Would you want more quests like Racial-Storyline (Lv.1-30)?

I make a lot of new characters and play a ton of Personal Story, especially the Lv. 1-30. I have to say that these are one of the most interesting quests of Core game.We get to know a lot about the cultures of races we are playing and that's great. These quests are for a lot smaller scale and therefore you get to know the people (NPCs) around you. For me, it's a lot more immersive when Norn have mission with the Mists, Jotun or Sons of Svanir. Charr are working for their High Legions, etc.I love the lore of Guild Wars and there are some great connections. The main - Living Story - is a great way of putting large scale fights, important things for the whole Tyria.

What Living World doesn't and can't deliver is personality of our characters. Even though we are the main hero of the story, we don't have any influence on the character development. Personal missions can be very costly and take more work, because of obvious reasons.

I know that it's very unlikely to happen but I'm just curious - Would you want more quests like Racial Storyline?

We do periodically get storylines which are more personal for one race or another (the obvious one is probably Hot and sylvari characters) but I'd love it if it was possible to have storylines which are actually different - beyond dialogue and minor choices - for each race, or Order or whatever else makes sense at the time. I do all the storylines on multiple characters anyway so it would be great to see different approaches to solving the same problem.

But I do understand why it doesn't happen. It's time consuming to make, it makes later storylines more complicated (unless you just never mention that period of time again) and it has relatively little benefit because people like me are going to do it multiple times anyway, other people will only do it once no matter what, so it's a lot of extra work for not much extra content in practice.

I mean, it's not like LS cant explore a race; for example ls2 and HoT with sylvari, exploration of the firstborns and the start of the nightmare court....then ls3 was primarily human-centric- we even fight alongside the shining blade a few times (and more times if you count canach) and see their history along with the white mantle. And while PoF was again human centric, it was centred in elona, a completely different can of worms. It's not exactly to the same effect as the lv10-30 story, but there's a lot of history and fun stuff involved with their institutions, i'm personally hoping for charr centric story next.

For 5x the work, i'm not sure there'd be 5x the satisfaction with more specific racial story- the lv10-30 story lines are to me, boring, for the sole and singular fact that you have like 5-7 instances to get an entire start-to-finish story across, each is a smaller story within the greater story of gw2, but each of them could have been so much greater were they not confined to a limited number of instances. Obviously there's malyck and the other pale trees as a famous example, but then the jotun have an entire history gw2 only has a few conversations on, all the story flame legion attacks are like baby fights with barely any to no antipation/prepartion and small scale battles in an implied large fight; they had to be, because lv10-30 can't have the kind of large scale world changing events LS does without changing the rest of the personal story. LS is a MUCH superior way of telling a story than any of the personal stories.

Personally, i'd not want to see a massive drop in quality in story - LS is AMAZING, so many times my heart got caught by stuff - and I don't see how they can produce more content similar to the early personal story without giving us 5 storylines per episode, which is A LOT of work, for something that many people aren't going to play more than a few times as i'd say the story dedicated are a minority. Also making 5 completely seperate plots complicates the story for everyone- any less would be a decline in quality. I like the current way it's done- how LS/the story as a whole kinda concentrates on one culture at a time and everyone regaurdless of race feels important, though it might be nice for a bit more race specific options/dialogue.

Yes, YES, and hell YES!

I vote no. Storyline is part of the game content I don't like much. I do it once only to secure progress, but never return to it after that. So of course, personally, I would prefer that Anet gives priority to something else.Though, I have nothing against it. I would simply not touch it, unless it is made close to mandatory by a significant amount of APs, or an associated content requiring the storyline to be unlocked. I would then not be happy to be forced to more storyline instances.

I would very much love that. But it's just not going to happen and it's perfectly fine. It would essentially divide the game into at least 5 different games as per the five races. Just not feasible.

@Lexi.1398 said:I mean, it's not like LS cant explore a race; for example ls2 and HoT with sylvari, exploration of the firstborns and the start of the nightmare court....then ls3 was primarily human-centric- we even fight alongside the shining blade a few times (and more times if you count canach) and see their history along with the white mantle. And while PoF was again human centric, it was centred in elona, a completely different can of worms. It's not exactly to the same effect as the lv10-30 story, but there's a lot of history and fun stuff involved with their institutions, i'm personally hoping for charr centric story next.

For 5x the work, i'm not sure there'd be 5x the satisfaction with more specific racial story- the lv10-30 story lines are to me, boring, for the sole and singular fact that you have like 5-7 instances to get an entire start-to-finish story across, each is a smaller story within the greater story of gw2, but each of them could have been so much greater were they not confined to a limited number of instances. Obviously there's malyck and the other pale trees as a famous example, but then the jotun have an entire history gw2 only has a few conversations on, all the story flame legion attacks are like baby fights with barely any to no antipation/prepartion and small scale battles in an implied large fight; they had to be, because lv10-30 can't have the kind of large scale world changing events LS does without changing the rest of the personal story. LS is a MUCH superior way of telling a story than any of the personal stories.

