Guild Wars 2

Oglaf, so what you say is that if Bear gets killed by Jormag, Norn would just abandon the teachings of Bear?

I find that highly unlikely. What would all the burly warriors do?

Gaudrath.6725:

Oglaf, so what you say is that if Bear gets killed by Jormag, Norn would just abandon the teachings of Bear?

I find that highly unlikely. What would all the burly warriors do?

You can’t pick Owl on Character Creation after all. If Bear got gobbled up by Dragon you probably wouldn’t be able to pick her either.

There are almost no Owl Shamans in the game anymore, or any of the other devoured Spirits. On the contrast, the “alive” Spirits have lots of “clergy” and well-maintained Lodges/Shrines.

It really does seem like once a Spirit “dies” he or she gets abandoned by the majority of Norns.

Hm. It could be the case, after all, Norn are not ones to dwell on things that are no more. BUT the problem remains that Svanir have chosen Dragon as their totem, and once you go down that path you do NOT come back (well, there is one Norn who did, but that’s the only one I know of).

When an elder dragon dies, does the corruption they have spread die with them? We don’t have a conclusive answer, and judging how things went with Zhaitan, it was no Lord of the Rings (movie) moment where all risen just dropped dead(er).

Maybe they would just go insane.

Which is why I said they’d still be around as roaming marauders, but not as an organized faction like they are currently.

Once you go Icebrood, you can’t go back, true. But the non-Icebrood Sons would probably be welcomed back to the fold if they so choose. They are not considered inherently evil after all.

Consider that Owl’s Lodge is in ruins with few shamans remaining… 165 years after Owl’s death. It wasn’t simply “Oh, Owl’s dead. Abandon ship!” The practice slowly died out because the young Norn followed other spirits. It was a gradual thing, as the NPCs around Owl’s Lodge describe.

As we see with Zhaitan, the dragon’s corruption does not die with them. Which means you’d still have corrupted ice, corrupted Icebrood, and Sons of Svanir living in those areas.

Like I already said, Svanir himself is dead. Defeated by his own sister, Jora. What was the outcome? They named themselves after him and decided all women were weak. This is not a group that follows logic .

Gaudrath.6725:

Not at all, but I am not surprised you really just skimmed across what I wrote, eager to argue. What I actually said, is that ANet should have made the world story more open-ended and player driven, and personal story more tailored to each character and more personal. The personal story should in no way seriously affect happenings in the open world.

This is either the second or even the third time you’ve started off a post claiming I’m not reading what you’ve written, etc, etc. Stop it. I’m reading your posts, and nothing you’re writing is addressing the issues I’m bringing up. You’re using that tactic to make me and my argument seem lazy.

Gaudrath.6725:

The notion that the player must be “crowned king” or otherwise highly elevated in order to have a sense of accomplishment is an utterly false one. Especially in an MMO, the sense of accomplishment should primarily come from things one has achieved in the social environment, .i.e the open world.

Case in point, I don’t care if you killed Zhaitan – the act is meaningless, because its success is predetermined. Soloing certain lesser champions is more difficult than killing Zhaitan and gives a greater sense of personal accomplishment.
That is because the possibility to fail is an important part of the sense of having accomplished something. This possibility is not presented to the player in any shape or form during the personal storyline. The choices are linear, few and predictable, and they all ultimately converge to the same conclusion – in other words, there are no choices and every “personal” story is the same.

Well, every personal story is not the same, there are numerous variations, but I get your meaning— they’re limited, and you don’t have the freedom to shape your adventure the way you want.

Again, I’ll say that you could only accomplish this in a meaningful way by sacrificing the linear story altogether—- this just isn’t what ANet were trying to accomplish in their PvE, and it’s not the game I want to play.

Gaudrath.6725:

So again. Personal storyline should have been created in such a way that it offers true choice and variation to the player, but not so that it interferes with the open world and the larger events in it.

You seem to be speaking now about a different issue. You brought up before that you weren’t happy that the death of Zhaitan did not have a noticeable affect on the open world. I took this to mean that you wanted either 1) a story that effects the world in a lasting way for everyone, or 2) a story that contains no epic events.

What other option is there? You’ve not actually provided a solution that satisfies your criteria realistically. When we create a threat, do we then have to keep it alive indefinitely…?

Gaudrath.6725:

Open world, on the other hand, should have been created with a much greater degree of player interaction and impact in it (the before mentioned war against dragons throughout the world), with game-changing epic events reserved only for most special occasions, such as Blizzard did with Cataclysm, or ANet did with the Karka event. They changed the world forever, and they did it only once.

Presumably when you talk here about players effecting the world around them, you don’t mean through personal story (which you said above should not be crafted in such a way that it effects the open world).

Events, of course, do affect the world around you, in that they affect whether camps or cities are accessible or contested. The events surrounding Skrittsburgh are a good example, or the Suwash event chain. Are you suggesting they just do this more? Make the world more fluid, more contested, etc?

You see, I’d agree with that, but that wasn’t all you suggested. You were talking earlier about logical inconsistencies, which was what brought me in in the first place. You were saying it was an inconsistency when the same named creature is killed for a second time, so these event chains, presumably, could only happen once.

Gaudrath.6725:

Such special events should NOT be available for players to determine, especially when it comes to removing something from the world, such as an elder dragon. Same goes for directly confronting one. You can have godlike beings that can smash continents apart, or you can have loot pinjatas for paltry bands of players to defeat. Not both at the same time.

Well, paltry bands of players, entire armies armed with airships and megalasers, but I get what you’re saying.

What’s the alternative? You still haven’t answered that question. Do we leave Zhaitan alive, simply to justify the continued existence of Risen? Do we leave every large threat alive just to avoid suspending our disbelief enough to accept that someone can replay old content in a game?

