Guild Wars 2

I was wondering about what could gw2 story be lacking of, and suddenly something popped out of my head.
There’s no real sense of desperation as a hero, where everything goes wrong and you end up pretty much screwed, have no idea what to do now and desperate to survive or something. Hopefully in the HoT expansion the hero gets emotionally destroyed so we can start building up the character emotionally from scratch.

Also, most of the people who die in-game, actually die not long after you meet them. Making you feel almost no empathy for the npc who just died because you had no friggin emotional attachment to him/her.

Some really heartbreaking drama that makes me cry would make the story a real piece of art, kinda like, I don’t know.. Traherne betraying us because he was a minion from Mordremoth from the beginning, maybe Kasmeer dying because of you and Delaqua turning evil trying to hunt you and killing the pact.

I mean, I want Anet to make me cry, and not only every time I reach for my wallet when I see the gem store. But maybe I was influenced a lot by old games like Golden Sun or Chrono Cross…. I suddenly got the need to play Zelda Link awakening.

I just lost the main reason I posted this, but it’s 3am so i’m really sorry about the things I wrote if they don’t make any sense.

flihslifhds have fun

Raven.1524:

There’s no real sense of desperation as a hero, where everything goes wrong and you end up pretty much screwed, have no idea what to do now and desperate to survive or something. Hopefully in the HoT expansion the hero gets emotionally destroyed so we can start building up the character emotionally from scratch.

It’s a bit hard to pull off a true sense of desperation in MMOs since mechanically the PC can instantly teleport away from any sort of carnage to a carefree and tranquil area. That instantly ruins the threat that an area or atmosphere has since it takes away the true danger of the situation.

Though, I will say that HoT definitely begins by putting us in a desperate situation story-wise. Maybe not mechanically for reasons listed above, but for the story it is definitely there.

• Mordremoth has just destroyed the Pact fleet, an organization cofounded by the Hero and one of the few bastions of hope in Tyria in the fight against the Elder Dragons, in a matter of moments.
• The Sylvari, one of the player races and major factions working against the EDs, are revealed to have been destined to have been dragon minions in the past.
• Mordremoth has the ability to instantly turn weaker willed Sylvari into its minions through mind control and forces them to participate in the destruction of all that they hold dear.
• A large portion of the first new areas is littered with the flaming wreckage of the Pact fleet. There are dead bodies everywhere, and the survivors are fighting for their lives under the constant assault of the Mordrem and the local hostile wildlife.

All reads desperate for the player and Tyria at large.

Erukk.1408:

It’s a bit hard to pull off a true sense of desperation in MMOs since mechanically the PC can instantly teleport away from any sort of carnage to a carefree and tranquil area. That instantly ruins the threat that an area or atmosphere has since it takes away the true danger of the situation.

Prior to introducing megaservers they were capable of having cross zone effects in the separate realms/shards (e.g., Orr temples). I once suggested during the first CDI they did on the Living World that they should leverage this more and have more zone spanning effects, such that we as heroes of the realm have some duty to keeping it stable. For example, If we let Spark Fly Fen fall to the Risen threat there, those threats should bleed over into Bloodtide Coast (replace enemies and events there with more Risen, less pirates) and then eventually Lion’s Arch. It would be massive amounts of effort to be sure; but if our “safe zones” were no longer safe and our economy could actively be disrupted by ignoring the threats to the world, I’d think our actions would feel a great deal more meaningful.

SirMoogie.9263:

Erukk.1408:

It’s a bit hard to pull off a true sense of desperation in MMOs since mechanically the PC can instantly teleport away from any sort of carnage to a carefree and tranquil area. That instantly ruins the threat that an area or atmosphere has since it takes away the true danger of the situation.

Prior to introducing megaservers they were capable of having cross zone effects in the separate realms/shards (e.g., Orr temples). I once suggested during the first CDI they did on the Living World that they should leverage this more and have more zone spanning effects, such that we as heroes of the realm have some duty to keeping it stable. For example, If we let Spark Fly Fen fall to the Risen threat there, those threats should bleed over into Bloodtide Coast (replace enemies and events there with more Risen, less pirates) and then eventually Lion’s Arch. It would be massive amounts of effort to be sure; but if our “safe zones” were no longer safe and our economy could actively be disrupted by ignoring the threats to the world, I’d think our actions would feel a great deal more meaningful.

woah~

SirMoogie.9263:

Prior to introducing megaservers they were capable of having cross zone effects in the separate realms/shards (e.g., Orr temples). I once suggested during the first CDI they did on the Living World that they should leverage this more and have more zone spanning effects, such that we as heroes of the realm have some duty to keeping it stable. For example, If we let Spark Fly Fen fall to the Risen threat there, those threats should bleed over into Bloodtide Coast (replace enemies and events there with more Risen, less pirates) and then eventually Lion’s Arch. It would be massive amounts of effort to be sure; but if our “safe zones” were no longer safe and our economy could actively be disrupted by ignoring the threats to the world, I’d think our actions would feel a great deal more meaningful.

This is the biggest disappointment I had from that feature patch that introduced megaservers.

I made similar suggestions, though my main example was regarding centaurs. For example, failing to kill Ulgoth would trigger a centaur invasion across Harathi Hinterlands (akin to the Scarlet Invasions), and if that failed then the map would have a lot more centaurs – even in ‘safety zones’ like Seraph’s Landing – than usual, and in Gendarran a new centaur invasion would trigger with similar effects, and should that fail a dual-invasion trigger in Queensdale and Kessex Hills. With each invasion failed, the previous maps would have tougher centaurs but have events to take back the land; for each previous map retaken, the invasion force in the next maps would reduce. So for example if Queensdale and Kessex were centaur occupied, then Harathi Hinterlands would be crawling with elites and champions, while Queensdale and Kessex would have only regulars and veterans, and if Harathi was taken back by players then the Queensdale/Kessex veterans and regulars would reduce in numbers making them easier, alternatively if Queensdale/Kessex were taken back by players the number of champions and elites in Harathi would dwindle, being replaced by lower ranked foes (regulars, veterans, and for the champ replacements, elites).

