Guild Wars 2

Ahh, why the kitten not. Signed.

Personally only a fraction of the people dislike Scarlet. but those are, as always the people who speak out on the forums. I absolutly love the character and think she is truly a job well done.

So definitely not signed.

I wouldn’t go that far, actually. Scarlet is a really underdeveloped, lame, generic villain, but that’s okay with me. Guild Wars has a lot of pretty lame villains, and then some hidden gem villains every now and then.

I don’t have a problem with Scarlet being involved in every new alliance, I’ve already accepted that she is the Guild Wars version of Superman. However, I will never accept how nothing is explained, ever! If Scarlet is going to be this military mastermind that unites every enemy faction, then at least tell us how she does it! How does she get the Krait, the most xenophobic faction in GW2, to unite with the Nightmare Court? How does she get the Molten Alliance together? Where does she get all these soldiers?

Some of those things have been explained partially, but without a proper explanation, everyone is gonna dismiss this new update as another “Oh look, Scarlet used her Mary Sue powers to unite evil people again.” We need information, otherwise this story will be a complete failure.

Like I said in that other thread, I’m already digging the hole. So far Retcon Wars could kind of almost get by based on the fact that it was played off as “well the historian who wrote that was wrong/that’s how things were so far as he knew” but this is hardly applicable in this situation. The Krait working with anyone at all is preposterous based on lore blog posts. If the Krait are, in fact, working with the NC in any way, shape or form beyond “we’ll have you do this for us then pull your guts out and strangle you with them” puts the Krait lore post under question. Making one of the blog posts turn out straight up WRONG in regards to what we see in-game means that all of the other lore posts might as well be wrong. A keen observer might point out that this is a slippery slope argument, and you’d be right… If it wasn’t for that part where so much lore has already been retconned/repurposed/never mentioned again. Indeed, this isn’t the first step in a long, long process that kills all the lore off, it’s merely the next step in a long line of such (sometimes necessary, but for the most part painfully pointless) retcons.

All I know is I will not be happy until the Lore Slayer has been Slain!

I personally have no problem with the idea that the Nightmare Court would ally with the Krait. I mean this fits very well with the mentality of the Nightmare Court, cause pain and suffering anywhere and everywhere, but I will never believe that the Krait would ally with the Nightmare Court. I’m sorry ArenaNet, but you’ve taken this fragile glass vase that we call the “Lore of Guild Wars” and you’ve thrown it on the ground, shattering everything. I sign the petition for the immediate execution of the Lore Slayer. In fact, I would be willing to make a deal. Many of you know how vehemently I despise Palawa Joko… Well I would be willing to let him live through the entirety of the timeline of GW2 as long as it means that the Lore Slayer gets destroyed in the most violent ways possible.

Narcemus.1348:

All I know is I will not be happy until the Lore Slayer has been Slain!

I personally have no problem with the idea that the Nightmare Court would ally with the Krait. I mean this fits very well with the mentality of the Nightmare Court, cause pain and suffering anywhere and everywhere, but I will never believe that the Krait would ally with the Nightmare Court. I’m sorry ArenaNet, but you’ve taken this fragile glass vase that we call the “Lore of Guild Wars” and you’ve thrown it on the ground, shattering everything. I sign the petition for the immediate execution of the Lore Slayer. In fact, I would be willing to make a deal. Many of you know how vehemently I despise Palawa Joko… Well I would be willing to let him live through the entirety of the timeline of GW2 as long as it means that the Lore Slayer gets destroyed in the most violent ways possible.

How about striping her powers from her and let all the web she’s woven to crumble over her until she’s some powerless lunatic shouting threats from the grove’s prison?

I’d say cut out her tongue for good effect. Even though the game hasn’t shown us this, she’s stated in the many articles to be a very silver-tongued individual. This is vastly different from the Scarlet we see, but nonetheless, remove her most useful tool, and leave her to rot for however long the sylvari may live.

The MA had some reason of logic behind it. Especially given how both factions (dredge and Flame) were in a civil war after the deaths of Shukov and Gaheron. Though maybe not with Scarlet’s involvement being the one to unite them (though I did call “female sylvari focused on technology” on that one – was expecting something completely different personality wise though).

Either way, Anet get rid of Scarlet? HAH!

Allow me to quote our very own Bobby Stein a few times:

Thalador.4218

Thalador.4218

The problem is that Jeff and Ree are either very busy with building the overarching lore (and giving into the subpar ideas of the new writers) or are held back so the LS writing team can have their “fun.”

I can’t comment on what Ree and Jeff are working on, but I can say that I’m ultimately responsible for the quality of the Living World story. I don’t imagine we’ll please everyone with our new direction, but that’s true of any story. That stated, I encourage people to leave their feedback. Just please be respectful.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/speech/Is-Scarlet-a-Villain-Sue-Merged/page/2#post2666647

Windu The Forbidden One.6045

Windu The Forbidden One.6045

The only problem I have with Scarlet is her motive. She’s been behind so many things, and the only motive we have is “she’s crazy”. That just doesn’t cut it.

