Guild Wars 2

It’s just what you want to see. =’)

Cyan.6904:

It’s just what you want to see. =’)

That argument can be applied to anything. Thought eventually a horse is a horse, white is white, and a sue is a sue.

I like Scarlet she’s everything

Namica.2951:

Cyan.6904:

It’s just what you want to see. =’)

That argument can be applied to anything. Thought eventually a horse is a horse, white is white, and a sue is a sue.

In your interpretation, yes.

Namica.2951:

Cyan.6904:

It’s just what you want to see. =’)

That argument can be applied to anything. Thought eventually a horse is a horse, white is white, and a sue is a sue.

And a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Namica.2951:

Cyan.6904:

It’s just what you want to see. =’)

That argument can be applied to anything. Thought eventually a horse is a horse, white is white, and a sue is a sue.

And a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man.

Ironically, that proverb fits you bad writing & plothole lovers just as well – if not more.

Thalador.4218:

Ironically, that proverb fits you bad writing & plothole lovers just as well – if not more.

I assumed that’s what he meant.

Unleashed.6195:

Thalador.4218:

Ironically, that proverb fits you bad writing & plothole lovers just as well – if not more.

I assumed that’s what he meant.

If you’re convinced there’s nothing there, you’re probably not going to find it. And if you’re looking for it and don’t find it, you’ll invent something. But if there’s something there and you say “I don’t see anything”, well . . .

I think that’s worse off than seeing some random splotches of paint and being moved to tears by whatever you imagine is there.

Hand in hand with another favorite saying: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”.

And it’s an admission time: I like looking at what’s on the table and drawing conclusions and conjecture. But to not see something and assume it will never happen . . . I can’t do that. I can’t accept that way of thinking. I can only assume it hasn’t happened yet, rather than it will never happen, or else I have no reason to continue.

Cyan.6904:

In your interpretation, yes.

To a point. I mean, if a mac truck is barreling down at you, it won’t matter what your perception is.. reality catches up.

ThiBash.5634:

Because she’s a Sylvari, and Sylvari in this game in general always outshine the other races. Asura are smart? Sylvari are smarter. Norn can drink? Sylvari can drink better. Charr can fight? Well, a Sylvari that doesn’t see himself lead an army does it better. Other racers become undead, but of course not Sylvari. Other races don’t want to work together, but Sylvari ‘will make them see reason’. And when it comes to brilliant blacksmiths, we get Norn (logical), Tengu (logical) and…well, a Sylvari because he apparently created an inpenetrable plant harness.

Sylvari seem to always outshine everything else, and quite frankly, I’m sick of it. The whole ’can’t grasp emotions very well’ bit was lost somewhere along the road, with only Seiran being a decent character. The rest are just one-dimensional Superman-clones.

Saw this late ThiBash, but I totally agree. I’m sick of the Sylvari being amazing at everything because they couldn’t find another way to be interesting. It’s like they got angry that Sylvari are the 2nd least favorite.. And are bashing us over the head with SYLVARI ARE AWESOME! YOU MUST ACCEPT! & having a Sylvari over achieve all the races totally taints the accomplishments of the other races. They will forever be pushed down to 2nd tier because “That Sylvari girl did it better”.
Can’t believe we lost out on Tengu for these guys… Man I hope this Scarlet story is a joke or a dream or an illusion or a manipulation by the Mursaat.

Next we’ll find out she can out drink a Norn and eat more meat than a Charr at Meatoberfest.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Next we’ll find out she can out drink a Norn and eat more meat than a Charr at Meatoberfest.

Pffft, I’m the Omnonmnivore. She’s welcome to take a crack at Belcher’s Bluff with me and Adrul any day.

Oh, by the way, can someone go find David Xanatos and teach Scarlet how to do things properly? Or maybe teach Evon for the next time he wants to win an election?

So I read the backstory and… I’m not that interested. Most of what she does is about as interesting as a job resume, and probably would’ve been more succinctly written out as one. The whole story with why she went insane seems to be “Yeah, she was hooked up to this device that metaphysicked her brain something fierce, and she emerged from it all ‘you can’t tell me what to do narbs!’ and then started the gnarliest random teenage rebellion tantrum”, and it doesn’t garner sympathy or distaste or even interest. It is like her form of rebellion against the dream state is to out nightmare the nightmare court.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So I read the backstory and… I’m not that interested. Most of what she does is about as interesting as a job resume, and probably would’ve been more succinctly written out as one. The whole story with why she went insane seems to be “Yeah, she was hooked up to this device that metaphysicked her brain something fierce, and she emerged from it all ‘you can’t tell me what to do narbs!’ and then started the gnarliest random teenage rebellion tantrum”, and it doesn’t garner sympathy or distaste or even interest.

