Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

Sir Vincent the Third:

By your logic, the only thing that can truly be a personal story is something like The Old Man and the Sea, where the protagonist is completely isolated from the rest of humanity for much of the story.

Not at all.

People are always going to be influenced about what family, friends, neighbours, and enemies are doing and have done.

Exactly, and it shape who you are. Compare that to the in-game personal story, none of the outside influence shape your character — even choosing to save the hospital instead of the orphanage has no effect — your in-game character is just numb and mentally and emotionally detached.

I am who I am because I was born in a first world nation, to parents who made certain choices, and they are who they are because their parents made certain choices, all the way back to the first amoeba which somehow ended up trading genetic material with another amoeba rather than eating it. Does this mean that my life stops being about me and becomes about everything else instead? No, it means that those other things have become part of my story.

Your heritage, environments, and up bringing are not about you.

What’s about you is how you react after learning your heritage. Do you reject or accept your heritage? Are you proud or embarrassed?

What’s about you is how you interact and adapt to your environment. Do you succumb to the influence of the culture around you or you reject it completely?

What’s about you is how you turn out based on your upbringings. Do you choose the same path as parents or pave your own path?

You see, those elements are missing when it comes to your character in-game.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I still think Tybalt jumped into the ocean and swam to Istan where he is drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.

No, not really. I think it’s just stupid how each and every one of the mentors decided they had to stay behind, when Tybalt is an engineer and could have come up with a way of rigging the gate to stay shut, Forgal could have held the line until the last minute, and Sieran could have used sylvari vines to reinforce the gate.

It’s unnecessary pathos.

Yeah that death was unnecessary. Never really add anything to the story, just takes away. I for one suspect that Forgal isn’t dead because Thrahern and I didn’t go to Hoelbrak like we did when Apatia died. We went to Hoelbrak because we’ve seen the proof that Apatia died — no proof about Forgal.

Angel McCoy.1832:

The Living World takes you from where the Personal Story dropped you off and carries you forward through your story. The story.

It doesn’t feel like that. My story ended with me as a member of the Pact, a member of one of the three Orders and a pseudo racial hero. Even if you discard my high rank in any of those organisations (which is fine – it does have awkward implications in an MMO), my identity in those organisations and their role in the world isn’t believably represented in the Living World.

In Flame and Frost we enter the Molten Facility. The Vigil took an interest in the Molten Facility and I have a Vigil character. Instead of engaging in that conflict with someone from the Vigil, or in any way dealing with the Vigil, I simply join Rox and Braham. That’s not my story, that’s their story. My story is the Vigil. Sure Priory and Whispers players entered the Molten Facility and limited resources come into play there, but my story as a Vigil member isn’t picked up on by the Living Story. It didn’t matter. I’m not those things any more (as the story seems to have decided, I’ve left my role in the Pact and in Vigil in all but name, I’m still in their “guild” but I never rep them any more, I don’t play with them any more, I’m busy reping the biconics because the biconic’s guild requires me to and if I don’t rep them they kick me out of the Living Story). I’m now entering Maguuma after being tipped off about an Elder Dragon, essentially investigating an Elder Dragon, and not once do I recognise the Pact at all. I don’t talk to Trahearne, I don’t work with Laranthir, I just go off as if I’m not a member of Tyria’s dragon specialists. How can you argue we pick up where we left off? The time line may, but my character doesn’t pick up, they discard.

Angel McCoy.1832:

3) Initially, when we created the original body of the game, we were especially careful to never break immersion by using PC dialogue lines that you might feel didn’t fit your PC. We’ve relaxed this with Living World content and it has proven a more positive experience for many, I hope. 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.

It doesn’t feel like my PC’s story, it feels like your PC’s story. It’s your decisions, your values, your words. I am in no way comfortable with having my PC say things that commit to things like that. That defeats the purpose of it being my PC. It makes sense for my charr to have knowledge that only a charr would have and act like a charr would act even if that’s not me the player – that’s the race in the world I’m playing. In some ways, that’s the rule that results in creativity, the canvas for me to create an identity as a charr or a sylvari or a norn. I can add to it, but the game gives me that foundation. The Living Story, as you say, doesn’t do that.

