Guild Wars 2

This image is of me standing in the area view in the first image.

I have noticed for some time that the lighting and shadow effects behave strangely for me. When there is a shaded area under some trees or something, the shadows disappear in a large radius around my character. Now I have found an area that does not look even remotely right, areas inside of a cave with the floor lighting up like a kitten floodlight is shining on it, and I would like some insight on this issue I will post pictures illustrating this issue in this and my next post. I currently have Shadows set to ultra, Shaders on high, Post-possessing on high, and Environment on high.

The image below is of me looking down on an area in Skrittsburgh.

A second screen shot for reference, only a few yards from where I stood in the first picture.

For some reason, a right of light seems to emanate from my character, because shadows vanish in a large radius around me. I have the shadows setting on ultra, so I have no idea why this would be happening. The only setting I don’t have on high, is the LOD distance.

Okomi.8693:

Offtopic but…

The original definition of trolling (circa usenet 1990) was to intentionally introduce discord into a discussion without meaning to seem to do so. This could be by producing false statements (a clumsy method) or to simply state seemingly innocent views with the intent of triggering a flamewar among the participants.

Over the years, usage has shifted. Nowadays it is used rather loosely to mean either intentionally introducing discord via any means, or to simply be ridiculously hostile to the point of humor (from someone’s perspective, not all).

I meant it in the means that you’re rather intentionally introducing discord. Which you were.

However now you’re straw manning the discussion by suggesting people here don’t want to improve, which is more classical trollish action.

I never intended to cause discord of any kind. I simply stated a dissenting opinion. If there is one thing that get’s under my skin, that’s when people take honest criticism and dissenting opinions and put them in the same category as those who just want to spread bile over the internet. All open discussions need room for dissenting opinions and criticism.

When I saw this post and read through a number if the posts, very few were simply saying “it seems kind of weird how some of these quests are harder than it seems they need to be.” What I saw was people claiming that the game is being completely unfair in what it asks of the player to the point that they find the personal story to be broken and something to completely avoid due to its difficulty. From my experience, the Personal Story is far from perfect and has numerous issues, but I don’t find the difficulty to be one of them, at least to the extent that some people on this post suggest.

Okomi.8693:

@Kurodius, please be respectful of other players. “Well games are not for you” is basically trolling.

Two things:

1.The definition of “trolling” is to intentionally express fallacies with the intent of making others angry over your pseudo-ignorance. Trolling is not just doing something to make people angry, just to let you know.

2. I don’t believe I am wrong that games by nature require the player to improve in actually playing the game I order to complete it. I acknowledge that there are some Personal story quests that do turn into a battle of attrition, but not to the extent that it should push you out of doing any Personal Story instance as others in this post have suggested. I also gave tips for people who are having this issue such as inviting friends to help you beat the Personal Story segment, so I don’t believe I was being disrespectful.

zonkeroo.7918:

Kurodius – I understand what you are saying but not everyone enjoys doing what you suggest. It’s a game and I’m supposed to be having fun. The personal story instances have gotten to the point where they are simply not fun.

The point that a lot of posters above are trying to make is that they aren’t interested in proving their skill during a personal story – they are interested in story. There are plenty of other places in the game to show how leet you are.

Then I’m sorry sir, but you are in the wrong artistic medium. Every game expects you to learn the mechanics and get better at the game as you progress, that’s the nature of games in general. If you just want a story with no contribution of skill, watch a TV series or a movie. Or at the very least, there’s youtube. The continuation in the story is a reward for completing that section of the story. When I face a hard personal story instance that killed me multiple times, I feel triumphant when I finally win and I’m immediately gratified with story, experience, and occasionally and upgrade to my current gear. If the game was easy through out the personal story, then it wouldn’t be nearly as engaging to me or to a lot of other gamers.

Besides, if you can’t clear the content in the instances that are designed for one person to play them, then how can you expect to face the meta content? The dungeons in the game are more difficult than anything in the personal story, and the later level dynamic events also crank up in difficulty pretty hard.

Oh, and another way to make it so you can clear the content even if your lacking in skill, is the ability to invite people to help you. Problem solved.

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

I just finished the story and I absolutely adored it from beginning to end. I am one of the few people who actually likes Trahearne. And Zhaitan has obviously taken a lot of cues from Sauron as he also never interacts directly. He always works through servants or his presence can be felt as a driving force but he is never engaged directly.