Yeah, my thought exactly. She’s a trash brat on the mother of all spiteful “lololololol im so smart ur so dumb no1 tells me wut 2 do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” ego trips. There really isn’t much I could possibly care less about than that.

Can we, maybe, possibly, eventually, go back to what this game was supposed to be about: saving the world from the Elder Dragons? I’m so bloody sick of oh-so-cool Steampunk pirates and this oh-so-cool and oh-so-infinitely-superior-to-everyone-ever childish tosser. How many more months do we have to put up with this nonsense?

And here I thought the pirate election was bad …

If Scarlet sues I think you’ll want to find a really good lawyer.

Namica.2951:

Well, reading her short story made it rather clear that those people talking about her past having depth were dead wrong. We can add more to her sueness:

Master Smith
Master Sniper
Evil for the sake of being evil
Responsible for Asuran personal story

When will the sue-ing end? She was already a genius of stupidly large renown, and pretty much a female Traeherne. She is one of, if not thee biggest sue I’ve ever seen in an MMO.

Was gonna say the same thing. The fact that she is in fact Sylvari, and not something else, and was already a master genious before she went to Rata Sum…

Seriously…

SERIOUSLY!

I’d delete my Sylvari if I hadn’t already. Sylavri’s had so much potential yet ended up being the worst written of all Tyria’s races.

Even a random, stereotypical Charr would have been better as a personal nemesis…

She may be a personal nemesis, but she’s not mine. Anyone want to take her on? Anyone? Nobody?

Here’s an easy way to sort these things out.

One part of being a Mary Sue is that the character has no flaws. And if they do have flaws, that the flaws dont just make them look all the more “amazing”. For instance, a common RP trope is blindness. Which of course is a flaw, but many players will find these ways around really being blind. For instance, using their magic powers to see through other peoples visions, or in one case I saw, through the eyes of a small dog they kept with them at all times. It took a flaw, and made it have no meaning, made it just make the character look all the more amazing and perfect.

What are Scarlet’s flaws? And before people say it, no, so far her “insanity” is not a flaw. Why? Well first of all, she may not be insane, she could just be acting childish. Second of all, her insanity has had absolutly 0 detrimental effects on her, and just makes it all the more amazing that she’s united such factions together under one banner (why would the Flame Legion, who not only hates none-Charr, but also hates women, listen to an insane Sylvari?).

DarksunG.9537:

Cyan.6904:

In your interpretation, yes.

To a point. I mean, if a mac truck is barreling down at you, it won’t matter what your perception is.. reality catches up.

True, and I do agree that they slightly overdid it on Scarlet. It’s just that I see potential, sue or not.

I don’t think I have met a single person ingame that doesn’t dislike Scarlet. Even one of the zergs I participated with discussed what a bad character Scarlet is.

I believe it’s safe to say that Scarlet is Trahearne-levels of hated.

Namica.2951:

Here’s an easy way to sort these things out.

One part of being a Mary Sue is that the character has no flaws. And if they do have flaws, that the flaws dont just make them look all the more “amazing”. For instance, a common RP trope is blindness. Which of course is a flaw, but many players will find these ways around really being blind. For instance, using their magic powers to see through other peoples visions, or in one case I saw, through the eyes of a small dog they kept with them at all times. It took a flaw, and made it have no meaning, made it just make the character look all the more amazing and perfect.

What are Scarlet’s flaws? And before people say it, no, so far her “insanity” is not a flaw. Why? Well first of all, she may not be insane, she could just be acting childish. Second of all, her insanity has had absolutly 0 detrimental effects on her, and just makes it all the more amazing that she’s united such factions together under one banner (why would the Flame Legion, who not only hates none-Charr, but also hates women, listen to an insane Sylvari?).