We haven’t revealed her motive yet. I can understand the confusion and/or frustration surrounding that so we’re looking at ways to accelerate the plot and implement some features that will make it easier to track Living World content. The first phase of that system will be implemented before the end of the year.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/twilight/Scarlet-is-the-BEST-villain-in-GW2/page/3#post2951453

Maybe I wasn’t clear in my other post. Tequatl becoming stronger (and Rox being present) are both tied into the overall LW story. More will be revealed later.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/tequatl/Any-story-surrounding-the-Teq-living-story/first#post2869046

There is a lot more to come. The Living World story is paced very differently than other content in the game, partially due to the nature of how we build and release it. I won’t spoil anything other than say that we’ll reveal more in time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/speech/Is-Scarlet-a-Villain-Sue-Merged/page/2#post2667169

And my personal favorites:

Glad some folks are enjoying Scarlet’s introduction. There is more to come. As always, thanks for your thoughtful feedback and constructive criticism.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/speech/Scarlet-is-fantastic-Merged/first#post2666543

Thanks for the positive comments.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/flameandfrost/Fantastic-Story-Content/first#post1813601
With crowning achievement post:

Thanks again for all the constructive feedback. It matters.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Living-Story-far-too-vague/page/5#post1656754

In short: Not trying to be offensive to Mr. Bobby Stein – by no means – but he really mainly only responds to positive feedback and to negative feedback he pretty much just says “we cannot please everyone.”

The other writers? Angel responded to criticism of her interview by just saying “as we grow up we learn the things we once knew isn’t what we thought – that’s why we’re changing the lore” without actually answering any of the issues. Scott McGough only responds to clarify a confusion once in a new moon (and thank you for that Scott!) but never addresses any points of criticism. The other writers aren’t heard from at all.

To me, that’s little different than saying “if you don’t like our story, gtfo” and “we have no plans to change it just because our long-time fans no longer like story direction.” Even BioWare had the tact to try to fix ME3’s ending. But I don’t see Anet going to improve their story at all.

And folks, killing off Ceara will not fix the lore or Anet’s attitude for it (hell, one may argue it’d make it worse depending on how she’s killed off).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In short: Not trying to be offensive to Mr. Bobby Stein – by no means – but he really mainly only responds to positive feedback and to negative feedback he pretty much just says “we cannot please everyone.”

That’s not quite charitable, but I sympathize with why you are frustrated. He also says they are working on ways to accelerate presentation and that they will reveal more answers in time as well. However, like you, I’ve heard this said countless times already and am a bit sick of hearing it but seeing no evidence that it is actually being worked on. Not even a blog post on future Living Story developments has been given or how they plan to accelerate the story telling/improve its presentation.

The only reason I would want her slain would be to prevent her from breaking more lore, though I concede that you are right Konig. Killing her off only means ArenaNet could bring in someone worse if we don’t get them to understand that they are slowly destroying the very world that they’ve worked so hard to create.

I very understood why people are in such a fuss about this. Would everyone have preferred the Krait to stay as an evil one dimensional race? Because, that’s all they are at the moment. Their “we’re already superior to everyone” mentally doesn’t really lend itself well to growth on the lore department, because they already think themselves perfect.

But hey, who am I to judge. Maybe people would have preferred this to be a solo Krait LS. They could have made a small tower, in the middle of the lake, out of sunken ships and debris, just to show everyone just how evil and superior they are to everyone else. Doesn’t that sound fun?

So you don’t think that they could give us a living story where the krait created something grand and dark that gives us further depth into the religious order of the krait? I mean including random Nightmare Court NPC’s will most likely give us absolutely NO additional background into either group?

Erukk… Can no group be evil without being involved with every other single evil group on the face of the earth? I mean looking at the real world. 1 nation can rise up and stir up a lot of kitten all by themselves without allying with every other group around. I mean how many allies did Germany have at the start of WW2? And look how far they got on their own.

Erukk.1408:

I very understood why people are in such a fuss about this. Would everyone have preferred the Krait to stay as an evil one dimensional race? Because, that’s all they are at the moment. Their “we’re already superior to everyone” mentally doesn’t really lend itself well to growth on the lore department, because they already think themselves perfect.

But hey, who am I to judge. Maybe people would have preferred this to be a solo Krait LS. They could have made a small tower, in the middle of the lake, out of sunken ships and debris, just to show everyone just how evil and superior they are to everyone else. Doesn’t that sound fun?

There’s a million ways the Krait could have pulled off the next LS release without involving Scarlet or her NC buddies. They could have built the tower to ascend another prophet. Or a big sacrifice ceremony that requires a buttload of slaves and somewhere to rip them apart. Or maybe the tower could have been a beacon for that army the Krait were waiting for. Why not all three at once? There’s a million things it could have been that wouldn’t have broken any lore just to make one crappy villain look interesting.

