Guild Wars 2

Entirely unnecessary changes to effects that have been fine for years, it comes up suspiciously when Anet continues to push their wanna-be esports hard and forget making it dependent on what the rest of the playerbase wants right?

Please keep these threads up with support until we are heard. Spread the message to others.

Ruining the graphically pleasing elements of this game for the sake of your pseudo e-sports is really obnoxious Anet.

This change is UNACCEPTABLE

What the hell is wrong with you Anet
Why are you ruining everything visually pleasing about class skills? I can understand Orbital Strike but this is ridiculous. It looks like a flaming spitwad!

The new build that was just released fixed my framerate issue, but I still can’t fullscreen the game. It runs just fine in Windowed Fullscreen, but when I try to put it into 1280×960 Fullscreen it flickers rapidly between the desktop and a blank Guild Wars 2 window and I cannot click on anything.

I’ve tried changing it to Full Screen in other resolutions, which I can do in other games just fine, and get the same result. No idea what causes this. Anyone have a workaround?

That being said, glad to have my framerate back to playable levels! At least now I can resume enjoying the game!

So I selected my Charr Warrior I left at Cursed Shore to log in and was waiting for some time at the loading screen. Got up to go get a couple Oreos and came back to my screen flickering wildly between the desktop and blackscreen. Nothing I could do save restarting my computer would stop it, I couldn’t click on anything.

My other half had the voice bug going around as well, although she had no problems logging in otherwise.

I cannot find anywhere in-game or on here for where to report inappropriate guild names.

The guild in question is “Michael Brown Deserved It” [MBDI]

I do not know which server it is on, I saw this guild in EotM. I can furnish a player/account name that is a member of the guild on request from an Admin/Support Team.

It’s going to have to be a harsh measure one way or another. Next to no one is ever going to leave the bigger team to join the smaller one unless someone makes them do it. Especially if those smaller teams are perceived as “loses often” regardless of how well they do in their individual arena.

Honestly as someone who started WvW just recently with the Spring tourney I’d be up for anything. I play on Fergusson’s Crossing late night. Sometimes there’s 20 of us. But then sometimes there’s so few of us I can’t find anyone.

Right now we’re matched up against Gate of Madness, who have so many more players than us it feels all but pointless to try.

Any of the three proposed solutions would be nice in my opinion. I’m sure folks here have better ideas than I do, but the way I look at it is if you don’t want to wait to jump into WvW then move to a smaller server. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind mergers either but then I don’t have the same attachment to other players that some folks have. I just want to crush my enemies and siege keeps.

Edit: On second thought, Battle Groups seems the least attractive option. I don’t particularly like the formless mass that is EotM. It’s a shame to see a really brilliant Commander only once.

What’s important to remember here is that ANY system can be exploited by both legit players and griefers alike.

Voting sounds good in theory, but what happens if it’s not just one griefer? What if it’s a bunch of people who think it’s real funny to constantly harass-vote siege? If I’ve learned anything about online multiplayer, just having someone constantly voting against you for the sake of being a jerk can get distracting and spoil your gameplay mood.

You also have to remember that there are always plenty of people who don’t think about it and just go along with it, assuming that good intentions are at hand. Or in some cases some people are so pessimistic they always vote against “to be sure”. So in some instances one griefer could potentially cause people to vote against legit siege who are otherwise too focused to pay attention to details.

At its core, the system at least sounds like -something-. But the very fact that players will have to focus away from the gameplay and focus on trying to thwart trolls means its only partially effective.

The changes to Commander tag prices seemed good to me to be honest. It raised the threshold so that people already playing the game for some time can use the tag, they’re experienced players at least. I tend to get frustrated with Commanders when they aren’t doing anything useful (and leave their tag up, which clutters up my minimap), or when an entire map of players swarm around one Commander leaving people doing other Group Events understaffed so to speak.

You know what would be cool? A UI option to disable Commander Tags.

It’s also a distraction from worthwhile discussion. What’s important is talking about the gameplay itself.

