Guild Wars 2

Fixing forum bug…?

Djinn.9245:

Raids are a different matter than regular content. It is difficult enough that it should need dedicated roles.

Maybe, but between variety in encounters/mechanics and in the strengths and weaknesses of each profession’s take on a role, you can get to a point where it the same few builds aren’t ideal for everything, and substitutions are less painful. Losing the counterplay of builds that GW1 had has hurt things in that regard, though.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Djinn.9245:

Carighan.6758:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Fighting Dragons is fun, but we have the possibility of being caught in a battle of the gods. “My light was dim, they’ll notice me now!” Or words to that effect. I don’t know about you, but being thrown into a war of that magnitude… BRING IT ON!!

You mean, a fight between comparatively weak “gods” (if I’d even call them that, considering how they are only part of the lore of a single of our 5 races, and mostly seem to be something like minor world-caretakers), instead of between forces of nature in the form of dragons?

Yeah, sounds amazingly epic…

I mean, as I said above, the switch away from the dragons was ok. But to what they switched, and how utterly random it showed up with no prelude, no introduction and no rhyme or reason? Meh.

I agree that the introduction of Balthazar was fairly weak. I think that the beings the Humans call “Gods” should have more of an impact when they are on Tyria so there should have been clues that Balthazar had returned and, as in the trailer, if one of them “never left”. There are people who worship these gods, I assume even priests of some kind. Those people, and the Order of Whispers, should have had some idea that something was going on. That would have made it an even better story: why are these things happening if the gods are gone?

As for the gods only being lore for one of the races, that doesn’t mean they still aren’t powerful beings that the other races should be wary of when they appear and take an active role.

What if they were commanded to remain silent? What if they are aware and choose not to warn others. That would be interesting.

A god could command his worshippers and priests to remain silent, but many Whispers agents aren’t human and probably wouldn’t care about such a command. Assuming that the god knew that they had information. Since the human gods aren’t all-powerful it’s possible they wouldn’t know who had information about them and who didn’t.

perilisk.1874:

Djinn.9245:

Raids are a different matter than regular content. It is difficult enough that it should need dedicated roles.

Maybe, but between variety in encounters/mechanics and in the strengths and weaknesses of each profession’s take on a role, you can get to a point where it the same few builds aren’t ideal for everything, and substitutions are less painful. Losing the counterplay of builds that GW1 had has hurt things in that regard, though.

Not really sure where, other than raids, you need dedicated roles so I have to disagree.

The real question is: Where is Grenth? He was the “god who stayed behind”, not Balthazaar. So why is War our “villain” and what happened to Death?

Trise.2865:

The real question is: Where is Grenth? He was the “god who stayed behind”, not Balthazaar. So why is War our “villain” and what happened to Death?

Do you have a source for Grenth being the one who stayed behind? Otherwise it’s best to note that it’s speculation…

While i agree the sudden shift is…lackluster it’s a far better affair than ehem, Elmer Fudds Kill the Dragon! Kill the Dragon! Kill the Dragon!

I do think the current story opens up for more diverse and larger conflicts, like Titans, Undead Liches, and other fan favorites to return.

I have the feeling we are going to find out that the 6 elder dragons are tied to the 6 human gods somehow.

I think each expansion will have their own dragon.
For this upcoming expansion, we might even know more about Kralkatorrik! As we head more to Elona.

Alga.6498:

I think each expansion will have their own dragon.
For this upcoming expansion, we might even know more about Kralkatorrik! As we head more to Elona.

I hope not. The elder dragons really aren’t that interesting. I’d rather learn more about the races of Tyria. Like what the human gods really are and how humans got to Tyria. Like what happened to the Jotun. Like how the Asura got the technology that they don’t really know how to handle. Like what happened to the Forgotten. Etc.

Dragons CAN work as villains. Nidhogg in FFXIV Heavensward was a very important villain and he was a dragon, and that didn’t stop the game expansion from having a very compelling storyline from start to finish.

It’s just that in Guild Wars 2 the elder dragons are more akin to forces of natures instead of being actual antagonists with goals, personalities and objectives that your character can be personally motivated to hunt. The elder dragons don’t plot to kill your friends, to drive you into madness, or to manipulate governments into doing their bidding, they’re just there being a nuisance to the world. So they don’t make very interesting final bosses on their own. You know why they must be put down, but you’re not very involved with them; you’re just a grunt hunting them.

