Guild Wars 2

Zietlogik.6208:

Thalador.4218:

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.

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

Anet doesn’t have those industry Story-Writers and an “estimated to be between $150 million and $200 million or more” to put towards development.

Keep going, SWTOR was reported to have cost upwards of 300 million, to develop and produce, and market. But as Forbes said “if you’re spending 300 million on an mmorpg, you’re doing something wrong.”

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.

Any plans to allow us to replay chapters of the PS anytime soon afetr all it is already in the Story Journal ?

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.

But after the Personal Story, you stop that, and only customize the story for what you mentioned second in the quote: singled out lines and dialogues that folks may not even realize are differentiations.

What happened to the story divergences like choosing which Order has the best plan for invading further into Orr? Or choosing what your greatest fear is and having that decide a storyline?

Sounds to me like either you don’t want to continue doing such, because it’s obviously more work, or you just can’t for some reason you don’t want to share (or can’t and maintain the rather silly biweekly update set-up).

Honestly, I would take story divergences or obvious minor story alterations far, far more than I would take more lines from the Player Character. Even if it’s something as adding in a certain charr warband that just so happens to be charr PCs’ warbands.

And bring back the personality system and make it more powerful. Those subtle occasional lines that pop up only if you’re of a certain personality were lovely traits… and now they don’t pop up anymore. Why? Why remove it? Why cease using it?

Angel McCoy.1832:

Our original thought was that you would add the personality to the words when you heard them in your head. We still know you will do that, 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. Our goal is to increase immersion and make you feel more like it’s your PC’s story.

To me, those who care about unique PCs with unique personalities and unique backgrounds would see the main storyline as either altered from its delivered version (to match what’s in their character as per their own vision but still following the storyline), or like me consider “not my fanon’s involvement”.

Those who don’t, will not care whether the PC’s saying things matches their ‘head canon’ (as I’ve heard some call such) because they don’t have such.

Angel McCoy.1832:

If every single person in this fantasy world knew your name and knew that YOU were the one at the forefront of killing Zhaitan, then it wouldn’t be very realistic.

Zhaitan was killed. Confirmed.

;)

However, an action so much as killing Zhaitan – I think anyone who isn’t a hermit would know the name of Zhaitan’s killer after 2 years. The face? No, not really. They may know a description, but not a face. But name? Yes.

To me, that’s what would be realistic. The tales would be exaggerated, but it would be known.

To quote an NPC in Nightfall:

“Your name is growing beyond your stature, hero. I thought you would be fifteen feet tall!”

That’s kind of what I would expect.

Angel McCoy.1832:

In our minds, this is your PC’s story. Just because you can watch your spouse go through their dramas, and you accompany your spouse to the grocery store, doesn’t mean it’s your spouse’s story that you’re living.

Wait… are you saying… that Trahearne is our character’s spouse?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Personal Story spoilers

hide spoiler

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.

Hmmm…

Firstly, we see at least two Commanders of the Pact in the initial release alone. One’s in Citadel of Flame explorable (Commander Suma), and one is in Frostgorge Sound (Commander Wik Tailbiter). There’s also a Commander (charr, vigil armor) in southern Timberline Falls, but there’s no Commander rank in the Vigil so that leads one to believe… Pact (ironically, all “Commanders” that are with or near Pact forces are charr and Vigil). So players by all appearances were always a Commander from the get go – to those who paid attention.

Secondly, I disagree that “repairing, preparing, and stocking up for the next big battle with the Elder Dragons” cannot deliver a good storyline. This is what all of Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, and Dragon Age: Origins pretty much are. The primary course of the story is about you building up your forces by solving local problems while fighting some forefront threat, before you end up being ready and take out the background threat.

This is, in fact, how most stories that revolve around some world-ending threat go. Most of the plot is about building up forces and fighting someone who isn’t actually the big bad and you know he/she isn’t, and then after beating that someone you can finally go after the big bad in a climatic battle.

And interestingly enough, those are greatly acclaimed games there. And personally? Amongst my favorite.

Thirdly, a huge problem with what you said here is that it is never even brought up that we left the Pact. In fact, in Flame and Frost when you first meet Rox, if you talk to Smodur he says, and I quote: “What’s a commander of the Pact doing here? I thought you had dragons to fight.”

There was no “I’m going on leave.” There was no “good job, Commander, now go have some well deserved R&R.” Or anything of the like. Just a vanishing act. Most militaries would consider this deserting and execute the deserter. Tyria sure is lenient!

Angel McCoy.1832:

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?

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.

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

We, like you, want the most bang for your buck!

I don’t think Ryu was saying to split the storyline, but rather to have it stated in-game – perhaps shown in-game – that the Pact is fighting on multiple fronts – in the Far Shiverpeaks, in the Dragonbrand close to the Crystal Desert, and elsewhere that dragon minions can be found.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Angel McCoy.1832:

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?

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.

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

We, like you, want the most bang for your buck!

I don’t think Ryu was saying to split the storyline, but rather to have it stated in-game – perhaps shown in-game – that the Pact is fighting on multiple fronts – in the Far Shiverpeaks, in the Dragonbrand close to the Crystal Desert, and elsewhere that dragon minions can be found.

That’s actually what I was going for, yes. Because if the players know that there are multiple frontlines the Pact is involved in, then we know we were just the commander of the Orr frontline.

Good night everyone

My opinion is that, the issue some of us (players) perceive with the characters of what is called by the community “destiny edge 2.0”, is not a narrative issue by itself, but rather a game design issue.

MMOs are not just about the social and multiplayer aspect of it, it’s also about freedom. That’s why you don’t see many MMOs that follow a single linear story, even if they allow you to play with other players.

When you create such strong characters, and you develop them, like braham, rox, marjory, etc. You take a risk, and that risk is that we, players, are human beings, and while we can relate to them, some maybe won’t, some maybe won’t like them.