Personally, i'd not want to see a massive drop in quality in story - LS is AMAZING, so many times my heart got caught by stuff - and I don't see how they can produce more content similar to the early personal story without giving us 5 storylines per episode, which is A LOT of work, for something that many people aren't going to play more than a few times as i'd say the story dedicated are a minority. Also making 5 completely seperate plots complicates the story for everyone- any less would be a decline in quality. I like the current way it's done- how LS/the story as a whole kinda concentrates on one culture at a time and everyone regaurdless of race feels important, though it might be nice for a bit more race specific options/dialogue.

True, LS does this in some scale. I think these were one of the best maps because each had that unique feeling to it. Although I don't think they executed S1-2 very well in terms of visuals, I think that the story itself was great. As for PoF, we tackled on Human story but we didn't have a choice of who we want to meet, how we want things to do. I don't think that's the case but being able to make even the smallest changes to the story mean a lot to me.For example: Ferocity, Dignity, Charm system could still work if they made our character respond differently depending on our beforementioned.Just one or two lines would do the job. And I know, money and budget, I'm jsut saying that this could mean a lot to some, not being a puppet.

And I get this, this wouldn't be worth it for sure. There are lots of different people playing GW2 and some of them don't really care about story or lore, that's perfectly fine.I think LS is great but it's becoming more of a book we read rather than playing the game. I love books, but I can read one if I want. Being able to have small impact on our character would be awesome.

Atm, all races' characters in Living World Personal story are Dignified. What if Ferocious Charr could be more aggressive towards some enemies? - One, two sentences and this would make a huge deal.

Not sure what do you mean by "same", so answering "No", as personal story so far was the worst story experience in the game, for me. It's boring, generic, with (most of the time) below than average voice acting and dull text and plots. If you just meant it sound like "to be less linear", then you had to phrase it differently.

Can't say no to more content :+1:

The L1-30 stories are more interesting in part because they seem to have gotten more time to flesh out than the L40-L80 stories. It's less about them being more race or character specific, and more about them being among the first things that ANet worked on, giving them time to properly polish. As an extreme example, most people agree that the Zhaitan fight is the worst (or among the worst) in the Personal Story and even ANet acknowledges it got short shrift.

So instead of asking if we want more L1-30 stories, I'd ask... would we prefer to get fewer Living World stories per year that got more time to get polished? Or more stories with less time? Or are we already at the happy medium between speed and quality?

Based on comments by the story writers, another question we could ask are: do we want to see more acknowledgment of the different races/professions/story choices made in the Living World? If so, then that too would result in far, far fewer stories per year (it exponential increases the amount of dialogue that needs to be written and translated and voiced).

Personally, I think 2.5-4 months is already a long time to wait (even though it's amazingly quick in terms of development time).

And if forced to choose between more L1-30 stories versus more L80 stories, I'd choose L80. There's a limited number of times I'm going to play any story and I have more L80 characters than I will have characters who will be "at level" for L1-30.

I'd like to see more done with the orders. It's pitched as an important choice to make, and really, all it does is decide who's at the gate, and which way you do a few of the quests leading up to the gate. It could even be something that's done post main campaign, prior to where LS 1 would have started, or even as "filler" between LS releases.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:The L1-30 stories are more interesting in part because they seem to have gotten more time to flesh out than the L40-L80 stories. It's less about them being more race or character specific, and more about them being among the first things that ANet worked on, giving them time to properly polish. As an extreme example, most people agree that the Zhaitan fight is the worst (or among the worst) in the Personal Story and even ANet acknowledges it got short shrift.

So instead of asking if we want more L1-30 stories, I'd ask... would we prefer to get fewer Living World stories per year that got more time to get polished? Or more stories with less time? Or are we already at the happy medium between speed and quality?

Based on comments by the story writers, another question we could ask are: do we want to see more acknowledgment of the different races/professions/story choices made in the Living World? If so, then that too would result in far, far fewer stories per year (it exponential increases the amount of dialogue that needs to be written and translated and voiced).

Personally, I think 2.5-4 months is already a long time to wait (even though it's amazingly quick in terms of development time).

And if forced to choose between more L1-30 stories versus more L80 stories, I'd choose L80. There's a limited number of times I'm going to play any story and I have more L80 characters than I will have characters who will be "at level" for L1-30.

Well, Zhaitan fight was indeed the worst one. And remaking stuff back would be very unprofitable for ANet. As for Zhaitan fight itself, well - this one needs a remake for sure, in near or far future. This thing can ruin the experience for some players and I think that this one particular mission should be remade, leaving other Core PS as it is.

