Guild Wars 2

Apparently scarlet has an endless supply of supplies, and of minions. It’s a game, yes, and we’ve killed the same spawning Dolyaks in the same spots in Frostforge and beyond a million times over. All content is repeatable in a static game, and it has to be that way.
That being said, this living content is different in my opinion. Number one, Anet claims anything is up for ruin and plunder; any city, any area, anyone. Now they’re sending the same monsters we’ve killed a million times over to destroy Lions Arch.
The whole thing feels a bit… pointless? Yeah we get loot and achievements from doing the living story quests and so on, but if they want to make it feel like an actual story, we need to start seeing the impact we’ve been inflicting upon said enemy forces. We’ve been doing the quests and killing scores of Krait and Dredge and whatever else comes up, but more and more enemies spawn.
Basically, Anet is saying – “Hey, we’re going to give you a bunch of temp content! We’re going to make it seem like you can make a difference, but you’re really just killing endlessly spawning Krait that will not help defend Tyria at all. The outcome is predetermined, but keep playing! You get good drops .002% of the time!”
It’s just hard to get into something when you know the outcome is predetermined, for me at least, and for this living story kitten.
The Karka still control every waypoint in Southsun, as do the risen in their land, even after we killed the dragon and the Karka lordwhatever.
Nothing feels accomplished. Nothing feels changed for the better.
Even when we beat the boss, we gain nothing but a bunch of indefinitely contested waypoints and empty maps.
Just a little sick of the lack of impact players have.
That’s all!

I feel like you want to play a singleplayer game. Themepark MMOs can not present the player impact in the same way a game you play alone can.
If you want to impact the world, play a sandbox MMO, like EVE.

Well the problem with this Living Story is actually, that nothing we did really matters. The Figure Scarlett behaves like a Jack in the Box. You beat it somewhere and it Pops up somewhere again in another Location, saying: “Haha, you can’t win.”.

We defeated the molten alliance but it’s still there, we found out, who was responsable for the chaos on South Sun but the mad Karka are still there. We killed the aetherblades and imprissoned their leader but they are still around, we destroyed the Tower in Kessex Hills, but it didn’t change a bit (ok this time we even got a bit of explanation), we killed the Marionette but it doesn’t help to stop Scarlett a bit as it seems and so on and so on. I do not even feel like it delays something, it just has no impact on whats going on at all.

Did you not do anything of the current LS? Scarlet wanted the tech of the Dredge, it didn’t matter to her how many deaths there were as long as she got what she wanted. The same with the aetherblade, she wanted something, distracted us and then tried to get her way (which failed, btw), then she wanted the droids from the Jubilee, which she got (and turned into a giant puppet), she wanted a poison that would be lethal (which she got, as the current LS proves) and she wanted to test the effectiveness of her big doll (a lot of people died because of that, but, Scarlet doesn’t mind a few deaths here or there…)

So far, we’ve all been a puppet in the hands of Scarlet, doing what she expects us to do while she reaps the reward. We’ll see about the final purpose of Scarlet at the end of this story arc… (I hope!)

That is exactely my point. She acts like a machine and is following her plan and all we can do is running behind her and always find out what she’s on to late. It’s not that she adjusts her plans according to something we did, that she reacts, she does what she wants to do nevertheless. So while Scalett might be an intelligent mastermind we are nothing but her pets which follow her around.

And it doesn’t even fell like we are weakening her because all her forces come up again.

Pirlipat.2479:

It’s not that she adjusts her plans according to something we did, that she reacts, she does what she wants to do nevertheless.

Yes, we’re always too late, we haven’t figured out what she plans to do (and only then can we pull ahead). But she does adjust her plans according to something we did. Again, it is clearly told in the current LS. The poison. She made a poison (the toxic alliance), which we got an antidote for. But this antidote doesn’t work for the poison she finally managed to make!

And she’s a psychopath (as far as we can see now). Why would she not do what she wants to do? She doesn’t care for anything but Scarlet (and her final goal, which we don’t know what it is). And as long as she can stay one step ahead of us, she can do whatever she wants…

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Pirlipat.2479:

It’s not that she adjusts her plans according to something we did, that she reacts, she does what she wants to do nevertheless.

Yes, we’re always too late, we haven’t figured out what she plans to do (and only then can we pull ahead). But she does adjust her plans according to something we did. Again, it is clearly told in the current LS. The poison. She made a poison (the toxic alliance), which we got an antidote for. But this antidote doesn’t work for the poison she finally managed to make!

And what was our impact then? Finding a not working antidote? Very important and we accomplished quite alot.

And she’s a psychopath (as far as we can see now). Why would she not do what she wants to do? She doesn’t care for anything but Scarlet (and her final goal, which we don’t know what it is). And as long as she can stay one step ahead of us, she can do whatever she wants…

Erm, sure but she is a figure in a story and I am criticising how this story is going on and how I feel about the impact my own game figure has on this story, and how the figure is presented and I am not discussing about a real person.

I kind of agree with the fact that no matter how many of her forces we killed, they are still here in great numbers. “Scarlet is threatening to kill them if they don’t obey” well by now we have decimated so many of them by now they should be scared of us, not her.

Why aren’t they revolting against her ? Is there something more to it ? I hope so.

As for the risen in Orr, I understand that it’s because Orr is currently frozen in time so even new players can experience the main quest of the game. But Southsun I don’t know.

Pirlipat.2479:

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Pirlipat.2479:

It’s not that she adjusts her plans according to something we did, that she reacts, she does what she wants to do nevertheless.

