Guild Wars 2

I’m wondering here… I’ve heard that these dragons are truly primal forces, strong enough to stand against gods. In fact, after gathering the forces of three different orders, that have yet to unite since the beginning of any of their creation, and defeating just one of the dragons, the entire world Tyria decided that it would be time to hold a Festival to “Bash the Dragons”.

But let me get this right, the true weakness of the dragons is not some powerful artifact, or the summoning and retrieving the blessing from one of the six gods. Their true weakness is their sense of direction and peripheral vision, or rather lack thereof? I mean stand at the side of a Dragon and a mere few half-kitten adventurers can simply slaughter dragons as if fighting skritt.

And this is supposed to be an “Epic” or “Legendary” adventure? I’ve fought kobolds in pen and paper games that felt more epic than this skritt…

No, not so much.

In the lore leading up to the game, they seemed that way, but now they just seem like generic enemy commanders that will come and go with a handwave and a lack of worthwhile presentation.

They could have been Lovecraftian horrors or unkillable beings whose existence sustains reality. But… They weren’t. :-\

The ones we fight are just the junior flunkies. I hope by the time we meet their bosses then the whole fight dynamic will be more, dare I say, hardcore.

Junior Flunky or not… This is entirely inexcusable… This game has -SOOO- much potential, yet the developers focus more on fixing bugs and nerfing farming than they do actual good content. Don’t get me wrong either, fixing bugs is a top priority too, but those bugs wouldn’t be there if they made a test realm like -every- other MMO. I came into this game majorly in the midst of southsun content… That was ‘alright’ content, definitely not great, and even then… It felt as if Southsun more or less just fell apart. I mean we essentially went out to help the Settlers and Consortium gather a whole new land for them to occupy. Then some major villain came in, riled skritt up on an unforseen level, then essentially went in and solo’d him. Which made me feel like… “Ok, the entire Lionguard, Order of Whispers, Vigil, and Priory couldn’t stop this guy? Even when he didn’t even have guards (Bosses leading up to) backing him? —-— Ooooooh Fireworks! FESTIVAL TIME!” Screw -truly- quelling the forces that he riled up…

All in all, honestly… ANet could go back on their promise to release new content -every- month, if they would simply make the content better and/or make current content feel more “Epic”… Quality over Quantity!!! The game has the potential to be the -BEST- on the market. It has pulled me away from World of Warcraft, and others away from all their MMO’s, but at the rate it is going now, it won’t even get the chance to really succeed.

Drayven.6408:

It has pulled me away from World of Warcraft, and others away from all their MMO’s, but at the rate it is going now, it won’t even get the chance to really succeed.

That fact that you’ve been pulled away from another game, and so have other people, already makes this one a success. To a degree.

Also, that you’re here to try and push them to better their efforts is also a success, to a degree. You are still here and want more.

I really hope they can get to some sort of diamond-crusted, platinum-dusted success level. That would be pretty awesome. But they aren’t doing too bad now. Yes, they can do better.

I think when we see significant expansions come out – revisiting the Shiverpeaks and that dark blue area of the map, pressing into the crystal desert, returning to the depths of tyria etc – we’re going to be in for a real shock when we see the level of corruption and the hostile alien landscape that’s growing within the dragon’s realms of influence.

Just look at Orr in contrast to the uncorrupted parts of the world…

To answer the question posed in the title….they sure as hell don’t feel like a threat (save Claw-and even that could use a bit more tweaking imo).

I could argue that the ‘run-to-one-side-and-auto-attack’ routine of 2/3 dragons is and exploit due to a bug (system not working as intended)-remember the demo they showed of the Sunless and Shatterer encounters leading up to the game’s release? Multi-level fights with groups of players taking on various roles to defeat the dragon-some on cannons, some using other weapons, some defending the cannons, others wailing on the dragons etc etc-those elements are still there…..just not necessary quite frankly.

I’d like to see proper characteristics for the dragons for starters-Teq could randomly turn downed (not defeated) players into risen, players encased in the crystals could become branded during shatterer or players downed with the frost debuff has a chance that increases with the number of stacks, to become an icebrood during claw. This is of course against the premise that the dragons won’t ignore the large group of players hitting him slightly to his right-make them preferentially target areas with large groups of players or create some debuff that renders that area a deadzone or something.

Another reason I feel they aren’t a threat (gameplay wise) is there is no consequence-hell or even possibility, of failing the event. In that regard the southsun cove camp events and karka queen are more of a threat.

Long story short, I agree the mechanics of the dragon encounters do not mirror their significance in lore.

No they are not, they are and will be just scripted attack scenes as we have now…

That said though i’d much rather attack Shatterers or Teq’s foot till he dies than Press 2 with a sparkle gun for 10 minutes while watching Zaitan “King Kong” it…

And smarty guy could say " Why Kralkatorrik wont fly few times more over Tyria and turn everything branded ? Since they are so big why won’t they take a dump above all cities and kill all folks ?
It’s just because it is story! Yes they are real threat! And if you are not satisfied with dragon encounters well… It might get better in the future, but also not.

