(Opinion/Rant) What's your worst story mission in Gw2/Expansions?

[Morvran.8265]

Everything after HoT. Kind of. Let me explain.

Many pointed out that EoD is walking simulator content, and after that I started paying more attention to the balance of gameplay vs dialogue.

I never realized it was this bad. Recently replayed the expansions and PoF is just as bad as EoD. 90% standing around and talking, then boss fight where nothing new is learned then talking again. There is barely any gameplay in the story in most arcs. 

HoT was seemingly the last era where talking and combat meshed well together, and bossfights could have storytelling of their own instead of being a spectacle that puts all the talking on hold for a bit. 

The worst are those instances where you can't even let the unskippable dialogue play while you afk, no you have to manually start a new conversation like 5 times in a row and let them talk for minutes. On first playthrough it doesn't stick out as much but on repeats where you already know what happens it really gets to you.

Feels like the complete opposite of how GW1 did story content and I can't say it's an improvement.

[Freya.9075]

I would have to agree the story part where you play as Caithe to be the most annoying one. Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good salad. But this one belongs in the compost. 

[Batel.9206]

The parts where you play as Caithe. I despised Caithe before that part in the story...that did not help. (Mechanically those missions were annoying, but the story issues were the larger problem, in my opinion.)

[Omega.6801]

I've been redoing the whole story with a friend. And it's not one single episode or mission I could point to. Instead, there are types of missions I have learnt to despise.
1) Busywork. Whenever the story asks the commander to do events to fill a bar. I get that it is supposed to bring players into the new map and that it should familiarize players with potential activities. But especially on a second (or in my case tenth) playthrough these parts just drag on forever.
2) Narrative Missions. Basically Missions where nothing happens beside reading textblocks or listening to audiologs. Stuff like the interlude with Gorriks audiologs in Gyala Delve or the time we had to investigate wreckage of Scarlets many attacks. Missions don't always have to be combat, Party Politics or infiltrating Joko's fortress are great examples for non-combat missions.
3) Not your characters mission missions. I don't like it, when I don't get to use my own character or its abilities to get through the mission. The Zhaitan fight or the missions as Caithe stand out as the worst offenders here. But there are exceptions, invading Kourna with Blish's arm f.e. was fun.

But overall, I'm quite happy with the story, having a buddy with me to shitpost wheneve the dialogue drags or is getting too cheesy definitely helps. I have come to value some of the LS maps even more and there are more very good and impressive missions than there are weak ones...not couting the core story, that one just pales in comparison.

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Everyone I know hates the story steps in LS2 where you have to play as Caithe.

Add another person to your list. If I wanted to play a female Sylvari Thief wielding dual daggers, I would have created one.

[Endaris.1452]

As someone who mained thief as their first character, I didn't mind the caithe missions at all. I was already playing double dagger with a condi build so that was basically a raw upgrade and great demolition fun.

Can definitely understand why they would trigger about every non-thief though. 😅

[Dante.1508]

11 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

For me it's pretty much anything to do with the Sylvari. As newly emergent sentient beings, they could have been really interesting. Instead they ended up being just another bunch of pretentious woodland elves with posh English accents. Yawn.

The only Sylvari story i enjoyed was the origin story about a Sylvari from another tree that was different and he had washed up in his pod. He was not connected to the in game Sylvari or the Nightmare court. then he left and we never heard anything again.. very frustrating.

7 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Joon's house was pretty bad but the final chapter/fight against Zhaitan tops everything....with the possible exception of Gayala.

Zhaitan is still broken to this day... The npc teammates run around like headless chickens..

3 hours ago, Batel.9206 said:

The parts where you play as Caithe. I despised Caithe before that part in the story...that did not help. (Mechanically those missions were annoying, but the story issues were the larger problem, in my opinion.)

To this day i still hate her for the egg incident in HoT.. Developers and writers need to be careful how they write characters or they destroy them forever in the eyes of the players.. Caithe was this. Also with Braham and his constant whining and childish hate.. Two huge mistakes in my opinion..

Edited August 5, 2023 by Dante.1508

[Tachenon.5270]

Some good examples given. I'll throw in a couple that gave me a case of the eye rolls. Disclaimer: YMMV.

The starting thing for Norn. Humans fight centaurs and that giant exploding thing. Ka-blammo! Asura fight rampaging golems and the Inquest. Cool. Sylvari fight a dragon and its minions (in their dreams, but still). Charr fight scary ghosts and a big animated stone statue. Heck, yeah. Norn? Who don't use armies and fight alone as true warriors should? "Hey, go join in the slaughter of that big worm somebody else already hunted and captured and conveniently brought to Hangrammr Climb for the Great (ha ha ha) Hunt." Uh. What? And earn the 'Slayer of Issormir' title? Pfft. 'Shooter of Fish in a Barrel' would be the more appropriate. A Norn from Guild Wars would have gone out into the wilderness all alone and (actually) hunted the kitten thing down. "Just try and stop me." ~ Olaf Olafson

Also . . . Justice? For Riannoc? Hah! That idiot dragged a poor, terrified little KID into a suicidal situation, where he earned his well-deserved Darwin Award and in the process, scarred that kid for life. But it's the kid who gets the blame for it all, and Riannoc who is in need of Justice, and the future Pact Commander who gets to mete out that justice. Makes sense. Anet sense. (See GW2 Old Forums Archive thread 'name things that you find unfair' for more.)

Somebody already mentioned it, but yeah, the thing with Malyck. Come on, man.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Most of the story stuff in personal story after your order mentor dies felt pretty meh, then living world S2 was just boring and poorly written in parts, uhh most of living world season 3 I guess, especially crack in the ice and the final chapter. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

Forearmed is Forewarned

It starts out like some kind of stealth mission, and I hate these things. Then you have to go around killing stuff and one of the targets is on the very border of the map where you can go out of bounds and potentially reset the mission. Who the heck decided this was a good idea?

And that era with IBS seemed to have a lot of the out of bounds problem. Heck, there was one mission where you had to follow an NPC and then you got booted for running too far ahead of them!

Also the last IBS chapter making you do all those stupid DRM missions. Ok I get the idea, but why were there so many?