The story degrades a lot as you progress

[Macabre.3829]

This is a lot more obvious to those of us who run the story in a short amount of time than those who have done it over the course of years.
I did everything, from My Story to the end of Icebrood Saga in less than a couple of weeks.
Somewhere around Path of Fire I believe, the game turns into wasting your time by forcing you into doing events and hearts in open world to progress in the story, which is just a cheap way to prolong the story gameplay. It breaks the pattern and immersion and is just a major annoyance.
That pattern interrupt is something I did not like that a all, and also, Taimi being my favorite character, there was just not enough of her in Path of Fire and onwards.

I hope there will be more Taimi in End of Dragons, and as name implies, have less dragons. Really tired of them.

[Fueki.4753]

You might not have noticed, since the events weren't active while you did it, but Season 2 used open world events several times.

Investigating Mordrem activities in the Iron Marches is basically a chain of events and dialogue. Acquiring the pieces of Adelbern's crown, so Rytlock can do his ritual to remove the ghosts, during Season 2 also requires doing events. Using the Skritt tunnels in the Silverwastes also requires them to be unlocked via events.

And given that Season 1, which is not available anymore, also made heavy use of events, one can say that the Living World used events from the very first.

As for Taimi, I'm happy that she had less and less time. Between were squeaky voice and basically being a plot device to explain excuse all the new tools and machines that drive the plot onwards, I think the plot might be better off with less of her.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Fueki.4753

[maxwelgm.4315]

I would say this is a progression rather than a degeneration - in spite of my personal opinion of whether it works or not. GW2's core story is heavily contained within personal instances, things that by definition cannot give you a proper sense of scale for a MMO game, as much as it also can't allow you to go through it with your friends without it not being "their" proper story. The plot beats, worldbuilding and the writing carries the personal story up to the end of Heart of Thorns, but the gameplay is precisely hurt by the same aspect of heavily self-contained instances you praise.

 

There is a nearly total separation of the Commander's and the Pact's actions during both core and HoT, up until Dragon's Stand where the Commander simply does not participate in the actual fight with the physical magic vessel of Mordremoth - a fact conveniently brushed off by use of his domain of mind and us fighting the dragon's mind as a separate entity while the Pact assaults the body. Anet has deliberately gone away from this model and instead slowly introduced a mixed pacing of the story in the sense that we go through open-world and private instance aspects of it. There are many disadvantages to this such as everyone being their own commander but at the same time everyone else being "just there" - certainly limiting suspension of disbelief, but on the other hand it finally delivers what any MMO should - proper sense of scale and gameplay driven narratives.

 

You can even see where this approach succeeds and fails very clearly on the Dragonstorm instance. It's a strange matchup of both extremes where you have this (public) instance related to a most significant moment of the Commander's personal story. If it had been a full blown map with a huge dynamic meta and many more mechanics, just like Dragon's Stand but this time being one and the same as your personal story (with an extra, private instance on the aftermath for Ryland's plot of course), you would be able to truly see the sense of scale of battling Elder Dragons and to realize the potential of just how much effort the Pact puts into mustering large forces to counter the Dragons. Likewise you would not merely fight a dozen of dragon minions with two isolated champions but rather witness the full extent of their powers and everything they could throw at each other and at you (like Mordremoth did have, but it was cleverly separated from your personal story).

 

However if we had the whole of Dragonstorm be just part of the personal story as a mission instance, there would be no sense of scale at all - and yet there are some advantages here, where the battle could have much more personal dialogue and the mechanics could drive you into seeing the perspective of the Commander, Aurene and the two other dragon champions being forced to fight against one another to the bitter end. This would certainly also be cool, there is nothing wrong with the Hearts and Minds instance - it's just not very MMO-ish and feels very dissonant to have it done fully away from the large map-wide metas that Anet has mastered over the years.

 

The moral of the story is not whether Core+Hot or PoF+LW3,4,5 approaches to story are better, but rather that Dragonstorm which tries to mix both just ends up having the bad side of everything all over it. And so the TL;DR is: they have deliberately and clearly decided to go since PoF towards a specific approach to storytelling that puts the "MMO" back into the "personal story" - and where they have full commitment to this model, it does work in what it sets out to do (giving proper sense of scale, truly involving the Commander with the Pact and the world around them) regardless of how much we might miss the initial approach.

[Obliviscaris.6937]

I'd agree that the story felt a little "lost", and that I wholeheartedly agreed with Ellen Kiel when she was surprised that the team going to take out Balthazar was basically one person.

