Guild Wars 2

I can understand why we can’t replay it, as we make choices in them. Especially the choice of what order to be in. That wouldn’t make sense to let us replay and pick another order.

Still, for those of us that had to play it in it’s broken form (Between the Sept patch that removed the Greatest Fear arc and messed up the order of missions) it really irks me that our character can’t have enjoyed it as it should have been.

But yeah, totally understandable that it’d be buggy and wrong to let us replay the personal story due to stuff like what order/race we picked. So how about just let us replay from “A Light in the Darkness?”

or if not let everyone reply, at least let those that experienced it the “Broken” way be able to reply from A Light in the Darkness.

or if not that, at least fix the journal to reflect the change? Shrugs

Thanks for the detailed update, this takes away a lot of worries.

With 4 characters having made it through the entirity of PS before the NPE and the changes that broke it, I’ve been withholding progress on my other 5 characters since September 2014. I’ve checked them all, and if I understand things correctly:

• Ele + Necro2: C6 Priory Step 3 – The Ghost Rite (Should be fine, pre any story-breaking/changing steps)
• Engi: C4 Step 3- Killer Instinct (Currently locked out, access to C4 is now beyond lv40, char is lv30 and unlocked access before NPE)
• Guard: C7 Step 6 Innocent – A Sad Duty (Appears to be okay, I think I should leave this as is and progress after update goes live to ensure everything happens in proper order?)
• War: C8 Step 5A – Ossuary of Unquiet Dead (since before NPE, should be fine and leave as is?)

I think that in my case, the best I can do now is wait just a little longer and do nothing, with no dramatic impact to my story. (Yay. I guess.)

However, I have a few points of note/concern with the status quo and impending changes:

1. Replayable Arah story mode going the way of the dodo. I would like to stress, first and foremost, that I am very happy that Victory or Death will be a scaled instance that can be played solo if wanted/needed.
   That said, I don’t see why this must come at the price of no longer being able to replay it other than hitching a ride or playing an alt allll the way to this point in the story. Surely a more balanced solution could have been worked out? 2 versions of the same instance, for example, such as version one being the existing one (ArahStory1.game) and remaining in place as is, and version 2 being the updated version (ArahStory2.game), included in the PS. Both versions could add progress to Dungeon Master (whichever is played first), or just version 2, and the benefit is that it remains re-playable and easily accessible for those who wish to do so. Coding for both versions exists, so why not try to combine that? As others have said here before me, the last thing GW2 needs is even more content that ends up permanently locked beyond a certain point.
2. Story maps/scenery reflecting the game’s timeline. As in; currently not at all, such as with PS steps in LA showing post-Scarlet scenery. Grating, immersion-breaking, and completely undermining any and all effort to create a valuable story experience. Don’t get me wrong, I like Back 2 the Future and all, but I don’t think it works in a GW2 setting. I’m sure we can expect Tyria to change even more in the future- please take this point into consideration when you’re updating maps and find a way to fix/avoid this issue.
3. ???
4. Profit! It looks like the update with intended changes may possibly coincide more or less with my wedding day. (Yay!) It is worth noting that further gestures of goodwill and well-wishing are perfectly acceptable to celebrate the occasion. (Hi ANet, a full set of legendaries in my mail as a wedding gift is totally awesome, but I’m sure I could settle for just one or two. I’m not picky.)

TL;DR version – wait, what? Go read, you lazy forum lurkers! >.>

It’s been months and months and months that I cannot enjoy anymore what used to be one of my most favorite activities: Mario K… err, Sanctum Sprint which happens to be once again today’s activity for the daily achievements.

Will you ever got those buggy skills, mainly the targeted and un-targeted versions of Lightning Pull, work correctly on medium-to-high ping (375-650ms) and bad latency connections?

I do not mind loosing when I make a mistake or someone uses a 6-9 skill on me, but it’s very very unnerving when you are in the lead and… and you are suddenly unable to continue forward because you need to cross a chasm and the un-targeted version of Lightning Pull make you land 3 meters away behind the receiving pyramid and your character keeps rolling until he falls down from the platform… When using the un-targeted version of the skill I expect to fall exactly on the pyramid not 3 meters away from it… and I certainly does not expect my character to continue moving with some kind of momentum.

