I feel like GW2 attempts to cater to everyone, and comes very close to succeeding. But the area where it just doesn’t deliver is story, in the sense of traditional RPG-style progression and narrative. It’s great for exploring, and there’s lots of little event chains that are fun to participate in; crafting’s pretty robust; supposedly the dungeons (which I have yet to reach the necessary levels to participate in) are really well done; there’s multiple strong approaches to PvP…but the part that’s supposed to deliver, storywise, is the personal story. And not only is it badly written, voice acted, and paced (all in my experience, of course - I guess it’s conceivable that it’s better later or for other races, but I’ve seen Sylvari called out as an example of the best writing, so, I kinda doubt it.), but it’s sparse (seems like there’s a personal story step maybe every two levels or so), not at all viable as a primary levelling method, and completely solo from start to finish.
And unfortunately, that’s exactly the area where I need it to be strongest. I can certainly eke some occasional amusement out of dipping into it for a few hearts and event chains, but it just doesn’t hook me. (Pretty clearly, since it’s been out how long now and I’m still under level 30 on my single character…) I’m also kinda frustrated by how squishy I am. I guess I’m meant to be dodging or something but unlike The Secret World (where the combat is also pretty active), I’m not seeing any obvious cues of -when- to do it.
To be honest, I wish GW2 didn’t have Personal Story at all. Different people come to it with all kinds of different expectations (primary leveling method, really? :)) and it just doesn’t deliver for most people. Singleplayer RPGs and MMOs are very different beasts and I don’t think it’s even possible to successfully amalgamate them together in one game and on one engine (and no, I don’t think SWTOR did it successfully) and if one of these parts is going to be clearly inferior, why even bother wasting resources on it?
I never finished Personal Story on any of my lvl 80 characters. Although I quite enjoyed the first maybe 20 levels of it on most of my characters.
Sigh, I wish I didn’t play this game to death over the last 4-5 months. I really enjoyed the journey, too bad everything has to come to its end. Hopefully they will release tons of content over the next few months and give me the reason to come back.
And I will definitely be there for an expansion!
I can’t wait for the next patch that will supposedly allow you to choose 4 of the 6 Daily activities you want to do. While I like the variety in the rotating set of activities, crap like “get 15 combo attacks” can DIAF.
You can level via world exploration, crafting, WvW, probably dungeons once you get access. If the story is supposed to be a viable way to play the game, it should be possible to level through just doing that. It isn’t.
I think we’re all probably going to drift in and out of GW2 over the coming years; I mean, that’s probably part of the plan, in a way.
Maybe, in the broader picture, they’re thinking that the price of having a small set of players heavily addicted, and a larger set of churning players (i.e. grind-oriented gameplay) wasn’t worth paying, when you can just have the whole playerbase addicted in short bursts and more or less guaranteed to pay for expansions.
I’m thinking of my own experience of course: I’ve stopped playing several times, but really enjoyed it for a while whenever I’ve come back. I have a strong affection for the game, and wouldn’t dream of missing out on expansions. But I bet most GW2 players are having a similar relationship with the game.
Anet’s emphasis on developing the world story through mini expansions would tend to support this: they want the game world to be a bit fresh for you every time you get re-addicted for a while, so your departing memory will be fond and you’ll look forward to the next mini expansion and the next expansions proper.
tryte
5267
Yes! There’s usually a small handful of very knowledgeable regulars around, and with the Living Story content encouraging low-level zone participation it shouldn’t be too tough to find someone to duo with.
Great, now I have to level up my ranger. There is no way I can live without shooting unicorns at stuff.
This will not stand!
Wolff
5269
Yeah man why can’t I level by dancing, playing the AH, or by partaking in the erotic RP.
It was never stated or promised you could level by only doing story.
fdsaion
5270
Prepare for 500 hours of grinding to afford that =p
Do you want to have an honest, adult conversation about this? Or is your only interest in spouting dismissive reductionist bullshit?
Derbain
5272
I just wanted to add my agreement to this one. Ugh, I gave up trying that one. It’s not even 15 combo attacks, it’s 15 kills. That means the creature actually has to die from the combo attack, which can be tricky to time.
Wolff
5273
Happy to have an honest adult conversation…but c’mon. My reductionist shit is to put in perspective the suggestion you made. The game is an mmo with story beats to tie you into the lore if you care. There are plenty of stories in each zone that if you pay attention to the voice chat of the npcs do a lot to make it more than this is the hilly green zone and this one is the yellow zone with a big lake.
For example the char starting zone has lots of undead humans in it. The char are actively tying to cleanse them to reclaim their homeland. The zone is dominated by a huge wall which has lore significance as well. Pretty much every zone has some character if you take the time to investigate. I rarely do but when I make the effort I am always pleasantly surprised.
Contrai
5274
They removed the combo one out of the daily achievement rotation in a patch. I never even got to try it out, but from hearing how annoying it was to get, I’m glad I didn’t have to.
Your reductionist shit is insulting, dismissive, and pretty obviously unfair. It’s also not responsive to what I was actually saying, in that a) I never claimed that they stated or promised that you could level by the story alone, and b) that comment was expanding on a particular facet of my overall thesis, and thus taken out of context.
Here is what I am actually saying:
The sort of linear narrative questing represented in Guild Wars 2 by the personal story questline is a different style of gameplay that caters to different player needs than the world exploration and event chains. It’s certainly perfectly fair for the folks at ArenaNet to be uninterested in catering to that particular demographic. It’s also possible that they consider it just another (possibly secondary) facet of the gameplay they’re providing with the world zones themselves (as you apparently do), in which case I would respectfully disagree but, y’know, whatever. It’s their game.
