I find it really funny that in a Guild Wars 2 thread the Personal Story is touted as this revolutionary and amazing thing that helps you connect to your character and the world around you and make all these choices and have an impact etc.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
I honestly believe the personal story will be the worst part of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn't mean I think the personal story will be bad, it's just that I believe the rest of the game is going to be that good!
To be honest i always liked the personal stories, more even now that they include full voice and cutscenes so... i really cant dislike it, maybe in a future when i get used to it i will remain neutral. Not for now at least.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
Actually there is no personal story in SWTOR unless you solo the whole game. If you are in a group your "personal" choice doesn't matter - the group decides the outcome of conversations.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
Actually there is no personal story in SWTOR unless you solo the whole game. If you are in a group your "personal" choice doesn't matter - the group decides the outcome of conversations.
So there is irony in your irony.
Irony of your irony is that the class quests in TOR are all personal story and the rest of the game isn't really instanced and the class quests you can invite other people into your story if you choose to.
Just like GW2 personal story.
The instances (dungeons) in TOR are exactly like the story mode dungeons in GW2 in that they are much, much easier and focus on telling the tale (and in TOR include the group conversation stuff).
At more "end game" GW2 has the exploration mode for the dungeons and TOR will have heroic mode that (they've only recently said this) will have LESS focus on story and more focus on game play, puzzle solving, combat etc.
Funny how similar many things are in these games when one takes the fanboi/hater shades off, yes?
Obviously a great many differences too, but that goes without saying.
I find it really funny that in a Guild Wars 2 thread the Personal Story is touted as this revolutionary and amazing thing that helps you connect to your character and the world around you and make all these choices and have an impact etc.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
I honestly believe the personal story will be the worst part of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn't mean I think the personal story will be bad, it's just that I believe the rest of the game is going to be that good!
I agree, I too appreciate the irony.
I think that most of the difference between GW2 and other MMOs, aside from the combat and class mechanics, is presentation and implementation. Don't get me wrong, those 2 things are more than enough to determine the difference between a complete failure and a smash hit, and I believe that they are some of the most undervalued parts of GW2 by most of the people on MMORPG.com.
Here is what I mean. Personal story is being presented as a way for your character to fit into the world, and for you to form an attachment to the character. That presentation lends itself EXTREMELY well to RPing, and I am looking forward to RPing for the first time in an online game, but how is the personal story uniquely implemented? here is a list:
character biography, which is something familiar to those who play certain single player RPG (the elder scrolls being one that I remember fondly, but that is implemented in a different way) You get to simultaineously design and get to know your character to an extent that doesn't really happen in other MMOs, which makes the immersion factor of the story much greater.
branching story. Its your story, you can be who you want to be given the circumstances and situations you experience. Since most MMOs don't really have the kind of personal story or storyline narrative that GW2 is going to have (SWTOR being the shining exception) it can be counted as a change, an innovation to the genre. Better yet, it is a logical progression from the way GW1's story narrative worked.
Story is NOT being required to play the game and progress through zones. the isn't really an innovation, but it does set it apart from how I believe SWTOR is going to work (I could be totally wrong here), where I think the success or failure of the personal story for SWTOR is going to make or break the games lifespan.
last, but not least, voiceover everywhere. It doesn't have to be perfect VO, and I am guess many people will like SWTOR's VO better than GW2 VO, but it has it, and that is the important part. This isn't to say that GW2's VO won't be great...it is all subjective.
Now, I think that the personal story is going to be WHY PEOPLE PLAY SWTOR, where as GW2 it is going to be a REALLY GOOD REASON TO PLAY GW2.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I find it really funny that in a Guild Wars 2 thread the Personal Story is touted as this revolutionary and amazing thing that helps you connect to your character and the world around you and make all these choices and have an impact etc.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
I honestly believe the personal story will be the worst part of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn't mean I think the personal story will be bad, it's just that I believe the rest of the game is going to be that good!
Did somebody call it revolutionary? It's an important touch that I think is needed to give the game some colour and context, but it's by far not the central focus as it is in SWTOR. As you mentioned, there's plenty more to the game that's going to be good. Personal story doesn't revolutionize it, but it is one of the many elements that improves the game and will probably play a big role in immersing many in the world of Tyria.
Besides, there's no way the same depth of information can be imparted to someone as effectively through open-world events as it can in a plotline devoted specifically to you. The only player I can reasonable imagine not wanting that would be someone not interested in the world to start with. I do believe individuals like that will be the minority, so why not cater to the majority who are interested, especially when the personal story remains an option and the world looks so ripe for discovery?
I'm glad for the story in TOR. It's a big reason I have pre-ordered the game. I hope they play out well and add enjoyment to the game.
TOR Class Story vs. GW Personal Story are not the same beast. From what I have read and also seen from developer commentary, the TOR storylines are linear, not branching. You can make choices that effect your Light Side / Dark Side balance, but the story basically plays out the same for everyone of the same class. GW2's Personal Story is a branching storyline and the direction it takes is based on Profession, Race, Gender, A series of character biography questions you answer, (at character creation and at other points along the story), as well as based on the choices you make while pursuing the story. It has been said that there are thousands of combinations of Personal Story Elements that make up any character's Personal Story Progression. With SWTOR, there are only eight.
I had thought that TOR would have an advantage over GW2, with each Class Story being completely unique, content wise, from the Class Stories of the other classes. I now understand that this is not the case, but rather each story contains a number of shared elements, the combination of which are determined by which slass you are playing. So, both GW2 and TOR have some commonality of content between individuial story tracks, the difference being that GW2 does offer thousands of combinations in a branching storyline, while TOR does not.
Final comparison will have to depend on presentation and playability. TOR may still have a superior story over all, but GW2 will always have the advantage of variety.
A lot of the ciriticism I have seen over the TOR Story content is more to do with the linear nature of the content, rather than the fact that the content exists in the game at all. RPGs can make up for linearity, if the quality of the linear story far exceeds what games with branching story lines are able to produce. Unlike the solo RPG space, where there are dozens of contemporary titles to compare a game against, in the case of GW2 and TOR, the comparison has to be head to head, as no other MMO titles seem to currently offer anything similar as far as voiced Story content goes.
Both games are all the richer for the inclusion of Story. How well this content plays out for each title and how well they succeed at offering a fulfilling MMO experience for players who aren't interested in the Story content remain to be seen.
100% agree. The personal story is just as backwards as SWTOR, except SWTOR is superior in terms of presentation. People want GW2 PvE because of dynamics events, and imo that's what Anet should focus on in expansions. Personal story is great, but only if it's told with the help of dynamic events instead of instances.
From some reports it seems that personal story doesn't take place entirely in instances..At some points you're required to wander about the "real" world. It's not really completely separate from the main game world. There's been some mention of something that sounds suspiciously like phasing... We'll see how it plays out, tho I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as it's optional. Frankly, I'd pay the full box price just to play WvW even if there were nothing else in the game.
this is a bit wrong you see, all they ever said was that you had to TRAVEL the world to get to where you can do your personal story at some points (i wudnt expect youd fight zhaitan in one of the racial citys, btw caps is for emphasis no yelling here). and the only phasing type thing there is in gw2 is the phasing of individual RESOURCE NODES so that noone gets ninja noded everything else happens in the persistant world (exception of course to dungeons, personal story and the instanced type of pvp.)
