Guild Wars 2

I think our normal bank should let us store gold anyway. Some people like to have it away to avoid accidents, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. Why remove it?

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Lonami.2987:

Order 66 all arooooouuuuunddd.

that’s clones, not robots… and we’re off topic

Obvious reference to robots turning evil -_-.

At long last. This should have happened months ago.

Awesome and fun stuff like Plinx and fishes were nerfed to death, when those were enjoyable to farm, and the boring CoF was kept in. About time they got their revenge!

Order 66 all arooooouuuuunddd.

Minis, tonics and finishers should have some kind of equipment slot, like harvesting tools, so you can keep them equipped and with a hotkey to display them (off-pvp for finisher, of course, like /rank).

Lodovicus.1562:

Isn’t it account bound already in a sense?

Any character can deposit their gold into the bank to be withdrawn by any other character on the same account. This just seems to cut out all the faffing.

Each character having his gold and being able to store gold in the bank help you organize your economy and your expenses. Also, it’s easier to control if you’re losing/gaining money with a single character. Being able to put money in the bank so you don’t spend it is good, too.

Separated is more organized.

We know karma is going to be account bount, but what about gold?

I’m not sure having it account bound is a good idea, anyway.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lonami.2987:

That’s pretty sad, considering we do have risen ship models, like the one you fight at northern Sparkfly Fen (and appears sank at the seafloor after you destroy it).

Those are ships that are made from bone and flesh, not actual Orrian ships – of which there’s only one known such ship.

Well, it’s still better, isn’t it? :P.

This won’t end well.

At all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

As for the Harbinger’s appearance – blame limitation on model options. There are no Orrian ship models in GW2. They wouldn’t have made a brand new ship model for a single ship either.

That’s pretty sad, considering we do have risen ship models, like the one you fight at northern Sparkfly Fen (and appears sank at the seafloor after you destroy it).

Still intrigued about this!

I have a question that could clarify things a bit: Originally, the Halacon river bridge was human, or centaur?

I could see the centaurs being long gone from Maguuma Wastes (at least near Kryta), and Overlord Greatcamp being built to flank, and not to support.

Still, there’s many things about the centaur invasion that don’t make too much sense, like how they moved from Gendarran Fields to Kessex Hills, all while leaving Nebo Terrace and Ascalon Settlement intact. Same for Queensdale, if they had a tunnel between Gavernhold Camp and Heartwood Pass Camp, I’d understand it, but that isn’t likely. Maybe there was a tunnel between Ambush Camp and Hidden Cliff Camp.

The advance across northern Kessex Hills is clear, but where it originates isn’t, not too much.

Okay, the question was worded wrong.

Good one: Who sits in the 10 chairs?

There’s 10 seats. 8 are captains, and 1 is the commodore. The other one, which isn’t a captain from the council, who is he/she?

10 chairs on Crow’s Nest Tavern, where they gather :P.

They probably have nobility titles instead of surnames, and those that become part of the royal family lose their surnames.

They’re called swarm during Lost Shores, so there you have.

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores/Phase_1/Dialogues#Dialogue_with_Pastkeeper_Saballa

There’s 10 chairs on the Captain’s Council, but there’s only 9 known members:

• Captain “Bonny” Anne Reid
• Captain Farth Scarclaw
• Captain Hao Luen
• Captain Magnus the Bloody-Handed
• Captain Peter the Lost
• Captain Shud
• Captain Theo Ashford (deceased)
• Captain Tokk
• Commodore Lawson Marriner

Who’s on the 10th seat? Riel Darkwater? Magnus’ second in command?

Never!

Interesting: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1irtvc/where_is_this_located_in_the_game/

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Lonami.2987:

Always read on release date order.

Sometimes authors make references to previous works, and you won’t get them if you don’t read them by release date order.

Why would an author make a reference to something they (or somebody else!) have written before, but that plays “in the future”, and if they did, how would that impact my ability to understand what’s going on?

On the contrary, in Ghosts of Ascalon, events and people are referenced that are vastly elaborated on in Edge of Destiny, which was released after.

I am reading them in order of release now, but halfway through the second one, I still think I would have been happier if I would have stuck to the chronological order.

It’s something that happens often in other bigger franchises. No matter when the events happen, there’s references to stuff in other books. Of course, they’re always minor, and unless you read the previous books and paid a lot of attention, you won’t notice them.