Then you have the design problem. If the content on the future will follow a “main story”, that is always about them, then the illusion of choice will suffer, our freedom, will suffer. And I think this issue can be resolved by branching it even more, give us more of that illusion.
Maybe keep your branch where we “follow” the group, keep it as it is, because that’s what we are doing, we are following a group of heroes, and show us that side of the story. But also, make at least one branch (a story branch, not mechanic branch like quest, achievement, etc) where we, as the “heroes”, do something important too, something that give us enough recognition that is not linked to the other group.
Imagine if on the Zhaitan arc, we could’ve have defeated some major villain, a minion of Zhaitan, alone. A task “only us could’ve done”, and as we see the other side of the story (trahearne’s story) it is relevant, but still distant from his point of view. See too, how all the things that we, players, do on the world, are not even mentioned on our, supposed, stories. I defeated tons of bosses, completed dungeons, killed dragons and beasts all over the world, yet, we are treated as equals, or slightly less important characters, by our fellows from DE2.0, which, have accomplished nothing really, compared to us. I would rather that it was clear that I am participating in their story, and be recognized as a great help, rather than this pretend thing were we have to imagine that they are our friends, even if some of us don’t even sympathize with them.

I don’t personally dislike any of our current protagonists, but I do feel distant from them, I don’t know why I’m supposed to run around with them, I don’t need them, I rather have my real friends join me on the adventures of Tyria, and we be the real group that saves the world. And of course, I am curious about their story, I wan’t to follow them, just, not pretending theirs is my story, because I don’t even decide where to go, I feel carried.

Echoing the questions above by Baltzenger.2467 and Konig Des Todes.2086 , especially that one about wanting to know when you guys illustrated that we left the Pact. I get that it’s supposed to be assumed, but that’s where a huge amount of confusion comes from. You’re expecting the reader to assume part of your story. I personally had no idea, I just started this game last November. So as far as I can tell, we killed Zhaitan and everyone was all “Rah! WE DID IT! Now we’re coming for the rest of you filthy overgrown beasts!”. Then there was silence, as far as I can tell.

But to further add to the observations here, let’s look at a recent part of the story.

So one thing that was great was in the second part where you’re allowed to observe this corpse and explain to Marjory what happened and what conclusions you drew from it. This was great, this is what I’d expect from a seasoned adventurer. Then there is a mis-step.

For whatever reason, apparently Kasmeer wasn’t listening to the people standing two feet from her (wat) and Marjory needed to repeat everything you just said to her. You know, I live in a desert. The air is pretty thin so sound really travels. What is apparently more interesting than a dead body? I can’t imagine how she somehow missed all of that dialogue. But it does do one thing. It draws the focus immediately back on to these two characters. Again.

Or just, things that don’t make sense. Inquest doohickeys that can inhibit Kasmeer from casting magic, unless you’re a big dumb and use the crystal power to rush right through the barrier and off the cliff. I know it was for the sake of not letting the player kill themselves and possibly cause some crazy bug, but it is one of those things that gives you pause.

I honestly can’t imagine “It would cost too much resources” applying to something so simple as “add two or three lines of text to a dialogue box every so often that includes the PC in the single-path decision making”.

If you’re going to railroad us in order to tell an epic story, you’ve got to make us believe we’re doing it for a reason. As others have said, the illusion of choice is everything.

I’m holding out, maybe these characters will become something greater. I really liked the original Destiny’s Edge, drama and all. But right now, my impressions since first arriving during the Toxic Alliance are that we have Rox, a Charr lady that’s got that sense of humor Charr ladies seem to be famous for, some Norn guy I’ve seen like that one time at Lion’s Arch and can’t remember the name of (seems to be a wallflower in dialogue, I know a guy just like this in D&D), an Asura girl that actually seems to be a little girl or something in a golem (she seems to have potential, kind of a likable character but I don’t know anything other than she had an intellectual obsession with Scarlet), and Kasmeer and Marjory (No idea why they’re important. They’re apparently amazing adventurers who are very well respected, but their portrayal seems to be focused more on their love interest than who they actually are. I thought for the longest time that Marjory was part of a military organization since she was given very important roles.)

Angel McCoy.1832:

In conclusion, I’ll just say again that we do pay attention to the forums, and thank you for posting your thoughts.

And in spite of “paying attention” you flogged that horrific LS Scarlet saga to the very end and beyond.
It isn’t our story, it is YOUR story, and you continue to make that perfectly clear as you plow ahead regardless of player reaction or GW1 lore.

You assign us emotions. Wrongly. You decide who is my “friend” and throw it into my face regardless of the truth of it. I cannot stand the “biconics”. I would happily slaughter each and every one of them. You don’t care, my “role” as pal is predetermined and infuriating.

Personally I think the biggest issue here is perception. People get the impression that because a spotlight shines on other characters its not actually shining on them at the same time. I think this mostly happens when you’re living a story from the 1st person. You’re always more aware of what others are doing then what you’re doing. Further more this is compounded by some technological limitations that one cannot really go around. Like someone mentioned that we the player didnt get credit in the cutscene before the festival of the 4 winds which wasnt really true but it was easily missed because while the other characters were called by name we were introduced as “their leader” which feels more impersonal.

Truth however is quite different if one looks at the story objectively and not from a first person perspective we were actually instrumental for everything. Trahearne might have lead the pact but it was us who were instrumental for the execution every step of the way. Like how in some storylines you secure stuff that is later instrumental in the fight against zaithan. Like when you retrieve the Orrian mirror as part of your early sylari personal story that is later used against the eye of zaithan. Without us the pact would never have had the mirror and Trahearne would never had that artifact to use against the eye.

In short it reminds me of a really powerful line in Babylon 5 for those who watched there series. In one episode Londo says there are 2 kinds of people. Loud ones and those who are silent. The silent ones are the ones who change the universe, the loud ones only take credit for it. Trahearn might have been the public face but we were the heros down in the trenches every step of the way.

Thats not just it but ally NPCs help build our story and for that I agree that if sacrificing our voice overs we get 10 allies in a story thats much richer for us and the story. What are we really loosing by not being voiced? we dont get to take active part in cinematics yet we can still have conversations with those npcs after wards and they still can recognize our efforts that way. In return we get to interact with a ton of other NPCs and we get background conversations that give us more lore and information on whats going on. Its a fair trade off IMHO.

You see this technical/coding challenge very clearly in those activity games you play.
You win a crab toss, sanctum sprint or the like, you’re top of the scoreboard, and across the screen you get a big message:

“Top player wins!”

