My story doesn't matter anymore

When I first made my character in GW2, I was under the impression that my personal story, the five multiple-choice questions, affected gameplay somehow. And they did, at least for the first few hours of playing.

I understand that one choice determines a profession-dependent aesthetic aspect of my character, the second question determines my initial personality, which affects how NPCs react to me, and the final three questions relate to my patron deity, my background, motivations, and experiences. That's really cool! I don't get those options in other games.

But after level 30, I feel like my choices at character creation don't matter anymore, like, at all. I keep reading into things as I go along, thinking , "Maybe he said that because I chose Dignity," or "Is she looking down on me because I chose Commoner?" In reality, I know that my choices at character creation don't matter anymore. But I wish they did. I've been level 80 for quite a while now, yet having been blessed by Kormir when I was young doesn't seem to matter, nor does the fact that I never searched for my true parents, or their (spoilers) deaths at the hands of the White Mantle.

Why doesn't my story matter anymore?

Why? Money.

Agreed with the answer above. Making your different choices matter would take a lot of time and resources to create the different paths and dialogue. We did have Dignity, Charm and Ferocity meters at launch but they have since been removed. Some dialogue do offer the choice between the three but as you said, they don't matter. It's unfortunate as that would have enriched the game so much especially if these choices affected your story down the line.

Having said that, there have been some improvements in the meaningfulness of choices in the current events. Well hopefully more work will be done on that front.

None of those choices matter beyond which story arc you follow.Choosing a helmet, or no helmet, or fancy shoulders...just unlocks that skin. It does nothing else for the character or how your character plays.Choosing that your character uses charm (or dignity or ferocity) does nothing. All the dialog is the same depending on the NPC and story step you are on.Choosing a patron God (odd that the 4 non-human races also have to choose one of the aliens the humans worship as gods during creation)...does nothing.

Once you get past the level 30 quest line, your character follows one of the Pact arcs, so it wouldn't have mattered what happened before that anyway.

I wish I could explain to you why your story doesn't matter anymore, but the problem with that thought is the word "anymore". Your personal creation choices, and even more so the race you chose, never mattered. All of the story arcs, even character creation where you choose a human god (even if you are NOT human), are written as if you are human. Anet is writing all the story arcs as if every player is human with all of the choices already chosen for you. Eventually. they force your character to follow/join human only paths forgetting that there are 4 other races in their game.

The game is fun to play, and there are crap other gaming choices out there, but the only choices available in GW2 are whether or not to buy gem store outfits/mounts, and if you choose yes...which one(s)?

Technically all the choices matter through whole personal story. Your race effects you. When you choose what status of wealth you are. When you choose a certain clan. Then when you go into the last couple chapters it matters how you want to help stop the war and stop zhaitan. Each chapter your have couple of choices. The first three are effected by race, or your main personal story you choice when creating character. Then the rest are how you want to kill zhaitan. So actually it technically does matter. how you want to kill the mouth of zhaitan and the eye. And choosing the clan chooses different ways also. If you want to really go there, theres probably 50 different choices to pick . 5 diff races makes about 15 diff story choices from the beginning to level 30 chap. three different choices for the clan till about chapter level 50. so thats 9 diff choices. Which does change the type of battle you do. chapter 60-80 which give 2 diff choices each chap. Just by that i told you 30 different choices that effect story. However in chapters theres also different choices to make within instances. So to say about 50 could be right but i could also be wrong.

Oh okay, well that's good. I was bummed that the initial character creation stories didn't actually matter beyond lvl 30.

And actually, I experienced a fun dialogue today when I talked to Kormir in her library. My character said, "That's Kormir! She blessed me at birth, but I never thought I'd—hail to you, Goddess of Truth." I was like, "Yay! My choice matters!"

@"Ubi.4136" said:I wish I could explain to you why your story doesn't matter anymore, but the problem with that thought is the word "anymore". Your personal creation choices, and even more so the race you chose, never mattered. All of the story arcs, even character creation where you choose a human god (even if you are NOT human), are written as if you are human. Anet is writing all the story arcs as if every player is human with all of the choices already chosen for you. Eventually. they force your character to follow/join human only paths forgetting that there are 4 other races in their game.

