Please add character restart option

[Kiki.9450]

13 hours ago, evilcat.6817 said:

Replaying personal story is very tempting, as i am a bit curious about other orders mission or getting all minor races, but maybe just make spreadsheet to track it and use alts.

You can save yourself the spreadsheet effort by using this page in the Wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Personal_story Just add your API key and it'll highlight everything you've done in green.

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

To be clear, it's wise to take statements like that with a grain of salt. Though it might be legitimate in the sense that it is a difficult problem and not worth the development resources for payoff, it's also the case that excuses are sometimes made just because like, it's basically annoying to deal with and they don't want to do it.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/142559-legendary-relics-are-coming-soon/page/16/#comment-2076092

On 2/15/2024 at 12:47 AM, Sobx.1758 said:

It doesn't matter what they'd say, you'd label it as "corporate speech" and it probably wouldn't be the first time

Called it. 😂

______

17 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

Doesn't all this sums up to "I want to make a new char, but I don't want to pay for a char slot"?

Yup, that's what it seems to be.

Edited February 18 by Sobx.1758

[Randulf.7614]

1 hour ago, DragonStar.1074 said:

In regards to my character restart idea and the story, the question is that if a newly created character can do the story from start to finish without problems, shouldn't an existing one be able to restart it if only the character creation choices and creation date and time would be kept, and all of the other character data would be erased with the character then in the state right after character creation (cutscene based on character creation choices, then tutorial instance at level 1 and so on)? That should remove all of the potential story and other character data conflicts so I don't see why that shouldn't be able to work as a safe way to keep the character and start over as an alternative to deleting and recreating the character or starting a new one.

No. So much is tied together behind the scenes we can't see. Even our Order choice and from there gear, ahcivements, collections, NPCs, dialogue. All at risk of bugging out or broken. You'd be confined to the same order and paths as before at the very minimum. There's likely many other interactions we dont realise

[Teknomancer.4895]

1 hour ago, DragonStar.1074 said:

In regards to my character restart idea and the story, the question is that if a newly created character can do the story from start to finish without problems, shouldn't an existing one be able to restart it if only the character creation choices and creation date and time would be kept, and all of the other character data would be erased with the character then in the state right after character creation (cutscene based on character creation choices, then tutorial instance at level 1 and so on)? That should remove all of the potential story and other character data conflicts so I don't see why that shouldn't be able to work as a safe way to keep the character and start over as an alternative to deleting and recreating the character or starting a new one.

They've been there, done that, discovered it wouldn't work. What part of the bit below is unclear?

Quote

Attempting to adjust a character’s story progress introduces a wide variety of bugs across various content and game systems. We investigated different solutions for partial and full story resets. In all cases, the changes led to unpredictable results in many different content types, including permanent blocking of story progress.

It's not going to happen, period.

[starlinvf.1358]

6 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

To be clear, it's wise to take statements like that with a grain of salt. Though it might be legitimate in the sense that it is a difficult problem and not worth the development resources for payoff, it's also the case that excuses are sometimes made just because like, it's basically annoying to deal with and they don't want to do it. I recall a story about that kind of thing, might have been shared on this forum, I don't remember, about such a thing. Was about a different product, not this game, but it went something like: the developers didn't want to bother with a certain issue, so said it was too hard to fix before shipping the product and then accidentally CC'd a higher up in a discussion that revealed it was an excuse being made cause they didn't want to deal with it - and unsurprisingly got told to fix it after that by the higher up.

We would like to believe professionals act "professionally" and take these things seriously to whatever degree of seriousness we associate with professionalism, but sometimes they're just human and don't want to be bothered with certain problems. Which can extend beyond business, too. Sometimes people come up with motivations for things that are supposed to sound rational cause others want a rational justification from them when the reality was that they "felt like it" or "didn't feel like it."

//For the love god DO NOT UNCOMMENT.  This code is bad and breaks everything.

A real comment in an AI system code that couldn’t figure out how fix on the spot. 

[Ashantara.8731]

No to a "character restart" option.

But yes to adding a replay option to the core campaign.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Personally i think the ps is thr best writing in the games history. I would love to replay it. 

Honestly i think it would be enjoyable if there was a prestige system that allows you to reset ps that is only available after completely victory or death. This would fix the key farm question because the sheer time required to complete the whole ps is much larger than the 25 minutes key farming takes.

