Guild Wars 2

I’ve posted this idea elsewhere but this seems like a good place to bring it up.

What about a difficulty scale? Single player games have offered this for decades, it allow people to see the story and for those who want more a challenge they can increase the difficulty. I’ve never understood why MMO developers don’t look to this.

The difficulty of the dungeon could be adjusted as characters/mobs are scaled in virtually every other aspect of the game. This would allow soloable play with somewhat less rewards and offer group play for those who want somewhat better rewards (or even titles for doing it that way).

The point to a story mission should be to present the story in the most effective way possible. That means making it accessible. There are plenty of PvE challenges in the game with explorer mode dungeons or FotM. The story missions should be about showing players the story, regardless of whether they play solo or not.

I just finished the mission myself and I had a very good group, nonetheless the experience was disappointing when they caused distractions during dramatic points (through no fault of their own, pets and other such stuff) and even more disappointing seeing another character taking the spotlight after all my character had done.

On behalf of SoR I am sorry dude. You guys got delt a really bad hand this time. Crappy dice roll. SoR isn’t happy about the match up either we want competition. sorry about the spawn camping but I cant control what others do. This kinda thing always happens. It happend to us last time siege was broken and it couldnt be thrown down. All while BG and JQ could throw down siege and we couldnt in EB so, we were just there a couple weeks ago. Anyways this week is probably going to suck man but no hard feelings.

You didn’t know this game was the new of game of thrones?

SHOCKED!

Rising Dusk.2408:

I am personally glad that it is how it is. I would have been very disappointed if the big, bad, super-boss of the story that we’ve been told is super scary and super tough to handle were killed by just me and my lonesome. I was actually quite relieved that it required I find some other people to complete; it made the experience much more satisfying.

In my honest opinion Claw Island is PERFECT! It wasn’t too long. It felt epic. There were many but it was single-player. We need something like Claw Island, but way bigger, for the Zhaitan battle. I’m incredibly sad that after months of hard work I simply cannot finish my personal story, and by personal story I mean Trahearne’s personal story.

lordkrall.7241:

It is actually quite funny with people complaining about no-one wanting to do the dungeon.
Based on the number of such comment on this forums alone there would be enough people for over 10 groups.

I don’t think it’s a lack of people but it’s some people don’t have the ability to devote 2 hours straight to do a dungeon and THEN do the story part. I have a young child, I am unable to devote that much time in one sitting and I will not ask people to put their game time on hold waiting on me if I have to suddenly Away From Keyboard which happens often.

At least with the other story missions you could akitten or worse case just restart without wasting anyone elses time.

Pretty much resolved myself to not doing the last mission on any of my characters – if it happens it happens but I am very disapointed that ANet did the bait and switch on this.

Edit – really, AwayFromKeyboard gets replaced with kitten? Wow.

Oh, I agree. Some were ok, like Havroun Grechen.

But a more than 50/50 chance that an NPC you actually get a cutscene with will die is ridiculous. May as well give them all red shirts.

LeCreaux.3087:

The Scarlet Raven.5416:

Every time I read one of these posts I think of this article I read regarding ArenaNet’s policies. If you have a few minutes, read it.

http://www.toptiertactics.com/15083/an-open-letter-to-arenanet-regarding-my-guild-wars-2-ban/

At first I thought that letter was serious, then I thought it was a satire, by the end I couldn’t tell.

If it was satire I loved it. If it wasn’t satire……well I love most americans I know. I suspect the constitution the writer claimed to have a right for was the first amendment.
’
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
’
To make it very boring and short. Your congress didnt make such a law, nor did your president or any other goverment in the USA or outside. When you started playing the game you where presented with an agreement. You clicked a button I agree and so you have a binding agreement with arenanet. Even if it goes against the first amendment, you agreed with that as well. Like the settlers in Southsun cove. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!