That kind of villain only works when there are humans acting on their behalf, tapping into their powers, communing with them, etc. For example, if Caudicus found a way to summon an elder dragon and used it to attack Charr lands, while rallying his supporter to gain power in Divinity’s Reach, ejects Jennah and start to eradicate the Charr, suddenly I would be much more motivated to go after Caudicus’ elder dragon, and I think the game of politics that would follow between Charr and humans would be very interesting to follow.

Doflamingo.6957:

The sudden shift to the story direction that ArenaNet took isn’t really good at all. Guild Wars 2 was unique because it was focused on the Elder Dragons as main antagonists and each expansion was supposed to be based on one of them but for some reason they gave up on that with living world season 3 and changed it to other random things making it impossible to kill another dragon in next expansion which is a turndown. We waited for so long to find out which Elder Dragon we will fight next only for them to change their mind and give up on the unique story it had.

There is no sudden shift if you’ve been keeping up with Guild Wars lore.

1) The lore was always about Humans and their Gods, they just took a backseat during the first years of GW2 to give the other races a chance to shine (mostly Sylvari, as they had zero exposure in GW1 while the other races all had some).

2) Killing dragons was always bad-its been explored since the start of the game. personal story addresses it, artifacts in the Durmand Priory address it. Throughout the game there have always been hints that “what if this has consequences” but we continue onward because “we have no choice anyway”. This was ramped up in the HoT storyline and then finalised in season 3.

People act like there’s this sudden change that killing dragons is bad when a certain book in the Durmand Priory literally says EVERYONE WILL FALL OFF THE PLANET if the flow of magic is destabilised in their absence.

3) Ultimately, Guild Wars is about many different antagonists. The dragons may seem like the main antagonist, but if you look back on it, they never actually were. We’ve had many enemies over the years that were just as bad, just as dangerous. If anything, they were always background noise compared to people who literally wanted to blow up the whole world or get it sucked into the mists for their own benefit. In fact, the entire Mist War (which is canon) is about invading/pillaging/subjugating/destroying (its never made clear which) one Tyria just to benefit another.

kdaddy.5431:

Im ok with that, Anet for me dropped the ball really badly with the HOT story line.

As Sylvari and Norn are my favorite races i thought it was a chance to see more into the culture of them ( sylvari espeically) since this is the elder dragon that created them. See the Pale Tree come back being that she is my favorite NPC.

Also HOT really hurt me being Eir, Caithe are my 2nd and 3rd favorites. No spoilers

I also liked Trehearne, it wasnt up there but i liked his character for the role he brought to the story as a Sylvari chasing his Wild Hunt and all the studying he did, explaining him as a Scholar.

GW itself has a great back story. GW2 the original story line with Zhaitan was better then average though i think it would of left a better taste in our mouths had we actually got to fight Zhaitan after blowing up 1/2 its body. Like we have to finish the job on the beach.

With all that rambling, HOT pooped the bed hard. Lack of character story lines, Lack of interest for whats going on, alot of Dues EX-Machina , character break downs, ( characters who did things they would of never done based of the GW2 story line, fighting ZHaitan) and just a lack of actual story to go threw.

LS didnt help either. Here we have the most powerful beings known to all beings. The dragons who have defeated all who have crossed them and Tami made a machine that could kill 2 at once.

Its not bad enough that the human gods are much stronger then us, or the fact that 1 of the new maps with the volcano left clues of far more advanced civilizations then ours losing to the dragons.

I mean think it would be a good change of pace so they can refocus and actually make fighting epic monsters epic again.

I already been discussing this ‘HoT pooped the bed’ thing with some people. And they seem to agree with me. In short, Anet knew what they’re in for when releasing HoT and they took the risk hyping it as much as possible to make this expansion with little to no content last for a while.

But look from the other side. The game got a very strong feature foundation that it can build upon. HoT itself was basically a ‘feature pack’ not a real expansion. I think it was intentional.

What I am trying to say is that (hopefully) next expansion is going to be big story wise and won’t really disappoint. After we have so many features in the game all it’s left is to build upon it. (And maybe do something with the game engine or improve graphics? The game kind of lacks in this department).

Alga.6498:

I think each expansion will have their own dragon.
For this upcoming expansion, we might even know more about Kralkatorrik! As we head more to Elona.

