How Similar are the Expansion Stories to the Personal Story?

[QUASAR.8935]

Hi, I'm a new player as of a few weeks ago. I really like sPvP and Fractals. I leveled to 80 in various zones and along the way I did the Personal Story (I'm up to the last few missions). I found the Personal Story to be the most dull and uninteresting part of the experience. I'm wondering if the "stories" featured in the Living World and expansions, like "1. Prologue: Rally to Maguuma" are similar to the format of the Personal Story. This is the format I'm talking about:

* Watch exactly two characters say lines at each other about some faction struggle trope

* Escort a group of uninteresting characters to a point

* Kill waves of monsters alongside said characters who can't die and are the strongest mortals in the world yet do almost 0 damage

* Run to the next point and kill waves of monsters that present no challenge

* Watch exactly two characters say lines at each other about a new plan they have

* Run to a point in the next zone and do this all again

 

I'm sorry if this sounds too negative but I find this really, really boring. I'm at the point where I'm being prompted to unlock Masteries and I'm wondering if the whole system is gated behind marching through these kinds of "stories." I do not care about Trahearne or Destiny's Edge. I care a little bit about the dragons but it's diminished because the "threats" they create in these stories feel so fake. I _want_ to be engaged in the game's lore but I'm finding it impossible with the way it is delivered. I hate the writing, I hate the cutscenes, and I hate the combat.

 

So does it end? Did they learn how to design story content at some point in development or is all of the newest stuff like this too? Is it necessary to do it to complete Masteries?

[infrequentia.3465]

the cutscenes like that are less. ls2 might still use but in hot its mostly open world talks

 

it will always be like the rest.

 

go to a point defend/attack it

escort a npc ( not always but it still happens)

kill waves of monsters

 

its story not open world its not supposed to be hard

masteries are gated behind story but only the first chapters those will unlock it

you would want to complete the story for HoT or PoF though because they give mastery points wich makes ''farming'' the others alot easier as you would need less and story is easy enough to do

[Erasculio.2914]

> @"QUASAR.8935" said:

> So does it end? Did they learn how to design story content at some point in development or is all of the newest stuff like this too? Is it necessary to do it to complete Masteries?

 

The bad news is that no, they didn't. In many ways, the story gets even worse after the core game because ArenaNet has stuck players with a bunch of annoying NPCs that effectively run the main storyline.

 

The good news is, don't look for story content in the solo missions, look at the dynamic events. In HoT, for example, the ''real'' story is told through the events happening in the maps. Most of those have great storylines, each with a beginning, a middle and an end.

 

 

[Brother.1504]

I played from beta to just before HoT launched. Took 2 years off and came back a few months after PoF launched. When I came back I wanted to play the story in order but was told to do the first mission in PoF for the mount then run HoT. With the mount I found the HoT narrative to be acceptable. Most of the time the story is a device to further our exploration of the maps for HoT and mounts for PoF. Gw2’s pve meta game is exploration and farming. Over all I would rate the story a 5-7 out of 10 with some totally disposable tropes mixed into a fun adventure and a few epic moments. But it’s an MMO we slay world threatening monsters then stand around making sure our boots match our shoulder clothing, don’t expect Shakespeare.

[Hesacon.8735]

HoT marks a turning point when things are less about filler (I recently replayed personal story, it's _mostly_ filler) and more about mechanics and interesting fights. Some of LW2 has it, like Glint's lair or the second shadow dragon fight, but it doesn't take the next step.

 

Starting in HoT you'll seldom use the same mechanics twice and there are a mix of achievements to earn doing things in certain ways (some will make you want to drink bleach, others are a nifty challenge). The PoF final boss makes a very satisfying fight.

 

The storytelling is a mixed bag. Most of the characters in LW2+ come from LW1, which is unplayable. You'd need one of the online recaps on the youtubes to really know who they are. Unlike personal story, they tend not to introduce a character you only meet once and immediately kill off with no story arc. Some personal story characters do randomly come back into play.

[Dreadshow.9320]

No cutscenes but you get to keep your helm.

[joneirikb.7506]

On the positive side you can mostly ignore story entirely in this game, usually all you need to do is the first step in a story to get to the relevant map, and can then ignore it. (Example Rally to maguuma to get to the HOT maps).

