Guild Wars 2

I’ll add my voice of disappointment to the decision of making the final dungeon a forced group. As someone else mentioned, it’s all about expectations. Why would I expect to group at that point when every single previous mission did not require me to do so? Add in a bugged quest to even get access to the dungeon, and it causes me to leave GW2 with an awfully sour taste after what had previously been a fantastic experience.

I’m not a big MMO guy in general, mainly because I generally don’t enjoy gaming with others. GW2 is the only MMO that has ever grabbed me, and it was because I was never forced to group with other people if I didn’t want to. I LOVE the fact that I can go through my personal story by myself, and not be dependent on other people. To change that entire paradigm on the very last mission – after I’ve put in hundreds of hours to get to that point – is incredibly disappointing.

/agree with the Op

I have no desire to do stupid 5 man dungeons, and the idea that I need to in order to complete my “personal” story is total nonsense.

And no, the 10 year old excuse that “it’s an MMO you should group” is NOT valid.

The fact that it’s an MMO has not effected my enjoyment of playing it SOLO for the past 80 levels… why in the hell should I be forced to play a game I WAS enjoying in a way I dislike now? Because it’s labeled an “MMO” and no other reason than that? Ridiculous.

Yep I agree. Personal story is the single player experience of the game. One should be able to complete it solo.

So i beat the story quest today and i get a exotic bag that grants 5 items, well all those items where level 20-48 blue gear…. thought i was doing a level 80 quest not a 40 please change this so it doesnt let anyone else down thanks.

Having shown the mighty dragon Zhitan a moderately impressive fireworks display, it was time to go talk to commander Twig. There was much cheering… and a box of fun, that was fairly amusing. But after it was all said and done it was time to collect my reward. Amongst those items that had me intrigued were the 5 parcels I received. Upon opening them, I almost felt like they were a reward for a second as I saw the yellow of a rare item, but to my surprise it was only a level 39 item. As I opened the remaining 4 I grew slightly more aghast. To summarise I gained 1 yellow, 1 green, and 3 blue items, non of which were above level 50.

Is this as intended? Seems a bit odd, being a level 80.

Jeffrey,

I was playing through the personal story quests with my (staff) elementalist up to the level 40 quests and I’ve since stopped playing the personal story because nearly every quest has been an experience of frustration. Most quests are designed around the idea of either throwing lots of mobs at the player or throwing champions and/or veterans at the player. This often leads to the situation that I’m forced to kite around to stay alive and playing those quests feels very much like running around like a headless chicken. There are often NPCs with me in the quest instance but they either:

a) fail to engage in combat and just stand there, two paces away from me and twiddle their thumbs while watching me getting downed. His majesties most useless soldier Logan is a prime example of this behavior,

b) engage in combat but deal no noticeable damage to their enemies and/or are incapable of taking aggro off of me,

c) they get downed in less than 5 seconds.

I very much believe in the idea that a personal story should be primarily about telling a story. It should not be about challenge because challenge can be had in places like dungeons which are isolated pieces of content. So if a player either chooses not to play a dungeon or faces a too high challenge level there then that’s not a big deal. But in the case of a personal story it means blocking the player from playing to the end of the story.

Because of this I completely disagree with the view that you expressed in another thread that it would be acceptable that a player has to show up with a specific weapon and/or a specific trait setup to get through a quest. It should never be the case that a quest that is part of a personal story requires that a player has to retool his character just to get through it. Instead the personal story should be:

a) about telling a story in an engaging way and allowing the player to take the story in at his pace,

b) personal. A player who chooses a particular class, weapon set and trait setup has made a personal decision what makes his character his character. A personal story quest should not force him to throw his personal decisions over board just to get through this quest.

The main problem with the personal story in GW2 is really that it is simply not about telling a story. The central design idea seems to be “let’s see how fast we get the player to the floor!”. That’s the opposite of what I expected it to be. I’ve played the epic story in Lotro and I would honestly recommend that you check out how the epic story is implemented there. It can be played by any class with any choice of weapon and any trait setup because the epic story there is really about telling a story. Players who want primarily a challenge can go and do a dungeon or raid instead or in addition to the epic story. But the epic aka personal story is about telling a story. What Turbine also does differently is that for many epic story quests the player can choose whether he wants to do it in a group or solo. The quest is balanced for 6 characters in the former case and in the latter case the player receives an “elf stone” from the quest giver. The player can activate the elf stone in the quest area and it drastically increases the player’s stats while he remains in the quest area to the point that he can defeat elite mobs solo. This may sound a bit weird but works very well in actual practice and it allows players to play all quests solo if they so choose.