Ummm, yeah, that makes sense! Why isn’t my name there?

When such a basic thing as taking the top ranked player in the scoreboard to print across the screen as a “system notification”, you can also understand their challenge with putting the PC at the steering wheel when it comes to dialogues and story in the LS and why it’s usually initiated by the NPCs and you only get a mention as “their Leader” or the likes.

The real gist of my post – skip to here if you want

I am not fussed on having my PC talk at all, but as the OP says, maybe a minor change in direction so that e.g. when you run up to Corporal Jantzen in Tangle Root, you have to initiate the sequence and could do that by a dialogue line first to greet him and get recognition for who you are, then Marjory could chime in with her dialogue. After all, you’re all there, but at least you as the PC took the first step to greet Corp. Jantzen.

Small things like that through-out, so you’re not a fly-on-the-wall in every interaction the Biconics has with story NPCs. Would help a lot to bring your PC into the conversation and taking charge, after all none of these dialogues usually start unless you “Interact” with the NPC with a green star over its head.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

I for one am happy with this choice. I enjoy listening to world’s random chit-chats which make it alive (and often in a fun way!), but I skip spoken scenes in things like PS because a) I rarely think that my character’s voice matches the chosen VA and b) when not being an “environmental noise”, spoken dialogues are time consuming and reading is faster and clearer.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Angel McCoy.1832:

In conclusion, I’ll just say again that we do pay attention to the forums, and thank you for posting your thoughts.

And in spite of “paying attention” you flogged that horrific LS Scarlet saga to the very end and beyond.
It isn’t our story, it is YOUR story, and you continue to make that perfectly clear as you plow ahead regardless of player reaction or GW1 lore.

You assign us emotions. Wrongly. You decide who is my “friend” and throw it into my face regardless of the truth of it. I cannot stand the “biconics”. I would happily slaughter each and every one of them. You don’t care, my “role” as pal is predetermined and infuriating.

So wait . What you’re saying unless I am misunderstanding you is once you and other made your opinion known about the story you expected them to just end the saga there and then have everyone wait at the very least 4 months until they create a new story and new content for it.

Now lets assume for a second the above makes sense, what about the people who actually enjoyed LS season 1, does their opinion not count? should they have their story cut in the middle just cause some others are not enjoying it?

What happens if the next story is to your like but not to their liking, should the same thing happen again?

There are limitations, every medium has them you cannot possibly create every single possible variation of a story so that you can accommodate every possible player’s choice. Gw1 was no different. Whether you liked it or not you had to ally yourself with the white mantle and fight the shinning blades before the story switched that around. You could not decide to help out vizier you were forced to fight him. You couldnt join abaddon or shiro you had to fight them.

I am sorry no you cannot just be friends with mordremoth (I am assuming an ingame character that would be happy slaughtering taimi would rather be friends with an elder dragon then some other character)

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.

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

We, like you, want the most bang for your buck!

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.

Michael

ps.
how about (very) short stories ? maybe to fill in the commander story gaps?

Zietlogik.6208:

Thalador.4218:

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

Anet doesn’t have those industry Story-Writers and an “estimated to be between $150 million and $200 million or more” to put towards development.

And nowhere did I say that they had the means and resources to accomplish something of the scope BioWare did.

I’ll highlight the relevant information:

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing

Indeed, and I wasn’t expecting to have 5 fully-voiced, totally diverging storylines with those 10 VAs voicing every line of dialogue in-game. And yes, I do believe the ambivalent dialogue is tedious, corny, and boring (after 2 years with minimal change, listening to the same couple going back into their hut to make love or those asura theorizing about a golem uprising is just godawfully dull) and that much more focus should’ve been put into the personal storyline.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

Then I don’t understand why you are even trying to push on with the PC’s story. It’s obvious that it’s not our story, but that of the biconics (or whatever they are called), the dragons, and the world that you are so fondly killing (in both a literal and a lore-related sense) at every step of the turn. Just make the characters mercenaries who get paid (in in-game cash) by Mr E, Destiny’s Edge, Destiny’s Toddlers, the Pact, one of the 3 Orders, or any other government. They go to wherever they are told and solve the problem. No need for involving origins, personality, species, origins, or gender anymore; we’re just guns, swords, axes, staves, scepters, daggers for hire and get the job done while your pets bathe in the limelight.

Jamais vu.5284:

Anet pre-release hype: This is your story.
Anet post-release: No it’s not.

Exactly what I thought upon reading Mr Stein’s reply.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I for one am happy with this choice. I enjoy listening to world’s random chit-chats which make it alive (and often in a fun way!), but I skip spoken scenes in things like PS

To tell you the truth, I’m skipping them too because a) they are cringe-worthy b) the characters (both the PC and the NPCs) look like drugged/drunken people wobbling and weirdly gesticulating in front of a hallucinated, painterly background.

Which again, could’ve been a thousand times better if most of the money they spent on telling their voice actors to gossip about Logan and alligators in the DR sewers, outhouses (and so on and so on) went to fleshing out and perfecting the Personal Storyline. And one more thing: I loved GW1-style cinematics and there I didn’t have the option to choose my dialogue. I keep wondering why they couldn’t continue with upgraded GW1 cinematics. Oh right… because it was GW1. They can’t have anything to do with the prequel.

As for closing, I’ll link in Konig’s post from the previous page because I wholeheartedly agree with the notions he brought up there. (No one can say I’m unable to compromise.)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Enough-of-your-GMPC-please/first#post4172561

Angel McCoy.1832:

The open-world content is there for those who want to make their own story and roleplay their own epic tales from their own imaginations.

Most of what you say makes sense, but this is the bit I take issue with. Not because you are wrong, but because this needs to be developed separately alongside the main story. The world doesn’t stop just because we are in Maguuma, but if you look around….it has. The zones and their stories have not aged or changed in 2 years. That makes it harder for us to do what you suggest.

What is going on in Ascalon? How goes the fight against the Fire Legions and the rebels of EBonhawke? It doesn’t need to be a story, but we need new events, changing events. Something new and different to show this evoloving Living World which is meant to be core to the pillars of the game, yet still hasn’t fully been realised (yet)

Angel McCoy.1832:

The whole “Commander” topic is another discussion entirely.