The targeted version of the skill is no much better because 1) you need to find a place where it will activate instead of the un-targeted one and 2) it usually jumps too short even if the AoE indicator was green making you miss the platform and fall to your death as well.

In the mean time and without any skill 0 (teleport to next point) I am forced to keep trying to jump (and die subsequently) while others player keep moving and reach the end of the race. Usually the race time expires with me never ever reaching the finishing line unless I get lucky and find one of those teleport skill…

It’s not fun anymore

Personally I don’t think OP cares about the subject of his post.

I’ve noticed before that OP chooses thread topics and titles that are deliberately controversial and that seem designed to spark argument.

The Charr one. More seductive outfits on Charr

This one, where the OP basically said, I got my Legendary. Please make it harder for everyone else to get theirs. Charged Lodestones not rare enough.

And now this one, about Mesmers being too seductive because of a possible armor glitch.

To me, It seems OPs design is not to discuss real, actual topics but to start arguments. If he really cared about the armor glitch, he would post in the bug forum.

I think the best course of action would be to temporarily disable brooms, mesmers and human females until the devs have time to fix this.

Some of the fixes are fine, but there’s no reason traits should be non-existent until 30. It really adds nothing to the feeling of easing new players in. Letting them be gained steadily over the leveling process would do a lot more to help give players a chance to mess with them and learn what’s going on.

Guhracie.3419:

Funset.7893:

Why do we get to use our trait points at level 30? Did they explain this?
Seems like a BAD New player experience to me…

Traits changed a year ago, not with the September NPE. The blog post about that change says:

Once you reach the appropriate level, we want you to be able to dive right into the system and start playing around with it…
…
As part of this approach to making traits more approachable, we’ve pushed back the level at which the different trait tiers unlock for new characters in order to better pace the early game experience and to add more meaningful character progression from levels 30 to 80.

So they took away the early access to traits in order to make later levels seem more meaningful.

Have to say it’s just utterly annoying. It also means that traits get dumped on players instead of being spread out over the entire leveling process. So very little gets added beyond getting up to a 5 key ability set going up to 30, there’s no reason traits shouldn’t be a part of the entire process from at worst level 10 onward.

The PoI addressed this very thing.^ Lion’s Arch will be back to its original form for the Personal Story, and I’m guessing that Fort Concordia will, as well. The Devs expressly stated that instances that were changed in the open world due to Living Story would be in their orginal form for the PS.

Yay! =)

They’re fixing the personal story. There’s a sticky about it on this page. But I agree, it’s frustrating, and you’re not going to be able to replay it on characters who missed it.

Finally

I’ve been complaining about those changes for a long time XD

I know a lot of people never cared much for it but im really glad complaints have been taken into account and these changes are coming

swapping the story steps around was a serious issue for me since I get very invested in the story more than anything when it comes to video games..
meeting characters for the first time after just completing a mission with them and honoring friend characters that I never even met was just a big throw off for me..

it really put me off playing the personal story through again..
but im super happy that its finally getting fixed ^^ I can’t wait to start leveling up my other toons once these changes have come into effect

BobbyStein.2315:

Cakemeister.5792:

I’m not sure if this was posted on March 31 or on April 1. This whole thread might be a hoax.

It’s not a hoax. These changes are definitely real and we’ll announce a specific release date sometime in the near future.

Will you guys revamp the disappointing Zhaitan fight since this is the best chance to do it?

Mmmmrrreeeeeooooowwwww, my heart is doing barrel rolls of joy. Thank you ANet and Bobby Stein for this effort and for the lucid communication about it.

Pathetic? How? It’s not a matter of “can’t” but a matter of how long it takes to get four other people. You’d find people who would ask on map chat to do the story dungeon with them and most of the time you’d see them refuse or ignore it. Usually it would take me an average of 30-45 minutes to gather people via LFG in case my guildmates aren’t around to join me when compared to the other story dungeons. This way, players can simply don’t have to wait that long anymore.

I’m glad this is happening. Now (or rather, in a few months or so) I can take my kid into Arah without having to worry about anyone being mean. She’s very excited to hear this!

Thank you!

