Guild Wars 2 story

MLGProPlayer

heavier wrote: »

so what OP is trying to say is that other game is better than ESO in some way? impossible there are no other games besides ESO
#walledgarden

MMOs are generally really bad. It's not so much that ESO is a great game, it's that the competition is awful. ESO is as close to a single player RPG as we have in the MMO genre, and that makes it the best by default.

jainiadral

heavier wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

GW2 does a lot of things right-- combat, the economy, PvE cooperative systems, the whole open world thing are all reasons I fire it up once in a while. Some of them I'd love to see ZoS copy-- the Auction House, credit to all types of contributions and all players during dolmens, etc., shared resource nodes, combat system. But the story isn't one of them. ESO's questing and storytelling are the best I've experienced in any MMO. GW2 storytelling is a pale shadow.

Runescape is still ahead of ESO in terms of storytelling for me personally. maybe it was because I was 8 at the time I started playing.
ye a lot of that is good and should be copied into ESO.
GW2 as I understand it has great world building
I like the guild traders personally. tamriel trade center is enough of an auction house for me. maybe a UI revamp is needed.

direfrost keep is just about the only dungeon I was enthusiastic about the mechanics of. good stuff.

I tried Runescape a couple of years ago and lasted less than three hours. Not my cup of tea by a long shot. I wonder if a lot of the charm it holds for vets is nostalgia-based. Old school gaming isn't my thing at all.

Don't get me started on the clique-based trading system here-- I'll never stop ranting. I like open, universal systems Just like I enjoy a modern feel to gameplay.

mxxo

I really love ESO and won´t play another game, but story could be a little deeper. Recently i played Morrowind, CWC and Summerset. It was enjoyable, but felt rather like teasers/trailers.

Another problem with the story is that there is almost never time to listen to a dungeon story since most ppl are rushing through it. I don´t blame ppl, because its understandable. It´s just a part of the story a lot of ppl can´t make use of.

So maybe these should be kept rather simple and instead the chapter/dlc stories could be a little deeper.

Linaleah

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I want to be punished for pressing 'e' through dialogs and just following my intuition when I skip over something critical

there are quests in ESo that do that in that characters die if you rush choices, or you get different, sometimes lesser rewards. of course it requires you to actualy care about the characters that are part of the quests, and if you are skipping dialogue then you obviously don't so... don't know what kind of punishment are we talking about here.

like needing to listen to the NPC again because a piece of a puzzle is missing
I got a 200% EXP scroll in clockwork city because I did what I felt was good even though I knew choosing the other option would gran 250%
it's really frustrating because it was an arbitrary decision I didn't really feel like making personally and would have rather the whole thing been left to be dealt with by the proper authorities. I hate choosing to kill people or save them like WTF kind of choice. I don't care about this character or their betrayal enough to act as judge.
that's the kind of "reward for paying attention despite it not really mattering what's going on" that I want to avoid.

hire the devs of Myst and Riven, talk to the people who made Portal and Half Life about what kind of physics puzzles and real time pattern matching you can incorporate to make stuff engaging.
play classic TERA dungeons/pvp and learn about how to design challenging bosses without giving them lockon oneshots

uh... having played Myst, portal and halflife (never got around to Riven) no thank you. that's not even remotely the same genre of a game, not even remotely the same kind of games. you don't like making decisions you find arbitrary, umm... those are the rpg decisions in your mmoRPG. moreover, there are mechanics in ESO dungeons and plenty of those that are not one shots. Tera, ugh, that game couldn't even hold me for an hour, that would be the last game I'd want ESO to take cues from, personaly.

MrGraves

I'm fine with either story telling method I guess but I prefer the stories in ESO over GW2. I think one thing I like with ESO is I'm not stuck working with the same character that I dislike for too long. I prefer ESO chars over GW2 atleast in general. some chars in GW2 are funny that are reccuring, like Faren. But I'm not a fan of really any of the ""main"" characters atleast not anymore. It's kinda like how most TV shows go where the character change dramatically and into someone who is just... Unlikeable. That's just my opinion on that anyway.




(Also not killing chars all the time just for shock value is nice.)

I think I kind of prefer ESO though like, I like getting dlcs about totally different stories. That way we get to explore all these different things without doing things like ruining all the characters or just making things like Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood into NPC bad guys.