She’s not actually insane. She looked at the Eternal Alchemy (tl;dr: destiny) and didn’t like what destiny meant, then she saw what her destiny was and embraced it (ironic, because she didn’t like destiny, but her destiny is to rebel against dest-…)

Yeaah…

boredinbc.2786:

I like her…a lot actually. Her character fits well into the writers style of overly campy and expositional dialogue. That sounds like a dig, but it isn’t. I think the writing style has struggled in this game since day one, the writers built square characters and tried to write them into round holes and it almost always fell flat. Here they have made a character they know how to write, and hopefully are finding their footing.

“Cannonballs! My one weakness”. Bravo.

you didn’t read any of the GW2 books i take it. the characters in there were pretty fleshed out in comparison to this saturday morning, generic bad guy.

Do you guys want to know what’s one of the funniest parts of this?

I’ve seen one of Scarlet’s fans claim that the only reason we hate Scarlet is because she’s a girl.

Accusation of misogyny aside, that claim is easily invalidated just by saying the word “Trahearne”.

Shriketalon.1937:

BobbyStein.2315:

I can’t comment on what Ree and Jeff are working on, but I can say that I’m ultimately responsible for the quality of the Living World story. I don’t imagine we’ll please everyone with our new direction, but that’s true of any story. That stated, I encourage people to leave their feedback. Just please be respectful.

Respectful constructive criticism attempt coming up!

I would describe Scarlet as well acted, poorly written. She herself is doing just fine. The voice actress is clearly having a blast and pulling off a nice maniacal villain, which meshes very well with her twisted choice of minions. It’s the exposition surrounding her, however, which doesn’t fit well.

You can’t impress people by injecting fake accomplishments into the world, it simply doesn’t fit and comes across as contrived. If the villain is extremely well known and amazing, they would have shown up on our radar far beforehand. More importantly, if you break the established norms of the world to try to demonstrate how super-special-awesome the character is, it feels forced rather than epic.

Let me give you an example. Say I showed you this character: Gragnack the Skulldecimator. Gragnack was an orphan charr who was raised by Norn and found to be an awesome warrior and mystic. He studied with the shamans of the great Spirits of the Wild and was requested by all four to become the new havroun, but rejected them all. Instead, he traveled across all of Tyria, defeating one of every powerful species he could find, and now invokes an occult power mightier than any known shaman’s strength that lets him bend all animals to his will.

Does this character sound amazing and impressive? Almost certainly not, because his power level and plausibility are completely insane. It takes everything we currently know about the Norn and the Spirits and turns it on its head for the sake of making one character sound super-special-awesome. If there were a charr shaman, we would know about it. If there was a charr shaman powerful enough to be havroun, he would have made a huge blip on the cultural radar. But when taken to the level of Best Shaman Ever!!!!, the character breaks straight out of the “rather implausible” and straight into the “bullskritt” category.

So, three points.

1) Fake accomplishments have no teeth. I don’t care if you tell me a brand new character just introduced beat up Jormag with nothing but a rusty can opener and a doylak skull, it still sounds like something you made up to make that character look cool. Because you did. Breaking the suspension of disbelief kills any possible appreciation for the new character.

2) You don’t need the character’s power level to be over 9000. The attack on the city was magnificent, but hearing Vorpp gush about the accomplishments of this super-special-awesome new prodigy was physically painful. If you had simply said “she was a sylvari accepted into the College of Synergetics who studied under -InsertPortalSpecialistNameHere-, then murdered her master and krewe and stole all their research”, it would have sounded perfect. Plausible but noteworthy, with a touch of cruel and villainous.

3) Show, don’t tell. Build, don’t force. If you want us to fear and respect the villain, have them do villainous deeds that instill fear and respect. If you want that villain to be grand and magnificent, build them up over time and use a series of events to instill a sense of grandiosity. Introducing a new character and telling us that they are important and amazing doesn’t work because it doesn’t feel real. If you show us the character being amazing and demonstrate how they interact and impact the world, it creates the persona of a grand nemesis organically.

I have to quote this wonderful response because it needs to be considered by the writing team.

I have no idea who made the decision to include your MAIN antagonist’s (for this portion of the LS anyway) background in a short story tucked away in the forums, but it was an objectively bad decision.

In games, we are supposed interact with the story and flow with it, not participate in it mid-plot and then move onto the next portion assuming things are so-and-so.

Scarlet/Ceara or her background should have been mentioned at length weaved into the LS or in the Sylvari or Asuran personal stories.

This isn’t a critique of her character (which I don’t find fits the Guild Wars setting), but how she’s presented.