Well yeah but there was this bit about entering some hole in the ground and when the tester entered it it was like whoah it's my own instance thing in there.... So...
But anywayz, it would bother me if it were in any way compulsory. I'll happily peruse of it when my friends are not online or I just want some solo play. It's optional and I consider it a bonus mode of play like a mini-game or something so it's no biggie. Instead of bashing stuff in D3 when i feel a misantrophic urge I'll do it in GW2 with my beloved pre-existing character(s). I'm content basically.
TOR Class Story vs. GW Personal Story are not the same beast. From what I have read and also seen from developer commentary, the TOR storylines are linear, not branching. You can make choices that effect your Light Side / Dark Side balance, but the story basically plays out the same for everyone of the same class. GW2's Personal Story is a branching storyline and the direction it takes is based on Profession, Race, Gender, A series of character biography questions you answer, (at character creation and at other points along the story), as well as based on the choices you make while pursuing the story. It has been said that there are thousands of combinations of Personal Story Elements that make up any character's Personal Story Progression. With SWTOR, there are only eight.
I had thought that TOR would have an advantage over GW2, with each Class Story being completely unique, content wise, from the Class Stories of the other classes. I now understand that this is not the case, but rather each story contains a number of shared elements, the combination of which are determined by which slass you are playing. So, both GW2 and TOR have some commonality of content between individuial story tracks, the difference being that GW2 does offer thousands of combinations in a branching storyline, while TOR does not.
Final comparison will have to depend on presentation and playability. TOR may still have a superior story over all, but GW2 will always have the advantage of variety.
Just to add to what Fiontar said (and further remove the percieved irony from the thread)...
MMORPGs aren't just a collection of individual mechanics or systems that you strap together and release. Companies that do that sort of thing generally end up with limited success at best. These games are about the sum being greater than the parts...about how all the various mechanics and systems fit together to create a long-term social experience with addictive game play in a persistent, immersive virtual world.
So... implementation makes a big difference, and you can't just compare one feature from each game and draw any kind of conclusion about them being similar. Are there similarities between what GW2 and TOR are doing with story? Sure...but you've got to be able to see the forest, not just a single tree.
The reason why I think GW2's implementation of the personal story is going to work much better is because of how it is integrated with the rest of the game. The mechanics and systems in the open world, combined with side jaunts into your own personal branching RPG experience, will make the personal story work in ways that it won't in SW:TOR.
From everything I've seen and heard about SW:TOR, it seems clear to me that the story element is the central aspect of the game...it is what most of the focus of their development seems to be. The rest of the game's mechanics appear to be, for the most part, just the typical WoW-formula MMO, same combat, same task grind, etc...which creates a stark contrast between the innovative, voiced and deep story elements and the game play that players will experience outside the story. It also emphasizes even more the solo-centric nature of the WoW-formula mechanics. It really is like BioWare just said, "We've got this awesome story mechanic and systems...so let's add generic_MMO_mechanics_set001 and we'll have an MMORPG!"
I'm sure there will be people who enjoy playing yet another version of the same old mechanics and systems with a really cool feature tacked on... but personally I think GW2's integration of the personal story, and the fact that story is only one of MANY innovations they are making to the fundamental systems, is going to lend itself to being a much more successful implementation. What I see is that ArenaNet has a much better grasp of the macro design...of building all elements to work together to create a cohesive and consistent game. BioWare's strategy or philosophy seems to be much more like Trion's Rift...SW:TOR is designed heavily around the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" concept with a few new features on top which they feel they do really well. Any solutions they implement within the old formula seem to be band-aids that they stick on top...superficial mechanics that don't address the underlying problems.
We'll see how the two implementations do in the market.
EDIT: TL:DR version -
Even if we were to say that the story content in both games were the same, SW:TOR's story content will end up suffering over time due to being strapped to a stale WoW-clone. GW2's story content will be just one aspect of a game that is innovative in many other ways. The moment-to-moment, rubber-meets-the-road game play in each game is going to end up determining the fate of the story content.
I find it really funny that in a Guild Wars 2 thread the Personal Story is touted as this revolutionary and amazing thing that helps you connect to your character and the world around you and make all these choices and have an impact etc.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
I honestly believe the personal story will be the worst part of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn't mean I think the personal story will be bad, it's just that I believe the rest of the game is going to be that good!
Because Anet don't claim it to be the alpha omega of role playing in a mmo. For me its just a lot more healthier and spot on. Overdoing something and spread that thing all over like the new messiah is just not right. Anet focus as much on your personal story as in the game world and the gameplay. I don't think that's what Bioware is doing. Or they missed something or they have a blurred vision or they are lying (on purpose or not). I'm sorry but at this point i'm very harsh about Bioware, i just suspect they use their old solo gaming formula without any discernment to tell you the true. They know it will work commercially and are like the disrespectful bulldozer destroying everything in their path to get to their point. They are just arrogant fools at this point to me, and a lot of people think a similar way.
For me the biggest problem with personal storyline is that it's soloable. While you can take someone with you, it's meant to be soloable. And there's no real skill involved in solo content - I guess most of the personal storyline will be about going around with some NPCs fighting for you and maybe some rare duel where you just have to dodge to win. Compare that to GW1 missions, where you had at least 8 players (or bots) where every toolbar had to be different and tailored specifically for the mission.
I am not a fan of personal storyline. We have personal storyline - scripted linear "cinematic" story, we have dynamic events - action sequences without a story, I'd like there to be some middle ground. I'd love some non-instanced QUESTS (yes, I said it, burn me now), which take you to some fun areas in the game world.
Sure I might be staying on the side of caution for this game (which really just means I'm not buying into the hype, since the games likely going to be purchased due to no monthly fee) but if theres one thing I need to disagree with and feel its a good idea, its personal story. I hate how so many MMOs neglect story and having a personal story can be a great thing. Sure you can complain about it being 'single player' but its no where near bad. If your playing 24/7 with friends, you really should count your lucky stars because thats an oddity. Having something to do that pushes the story while letting you have fun on your own just makes the game have extra entertainment. It helps to make better immersion in the game when you can start to feel more of a link between your character and the general story.
Keep in mind, that this has been done rather lack luster in other games. To often the 'your the destined hero' tad bit just falls flat when you consider that everyone is that person. While we need to wait to see just how well its handled, discrediting trying to push a story and giving alternate options of play should not be considered bad.
For me the biggest problem with personal storyline is that it's soloable. While you can take someone with you, it's meant to be soloable. And there's no real skill involved in solo content - I guess most of the personal storyline will be about going around with some NPCs fighting for you and maybe some rare duel where you just have to dodge to win. Compare that to GW1 missions, where you had at least 8 players (or bots) where every toolbar had to be different and tailored specifically for the mission.