Another “good” thing about Bubbles and Mordremoth is we don’t know them, and the locations where they are supposed to be (Cantha + ocean, Magguma/west of Tyria) aren’t places we’d worry about defending.

So for example, in the Cantha expansion we could go to Cantha for any reason, without caring about Bubbles, and then he appears in the last moment. Maybe he could even be secondary, with another bigger threat remaining as the main villain.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Arathor.7419:

you have a point there yet i prefer to see kralkatorik and visit crystal desert.

I’d much rather see Jormag fought first. It’s most logical to go after Jormag and Primordus who’s had the most time to build up forces – to prevent them from becoming stronger before striking after them. And Jormag is the only Elder Dragon who’s location we know.

There’s really nothing in the living story that implies the story will go into the crystal desert – the story is more related to the dwarves and the shiverpeaks giving Primordus and the Depths of Tyria a more likely outcome than it is to the Crystal Desert and Kralkatorrik.

Lonami.2987:

• There’s branded in the Far Shiverpeaks, where the Brand begins.

Er… the Dragonbrand begins in the Blood Legion Homelands, not in the Far Shiverpeaks which are west of said homelands.

Lonami.2987:

Deldrimor Front would fit with Primordus’ expansion.

I fail to see how given how that area has never held any relation to Primordus at all.

By “Far Shiverpeaks” I meant the entire “continent”, north of Tyria. Yeah, leads to confusion :P.

Deldrimor Front would make sense as it’s the former dwarved homeland, and could serve as an entry point to the depths, together with the Maguuma Wastes.

Another two “important” things:

• There’s branded in the Far Shiverpeaks, where the Brand begins.
• Deldrimor Front wouldn’t be included in the Elona expansion, it’s too big already if we make it cover from Istan to the Crystal Desert.

Both of those places should appear before the Elona expansion. Well, at least Kralkatorrik’s former resting place, which would be included in Jormag’s expansion. Deldrimor Front would fit with Primordus’ expansion.

So I wouldn’t expect Kralkatorrik and Elona until the second or third expansion.

A good order, in my opinion:

• Jormag
• Bubbles
• Primordus
• Kralkatorrik
• Mordremoth

Always read on release date order.

Sometimes authors make references to previous works, and you won’t get them if you don’t read them by release date order.

ARMOR: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets#Loot_armor (The page isn’t organized too well, check: http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/ if your head hurts)

Let’s analyze what we have:

Armor sets are a mess, plain and simple. Lot of pieces with different names, missing pieces… Let’s say the biggest problem is the lack of naming consistency. And don’t get me started on each renown heart vendor having a different name for each piece of the same set.

From 1 to 40 you alternate between two sets, and then you get a new one you keep until you get to 80, the same from the dungeon vendors. You can get new skins from renown heart vendors, but as I said it’s too chaotic, and after all, loot is more motivating than vendors. Add the always-basic armor set, too, as well as one rare and one exotic.

So that leaves us with 4 loot armor skins for the entire 1-45 experience, same skins no matter the region. Worse than with weapons.

Things we could improve:

First of all, establish a generic name for all armor sets. Right now, we have sets with different named pieces, sets using the same name as sets with different skins… A complete mess. Medium armor users have one less armor than light and heavy, too (you can only get the head and two other pieces that only appear as personal story rewards). I’m working on another piece of text about armor naming, I’ll link to it from here once it’s done.

There’s a total of 5 karma-centric sets. The 5th of them is the exotic-only Armageddon armor from the temples, which leaves us with 4, which can be bought as skins with Badges of Honor, too. As for loot, there’s a total of 5 loot-centric sets. The 5th is exotic-only, and the 4th is rare-only, which leaves us with 3. A total of 7 Fine/Masterwork.

If we divide armor drops by basic level ranges, we get 7 ranges, perfect to rearrange armor drops with those 4 karma and 3 loot armor sets. We can add more variety by making the ranges overlap with each other. It could look like this:

• 1-20 – 1st loot – country/superior studded/worn chain
• 15-30 – 1st karma – devout/rogue/duelist
• 25-40 – 2nd loot – magician/swindler/worn scale
• 35-50 – 2nd karma – dry bones/duelist/pit fighter
• 45-60 – 3rd loot – cabalist/rogue/reinforced scale
• 55-70 – 3rd karma – stately/warden/plated
• 65-80 – 4th karma – tactical/conqueror/dark

This would give us different skinned fine/masterwork armor sets each few levels, as loot, letting people change their style easily as they progress, and making armor loot interesting.