It took away my PC and turned it into the sixth biconic. I simply say the things I’m supposed to say, just as any other biconic would do. If I don’t accept the positioning that you as writers create (and you have to admit, the writing has a very specific personality, one that would not be replicated in many of the players playing the game – threads like this one demonstrate that) then this kind of writing does not add to immersion – it completely breaks it.

I’ll mention again the observation of the stab wounds in the Zephyrites at the crash site. As a player I didn’t see that, mentioning them broke my immersion. Even if I accept the defence that not showing the stab wounds was a limitation, as a former Pact commander and a blood legion soldier, I wonder why I’m the one to approach a crime scene like Detective Beckett from Castle when I have not one but two PIs with me. It felt like a line of dialogue written for Marjory, but the writer wanted to include the player so it was cut from her and given to the PC.

Relaxing your caution about breaking immersion with what PCs say may have been rewarding for some players. What that comment doesn’t recognise is that it hinders the enjoyment of others. I don’t understand why you think that increases immersion. It takes our characters away from us and gives them to you, the writer. How you write my character in the world, and how I feel about the world is different and that conflict hurts immersion. The story becomes your voice, not mine.

It’s bad enough I know there’s many many more people who have Crusader Deborah as their long-lost-now-found sister.

Deborah is a common name among crusaders in Kryta, didn’t you know? — that one just happen to be your long-lost-now-found-sister.

Or who were recruited into the Gear Warband.

It seems that the Gear Warband is a big group, they could be called a legion based on their number.

Or who watched Sieran die.

Nobody did. We assume she died because the Pale Tree told us so.

As for the other mentors; there was a suggestion way back when that since Sieran cannot come back as an undead, the other mentors should be part of the undead resistance when the Orders are retaking the island — which should prove that they did sacrificed themselves and did not run away like pansies.

Honestly, and personally, I really want ANet’s writing and planning staff to decide if we’re going to have story revolve around our inclusion or move along around us. It doesn’t seem as if they can really decide sometimes . . .

It has been decided. It’s obvious that what we’ve seen in the recent releases was decided long time ago and there’s no way we’ll ever be able to change their minds — we can’t go back to the past. That decision resulted our characters to play Dr. Watson while NPCs around us plays Sherlock Holmes.

(2/2)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You’re not thinking the right path. I took the “Loyal Soldier” path, where the events were centered on finding that heirloom because it was owed to my charr. This was not “Honorless Gladium” or “Sorcerous Shaman”.

It started with “by the way, your father left you this”, but it’s entirely about my character deciding it’s his and going to get it. The enemies are not his father’s enemies, they are his.

I apologize for mistakenly thinking that you were talking about the gladium path. Regardless, how is loyal soldier path about you and not about your father and his treasure?

And when you find the treasure…it’s more about somebody else. It would have been nice if it shines a light about your past, not you father’s past.

No, it’s about my character. After all, he’s the one being targeted for death, isn’t that right? Cannot get more personal than “I am going to kill you”.

The only reason you are targeted is not because it’s personal, it’s because you are your parents’ child — you’re just an accessory.

I doubt the killer even know your name.

Well none of that is relevant to the short little plotline, is it? Though if it had been my ranger, it would have been the Commoner thread, so we would have known who kept him safe since his parents died.

Sorry, but Andrew and Petra are just friendly neighbors who probably know as much as you as you know of your character — nothing.

Again . . . because who you are before the incident is not relevant to the plot thread there. Why do you have this fascination with extraneous details? From a writers’ standpoint, you have limited time and “real estate” to deal with the plot . . . and in these little chapters ANet left themselves barely enough time to handle the plot they chose.

I understand the constraints but I am not one to believe in the delusion that the personal story is about my character.

Why complicate it with yet more threads which don’t go anywhere and might not ever come up? And from another angle . . . why decide these sort of things for the player when it could be their choice to fill in these blanks themselves?