I am not a fan of personal storyline. We have personal storyline - scripted linear "cinematic" story, we have dynamic events - action sequences without a story, I'd like there to be some middle ground. I'd love some non-instanced QUESTS (yes, I said it, burn me now), which take you to some fun areas in the game world.
I'm not expecting most of the Personal Story to be hyper challenging, but it's not going to be a complete cake walk, either. One of the devs said one reason you might want to invite someone into your personal story is for help with content you are having trouble defeating on your own. About seven months ago, there was a press demo on one of the video sites (not youtube, which is making it hard for me to track it down again) that showed a little bit of Personal Story content where the player had to go into a tavern and take down a bandit and some of his henchmen in order to free a friend that had been taken hostage. The henchmen didn't seem too challenging, but the bandit almost beat the dev doing the demo.
Don't assume that all the Personal Story content is going to be super easy.
BTW, the Personal Story in GW2 is far from linear. The story does branch significantly along the way. I don't know if you can fail a personal story element in a way that effects your story based on that failure, rather than on a story line choice, but it's not linear. (There will be thousands of possible Personal Story Element combinations, so even characters of the same race and class may have a very different story).
So there have been a lot of folks bringing up the positive points of the personal story and I definitely appreciate that input.
I don't hate the personal story at all, my only real fear is that it will provide an "alternative" for the more MMO oriented content.
Rift and WAR both had some form of public questing which is similar to dynamic events. But they also had a complete "traditional" quest line that would take you all the way to max level. What happened was that people just did the traditional quest line because it was generally much faster and much of the public content was neglected. Even worse, I feel like the quality of the PQ content in those games was less because the devs spent so much time on traditional questing.
What makes GW2 so revolutionary is that it has NO traditional quests, it's all dynamic events. So it's trying to turn the PQ from a "gimmick" into the main mean of the game.
But then when you look at the personal story, what is it but just a big traditional quest? And that's the root of my fear. If the personal story is extensive enough to carry you to max level or even just be the "main" thing you do...then GW2 really hasn't replaced quests with dynamic events, they just renamed quests.
However from what I'm hearing, the Personal Story should be a relatively "minor" part of the game when compared to DE's. Hopefully this is true.
My understanding is that the exp reward from different elements, and the pacing of play, is such that as a player you will be doing a mix of everything as you level in a very organic way. You'll be lead into instances for personal story at certain points, you'll be wandering and exploring, you'll be doing dungeons and getting the stories in those... plus the options of crafting and diversions in the cities. I think they are definitely designing the typical journey through the game - the path of least resistance - to involve all of those things in a way where it all meshes together well.
This is another stark contrast from games like Rift, where the various elements clashed and competed against each other... the task grind was definitely the path of least resistance, but the rifts and other content often blocked your way or stopped you completely and forced your hand. Because of this, and because the other content tended to be very shallow and quickly become repetitive, players ended up resenting and avoiding the "new" stuff in the game, and becoming frustrated when they couldn't keep their head down and just steamroll from one quest hub to the next. Dungeons had very tight level ranges and you had to go out of your way to find them... etc. Bad game design all around... a theme park where the rides are chosen for you.
GW2 won't be anything like that, for 100s of reasons.
I look at the personal story as my familiar home bastion in an otherwise brave new world. It will be that relaxing part of the game I can play when I feel like hanging solo for a while, or while my friends aren't online, and it will still be full of all that classic RPG goodness. It gives solo players something they can undoubtedly enjoy. I understand MMOs are supposed to be massive, and well...multiplayer, but it can't be denied that many players today enjoy the occasional solo experience. Many also do not, and that's cool too. The vast majority of GW2 is played cooperatively with other players; you never have to do the personal story if you don't want to. It's also my understanding that you can invite a buddy (or buddies) into your own personal story, although they would then still have to go back and do their own.
Overall, the personal story is more about accomodating additional player types without imposing an undesired playstyle on those who do not wish to play that way. There's really something for everyone. And hopefully if someone doesn't think they'd like a particular playstyle, they'd try it out in GW2 anyway and possibly discover they're enjoying themselves.
So there have been a lot of folks bringing up the positive points of the personal story and I definitely appreciate that input.
I don't hate the personal story at all, my only real fear is that it will provide an "alternative" for the more MMO oriented content.
Rift and WAR both had some form of public questing which is similar to dynamic events. But they also had a complete "traditional" quest line that would take you all the way to max level. What happened was that people just did the traditional quest line because it was generally much faster and much of the public content was neglected. Even worse, I feel like the quality of the PQ content in those games was less because the devs spent so much time on traditional questing.
What makes GW2 so revolutionary is that it has NO traditional quests, it's all dynamic events. So it's trying to turn the PQ from a "gimmick" into the main mean of the game.
But then when you look at the personal story, what is it but just a big traditional quest? And that's the root of my fear. If the personal story is extensive enough to carry you to max level or even just be the "main" thing you do...then GW2 really hasn't replaced quests with dynamic events, they just renamed quests.
However from what I'm hearing, the Personal Story should be a relatively "minor" part of the game when compared to DE's. Hopefully this is true.
I don't think there's any way whatsoever that people will spend all their time in the personal story and ignore the entire open world and dynamic events. I would venture to say that the single most hyped feature of GW2 has been the dynamic event system. DEs comprise the VAST majority of the game's content. Personal story is really what you said, an alternative, traditional playstyle, there to accomodate a certain player type without neglecting anyone. Ideally, it will suppliment your open world DE adventures and even integrate with your group dungeon stories. It's something you can do on your own time to gain a more complete picture of the macro story taking place as well as your part in the events.
I am not in love with the idea. I also understand the idea of wanting to deliver story directly to the player. And the first run through of dungeons will involve Destiny's Edge. I think they might be helpful in that way, but it does seem to stand the chance of putting people in the same mentality of "gotta do this" that quests give. People will want to do their story and bypass other things. I hope that isn't the case, but we will see.
The thing I am concerned about is how this will affect roleplayers. When you have a story directly told to players in a way that seems to contradict with the idea of a vibrant world where everyone has a different story, I think it creates the same sameness of story that happens in other games.
In other MMOs recently, you have a series of quests that make you the leader, the hero, the one who defeats a series of evils. But then the next players does the same. Even have several different plotlines in the personal story will not prevent this. Even if there a hundred different plotlines, many, many people, will have the exact same story, and have defeated the same enemies. In addition, every human noble will have the same friend, and every charr will have been in the same warband with the same people. That puts a serious damper on roleplaying in the same way other games do. In effect, you must ignore the quests or personal story when roleplaying, because everyone is "reading the same book."
If the story were told through the world and dynamic events without the need of a personal story, I think this would help roleplayers, and also make the world feel more alive, more real. Everyone doing different things all the time, and no one's experience of the world is quite the same. Everyone gets a feel for the lore and the story, but people do things in a different order, and not always the same thing. And even if they did do exactly the same thing at the same time, they would both be a part of the actual event, because it happens to the entire world simultaneously, not just to one person in an instance, a thousand time in a row.