The thing is that I still know every single epic quest that I played through in Lotro and I have very good memories of them although it has been years that I played the early ones. I still get goose bumps when I replay the “We can not get out” session play although I know that it is deliberately designed in such a way that I can not win this quest because it is about the small group of dwarves that tried to retake Moria and they failed and you play as one of those dwarves. But here in GW2? I don’t even know why some NPCs address my character as “advocate” or where I got that title from because the majority of my worry and energy is focused on staying alive and this drowns out the story aspect.

If you want to fix the personal story then the way to fix it is to replace the design goal:

“kill the player”

with

“give the player good memories of a well thought out story with plot twists that play out over many levels. Also, although the character is considered to be a hero, this still does not make him perfect and unable to screw up”.

My champion (basically an offensive warrior) in Lotro failed to help safe the daughter of one of the rangers from the witch king in Angmar. Every time I meet her father he reminds me of that fact and how much he misses his daughter. In that game I’m a hero but not perfect. In GW2 I’m apparently a perfect hero but for some mysterious reason still spend a whole lot of time on the floor – throwing rocks at my enemy.

You guys may dislike me greatly for this, since you obviously enjoy a story.
But I’ve played on mute and skipping all the cutscenes.
The games been completed for a while now and honestly only found out that Trahearne is a self-righteous kitten from your post.

But the reason for my skipping and muting is because that storyline in new MMO’s tend to suck.
I’m waiting until they have everything just perfect before I put my surround sound speakers on, pull up the 3 screen HD displays and fall into the world of GW2.

Oh and I might also point out I’m gaming on performance atm. So everything is just several blurry shades of poop.

:D

Actually, what you said is that you never had any problem with the personal story. Many a player, myself included, will take this as condescending. You state that you are playing the most broken class in the game, and had no problems. This comes across as you telling us we’re doing it wrong. That may not have been your intention, but that is the effect. It has nothing to do with “learning your class” and everything to do with overall difficulty. I should not have to be some kind of magical, godlike, gaming master to complete a story mission. They should be easy enough that the average player with an average level of skill can do it. They currently are not. You even admit to dying a lot in your story, which completely contradicts your original statement.

I try not to sound harsh when I post, but the divide between the elites and everyone else is starting to become WoW-like. The majority of the posters on this board post that they struggle with the difficulty. Then, a few people, for reasons I do not understand, feel the need to come into the post, say there is no problem, that they have no issues, and that the rest of us must just suck or something.

I am not trying to attack anyone personally, but I seem to end up doing just that. I don’t like elitists. I never have. I don’t like being told to “learn to play”. The fact of the matter is, for a sizable portion of the current player base, personal story is too hard. The difficulty needs to be toned down in a major way. If some people find them too easy, too bad. They are in the minority and this game is not targeted at the elite minority. This game is supposed to be solo-friendly and available to all players of all skill levels. If dungeons want to be really hard, fine. I have no problem with that. They probably should be. But personal story should never be so difficult as to make it unavailable to large segments of players, which, right now, is exactly what is happening.

I know I sound harsh and angry. I am. Not enough to quit playing (yet), but enough that I am not going to sugar-coat my opinion or go out of my way to be gentle.

Summarized point : Personal story needs major nerfing/re-balancing. Too many people can’t do it. If you find it “too easy” I’m happy for you, but the rest of us need some help.

Have a nice day.

Just adding my own two cents as well. Either make the NPC allies do more, drop the mob levels, or reduce the number of mobs, as it is the personal quests are just maddening to try and do alone.
And for the benefit of all, this is not because I’m just standing there either. I’ve tried it with multiple weapons and utility skills, used CC and dodges, tried to kite and play tactically, but it comes down to simple overload when it is just me versus 6+ mobs.
To be perfectly frank, for the foreseeable future I have lost all desire to do the personal quests on any of my characters.