Does individual character progression affect anything in future story content?

[SaferMurderweapon.7143]

Does personal story, HoT/PoF story progression, or previous Living Story Episode progression affect a newer living story episode? Or can I just play on a character other than what I've been playing on up to that point and do future content on that character without any affect on the story itself? I'm specifically referring to things such as character dialogue.

[Eros.6801]

Short answer yes. As far as i know only first few chapters of personal story affected by race and choices you made, later personal story, PoF/HoT, LW are all the same which mean any character you play won't matter. The only thing that matters is probably different voice acting depends on race. I personally thought it's a shame to lose the ability to choose which way the story is heading, consequences of the choice we made etc. but i guess it's fine.

[Urud.4925]

There are few details and dialogues that change based on the race or previous choices. For example when you meet Ceara in HoT, there are few lines depending on your previous personal story. They way you escape the jail in Istan is also different according to your race. The fight against Mordremoth slightly changes depending on your choices (or not choices...) in the personal story. Sylvari have also different lines in the HoT story.There are minor changes, that make the experience even more beautiful imo. But nothing that really change the lore. If a dragon dies or it's spared, it must be the same for everyone. This is why the personal story can be more different only at the beginning.

[Danikat.8537]

The personal story and each expansion storyline has to be played in order and progress through them is character specific. You can skip to the start of an expansion, but you can't do things like get up to the Eater of Souls fight in PoF on one character, skip to another one to fight that boss, then carry on with your original character after that.

Other than that it's as other people have said; there are changes to the dialogue and occasionally to which options are available based on things like your race and profession and sometimes based on changes made during the story like which Order you joined. But it just changes the story (and then only slightly), you won't be prevented from playing it.

The story and the characters in it will assume your character has done everything leading up to that point, including Season 1 which isn't even available any more. They will talk about you defeating Scarlet and saving Lion's Arch even if it was fully rebuilt before that character was created. Which is a little bit weird, but I guess it makes sense that in canon the Commander did all those things.

[joneirikb.7506]

Simplified:

• This game has a linear story.
• This game doesn't have multiple paths/choices for story.
• A few minor dialogues can vary depending on choice/race.

They promised a bit too much when they where describing the game before launch. :) And had to fall back on a more traditional story telling style, understandable enough as it has to fit/work with every single character that players could make and play in different manners. Even if they decided to spend a lot of time trying to make choices affect story, they would still have to get mostly the same results from each story, or it would diverge too much between different players to be able to develop the story further.

Player choices affecting story is a nightmare in an MMO game. This is also why they did as they did with the Personal story and moved all the choices to the start, so that no matter what choice you take you get funneled into the "end story". As opposed to the more traditional style of branching story lines where you start from the same start but expand as you get more choices. It wouldn't work well in an MMO, just imagine the PersonalStory letting you chose which of the dragons to fight against and kill ? That would require so much more work from every single later story they made, as they would need to make variants for player having killed any one dragon before... And somehow lead you to another dragon that you haven't killed yet etc.

Ok done ranting now, sorry.

[ExoticKitten.4712]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Simplified:

• This game has a linear story.
• This game doesn't have multiple paths/choices for story.
• A few minor dialogues can vary depending on choice/race.

They promised a bit too much when they where describing the game before launch. :) And had to fall back on a more traditional story telling style, understandable enough as it has to fit/work with every single character that players could make and play in different manners. Even if they decided to spend a lot of time trying to make choices affect story, they would still have to get mostly the same results from each story, or it would diverge too much between different players to be able to develop the story further.

Player choices affecting story is a nightmare in an MMO game. This is also why they did as they did with the Personal story and moved all the choices to the start, so that no matter what choice you take you get funneled into the "end story". As opposed to the more traditional style of branching story lines where you start from the same start but expand as you get more choices. It wouldn't work well in an MMO, just imagine the PersonalStory letting you chose which of the dragons to fight against and kill ? That would require so much more work from every single later story they made, as they would need to make variants for player having killed any one dragon before... And somehow lead you to another dragon that you haven't killed yet etc.

Ok done ranting now, sorry.

Thanks That helps quite a bit ^_^ :+1: