Guild Wars 2

Well… Not a whole. But the second half, at least.
First just want to say that this is not an angry topic with a bunch of whining on the universal injustice, with the prosecution of developers, Trahearne hateing, and exorbitant demands. I love this game and want to see how it gets better. I know as well that my words hardly will take any value. But I just want to give it attention.

Personal story claimed as one of the most innovative ideas in this game. However, from the beginning, because of lack of time apparently, it seemed a bit unfinished. When I’ve done it first time I got a lot of positive emotions. I expected that it will improve over time. But… It’s like as if personal story simply forgotten now.

1. – It’s not just about minor issues, bugs, etc. More… globally, I could say. To be honest, a little thing to complain about in the first half. Each race has a lot of history, options, branching. Everything looks decent. Some sadness begins during the attack on the headquarters of your order. Here’s the first discontent. Order of a very important thing, right? Why is part of the order in your story so short? Even a dozen quests will not be typed. I just do not have time to feel the some kind of participation. You have ben taken in order, you performed a couple of errands, got almost the highest rank after in and is going to investigate disturbing rumors about the undead allready. Too fleeting.
Yes, I know the guys from the your order will appears after. But no one will even remember in which order you are consists. I would like more quests related to the order. Maybe that choice of order influenced on the further quests.

2. – Second sadness begins around there, too. For some reason, the event loses its dramatically scale. I do not know. Strange. It should be. But still… The attack on the headquarters – a pair of tens of mobs. A couple dozen of your guys listlessly kicking against them…
No drama.
No screams of frightened in the spirit of “they came out of nowhere!” “they have no end!?”, “OMG what is going on”, “They broke through the defenses”, “Oh my God, they killed Leeroy!”. The funny (and not only in this quest), that you are often can easy vanquish your enemies, but your guys still retreating. I do not propose to make optional parameters of victory or defeat in the battle of the masses. I just want more atmospherics. If you want to create the impression that the enemy oppresses us, make a surprising number of dominant enemies. Let them kill allies by scripts. Make them even invincible. For example beyond shaky lines of defenders there is hold approaching army that whose line you can not cross. Or just very quickly die out there. Or even instantly. And the task loke "kill X enemies until they reached the main gate/camp/ fortifications.

You know what I mean? May enemy’s army will be at least 2D. The main thing here is impression. Something imposing. Significant. Dangerous. For now each major fight is few small packs of mobs appear out of nowhere, one after the other. That rather annoying than impressive.

3. – By the way. The third point. The appearance of the enemies from nowhere. It looks good in some places, but it’s EVERYWHERE. Green smoke, quiet puff, and viola! Pack of risen opposite you. Appears in the most inappropriate places. How can you fight the enemy that occurs anywhere from nowhere. What is the point to defend the camp? Why enemy appears exactly at the camps gates? Let them just come. Do the same 100500 enemies beyond the camp walls that will beat you if you come out and just let task “defended inside”. If you need them to appear right under your nose, make it so that dragon will spit them on you flying by. Or something like that.

There is an excellent example of the dramatic approach of the enemy in the new teaser.
Example => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1bMmT2pKvA
You see, the enemy is not so much. However, the sense of chaos happening around. The enemy is approaching inexorably. Slowly but surely. Artillery fire cannot hold them. Explosions. Fire everywhere. The camera snatches helicopter falling from the sky. If personal story will create same impression – it would be cooler at least 5 times.
http://www.hostpic.org/images/1310091858030107.png

There is similar problem is In the battle on the claw island (both battles). All stand here and there throughout whole fortress (what king of fortress is it, in which enemy could easily enter?!) and fight 1 on 1, 1 to 2, etc. But enemy just appears endlessly right inside fortress, and the allies just fall unconscious. It would be much more atmospheric if there will be an army from the walls far as the sea and a few mobs will broke through the defensive line inside the fortress from different gates. So, you will need to fight them off in different parts of the battlefield.