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Well, every personal story is not the same, there are numerous variations, but I get your meaning— they’re limited, and you don’t have the freedom to shape your adventure the way you want.
Again, I’ll say that you could only accomplish this in a meaningful way by sacrificing the linear story altogether—- this just isn’t what ANet were trying to accomplish in their PvE, and it’s not the game I want to play.

That is of course, your preference. But since neither of us has the power to direct ANet on how they will make their game, the fact that our tastes differ means little. We are discussing what would have been the best way to make the game in the context of storytelling. I argue that basically, more logical and consistent your story and player experience, the better.
You seem to disagree.

You seem to be speaking now about a different issue. You brought up before that you weren’t happy that the death of Zhaitan did not have a noticeable affect on the open world. I took this to mean that you wanted either 1) a story that effects the world in a lasting way for everyone, or 2) a story that contains no epic events.

What other option is there? You’ve not actually provided a solution that satisfies your criteria realistically. When we create a threat, do we then have to keep it alive indefinitely…?

I am actually just not happy about the all too quick and easy defeat of an elder dragon and the issues it brings up in the open world. I do not call that an epic event because I had very little to do with it. This is a game, not a book. If there are epic things to be done, they should be done by players, not NPC’s. You basically just tag along.

When you create a major, godlike threat like the elder dragons, you make kitten sure they live up to that reputation. Killing one via a 5-player instance is a bad, bad idea. Makes the kitten thing feel easier than a common giant. I don’t care about set-piece arrangements. Do you feel a sense of accomplishment after one of Call of Duty’s set-piece fights? No. Why? Because it is a movie pretending to be a game and you have very little to do with the outcome.

Instead I proposed that there be MANY epic fights. Long, epic, uphill struggles against these terrible forces that want to devour the world. Armies of dragon minions marching across multiple fronts, with the actual possibility to see stuff such as:

-major cities actually under siege
-dragon minions taking over an entire zone and forcing players to push them back (Orr style)
-dragon armies cascading invasions (for example Orr->Sparkfly Fen->Bloodtide Coast->Siege of Lion’s Arch), with dynamically adjustable content (instead of chasing away drakes and pirates in Bloodtide Coast, now you have to chase away undead beating on the bulwarks hastily set up by the Pact and the Guard), where if one zone is run over, the invasion spills into the next
-NPC generals leading these armies, which can be defeated in epic combat (see the random name generator idea)
-solo players can, WvW style, disrupt enemy supply lines or go deep behind enemy lines to try and assasinate key enemy leaders to slow down or help turn back these invasions

And so on and so forth. A fully dynamic, player driven content, think dynamic events but on a much grander scale. That’s not epic enough?

But this means you cannot go down the route of easy gratification and just let the players practically solo an elder dragon. This kind of system has many epic fights instead of just one and the final reward is the world. Instead of killed, the dragons could be barely contained in their core lands. The system could be made such that it is progressively more difficult to push back their armies the closer you are to the dragon. Players could even face the elder dragons themselves, but not kill them. Wound them, defeat them and besiege them.

But no, you would not be able to actually kill one. Fitting, in my book. GW2 dragons are so over the top, of such epic proportions (I mean, they’re basically flying mountains), that just killing them is actually somewhat anti-climactic. One of them casually scoured away a canyon across half a continent. Another raised a continent from the seabed, how can you just kill such things, megalasers or not!

Anyway, that is how I would have done it. MMO games are about players interacting with and next to each other. I have nothing against personal storylines, in fact I welcome them as a sort of a unique sidequest you can have, but such things need to be kept separate from the open world.

Gaudrath.6725:

I argue that basically, more logical and consistent your story and player experience, the better.
You seem to disagree.

No, that’s a strawman. My argument was always that there is no illogic and inconsistency in the storyline of GW2 as it is. Including a mechanic to allow players to revisit old content has been a staple of most non-restrictive games for decades, even if it’s just multiple save files.

Gaudrath.6725:

Instead I proposed that there be MANY epic fights. Long, epic, uphill struggles against these terrible forces that want to devour the world. Armies of dragon minions marching across multiple fronts, with the actual possibility to see stuff such as:

-major cities actually under siege
-dragon minions taking over an entire zone and forcing players to push them back (Orr style)
-dragon armies cascading invasions (for example Orr->Sparkfly Fen->Bloodtide Coast->Siege of Lion’s Arch), with dynamically adjustable content (instead of chasing away drakes and pirates in Bloodtide Coast, now you have to chase away undead beating on the bulwarks hastily set up by the Pact and the Guard), where if one zone is run over, the invasion spills into the next
-NPC generals leading these armies, which can be defeated in epic combat (see the random name generator idea)
-solo players can, WvW style, disrupt enemy supply lines or go deep behind enemy lines to try and assasinate key enemy leaders to slow down or help turn back these invasions

Now, you describe something pretty cool, here. You’re also describing something without a linear story.

ANet are aiming to create a series of games with storylines, beginnings and endings. Explorable worlds, like GW1, but massively multiplayer, and each one telling the next chapter of the story.

They could not do that with your model.

Besides this, another problem would be that with your never-ending event chain (pushing forward and being pushed back), progress would be meaningless. You would be progressing towards nothing storyline-wise. You would simply take a keep, defend it, perhaps take another, and when you logged on again the next day it would all be lost.

That works fantastically in WvW, because of its competitive nature. I believe most people would find it to be an inferior PvE experience.

It would also be incredibly restrictive to what you could do in the PvE world. Join one of the fronts in the never-ending war, maybe defend Nageling from a (randomly-named) Giant for the umpteenth time…. but nothing truly personal, because any actual advance in the War relies on huge zergs completing generic and randomly-generated events.