Yes, we’re always too late, we haven’t figured out what she plans to do (and only then can we pull ahead). But she does adjust her plans according to something we did. Again, it is clearly told in the current LS. The poison. She made a poison (the toxic alliance), which we got an antidote for. But this antidote doesn’t work for the poison she finally managed to make!

And what was our impact then? Finding a not working antidote? Very important and we accomplished quite alot.

We worked to find an antidote and at the end we thought we had found it (and thus thought we were one step ahead of her). But, we were proven wrong and now must wait to see what she will do with the toxin she finally managed to make.

It happens a lot in stories, you know, that the hero of the story thinks he’s solved it but then it crumbles all around him one chapter later…

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Did you not do anything of the current LS? Scarlet wanted the tech of the Dredge, it didn’t matter to her how many deaths there were as long as she got what she wanted. The same with the aetherblade, she wanted something, distracted us and then tried to get her way (which failed, btw), then she wanted the droids from the Jubilee, which she got (and turned into a giant puppet), she wanted a poison that would be lethal (which she got, as the current LS proves) and she wanted to test the effectiveness of her big doll (a lot of people died because of that, but, Scarlet doesn’t mind a few deaths here or there…)

So far, we’ve all been a puppet in the hands of Scarlet, doing what she expects us to do while she reaps the reward. We’ll see about the final purpose of Scarlet at the end of this story arc… (I hope!)

Honestly, I never really pay attention to the story. I sort of did in GW1, but not gw2. Too much lore for me. I don’t mind repeatable events like the marionette that are large and require a lot of resources, but when Scarlet repeatedly finds all of this steel SOMEWHERE and builds it into airships or dolls or whatnot, it just seems sort of dull. Like, where did you find all of this stuff? Mined it? From where? Dredge? Well we’ve killed a million of them. It would be cool to win sometimes. I just want Anet to explain HOW all of these enemies are still there, be it some mystical respawn portal or just very fast reproduction. As it is now, we never make a dent.

NinjaChris.9340:

I feel like you want to play a singleplayer game. Themepark MMOs can not present the player impact in the same way a game you play alone can.
If you want to impact the world, play a sandbox MMO, like EVE.

I don’t mind not having an impact in the normal game play, but when they introduced this living story stuff they made it sound like we were going to have power, and options. That hasn’t really happened overall. And yeah, EVE is awesome, but it takes too long to play. And costs moneh.

This is not happening once this happens over the whole Story arc.

I haven’t done much RP but if Scarlett was a roleplayer I would say she is horribly powerplaying.

eye floater.7140:

I don’t mind not having an impact in the normal game play, but when they introduced this living story stuff they made it sound like we were going to have power, and options. That hasn’t really happened overall. And yeah, EVE is awesome, but it takes too long to play. And costs moneh.

Well to defend Anet, they did leave us a choice : Kiel or Evon. And I hope they never ever make something like that ever again.
That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make us chose attack tactics or allies which simply add a twist to the story, but making us chose "Which major lore event you want to see knowing that the other one would completely forgotten (which again doesn’t make any sense because if Evon won, I hardly see how we could forget about Thaumanova or how Scarlet could be associated to the Abaddon Fractal).

Any kind of content vote is bound to not end well because those who wanted the content and didn’t get it in the end are going to be pretty unhappy. Which wouldn’t be the case in asking us how we wanted to deal with Scarlet (kind of like when we had to chose which Order tactic we should follow).

It is ultimately a game, and all games have a predetermined end (arguably even PvP as one of the teams will win, that is predetermined. the only choice is which). Read a book, it ends how it is written. Play a game, there is illusion of choice at times, but the end is preprogrammed. I don’t see this living story any different. If you want something that isn’t predetermined, go out to real life. That is the only place you’ll find it, and even then some would argue that many of your decisions are only illusions there too.

Invictus.1503:

It is ultimately a game, and all games have a predetermined end (arguably even PvP as one of the teams will win, that is predetermined. the only choice is which). Read a book, it ends how it is written. Play a game, there is illusion of choice at times, but the end is preprogrammed. I don’t see this living story any different. If you want something that isn’t predetermined, go out to real life. That is the only place you’ll find it, and even then some would argue that many of your decisions are only illusions there too.

But the ending of a book or single player game usually flows from the actions of the main character as well as the villains. The problem here is that the LS isn’t reflecting our actions very well.

Scarlet started with the Molten Alliance, and we broke them. Then the Aetherblades showed up, and Scarlet now had the MA and the Aetherblades. That seems fine, until you remember that we smashed the MA. But… okay. Maybe it’s just a few left over. So, we smash the Aetherblades. We went in all Rambo, and handed them their kitten. But the next time she shows up, she STILL has the MA. And she has the Aetherblades at full force as well.

THIS is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. By PLOT reasons, she shouldn’t have all these forces any more. And yet she does. We’ve accomplished nothing.

Lol, of course this has a predetermined end and every real impact is an illusion. What becomes quite annoying for me is: you do something everyone is making quite alot of drama about it, you seem to accomplish something get a reward and in the next chapter they tell you “hey, cool what you did, but it doesn’t matter, that wasn’t what Scarlett was after or she got what she wanted no matter what you did, oh and btw it didn’t hurt her anyways, just…because.”

That is at least how I feel right now about the entire storyplot.

RedStar.4218:

Well to defend Anet, they did leave us a choice : Kiel or Evon.

Which amounted to choosing one of two fractals – after all, i doubt this choice affected the destruction of LA even one bit, and once it is destroyed, who sits on LA captain council will become irrelevant. The city (and thus council) will be gone.