A path that I feel the personal story always lacked

[Sancre.2317]

(If this exists right now, please tell me, as I haven't played since a long time and they might have added it without me knowing)

 

Since I began playing GW 2, I was surprised about things like the starting story traits, living story and so, but it always seemed weird to me that there was no chance to decide if you wanted to be part of the "Bad Guys", in the sense of becoming corrupted and serving the Elder Dragons you were trying to stop at first.

 

I know that it would be a lot of work to adapt a new way to play, classes and so for each corrupted, even if it was only a pvp mode, but seeing how they have allowed players to play as branded in the past, and the many tonic that exists to disguise as one of the corrupted, it is possible to do, only they don't want to. This is not a suggestion, it just seemed off to not be able to control your own story in that sense, like other games as Fable, Infamous and so let you decide, and i wanted to know if you people also think that is weird that they don't let you take this choice, not even when you are a Sylvari and Mordremoth is ordering you to join him during HoT

[Maikimaik.1974]

Nobody "chooses" to become corrupted.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Maikimaik.1974" said:

> Nobody "chooses" to become corrupted.

 

Well the Sons of Svanir technically choose the path that they know will lead to corruption.

 

But it would be incredibly weird and out of place to have a narrative that actually leads down the path of corruption given we'd then lose will, control and identity to the Dragons. It would essentially be game over.

 

In games like fable, skyrim etc you make evil choices, but you essentially remain as your character. That would not be the case here as your motivations and control over decisions would not be your own. You essentially become a drone.

[seinka.4823]

> @"Maikimaik.1974" said:

> Nobody "chooses" to become corrupted.

 

Actually, if the character sees it as an "upgrade" instead of "corruption", the willing choice might be possible.

[Pifil.5193]

Well, it'd be odd to allow the player to choose the losing side. If you chose Zhaitan, you'd have effectively lost at launch. If you chose Mordremoth you'd have lost when HoT launched. The pact wins. Your side loses.

 

Choosing to be on the "bad guy" side is really only possible in single player games and even then your "bad guy" character usually follows the same basic path as the "good guy."

[Laila Lightness.8742]

We kinda are corrupted our little dragon has chained uss

[Elva.6372]

Nobody chooses...

 

The choices are made for us to choose from, and all involve being a Goody Two-Shoes...

 

It is it bit bland (especially Human) and often flies in the face of a player's character concept. It works for my Guardian, not so much for my Thief or Necromancer...

 

I think in some ways, less would have been more in the Personal Story beginnings of the game.

 

The Charr origin story seems to be the grittiest, the Asura story is alright and the Sylvari fairly decent but oddly unstatisfying in some respects due to glaring unresolved mysteries.

 

But the humans, ugh...

 

At least I was able to let that idiot "friend" meet his demise so I could save people he helped put in danger...that was about as gritty as it got.

 

Anyway, it's a pity that the game was made so tamely in this regard, it is rather infused with being nice and Kumbaya singing, loudly and off key.

[Ardid.7203]

Fable, Infamous, Mass Effect. Jedi Knight and other similar games are single player stories, where focusing in personal god/bad choices is more important and plausible to do than in a game with many, many players, as an MMO. GW2 case is even harder in this respect, because the player character is not "just another guy" in the fight. The player character is "The Commander", a great hero, leader and public personality in Tyria, recognized for being incredible strong yet always "altruistic" combatant. For a game like this, IMO, it is exceptionally hard to allow such game-changing choices as allying with the antagonistic forces.

[Elva.6372]

> @"Ardid.7203" said:

> Fable, Infamous, Mass Effect. Jedi Knight and other similar games are single player stories, where focusing in personal god/bad choices is more important and plausible to do than in a game with many, many players, as an MMO. GW2 case is even harder in this respect, because the player character is not "just another guy" in the fight. The player character is "The Commander", a great hero, leader and public personality in Tyria, recognized for being incredible strong yet always "altruistic" combatant. For a game like this, IMO, it is exceptionally hard to allow such game-changing choices as allying with the antagonistic forces.

 

Absolutely, I agree -it's unfortunate that's how they decided to do it though because it completely locked out any real sense or role playing -the trade off for a story line that loses it's luster fairly quickly after a few playthroughs, mainly because it lacks any real depth and has a very narrow range of outcomes.

 

But completely understandable chains bind the game to this track, just too bad they chose that method of player direction.