You could have no villains with any true meaning to them, like Kudu or Faolain or Baelfire, unless these villains were perpetually alive, never defeated. You could have no dungeons, unless these dungeons can only be completed once, and affect the world directly when they’re done.

This doesn’t seem like a recipe for increasing the sense of accomplishment to me. It sounds like a recipe for vastly diminishing it… and that’s aside from the fact that you’re describing an utterly different game, one without a linear story, one completely alien to what ANet set out to do.

It’s a bit late here, but I will say this – you were right about me not finishing the personal storyline, but I just watched the video of the final fight with Zhaitan on Youtube.

Oh my god. What… that’s just so terrible. Awful. I really hope that Zhaitan isn’t really dead, because if they got rid of him in such a lame manner, that’s just… argh. That’s not epic. That’s not even slightly interesting. Definitely not a way for an elder dragon to go.

That works fantastically in WvW, because of its competitive nature. I believe most people would find it to be an inferior PvE experience.

As opposed to always same local events endlessly cycling, always same enemies in same places, in same numbers? With a more dynamic system you could have everything dynamic. If the invasion is going well, there would be more and different enemies and tougher bosses with more loot. You would never revisit an old zone and find it exactly the same, there would always be something different.

I think it would be quite a superior PvE experience. Plus you would royally screw the bots, because there wouldn’t be any farming sweetspots, heh heh.

As for villains… well, there would be, in my opinion, more meaning and more immersion with cleverly told stories involving randomly named villains than static stories with farmable “unique” villains.
Sure, it’s fun and unique the first time, but the thing about MMOs is that first time is almost never the last time. So you have either a choice of disguising the fact that this big bad boss is there to be killed a lot by players and achieve maximum possible immersion, or you can stick to traditional static storytelling and just rely on suspension of disbelief.

Three Owl Shamans – or more accurately, 2 (one event chain related, the other skill challenge) and an apprentice shaman (the heart NPC).

And comparing the Owl Lodge to the Hoelbrak lodges is like saying Wurm, Ox, Wolverine, Minotaur, Eagle, and the other minor Spirits of the Wild are without any following. Of course it’s a far stretch from Hoelbrak – Hoelbrak is for the major Spirits of the Wild! That place outclases any minor Spirit of the Wild, which includes Owl. And Owl having a ruined lodge is still far more than the other minor Spirits of the Wild get.

And think: They view Jormag as a Spirit of the Wild. Spirits don’t have physical bodies, so they very well may view that Jormag’s spirit is still out there (and it very well may be) and able to give them power.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And think: They view Jormag as a Spirit of the Wild. Spirits don’t have physical bodies, so they very well may view that Jormag’s spirit is still out there (and it very well may be) and able to give them power.

No, it doesn’t work like that. Owl is dead. As are the other Spirits said to be dead. Jormag/Dragon ate them up. Spirits of the Wild are definitely “mortal” in the eyes of the Norn.

Gaudrath,
You are saying that you want more dynamic events, the issue with that is that dynamic events other than The Lost Shores are not one time events, they happen over and over. You want something you have defined as a contradiction, replaced by something else that also fits in your definition of a contradiction. Unless you want every dynamic event to only happen once, which cannot be practcally done (which is probably why it wasnt), by what you are saying you will never be satisfied.

Grievous.3568:

Gaudrath,
You are saying that you want more dynamic events, the issue with that is that dynamic events other than The Lost Shores are not one time events, they happen over and over. You want something you have defined as a contradiction, replaced by something else that also fits in your definition of a contradiction. Unless you want every dynamic event to only happen once, which cannot be practcally done (which is probably why it wasnt), by what you are saying you will never be satisfied.

You got it quite wrong – I have no problem with repeatable content and have even thrown around some ideas how to disguise repeatable content as unique, something even GW 2 right now doesn’t bother to do. So no contradiction there.

MMO’s are designed to be played for hundreds and thousands of hours. Of course 99% of the content has to be repeatable.

Oglaf.1074:

No, it doesn’t work like that. Owl is dead. As are the other Spirits said to be dead. Jormag/Dragon ate them up. Spirits of the Wild are definitely “mortal” in the eyes of the Norn.

Owl is the only Spirit of the Wild said to be dead – Wolverine and Ox are just missing.

And I never said that the Spirits of the Wild aren’t mortal. I’m saying that the Sons of Svanir may go “well, Jormag was defeated because he had a physical body still! But now he’s a spirit, a true Spirit of the Wild!”

Don’t expect logic – what you’re trying to apply here – to work for norn, let alone fanatical ones.

Honestly, a lot of them might just go, “Huh. So the real Dragon Spirit is PRIMORDUS! All hail PRIMORDUS!”

I’d actually be surprised at such an action – Jormag got viewed as Dragon because he’s the one who messed up norn culture. The other Elder Dragons haven’t done such.

Though I am curious what the Sons of Svanir’s take on Primordus and the others are.

given what we know of the EDs, Jormag is the only one that shows “active” intelligence, seducing people left and right with promises of power and conquest. unless the other EDs display similar, the Sons of Svanir may just consider them “dragons” instead of Dragons

This is just a mild guess but Anet said they are going to revamp Orr maybe this revamp is going to show how us killing Zaitan has changed orr for the better.

As i said its just a guess but it would be great if Anet cleaned orr some to reflect our actions against Zaitan..

Plus the branded have only just been touched upon in Ebonhawke, if you follow the purple smear down to the crystal desert, its been smashed to hell, and i fear for Elona too..

Dante.1508:

This is just a mild guess but Anet said they are going to revamp Orr maybe this revamp is going to show how us killing Zaitan has changed orr for the better.

As i said its just a guess but it would be great if Anet cleaned orr some to reflect our actions against Zaitan..