I can only speak for myself, but I’m much more interested in how people feel about the changes to when Utility skills are gained (Which seems great now if the notes I read are correct, makes me happy how about others?) and what the devs think about Adrenaline draining super-quick.

Our alts have passed the point where the NPE matters anymore, so all I can do is post about the impressions I got during it.

Here’s a couple other things for you guys to keep in mind:

With your weapon abilities being locked out it makes it seem like there are “better” classes to start out as. Letting starting players be able to do whatever they want and feel useful is important. Again, compare being a Warrior with a rifle early in to being a Mesmer with a staff early on. Or maybe being a Thief with a sword versus being a Ranger with a sword starting out.

It’s a lot more fun to be able to play around with weapon combos early in and feel that customization and say “Look at all these cool abilities I can do”

You get one chance to impress new players. It’s better for them to be blown away than for them to feel underwhelmed in my opinion.

Also, please be a little more lenient on Warrior adrenaline. It’s really frustrating to feel like it’s better to run into combat at half health than to risk your adrenaline draining.

Edit2: I get that some people feel like it isn’t helpful for the same people to continue wanting to make their points, but honestly guys to me it smacks of “Yeah we heard you so just shut up about it okay?”

anzenketh.3759:

I have decided based upon my impression of this thread and recent comments from Chris that changes are closer to their actual design. I do not know everything in relation to the NPE as I have veteran goggles on. However I am in a unique position to have a wife that recently picked up the game.

Due to this I will revise my feedback I posted in in the following thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Learning-Curve/first#post4389552

Revamped Hints

These are extremely useful. However I am unsure about their effectiveness. Your testing should have proved if it is true or not.

Gating of Weapon skills

I understand why this was done to reward the player. I think that gated systems are not vary rewarding they always feel restrictive. Nor do I find it educational. I do not feel that it teaches me the profession. I was leveling up a sentimentalist from level 1 in the new system I understand the mechanics of fire well. The reason behind this was that I was required to go a entire level focusing on that single skill.

However for the remaining elements of the elements I don’t understand them well at all and find myself going back to fire frequently. I have not had the focus with the other elements like I have on fire.

I think the old weapon unlock system excelled in this area. On my thief I learned what the skills did as I unlocked them. However they unlocked a bit too fast if I was not paying attention. Perhaps return the old unlock system and slow down the progress of unlocking them.

I do think this may annoy some veteran players I am not sure how to satisfy them. Perhaps once you have unlocked a weapon for a profession on the account it is unlocked for the entire account for that profession.

Frequency of events
I think the events in the begening areas need to be increased a tad. This is to keep refine the pacing in the starting areas.

Bundles and changes to starter areas
I understand why it was done. You don’t want to front-load a player who is just learning their skills. However now some of them are quite silly or feel toyish. Entertaining a cow, fumbling with a toolbox. Also some interesting ones were outright removed. Protogy and Golem chess in Metrica province. I feel that the cows and repairing golems should actually be collector heart events. And the events that were removed should be re-added elsewhere. Please add the flavor back to the beginning areas.

I agree with this post a lot. I don’t know if you guys read the thread I posted with my other half and I’s thoughts about the NPE when we made our new character duo but my biggest problem was the Utility/Elite Skill gating. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NPE-Feedback-and-GATLING-FISTS/first#post4414100
for reference
Weapon skill gating is irritating and extremely unfair to certain weapon skills for some professions (Like Staff Mesmer, as I mentioned).

I saw a post the outlined changes or bug fixes (Was it actually a bug? What did you guys think to yourselves when you saw that the skills unlocked so late? No malice intended, I’m genuinely curious) to when Utility Skills and Elite skills level unlocks and that seems good enough to me. I overall liked the rest of the changes, as I stated in my thread. Except the golems killing us instantly haha.

I don’t like that you guys removed some of the fun ways to do the hearts, I was saddened to see the golem chess gone. I instead opted to just cause the golem to break itself and revive it repeatedly to get it over with quickly, since the interesting avenue was gone the path of least resistance seemed the next option.

