Guild Wars 2

Oglaf.1074:

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.

Sounds like the battle against Sin in FFX. That could work, very effective and epic way of tackling giant enemies!

I never played it, but didn’t WoW also have that sort of thing when players fought on the back of Deathwing? Sure does sound epic.

More epic than pressing 2 over and over in any case.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Sounds like the battle against Sin in FFX. That could work, very effective and epic way of tackling giant enemies!

The FFX battle against Sin is actually a good comparison, since you first battle him on an airship which shoots Sin down using superlasers. The actual fight against him using your characters doesn’t really happen until you go inside of him, and kill the source of Sin, so to speak.

So, rather than taking the Deathwing approach (fighting on his back), I think it would be more interesting to take a FFX-Sin approach (go inside them, find a metaphorical metaphysical plane, and kill their source of power).

Gaudrath.6725:

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.

I’m sorry, but all your examples were basically the same to me. So I don’t feel I side-stepped any, I just addressed the same point reiterated in different words once.

And no, I never once said Anet did a stellar job with the Zhaitan fight. I in fact said the opposite. It seems pretty clear to me now that you’re not reading my posts. Hopefully this one is small enough that you’ll read it all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Gaudrath.6725:

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.

I’m sorry, but all your examples were basically the same to me. So I don’t feel I side-stepped any, I just addressed the same point reiterated in different words once.

And no, I never once said Anet did a stellar job with the Zhaitan fight. I in fact said the opposite. It seems pretty clear to me now that you’re not reading my posts. Hopefully this one is small enough that you’ll read it all.

You say all my arguments feel the same to you, and yet you fail to counter them at all, always resorting to the default “it doesn’t make sense” basing it primarily on the size disparity between our heroes and Zhaitan. That’s not an argument, that’s an opinion and a matter of taste.
I guess the final battle in SW IV: A New Hope also doesn’t make sense to you? And of course, as others have pointed, there can be many other ways to make the final fight more interesting, including fighting on or even inside the dragon itself.

Those are details. Not important. My point was that you could do a better job with the final fight after a measly ten minutes of casual writing. Of course you can find flaws in my version, it’s not like I’ve spent months refining it, but that’s not the point and yet you keep focusing on finding small issues with the alternative version instead of discussing the bigger picture.

I could say the same thing for you – you don’t like firing at Zhaitan with lasers or canon because it “doesn’t feel epic.”

That’s 100% subjective. And yes, so is “it looks silly” to slashing at a 1,000 foot tall creature with a 3 foot sword, but hey, we all have opinions.

And that’s what this situation is – opinion. I don’t ignore or “fail to counter” your examples – they’re just different scenarios! And I have, in fact, countered some – like your weakspot scenario, I said more than “it doesn’t make sense” (if I said that at all), but I also said that goes against the entire point Anet wanted to make with the Elder Dragons – that conventional weapons don’t do kitten against them – that’s why our beloved Drakkar was “retconed” (as in, changed during development) to not be Jormag – because it was too small and gave the Elder Dragons a sense of weakness ArenaNet didn’t want to give them (I’d source it, but Guru2 seemed to have deleted the post by Stephane Lo Presti commenting on Jeff Grubb’s behalf showing this).

Yes, the battle at the end of A New Hope does make sense to you – because they aren’t fighting an entity meant to hold no inherent weakspots (note: being able to be cut in half by something never used against them is not an inherent weakspot – it’s being overpowered), because it’s a ship and ships have generators and blowing them up destroys the ship – it’s an age old adage predating long before Star Wars. A person with a pipe could, theoretically, have destroyed the Death Star.

But Zhaitan doesn’t have a generator, and he won’t blow up when striking at this non-existent generator.

Gaudrath.6725:

Those are details. Not important. My point was that you could do a better job with the final fight after a measly ten minutes of casual writing. Of course you can find flaws in my version, it’s not like I’ve spent months refining it, but that’s not the point and yet you keep focusing on finding small issues with the alternative version instead of discussing the bigger picture.