Bhaal5

So after playing a lot of hours on both, ive recently return back to gw2 as
-eso does not offer the amount of content for the price point they charge
-the game is so unstable, takimg a step back from eso has made it so clear on how a game should be made and developed..
-eso pvp, or lack of... Is a joke, yet gw2 has a massive population that still plays and breathes the wvw/pvp

Thats to name a few, i question why i got eso on ps4 now and not that time in gw2.

jainiadral

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I want to be punished for pressing 'e' through dialogs and just following my intuition when I skip over something critical

there are quests in ESo that do that in that characters die if you rush choices, or you get different, sometimes lesser rewards. of course it requires you to actualy care about the characters that are part of the quests, and if you are skipping dialogue then you obviously don't so... don't know what kind of punishment are we talking about here.

like needing to listen to the NPC again because a piece of a puzzle is missing
I got a 200% EXP scroll in clockwork city because I did what I felt was good even though I knew choosing the other option would gran 250%
it's really frustrating because it was an arbitrary decision I didn't really feel like making personally and would have rather the whole thing been left to be dealt with by the proper authorities. I hate choosing to kill people or save them like WTF kind of choice. I don't care about this character or their betrayal enough to act as judge.
that's the kind of "reward for paying attention despite it not really mattering what's going on" that I want to avoid.

hire the devs of Myst and Riven, talk to the people who made Portal and Half Life about what kind of physics puzzles and real time pattern matching you can incorporate to make stuff engaging.
play classic TERA dungeons/pvp and learn about how to design challenging bosses without giving them lockon oneshots

If ESO devs ever try to copy Portal, I'm gone. Environmental puzzles royally suck, even if you're not stuck with crappy MMO jumping physics. GW2 Living Story puzzles were nasty, Last Train to Cairo in SWL was a misery, and the Gemini Deception in SWTOR was utter misery, let alone the utter kitten mouse droid game in Eternal Throne. The stealth missions in this game are bad enough.

Bhaal5

jainiadral wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I want to be punished for pressing 'e' through dialogs and just following my intuition when I skip over something critical

there are quests in ESo that do that in that characters die if you rush choices, or you get different, sometimes lesser rewards. of course it requires you to actualy care about the characters that are part of the quests, and if you are skipping dialogue then you obviously don't so... don't know what kind of punishment are we talking about here.

like needing to listen to the NPC again because a piece of a puzzle is missing
I got a 200% EXP scroll in clockwork city because I did what I felt was good even though I knew choosing the other option would gran 250%
it's really frustrating because it was an arbitrary decision I didn't really feel like making personally and would have rather the whole thing been left to be dealt with by the proper authorities. I hate choosing to kill people or save them like WTF kind of choice. I don't care about this character or their betrayal enough to act as judge.
that's the kind of "reward for paying attention despite it not really mattering what's going on" that I want to avoid.

hire the devs of Myst and Riven, talk to the people who made Portal and Half Life about what kind of physics puzzles and real time pattern matching you can incorporate to make stuff engaging.
play classic TERA dungeons/pvp and learn about how to design challenging bosses without giving them lockon oneshots

If ESO devs ever try to copy Portal, I'm gone. Environmental puzzles royally suck, even if you're not stuck with crappy MMO jumping physics. GW2 Living Story puzzles were nasty, Last Train to Cairo in SWL was a misery, and the Gemini Deception in SWTOR was utter misery, let alone the utter kitten mouse droid game in Eternal Throne. The stealth missions in this game are bad enough.

I do prefer any environmental puzzle over watching a loadscreen or constantly getting bluescreened because of the country i live in

jainiadral

Bhaal5 wrote: »

jainiadral wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I want to be punished for pressing 'e' through dialogs and just following my intuition when I skip over something critical

there are quests in ESo that do that in that characters die if you rush choices, or you get different, sometimes lesser rewards. of course it requires you to actualy care about the characters that are part of the quests, and if you are skipping dialogue then you obviously don't so... don't know what kind of punishment are we talking about here.

like needing to listen to the NPC again because a piece of a puzzle is missing
I got a 200% EXP scroll in clockwork city because I did what I felt was good even though I knew choosing the other option would gran 250%
it's really frustrating because it was an arbitrary decision I didn't really feel like making personally and would have rather the whole thing been left to be dealt with by the proper authorities. I hate choosing to kill people or save them like WTF kind of choice. I don't care about this character or their betrayal enough to act as judge.
that's the kind of "reward for paying attention despite it not really mattering what's going on" that I want to avoid.

hire the devs of Myst and Riven, talk to the people who made Portal and Half Life about what kind of physics puzzles and real time pattern matching you can incorporate to make stuff engaging.
play classic TERA dungeons/pvp and learn about how to design challenging bosses without giving them lockon oneshots

If ESO devs ever try to copy Portal, I'm gone. Environmental puzzles royally suck, even if you're not stuck with crappy MMO jumping physics. GW2 Living Story puzzles were nasty, Last Train to Cairo in SWL was a misery, and the Gemini Deception in SWTOR was utter misery, let alone the utter kitten mouse droid game in Eternal Throne. The stealth missions in this game are bad enough.