I think personal stories are a good way to tell a story, but I don't think it is the same leap forward in MMOs as many of the other ideas the Anet has for GW2, and that fact alone baffles and bother me.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I think the personal story will give me a bit of a break, a chance to tone it down a bit. I can be terrible for jumping from one mob to the next mob to the next without taking a breath. I often start the next fight before I'm healed up from the last, and don't stop until I'm dead or so close to it that I have to wait for a moment. With dynamic events, I can see myself getting burned out fairly quickly because I don't have to stop and run back to hand in quests. I think that my play will follow along the lines of playing DE's for a few hours, then working at the personal story for a hour before shutting down.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
So there have been a lot of folks bringing up the positive points of the personal story and I definitely appreciate that input.
I don't hate the personal story at all, my only real fear is that it will provide an "alternative" for the more MMO oriented content.
Rift and WAR both had some form of public questing which is similar to dynamic events. But they also had a complete "traditional" quest line that would take you all the way to max level. What happened was that people just did the traditional quest line because it was generally much faster and much of the public content was neglected. Even worse, I feel like the quality of the PQ content in those games was less because the devs spent so much time on traditional questing.
What makes GW2 so revolutionary is that it has NO traditional quests, it's all dynamic events. So it's trying to turn the PQ from a "gimmick" into the main mean of the game.
But then when you look at the personal story, what is it but just a big traditional quest? And that's the root of my fear. If the personal story is extensive enough to carry you to max level or even just be the "main" thing you do...then GW2 really hasn't replaced quests with dynamic events, they just renamed quests.
However from what I'm hearing, the Personal Story should be a relatively "minor" part of the game when compared to DE's. Hopefully this is true.
It will be a big traditional quest if those are about fed ex exclusively. But if you have to spy, escort, protect, find clues, learn about the lore, choices about your character personality and the vision you have about some aspect of the lore, have to resolve riddles, timed runs, learn about aspect of the games you might not look at like crafting... then it won't be just a "succession of traditional quests".
I don't know look at few good games like Assassin creed for example, do they have fed ex quests? no. Now look at some "cheap" games like "Rage" for ex, do they have fed ex quest? ye they have only that. Its simple some company don't want to bother coding anything except for the visuals, so they make fed ex. You don't need to code anything to make fed ex, an amateur can do tons of those with a good engine. But spying quest like it is in Assassin creed, its an other story, because you probably need to make some real work on your engine.
I personally don't care if it is as important quantity wise as it is in Swtor for ex, or if its just 10 minutes of quest. What is important is the quality of those quests. If they really are about stories like some quest in NWN for example, then i'm fine even if i can level to max. If that's what some people want, why not. I mean they will make events afterward. Why stop them and reduce their choice to begin with because they don't share your philosophy of gaming, would you like them to do the same, and give you only fed ex to play with? In any case its a personal story, i don't think they are build for you to level to max and avoid the rest, they are probably there to give some personal attachment with your character, and help you define it into the boundary of the game, probably.
Still waiting for more information before I make any judgement about this.
I've as of yet got no clue exactly how many branches and how far apart these branches are in the story.
Are all my branches decided by a combination of character creation choices and which of the three orders I join, or am I faced with choices on every step along the way?
Will each branch be vastly different or merely have a different flavour? We already know you can't go evil so the end-goal, bringing bringing Destiny's Edge together and defending against the elder dragons seems set in stone, the destination seems like it's set in stone (though I'm hoping for possible twists) but how many roads lead there and how far apart are these?
Are the character creation stories truly different or are they more like DA:O where as soon as you leave the starter area your choices only have a very minor impact? Are the three orders truly different or will they have basically the same quests but merely in different locations with slightly different approaches?
They talk about thousands of possible story combinations but they also mention that each story part (race story, order story ,one story per Destiny's Edge member and story for the elder dragon it seems) has at least one major decision point (thus implying that several parts do indeed have only a single major decision and that the others don't have significantly more).
So based on that we could say we have 5 races, 2 branches per race, 3 orders,2 branches per order, 5 Destiny's Edge members, 2 branches per member, 4 branches for the elder dragon. That gives us 5*2*3*2*25*4 = 7680 combinations. Which sounds about what they're talking about. So if that's true (which in all likelyhood it isn't) you can expect a story where you're faced with a total of 9 major decisions (1 for your race, 1 for your order, 5 for Destiny's Edge and 2 for the Dragon; noting that 1 major decision = 2 branches).
That sounds pretty good although it does make me wonder how much influence those choices at character creation have. If they have any major influence we'd be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of possible story combinations and I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned that.
But as I said, I don't think there's nearly enough information out about the personal storyline to make what we're saying anything more then just guesses. We'll have to wait and see what additional information ANet releases, although I remember hearing something about them keeping the personal story more secret so as not to spoil anything.
EDIT: Updated math. 25 is there because unlike races and orders the Destiny's Edge members aren't mutually exclusive (doing one member's quest doesn't prevent you from doing another's, but picking one race does prevent you from picking another).
We are the bunny. Resistance is futile. ''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\ ( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o) (")("),,(")("),(")(")
I am not in love with the idea. I also understand the idea of wanting to deliver story directly to the player. And the first run through of dungeons will involve Destiny's Edge. I think they might be helpful in that way, but it does seem to stand the chance of putting people in the same mentality of "gotta do this" that quests give. People will want to do their story and bypass other things. I hope that isn't the case, but we will see.
The thing I am concerned about is how this will affect roleplayers. When you have a story directly told to players in a way that seems to contradict with the idea of a vibrant world where everyone has a different story, I think it creates the same sameness of story that happens in other games.
In other MMOs recently, you have a series of quests that make you the leader, the hero, the one who defeats a series of evils. But then the next players does the same. Even have several different plotlines in the personal story will not prevent this. Even if there a hundred different plotlines, many, many people, will have the exact same story, and have defeated the same enemies. In addition, every human noble will have the same friend, and every charr will have been in the same warband with the same people. That puts a serious damper on roleplaying in the same way other games do. In effect, you must ignore the quests or personal story when roleplaying, because everyone is "reading the same book."
If the story were told through the world and dynamic events without the need of a personal story, I think this would help roleplayers, and also make the world feel more alive, more real. Everyone doing different things all the time, and no one's experience of the world is quite the same. Everyone gets a feel for the lore and the story, but people do things in a different order, and not always the same thing. And even if they did do exactly the same thing at the same time, they would both be a part of the actual event, because it happens to the entire world simultaneously, not just to one person in an instance, a thousand time in a row.
I think personal stories are a good way to tell a story, but I don't think it is the same leap forward in MMOs as many of the other ideas the Anet has for GW2, and that fact alone baffles and bother me.
I've tried to look at ArenaNet like they're making the best MMO they can make, and if that means revolutionary change, evolutionary, or maybe even no change, that's what they'd do. I'm no expert on all the MMOs ever made, but hasn't this kind of personal story only been done before in AoC and it was only the beginning of the game and linear? The goal of putting a single player RPG-worthy story inside an MMO isn't setting out to reinvent the wheel, but I do think they're doing a good job of integrating it into a home instance (who has done that before), as well as sending you out into the world to complete parts of it, setting you up to organically stumble across dynamic event content.