I’m a bit saddened to see people in here trying to paint everyone who didn’t like certain aspects of the NPE as “trolling” or something similar. It’s a really low thing to do.

MikaHR.1978:

Mister Midnight.9837:

I can’t even comprehend how you’d manage to ignore enough aggressive enemies that pursue you for 15 levels to not get these abilities just by defending yourself, but I guess some people just run past enemies?

Obviously I can’t say your experiences are invalid as much as you cannot attempt to invalidate mine.

It seems to me a reasonable middle-ground would have been to just reduce the number of kills (Because it isn’t about hits. One hit counts as much as 20 on a single kill in the old system) for those people that…don’t seem to fight enemies as much as most other players?

Most other players?

Please explain how you know what “most other players” do or like?

The way they changed it it quite seems most other players didnt like to JUST grind mobs for basic weapon functionality and they actually DID miss skills to play with for far too long. And when they finally got new weapon type – all over again.

Honestly this is a complaint I pretty much never saw, maybe it’s just me.

Your entire argument doesn’t even make sense, it is a FACT you will have at least two if not three of your first weapon skills before you leave that level 1 tutorial. You never had to wait until leveling up to acquire your weapon skills. You didn’t even have to TRY, you could have leeched one hit off an enemy someone else was fighting. Is there really any regular enemy in this game that takes very long to kill anyway?

Let me emphasize that point: You have to WAIT to get a weapon skill. You seriously have to WAIT until you are ALLOWED to have that, rather than being able to pick up any weapon you desire and smack a handful of heads to get yourself started. As you level up higher the process took even fewer kills. This was never something that took actual effort.

I’m pretty strong in my belief that you are greatly exaggerating the amount of combat it took, and frankly experiencing this process 18 times gives me a pretty strong standing point I think.

I can’t even comprehend how you’d manage to ignore enough aggressive enemies that pursue you for 15 levels to not get these abilities just by defending yourself, but I guess some people just run past enemies?

Obviously I can’t say your experiences are invalid as much as you cannot attempt to invalidate mine.

It seems to me a reasonable middle-ground would have been to just reduce the number of kills (Because it isn’t about hits. One hit counts as much as 20 on a single kill in the old system) for those people that…don’t seem to fight enemies as much as most other players?

Malkavian.4516:

Voting in-game can be very intrusive to people who just want to play the game to be honest. It would be ideal to just keep it through this site and just notify players via the bulletin you see on the client.

If anything though, I’d also like to see video demonstrations of what feature patches would have as text previews. So far, they have only given demonstrations to balance changes for professions and the whole new WvW experience footage from PAX which is a good start. All that’s needed now is to exercise consistency with it and present video footage for what future feature patches will have in store to help people be on the right page with the developers and all that.

Well the general idea is to make it a menu one can go to on their own volition. The problems arise when devs do the things that always make problems with these sorts of things arise: Making objects flash/pulse/sparkle/do unnecessary things/ rather than sit in the background. Which Jagex does and it’s annoying.

I definitely agree on the topic of less hand holding. One of the things about this game that my other half and I fell in love with about it was how open it was. The encouragement to explore and figure it out reminded us of some of our favorite games from back in the N64 days when we were kids.

I’ve always told people in other online arenas that the exploration and figuring it out aspects were a strong point of this game, and I still think so. Figuring out how everything worked reminded me of how it felt to play MMOs for the very first time, a fleeting feeling you can give MMO players that is like reaching for the stars.

I sincerely do believe Anet when they say that their ability to bring in new players is in dire straits and I do want them to do something about it.

I just hope for it to be something that makes the game more fun and varied, not rigid and restricted.

But then I’m that MMO player that likes to go places and do things my character shouldn’t be doing yet, even though that makes it needlessly difficult or gets me killed.

You know one thing you guys could do is start having more community votes on future updates.

You see, I play Runescape sometimes also. It’s a very old game, but one thing they’ve done in recent time is to implement this brilliant system that lets players vote on upcoming content options the Devs have brainstorming. You might not see that content until 8 months later, but still. Furthermore, they have votes afterwards for how players felt about the update.

