Guild Wars 2

Doing the “Story Episode” for the Living Story Season 2 in one character, should unlock the repeatability across ALL characters, aka account bound. Clearly it’s not the case here. Fix it please ANet

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-story-journal/

To unlock an episode and have it added to your story Journal, you simply need to log in to the game during the two-week period that the release is live to be given permanent, free access to the storyline of that episode. Once you’ve unlocked it by simply logging in, you can replay that episode’s storyline on any character on your account as many times as you like from your story Journal forever. Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems. (Don’t forget you can earn gold and purchase gems to unlock the episode for your account).

This means that you will have permanent access to the story for all current and future characters as long as you logged in during the time period the story is available. I’m sure the story in the gem shop functions the same way as in unlocking for your whole account once purchased. The story in the gem shop is for players who didn’t log in during the 2 week period a story was available to unlock it for free.

Also keep in mind the new living story stuff can be done only on level 80 characters, but you should be able to see it in your story journal on characters lower than 80. If you aren’t seeing it in your story journal on all of your characters regardless of level, then it’s most likely a bug that will be fixed asap.

Just to check, your alts are also level 80? I remember reading that LS2 is only available to level 80 characters.

Thank you for the new information.

Repeatability for achievements should be enabled as account bound.

This game has too many account bound and not enough character bound achievements. Please let it as-is.

It’s not even like it will prevent map access for other characters like in GW1 (you had to do each campaign with each character, and story completion was needed to access maps in Faction and Nightfall)

My alts are lv80. Re playability doesn’t work. I did the main story on my Ranger, tried to do the achievement run on my Warrior. Didn’t work.

I logged in on my level 80 character and the first thing I noticed was a green star shaking above my mini map on the right side of the screen. I clicked it and it asked if I wanted to open the mission journal and I did. I checked all of my other characters (none of which are level 80 yet) and they all have the new living story in their story journals though it says it will become available when they reach level 80. That part at least seems to be working. I haven’t played the new content yet, so can’t comment on replaying it for achievements.

I’m also curious why this is not account bound. Why do we have to play the same 3 missions on however many characters just to be able to get the achievements with that character? Better do the story on the character you intend to do the achievements on, or you have to do it all over again.

On the flip side, repeating the instances on another character gives you the loot…. I suppose it is like the personal story – same stuff repeatable on mult toons.

It is the same as personal story, so have to do again on alts

Ok question:

If i have 10 characters and i unlock everything on my main character, after we get to the next event, considering i unlocked everyting on 1 character, do i have access to doing the story again with all other characters after this event ends? or do i have to unlock it now with each one?

Rebound.3409:

Ok question:

If i have 10 characters and i unlock everything on my main character, after we get to the next event, considering i unlocked everyting on 1 character, do i have access to doing the story again with all other characters after this event ends? or do i have to unlock it now with each one?

the unlocking is account bound. It’s just the progress is character bound.

You can do the story on any alt you want any time now. But you have to start from the 1st instance (the one in brisband) for each alt.

the hero panel indeed states unlocking is account bound, but it doesn’t seem that way yet. I’ve finished the story on my engi and redid a few story steps with him to get the achievements. one achievement (don’t get hit by static discharge) seemed a bit kitten engi, so I thought I’d try it on my mesmer and just reflect the stuff. my mesmer does NOT have the achievements unlocked, so I won’t get the buff icon for which achievements I can still earn in the instance. I have to do it (and [s]probably[s]certainly the whole story) again, to unlock it.

the fact that we have to replay the story at all and can’t try to get at least some achievements during the first time is a big disappointement for me. having to do it on multiple characters because some achievements favour certain classes is unacceptable. I’ll wait till this gets fixed, there’s really no fun in the way it currently works and I really hope that’s not intended.

tl;dr: right now, you need to complete all story steps for each character you want to unlock the achievement page, then you can complete the necessary story steps again to get those achievements (multiple times, as some exclude others with near certainty).

edit: finished the first story instance, went in again, still can’t do the achievement without finishing the complete story first. tried getting the achievement anyway, never got hit by a discharge but no achievement.

Didn’t they advertise it to be unlocked across all characters?

I’d say this is a bug and will be figured out when they can.

Taygus.4571:

Didn’t they advertise it to be unlocked across all characters?

