55 replies to this topic

[Skrobble]

I've progressed through the game on a Ranger and completed the main story line, which I found quite boring. I will be creating a new character soon, and I am dreading having to re-live the whole story line again.

Does completing your personal story have any effects on your character in game? Like for example are any areas locked or un-accessible unless you complete your personal story?

Also are dungeons/dungeon rewards available? I imagine that the Order armours won't be unlocked until I compete the personal story (or am I wrong in thinking this?)

Thanks.

[Shroomhead Fred]

Worst

Story

EVER



I tried so hard, just couldn't get into it.  Not sure what audience they were targeting...

I don't believe you're locked out of any areas, but you may need to complete the lvl 30 story to unlock the order armors.  Could be wrong there.  Dungeons rewards should not be effected though.

[Baldur The Bold]

I agree it is very boring. Probably one of the worst stories I have ever seen in an mmo.

That being said, completing the story does not really affect things as much as I had thought during the character creation. Order armors are the big one that I think of off hand.

Personal story is basically the part before the end game grind.

[Skrobble]

I'm glad you guys share my view haha.. Maybe they'll revamp it? No high hopes though.

The Orders armour was my only concern, but that's not a huge one.

[Silinsar]

Parts of the personal story (till lvl 20 I think) vary depending on race and the options you've chosen on character creation.
Then you can decide different ways to complete a task -> "trying out" orders until you get to join one at lvl 30 if I remember corrctly.
Of course, the story is different in every order and sometimes you can even select a course of action within an order.
Many missions stay the same, but you'll have some alteration in it when playing it again with a twink.

The effect/benefit of the completion:
- exp
- you can buy the armor/weapon skins of your order
- somewhere about 76-80 you can get a unique armor skin as reward
- ??? ( I haven't fnished it yet^^)

[Bryant Again]

You get a pact skin weapon later on, and your story determines which 'order' you belong to. But yeah, pretty hard to get into it for me as well.

[Trei]

It's good exp.
I do most chapters way below recommended levels, so the rewards are frequently upgrades for me.

[Bloggi]

Other than the Order armors and weapons, I don't think people lose very much in terms of gear (or skins) by not doing the personal storyline...or perhaps you also lose the convenience of being able to visit your Order headquarters and getting a free port to Fort Trinity which is at the fringe of Orr, which is where some folk like to do events and farm for mats and items.

So the personal storyline is not essential by any stretch. I've done the whole thing on one of my toons and would do it on all my other toons given the time. Personally I think the personal storyline is reasonably well written, even epic in some parts. Some of them feature humorous moments and fantastic one-liners, yet it is quite sanitized, presumably for younger audience. So expect to see some lines that some adult folk might consider to be 'lame'. Nevertheless, I don't think this game would be complete without including the personal storyline as a feature.

I see it as something that should be done in tandem with leveling. Same with crafting. Essentially it would take a player on a path through the map and eventually finishing at Arah. It gives a good deal of experience, free items and even guild influence. At the end you get a token that can be exchanged for a rare item with a unique skin. Completing the very last bit may be a bit of a challenge, but honestly I see little reason why people shouldn't do the personal story while they are leveling.

[Heart Collector]

I love this game but the story leaves me cold. With a couple of exceptions (i.e. Tybalt), the story itself and the characters were so cliche and bland. OK I am a fan of stories in the style of Gothic and The Witcher so I guess I wasn't the target audience here, but it's still anything but riveting. I do it to break up the leveling experience and of course the XP.

That been said, it's in small doses and its kind of servicable. Obviously not the main focus of the game.

[AsgarZigel]

I still haven't finished the story, the end is just a boring slog through countless risen...
It's not all terrible imo, the first half of the story was pretty fun or at least everything served a purpose. Lord Faren and Tybalt were enjoyable, but after the battle for claw island it just goes downhill fast.
Trahearnne is simply boring, a lot of characters are introduced and die off in one or two missions (completely defeating the point of the whole "omg this is war people are dying" thing) and even the goddamn tanks are boring because the engine probably can't handle vehicles or they just ran out of time.

