I really enjoyed the storylines. However what I don't like is how choppy they were and how some aspects came to abrupt endings. For instance...
*Minor Spoilers with the Charr Storyline*
The Warband you built and pick characters just go *poof*, I developed some connection with my lil wise crack engineer vixen and was really sad that had to ditch her for the Vigil. The choice of killing your father seemed to have no lasting impact when I had expected a much higher impact on the character, Rytlock played a minor role which I expect a much bigger role in my characters personal story (sseems like their story is more dungeon based but still that few and far in betweeen).
Granted there is a lot of open doors that ANet can tackle on with personal stories dealing with races in future content but seems like we just got an appetizer for our racial culture personal story and then our meal was cancled and had to go to a different cuisine. Just felt that my personal story dealing with my race just ended too abruptly and had to run off for the Vigil.
I personally don't like it. I dumped mine at level 63, but I guess I'll have to continue it if I want to get 100% map completion on Straits of Devastation, since one of the PoI can only be accessed through the personal story missions. -_-
My problem isn't the story itself or the voice acting or the cutscenes, but the way the story is delivered. Different arcs feel disconnected when it comes to story. They also make you go back and forth between different zones which at higher levels feels like a bother to me (had to run through 2 zones I had never been in and after fighting undead for 15 minutes it told me to go back to LA, not to mention that teleporting costs ~ 2.50 silver and I'm kind of poor since I spend all my gold on blueprints/upgrades for WvW).
Also the general gameplay in the personal story is kind of boring. Go somewhere and fight undead, undead and some more undead. I was seriously getting bored of fighting them even before I reached Orr, because of the personal story. I just wish there were different objectives and stuff. I guess I'm comparing the personal story in GW2 to the missions in GW1. Of course missions in GW1 were balanced for teams of 4-8 people, which allowed for more complex gameplay mechanics. But there you had missions where you had to outrun huge armies, carry crystals around, defeat your doppleganger, solve riddles, defend forts, take part in the party of nobles, complete objectives within a time limit etc.
Also the chance of failing and having to start from the beginning made them feel much more challenging. In GW2 if I die - no big deal. I'll just restart from a checkpoint and keep beating my head against a wall until I eventually succeed. Whereas in GW1, if something didn't work I'd have to restart the mission and reconsider my build/tactis and where I went wrong.
Some personal stories are absolutely phenomenal, others kind of dragged. A few started to pick up about halfway through (my Norn) but prior to that I wasn't interested enough to pay much attention. I ended up hitting the skip button a few times. Then things got dramatic and I was interested again.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I finished it a couple days ago with the last part,Arah instance. To be honest i skipped every thing in it excpet maybe for the first 7 levels or so. I kinda knew what was going on,but didnt care at all and was totally uninterested.
I waited to finish until they fixed the rewards for the last part and was still disappointed. If it wasnt for the exp i gained along the way it was mostly a giant waste of time and money (porting around).
SPOILER ALERT---------------------------------------To be honest Zhaitan,the part i was looking forward to, was a complete let down,was looking forward to a big battle not some pew pew from a airship, was lame.
Since the personal story has many different segments, and my enjoument has varied on them, I'll go from section to section.
Level 1-10 Human Noble: I really enjoyed this part of the story. I thought Faren was a great character and everything was voiced well.
Level 11-20 Unknown Parents: Liked this part a lot as well. I thought it tied in to the first part nicely and it was fun.
Levels 21-303 Orders: This section wasn't bad, there were some good variations in the scenarios you could play. Not as fun as the first two parts, but good.
Levels 31-40Vigil: This part was okay. Run to a place, kill a bunch of things. Forgal Kernsson is enjoyable.
Levels 41-47 Quaggan: I like the quaggan, so this was ok.
That's as far as I've gotten so far. My favorite segment was the nobility, I wish that there was more of that. Or more with Faren. We'll see how the rest goes.
GW2 personal story is the worst I've seen in any MMO (playing only Western ones though). Dialogue is even worse. Story and dialogue put together is 1 out of 10 for me. Started to skip it very fast because it was just so bad.
Originally posted by Xzen I thought it was ok and kind of typical. I voted "Let me see the results".
Same here. The poll kind of lacked a middle of the road choice. Some stories have been better than others. I haven't been blown away by any of them, but they are fun and enjoyable.
My Norn had fun piecing together his "forgotten drunken night" and I laughed a few times. The gripping losses never really got to me. I never really made any connections with the other NPCs in the story.
