”

No offense, but I do want the option of defining my characters more sharply to be in my hands and not someone else’s.

I’m not arguing about that nor I want ArenaNet to define my character. I’m simply saying that if ArenaNet attempts to define my character, to make it personal, then they could’ve done so as I suggested above about the unknown parent — but since they didn’t, they left that hole for us to fill in, which makes the personal story impersonal and more like a backdrop of a beautiful portrait of ourselves.

Simply put — the personal story is the background landscape to define the settings, not the player, the players can then do what ever they want on the foreground.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

In the Living Story, their goal is to focus on the world and let the players role play their characters and create their own history and personality — which I believe should have been the goal in the first place. Them trying to define our characters will only lead to failures.

My bad, I was feeling lazy and didn’t read previous post (except the ones by Anet). I do understand your point now, the complaint is not that the current personal story is not personal enough, but that the previous personal story wasn’t, and that trying to do so caused problems latter on in the game.

Though… I don’t think there would have been these ‘problems’ if they had concluded personal story properlly; if they had tackled the emotional aspects of our characters, and tied up their loose ends. For example, we lost Forgal, the only bad-kitten in game with a witty sense of humor and the strength to back it up… and there is certainly emotions there that it sturs within our characters, but they never addressed or touched up on them.

This could have been resolved by transforming forgal into a Risen, and forcing us to slay him, allowing them to really dwelve into the emotional depth of our characters, and yet… he died, and we moved on; that was it, the issue pushed under the table and forgotten, despite us having strong personal bonds. That left the matter unresolved, no, far worst than that, they devaluded our relationship by ignoring it. If that’s the case then it truly would have been better to avoid personalizing the story all together.

I thought about that also why our character made that happen. The answer points us back to my main point — the story is not about us.

You see in that very moment, the possible reactions to what Forgal did can be numerous and impossible to predict. Sure some will have emotional attachment to the NPC — I did like Tybalt — but others will find the mentors annoying and could care less if they sacrifice themselves.

That open ended part of the scenario allowed the player to role play the moment. When Tybalt choose to sacrifice himself, I stayed there trying to get back in to help him out because that’s just not right. When I came to my senses, I accepted his sacrifice and didn’t put it to waste. When Forgal did it, I went to Hoelbrak and told his story. When Seran’d turn, I kneeled and prayed by the gate for her.

Was any of those choices in the personal story — of course not — because what is logged in my journal IS NOT my personal story. That’s my point.

Then there is claudicus, who is set on dethroning the queen, and the bandates, who have a strong tie to the white mantle… and yet, these too, die off when we join an order, left unconcluded. Though, I still have hopes living story will touch up on these matters.

Refer to what I wrote above, those were left open ended on purpose, because the personal story is not about you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Was any of those choices in the personal story — of course not — because what is logged in my journal IS NOT my personal story. That’s my point.

because the personal story is not about you.

Eh, its not personally about me, because some of the choices my character makes or the things they say or do, I would never do myself. But the story is personally about my characters, so it still is a personal story, just not mine. For example, I could never get along with that annoying priory girl, and yet in the spoken diologue my character genuenly cared for her. So it is my characters personal story, and in affect, should be concluded properly… only, it wasn’t; and that’s where they failed.

I’m not seeing any difference from last year. It’s still all about the 2 gals love story.
After about 2 minutes, I turned the sound off. Not seeing any reason to turn it back on during their story.

And no, I’m not prejudice. If it was 2 guys or 2 buffalo or 2 taco bell dogs, it would still be those 2’s story. Had more than enough of that npc character development last year.
It prevents immersion, instead of enhancing it.

Try a story segment where npc’s just give pertinent info and an occasional “be careful” and involve the actual players in dialog that makes us seek the right answers from them. Then instead of it being their story we are asked to help with, it becomes our story of fixing a problem we discovered and increasing our fame.

Worth a try…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

snip

I don’t believe you understand the meaning of the word “personal” and have argued with others back and forth about the “you” and the “me” while being wrong the entire time.

The Personal Story is about the player character. Period, full stop. If there was no PC, the story wouldn’t happen, Tyria wouldn’t exist, heart quests would not be completed, the map would never be explored, dynamic events wouldn’t exist, and absolutely the Personal Story would never even be touched. The PC is the protagonist, whom the story is about, because without a protagonist the story could not exist.

This is pretty much fundamental writing 101.

As to the gaps in the narrative, flexibility in roleplaying may be a factor, but most commonly is due to it being an MMO, with multiple character possibilities and choices, such that nailing down a certain variable alienates a percentage of the player base’s choices, race and sex being the most obvious.

There’s no Schrodinger’s Cat version of the personal story, no illusion of whatever you’re trying to point out. The PERSONAL story is about the player. The Living Story is about the world, and the problem I and others have with its implementation is that so far the PC’s contributions to the world of Tyria are being marginalized in favor of two dimensional characters that are George Lucas-ing certain plot elements into the game, such as Marjory and Kasmeer’s “love” which literally is the Jar Jar Binks of a homosexual relationship.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Angel McCoy.1832:

We felt it was important to allow you to customize your PC and in doing so, we gave up some of the opportunity to customize the story to every single PC in the game in every single moment of the game. Instead, we try to bring you moments where you are singled out with customized text in conversations (which you may not even always notice because you don’t see the other options).

Okay, this downright sounds contradictory to me. You want to allow customization to the PCs, but part of that is customizing the story. And you give the establishment for these via the biography options (and later choices)! You have shown you can do these.

All I meant above is that we have a limited amount of content we can make each time. We have a huge number of variables for characters. There is absolutely no way we could put in a special dialogue tree for every possible character combination.