I honestly don't roleplay, so I really can't speak to the rest of your post. I know they've said that the character creation options are intentionally designed to allow for flexibility. The example they gave is if you want to RP your family's backstory, you can choose the human option about never having gone to the circus, instead of the ones about not knowing your family/not finding your sister's body.
That's kind of how I see it. What other games have given you a backstory at all? Perhaps you can still roleplay to fill in the gaps of the story. This sequence of events happened to you, but they're not the only things that did.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
The Personal Story is only a fraction of the game though.
While it's possible to hit max level just doing WvWvW or Dynamic Events, this isn't true for the personal story.
It's not even neccessary to do the personal story... and the level of the content changes with you. So if you want to save all (Or most of it anyway, you do a little in the beginning) of it for level 80 during some rainy day when you don't feel like playing with others, that's perfectly possible.
... and you can still bring other people along. Up to 4 more people presumably (Full party size), which means it can be as multiplayer as dungeons anyway.
This was not true from playtests... The person that used his gamecon time to play the personal story as far as ppssible discovered that the content didn't scale down./// this allows people that like a challenge to play red content...
Tough i think it will scale upward as thats part of the game mechanics... otherwise the content would become boring and futile over time
For all we know, i am a big fan of the personall story implementation.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
For the really serious roleplayers, the personal stories will probably seem like a step in the wrong direction. Even though the story offers many options and branches and players will be able to change the way NPCs react to them and the way their instanced area looks... it's still less than the infinite options roleplayers always have using just their imagination.
I don't think it will be impossible to still roleplay the exact character you want, with the exact story you made up, even if there are no personal story options that come close enough to make it work. It will just mean setting aside or ignoring the personal story, or just using it as a separate solo experience. I can definitely see the possibility that some serious roleplayers might not like the restrictions...but they can obviously work around them just like they've been working around games (and filling in lots of gaps) for years.
The positive side is huge, though, in terms of roleplay. I think it's very possible that the personal story content will provide a good compromise...making roleplay much more accessible to many more people. For the first time in an MMORPG, right from character creation, players are set up with intuitive and easy ways to begin developing their character and backstory. Players in general may end up being more connected to their character and to the game world...which is a good thing for longevity and for the maturity and consistency of the community. Providing easy little nudges to get the masses thinking about their character as something more than simply a collection of pixels...it's got to be a good thing, and definitely a nod back to the foundations of the genre and what came before.
Even the most immature gaming kiddies that normally name their characters iPWNj00 and run around trying to ruin everyone's fun may end up thinking a bit more and treating GW2 more like a world and a community worth being a part of (it's a longshot, I know...but the tools will be there).
I guess what I'm saying is that long-time hardcore roleplayers may not end up with quite as much freedom as when everything is left to their imagnation...but they are going to be getting some great things in the tradeoff... built-in tools and support in many ways in the game world, and perhaps a significantly larger roleplaying community (or at least an overall community more sympathetic to roleplay and willing to try it out).
I feel like that line of thinking made more sense in my head, and I'm not describing it well. Does any of that make sense?
But then you have...the personal story. Which as I understand it is basically a long string of instanced traditional quests. Doesn't this just seem counter to everything else about GW2's philosophy? When someone is on their personal story they will never run into another player and decide to team up, they are essentially playing single player. Sure, you can bring another player into your instance, but this really isn't any different to how GW1 worked.
You've misunderstood how personal story works.
Your "personal story" is affected by everything you do in the world and reflected in your personal zone in the city(think of it like player housing or something, except instead of a house you have a whole zone). NPCs in that zone will react differently based on what you've done in the world, the zone itself will reflect it, etc. You can invite other people into your personal story area, or not.
The rest of the world is completely segregated, for the most part. (Meaning that you can take quests and stuff from your personal story zone out with you, but you are interacting with the same world as everyone else outside that zone, and the vast majority of the game is separate from your personal story.)
As I understand it, the personal story is a way to differentiate each person's experience from every other.
Comments
I find it really funny that in a Guild Wars 2 thread the Personal Story is touted as this revolutionary and amazing thing that helps you connect to your character and the world around you and make all these choices and have an impact etc.
But then in Star Wars: The Old Republic threads people say that the focus on Bioware-style personal story is a terrible thing that is taking the genre in the wrong direction and turning it into a "single player RPG" without the MMO bits...
I just appreciate the irony, that is all.
I honestly believe the personal story will be the worst part of Guild Wars 2, but that doesn't mean I think the personal story will be bad, it's just that I believe the rest of the game is going to be that good!
To be honest i always liked the personal stories, more even now that they include full voice and cutscenes so... i really cant dislike it, maybe in a future when i get used to it i will remain neutral. Not for now at least.
Actually there is no personal story in SWTOR unless you solo the whole game. If you are in a group your "personal" choice doesn't matter - the group decides the outcome of conversations.
So there is irony in your irony.
Life IS Feudal
Irony of your irony is that the class quests in TOR are all personal story and the rest of the game isn't really instanced and the class quests you can invite other people into your story if you choose to.
Just like GW2 personal story.
The instances (dungeons) in TOR are exactly like the story mode dungeons in GW2 in that they are much, much easier and focus on telling the tale (and in TOR include the group conversation stuff).
At more "end game" GW2 has the exploration mode for the dungeons and TOR will have heroic mode that (they've only recently said this) will have LESS focus on story and more focus on game play, puzzle solving, combat etc.
Funny how similar many things are in these games when one takes the fanboi/hater shades off, yes?
Obviously a great many differences too, but that goes without saying.
I agree, I too appreciate the irony.
I think that most of the difference between GW2 and other MMOs, aside from the combat and class mechanics, is presentation and implementation. Don't get me wrong, those 2 things are more than enough to determine the difference between a complete failure and a smash hit, and I believe that they are some of the most undervalued parts of GW2 by most of the people on MMORPG.com.
Here is what I mean. Personal story is being presented as a way for your character to fit into the world, and for you to form an attachment to the character. That presentation lends itself EXTREMELY well to RPing, and I am looking forward to RPing for the first time in an online game, but how is the personal story uniquely implemented? here is a list:
character biography, which is something familiar to those who play certain single player RPG (the elder scrolls being one that I remember fondly, but that is implemented in a different way) You get to simultaineously design and get to know your character to an extent that doesn't really happen in other MMOs, which makes the immersion factor of the story much greater.
branching story. Its your story, you can be who you want to be given the circumstances and situations you experience. Since most MMOs don't really have the kind of personal story or storyline narrative that GW2 is going to have (SWTOR being the shining exception) it can be counted as a change, an innovation to the genre. Better yet, it is a logical progression from the way GW1's story narrative worked.
Story is NOT being required to play the game and progress through zones. the isn't really an innovation, but it does set it apart from how I believe SWTOR is going to work (I could be totally wrong here), where I think the success or failure of the personal story for SWTOR is going to make or break the games lifespan.
last, but not least, voiceover everywhere. It doesn't have to be perfect VO, and I am guess many people will like SWTOR's VO better than GW2 VO, but it has it, and that is the important part. This isn't to say that GW2's VO won't be great...it is all subjective.
