My story doesn't matter anymore

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"DiscipleofLaw.3796" said:

> When I first made my character in GW2, I was under the impression that my personal story, the five multiple-choice questions, affected gameplay somehow. And they did, at least for the first few hours of playing.

>

> I understand that one choice determines a profession-dependent aesthetic aspect of my character, the second question determines my initial personality, which affects how NPCs react to me, and the final three questions relate to my patron deity, my background, motivations, and experiences. That's really cool! I don't get those options in other games.

>

> But after level 30, I feel like my choices at character creation don't matter anymore, like, _at all_. I keep reading into things as I go along, thinking , _"Maybe he said that because I chose Dignity,"_ or _"Is she looking down on me because I chose Commoner?"_ In reality, I know that my choices at character creation don't matter anymore. But I wish they did. I've been level 80 for quite a while now, yet having been blessed by Kormir when I was young doesn't seem to matter, nor does the fact that I never searched for my true parents, or their (spoilers) deaths at the hands of the White Mantle.

>

> Why doesn't my story matter any more?

 

Not quite, I see you've made a human...

The "Commoner" part decides the whole first chapter of your personal story (lvl 10-20 story), the other (The "regret") one decides your second chapter(20-30? - not sure about the levels, haven't done much of the LS after it was locked to these levels).

The Gods part is kind of only for flavour afaik, while the Dignity, etc was there for a system that was deprecated (You used to gain different "titles" as you gained more dignity, or Charm, etc), but still show in different dialogue options.

 

So if you made a new human character but picked entirely different answers your game experience would be completely different. As in you'd have a different "childhood friend" and would have a completely different quest for the first two chapters.

 

Those choices, however, only carry inside the personal story and your home instance.

 

Check the wiki for more insight:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Biography#Race_questions

 

[Menadena.7482]

I read somewhere that the original plan was to make the choices at the beginning matter more. Now though beyond level 30 in the personal story your choices may as well have been random.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Menadena.7482" said:

> I read somewhere that the original plan was to make the choices at the beginning matter more. Now though beyond level 30 in the personal story your choices may as well have been random.

 

Well, when they revamped the story to make it "more appealing" to the masses (as in really dumb people that couldn't handle the game without all the hand holding you get now) they actually removed one of the BEST story steps that gave some gravitas to the story. The "Your greatest fear" step.

I think they have added it back now, but they messed up the story a lot for a while.

 

We got what people wanted. GW2 at launch gave you freedom to do whatever, you just had to use the weapon to unlock the skills (not level locked), you could (iirc) equip both sets from the start, your first story step was doing a heart ^_^, and subsequent ones were serialized into smaller level intervals, one mission per interval, instead of the current one chapter per 10 levels.

The narrative time-line was different than what it was last time i did the story, and there were stuff in place to make your behaviour matter more (although those never saw complete implementation).

But a lot of people were "turned down" by all that freedom and "didn't know what to do". So Arena Net felt compelled to add all that hand holding, and the NPE (New player experience) was created, and completely killed any possibility of "choices" being relevant.

 

Although one thing's for sure, they really couldn't do it too differently, because in the end the story needs to converge to the same exact ending, for cannon and continuity, which is why post lvl 30 most of what you did in the previous steps doesn't really matter.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

Your story ends with orded arcs. Rest of the game is about commander fighting dragons.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > @"Menadena.7482" said:

> > I read somewhere that the original plan was to make the choices at the beginning matter more. Now though beyond level 30 in the personal story your choices may as well have been random.

>

> Well, when they revamped the story to make it "more appealing" to the masses (as in really dumb people that couldn't handle the game without all the hand holding you get now) they actually removed one of the BEST story steps that gave some gravitas to the story. The "Your greatest fear" step.

> I think they have added it back now, but they messed up the story a lot for a while.

 

Yeah, adding whashername was a real snafu as she bugged me every day to 'fix' things. Not that it mattered what I said to her. If I let her add the step I did not get to do it anyway and knew she would ask me again tomorrow but if I did not let her add the step she would also just pester me about it the next day.

[Menadena.7482]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> Your story ends with orded arcs. Rest of the game is about commander fighting dragons.

 

That was basically my feeling. Every time I would do the battle of Ft Trinity then it would be 'ok, finished now'.

[Robj.6815]

One of the things I was thinking about in a post about our decisions in POF having a direct and negative impact on Tyria and its denizens is how would the consequences play out? That led me to thinking about the personal story and how it's no longer really relevant.

 

But as I thought about it more it made sense to incorporate a personal story into the next expansion or even serving as the BASIS for the next expansion as we work to rebuild our reputation within Dragon's Watch, our race, the Pact, and the world in general.