4. – Another problem. Often allies are useless (by the way, is not only in a personal story). It seems to be the coolest officers and heroes are not able to do… no matter what. They either fall down over a second or do not any damage to enemies at all. If you really want to add them to quest – simply make them invulnerable, but let them not cause any damage to enemies. Or a better solution – make them better then mobs, but make mobs themselves a bit harder mobs and in high quantities. Let the heroes fight with multiple of them and kill them until you fight with the others. Let the fighting of heroes and monsters will be scripted rather than randomly.
I could bet there is not only one theme in this forum about Trahearne dies in battle with the one miserable monster.

5. – Next problem – it’s illogicality of some events. Forgive me for my further sarcasm and irony.
Example. Undead captured the fortress at the turn of the lion’s Arch. The city was attacked. Army of risen monsters is approaching to Lion’s Arch led by a strong lieutenant. And.. it’s a.. a-a-a… yet another bunch of dozen mobs running one after the other on one single tiny beach of the town?!
Or. City is captured. It is necessary to discourage it by destroying… a 3 packs of 5 mobs? Are you kidding me?! It is strange that the kids do not come out to play on the street.
You are carrying the sad news to the widow, and she runs away, shouting, “You killed my husband” right on the battlefield. You do not understand what’s going on, there’s some monsters. She runs. You kill monsters. Short conversation. She comes back. Quest complete.
You want to destroy the enemy fleet, which gathering corpses from sea. Enemy fleet – 2 tiny boats and a big one. You do not meet any resistance until you climb aboard. A pair of bombs – a powerful enemy’s fleet destroyed.
You meet a ship full of military tanks that cannot disembark because of 2 giants walking on the shore, which easily defeated by a few infantry.
The attack on the over-fortified fort Trinity. 10 risens crawled out of the water 10. Fall back! FALL BACK! Close the gate! Undead appeared right behind locked gates! There are three of them but we are afraid! Retreat. Retrea-a-at!

In general there is no point in continuing. I think these problems are also could be fixed cosmetically. Simply creating an effect of the battle all around you will add significanty to events. If the enemy fleet will be large and kept firing with our fleet … you get the idea.

6. – Next. Cheap, simulated drama. Seriously, friends, not so well! You start killing each little or less familiar character on every couple of quests. Moreover, often, for absurd reasons. When once again that does not work another detonator / smoke signal / Manual Focus / etc and he / she decide to explode himself with enemy – it’s becoming ridiculous. Often, it is not even required at all.
If in response to theirs “I’ll stay here to explode with the enemy,” you could have option to say “you lost your mind, fool. You coming with us, and we will kill them all without any bombs” – I would sincerely rejoiced. THIS would be a surprise, but not another “heroically” died character.
You look to the left – our troops are dying trying to hold the lines. You look to the right – giant breaks our tanks. Norn screaming about the legend runs into the thick of enemies, scattering risens on the way. After a few seconds of the fight he drowns in the ocean of the undeads. You hear the shouts of the officer, who gave the orders, which is suddenly cut off. You see how the soldiers dragged away into the sky by risen knights. The last line of defense swept away by upcoming abominations. Humans go into battle from which they will not return with cries of “For the Kryta” “For the queen.” People are in a panic, they call you, hope for your help. Here is a drama . So you feel the significance of what is happening, as well as your own meaning in the story.

7. – We goes onward. The personal story is cut off from the world. This is a serious problem. You see, the very essence of the current story – it’s “run from quest instance 21 to quest instance 22”. Remember, at the beginning of norn personal story, you mast track down the Minotaur seeking their footsteps. Or talk to witnesses, representing the Order of Whispers in the human quest. Something like that is missing. Quests between instances. You might request to find some artifacts around the world. Talk to people. Perform some heart. Defeat metaboss.
To heighten the effect, that would not hurt to split quest in two. To get to the next step you will need to complete 2 different story instance.
This may also include the lack of influence of P-story on the world. When the story ends, it’s just… ends. Leaving no traces. Supposably, the personal story replaces the classic quests of ring games. Doing quests gives you access to repetitive tasks. Why not introduce something similar in GW2? Fulfillment order’s chains allows you to receive daily errands. Such as “protect point N from enemies in mini personal instance", “secretly sneak here …” “examine this tomb …” with some pleasant award and the ~five achiv points. Finished quest for the pact – get a daily quest to cleansing of Orr. Etc.