What would that mean for players like me, who haven’t killed Zhaitan yet – we get no improvements?
They’ll never do that for one simple reason – it would totally fracture the game. It can be hard finding people to do the Arah story now, imagine if half of the people didn’t even play in the same instance as you.

On the note of killing Zhaitan – did you notice how he doesn’t look like anything depicted in the official trailer for the game, or any of the other dragons? Maybe what we think was Zhaitan was just another monstrous abomination of his?

Pretty safe to say it is Zhaitan, I reckon. He matches the concept art.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/bf/Zhaitan_the_Undead_Dragon_concept_art.jpg

Oglaf.1074:

Pretty safe to say it is Zhaitan, I reckon. He matches the concept art.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/bf/Zhaitan_the_Undead_Dragon_concept_art.jpg

“Did you find the body?”
“No sir, but it fell…”
“No body, no dead dragon. Keep looking.”

:p

Seriously, the elder dragons are so cool, Zhaitan’s defeat was so… meh. It could have been made so much more epic.

Zhaitan comes, they fire the megalaser and wound it, and the dragon screams in pain. A dozen smaller dragons swoop in on the skyship, tearing at it with tooth and claw, the defense cannons controlled by players firing desperately to keep them at bay, but in the end the engines are crippled and the stricken airship CRASHES into Zhaitan who is blinded by pain.

Both plummet from the sky to the ruined city below. Our band of adventurers survives the fall, of course, but so does Zhaitan! His wings broken and useless, the enraged elder dragon slowly starts to gather himself but is buried under the ruins of a nearby tower which shattered in the preceding crash.
The time is NOW, players have to rush to get to the fallen dragon and finish him before he can get away, but there are dragon minions coming out of the woodwork!
They cut a bloody trail in their haste to reach Zhaitan before it is too late, but at the last moment a giant, never before seen monstrosity CRASHES through a rotting wall! It is the Hand of Zhaitan, a twisted nightmare of rotting flesh and rusted steel, towering over the players.
They try to fight it, but it is too strong. When each player falls, they are held fast by undead hands springing forth from the very ground. Zhaitan slowly rises in the background, and all hope seems lost.

Enter Trahearne! Leaping over the shaterred walls he bears down on the monster, Caladbolg gleaming in his hands, but even its might is barely enough to contain the dreadful power of the Hand of Zhaitan. With one sweep of the magical blade, the players are free and Trahearne SHOUTS to the players to go and reach Zhaitan before it recovers!
He keeps the Hand at bay, but is absorbed by the fight as Zhaitan’s champion, fueled by the elder dragon’s desperation and hate, attacks relentlessly.

The players resume their charge towards the dragon. Hordes of undead spring forth from the ground and shadowed holes around them. But a new cry is heard! The Pact is finally here! Warriors from all over Tyria join the fray and the battle is now in full swing!

Buried beneath tons of rubble, the dragon is still pinned to the ground, unable to move. Through this all the players press on, ever closer to the dragon, who now in desperation starts spewing giant serpents from his mouth, but the monsters are cut down one by one.

Finally, the players reach Zhaitan. He roars defiantly, the deafening shout only briefly overcoming the din of battle, the explosions of guns and ring of swords and spears. Zhaitan rears his giant head, the remaining serpents snapping from his mouth at players who have to quickly evade their attacks or die! They dodge and weave their way beneath the dragon’s head, where a weak spot may be found!

At last the final fight is at hand. With spell and sword the heroic party unleashes all their might into this one attack to bring about the fall of the elder dragon. Zhaitan screams and the mountain of rubble shakes as he desperately tries to escape, but it is to no avail. He is trapped and with no way to reach the heroes striking at him, he is finally overcome.

Thus was ended Zhaitan, the elder dragon of undeath.

Or we can fire fireworks at him until he dies from it. :p

At least it wasn’t a Quick Time Event!

:D

you know Gaudrath… that would indeed make for an awesome final fight against Zhaitan. now i wish they went that way with it :/

smekras.8203:

given what we know of the EDs, Jormag is the only one that shows “active” intelligence, seducing people left and right with promises of power and conquest. unless the other EDs display similar, the Sons of Svanir may just consider them “dragons” instead of Dragons

Kralkatorrik and Zhaitan show intelligence, though Kralkatorrik we only know thanks to Edge of Destiny showing the thoughts of Branded and Kralkatorrik himself, and Zhaitan only shows it from halfway through the storyline on.

Dante.1508:

This is just a mild guess but Anet said they are going to revamp Orr maybe this revamp is going to show how us killing Zaitan has changed orr for the better.

I guess I don’t pay enough attention to GW news, but where was the revamp to Orr mentioned? Either way, I cannot see it being that they’re cleaning it up – it’s probably just a lot of balance changes (that Balth temple meta is hard as hell from the few times I’ve tried it, for example) or alternatively some changes to the events or mobs there (please reduce the CC!!!). The issue that cleaning up the corruption or mobs would bring is that new players who never fought Zhaitan would also see it, and they wouldn’t see the change so that it’s pointless or the change would be drastic to the point where Orr loses its “corrupted land of undead” feeling to new players.

It’d be cool and all, but I cannot see that happening.

Gaudrath.6725:

Seriously, the elder dragons are so cool, Zhaitan’s defeat was so… meh. It could have been made so much more epic.

True, it was rather meh, and only a few changes would really be needed to make it better. The main reason why it was meh was because the last phase of the fight was just stand there pressing 2 once you allign the cannons properly, only stopping for those weak-as-hell Tendrils of Zhaitan that spawn.