Rare and exotic armor loot would remain untouched, with one unique set each. Karma armors would still be available through their original means, but they could be rearranged to make space for the three loot sets above, and add more variety to renown heart vendors, too.

IDENTIFYING EACH ITEM’S SKIN SET

Beyond basic naming, both weapons and armor have a skin-identification problem. That’s why I suggest adding a new property field to every item, detailing the skin set.

This way, no matter there will always be items with unique names, you’ll know easily if they’re part of an existing set, or have unique skins.

Additionally, aside from the new property field, PvE and PvP skin sets should have the same item names, both weapons and armor.

TL;DR

• Simple weapons no longer drop as any rarity that isn’t white/basic, leaving the cultural tier 1 of each region as the only blue/fine and green/masterwork weapon skin
• Enemies with thematic crafted or karma weapons drop those as fine and masterwork, instead of the cultural tier 1 of the region
• Armor names unified to avoid confusions and have a clear idea of where each piece belongs
• Divide fine and masterwork armor loot in 7 level ranges, adding karma armor as loot to give more variety
• Add a new property fields to all items, detailing the skin set

The basic idea behind this post is loot should encourage players to keep playing with their look, unlike the current situation where players keep the same skins for most of their leveling, and don’t change it until they are 80. This leaves many unused skins in the process, and makes loot be boring.

Loot is a way to entertain the players, and no matter I approve of the removal of requiring loot drops to have good stats, I can’t say the same about skins.

And well, that’s my analysis on how open world loot could be improved. You can find a first version of this thread on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1hv4kv/open_world_loot_skins_need_to_be_improved_scarce/ which I improved a bit before reposting it here.

I really hope something’s done regarding this problem. If you’re with me, support this thread.

Check this other thread, too: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improving-the-guild-system-Long-detailed/first

Open world loot skins need to be improved: Scarce skin variety from 1-80

TL;DR below

Open world loot in this game isn’t very interesting. You always get the same skins from 1 to 80. It got a lot of criticism from new players at the first days, and still today new players complain about it, too. I do think it’s a problem, but don’t get my wrong, being able to get the best gear without needing to loot is awesome. I’m talking about skins.

The best part is we can fix this without developing any new models or skins, using the resources we already have.

WEAPONS: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_weapon_sets#Loot_weapons

Let’s analyze what we have:

• Basic weapons drop rarely, as white/basic
• Simple weapons drop everywhere, a lot, in any rarity
• Cultural tier 1 weapons drop as blue/fine and green/masterwork in the respective region of each race
• Cultural tier 2 weapons drop as yellow/rare in the respective region of each race
• Each region has a unique set of orange/exotic weapons, that can’t be found anywhere else

And that’s all. Only four different weapon sets per region, rares don’t appear until level 46 and exotics until level 62, which leaves us with only three different loot weapon sets for 1-45, in each region. If you don’t get out of your region from 1-45, you’ll only see those three different weapon sets in your entire journey: basic, simple and cultural tier 1. The fun thing is, the game does have a lot of weapon sets: 47 with release.

Now, how isn’t this a problem?

Things we could improve:

First of all, simple weapons should be limited to basic rarity, and maybe fine. No simple weapon should drop in any higher quality, there’s nothing more disappointing than getting an exotic with a simple weapon skin. This would leave us with pretty much a single skin for fine and masterwork loot on each region, that of the cultural tier 1.

There’s a lot of weapon sets that no one cares about, mostly rare discipline-crafting weapons. These weapons are themed around specific enemies. What if these enemies dropped these crafting weapon sets, in fine and masterwork rarities? We could add pirate, Ebon Vanguard and Modniir weapons, too, karma weapons that aren’t too mainstream. These would give us new sets in each region: (Really, wherever these enemies are located, but mainly these regions):

• Ascalon: Grawl, Ogre, Separatist
• Kryta: Bandit, Centaur, Pirate
• Maguuma Jungle: Hylek, Krait, Pirate
• Shiverpeak Mountains: Dredge, Grawl

When you kill one of these enemies, the fine and masterwork loot, instead of being cultural tier 1, would give their specific skins. Same for chests located in their territory. If you want rare versions of these weapons, you’ll need to use crafting or buy them from vendors.