If I am to believe that, then my actual personal story happened during my character creation and not in the actual “personal story”. The character creation says more about my character than the actual story ever did.

Way to take that out of context, thank you very much. I put that in the part where I talked about really good parts which didn’t have anything to do with the player character directly.

You said “I’d add…” so how was that out of context?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

What I asked was a question you ignored, but everyone should reflect on since Angel and Bobby have said it in different ways. So have Ree and Jeff from time to time -

Just how many singular “special heroes” can there be?

That question I ignored because it’s irrelevant and sounds rhetorical.

But if you want an answer, then yes, there can be more than one special hero. According to ArenaNet, my character was “the” commander of the Pact, but now he’s “a” commander of the Pact. Being the commander is personal, being a commander, not so much. However, even in the current plot of the Pact, my character was never “the” commander because if I choose a path, someone else completes the other paths.

ArenaNet have dissolved the idea of “singular” and “personal” even before launch. The ad campaign was accurate when they were still developing the game but was not delivered on release because of the fact that they are not building a single-player game.

It’s an MMO, there are hundreds of us (if you believe the game is declining in population, otherwise “thousands of us”) running around, and the more you tie events to one character the more the other players’ characters are also “the chosen one” or whatever you call it.

Bingo! With other players running around, how can you then say that the game and the story is about one character? What I’m saying is, it never was.

(1/2)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I’m . . . pretty sure that’s not entirely the case. My Blood Legion charr had part of his chapter there where he was hunting down something which had been left to him from his father, and it was pretty much about his birthright and not the people in the intermediate parts.

If you reflect on what actually transpired, you’ll see that it’s all about your father and not you.

Furthermore, the one human storyline where White Mantle are after you due to your parentage is decidedly about you. (It also has Logan being useful and amusing.)

Again, this is more about your parents than you. Nothing was mentioned who brought you up and kept you safe all this time ever since your parents died. Nothing was mentioned about which school you attended, who’s your mentor, who’s your childhood rival was, love interest, etc. Nothing.

. . . lastly, there’s the norn chapter where you blacked out at a moot. And happened to steal a charr tank and “lose” it. So you’re press-ganged until it’s either found or you’ve served time enough. Yeah, that’s sort of about you since you’re basically owning up for your screwup.

Again, this is more about your Charr chugging buddy than you. You’re simply blamed on what had happened. Nothing was ever mentioned on who you are before the incident nor what were the circumstances between you and the Charr.

I’d add Fall of Falcon Company in on that, because I actually really enjoyed the writing of that one.

I agree that the writing is enjoyable, yet it has nothing to do about you, it’s about a missing Seraph Company and the injustice of the captain — one of the soldier simply just happen to be your sister.

The LS is less about “us” and more about “the world”. For some this is an issue, but it does boil down to one question which keeps coming up and I don’t have a real good answer to:

Just how many singular “special heroes” can there be?

. . . at least it’s handled better than EverQuest handled its vaunted Epic Weapon quests. "Sweet, I deciphered the mysteries of the elements long thought to be impossible to reconcile and have the Orb of Magi’Kot . . . as does most every magician past 60 . . . "

What I’m saying is, it was never about us to begin with. The idea that it’s about us is nothing but an advertising hype that was never delivered.

Mister Midnight.9837:

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.

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.

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.

No difference. Caithe, Logan, Eir, etc. they are all the same.

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.

“all kinds of congratulation” is not what I said. I said “I am being congratulated on killing Scarlet even though I didn’t even bother to participate on the finale.”

If you missed it, then you didn’t talk to the biconics during the Festival. I remember Braham saying to me that we beat Scarlet that he got some broken bones and Rox saying that we deserve the crowd’s appreciation — even though I wasn’t there to beat Scarlet.

Mister Midnight.9837:

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.

Well, there was the question which raised a fuss on the forums some months ago in the “Aftermath” instance in the Dead End where Marjory acknowledged you’d done it among other people . . .