I do prefer any environmental puzzle over watching a loadscreen or constantly getting bluescreened because of the country i live in

Sorry, I don't get what you're saying here. I'm talking about game design and mechanics, not performance issues.

Turelus

Personally I don't care about the length of the story as long as it's interesting and I have fun playing it.

ESO has some amazing writing talent and a collection of veteran writers and newer writers who have given me great stories to enjoy.
The short stories have never really bothered me as I find it a bit more realistic that someone would be part of many adventures during their life than one single never ending adventure.

SickDuck

As mentioned by many others, ESO has great stories and quests in general. However there are two things ruining it currently.

The quality seems to be declining over the years. Part of it is burning out of writers (been there, done that feeling) struggling to come out with original ideas after creating like 2k quests. Other bit I blame on the community, those whining constantly over quests and just wanna grind themselves to max cp asap.

The second thing is 1Tamriel ruining storytelling. With scaling and fully open world storytelling is random and out of order. Any new player who have no idea how to follow the original storylines will have a random experience of mildly interconnected but uncomprehesible quests.

Smaxx

Whenever I'm looking back at "season 1" of their "living story"… just imagine all ESO DLCs becoming dungeon DLCs and at the end of each dungeon you'll find out that it's been Mannimarco yet again. And if it's some new area, it's just full of grind to keep you busy for a while.

I enjoyed playing GW2 at release and a while after, but I never really looked forward to doing the living story stuff, because in the end it always ended in stupid achievement grind. Nope, I prefer ESO's way of doing new content any day.

WuffyCerulei

Each mmo will do its own thing. ESO goes on its way of telling a story or presenting a new zone. Doesn’t need to copy another game.

thedude33

jainiadral wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I

If ESO devs ever try to copy Portal, I'm gone. Environmental puzzles royally suck, even if you're not stuck with crappy MMO jumping physics. GW2 Living Story puzzles were nasty, Last Train to Cairo in SWL was a misery, and the Gemini Deception in SWTOR was utter misery, let alone the utter kitten mouse droid game in Eternal Throne. The stealth missions in this game are bad enough.

If ESO devs ever add 'jumping puzzles' I would also leave. GW2 devs remind me of Beavis and Butthead. I remember watching a live feed where they were introducing a new patch. They were giggling like 8 year olds while using some of the new things that were just added to the game. Troll worthy things that made for frustrating game play, but sure made them laugh.

idk

^^^^ Best post in the thread. I think you got the quote part messed up. Happens.

Peekachu99

The story in GW2 is anime-tier bad, with absolutely hilarious voice acting (not in a good way). Idk why you would want anything like that in ESO.

jainiadral

Peekachu99 wrote: »

The story in GW2 is anime-tier bad, with absolutely hilarious voice acting (not in a good way). Idk why you would want anything like that in ESO.

To be fair, a large number of GW2's voice actors are here. Gideon Emery, Jennifer Hale, and I could swear Eir Stegalkin's actress has voiced a few NPCs too. That's just off the top of my head.

Now the story, that's another story. I enjoyed the base game story in a lighthearted way, but Path of Fire made no sense and the Living World stuff has been hit too hard by the Joss Whedon stick.

Katahdin

I found GW2 story to be shallow and lacking in detail. It was boring and at times too slapstick (Scarlett).

Having to grind the same fetch quests in HoT over and over and needing a zerg to do it just to level enough to get to the next story quest was aggravating.

The living world nonsense where you have to wait for the next episode with no closure forever was tiresome.

There was a huge hole left in the story that was disappointing. One of the main characters leaps into a hole and disappears for months. He comes back and there is no explanation about where he went and what happened to him.

I loved the original GW story. It was detailed and had depth. ESO's story reminds me more of the original GW story more than GW2 does.

Danikat

I play both games, I like both games and this is one of the things I don't think I really have a preference on.