Erukk.1408:

I very understood why people are in such a fuss about this. Would everyone have preferred the Krait to stay as an evil one dimensional race? Because, that’s all they are at the moment. Their “we’re already superior to everyone” mentally doesn’t really lend itself well to growth on the lore department, because they already think themselves perfect.

But hey, who am I to judge. Maybe people would have preferred this to be a solo Krait LS. They could have made a small tower, in the middle of the lake, out of sunken ships and debris, just to show everyone just how evil and superior they are to everyone else. Doesn’t that sound fun?

Oh man, are you kidding me? This Living Story had the potential to introduce the Krait’s version of a god. The Krait aren’t even evil, they just consider themselves superior. Kind of like how we hate kittenroaches, and we try to eradicate them from our own special worlds. Are we evil for that? Maybe, but that’s just how we think. Besides, the Krait will remain “one-dimensional” if they decide to ally with the Nightmare Court, since the Nightmare Court are just as “one-dimensional”.

A Krait focused LS could be the turning point of the Living Story, the one update that finally ends the skepticism. It could expand on existing lore, introduce a new baddy that isn’t Scarlet or related to her, and bring a real sense of threat to the world. A lot like the Tequatl Rising update (which is imho the best LS release so far) but on a bigger scale.

Who knows, maybe this Living Story arc will pull that off, but the Krait allying themselves with a faction related to Scarlet does not make it look promising.

From what I remember about the Krait, they don’t build obelisks to ascend prophets. The obelisks mark where the prophets ascended. So, unless one of their own already ascended, they are building the tower for something else.

Yes, I do believe they can make a LS delveing into the religious order of the Krait, but you are making it sound like that can’t be included in this LS. We know barely anything about this LS so far, much less how the Krait came to be possible allied with the NC, yet people have already marked it down as “Scarlet being Scarlet”.

The Krait are exhibiting totally unknown behavior by actually allying with another group, but instead of people finding that fascinating, and wondering what could possible cause that and the motives behind it; people have already declared it a lore breaking failure on Anet part. And i’ll repeat, we still know barely anything about it.

Germany did get far in WW2, by themselves, but they still lost didn’t they? The same goes for the Krait. They can cause a lot of problems by themselves, but they wouldn’t last against any allied force. Heck, they wouldn’t last against DR alone, if DR ever turned their full attention to them.

Erukk.1408:

From what I remember about the Krait, they don’t build obelisks to ascend prophets. The obelisks mark where the prophets ascended. So, unless one of their own already ascended, they are building the tower for something else.

Yes, I do believe they can make a LS delveing into the religious order of the Krait, but you are making it sound like that can’t be included in this LS. We know barely anything about this LS so far, much less how the Krait came to be possible allied with the NC, yet people have already marked it down as “Scarlet being Scarlet”.

The Krait are exhibiting totally unknown behavior by actually allying with another group, but instead of people finding that fascinating, and wondering what could possible cause that and the motives behind it; people have already declared it a lore breaking failure on Anet part. And i’ll repeat, we still know barely anything about it.

Germany did get far in WW2, by themselves, but they still lost didn’t they? The same goes for the Krait. They can cause a lot of problems by themselves, but they wouldn’t last against any allied force. Heck, they wouldn’t last against DR alone, if DR ever turned their full attention to them.

Read my response again. I said there is a possibility for me being wrong. I have not claimed end of the world yet. I am totally willing to give this Living Story update a chance, since I think the quality has been getting better lately. I just wanted to say to you that the Krait can be great villains without having to change their ways. And honestly, do you blame people for being sick of evil alliances at this point? I don’t think Scarlet is the ultimate worst thing ever like other people do, but I can understand why people would be upset about talk of another alliance.

The problem with “Scarlet did it” is that it is similar to “aliens did it”. Its pretty much forcing it down the viewer’s throats. There is no logic, history or lore behind it.

For a voodoo, E.T. and ghost documentary it is fine. No one take those stuff seriously anyways. But when it comes to fictional storytelling, it is just very badly done. It means the author have ran out of ideas. And that’s the worrisome part.

1) As for Krait allying with NC, firstly it is impossible from the lore’s stand point. Kraits will enslave, eat and sacrifice any other races they found. They don’t waste time talking at all. Sure the writer can change all that and say the old lore no longer applies. None of us viewers can stop him.

But then you got to ask, what’s the point of us keeping track of the lore then? If the writer can come out tomorrow and turn around any lore they want 180 degrees, what’s the point of having lore at all?

2) Secondly, even if by some miracle the Kraits allied with NC, why must Scarlet be involved? Can’t any villain group in the GW2 universe make up their own freaking mind without the help of this outsider?