The dragons are more of a force of nature so you don't really have an interesting villain... which can work, if you have likeable characters you get to know over time and want to succeed.

ANet themselves said at least they learned from there mistakes, so there is at least hope they will do it better for future content.

Edit: I do believe you get a guild influence item at some point in case you need that.

Edited by AsgarZigel, 11 February 2013 - 09:25 AM.

[Killyox]

Depends which story you get tbh. In my first playthrough i got tybalt and i enjoyed that part a lot.

I disagree with notion that it's bad though. It's far better than what SWTOR had or what wow has (or actually has no).

It's not really fair to expect single player level story out of this and even these can fail miserably.

[Cruzzi]

Storylines before Claw Island were a bit uneven but overall I'm fairly happy with them.

Storyline after Claw Island is horribly dull for the most part. Liked the silly golem fight in Orr, but that was completely illogical as one of those golems could pretty much cleanse all of Orr. It feels like the entire point of this latter half of the personal story is to breed a deep hatred for Trahearne.

Edited by Cruzzi, 11 February 2013 - 10:24 AM.

[The_Blades]

i enjoyed racial specific plots (asura has some good points to it). but the rest is just a big yawn.

i got to a point where i had to leave a story mission and just shut down the game midway. So needless is to say i havent finished the story in any character, and i play since the betas.

Edited by The_Blades, 11 February 2013 - 10:41 AM.

[Traveller]

Problem with the personal story is that it's mostly quite poorly written and boring. Plus Trahearne is awful. It makes me wonder how they managed to learn nothing from the reaction Kormir's actions got in Nightfall and make the exact same mistakes again with Trahearne.

Edited by Traveller, 11 February 2013 - 11:11 AM.

[Kovares]

Traveller, on 11 February 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

Problem with the personal story is that it's mostly quite poorly written and boring. Plus Trahearne is awful. It makes me wonder how they managed to learn nothing from the reaction Kormir's actions got in Nightfall and make the exact same mistakes again with Trahearne.

Personally (no pun intended), I feel that this so called "personal story" not only suffers from horribad writing, it also completely lacks the "personal" touch to it. You notice very quickly that despite what the commercials sad, absulutely none of your actions have any consequences whatsoever, except chosing what your very next mission looks like.

Also, the branching points of the story were so awfully obvious that I couldn't help but feel aliented by how artificial the whole plot seemed to be. I was actually somewhat offended by the thought that someone out there thought I would genuinely enjoy this bland, repetitive and immature sad excuse for a story.

[Butcher]

I find that the story gets more interesting as you keep going. Before that, though, it's all "you're a hero, kid!", which is just kind of childish in my opinion. Also, apparently the "Dwarven Tome" described in the story said to kill Snake Face with harpoons.

[Cr0w]

I wish there was an option to skip parts of the story so you can just do the bit you want. I have 7 Alt's and I cannot be bothered doing it all again

[Nyrath]

I guess I'm the only one who quite liked personal story (at least until Trahearne appeared)...

Spoiler

Fighting with Eir against the Svanir was quite fun, overally, the story was the best at the beginning. I also liked the brawl part, when I took revenge on a bulky Norn guy.

Warmaster Forgal was also the best mentor ever, going throught Fields of Ruin with him to establish Treaty and fighting against Separatist was also quite nice.

There could be more plot twists, and making decisions, but don't expect high-quality RPG story from a MMO.

After Trahearne appeared, I found story kinda boring, and that's why I've never ended it (anyway, I'm close to the end, I'm in the hunting Eye of Zhaitan quest). He is just...annoying, selfish and egoistic. He takes the lead, he becomes the hero, and you, from glorious Warmaster of Vigil, become just a pet on the Trahearne's leash.

Edited by Nyrath, 11 February 2013 - 11:42 AM.