By the way, another instance of the PS 1-20 not being entirely around the NPCs is the human storyline in chapter 1. Especially the street rat and commoner storylines, the noble one not so much . . . but it has Lord Faren being a goof so I forgive it.

Also, Blood Legion’s opening chapter? I really like how that one turned out. Building your own warband and then getting to use it? I loved it.

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.

tekfan.3179:

I agree completely that not every character in GW1 was the memorable depthly creation like Gwen.

And even that has issues when you step back. Issues as in you can stop and go “. . . that’s Sarah Conner”.

Still I remember Mhenlo’s relation with Cynn and the constant bickering in it.
I remember Thackeray and how he tried to land on Gwen, I remember Glint…there are so much iconic characters I remember who played a big role without ever making me feel like I played their henchmen, instead of going on an adventure with them.

Lieutenant Thackeray was better than most, but he was still . . . I dunno, “Dogged Nice Guy” pursuing a girl who couldn’t accept him. At least until after War in Kryta. Then he got more work done on him . . . primarily because it was decided Logan had to exist descended from him.

(The apple does not fall far from the tree, I will note, with regards to these two characters.)

While the GW1-characters had a lot more appearances in the multiple expansions than the GW2 B-Iconics so far, I think that’s not all of it.
However, most of the characters in GW1 were nothing but henchmen you picked up like mercenaries while Anet designed the Living Story with the B-Iconics as main-protagonists. They are supposed to be the big friends the pc made while fighting off Scarlet and her minions, yet we know barely anything about them.

We know as much if not more than we did about henchmen like Stefan or Aleisa, despite four “chapters” of campaign/expansion work. Heck, we know more about at least two of them than we do about Prince Rurik who we were supposed to feel for when he died.

Mostly I feel more attached to the dead order-tutors than to the posse we’re running with now.

The further I get from the death of Tybalt the more I think he was a wasted opportunity of a character. He should have been saved to die in Orr rather than that early, and we should have gotten a better Whispers mentor.

Also, can’t wait to see Sieran die. Horribly. I may abandon the mission at the last minute so I can watch it again.

We had a few combat-instances with them in Season 1 and Taimi only attached herself to the group at the end without having much to do either.

I’ll take “reasons to never ever put children in your MMO for 1000, Alex”.

GW1 often managed to introduce characters in a short time way better than the Bicons until now.
My example: Eye of the North.
Within minutes I was taken by Ogden and Vekk.
Vekk, Jora and Ogden had established their role within minutes with their character design and dialouge.
Simply as Jora paced towards the group with her armor and size in the first encounter she embodied everything norn that I had to know.
The only character of the B-Iconics that managed to take me like that within the first minutes was Rox, which is probably the reason why I like her the most.

It’s funny, I didn’t know enough about Rox until after her instance to really like her. I liked Braham more, basically for going “no, you have to do something and if you’re not going to, I will” about the Molten Alliance attacks.

In my opinion Anet should have interjected a short time of peace between the two seasons with a few short story-instances to get to know the Bicons personally.

That takes time to develop and handle, and I don’t want them to run their efforts too close to the red line of “will this make it to finish and polish in time?” . . . because they did that already and what we got was the Zhaitan fight.

No. Thank. You.

I’d like to see the teams work on some sideline stuff they can slide in during LS2 where we can do downtime with them presumably at the Tangle Root camp and talk about things. Like the one instance in Lion’s Arch during the Marionette chapter . . .

I’d like them, much more, to think ahead to “Season 2 Epilogue” which can get some of these minor ideas integrated then . . . heck, let them be someone’s side-project like the SAB.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

tekfan.3179:

If five random tyrians, who failed years ago at killing an elder dragon, are known to everyone while the pc, with all those achievements, is meant to remain unrecognized in a period of two years of heroic deeds, something is off.

It’s more a sign they had no real idea how to integrate the PC into the Living Story with Personal Story in mind, other than to assume they had already finished it (see the obvious patch over it in how you now must finish Personal Story to get into LS2). They were clearly not sure how far to take it and what to assume player characters had already done other than their tutorial instances . . .