It’s something I kind of like and I really respect Jagex as a studio for involving their players with the future of the game like that. Now GW2 is a very different beast that operates in very different ways, but implementing an in-game voting system for some of your ideas might not be too bad of an idea no?

MikaHR.1978:

Mister Midnight.9837:

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Katz.5143:

CalamityO.2890:

Leveling alts(s) to level 10 and then unlocking all weapons skills by equipping each weapon is convenient. The rest really seriously do need a good looking in to.

I enjoyed leveling the weapon skills and looking at the list of weapons I could equip and then crafting or finding or somehow getting the weapons I hadn’t unlocked and unlocking the skills. It just sort of felt like a small little accomplishment.

Question: Is there some place where each change and its rationale is clearly explained by a developer? Other than an overall general “we are making it easier” statement?

And i hated grinding mobs for every single skill on every single weapon. I just felt it detracts from doing more fun stuff like events, hearts, collecting mats, doing POIs/Vistas….

Now i have the freedom to do whatever i want and dont have to endlessly grind mobs just to have basic weapon ability use.

you didnt have to endlessly grind monsters, you just had to kill them while doing whatever you were doing.
If you gained great exp while doing so, and was like level 10, the system then makes it so you get them with even less kills.

you can like whatever you like, but unlocking a weapon was no where near endlessly grinding mobs.
i guess the point is you hate killing monsters while you play. Ok thats a valid reason for yourself, but most other people dont mind killing monsters while doing hearts/events/getting mats from enemies, etc.

Yes, it WAS endlessly grinding mobs just to get basic weapon funtionality.

You seem VERY unaware that hearts/events had non combat aspects to them.

“getting mats from enemies” no, from nodes.

Nothing BUT endlessly killng mobs gave basic weapon funtionality.

Now you have freedom to play as you want. If you dont want to depopulate area of lvl1 boars, you know, just because, you dont have to.

But if you enjoyed it – knock yourself out, it hasnt been removed.

And people talk about removing freedom….rofl

What? No it doesn’t. I changed weapon preferences on a level 40 character and unlocked all of my abilities within 5 kills. I had even once unlocked all underwater skills all at once from a single kill on a higher level character that had never ventured into underwater combat.

Uhm, we are talking level 2-5-7-10 here. You know, new player expereince, for new players.

It still wasn’t “grinding endlessly”

I’ve had the first three before even finishing the tutorial on most of the 18 characters I made before the update. I’ve tried every weapon with every class. It does not, never did, take any inordinate amount of time.

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Katz.5143:

CalamityO.2890:

Leveling alts(s) to level 10 and then unlocking all weapons skills by equipping each weapon is convenient. The rest really seriously do need a good looking in to.

I enjoyed leveling the weapon skills and looking at the list of weapons I could equip and then crafting or finding or somehow getting the weapons I hadn’t unlocked and unlocking the skills. It just sort of felt like a small little accomplishment.

Question: Is there some place where each change and its rationale is clearly explained by a developer? Other than an overall general “we are making it easier” statement?

And i hated grinding mobs for every single skill on every single weapon. I just felt it detracts from doing more fun stuff like events, hearts, collecting mats, doing POIs/Vistas….

Now i have the freedom to do whatever i want and dont have to endlessly grind mobs just to have basic weapon ability use.

you didnt have to endlessly grind monsters, you just had to kill them while doing whatever you were doing.
If you gained great exp while doing so, and was like level 10, the system then makes it so you get them with even less kills.

you can like whatever you like, but unlocking a weapon was no where near endlessly grinding mobs.
i guess the point is you hate killing monsters while you play. Ok thats a valid reason for yourself, but most other people dont mind killing monsters while doing hearts/events/getting mats from enemies, etc.

Yes, it WAS endlessly grinding mobs just to get basic weapon funtionality.

You seem VERY unaware that hearts/events had non combat aspects to them.

“getting mats from enemies” no, from nodes.

Nothing BUT endlessly killng mobs gave basic weapon funtionality.

Now you have freedom to play as you want. If you dont want to depopulate area of lvl1 boars, you know, just because, you dont have to.

