Apparently arenanet received an overwhelming amount of complaints about the personal story feeling “disconnected”. That’s why they decided to remove the “fear”-part because it actually involved zooming out of the world map to find the next green star…this can be quite overwhelming for people who just dinged level 60.
The problem is that the fear arcs are necessary to understand what the kitten is going on during the Battle of Fort Trinity. Why have the gates been sabotaged? What’s that blue orb? Where did it come from? Wait, we suddenly have a risen repelling fence? When did that happen? Who’s this Tonn guy and why is everyone making such a big deal about his explosives?
If they think there was a problem with the story being disconnected before, I don’t see how throwing random bits of story at us without any sort of context makes it better.
Like I said: the guy(s) who did this change clearly did not play the story.
…really isn’t too bad!
I’ve been re-leveling a ranger and I have to say, it’s not too bad. People who are having issues seem to having issues with the operator and nothing else (sorry to all of those who are offended).
Leveling 1-15 is ludicrously easy, they hand out the first 15 levels like hotcakes. Starting zones are made much easier to enforce applicability of your learned skills when you learn them and allow you to complete level appropriate content much earlier in the game without consideration for level appropriate gear. Granted his change happened earlier, but there are also no champions kittenblocking your progress and contesting areas.
It’s simply a way to introduce mechanics slower to the game yet also keep things fast paced. If anything, it’s now faster to get to 80 than it was before. They’ve reduced the speed by giving you a faster head start and increased the spread.
I wouldn’t say I’m a heavy advocate of this change…I feel it was a waste of resources from the very start – but now that it’s here, at least it’s not bad.
People are not complaining because they feel the leveling process is too slow. People actually praise GW2’s leveling being faster and more convenient than other MMO’s in the market.
People complain because they feel the leveling process has been dumbed down to single celluar organism-level.
Ask yourself: If GW2’s leveling was even10 times faster than it is now but you’d be only able to autoattack and nothing else, would you be happy? According to your logic you would, since you level up faster!
It’s not the speed of the leveling process that irks people. It’s about what you do while you’re leveling. And no one can deny that the majority of features have been timegated by this newest feature pack in such a way that you feel like a child riding a toy-train.
What inculpatos posted is the only dev-response/statement regarding the personal story changes so far. I hope it’s not going to be the last for the very reasons you mentioned in your post.
Apparently arenanet received an overwhelming amount of complaints about the personal story feeling “disconnected”. That’s why they decided to remove the “fear”-part because it actually involved zooming out of the world map to find the next green star…this can be quite overwhelming for people who just dinged level 60.
Mixing up “forming the pact” with “victory or death” and all the illogical inconsistencies it creates in the process can only be explained that the guy who did this…actually didn’t play the story in the first place.
There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.
I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.
Then you wait until your level is high enough to all the quests at once. Problem solved. You always had this option. But now we’re forced to accomodate to a butchered questing system that forces me to backtrack into the previous zone to do the personal story missions.
Once I reach kessex hills, I have to go back to do the quests in friggin shaemoor village. Once I’m gendarran fields I do the circus quest in kessex etc etc..
The challenge was to create a personal story that tied into the leveling experience of the zone. Incorporate it organically with the flow of the zone. That was the challenge. And guess what? They succeeded at doing that. But not anymore. Now they butchered it for no reason.
Wow…that’s just..
I hope arenanet fixes that. Looks like some overzealous managment guy thought “hey let’s make the whole game one big tutorial! people gonna love it!”.
Maybe it will disappear automatically once you reach a certain level.
The story change is fine.
This way makes much more sense and gives the story in chapters rather than 5 minute segments every 1-2 hours.
You missed the point. It’s not about clustering the personal story mission into big chunks.
It’s about the removal of several story missions for no reason, which is not fine.
It’s about changing the order of the orr-missions in an inconvenient and logically inconsistent way, which is not fine.
I would be deeply disappointed in Arenanets common sense if they removed the “fear” story part. I very much enjoyed that part because a) it’s the first time I felt some sort of emotional bond with my character since he kittened up, was put into a position of shame and had to get his honor back…and b) it felt a cut above the disney-level storytelling that is afflicting the rest of the personal story.
Why did they have to remove it? And the shuffling around of the orr-part makes no freaking sense. Koenig already beautifully pointed out all the inconsistencies you created in the process.
Aren’t you guys “developers”? Go develop something instead of removing the things we enjoy. This really feels like changing for the sake of changing.
The personal story is optional. You don’t have to play it. For those of us who enjoy the personal story it definitely does not feel like a “waste of money”.
Regarding the markers: Personally, it never took me more than 5 seconds to find the green star. Just zoom out of the map and you’ll find it immediately. Sorry, but I can’t even take this complaint seriously…
From what i’ve read, this is the last LS story thingy…
No, after todays update (Dragon’s Reach Part 1) there will be another one on August 12th (Dragon’s Reach Part 2). The mid-season break will occur on August 26th.
I think they will definitely finish the Dry Top map but not more. We have currently access to an area that is roughly a quarter of Brisban Wildlands. If the mid-season break which is coming after the story-chapter on August 12th (after Dragon’s Reach Part 2) literally means “mid-season”, then there won’t be time for more maps.
In my opinion Season 2 is all about being Mordremoth on the offensive and us on the defensive. This is a neccessary step in storytelling. They have to make him feel dangerous and capable of destruction, hence the spreading of the vines and destroying of important forts (Concordia, Salma). After we’re emotionally invested the tables will turn and Season 3 will be about us on the offensive and Mordremoth on the defensive. This might be a good time to open up the Maguuma Jungle and take the fight to his homeland.