As i understand the whole “commander thing” as such it was more including me as a person in the game.
You knew commander as beeing you, like the festival introduction movie you were called “you” by Ellen, Yes she referred to us, but in such an impersonal way.
The commander title solved this greatly for me.
May be the solution is in such a titles like Commander (even though traherne got all the credit )
And even more accommodating could be the introduction like Leftpaw characters that are more like a counter part to the player instead of another NPC.
And going further on that path give us an option to choose a nickname some NPC refer to us in some ways.
This might even be a limited choice so you can voice them all like 3 option per race and gender that would be 30 names. But that would at least give us some name in the narratives.
I even like it better when they called me “twolegs” some 250 years ago, felt insulted even.

The fact that ArenaNet makes decisions for my character rather than me, is actually the number one issue I have with this game.

I made the character. I created the background for her in my head. I’m role-playing it. So get your writer’s mittens off of my character and not force her to do things she shouldn’t. Killing Scarlet and being forced to say that she liked it was the single worst moment in a Living Story that includes Scarlet. So that’s saying something.

I saw this on the front page of reddit today. I don’t think it’s actually a real Henry Ford quote, but the spirit applies here.

ThiBash.5634:

The fact that ArenaNet makes decisions for my character rather than me, is actually the number one issue I have with this game.

I made the character. I created the background for her in my head. I’m role-playing it. So get your writer’s mittens off of my character and not force her to do things she shouldn’t. Killing Scarlet and being forced to say that she liked it was the single worst moment in a Living Story that includes Scarlet. So that’s saying something.

So then don’t do it.
All story is scripted and you know that beforehand.
If it’s not scripted it’s not a story, it’s running around randomly doing random things.
If you can’t accept that, then come up with your own story and toleplay it instead.
So if you don’t want your character to do the story, don’t do it.
Nobody is forcing you.

Mister Midnight.9837:

So far, I really like the next season of Living Story. Except for one really blatant and grating detail.

Once again, it’s about these obvious GMPCs that are single-handedly hogging the spotlight from who is supposed to be important here (you).

That dialogue scene before the Festival? Where they congratulated these people I don’t care about at all for the death of Scarlet, but failed to mention the PC at all? I was hoping that’d be the end of the special snowflakes.

But here we are once again with The Superfriends while the player gets to be the goofy side characters following the real superheroes.

It’d be alright to have your GMPCs if the PCs got just as much spotlight as they did, but we don’t. We’re referred to in these off-hand ways. Last I checked we’re supposed to be the Commander of a worldwide alliance that killed an Elder Dragon. Not the GMPC’s “friend”.

As a side note, your two female characters Marjory and Kasmeer are becoming extremely grating. I absolutely do not like having to stand there for unskippable dialogue and wait for these awful pet names and painfully forced gushing to end. It’s completely incongruous to what is going on around you. In case you guys forgot, a whole lot of people died a horrible death and there’s looters all over this mass grave.

It’s getting real tiring watching the dungeon master wax on about his NPCs while we all wait for our turn to speak, you know what I’m saying? Whatever happened to those great one-on-ones from the Personal Story?

Whatever happened to us mattering at all?

Logged in real quick to also agree

Listening to those 2 love-birds go on and on about how SAD they would be if one of them got hurt was so embarrassing to listen to, not to mention irritating. And it honestly doesn’t help when one of that characters sounds like they are trying to seduce EVERYONE around them 24/7.

And again with us being side characters, I totally agree, everyone else sounds much more important than you. So far, we, as the leader have killed 2 insane sylvari and we get no real recognition. They should have changed certain dialogue queues when you walk up to certain NPC’s making you sounds more important.

Jamais vu.5284:

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

Anet pre-release hype: This is your story.
Anet post-release: No it’s not.

That made me chuckle man, thanks

Dear god, can’t you guys leave A-Net alone ???

The story is fine like it is. It is impossible to conquer the world alone.
Everyone has a favorite. I really like Taimi other like the other characters.
The 2 girls aren’t my favorite but please…. every seed has a right to grow :-)

But most important THANK YOU Angel McCoy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Finally i have a reason to tell my Wife to do the grocery shopping.
I can even say i experienced her shopping trip :-)

Both of us enjoyed your comments very much and looking forward where LS2 is taking us. We really like it

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.

Holy kitten an actual explanation from a Dev…kudos to you friend!

Mikuchan.7261:

So then don’t do it.
All story is scripted and you know that beforehand.
If it’s not scripted it’s not a story, it’s running around randomly doing random things.
If you can’t accept that, then come up with your own story and toleplay it instead.
So if you don’t want your character to do the story, don’t do it.
Nobody is forcing you.

Oh, so now you are telling me what kind of criticism I can and cannot give too? Give me a break. My point is valid and you know it.

When there are 3 options to reply to an NPC, what’s the point in actually choosing if the replies are all the same? If the only reply to ‘what did you feel when you finished off Scarlet’ are variations on ‘killing is fun and a good, easy and fun way to solve your problems’ the writers have made a mistake. I’m just giving my feedback for the future that next time they add stuff like that, they vary the possible responses.

It’s fairly easy to add dialogue screens with multiple options that all result in the same generic response. It could add some customization to your character’s personality without affecting the overall story at all. There’s no need for fancy programming or expensive voice actors. All it takes is a short string of text. And I don’t get why that option isn’t used more frequently. Or that, when it is used, all the options are the same.

I actually don’t mind the GMPCs so much as some of the dialog and decisions. Like I don’t understand why Taimi is there. Sure I understand she’s cute and provides some comic relief but realistically (for in-game realism) why would a bunch of adults allow a cute, disabled “almost-adult” to go along in such dangerous situations? And why would they allow her to be the one to catalog Scarlett’s stuff? Wouldn’t they contact the head of the Priory, the Pale Tree, and one of the Asura colleges for such an important discovery?

And I disagree with making the PC the “Commander” since the PC can’t actually communicate effectively with the NPCs and can’t actually make any decisions. I would have preferred simply being allowed to be a member of such a prestigious team – then there wouldn’t be any conflict with my being a commander who can’t actually command…

And for a last example, Marjory’s comments when you click on her have got to be edited! She always says something provocative, even though my character is male and she’s “with” Kasmeer. I think one time she even said something like “can’t get enough of me?”!