[Labjax.2465]

5 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/142559-legendary-relics-are-coming-soon/page/16/#comment-2076092

Called it. 😂

______

Yup, that's what it seems to be.

I don't think I ever fully understood the idea of "living rent free in someone's head" until today. Like I understood the concept, but it's another thing to have it happen to you, that you are in someone's head like that. Don't know what started it, but you'll prob feel better if you boot me out of your head and focus on other things.

[Linken.6345]

5 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I don't think I ever fully understood the idea of "living rent free in someone's head" until today. Like I understood the concept, but it's another thing to have it happen to you, that you are in someone's head like that. Don't know what started it, but you'll prob feel better if you boot me out of your head and focus on other things.

You say this like it is hard to see your resent posts and make a deduction?

Do that mean said person is thinking about what you said constantly?

This not the own you seem to think it is.

[Labjax.2465]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

You say this like it is hard to see your resent posts and make a deduction?

Do that mean said person is thinking about what you said constantly?

This not the own you seem to think it is.

I'm not trying to "own them", I'm serious. What I posted in here wasn't supposed to be about me at all, nor was it even about this company specifically, it's just the subject matter made me think of something I'd encountered recently and I posted about that. Someone else made it about me and dragged in unrelated convo from another thread. Can you seriously tell me you don't see that as odd?

[Obfuscate.6430]

On 2/17/2024 at 6:08 AM, DragonStar.1074 said:

Please add the ability to restart game progress on a character as an alternative to deleting and recreating the character, through which the choices that were made for that character on character creation would be kept along with the creation date and time (as the character would be restarted rather than recreated), but the character's game progress would be reset to where it would be right after character creation.

Situations in which implementing this capability would be useful to have would include:

1) For people who want to keep the character choices the same as when they created the character (and also not lose birthday progress, which for a lot of people would also or in particular be an important and valuable point in having this capability), but want a fresh start or to re-experience the story on that character. In regards to the latter, since unfortunately that presumably still cannot be reset independently of other progress without causing serious bugs, it seems that resetting progress in general on the character back to the beginning would be the only reliable way for that to work while still essentially keeping the character.
2) For people doing their weekly key farm as it would make the grind for it faster by being able to restart a character rather than having to delete and recreate one. I would also hope that with the ability to do this, there would be much less data pollution for potentially keeping a backup of recently deleted characters, making restoring the availability of the restore deleted character service more of a possibility in the future.
3) For testing purposes where the ability to restart one or more characters rather than deleting and recreating them would be helpful.

There should also be a safety measure either in general or at least for non-testing characters in order to avoid accidentally doing this, such as one or two confirmation prompts or entering the character name in a form field as with deleting the character.

Your name is reserved for you for 24 hours after deleting a character. 
Just write down your choices so when you remake the character, you can choose the same ones, or something slightly different. 

Changes around earning keys were made by Arenanet intentionally to combat key farming because Black Lion Keys is a part of their way of making revenue in the cash shop. 

You can still do all the testing you want by deleting and then remaking a character.

The only valid idea /point you have is MAYBE the part about saving your character's first made date for anniversary rewards. Some people have wanted Arenanet to use your account creation date instead of character creation date for this but ultimately that screws over people who enjoy the rewards being per character. 

~*~
Your work around:
You start out with 5 character slots. Keep your first character. 
Remake your second character as much as you want using your first character's choices.

Buy character slots. 

The game incentivizes and rewards the creation of alternate characters. Take advantage of that.  

[Sobx.1758]

31 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I'm not trying to "own them", I'm serious. What I posted in here wasn't supposed to be about me at all, nor was it even about this company specifically, it's just the subject matter made me think of something I'd encountered recently and I posted about that. Someone else made it about me and dragged in unrelated convo from another thread. Can you seriously tell me you don't see that as odd?

Few days ago I responded it wouldn't matter what anet says because you'd sweep it under some convenient "corporate speech" blanket anyways. Today -which is rather fast- you're proving that exact thing. In the end obvious concern trolling is obvious and if someone "lives in anyone's head", it's probably anet in yours, seeing how despite "proudly quitting" you're still complaining on the forum of the game you're not playing.
Because that's what's normal, as opposed to remembering my own words for 3 days, got me good 🤷‍♂️ 

Without change from what we know based on what anet told us, it's almost certainly not going to happen, so buy character slots and use lvl boosters.