Now, I think that the personal story is going to be WHY PEOPLE PLAY SWTOR, where as GW2 it is going to be a REALLY GOOD REASON TO PLAY GW2.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Did somebody call it revolutionary? It's an important touch that I think is needed to give the game some colour and context, but it's by far not the central focus as it is in SWTOR. As you mentioned, there's plenty more to the game that's going to be good. Personal story doesn't revolutionize it, but it is one of the many elements that improves the game and will probably play a big role in immersing many in the world of Tyria.
Besides, there's no way the same depth of information can be imparted to someone as effectively through open-world events as it can in a plotline devoted specifically to you. The only player I can reasonable imagine not wanting that would be someone not interested in the world to start with. I do believe individuals like that will be the minority, so why not cater to the majority who are interested, especially when the personal story remains an option and the world looks so ripe for discovery?
I'm glad for the story in TOR. It's a big reason I have pre-ordered the game. I hope they play out well and add enjoyment to the game.
TOR Class Story vs. GW Personal Story are not the same beast. From what I have read and also seen from developer commentary, the TOR storylines are linear, not branching. You can make choices that effect your Light Side / Dark Side balance, but the story basically plays out the same for everyone of the same class. GW2's Personal Story is a branching storyline and the direction it takes is based on Profession, Race, Gender, A series of character biography questions you answer, (at character creation and at other points along the story), as well as based on the choices you make while pursuing the story. It has been said that there are thousands of combinations of Personal Story Elements that make up any character's Personal Story Progression. With SWTOR, there are only eight.
I had thought that TOR would have an advantage over GW2, with each Class Story being completely unique, content wise, from the Class Stories of the other classes. I now understand that this is not the case, but rather each story contains a number of shared elements, the combination of which are determined by which slass you are playing. So, both GW2 and TOR have some commonality of content between individuial story tracks, the difference being that GW2 does offer thousands of combinations in a branching storyline, while TOR does not.
Final comparison will have to depend on presentation and playability. TOR may still have a superior story over all, but GW2 will always have the advantage of variety.
A lot of the ciriticism I have seen over the TOR Story content is more to do with the linear nature of the content, rather than the fact that the content exists in the game at all. RPGs can make up for linearity, if the quality of the linear story far exceeds what games with branching story lines are able to produce. Unlike the solo RPG space, where there are dozens of contemporary titles to compare a game against, in the case of GW2 and TOR, the comparison has to be head to head, as no other MMO titles seem to currently offer anything similar as far as voiced Story content goes.
Both games are all the richer for the inclusion of Story. How well this content plays out for each title and how well they succeed at offering a fulfilling MMO experience for players who aren't interested in the Story content remain to be seen.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Well yeah but there was this bit about entering some hole in the ground and when the tester entered it it was like whoah it's my own instance thing in there.... So...
But anywayz, it would bother me if it were in any way compulsory. I'll happily peruse of it when my friends are not online or I just want some solo play. It's optional and I consider it a bonus mode of play like a mini-game or something so it's no biggie. Instead of bashing stuff in D3 when i feel a misantrophic urge I'll do it in GW2 with my beloved pre-existing character(s). I'm content basically.
Just to add to what Fiontar said (and further remove the percieved irony from the thread)...
MMORPGs aren't just a collection of individual mechanics or systems that you strap together and release. Companies that do that sort of thing generally end up with limited success at best. These games are about the sum being greater than the parts...about how all the various mechanics and systems fit together to create a long-term social experience with addictive game play in a persistent, immersive virtual world.
So... implementation makes a big difference, and you can't just compare one feature from each game and draw any kind of conclusion about them being similar. Are there similarities between what GW2 and TOR are doing with story? Sure...but you've got to be able to see the forest, not just a single tree.
The reason why I think GW2's implementation of the personal story is going to work much better is because of how it is integrated with the rest of the game. The mechanics and systems in the open world, combined with side jaunts into your own personal branching RPG experience, will make the personal story work in ways that it won't in SW:TOR.
From everything I've seen and heard about SW:TOR, it seems clear to me that the story element is the central aspect of the game...it is what most of the focus of their development seems to be. The rest of the game's mechanics appear to be, for the most part, just the typical WoW-formula MMO, same combat, same task grind, etc...which creates a stark contrast between the innovative, voiced and deep story elements and the game play that players will experience outside the story. It also emphasizes even more the solo-centric nature of the WoW-formula mechanics. It really is like BioWare just said, "We've got this awesome story mechanic and systems...so let's add generic_MMO_mechanics_set001 and we'll have an MMORPG!"
I'm sure there will be people who enjoy playing yet another version of the same old mechanics and systems with a really cool feature tacked on... but personally I think GW2's integration of the personal story, and the fact that story is only one of MANY innovations they are making to the fundamental systems, is going to lend itself to being a much more successful implementation. What I see is that ArenaNet has a much better grasp of the macro design...of building all elements to work together to create a cohesive and consistent game. BioWare's strategy or philosophy seems to be much more like Trion's Rift...SW:TOR is designed heavily around the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" concept with a few new features on top which they feel they do really well. Any solutions they implement within the old formula seem to be band-aids that they stick on top...superficial mechanics that don't address the underlying problems.
We'll see how the two implementations do in the market.
EDIT: TL:DR version -
Even if we were to say that the story content in both games were the same, SW:TOR's story content will end up suffering over time due to being strapped to a stale WoW-clone. GW2's story content will be just one aspect of a game that is innovative in many other ways. The moment-to-moment, rubber-meets-the-road game play in each game is going to end up determining the fate of the story content.
Because Anet don't claim it to be the alpha omega of role playing in a mmo. For me its just a lot more healthier and spot on. Overdoing something and spread that thing all over like the new messiah is just not right. Anet focus as much on your personal story as in the game world and the gameplay. I don't think that's what Bioware is doing. Or they missed something or they have a blurred vision or they are lying (on purpose or not). I'm sorry but at this point i'm very harsh about Bioware, i just suspect they use their old solo gaming formula without any discernment to tell you the true. They know it will work commercially and are like the disrespectful bulldozer destroying everything in their path to get to their point. They are just arrogant fools at this point to me, and a lot of people think a similar way.
For me the biggest problem with personal storyline is that it's soloable. While you can take someone with you, it's meant to be soloable. And there's no real skill involved in solo content - I guess most of the personal storyline will be about going around with some NPCs fighting for you and maybe some rare duel where you just have to dodge to win. Compare that to GW1 missions, where you had at least 8 players (or bots) where every toolbar had to be different and tailored specifically for the mission.
I am not a fan of personal storyline. We have personal storyline - scripted linear "cinematic" story, we have dynamic events - action sequences without a story, I'd like there to be some middle ground. I'd love some non-instanced QUESTS (yes, I said it, burn me now), which take you to some fun areas in the game world.