Decisions like this make the story less plausible and so I am less invested.

Djinn.9245:

realistically (for in-game realism) why would a bunch of adults allow a cute, disabled “almost-adult” to go along in such dangerous situations?

because they don’t act like adults

why would they allow her to be the one to catalog Scarlett’s stuff?

taimi wants the finders rights, they trust her.. and marjory used to be ministry guard but runs their own detective business

and if we are critiquing DE2.0, particularly marjory.. i don’t care much for her kitten names she adresses everyone with and even when she says something of merit it’s in that sultry cheesey private detective voice.. if that characters development went in that direction because ‘they thought it would be neat’ they were sadly mistaken

In regards to execution for desertion. IIRC whilst it remains an option it is actually rarely used.

Tbh, I don’t mind my character not being the spotlight but rather the story that unwraps around her. I know I’m probably the minority but I feel that Anet should know that there are also players that don’t mind NOT being the ultimate hero. That’s boring. To me. When NPC’s give me unlimited praise non stop, it feels like shoe-licking.

Angel McCoy.1832:

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?

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.

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

We, like you, want the most bang for your buck!

Well, that’s all very well and good, and I don’t disagree. However I find that the Living Story as a whole seems to gobble up most of the resources Anet have leaving precious little for anything else, esp gameplay improvements.

It is a little aside the point of the thread, but as good as the LS and it’s characters have become, they can’t carry the game. Esp when you don’t see the improvements to the gameplay, such as better AI and telegraphing reach the rest of PvE.

It’s like playing two versions of the game, one which is new and the other that is 2 years old. It’s jarring. And since current thou season 2 is fixing this, there is precious little of actual new content that is permanent.

-
But back to my main point, while I find the LS to be generally fairly decent, the gameplay, namely profession have gotten next to no development. Which has other issues such as weak and shallow multiplayer, since your only real option is a dozen different flavors of DPS, and DPS’s don’t play well together.
This problem could be resolved if support and control or whatever other roles were actual separate roles and not subservient to DPS, but their not, and the only way they could be fixed is with additional content to flesh them out.

Which is to say new skills, traits, and likely new stats since both control and support have next to no stat investment. But since this is an area of the game that simply doesn’t get much attention, probably as a result of lack of resources, these problems will never get resolved. And the games core engagement is going to suffer for it.

It’s gameplay, not story that carries a game…. well, at least a multiplayer game.
Which is one of the principle reasons I left the game. Not that because these problems existed, but because they clearly were not getting resolved.
And personally I blame the LS since it appears to devour most of the resources.

I didn’t read the whole thread, but one major issue imo is that the NPC’s don’t talk to the PC in voiceover; nearly all of the interaction we have with them is through choosing to walk over to them, pressing F, and reading text. Makes it feel like you’re not really part of the story and you’re just tagging along. This can be done without even using the player’s name or generic lines; they just have to walk over to the PC and speak to them directly so it’s clear you’re being addressed.

Speaking of Pressing F
Is there any way to add “skip” button for those blah-blah-long-interactions that are between NPCs and I’ve already heard once and sooooo wish I could just skip on the second try? What I loved about painterly interactions we had before, is that you could skip through it quickly if you want. Now, when everything is “open world” it’s really boring. Can we have a “Tivo” mode where everything but important choices just gets skipped?

I understand there are complications customizing the story for each decision in the personal story, but what about our biography choices? Things like our warband or dream to join the circus should really play a bigger role influencing the decisions our character makes.

For example, an Ash legion charr should take a more tactical approach, whereas a Blood legion should confront their foes head on.

A human character who’s lost his parents might sympathize more with a character in a certain situation, and focus on defending them during an invasion. However, someone wished to join the circus could be trying to keep a crowd calm and provide motivational support.

Or what about my human’s social status? A street rat might be able to woo Riot Alice into helping out, and provide tactics needed to infiltrate a bandit hideout, as opposed to blasting in with guns roaring like a Noble would do (ironic…)

This needn’t happen for every mission of course, but it would be nice if our biography decisions influenced at least a bit of it. I want to feel more characterization of the protagonist I worked so hard to create.

Kain Francois.4328:

I understand there are complications customizing the story for each decision in the personal story, but what about our biography choices? Things like our warband or dream to join the circus should really play a bigger role influencing the decisions our character makes.

For example, an Ash legion charr should take a more tactical approach, whereas a Blood legion should confront their foes head on.

A human character who’s lost his parents might sympathize more with a character in a certain situation, and focus on defending them during an invasion. However, someone wished to join the circus could be trying to keep a crowd calm and provide motivational support.

Or what about my human’s social status? A street rat might be able to woo Riot Alice into helping out, and provide tactics needed to infiltrate a bandit hideout, as opposed to blasting in with guns roaring like a Noble would do (ironic…)

This needn’t happen for every mission of course, but it would be nice if our biography decisions influenced at least a bit of it. I want to feel more characterization of the protagonist I worked so hard to create.

Very true. It seems like they scrapped this system. If not I agree that it would be nice to see it more in action.

Good night, again (and happy July 4th to the american players)

I wanted to add something, but is entirely my opinion and I don’t know if others would feel like me.

I do like voice-acted dialogue, but I don’t find it a must at all. To me, a good story in a game is told by playing rather than reading or hearing a dialog. I would be totally fine, as a player, if a more customized branch of “my story” is done entirely without voice acting, as long as the gameplay is good, and I don’t have to face walls of texts (instead of actually living what is told).

Angel McCoy.1832:

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?

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.

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

We, like you, want the most bang for your buck!

Could we get occasional in-game mentions of the activity and war-fronts of the other elder dragons?
I agree with you (as I think most people will) that splitting your efforts won’t get you the best bang for our buck, but in something that’s supposed to be a “living world” it feels odd that we don’t hear about the supposedly perpetual threat of the other dragons and the battles that go on against their minions in the background.

It’d be really great to get the occasional new dialogue from NPCs that hints towards what’s happening in the fight against the other EDs (particularly Kralk and Jor, since we, the player, recognize them/their minions to be a rather active threat to us since launch). It would also be a great opportunity to potentially foreshadow long-term future content.