If I’m arguing over small issues, so are you – as this is the first time you try deviating from such.

From the get go, by the way, I’ve been arguing on the larger view of how to confront Zhaitan to be best – disagreeing with you (yes, it is a bit subjective, but so is your stance) – and furthermore, from the get go I have been saying, effectively but not in exactly the same words “Anet went the right direction, but executed extremely poorly” – and to clarify, by “right direction” I mean using powerful weapons.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I could say the same thing for you – you don’t like firing at Zhaitan with lasers or canon because it “doesn’t feel epic.”

Nevermind epic, it also feels impersonal and it is impersonal. Huge weapons always are. That’s why it is usually the bad guys who use them in works of fiction. They are inhuman.

There is no way you can achieve the same emotional impact in a story by using superweapons against a big monster and using the before mentioned “fateful strike” method.
And yes, Zhaitan can have a weak spot. Everything can have a weak spot. In fact, building up your monster to not have weak spots at all, and then just overpowering it with simple brute force (because that what a megalaser is – brute force) sort of defeats the whole point of having this huge, invulnerable nemesis. It’s poor storytelling.

And even if it has to be a superweapon, they should have made the method of delivery more interesting, but that we agree on.

To summarize, my two main issues with how Zhaitan was handled are:

1. That Zhaitan was killed outright, creating paradoxes in the game world
2. The method by which he was killed was poorly chosen and poorly executed

Personally I see nothing wrong in smashing and slashing at an Elder Dragon with our dinky little weapons. In Hoelbrak there is a pretty good piece of evidence that they can be harmed (and probably killed) that way.

You just gotta hit really, really hard!

You know what Gaudrath, I’m tired of your relentless “it’s inconsistent! It’s paradoxical!”

If you hate GW2 so much, that’s fine. But do you really have to repeat yourself like a kitten broken record every post? You don’t. It’s not paradoxical nor inconsistent as EVERYONE ELSE has told you.

And as everyone will say: Zhaitan was defeated, but not necessarily killed. Like what ArenaNet does for everything, they left the door for Zhaitan open. They can later say “he’s dead” or they can say “that was only part of Zhaitan!” or they can say “Zhaitan was simply put back to sleep for this cycle of awakening.”

As for impersonal – I disagree, but this is a matter of opinion, just as slashing at a 1,000 foot dragon with a 3-5 foot sword is. This argument won’t end, so why do you keep it going by repeating yourself? This’ll be the second attempt to end it, and if you just repeat yourself, I’m not going to bother responding.

From here on out, I’m calling you Broken Gaudrath Record.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You know what Gaudrath, I’m tired of your relentless “it’s inconsistent! It’s paradoxical!”

If you hate GW2 so much, that’s fine. But do you really have to repeat yourself like a kitten broken record every post? You don’t. It’s not paradoxical nor inconsistent as EVERYONE ELSE has told you.

If by everyone else you mean you and Neilos, then no, that’s not enough and it wouldn’t matter if the whole kitten board disagreed with me.
You have to counter my arguments. I have presented them, they are valid and you have not successfully countered them. I am sorry if that annoys you.
I repeat myself only in an effort to explain myself better since it seems you do not understand what I am saying.

And I don’t hate GW2, I love it. I had and still have tons of fun in the game. But that doesn’t mean I can’t criticize parts of it which I think were poorly done.

And as everyone will say: Zhaitan was defeated, but not necessarily killed. Like what ArenaNet does for everything, they left the door for Zhaitan open. They can later say “he’s dead” or they can say “that was only part of Zhaitan!” or they can say “Zhaitan was simply put back to sleep for this cycle of awakening.”

If that is the case, then I effectively have no problem with the story and there are no paradoxes. If Pact erroneously believes Zhaitan to be dead and ANet is only playing with us a little, then everything makes sense. As I said numerous times, I am hoping this to be the case.

As for impersonal – I disagree, but this is a matter of opinion, just as slashing at a 1,000 foot dragon with a 3-5 foot sword is. This argument won’t end, so why do you keep it going by repeating yourself? This’ll be the second attempt to end it, and if you just repeat yourself, I’m not going to bother responding.

