Question: would you all be interesting in Alternative Story Telling methods, playing as a different character?

[Knighthonor.4061]

Just curious where the community stands on this idea of using an alternative method of story telling? Instead of the Living Story instances model with the Commander, what if the Story instances switched to players controlling a special Character from the Story and their henchmen, similar to Guildwars1 mechanics of instances with Hero units in the party...

 

I feel like we could get better Stories from such a method rather than everything having to revolve around this unkillable, unstoppable,  more powerful than a god, Commander, method.

[Knighthonor.4061]

Hey can a mod move this to the correct sub of the General discussion please. This not specific to JW.

[bq pd.2148]

in story instances that would work and allow for less world ending stories.
but the story is also told in all the small interactions in the open world. i suppose NPCs could talk to us like we are some random (pact?) soldier, astral ward, mercenary or whatever and that might make some of their requests a lot more sensible than sending the commander out to menial tasks. the problem then occurs if we have established NPCs in the open world that most certainly know who we are.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

So basically Living World Season 2: Seeds of Truth and Visions of the Past: Steel and Fire (Darkrime Delves mission)?

It would be nice if ANet revisited the Scrying Pool, because after the Season 1 re-release, they've stripped out everything except Canach's Lair which kind of makes the Scrying Pool pointless. A nice callback would be to add in missions like the Bonus Mission Pack from GW1.

As far as Henchmen go, I really want ANet to have "Heroes" that we can customize that can be brought as stand-in players for (non 50-player) instanced content. Sure, it's not perfect as mechanics will kill everyone in certain content, but it gives players a bit more leeway if they can't find the players they want/need (or simply want to do things solo).

[Randulf.7614]

No thank you. Forging Steel and Fractals are at my limit for that stuff (despite two occasions of playing those nasty Charr!). I want to play as my character and use my skills. Those GW1 missions - like the LS2 Caithe ones - were awful

I didn't spend ages customising my character to play an entire story as someone else.

Hard pass.

[Mic.1897]

Our story is literally the story of the commander

[kharmin.7683]

Sounds like a hidden request for solo OW content with henchmen.  If so, go back to GW1 as that model worked better there.  GW2, by design, isn't really set up for this.

[DeanBB.4268]

Isn't it rather late for such a change? We have the core GW2, HoT, PoF, EoD, SotO and JW, plus all the Season content in between. 

And I agree with others, I hate it when they mess with my character or skills. I've built my character that way for a reason, and don't all of a sudden wish to toss that out and play as Caithe (for example).

[Danikat.8537]

As other people have mentioned they've done this occasionally before (there's also some Fractals where you're put into the role of a random person, like Urban Battlegrounds and Thaumanova). It wouldn't surprise me if they do it again sometimes, but I doubt it will ever become the main form of story telling.

I know the ones where you play as Caithe were very unpopular because they forced you to use new skills, I think it became tolerable to more people once you kept your normal build and skills and only the model changed, but I still don't think it's been anyone's favourite form of story telling.

(Also it's very important to the narrative that the Commander is not unkillable, and certainly not unstoppable. Many story chapters revolve around us finding the right people to help with a problem we cannot overcome on our own, often after failing to deal with it by attacking directly.)

[Ashen.2907]

I enjoy watching movies where the protagonist is created by the screenwriter instead of me. The same is true of protagonists in text media such as novels, comic books, and so on. But if I am not going to play my own character who I created then I probably won't care as much about what is going on in an RPG.

From a gameplay perspective: I spend a lot of time developing builds for my characters to fit my play style preference, my RP concept preference, and to be effective. I then spend time and resources on gear to make the concept work. And that doesn't even take into consideration just how much I've spent on cosmetics. Telling me that my effort was wasted because I have to play someone else's character instead means that I might as well not bother.

Simply put, to use the Caithe missions as an example, if I wanted to play a Sylvari dual dagger female thief whose cosmetic options are completely out of my control I would have created one and (now at least) have hit randomize appearance.

Edited Monday at 10:21 PM by Ashen.2907

[Omega.6801]

On the one hand I would like playing smaller, singular episodes of story that "fill in the gaps" or "give a new perspective". On the other hand I chose to play a character/class for its playstyle, i.e. its move- and skillset, forcing me to play an episode of such a story as a given character goes against this choice. We had this with Caithe in LS2 and while she wass a fun and overpowered thief, the episodes still forced you into playing that exact build. Also this approach makes it very "hit or miss" for the audience and unless new episodes are released often and frequently, player can easily feel left out if, let's say, three consecutive episodes didn't feature a playstyle they liked.