Rare and exotic weapons are fine skin-wise, so they would stay as they are, with only one skin per region like now, rare as cultural tier 2 and exotic as the region-unique.

Another thing that needs to be fixed are the renown heart vendor skins. 95%~ of them are simple weapons, too. When they sell you a “Bandit dagger”, its skin should be that of the Bandit weapon set. When they sell you a “Lionguard sword”, its skin should be that of the Lionguard weapon set.

Of course, there should be exceptions for this. Only cultural tier 1, crafted rare weapons and the 4 pseudo-cultural karma weapon sets (Ebon Vanguard, Lionguard, Modniir and Pirate) should be available through renown heart vendors. The rest would remain unique.

However, maybe it could be good to make an exception with cultural tier 2 and order weapons. These are expensive in their vendors, but they aren’t bought in big enough quantities to make a money sink difference anyway, and it would help diversify renown heart skins.

And if there’s still worry, just make renown heart weapons (just the ones with cultural tier 2 and order weapon skins) non-transmutable, fixing the money sink problem. They would have a “Skin can’t be transmuted property”, and when players try to use them for transmutation keeping the skin, an alert would pop up warning the weapon is of bad quality, and to get the skin at a vendor.

The personal story should be replayable, it’s just such a waste of content.

Jormag. He’s the closest, and right now, the most dangerous, with the icebrood at the gates of Hoelbrak. Going to the Far Shiverpeaks against Jormag would continue the centaur storyline, too, which was left in the air.

Kralkatorrik’s south, probably somewhere at Elona. The branded are moving south along the Brand, too. He would be probably included with Palawa Joko, an undead, and it’s too soon to add more undead to the game.

Primordus isn’t very active, and his minions are just wandering around, with no real goal, no invasion purposes. They just pop around, invade a cave and stay there, without becoming any real menace to any region. Chances are the dwarves are still containing him.

Bubbles and Mordremoth are too far, and their influence hasn’t still reached us.

Any lore behind them? Seems they have none.

It’s clear they’re karka-related, in some way. Maybe a future plot around Southsun Cove?

The only explanation I find is the Zephyrites funded the bazaar this time. The architecture is all Zephyrite-style. Maybe the place is a Zephyrite dock, and they invited the rest of the people for the bazaar just because.

They could come back for the skill hunt. After all, they had their unique abilities.

I think Port Stalwart was either in the island south of Dominion of Winds, or in the coast of Kessex Hills, in current tengu territory.

I hope they don’t forget about it and add it when they complete the Sea of Sorrows’s zones, even if it’s just some old ruins.

Zhaitan’s body was supposed to appear at the 4th explorable path of The Ruined City of Arah, the one about the bloodstones.

In older datamined maps, the body was visible where The Wreck of the Scorchrazor point of interest is located now. Also, next to it, there’s another point of interest named Zhaitan’s Rest.

The shape of Zhaitan’s corpse on the minimap matches that of a dead dragon we saw on the first trailers.

So I think it’s pretty certain his corpse was supposed to be there. But now, it isn’t. Why would they remove his corpse, with all the model-work behind it?

I really hope we get to go down into his lair and search his corpse, in some kind of personal story revision.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Thanks for reporting this! The ‘Future In Politics’ map instance is a known bug.

Originally planned for a conversation between Inspector Kiel and Magnus the Bloody Handed, this conversation now takes place in the open world and repeats a few times each hour. This is an optional scene for players to watch, has no reward associated with it, and helps provide context for the future story.

Thanks again for your reports.

I think you should have instanced it, people miss gossip like this if they don’t know it exists. I don’t think it’s a positive way for delivering the lore. It’s a somewhat “surprise” moment, I would hate to see the result next patch without having seen this gossip :/.

Now I’ve seen a conversation pop up between Magnus and Kiel outside. Isn’t this the one supposed to happen in the instanced version? o_O

I get inside the instance, but nothing happens. No conversations at all.

Any idea why? :/

I was working on some lists of armor skins for the wiki and I noticed this.

From the armor skins sold in WvW’s Armor Master, the second fine medium armor shouldn’t be there. Why?