3) Thirdly and most importantly, the whole world revolves around Scarlet. And this will slay any lore. Ok this might not hit home for you, so I will explain it again.

Everyone in GW2 are bounded by some kind of limits and rules of this world. For example a single Skritt is not as smart as a single Asura, for example. But multiple Skritts are smarter than multiple Asuras. That’s the rule of their race. That’s the lore. That’s the story that we, lore fans, go by.

Suddenly Scarlet comes out and genetically modify the Skritts, so now they are smarter than Asuras one on one, and even smarter in a group. Not only this, Skritts are now all as big as Norns and stronger than Magni the Bison. They also got increased breeding and growing rates so now their population is 20 times as large as before.

Why would this happen? Well Skritts wants power so they allied with Scarlet. Each time a lore is broken, that race’s lust for power and Scarlet’s silver tongue explains everything away.

Once again lore is slayed by Scarlet. This whole GW2 world revolves around Scarlet, not the other way around like it is for other people. Scarlet have no laws, rules or limits. She herself is the law, rule and limit of this world.

On the idea that the Nightmare Court are antagonistic to Soundless: Nowhere have I’ve seen the Nightmare Court killing Soundless. All I see the Nightmare Court sending slavers to enslave them.

I don’t see any evidence that the Nightmare Court would be antagonistic to Scarlet just for being Soundless. Especially considering there isn’t hard evidence for them killing Soundless in the first place.

Erukk.1408:

The Krait are exhibiting totally unknown behavior by actually allying with another group, but instead of people finding that fascinating, and wondering what could possible cause that and the motives behind it; people have already declared it a lore breaking failure on Anet part. And i’ll repeat, we still know barely anything about it.

It’s because of the precedent set.

Flame Legion and Dredge working together? There was the opportunity to make a great story there about how pressure from their enemies and the example (and threat) of the Pact convinced them that they had to form alliances to survive, particularly after the events of SE and CoF. What did we get? Scarlet waved her VillainSue wand and then they were working together.

Pirates and Inquest? While one can certainly see reasons why the Inquest would use pirates as catspaws, all we’ve got on that is “Scarlet waved her VillainSue wand”. (In fact, since Aetherblade Retreat, the Inquest side seems to have been whitewashed out – it wouldn’t surprise me for it later to be asserted that the Aetherblade’s stuff was all made by Scarlet in the first place.)

So, the completely lore-unintuitive pairing of krait and Nightmare Court, when the krait religion dictates destruction of all land-based life and where the NC was formed, in part, because its founders believed that to survive, the sylvari needed to adopt more ruthless measures in their defense against threats that specifically included the krait - with the precedents above, you know what we’re expecting?

Scarlet waved her VillainSue wand. And that is all.

PS: Nightmare Court working with Scarlet makes a lot of sense: in my mind, she is Nightmare Court, she’s just not willing to admit it. The NC policy regarding Soundless (which generally seems to boil down to “easy targets”) is irrelevant.

The problem is her ability to bring in a race that is known for its policy of killing or enslaving (and then, ultimately, killing) land-dwellers on sight.

Unless the Krait Prophets hijack the Nightmare Court storyline and turn out to be the ones behind said Nightmare Court i the first place!

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

Unless the Krait Prophets hijack the Nightmare Court storyline and turn out to be the ones behind said Nightmare Court i the first place!

If that can somehow make sense I’m all for it.

Krait Prophets are said to have ascended to higher plane of existance.

Krait are situated around the Sea of Sorrows which both Orr and Caledon Forest borders.

Caledon Forest is the location of the Nightmare Court.

Orr is where Faolain was corrupted by the Nightmare.

I believe The Nightmare is the Krait Prophets themselves.

Krait are in my mind planning the conquering of Tyria through corruption of the Sylvari and the enslavement of the spawn of the Nightmare Vines/Jungle Wurms(Nightmare Hounds and Summoned Husks).

See, if that is what happens, that would be interesting. Different to the major theories as to the nature of the Nightmare, but not inconsistent with the known lore, and there’s nothing wrong with theories being Jossed occasionally.

Thing is… we’ve been conditioned to expect Scarlet when we see a “By these two factions combined!” plot, and furthermore, to expect no more depth to that alliance than “Scarlet did it”. I’d love to be proven wrong here, but I’m just not optimistic given the track record so far.

Just my uninteresting to anyone opinion overhere which I need to express.
Scarlet sucks. Unfortunately, Anet won’t admit their fail. They don’t have such habit.
And I still hope they’ll create intresting villain, story with grimdark atmosphere and bunch of memorable characters. In other words – everything what I (and I think most of people) liked in GW1.

