Character biographies

A long time ago I played a great MMO called City of Heroes. In the game you were able to write an origin story or whatever you liked in a text box that other players could view and read. This personalised your character on a whole new level. I would love a similar feature in game. I know this may be unappealing to the developers because they pushed their "personal story" on us. I am here to say these stories are boring and I want creative freedom in game to truly make a personal story. I want to have a Sylvari who was raised alongside Charr. An Asura who isn't intelligent, but is an excellent fighter. And when the time comes to do the personal story missions I will simply suspend my disbelief.

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:I want to have a Sylvari who was raised alongside Charr. An Asura who isn't intelligent, but is an excellent fighter. And when the time comes to do the personal story missions I will simply suspend my disbelief.

I have an asura that I role play as a mute. Well, she's obviously not a mute during her personal story, so I just pretend that she's signing.

There was a thread in the old forums that talked about adding a clickable bio card for player characters. I still support this idea.

Ultima Online had (has?) a similar thing. You got an image of the character (no stats or build info) and a free text box with whatever the player wanted to write about them. I'd love to have the same in GW2, or even just the text. It could also be useful to people who don't role-play or make up backstory for their characters because they could use it as a more general 'about me' page to talk about who they are and what kind of things they like doing in-game.

I also don't see why the personal story would be a problem. Plenty of people already make up additional backstory for their characters - either building it around the personal story or disregarding it and starting from scratch. The biography choices only cover a few points in your characters past so there would have to be a lot more story there, even the most boring person on earth has had more than 3 things happen in their lifetime.

Champions Online has the same thing. :D This would be fun, I'd totally run around in cities just to read random characters' stories!

I'm 100% in support of this feature. I would love to add a backstory for my own characters.

I mean, I already do it in other games. ;)

Sadly, ANet did remove our personalities (Charm, Ferocity, Nobility), so I dunno if we'll get a backstory tab. Even so, it'd be a great addition, and again, I'm 100% behind it! =)

That's a great idea! :)

I dont know if they need to add it in game. My Charr has her own backstory, so do three of my other(charr) characters. All of them different. I keep all of them in text format so that if im doing any kind of RPing i can easily send someone a link on that characters back story.

Id support this as well. Shouldn't be hard too hard to add under our character menu a text box, for our Character Stories, which if other people right click our characters, people see then our Character Stories if they click on it to open it up for them to read.If it works then like reading through a book, this would be awesome. That way could you write then also a story about your characte, that maybe has several chapters, so that it doesn#t has be to just 1 site of a text box with very limited space.

My thief comes from a long line of Rangers (as in those that use range and not what this game call Ranger).My necro was raised by Fleshreavers (Minion-based Necro. No other way I can play Necro).

Eh, I already do this with my 15 characters as both a role player and a writer. They have bios, personalities, history, and so on and I have that info stored away.

It would be nice if Anet did that but I don't see it happening and I would rather them divert resources to improving the story of the game.

Or not because it's the inadequacies and flaws in the story that help fuel my creative drive for my characters. Anet isn't providing answers I like? I can make my own. :D

I'd love a feature like this!

Nothing is stopping you from doing that already. I wouldn't want to pile more work on them by having them think up new stories that range more broadly when I, as a writer, can do this myself. Though a bio for each one would be appreciated~ I seem to do most of my plotting with my friends ingame as we play, so it'd be handy to have that in easy reach. But this I can also do myself. I was working on storing them on a forum or blog somewhere. I mostly just work with two friends, so I don't require the information to be available in the game itself.

My Asura ranger is the black sheep of his family. He's never invented a single thing in his life, he prefers to be outdoors and working with animals. Just because I had to choose an invention for him, doesn't mean he actually made anything. Goes without saying he's also not a Snaff Savant, but his sister is.My human thief was blessed by Kormir, but he doesn't particularly follow any of the Gods. That's who his family preferred.My norn ranger has Raven, but after playing her and learning more about her, I feel like Bear fits her better. She also wouldn't have done any of her personal story. She'd be out on her own with her leopard and owl, forging her own legend without anyone's help.I had to switch from my sylvari mesmer to my sylvari necromancer for story stuff, because the tone of voice in HoT didn't fit my mesmer. She doesn't even fit the role of Commander. She's a member of the Order of Whispers and stays at the headquarters doing office work. She has barely an adventurous bone in her body. She likely would not have gone up against Zhaitan, but stayed back to help rebuild the headquarters. But I finished personal story on her and only her. I enjoy the story as it is but where she is concerned, I ignore it in relation to her. And the whole having to choose an order thing...I could name a few who never would.

Unless I've completely misunderstood what the OP is suggesting this wouldn't require any work from Anet's writers and wouldn't affect existing or upcoming stories in any way at all.

The system I remember from Ultima Online and City of Heroes is literally just a text box you can type into - like the guild message of the day or LFG messages but with a higher character limit. Then anyone who wants to can click on your character and click a button on their nameplate to display that text box so they can read what's written there.

It would require some work from the people who develop the UI to create the text box and the button to make it readable (it would probably need a report button as well), but no writers would need to be involved and once it's done it wouldn't need any further work, unless there's bugs of course.

@Danikat.8537 said:Unless I've completely misunderstood what the OP is suggesting this wouldn't require any work from Anet's writers and wouldn't affect existing or upcoming stories in any way at all.

The system I remember from Ultima Online and City of Heroes is literally just a text box you can type into - like the guild message of the day or LFG messages but with a higher character limit. Then anyone who wants to can click on your character and click a button on their nameplate to display that text box so they can read what's written there.

It would require some work from the people who develop the UI to create the text box and the button to make it readable (it would probably need a report button as well), but no writers would need to be involved and once it's done it wouldn't need any further work, unless there's bugs of course.

Yes. This is my exact intention down to the mechanics of how it would function.

I used to hoard comically awful biographies in City of Heroes the way Scrooge McDuck hoarded gold coins. I miss that game so much

It would be nice, just for other players to have fun reading and such, but not influence the story in any way. Like just a place for you to make an alternate version of yourself.