Sure, we don’t have to discuss literary techniques and their qualities. I find such discussion interesting, but hey, you don’t want to talk about it, fine.

From here on out, I’m calling you Broken Gaudrath Record.

:*

Gaudrath.6725:

To summarize, my two main issues with how Zhaitan was handled are:

1. That Zhaitan was killed outright, creating paradoxes in the game world
2. The method by which he was killed was poorly chosen and poorly executed

2: A bit, yeah. I liked the lasers, personally. But like I already said, felt it should have been followed up. Keep the lasers, add the personal part at the end.

1: Paradoxes? Because there’s Risen and NPCs and such? I have no problem with that; it’s in every MMO. I haven’t seen an MMO yet that redid the entire game world the instant the last boss was dead. Heck, even WoW: Cataclysm didn’t come until three expansions down the road, and I could download WoW right now, hang out in Kalimdor where the Lich King is dead, then take a boat to Northrend where he’s alive and a threat. And then go to Outland where Illidan is alive and a threat.

Until we develop technology to the point where the entire game world becomes so fluid that killing the end boss has immediate and drastic repercussions across the entire game world, I don’t think you’ll really be satisfied on this one. Though that would be cool.

WoW didn’t start doing the kill-the-unique-boss-with-a-story gimmick until relatively recently. Before that they had their endgame bosses more or less immortal. Players could kinda slay them, but only temporarily.

Also there is no need to alter the entire game. Simply do not allow players to really end the final boss. Have the players subdue the boss, or drive the boss back or have the boss reform itself or what have you. Then that boss comes back after a while, ready for another round.

Players wouldn’t hate that, on the contrary, if it is done well. One thing that players love more than an amazing raid is an amazing raid they can do more than once. There are also a host of programming and design tricks you can employ to shake things up a bit so that no two final raids are quite the same.

That way your open world is consistent, and your players are happy. Win-win. Or you can do this “story-is-king” and try to force definitive endings and chapters onto a medium which doesn’t really support that kind of thing by its very nature.

Gaudrath.6725:

WoW didn’t start doing the kill-the-unique-boss-with-a-story gimmick until relatively recently. Before that they had their endgame bosses more or less immortal. Players could kinda slay them, but only temporarily.

Onyxia was relatively recent? You mounted her head on a pike. Literally.

Gaudrath.6725:

Also there is no need to alter the entire game. Simply do not allow players to really end the final boss. Have the players subdue the boss, or drive the boss back or have the boss reform itself or what have you. Then that boss comes back after a while, ready for another round.

But then the story could never progress. And what sort of story would you have?

“We need to form the Pact to kill Zhaitan! Now, he’ll only stay dead for about a week. Then he’ll be back. And we can never actually kill him for good, so we’ll need to do this every week forever. And about a hundred of us die every time, so, uh… bollocks.”

Gaudrath.6725:

WoW didn’t start doing the kill-the-unique-boss-with-a-story gimmick until relatively recently. Before that they had their endgame bosses more or less immortal. Players could kinda slay them, but only temporarily.

Also there is no need to alter the entire game. Simply do not allow players to really end the final boss. Have the players subdue the boss, or drive the boss back or have the boss reform itself or what have you. Then that boss comes back after a while, ready for another round.

Players wouldn’t hate that, on the contrary, if it is done well. One thing that players love more than an amazing raid is an amazing raid they can do more than once. There are also a host of programming and design tricks you can employ to shake things up a bit so that no two final raids are quite the same.

That way your open world is consistent, and your players are happy. Win-win. Or you can do this “story-is-king” and try to force definitive endings and chapters onto a medium which doesn’t really support that kind of thing by its very nature.

There is no stopping you from doing a raid over and over again but there no need to add that to the story and make everything you do competely worthless. “Yes we stopped the enemies plan but they be back tomorrow.” Plus we be fighting the same enemy over and over instead of acutally seeing some new ones.