The Living World takes you from where the Personal Story dropped you off and carries you forward through your story. The story.

With the Living World, we’re making a story that everyone can enjoy. You don’t have to be a specific race to play certain content anymore, for example. The customization comes in the personalized dialogue you get when it makes sense to the story.

For example, if it makes sense for an asura to have special dialogue just for them, we do that. If you’re talking to a Priory scholar and you’re a member of the Durmand Priory, you may get a special greeting or additional information that others don’t get. And so on.

Wow, a special greeting, how deep! Essentially what you’re saying is that all the player’s choices are irrelevant so everyone can enjoy it. How inclusive. And boring. If you guys can’t make the whole world seem living, like the threat of the 5 other Elder Dragons whose leiutenants are napping, then why not go a more traditional route? You guys had such a strong start now it seems like the teams are just juggling to release this living story stuff rather than giving players actually meaningful content where their choices are preferences matter.

Kaleban.9834:

I don’t believe you understand the meaning of the word “personal” and have argued with others back and forth about the “you” and the “me” while being wrong the entire time.

First of all, let’s clarify one thing; “you” = your player character, “me” = my player character, “us” = our player character.

Now that’s out of the way

The Personal Story is about the player character.

No it’s not. You just have this bias that the personal story is about the player character because we all did bought into that notion that GW2 is all about “us” and if you take the time to reflect on your journal, nothing in it is about “you” — the “you” is missing, thus is not as “personal” as it was advertised.

Period, full stop. If there was no PC, the story wouldn’t happen, Tyria wouldn’t exist, heart quests would not be completed, the map would never be explored, dynamic events wouldn’t exist, and absolutely the Personal Story would never even be touched.

I disagree. I’ve met the Order, the Pact and have explored Orr with one of my alt without ever progressing the story — I tried to complete them when I’m bored. So contrary to your belief, the story do progress even without you. The dynamic events would exist and will go on their own cycle. None of what you mentioned requires the PC which further reinforce my statement that it’s not about “you”.

The PC is the protagonist, whom the story is about, because without a protagonist the story could not exist.

No they’re not. Protagonists only exists on a single-player games, not in MMO.

This is pretty much fundamental writing 101.

Which you obviously failed. Not knowing the application of protagonist is a Litmus Test on how much you know about “fundamental writing 101”.

As to the gaps in the narrative, flexibility in roleplaying may be a factor, but most commonly is due to it being an MMO, with multiple character possibilities and choices, such that nailing down a certain variable alienates a percentage of the player base’s choices, race and sex being the most obvious.

Which further supports the idea that the story is not focused on any single individual.

There’s no Schrodinger’s Cat version of the personal story, no illusion of whatever you’re trying to point out. The PERSONAL story is about the player.

That’s because you bought on the idea that it’s about you. If you step back for a second and reflect on your experiences. Nothing in the game is about you.

Your story begins when you login to the game and it ends when logout. Whatever you did during that time is your player story — not the “personal story”. You need to have the ability to separate the two.

Calling the personal story “personal” is a misnomer, it’s more like “story missions”.

The Living Story is about the world, and the problem I and others have with its implementation is that so far the PC’s contributions to the world of Tyria are being marginalized in favor of two dimensional characters that are George Lucas-ing certain plot elements into the game, such as Marjory and Kasmeer’s “love” which literally is the Jar Jar Binks of a homosexual relationship.

It would be boring if not for those “eye rolling” moments. There’s plenty of those while hanging around the members of Dentiny’s Edge, specially Logan.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…

lnguy.5127:

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

You actually buy that? If that is even true, I guess seeing Kiel’s and Evon’s face plastered all over the place during the election was just my imagination.

But never mind that, in Ebonhawk, the resistance are mass printing their propaganda and the Whispers have a mass printing machine.

Gotta agree with you Vincent.

Same thing with Divinity’s Reach. Five tyrians, no VIP’s at that time, killed some dragon champions and failed at killing an elder dragon.

In Lions Arch children play their adventures and some NPC’s in the world talk about them.

The pc achieved something at his/her home(great hunt, snaff prize, etc.), skyrocketed through the ranks of an order, played the major role in uniting three orders to become the pact(the largest civil military organization in Tyria), reunited the famous Destiny’s Edge(without the help of the orders), farms Dragon Champions for a living and was the leading commander in the successful mission to kill zhaitan.
Right after that the pc took a break from winning against the dragons and intervened against Scarlet, killing her and thus saving hundreds or even thousands of Lions Arch citizens to give the city a future. Now the pc’s name is even mentioned as the hero of Lions Arch on one of the monuments there.

So how did Destiny’s Edge end up as the 5 tyrians idols, while a character who continually saved the world for two years until now remains just some guy?

tekfan.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…

lnguy.5127:

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

You actually buy that? If that is even true, I guess seeing Kiel’s and Evon’s face plastered all over the place during the election was just my imagination.

But never mind that, in Ebonhawk, the resistance are mass printing their propaganda and the Whispers have a mass printing machine.

Gotta agree with you Vincent.

Same thing with Divinity’s Reach. Five tyrians, no VIP’s at that time, killed some dragon champions and failed at killing an elder dragon.

In Lions Arch children play their adventures and some NPC’s in the world talk about them.

Brilliant point! I forgot about those children role playing in LA.