 

By treating this type of journey as BASIS for the next expansion, we could flesh out our personal choices (within reason, of course) to tell a deep story of personal redemption.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Robj.6815" said:

> One of the things I was thinking about in a post about our decisions in POF having a direct and negative impact on Tyria and its denizens is how would the consequences play out? That led me to thinking about the personal story and how it's no longer really relevant.

>

> But as I thought about it more it made sense to incorporate a personal story into the next expansion or even serving as the BASIS for the next expansion as we work to rebuild our reputation within Dragon's Watch, our race, the Pact, and the world in general.

>

> By treating this type of journey as BASIS for the next expansion, we could flesh out our personal choices (within reason, of course) to tell a deep story of personal redemption.

 

That would be a great idea, but i don't think it's feasible, not in any great depth. Because at the end of the story everyone has to be at the same point, having experienced the same overall story beats. So basically your suggestion would be similar to that story chapter i mentioned, when your greatest fear becomes true, and people die on your watch, and you have to try and redeem yourself.

That story step was considered so secondary that they actually removed it for a while.

In the end, i agree with you, there's a lot of loose threads in the story, and your own personal story beats from the past do get ignored for the most part.

Would be nice if a couple of chapters within LS4 dealt with that (since they actually need to fill a longer time, because no "content draught"), but you also need to understand that some things might not be doable because of how the time-line works in GW2. Where each map is frozen in time, and are not all contemporary to each other (like Orr is stuck at 5 years ago - pre final chapter of personal story, SW and HoT (except Dragon Stand?) are stuck before Mordremoth died, etc.).

[Edelweiss.4261]

> @"Robj.6815" said:

> By treating this type of journey as BASIS for the next expansion, we could flesh out our personal choices (within reason, of course) to tell a deep story of personal redemption.

The issue that I have with this is that there is no redemption to be had. We didn't choose the actions that would require redeeming and, as such, making the redemption personal wouldn't make sense. The "commander" might need redemption, but the player character does not.

[Robj.6815]

> @"Edelweiss.4261" said:

> > @"Robj.6815" said:

> > By treating this type of journey as BASIS for the next expansion, we could flesh out our personal choices (within reason, of course) to tell a deep story of personal redemption.

> The issue that I have with this is that there is no redemption to be had. We didn't choose the actions that would require redeeming and, as such, making the redemption personal wouldn't make sense. The "commander" might need redemption, but the player character does not.

 

But the PC does need redemption as it is our avatar acting in the role of "Commander". Granted, if you're RP'ing it doesn't work so well but it works within the context of our actual role within the story.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

> @"Robj.6815" said:

> > @"Edelweiss.4261" said:

> > > @"Robj.6815" said:

> > > By treating this type of journey as BASIS for the next expansion, we could flesh out our personal choices (within reason, of course) to tell a deep story of personal redemption.

> > The issue that I have with this is that there is no redemption to be had. We didn't choose the actions that would require redeeming and, as such, making the redemption personal wouldn't make sense. The "commander" might need redemption, but the player character does not.

>

> But the PC does need redemption as it is our avatar acting in the role of "Commander". Granted, if you're RP'ing it doesn't work so well but it works within the context of our actual role within the story.

 

Actually PC plays different role in different places.

 

My idea is that PC is commander in story, obviously. But in open world it feels like we are one of many explorers coming with commander. In first raid our squad is a group of explorers going to the rescue. In fractals we are one of many fractal travelers. PC is not one character.

[Lunarlife.5128]

There are many, very small changes that your choices make in the stories. They are there, you just have to pay attention to them.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Most of the decisions you make in the game do not effect the events after Zhaitan's defeat. The reunion with your special friend during the final fight in Heart of Thorns was a nice idea.

 

What made me smile, most of the times, was the alignment with your order. When traveling central Tyria in particular, talking to representatives of your order always granted you some interesting side information. Sometimes it was the only way to unlock a certain door, because only a member of the Order of Whispers was allowed passage. Or the friendly gate-worker in Rata Sum, who offers a special/hidden dialogue to priory-members. The pact is still runing and you meet them all across tyria, even in the Path of Fire zones. You can still see Priory, Order of Whispers and Vigil. They all walk under the same flag, but you can identify them one by one.

 

It would be nice to have some chats with your old comrades, maybe even some hints or access to special bundles for the sake of good old times. When we pick an order in our personal story, we pick them for life.

 

The major reason, our decisions no longer have a lasting effect: The level 80 boost. I hate to be the one always pointing at it, but in this case it is quite obvious. The majority of characters created nowadays never complete or even start their personal story. They use the booster or scrolls to jump to 80, then start either HoT of PoF. Aside from the decisions made in character creation, they have done nothing. It would be rather unfair to grant people who did the personal story a boon and punishing those who used the boost.