Son of Elias.5420:

Gaudrath.6725:

WoW didn’t start doing the kill-the-unique-boss-with-a-story gimmick until relatively recently. Before that they had their endgame bosses more or less immortal. Players could kinda slay them, but only temporarily.

Onyxia was relatively recent? You mounted her head on a pike. Literally.

Ah well, my lack of knowledge about WoW endgame shines through. I never did get to Onyxia. Welp, more bad storytelling, what can you do.
However, Onyxia could be killed plenty of times, that fight was repeatable, so technically she can’t be permakilled even though you can do the quest only once.
They just didn’t bother to mask the game with a clever story, much like GW2 only from the other end.

But then the story could never progress. And what sort of story would you have?

“We need to form the Pact to kill Zhaitan! Now, he’ll only stay dead for about a week. Then he’ll be back. And we can never actually kill him for good, so we’ll need to do this every week forever. And about a hundred of us die every time, so, uh… bollocks.”

And what sort of story do you have now? You kill Zhaitan and… nothing happens.

No, I explained earlier how you could craft a story around unkillable bosses. You essentially make the whole PvE experience more similar to WvW, only with NPC instead of player enemies. Basically the entire game is one big continuous struggle to push back and contain this great evil. Success is not measured in mere killing of a dragon, but in defeating dragon armies across the world in dynamic zone-wide event chains.

And all dictated by players. Players would decide when to storm forts, and when to defend them. There could be multiple fronts, especially when other dragons jump into the fray. There could be neutral NPC factions to ally with (before Zhaitan does) to help the war effort. There could be solo or group assassination quests. Supply lines to break or maintain. Commando style raids deep behind enemy lines (where there are no working gates).

Ultimately the players could push all the way to Arrah by themselves with NPC support (right now it is the other way around), whereupon you could have a big battle against Zhaitan, with good rewards but extremely, and I mean extremely difficult to win. If defeated, Zhaitan would not be killed but would flee into his innermost lair and seal himself up to recover. Some time later he would again explode forward and try to regain lost territory and push the players all the way to nearest major city, which could then be put under siege (assuming the players do not counter and push back the dragon invasion).

In the background, you could have a separate, years long personal story detailing the quest to find a permanent solution to the elder dragon problem. The personal story would also be much more focused on the player’s character and their culture and background.

So that’s one way you could have fun, repeatable endgame bosses that make sense, as well as an interesting personal story that helps you immerse yourself in the game world.

And the problems with that model have been pointed out more than once.

I’m not looking forward to a world in which the linear storyline is thrown away in favour of a never-ending war in which no meaningful characters can die (enemies being generically-named and meaningless story-wise), no meaningful progress can be made (take a keep, and log on the next day to find that it’s all been lost or everything’s moved on without you anyway— and besides, you’re progressing towards nothing, in terms of story, you’re progressing only towards being thrown back), and your personal intervention is worth squat.

It worked in WvW because of the competitive nature of the league table. You’re progressing towards a higher score than your rival worlds, and even if you hold a keep for only an hour, it’s still helped your point tally. Transfer this to PvE, progressing towards nothing but a huge boss fight with no story implications? When most people who’ve taken part in the war to get there won’t even be present at the end, because people leave and re-join WvW all the time?

Besides which, such a massive war would consume the majority of explorable areas, the way you’re describing it. It would be very restrictive to playstyle. To do away with the linear storyline completely in favour of a constantly-cycling dynamic world populated by repetitive events and meaningless NPCs would be a very unpopular move. And what would happen if huge numbers didn’t happen to be waging the war at any time…? Well, then the individual would be unable to progress.

And then, imagine if ANet want to continue with Jormag and Kralkatorrik and the others. Do we just keep up piling the wars against dragons, each and every one never-ending?

And all of this is ignoring the fact that this is simply totally alien to the game ANet wanted to make, which is one with a linear story and an open world, one that the vast majority of people find completely agreeable.