Zyxith.9328:

Know what’d also be a nice change to the PS? Make the missions/instances with Lion’s Arch look like the OLD Lion’s Arch. It just makes way more sense. If people ask like “Why isn’t it ruined by Scarlet?” just let them know the PS is meant to take place BEFORE Scarlet. Please, fix this. Having Lion’s Arch look destroyed by Scarlet and then fighting off a Dragon who attacks, it just looks… wrong.

I’d add Fort Concordia too. It seems weird for the Pact to choose a ruined fort that’s full of Mordremoth’s vines and on fire as their first base. Especially since Mordremoth hadn’t woken up then.

But I suspect that’s probably a bit too much work. From the first post (and earlier posts on this) it sounds like the changes are all being made by the writers and voice actors, not people who can change which version of the map is used in the instance.

Know what’d also be a nice change to the PS? Make the missions/instances with Lion’s Arch look like the OLD Lion’s Arch. It just makes way more sense. If people ask like “Why isn’t it ruined by Scarlet?” just let them know the PS is meant to take place BEFORE Scarlet. Please, fix this. Having Lion’s Arch look destroyed by Scarlet and then fighting off a Dragon who attacks, it just looks… wrong.

Silmar Alech.4305:

Many thanks to the story line repair!

I still have a question, it has to do with the “why” you mentioned in your introduction: Why did you do the changes last year in the first place? This is something you never explained. I’m just curious, not trolling.

I never understood why you removed content and left the game in a state worse than it was before. Instead of putting the work into enhancing it. And keep it like this for more than half a year. For me, it appeared as a burning and bleeding open wound in the story line. Yes, the Apatia part of the story never was the best content, but it was not so bad that it was worth removing – in my opinion.

This.

Bobby is awesome, no doubt. He’s one of the few people who is willing to step up to the plate and communicate with the players. And it’s not just this post; he has a history of really going out of his way to talk to us on the forums and trying to clarify things as much as possible. So…much love for Bobby.

That said, when this whole thing began, no one from ANet was even willing to answer the question of whether what was going on with the Personal Story was a bug or was intended. The question was ignored and side-stepped just as often as it was asked. No one had the courage to step up and say “Hey, yes, we intentionally made these changes; we were trying to improve the Personal Story by streamlining it, and we really messed things up. We apologize.”

I would respect ANet a whole lot more if they would just start admitting when they make a mistake instead of going all hush-hush and pretending that they didn’t see the question being asked in the forums.

However, not to end this post on a sour note, it really sounds like they’ve been working very diligently on straightening this out. I appreciate the periodic updates along the way, and I’m really happy to hear that the last story step will no longer force you to be in a group if you choose not to. I did not expect that, so it was a pleasant surprise.

So…kudos to you, Bobby and team. I think you’ve done yourself proud this time.

So as someone who was doing old personal story and stopped doing it after you cut of parts and pieces of it I will not only loose possibility to play full story as it was before you broke it but (since after you took away parts of the story) my character was placed after “Forging the pact” at “Battle of fort trinity” and because after your stupid changes you placed my character at that point i wont be able to play restored chapters unless i create new character and play whole story from the beginning. That character will be forever cut of from content. For me, as someone who bought that game because of its good story its infuriating. Its like you prevented some PvE players from playing specific dungeon or PvP some selected PvP players from accessing part of WvW borderlands.

It’s like selling a book, and then going to everyone who bought it, ripping out some pages from that book and giving them whats left of it.

1st you broke the story when there was NOTHING wrong with it, then you started sneakily taking away even more parts of personal story by removing pieces of new character starting instances (witch made them just plain bad and boring) and now when you finally return some of what you took away you are saying… “welll… well give it baaak to sooome playerss… but not to you, because appaaaarentlyyyy you alreadyyy playeeed story sooo… ummmm… you wont get it.”

You are taking away experience from players who actually played story witch means they like it and want it and return that experience to players who didn’t play story witch means they probably don’t care and would rather skip it anyway just to get achievement or something like that.

You only reminded me how angry i am at you for removing more and more story related content from the game.

PS. I finished whole story on my second character and I will lvl up new character, go trough all previous episodes and complete story again just to play this restored part. This doesn’t make yourkitten**d up practices any less f***ed up. You can’t remove parts of product that you already sold to someone.