The pc achieved something at his/her home(great hunt, snaff prize, etc.), skyrocketed through the ranks of an order, played the major role in uniting three orders to become the pact(the largest civil military organization in Tyria), reunited the famous Destiny’s Edge(without the help of the orders), farms Dragon Champions for a living and was the leading commander in the successful mission to kill zhaitan.
Right after that the pc took a break from winning against the dragons and intervened against Scarlet, killing her and thus saving hundreds or even thousands of Lions Arch citizens to give the city a future. Now the pc’s name is even mentioned as the hero of Lions Arch on one of the monuments there.

So how did Destiny’s Edge end up as the 5 tyrians idols, while a character who continually saved the world for two years until now remains just some guy?

Perhaps too many of us that they are still debating which face to put on a poster?

Not to mention, when Kiel was elected, we get to see her big as— I mean hologram for all to see — who needs TV?

EDIT: I just thought of something better.

In Finding Nemo, fish has no TV nor printing press yet the news traveled faster than Marlin can swim.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

tekfan.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…

lnguy.5127:

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

You actually buy that? If that is even true, I guess seeing Kiel’s and Evon’s face plastered all over the place during the election was just my imagination.

But never mind that, in Ebonhawk, the resistance are mass printing their propaganda and the Whispers have a mass printing machine.

Gotta agree with you Vincent.

Same thing with Divinity’s Reach. Five tyrians, no VIP’s at that time, killed some dragon champions and failed at killing an elder dragon.

In Lions Arch children play their adventures and some NPC’s in the world talk about them.

Brilliant point! I forgot about those children role playing in LA.

The pc achieved something at his/her home(great hunt, snaff prize, etc.), skyrocketed through the ranks of an order, played the major role in uniting three orders to become the pact(the largest civil military organization in Tyria), reunited the famous Destiny’s Edge(without the help of the orders), farms Dragon Champions for a living and was the leading commander in the successful mission to kill zhaitan.
Right after that the pc took a break from winning against the dragons and intervened against Scarlet, killing her and thus saving hundreds or even thousands of Lions Arch citizens to give the city a future. Now the pc’s name is even mentioned as the hero of Lions Arch on one of the monuments there.

So how did Destiny’s Edge end up as the 5 tyrians idols, while a character who continually saved the world for two years until now remains just some guy?

Perhaps too many of us that they are still debating which face to put on a poster?

Not to mention, when Kiel was elected, we get to see her big as— I mean hologram for all to see — who needs TV?

EDIT: I just thought of something better.

In Finding Nemo, fish has no TV nor printing press yet the news traveled faster than Marlin can swim.

Also it’s kinda hard to belief that the pact, pretty much forged to kill an elder dragon and show that it can be done, wouldn’t plaster the cities with posters of the victory against zhaitan to give the people hope and to raise recruitments.

Very interesting thread and really great to see the Devs responding in such detail!

It is great to hear our character may soon have a voice, I think it will add considerably to the cinematic scenes.

Braham: Hey there.
Me: Hi, how are you doing?
Braham: Did you… just talk?

Followed by even more hilarity

Thank you for that

It is hard to write a story focused around a character for an MMO. Regarding the OP’s concerns, I don’t mind the current batch of NPCs because I think the story has done a decent job pointing out that they need the player character. Rox and Braham were just rookies when we met them, I think the story should continue show that they view the player as their mentor. Kasmeer and Majorie might bring up the reminder that they never would have met without the player. Perhaps they have a quarrel and we have to help mend things up. The player needs to continue to be the "glue* for this group. Never, ever show this bunch doing things as a group without the player.

Essentially, I’m saying it is critical never to lose the idea that the NPCs need the player. Don’t miss a chance to bring this up. And don’t lose it in the story.

In contrast, people have mentioned how our player is called the ‘Commander’ in the PS, I never got the sense my character was commanding anything in the Personal Story. My character was a lackey being told what to do. It’s shoved in our faces what an expert Trahearne is from the moment we meet – he already has Pact connections and all this knowledge of Orr. Our characters just serving as an instrument to do damage, replaceable by any other. We see the future showing he’s going to unite the Pact and we don’t see a our character by his side in that vision. We don’t get the magic sword and we just get to watch as the NPC we’ve been repeatedly told is more dedicated, more knowledgeable and more destined than our characters could ever be fulfill that destiny. Take our character out of the story and it ends the same.

The Destiny’s Edge story was better since it showed our character serving to bring them together. Again acting like a glue for them. This was helpful, of course, since the player character could talk in the cinematics. It was a little disappointing in the end that we weren’t made an honorary member of Destiny’s Edge, our character still didn’t rate enough to be part of the cool club, I guess.

The introduction of the new batch of NPCs brings a group who are very competent but they’re not already famous and renown. That made them seem to need the help of the player character. That gives us a sense of investment that has been lacking IMO. A hero should be needed, not just be something to point at the next boss mob. I really hope ArenaNet can keep that sense as the story continues and Rox and the other continue to develop and grow.

One last thing I have to add, I really hope you guys have a good villain planned for Season 2. A story is only as good as the villain (and having yet another nutso sylvari that we have to take out in this beginning chapter was not a strong example of one. That mysterious Master of “Peace” guy on the other hand….hmmmm)

tekfan.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

tekfan.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

…

lnguy.5127:

Angel McCoy.1832:

They might have heard your name, but would they put your face with that name in a world where there is no television and no mass printing presses?

I understand your point. However, what I find to be inconsistent with this is that the majority of the time the NPCs get recognized but the PC doesn’t? How does that make sense? The PC is arguably more of an important figure than the NPCs and yet they get more recognition than the PCs when there is no television or mass printing presses?

You actually buy that? If that is even true, I guess seeing Kiel’s and Evon’s face plastered all over the place during the election was just my imagination.

But never mind that, in Ebonhawk, the resistance are mass printing their propaganda and the Whispers have a mass printing machine.