But now we have festivals, Villain Sue who can’t think of mesmer’s clones and prefer killing her enemies by GIANT CLUB and story of ALL factions uniting against us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhXz60f0HLU
//Well, all factions union would be really nice plot. If anyone would give a kitten about it. Now we have same green fields with NPCs who don’t really care. And bunch of dull one-sided female characters… And couple of male characters who are “clowns” at best. (And sudden dumb Eir’s sons with awful haircut and ebony FOR GRENTHS SAKE, EBONY NORN, WHY? skin at worst).

So, NPCs’ indifference and awful characters kill everything for me. That’s why my favourite LS is Flame and Frost. It had atmosphere. The fires burning in the blizzard, crowds of refugees and dead bodies all over locations. I spent entire month in 1-25 Norn lands. F&F wasn’t perfect. Story was banal, characters were… you know. But it was darker. It was serious. It influenced the world.

I hope Nightmare tower will be similar atmospherewise. But in fact I expect that NPCs that live in 100 metres from that tower won’t even notice. Excluding northern fort there, which, I guess, will be the main point of the “good guys”.

mercury ranique.2170:

only a fraction of the people dislike Scarlet.

Based on what exactly?

Signed.

It is not that she herself is the sole cause of cheapening the already established lore (Though she is a big part of it). I would say Area Net’s attempt of forcing a connection between her and every other event that truly devalues things.

mercury ranique.2170:

only a fraction of the people dislike Scarlet

I can do that too!

Only a fraction of people like Scarlet.

When Scarlet came out, it was interesting. Till we found she was linked to…ohh..everything but the dragons. Most people who like lore don’t like her. She is a lazy attempt to wrap everything into one tight basket and needs to go.

There is a bad sylvari wanting to destroy all lore….let´s go kill her! (dibs on Slayer of Lore Slayer title!).

on another note…as someone said that Nightmare Court was established to better fight dangers of sylvari, kraits included, it hit me. During the Sylvari week, there was this short story about the Secondborn that at the end founded the Nightmare Court. One of the breaking points for him to establish it was unwillingness of “normal” sylvari to kill krait hatchlings, because of “they are just children, they are not evil yet and therefore have a right to live, because they can chage” attitude. This secondborn refused this and other Tablet teachings and has found NC. Isn´t this a reason why the Krait-Nightmare Court alliance don´t make sense from the NC standpoint too?

For once I would like to see something completely unpredictable. I was thinking the other day that it might be interesting to have Halloween and an attack of one of the dragons fall on the same day, and then further develop the chaos that comes from it. Imagine Mad King Thorn actually helping in defending Lion’s Arch from one of the dragons, rather than being the bad guy. Or Scarlet and the Mad King coming into conflict.

But often it feels these character all live on separate islands. They all seem tied to their own niche part of the Living Story, with no way to interact with one another. I think there’s some great untapped story telling potential there, that the writers are neglecting. This is I think, why a lot of players feel resentment towards the character of Scarlet. Not just because she is the cliche villain, but because the writers seem unable to add more interesting interactions with this character to the story. We never really see Scarlet interact with anyone else in the world of Tyria, except for Faren who she captures, and Queen Jennah whom she taunts. But those are very superficial interactions. How does Scarlet feel about the Elder Dragons? Do they concern her at all? What about other villains? These sort of questions could make the character of Scarlet less black and white.

Captain Seyo.4285:

She is a lazy attempt to wrap everything into one tight basket and needs to go.

The irony of it is that when John Stumme transferred over from GW2 back to GW1 as the new Live Team lead, he explicitly stated that they (Anet) wanted to go away from the whole “Abaddon did it” mentality so as it make their lore wider, rather than deeper (where everything is interconnected).

And then they bring out Scarlet and Elder Dragons. What isn’t connected to the Elder Dragons, is connected to Scarlet (or soon will be given the current rate). And they’ve managed to fill up the depth they made with the Six Gods and Abaddon, revoking many of their greatest accomplishments.

I think Scarlet is too whimsical and too influential for what she is, but I could see an interesting lore opportunity:

Show us what Scarlet saw, take us beyond the veil, show us the secrets and foundations of the universe.

Possible opportunities/settings for grand revelations and epic final battles.

mercury ranique.2170:

Personally only a MAJORITY of the people dislike Scarlet. but those are, as always the people ARE SMART AND CAN SEE BAD STORYTELLING A MILE AWAY . I HATE the character and think she is truly a DISGUST RIP OFF.

So definitely signed.

I fixed it for ya white knight

The thing that bothers me the most about Scarlet is that it seems like she’s taking the place of other, more interesting lore.

In my opinion the living story is a great concept that would be 100 times better if they built upon lore thats already established as opposed to focusing in on Scarlet.

The whole Heath Ledger joker thing is getting really annoying in media as whole tbh.

I agree with what the Mad Queen said. ANet seems keen on Scarlet being a connector of sorts. Right now this is a massive failure, but I think it could be saved if Scarlet has some interaction with the bad guys we actually care about.