But your story… I don’t like, personally. They give a reason why Trahearne’s not there – he’s busy keeping the corruption at bay (this is said, iirc, in the instance after Zhaitan’s defeat in the personal story). And you have us finishing Zhaitan off with our basic weapons against a weak spot? Doesn’t that ruin your whole concept of why Elder Dragons are cool? Why would an Elder Dragon have a weak spot that can be taken out by tiny kitten weaponry?

All they had to do was have some dragon champions come in to defend their master while the Glory of Tyria airship circled around Zhaitan – making you change angle of the cannons, and leave the cannons to attack the (effectively endless) minion assaults. Then just add more attacks from Zhaitan – his little mouth tendril things practically snap at one or two of the cannons from 50% health and on, make that do damage.

No need to get all fancy with stuff that’s probably not entirely possible with the game engine (half the stuff you said would work great in a book or movie or as a cinematic, but probably not with the GW2 game engine).

But I digress – yes, the final fight with Zhaitan was sub-par. Let’s just hope we get better fights with Jormag who’s most likely to be next, and especially the deep sea dragon (I cannot see an army of airships being effective against any other Elder Dragon except maybe Kralkatorrik – you don’t really want airships over the arctic sea, where Jormag can submerge underwater, and they wouldn’t work with the DSD unless you force him to surface and they certainly wouldn’t with Primordus underground).

The fight with Zhaitan? Kind of an anti-climax. The entire instance? Actually really well done.

The “fight two champions, on an airship, at the same time” bit. The “LOOK AT ALL THE GIANTS” creepy bit. The “Oh and FYI… Zhaitan just swappted your airship like a fly… but the cavalry just showed up in an even more kitten NEW AIRSHIP”

All of that was really, really, a great experience narratively and mechanically.

The Zhaitan cinematics and just his presence were great.

But then… the “fight” happened.

I understand pact megalasers are the best thing since sliced bread, but what we ended up with was an over-long sequence of shooting at a completely defenseless elder dragon while mopping up the occasional add. While it did let us appreciate the great modeling, it felt very lacking in communicating the sheer scale and menace of the thing.

I understand we can’t just kill these things with our handheld weapons, but hopefully the next one puts us in a much more terrifying position. The players should really be the ones pinned down and made helpless by unending heavy fire by a superior foe, lashing out with only as little token resistance as we can muster.

If we’re relying on pact super-weapons, fine, but let these beasts make us run, make us hide, pin us down, and beat on us until we finally have that one-in-a-million shot, and let us push the dang button!

Konig, actually I do have a little bit of experience in game design, so all of the stuff I said was meant to work with the game engine and is completely doable, no worries.

The resaon of letting players defeat Zhaitan with their ordinary weapons is the same reason why defeating Zhaitan with lasers and huge cannons is a let-down: it is not epic. It is impersonal, it is machines against a suddenly atavistic monster. Of course the machines will win. Machines always win against fantasy monsters, we as human beings expect it because we see it in our world and civilization, which is based on the conquest of nature by technology.

By pitting players personally against Zhaitan, you create a sense of heroism, the kind of impossible odds that still send shivers down your spine when the heroes charge anyway, like the final march of the Ents in Lord of the Rings, or the battle between Morgoth and Fingolfin (see attached picture). And then they WIN.

It is personal, it is heroic, it is worthy of song. Shooting a dragon with lasers and giant cannons simply isn’t. They might as well shoot him with a ballistic nuclear missile launched from Rata Sum.

Well, it wouldn’t be very heroic to have us stand in front of Zhaitan’s toenail and poke him with our weapons. The issue is that he’s too dang big.

Personally, I think we should’ve hit him with the Pact Superlasers and had him come apart – you can tell he’s made of a bunch of dragons fused together. Then suddenly the airship is under attack by a dozen Shatterer-size dragons and Zhaitan continues to disintegrate because of the superlasers, while we fight off the smaller (but still large) dragons… etc etc.

PopeUrban.2578:

The fight with Zhaitan? Kind of an anti-climax. The entire instance? Actually really well done.

QFT. I agree that the fight against Zhaitan is too easy, etc (though the spectacle of him clutching the tower is a great image), but people don’t give the rest of the instance the respect it deserves. I came away from Arah Story for the first time feeling incredible, and though it wasn’t as a result of the Zhaitan fight, the feeling came from fighting multiple champions aboard the airship and numerous other awesome encounters.

It’s true. Zhaitan’s boss fight was anti-climactic. But, to be honest, I can’t remember the last time a final boss fight was truly epic. I look across my PC game shelf & I see only 4 out of the 17 single-player games had end boss fights that did justice. I know this doesn’t let Zhaitan off the hook, it’s no excuse, but give the rest of the mission some credit! It felt epic!

True that. The fight where you defend yourself against his flying champions were more hectic and epic than the actual fight against Zhaitan.

That’s what happens when you build your archnemesis to be larger than life… your fight with that archnemesis then has to be on the same level.

Which is why in my version you’d be basically fighting his head only, him being buried under a thousand tons of rubble, but YOU would fight with Zhaitan. Not with his champions, and not by using some superlaser crutch.
You, the hero, would fight and kill the elder dragon, with your weapon and skill. Only way to be done really. Anything else and it just feels lacking.

As for size… a Norn ripped out a tooth from Jormag’s jaw the size of a small tower. If you want epic, don’t expect much realism. Realism can be all kinds of stuff, but epic isn’t one of them.

Also, once you start killing off ancient giant dragons with lasers and bombs, instead of personal, heroic struggle… what’s next? Carpet-bombing Jormag? Where is the mystery? The dread? The hope? We can lazer one elder dragon to pieces, we can lazer them all. No real challenge, just technical and logistical problems to be solved. No more mystical war against ancient evils, but quite an ordinary one against a hopelessly outdated enemy.

What if zhaitan was already dead, and some other being revived him an created the risen (and likes to stay in the shadows)?