 

IMO, SWTOR (before they ruined the story) did a better job with giving the player a feeling they were acting in character.. Ultimately, it's not a good idea for MMO's because it requires good writing and funding for voice acting and can get real dicey keeping all the dialog trees in line.

 

The choice to make the player character the "Saviour of the Universe" and central to the plot has many downsides, as SWTOR illustrates most plainly.

 

And thus, basic role playing goes out the window, because your game is on rails without even a decent illusion to hide the fact from your eyes.

[EpicName.4523]

If you play every branch of the personal story, you will soon realize that no matter what you choose you will always be right, even if it doesn't make sense. The game will always justify your actions. Therefore, you don't have a choice, only the illusion of choice.

 

This is an MMO, it is not supposed to have a great story despite the fact that some other MMOs that begin with W and end with W had that in the distant past. Don't pay too much attention to the story and it will be fine. My only problem is that in living seasons you are forced to endure it.

[Danikat.8537]

People have made similar suggestions before, most common one that I've seen is we should be able to join the enemy faction in the story - the Inquest, Nightmare Court, Bandits, Sons of Svanir and Flame Legion. The problem is that would change the whole of your story from that point on. They'd have to write an entirely different storyline where you were helping the enemy and never tried to destroy Zhaitan, never joined an Order or the Pact...basically it would be two different parallel games, meaning twice as much work for Anet.

 

And apparently in games which do offer you a choice the 'evil' one is always the most rarely played. There's some really interesting (if you're me) articles that go into detail on this, but in general something like 60-80% of the time people pick good choices, and evil choices are mostly made in a second play-through where the player is deliberately trying out the options they didn't pick the first time.

 

If the developers are making a story-focused game where meaningful choices and long interconnected storylines are a major selling point that can be well worth doing, but it tends to mean other areas of the game are simpler to accommodate that. Or if they're making a game with lots of short stand-alone stories where you choice doesn't affect future stories so the work to include those choices is minimal. But in a lot of cases what they end up doing is giving players the illusion of choice - you get to pick between two options and it's written in a way that makes it seem meaningful, but if you play it again and make different choices you end up at the same end-point. GW2 does a mix of those two, which unfortunately makes it impossible to do major choices like joining an enemy faction, at least for longer than one story arc.

 

I'm still hoping people will find ways to make including meaningful choices less labour intensive (and I know there are people working on it) and eventually it will be possible to have that kind of story telling in a game that also includes huge open-world maps to explore and all the other things I like. But apparently we're not quite there yet.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

I think it's not possible to achieve in an mmo. Such options are reserved for single player rpg that are actually focused on story and character development.

 

However, it is pretty lame we can't be inquest, nightmare courtiers, bandits, low tier sons of svanir or flame legion.

[Elva.6372]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> I think it's not possible to achieve in an mmo. Such options are reserved for single player rpg that are actually focused on story and character development.

>

> However, it is pretty lame we can't be inquest, nightmare courtiers, bandits, low tier sons of svanir or flame legion.

 

I think you are right until such time as we have true AI and synthetic voice on the fly, etc.

 

But currently, less would have been more -at least for me, I'd prefer to have a more open world story versus having the constraints of these canned ones. Too many limitations at the cost of re-playability enjoyment.

[Samnang.1879]

suggested this 3 years ago... don't know where the thread is, anet hijacked the old forum and deleted all the evidence.

 

like i wrote i wanted to be part of the white mantle... and as usual, the people on the forum are always against ur suggestion... this is what some of them said, "Go buy white mantle outfit off gemstore and RP in wvw"...

 

it's like no suggestions are ever good enough for these ppl... like when ppl suggested mounts 99% of ppl here were against it, now that anets released it... they're all like, "omg i love mounts, i was never against it".

[Elva.6372]

The issue is that it is not that ANet needs to write the story lines to incorporate every possible player choice -but that they should not (too late now for this game and impossible) have locked the player into the world story in such a limited and ultimately disappointing way.

 

Inclusive versus exclusive world...somewhat ironic, considering...

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Kheldorn.5123" said:

> I think it's not possible to achieve in an mmo. Such options are reserved for single player rpg that are actually focused on story and character development.

>

> However, it is pretty lame we can't be inquest, nightmare courtiers, bandits, low tier sons of svanir or flame legion.