I’d say this is a bug and will be figured out when they can.

that was my understanding as well, I’m fairly certain this isn’t intended. the game is already increadibly alt-unfriendly, the only upside is being able to get use the character you think can do something best/easiest, forcing people with alts to grind/complete the base story multiple times before being able to tackle the achievements would be a slap in the face to those who like playing with different classes. I just hope they fix it soon.

Common sense says that it should be account bound.

Common sense says that it should be character bound.

Eowin Of Rohan.2619:

Common sense says that it should be character bound.

The entire game is account bound. There is literally no reason for this to be character bound.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Eowin Of Rohan.2619:

Common sense says that it should be character bound.

The entire game is account bound. There is literally no reason for this to be character bound.

Personal story is character bound. Living Story is an extension of Personal Story and therefore it makes sense that it too is Character bound.

Since it is replayable, there is no reason to make it character bound, since if you want to do it with other character you can just use the replay function.

Many things should be account-bound in this game. This is not one of them.

If everything was account-bound, what would be the point of creating a new character? Account-bound content is excellent to remove unnecessary, unfun grind from when playing with alts, or preserving past acchievements, money, etc.

However, the adventure itself should remain character bound. Because if we make the adventure account bound, there’s nothing left to do the moment you create a new alt character – everything is done already!

khani.4786:

Personal story is character bound. Living Story is an extension of Personal Story and therefore it makes sense that it too is Character bound.

I don’t recall any of the LS1 being character bound but do you know of any that were?

They did say that LS2 would act as ‘continued story’ so I sort of assumed that like personal story, I would need to do it on any character that I wanted to access the achievements on. After unlocking those I could work on them ‘overall’ on any character.

Taygus.4571:

Didn’t they advertise it to be unlocked across all characters?

I’d say this is a bug and will be figured out when they can.

The living story is unlocked and playable on all characters.

To unlock the achievements you must complete the story on the character you wish to do them on. I can’t get to the final part of my personal story and complete the Arah Dungeon Story mode on another character in order to finish the first character’s story.

If my guardian does a dungeon story mode my guardian has access to the explorable paths. Same thing going on here. Have to do the story mode before you unlock the explorable/achievement path.

Hachiman.2470:

khani.4786:

Personal story is character bound. Living Story is an extension of Personal Story and therefore it makes sense that it too is Character bound.

I don’t recall any of the LS1 being character bound but do you know of any that were?

Season 1 was a different bag of rocks. It was not built or designed with the story journal or continuation of personal story in mind.

I was looking forward to reading the dev response on this matter. However, despite the thread showing that there is a dev response (red thread icon), there is no dev response anywhere in this thread.

Did a dev post in here and then delete their comment?
Did anyone catch what the comment said?

Hmm. I wonder if they were stating possibly incorrect information regarding this subject and instead opted to remove their post until internal discussion on the subject verified that their response was, indeed, the correct information.

khani.4786:

Season 1 was a different bag of rocks. It was not built or designed with the story journal or continuation of personal story in mind.

True but it was still labeled as the living story not a personal story, only a continuation. The personal story is different for every character you have unless you create them all exactly the same thus that part of the story has to be character-bound. This story is exactly the same no matter which toon you use so it makes it redundant for no reason. If it was suppose to be character-bound then at least have it be the same format that the personal story is, that is, based on character creation.

khani.4786:

The living story is unlocked and playable on all characters.

To unlock the achievements you must complete the story on the character you wish to do them on. I can’t get to the final part of my personal story and complete the Arah Dungeon Story mode on another character in order to finish the first character’s story.

If my guardian does a dungeon story mode my guardian has access to the explorable paths. Same thing going on here. Have to do the story mode before you unlock the explorable/achievement path.

Well the Arah example you are using is part of your personal story. This is living story, not personal. Each character you create can have a different story line so it makes total sense to have that character-bound. This is exactly the same story so what’s the point? The dungeon example is a good example but one that many have complained about as well. The difference in the dungeon however is that you can still run the explorable path you just can’t start it so in that way you don’t really need to redo the story mode.

Hachiman.2470:

khani.4786:

Season 1 was a different bag of rocks. It was not built or designed with the story journal or continuation of personal story in mind.

True but it was still labeled as the living story not a personal story, only a continuation. The personal story is different for every character you have unless you create them all exactly the same thus that part of the story has to be character-bound. This story is exactly the same no matter which toon you use so it makes it redundant for no reason. If it was suppose to be character-bound then at least have it be the same format that the personal story is, that is, based on character creation.

khani.4786:

The living story is unlocked and playable on all characters.