I DO NOT want Scarlet to make some new alliance between the Mad King and the Elder Dragons, but rather, I would like to see a 4-way battle. Some kind of festival starts and Scarlet pops out of nowhere to cause havok, but for once something happens that she didn’t plan for. Maybe an Elder Dragon champion could come in, then the Bloody Prince could break out to exact his revenge.

Obviously that scenario is a bit much, but it would open up multiple storylines while also keeping the feeling of connection. They could use the Living Story to build up these stories into an expansion. I would still prefer they just drop Scarlet, but I feel this is the best way to go if they want to continue with her.

Eh, I’m quite tired with the whole “A wild Scarlet appears.” She only ever does any amount of damage because her antics are unknown.

We’ve known about her for a while now, we need to start figuring out her antics before she’s ready to reveal her plan and cause havoc. And she still needs to be a threat then.

My issues with Scarlet can be summed up in four parts – from most important to least (and all are very big issues):

• She’s a one-note song. All about combining groups that wouldn’t work together (thus breaking their lore), or popping out at celebrations. Change it up a bit.
• We get too little too slow. Plot needs to develop a bit faster. Not saying “more content faster” but rather “the content needs to be juicier in story context.”
• There’s no development. In both her background and of what we’ve seen of her over the past three months as well as what’s attributed to her from before her final reveal, her personality has not changed. At all. You can take Ceara as she was born, and the Scarlet Briar at the end of Twilight Arbor and the only change is that she’s batkitten crazy now – and even that’s arguable to not be a change.
• Not a threat. She isn’t; at all. As said above, the only way she does damage is by her – or her forces – appearing out of the proverbial thin air. She’s a threat because we, the good guys, don’t know until it’s too late. When we find out, her plans go down the drain faster than it takes to flush a toilet. Which returns to the no development point, as her plans fail time and time again, leading her to be akin to a Saturday morning cartoon or a returning comic book villain. Team Rocket made more interesting foes.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Eh, I’m quite tired with the whole “A wild Scarlet appears.” She only ever does any amount of damage because her antics are unknown.

We’ve known about her for a while now, we need to start figuring out her antics before she’s ready to reveal her plan and cause havoc. And she still needs to be a threat then.

My issues with Scarlet can be summed up in four parts – from most important to least (and all are very big issues):

• She’s a one-note song. All about combining groups that wouldn’t work together (thus breaking their lore), or popping out at celebrations. Change it up a bit.

Well, first case of combining groups and breaking their lore would be if the Krait are really working with her

• We get too little too slow. Plot needs to develop a bit faster. Not saying “more content faster” but rather “the content needs to be juicier in story context.”

True. We get nothing about this plot. Anet is hiding too much about it, they should give us more informations.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• Not a threat. She isn’t; at all. As said above, the only way she does damage is by her – or her forces – appearing out of the proverbial thin air. She’s a threat because we, the good guys, don’t know until it’s too late. When we find out, her plans go down the drain faster than it takes to flush a toilet. Which returns to the no development point, as her plans fail time and time again, leading her to be akin to a Saturday morning cartoon or a returning comic book villain. Team Rocket made more interesting foes.

Even Team Rocket has more long term success.
There are two things we need to make it more interesting. First, let one of her plans succeed, let us arrive too late or play right in her hands. To be a threat, she must achieve something against us. If all her plans goes downhill the time we come then no one can take her or her plans serious.
Second. Let us have some indication that we achieve something. Look at Twilight Arbor Aetherpath. Look what we did, shutting down an entire Airship facility. This isn’t some small achievement. Cutting down supply lines and destroying facilities, are really important tasks, because they cripple the enemy. But does it feel like we did some damage to Scarlets plans. No, because she didn’t care about the destruction of an entire Airship Facility which is ridiculous. Airships are high tech warmachines and being crippled to build them is serious business, but she laughs it off like it was nothing. Let her go OOC. No more " I don’t care". Let her yell at us, let her fill with anger about the failed plan.

Walhalla.5473:

Even Team Rocket has more long term success.
There are two things we need to make it more interesting. First, let one of her plans succeed, let us arrive too late or play right in her hands. To be a threat, she must achieve something against us. If all her plans goes downhill the time we come then no one can take her or her plans serious.
Second. Let us have some indication that we achieve something. Look at Twilight Arbor Aetherpath. Look what we did, shutting down an entire Airship facility. This isn’t some small achievement. Cutting down supply lines and destroying facilities, are really important tasks, because they cripple the enemy. But does it feel like we did some damage to Scarlets plans. No, because she didn’t care about the destruction of an entire Airship Facility which is ridiculous. Airships are high tech warmachines and being crippled to build them is serious business, but she laughs it off like it was nothing. Let her go OOC. No more " I don’t care". Let her yell at us, let her fill with anger about the failed plan.

This is basically something I realised myself yesterday, and was saving for a Colbert-style list of what’s wrong with Scarlet that I might unveil if it turns out that she really IS responsible for the krait making nice with the rest of the organisation.