Mister Midnight.9837:

I’d also like to echo the sentiments that their relationship is written in a way that is painful. Look I’ve played a lot of games with relationships in them, and this one is getting about as awkward as Fox and Krystal in Starfox Assault.

My only issue is that the relationship doesn’t match my conception of my various character. I can see some of my alts as being all chummy chummy, but others not so much. The only issue is that we’re not able to meaningfully interact so we’re unable to change the narrative or reaction to us or about us. But I’m aware of the constraints as as such I don’t mind too much.

Valmir.4590:

And remove the feeling that the zones are made of living characters that have their own lives and that not everything revolve around one character only ? I wouldn’t want that, like at all. The bolded part is for me one of the greatest point of GW2.

Agreed, ambient dialog really helps to give the world depth and feeling. Particularly in the racial regions of Tyria. Most of it tends to be a bit stereotypical to the race, but in that way it helps to create a sense of the race. The Charr more aggressive militaristic Charr creates a far different feeling to the noble in Divinity’s Reach complain about Centaurs, or poor people.
Honestly I think ANet should constantly be adding more of this (if only because I’ve been player the game for a while now and I’ve heard most if it :P)

Angel McCoy.1832:

5) Our current UI setup for non-spoken dialogue limits the number of words we can use for the PC’s lines. Adjusting the UI is no small feat. We writers must abide by this limitation, but I believe we’re getting better at using the words we have to their best effect.

I can see this. The current UI isn’t that great for long pieces of text (try reading a book in game it feels a bit awkward), but it most likely wasn’t made to. However the easiest means of giving our PCs some more personality would be through the non-spoken dialog (since it’s easier to write a lot of dialog then have to write and VO it). A change in the UI would greatly go towards allowing for longer, more meaningful non-spoken conversations. Although this might also include some difficult to debug dialogue-trees, since you’d be able to put flags for gender, race, profession, personality… possibly even Personal Story choices. But I think having more ‘tailored’ dialog would probably address some of the issues some players are experiencing.

Angel McCoy.1832:

If we split our attention to two storylines, then neither one gets our full attention.

Basically this, we’re in Maguuma, Pack is not. Would be nice it the Pack dropped us a letter or two every now and then. At least a informal status update from Trahearne: “Hi commander, how’s it going? Me, well we’re gotten done X, Y, Z. Looking into A, B, C. When we’re ready for the next offensive we’ll send you for”, or something like that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Zhaitan was killed. Confirmed.

;)

Aaawww there goes my hope of a Zhaitan Resurrection / Arah Story Expansion / New Final Zhaitan Battle.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

And in spite of “paying attention” you flogged that horrific LS Scarlet saga to the very end and beyond.

Firstly, what were they going to do? Have her slip in the shower and break her neck half-way through S1? Sometimes you just got to stick with it to the end. Also I’m still convinced people are retrospectively making S1 worse than it was.

Randulf.7614:

Most of what you say makes sense, but this is the bit I take issue with. Not because you are wrong, but because this needs to be developed separately alongside the main story. The world doesn’t stop just because we are in Maguuma, but if you look around….it has. The zones and their stories have not aged or changed in 2 years. That makes it harder for us to do what you suggest.

What is going on in Ascalon? How goes the fight against the Fire Legions and the rebels of EBonhawke? It doesn’t need to be a story, but we need new events, changing events. Something new and different to show this evoloving Living World which is meant to be core to the pillars of the game, yet still hasn’t fully been realised (yet)

I agree a lot of plot lines are still stuck in limbo, but I must point out that ANet can only produce so much content at a time.

It’s a tricky issue.. at the end of the day, stories are at the whim of the pen holders and that should be enough for me, it usually is, I generally speaking don’t get disgruntled when I read books. I get to the end and I’m sad that it’s over and during the reading I always can’t wait for what comes next, sometimes I find a book that looks interesting but I end up getting too bored of it to follow correctly and find myself reading a whole page or two without taking a word of it in, in those cases I tend to drop the book.

When I play video games I almost always go for games with good lore and a story that keeps me hooked because I like to feel I’m in some ways reading a book amongst the hours I’m wasting at a computer. Sadly, at the moment, my own personal opinion, the active story telling in GW2 feels more like the kind of books I don’t connect to whereas if I just follow the Lore as it unfolds and ignore the specifics of how the story is told between NPC’s and instances, I still find myself pretty interested. But then that’s the perspective of an outsider reading a legend, not a pivotal character within the story. I appreciate that what’s missing for me could be supplemented by a certain amount of roleplay and imagination, but I can’t remember ever picking up a book and thinking I’ll have to imagine anything more than what the characters and lands look like.

For the first half of the living story my character felt fresh and new and had a lot to learn, indeed the racial and order mentors helped build on that. As the pact forms and moves into Orr Trahearne takes over and I can live with that, I’m not a Trahearne fan by far so I did start to feel desensitised from my character but not enough that I’d notice it till other players voiced feelings of wishing the PC had been ‘the chosen one,’ Trahearne actively (though rather pompously) respected us and that makes a difference to my feeling of the perception of the main character. LS unfolded and with it came the new characters and it feels, at this point, my PC left the scene and my character is more or less just a tagalong mercenary (which I actually wouldn’t mind if it was written in but it wasn’t and my PC feels dumped there). From the snippets of text conversation the PC has, I’m left wondering where my personality went or why going through through the Zhaitan war 2 years ago as a commander hasn’t built me into a warmongering or charismatic or noble leader. My character deserves respect and I don’t feel like she gets the acknowledgement or reactions from D.E2 that she deserves, though I will say I’m very impressed with the racial acknowledgements in S2 dialogues.

But then, maybe we’re being built up for some bigger than I’d expect such as this group of ragtag adventurers ending up being captains in a pact regiment that we command, or something. I think that would be awesome, and indeed I could very well just imagine this, or any other wonderful details. I’m not devoid of imagination by any means but the danger is that I supplement my character with ideas and stories that will get shattered by what the writers write in the future for them, which will further desensitise me to my character. One of my characters started a bloodthirsty campaign against Kralkatorrik because it seemed the rest of the world had gone back home for a break after the fall of Zhaitan, wait no, that’s not true we’re doing Mordremoth now! Which is fine and all but I hope the point is heard. I don’t mind not getting what I want, I do mind my character feeling let down. It’s a quite an unusual, selfish-selfless feeling o.O

I’m not sure how some of you may have messed up your stories, but I know when I run through places with npc’s, I am still saluted, clapped at or some other appreciated gesture made towards.