I slogged through What Scarlet Saw (oh god it was bad and confirmed everything I said prior) and I said this elsewhere, but I’ll copypaste it here:

“Scarlet Briar: pretty much the same as if Rowling made a 15 year old American transfer student metamorphmagus-animagus, that can cast the killing curse with good intent, who uses their dragon familiar to kill Voldemort while they’re busy at a conference peacefully and successfully revealing the wizarding world to muggles.”

It’s a particularly nasty rub as someone whose main is a Sylvari engineer with a surname. Though he took a surname because he really likes humans and it’s just naive mimicry, I imagine.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

If you’re convinced there’s nothing there, you’re probably not going to find it. And if you’re looking for it and don’t find it, you’ll invent something. But if there’s something there and you say “I don’t see anything”, well . . .

We have gleaned new information regarding Scarlet from the short. That doesn’t automatically make the “something” that is there any good, though.

Eldrake.1543:

Do you guys want to know what’s one of the funniest parts of this?

I’ve seen one of Scarlet’s fans claim that the only reason we hate Scarlet is because she’s a girl.

Accusation of misogyny aside, that claim is easily invalidated just by saying the word “Trahearne”.

As someone who is a huge proponent of equal rights and will freely, happily admit to being a feminist, I find that just as insulting as the people who say that Scarlet needs to look more sexy.

Bad characters are bad characters, it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female.

That said, I believe she’s surpassed Trahearne in awfulness by miles, and it has absolutely nothing to do with her gender. At least she has a stunningly talented VA. I feel bad that Tara Strong will forever be tied to such a badly written character, though.

So wait, i read the story i would like to ask some things, spoilers for those who haven’t read clearly.

1- According to the story they tempered with stuff while in the inquest to gain an edge on the snaff prize deal, so basically, she was responsible for part of the asura personal story?

2- I can symphatise with the idea of trying to look for a destiny for yourself, and not doing something that people expect you to do, but… according to the story this is the bad thing? I don’t get it, that’s a nice moral and yet the premise of the story is that because she didn’t do what was expected of her she’s wrong?

3- Is she just evil for the sake of being evil really? She laughs as she got caught tempering with items from the inquest like she dosn’t have a care in the world, and messed with alot of her tutors and brags alot, but most important, she killed, for no reason at all her tutor wich made it possible for her to experience the whole “eternal alchemy”. Her drive for knowledge was interesting and all that, and i would have understood if she at some point found something that messed with her mind and made her insane, but no, she’s acting according to her own personality to the end, a giant villain sue.

Whether she is a Villain Sue or not, I believe it would not be entirely incorrect to say that Ms. Scarlet is…

/e pause for dramatic effect

…a bad seed.

Eldrake.1543:

Do you guys want to know what’s one of the funniest parts of this?

I’ve seen one of Scarlet’s fans claim that the only reason we hate Scarlet is because she’s a girl.

Accusation of misogyny aside, that claim is easily invalidated just by saying the word “Trahearne”.

Actually, there was some misogyny going on during Cutthroat Politics. Accusations of people only supporting Kiel because she has female assets. So it is not unheard of.

I like her voice and the character model of Scarlet. I know it is waaay over the top, but it is funny. What I really don’t like is her back story and how it is presented. I don’t mind a short story about her, but I think, it could have been presented better in the game. If you had Scarlet in mind as a villian since the Molten Alliance then it would have been possible to leave some clues around, let some people mention this super genius travelling through Tyria and learning from the best.
And her backstory basically reads like: she travels to a teacher, learns from them and then travels to the next. No mistakes and in everything she’s the best. You can have a fun over the top villian without this ridicilous backstory of her.
And I don’t see the point hiding her the last updates. I really thought she was someone we already knew. Like maybe Kasmeer or Kiel.

inazuma.7021:

Actually, there was some misogyny going on during Cutthroat Politics. Accusations of people only supporting Kiel because she has female assets. So it is not unheard of.

I love how misogyny now means “doesn’t prefer women over men”

Villains are only interesting it they have a realistic motive and as far as I can tell, Scarlet has none. She’s invading but why? What would she do if she was successful? What does Dredgehaunt Cliffs have to do with Queen Jenna and Kryta? Why would the Aetherblades and the Molten Alliance side with her? Why does it benefit them? What the hell is she after?