8. – Next. Almost no decorative quests. Which just transferring the experience. P-story poorly retains tension. You send here and there, without having to logically complete the story phase. For example, after creating the army of pact it would be most appropriate to add a quest where the pact comes to the war. Launched the first zeppelins. Marching army.

http://www.hostpic.org/images/1310091936040107.jpg

There are a lot of “unfinished” quests, which are expected to more. For example, a survey of the temple of Abaddon. Begins promisingly. You find a strange altar, activate it, defeat the guard. Good. Mysteriously. The door opens and … next the altar, the next guardian. Well, and there is … again the same. And in the end, we learn that… nothing. Just three Zhaitan’s lieutenants (it is unclear how they get there) revealed out and stole the artifact (wait.. wait… what artifact?), about which no one will remembers later (wait! Please! I want to know about this artif… ooow).
Last quest – source Orr – everything seems to be not bad. But, again, leaves much unsaid. Now you are fight with the Knights. Suddenly they let you pass. You kills the eye. Everything sparkles. Everyone is happy. Trahearne pours out his soul to you again. A little unclear. Epic nature is not sustained. And further: Go, he says, kill Zhaitan. Oh… Really? I must just go there and… kill dragon? Well, Ok. Mister Marshall! Bye! And it all ends by an epic failure. Ruins of Arah story mode. Start promising once again. However, the battle with the dragon: at first everything was cool. He appears, flies, breaks things. You think “well, now would be something epic.” On deck appears risens. From nowhere again. Okay… Risens in the sky. No matter. Kill the mobs. And now we will fight with… more monsters. And more. AND MORE. And the fireworks. And. Ouch. Dragon is dead. Wait… What?! X_X I want to cry. This time he did not even spawn snakes on deck. No need to say that the dungeon requires serious treatment.
But.. Just imagine for a moment if after the “Source of Orr” it has been quest to raise an army and to break through in Arah. And Zhaitan himself would meet us there, as it was in “our time is now” trailer. Doesn’t it will impress you? =>

http://www.hostpic.org/images/1310091918210109.jpg
http://www.hostpic.org/images/1310091918530110.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/v651jd.png

Fort Trinity goes on war to Orr => http://www.hostpic.org/images/1310091904270099.jpg
In general give people an impressive quests where no need to kill 100500 mobs. Just take a look at what is happening.

9. – The next problem . Very curves cut scenes. Seriously . When I was going through the story for the first time, I did not pay attention. But second, third … Here is a prime example. Steel Tide. Bernie “giving his life for us”. This process takes ~20 seconds . The first 5-7 seconds, the camera shows … ground. Then, abruptly, the ghost floats by. Bernie runs somewhere. And.. And shouts something incomprehensible. No subtitles for some reason. Cut scene ends. We kills the ghost. Deborah crying. She promises to take care of Bernie’s dog. But the interesting thing : Bernie is ALVIE, stands in front of her. You can even talk with him. He probably wonders why Deborah sobbing at his feet. You start to be embarrassed for the behavior of sister… I fully realized what happens only after a half minute.
Oh well. It’s more of a bug. There are rather many of them, by the way. For example in one of the quests are the same Deborah suddenly becomes a blonde with a completely different face. In the following she is she again.
Returning to the subject. It would be nice to modify many cut scenes. I swear if you wrote more unique animations, it would solve so many problems! And less of camera abrupt rotation! It is better to simply switch the camera angle
This new teaser video yet again demonstrates the excellent work cameras. Plus, shows us a lot of dramatic moments that would be nice to see in the game. =>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1bMmT2pKvA

10. – And finally, about rewards. This is ba-a-ad too. During the performing of personal story you just have to give people unique rewards. All there is at the moment – it’s the tone of useless junk. Beautiful unique skins, which cannot be obtained in another way, would radically change the situation. The change of scenery in the personal city dungeon or access to areas that are not available earlier – is not a bad idea.