What more is there than to be noticed by common person, who has no ulterior motive in wanting to recognize me?

Mister Midnight.9837:

It’d be alright to have your GMPCs if the PCs got just as much spotlight as they did, but we don’t. We’re referred to in these off-hand ways. Last I checked we’re supposed to be the Commander of a worldwide alliance that killed an Elder Dragon. Not the GMPC’s “friend”.

As a side note, your two female characters Marjory and Kasmeer are becoming extremely grating. I absolutely do not like having to stand there for unskippable dialogue and wait for these awful pet names and painfully forced gushing to end. It’s completely incongruous to what is going on around you. In case you guys forgot, a whole lot of people died a horrible death and there’s looters all over this mass grave.

It’s getting real tiring watching the dungeon master wax on about his NPCs while we all wait for our turn to speak, you know what I’m saying? Whatever happened to those great one-on-ones from the Personal Story?

Whatever happened to us mattering at all?

THIS!! So much this!! When Marjory said “friend”, I ACTUALLY looked around…then I realized she was referring to me. LS2 is suppose to be a continuation of the Personal Story, my personal story. Aren’t I The Pact Commander, Slayer of Zhaitan, Ender of Scarlet? And I’m standing beside Tyria’s greatest detective, at the beginning of a huge mystery, surrounded by a peaceful population’s crash site trying to piece together what happened! Felt like a third wheel watching these two gushing over each other…

I would have been fine with their gushing if it happened in Brisbane, before we cross over into Dry Top and discover the crash site.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Personal Story spoilers

hide spoiler

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.

I see what you are saying Angel. From my point of view, I was seeing it more as building a resume like a Norn builds their legend. What qualifies me to investigate the crash? Brought the 3 orders of Tyria together, killed an elder dragon (something even Destiny’s Edge didn’t do), etc. I haven’t been doing much with the Pact because it hasn’t needed my direct attention atm as Trahearne was handling it. But lets be honest, he can’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag and if some major butt-kicking was needed, I’d have a little carrier pigeon bring me some mail

PS Thanks for not locking me in a little room with him! I wouldn’t be able to control my fire-bug tendencies lol!

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Zietlogik.6208:

Thalador.4218:

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.

Fun fact: SW:ToR had 8 classes with entirely diverging storylines and was and is still fully voiced. With the two genders that means 16 possible voices, with split lines of dialogue (usually 3 choices).

Actually, I’m not saying that you could’ve pulled off something similar as you didn’t have EA’s financial backing (although by not ditching quests for events and cutting down the ridiculous amount of ambivalent dialogue that in 90% of the cases is all about the everyday, boring lives of a zone’s denizens you would’ve had way more resources to concentrate on giving voice to the person who matters the most in an RPG: the PC… my 2 cents). However, I’m still waiting on a branching storyline where my choices matter, I have more than one line of dialogue, and which incidentally also takes my character’s personality, origin, species, and gender into consideration.

Anet doesn’t have those industry Story-Writers and an “estimated to be between $150 million and $200 million or more” to put towards development.

Keep going, SWTOR was reported to have cost upwards of 300 million, to develop and produce, and market. But as Forbes said “if you’re spending 300 million on an mmorpg, you’re doing something wrong.”

And Swtor’s stories are a lot better than the amateur stuff we have in GW2, so it paid off

My own 2c:

Regarding the concept of the PC as a deserter: I don’t think that’s the case, particularly since at the start of Flame and Frost the PC is asked (or ordered, if Vigil) to look into the problem, and most of S1 has followed on from that. What I expect it to be is more of a case of being on detached duty – in most of the PS you’re still working with your order, (a part of the Pact) and you’re still performing tasks that it’s in the interest for the Pact to have performed even if they’re not officially taking part. Besides, as (equal?) second-in-command of an organisation that lacks external oversight, the only one in a position to charge you with desertion is Trahearne, and I expect he’s quite happy for the PC to work on fixing problems elsewhere on Tyria as long as the PC isn’t needed in Orr.

BuddhaKeks’ comments regarding the GW1 characters hit a little close to home in one respect – Ogden’s Benediction talks about ‘the children of the legends’, suggesting that for GW1 players, their human GW2 characters may be descendents of one of their GW1 characters. Now, this may be something not every player would want, but I think it would be nice to see some recognition of this. Perhaps there could be a conversation in the Hall of Monuments where it can be established whether a given human character is related to (and knows they are related to) a GW1 hero, and if they are, then every so often unvoiced dialogue will reflect this. For instance, let’s say we come across evidence of mursaat involvement in the Maguuma and the Shining Blade gets involved:

Exemplar Salia: This could get tricky. The mursaat and their constructs have a magic that brings an agonising death to any who oppose them. According to Shining Blade records, only the members of a band of Ascended heroes who had infused their armour with protection against it could stand against them.

Default response (also available to descendents as a means to end the exchange immediately):
PC: We’ll have to see if we can find a way to repeat it.

Descendent response:
PC: I know. One of my ancestors was part of that band.

Exemplar Salia: Really? Wow. Heroism must really run in your family. I don’t suppose you know how it was done?

PC: It took the intervention of one of the elder races – one of the Seers. But none of those have been seen since the overthrow of the White Mantle, so unless we can find one we’ll have to think of something else.

Galen Grey.4709:

actually you are recognized in the cutscene before the festival. Elen introduces the group of heroes and you as their leader. Obviously they cannot voice over everyone’s name so we have to be happy with titles. Sometimes we’re called commander in this case we’re the leader technically thats a promotion

No hero can accomplish everything on their own. Especially when we’re talking of things like Dragons and such that are seamingly unbeatable even when faced with entire armies. It makes sense to have a group. If anything I’d say the group is too small actually.

Commanders are middle men, they serve to give the orders of marshals or generals on the field of battle rather than behind the front lines.