A couple of times, the voice file did not kick in and I pretended I was suddenly telepathic
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
The personal storyline is ok, but nothing special. The human storyline is not awful, but not terribly innovative or creative. The immersion is lacking though to be sure. The cutscenes themselves are fairly immersion ruining; the characters just standing there shrugging their shoulders and miming to the voice acting and fading out to be replaced by another character...sorry just doesn't really do it for me. I would have rather had cutscenes play out in the gameworld with maybe some camera angle changes or something like that much like the vista cutscenes.
On a side note, big armored warrior npc's with fierce, manly voices are impossible to take seriously when they have pink eyes. If you played the human story line up to the 30's you know who I'm talking about. Ole Pink Eyes left me somewhere between grimacing and giggling whenever he showed up in a cutscene. It just looked unintentionally silly.
Also, anytime an Asura npc shows up I have to roll my eyes :P
The first time could be better, the second time makes me cringe. Its got good moments, but it just slaps you in the face to much with a lot of the bad parts to even care about what is good. Its extremely predictable after the first time through and 'changing it up' often times gets you mixed up with doing a very horrible alternate quest (I nearly cried switching it up near the end (no matter the side you pick the stories merge at the end towards Orr) involving underwater combat *cringe*. It gives good experience and items and its a break at least from the more tedious leveling, but its more for the mission then the story. Just sucks when it decides to bug out on that end.
I just finished one of the larger battles in the game and I have to say I am disappointed. Overall I feel like ANet didn't learn anything from GW1 in terms of storytelling. the characters are uninteresting, have nothing worthwile to say and most of the time quite bad voice acting. Just now I heard npc talking how he lost all his friends to the undead just 5 min earlier. no emotion, nothing.
the structure of the mission was lacking too. I felt like a delivery boy running from1 npc to another in the middle of an assault. Sometimes the objectives weren;t very clear. go to the center of the plaza, said green text. When I got there.. nothing I started killing random things and after 5 min something triggered a cutscene.
there were a few ok characters, but before they got really interesting they were usually gone and replaced by someone else.
This whole destiny's edge story is boring and badly executed. the quarells of those 5 characters feel like watching 10 year old kids at elementary school.
I feel like ANet should simply admit that they suck at creating storylines and don't waste resources ever again on creating things like this. It simply is not working considering almost evry review said that personal storyline is the worst part of the game. It seems like it is ok that they added it but imo they simply wasted resources. they could have created like twice as many dynamic events intead.
Comments
I really enjoyed the storylines. However what I don't like is how choppy they were and how some aspects came to abrupt endings. For instance...
*Minor Spoilers with the Charr Storyline*
The Warband you built and pick characters just go *poof*, I developed some connection with my lil wise crack engineer vixen and was really sad that had to ditch her for the Vigil. The choice of killing your father seemed to have no lasting impact when I had expected a much higher impact on the character, Rytlock played a minor role which I expect a much bigger role in my characters personal story (sseems like their story is more dungeon based but still that few and far in betweeen).
Granted there is a lot of open doors that ANet can tackle on with personal stories dealing with races in future content but seems like we just got an appetizer for our racial culture personal story and then our meal was cancled and had to go to a different cuisine. Just felt that my personal story dealing with my race just ended too abruptly and had to run off for the Vigil.
I personally don't like it. I dumped mine at level 63, but I guess I'll have to continue it if I want to get 100% map completion on Straits of Devastation, since one of the PoI can only be accessed through the personal story missions. -_-
My problem isn't the story itself or the voice acting or the cutscenes, but the way the story is delivered. Different arcs feel disconnected when it comes to story. They also make you go back and forth between different zones which at higher levels feels like a bother to me (had to run through 2 zones I had never been in and after fighting undead for 15 minutes it told me to go back to LA, not to mention that teleporting costs ~ 2.50 silver and I'm kind of poor since I spend all my gold on blueprints/upgrades for WvW).
Also the general gameplay in the personal story is kind of boring. Go somewhere and fight undead, undead and some more undead. I was seriously getting bored of fighting them even before I reached Orr, because of the personal story. I just wish there were different objectives and stuff. I guess I'm comparing the personal story in GW2 to the missions in GW1. Of course missions in GW1 were balanced for teams of 4-8 people, which allowed for more complex gameplay mechanics. But there you had missions where you had to outrun huge armies, carry crystals around, defeat your doppleganger, solve riddles, defend forts, take part in the party of nobles, complete objectives within a time limit etc.