But if you enjoyed it – knock yourself out, it hasnt been removed.

And people talk about removing freedom….rofl

What? No it doesn’t. I changed weapon preferences on a level 40 character and unlocked all of my abilities within 5 kills. I had even once unlocked all underwater skills all at once from a single kill on a higher level character that had never ventured into underwater combat.

Oh, and one other feedback bit I forgot:

Why did you guys lock-out Skill Challenges until a certain level? I personally found that irritating to have to backtrack for them. It would have been nice to be able to do them, and use those skill points on alternate healing skills. It’s not like you can hide them, if someone high enough level triggers them you can participate anyway. Or in the case of those that aren’t fights, it’s kind of lame to have that held out of reach because reasons.

I suppose people would question not being able to use their skill points, but you know there are the healing skills to try out…

Sokia.3710:

Mister Midnight.9837:

What is up with the damage on Gatling Fists? I was getting hit for over 1,000 damage on my newbie character. It’s not much different at other levels either, and the Elite Asura Summon also does insane damage with it. I saw a lot of players in Metrica frustrated about this as well, because as you know Golems are quite common there and as Personal Story bosses. Since players have no means of defending themselves due to the trimming away of skills, you can’t dodge enough to just not get destroyed. I hope this is a bug haha.

I’m pretty sure it’s a ploy by the Inquest for world domination.

Or, it could just be a bug.

It’s working! That attack has always done considerable damage, so much so that I always prefer to encounter them with a reflect ability ready but good grief haha the first time I didn’t even have time to react!

Surely, they must be powering their Golems with something new. I’m betting on Dr. Bleent’s Ooze Booze, which was mysteriously missing from his vendor wares.

3. Level-Gated Utility Skills

This one kind of stings. I know it was done because players level faster. But it weakens the player in that 1-15 timeframe when you’re already at your most squishy. But it also has one other drawback.

Combat feels less interesting at the beginning. When you’re new you’re getting used to your 1-5 abilities and trying out new weapons, but not all classes get that luxury of LOADS-E-WEPPONS. Engineer for instance has Pistol, Shield, and Rifle. So as you might imagine, not having any utility skills to play around with made it get repetitive very quickly. A compounding factor to that is that the enemies largely have no real abilities to speak of. So it’s your default attacks vs basic attack enemies for quite some time. It felt a bit stale.

I remember when we were new, part of the fun was mixing around the utility skills and experimenting. They always were gated, because unless you already knew how to get lots of skill points you had to wait to unlock more of them. Especially those 6-point skills that felt like a risk not knowing if they were really good or not. This really stings for Rangers I might add, who have quite a lot of utility skills that I personally feel are dull.

Pacing:

The pacing is great now. I liked that we reached the renown hearts at a reasonable level, and the zone more or less stayed with us until we did personal story at 10. After that we over-leveled it and steamrolled everything. But new players likely wouldn’t experience that, or might even find it enjoyable to feel like their character is becoming mighty.

Although that being said, the difficulty curve immediately after the newbie zone is a real shock of cold water. We went to Diessa after finishing Metrica Province since you can get a full set of greens there from a heart. The first heart to stop the separatists is bugged, but we instead went to help Crankmane set up the ghost controller machine. That event is a favorite of mine. But it definitely underlines the difference between the 1-15 zone. It’s less sleepily pressing 1-5 keys and a lot more trying desperately to dodge attacks and killing specific enemies first. Since y’know, enemies actually have special attacks now. That and the Veteran enemies blow the 1-15 vets out of the water.

Overall it’s not too bad, I don’t mind it at all and I like the level-up rewards. But the skills bits I mentioned I feel like is shooting your efforts in the foot. Certain parts of that leveling process just weren’t fun, and it felt like it was dragging on forever before I could do something interesting with my character.

Oh, and about those Golems.