And they’re playing catch-up now, which makes it frustrating to watch and there’s small fumbles here and there which I overlook but when brought up go “yeah, hm”. Fridge Logic at its finest . . .

Honestly, there is character to the B-iconics but it suffers from them not being consistently present in LS1 and sometimes not entirely present at all other than to be stuck in there as “hey, we’re still here”. Aside from Tower of Nightmares and everything after that, the B-iconics got very little character to develop at all.

This is probably why they feel “easy to bleach out and blur” – which is also reminiscent of almost every other character in GW1 whose name was not Gwen.

I agree completely that not every character in GW1 was the memorable depthly creation like Gwen.
Still I remember Mhenlo’s relation with Cynn and the constant bickering in it.
I remember Thackeray and how he tried to land on Gwen, I remember Glint…there are so much iconic characters I remember who played a big role without ever making me feel like I played their henchmen, instead of going on an adventure with them.

While the GW1-characters had a lot more appearances in the multiple expansions than the GW2 B-Iconics so far, I think that’s not all of it.
However, most of the characters in GW1 were nothing but henchmen you picked up like mercenaries while Anet designed the Living Story with the B-Iconics as main-protagonists. They are supposed to be the big friends the pc made while fighting off Scarlet and her minions, yet we know barely anything about them.
Mostly I feel more attached to the dead order-tutors than to the posse we’re running with now.
We had a few combat-instances with them in Season 1 and Taimi only attached herself to the group at the end without having much to do either.

GW1 often managed to introduce characters in a short time way better than the Bicons until now.
My example: Eye of the North.
Within minutes I was taken by Ogden and Vekk.
Vekk, Jora and Ogden had established their role within minutes with their character design and dialouge.
Simply as Jora paced towards the group with her armor and size in the first encounter she embodied everything norn that I had to know.
The only character of the B-Iconics that managed to take me like that within the first minutes was Rox, which is probably the reason why I like her the most.

In my opinion Anet should have interjected a short time of peace between the two seasons with a few short story-instances to get to know the Bicons personally.
Things like:
Taimi has to do a presentation in her college and you accompany her to talk about scarlet. The other progenies could react differently if the pc is asura.
Braham invites us to visit him in his village, he arrives with the pc in tow, only to see that the whole village is setting up a celebration for him. We hunt some food with him and after the celebration have a talk with Braham in front of a slowly dying firepit with each a mug of ale in our hands.
We join Rox’ debriefing with Rytlock and spent some time with her and stand in when she is being discriminated because she is a gladium. Including a charr-barfight.
Kasmeer and Jory invite us to a picnick and we solve some small cases like a lost puppy, who always steals the cake from a farmer or what else.

I currently level up some twinks I had in stasis for a long time.
I get to experience a lot more of the story than ever before and I must confess that I find it lacking more and more.

Warning! Spoilers!

Right now I’m pulling up a charr engineer in the priory who takes two Sylvari and their trained troops to free claw island. Besaid Sylvari are the same you meet later when you try to lure the mouth of zhaitan out with a magical mirror…which I did with the same char.
They don’t even mention an earlier meeting in a sidenote of the text-conversations.
I pulled up a asuran thief who met Professor Gorr in three different story-segments and never ever he remembered her.
Not even in a text-note.
Even Gwen from Guild Wars 1 Eye of the North remembered the pc when he was of ascalonian origin and commented on that. She met the pc when she was a child and still remembered him. Guild Wars 2’s NPC’s can’t remember the pc even though they saw them multiple times in the same year and had lifechanging victories with the pc.

More and more I feel my characters being excluded from the story and the living of the world.
Still, I kinda like the new characters, although they appear to me mostly as uncreative.
The shining star for me is Rox.
Braham’s design is a typical “Bro”, put him in a sci-fi armor and color his red hair brown and you get James Vega from Mass Effect 3. I liked how he became Taimi’s makeshift bigger brother, but even this originality seems to bleach out.
Kasmeer and Jory are likeable. However, the funny detective-identity of Delaqua fades out like the color from the sequence of her journal.
Except for sidenotes like “The plot thickens” she is as much a detective as pretty much any other NPC in the personal story who has functioning eyes.
Taimi…well, I like the Asura, but her only identity is pretty much this: Scarlet-Fangirl who limps around.