I found the fight leading up to the big laser cutting Zhaitan in half to be the big finale and then the final bit is just fluff so you get to blast him. His health pool at this point could be dropped a bit, but all in all a very enjoyable experience and I look forward to the next dragons.

Two things:

1. SPOILERS DUDE, NOT EVERYONE HAS PLAYED THROUGH IT ALL YET

2. Again, I have little issue with the story itself. I too like Trahearne as a character and I feel the hate on him is less because of the character himself, but more due to the issues I mentioned with the personal story as a game mechanic.

For some personal story quests, you just need to swap your utility skills around, or even your weapon sets, for the situation. I ,through my entire experience, never had to leave the personal story instance after entering it at the required level. I have died, and I have had to restart, but I have never needed to leave and come back when I’m a few levels higher. Oh and that does include the “Rat-Tastrophe” quest mentioned in the last post. As for all the killed NPCs in that quest, I think that’s just to give more of a sense of urgency and how without the explosives, this is a losing battle. Remember that this game is meant to have difficulty to it, it’s not just a slew of gear checks like other MMOs, as that level gets higher, your gonna need to play the game better or you will get eaten. When I played my elementalist I just stayed in the fire attunement for a good while, but once the level 30 content started hitting me, I started to realize I actually need to cycle the attunements if I had any hope of surviving. If what you are doing isn’t working and the game seems to have hit you with enemies you can’t beat, it’s time to start experimenting to find the optimal way to clear the content.

I know it sounds kind of heartless and more like I’m trying to mess with you guys, but if you find yourself having a lot of difficulty with the Personal Story quests (which are designed to be solo able) then you need to get better at the game, it’s as simple as that.

There are Personal story quests that are broken (with items vanishing, NPCs getting stuck and occasionally an invincible mob that will fight you forever without ever taking damage), but “these fights are too hard” is not one of these issues.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i think the real issue, which i addressed on that topic, and which i thought was the issue you had, was how disconnected everything feels. no matter what i do now, it won’t matter once the next story arc starts. nothing is ever brought back, nothing ever sticks around, and nothing feels like it matter because it won’t change anything.

Well Bruno, what I find to be the issue is indeed how everything in the personal story is disconnected, but I hoped for the events that happen prior in the story would somehow affect something later on. I had hoped for the decisions that you make would intertwine into what would be “your story.” To me it feels like more of a mechanical issue with the game, which leads to the issue that you focus on, which is the narrative itself.

BrunoBRS.5178:

curious, i just posted a thread about how the sylvari story kind of remedies that indirectly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Sylvaris-have-the-most-consistent-cohesive-story-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things

It does seem like the Trahearne heavy segments would feel more natural as a Sylvari, but that doesn’t ultimately fix the issues I have. I have no doubt that there are good stories in the personal story, but my issue is more about the mechanics of it than the content specifically.

EdwinLi.1284:

I think people had a too high expectations for the first part of the Personal Story to be a single story with a absolute ending that gives no “to be continued” feeling. Act 1 (Zhaitan Act) seems to only set the stage for future Story Acts rather than being one single story that has people appear only once then never appear again (or seen only once and never seen again) in the future Story Acts.

You bring up and interesting possibility, for the future expansions to have stories that equal the release content story’s length. But my issue is not with the content of the story, but more the means of delivery.

Turgon.8625:

They promised a lot, tried to do a lot and failed.

Ultimately a better use of the PS budget would have been to cut down all the hollow choices and focus on one storyline that was coherent and had actually fun missions in. A solid single player RPG basically.

Sure every player would have had a similar story but at least it would have stood a chance at being good.

I actually think the story that’s there is just fine within the individual story arcs. I just feel that the execution of the personal story, as a mechanic and as a storytelling tool, failed to live up to my expectations.

Ramaset.5260:

There’s something my boss once said to me when I requested funds for a project. “Sounds like a great idea; budget is spent. Which current project shall we scrap for it?”

Let me first say, I agree with EVERYTHING you said, however…also note that literally every single word and letter that is put into this game costs money. For them to create as many branches and such as you’re talking about, including voice acting and such, would have cost a LOT of money in both resources, and delays to release….or….something else that you loved in the game making it the “best MMO experience out there” would not have been in there….because the budget is spent, and ya gotta scrap a project to do another.

Then in that strain of logic, why put in the hollow questions? They seem like they were tossed into the game only for the sake of fluff that has no effect on anything, which by the logic of everything in the game costing something, why waste money on something like that? I also find a well done narrative to be priceless, so if they took money out of the budget to put in a story with all these different branches at the cost of making the WvW mode to have 3 maps in stead of 4 or remove a few lines from the ambient npc voice acting, I would find worth it. Not that the WvW maps aren’t beautiful.

Dear ArenaNet,

I followed the news of Guild Wars 2 for nearly two years before its release, and now that I have the game I’m enjoying it very much. However, I feel that in order for anyone to truly enjoy or call themselves a fan of something, one must be critical of it. There is something in this game’s design that has done nothing but annoy me; something that puts a big black spot on this otherwise fantastic game, the execution of the personal story. I personally am a gamer that likes to focus on the narrative of a game’s story, and the idea that my choices would influence how the narrative unfolded made me giddy for this game. Now I find the same thing that I would have cited as one of my top things to be exited to see in this game is my biggest gripe.
I dreamed of how the smallest of choices could shape how the story unfolded, to see how the events at the beginning of the game would intertwine with later events to create something spectacular. This sadly is not what I have seen. What I have seen are instance chains that take no influence of anything outside that section of the personal story. As I play to the “lost sister” storyline, the game doesn’t care if I was a noble, commoner, or street rat. My character is no different whether or not my best friend Quinn was brutally murdered. To me that puts real flaws in the narrative when every ten or so levels feel like an episodic TV show with my character being the only connection.
Another aspect that put me off is the presence of choices that have no influence in the story or even in the home instance. I had high hopes for what the choice of what god blessed me as a child would translate to in the story, but sadly it does nothing. There are also numerous times that an NPC will ask a question in the personal story, like what human kingdom I am from, that will have no effect on anything as though the game doesn’t care about my answer. These kinds of choices that are only in the game for fluff give false hope that there will be some kind of payoff later on, they are deceptive by nature and they leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I really had high hopes for the personality system. When I first saw it, countless ideas passed through my mind about how it would influence the story and your relation to the other NPCs in the game. I had thought that it would be the deciding factor of your character’s influence in the storyline. I believed that in the climax of the story that it would influence your character’s final speech to Zhaitan before charging into battle, ~

“We will never allow an evil like you to exist and we will always stand together to strike you and the other dragons down. Your reign of tyranny ends here, FOR TYRIA!”

-for Dignity

“If you think I would let you live after you caused so much pain, so much agony, then I’LL JUST HAVE TO RIP THAT FOOLISH IDEA OUT OF YOUR SKULL!”

-for Ferocity

“I’m sorry Zhaitan, but I can’t let myself die just yet. There are just too many people waiting for me to come home. They would all be pretty sad if I died, so it looks like I’m gonna have to TAKE YOU DOWN!”

-for Charm

~ but it’s just a meaningless little gauge shaped my meaningless choices that only effects the text interactions with a few NPCs with no influence on anything else.
Please know that I am loving the game, I think it’s the best MMO experience out there. There is so much of this game for me to love, and I plan on playing it for a long time. You did good work here ArenaNet, but it seems to me that you could have done much better.

Thank you for your time-
Kurodius

I’m running an AMD Radeon HD 6750m video card. I have completely updated the driver for the video card and updated DirectX. I have checked all the video settings but nothing in the game changes it. I’ll give it a try on the Mac version and I’ll post the dxdiag report when I get the chance.

I recently got a new computer (a 21.5" iMac) to upgrade from my mid 2010 Macbook, and for some reason there is a green hue over the whole game. It looks like what happens when you put the tint setting too high on TVs. Know that I am running the PC client on a windows partition, so this isn’t a mac beta problem.

I go into the instance and I get up to the point where it says escape withthe scabbard, but the instant I tough the surface of the water the scabbard vanishes from existence. I swim all the way to the point where I’m supposed to escape, but when i get out of the water, the scabbard is gone with no way to complete the quest. My Personal story is now come to a screaching halt and I would very much like to continue it.