It’s the same in the “personal” story, if you can call it that after Trahearne appears.

Dragons;
Again might I remind you in the Personal Story a Elder dragon is defeated not by you, but an airship. Isn’t that already a sign that the dragons themselves are far from unbeatable, given a single airship defeated it. Sunless is the only dragon who had the feeling that you are seriously going up against insurmountable odds and that was just because of a time limit.

Anet do a bad job at making me think dragons are the threats they are meant to be when you can quickly manufacture said airships on mass and more than likely wipe out dragons with relative ease. If GW3 ever came about I would be surprised if dragons existed at all and if they did I would certainly question it.

Angel McCoy.1832:

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).

Just recently I recognized the different racial dialogue options in the conversations with the Skritt test subjects in Metrica at the heart quest area. First I thought they just are random, but when I was there with my Norn and read the special tankard of beer related question it was clear to me, that such different dialogue options in the open world exist. Kudos for that, it makes the whole leveling thing with a different race much more entertaining :-)

I don’t know why not being the ultimate supreme hero bothers so many people. I definitely would like to see the story and cutscenes be a little more interactive, where my character is actively involved instead of just being the still/silent protagonist, but it would be just as lame if not more if everyone just deferred to your character all the time.

Kain Francois.4328:

I understand there are complications customizing the story for each decision in the personal story, but what about our biography choices? Things like our warband or dream to join the circus should really play a bigger role influencing the decisions our character makes.

For example, an Ash legion charr should take a more tactical approach, whereas a Blood legion should confront their foes head on.

A human character who’s lost his parents might sympathize more with a character in a certain situation, and focus on defending them during an invasion. However, someone wished to join the circus could be trying to keep a crowd calm and provide motivational support.

Or what about my human’s social status? A street rat might be able to woo Riot Alice into helping out, and provide tactics needed to infiltrate a bandit hideout, as opposed to blasting in with guns roaring like a Noble would do (ironic…)

This needn’t happen for every mission of course, but it would be nice if our biography decisions influenced at least a bit of it. I want to feel more characterization of the protagonist I worked so hard to create.

And I do agree with this. One of the most disjointing things about the game is how generic the MC tends to feel despite all the cool things you picked out from their background.

Cruril Darksbane.2318:

Galen Grey.4709:

actually you are recognized in the cutscene before the festival. Elen introduces the group of heroes and you as their leader. Obviously they cannot voice over everyone’s name so we have to be happy with titles. Sometimes we’re called commander in this case we’re the leader technically thats a promotion

No hero can accomplish everything on their own. Especially when we’re talking of things like Dragons and such that are seamingly unbeatable even when faced with entire armies. It makes sense to have a group. If anything I’d say the group is too small actually.

Commanders are middle men, they serve to give the orders of marshals or generals on the field of battle rather than behind the front lines.

It’s the same in the “personal” story, if you can call it that after Trahearne appears.

Dragons;
Again might I remind you in the Personal Story a Elder dragon is defeated not by you, but an airship. Isn’t that already a sign that the dragons themselves are far from unbeatable, given a single airship defeated it. Sunless is the only dragon who had the feeling that you are seriously going up against insurmountable odds and that was just because of a time limit.

Anet do a bad job at making me think dragons are the threats they are meant to be when you can quickly manufacture said airships on mass and more than likely wipe out dragons with relative ease. If GW3 ever came about I would be surprised if dragons existed at all and if they did I would certainly question it.

Commander is the rank you got in the personal story as you said. In the living story you’re refered as the group leader not commander.

only it wasnt just an airship that defeated ziathan

that being said I am not disagreeing that the execution of zaithan’s fight was weak. Most of the above you only learn from dialog with NPCs we dont get to see the level of destruction the story alludes to first hand and most of the events that lead to the battle arent really explained in depth of what effect they’re going to have on the battle. the whole thing required a lot of fill in the blanks by players and that could quite easily make it seem less epic than it really was in terms of story.

Einlanzer.1627:

Kain Francois.4328:

I understand there are complications customizing the story for each decision in the personal story, but what about our biography choices? Things like our warband or dream to join the circus should really play a bigger role influencing the decisions our character makes.

For example, an Ash legion charr should take a more tactical approach, whereas a Blood legion should confront their foes head on.

A human character who’s lost his parents might sympathize more with a character in a certain situation, and focus on defending them during an invasion. However, someone wished to join the circus could be trying to keep a crowd calm and provide motivational support.

Or what about my human’s social status? A street rat might be able to woo Riot Alice into helping out, and provide tactics needed to infiltrate a bandit hideout, as opposed to blasting in with guns roaring like a Noble would do (ironic…)

This needn’t happen for every mission of course, but it would be nice if our biography decisions influenced at least a bit of it. I want to feel more characterization of the protagonist I worked so hard to create.

And I do agree with this. One of the most disjointing things about the game is how generic the MC tends to feel despite all the cool things you picked out from their background.

There actually is a bit of this in the first story instance. I talked to Jory’s sister after the battle and she admitted being uncomfortable around my character because he was a nobleman (picked at character creation). I was able to talk to Kasmeer about it as well.

I’m not playing through it again with another character, but I have to think the dialog would change for say my Asura.

I would like to meet other commanders in the Living Story moving forward. I can imagine some of them starting the dialogue something like:“While you were parading all over Tyria, I was leading the Pact to defeat [insert dragon minions]!” or if you meet a Vigil based one: “Don’t sweat it, relic!”, " This commander can handle this situation better than an old geezer!", “You should stay a veteran!” and so on. We did meet a few commanders in the Personal Story, I don’t remember any of them, but I would certainly like to meet some of the Pact’s new blood and see how they fare against a dragon champion.

I would like to be able to replay the chapters in the PS, some of them were good and like seeing and hearing my main toon speak….. Since they in the journal, cant be too hard right ?

Yes I really don’t want to have sit through pet names and bad voice acting. I understand that some people like it but could this be skippable? You should at least be able to click on the dialogue boxes and speed it up. What happened to the dialogue scenes? The ones where two characters faced each other in a shot from their waist up and talked in front of a static background. Those you could click and speed up or skip.

I didn’t like LS Season 1, am trying to give LS Season 2 a chance and this is not helping.