To unlock the achievements you must complete the story on the character you wish to do them on. I can’t get to the final part of my personal story and complete the Arah Dungeon Story mode on another character in order to finish the first character’s story.

If my guardian does a dungeon story mode my guardian has access to the explorable paths. Same thing going on here. Have to do the story mode before you unlock the explorable/achievement path.

Well the Arah example you are using is part of your personal story. This is living story, not personal. Each character you create can have a different story line so it makes total sense to have that character-bound. This is exactly the same story so what’s the point? The dungeon example is a good example but one that many have complained about as well. The difference in the dungeon however is that you can still run the explorable path you just can’t start it so in that way you don’t really need to redo the story mode.

The story lines are only different up to a certain point, after which all of the story steps are exactly the same. They said that living story is a continuation of personal story. Season 1 happened after the defeat of Zhaitan, and Season 2 is after season 1. The fact that they did season 1 differently is because they had not yet thought of doing it through the story journal. The story is personal to a particular character. The interactions between your character and the bi-conics are different based on the choices you’d made in your personal story, your race, etc.

I still point out the fact that you cannot start explorable paths of a dungeon unless that particular character has completed the story version.

The story mode & explore modes of dungeons and game story work the same, as they should.

In Guild Wars 1 you couldn’t complete the story on one character and then immediately be able to access hard mode on all of your characters…that was character bound as well.

khani.4786:

The story lines are only different up to a certain point, after which all of the story steps are exactly the same. They said that living story is a continuation of personal story. Season 1 happened after the defeat of Zhaitan, and Season 2 is after season 1. The fact that they did season 1 differently is because they had not yet thought of doing it through the story journal. The story is personal to a particular character. The interactions between your character and the bi-conics are different based on the choices you’d made in your personal story, your race, etc.

I still point out the fact that you cannot start explorable paths of a dungeon unless that particular character has completed the story version.

The story mode & explore modes of dungeons and game story work the same, as they should.

In Guild Wars 1 you couldn’t complete the story on one character and then immediately be able to access hard mode on all of your characters…that was character bound as well.

Well different is still different even if it’s only to a certain point. It just make sense that if you are going to essentially make the LS part of the personal story through the story journal then it should be in the same format the personal story is and have it be different for each character even if only to a certain point. Again though, the only real cap you have on dungeons is your level. You can get a group and run any explorable you want without completing the story mode. I agree though, the dungeon example is the best comparison.

In the end, I don’t necessarily care that I have to redo it on every character. I would of just liked if each character had the story be a little different if it’s going to be character-bound.

HM was account bound (but you had to be lvl20). But it didn’t grant you access to anything : you still had to unlock missions and regions with each character.

khani.4786:

The living story is unlocked and playable on all characters.

To unlock the achievements you must complete the story on the character you wish to do them on. I can’t get to the final part of my personal story and complete the Arah Dungeon Story mode on another character in order to finish the first character’s story.

If my guardian does a dungeon story mode my guardian has access to the explorable paths. Same thing going on here. Have to do the story mode before you unlock the explorable/achievement path.

your reasoning is pretty strange and does not really compare. any of your characters, no matter where in the personal story, can chose to do arah story and unlock arah explorable with that. this won’t progress their personal story, but they will be able to do the dungeon anyway.

when activating the season 2 story on any character again after the first one already beat it, they see purple stars where there are story instances with open achievements. entering one of these will yield the message ‘This is not your active story. Any progress made in this instance will not be saved.’
this of course make sense, if you replay the story, just playing a step out of order won’t progress the replay, but you don’t have to replay everything to do the one step where you need an achievement for.
theres no reason not to do this for every character after the first one unlocked the achievements themselves. all other characters will still have to progress through the story step by step to complete it, they just have the ability to chose an out of story step (as has the first character of that account), to go after an achievement.

I’ve done the story now twice completely to be able to do the achievements on one of my other characters. I can’t take it one more time. it’s nice and fun the first time, but after that you just wait for dialogue you already know inside out and do the same battles over and over again. arguing it doesn’t make sense for the character as if it were a thinking entity is hardly productive. this is a game, when it comes to adecision between user friendliness or realism, the former should always win – otherwise you’ll have lot’s of realistic character with no one playing them anymore.

Off Topic, but why is this forum topic marked red when I don’t see any responses from an A-Net person?

As a player with 10 level 80s, 7 map completions (working on #8), 7 personal story completions (working on #8), almost 5 pvp champion titles, and multiple ascended characters I am not averse to repeating content.