This eagles song is refering to addictions and the dark sides of addictions. I know im trying to trigger people to think when i call them a game addict here. The reality is that I myself could prolly never leave Tyria for good. Tyria calls me always as a lover.
So I do am provoking when i call people addicted. The reason is not disrespect. The reason is to help. We are all addicted to air cause we can’t live without. but breathing air doesn’t cause problems and nobody is worried bout it. The problem start if the addiction effects other aspects of your life or when you are violently cut off and don’t understand that you are addicted. You react wild and without reasoning.

Back to the first amendment. Freedom of speech is an important thing, But more important is freedom of thought (something the founding fathers missed imo). You can think whatever you want. I can imagine you all be doing very naughty things right now, but it wouoldn’t be an issue till I actually wrote it. When I told you I wrote it i was upsetting you on purpose (and hopefully I get away with that offense cause im using text to prove a point). That is not what the first amendment is all bout. actually it is a misuse of the law, wich is punishable as well.

The first amendment is more bout the freedom to think and feel what you want. The true freedom to speak what you think and feel is limited by the company you are in. If you are in your own guild and your members dont’t have an issue, go ahead, say whatever you want.

The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to grief people.

Trahearne is the Jar Jar Binks of the guild wars universe.

You haven’t joined the Order of Whispers, have you? Jennah’s dress is nothing compared to Riel Darkwater.

Caedmon.6798:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Due to excessive messaging. <———REALLY, this has got to stop ANET it is now beyond ridiculous. After sending just 2 messages in map chat I get this and can’t send messages again for a good 20 minutes. Please fix this or at least explain the reasoning behind this because it is ludicrous.

No..you will not get supressed from 2 messages,Be honest if you want to be taken seriously.

YES it was after 2 messages, the third was suppressed and yes they were identical messages(in response to another respondent) sent approximately 10 minutes apart concerning an event starting in Queensdale.

i said thank you to some people 3 times in 5 minutes in /say and got suppressed for excessive messaging, it’s way too strict.

The story feels longer when you meet Traherne

I would like to say first, that I am for the most part happy (or at least not unhappy as such) with the voice acting and dialogue. Most is okay, some of it is rather excellent. Much of it is sort of cheesy, but I’ve come to accept this as GW2’s overall style, so it’s okay. Sorry if the rest of this post comes across as whiny!

So, first, my character’s personality.
During character creation I chose one of the three personality types (overcome obstacles with charm/dignity/ferocity) and it was my expectation that this would impact how my character reacts during personal story instances, at least on the level of how she expresses something. I realise now that there is far too much spoken dialogue in the game to record all player character lines six or more times (3 personalities X 2 genders, and later on X 5 races). But it was a small disappointment that my friend’s “charming rogue” sounds just as stuck-up as my “dignified engineer”.

Secondly, during character creation I picked the “sister” path. Then when I finally found and freed my sister, the emotional impact was… zero.
Deb: “Cool, you rescued me.”
Me: “Yeah, see you around I guess.”
(Unfairly paraphrased by me as I don’t remember the exact wording.)
Having a sister in real life… this is not how I expected it to go down. I didn’t so much expect her to show up in future story mode instances (although that would have been amazing), but at least in this one instance, there should have been tears of relief or similar.

Aethgar.1784:

Actually, a second. The name of the sister.
My human male noble is Ascalonian. I went with a Saxon name: Ahrwit. It combines terms relating to honour with a suffix for cunning.
So having Ahrwit blather about “Debs” kind of.. bugged me. I treat that section as not ‘me’.
<.<

I had a same problem.

The storyline sometimes has some logical flaws stemming from bad dialogue.

For example, the very first thing you do as a Norn is kill the wurm Issormir. This gains you the title of Slayer and you get referred to by this title. But when you think about it, this makes no sense. Why? Because Knut Whitebear brought the wurm there to be killed.

Knut Whitebear: By my own hand, I have brought the mighty wurm, Issormir. He waits above, in the plateau, for one such as you to challenge him.

Now really, he somehow managed (and it implies singlehandedly) to get that giant wurm up there in the plateau for someone else to kill. Now THAT is an accomplishment. He had to track it down, then either capture it and get it up there or enrage it enough that it followed him clear up there and get away safely. No easy task either way.