 

This is an MMO game, so really, don't expect that story will be its strong point. I can't stress this enough. Remember that the writers have to write all the story/dialogue in a way so that they don't add a personality to your character, since players can make their own characters (9classes, 5races, 2genders, any random personality the player imagines for the character), so if they project anything onto the character it will become wrong for many, so we're stuck with a "blank slate" character. And thus the "chatty npc's" have to take over all the characterization.

 

Old Phantasy Star Universe had just this problem, the main game story forced you into a set role (Ethan iirc) and thus built the story around that one character like a traditional single player game. While for the online part (MMO) you created your own character as usual, but couldn't play that character in the story (single player). Fans got annoyed by this and said they wanted to play single player with their character, so the devs did this for the expansion pack. Where you could play your own character, but the game basically offloaded 90% of story and talk to an NPC you did all story missions with. Fans didn't like that either, go figure.

 

---

 

If you enjoy other aspects of the game, focus on that. The story is optional.

 

From the sound of things you enjoy group content (PVP, Fractals), then you might like Dungeons (bit longer and easier than Fractals), Havoc squad in WvW (small group trying to organize and take objectives, and then get away with it when 20+ players chase you), HoT maps in general.

 

More curious about this line:

 

> and I hate the combat.

 

Specifically about the combat in the stories, or combat in general? Because it seems it seems strange you'd enjoy PVP if you hated the combat.

 

---

 

In general the main change from "Personal Story" to the later story (Living Season, Expansions) are that they gave up on trying to give us "choices" like they did in PS, and moved it all over to a single path (Railroad Track) with the later stories. This allowed them to focus it more, and generally raise the standard a bit on the one track they made. They also add a good it more new mechanics you have to learn/figure out, as well as raise the difficulty a bit.

 

If you want to, try it, if not, ignore it. You can play and enjoy this game without bothering with the story as long as you find other things you enjoy.

[AliamRationem.5172]

The personal storyline was a cool idea, but I agree it's pretty boring. I find I didn't like LS2 much either. The HoT storyline was a bit better, but I'm still not a big fan. Now, from LS3 onward I find that while the writing may not be great, it's more engaging than earlier stories and the combat is at least worthwhile so you don't snore your way through the entire thing. You also have all of these new maps where you switch between open world play and storyline episodes as you go, which I really enjoy.

[Grim West.3194]

Yeah, the personal stories from the base game are really boring. Endless talking cut scenes with no backgrounds and no action. So bad that I wouldn't do it on my alts and skipped all the other story content to come out for a long, long time.

 

But I shouldn't have. The stories get much, much better. Liked HoT and PoF but my favorite is Living World Season 3. Enjoyed them so much that I went back to finish Season 2 so that I could do the rest in order.

 

I think you will like the later stories.

 

 

[kharmin.7683]

> @"AliamRationem.5172" said:

> You also have all of these new maps where you switch between open world play and storyline episodes as you go, which I really enjoy.

I found this method doing the story to be enjoyable, too.

 

[starlinvf.1358]

I wanna throw my hat in and say that the whole thing is mixed bag overall, but a lot of those that harp on the characters do so for dumb reasons...... much of which stems from either the missing introduction in Season 1, or a sharp reaction to what they perceive to be "the problem with super hero movies". When these chapters were first introduced, there was a long periods of down time between them.... allowing a lot of time for information to sink in, and be reinforced through environmental story telling. Environments tend to be this game's biggest strength, so the method of writing the Story chapters takes a split approach. This was the entire premise of Heart of Thorns maps, where half the story is told via the Map metas.

 

Since most players are just barreling through it to get the story out of the way, much of that gets lost in their hyper focused effort to clear the expansion as quickly as possible. This is also where much of the perceived pacing problems from LS3 come from, as they're trying run 2 different story arcs concurrently.... the overarching story, and the current obstacle that justifies the map. For the most part, the LS stories follow a 3 act structure, but written as Epilogue followed by Prologue across the 6 episodes. The first 3 are to mop up loose ends from the previous campaign, with the latter 3 setting up the new antagonist. Because the story missions are so short, theres a lot of tonal shifts within each chapter that often get confused as "wholesale bad", as this is a similar problem with the trends in Super Hero movies. While this would break off into another discussion entirely, the Story and maps are not written in a format thats conductive to Binging.... but most people now have a habit of binging all their forms of entertainment. This causes the weakness of the episodic format they're using to stand out heavily, and weaker story chapters will often ignite the existing frustration people have with various parts of the game.

