Guild Wars 2

So much hate for Scarlet, sometimes justified, most times just blind hate.

At least wait until the full story is out before bashing the writers, this is just the beginning of the Tower of Nightmares.

Do people really expect it all to be laid out? it could be between years and never before the details in a story are fully revealed. The player only has a limited perspective. The why and how doesn’t really matter, only that things have happened and need to be dealt with.

Of course it does.

This makes no sense.

Krait saying things like “this alliance gives us power”? Nonsense.
The moment Scarlet told the about an obelisk shard, they would have tried to capture her and get it by force. And if she escaped, they’ll swarm the entire world to find her and get the obelisk back.

Unless it’s just a scheme and krait turn against the nightmare court at some point of the story, this will not be believable.

I’m actually a little stunned here. Did people actually think that something as silly as the lore would stop Scarlet?

Scarlet is so powerful she re-writes lore to suit her needs. She needed a new alliance, krait were available. BAM! Lore is changed to suit Scarlets compulsion to pair races together. This is what she does. Shes done it before, she’s doing it now and she’ll do it again.

It is painful and its getting old.

She’s got a golden tongue. Her MO, as has been mentioned, is to forge alliances to serve her own goals. It’s a brilliant strategy, to manipulate others to do your own dirty work. And being as intelligent as she is, can concieve of the desires of groups in order to leverage them into an alliance. Each group believes they will attain something that they want. It’s just manipulation with foresight and no problems with treachery and backstabbing if it becomes necessary.

She’s smart. Finding something lost (like an obelisk shard) is something one who studies stuff could do. She recognizes what tool she’ll need to manipulate the Krait and sets out to find it. It’s probably where she’s been since she last disappeared.

Seras.5702:

She’s got a golden tongue.

The only problem is that we the audience are unbelieving of that because we have never seen it in action. The only reason we are given for things happening is just “ohhhhhh! Scarlet is just thaaaaaaaaaat awesome!”. That’s not good writing. That’s not a good character design. That’s schlock. We don’t want schlock.

Speaking of lore.

What are the centaurs in kessex hills doing right now? Oh, you know, same old thing. Never mind the fact that they have been warring against the humans to remove them from their land. Land that they hold precious.

Along come the toxic alliance corrupting the land, mass deforestation and invasions. Eh, no biggie say the centaurs. Krait nameplates are the same color as centaur nameplates so no harm no foul I guess.

I guess the centaurs could be part of an upcoming alliance with skritt and are just waiting their turn.

Xar.6185:

I guess the centaurs could be part of an upcoming alliance with skritt and are just waiting their turn.

At this point, we’ve to wonder who’s left to make any new alliances if not already reconstituted into one of the Elder Dragon’s armies.

Centaur
Skritt
Trolls
Jotun
Ettin
Giants (we all need Giant Slayer titles, right?)

I feel like it should be mentioned that I saw Krait attacking the Nightmare Court, and vice versa. Perhaps the alliance isn’t as clean-cut as it seems.

Another dragon awoke in the deepest parts of the seas, creating tentacled horrors from its surrounding. Its awakening forced the krait, quaggan, and largos living in the Unending Ocean to flee north toward Tyria, in many cases forcing them into the path of the risen armies. Little is known of this dragon still.

Thats quoted from the wiki which states the krait and other sea races where pushed out of there sea kingdoms due to another dragon. So there thats why the races of the sea came to the land it was not to become more of anything they where driven out of there homes by another dragon and the Krait stones would of been lost in the deep where this sea dragon is. So i dont know how anyone would of gotten them from the depths but who ever did I dont think it was Scarlet.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Krait saying things like “this alliance gives us power”? Nonsense.
The moment Scarlet told the about an obelisk shard, they would have tried to capture her and get it by force. And if she escaped, they’ll swarm the entire world to find her and get the obelisk back.

Unless it’s just a scheme and krait turn against the nightmare court at some point of the story, this will not be believable.

I don’t think the krait have the forces for that. Their shallow-water Deeps don’t seem particularly well-organized or connected to each other, and even then it’s questionable how formidable their total strength would be, spread out across lands peopled by so many other races, both the good factions and the bad, all of which will be hostile. Swarming all over Tyria doesn’t seem doable at their current strength. (Or, indeed, they would likely have already done it.)

I can only reason that turning against Scarlet and the Nightmare Court is their eventual plan, once they have the strength to crush everyone on their own. That would fit with the mentality of krait supremacy, and make allying with non-krait more palatable to the layman. (Laykrait? The nonpriests.)

Whether or not they’ll actually muster enough power to hit that point of betrayal before the players stop them is another matter.