What it made me feel like is a kitten whose mother has caught and brought a mouse over to it so it can learn how to kill something. It does NOT make me feel like the mighty Slayer. To be referred to as Slayer for killing an animal someone else captured and essentially left staked out for me to kill feels condescending.

They needed someone to go thru the storyline with a red pen and a critical mind, looking for logical flaws and cleaning up the dialogue. The lines from Knut should have been removed and lines telling how that wurm was terrorizing the area added and how it needed to be killed. Then killing it would have earned me the title of Slayer.

In terms of improvement, the writing has been done and produced and its really not possible to go back and completely change everything.

However, I think the writing might be more appreciated if the cut-scenes gave us more than two people spitting out lines at each-other.

I have gone into a lot of detail on the history of Guild Wars cutscenes and a possible (and fiscally plausible) future for the Guild Wars 2 Personal Story in an another forum post, so I’ll save my spiel.

Basically:

• Guild Wars 2 cinematics are currently worse than they have ever been in Guild Wars’s history.
• The lack of visual narrative in Guild Wars 2 cutscenes makes every single character feel hollow and lifeless.
• The lack of visual narrative also takes away from the tone and pace of the story, making it feel boring, long and drawn out.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example of a shooting script for the first human cut-scene after the run-in with the earth elemental using the pre-existing dialogue:
——————————————————
INT. TAVERN – DAY
Player opens his eyes. He finds himself in a bedroom with Priestess of Dwayna looking over him. Player rubs his eyes and sits up.
PLAYER
Where am I? What happened?
The priestess gently lays Player back down onto the bed.
PRIESTESS
You were injured when the elemental exploded,
She places a rag on Player’s head.
PRIESTESS (CONT’D)
Captain Thackary brought you here personally.
Priestess carefully undresses the bandage on Player’s arm
PRIESTESS (CONT’D)
You’ve been out for three days…
Player rubs his head and rests his head down on the pillow
PRIESTESS
You had lots of visitors. Villagers you rescued, Some seraph,
Player winces at the pain as she dabs some magical healing paste on his wound.
PRIESTESS
(Trying to remember)
…and a nervous, shady-looking character who came by every day but wouldn’t give his name…
Player smiles to himself and props himself up on his elbows.
PLAYER
That’d be my friend Quinn.
(Pointing to the next room.)
You might want to check your supply cabinets… I’ll find out what he wanted once I’m fully recovered.
Priestess pulls the rag from Player’s head
PLAYER
(Stretching for the first time in 3 days.)
What should I do now?
FTB
——————————————-
Okay, so there, in my poorly written shooting script, you can already see that these characters now have some life in them. They aren’t just animatronic robots repeating sound files in sequence any more, they interact with each other and with the environment in ways that make them actually seem human and, therefore, are more able to identify with. Therein lies the problem with the Personal Story, in my personal opinion.

Doc really needs a slight nerf…. She’s been hitting her steroid supply WAY to hard. ^.-

By my point of view, the whole story is just a little too bright.

I mean… Humans were presented on the edge of extintion.
Charrs as a brutal, technocratic empire trying to rule the world.
Asura as a sort of a species of racist scientists that sees all other species as animals.

Those background are really dark. Cool, by my point of view.

Then what I saw was a story where everything was at peace, war was only against some odd races, some of theme looked more like parodies (like the grawls and the dredge). The idea of the Pact itself was the most predictable thing: everyone is uniting, why shouldn’t have the Orders done the same?

I fought some presence of grudge only among separatists. Someone actually against the system our characters are born in. You don’t even hear renegades or flame legions. From what I saw, they just look like the bad guys.

Even the part about the ghosts of Ascalon was a bit spoiled. As a charr, I felt all the grudge they had against me. It was cool. Then, when I stepped out of the citadel, I found out they were seen as a nuisance even by other humans: “Ah, yeah, those pesky ghosts”.