She’s super intelligent, which in this case is used lazily to justify her having created robots which appear to be no more advanced than a typical asuran golem. How about if some of that intelligence is applied towards her motives? It could be interesting if she injected doubt into the player’s mind, as to whether she’s evil or not.

Perhaps having glimpsed into the eternal alchemy, she saw something which justifies her actions somehow. Maybe she saw that unless she invaded with her minions, Tyria would face some even greater threat, possibly a kittenING DRAGON DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THOSE?

But no, she’s just a generic, deranged, moustache twirling, cackling villain who does evil things for no reason at all.

I didn’t care for Scarlet because I had no connection with her. She never popped up except for this LS (with a brief cameo during the Gauntlet). It’s like the LOTR trilogy with Sauron being introduced only during the assault on Barad-dur. There was no buildup, no interweaving themes (except for episodic villains like the Pirates and Molten alliance). If we could have gotten smaller clues during the previous LS, it would have tied everything together and made the whole story more cohesive.

Shifu.4321:

I didn’t care for Scarlet because I had no connection with her. She never popped up except for this LS (with a brief cameo during the Gauntlet). It’s like the LOTR trilogy with Sauron being introduced only during the assault on Barad-dur. There was no buildup, no interweaving themes (except for episodic villains like the Pirates and Molten alliance). If we could have gotten smaller clues during the previous LS, it would have tied everything together and made the whole story more cohesive.

We’ve never seen villains pop up and take claim for all the past actions of GW stories… Cough Abaddon Cough I seriously think people need to get their panties unbunched and give them more than 1 single story to flesh out a character. Heck, half of people’s problems with the original GW2 personal story was having NPC deaths making little impact on the players because they had their introduction and death in the same instance. Time is necessary, give them some of it to work with, lol.

Narcemus.1348:

We’ve never seen villains pop up and take claim for all the past actions of GW stories… Cough Abaddon Cough

Abaddon didn’t take claim for past stories for Prophecies or Factions. He just took the bosses and put them together for a boss fight.

Supreme.7352:

Abaddon didn’t take claim for past stories for Prophecies or Factions. He just took the bosses and put them together for a boss fight.

Actually, in Nightfall, we find out Abaddon was behind most of the bad things that happened in gw1.

1. The invasion of the three human kingdoms by the Charr, which lead to the destruction of Ascalon.
2. He sent a demon, disguised as an Orrian ghost, to manipulate Khilbron. He was able to get Khilbron to read from the Lost Scrolls, which caused the Cataclysm.
3. One of his servents, the Fury, was responsible for overseeing the creation of the Titans. The beings that were released at the end of Prophecies, that the Mursaat were trying to stop.
4. He sent another demon, this time disguised as a fortune teller, to manipulate Shiro. This lead to him killing the Emperor and causing the Jade Wind.
5. The entire events of Nightfall.

We didn’t even know about him until Nightfall, and we found out he was behind almost every villain in the storyline. The only ones bad guys that can’t claim the “Abaddon made us do it!” excuse is probably the Mursaat and the Stone Summit dwarves. Even the Charr got to use that cop out.

I absolutely refuse to believe she’s actually the one behind the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades. That person in my head would’ve been someone cunning, who’s always one step ahead of you, and oozes with authority.

Instead, we got this childish girl who acts in such a way that you can predict her actions down to her dialogue lines.

Make your own Scarlet here!

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/fatguy.html

She appears to be a normal sylvari except she dresses like a bloody nurse J-pop star, her eyes can see the goodness in any creature’s heart and her hair is orange and changes color depending on her mood, but secretly she is actually a half-cyborg.
She is a rumored first born from a scientific experiment gone wrong and she will fight her enemies with the power to twist the flesh of her opponent with her mind or to talk to machines.
Her friends and enemies call her Domi Machinecaller!
Her constant companion is a living young asura giant who is also part of her soul.
Her favored weapon is a ancient darksteel sniper rifle which absorbs all projectiles around her.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I absolutely refuse to believe she’s actually the one behind the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades. That person in my head would’ve been someone cunning, who’s always one step ahead of you, and oozes with authority.

Instead, we got this childish girl who acts in such a way that you can predict her actions down to her dialogue lines.

I doubt it is going to happen, but I’m personally hoping for Lazarus the Dire, the last known Mursaat, to be secretly pulling her strings. I can somewhat understand her controlling the Aetherblades, since they’re pirates after all, but organizing the political alliance between two xenophobic groups?

……No.