Sure I might be staying on the side of caution for this game (which really just means I'm not buying into the hype, since the games likely going to be purchased due to no monthly fee) but if theres one thing I need to disagree with and feel its a good idea, its personal story. I hate how so many MMOs neglect story and having a personal story can be a great thing. Sure you can complain about it being 'single player' but its no where near bad. If your playing 24/7 with friends, you really should count your lucky stars because thats an oddity. Having something to do that pushes the story while letting you have fun on your own just makes the game have extra entertainment. It helps to make better immersion in the game when you can start to feel more of a link between your character and the general story.
Keep in mind, that this has been done rather lack luster in other games. To often the 'your the destined hero' tad bit just falls flat when you consider that everyone is that person. While we need to wait to see just how well its handled, discrediting trying to push a story and giving alternate options of play should not be considered bad.
I'm not expecting most of the Personal Story to be hyper challenging, but it's not going to be a complete cake walk, either. One of the devs said one reason you might want to invite someone into your personal story is for help with content you are having trouble defeating on your own. About seven months ago, there was a press demo on one of the video sites (not youtube, which is making it hard for me to track it down again) that showed a little bit of Personal Story content where the player had to go into a tavern and take down a bandit and some of his henchmen in order to free a friend that had been taken hostage. The henchmen didn't seem too challenging, but the bandit almost beat the dev doing the demo.
Don't assume that all the Personal Story content is going to be super easy.
BTW, the Personal Story in GW2 is far from linear. The story does branch significantly along the way. I don't know if you can fail a personal story element in a way that effects your story based on that failure, rather than on a story line choice, but it's not linear. (There will be thousands of possible Personal Story Element combinations, so even characters of the same race and class may have a very different story).
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
So there have been a lot of folks bringing up the positive points of the personal story and I definitely appreciate that input.
I don't hate the personal story at all, my only real fear is that it will provide an "alternative" for the more MMO oriented content.
Rift and WAR both had some form of public questing which is similar to dynamic events. But they also had a complete "traditional" quest line that would take you all the way to max level. What happened was that people just did the traditional quest line because it was generally much faster and much of the public content was neglected. Even worse, I feel like the quality of the PQ content in those games was less because the devs spent so much time on traditional questing.
What makes GW2 so revolutionary is that it has NO traditional quests, it's all dynamic events. So it's trying to turn the PQ from a "gimmick" into the main mean of the game.
But then when you look at the personal story, what is it but just a big traditional quest? And that's the root of my fear. If the personal story is extensive enough to carry you to max level or even just be the "main" thing you do...then GW2 really hasn't replaced quests with dynamic events, they just renamed quests.
However from what I'm hearing, the Personal Story should be a relatively "minor" part of the game when compared to DE's. Hopefully this is true.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
My understanding is that the exp reward from different elements, and the pacing of play, is such that as a player you will be doing a mix of everything as you level in a very organic way. You'll be lead into instances for personal story at certain points, you'll be wandering and exploring, you'll be doing dungeons and getting the stories in those... plus the options of crafting and diversions in the cities. I think they are definitely designing the typical journey through the game - the path of least resistance - to involve all of those things in a way where it all meshes together well.
This is another stark contrast from games like Rift, where the various elements clashed and competed against each other... the task grind was definitely the path of least resistance, but the rifts and other content often blocked your way or stopped you completely and forced your hand. Because of this, and because the other content tended to be very shallow and quickly become repetitive, players ended up resenting and avoiding the "new" stuff in the game, and becoming frustrated when they couldn't keep their head down and just steamroll from one quest hub to the next. Dungeons had very tight level ranges and you had to go out of your way to find them... etc. Bad game design all around... a theme park where the rides are chosen for you.
GW2 won't be anything like that, for 100s of reasons.
I look at the personal story as my familiar home bastion in an otherwise brave new world. It will be that relaxing part of the game I can play when I feel like hanging solo for a while, or while my friends aren't online, and it will still be full of all that classic RPG goodness. It gives solo players something they can undoubtedly enjoy. I understand MMOs are supposed to be massive, and well...multiplayer, but it can't be denied that many players today enjoy the occasional solo experience. Many also do not, and that's cool too. The vast majority of GW2 is played cooperatively with other players; you never have to do the personal story if you don't want to. It's also my understanding that you can invite a buddy (or buddies) into your own personal story, although they would then still have to go back and do their own.
Overall, the personal story is more about accomodating additional player types without imposing an undesired playstyle on those who do not wish to play that way. There's really something for everyone. And hopefully if someone doesn't think they'd like a particular playstyle, they'd try it out in GW2 anyway and possibly discover they're enjoying themselves.
I don't think there's any way whatsoever that people will spend all their time in the personal story and ignore the entire open world and dynamic events. I would venture to say that the single most hyped feature of GW2 has been the dynamic event system. DEs comprise the VAST majority of the game's content. Personal story is really what you said, an alternative, traditional playstyle, there to accomodate a certain player type without neglecting anyone. Ideally, it will suppliment your open world DE adventures and even integrate with your group dungeon stories. It's something you can do on your own time to gain a more complete picture of the macro story taking place as well as your part in the events.
I am not in love with the idea. I also understand the idea of wanting to deliver story directly to the player. And the first run through of dungeons will involve Destiny's Edge. I think they might be helpful in that way, but it does seem to stand the chance of putting people in the same mentality of "gotta do this" that quests give. People will want to do their story and bypass other things. I hope that isn't the case, but we will see.
The thing I am concerned about is how this will affect roleplayers. When you have a story directly told to players in a way that seems to contradict with the idea of a vibrant world where everyone has a different story, I think it creates the same sameness of story that happens in other games.
In other MMOs recently, you have a series of quests that make you the leader, the hero, the one who defeats a series of evils. But then the next players does the same. Even have several different plotlines in the personal story will not prevent this. Even if there a hundred different plotlines, many, many people, will have the exact same story, and have defeated the same enemies. In addition, every human noble will have the same friend, and every charr will have been in the same warband with the same people. That puts a serious damper on roleplaying in the same way other games do. In effect, you must ignore the quests or personal story when roleplaying, because everyone is "reading the same book."
If the story were told through the world and dynamic events without the need of a personal story, I think this would help roleplayers, and also make the world feel more alive, more real. Everyone doing different things all the time, and no one's experience of the world is quite the same. Everyone gets a feel for the lore and the story, but people do things in a different order, and not always the same thing. And even if they did do exactly the same thing at the same time, they would both be a part of the actual event, because it happens to the entire world simultaneously, not just to one person in an instance, a thousand time in a row.
I think personal stories are a good way to tell a story, but I don't think it is the same leap forward in MMOs as many of the other ideas the Anet has for GW2, and that fact alone baffles and bother me.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
I think the personal story will give me a bit of a break, a chance to tone it down a bit. I can be terrible for jumping from one mob to the next mob to the next without taking a breath. I often start the next fight before I'm healed up from the last, and don't stop until I'm dead or so close to it that I have to wait for a moment. With dynamic events, I can see myself getting burned out fairly quickly because I don't have to stop and run back to hand in quests. I think that my play will follow along the lines of playing DE's for a few hours, then working at the personal story for a hour before shutting down.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
It will be a big traditional quest if those are about fed ex exclusively. But if you have to spy, escort, protect, find clues, learn about the lore, choices about your character personality and the vision you have about some aspect of the lore, have to resolve riddles, timed runs, learn about aspect of the games you might not look at like crafting... then it won't be just a "succession of traditional quests".