I thought it made perfect sense. Just because Zhaitan is killed, it doesn’t mean that his minions are. Similar to WoW’s Arthas/Lich King story arc. After he was killed the Scourge remained. A new Lich King had to take Arthas’ place since without a master giving the Scourge a purpose, they would run chaotically rampant. I imagine this is what is happening in Arah exploration; the remaining Risen are without a master, but are aggressive anyways due to their nature.

On topic of whether it was or was not a mistake to kill an Elder Dragon because it may “wind-down the plot”, I do not think that is true. We severely weakened Z by first killing Eyes and Mouths. This may not be possible with the other Elders. Who knows what their weakness is? Time will tell.

I wouldn’t want to fight an Elder Dragon’s head with my regular weaponry. It’d be far less impressive. Whatever the final fight lacked in challenge, it had great visual spectacle, which a battle against Zhaitan’s head with our swords would lack.

I had no problems with the way we killed Zhaitan. I mean we flew in on freaking blimbs, a massive air battle was going on and we shot some laser guns at him. How cool is that? Crazy cool! That’s how! And I agree, the rest of the dungeon was pretty awesome too.
The only problem I have is that, I wanted to fire the laser. Not battling of endless waves of Risen. And when I finally get to fire at the big Z himself, he just hangs there on that rock. He looked so sad. I would have rather hugged him at that point.

So what could have been done better? Make the players aim the super laser. Make the big blimb crash after a ram attack by Zhaitan, but he goes down with it. Use cannons to weak Zhaitan who lies under the blimb and tries to snatch you off. Finally jumb down and attack his head, while Zojja activates the self-destruction. Then run away and watch Zhaitan going down in flames. That would have been an epic ending.

Gaudrath.6725:

Konig, actually I do have a little bit of experience in game design, so all of the stuff I said was meant to work with the game engine and is completely doable, no worries.

With other game engines, definitely, with GW2’s?…

“Enter Trahearne! Leaping over the shaterred walls he bears down on the monster”

NPCs can’t seem to jump in GW2, not in the same way PCs can – and same goes for falling off cliffs (even 1-foot high ones).

I dunno why this is, but it is.

Gaudrath.6725:

The resaon of letting players defeat Zhaitan with their ordinary weapons is the same reason why defeating Zhaitan with lasers and huge cannons is a let-down: it is not epic. It is impersonal, it is machines against a suddenly atavistic monster.

If you ask me, killing Zhaitan with a 3 foot long blade is not only not epic, but also not making any sense. As would the concept of Elder Dragons having a weak spot. Personally, my main issue with killing Zhaitan with mega-lasers and the like was that half of the work was done by NPCs. You didn’t fight Zhaitan half the time – you fought his minions while Zojja and otherwise-never-named NPCs did the actual damage to Zhaitan, until he was crippled and hanging onto a tower for his dear life (which also felt a bit meh – I would have preferred chasing him in the airship as he crawls through Arah in a circular pattern, unable to fly, while champions besieged the ship).

To me, wacking a creature the size of, or bigger than, Godzilla with standard-sized weaponry is not epic nor does it provide as “sense of heroism.” It’s comical because of how silly it is. It’s like being killed by a bunch of splinters (germ warfare excluded). That’s not heroic or worthy of song. It makes the allies of the fell laugh their kitten off, and the victorious go “we were threatened by that?”

If he was a third of the size he is, I could probably agree. But as he is, he’s twice the size of the airship you’re on (roughly) which itself is about three times the size of other airships – effectively making Zhaitan roughly six times a standard airship’s size. And you know how much bigger to your character a standard airship is?

Forget slashing at toenails, you’re slashing at cuticles. Hell – fighting the dragon champions is already slashing at ankles unless you’re ranged and can aim at the head, and I find those fights boring as hell because of such.

There’s dozens of ways to have made the fight epic without resulting in slashing at something over a hundred times your size with a sword. Be it that they just had you do more than spam 2 in the final phase, had you be the one to cripple Zhaitan, had you fire at Zhaitan while he’s in flight, had champions defending him, had you having to shoot Zhaitan as he moved about on the ground when crippled, or even as everyone was expecting when they heard Zhaitan was designed to look like many dragons merged together: that he’d split apart into his dragon champions and you’d have to kill each one individually.

Gaudrath.6725:

As for size… a Norn ripped out a tooth from Jormag’s jaw the size of a small tower. If you want epic, don’t expect much realism. Realism can be all kinds of stuff, but epic isn’t one of them.

A norn empowered by multiple Spirits of the Wild.

Maybe if we had the blessing of the gods like when we fight Abaddon in Nightfall, it’d make a bit more sense to fight Zhaitan with what would be mere splinters to him.

Gaudrath.6725:

Also, once you start killing off ancient giant dragons with lasers and bombs, instead of personal, heroic struggle… what’s next? Carpet-bombing Jormag? Where is the mystery? The dread? The hope? We can lazer one elder dragon to pieces, we can lazer them all. No real challenge, just technical and logistical problems to be solved. No more mystical war against ancient evils, but quite an ordinary one against a hopelessly outdated enemy.

We can laser Zhaitan and use those golden cannon fires on him because they’re made to be anti-undead and anti-Elder Dragon, not just anti-Elder Dragon.

I bet Kralkatorrik and Jormag can reflect those lasers with their crystals and ice – using them like mirrors. And you sure as hell can’t get airships underground or underwater (hell, would the lasers and cannons even work underwater?). Given those weaponry were made for Zhaitan, you’d have to make new stuff for the other Elder Dragons – and who’s to say that new stuff will work as well as the old stuff on Zhaitan did?

Just adding to the above; who’s to say the other ED’s won’t be aware of Zhaitan’s fall, and be all the more cautious or aggressive as a result?