Not Villain Sue, I think she fits more as a Straw Nihilist

hermescragsniper.2713:

Not Villain Sue, I think she fits more as a Straw Nihilist

Por que no los dosss
Doesn’t sound like either/or options, both seem to fit to me.

Honestly though, one thing about this LS that I really enjoy is just beating the crap out of Scarlet. The more I hate her, the more gratifying it becomes xD
WHERE ARE YOUR ASURA DEGREES NOWWW

Sieg.8439:

Por que no los dosss
Doesn’t sound like either/or options, both seem to fit to me.

Sure, why not.

Also just realized Scarlet and some of her back story reminds me a lot of Albedo from the Xenosaga series; a fantastic character and done very well. I do hope Anet can follow through with Scarlet like was done with Albedo. I disagree though that she’s a really bad character right now

Erukk.1408:

Xae Isareth.1364:

I absolutely refuse to believe she’s actually the one behind the Molten Alliance and the Aetherblades. That person in my head would’ve been someone cunning, who’s always one step ahead of you, and oozes with authority.

Instead, we got this childish girl who acts in such a way that you can predict her actions down to her dialogue lines.

I doubt it is going to happen, but I’m personally hoping for Lazarus the Dire, the last known Mursaat, to be secretly pulling her strings. I can somewhat understand her controlling the Aetherblades, since they’re pirates after all, but organizing the political alliance between two xenophobic groups?

……No.

Don’t forget that one of them was also sexist!

But yeah, seems the only way that Scarlet is ever getting better is if they make some massive changes to the character. Everything we have about her now is just poorly done.

hermescragsniper.2713:

Sieg.8439:

Por que no los dosss
Doesn’t sound like either/or options, both seem to fit to me.

Sure, why not.

Also just realized Scarlet and some of her back story reminds me a lot of Albedo from the Xenosaga series; a fantastic character and done very well. I do hope Anet can follow through with Scarlet like was done with Albedo. I disagree though that she’s a really bad character right now

I’m sorry, but how is Scarlet ANYTHING like Albedo aside from MAYBE being unhinged (which isn’t even confirmed, she could just be immature)?

Albedo has very clear and believable motivation: He is driven by love. He was a flawed person in life with rather noticeable anger problems. He became insane when he learned of the frailty of life and how he was powerless to stop it. He didn’t master things at a breakneck pace. He didn’t apparently have a masterful silver tongue. He had a difficult life and it showed up later in his life.

You can’t just take every character that has mental instability and go “Just like Scarlet!”, there is more to a character than whether or not they’re insane. This is especially true in this case where Scarlet herself may be perfectly sane, just self centered and immature.

My personal verdict on Scarlet:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/What-Scarlet-saw/first#post2695842 (It’s a two-part post)

Namica.2951:

hermescragsniper.2713:

Sieg.8439:

Por que no los dosss
Doesn’t sound like either/or options, both seem to fit to me.

Sure, why not.

Also just realized Scarlet and some of her back story reminds me a lot of Albedo from the Xenosaga series; a fantastic character and done very well. I do hope Anet can follow through with Scarlet like was done with Albedo. I disagree though that she’s a really bad character right now

I’m sorry, but how is Scarlet ANYTHING like Albedo aside from MAYBE being unhinged (which isn’t even confirmed, she could just be immature)?

Albedo has very clear and believable motivation: He is driven by love. He was a flawed person in life with rather noticeable anger problems. He became insane when he learned of the frailty of life and how he was powerless to stop it. He didn’t master things at a breakneck pace. He didn’t apparently have a masterful silver tongue. He had a difficult life and it showed up later in his life.

You can’t just take every character that has mental instability and go “Just like Scarlet!”, there is more to a character than whether or not they’re insane. This is especially true in this case where Scarlet herself may be perfectly sane, just self centered and immature.

It appears I have offended you with my opinion and you have made a number of false assumptions about me and what I said. I apologies for my lack of clarity and will refrain from doing so anymore in the future. I agree with most of your analysis.

Narcemus.1348:

We’ve never seen villains pop up and take claim for all the past actions of GW stories… Cough Abaddon Cough I seriously think people need to get their panties unbunched and give them more than 1 single story to flesh out a character.

Wow.. you’re comparing Abbadon to Scarlet? Abbadon was awesome. The links made sense, they were convincing, they didn’t break previous rules & when you found out it was a great, satisfying twist. And most importantly, Addabon was a cool, calculating, menacing & understandable force that made him great.