10. b – And the last. Expendability. Why? It is understandable: why change anything if people will just complete it and soon forget about it? Why not just add the “remember how it was” button right at character window, and go to chosen story step after using it. Why not add some more arcade to game? Add the optional quests objectives for achieving, as it was in the first part missions? Make a history of repeatable, you know. Awards and titles. Story for impressions, you might say, not for awards. However, many do not want to go through it at all because of its futility. I think you need to focus on those players who are looking for the benefits of their actions, as well as on all others.

And so, what we have come in brief:

• Orders quest chains are too short
• No drama. Epic battles look dull and smeared
• Enemies appear from everywhere in absurd places from a puff of smoke
• Too weak allies and heroes. Spoil the impression dying from chicken’s fart.
• Illogicality of stories. Unnatural, foolish actions and events. Allied armies flee from 3 mobs. The defense of the camp of the enemies that appear right inside. etc
• Trumped-up drama. Detonators are constantly broken. Heroes like to blow themselves up on the spot and die there, where it is not necessary.
• The personal story is cut off from the world. Run from one quest instance to another. Does not leave any consequences in the world upon completion.
• No decorative quests. Without the genocide and murder. Showing some epic events. Tell the story of what is happening. Story cannot hold players in impression or stress. Monotonous.
• Lame cut scenes. Sometimes can’t understand what you want to show at all.
• No normal awards. Neither decorative. Neither interesting. Neither the titles. No special privileges.
• Un-repeatability. The monstrous waste of potential.

In Conclusion I want to apologize for my bad english. I hope my feedback will not disappear without a trace.
And to give advice: if you want people to stop hating Trahearne, make sure that he did not open his soul at the end of each quest. It deprives him of the whole mystery, making a sentimental fool. It creates feeling that the quests are made not for our pesonal story, but to reveal next aspect of his character to us.

Hi,

Your feedback is imo short sighted and most off all too long.
I’m not even bothered to reading it all So I react only to your summary:

‘Orders quest chains are too short’ With a total of 4 introduction story steps, and then 15 storysteps the order arc gets much more attention then any other arc. Besides that the orders are not dead, you keep working with all the orders after retribution untill the very end.

‘No drama. Epic battles look dull and smeared’
I’m not sure what you mean by no drama, but your friend and mentor being killed, a big dragon swooping down from the air

‘Enemies appear from everywhere in absurd places from a puff of smoke’
I start to have the feeling you have been skipping cutscenes, its not jsut a puff of green smoke. it falls from the air,the green smoke is their corruption spreading. If you actually took time to watch cutscenes you would have known this.

‘Too weak allies and heroes. Spoil the impression dying from chicken’s fart.’
In many stories the allies can already solo the whole thing while you go akitten a corner.
But guess you want it even more easier and boring!

‘Illogicality of stories. Unnatural, foolish actions and events. Allied armies flee from 3 mobs. The defense of the camp of the enemies that appear right inside. etc’
I actually had to look up in the walls of text what you mean and still don’t have a clue what your talking bout.

‘Trumped-up drama. Detonators are constantly broken. Heroes like to blow themselves up on the spot and die there, where it is not necessary.’
First there is not drama? then it is wrong drama?? pfffft

‘The personal story is cut off from the world. Run from one quest instance to another. Does not leave any consequences in the world upon completion.’
It actually does and you are so very wrong. If you do the stories at the recommended level and if you visit zones at the recommended level you will clearly see the impact. In the starterzones you find no presence of the orders cause they haven’t introduced to you yet. When your doing the order storyline the maps of those levels makes you meet people from the different orders. The higher level zones however have members of the pact. But guess if you level up by crafting you wouldn’t notice such things.