Edited February 18 by Sobx.1758

[Labjax.2465]

9 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Few days ago I responded it wouldn't matter what anet says because you'd sweep it under some convenient "corporate speech" blanket anyways. Today -which is rather fast- you're proving that exact thing. In the end obvious concern trolling is obvious and if someone "lives in anyone's head", it's probably anet in yours, seeing how despite "proudly quitting" you're still complaining on the forum of the game you're not playing.
Because that's what's normal, as opposed to remembering my own words for 3 days, got me good 🤷‍♂️ 

Without change from what we know based on what anet told us, it's almost certainly not going to happen, so buy character slots and use lvl boosters.

So let me get this straight. You are keeping track of whether I play the game or not, what I say in different threads, and relating it together, when I've barely posted in the last couple of years and only recently had a more consistent string of posts on the particular relic issue. And I am supposed to believe this is just something you casually do and is not personal at all. And again, I'm not trying to "own you" or "get you good." But since you aren't taking the hint, please leave me alone. All it is doing is dragging off-topic a thread that was on-topic.

And as to the attempt to flip it, I have said outright that this game got into my head, possibly even in those words. I have no shame in admitting I have some lingering attachment to it in spite of quitting.

[Sobx.1758]

10 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

So let me get this straight. You are keeping track of whether I play the game or not, what I say in different threads, and relating it together, when I've barely posted in the last couple of years and only recently had a more consistent string of posts on the particular relic issue. And I am supposed to believe this is just something you casually do and is not personal at all. And again, I'm not trying to "own you" or "get you good." But since you aren't taking the hint, please leave me alone. All it is doing is dragging off-topic a thread that was on-topic.

And as to the attempt to flip it, I have said outright that this game got into my head, possibly even in those words. I have no shame in admitting I have some lingering attachment to it in spite of quitting.

I'm not keeping track of anything, I read popular -and the ones that concern me as a player- threads. When you popped up in one of them, you repeated in a few posts how you're happy you left the game and then how concerned you are about gw2's perception despite not playing it. I don't need to keep track of anything when you're constantly announcing it in every other post. I don't care how much who posted in last couple of years, we're talking about last few days in a topic directly related to the upcoming update, what a terrible attempt to turn this into something it's not. Not sure how you managed to flip it in your head that you're somehow a main character in my world, but maybe that's what you need right now. 🤷‍♂️ 

You're "concerned" about offtopic again and yet you failed to address anything on topic. Without change from what we know based on what anet told us, it's almost certainly not going to happen, so buy character slots and use lvl boosters.

Edited February 18 by Sobx.1758

[DragonStar.1074]

2 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Personally i think the ps is thr best writing in the games history. I would love to replay it. 

Honestly i think it would be enjoyable if there was a prestige system that allows you to reset ps that is only available after completely victory or death. This would fix the key farm question because the sheer time required to complete the whole ps is much larger than the 25 minutes key farming takes.

Unfortunately I don't see a way that replaying the personal story can work except on a new character, unless something like the character restart I described can reset character progress on an existing character in general to a safe point for it. I know from that official forum post from years ago that partial or full reset can't work under the conditions they tested, which presumably was doing so independently of resetting the other character data, but I don't know as nobody but Anet knows the scope of the "different solutions" they tested and whether or not resetting game progress on a character to the point I described with the restart idea was part of that. In any case it would be great if there could be some kind of workaround or fix to make replaying the personal story work on an existing character, but the situation is clearly very complicated and only Anet really knows or could determine what would be possible.

I do think that at least a second version of the personal story unlockable after finishing the existing one could work, because that should be implementable in a way that would be completely separate from the existing personal story.

Edited February 19 by DragonStar.1074

[Labjax.2465]

8 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I'm not keeping track of anything, I read popular -and/or the once that concern me as a player- threads and when you popped up in one of them, you repeated in a few posts how you're happy you left the game and then how concerned you are about gw2's perception despite you not playing it. I don't need to keep track of anything when you're constantly announcing it in every other post. I don't care how much who posted in last couple of years, we're talking about last few days in a topic directly related to the upcoming update, what a terrible attempt to turn this into something it's not. Not sure how you managed to flip it in your head that you're somehow a main character in my world, but maybe that's what you need right now. 🤷‍♂️ 

You're "concerned" about offtopic again and yet you failed to address anything on topic. Without change from what we know based on what anet told us, it's almost certainly not going to happen, so buy character slots and use lvl boosters.