Scarlet is an annoying teenager with the token “i can do whatever I want!” attitude with an deus-ex intelligence level (which when combined with such an annoying personality just makes her an immature power fantasy for teens) to try to compensate for a character that not one of her teachers would want anything to do with. then they hammered the final nail of the shark-jumping coffin when they made her comprehend all existence (though a simple machine of all things). I can’t stress how utterly stupid that story element is. It’s true, she should have been a burnt-out husk after that. her brains should have filled the inside of the pod. She didn’t appropriate the power of a god (which incidentally they’ve continued to ruin/play down/eradicate with every story element) & merge with it, she just used a machine. That’s ridiculous. All these stupid over-powered elements are slapped on top of a wacky edgy teenager to try to force us to believe she a threat. Varsh commanded power & authority. she was convincing & plausible. Scarlett is an attempt to try to force people (through unrealistically over-powering) to accept a character who’s personality is that of a the cheesy “sassy evil clown”.

One of the most egregious problems with Scarlet is that she belittles cooler characters like the Mursaat with her over-poweredness. As powerful as the Mursaat were (& they were) I would have never thought they could comprehend all existence. Now Slappy Mc Woo-Woo is smarter & can amass a greater army than them. really? Robert said

If I’m gonna do Mursaat and White Mantle, I (as a hardcore GW1 player) would want it to be epic and grand. We haven’t ..forgotten.. about them, I just have higher expectations for them than what I was capable of putting out in this release.

But it looks if he eventually does get to do the Mursaat it’ll all be under the shadow of Slappy McWoo-Woo. Her epic stain on GW has castrated a lot of previously cool elements with how much “cooler” we’re supposed to think she is.

My personal verdict on Scarlet:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/What-Scarlet-saw/first#post2695842 (It’s a two-part post)

You nailed it Thalador. Especially with how they’ve ruined the gods. The GW gods retcon goes like:
They are the gods & created the planet & all races
Not really, they didn’t make the planet.
They didn’t really make all the races
They didn’t make human even
They’re actually just HUMAN gods
they really BROUGHT humans
actually they’re really just really powerful guys
meh, actually most races aren’t even impressed by them
The dragons, they’re basically as powerful
You know what? just ignore them, they’re gone.

uhh.. what?

Twilight Sparkle?? … what in the……..

..I’ve got nothin here.. I woke up today with an awesome train of thoughts and knew exactly what I wanted to do today. But now I don’t even know where I am. What just happened??

Scarlet’s intelligence being unbelievable aside (because the short story did nothing to clear up her being the smartest person on the planet by a significant margin with little effort) I’m just wondering how people think the Elder Dragons will be any better? People complained about Trahearne being boring so we get Scarlet (who went in the opposite direction). People complained about Zhaitan only popping up at the very very end and being not really directly involved. So we get Scarlet who is extremely involved after a supposedly long period of being involved in the background (I don’t believe she could lead all those factions from the information given but hey, they might fix this some day). Demanding more Elder Dragons and expecting any change just seems a bit silly when the problem is more with how the story is being presented and not so much the characters in them.

I’m sorry, but I loved Scarlet’s dialogue in her Playhouse. It was witty, I laughed a few times, and she seems like a truly insane character I wouldn’t mind seeing often. She’s the Joker, and we’re Batman.

Some people just want to watch the world burn… Some just want to make Farren soup.

I think Scarlet is a Villain Sue and that was entirely the point. She was meant to be a ridiculous, over the top and cliche villain. Not meant to be taken seriously and probably not the ‘nemesis’ we’ve been getting hinted at getting. Some part of me wonders if this sacrificial train of Sylvari villains to kill is the ANet Writing team’s effort to let us vent some of that Trahearne anger.

I don’t mind the Living Story. I don’t. Some parts of it have been more engaging than others but not terrible or game-breaking. The problem I think is two-fold: 1. IMO the community is ready to get back to killing dragons and the Living Story hasn’t really had much to do with that at all. 2. I think its time for a more substantial, serious villain. Personally, I feel a true villain, somebody we’ll love to hate and who outpaces the heroes of Tyria in both a meaningful and believable way is due.

Having said all that, I think it’d be kind of cool for ANet to give us a writing contest of some kind to decide the next villain in either the Living Story or possibly added to a dungeon or fractal.