However, -if- they recognize the distinction and do want to cater to that playstyle, it’s been their professed intent to make all the supported playstyles equally viable. And it is my contention that the personal story in its current form really is not up to the standards of the rest of the game in either the quality of the content or its overall viability as a distinct playstyle (one component of which would be being able to level 1-80 just by working on the main story or quest content of that type). Which is a pity because although I moderately enjoy just poking around the world doing events and hearts and vistas and skill challenges, the personal story stuff is the type of gameplay that is most compelling to me. Just, y’know, not in the form that exists in Guild Wars 2 at present.
Edit: And I absolutely recognize the sort of ambient storytelling being done in GW2 and I think they’re doing some cool stuff with that. It just doesn’t replace the sort of storytelling the personal story does.
I agree with you, the storylines are relatively the weakest part of the game.
In mitigation I’d say that at times they are pretty good (the Sylvarii storyline I’m running through just now is much more engaging than the Human storyline on my alt), and they show a glimpse of how good the storylines could have been. It’s more that the quality is patchy than that they are all shit.
I guess they just had to make tough decisions on resource allocation, and the storyline development was considered the least important of a bunch of things that are all important. Or perhaps their rationale was to concentrate on the things in which they were innovating most.
If that’s the case, I’m happy that they spent resources on making the gameplay smooth, the build system varied and balanced, polishing the world and DE experience, etc. But I am wistful that the storylines are weak. It would have been some perfect icing on an excellent cake if they had all been strong.
Maybe they will develop personal storylines better in an expansion. Here’s hoping.
Which simply means that they do not view personal story as a separate and self-sufficient playstyle. It is an MMO and as such it has slightly different design goals from a singleplayer game. They’ve added a completely optional and relatively short personal story to, maybe, help with immersion and provide some background to their world but they never intended (and understandably so) to develop a compelling parallel single player RPG with multiple story lines for each race/profession/background and gazillion branches.
Which is a pity because although I moderately enjoy just poking around the world doing events and hearts and vistas and skill challenges, the personal story stuff is the type of gameplay that is most compelling to me. Just, y’know, not in the form that exists in Guild Wars 2 at present.
I hope you realize that it is a bit unreasonable to ask for an awesome yet completely separate singleplayer RPG to be incapsulated inside an MMO. It wouldn’t work on so many levels and would be completely opposite to what the game’s main audience is expecting out of an MMO game. With all the moaning how WvW needs to be improved and dungeons and what not, who would have resources to do all that plus a singleplayer game?
Maybe you should look into, you know, some singleplayer games. :)
I created a Charr Engineer this morning (I have to say, he’s way cooler looking than my Norn Guardian) and am looking forward to playing him some this weekend. Already the intro bits for the Charr storyline were more interesting than those for the Norn, so I’m cautiously optimistic at this point.
On the subject of story in GW2. Since I sort of started that arguement with my complaints, I wanted to clarify my position. I don’t expect that the personal storyline should be the only or even the main source of leveling content. I really like the event system in GW2 and there are zones in which it ties in really nicely with a story. The Norn area from 15-25ish is one, where you’re helping clear the road and rescue travellers, and eventually meet the bear race and the underwater race. That was a well threaded story with interesting events, even if the enemies were somewhat lacking in creativity (oh noes, giant ice whack-a-whirl thingies!).
My complaint was coming from the perspective of someone who played through all the content in the original Guild Wars and loved it. In the original game, the storyline took you from public area to public area by way of instances, and those instances were self-contained little “chapters” in the overall story the game was telling. As you finish each one there was a sense of accomplishment, of forward movement. The story was epic, and it featured you and your friends as the heroes. With Guild Wars 2, the design is different. It’s not bad, in fact it’s really an amazing paradigm shift in MMOs, much the same way the format of GW1 was originally. It’s just that with GW2 I don’t feel that same sense of progression, of being a part of a story starring me and my friends. Instead I feel like a part of a story where me and 10,000 other people all play bit parts and spend as much time looking around the map for the narrative as we do moving it forward. It’s totally a “me” thing, just my personal perspective while playing I guess. Maybe I’m just old and too used to having my hand held by my MMOs. ;-)
It’s entirely possible that the developers think that way, yes. I did mention that possibility in the post you’re quoting. That doesn’t mean I need to agree with them. The rest of your post appears to be based on either a misunderstanding of what I am looking for or a belief that it is not possible to deliver narrative storytelling (as opposed to the ambient storytelling that characterizes the rest of GW2’s PvE game) in the context of an MMO, much less that it’s possible to do so as an integrated and holistic part of the game, a proposition with which I wholeheartedly disagree.
I mean, hell, the fact that the personal story -exists- is evidence that that assertion is wrong. It’s not compelling narrative because it’s badly written and paced, and it’s not very well integrated into the rest of the game because it’s strictly solo and has little connection with the things going on in the zones it purportedly takes place in (at least so far as I’ve played). But it exists. And it’s possible to do it well, too - WoW, The Secret World, LOTRO all do, and other MMOs have gotten it right at least some of the time.
I am not asking MMOs to be singleplayer games. I wish a lot more people would take a crack at singleplayer RPGs instead of throwing another MMO straight down the drain, but there are clearly things that singleplayer games can do that MMOs can’t and vice versa. That doesn’t mean that MMOs can’t tell a story and engage players like me who thrive on that sort of thing. I wouldn’t blame ArenaNet if that’s not somewhere they wanted to go with this particular game (certainly there’s no need for Guild Wars 2 or any other MMO to be all things to all people, something which I wish more of them would figure out), but it seems like they do want to go there. They just fucked it up.
It never bothered me that I couldn’t level from the story quests alone. It bothered me that the story quests were limited and therefore, in effect, rarefied, which implies they should be one of the better parts of the game but are actually the worst part of the game.