 

It can be done in an MMO. Plenty of games have had enemy factions which players could join, but in most cases I know of that was _the_ choice the rest of the game was built around. In at least two (World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online) it's actually something you decide during character creation and tied to your race. Others have made it a choice you make during the game, but again it's a one-off major decision for your character and affects everything from then on so the developers, and players, have to be committed to it and prepared to accept the consequences - like never being able to play with someone who made a different choice.

 

The other way to do it in an MMO is to make the whole game more of a 'sandbox' style environment where the focus is on player created and driven storylines. So you have lots of different groups players can join but it's up to them to role-play the consequences of that. Which can be the most enjoyable way to do it, but those kind of games are a big time commitment and often difficult for new players to get into.

[Elva.6372]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

 

> It can be done in an MMO. Plenty of games have had enemy factions which players could join, but in most cases I know of that was _the_ choice the rest of the game was built around. In at least two (World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online) it's actually something you decide during character creation and tied to your race. Others have made it a choice you make during the game, but again it's a one-off major decision for your character and affects everything from then on so the developers, and players, have to be committed to it and prepared to accept the consequences - like never being able to play with someone who made a different choice.

>

> The other way to do it in an MMO is to make the whole game more of a 'sandbox' style environment where the focus is on player created and driven storylines. So you have lots of different groups players can join but it's up to them to role-play the consequences of that. Which can be the most enjoyable way to do it, but those kind of games are a big time commitment and often difficult for new players to get into.

 

But that's more about playable "factions" and yes that would have been really cool I think for GW2. But the decision was made to not have the "player races" be at odds with one another and we got this weird Mist War thing for PvP WvW.

 

As a former Dark Ages of Camelot player in days of yore and later Warhammer Online ( :( ) I absolutely love this type of setup if done right. DaoC was done right, Warhammer, sadly was not...you want more than just 2 player factions.

 

[hugo.4705]

I can give a simple solution: Like in Bitterfrost Frontier, let's have the possibility to drop the corresponding "disguise" on enemies: Awesome mechanic, you can turn into the enemy, all same enemies of the map are shown as allies and wil not attack you whereas pact would became enemy or stay allies because they know you are under disguise. ^^ This mechanic is already implanted in-game, travel to bitterfrost- western svanir camp. You can actually drop 3 pieces "Helmet/Chest/Leggings" and then click and hop you are a son of Svanir! Instead of modulate the story, let players be what they want to be with this mechanic! It would be very helpful for RPers by the way.......---You can have the look of an Inquest agent with your armor, but they will still consider you as an enemy.

I have suggested disguises on the old forums, they are a good alternative...

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

I think, unless Anet wants to make a second parallel set of storylines for the entire game, it's probably going to have to wait for Guild Wars 3. That being said, I have sometimes wondered what a plotline would be like where you had joined the Inquest or the Nightmare Court.

 

I recall LucasArts saying at one point that the problem with having a character from the Empire is that their most interesting storyline was for the character to reject the totalitarianism and defect. That was said long after they made TIE Fighter, though, which was hugely fun and popular, but after which they said they would never do a game from the villain's side again. (Not sure why, if they took some flack for it or whatever.)

 

> @"EpicName.4523" said:

> If you play every branch of the personal story, you will soon realize that no matter what you choose you will always be right, even if it doesn't make sense. The game will always justify your actions. Therefore, you don't have a choice, only the illusion of choice.

 

Heh, that's one reason I play my key-farmers to level 40, to try out all the lousy decisions my 'real' characters would never make and see how it all turns out anyway.

 

[Ayrilana.1396]

The structure that Anet uses to do their episodes/stories probably makes it difficult (or resource intensive) to have multiple versions of a storyline for each possible choice.

[Sancre.2317]

The most probable way for this to not be a possibility would be mostly because Anet would have to create new species, traits, skills and so for corrupted players, not counting with the different stories as many have said, but is it not because there isn't any possible story, as there are many posibilities:

 

_-As a corrupted, you try to undermine the pact in many ways._

_-you forgot who you are, but there has to be some way to recall your old life_

_-Your master has died, but now you must find a way to bring it back/claim its power for yourself (only for risen/modrem)_

 

And, this one going out of the "dark side", so your character can rejoin the oficial storyline that Anet is making

 

_-Your character manages to break free and becomes a new kind of corrupted still sentient, you rejoin the pact after many problems and finally manage to get their trust, so you start working along them in order to be able to turn back to your original form (hopefully with a new corrupted like-job/Racial traits), still there is a long journey ahead while that happens, and there is still some alure from the darkness that tries to push you back to submission_

 

These are just some of the examples I got in less than 5 minutes, so Anet should be able to get many more, and even join a corrupted player to their story somewhere.