Gotta agree with you Vincent.

Same thing with Divinity’s Reach. Five tyrians, no VIP’s at that time, killed some dragon champions and failed at killing an elder dragon.

In Lions Arch children play their adventures and some NPC’s in the world talk about them.

Brilliant point! I forgot about those children role playing in LA.

The pc achieved something at his/her home(great hunt, snaff prize, etc.), skyrocketed through the ranks of an order, played the major role in uniting three orders to become the pact(the largest civil military organization in Tyria), reunited the famous Destiny’s Edge(without the help of the orders), farms Dragon Champions for a living and was the leading commander in the successful mission to kill zhaitan.
Right after that the pc took a break from winning against the dragons and intervened against Scarlet, killing her and thus saving hundreds or even thousands of Lions Arch citizens to give the city a future. Now the pc’s name is even mentioned as the hero of Lions Arch on one of the monuments there.

So how did Destiny’s Edge end up as the 5 tyrians idols, while a character who continually saved the world for two years until now remains just some guy?

Perhaps too many of us that they are still debating which face to put on a poster?

Not to mention, when Kiel was elected, we get to see her big as— I mean hologram for all to see — who needs TV?

EDIT: I just thought of something better.

In Finding Nemo, fish has no TV nor printing press yet the news traveled faster than Marlin can swim.

Also it’s kinda hard to belief that the pact, pretty much forged to kill an elder dragon and show that it can be done, wouldn’t plaster the cities with posters of the victory against zhaitan to give the people hope and to raise recruitments.

If you speak to Belinda in the Gates, she obviously have heard of the fall of Zhaitan and if the news got that far, posters would be unnecessary. But yeah I agree that part of the Living Story should be a recruitment line forming outside the Vigil’s HQ in LA.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you speak to Belinda in the Gates, she obviously have heard of the fall of Zhaitan and if the news got that far, posters would be unnecessary. But yeah I agree that part of the Living Story should be a recruitment line forming outside the Vigil’s HQ in LA.

Well their is no real need to make posters and slap them everywhere because we have a Holiday to celebrate the defeat of Zhaitan called Dragon Bash now.

I mean a Holiday is much better than a bunch of posters.

I can’t agree with this whole ‘there are no main characters in a mmorpg’ simply because thousands of other people play it. the devs themselves specifically said that they are writing this story from the perspective that the PC is the main character, however they are prioritizing making the world seem alive and real over personalizing character activity. granted I took liberties with the wording, but between the two devs posting here that’s pretty much the sum of it. yes, thousands of other people play this game, however you likely won’t meet half of them, and know even fewer. so as you’re playing you have to conceptualize that the thousand other players are the filler characters, the main npcs the supporting characters, your friends and alts the secondary, and your main, the main. just use your imagination a little, its not that hard. still, a basic story cannot be written without a leading protagonist… unless you think destiny’s edge, trahearn, the mentors, and destiny 2.0 actually knows all 200 thousand of us, and forgal has died some 672 thousand times. no, that’s even less realistic. so from each players perspective, they must be main, otherwise it does not make sense, and the story is shattered.

tekfan.3179:

Also it’s kinda hard to belief that the pact, pretty much forged to kill an elder dragon and show that it can be done, wouldn’t plaster the cities with posters of the victory against zhaitan to give the people hope and to raise recruitments.

This idea gave me a thought. We know that phasing technology allows players to see different things even when they’re logged into the same zone. I wonder if would have been possible to generate a poster of the character’s face and put those all over LA?

Or perhaps easier would have been to use asura tech to create holographic busts of the character’s image proclaiming they were the hero instrumental in taking down Zhaitan. To fit with the story, I suppose the holograms could cycle through images of the Destiny’s Edge NPCs as well and perhaps one or two notable NPCs, that would have been neat to see our character shown along with the others.

Now everyone would be seeing their own character faces so RP-ers might not like it, but you have to figure they always need to work around that part of MMOs.

Heh, and every now and then the hologram tribute could be interrupted by Evon Gnashblade doing a commercial for Black Lion Trading

Please no phasing. It’s always miserable in any game it’s implemented in.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

tekfan.3179:

Also it’s kinda hard to belief that the pact, pretty much forged to kill an elder dragon and show that it can be done, wouldn’t plaster the cities with posters of the victory against zhaitan to give the people hope and to raise recruitments.

This idea gave me a thought. We know that phasing technology allows players to see different things even when they’re logged into the same zone. I wonder if would have been possible to generate a poster of the character’s face and put those all over LA?

Or perhaps easier would have been to use asura tech to create holographic busts of the character’s image proclaiming they were the hero instrumental in taking down Zhaitan. To fit with the story, I suppose the holograms could cycle through images of the Destiny’s Edge NPCs as well and perhaps one or two notable NPCs, that would have been neat to see our character shown along with the others.

Now everyone would be seeing their own character faces so RP-ers might not like it, but you have to figure they always need to work around that part of MMOs.

Heh, and every now and then the hologram tribute could be interrupted by Evon Gnashblade doing a commercial for Black Lion Trading

I thought of that phasing option too and would really love personalisation like that. The game already automatically takes facial screenshots of characters for text-dialogue and the party-ui.
Running a sepia-filter over it and putting it onto a poster doesn’t seem so farfetched I think.

The holos are a good idea.
If there is an expansion to come, I hope Anet sweetens the waiting time with a living world story where recruitment-stands from the Pact are placed in all cities, complete with holographs of victory-scenes and posters of the pc.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Isn’t that my original point all along? — that the personal story is not about you instead you simply choose to believe in the illusion that it was, even though the story states otherwise? The “personal story” is nothing but an instanced “heart” quest.