NeHoMaR.9812:

I want all dungeons story mode to be soloable.

^^ This – and make it doable one/day per character and reward like…20-30 of the dungeon currency so people who don’t want to suffer through groups can slowly work towards the dungeon skins / legendary gift item.

Ty so much for this change Anet!

ShroomOneUp.6913:

IS it ingame allready or jsut its goin to come soon announcement?
I WANT TO KNOW

Please read the FAQ. Bobby wrote out all these answers in lovely detail. And as people have asked this in the thread the FAQ’s been quoted.

You Have Eight Weeks At Least Before This Happens

So I’m at “Battle for Fort Trinity” but not done it yet. Should i wait? Or won’t it matter if i continue?

Awesome news btw getting PS restored, it was terribly disjointed last time i played through it. It’s also good to hear you’re moving toward giving solo options for Arah. It would be even better to have this option for all dungeons. An option to one day be able to reply PS, would be the ultimate awesomeness. But i disagree having your character reset to be able to do it, as suggested by someone above. With lvl downscaling there’s no need to go that drastic. Only the story need resetting not your character.

I have done Victory or Death 9 times, once each on my 8 characters and once to help a friend. It is a long instance, with many boring lulls or lols. It is still buggy as heck, so i hope they will fix things. Like being knocked down thru the airship and falling all the way down to map and death. Buggy interaction with cannons, sometimes you are stuck in falling animation when using it. I don’t know if they change is just to scaling for solo and more party members or a revamp so that its more like the LS instances, shorter duration, challenging for solo, but welcome to party up too. If nothing really changes as far as the current instance is, soloing would probably be super UN-fun

That people prefer only new stuff over gettign old stuff fixed or returning is just absolutely untrue and in that case, I have strongly to agree with it, that such an opinino would be very flawed.

Every kind of game content is worth it to be improved, regardless if you improve the game with new content, like new explorable places, stuff like specializations or adding new weapons categories like 2H axes – or of its improving old content, like fixing the personal story, fixing the trait system, fixing Ranger Problems with pets or redesigning Zhaitan to become a truly epic battle, that this end boss deserves to be instead of being a boring lame 2 minute pew pew pew fiasco.

That anet shows interest in improving and reiteratign parts of the original game have they shown to us now several times.
For that you have to look only at the Tequatl Redesign which turned a boring battle into a much more challenging battle.

No one expects miracles here, or that ANet has now to work on thigns liek a Zhaitan Redesign to brign it out in short time. That such tasks take time, is normal and I’m also willing enough to wait for it, being patient, cause I know, if they do it finally somewhen sooner or later, it would massively improve the whole game experience for everyone and would make simply GW2 a so much better game, than it is already, that such improvements should be absolutely worth it to do.

I mean, what can they lose? Worser than Zhaitan already is, can a redesign not end up ^^ lol It can only become better xD.

That Anet would work on the redesign of Season 1 together with a rework of the Personal story to make it all at once in one go together with season 2’s system replayable to bring finally game design continuity into the whole game itself is imo also the most reasonable and logical thing Anet could do and the best thing in my honest opinion that Anet really should do, where I’m absolutely patient for, if I just would know, that Anet is actually willing also to do that.

But imo saying, we can#t make the PS replayable, because it creates bugs is imo an excuse for me. If remaking the PS from sratch just to get rid of these appearing game stopping bugs is the solution – one that means more effort, but means in its results the most perfect solution for the whole game, than that solution should be worth the effort, even it it meant that we players have to wait alot longer for that solution.

So do I see that. I don’t know, if I’m the only one, who sees it that way, but I personally see just onl,y how much Anet already has improved the existing content compared to the original game release version of GW2, so I don’t believe, that somethign like that should stop them from improving the personal story, when they redesigned alreay so many other things and all that stuff also didn’t create any game stopping bugs which hindered them to make those game changes at all and all of that was also just effort, which required several months of effort to implement and weren’t things, Anet could just simply change from today to tomorrow to exaggerate it now for example.

Given, that Anet is already working since a longer time maybe in background on the changes of Season 1 to bring it one day back maybe as part of a larger Feature Pack, it shows already, that somethign like that combined with a sense making rework on the personal story is naturally nothing, what would be easily done, but instead something, that seriously takes time. But its time, that will definetly be worth all that effort and thats the only thing, that counts for me personally.