 

If things come to that, it could be made a new pvp mode where each player joins a corrupted faction and must destroy the other ones playing as/against other corrupted players

 

**I do repeat though, this isn't a suggestion, as I know that Anet won't do that because of the many good reasons fellow players gave, but its because they don't want to, not because its impossible in any way**

 

About the branched story, it would be great, and not really that demanding if you keep it to a not so determining differences, or overtime it would amount to too many differences for the same story among players, but yeah, that is such a fine balance that would probably end up backfiring in some way

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Pifil.5193" said:

> Well, it'd be odd to allow the player to choose the losing side. If you chose Zhaitan, you'd have effectively lost at launch. If you chose Mordremoth you'd have lost when HoT launched. The pact wins. Your side loses.

>

> Choosing to be on the "bad guy" side is really only possible in single player games and even then your "bad guy" character usually follows the same basic path as the "good guy."

 

Heh ... so the same illusion of choice.

 

Until technology becomes much better choice in a game will remain an illusion.

 

They other problem with "the other side" is that so far all the minions are under absolute control by their respective masters. The only possible partial exception is probably only kept around for his creator's amusement.

[Ardid.7203]

> @"Samnang.1879" said:

> suggested this 3 years ago... don't know where the thread is, anet hijacked the old forum and deleted all the evidence.

>

> like i wrote i wanted to be part of the white mantle... and as usual, the people on the forum are always against ur suggestion... this is what some of them said, "Go buy white mantle outfit off gemstore and RP in wvw"...

>

> it's like no suggestions are ever good enough for these ppl... like when ppl suggested mounts 99% of ppl here were against it, now that anets released it... they're all like, "omg i love mounts, i was never against it".

 

I think Anet did a magnificent job with their mounts. However, I always considered their addition a mistake, and always will.

[Lazeris.1725]

World of Warcraft had a sub-plot in the last expansion involving one of their classes the Death Knight ( a bad guy themed class). Without belaboring the point the DK got to do several VERY clearly objectively evil things, including: Raising long and recently dead heroes from the story to serve as powerful undead knights, Attacking the main good guy church looking for more bodies to raise, Killing off a bunch of good aligned dragons (red dragonflight) looking for information related to a mount the DK was told to acquire.

 

Now I bring this up because the entire time the character is told how evil they are being, but that the ends will ultimately justify the means - This does not sit well with most or all relevant characters in the story and again you character gets called out on their nefarious methods frequently. However it doesn't change the overall plot of the story......your methods while questionable do ultimately help resolve the plot for the forces of order.

 

I think that is a good distinction to make and would be nice to see from gw2 - that while we can all work towards order rather than chaos - order isn't necessarily nice (for example Joko). It would be really cool to see if A-net could work that sort of choice into a story - while it doesn't change the end result of the story ultimately - it does add a new layer of customization....if only slightly (Really you'd just be getting a few lines of different dialogue, I don't expect "branching" story paths or anything....just a few quips from the party about how mean or evil you are)

[Pifil.5193]

> @"Khisanth.2948" said:

> > @"Pifil.5193" said:

> > Well, it'd be odd to allow the player to choose the losing side. If you chose Zhaitan, you'd have effectively lost at launch. If you chose Mordremoth you'd have lost when HoT launched. The pact wins. Your side loses.

> >

> > Choosing to be on the "bad guy" side is really only possible in single player games and even then your "bad guy" character usually follows the same basic path as the "good guy."

>

> Heh ... so the same illusion of choice.

>

> Until technology becomes much better choice in a game will remain an illusion.

>

> They other problem with "the other side" is that so far all the minions are under absolute control by their respective masters. The only possible partial exception is probably only kept around for his creator's amusement.

 

Exactly! Another problem would be the restriction of movement and play you'd experience: how welcome does anyone think a risen minion would be in Divinity's Reach or the Black Citadel? If you want a realistic "bad guy" experience your character would be attacked by just about every single NPC in the game.

 

It's not like your risen minion would be welcome amongst the Svanir or the minions of Mordremoth either, so I hope you enjoy Orr.

 

Oh and good luck getting your stuff from the TP or bank. :)