Well, because the skin is the same one from the basic armorsmith vendors.

Also, there’s another one that should be there, following the pattern of the skins made available through this vendor, and obviously isn’t.

These are the two armors:

• Shouldn’t be: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rawhide_armor

• Should be: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Duelist_armor

Obviously medium armor users are getting less options. A quick way to fix it would be to add the light and heavy basic armor skins at the top, together with rawhide, and put duelist in rawhide’s place.

Anyway, I think there’s some other mistakes around. I’ll update the post later if I confirm them.

Molten Weapons Facility shouldn’t have been removed. It’s just dumb. We don’t get “enough” content nowdays, and then you throw it away. Why?

MWF could stay in-game forever, just as it was during the event, with no changes, and it would be fine. People would still play it for the new recipes, the azurite and the molten backpack. Maybe even add low fused ticket drop chances. Or maybe remove all the special rewards.

Same for the living story missions, like Cragstead, Canach’s Lair…

Which by the way brings me to this point: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gqnur/shouldnt_the_living_story_use_the_personal_story/

You should really integrate the living story into the personal story system.

Why isn’t the personal story system used for the living story? It’s perfect, with UI help, its own tab in the hero panel…

With the Dragon Bash living story’s completion we get Marjory’s Journal, an item whose only purpose is to replay the cinematic.

Am I the only one who thinks this is redundant, inefficient and dumb? If the living story was played using the personal story system, together with a section in the hero panel, we could replay it from there, without wasting any bank space.

What’s going to be the situation when we have dozens of these books? What’s going to happen when we get an expansion with an entire new personal story?

If you need more reasons, you could read this analysis on how to improve the personal story: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/191me2/detailed_analysis_on_how_to_improve_the_personal/ specifically the “Using the personal story model for new storylines” section.

PS: Reddit copy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1gqnur/shouldnt_the_living_story_use_the_personal_story/

It’s something I’ve wondered since the game released. We have the official ISO 639-1 language codes for DE and FR, and then, we have SP for Spanish, when no prominent ISO has “SP” for it, and ISO 639-1 gives it ES.

Any explanation? o_o

I love reading every bit of dialogue. When I got to Southsun Cove for the new changes, I spoke to Kiel first and bam, inside the instance. I complete it, and everything’s fine.

Later on I notice the NPCs around her were supposed (maybe they weren’t and all this rant is for nothing) to have a special dialogue that they don’t have anymore, because they act as if I already completed the instance (which I did, of course).

But now I’ve missed that dialogue forever, unless I find someone who took screenshots or recorded it. Being account-bound, I can’t check it with other characters.

These kind of things happen too much. Why can’t we get lore in a decent and consistent way? I’m tired, really, really tired of needing to check every single detail to learn what it’s going on. I love the story, but I hate needing to hunt it, waiting minutes idle for the NPCs to trigger the scene and say their line, searching books between bushes to find the basic grasp of the story around the respective area, etc. That could be cool for “deep” extra lore, but is terrible for what should be basic knowledge.

Still, even if these particular NPCs didn’t have any special pre-instance dialogue, I’m just tired of how the lore is handled in this game, and wanted to see if I’m alone or not.

Redscope.6215:

Q: What is the point of Mist Form now?

A: The same as it was before, take no damage for 3 seconds.

The reason why you can no longer heal in Mist Form is because the ele has the highest healing in the game regardless of spec. Coupled with an invuln where you can’t be interrupted, its OP.

Now Mist Form is no longer OP. Hope that clears things up.

The ele has the highest healing in the game?

Give vitality a look, please. Eles heal a lot because they need it to survive.

fadeaway.2807:

Is this a serious question? You can’t see the point of an instant stunbreak and invul?

Invul? Read it again, conditions still affect you, and I already have Lightning Flash to break out of stun, thank you.

Naurgalen.2374:

I can see that Warriors “Endure Pain” doesn’t have that kind of limitations and both skills have the same role. It could be argued that having less armor and life elementalist´s variant should be more strong… but NOW it´s in fact worse.

This is important to note, too. Everything being nerfed on the elementalist has identical counterparts on the warrior, which has better base stats.

Warrior, which is the game’s OP class doesn’t get any nerf, and elementalists, which depend on those abilities to survive, because we don’t have enough life, get nerf after nerf.