 

Its indisputable that the writing and execution quality varies heavily, and is an unfortunate side effect of Anet's production cycles and limited resources. When the story is good, its good. When it misses, it can be bad, or just "meh", but it gives people something to talk about.... and talk they shall. The characters also don't have enough time in stories to really flesh them out properly, and this furthers some of the disconnects people have with Brahm and Taimi. So most of the attachment and praise people have tend to be highlighed as single moments of pitch perfect acting or plot moment that added character depth.... because, frankly, theres limited opportunity for this every story chapter. The same can be said in the opposite direction, usually with "I hate how X did Y, it made no sense". Its already a given the quality levels are inconsistent, and some moments are upsetting....but nothing thats happened with any of the characters have "ruined them", given how most haven't been explored deeply enough to begin with.

 

Another issue I've been noticing is people taking huge issues with story tone, but only really describing it as deviating from some standard that never existed. This sounds broad and pretentious, but bear with me for a second. GW in general runs the gambit in tone.... everything from sprawling epic, to light hearted fun, to apprehension and melancholy. Theres a ton of stuff going on, and theres no single focal theme to it beyond "Heroes have to save the world again". But for some reason, I always see a small, but vocal percentage of people (both ingame and the forums) that think Guildwars is supposed to be a Dark, epic, serious, brooding universe, and equates any of the less serious elements to be criminally unjustified memes....... and I can't for the life of me figure out where this comes from. The only criticism on this subject that I can see having merit is in the GW1 campaigns being a lot more cohesive, where GW2 suffers from content releases being more Episodic.

 

 

 

Actually..... after further thought..... I think I might have a theory....... Guildwars 2 stories have a huge amount of Head Canon going on. That would explain a lot people's expectations being all over the place, and why theres always some kind of flare up when the story commits to something. I've been finding the arguments about Joko being a cartoon villain almost painful as a stupid idea being almost painful, as its not only well within his character (dating back to GW1), but his personality is modeled after comic book "characters" rather then an the typical "antagonistic force". I'd argue hes the best Villain in the entire franchise, as there are so many ways you can use him in conflicts both large and small, where he'd fit in perfectly. He's even able to run the full spectrum of threat level... and actually has over the course of the franchise.

 

 

 

Anyway. To skip back to the original post. The personal story suffers from what it was meant to be, but lacked the resources to make it happen. The intent was to have a very wide, branching story to highlight the personal nature of a hero's journey. However, this ran into problems with what the game had to do, and there wasn't enough time or resources to fully flesh out the personal story the way they wanted it to work. Acts 1 and 2 deal mostly with personal problems.... so the scenarios played out vary in style, and was meant to correlate with a player's personality type, but doesn't always pan out that way. Its an error that you'd find in the later Mass Effect games, where the character is a character, and not an Avatar. So when those 2 elements disagree on an action, people will get frustrated with it. Act 3 and Act 4 (the Orders and Pact arcs), that pretense of the character being blank slate has to be dropped, and are given certain personality traits by choice of action in order to keep the story moving along. For Living story seasons 1 and 2, you were not the center of the story, and mostly along for the ride.... some folks hated that lack of agency, while others liked a more cohesive story to follow. But with Heart of Thorns, they shifted gears again, and now the Commander is the center of much of the story. The personality type is assigned by the story, and the choices offered during missions are meant to shape the encounter, rather then shape the story. Again, this had a mixed response.

 

Design wise, LS2 introduces some new mechanics, but most of the level adhere to the usual wave spawn/escort deal. Though keep in mind, the engine was still an unwieldy mess in that era; so new mechanics were difficult to get working. Even up through Heart of Thorns, level mechanics tend to be kind of gimmicky, as they were relying on the Mastery abilities to carry the weight. For Living Story season 3, the use of mechanics in levels sees a huge improvement, and gets integrated into mechanical puzzles for the story missions. Some people complained about that.... and those people I will continue to mock. Execution is still hit and miss, but there has been steady improvement ever since.