But the living story is not something that should be designed around this. Replayability should be account bound, a single character completion should allow targeted desired gameplay experiences.

This mistake has been made repeatedly in the past and then undone, there is no need to once again retread this path.

Examples:
- Fractal level was character bound. Anet wants this to be a character based progression. End result, players felt locked into a single character. Anet reverts this decision and makes fractal level account bound.
- WVW experience is character bound. Anet wants this to be a character based progression. End result, players felt locked into a single character. Anet reverts this decision and makes WXP account bound.
- Ascended equipment is intended to be the final crowning equipment growth of a single character. Anet wants this to be a character based progression. End result, players felt locked into a single character. Anet reverts this decision and makes ascended gear transferable across the account.
- Legendary items.
- Skins.
- All currencies in the wallet, especially Karma.
- Gathering tools (really all gem store items.)
- Living story rewards/toys.

Account bound has been and remains the correct way to handle progression.

Don’t encourage single character lock-ins. It is what sets GW2 apart from other games.

Anet makes more money by encouraging more alts to be played. The new Living Story content is absolutely fantastic. I am a huge fan of the direction they’re taking. But I enjoy building characters with themes and sticking to them. My tanky venom share thief is a much more capable duelist than my glass cannon max range staff elementalist. I would like to duel on the rock for the achievement with my thief. I did the story with my ele.

I won’t be terribly upset if I have to repeat the story, but it will certainly result in it getting stale.

My 7 100% characters were built over nearly 2 years, one at a time with breaks between the activity types that kept it fresh. The living story is going to be 2 weeks where I redo the story 3-4 times to get the correct characters unlocked to do the achievements (which I find fun, I have almost 22k AP.) The downside is that the pace of repetition will make the content stale much faster.

Account bound LS chapter unlocks, please. Just review the past. This lesson has been learned and the game is better for moving towards account bound in every previous example.

I for once prefer replaying to be character bound.
You can still get the achievements and play anything in any order if you join another party, but since it’s character bound, you get a full set of rewards for each character that does it.
And the rewards can be more or less decent, since you have to do the previous stuff before getting to others, instead just doing that one quest with the stuff you want with all characters, and ignore the rest.
I like getting more stuff for doing things with other characters.

Invictus.1503:

Off Topic, but why is this forum topic marked red when I don’t see any responses from an A-Net person?

They must have deleted the message shortly after posting, and since the forum’s code is… let’s say… lacking, the thread stays marked.

So… altoholics are bleeped again. I have to do this 24 times to get it on all my characters?

Do I get rewards each time? Sure hope so if I’m going to have to drag my most hated Elementalist and Guardian through the story. Its good, but not THAT good!

Avster.1935:

My alts are lv80. Re playability doesn’t work. I did the main story on my Ranger, tried to do the achievement run on my Warrior. Didn’t work.

You have to play the story with your warrior first before you can do the achievements with him. You should be able to do the achievements with your ranger.

I think they should add a way to skip all conversations and cut scenes for this to work. I managed to rush through it on my alt by spam clicking all conversations. It didn’t take me long, but the next chapter might be longer, and maybe more tedious (tedious to repeat, that is. It is very fun and well written).

I like it the way it is. You get the “first run” loot on each character, and down the line, when there are multiple episodes it’s going to give a really nice extended bonus for rolling a new alt, as you get some pretty hefty rewards just for doing personal>living story.

I do wish they’d at least put a text summary of LS1 in the journal though, even if they can’t ever implement it as playable. As a functional journal it feels like it’s missing a chapter.

I’m just annoyed I did it once and now 7 of my alts suddenly have the annoying green star in the upper right corner of the screen again. I worked hard to make that go away. Why is it back again? Please let me turn it off. And no I don’t want to replay this episode 7 times; the first 2 times were enough.

I don’t mind having to do the instances again on my alts. I’d just like it possible for my alts to accomplish the achievements that my main unlocked access to when they do the LS for first time. And for those that have multiple alts, we could focus on 1 achievement each time we bring a new alt into an instance.

More chances for more loot. Seems pretty effing awesome to me. Only 7 more characters to go!