I found several discussions in these forums about how nobody recognizes the pc as commander or in any other way.
Often I read the argument that the victory against zhaitan was two years ago and that there are now more commanders in the pact, so our pc is just one of many.
I even read that it’s normal since there is no TV or press showing the face of the pc.
I find these arguments as empty as they can be.
Destiny’s Edge only almost brought down an elder dragon and they are pretty much tyrian-idols with kids playing their adventures on the street.
The pc achieved something in its home(snaff prize, hunter, hero against a centaur attack…), the pc formed the three orders into the pact, the pc reunited Destiny’s Emos and the pc was the leading commander in the attack against zhaitan where the pc also brought along DE. Now the pc is mentioned on monuments in Lions Arch for bringing down Scarlet.
If five random tyrians, who failed years ago at killing an elder dragon, are known to everyone while the pc, with all those achievements, is meant to remain unrecognized in a period of two years of heroic deeds, something is off.

Eh, just file it this way:

The Pact is on a bit of down-time since Zhaitan was killed, their duties right now are in trying to keep a lid on Orr’s Risen (which still remain after Zhaitan died for some reason) and keeping a front active against the Icebrood and Claw of Jormag (yes, that is Pact up there). The Commander is not needed there, so they took leave and wound up sticking their nose into local affairs. (You can even claim it’s to build goodwill.)

The rest of it can be filed under “Chronic Hero Syndrome”. It’s assumed the Player Character is going to take part, rather than say “eh, screw this I’m going to find a Southsun beach not infested with karka or drakes and laze about for a few months”.

Or that they didn’t go “Oh, Forgal died? Good luck with the dragon suckers, I’m turning Mist Warrior.”

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.

Highlord.7158:

I’m not liking the new destiny’s edge (lower case intentional) replacements that much either. Quite frankly, if I wanted a pair of women gushing over each other to the point of distraction while they leave getting work done to others, I’d go read Final Fantasy fiction. I don’t give a whit about Anets GMPC’s. It reeks of White Wolf level railroading and bad writing.

All in all, I’d like /some/ attention paid to the PC for a kitten change. Not a passing line of dialog, not being referred to GMPC #1631345’s “friend” and not as “just another adventurer.” We are incredibly deadly, frighteningly capable, world-shaking engines of Getting Kitten Done, and some acknowledgement of that would be nice as a player.

But as things are now, the new group of DM created special snowflakes are just replacements for the last group of them. But while destiny’s edge are a pack of simpering morons more interested in teenage drama and blame games than they are of doing their jobs, the new group are too busy flirting and necking in the bushes to be of any use.

Enough of this. Get them out of the way so the professionals can gets things done already.

Show, don’t tell. You can talk about the PC being a commander and doing commander things somewhere else all you want. It’s not shown in game, since it goes from Zhaitan, to Scarlet, to whatever is going on now, and apparently we only actually had a hand in the first one. Everything else happens offscreen and the PC we’re playing is just some random sideliner taking part in the writers characters’ story.

I… can’t add anything to this. This echoes a lot of what I’m feeling about the story writing. Through level 20 or so, the PC was important, even if a lot of that was indecisive leaning by the PC’s administrative superiors. But now, we’re not even worth an honorable mention. :\

I like character and story development, as a side effect of my RPG and LARP experiences, both in the player side and the GM and ‘writer’ side.

The ‘writer’ was to think and write around 60 characters for a LARP, their interactions, backstory and possible ramifications while in game, for 60 players, taking in consideration that all of them were players, we had only 3 or 4 NPC and we could not allow ourselves to make any of those 60 character a “background piece”. All of them should had enough background and previous history information to make informed decisions for their characters, and enough interactions, goals, desires and stuff to be done to not be bored for the whole event (usually a weekend).