‘No decorative quests. Without the genocide and murder. Showing some epic events. Tell the story of what is happening. Story cannot hold players in impression or stress. Monotonous.’
Again, the cutscenes dialogues do a lot of storytelling, skipping them does make you miss out a lot.

‘Lame cut scenes. Sometimes can’t understand what you want to show at all.’ Then don’t skip them, as you obvious have been doing.

‘No normal awards. Neither decorative. Neither interesting. Neither the titles. No special privileges.’
The rewards are awesome, unique skins. good balanced introduction of available elemtns (like a pie at level 34-ish to introduce foods).

‘Un-repeatability. The monstrous waste of potential.’
Create a new character and you can complete it again.

It seems to me you are skipping all cutscenes (or atleast not paying attention to them and then are complaining you don’t understand whats going on. Feedback is good, but unfunded and bad feedback is wrong. I have some criticism bout the story, but overall it is pretty good. Some choices they made wouldn’t be mine, but I understand them. It is also good that they are using the living story to test out new concepts.

I urge you to replay the story with a new character. Pick different options, watch the cutscenes and the dialogues. Then pick out one or two things you really find bad and take them on. You took a lot of time and effort in making this wall of text and I think your reall feedback is much much smaller and your making things bigger to prove a point. The end effect is that you are covering your true point in a bunch of vague and half true recommendations.

I really can’t find it.

mercury ranique.2170:

It seems to me you are skipping all cutscenes (or atleast not paying attention to them and then are complaining you don’t understand whats going on. Feedback is good, but unfunded and bad feedback is wrong. I have some criticism bout the story, but overall it is pretty good. Some choices they made wouldn’t be mine, but I understand them. It is also good that they are using the living story to test out new concepts.

I urge you to replay the story with a new character. Pick different options, watch the cutscenes and the dialogues. Then pick out one or two things you really find bad and take them on. You took a lot of time and effort in making this wall of text and I think your reall feedback is much much smaller and your making things bigger to prove a point. The end effect is that you are covering your true point in a bunch of vague and half true recommendations.

I really can’t find it.

Perhaps it’s better to read before criticize, though? In response you wrote a quarter of my text, so I think it would not be so difficult to you.

I’v done whole quest 4 times. I went through all the possible combinations of races and subject. Talked with all the NPCs. And I never skip cut scenes. So I know very well what I’m talking about.

mercury ranique.2170:

Hi,

Your feedback is imo short sighted and most off all too long.
I’m not even bothered to reading it all So I react only to your summary

Then how do you know if you do not even read it?

mercury ranique.2170:

Hi,

‘Orders quest chains are too short’ With a total of 4 introduction story steps, and then 15 storysteps the order arc gets much more attention then any other arc. Besides that the orders are not dead, you keep working with all the orders after retribution untill the very end.

8 only
Without introduction 8. I do not think that introdiction should be considered.

mercury ranique.2170:

The rewards are awesome, unique skins. good balanced introduction of available elemtns (like a pie at level 34-ish to introduce foods).

The only useful things which I got from 100500 quests which I completed is BL keys. I also found out that there is no unique set given by the story. Pie? Are you kidding?

mercury ranique.2170:

In many stories the allies can already solo the whole thing while you go akitten a corner.
But guess you want it even more easier and boring!

So let them balance it! Or, in your opinion, the only way to do something difficult, it is to cram a bunch of useless allied mobs?

mercury ranique.2170:

‘Enemies appear from everywhere in absurd places from a puff of smoke’
I start to have the feeling you have been skipping cutscenes, its not jsut a puff of green smoke. it falls from the air,the green smoke is their corruption spreading. If you actually took time to watch cutscenes you would have known this.