At first I thought that GW2 was released too early, but later I have realized that it can’t be polished, ballanced and completely finished without massive number of players.
It’s not just only what it is, but what it can be in the future
—-now back to Dragon Bash song loop—-

Depends how you describe “threat”. They are like Morpheel from Twilight Princess, who is actually running AWAY from the player instead of attacking him.

Yeah, the dragon fights could have been done better. Claw of Jormag is pretty close, but even then most of the challenge is in finding a good blind spot to sit in. I would love to see Anet take another crack at making these fights (ESPECIALLY the final fight against Zhaitan) more epic, but bugs and balance are much more important right now. As awesome as a really good fight against a dragon would be, bugs and balance issues affect far more players every single time they log in.

zenleto.6179:

Drayven.6408:

It has pulled me away from World of Warcraft, and others away from all their MMO’s, but at the rate it is going now, it won’t even get the chance to really succeed.

That fact that you’ve been pulled away from another game, and so have other people, already makes this one a success. To a degree.

Also, that you’re here to try and push them to better their efforts is also a success, to a degree. You are still here and want more.

I really hope they can get to some sort of diamond-crusted, platinum-dusted success level. That would be pretty awesome. But they aren’t doing too bad now. Yes, they can do better.

Oh I won’t disagree that this game is definitely successful, and I honestly hope that it only gets -more- successful. I’m also going to say that I realize this game isn’t even a year old yet, and that I will definitely be sticking around to see how much better it gets. Also, like you, I truly hope that they are able to take it to a whole new level too… I just hope I don’t have to wait until I have to buy a new expansion for this to happen.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Yeah, the dragon fights could have been done better. Claw of Jormag is pretty close, but even then most of the challenge is in finding a good blind spot to sit in. I would love to see Anet take another crack at making these fights (ESPECIALLY the final fight against Zhaitan) more epic, but bugs and balance are much more important right now. As awesome as a really good fight against a dragon would be, bugs and balance issues affect far more players every single time they log in.

Oh, definitely, bugs and balance should -remain- top priority, but they should also come out with a test realm so that these issues can be solved prior to actually releasing content. Also, in my personal opinion, even Jormag isn’t all that great of a fight… It’s still the ‘stand at one side and auto-attack’ type of fight…

As for Zhaitan, I thought that was actually had a pretty good “Epic” feeling to it… Do I think the fight itself was good? Well, I’ll say I definitely think it could have been done better, but the fight itself versus the presentation and the feeling I got from defeating him? The presentation was fantastic, in my opinion… My issue with that fight is the “King Kong” style the dragon had, and the lack of abilities the dragon used…

Essentially the dragon came along, spawned adds that were in the end more difficult than the actual dragon itself. If you could withstand the adds though, it was pretty much a guaranteed win. I think that fight would have worked a lot better if we had simply guarded the cannon that knocked him down from the air, and made the actual “Shoot at Zhaitan” part take less time… Put in more than one way to actually attack him before he goes into King Kong mode, and that way when you’ve blown him out of the air, he’s already at half health…

IMO Dragons aren’t really a big threat, both from lore and gameplay perspective. In lore it takes one saladhead to say: “Hey guys, maybe we should stop arguing with each other start working together?” (Genius!) And BOOM, one Elder Dragon less.

Sorry but I have seen many “God-like” villains executed better:
1. Reapers from ME, even after all the butchering they got in ME3.
2. Chaos Gods from Warhammer universe.
3. Elder Gods from Cthulhu mythos.
4. Old Gods from Warcraft, even though they are a copy-paste of Lovecraftian universe.

And Zhaitan will be forever remembered in my book as the most dissapointing villain ever.

In game that was made to feel alive making real threat that sits on its but and don’t move, waits to be forced to go few steps back (daily rare items hunt with bash the dragon stile we have for months), I would say dragons are just overgrown pets we have no business with. And whole game seems to be broken for that reason.
I imagined that Flame and Frost would lead to make another personal story-like thing from Flame and Frost, but we get really nothing like TO DO list for like last 2 months, aside from SAB that was cool and unique.

Septemptus.7164:

(snip) aside from SAB that was cool and unique.

Is this bad that when I think about the Big Bad of SAB (Lord Vanquish?) I want to beat that jerk for kindnaping Mot… err a princess Miya, but when I see something about ED I just yawn?

Nope just Giant GIF’s that hand out welfare checks (the rares from the mini chest).

Drayven.6408:

snippety snip

Also, like you, I truly hope that they are able to take it to a whole new level too… I just hope I don’t have to wait until I have to buy a new expansion for this to happen.

Absolutely! I’d imagine the dev team hope so too. It’ll just depend on when the string-pullers tug on the strings.

They are definitely a real threat.
Why else would the Orders and races work together?
The Charr and the Humans? They hate each other, and yet they work together to face a greater threat.