I don’t care about nerfs, but give us viable alternatives. I don’t want to be forced to play bunker.

You can’t heal conditions if you use Mist Form anymore, which makes it pretty useless in PvE where you need to heal conditions constantly.

If we can’t cast anything while in Mist Form, at least conditions should stop doing damage, or else this ability becomes useless.

Mist Form is ruined in the current state. It’s supposed to save you, and it doesn’t do that in any real fight anymore.

I just deposited a rare light mask in the bank, and it doesn’t show. The history doesn’t load. I deposited a crest too, and the same happened.

What’s going on with the guild system? Some days ago I bought 4 gold of influence and it hasn’t still arrived, and now this :/.

Guild name: Hunters of Secrets [HoS]
Server: Baruch Bay [ES]

EDIT: I changed zone and those 2 missing items appeared back in my inventory.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Spending-gold-for-guild-influence-not-working

Lonami.2987:

So, I just spent 4 gold on Drinks for the City for 2,000 influence through the Guild Promoter at Lion’s Arch. Some guildmates spent Letter of Commendations from the Dead Drops. And none of them “arrived”.

Not sure if the guild system is lagging (in which case, they’ll arrive sooner or later) or they just disappeared because of some sort of bug.

Any information?

Lonami.2987:

Still nothing. Some members spent Letters of Commendations this morning and they worked, but no sign from yesterday’s. The 4 gold I spent for 2,000 influence are missing, too :/.

Guild name: Hunters of Secrets [HoS]
Server: Baruch Bay [ES]

Still nothing. Some members spent Letters of Commendations this morning and they worked, but no sign from yesterday’s. The 4 gold I spent for 2,000 influence are missing, too :/.

So, I just spent 4 gold on Drinks for the City for 2,000 influence through the Guild Promoter at Lion’s Arch. Some guildmates spent Letter of Commendations from the Dead Drops. And none of them “arrived”.

Not sure if the guild system is lagging (in which case, they’ll arrive sooner or later) or they just disappeared because of some sort of bug.

Any information?

==Applying all of these changes==

This could be advertised as patch content without too many problems. Instead of including the entire rehash in a go, the updates could be divided between 4-6 patches, covering a part of the personal story each time. Everything from The Lost Shores event could come into a new personal storyline together with improvements to Southsun Cove, or together with the rest.

In the end, we have a ton of content that is getting wasted because we don’t have the proper way to enjoy it again and again. It’s all my opinion, of course, but I think all of these changes would make both the personal and the game better than they are now.

This isn’t really a suggestion, it’s more like discussion on what could be improved or not, so feel free to discuss everything and add your own stuff.

Uh, and congratulations if you read it all xD.

==Branched storylines==

We can choose different paths, and that’s great, but the personal story is still a one-way path, in the sense that you complete one mission after another. You don’t have “Oh, I need to complete 3 missions to unlock the next mission” moments.

In some sense, you’re forced into a stream-lined storyline. Some freedom in that regards would be nice. You can even combine this with choosing different paths, and make players decide 2 missions out of 3 to continue further.

If we’re improving the personal story, it could be good to add new missions, and this would be a good way to do it without breaking what we already have, together with the ideas on the previous section.

For example, after Claw Island, you could get a bonus arc to try to find what happened with the characters there. Lot of people was disappointed on how it ended, and this could let us elaborate on their backgrounds without changing the established story.

These would help make the “rehash” be more than just some improvements, having new stuff you definitely want to check.

In line with branched storylines, dungeons could get some love, too:

==Dungeon story mode==

Dungeons tell a story, but they aren’t present in the personal story, except the last chapter, Arah. Using the ideas from the two previous sections, we could make dungeons have a storyline in the UI, too. We would unlock it after the 1-30 racial story arc, just when we start playing with our chosen order, and then it would lead to Arah parallel to the main storyline.

Dungeon story mode difficulty needs a solution, too. Forcing it into the personal story… As it was done, it wasn’t a good idea. However, nerfing it to death isn’t a good idea, either.

A good solution would be to make dungeons HARD, as they were before. Not as hard as explorables, but not as easy as they are now. Then, when you get there through the personal story, you don’t enter using the dungeon portal, you enter using the green star, and for only once, the dungeon is soloable (you get extra stats, mobs get weaker, whatever). After you complete it, you can’t access that easy mode anymore. If you want to play it again, you’ll need to do it the 5-man way.