It’s hard to do, and probably is unrealistic to be done in a MMO. But it may be done better (less focus on GM NPC, allow some antagonist to address your character instead of focus on the NPC, some options to configure the NPC’s group to fit player desires, etc).

I guess it depends on the views of the whole team, development times and cycles, and lots of internal stuff we are not aware of.

Little examples: Treaharne. The personal story could have been divided in two. It is in fact divided, but some external division could have been useful so we, the players, could have a less grieving look when our personal story transforms on Treaharne’s story. Just something advertising at us “and what follows is not exactly your story, but you took a part on it”.

Destiny 2.0 is tricky, it’s a pre-made group of people that you have to like (like it or not), and accept as best-buddy-friends forever. If the company had received some signal before saying “this may be a bad idea, what happens if someone dislike the characters so much?” they could have proceed to deliver it in another way. Maybe choosing their personality traits, or having the possibility of configure which members form “your Destiny”. So during a year, or half a year, the Living World could have consisted in missions, adventures and events that lead to the creation of ‘your’ Destiny 2.0 (that’s much more development, more models, more lore, more text, more possible interactions….), but it delivers a world that is more ‘yours’.

I’m not liking the new destiny’s edge (lower case intentional) replacements that much either. Quite frankly, if I wanted a pair of women gushing over each other to the point of distraction while they leave getting work done to others, I’d go read Final Fantasy fiction. I don’t give a whit about Anets GMPC’s. It reeks of White Wolf level railroading and bad writing.

All in all, I’d like /some/ attention paid to the PC for a kitten change. Not a passing line of dialog, not being referred to GMPC #1631345’s “friend” and not as “just another adventurer.” We are incredibly deadly, frighteningly capable, world-shaking engines of Getting Kitten Done, and some acknowledgement of that would be nice as a player.

But as things are now, the new group of DM created special snowflakes are just replacements for the last group of them. But while destiny’s edge are a pack of simpering morons more interested in teenage drama and blame games than they are of doing their jobs, the new group are too busy flirting and necking in the bushes to be of any use.

Enough of this. Get them out of the way so the professionals can gets things done already.

Show, don’t tell. You can talk about the PC being a commander and doing commander things somewhere else all you want. It’s not shown in game, since it goes from Zhaitan, to Scarlet, to whatever is going on now, and apparently we only actually had a hand in the first one. Everything else happens offscreen and the PC we’re playing is just some random sideliner taking part in the writers characters’ story.

BobbyStein.2315:

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.

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.

There are some among us who want to feel some sense of importance to character planning. It could be as simple as having a text box to put some background story, it could be as weighted as having forking text branches. The impression I’m getting from the last two years of playing this game is there are too many unraveled and unfinished threads.

There are some among us that want to experience deeper lore and exploration, and be rewarded with some sense of history and context. That’s largely absent. Take for instance the ruins of the dwarves, is there anything to discover? No. You have a couple headstones. In Lion’s Arch there’s a placard serving as a memorial to those who died. What does it say? Nothing more than a description of what the sign says – no actual details. You can’t say that you guys have spent time fleshing out the open world when in two years time, 2.25 zones have been released. And those zones are shallow compared to the vanilla ones. What about the 30+ minigames? What about Order quests and events?

The open world is completed by our choices and what things interest us. To ignore that is to ignore any chance at meaningful content, open world or not. The two groups are not exclusive.

During the launch time ego boosting your company said you were wanted WoW’s throne. Let’s do a simple comparison. Count how many dungeons, count hearts and events as quests – do you think that Guild Wars 2 actually has the same level of content?

Yeah, I don’t like these GMPCs either. Skipping over every in-depth issue the basic problem is that they waste the player’s time with uninteresting dialogue that is more about reveling in the characters than actually engaging the player. It gives the impression that the player has become a generic mook rather than someone who has made a critical difference when it should be the other way around. It’s not fun and it’s not engaging.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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)