I’m not sure if that was your original point, but you’ve went from discussion to just telling me it is all in my head. I don’t know what further to discuss in that vein, because I’ve pointed out about that particular one several times it’s about your character, my character, any other person’s character a lot more than it is about a long-dead father. They’re dead. The only bearing they have is they left this birthright and it’s on our characters to find it.

Or to abandon the storyline right there and never bother with it again, you could always do that as a nice middle finger to a deadbeat I suppose.

You can write in your journal how you completed the heart quest and log every heroic deeds, but the reality is, the heart quest is not about you. If someone else is reliving your adventures through your journal entries, then that would be about you, but not about that someone else.

Hold that thought . . .

That’s my point! The “you” are missing in the story, thus it become necessary to fill in the “holes”. The “you” is not part of the story and now you admit that you have to scribble it in your individual story.

Those are only holes for those who care about them. There’s more than likely as many players who don’t care about what their character’s favorite food is, or what they got for their fifteenth birthday, than there are those who can tell you those details ad-libbing the whole time.

They’re extraneous details for the large picture, and they’re left out because they shouldn’t be focused on before the whole of the story is actually done. (Bear in mind, they were still working on things months before release in that regard.)

Putting on my writer’kitten, there’s a reason we don’t have to hear about what color the drapes are in a room characters pass through on the way to somewhere. There’s a reason we don’t need to know what they had for every meal when we see them, and there’s a reason we don’t need to hear about their first spoken words . . . unless any of it is important to any piece of plot. You have a finite amount of “real estate” when you write a story, and you have to be careful about what you fill it with or you’ll run out of space. (And then the readers won’t care how well you describe your meals, Mr. George R.R. Martin.)

Putting on my tabletop player’kitten, it’s a different approach much the same. I don’t need the GM to tell me my character. I would rather tell the GM about them, and have them meet at least halfway on things.

And putting on my RPG player’s hat? Either go the JRPG route and give me fully realized characters, or WRPG and give me blank slates for me to project onto.

“You can write in your journal how you completed the heart quest and log every heroic deeds, but the reality is, the heart quest is not about you. If someone else is reliving your adventures through your journal entries, then that would be about you, but not about that someone else reliving your story.”

I’ll make one final note on this thread of discussion – pick up any novel and I’ll guarantee you’ll find the story is probably not about the protagonists in it. I could, and have, made the argument ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is not about the titular characters so much as it is about the circumstances which drive them into tragedy. Similarly, ‘The Hobbit’ is never about Bilbo Baggins, it’s about the dwarves.

Simply put — the personal story is the background landscape to define the settings, not the player, the players can then do what ever they want on the foreground.

The difference between you and I is that you see this as a problem, and I see it as an opportunity.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

The Destiny’s Edge story was better since it showed our character serving to bring them together. Again acting like a glue for them. This was helpful, of course, since the player character could talk in the cinematics. It was a little disappointing in the end that we weren’t made an honorary member of Destiny’s Edge, our character still didn’t rate enough to be part of the cool club, I guess.

My impression was that we were, it’s just that none of them saw the need to make a big song and dance about it. One of the cinematics in the epilogue instance shows the PC marching victoriously into Fort Trinity flanked by Destiny’s Edge – if that’s not being a part of the band, that’s being so epic that we get Destiny’s Edge acting as our honour guard.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

…

Simply put — the personal story is the background landscape to define the settings, not the player, the players can then do what ever they want on the foreground.

The difference between you and I is that you see this as a problem, and I see it as an opportunity.

I can understand why you may see this as an opportunity. If you’re into roleplaying, a blank sheet of paper is allowing you to fill it with whatever you want.
I ran into a group of roleplayers standing at the beach of Sunshine cove and chatting at the bar, talking about how delicious the food was and how they enjoy their vacation.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t almost laugh my butt off(no offense), but if that’s the way they enjoy the game, I’m also happy they enjoyed themselves.

However…
Then what do you need the Living story for at all?
Join a roleplaying-guild and ignore the personal story completely. Let the world be your sheet of paper and nothing else. Blank, spared of any interactivity except for the combat-system and the shop-interactions.
If that’s your kind of opportunity, grab it. Create a character, level it to 80 and only interact with other roleplayers, instead of the interactive story.
On my part I want to delve deep into a rich story. I enjoy the interactivity of a game.
If I can tell the game that my favourite color is blue and a NPC later sends me a blue dye as a gift or I suddenly find a blue paradise bird in my story instance, that’s a marble of interactivity for me, rather than a cage that limits my experience.

In short, I want to be part of a game’s world. If there is a Living Story for my character to play, I enjoy it when it’s interactive and the world itself reacts to it.

tekfan.3179:

I can understand why you may see this as an opportunity. If you’re into roleplaying, a blank sheet of paper is allowing you to fill it with whatever you want.
I ran into a group of roleplayers standing at the beach of Sunshine cove and chatting at the bar, talking about how delicious the food was and how they enjoy their vacation.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t almost laugh my butt off(no offense), but if that’s the way they enjoy the game, I’m also happy they enjoyed themselves.

I don’t go to that extreme, mind you, but it’s more in the context of filling out the details Mr. Vincent asked about way up-thread. Does my character have a rival? What did he do growing up? Why pick the particular profession they did? What do they do when there’s no focus on them (between Personal Story segments, for instance)? Do they like music, reading, acting or watching actors?

I don’t expect ANet or any company to tell me that when I’m playing a game where my character isn’t just a viewpoint from which I see the world (again, JRPGs vs Western RPGs).