There are a lot of things besides dragons that can be expansion-size-worth of material. Why is everyone obsessed with those sleepy beings. Let them sleep (considering they literally sleep for a loooong time. Like thousands of years (source from wiki)). We can go different direction and get even more epic narratives as well.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

Trise.2865:

The real question is: Where is Grenth? He was the “god who stayed behind”, not Balthazaar. So why is War our “villain” and what happened to Death?

Do you have a source for Grenth being the one who stayed behind? Otherwise it’s best to note that it’s speculation…

Of course. From the Personal Story:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cathedral_of_Silence_

We see here that Grenth is very much nearby and active against the dragons, or at least against Zhaitan. There is no evidence anywhere else of a god’s presence until now. Knowing that the gods left Tyria centuries ago, and that “one” (and only one) had “stayed behind”, this must indicate that Grenth is that one.

It’s been speculated the 6 might have gained their abilities via bloodstones or ley-lines etc. Hell Asuran tech may have given them their “powers” which is why Balth wanted Omadds machine. I like to imagine they did and the Elder Dragons are trying to stop them, or at the least two toughest kids on the block, are going to fight sooner or later. Or perhaps a Mad Eye Mooney/Bartie Crouch revelation that Scarlet, Omadd etc was all orchestrated by Balthazar and/or Abbaddon. Just please, no more Shiro okay? Unless it takes us to Cantha lol

In LS2, when you’re exploring the Priory’s library, there is an optional book that explains the Elder Dragon’s role in balancing the worlds magic. So this twist was foreshadowed years ago.

Very disappointed that the story is going away from killing elder dragons. In the beginning, the theme was always that we were going to battle the elder dragons one-by-one. It was exciting to predict which one would be next. We’ve been waiting so long for the next one. I feel like they are now taking the epic elder dragon fight away from me!

The logo of GW2 is a dragon. The logo of HOT is a dragon. And the logo of POF is a dragon….. so I hope I’m wrong.

Kestrel.7890:

The logo of GW2 is a dragon. The logo of HOT is a dragon. And the logo of POF is a dragon….. so I hope I’m wrong.

The logo for PoF is both dragon and a tornado. It represents the “sand” storm the Elder Dragon is in the middle of being a 4 wat war between the Dragon’s Watch, Kralk, Joko, and Balth.

Kestrel.7890:

Very disappointed that the story is going away from killing elder dragons. In the beginning, the theme was always that we were going to battle the elder dragons one-by-one. It was exciting to predict which one would be next. We’ve been waiting so long for the next one. I feel like they are now taking the epic elder dragon fight away from me!

The logo of GW2 is a dragon. The logo of HOT is a dragon. And the logo of POF is a dragon….. so I hope I’m wrong.

The sooner you stop caring about the story the better the overall game becomes. That’s been my experience so far.

Doflamingo.6957:

The sudden shift to the story direction that ArenaNet took isn’t really good at all. Guild Wars 2 was unique because it was focused on the Elder Dragons as main antagonists and each expansion was supposed to be based on one of them but for some reason they gave up on that with living world season 3 and changed it to other random things making it impossible to kill another dragon in next expansion which is a turndown. We waited for so long to find out which Elder Dragon we will fight next only for them to change their mind and give up on the unique story it had.

As a long time guild wars player I am happy that elder dragons are gone.

Had enough of them in skyrim, had enough of them in dragon’s dogma, honestly they are the most played-out antagonist since forever.
Besides they were crikets compared to GW1 antagonists:

>Lich, white mantle and the Mursaat
>Shiro Tagachi, the afflicted and the alliance
>Abaddon, Varesh and the Margonites

all these kittens were diverse and offered unique challenges, so far in GW2 all we had to do was press F to shoot a cannon and mind kitten a plant.

Excelsior.

The only big grape I had with the GW2 franchise was the “Dragon Killer” setting. It is so uninspired… In my appartment I have dragons sitting in every corner, and they are designed to be more or less friendly (at least not histole until you bother them), and in every game they are target #1 for entire worlds, races, makind. Just like in “How to train your dragon”, why not having them in a more friendly setup?

I’d be glad to move the elder dragon topic out of the focus a bit.

We can back to kill them wil story shift. Balthazar seems good. I expect lyssa next.
Extra baddies won’t hurt. More story, more expansion.

Well considering how randomly and nonsensically Balthazar entered the story, it could be back to Elder Dragons in a blink. Or our next major enemy is Rhytlock! No one knows! :o

I think we need to end, what we started, defeatign the ED doesn’t mean that we must kill them all off.
Its just enough to find a way to stop them from doing harm to Tyria and us, to send them again into eternal sleep somehow.
However, takign a break from going against ED ist a nice wind of change, as it allows the developers to have again more freedom of design in regard to where they want to take us ancd the game for the expansions innstead of designing the game like a chain, where we have to kill 1 ED after another.
Thats stale and boring over time and would limitate over tiem the devs too much in what they can do with the game, if they are too focused on just the EDs, when Tyria could be so much more to explore and do for different new approaches of story tellign, that isn#t all just bonded on killing EDs …

Why not also give the population of Tyria a break from the threat of the ED. I mean, we habve had now 2 large scaled wars with them… the pact stood already after Mordremoth at its brink of destruction.
Its time for recovering the wounds, to restock and rebuild first the army, before we are even able to face more EDs, especially should ever occur the situation of having to fight more than 1 of them at the same time…
So war we were always only able to handle 1 at a time, and still suffered each time on massive losses and whenver 1 dies, the reminaiung ones become stronger due to all the absorbed magic that is set free when one ED dies that the killed off ED has devoured previously before, which is the reason why Tequatl became stronger after we defeated Zhaitan….

im still with my opinion, that everythign started with Primordus, so everythign should also end with Primordus, hes the Alpha et Omega of the whole story of GW2.
Howeve,r that hasn#t to mean that we need to rush over it with killing off the dragons, that Naet isn#t also allowed to make some time for breaks from them to use these breaks to show us something completely new and different….

Heck, peopel are wanting to return to Cantha for 5 years now, they are begging and pleading for this every freaking single day in this forum since day 1 of the game.
Now we see first finally the arrival of MOUNTS and the return of Elona

Dragons can wait, if we see therefore sooner the return of some nostalgic regions of the previous games and long wished features as part of that, then I’m very happy about it, that they have decided to not go for the next ED, even if we have naturally with Elona and the Crystal Desert practically direclty Kralktorrik in front of our doors just waiting for us…

But as long we haven’t dealt with Balthazar first, we won’t have time to go for any of the remaining EDs, especially as long the pact army is still massively weakened and reduced from the battle with Mordremoth.

our heroes need to buy us for now first some time, so that the army can recover meanwhile, and in that time we are going to have some warplay with Balthazar, getting to know, where he has been meanwhile and what eventually all the other gods were doing in all that time and what they are doing and thinking over Balthy going on now crazy on his path of fire.

The expansion will show us what will follow in the distant near future of this game’s story, into which kind of direction the game will turn next.

I’m glad we stepped away from the dragons, I feel like that idea has been done to death by this day in age.

I loved GW1 story where we were fighting the Lich, Shiro, and Abbadon. Their stories and the final battles so much more unique.

Doflamingo.6957:

The sudden shift to the story direction that ArenaNet took isn’t really good at all. Guild Wars 2 was unique because it was focused on the Elder Dragons as main antagonists and each expansion was supposed to be based on one of them but for some reason they gave up on that with living world season 3 and changed it to other random things making it impossible to kill another dragon in next expansion which is a turndown. We waited for so long to find out which Elder Dragon we will fight next only for them to change their mind and give up on the unique story it had.

i am glad it shifted from killing dragons to killing anything else. Once you kill your first dragon, it stops being epic. Any skyrim player can tell you that.

At least now they can take the story wherever they want and create more engaging things than: “dragon awakes, causes mayhem, we kill him, rinse and repeat”.

I think from a writing standpoint all that has been said in game is that we cannot kill them. That to me suggests they may be integral to the story and a stumbling block. They rise up, threaten the 6, we back them because killing them will destroy Tyria. But… Killing or defeating the 6 will cause a social vacuum and cause a split in Tyrian society. “What do we believe in now?” “Life is meaningless..” etc. Which would degrade into a struggle for new “deities” to rise or be “created”. All which is too much of a hotbed for the game to delve into imho. They will always offend more then they appease, as calling to mind players own beliefs is inevitable, and some will transpose them on the game. And ummm map chat is toxic enough at times. TYVM.

So.. where do we go from here?

Cyninja.2954:

Simply put, they realised that the story arch:

- elder dragon appears
- random filler stuff
- elder dragon gets beaten
- start from step 1

gets quite repetative. In fact most of the filler stuff was what was more interesting than the actual fight against the dragons.