Basically, and this is probably part of why she seems like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, it feels like the end of each chapter reverts to status quo. Scarlet’s killed a few people and generally been annoying, but apart from building up her forces, she hasn’t really achieved anything of significance. Now, they’re probably handicapped here in that for a number of reasons they can’t just let Scarlet destroy one of the major cities or something like that, but maybe that’s all the more reason to start taking breaks from her and doing something else – if the something unrelated to her the players have been working on gets disrupted because she decides to interfere with it, people might actually start hating Scarlet the way ArenaNet wants them to rather than hating her because they regard her as a waste of virtual screen time.

On the other side of the equation, we never get to really hurt her. We thought we won a major victory at the end of F&F, but QJ showed the Molten Alliance going as strong as ever. We just smashed her airship building facility, but odds are future events will still depict the Aetherblades as apparently having the biggest fleet, sea or air, in Tyria.

Basically, the LS feels like a series of, well, Saturday morning cartoon episodes where everything goes back to the status quo at the end of each episode, and then we get the villain’s dastardly new plot next episode. Now, while that may work for a TV show that has episodes every week, it does not work for a story that updates monthly at best. The story needs to actually develop, rather than coming in mostly self-contained packages that occasionally reference one another.

Re: krait.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were dragon corrupted, but with Scarlet around, I don’t trust Anet in that.

The one thing that makes any villain great, is when the villain has enemies that are not the good guys. Right now it feels like Scarlet would work together with anybody.

And why? What is she hoping to accomplish? Is there any over-arching big reason that ties all these random plots together? Is it really something she couldn’t possibly achieve by simply asking people’s help? Wouldn’t that be easier?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The one thing that makes any villain great, is when the villain has enemies that are not the good guys. Right now it feels like Scarlet would work together with anybody.

Which is a large part of the reason why the likelihood that we’re getting a krait/NC alliance brokered by Scarlet is causing such a backlash. From what we’d been given before, it seemed that the Nightmare Court would regard the krait as enemies, possibly more than they regard the PCs as enemies in the case of NC members that actually genuinely believe the ideology rather than being in it for the evulz.

Ah, next she will work with centaurs. Why? Because she can. Establishing her as a chaotic omnipotence antagonist with underdeveloped character depth, is not working on improving the story. Especially when it’s dragging down the whatever likability the Sylvari had left in game. We get you screwed up with Trahearne, but forcing Scarlet on us (till you “fix” her) is not making things better.

I remember talking about a personal nemesis would make things better; but it would also be a villain that you would love to hate. Not simply outright hate because it’s is poorly written. I like “Q” from Star Trek because he had a plausible motivation, while having a interesting personalty . Also because “Q” had an Achilles heel, due to his arrogance towards anything he could not directly control. I like the Joker because his personality and ideologies conflict with that of the Batman. They use clever psychological games, and not just cheap gimmicks to antagonize their opponents.

draxynnic.3719:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The one thing that makes any villain great, is when the villain has enemies that are not the good guys. Right now it feels like Scarlet would work together with anybody.

Which is a large part of the reason why the likelihood that we’re getting a krait/NC alliance brokered by Scarlet is causing such a backlash. From what we’d been given before, it seemed that the Nightmare Court would regard the krait as enemies, possibly more than they regard the PCs as enemies in the case of NC members that actually genuinely believe the ideology rather than being in it for the evulz.

Well if we look at the way the NC members act and the Twilight Arbor dungeon, we could see that almost no one in the NC believes in their ideology. The 3 high ranking member of the court we are fighting don’t give two kittens about their ideology. And Faolain is using the court for her own amusement. The one who cared about, Cadeyrn, is dead.

There may be some NC member who fight for their ideology but with faolain as leader, chances are that they are in the minority

Actually, most (if not all) Nightmare Court care about spreading Nightmare. The differentiation is that they all have their own views about how to spread it. For example, those three coutiers in Twilight Arbor? One wants to plunge everyone in war to spread Nightmare, one wants to invoke primordial fear (arachniphobia), and one wants to subjugate everyone. In the end, Nightmare – via fear, pain, and torment – gets spread. It’s just different ways. Faolain also wants to spread Nightmare, but she’s more… isolated. She wants to convert Caithe specifically – still spreading Nightmare, but her personal goals are, well, personal.

And that’s just talking about those in Twilight Arbor. Go into the personal story and every major Nightmare Courtier is seeking to spread the Nightmare in their own way – Faolain isn’t unique in how she does it, btw, as seen in the Shield of the Moon storyline where the mesmer (forgot her name) seeks to bring her lover to Nightmare (and may succeed depending on your actions).

I think there is also distinction in what their motivations are. Some are in it because they genuinely think it’s for the good of the Sylvari. Others are just sadists and they want to create a world where they’re free to indulge in their sadism.