This could work well as a tutorial, letting players grasp the mechanics of dungeons, because let’s face it, the jump from PvE to Dungeons is too rough for new players, as well as a way to force people play all the dungeons to see the story behind Destiny’s Edge, without forcing them to group and gear for dungeons.

Of course, if you decide to bring a group or to do it without using the green star, you progress the story anyway. Loot would be worse on the easy mode, too.

If we go further, making the story mode be hard again could let us make it reward people with tokens from that dungeon, making it nice to be replayed together with the explorable modes. The story modes are much more better than many explorables, but their lack of rewards make them get wasted, which is a pity.

Let the single players experience Zhaitan in their way, and let the dungeon players experience him on theirs.

But the best part of all these changes is how they can be applied:

==Integration with the open world==

Sometimes a location in the open world has nothing to do with that same location at the personal story. This shouldn’t be hard to fix, adding NPCs from each side to the other, as well as having some dialogue hints about each instance.

For example, you go defend a location, and key characters there on the open world and missing, and then we have new characters that don’t appear at the open world. This happens too much.

Another example, racial sympathy minor races and their locations. When you arrive there in the open world, you can’t tell if there’s any presence from that race there. This is specially weird with quaggans and hyleks, where there’s no presence by them in the open world in kilometers around what is their home in the personal story. I know the story can change the role and presence of those races there, but there should be signs of their presence there.

And I could go on and on. Cohesion would welcome a bit of love. After all, it feels good to meet NPCs once again, and maybe you could even elaborate on their background. For example, there some quaggans that want to be pirates at Lornar’s Pass. You go there at the personal story, and there’s no mention of that. All the named characters from the open world are missing, too. You could take them, and elaborate on why they want to be pirates, for example.

Finally, there’s a problem with closed instances, that have no real reason to be closed and just add more cohesion problems with the open world:

==Instances as rewards and signs of progression==

The Source of Orr. Each minor race’s home. Maeva’s house in Lion’s Arch. Minister Zamon’s Mansion. All of these are examples of closed instances that have no real reason to be closed.

I see 2 solutions here:

• Leave them open in the open world, letting you meet the personal story characters there (for example, be able to enter Maeva’s house and meet Maeva).
• Transform them into personal instances, like the home instances (You could visit The Source of Orr and see everything you achieved, or check how the minor races are doing in their original homes).

Having them closed and inaccessible is bad (unless they’re specific fight-places, like Cathedral of Hidden Depths, that we would get to visit again through replayability each time we want). Also, I’m pretty sure roleplayers would welcome having more space for them.

Back to the main topic, if we really want to improve the personal story, adding new missions would be a good idea:

==Using the personal story model for new storylines==

We have a single storyline, and that’s all. Yes, we can choose paths, which is nice, but we’re stuck with the “Zhaitan” storyline for the entire game.

Now, for example, The Lost Shores storyline. It played in a slightly “weird” manner, and having tons of players doing it at the same time didn’t help. What if we had used the personal story model? Its mechanic is pretty nice, and in my opinion, it should be used for everything that isn’t intended to be dynamic and stationary. How could it work?

You could have different storylines, just like when you have different active missions on classic RPGs. To avoid screwing the UI, we would add some “< – >” arrows above the personal story text box, to let us navigate between the different active storylines.

Back to replayability, this would let us experience The Lost Shores with all the characters we wanted when we wanted, no matter the event finished months ago. The content doesn’t get wasted, once the patch is released, the story becomes more content for the game. Just get near the NPC that gives out the mission and unlock it, and play it, and if you want to play it again, go on!

Being instanced, the terrain can be changed, without fear of altering the open world, giving the developers more freedom to adapt the world to each story. 100 guys to kill the Ancient Karka is nice, but 100 guys to punch Canach isn’t. This would make sure no one gets screwed by overpopulation, too. And if you think cooperative play gets screwed, make the content hard so you need a group of 5 players to complete it.

In the future, this could let us have “Zhaitan story” together with “Jormag story”, without forcing us to finish one before another, together with more storylines that would work well together without screwing each other.

You could go further, and divide big storylines into arcs, that unlock when you reach a level aside from when you complete the previous ones, letting you decide what to when, and not just what to do: