Guild Wars 2

Change games.

You have to enjoy at least a few of the many paths the game offers you to level up. If you are getting bored, you simply are not interested in any of them.

Listen to yourself, and act accordingly.

Dymensity.2789:

What should I do?

Play something else.

Including something just to include makes for preaching and poor story telling. It’s like a Christian demanding a monotheistic God be present because they want their beliefs to be represented and shown as valid… that’s just utterly ridiculous. If you’re not trying to, essentially, use media to preach your message, why aren’t you fighting for the inclusion of interracial couples in the spotlight? So it seems to me, people who want this are obviously just trying to use video games in order to preach their dogma…

If anet can finds a natural, non-forced way to include a male gay couple, sounds fine to me. That doesn’t mean we should include them just for the sake of including them… that’s just being preachy.

At the moment GW2 has arguably more gay romantic characters than straight romantic characters (Logan/Jenna, Kasmeer/Jory, Caithe/Faolin). They don’t need to pioneer gay relationships to such an extent that straight relationships are rare.

Anton’s back piece. It’s a skin of what appears to be back up swords and daggers. Any would be adventurer of Tyria should have them!

I understand why some people who’d already completed it might have wanted it to stay the way it was – but “Victory or Death” is part of the PS, and it needed to become soloable. Look back in the early forums, and you’ll find any number of people seriously upset that it wasn’t. And the biggest, most frequent plaint was simple:
“This has been MY story all the way through – and now you’re telling me I MUST team up with, worst case, four complete strangers to finish it? That is NOT going to happen. I’d rather leave it unfinished.”
And no amount of trying to convince people – that, say, it wasn’t really THEIR story, but that of Trahearne, or Destiny’s Edge, or the Alliance – was going to change that feeling of having been robbed of the right to finish it themselves.

(I was one of those. To let the stats speak for themselves – I have 22 level 80s right now. Of those, before the change, no less than 13 had completed their PS – except for “Victory or Death”. And I’d run the story on 2 more – both times grouped with, and only with, RL friends. Sure, I might just have gotten around at some point to asking a friendly guildy or four to help me complete my PS on the odd extra one. But – PuG the rest? Not remotely interested. Whereas, now, I’ll pick them off one at a time, when I have the time and feel the inclination – and get a sense of satisfaction each time I do so.)

Whether ANet made a good job of the change or not is another question. My own reaction is that it’s not bad, but could be better. I’ve done it once since the change, and I agree that the ending is rather anti-climactic – especially compared to earlier parts of the episode. I had MUCH more trouble at a couple of points than with Zhaitan. But on the other hand, I’d have been SERIOUSLY pee’d off if, having spent a good two hours getting to the final fight, I’d then found it so hard that I couldn’t beat it (or if it had bugged, come to that – which at one point I thought it had!). It would undoubtedly have been a while before I summoned up the enthusiasm to try again.

So – I’d personally say that some rebalance is desirable. Some of the earlier bits need making just a fraction less challenging, whilst the fight with Zhaitan itself needs upgrading a bit and to feel a bit more like YOUR fight. kitten it – I’m supposed to be the Commander – let me command. Maybe give me a couple of alternative tasks I can entrust to Destiny’s Edge, and make me step in when they’re struggling to complete them (noticeably, I mean – I know that DE was running around all over the place at various times, and I probably did exactly that at points – but frankly, if so, I was too absorbed trying to do my own stuff to actually notice). And add some sort of checkpoint mechanism to let you skip the stuff you’ve already completed, should you fail, or get DC’d, or the episode bug – because it’s simply too long as it stands to oblige people to go back to the beginning and try again. (I’d suggest splitting it into multiple episodes, but I can understand that ANet probably want the last episode to feel of epic proportions, even if you’re the only one doing it, so it seems unlikely that there’s any chance of that.)

VaLee.5102:

To sum up my experience and opinion: after about 2 years of GW2 I’m actually going back to WoW.
And will not purchase HoT until there’s a sale or something, that’s how boring I find the game now, and HoT doesn’t seem it’s gonna change anything important.

Haven’t played WoD yet, I take it.

The issue I have; and I’ve spoken to my partner many times about this in the past is that a lot of the LGBT community wants to fit in. They want to be accepted and they want to be treated like everyone else. Which is their right and I don’t think there are many in the gaming community that really has an issue with that whatsoever.
At least; I’ve never met anyone that has any issue with my sexual preference though I’ve only mentioned it a few times to a few friends online.
I’ve personally never felt the need to tell people about it I’m not hiding it. I just don’t feel that in a game, I need to tell everyone about it.

Regardless of who I’m attracted to, if I’m homosexual or hetrosexual it doesn’t influence my gaming in anyway, it doesn’t influence my ability to play and it doesn’t change how I interact with people.

I don’t understand why a lot in the LGBT community feel they have to parade it around for everyone to see. Wanting to be accepted and wanting to be noticed are entirely different things.
Sure; needing rights and protection is a big thing in the US. Being able to be open about your sexuality is wonderful and I encourage it. But being open about your sexuality and parading it around for everyone to see is a different thing entirely.

The whole; Lesbian Living Story.. I don’t think that was anything other than Anet directly trying to be PC. Transgender NPC? PC gone mad.
I’m not saying all sexual orientations shouldn’t be included. Not at all. But it is main characters and it’s a lot of the story so it does feel it’s there for the sake of inclusion rather than to represent everyone.
“We have to include this or we’ll look homophobic” rather than “we believe that all sexual orientations should be represented”
That’s just how it feels to be personally.

I’m not against any sexual orientation; I just don’t see the need for anyones sexuallity to be paraded around like it’s a big deal for anyone but the individual, because it’s not.