This is inaccurate. There are a small handful of times when your starter choices matter in the later story. If you're a Sylvari, when you are introduced to Traehern you already know him because he's part of the level 20 story for Sylvari. If you had the level 20 story with the mirror and you choose the snipers in Orr you have a short conversation because you know the head of that group. If you took Statics as an Asura and you choose to search for old artifacts in Orr you explain to the Asura there that you know what her device is because you specifically invented it. If you play a Sylvari in HoT you get a very different story than if you play any other character.

There aren't many call backs, but they do come up from time to time.

if you think that's the only thing they did wrong from launch, you should've bin there since beta and you'll know the crap load they did wrong since launch.

@"DiscipleofLaw.3796" said:Oh okay, well that's good. I was bummed that the initial character creation stories didn't actually matter beyond lvl 30.

And actually, I experienced a fun dialogue today when I talked to Kormir in her library. My character said, "That's Kormir! She blessed me at birth, but I never thought I'd—hail to you, Goddess of Truth." I was like, "Yay! My choice matters!"

Yeah, sometimes newer "parts" of the game "react" to your past choices. It was awkward to meet Ceera again when HoT came out. :( <- I'm sure some people can relate.

the monetn Anet added living story, we have lost all of our meaning to our personal storys as it became degraded into a meaningless "start up story" for the main game to give your character beasically at the end only a reason to fight off the very first Elder Dragon with that you the stone to roll for the events that followed after that through the living story...

Basically it would be best for the game to completely rework and redesign the person story all around season 1's reimplementation and brign the story of the main game practicalyl back as "Living World Season 0" as kind of a prequel to Living World Season 0 in which then also all the other LW characters can play a role and get shown in the story also ,what they did back in the time when you went for killing Zhaitan, when they didn't knew each other at that time.

I#d love to see what taimi did do in the past when Zhaitan was still alive, or what Kasmeer did all back at that time, or Rox.. thats all past of them which we don#t know, because Anet all introduced these characters first to us at a time, after that we defeated Zhaitan, without providign us some lore to what all of these characters did do earlier in time, but which woudl be really intestign to know.

I'm told that raids will pay some attention to it. I can't speak from personal experience of this, but apparently the various random dialogues your character spits out as flavor will depend on your initial creation choices. Raiders, got any examples?

@"Ubi.4136" said:Choosing a patron God (odd that the 4 non-human races also have to choose one of the aliens the humans worship as gods during creation)...does nothing.

That's not true. Only humans pick one of the 6 gods at character creation, the other races get different (equally irrelevant choices). The pattern is:

• 2 questions which affect your level 10 and level 20 story,
• 1 which affects something your character wears/uses (this is profession specific rather than race specific),
• one which used to affect your starting personality (charm, dignity or ferocity) but doesn't anymore - everyone gets all the dialogue options now
• one which only affects some dialogue and other minor things. For humans this is the god they worship, for asura it's their first mentor, for sylvari it's the cycle they were born into, for norn it's the Spirit they worship and for charr it's their closest friend in the warband.

As other people have said all your choices will come up occasionally, but I think a lot of the time you need to do the story multiple times (close enough together to remember all the dialogue) to notice because the other options are hidden, you're not going to be told that they would have said something different if you'd been a Night Cycle sylvari or a human who worships Melandru or whatever. It can also depend on the choices you make, if you make the "wrong" choice you miss the chance to meet an NPC again later on and don't get the extra dialogue with them.

(On a separate note I find it kind of amusing that some people keep saying the entire story is focused on humans and written as if the player character is human and the other races are irrelevant. Back when HoT was the latest release people said the same thing, except about the sylvari. All the evidence was there - the personal story allegedly made more sense as a sylvari because it was always about fighting the dragons and you met Trahearene earlier, Destiny's Edge had no sylvari member because the player was it, and then we got an entire expansion that was exclusively about the sylvari. Then PoF came out and now apparently the entire game has always been all about humans. I assume if the rumours are true that we're going into the far north in the next expansion the game will then have always been entirely about norn.)

tbh I wish our personal story matter less. One of the things I miss about vanillia tyria is how the npc just treated you as random adventure #394. Nowadays npc just fangirl over the "commander" wherever you go. Ugh, not a fan of power fantasy storytelling, but unfortunately nobody seems to know how to make a mmo that isn't based on power fantasy,

I actually wish Anet would make a Personal Story Part 2, maybe as an intro to the next expansion, where our character got to do some individual stuff again that would lead up to the next part of the story.