Alukah.2063:

So much hate for Scarlet, sometimes justified, most times just blind hate.

At least wait until the full story is out before bashing the writers, this is just the beginning of the Tower of Nightmares.

So far I see no holes in this living story update. The Krait are on the decline, and would probably do just about anything for the promise of power (…except that!)…(and that!)

In two weeks when Red Salad comes along, that’s debatable, only because we don’t know what’s going to happen yet. So far though, its doing better than the Zephyrites, which didn’t really make that much sense since we were forced to draw our own conclusions from a very fragmented story. Everything about this living story is explained right infront of you by npcs on the map, but I am willing to bet gold that there’s a short out of game story that gets posted on the website that ends up asking way more questions than it answers!(either this week, or during the next update)

Doesn’t matter if the writing continues to be poor or if they drop a steaming pile on the lore, if they can get the gem shop to meet the figure NCsoft wants, it’s all good.

Equinox.4968:

What if the point of these alliances is for the devs to make us aware that we should be feeling they’re very wrong and probably should never have existed? It could be a way to lead up to some lore-friendly explanation in the end…I hope.

The only lore-friendly explanation I can think of so far is “it was all a dream, a very annoying vegetably dream”.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

It’s called “poetic license” Anet can do what it likes with the story & lore of their game and Krait, like anyone else can evolve. Being rather intelligent, they are quite capable of changing their mind about other races, at least once given enough incentive to do so.

Yea they can do whatever they want with the story, doesn’t mean any of it has to make sense, be logical, or be good in any fashion.
Also lol
“The term poetic license is also sometimes used in a humorous or pejorative sense to provide an excuse for careless or superficial writing.”

Xar.6185:

I posted this in another thread in response to a similar post by someone who was horrified that the krait would form any sort of alliance just before the patch.

Xar.6185:

And this is why you are supposed to be all the more impressed / afraid of Scarlet as she will be the one to make the krait ally with the nightmare court.

Scarlet has already made the racist, sexist, xenophobic flame legion char work for her, alongside another race.

Scarlet has already made the xenophobic dredge, who have freed themselves from very oppressive leaders twice before, work for her along side another race.

Scarlet found an army of pirates that were pretty much non-exsistent before her.

Scarlet creates portals to other worlds and imports armies of steam creatures.

Why wouldn’t she be able to make the krait & nightmare court work together? This is her M.O. to a tee. She is above all. Better than the best Norn blacksmith, smarter than all the asura, the best char legionaire since sliced internet bread.

Make no mistake about it. Whether they fight against her or for her, the krait are now allied with the nightmare court and it is because of Scarlet Briar.

I wish I was wrong…. but all of the evidence suggests that I am not…

The question is are you more impressed / afraid / respecful of her threat or just even more annoyed by Scarlet’s superiority?

No one except a child is impressed by a Mary Sue who can do all that but fails face first doing anything impactful to the major races that Centaur and the like weren’t doing already.

Xar.6185:

I posted this in another thread in response to a similar post by someone who was horrified that the krait would form any sort of alliance just before the patch.

Xar.6185:

And this is why you are supposed to be all the more impressed / afraid of Scarlet as she will be the one to make the krait ally with the nightmare court.

Scarlet has already made the racist, sexist, xenophobic flame legion char work for her, alongside another race.

Scarlet has already made the xenophobic dredge, who have freed themselves from very oppressive leaders twice before, work for her along side another race.

Scarlet found an army of pirates that were pretty much non-exsistent before her.

Scarlet creates portals to other worlds and imports armies of steam creatures.

Why wouldn’t she be able to make the krait & nightmare court work together? This is her M.O. to a tee. She is above all. Better than the best Norn blacksmith, smarter than all the asura, the best char legionaire since sliced internet bread.

Make no mistake about it. Whether they fight against her or for her, the krait are now allied with the nightmare court and it is because of Scarlet Briar.

I wish I was wrong…. but all of the evidence suggests that I am not…

The question is are you more impressed / afraid / respecful of her threat or just even more annoyed by Scarlet’s superiority?

That means diddly though when it comes across as a Mary Sue or makes no sense. If a writer has to rewrite all of what they’ve done or requires you to suspend all belief so something works. Well then something is wrong.

The way she has done it requires you to forget what these factions are, were, or that the world would hear of how she screwed over or failed her previous allies. It also requires you believe she knows where everything such as the shards are magically. That just isn’t good story telling.

A good example of a cunning insane villain is the Joker and a calm one is Lex Luthor. I use those because not only are they good but well known and for Guild Wars it would be Abbadon in how well he controlled things behind the scenes or Palawa Joko. You believe not only that they can do it but is within these villains realm of power. They keep your interest in the story and engage the reader keeping you reading because you need to know how it ends. You must have the next expansion/graphic novel, etc.