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Just adding to the above; who’s to say the other ED’s won’t be aware of Zhaitan’s fall, and be all the more cautious or aggressive as a result?

You mean they’ve got a Legion of Doom sort of deal?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Gaudrath.6725:

Konig, actually I do have a little bit of experience in game design, so all of the stuff I said was meant to work with the game engine and is completely doable, no worries.

With other game engines, definitely, with GW2’s?…

“Enter Trahearne! Leaping over the shaterred walls he bears down on the monster”

NPCs can’t seem to jump in GW2, not in the same way PCs can – and same goes for falling off cliffs (even 1-foot high ones).

No man, that would obviously be a cutscene, like the one where Zhaitan smashes the airship, or the one where Nightmare dragon rises from the ground etc. You have to use cutscenes sometimes, can’t tell the story while the player is fighting a gazillion mobs, first, they wouldn’t hear anything that was said (a common problem in GW2 during dynamic events), and second, they probably wouldn’t even see it and would get confused.

If you ask me, killing Zhaitan with a 3 foot long blade is not only not epic, but also not making any sense. As would the concept of Elder Dragons having a weak spot.

Well, they can either have a traditional weak spot, like Smaug, the dragon which singlehandedly decimated an entire dwarven kingdom (and that while he was younger and less powerful) and is indeed really, really big. He was killed by fate and a single arrow. It wasn’t even a magical arrow.

Or your dragon can have a weak spot against megalasers.

So you can have a personal, hero vs dragon, David vs Goliath, face-to-face confrontation, or an impersonal, here’s-me-looking-through-scopes-and-taking-potshots one. Don’t know about you, but the latter doesn’t sound epic to me no matter how you spin it. Chasing an elder dragon with a huge airship while he scuttles around Arrah, desperate to find a hiding hole? Not epic, sad.

To me, wacking a creature the size of, or bigger than, Godzilla with standard-sized weaponry is not epic nor does it provide as “sense of heroism.” It’s comical because of how silly it is. It’s like being killed by a bunch of splinters (germ warfare excluded). That’s not heroic or worthy of song. It makes the allies of the fell laugh their kitten off, and the victorious go “we were threatened by that?”

But shooting a dragon a mile off with lasers is heroic. Ooh, your laser is so powerful, did you get tired from squeezing the trigger?
Also, explain to me how a single Norn knocked a tooth out of Jormag’s jaw. Was he using an Asura megabaseball bat? :p

Epic combat against mythical creatures doesn’t have to be realistic. It is larger than life. It is the stuff of fairy tales and song. Not charts and diagrams and physics. Because if you want to go down that route, GW2 is not really that big on realism, so may as well complain about all that too.

And finally, you’re grasping for details. I can instantly fix that. Say that Trahearne is terribly wounded (maybe even mortally, eh?) as the players reach Zhaitan, and with his last bit of strength he hurls Caladbolg against Zhaitan as the elder dragon rears, finally free of the rubble, in the attempt to crush the players poking at him beneath. The mythical blade spins through the air and IMPALES Zhaitan just as he exposes his neck.

BOOM. Zhaitan is dead after an epic struggle, Trahearne did the killing blow, but only because players managed to get close enough to Zhaitan to make him expose himself.

Or you can do a thousand other variations on the theme “fateful strike”. You can have players carry an enchanted artifact close enough to the fallen dragon which can destroy him, you can have player weapons imbued with eldritch power, you can have this and that.

A hundred solutions better than simply poking the elder dragon with cannons until dead.

I take it as, its a game…a MMORPG. I’m playing the same story as thousands of others with slight differances. I prob wasnt the first to kill the boss but in my story I was. The risen will remain until the last one is destroyed. each “zone” is a moment in time. so if i take my lvl 80 necro to a lvl 10-15 zone then im in the “point in time when my story was here”. Havnt done dungeons yet as I find it extremly difficult in my necro to not be kicked in favor of another class. haha the number of times i have heard “its not you but this incert other class here is also wanting to do the dungeon and they can do what you do but only better”

So what happens if we two meet in a lvl 15 zone? We each have a temporal bubble around ourselves?

MMORPG’s have never worked like this. You either have instances, where you are essentially in a separate “reality”, or you don’t. If you don’t then the world is continuous and same for all players and a designer should work around that.

Personally, I simply ignored Zhaitan. I never killed him, and don’t have any desire to. Abandoned the personal story a few chapters before end… too bad because I found it quite a nice addition up to that point. I wish the story was more about my character, their friends, enemies, about the background of the world… I can handle giant dragon slaying on my own, give me interesting side stories that explain little details, give the world some solid background.

Oh well.

@Gaudrath: Having a few tails cut off by a large laser designed and modified to be anti-Elder Undead Dragon is a hell of a lot less disappointing than a having a weakspot that a standard weapon can kill.

The Elder Dragons are meant to be nigh unstoppable beings, creatures millenia old that powerful races that nearly brought the current races at their high points to their knees couldn’t defeat. Just to be killed by a single arrow? Something those powerful races had plenty of? How kittening ridiculous does that sound to you? But instead being felled by something they didn’t have, that makes a hell of a lot more sense.

And slashing at a fleshy wall isn’t epic no matter how you spin it.

But I guess at this point it’s just a matter of taste – no matter what you do, you will never be able to please everyone.

And your sarcasm at the end is getting tiresome. Hell, you as a whole are getting tiresome.

If Zhaitan was the size of the Shatterer, your idea would work. Fighting with your everyday weapons and spells would work. But Zhaitan’s pretty much at least 3 times the Shatterer’s size. It’d be like attacking a skyscraper with a sword.

Makes me think of this – just change stone to scales. Its the same concept.