They all can fly? The dragon throw them down? Why there is no dragons in 90% cases when they are occur? How can they land deep inside the cave, then? So nope. They just appear out of green/blue/black/etc smoke. Will appear right under your nose, if it’s more convenient for developers. In some places, it is atmospheric. But not constantly

I think it is you, who should repeat quest and watch carefully for all.

So far you create the impression of funboy that can not judge objectively. Or just a lover of oppositioning. You know, to deny the existing flaws, in fact, not a very good way to make the game better.
I think Personal Story has a lot things to aspire to yet.

For #2,

The personal story was very challenging and had a ton of drama but I believe players complained it was too hard so Anet nerfed parts of it. This allowed more people to advance through the story, those same people probably played on their own and didn’t get help with their story since it was “personal” to them.

The only useful things which I got from 100500 quests which I completed is BL keys. I also found out that there is no unique skins.

Commander Armor is a unique skin you can only get through the personal story.

reapex.8546:

The only useful things which I got from 100500 quests which I completed is BL keys. I also found out that there is no unique skins.

Commander Armor is a unique skin you can only get through the personal story.

Commando. True. But it has PvP copy. U can’t get full set, as i remember. Anyway, if I’m not mistaken, from storie you can get one such thing only. Little similarity to a memorable award.

reapex.8546:

For #2,

The personal story was very challenging and had a ton of drama but I believe players complained it was too hard so Anet nerfed parts of it. This allowed more people to advance through the story, those same people probably played on their own and didn’t get help with their story since it was “personal” to them.

I’m talking more about the visual effect. When outside walls is the army, and the allies are dying with shouts of horror – that’s impressive. When outside the wall 2 handfuls of 5 risens, and they are exchange blows with your allies lazy 1 on 1, with a distance of 25 meters between each fighting groups – it looks bleak. Let the enemy army will be though 2D animated backdrop. So long as it makes an impression.

They’d better off leaving the old personal story as is and focusing on new ones in, hopefully, a new expansion where we take the fight to newer, more powerful elder dragons.

We killed Zhaitan. That’s done. I would like to move on to new elder dragons with new personal story.

Personally, I liked the personal story. It’s riddled with imperfections, but I got through it three times without getting bored, and I’m working on a fourth. It’s not storytelling gold, but if I want that, I’ll play Ico or Final Fantasy IX, or lots of other things that aren’t an MMO. I enjoyed choose your own adventure books as a kid, but there are reasons the stories they can tell are so limited, and even more so in a video game.

Anyway, with full awareness of the story’s flaws, Veasna’s right: Future personal story updates will do better to tell a new story than to rewrite the old one. It’s simply not practical or a good use of time/money to redo a ton of existing story missions, dialogue, animation, etc., unless it’s fundamentally broken and unusable, which it isn’t. It might be cheesy or underwritten in parts, but it’s enjoyable to some for what it is, and playable to the rest if they want.

I will agree that the rewards are terrible, Pact Weapons in particular. Setting their skins aside as a question of personal preference, they’re Rare-quality weapons with Magi’s stats (a combination that doesn’t strike me as particularly useful, with no option to change them,) and a Major Sigil of Force, which is just plain lame given that the a rare weapon with a Superior Rune of Force and Berserker’s stats is awarded for completing Against the Corruption, four whole story steps earlier. “Underwhelming” doesn’t even do it justice.

mercury ranique.2170:

Hi,

Your feedback is imo short sighted and most off all too long.
I’m not even bothered to reading it all So I react only to your summary:

. . .

I really can’t find it.

His feedback is shortsighted?

What about your metafeedback of posts you never even read? How much more fricking shortsighted can one get?

The opener was spot on on almost every point, and had you actually taken the time to read the opener’s posts (which takes only 5 minutes), you would have been in agreement instead of disagreement. The only error was in the recommendation to alter the preexisting storyline quests. I agree with you in that this would be a waste of resources.