24 replies to this topic

[zwei2stein]

This is Guild Wars 2 Storyline flowchart outlining all choices that affect story in significant way.

It does not contain exhaustive list of quests, but rather "Checklist of what you have done" - Second picture has storyline of my main character marked with red.

Legend:

Diamond - choice/branch spot.
Labeled line - choice to go this way was made already.
Box - Mission/Quest.
Group - either groups arcs together to notifies that mission is shared in multiple arcs.

http://gw.zweistein....w2storyline.pdf - this is pdf, this is what you want to view

http://gw.zweistein....oryline.graphml - this is original source file
http://gw.zweistein.cz//gw2storyline.svg - this is svg

Edited by zwei2stein, 10 October 2012 - 07:06 AM.

[RayofNoX]

Nice flowchart i always like knowing every little intricate bit of a game like this.
just 1 issue i have with it, is that i cant really read the text to well because when i zoom in the text gets blurred might wanna save it at a higher quality so that zooming in still keeps the text readable.

[zwei2stein]

RayofNoX, on 08 October 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

Nice flowchart i always like knowing every little intricate bit of a game like this.
just 1 issue i have with it, is that i cant really read the text to well because when i zoom in the text gets blurred might wanna save it at a higher quality so that zooming in still keeps the text readable.

imgur link has full resolution version: http://i.imgur.com/doaX6.png. I will also do more high res version after i get some feedback and eventual bugs are found.

[WhiteScarf]

Good stuff. Some of the text overlaps for me. Also maybe you could see about including some text on which choice leads to which quest?

[Bridger]

Very cool.  We'll be featuring this in next week's Tales of Tyria for sure

[Splurch]

Thanks a lot for making this, going to help a lot with quest tracking. Found an error though, the quests listed under Grawl are the Quaggan quests and the quests under Quaggan are the Grawl quests.

[Rukioish]

pretty sweet. Disappoint however, since it gets funneled down pretty hard at the end. Kinda goes against "vastly branching" storylines. It sucks that teh culmination of your choices doesn't affect the final missions in some drastic way.

(Oh man ME3, oh man, we thought the gaming world learned it's lesson)

[Alexandriea]

Well done! Least it gets rid of my mental picture that all quests after 50 start with Trahearne..

[zwei2stein]

Splurch, on 08 October 2012 - 08:11 PM, said:

Thanks a lot for making this, going to help a lot with quest tracking. Found an error though, the quests listed under Grawl are the Quaggan quests and the quests under Quaggan are the Grawl quests.

Oh, thanks, fixed it!

There is new, highres, version which includes all the missions: http://image.yogile....obakkun1wcd.png

[abr4]

Tbh with all this modularization the story to me the story just feels really ripped apart. There's quite a few characters which I just don't care a bout because I've only seen them for 3-4 missions. For example at some point an asura dies in one of the story lines and I thought to myself "man, this would have quite an impact if I had gotten to know this fellow a bit better", but so I just shrugged his death off as a casualty of war. You could clearly tell this was not the effect they were going for.

It's also very noticeable in the beginning when you're just starting out with your racial quests, the individual chapters feel very disjointed with no overarching suspense.

[skullmount4]

good stuff, but I'm pretty sure there should be a line from Quaggan to Pastkeeper.  That was the name of the PS quest I was stuck on a couple of days ago (had to help/protect quaggan shaman while he performed ritual to get power from the stones.  I remember because the kitten imps killed me the first couple of tries).

[Turtle Freak]

You're missing a couple arrows for the norn when you get to your choice of which secondary race to help.  They can help the Grawl, the Ogres, and I believe the third is the Hylek (?).

EDIT: Also noticed you have two arrows from Asura to Hylek, so maybe that's where the error came from.  Also, is this choice actually tied to race?  I got the impression it was based on the order you choose, but I haven't played that far with a second character yet, so I'm not sure.

EDIT 2: Just checked the wiki, and I guess it is tied to race.  I thought that's what it was supposed to be, but it just seemed strange that the norn would have hylek and ogres as options when we have so little contact with them compared to quaggans and skritt.

Edited by Turtle Freak, 09 October 2012 - 08:33 PM.