The latter might be willing to work with krait, but the former definitely would not. As I commented, the issue with the alliance is that it removes the Nightmare Court having an enemy, and precedent suggests we won’t get any explanation to it (like, say, it being the pure sadists while the idealogists split).

The thing is – gw1 lasted what, 7 years? (granted its ongoing but lets be honest here, we aren’t going to jump back permanently). So in 6 years time will we actually be playing this or will gw3 be on the books by then?. Theres not enough time in this products lifespan to have the story move at the glacial speed its going. We need some serious plot resolved and all we’re getting is months and months of scarlett filler arc. Speed it up anet, get the story rolling because frankly you’re going to run out of players/time.
Edit: Sometimes a race/villan is so epic and has such potential theres no need to evolve/change them. Think how many krait are in the deep dark seas and what a threat they could be. They’re like the daleks – why change what doesn’t need changing?

Well, the Daleks did change quite a bit over the series, including enslaving other races.

But it was always definitely the Daleks in charge – anyone who didn’t capitulate absolutely to the Daleks was an enemy, however advantageous an alliance might seem – consider the episode in the latest season where the Cybermen offered an alliance to a group of four Daleks, and the Daleks basically responded with (paraphrased) “We don’t need you: the four of us are superior to your entire race. Submit to us or be exterminated.”

And, as much as theoretically the Dalek/Cybermen alliance would be more menacing than the Daleks alone, the fact that the Daleks could say this, and then back it up, made them all the more menacing.

Sometimes, having an evil faction ally with another evil faction actually makes them less scary.

But an evil faction allying with another evil faction still happens though. Even the Daleks have done it before, and it was the entire setup for the first season of the 11th Doctor. The Daleks allied with basically every other antagonistic race (including the Cybermen) to form the Alliance, and their whole goal was to save the universe from the Doctor by locking him up in the Pandorica.

Obviously, that plan backfired, but the scenario is still there. Incase of a powerful common enemy, people are willing to put aside their differences to work together and take care of the problem. Though, it seems it makes the villains look less evil if they do something logical, like an alliance of mutual benefits.

The story has run cold for me. I was entirely interested with the Lore from Tyria 250+ years ago, and the twisted plots they once existed. When the Elder Dragons started appearing, I was still entirely excited about what could happen next, what new twists could occur. The views of the world through all 3 books were great too.

But it all started going dry for me once I started Guild Wars 2 story over a year ago. The first parts of the story were exciting, and I felt like my character was progressing into something more. Then I met Trahearne and they story regressed for me, but progressed for everyone as a whole. On top of the broken story quests, lack of backend polish, the story fell flat by the time I was blasting Zhaitan.

I gave it the benefit of the doubt since I have been such an avid fan. Living Story came in with a bang I thought. Within a couple months we were seeing new creatures and a new zone. I was ecstatic at the pace. Once we conqured Southsun we entered the yearly Wintersday and that’s when it really hit me. This isn’t the Guild Wars i became so fond of years ago. Tixx was a random NPC with some backstory quickly thrown into the mix to remove the “Human Gods” that once held the spotlight of wintersday. I gave the game a break after feeling let down, but returned during the Molten Alliance/Flame & Frost beginning. I became excited once again by the thought of strange and unknown powers stirring in the Shiverpeaks. I stayed to find out what was behind all of this chaos, but was left with a “clift hanger” at the end. I accepted this and we moved back to southsun where the story became sporadic and I was left clueless on what was going on.
My short lived glee started fading away once again… I continued to play since we were given a look forward and promised some amazing things. (The Synopsis of Guild Wars 2 and theLiving Story with a video of going foward-Narrated by Colin J.)

Now recently we have this new “Major” Villain named Scarlet. I’ve never took her seriously, and she’s never excited me enough to really do find out what her motives are. One moment I’m in Kryta, the next the shiverpeaks, and then we are somewhere else. It’s done the opposite of bringing me closer to my “fanboism” of Guild Wars. It wasn’t the introduction of Scarlet in itself that has killed the love for me, but just the confirmation that this Genre has gone away from what I love.

Had some great times, met some amazing folks, and don’t regret my devotion, but it does seem I’m not in the “Target Audience” anymore. Until next time, cheers and happy gaming,
Dan

Walhalla.5473:

There are two things we need to make it more interesting. First, let one of her plans succeed, let us arrive too late or play right in her hands. To be a threat, she must achieve something against us.

Not much to do with lore, this is more mechanics.

I have been thinking a while of a more controversial way for Scarlet to succeed against us. It’s really controversial, but, allow her minions to spawn anywhere in the overworld/Tyria where a player is present (I think dungeons and instances would be taking it too far). This would encourage players to group up together (we would feel threatened) and we would hate her (and, sadly, probably ANet too).

While incredibly infuriating, that would really feel like a living story to me.