Well after over 2000 hrs in game I’ve never completed my personal story ONLY because of the dungeon group requirement, so I’m thrilled that I’m now going to be able to complete my story, my PERSONAL story, personally, alone. Thank you.

Part of me feels like rerolling my character all over again to enjoy the story as IT WAS MEANT TO BE but then I realize I’d have to re-do all the other stuff my main has, like world map completion and unlocked traits.

I would really, really, really, really like to see some way that you all at Arena Net could somehow let us ..not so much “Re-do” as that seems a wrong wording, more -erase all progress done and start from scratch.- I’d be perfectly content to just do 100% of the personal story all over again. Instead of it being “Repeatable content” just erase my all my personal story progress.

I’m not sure how much work that’d take or if it’d break my game but Shrugs at this point I’d be perfectly find having to redo it all over again to enjoy the full personal story as it was meant to be. That or at least start all over from the point of A Light in the Darkness or such.

I am curious, how much trouble/work it’d be to just clear a character’s personal story and start from scratch.

So, we’re finally going to be back to where we used to be 7 months ago, with the exception that all the damage done over the past months isn’t going to be amended. Yay? No! Can’t say I’m exceptionally excited.

Though, I’m not personally affected by this, I know a few newer players who started playing GW2 within the past couple of months and aren’t going to delete their main characters and all the progress made. They’ll have to live with a botched personal story now. Well done.

BobbyStein.2315:

Personal Story Restoration

• If your character is currently playing “Against the Corruption,” “Cathedral of Silence,” “Romke’s Final Voyage,” or “The Source of Orr,” you must complete your story steps through the Source of Orr to begin chapter 8. If you do not complete “The Source of Orr” before the Personal Story restoration goes live, you will be advanced to “Victory or Death” upon completion of “The Source of Orr.” “Victory or Death” is the final Personal Story step (and you will miss out on most of chapter 8 with this character). This is due to these steps being moved back into chapter 8 and the successor steps being restored to their original state.

• The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.

I am glad to see that the story is being fixed, but I am highly upset at how it is being done. I was unaware that the story had been “redone” until I was so confused at all the continuity errors that I came to the forums to see if I was bugged or if this game’s main story was half-kittened together. I was happy to see that at one point the story made sense and was good. Then for some reason arena net decided to screw up the story by having you meet time traveling Eir and Rytlock that talk about the meeting in Lions arch 10 levels before you have the meeting in lions arch. Then after we barely survive fort trinity we have enough strength to push all the way to the gates of Arah to cleans Orr and kill the king eye of Zytan only to hear that I have already killed other Eyes of Z and mouths before (which I never saw). Then after I do all this I finally assault Orr? I mean why assault something I am already freely walking around on?

These were just a few of the moments I was completely lost during and wondering how this was allowed to ship. Then I come here and find that its being “fixed” but that they are not taking the time to let the people who had to play through that junk a chance to play through the fixed content. Is it so hard to just allow players when they log in the chance to start their story again from “A light in the darkness”? A pop up window or in game mail that says if you want to play the corrected story click here or talk to X npc to have your personal story reset back to that point should not be to hard to do in the grand scheme of things.

Personally, I am highly disappointed with everyone that is apart of this team. Why you would allow this content to ship back in September and then not even allow all the people who played through that the ability to see the story as it should be is just shameful. I know that my post here will not be read by those it pertains to but even still my view of Arena net, which until this point was a very high view has been massively tarnished.

I would really love to see what is happening to Arah happen to all the other dungeon story modes. Just allowing for difficulty scaling based on number in the group would be a wonderful thing.

Thanks! Good to see Personal Story has been restored

Many thanks to the story line repair!

I still have a question, it has to do with the “why” you mentioned in your introduction: Why did you do the changes last year in the first place? This is something you never explained. I’m just curious, not trolling.

I never understood why you removed content and left the game in a state worse than it was before. Instead of putting the work into enhancing it. And keep it like this for more than half a year. For me, it appeared as a burning and bleeding open wound in the story line. Yes, the Apatia part of the story never was the best content, but it was not so bad that it was worth removing – in my opinion.