While people are right that there is an over-arching story to ESO it's a lot more subtle. In GW2 it's more like if you jump into an expansion without playing the previous storyline you're not going to know what's going on - it would be like someone deciding to watch Game of Thrones and starting with season 5. Which is good if you want a huge, long story to play through, not so good if you like the story and want to jump straight into the latest content, but fortunately the game is designed so there's no pressure on new players (except maybe from their friends) to start doing the latest stuff right away.

ESO gives you a lot more flexibility to skip around or play things in a different order without missing too much (and has fewer story related updates overall since a lot of the DLC is stand-alone dungeons) and sometimes I prefer that. For example I don't want my main character to join the Dark Brotherhood and since there's only a few bits of that DLC which relate to the wider story and you don't have to complete the actual DB story to do those I can skip it on her. It's also easier to keep track of what was going on that's relevant and it doesn't matter too much if you forget something whereas it's easy to get lost in the GW2 story.

But that (and similar comparisons with all kinds of other things) are why I like playing both games - I get different things from them. I wouldn't want them to be identical or interchangeable because that would just give me 1 less game to play.

Zardayne

Kikazaru wrote: »

I play both, and the storytelling in each game is fine in its own way.

I agree. I play both as well.

Kagukan

When I first started looking for a new MMO it came down to GW2 and ESO. The player housing in ESO won me over.

Bakkagami

ESO's stories aren't terrible but it's execution just made it way too boring for me to get into. Almost like reading a book and finishing just to finish rather than because you were interested in the conclusion. It has the same issue Skyrim had with a world that feels like its stagnant and main story that at no point makes you want to know what might happen next. GW2 does a much better job of making you want to continue the story. It's world also feels FAR more alive and less reliant on you than ESO's world.

In many ways, ESO's design philosophy seems simple to a fault and lacking in creativity. Dolmens and world bosses are a good example of this as something that could have been interesting (think rifts in RIFT or legendary bosses/map events in GW2 ) but just ended up simple mob spawn locations and have zero impact on the world, even within 10 feet of them. Considering they are set in such a well established universe, I can't help but be disappointed in how bland ESO's world feels.

Rain_Greyraven

I have enough issues with the corporate based identitarian nonsense that they trot out from time to time in ESO.


Why would anyone in their right mind want to wallow in it 24/7 like arena.net dose with GW2? People who play MMO's (or any game really) want to relax or maybe want to have an adventure with their friends.

What they don't want is some obsessive orientation manifesto predicated around what Mary Sue pixels stick what in where.

Linaleah

jainiadral wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

I want to be punished for pressing 'e' through dialogs and just following my intuition when I skip over something critical

there are quests in ESo that do that in that characters die if you rush choices, or you get different, sometimes lesser rewards. of course it requires you to actualy care about the characters that are part of the quests, and if you are skipping dialogue then you obviously don't so... don't know what kind of punishment are we talking about here.

like needing to listen to the NPC again because a piece of a puzzle is missing
I got a 200% EXP scroll in clockwork city because I did what I felt was good even though I knew choosing the other option would gran 250%
it's really frustrating because it was an arbitrary decision I didn't really feel like making personally and would have rather the whole thing been left to be dealt with by the proper authorities. I hate choosing to kill people or save them like WTF kind of choice. I don't care about this character or their betrayal enough to act as judge.
that's the kind of "reward for paying attention despite it not really mattering what's going on" that I want to avoid.

hire the devs of Myst and Riven, talk to the people who made Portal and Half Life about what kind of physics puzzles and real time pattern matching you can incorporate to make stuff engaging.
play classic TERA dungeons/pvp and learn about how to design challenging bosses without giving them lockon oneshots

If ESO devs ever try to copy Portal, I'm gone. Environmental puzzles royally suck, even if you're not stuck with crappy MMO jumping physics. GW2 Living Story puzzles were nasty, Last Train to Cairo in SWL was a misery, and the Gemini Deception in SWTOR was utter misery, let alone the utter kitten mouse droid game in Eternal Throne. The stealth missions in this game are bad enough.