Personally, I would have preferred a darker story, going something like this:

The Orders don’t want to forge the Pact.

The players go up in the ranking with their own orders.

At some point, they are reached by some sort of mysterious entity. This entity persuade us of the fact the Orders must be united by any means. You need to weaken the lords to make the Orders bend to your will.

So you start a series of missions to put them one against each other. In the chaos that follows, you manage to eliminate all the commanders of each Order.
This could happen in various ways: you could kill the General of the Vigil in a fight, you could convince one race’s lord to execute the chief of the Orde of Whispers, and so on. And maybe you could manipulate everything n a way that you partners on each order may become the new commanders, while being dependant on you.

Then you convince Trahearne to follow your cause, and you somehow force him to become the Great Marshal of the new Pact. But he remains a puppet into your hands, and you should use every occasion to remind him.

That would be coherent with the fact every player would follow that story: you are just a part of a group of individuals who is working under the guide of this misterious entity, all working on their own to destroy the Order’s autonomy.

And that would satisfy more kind of characters: the hero would be doing that for a greater good. The mercenary would be doing that for his lust of power. Another player would be doing that just to create chaos.

And all would bring more personality to your character even in the cutscenes, instead of being some sort of boring boyscout.

The mysterious entity would have also been an interesting step for the story in another expansion.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I suspect the issue is that varying load times are affecting the timing.

Should it not be possible to test that suspicion?

How could it even be that the game has timing issues while running at 30fs? Don’t answer that.

Two weeks have passed, my progress is still blocked.
I’ll keep it polite, but i can tell you i am very upset about this.
Yes i know, it’s just a game. But if it would be that unimportant to me i would not have spend money on it to begin with.

Doesn’t Anet want costumers with some emotional attachment to the game? Those do tend to be the most loyal, and you can’t have people be emotionally attached to only the good parts of your product, and not be emotionally affected by the bad parts.

In the mean time, what am i going to tell my buddy who purchased GW2 based on the trial weekend?

Killing a level 14-16 creatures on a level 14-16 toon does not take any longer.

Mungrul.9358:

I’d like the game to be just as difficult in Queensdale as it is for the same character in Orr.

You mean, a content designed for players that do not have all their skills yet unlocked, nor their traits (and probably newcomers), should have the same difficulty as Orr? What?

I found that armor/HP downscales too much but dmg not enough. In low lvl zones I kill much faster than in high level zones, to the point that I can oneshot things constantly with at least 4 different skills, but the mobs also kill me faster than high level ones do.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

DaMunky.6302:

Having literally JUST played that mission for the first time, infamous cannon fight and all, I think I finally understand it.

The final showdown with Zhaitan ISN’T a fight. People all get disappointed because they’re expecting to fight him, but think about it: when was Zhaitan ever a fighter? All along, he was a chessmaster, using a large and varied stable of minions to put pressure on the heroes. Once you defeat all the pieces, he’s nothing but a helpless King. He can move one space per turn and he loses automatically the second you corner him.

The final mission isn’t a ‘fight’ with Zhaitan. It’s a chase scene.

That said, I am totally expecting we will be ‘fighting’ Primordious in the traditional sense. If that one isn’t a Warrior I don’t know who is. And I SWEAR TO GOD if they give us another “throw rocks at the boss” battle I am going to be super irritated.

This actually makes a lot of sense…but at the same time, it’s very poorly designed to have to sit and spam 2 for the final epic scene. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been able to put up some sort of a fight to actually make it fun. After all of the great Guild Wars 1 endings, I can’t believe how badly ArenaNet messed this up.

Honestly? It’s poorly designed that the end to your personal story requires dragging along 4 other people. The rest is just things making it worse.

Tybalt, because he is so funny and looks cute

Tybalt… I would switch him for Trahearne. Then I would go further back in time, so that Tybalt can assassinate Gwen and become a legend among his people.

smeen.4237:

Tybalt. He was too awesome to die.

This. He’s the only character I found likable.