However the undertaking of hearts and events did a good job of framing the situation the people of Elona were in. Particularly when it came to life in Vabbi and the populace's dogmatic love for Palawa Joko.

 

As a whole however the story didn't feel 'weighty' for me. 

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

On 12/27/2021 at 9:12 PM, maxwelgm.4315 said:

I would say this is a progression rather than a degeneration - in spite of my personal opinion of whether it works or not. GW2's core story is heavily contained within personal instances, things that by definition cannot give you a proper sense of scale for a MMO game, as much as it also can't allow you to go through it with your friends without it not being "their" proper story. The plot beats, worldbuilding and the writing carries the personal story up to the end of Heart of Thorns, but the gameplay is precisely hurt by the same aspect of heavily self-contained instances you praise.

 

There is a nearly total separation of the Commander's and the Pact's actions during both core and HoT, up until Dragon's Stand where the Commander simply does not participate in the actual fight with the physical magic vessel of Mordremoth - a fact conveniently brushed off by use of his domain of mind and us fighting the dragon's mind as a separate entity while the Pact assaults the body. Anet has deliberately gone away from this model and instead slowly introduced a mixed pacing of the story in the sense that we go through open-world and private instance aspects of it. There are many disadvantages to this such as everyone being their own commander but at the same time everyone else being "just there" - certainly limiting suspension of disbelief, but on the other hand it finally delivers what any MMO should - proper sense of scale and gameplay driven narratives.

 

You can even see where this approach succeeds and fails very clearly on the Dragonstorm instance. It's a strange matchup of both extremes where you have this (public) instance related to a most significant moment of the Commander's personal story. If it had been a full blown map with a huge dynamic meta and many more mechanics, just like Dragon's Stand but this time being one and the same as your personal story (with an extra, private instance on the aftermath for Ryland's plot of course), you would be able to truly see the sense of scale of battling Elder Dragons and to realize the potential of just how much effort the Pact puts into mustering large forces to counter the Dragons. Likewise you would not merely fight a dozen of dragon minions with two isolated champions but rather witness the full extent of their powers and everything they could throw at each other and at you (like Mordremoth did have, but it was cleverly separated from your personal story).

 

However if we had the whole of Dragonstorm be just part of the personal story as a mission instance, there would be no sense of scale at all - and yet there are some advantages here, where the battle could have much more personal dialogue and the mechanics could drive you into seeing the perspective of the Commander, Aurene and the two other dragon champions being forced to fight against one another to the bitter end. This would certainly also be cool, there is nothing wrong with the Hearts and Minds instance - it's just not very MMO-ish and feels very dissonant to have it done fully away from the large map-wide metas that Anet has mastered over the years.

 

The moral of the story is not whether Core+Hot or PoF+LW3,4,5 approaches to story are better, but rather that Dragonstorm which tries to mix both just ends up having the bad side of everything all over it. And so the TL;DR is: they have deliberately and clearly decided to go since PoF towards a specific approach to storytelling that puts the "MMO" back into the "personal story" - and where they have full commitment to this model, it does work in what it sets out to do (giving proper sense of scale, truly involving the Commander with the Pact and the world around them) regardless of how much we might miss the initial approach.

Well said. Personally, I do think the more 'war-esque', large-scale approach to the Elder Dragons feels more realistic (in a fantasy RPG, I know) and high-stake. In that sense, I think the instances and story surrounding Mordremoth nailed it. 

What's more interesting, I'd say, is comparing the tone of the narrative and dialogue. I'm not a professional writer, by any means, but there's a fairly noticeable change between core + season 2 + HoT and season 3 onwards. 

[ugrakarma.9416]

Strict history stances make the history mode too much disconnected from 'open world'.

 

To give a example in neverwinter from PWE, the history runs on dungeons, the open world is just for "quests" that seem only about to kill and "collect" things.

 

Gw2 by this turn, have a effort to create a "living world', is far from perfect, but they have footsteps into it. is very less boring than tradicional MMo's;

 

In other side, theres games like Dragon Age, where history is very mixed with "open world", but is very hard-coded, so it will requires much more resources from anet to reach Dragon Age level.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Its always been like this. In Personal Story, you had to wait ten levels between each chapter. Do you know how long and grindy that is to a new player going through the game the first time?

 

That's the equivalent of doing dozens of hearts and events instead of just a few.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Hannelore.8153