Now fill in some tie ins to the way better storylines and lore of Guild Wars 1 and you have a solution how to liven up the series story. Longterm this gives them more flexibility as to how to design the story but will make it harder to keep a congruent narrative.

- elder dragon appears.
- commander unite everyone to fight the dragon(Forming the pact in personal history and the world summit on ls2.).
- pact invades the dragon territory(Orr/Magumma)
- pact gotta problems, and them commander came to rescue.
- commander do a sort of a “raid operation” in the dragons lair heart.
- elder dragon gets beaten.
- start from step 1.

Doflamingo.6957:

We waited for so long to find out which Elder Dragon we will fight next only for them to change their mind and give up on the unique story it had.

Inst unique, is kinda a cheap copy of Dragon Age Inquisition and others of the genre. The biggest difference for Dragon Age Inquisition is that in the latter, dragons are not global but regional threats, they cause problems near the towns and cities where they settle, not part of the main plot, you can ignore them. Whoever occupies the main plots are super-Machiavellian villains with some ingenious aka Scarlet.

Elder dragons are unoriginal and boring and the plot got way too formulaic and predictable.

Or do you honestly want to spend 5 expansion packs doing nothing but going from region to region killing the big bad elder dragons who are all the same but with the exception of a palette swap?

I’m kinda glad Anet moved away from killing the elder dragons and shook up the foundations. Now we have to PROTECT one, against a GOD! Not just an all-powerful deity either, but one with personality, desires and goals! How exciting is that?

My favorite parts of the GW2 story so far have been Living World Season 1, the Raid stories and Living World Season 3.

The Vanilla and Heart of Thorns stories were bland, boring, cliché and very forgettable.

The Path of Fire story however, seems to be at least as exciting as LWS1 and LWS3.

It does seem silly that we go from a Narrative of “we have to destroy the elder dragons because they decimate the planet and destroy civilization every several thousand years” to “we can’t kill any more dragons or the world gets destroyed”

Though I can understand from a gameplay perspective it was becoming impossible to do the Elder Dragons justice, the fight against Zhaitan was disappointing, the fight against Mordremoth seemed like a cheap way out.

The problem is the scale. They describe to us as the Dragons being so large that they can destroy islands with their rise out of the ground and cause floods, but Zhaitan was a lot smaller than his feats would suggest. How do you represent Dragons the size of islands or mountains in this engine? Mordremoth (well the “Mouth of Mordremoth” that we fight is a bit bigger but still smaller than the “entire jungle” that it’s described as).

So while dragon champions make decent world or story bosses, Shatterer, Tequatl, Claw of Jormag, Shadow of the Dragon, Blightghast, etc and make for some “big dragon” encounters, thats about the limit of what this engine can handle, and what we can really handle as puny mortals.

Interesting mock up to show the possible size of Primordus.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6amb0n/the_size_of_a_certain_enemy_compared_to_tyria/

Carighan.6758:

Well considering how randomly and nonsensically Balthazar entered the story, it could be back to Elder Dragons in a blink. Or our next major enemy is Rhytlock! No one knows! :o

Bad writing is bad.

Expect the out of the blue story change nonsense to continue.

What is “fresh” in using some dudes or boring gods that only GW1 players would know or care (more) about? Why doesn’t that count as rehashing content or pandering?

I don’t mind other threats to Tyria, mind you, but the terribly uninteresting reveal of Failthazaar and Livia, which left me with nothing but a simple “Who?” reaction, didn’t really do much for me. Maybe that will change with PoF, though. It doesn’t help either that some insights to the hijinxs are put behind kitten raids.

Mahou.3924:

What is “fresh” in using some dudes or boring gods that only GW1 players would know or care (more) about? Why doesn’t that count as rehashing content or pandering?

This was my biggest gripe with it.

They exchanged an enemy I knew for one I don’t, but which is expected to be known because it was pure fanpandering. If like in GW1 we were all human characters, it would have some impact at least. But just as with the Shining Blade “initiation” (I still think these were test voice recordings done as a non-serious thing and someone just had a laugh using them for an actual instance), this all feels absurd given the scope of our races and the world.

I’d much rather have had a new enemy tbh. Someone built up as a baddie, not someone randomly pulled out of a hat and then they expect me to feel motivated to do something about it.