I don't know look at few good games like Assassin creed for example, do they have fed ex quests? no. Now look at some "cheap" games like "Rage" for ex, do they have fed ex quest? ye they have only that. Its simple some company don't want to bother coding anything except for the visuals, so they make fed ex. You don't need to code anything to make fed ex, an amateur can do tons of those with a good engine. But spying quest like it is in Assassin creed, its an other story, because you probably need to make some real work on your engine.
I personally don't care if it is as important quantity wise as it is in Swtor for ex, or if its just 10 minutes of quest. What is important is the quality of those quests. If they really are about stories like some quest in NWN for example, then i'm fine even if i can level to max. If that's what some people want, why not. I mean they will make events afterward. Why stop them and reduce their choice to begin with because they don't share your philosophy of gaming, would you like them to do the same, and give you only fed ex to play with? In any case its a personal story, i don't think they are build for you to level to max and avoid the rest, they are probably there to give some personal attachment with your character, and help you define it into the boundary of the game, probably.
Still waiting for more information before I make any judgement about this.
I've as of yet got no clue exactly how many branches and how far apart these branches are in the story.
Are all my branches decided by a combination of character creation choices and which of the three orders I join, or am I faced with choices on every step along the way?
Will each branch be vastly different or merely have a different flavour? We already know you can't go evil so the end-goal, bringing bringing Destiny's Edge together and defending against the elder dragons seems set in stone, the destination seems like it's set in stone (though I'm hoping for possible twists) but how many roads lead there and how far apart are these?
Are the character creation stories truly different or are they more like DA:O where as soon as you leave the starter area your choices only have a very minor impact? Are the three orders truly different or will they have basically the same quests but merely in different locations with slightly different approaches?
They talk about thousands of possible story combinations but they also mention that each story part (race story, order story ,one story per Destiny's Edge member and story for the elder dragon it seems) has at least one major decision point (thus implying that several parts do indeed have only a single major decision and that the others don't have significantly more).
So based on that we could say we have 5 races, 2 branches per race, 3 orders,2 branches per order, 5 Destiny's Edge members, 2 branches per member, 4 branches for the elder dragon. That gives us 5*2*3*2*25*4 = 7680 combinations. Which sounds about what they're talking about. So if that's true (which in all likelyhood it isn't) you can expect a story where you're faced with a total of 9 major decisions (1 for your race, 1 for your order, 5 for Destiny's Edge and 2 for the Dragon; noting that 1 major decision = 2 branches).
That sounds pretty good although it does make me wonder how much influence those choices at character creation have. If they have any major influence we'd be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of possible story combinations and I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned that.
But as I said, I don't think there's nearly enough information out about the personal storyline to make what we're saying anything more then just guesses. We'll have to wait and see what additional information ANet releases, although I remember hearing something about them keeping the personal story more secret so as not to spoil anything.
EDIT: Updated math. 25 is there because unlike races and orders the Destiny's Edge members aren't mutually exclusive (doing one member's quest doesn't prevent you from doing another's, but picking one race does prevent you from picking another).
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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I've tried to look at ArenaNet like they're making the best MMO they can make, and if that means revolutionary change, evolutionary, or maybe even no change, that's what they'd do. I'm no expert on all the MMOs ever made, but hasn't this kind of personal story only been done before in AoC and it was only the beginning of the game and linear? The goal of putting a single player RPG-worthy story inside an MMO isn't setting out to reinvent the wheel, but I do think they're doing a good job of integrating it into a home instance (who has done that before), as well as sending you out into the world to complete parts of it, setting you up to organically stumble across dynamic event content.
I honestly don't roleplay, so I really can't speak to the rest of your post. I know they've said that the character creation options are intentionally designed to allow for flexibility. The example they gave is if you want to RP your family's backstory, you can choose the human option about never having gone to the circus, instead of the ones about not knowing your family/not finding your sister's body.
That's kind of how I see it. What other games have given you a backstory at all? Perhaps you can still roleplay to fill in the gaps of the story. This sequence of events happened to you, but they're not the only things that did.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
This was not true from playtests... The person that used his gamecon time to play the personal story as far as ppssible discovered that the content didn't scale down./// this allows people that like a challenge to play red content...
Tough i think it will scale upward as thats part of the game mechanics... otherwise the content would become boring and futile over time
For all we know, i am a big fan of the personall story implementation.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
For the really serious roleplayers, the personal stories will probably seem like a step in the wrong direction. Even though the story offers many options and branches and players will be able to change the way NPCs react to them and the way their instanced area looks... it's still less than the infinite options roleplayers always have using just their imagination.
I don't think it will be impossible to still roleplay the exact character you want, with the exact story you made up, even if there are no personal story options that come close enough to make it work. It will just mean setting aside or ignoring the personal story, or just using it as a separate solo experience. I can definitely see the possibility that some serious roleplayers might not like the restrictions...but they can obviously work around them just like they've been working around games (and filling in lots of gaps) for years.
The positive side is huge, though, in terms of roleplay. I think it's very possible that the personal story content will provide a good compromise...making roleplay much more accessible to many more people. For the first time in an MMORPG, right from character creation, players are set up with intuitive and easy ways to begin developing their character and backstory. Players in general may end up being more connected to their character and to the game world...which is a good thing for longevity and for the maturity and consistency of the community. Providing easy little nudges to get the masses thinking about their character as something more than simply a collection of pixels...it's got to be a good thing, and definitely a nod back to the foundations of the genre and what came before.
Even the most immature gaming kiddies that normally name their characters iPWNj00 and run around trying to ruin everyone's fun may end up thinking a bit more and treating GW2 more like a world and a community worth being a part of (it's a longshot, I know...but the tools will be there).
I guess what I'm saying is that long-time hardcore roleplayers may not end up with quite as much freedom as when everything is left to their imagnation...but they are going to be getting some great things in the tradeoff... built-in tools and support in many ways in the game world, and perhaps a significantly larger roleplaying community (or at least an overall community more sympathetic to roleplay and willing to try it out).
I feel like that line of thinking made more sense in my head, and I'm not describing it well. Does any of that make sense?
You've misunderstood how personal story works.
Your "personal story" is affected by everything you do in the world and reflected in your personal zone in the city(think of it like player housing or something, except instead of a house you have a whole zone). NPCs in that zone will react differently based on what you've done in the world, the zone itself will reflect it, etc. You can invite other people into your personal story area, or not.
The rest of the world is completely segregated, for the most part. (Meaning that you can take quests and stuff from your personal story zone out with you, but you are interacting with the same world as everyone else outside that zone, and the vast majority of the game is separate from your personal story.)
As I understand it, the personal story is a way to differentiate each person's experience from every other.