What is up with the damage on Gatling Fists? I was getting hit for over 1,000 damage on my newbie character. It’s not much different at other levels either, and the Elite Asura Summon also does insane damage with it. I saw a lot of players in Metrica frustrated about this as well, because as you know Golems are quite common there and as Personal Story bosses. Since players have no means of defending themselves due to the trimming away of skills, you can’t dodge enough to just not get destroyed. I hope this is a bug haha.

Greetings folks. I decided to make this post to give some feedback about the updates from the perspective of my Fiance and I.

And to talk about Golems. But we’ll get to that.

For a quick background, we both have 19 characters each. We decided to make our 19th pair today as something fun to do on her birthday. An Asura duo made from Warrior and Engineer in Metrica Province. We stopped tonight at level 17. We didn’t use anything but what we found or got as level/story rewards. I hope the devs find this feedback helpful!

Leveling Rewards:

This idea is something that seems pretty nifty. The other half loves it, and I think it’s a good idea myself. Since the removal of being able to play around with trait points every level after 11, this does at least make leveling up a little less boring. Suggested improvements would be to spread gear rewards out a bit. I upgraded weapons more than necessary, but still had level 3 blue gloves at level 17 by normal playing. Adding Accessories/Rings as rewards would fill empty slots and make new characters a little stronger for those that do not discover Jewelcrafting early on.

I noticed overall that “loot” or item rewards rather was more interesting, this is good. Uninteresting and boring loot is an issue that plagues this game, especially at high levels. There’s little interest in killing much of anything, as you already know whatever may drop is junk. At low levels it’s fun and charming to get your first green, and then your first rare, but after that it tapers off and starts being 90% salvage/junk/etc. and 10% +1-3 points stat increase. But I digress.

Skills:

This was the big bone of contention for both of us.

1. Level-gated weapon skills is frustrating. Having three buttons to press after the tutorial boss made it more flavorful and interesting back when it was acquired that way. Now it’s Auto-attacking for a while, then having a 2 key for a while, then finally a three key, you know. Honestly it was the 4th and 5th weapon skills that felt like a real drag to get to.

It’s also not equal across the board for weapons. Some weapons are great in keys 1-3 and some only reach their full potential with 4-5. Look at it this way: A Staff Mesmer would have to suffer having nothing but “Winds of Chaos”, the teleport clone that also casts Winds of Chaos, and the long cooldown Illusion that casts a single attack. That sounds dreadfully boring, does it not? Staff Mesmer is hilariously weak, so I honestly feel like that player would die. A lot. Which brings us to point 2…

2. Level-Gated Downed Skills

I was absolutely shocked to find that the only thing I could do was just…use the 1 key and attempt to bandage. Why? I don’t understand how that helps a new player, who no doubt already finds learning the mechanics challenging. This just makes it easier to die. It’s much easier to die now because of Point #3…

Here to agree! I made a thread about the things I disliked from Ep. 1, but I’m happy to see that Ep. 2 has turned around and is really great. More like this please!

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You might be making the choices but it’s not about you, it’s always about somebody else — and Eir is a liar. All those time saying to you that she doesn’t want to be the hero, yet she and her pals was there when Zhaitan fell. She just want you to believe that it was about you when in fact she’s just toying you and used you to help her and Caithe to get the Destiny’s Edge back together again.

Haha oh wow, this right here.

Yeah, sure, okay

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Mister Midnight.9837:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It is not hard to understand the vision that ArenaNet is trying to accomplish. In a sense, it makes sense as a person goes through their real life experiences.

The Personal Story is likened to a person going through school from K-12 that their whole world is all about them, thinking that the world revolves around them, that all deeds needs to be recognized else they throw a fit. But as soon as this person becomes an adult, this person is overwhelmed with the vast open world that the first reaction is fear of uncertainty and demanding that things should stay as they were — back to all about them. The Living World reflect the adulthood of a person and the reaction to the Living World is that of young adult’s fear of uncertainty.

Adulthood is no longer about you, nor the world ever revolves around you. Sometimes, people you work with will take the spotlight even if you have done above and beyond the call of duty. As an adult, we learn to compromise, adapt, and deal with the situation even if we are not regarded by name. This is what the Living World is trying to portray, that after reaching Level 80, we are now adults ready to take on the world.