[Yski]

The stories are fine (especially the non human ones) in the beginning, but the further you go the worse they get. By the time I reached Orr I wanted to murder Trahearne rather than the dragon.

I'd much rather have entirely separate storylines for different races anyway. I don't want to do the worst part of the story on every character I make, so why does the story force me there over and over again?

[Rukioish]

I loved the charr story, and it all goes down hill once they deviate from that and make the story about the pact and traeherne. So boring and weak. I wish each race had a unique story that ran the course 1-80.

[Gilles VI]

Am I the only one who really enjoyed the story and was intrigued by it?
Like discovering Zhaitan eats magic,...

Granted I only did it on my main, all my lvl80 alts are stuck on llv30 for orders armor, can't be bothered to get further

[matsif]

I completed the PS on my first character, 2 alts I have up to right after claw island, and the rest are still at level 30 in it.  Up until level 30 I think the story is quite good actually, since it still seems "personal."  From 30-50 it gets a bit more boring as you become a grunt for the order you chose and the missions are all essentially the same gearing up towards claw island.  After claw island, dear god I wish the writers for that section of the story are never hired to write another game's story again.  By far the worst section of a game's story I've ever played.

[Coren]

ANet knew how to make stories in GW1, mainly because you felt like the hero, in GW2 the real hero is that flat toned broccoli Trahearne. You're just.a.side actor, or at least I felt like one.

Personally I loved the 1 to 20 missions, because it was about me. Then the rest is about how insignificant I was compared to the rest.

Edited by Coren, 11 February 2013 - 01:35 PM.

[d_fens]

The fact that you need 4 other ppl just to complete your PERSONAL story, makes it even worse.

[Lunacy Polish]

From an aesthetic point of view yeah it is terrible.  I admire what they TRIED to do but it just falls so flat.  The ambition is admirable but the execution sucks.

From a practical standpoint personal quest is stupidly easy XP.  Once you learn how to skip all the fluff and unnecessary parts at least.  Some steps are bore fests no matter what you do though like the battle of claw island.

If you truly loathe it you really don't need it.   I would just join an order for account medal and access to order skins and stop at that point.  You can easily skip it.

[Sword Hammer Axe]

I dislike the story, but I like parts of it. Depending on what you choose you can get a few good surprises. But mostly it's bad.

As for rewards there're the Pact weapons, some gifts, some blueprints, and some "yay, done" feelings, but that's about it.

[Sazaraki]

From what I've been able to tell, there is a few Points of Interest needed for map completion inside Fort Trinity that you can't get without getting at least that far in the main story. Or you could find a friend who is about to go there to help you.
I liked the story for the most part. There were only some parts I didn't like and I didn't like how they did the deaths of most people. Though, losing your partner from your order is sad to me.

[Cruzzi]

Sazaraki, on 11 February 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

From what I've been able to tell, there is a few Points of Interest needed for map completion inside Fort Trinity that you can't get without getting at least that far in the main story. Or you could find a friend who is about to go there to help you.
I liked the story for the most part. There were only some parts I didn't like and I didn't like how they did the deaths of most people. Though, losing your partner from your order is sad to me.

They fixed this around November or something like that. You can now zone into that area of Fort Trinity no matter what step you are on in the personal story.

[Gruunz]

For me, most of the story was quite mind numbing, probably because of that maybe only a few fews scenes snapped me out of the haze like;

Spoiler

Vigil storyline? Something about taking the orb from the sea witch area. And when you are just about to finish the story you're vigil partner gets kidnapped and then you're just like "wait what? oh dear"

The only other interesting part of the storyline I actually liked was meeting the largos, nice voice actor to compliment the character. I want a costume of a female largos :[

[Skrobble]

I'm glad to see so many people share my pain in regards to the story line.

My big issue is with the stories involving Risen. I understand that the Risen are terrible blah blah, but couldn't Anet have added in some different forms of enemies? I mean killing the same mob from level 40-80, story line or just "hearting" is what really drags down leveling for me.