Dante.1508:

This is just a mild guess but Anet said they are going to revamp Orr maybe this revamp is going to show how us killing Zaitan has changed orr for the better.

As i said its just a guess but it would be great if Anet cleaned orr some to reflect our actions against Zaitan..

Plus the branded have only just been touched upon in Ebonhawke, if you follow the purple smear down to the crystal desert, its been smashed to hell, and i fear for Elona too..

This was done in GW 1 with pre War in Kryta, during War in Kryta, and post war in Kryta. If one person has not reached War in Kryta’s storyline, it reverts to the old game. After peopledone it, You only had to get a certain quest to “go back in time” to how it was during the Beyond part of the game.

It seems to me that they are going back to GW 1 a bit and having dynamic changes based on personal progress. Yet how will that work in an non-instanced environment?

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Dante.1508:

This is just a mild guess but Anet said they are going to revamp Orr maybe this revamp is going to show how us killing Zaitan has changed orr for the better.

As i said its just a guess but it would be great if Anet cleaned orr some to reflect our actions against Zaitan..

Plus the branded have only just been touched upon in Ebonhawke, if you follow the purple smear down to the crystal desert, its been smashed to hell, and i fear for Elona too..

This was done in GW 1 with pre War in Kryta, during War in Kryta, and post war in Kryta. If one person has not reached War in Kryta’s storyline, it reverts to the old game. After peopledone it, You only had to get a certain quest to “go back in time” to how it was during the Beyond part of the game.

It seems to me that they are going back to GW 1 a bit and having dynamic changes based on personal progress. Yet how will that work in an non-instanced environment?

It won’t and it can’t. That’s probably not what ANet is planning for Orr. They will probably do better difficulty balancing or introduce more and varied rewards so that more people go there because frankly, on some servers it is getting hard to flip certain temples because too few players go to Orr.

Konig, you are really grasping at straws here. I offered you a number of different scenarios which answer your one and only “it is too big” argument and of course you just sidestep that and continue about how Zhaitan is too big.

I wonder if people would remember the story of David and Goliath if David used a field howitzer to blast an arm off Goliath, then gunned him down with a M-60 machine gun.

You honestly think that ANet did a stellar job on the final Zhaitan fight and that it couldn’t be done any better? Please.

Is your main issue the fact that technology was used? Because one of your examples of an ‘epic’ fight is an archer firing an arrow and killing a dragon in one shot. But then you mock the idea of firing a laser and killing a dragon because your trigger finger might be tired. So apparently killing something in one shot with ease is fine, as long as it’s completely mundane and doesn’t involve lasers?

I am apparently outside the norm, because I’m perfectly fine with epic fights and technology. When Luke blew up the Death Star by pressing the trigger for his photon torpedos, I wasn’t let down. I didn’t think it would have been more epic if he had shot an arrow at the space station or attacked it with his lightsaber, though I guess that would fit your ‘David and Goliath’ comparisons.

Look, David and Goliath was a boring fight. He threw a rock at the dude and he died. It wasn’t epic, it was a metaphor. An airship rigged with superlasers fighting an undead dragon twice its size? That’s an epic fight.

No man, my main issue is that the final fight is highly impersonal and really just technical/realistic. Nothing epic there, just like there is nothing epic in destroying a bunker with a bunker buster.

Your analogy with Luke and the Death Star doesn’t work, in fact it goes in my favor. Destroy a moon-sized battle station capable of annihilating entire worlds with a single shot from a small fighter? Preposterous, right?

No, that fight is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. It is a sci-fi variation of the theme “fateful strike”… there is a big battle against an impossibly large and powerful enemy, and in the climax the hero lets loose one fateful shot/strike. The shot itself is comparatively weak and would ordinarily do no damage, but through good fortune or mystical forces (read, fate), it strikes the one weak spot on the enemy, destroying it.

If Star Wars was done like GW2, the rebels would have constructed their own slightly smaller Death Star, forget to charge the superlaser properly, there would be some stormtroopers landing on the rebel death star for our heroes to shoot, then the rebel laser would graze the imperial death star, crippling it, more stormtroopers would land to get shot, and finally the rebels would finish off the imperial death star with a 15 minute long sequence of spamming turbolaser fire at it while Moff Tarkin clutched at his chair and scowled at them, refusing to retreat while the whole thing slowly burned around him.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Imperial Fleet (in our case, the friggin’ dragons) just circling around them like headless chickens, doing nothing the whole time.

A big yawn. “Luke, use the force… to fire that turbolaser cannon a hundred times in the general direction of the moon sized battlestation!” He can’t even miss!

Personally, I still think a mixture would work best. Blast the dragon with the superlasers, then do something with our swords and magic when he’s cut down to size a bit. Nothing to do for it now, of course, unless the Zhaitan fight is revamped again. We’ll see how they do the next Elder Dragon.

Son of Elias.5420:

Personally, I still think a mixture would work best. Blast the dragon with the superlasers, then do something with our swords and magic when he’s cut down to size a bit. Nothing to do for it now, of course, unless the Zhaitan fight is revamped again. We’ll see how they do the next Elder Dragon.

It’s buried a few pages back, but that’s pretty much what I suggested in my alternative version of the final fight.
And yeah, I’m hoping they will make the other Elder Dragons more epic. I still don’t like that we get to just off them, but at least they could make it more memorable and personal.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Jormag, personally.

I would also like the other ED fights to take a different route, to be honest. Not sure exactly what— they’ve set themselves quite a task with such massive enemies.

Maybe actually fight on them. Zhaitan sure looked big enough for us to be able to have some fun on his back. Perhaps fight some Risen living on him like fleas and attack “power points” on his body to weaken him before the laser salvo.

That would’ve been awesome.