As an adult we choose how we are going to live our lives. In GW2, some choose to fight in the Mist, some choose to tackle the Fractals, some prepares for the next big threat, and some likes to explore the Dungeons. Others like the peaceful life of crafting items, trading in trading post, or just hanging out in Divinity’s Reach Party Around the Clock crowd. Thus ArenaNet is striving to accommodate to all walks of our GW2’s life.

I may not agree with a lot of decisions and indecision — actions and inaction — coming from ArenaNet, but it is undeniable that the world of Tyria is indeed beautiful. It is a nice and beautiful world they are building and if we stop for one second, then climb at the highest peak we can find, then look around — everything else is less important. So what if the neo-DE takes all the credit — they can’t stop and appreciate the world as I do.

I for one think your analogy is garbage. The Personal Story itself isn’t even “all about you”. It was largely about how your character affects these various NPCs and organizations he/she encounters and playing the hero. It stopped being about you around level 20. You’re trying to reach way too far here to make an analogy that sounds noble, with a side order of condescension while you’re at it.

Ah, but you misread. My post is about the misconception of the player thinking that the Personal Story is all about them. There’s a big difference on what I’ve posted from what you think I’ve posted.

If you really believe that the Personal Story is all about you up to level 20 — you are mistaken — you simply believe that it was, and it was so. If you review everything you’ve done from Level 1 -20, none of them are about you -- it’s always been about somebody else.

My analogy is based on the misconception of someone thinking that they matter because the reality of it is that — you don’t matter at all. You’re nothing but an spectator ever since from the beginning. The Living Story will progress with or without you. You choose to join into the story because you want to matter, some how, but unfortunately, that’s just something you’ve convinced yourself. Nothing you do really matters.

On the flip side of your topic, I am being congratulated on killing Scarlet even though I didn’t even bother to participate on the finale. Perhaps I should create a thread complaining about getting the spotlight even though I don’t deserve it. lol.

Yes, it actually is about you to a point around level 20. The Norn side of things is a great example. Everything you do is based upon the choices YOU make, how YOU want to handle the situation. It’s stressed that YOU are building YOUR Legend. I liked the Eir consistently tried to distance herself from it, stressing that she is NOT the Hero anymore. You are. Eir was there to mentor you along, and nothing more.

This unfortunately not true in the slightest in regards to Caithe, who is about as bad as the current GMPCs is interjecting herself whenever possible. But I digress.

You’re getting all kinds of congratulation for killing Scarlet? Well goodness do I feel cheated, or blind as can be. I seem to be missing it.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

It is not hard to understand the vision that ArenaNet is trying to accomplish. In a sense, it makes sense as a person goes through their real life experiences.

The Personal Story is likened to a person going through school from K-12 that their whole world is all about them, thinking that the world revolves around them, that all deeds needs to be recognized else they throw a fit. But as soon as this person becomes an adult, this person is overwhelmed with the vast open world that the first reaction is fear of uncertainty and demanding that things should stay as they were — back to all about them. The Living World reflect the adulthood of a person and the reaction to the Living World is that of young adult’s fear of uncertainty.

Adulthood is no longer about you, nor the world ever revolves around you. Sometimes, people you work with will take the spotlight even if you have done above and beyond the call of duty. As an adult, we learn to compromise, adapt, and deal with the situation even if we are not regarded by name. This is what the Living World is trying to portray, that after reaching Level 80, we are now adults ready to take on the world.

As an adult we choose how we are going to live our lives. In GW2, some choose to fight in the Mist, some choose to tackle the Fractals, some prepares for the next big threat, and some likes to explore the Dungeons. Others like the peaceful life of crafting items, trading in trading post, or just hanging out in Divinity’s Reach Party Around the Clock crowd. Thus ArenaNet is striving to accommodate to all walks of our GW2’s life.

I may not agree with a lot of decisions and indecision — actions and inaction — coming from ArenaNet, but it is undeniable that the world of Tyria is indeed beautiful. It is a nice and beautiful world they are building and if we stop for one second, then climb at the highest peak we can find, then look around — everything else is less important. So what if the neo-DE takes all the credit — they can’t stop and appreciate the world as I do.

