Guild Wars 2

Hard working, inquisitive, outsider who travels the world, doesn’t take slack from no one and enters societies that specifically look down on them and succeed regardless.

Scarlet as a character is workable. A tad creator-stand-in, but with decent writing that can be overcome. The problem, however, is how poorly she is presented.

She appears out of no where. Everyone acts like an idiot around her, you defeat her easily every time yet she keeps saying how it’s all part of her plan. It’s the ideal recipe for annoyness.

How could this have been avoided? Ingame backstory. I’m not talking a book, but actual flashbacks that you can participate in.

This should have been done the patch before the reveal. Have an Asura teleport you back to Rata Sum when Scarlet was attending. Show the player how she was brilliant, and shunned by the racist Asuras. Have the player and her team up against a foe. Have her talk about her philosophy on life a bit. Build character.

Then the next patch- bam- Scarlet is the mysterious stranger. Now she is at least a bit more relatable, and the player feels some connection to her.

The opportunity is passed now. But it’d be nice if ANet learns their lesson and actually properly introduces villains in the future.

Yes to 100% of everything you said.

Yeah, people who played AN’s other stuff know that’s a fact they have always struggled with. Imo, Tyria is the best fictional universe ever, period, but when only playing their games it’s really hard to get enthused by it.
This is by no means a justification, it’s simply something they hopefully figure out before tackling deeper and more impactful lore. I guess, that’s what I see the whole “Scarlet thing” as: A kind of test run, so they can figure they story delivery out (Personal story was kind of garbage…)

Scarlet even with backstory I still feel is garbage and does not suceeded as anything that can be taken seriously. Again as stated many times before, she has failed to do what the Joker ( some versions ) and Kefka ( FF6) suceeded in doing, being comical and actually still be taken seriously.

On top of the fact she is a Mary Sue of villians.

Most likely linked before, but, yeah.

Farzo.8410:

Most likely linked before, but, yeah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZU8h-9nyHU

That sums it up pretty much yeah. I hope she dies soon.

and another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIR97Ubfpa4

Yep. There’s not an ounce of Scarlet that I find interesting. She is a surrogate villain — not a proper one.

Instead of encouraging on screwing up more Guild Wars lores just to keep Scarlet, why not just kill her off or retcon her out? From here, give a different writer a chance to write a different villain, or just go back to freaken dragons, which you know, was advertise for the game for a year.

Qawsada.4251:

Instead of encouraging on screwing up more Guild Wars lores just to keep Scarlet, why not just kill her off or retcon her out? From here, give a different writer a chance to write a different villain, or just go back to freaken dragons, which you know, was advertise for the game for a year.

Anet being stubborn as they are, plus the fact that living story chapters go into production months before they come out means that we’re likely stuck with Scarlet for a very long time.

I think Scarlett would have worked better if she was introduced in content that made her into the next Sierran and along the path of completing that living story Scarlett was driven to keep searching for more and more knowledge to counter an enemy whose strength only existed in her mind, growing more obsessed as the story progressed until she became the enemy that she was always worried about.

And she needed to have not continuously been defeated so easily so consistently. Villains need to have the occasional major success in order to be taken seriously.

Ellisande.5218:

And she needed to have not continuously been defeated so easily so consistently. Villains need to have the occasional major success in order to be taken seriously.

And that success needs to be believable. Not “Ah-ha! You’ve destroyed my massive investment- just like I knew you would. Everything is going according to plan- <evil laugh>.”

Even if that turns out to be true, the explanation for it will defy belief.

Being mysterious is fine, having reality twist to accommodate you isn’t- be it hero or villain.

Off topic: but I think a lot of Scarlet hate could be solved by showing us what is actually happening. Krait and Nightmare court team up, sounds a bit unbelievable- but how about show us with our own eyes. Have us transform and see the original meeting.

If you’re unable to create an original meeting that demonstrates such a thing then that a clue that maybe what you’re doing simply isn’t logical.

Flame Legion and Dredge: show us the meeting.

Humans suddenly, and for no reason, start practicing advanced golemancy seemingly just so Scarlet can convert them in to an army 2 weeks later. Show us how that happened. Show us how the humans got them. Show us why Scarlet was so easily able to convert them. We don’t need to kill anything, just allow us to stand around as a Krait while people talk to other people near us.

Person teleporting around at unprecedented levels. Show us how that’s possible.

Flame Legion prisoners don’t give up a plant who they’re angry at immediately? Let us stealth and see why. Let us see their leadership order them not to talk.

If interactions can be crafted to demonstrate why any of these things are believable, even if their believability is marginal, people will at least see things happening in the world.

Instead of what currently happens, ANet stating that something unbelievable happened and us having to believe it without ever witnessing it. It feels like very poorly written fan-fiction.

“Scarlet was a master of making people do what she wanted.” Show don’t tell. Story-writing 101.

Id argue it is a slow delivery not a bad one. I think they are taking to long to develop her which leaves her empty like unflavored food. Leaving you with only a bad taste in your mouth. Also leaving all of her development out of game is the major pet peeves about her.

Any delivery that has players realising her involvement is a blind date between two evil factions every other month and an inconsequential appearance of Scarlet herself before we defeat them all and send her off two play match maker with two more villanous factions with no other consequences, that kind of delivery I would describe as bad.

We expect Scarlet to fail. We expect her to be harmless. We expect her alliances. That’s not good.