Shademehr.1397:

More chances for more loot. Seems pretty effing awesome to me. Only 7 more characters to go!

nobody is arguing against the possibility for every alt to be able to play each story step again, if the player so wishes. the problem lies within the achievement system tied to the LS, which now can only be accessed if the character has played the full story through, and then has to play the steps with achievements again. achievements should be unlocked when the first character completes the story, after that, every other character can start any instance to do an achievement run, but if it’s not the next one in line, it won’t progress him or give him loot. if you prefer to complete the story 10 times, you still could, you’d get your loot and would have no drawback – wheres the current system has only drawbacks for those who want to complete the achievements on alts and still no benefit for people like you who prefer to repeat the same story multiple times.

I see really no point why people would even argue against it, if they don’t like it, they still can complete every story step in order again and again.

If it is a bugged then they better fixed it as doing the current season 2 story was somewhat tedious (involve going to point A to point B to advance the story and the boss was annoying as hell when he blown you off the platform).
Most of the time I played the story as my Guardian (best suvivor out of my character) but since jumping puzzle are involved, my Asuran Mesmer is ideal for that (Charr Guardian) and I already preoccupy in the game like doing WvWvW, pvp etc.
While the main game story is somewhat mandatory that if you want to do the explored version of the dungeon what do we get out of the season 2 story? Just loots and achivements? Yeah that alone isn’t worth redoing the stories for all of your characters.

Well, I did the story and for some reason it seems like it didn’t unlock. It sais Gates of Maguuma completed but still sais 0/1. I can get in to Dry top, and while I’m outside of it, it get the green indicator for Prosperity’s Mystery. When I go in I have nothing indicating where to go. Did I do something wrong. I cant even repeat on my other lvl 80 alts. I’m totally confused.

MiloIsMilo.1586:

Well, I did the story and for some reason it seems like it didn’t unlock. It sais Gates of Maguuma completed but still sais 0/1. I can get in to Dry top, and while I’m outside of it, it get the green indicator for Prosperity’s Mystery. When I go in I have nothing indicating where to go. Did I do something wrong. I cant even repeat on my other lvl 80 alts. I’m totally confused.

after the end boss battle there are a few more story steps to wrap things up and if interested get some lore on scarlet. I think one of the first steps after the boss instance was to talk to miner toska again (in the very dark mine). after you went to scarlets hideout, the story should be finished, are you sure you didn’t just finish the last instance with the boss battle?

As someone with multiple accounts and 20’ish alts, this is not making me happy at all. This just added a ridiculous amount of grind to the game. Please, account bind map complete and the story. Also, who cares about getting more bad loot anyway? There’s nothing of real value from Dry Top.

If anyone thinks doing this again and again if fun, it’s not. Already did it 3 times and I’m at the, “God, get me out of hear” phase.

DeWolfe.2174:

multiple accounts and 20’ish alts
…
This just added a ridiculous amount of grind to the game.

I think I found your problem.

PopeUrban.2578:

DeWolfe.2174:

multiple accounts and 20’ish alts
…
This just added a ridiculous amount of grind to the game.

I think I found your problem.

No, with so many races, professions, and build types, why wouldn’t you have alts? Also, this is what happens when they keep changing aspects the game around since launch. The Dev’s need to get a grip and stop flip flopping on character vs player(account) progression and time gated resources. I believe the majority has been asking for more player progression. This living story is now back tracking toward character progression.

The capacity to replay the Living Story was enough to give players a choice for character or player progression. Forcing character progression wasn’t called for.

DeWolfe.2174:

PopeUrban.2578:

DeWolfe.2174:

multiple accounts and 20’ish alts
…
This just added a ridiculous amount of grind to the game.

I think I found your problem.

No, with so many races, professions, and build types, why wouldn’t you have alts? Also, this is what happens when they keep changing aspects the game around since launch. The Dev’s need to get a grip and stop flip flopping on character vs player(account) progression and time gated resources. I believe the majority has been asking for more player progression. This living story is now back tracking toward character progression.

The capacity to replay the Living Story was enough to give players a choice for character or player progression. Forcing character progression wasn’t called for.

My point is that choosing to have multiple accounts and 20 alts was choosing an insane amount of grind. It’s not as if the game is balanced or designed around that sort of abnormally high amount of task repetition, but rather that you chose to create that problem for yourself. It’s like complaining that you have to level all 20 alts to 80, or that you have to rediscover waypoints for all 20 of them. Story progression is character progression, and the secondary achievement system we have now is part of story progression. That’s why it happens after you complete the story on a character.

Furthermore, as achievements, why would you need to do them on more than one character? This is precisely why achievements are account bound in the first place. So you don’t feel compelled to do them on every single character.