 

Path of Fire is their winning story arc. Its well executed, well paced, mixes things up to stay fresh, and is of decent length. The biggest complaint I've seen about Path of Fire (if we're not counting ranting about achievements and one boss fight), is that people wish there was more of this good quality content. This is partly why people most people are upset with the execution of LS4, as Development quality is faltering again. The maps have a lot of stuff, and the story is fun, but PoF raised the bar for Anet; and now it feels like they're struggling to meet it again with this content block. The problem really is more about the maps having squandered potential, and many of the activities looking rushed for cut short. It doesn't flow the way PoF's main story did, and the long gaps between chapters isn't helping. I understand aspects and difficulties of development for these types of games, and I feel bad for the harsh pressure the Devs have to be under at this point.... but I'm worried we might be seeing the end of LS content blocks, and may or may not be replaced with something else. It could be a good thing or bad thing..... but its clear Anet can't keep this kind of cadence up with their staffing. And, unfortunately, Staffing is the one thing that isn't likely to see a big boost in the near future.

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

I've seen the entire gamut of opinions about whether there's been improvement in the story telling, in the tasks inside the story instances, in the immersion (or lack thereof), in the connection to the main character and/or NPCs, etc. Everyone has a favorite, everyone has a part that they find dull. I have yet to see a clear pattern. Some veterans are more impatient, some are more willing to cut ANet some slack.

 

So for someone like the OP, who cares mostly about progressing character abilities, I'd say: don't worry about the story at all. Whatever it is that you think ANet missed in the past, they haven't upended their thinking so much so that you'll think it's a whole new system, one that you like better.

 

Instead, do the minimum amount of story you need to to unlock the new map or new feature. **That** is absolutely worth whatever grind that story might be for you. In particular:

* The Griffon mount requires finishing PoF story once and it is so much fun I think it's totally worth the 3-10 hours of time invested in that.

* The Beetle Mount requires reaching Kourna in LS4.3 (so maybe 1/3 of the story). Also worth it.

* Also worth it: unlocking Bitterfrost (3.3), Bloodstone Fen (3.1), Draconis Mons (3.5), and Siren's Landing (3.6)... for the ascended trinkets and farms and because these maps are, at least for a short while, a lot of fun.

* Similarly, Istan (4.1) for its massive loot farm & some fun events, Sandswept (4.2) for a more casual experience, and Kourna (4.3) for the beetle.

* For HoT, you can do the metas without finishing. The only mastery I'd feel compelled to have is to max out gliding. The others are less important, especially with PoF mounts.

* I'd skip LS2 for as long as possible. It's IMO the most tedious story telling and all it unlocks are mastery points, which you can gain elsewhere.

 

Once you've gained access for once character...

* For LS3 and LS4 maps, buy an access scroll so your other characters can get there without the story.

* For PoF zones, you can start with the Windswept Haven GH or use a gizmo you get at the start of the Griffon acquisition process to take you to Vabbi. That unlocks the north-most waypoint in Vabbi, so warp there, cross into the next zone. That unlocks its north-most WP, and warp there and rinse|repeat. Only the last zone requires a short (mounted) ride to unlock. The whole thing takes 8 minutes your first time, closer to 3 after you get the hang of it.

[QUASAR.8935]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> More curious about this line:

>

> > and I hate the combat.

>

> Specifically about the combat in the stories, or combat in general? Because it seems it seems strange you'd enjoy PVP if you hated the combat.

 

Just the combat in story missions. sPvP is great, Fractals seem challenging and varied, and even in the open world I can pull as many things as I want or just run past them.

 

In story missions you are almost always forced to kill certain groups of enemies. But complex mechanics aren't involved and fights ares extremely easy because they're designed to be doable by everyone. What's worse is there's almost never just one fight. You have to do fight, after fight, after fight, all at a slow pace because enemies usually spawn in small waves.

 

I wish they would have just made the NPCs powerful. They certainly have the ability to code competent AI because the training NPCs in the Heart of the Mists are moderately deadly -- and they're scaled to have player stats. If it actually felt like you were fighting alongside some of the strongest heroes in the world it might make the story engaging. But no, it's just you, the "Commander" who does 98% of the work while the soulless characters bumble around. I think the NPCs should feel like they're players in a dungeon party. It's irrelevant if it makes the missions nearly AFK-able, because they're so easy anyway.

[QUASAR.8935]

Thank you all for the high-effort replies.

 

I like to play Dungeons & Dragons every so often so I think what I'm going to do is make the Guild Wars 2 story my new D&D. I'm just going to shelf it and return for pieces whenever I get the urge to role play. I think taking it slow will make it more enjoyable. It's good to hear that's an option, because after looking at the Mastery system I became worried that key game features were locked behind a lot of story missions.