[Nilkemia.8507]

No.

[Lucy.3728]

I'd like to play small episodes in the shoes of someone else. Doesn't even have to be the story, can be mundane things. Like the day of a seraph soldier... or the queen. Little things.

 

On 9/16/2024 at 8:45 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

Sounds like a hidden request for solo OW content with henchmen.  If so, go back to GW1 as that model worked better there.  GW2, by design, isn't really set up for this.

I wonder if I could play dungeons if I had my GW1 heroes with me.
Pyre Fierceshot that interrupts faster than any mesmer.

[Benedetti.2619]

Interesting I should find this now. I just finished playing as Caithe in No Refuge, and hated every single second of it. I am so happy to read there's not a lot of that in GW2.

There is another game (cough FF14 cough) that does this a lot. You must play a lot of different characters in a lot of different situations there, to progress in the main story questline. And it's the single most important reason why I quit playing FF14. You get no XP (as you're playing another character), you get no loot (as you're playing another character), and the builds are one-offs and different from what you would use if you played the class this character has. They're just speedbumps, an utterly useless waste of my time. As for actual story telling? I generally learned more from cutscenes where I could sit back and listen. If I'm busy fighting, I'm not really listening in to pick up some lore or story telling.

I have a character I've build up. I'm trying to get my fingers get used to the rotation. It's based on choices I have made, for class & gear or in the case of GW2 build and gear. I have not one iota of interest in having to work out how to play with someone the devs dreamed up. Any game that feels like it's a good idea to waste my time like that, and there is no option to skip it, gets a very, very hard pass from me.

[Skub.8240]

No, I don't want to play as anyone but my own character

[Poormany.4507]

I would love more Visions of the Past because the one we got (Steel and Fire) was really fun to play and had some nice lore in it with the Steel Warband and with the Stone Summit, allowing us to see events our character wouldn't usually get to see and experience.

I agree with others though that I need to keep my skills, otherwise it just feels very gimmicky and forced (i.e., the Caithe missions in LWS2 - I loathed having to replay those on alts, likewise for the GW1 Keiran Thackeray missions).

Edited Wednesday at 02:24 AM by Poormany.4507

[Astralporing.1957]

On 9/16/2024 at 8:04 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

I didn't spend ages customising my character to play an entire story as someone else.

Pretty much this. It's one thing if we were sort of performing someone else's role (like it's the case in fractals), where in reality we still play our own character. Even the cases where we're acting under appearance change effect miiiight be fine if used very sparely. Asking me to play a different character however, with their specific build and skills, is going too far. If i want to experiment with different builds and classes, i'd rather do it on my own terms, and at my own pace.

[Tinker.6924]

Playing as a different character?  No.  There are a few places in the game where you play as Caithe (LW2?) and I remember those as my least favorite.  A large part of the reason was the change in skills and build to something I was absolutely unfamiliar with and made combat just awful.

I would like to see these Personal Story changes though

• Break it into 2 stories: the racial-specific story and the generic "Defeat Zhaitan with Trahearne" story
• Allow us to quit the My Story.  You can turn off showing "My Story objectives" which disable the least annoying things but still dooms you to be followed by the Green map star forever reminding you to go back and do it.  Full quit the thing, just like we can for all the other stories.
• Allow us to play the racial bad guys instead of just Vigil, Whispers, or Priory.  Be the anti-hero who fights for Inquest, White Mantle, Flame Legion, etc... but eventually joins Trahearne against Zhaitan.

[Atoclone.4810]

Nope, I know my character and I know what the buttons do. I hate it when you're given a whole different skill set and either have to hope and pray button mash or stop and read them all. Final fantasy is really bad for that

[sasya neko.1985]

no to a different character but yes to heroes/henchmen, however, only for dungeons as it is practically abandoned and many just want to play it on their own pace without everyone assuming everyone knows the dungeon.

[Kanimae.1735]

I have always strongly disliked being forced to play as some NPC in -any- game whether single player or mmorpg. So a hard no from me. I play this game because I enjoy my character, I enjoy how she looks, I enjoy how she fights, I do not want to be forced to step it anyone else's shoes!