Scarlet just does not do this. I may sound mean sometimes to Anet but I just come off rough it is my nature. Scarlet just isn’t written or implemented well enough to make anyone wanting more then a saturday morning cartoon villain engaged but then even that is unfair because you know what? You did want to know how Starscream was going to betray Megatron next. I have no interest in what Scarlest is doing at all.

I have to assume that many of you missed or chose not to read this thread, but here’s something to highlight:

BobbyStein.2315:

• Pacing: …we made the conscious decision to pace out her character development over multiple game builds. In other words, we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet, but since nobody outside the building has an idea of what’s to come I can understand the reactions that she’s “one-dimensional” or conveniently powerful. We’re aware of the perception and feel that future releases will have content that develops her character.

“we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet”

Want it shorter? Here: be patient.

If the feedback was that her story is developing too slow I’d fully agree, but you guys are criticizing a content in development as if it was the finished product.

Late For Tea.1846:

Redenaz.8631:

The living story explains that whoever is pulling the strings (Scarlet, probably,) found something to offer them: Krait obelisk shards.

No one ever knew where to find them, yet Scarlet has triumphed where no one else could yet again. It was a poor way to fix a problem: Why the krait would ally themselves with others. In any profession you’re not supposed to fix problems but avoid them. The Krait-Nightmare Court alliance should never have happened.

No one was really looking for those obelisks. And the krait, can’t just waltz in every place they want to look for them. So no, I don’t agree with your reasoning.

We might (i stress Might) see the Krait actually turning on the nightmare court when they feel they are of no use to them anymore and Scarlet having a slap to face :P
I for one would love to see that happening with the next LS.

Cheers!

Alukah.2063:

If the feedback was that her story is developing too slow I’d fully agree, but you guys are criticizing a content in development as if it was the finished product.

The catch is, of course, that since we can’t see the fully picture, people are less concerned that Scarlet’s character is developing too slowly than they’re frustrated and worried that she’s not developing at all...Which is more or less the case from a pure player prospective. That’s a big trouble with the story pacing; the establishing stages dragged out half a year to introduce characters, and with our villain we’re still at the “we haven’t gotten to her development yet” stage.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t really mind Scarlet, personally, and I’m still optimistic about seeing where the entire Living Story goes. It’s just a tricky medium for storytelling, and “You just have to see the whole thing to judge it” is a concession that very few properties can get away with, since it asks for a lot of patience and a lot of confidence. Personally, the only example that readily comes to mind for myself is the Netflix season of Arrested Development, which is told in such a way that it really demands the whole show, or most of it, for any of it to make sense. The difference, of course, is that I could marathon that season in a week, rather than a year.

Bobby Stein’s posts in that thread are some of the best feedback I can remember in a while, and they give me confidence development is being thoughtful about their direction, even with some bumps along the way.

Alukah.2063:

I have to assume that many of you missed or chose not to read this thread, but here’s something to highlight:

BobbyStein.2315:

• Pacing: …we made the conscious decision to pace out her character development over multiple game builds. In other words, we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet, but since nobody outside the building has an idea of what’s to come I can understand the reactions that she’s “one-dimensional” or conveniently powerful. We’re aware of the perception and feel that future releases will have content that develops her character.

“we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet”

Want it shorter? Here: be patient.

If the feedback was that her story is developing too slow I’d fully agree, but you guys are criticizing a content in development as if it was the finished product.

That’s because those parts that we got seem so bad that i really doubt they can be fixed with future changes and additions. And make no mistake – it would be fixing, and not the case of us “not knowing the whole story yet”.

Alukah.2063:

I have to assume that many of you missed or chose not to read this thread, but here’s something to highlight:

BobbyStein.2315:

• Pacing: …we made the conscious decision to pace out her character development over multiple game builds. In other words, we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet, but since nobody outside the building has an idea of what’s to come I can understand the reactions that she’s “one-dimensional” or conveniently powerful. We’re aware of the perception and feel that future releases will have content that develops her character.

“we haven’t gotten to that part of her story yet”

Want it shorter? Here: be patient.

If the feedback was that her story is developing too slow I’d fully agree, but you guys are criticizing a content in development as if it was the finished product.

A good story writer, a good book, a good movie all keep you interested from the get go. You are involved and want to see more even before you are deep into it. The story should engage you from the get go. It shouldn’t need a whole years worth of segments to make you care about it all.

The Scarlet storyline doesn’t need to be done to see it is bad.