[Sword Hammer Axe]

I love this, but it seems there's an error with the choices for minor races to defend, as Norn for example branches over to only Grawl, when they also have Hylek and Skritt to defend.

[Dark]

Thats a great flowchart! accurate as well! looked through my storyline and it was all there

[Dragonice]

I have to agree that this is amazing work, but I think it spoils the game, this shoudn't the table players lookinto before making their decitions! But I really like the way storys come together!

[zwei2stein]

Sword Hammer Axe, on 09 October 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

I love this, but it seems there's an error with the choices for minor races to defend, as Norn for example branches over to only Grawl, when they also have Hylek and Skritt to defend.

Yes, fixed that, here: http://gw.zweistein....w2storyline.pdf

[evilbob]

I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed that the personal story can be summed up in such a simple flowchart like this - or rather, that the story continues to "bottleneck" over and over, where all choices lead to the exact same place.  I was really hoping that your personal choices at the beginning affected much more than just one short questline.  As it stands, once you've done three characters, you've seen well over 50% of the entire possible story.

Obviously more branches and paths would mean more work on the dev side, but I wish more of your choices had more of an impact down the line.  Reintroducing characters you'd worked with before would be nice, or having a few bits of dialog that referenced something you chose earlier.  It doesn't seem like it would take much.  Then again, I've already seen one conversation option as a human that was clearly meant for a sylvari, so maybe just keeping it together for the five races is taxing the devs to their limit.

[BlaineTog]

evilbob, on 10 October 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed that the personal story can be summed up in such a simple flowchart like this - or rather, that the story continues to "bottleneck" over and over, where all choices lead to the exact same place.  I was really hoping that your personal choices at the beginning affected much more than just one short questline.  As it stands, once you've done three characters, you've seen well over 50% of the entire possible story.

Yeah, but for most games, you've seen almost everything with just one playthrough.  Even the much-vaunted Mass Effect series was essentially linear all the way through, albeit with superficial differences along the way (though I still miss the conversation wheel).  Doing it this way, a huge number of early branches that bottleneck to a smaller number of options, is a really smart way to cover a massive amount of ground while still giving some options.

evilbob, on 10 October 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

Obviously more branches and paths would mean more work on the dev side, but I wish more of your choices had more of an impact down the line.  Reintroducing characters you'd worked with before would be nice, or having a few bits of dialog that referenced something you chose earlier.

I agree this would be awesome, though.  My first character is a Human Elementalist with the commoner background, and I haven't seen nor heard anything about Petra in over 50 levels at this point.  Obviously a barmaid has no business hanging around Orr, but sometimes I wonder what's happening with her and her father, whether that medicine I found for him all those levels ago has him back to top bartending form.  Bringing in small details and characters might still be essentially superficial, but those little things do make a big difference for immersion.

[evilbob]

Agreed.

Honestly even the way the flowchart looks it's like they started with the idea that they would have a whole lot more story options and then cut back somewhat into the development cycle.  They already had a lot of starting options, but then late-game stuff just got merged together until you only had a few choices.

Of course, another way to look at it is that each of the starting storyline pieces will be viewed many more times than the ending ones, as many will never follow the story all the way through.  So it's better to have a wider range at the beginning.  Also, since the story ends up focusing on unity and one large event, obviously all paths would lead to the same conclusion.

[Russet]

Rukioish, on 09 October 2012 - 12:41 AM, said:

pretty sweet. Disappoint however, since it gets funneled down pretty hard at the end. Kinda goes against "vastly branching" storylines. It sucks that teh culmination of your choices doesn't affect the final missions in some drastic way.

(Oh man ME3, oh man, we thought the gaming world learned it's lesson)

You know, though, it's a lot easier to say "diverging storylines" than it is to make them.
ME3 was the same as ME1 and ME2, it's just peoples' expectations were completely unrealistic. (Well, that's what I believe, as I enjoyed the game while all the chaos about it was going on.)

What's the point of of the GW2 storyline? To defeat Zhaitan. This means that, really, there's only one way the story can end.... By defeating Zhaitan.
So, yes, the game bottlenecks. You have all the races > The three orders > The one final storyline, with a few branching parts in each.
We get A,B,C,D,E > F,G,H > I instead of A > (AF > AFI),(AG > AGI),(AH > AHI), B > (BF > BFI) .... etc, etc, which would be many more years of work, which frankly isn't worth it at all for ANet (or anyone who makes video games). I'd love to see a game with that amount of dedication put into it, but frankly it's never going to happen.