However…
Then what do you need the Living story for at all?
Join a roleplaying-guild and ignore the personal story completely. Let the world be your sheet of paper and nothing else. Blank, spared of any interactivity except for the combat-system and the shop-interactions.
If that’s your kind of opportunity, grab it. Create a character, level it to 80 and only interact with other roleplayers, instead of the interactive story.

Why limit myself so thoroughly when there’s plenty of stuff to make use of?

On my part I want to delve deep into a rich story. I enjoy the interactivity of a game.
If I can tell the game that my favourite color is blue and a NPC later sends me a blue dye as a gift or I suddenly find a blue paradise bird in my story instance, that’s a marble of interactivity for me, rather than a cage that limits my experience.

Yeah, the difference is I don’t expect deep, rich stories in my games. In my experience, the more story the developers put into the game, the less there is for me to do with it. There may be branches, and options, but in the end they matter only as a means of getting me to the final part of the story where those decisions might not even affect the outcome in more than a few lines of text.

In short, I want to be part of a game’s world. If there is a Living Story for my character to play, I enjoy it when it’s interactive and the world itself reacts to it.

Reacts to your character, or to the Living Story? Because so far it seems the world is reacting to the LS events and progression (the vines), though it’s far too early to call it one way or another for the whole of LS2. If you’re talking about the character, that’s never going to happen outside something like a MUD where there’s someone in charge changing the the stage dressings in reaction to what players do. There’s too much in the way of potential for people developing the game to get it all.

For instance – I still can’t load asura into trebuchets and launch them back to Rata Sum from Fort Salma. And other players can’t lead a force of Separatists against the Black Citadel to try to retake Ascalon. And yet more players can’t just squat down somewhere in the Shiverpeaks and make a fort from which to fight the Icebrood.

And most importantly . . .

Nobody can beat some sense into Logan over his infatuation with Queen Jennah.

If you want your main character to be voiced so badly, do your own lines. It’s what I do in my head.

Whether or not you believe any of the living story or personal story really concerns you is beside the point. The thing is we were lied to. From the minute we finished creating our character, we were greeted with one of the most epic cutscenes I’ve ever seen. It went something like, “I was born here, grew up in this place. Had these friends, overcame this obstacle, and here I am now… I am <character name>, and this is MY story”. Gave me goosebumps first time I saw it.

It was wrong.

I’d be ok with the state the current living story is in except for a few points. First, if we are just part of a really good team, then make the rest of the team at least partly competent. Even with the most recent release, it’s made out where the only person doing any damage in the group is my character. If I am downed, they won’t even come over to try and get me back up. If I die, the mission fails. That’s not part of a team, that’s me carrying the entire mission. Second, for the non combat question and answer part, if you aren’t willing to listen to the people who are telling you the ‘romance’ thing is sappy and a waste of time, then please put in a dialog option to where we can tell them to shut the kitten up and actually have them not have that type of conversation again. Not in just that chapter either, but ever.

Honestly though, with the devs complaining about limited space for dialog and all that, there are much better uses that can be made of what space they do have than trying for a bad high school movie remake.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

tekfan.3179:

…

…

The level of detail a character can have is of course limited in games like this and we fill out the gaps.
However, couldn’t the game-world react? Couldn’t we share a bit, at least a tiny bit?
Aside from the journal and a few mostly mute characters in the home-instance there is nothing in the world that takes note of the characters actions.
Did you play the LW-Story where you killed Scarlet or not? Doesn’t matter, the game world assumes it and slaps the characters name on a monument.
Did you kill Zhaitan before entering Season 2? Arenanet assumes it for the ease of the story, yet there is no mention of that(Although it is saved in your journal, so there could be a check for that).

Another example: I have a asuran thief who met Professor Gorr three times during the personal story. The choices I made led to three meetings with Gorr, once when I joined an order, later when I helped him to test his new weapon and brought him and the weapon to claw island and lastly in the Pact, when he was the researcher to run tests on the captured Eye of Zhaitan. The game doesn’t react to that. There is not even a text-bubble that Gorr remembers the character.
I’d rather have a short reaction, instead of imagining for myself that Gorr has a memory-loss or something.

…

Why limit myself so thoroughly when there’s plenty of stuff to make use of?

Exactly the point I crave and which I think Vincent does, too. Why limit the interactivity when a few more lines of text or one or two checks of the Story Journal could improve the immersion imensely?

…

…
There may be branches, and options, but in the end they matter only as a means of getting me to the final part of the story where those decisions might not even affect the outcome in more than a few lines of text.

I’ve experienced letdowns too. Namely Mass Effect.
Yet you say that you’d find it a limitation to ignore the personal story, so story seems to have importance to you.
I had some differing dialogue with Taimi, since I played an asura who won the snaff-prize. That’s something for me. Only a few lines of text, yet they hightened the immersion.
I don’t expect every decision I make to make a difference in the outcome, but at least the world could react to more of them, aside from my pc’s race.

…

Reacts to your character, or to the Living Story? Because so far it seems the world is reacting to the LS events and progression (the vines), though it’s far too early to call it one way or another for the whole of LS2. If you’re talking about the character, that’s never going to happen outside something like a MUD where there’s someone in charge changing the the stage dressings in reaction to what players do. There’s too much in the way of potential for people developing the game to get it all.

For instance – I still can’t load asura into trebuchets and launch them back to Rata Sum from Fort Salma. And other players can’t lead a force of Separatists against the Black Citadel to try to retake Ascalon. And yet more players can’t just squat down somewhere in the Shiverpeaks and make a fort from which to fight the Icebrood.