Also the chance of failing and having to start from the beginning made them feel much more challenging. In GW2 if I die - no big deal. I'll just restart from a checkpoint and keep beating my head against a wall until I eventually succeed. Whereas in GW1, if something didn't work I'd have to restart the mission and reconsider my build/tactis and where I went wrong.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
The "show me the results" option
Voted "It could have been better".
Some personal stories are absolutely phenomenal, others kind of dragged. A few started to pick up about halfway through (my Norn) but prior to that I wasn't interested enough to pay much attention. I ended up hitting the skip button a few times. Then things got dramatic and I was interested again.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I finished it a couple days ago with the last part,Arah instance. To be honest i skipped every thing in it excpet maybe for the first 7 levels or so. I kinda knew what was going on,but didnt care at all and was totally uninterested.
I waited to finish until they fixed the rewards for the last part and was still disappointed. If it wasnt for the exp i gained along the way it was mostly a giant waste of time and money (porting around).
SPOILER ALERT---------------------------------------To be honest Zhaitan,the part i was looking forward to, was a complete let down,was looking forward to a big battle not some pew pew from a airship, was lame.
Since the personal story has many different segments, and my enjoument has varied on them, I'll go from section to section.
Level 1-10 Human Noble: I really enjoyed this part of the story. I thought Faren was a great character and everything was voiced well.
Level 11-20 Unknown Parents: Liked this part a lot as well. I thought it tied in to the first part nicely and it was fun.
Levels 21-30 3 Orders: This section wasn't bad, there were some good variations in the scenarios you could play. Not as fun as the first two parts, but good.
Levels 31-40 Vigil: This part was okay. Run to a place, kill a bunch of things. Forgal Kernsson is enjoyable.
Levels 41-47 Quaggan: I like the quaggan, so this was ok.
That's as far as I've gotten so far. My favorite segment was the nobility, I wish that there was more of that. Or more with Faren. We'll see how the rest goes.
My Norn had fun piecing together his "forgotten drunken night" and I laughed a few times. The gripping losses never really got to me. I never really made any connections with the other NPCs in the story.
A couple of times, the voice file did not kick in and I pretended I was suddenly telepathic
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
"It could have been better"
I'm enjoying the story, but voice acting needs some more work. In my opinion personal story is weakest part of GW2, but still fun
The personal storyline is ok, but nothing special. The human storyline is not awful, but not terribly innovative or creative. The immersion is lacking though to be sure. The cutscenes themselves are fairly immersion ruining; the characters just standing there shrugging their shoulders and miming to the voice acting and fading out to be replaced by another character...sorry just doesn't really do it for me. I would have rather had cutscenes play out in the gameworld with maybe some camera angle changes or something like that much like the vista cutscenes.
On a side note, big armored warrior npc's with fierce, manly voices are impossible to take seriously when they have pink eyes. If you played the human story line up to the 30's you know who I'm talking about. Ole Pink Eyes left me somewhere between grimacing and giggling whenever he showed up in a cutscene. It just looked unintentionally silly.
Also, anytime an Asura npc shows up I have to roll my eyes :P
Btw, I voted for "It could have been beter"...
I just finished one of the larger battles in the game and I have to say I am disappointed. Overall I feel like ANet didn't learn anything from GW1 in terms of storytelling. the characters are uninteresting, have nothing worthwile to say and most of the time quite bad voice acting. Just now I heard npc talking how he lost all his friends to the undead just 5 min earlier. no emotion, nothing.
the structure of the mission was lacking too. I felt like a delivery boy running from1 npc to another in the middle of an assault. Sometimes the objectives weren;t very clear. go to the center of the plaza, said green text. When I got there.. nothing I started killing random things and after 5 min something triggered a cutscene.
there were a few ok characters, but before they got really interesting they were usually gone and replaced by someone else.
This whole destiny's edge story is boring and badly executed. the quarells of those 5 characters feel like watching 10 year old kids at elementary school.
I feel like ANet should simply admit that they suck at creating storylines and don't waste resources ever again on creating things like this. It simply is not working considering almost evry review said that personal storyline is the worst part of the game. It seems like it is ok that they added it but imo they simply wasted resources. they could have created like twice as many dynamic events intead.
As one feature of a very good MMO, I would say: It is great!
Could it have been better? Of course! The choices could be more forceful and even lead to moral dilemmas. The voice-overs are, hmmm, ok^^
But hey, they have a great ingame mechanism that opens up a lot of opportunities for future expansions!
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