All. OF. THIS. and you forgot to mention mad king's clocktower. I tried that thing twice years ago and I still have occasional nightmares.

and I have such love/hate relationship with last trait to Cairo... i love Nasir to pieces and I think Said is fascinating, but omg, that section of the train where you have to dodge oncoming crap while still fighting enemies. UGH. I was having Uncharted 2 Dejavu and Uncharted 2 is litteraly my least favorite of all uncharted games becasue of that train section.

and that mini droid game is number one reason why I only ever finished KOTFE on a single character. there are a few other reasons, but that one is one of the main ones. the party section at Vaylin's place is the other major reason.

aaaaanyways.

P.S. have they changed how GW2 world bosses work? becasue last i did them, they are pretty much ESO world bosses but requiring larger groups and not spawning as often. you can just join in randomly, or walk away a few steps and keep playing in a zone completely unaffected

DaveMoeDee

I'm happy with the storytelling in ESO. I haven't tried GW2 and I'm not interested in playing MMOs in general. I still have so many single player games to play through that don't compromise their storytelling with all the MMO distractions. I have no connection to the GW IP/lore, so no point for me.

Daimmyo

In fact,
instead of pushing ESO in the general direction of GW2 fluffiness - in terms of storyline AND (not less important) design, I think we need to work hard to bring ESO questing further into deep dark waters,
and same with design.

So, less flowers and purple haze neon atmosphere please...

And more darkness and gloominess and dirty dirty, hard hard hard delves with messed up crazy story-lines and truly insane characters.

Because
Indeed
this is how the world is now.

And I know us old farts are minority, but please do not seduce children with false promises of bright future.

Thank you!

FakeFox

The story of GW2 is very much character driven. This works for GW2 because it is very linear with a predefined player character and a focus on instanced story missions and cutscenes. This goes contrary to ESOs character concept of being a nobody and making your own story, in a more open world based story telling. For that reason I think GW2s story would not work well in ESO and vice versa.

Zelos

idk wrote: »

Glad you like GW2, however, you seem to be looking at it through rose colored glasses of it being new and something you like.

Heck, I did not find Summerset to be a short story and it was clearly well written. I seriously doubt GW2 is a much better story teller, if better at all. If you are saying GW2 offers much more quest content when they add a zone, I doubt it is much more if at all.

In the end, we all find different things interesting and again, glad you are enjoying GW2.

I played both games extensively and I find gw2 to have better questing and consistent patches with communication between there players more so then this game. They clearly put more effort into there game then I think eso does:) eso has such a annoying fetch questing where it is just run here do that then go to this NPC talk to him fight a boss with 100k health thats dead in less then 10 seconds at most. I mean come on:)

Daimmyo

Zelos wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Glad you like GW2, however, you seem to be looking at it through rose colored glasses of it being new and something you like.

Heck, I did not find Summerset to be a short story and it was clearly well written. I seriously doubt GW2 is a much better story teller, if better at all. If you are saying GW2 offers much more quest content when they add a zone, I doubt it is much more if at all.

In the end, we all find different things interesting and again, glad you are enjoying GW2.

I played both games extensively and I find gw2 to have better questing and consistent patches with communication between there players more so then this game. They clearly put more effort into there game then I think eso does:) eso has such a annoying fetch questing where it is just run here do that then go to this NPC talk to him fight a boss with 100k health thats dead in less then 10 seconds at most. I mean come on:)

As someone who is almost done with Caldwell Gold - I do agree and I think that level of generic/repetitive questing is off the charts. It feels like copy/paste storyline from alliance to alliance with just keyword editing.

I will be honest that I was annoyed with GW2 - but I didn't go through the story all the way.

I loved a lot GW1, it was my first MMO experience - skillwise it goes into better games, storyline so-so, but acceptable.

Something irritated me hard about GW2, but I may give it another try quest-wise.

I stopped halfway through at the very beginning playing Mesmer - being generally ugh*$#!!#?* after GW1.

Linaleah

did you just say.. GW2 has better questing while complaining about ESO being repetetive? have we been playing the same games? I undertand if you'd say original GW had better questing but GW2 can go into enciclopedia as the best example of repetetive questing. like.. I'm not even sure you could even call 80% of the game - questing. since what you do is go from area to area on the map and fill in the hearts/progress bar type things by doing one of the few repetetive tasks. you either grind some mobs which could ether mean going out and looking for them, or staying put and repelling attacks from them, or you loot things and bring them to an npc. occasionally something amusing like catching and carrying chickens happens, but for the most part... one of the reasons I stopped around 70% of been there done that achievement becasue I coudln't take the monotony anymore. the zones pretty much blurred into one another. in ESO at least - quests are actual quests and come with stories and little interpersonal character drama.