Some couple of references are done here and there, for example if you're an Iron Legion charr and choose Galina and Snarl Backdraft to support you at Claw Island, you can use a ghostbore turret. I'm thankful for this, as, really, think about it. That's extra coding, voice acting, and writing which only applies for a small percentage of players.

Thanks for the flowchart!

[Rukioish]

Russet, on 12 October 2012 - 03:22 AM, said:

You know, though, it's a lot easier to say "diverging storylines" than it is to make them.
ME3 was the same as ME1 and ME2, it's just peoples' expectations were completely unrealistic. (Well, that's what I believe, as I enjoyed the game while all the chaos about it was going on.)

What's the point of of the GW2 storyline? To defeat Zhaitan. This means that, really, there's only one way the story can end.... By defeating Zhaitan.
So, yes, the game bottlenecks. You have all the races > The three orders > The one final storyline, with a few branching parts in each.
We get A,B,C,D,E > F,G,H > I instead of A > (AF > AFI),(AG > AGI),(AH > AHI), B > (BF > BFI) .... etc, etc, which would be many more years of work, which frankly isn't worth it at all for ANet (or anyone who makes video games). I'd love to see a game with that amount of dedication put into it, but frankly it's never going to happen.

Some couple of references are done here and there, for example if you're an Iron Legion charr and choose Galina and Snarl Backdraft to support you at Claw Island, you can use a ghostbore turret. I'm thankful for this, as, really, think about it. That's extra coding, voice acting, and writing which only applies for a small percentage of players.

Thanks for the flowchart!

ME3 should have been great. It should have been the series crowning achievement. You don't spout on about how much your choices matter for 3 games and then * it all up in the end.

as far as gw2 goes, I agree, there is only one way to beat zhaitan but I was more on the lines that the dialouge is all the same regardless of who you are and what you did. As a charr it never matters that I'm blood legion, or that im order of whispers AFTER I'm out of those storyline segments, I go from one title to the next and that's it.

[FoxBat]

I don't think the bottlenecking is at all unreasonable given how much story there is. It's just that anet repeatedly used the word "branching" to build up expectations when there is almost none of that. The majority of your decisions only let you choose between one of two missions before converging again, the only choices that matter in the long run are two of the personal story questions and your choice of order.

Edited by FoxBat, 12 October 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[zwei2stein]

FoxBat, on 12 October 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

I don't think the bottlenecking is at all unreasonable given how much story there is. It's just that anet repeatedly used the word "branching" to build up expectations when there is almost none of that. The majority of your decisions only let you choose between one of two missions before converging again, the only choices that matter in the long run are two of the personal story questions and your choice of order.

Lets look at it:
60 missions in 1-10 branch
50 in 11-20 branch
50 in 21-30 branch
15 in 30-40 branch
19 in 40-50 branch (orges do not have branches - the only asymmetry here)
19 in 50-60
17 in 60-70
22 in final stage

92 missions after racial stories converge, 160 for racial stories, 252 missions total.

252 missions is HUGE number. I can not blame devs for simplifying... they bit a lot.

[Manganeez]

Hello, zwei2stein! When you next update this flow chart, any chance you could annotate the suggested levels in the mission boxes?

Either way, thanks for the great chart!

Manganeez

[ValenciaF1]

Two things don't fit with the storylines I had:

My Sylvari has had the mission "Awakening" before entering the "White Stag" branch with "Called to Service". I assume the "Awakening" happens to all characters before the branches.

And my Charr followed the later storyline with "Marshalling the Truth", followed by "the Battle of Fort Trinity" and "Liberating Apatia", the arrows make it look like I jumped branches (not so sure about this, since I had no idea who Apatia was and the game might've been bugged at this point, or it's just me not paying enough attention, which is also likely)

EDIT: More to add:
The 66-68 stories are swapped in the "Making another suffer" line. "Wet Work" comes after "Striking Off the Chains", THEN it's branched with "Intercepting the Orb"/"Willing Captives"

Edited by ValenciaF1, 14 November 2012 - 02:10 PM.