Repeatedly stating the same on topic line at the end of your personal attacks don't make your posts on topic. I'm pretty most people don't want to read this stuff and no one was giving my post much attention until you made it into a thing. Now I asked you to leave me alone and you tell me I have main character syndrome. Apparently wanting to be left alone means I want attention??? Please just stop.

[Sobx.1758]

Pointing out it doesn't matter what anet would say because it would be swept under the "corporate speech" blanket was a correct assesment -because that's exactly what happened in this thread- isn't a personal attack. You've tried poking me with this bad "living in your head" remark, but if you dislike my posts, you have a way to not see them instead of doing whatever you're doing right now.

22 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I'm pretty most people don't want to read this stuff and no one was giving my post much attention until you made it into a thing.

Most people also probably don't want to read these attempts at undermining anything the devs tell us. "They're not touching personal story because it breaks the game? Naaah, no reason to believe them, they're just lazy or something". Not sure if that helped OP -or anyone else- in any way.

Edited February 19 by Sobx.1758

[Teknomancer.4895]

29 minutes ago, DragonStar.1074 said:

I know from that official forum post from years ago that partial or full reset can't work under the conditions they tested, which presumably was doing so independently of resetting the other character data, but I don't know as nobody but Anet knows the scope of the "different solutions" they tested and whether or not resetting game progress on a character to the point I described with the restart idea was part of that.

Lawyer-parsing the wording of a post from 2015 doesn't really go anywhere helpful. The game has only gotten bigger and more complex since then, with even more content now being reliant upon the original choices made during character creation. Let it go.

[Astralporing.1957]

22 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

They should just add race and profession swap options to the makeover kits. After a decade, I couldn't care less about the personal story, key farming, or anything related to it.

But you would care about your character becoming unusable due to bugs, wouldn't you?

[Chichimec.9364]

On 2/17/2024 at 5:19 PM, kiroho.4738 said:

Doesn't all this sums up to "I want to make a new char, but I don't want to pay for a char slot"?

 

So far this post seems to best hit the nail on the head. I've been playing for six years now and for the first two - three years I enjoyed leveling characters up and trying all the different personal stories on the various races. To do that I simply started new alts. After a while I got bored with that and just started using my  main characters for endgame content, things like WvW. The character slots I bought supported a game I enjoyed and still enjoy playing, so that seemed like a reasonable expense to me.

Oh, and if birthday gifts are a matter of serious interest to you, the more alts you have, the more birthday gifts you get, which is a very nice thing for a WvW player who is still leveling up. Gonna hit Diamond Rank in WvW in another 400 levels or so and my abundant supply of birthday boosters has been a major force in helping me get there. 😁

[SaferMurderweapon.7143]

On 2/17/2024 at 6:24 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

The devs have commented on similar things in the past. Resetting progress, changing story choices - the code can’t handle it and it would lead to permanently broken characters

The devs commented on a lot of things in the past, comments that don't hold true today especially in regards to code (i.e: changing display names permanently breaking accounts which can now be changed for free)

[DragonStar.1074]

9 hours ago, SaferMurderweapon.7143 said:

The devs commented on a lot of things in the past, comments that don't hold true today especially in regards to code (i.e: changing display names permanently breaking accounts which can now be changed for free)

I don't know what Anet can do about it, though there's probably more and better resources including possibly AI that could help with sorting out the mess now than there was back then.

It would probably take a lot of time, effort and testing to make the personal story changeable or resettable on existing characters (especially without needing to change, rollback or erase other character data), let alone changing class or race or other things that undoubtedly plenty of people would like to be able to change about their existing characters.

The main incentive I would see for them trying to accomplish it, aside from improving player experience by giving players more options to make their characters and their stories the way they want them, is that like with changing name or appearance, they could sell it in the gem store. I don't know if it will ever be possible, but a breakthrough in that regards could lead someday to a future with brand new items available for sale such as Class Change Contracts (which alone would probably sell very well), Race Change Scrolls, and New Identity Kits for changing part or all of a character's entire identity (race, class, appearance, background, name and story).

Edited February 21 by DragonStar.1074

[Astralporing.1957]

15 hours ago, SaferMurderweapon.7143 said:

The devs commented on a lot of things in the past, comments that don't hold true today especially in regards to code (i.e: changing display names permanently breaking accounts which can now be changed for free)

There are a few people on these forums who after a change had their display name broken to the point where Anet cannot fix it. At least their accounts still work.