The current quality of LW we receive is great and I have no doubt about it. What bothers me is that ANet made Player Character the Hero, the Commander while we clearly have absolutely no impact on what's happening - and that's fine. I'd just want to take PC out of the all-lights-spot. We're not that important, the story is, and while the latest LW delivered amazing experience I feel like races, classes and character choices start to disappear.

What I meant by this thread is something that would bring some personality into our characters. This would surely take away resources to do. But the perfect idea would be to make another set of Personal Story Quests. Perhaps after the LWS4 there could be added someting like this. Something that would once more bring PC to its homeland.

And lastly, when we're at PC personality, if all of this can't be done without harming the whole LW-development, I'd be all for some Race and choice dependant quotes. It could be something as small as Charr reacting ferouciously to one or to situations. And so on.I'm just wondering what people's opinions are as I know this is very unlikely to happen, just like Dungeons which work great as a side-but main lore.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:What I meant by this thread is something that would bring some personality into our characters.Yes, I got that.The issue is that it's geometrically more expensive. The reason our characters are generic is to allow us our own head cannon with fewer limitations. If the story took into account race or profession, it would require far, far more resources and so we'd end up with fewer stories.While I'd like more 'personality', I'd rather have more content. I don't think we can reasonably separate the two.

It could be something as small as Charr reacting ferouciously to one or to situations.The writers have sometimes talked about this sort of thing. And it turns out: it's a lot more costly than most of us realize. Just take your example for a single line per LS episode. That means at least five, maybe 10 lines of dialogue instead of one and more time with the relevant voice actors. It means more time for translations and localization. And that's without the line having any 'true' personality (just something that makes it sound like a charr).

We do get a little of that. At the barracks heart in Thunderhead Peaks, the asura speak of fighting for 'our progeny' while the humans rally the troops for 'our children'.

What bothers me is that ANet made Player Character the Hero, the Commander while we clearly have absolutely no impact on what's happeningWe have a huge impact, since the PC is central to, well, everything.Maybe what you mean is that the player has no agency in making any of the choices in the story. And again, that's because it's vastly more expensive than using the identical plot devices/options for every player.

I'm completely in favor of the theory of branching plots and dialogue, and more options in just about everything. It's just not feasible given the economics of producing games. For the foreseeable future, MMOs will tend towards the generic.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"DonArkanio.6419" said:What bothers me is that ANet made Player Character the Hero, the Commander while we clearly have absolutely no impact on what's happeningWe have a huge impact, since the PC is central to, well, everything.Maybe what you mean is that the player has no agency in making any of the choices in the story. And again, that's because it's vastly more expensive than using the identical plot devices/options for every player.

The lesson from SWTOR is that if you listen to people who want their choices to count, you get backlash from those same people when you make their choices count, because it turns out that they didn't really mean for those choices to count. ("Hey! I killed Koth and now, like, Koth's really dead!")(1)

(1). No. I'm not kidding.

Well, as I mentioned in another post, I think they had an avenue to work with to create good side-stories, they just didn't have the time or resources to explore it.

The example I made was related to profession stories, though, where you interacted with an NPC that would give you training and quests to gain abilities and/or traits for your profession. I'm sure many players are fine with the whole hero point system and just quickly unlocking an elite spec...it's more convenient and you get to play around with the spec sooner...but it might have been more interesting if there was one or more NPCs that end up telling a story and having an adventure that helps unlock those abilities for you.

Having something similar but for race (that is, having quests and stories) could also work but I think it still needs to have some sort of purpose. Putting in stories with no goal or reward isn't going to get you a good turnout for the effort invested in it. There needs to be something you gain from these stories, just like any content put in the game.

A solution would be a serie of racial maps episodes. But would require more work and ressources to make those 80 maps where you find only quests related to a specific race. And I don't see the cadence increased.....

We have a considerable amount of lvl 80 maps now, why not adding some additionnal lvl 20-30 maps?

Asura personal story is easily my favourite story of the entire game - all options tbh, but especially the infinity ball.

So yeah I'd welcome anything like that.

It would be kind of nice if they did some side stories for the different races. They could even tie up some loose ends from the personal stories.

A big yes from me, those were my favourite parts of GW2 story. And since I saw SWTOR being mentioned I wish Anet followed that narrative model here. Not only it allowed you to RP your character but also had the best co-op mechanic in mmo storytelling. Anet doesn't even have to make it racial-specific, just bring back story branches with meaningful choices.

I think this is part of what people are after when they ask for a new race. The starting stories that delve into the culture of that race, so we can get a good feel for another part of Tyria. (It's not the only thing, mind you.)