But alas, megaservers removed such epic potential.

Forme the “desperation” falls often flat, because of the scope of the events we are wittnessing (or how they are discribed to us)

The recent example is the destruction of the pact fleet.
How big was the fleet?
Was it the whole fleet?
Was it an all out attack?
Where did they come from? In extension, do we still have facilitities?
Do we still have enough pact member?
Was it only pact, or the alliance helping there?

Then there is the problem, that we only get glimpses of problems. They are said to happen all over the continent, but we only see them poppin up here and there.

I never felt Mordremoth as dangerous to the existing lands, as the NPCs made out to be.
Sure he popped up here and there, but if we say full scale invasion Scarlet and every holiday that placed some enemies throughout the world was more dangerous (the next event could be interesting, if they don`t just drop them in and say: “here, have some Mordem newcomers”)

Scarlet was another example. She was a most wanted criminal, who was plled into the light at the Queens Speach and what did happen after that?
Nothing. No ballots, no search parties.
We didn`t see any effort in the world.
She was the enemy to the Norn, Charr, Humans and LA at this point and the world did not reflect it.

logan even said he would try to get some of his seraphs out for a search party. Nothing.
Thats actually one of my biggest complains with S1. The dumb and useless world.
That it took a freelance detective to put Scarlet into perspective, which just resulted in her being much more OP than she should have been.
A scientific genius who has barely any Asura trying to have a knack at her to proove who is better and an giant army who leaves barely anything to follow?
It just raised too many questions.

The whole only getting a glimpse of the whole affair is sadly not enough to get a living world feeling.
Things need to have a ripple effect and be felt throughout more than one little map.

@Konig
Not essentialy.
Just don`t go serverbased, but region based.
While I doubt there will be many times the events fail, just think of multiple low population maps where the centaur run rampart.
These could effect the other generated maps in the same way, suddenly resulting in a difficulty spike.
However, it would happen less or maybe only at night and in the mornings.

Jaken.6801:

@Konig
Not essentialy.
Just don`t go serverbased, but region based.
While I doubt there will be many times the events fail, just think of multiple low population maps where the centaur run rampart.
These could effect the other generated maps in the same way, suddenly resulting in a difficulty spike.
However, it would happen less or maybe only at night and in the mornings.

I suppose they could keep a server region-based ratio of how the different fronts were performing in the events across the different instances of the zone created. That’s a bit of word salad, but the technology creating the world is a bit complex, let me expound…

For example, the North American region as a whole has had 25 copies of Hirathi Hinterlands created, of those created the centaurs have won 45 out of 60 events. Once the centaur victories over attempts reach some threshhold they could set flags to change the zone state across all copies created and that could be created (e.g., Harathi Hinterlands in invaded state, Gendarran Fields spawning elites, etc.). It would feel illogical to those people who have been doing really well in those regions in their own copies, only to see the centaurs suddenly get a huge chunk of Tyria under their control, but it could approximate the effect Konig and I are talking about.

A bit messy, but since we are not going back to individual, semi-persistent worlds, it would have to do if there are to be cross zone effects in any form.

It’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure how the devs would feel about their event possibly punishing players for the (in)actions of others. It would be mildly annoying if someone is trying to do world completion only to run into a totally conquered zone with buffed troops to deal with.

Erukk.1408:

It’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure how the devs would feel about their event possibly punishing players for the (in)actions of others.

I would say their response to the requests to remove WvW from world completion requirements suggests they don’t mind adding hurdles to world completion that require the successful performance of other players. You can’t (easily) get world completion in WvW unless you have a players on your server capable of capturing objectives and holding them.

SirMoogie.9263:

Erukk.1408:

It’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure how the devs would feel about their event possibly punishing players for the (in)actions of others.

I would say their response to the requests to remove WvW from world completion requirements suggests they don’t mind adding hurdles to world completion that require the successful performance of other players. You can’t (easily) get world completion in WvW unless you have a players on your server capable of capturing objectives and holding them.

Yeah, but didn’t they then remove WvW from map completion? It was part of one of the feature packs, I think.

EDIT: Nevermind, not a feature pack. Just one of the more recent changes they made preparatory to HoT. Still, it indicates a change of direction for them.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Yeah, but didn’t they then remove WvW from map completion? It was part of one of the feature packs, I think.

I was not aware, been sometime since I’ve been active.

Jaken.6801:

@Konig
Not essentialy.
Just don`t go serverbased, but region based.
While I doubt there will be many times the events fail, just think of multiple low population maps where the centaur run rampart.
These could effect the other generated maps in the same way, suddenly resulting in a difficulty spike.
However, it would happen less or maybe only at night and in the mornings.

Not the same, for reasons Moogie gave. The megaserver means that there’s no clear flow between maps anymore. It’s why they altered how the Temple-and-Statue connections in Orr work – rather than a temple being tied to a statue of the same god, they’re linked via proximity instead. This is because it’d be impossible to accurately link cross-zone events with the megaserver. For example, what if there are more instances of Cursed Shore than Straits of Devastation? How do the Balthazar statues in spare instances react when there’s no counterpart in existence currently?