Plenty of choices matter, beyond the first levels, but they matter less often and in different ways. Later in the story the pale tree gives you a choice which changes one of the story arcs. In some of the living world stories, you get different options based on your profession. In one instance, engineers, rangers and necros can do things others can't. In a recent episode of a living story it's a bit different for each profession.

And if you're on a Sylvari there are numerous differences in the HoT story line.

However making a game where every choice matters for years would mean too many instances to create enough content to feed the masses.

@Danikat.8537 said:

@"Ubi.4136" said:Choosing a patron God (odd that the 4 non-human races also have to choose one of the aliens the humans worship as gods during creation)...does nothing.

When I read that post, I was like "Huh? I don't remember my Charr picking a human god...", glad to know I'm not crazy. Unfortunately, I haven't made a new character in ages and forgot the beginner choices I made. Is there a way to be "reminded" of them for each character?

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@"Ubi.4136" said:Choosing a patron God (odd that the 4 non-human races also have to choose one of the aliens the humans worship as gods during creation)...does nothing.

It'll all be listed in your story journal, fourth icon down in your hero panel.

Hum... Personally, I appreciate that story lines (main and else) don't matter too much, because they are out of the activities I like the least in the game. Usually, I do story line once only to unlock what is necessary, and I never return to it unless I am forced to it in case I lack mastery points. 80% of my chars have never done their personal story line apart from the mandatory one at creation.

Aside of this, I understand your point of view OP. One of my friend is like you and think alike about it.

I believe that the reason is that GW2 is a game with multiple contents satisfying a big variety of players. However, the counter part of this variety is that the game is not going "fully" into one or the other activity, as in does not offer the same content in each activity as if the game would be dedicated to that activity only.

It is hard to explain what I mean, hope I make sense! :3

@"Crinn.7864" said:tbh I wish our personal story matter less. One of the things I miss about vanillia tyria is how the npc just treated you as random adventure #394. Nowadays npc just fangirl over the "commander" wherever you go. Ugh, not a fan of power fantasy storytelling, but unfortunately nobody seems to know how to make a mmo that isn't based on power fantasy,

Have you ever played Morrowind? (The 3rd Elder Scrolls game.) In that you still save everyone from certain annihilation but in the process you go from the scum of the earth to just about tolerable in the eyes of the locals. (Especially if you play one of the 'beast' races.)

There's other, less extreme, examples too. Mainly games where there's less communication between people in different areas of the world, so you can save a town and the people there will be grateful, but the people elsewhere will have no idea it even happened and when you walk into town you're just some random who just showed up.

If you want a game where you never get to save the world however I think you need to go for sandbox MMOs with little/no overall story. Otherwise RPGs usually are about saving the world, either single-handedly or as part of a team of some sort.

Well, they completely retconned the Asura out as a playable race, what with taimi treating us as skritt-level intellectuals..

@Ubi.4136 said:Choosing a patron God (odd that the 4 non-human races also have to choose one of the aliens the humans worship as gods during creation)...does nothing.

insert “what.gif” here.Humans choose a deity, Norn choose a spirit, Sylvari what time of day they’re born.. etc

The choices matter more then people often realise. For example. The race you pick decides what lesser races you can help in the level 50 arc. This also plays a role in the story chapter where you lure out the eye of Zhaitan (level 80 story arc). Just one of many examples.

@Danikat.8537 said:, Destiny's Edge had no sylvari member because the player was it,

Sorry, just need to throw this in there. Caithe is the Sylvari member of Destiny's Edge. DE2.0 didn't have a Sylvari member until part way into HoT, so in that case you're mostly right.

@"Crinn.7864" said:tbh I wish our personal story matter less. One of the things I miss about vanillia tyria is how the npc just treated you as random adventure #394. Nowadays npc just fangirl over the "commander" wherever you go. Ugh, not a fan of power fantasy storytelling, but unfortunately nobody seems to know how to make a mmo that isn't based on power fantasy,

The OP was talking about the personal story in vanilla Tyria. I wouldn't consider the "commander" story to be a "personal story" at all. Rather, the whole "commander" thing seems a result of moving away from our personal story. Personally, I don't view the "commander" as my character at all.

Try RolePlay if u want to see that your choices really matter.If it comes to the game plot, you have to remember thats just MMORPG. And endgame is more important in this kind of games, than story.