I also was disappointed to find that finishing my personal story required dungeon completion. The PS has been a really fun…sometimes challenging…experience and it was really building in a cool way with those last few segments. Now…hmmm…well, I guess I just move on to something else. While I enjoy playing out in the world with people…and there are incredible opportunities for that, six + years of Blizzard has left me a bit down on organized dungeon groups…so I just avoid them.

That said, I respect that this is a decision made by the developers and I expect that it was vetted and discussed rather rigorously before doing this. I don’t like it…but I understand and accept that I do no have to like everything. I also understand and accept that by refusing to do dungeons, I am foregoing a good bit of content. The decision is up to me and the consequences of that decision accrue to me…so be it. But…and this is a really big but…you might have warned us ahead of time.

I have spent considerable time on the PS…only to drop it now before the end. The one saving grace is that I know better than to start it when I begin my new character. This is, again, a decision that will remove one more piece of content for me. But the implications go beyond that. We now have the Living Story…which seems cool enough and something to get excited about. Is this going to end up in a dungeon as well? Based on what I have experienced with the Personal Story and the lack of any information to the contrary, I am concluding that it probably will involve a dungeon and will now just stop bothering with those snow and dirt covered objects.

My desire isn’t that they change the arrangement now…probably not practical. I just hope that they recognize that not everyone plays dungeons (even though they may well enjoy playing with lots of players out in the world) and giving us a heads up on activity lines that will end up in dungeons will help us make better decisions about allocating our play time.

never ! us GW1 player will rage if they are given outside the HoM…..

Nobody should get to wield a fiery dragon sword without knowing who Prince Rurik is first

I don’t think any changes to the PS are realistic at this point and it’ll probably be better just to add better stuff later, but if I had to change stuff:

- (I might get some hate for this.) I love Trahearne, but it took an effort outside game to get to know the character better to see him fit better in the story. Considering the background information that is either obscure or locked into multiple playthroughs, he is hardly any more of a mary-sue than the player character and much more qualified as Marshall. But this needs to come out in easy to access play, not through scrounging up whatever information one can from various sources. The story could use some serious bulking out with a lot more fleshing out of various important characters, especially Trahearne. It saddens me how much undeserved blame he gets for supposedly “ruining the story” when it’s really the presentation that’s killing the story.

- Because people are going to whine about him taking the credit, maybe take out the people praising him for seemingly trivial things? Not that he seems to be aiming for glory but he’s going to be considered a glory hog anyways. I mean, not that it wasn’t hilarious in a way for random praise to be thrown his way and he seeming completely oblivious.

- Make it obvious when the “personal” part of the story end and when the main storyline takes hold. Of course you impact the main storyline but it’s not longer really personal at that point. Claw Island is a very solid marker but it seems like just another fight-lots-of-dudes quest that hasn’t split from personal story. Not that I mind out personal story ending at 20-30 but a really obvious sign might make players less confused at to why suddenly they are less of the main character. (Again… not that I mind, being second in command is fine with me. Do you guys really want to do Trahearne’s paperwork?)

- I’m hesitant to say this, because making dungeons solo content does go away from being an MMO, but it would be nice to have the storymode dungeons be soloable. I did Arah to finish my story and had almost no idea what was going on with the Destiny’s Edge (other than ~Friendship is Magic~ or something along those lines) because you don’t need to do the other story mode dungeons to finish the story. Also it’s very annoying to have to scrounge up a group so you can do a personal storyline and can be annoying for said party if you want to sit through all the cutscenes. Personal cutscenes would be nice too. For ALL story dungeons, on that note. Since there seems to be no dialogue directed specifically at you outside the cutscenes, I would think this would be fairly easy?

- Expanding on the previous topic; having the Destiny’s Edge storyline in dungeons that require parties makes the storytelling very jagged for me. Doing them out of order because you couldn’t get a group together for an earlier one just jumbles the story up something fierce. I feel very disconnected from that story arch and it really took the bite out of Zhaitan’s fight to have little lead up on that front.

- Please, dear goodness, fix getting double introduced to people I already know. As a sylvari, Claw Island to Forging the Pact felt very off. Being presented as friend-of-Trahearne to my own mother is a little jarring. It really took me out of the story and I didn’t pick up from Forging the Pact until I was 80 for quite a few months.

- Having race and/or class being noticed would be nice too. Doing the Priory arch felt a little odd when my sylvari didn’t ever get annoyed by Gixx’s snide comments about Seiran and it was even odder than he never made any at me. Asura in the sylvari quests before the orders’ arches have no shortage of terrible plant based jokes for my characters. :I

- Either make choices feel meaningful or remove them. I don’t feel like the dignity/charm/ferocity has much of impact other than a bit of flavor here and there. I’m not against some flavor here and there but they’re so few and far between and their levels so meaningless. It would be interesting to see actual impact on the missions depending on how you act towards npcs. Ones you’re mean to are probably not going to be so likely to listen to you no? I do like being able to pick what missions I get to go along on in Orr, but the role playing is pretty thin on the ground elsewhere. I’m not really playing my individual character, I’m pushing a template down various routes.

- More of a chance to mourn your mentor and/or all the friends you’ve lost along the way. My dude seemed to get over his mentor’s death with a disturbing quickness. I was still pretty sad and wanted a funeral or something.

Edit: Also, can we not have this thing where any remotely amusing minor npc is slaughtered two missions later? It was getting to the point that I could pick out who was going to be dead in a mission or two.

Because they run everywhere….

Ebooks
Animations
Tickets to social events in game (provided they offered me something cool for coming to the party)
Tickets to play games at the carnival
Town clothing
Player housing (furnishings, etc)
Haircut
Mini-games (Chess, checkers, etc) I could play in game
Transit pass to travel for free for a month
New in-game music
Pets (that I can actually choose)