And most importantly . . .

Nobody can beat some sense into Logan over his infatuation with Queen Jennah.

Yeah, Logan… I’ve given up on him even before the game launched, when I read the book.

Launching Asura from fort Salma to Rata Sum…I got you on my list now.
Still, I’m not talking about creating totally new story-branches in the end, based on how you came to the point of defeating Zhaitan.
However, the things that already happened in the personal story of a pc could at least get some attention.
In most cases the pc is a hero who did heroic deeds for two years. Yet, the pc is just another stranger to pretty much every NPC.
The pc saved Claw Island? What do Kiel and Magnus care?!
The pc saved Lions Arch twice and fough alongside Rox and co in the pavilion to save people in Divinity’s Reach? What do the Seraph in Brisbain care?!
Oh yeah, and on a sidenote the pc was the leading Pact-Commander in the mission where Zhaitan got killed…just a character who reunited the famous Destiny’s Edge and led them to the victory against an Elder Dragon. Something they failed at years ago(thanks, Logan btw) which still made them famous.
Not that I want the whole lot of Tyria cheer to my pc and praise him, nope, that would be more awkward than anything else.
However, at least some npc’s should recognize the character and react to the pc in some way. May it be that the Seraph-leader at brisbain recognizes the pc as the Commander who brought down Zhaitan and makes a comment that the group should be in good hands and can take care of their own in uncharted territory.

tekfan.3179:

The level of detail a character can have is of course limited in games like this and we fill out the gaps.
However, couldn’t the game-world react? Couldn’t we share a bit, at least a tiny bit?
Aside from the journal and a few mostly mute characters in the home-instance there is nothing in the world that takes note of the characters actions.

I suppose so, but we run into issues with time, more notably the time to make those little adjustments and inclusions. Frankly, ANet didn’t leave themselves enough time for that phase of development the first time or the next time and quite likely this time too.

It’s a criticism I do level at them – they did not budget time well enough. It doesn’t matter exactly what obstacles came up, they simply didn’t get there. I’d go into it further but this problem is better saved for a different topic. I’ll leave it at this:

Guild Wars 2 probably would not have suffered terribly if what we got as “Lost Shores” was pushed back and instead we had “Into Zhaitan’s Lair”.

Did you play the LW-Story where you killed Scarlet or not?
Did you kill Zhaitan before entering Season 2?

Those assumptions are part of the issue, I suppose, when I said they’re not leaving time for the polish.

Another example:

I have that experience too, actually, but it was piggy-backing through on someone else’s PS chapter where Crusader Deborah was there and it didn’t check journal flags to see if it should react. I mean, it’s not my PS so I didn’t expect it to but it would have been nice. I was “lucky” in that my Orr trip didn’t have me meet characters I already knew, except for Doern.

Exactly the point I crave and which I think Vincent does, too. Why limit the interactivity when a few more lines of text or one or two checks of the Story Journal could improve the immersion imensely?

See above: it’s the time issue. That points to a layer of polish which hadn’t been given time to be done.

I’ve experienced letdowns too. Namely Mass Effect.

A series I’m not touching primarily for learning how the touted “your choices matter” boils down to “red, green, or blue” in the end. Okay, that’s oversimplifying it but I’ve watched Spoiler Warning (and SF Debris) . . . so when I see what was going on there, I pretty much confirmed my fears – the choices don’t matter as much as they should.

(I do highly recommend the Chuck Sonnenberg play of ME2, by the way. Heck I recommend him completely – he’s worthwhile and entertaining.)

Yet you say that you’d find it a limitation to ignore the personal story, so story seems to have importance to you.

I find any choice I make where I purposefully leave material aside is a limitation. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes not. I would prefer to not pretend Tobias had nothing to do with the Pact, or anything which happened previous. I’d much rather own it and work with it.

I don’t expect every decision I make to make a difference in the outcome, but at least the world could react to more of them, aside from my pc’s race.

There’s more than a few instances I can recall but they’re highly limited and it shows where the time ran out for that kind of polish. Want an instance? Go visit Rytlock’s office in the Black Citadel with a non-charr ranger. That is the kind of polish missing from about the point where the three Orders start to enter into the game.

. . . unless you go with the Whispers. Then there’s some interesting dialogue options you can happen into. I’d tell you more, but they’d probably kill me.

However, the things that already happened in the personal story of a pc could at least get some attention.

Half these things are because LS1 was being generated separated from the PS so it didn’t need to be joined since there are so many people who claim they quit the PS due to a certain necromancer entering the cast. The other half can almost be waved away due to potential in-world reasons. (The Wildlands are kind of the bass-ackward end of nowhere, a dead-end posting from what I gathered.)

However, at least some npc’s should recognize the character and react to the pc in some way. May it be that the Seraph-leader at brisbain recognizes the pc as the Commander who brought down Zhaitan and makes a comment that the group should be in good hands and can take care of their own in uncharted territory.

Given the note of how LS2 now assumes the PS is finished, that’s another sign there wasn’t enough polishing done from what I can see.

Thanks for the discussion. I think I’ve about said all I could without getting into repetitions of the same thing. (“ANet, please, polish is not just for the tile floors.”)

Mister Midnight.9837:

But to the point of the current living story, why is it that when the Commander of the Pact approaches a Seraph camp the guy that runs out doesn’t say something along the lines of “Wow! What brings the Commander of the Pact all the way out here?!?”. The Player Character should be a big deal, defeating Zhaitan and saving the world makes you at least as recognizable as any Destiny’s Edge member I’d say.

