Guild Wars 2

Hello,

THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE!

So we all know that Zhaitan was a big dissapointment for many players (including me) not only because the fight was so simple but also because I didn’t feel Zhaitan’s power.

The personal story is a one big chain of our victories, the only thing Risen achieved was taking control of Claw Island, which we quickly reclaimed. And that’s all.

We have took back Claw Island, defended Trinity Fort, and then marched into Zhaitan’s territory to kill its most powerful minions, destroys Risen’s troop factories etc. And then OH NO WE LOST THAT ONE SHIP ( even thought we have much more of them)! SUCH A LOSS! OH NO, I HAVE LOST MY BIG FRIEND AND A MENTOR.

Look, I don’t care about this one NPC that constantly tells me how powerful are Risen, I want to SEE IT. I want to see an ED in action, how it destroys whole armies.

Other than CI, Risen are only responsible for deaths of a few NPCs, of course almost each death was super heroic, because that random Vigil soldier can’t simply die, he has to take hundreds of zombies with him (maybe it was some super OP version of warrior’s vengeance, i don’t know).

In fact I felt more threat from rogue factions like Flame Legion who can somehow fight against three other Legions, Seraphs and the Pact.

So instead of telling me, how powerful Risen are, just show it.

The second thing: show more than one ED at a time. I know there are icebrood, branded and destroyers (and probably DSD’s minions and sixth one’s too) in game, but they are never seen in personal story as far as I know.

It would be cool to see how ED’s armies fight with or against each other. Plus it would be nice to fight against something different than forces of ED we face actually (I don’t need to tell you how quickly Risen became boring).

Thank you for reading, and discuss.

Have you ever looked up in the sky in Orr and watched the Pact Airships fighting off Zhaitan’s Champions in the air? I would sit and watch when I got to a vista or someplace safe in Orr, because it was cool to watch and randomly see an airship get destroyed. Sadly I don’t think I ever saw them shoot down a dragon champion, but I could have always been at the wrong part of the fight.

Other dragon minions are fought in the racial sympathy steps (unless you chose Hylek). I somewhat see what you’re saying, but they went with a more ‘this dragon is your enemy’ rather than ‘this dragon is scary’. It kills a LOT of NPC’s that you grow attached to (or are supposed to). Instead of just mindlessly killing an army of vigil nobodies, it kills your order mentor and high ranking pact officials.

Narcemus.1348:

Have you ever looked up in the sky in Orr and watched the Pact Airships fighting off Zhaitan’s Champions in the air? I would sit and watch when I got to a vista or someplace safe in Orr, because it was cool to watch and randomly see an airship get destroyed. Sadly I don’t think I ever saw them shoot down a dragon champion, but I could have always been at the wrong part of the fight.

I knew there are dragons fighting against airships in the sky, but didn’t knew they can win. Still it’s not enough (for me).

Mystic Starfish.2586:

Other dragon minions are fought in the racial sympathy steps (unless you chose Hylek). I somewhat see what you’re saying, but they went with a more ‘this dragon is your enemy’ rather than ‘this dragon is scary’. It kills a LOT of NPC’s that you grow attached to (or are supposed to). Instead of just mindlessly killing an army of vigil nobodies, it kills your order mentor and high ranking pact officials.

Well, in fact I don’t even remember their names. If the dragon would kill somebody from the DE then probably it would be something, but I don’t expect that to happen. The only dying NPC I remember is your mentor and this was the only death that meant something for me. To be honest when I first saw Forgal something in my head screamed: “THIS GUY WILL DIE!”

I believe Anet could just make EDragons “this dragon is your scary enemy”.

Besides it’s stupid if I play a charr for example, after all in the first mission I have lost a bunch of my friends. Why my hero doesn’t care about them, but cares so much about a norn who helps you in 3-4 missions.

I don’t know how to put it simply but here is a nice explanation: you may played in the
old RTS games like Warcraft (not WoW, I hate when people mistake these games, it ironically makes me feel old ). Usually AI only were sending small groups of units, until you made a big army and then crushed the enemy with no problems. And here i feel that Pact is a player and Zhaitan is this stupid AI that started with a base and big army and then allowed the player to win.

I agree that I would like to see the Elder Dragons be scarier in future. There’s no particular impact in hearing lich-lord after lich-lord say “ALL GLORY TO ZHAITAN!” – especially when these speaking minions’ motivations are far from clear. I’ve long said that the Elder Dragons are very similar to the Reapers in Mass Effect, and the devs have the same problem: you build your story around these unstoppable, massive, inconceivable enemies that threaten to destroy everything, but then how do you show that in game? How do you justify fighting one of them?

The most powerful scenes with the Reapers in Mass Effect 3 weren’t the ones were we talked to them, or when we saw them en masse. They were the ones where you’re out on a mission and in the distance, a Reaper looms massive on the horizon, destroying everything, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That sense of helplessness before a foe way out of your league – something that seems impossible to stop – is excellent game storytelling. I’d love to see something similar.

What I don’t agree with is seeing Elder Dragons fight each other – this would frustrate me because if two of them really fought, everything in the area would be destroyed, surely. Just being near an actual Elder Dragon should risk being flattened. I would be keen to see, say, a champion of one dragon obliterating a group of another’s minions. Some interaction, but let’s leave the Elders as territorial.

The dragons in the sky around Orr that Narcemus mentions are some of the coolest examples in the game right now. They help to remind us that we’re not the only heroes fighting this battle, we’re in a war. But in future I hope that the Elder Dragon fights can have a more desperate atmosphere.

The way I like to see it, the elder dragons never really felt they had any reason to work hard to make their conquests because they never really felt threatened, but with an Elder Dragon dead I can see their assaults growing exponentially.

honestly, i was quite bored (not to say sick) about these “super-strong-and-evil-and-invincible” monsters (and dragons and other humanoids) that stay back and let their minions do the work for them, while they are waiting to be reborn or re-awakened…

They sounded LESS scary and terrifying!! Imagine someone who orders everyone around while they do nothing….
that doesn’t seem ‘powerful’ to me, i think ‘pitiable’ maybe more suitable here

if these EDs do the work by themselves, I believe we can feel that their threat is truly threatening
:D

Problem is, if the Elder Dragons were doing it all themselves then they would have to be nerfed. We would have to stand a chance with Elder Dragons rampaging across the land, actively trying to destroy us…yet somehow not managing it until we had researched them, gathered an army, made some new tools and decided to go after them.

I like to think of it as working on the time scale of gods. I don’t think the Elder Dragons are lurking in the back so much as they just haven’t got around to destroying us yet. They work on cycles of thousands of years; waking up and bending your will to something takes a while. It might be decades for us, but that’s probably not long in Elder Dragon years.

Zhaitan is a necromancer: He is like an Officier. Easy to kill, but impossible to reach! Actualy every kill the risen made, was Zhaitans kill. Although i know your feeling (i mean i imagined the Elder Dragons to be as big as Mountains, as said in the books: kralkaltorik was actualy believed to be a mountain, so i expect him to be giant at least).
However, Zhaitan was actualy nothing more than a necromancer. So while other dragons may be stronger in direct fights, i think Zhaitan just had to rely on his minions (and how the other allready said: look in the air in Orr, Zhaitan actualy is sending out houndreds of Dragons while he himself “uses” only 10 dragons. Maybe he could have been stronger if he would have used every dragon, but his nature was just beeing passive, so he actualy did more damage by not risking himself).