I am not arguing if people find it agreeable. The initial question of this thread was “How does Arah exploration make sense” and my answer is a short and sweet “it doesn’t, roll with it.”

You seem to think that it does, and thus we went of to discuss the finer points on why I believe that is not the case.

As for the rest, that is your opinion, but the difference between us is that I favor emergent, player-driven gaming experience, while you seem to favor a scripted one. However, I think your estimate that most players would hate a game world where they cannot bury a endgame boss forever is very wrong.

If that was the case, WoW wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is. I merely suggested creating a far better wrapping for the standard MMO treadmill (which is very much present in GW2 as well, in case you think it is any different).

The bosses in WoW never die? Really? I wouldn’t know, I played it very briefly on a free trial.

I’m not sure what you mean by “emergent”, but as for player-driven, I can see where you’re coming from. I’d like the events to be more dynamic, more varied, etc— that’s very much the direction I want them to go.

What I don’t want is a never-ending cycle of war-events to replace personal progression in a linear story altogether. That would be the death of meaningful storytelling.

Gaudrath.6725:

I am not arguing if people find it agreeable. The initial question of this thread was “How does Arah exploration make sense” and my answer is a short and sweet “it doesn’t, roll with it.”

However, it does.

By your argument, what doesn’t make sense is the interaction between Arah story and everything preceeding such.

Arah explorable does make sense – Zhaitan is treated as dead, and the Risen are in limited supply although still numerous, even if the risen say otherwise (they’re known for lying, you know).

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

The bosses in WoW never die? Really? I wouldn’t know, I played it very briefly on a free trial.

I’m not sure what you mean by “emergent”, but as for player-driven, I can see where you’re coming from. I’d like the events to be more dynamic, more varied, etc— that’s very much the direction I want them to go.

What I don’t want is a never-ending cycle of war-events to replace personal progression in a linear story altogether. That would be the death of meaningful storytelling.

Which is why I mentioned a really, really long personal story arc running in parallel with the open world, but not interfering with it.
What I would love to see, in addition to an even more dynamic open world experience, is a personal storyline that helps players get a solid feel for the world of GW2. It really is a shame, there is so much lore and detail in the world, and it all just gets sidestepped in order for a rushed dragon killing, cliche-ridden storyline to take the spotlight. Personal character progression never was about finding the biggest, baddest monster in the world and killing it. That’s just so much wasted potential.

By emergent I mean non-scripted as in, “it just happened”, spontaneous or otherwise. Usually sandbox MMOs have completely emergent gameplay since most of it is player driven.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Gaudrath.6725:

I am not arguing if people find it agreeable. The initial question of this thread was “How does Arah exploration make sense” and my answer is a short and sweet “it doesn’t, roll with it.”

However, it does.

By your argument, what doesn’t make sense is the interaction between Arah story and everything preceeding such.

Arah explorable does make sense – Zhaitan is treated as dead, and the Risen are in limited supply although still numerous, even if the risen say otherwise (they’re known for lying, you know).

Yes, correct. The discussion quickly took off to include open world inconsistencies, and I think that’s where I stepped in. Arah explorable makes sense and is explained.

But Orr and the rest of the world as sure as hell aren’t.

Congratulations, you just contradicted yourself.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Congratulations, you just contradicted yourself.

Really? Do explain.

Gaudrath.6725:

The initial question of this thread was “How does Arah exploration make sense” and my answer is a short and sweet “it doesn’t, roll with it.”

Gaudrath.6725:

Arah explorable makes sense and is explained.

That’s how.

I suspect this thread has reached the end of possible useful debate. I can see Gaudrath’s point, in that the ultimate ideal is a dynamic, continually-changing world that reacts to a player’s every action in a realistic way, but I would disagree with the alternative that having a world with no real change would work either.

In either case, it’s obviously not going to happen with this game, and even more obviously not going to happen with Zhaitan.

I agree. I think I have pretty much said all I wanted on the subject.

And Konig – oooh. You got me there. You got me good.

All in all I am happy I gave manbirth to such a lively and interesting discussion.