Sorry if someone already mentioned it, I didn’t read the whole thread yet. If you talk to some of the NPCs near Prosperity Waypoint one of them calls you Commander (the hylek if I’m not wrong), the others talks to you in a respectful way as if you were an important figure indeed.

RyuDragnier.9476:

About those last spoilers Angel, have you thought that maybe you should make it so there are multiple fronts, and that the pact is also hot on the heels of the other elder dragons?

The Pact is fighting Jormag’s corruption in Frostgorge, and they also operate in the Brand.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m not sure if that was your original point, but you’ve went from discussion to just telling me it is all in my head. I don’t know what further to discuss in that vein, because I’ve pointed out about that particular one several times it’s about your character, my character, any other person’s character a lot more than it is about a long-dead father. They’re dead. The only bearing they have is they left this birthright and it’s on our characters to find it.

Or to abandon the storyline right there and never bother with it again, you could always do that as a nice middle finger to a deadbeat I suppose.

You’re missing the point again. If the “birthright” is about us, then it would have changed us. For instance, when my charr found the item, it should be a unique weapon skin or something that aesthetically changed my character. Or the item can be exchanged for a land, house, or my own legion, or something. With the human unknown parents it can be as simple as something written on the gravestone of my father like;

“A father who will always play the Seraph for his son playing as the Thief.”

.. and if you’re a warrior for example;

“A father who will always play the Thief for his son playing as the Seraph.”

With something simple thing like that takes the story to a personal level.

Instead we get a generic address “…our beloved <Character Name>.”

Those are only holes for those who care about them. There’s more than likely as many players who don’t care about what their character’s favorite food is, or what they got for their fifteenth birthday, than there are those who can tell you those details ad-libbing the whole time.

Again, my point exactly. If those are details to be ad-libbed it only reinforce what I’m saying that the story is not personal — since everything personal are ad-lib.

They’re extraneous details for the large picture, and they’re left out because they shouldn’t be focused on before the whole of the story is actually done. (Bear in mind, they were still working on things months before release in that regard.)

I’m not saying that ArenaNet should put them in — they don’t have to and I’m ok with the things are. However, don’t expect me to call it “personal story” after they leaving things out.

You have a finite amount of “real estate” when you write a story, and you have to be careful about what you fill it with or you’ll run out of space. (And then the readers won’t care how well you describe your meals, Mr. George R.R. Martin.)

Not complaining about the writing at all since I understand the constraints, but it would be moronic of me to believe in the misnomer they call “personal story” that it is something personal and not generic.

Putting on my tabletop player’kitten, it’s a different approach much the same. I don’t need the GM to tell me my character. I would rather tell the GM about them, and have them meet at least halfway on things.

Isn’t that what they’ve done to “personal” story — it’s about us telling the GM about our characters?

I think that’s the right approach — but don’t call it “personal” because it isn’t.

And putting on my RPG player’s hat? Either go the JRPG route and give me fully realized characters, or WRPG and give me blank slates for me to project onto.

It doesn’t matter.

~snip~
Similarly, ‘The Hobbit’ is never about Bilbo Baggins, it’s about the dwarves.

Actually is about the brewing evil and the dragon Smaug, but I digress.

If you are the player playing Bilbo, can you say that the story is about you? Of course not. The story about Bilbo is the book he wrote that he passed down to Frodo. No different than our GW2 character writing a journal.

The difference between you and I is that you see this as a problem, and I see it as an opportunity.

I don’t see the GW2 story a problem at all. The problem lies on the notion that the “personal” is personal —which is not -- and the fact that players bought into the idea that GW2 is about the player — which is also not.

If we all accept this simple fact, and shatter the illusion concocted by the ArenaNet ad campaign, that it’s not about the player and their chracter, then we’ll see no problem with what they are doing at all. It will all make sense.

Ms. McCoy, there is something in your posts which I feel needs to be addressed.

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.”

This never happened.

You never told that story. You did not write those scenes. Nowhere in the entire game of Guild Wars 2 does this ever take place, and therefore it is not the story you told.

This has happened repeatedly throughout Season 1, you refer to events and information that never actually transpire in the game. There are forum posts that detail how the Flame Legion were just using Scarlet to get their way, but there is no evidence for this in the game. Other posts describe how the dredge were inspired by multiple victories and motivated to keep serving as shock troops, but there isn’t a single NPC who says anything remotely justifying this. The krait were described as bitter and resentful after the Tower fell and struck LA in pursuit of vengeance, but there isn’t a single scene where that idea is conveyed.

If it isn’t in the game, it doesn’t exist. If it never makes it from your head to the page, it is never written.

The storyteller is responsible for conveying the entire narrative, and any holes in the tapestry are theirs to mend. It does not matter if you have the answers. It does not matter if you have it all properly arranged in your mind. It does not matter that you are a smart and clever thinker. All that matters is what you actually create in your medium. Art is judged by its results, not its intentions.

We never left the Pact. Anyone can claim we left to do our own thing, but there isn’t a single scene in the story that actually demonstrates this. It’s like leaving a gap between Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 and giving a brief synopsis of what was supposed to happen. That’s not storytelling, that’s telling that there should have been a story. And it’s all well and good to claim that there were priorities and time constraints, but maybe we didn’t need one or two of the hundred of lines of Scarlet’s “Mwahahahaha, I’m evil” rants or a scene or two of Marjory and Kasmeer making kissy faces, or a random interlude of Braham being a stereotypical moron. Maybe one of those scenes could have been spent actually moving the plot for the Player Characters.

You cannot ask us to pretend that you wrote the missing chapter of your novel. If it isn’t in the game, it does not exist. If it never happened in game, it did not happen.