Honestly, I'd be happy with more little things. For example: We come across an artifact, and most characters say "We need to talk to someone to find out what this is." But if you're playing a norn or someone from the Priory, they simply say "Oh, I know this thing! It's the shield of a famous norn warrior, who ...." All it does is allow the character to know one bit of information without having to go talk to an NPC (not even an instanced conversation), but it shows the difference. Or if you're in an instance, and come across some broken down charr weapon. Playing Iron Legion or an Engineer? You can fix it and use it, giving you a new option for part of that instance. (In LS2, there was one mission where you could double back and grab a discarded flamethrower that made the first part of the mission much easier. Imagine if it had been a broken flamethrower for this.) Holy objects for humans, stray animals for rangers, unquiet spirits for revenants, and so on can all be added so that the story doesn't always play out the same for everyone, but doesn't require derailing things.

I agree that making multiple outcomes for 1 racial-character require a lot of works so i would like them to make 1 particular story instance to be different depend on your character race, for example: you need to infiltrate an stronghold.If you're a Asura you use a siege golem to breakdown the gateIf you're a Charr you call your warbandIf you're a Sylvari.....................................................................................ask tree mom to help you? that was terrible.

Not necessarily more, but different. I'd like player choices to have a greater impact on the path they take to those big confrontations, and I'd also like greater customization (alternate voices for my toon, for instance). Right now lets say I select a 'dignified' attitude - it has no consequences, nor even corresponding choices in my interactions with npcs. Furthermore if I join the Vigil it has only a minimal effect in what happens in my story vs any other faction. I guess it's too late to fix this but it really is one area of the game I feel is lacking.

@Palador.2170 said:I think this is part of what people are after when they ask for a new race. The starting stories that delve into the culture of that race, so we can get a good feel for another part of Tyria. (It's not the only thing, mind you.)

Another suggestion I usually make regarding new races is having a companion that is a race (not one of the five playable) of your choice and it has a story you can follow that delves into stuff like backstory or culture. Seems far simpler than adding the race as playable. But no one ever comments about it so I guess it's not a popular opinion.

@Palador.2170 said:Honestly, I'd be happy with more little things. For example: We come across an artifact, and most characters say "We need to talk to someone to find out what this is." But if you're playing a norn or someone from the Priory, they simply say "Oh, I know this thing! It's the shield of a famous norn warrior, who ...." All it does is allow the character to know one bit of information without having to go talk to an NPC (not even an instanced conversation), but it shows the difference. Or if you're in an instance, and come across some broken down charr weapon. Playing Iron Legion or an Engineer? You can fix it and use it, giving you a new option for part of that instance. (In LS2, there was one mission where you could double back and grab a discarded flamethrower that made the first part of the mission much easier. Imagine if it had been a broken flamethrower for this.) Holy objects for humans, stray animals for rangers, unquiet spirits for revenants, and so on can all be added so that the story doesn't always play out the same for everyone, but doesn't require derailing things.

There shown they can do this to varying degrees, they just rarely do.

My only guess is they don't want to make too many extra voiced lines. Just another compromise, I suppose.

I'd probably start a poll asking what is more important to you, fully voiced dialog or text dialog options/variations.

In visual novel games, these are very important in keeping the player's interest.

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Palador.2170 said:I think this is part of what people are after when they ask for a new race. The starting stories that delve into the culture of that race, so we can get a good feel for another part of Tyria. (It's not the only thing, mind you.)

@Palador.2170 said:Honestly, I'd be happy with more little things. For example: We come across an artifact, and most characters say "We need to talk to someone to find out what this is." But if you're playing a norn or someone from the Priory, they simply say "Oh, I know this thing! It's the shield of a famous norn warrior, who ...." All it does is allow the character to know one bit of information without having to go talk to an NPC (not even an instanced conversation), but it shows the difference. Or if you're in an instance, and come across some broken down charr weapon. Playing Iron Legion or an Engineer? You can fix it and use it, giving you a new option for part of that instance. (In LS2, there was one mission where you could double back and grab a discarded flamethrower that made the first part of the mission much easier. Imagine if it had been a broken flamethrower for this.) Holy objects for humans, stray animals for rangers, unquiet spirits for revenants, and so on can all be added so that the story doesn't always play out the same for everyone, but doesn't require derailing things.

I actually really like your suggestions. In fact, we have a minature of something you mentioned. I believe each race has a companion at Lv. 1-30. You can choose it by selection in character creation. It's sad that they disappear once this short story ends.

Extra voiced lines would be very costly, but adding about 40 lines of text wouldn't hurt. And I know people would be much happier if they just had an option to choose.

As much as I'd like it to have a ton of branching, I wouldn't like how much that would slow down development though. The main thing I've always wanted is for those dialogue choice options to actually count toward your character's personality, at the very least (the ones like charming, fierce, and honorable? if i remember correctly). And maybe that would slightly impact future dialogue. Doesn't have to be race specific and it would require a lot more dialogue be recorded if it was voiced, but it could at least let you have your character respond to things the way you want them too, even if the story stays linear.