I for one think your analogy is garbage. The Personal Story itself isn’t even “all about you”. It was largely about how your character affects these various NPCs and organizations he/she encounters and playing the hero. It stopped being about you around level 20. You’re trying to reach way too far here to make an analogy that sounds noble, with a side order of condescension while you’re at it.

Wholeheartedly agree, and I think your suggestions are just what is needed to make the story reach the quality it used to have.

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.)

Why does the game have to be open world at the expense of the PC? That’s a complete cop-out.

We’re talking about Author’s Pets hogging the spotlight from the PCs, something that made World of Warcraft’s lore characters insufferable, not making the entire game revolve around the PC.

I don’t think allowing the player to have more dialogue with NPCs, and more recognition in the NPC’s dialogue is too much to ask nor is it going to ruin the “living world”.

Look, you require your players to complete the entire personal story in order to participate in the new Living World season right? I seem to remember that. That means you need to recognize those efforts by the player later on in the storyline, not act like everyone involved with Zhaitan faded into obscurity because these people over here are new.

At the very least do not make the dialogue unavoidable. It really, really kittened me off to have to stand there and wait for the Author’s Pets to finish talking so we could keep moving forward. A good story does not have the reader rolling their eyes and going “oh boy here we go again” and wishing nothing more than to thumb the pages forward.

I only came here to complain because for the most part I really, really like this game’s storytelling. I’m that guy that /does/ talk to every NPC and sign post and animal in RPGs, I love it. But good grief guys I’m starting to dread the next part of the story because my mind is already thinking “I hope they don’t make it all about those guys again…”

Is there a way to edit posts? I can’t seem to find a button for it, perhaps I am as blind as a Dredge.

I’d also like to thank you, BobbyStein, for extrapolating on why the PCs no longer speak. That’s about what I figured, but it’s cool to see it detailed.

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

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

I’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.

I don’t recall the cutscene before the Zephyrites festival mentioning the PC at all, which really cheapened how much work was put into the Lion’s Arch conflict for me. I felt like The Fellowship of the Ring had just defeated Sauron, and everyone was thanking each of the Fellowship members in turn for saving the world. Here the PC is, who is basically Frodo, waiting for him to be mentioning specifically and pointing to himself with a relieved smile. The people finally say “and thank YOU, Samwise!” and that’s it. Left hanging on the high-five, you know? The group all get introduced by name, but there is no introduction for you. They don’t have to program your name in or something, a simple “And here is the Commander who played a role in Scarlet’s Downfall”

But to the point of the current living story, why is it that when the Commander of the Pact approaches a Seraph camp the guy that runs out doesn’t say something along the lines of “Wow! What brings the Commander of the Pact all the way out here?!?”. The Player Character should be a big deal, defeating Zhaitan and saving the world makes you at least as recognizable as any Destiny’s Edge member I’d say. Instead we’re overlooked while Marjory and Kasmeer toss their relationship front row and center, while they introduce some side character in her sister?

If we’re supposed to be their leader, why is it that there wasn’t a dialogue option for us to give any direction on what to do? It didn’t even have to be a multiple choice deal, just the NPCs saying “What do you think should be our first move?”. That alone would have at least involved the PC, instead of us being The Special Snowflake Brigade’s groupie.

I get that the player character can’t do this on his or her own, and that’s not what I’m asking. What I’m saying here is that it’s painfully obvious that the PC isn’t being involved enough.

The problem with The Superfriends is that there has yet to be any reason I can discern to care about them. Compare them for a moment to other characters like Tybalt Leftpaw or Seiran or Warmaster Forgal. Those three were sympathetic characters you could genuinely care about, and feel sad when they died.

Instead we’re being told these people are our friend and we’re following them around. What? Why? Why are these people apparently my friend? Nothing from the previous Living World gave me any indication as to what they matter, they just seemed like these fellow adventurers that happened to be in the same place as you.

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?