Guild Wars 2

Some months back there was this Living Story update, where the players helps Marjory Delaqua investigate the murder of a charr guy at the beginning of the Dragon Bash festival in Lions Arch. Here’s a link to the wiki page of that certain investigation:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Every_Piece_Matters

Now, there are several suspects here, and you have to find out who is guilty. At first, I thought this was pretty cool, with a crime scene and all that stuff. When you get to the interrogation part it’s almost like you want to kill a baby seal. Instead of asking the suspects questions and checking if they have alibi and so on, you just get this “device” that solves all your problems. You point the thing at your suspect, and POOF, the device instantly tells you if the suspect is guilty or not. Yes, I know Azura can invent all these kinds of devices, but seriously. If you want to have a really compelling story, stay away from such cop outs. It’s almost as every LS update features an Azura with his or her little (cop out)device.

With the introduction of all the techy things to GW2, it seems likely they will do more of this. I sincerely hope they won’t repeat the technology cop out. Anyone else getting annoyed by this?

Asura technology irks me in general…should have just said that Rata Sum was a spaceship, that the asura weren’t living under ground but were in stasis, and that they crash landed here millenia ago.

I, personally, don’t mind them using technology in the story, as long as its written well. Though I do get irked at times, when they use it like as you say, as a “cop out”.

The more a society advances, so does it’s technology. That in turn, grows our dependence on it, since it is just easier using the tech to get stuff done. Just because it’s easier to make a technological loophole though, doesn’t mean the storytellers should always use it. It severely weakens the story when all your problems can be solved with a press of a button.

Bottom line, technology has it’s place in certain storylines, like the Aetherblade attack during the Dragon Bash. It could have be handled better, like you said, with an actually interrogation, but I personally didn’t mind it. Actual magic needs to be used more though, since this is still a magically world, even if it is moving into an industrial age.

Yes. The introduction for Marjory was great. The detective work with an Asura box was awful.

Spectre.6452:

Instead of asking the suspects questions and checking if they have alibi and so on, you just get this “device” that solves all your problems. You point the thing at your suspect, and POOF, the device instantly tells you if the suspect is guilty or not.

The way that “investigation box” worked is pretty much consistent with real-world investigation as well. It’s nothing different from how heat reveals lemon stains, or how ion-mobility spectrometers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-mobility_spectrometry) reveals glycerol. If five suspects are checked, and one of the five shows traces of the searched-for substance, that person is to be brought in for questioning, and if that person tries to escape or resist, he or she must be forcibly detained. And that is exactly what happened in this scene. No hocus-pocus truth-detecting machine, just basic chemistry and logic.

That said, I will agree that I was disappointed by the lack of interrogation options.

Jigain.8231:

Spectre.6452:

Instead of asking the suspects questions and checking if they have alibi and so on, you just get this “device” that solves all your problems. You point the thing at your suspect, and POOF, the device instantly tells you if the suspect is guilty or not.

The way that “investigation box” worked is pretty much consistent with real-world investigation as well. It’s nothing different from how heat reveals lemon stains, or how ion-mobility spectrometers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-mobility_spectrometry) reveals glycerol. If five suspects are checked, and one of the five shows traces of the searched-for substance, that person is to be brought in for questioning, and if that person tries to escape or resist, he or she must be forcibly detained. And that is exactly what happened in this scene. No hocus-pocus truth-detecting machine, just basic chemistry and logic.

That said, I will agree that I was disappointed by the lack of interrogation options.

But there is a major difference between the devices in real life and GW2. In real life we don’t have this device that we point against a suspect and it immediately tells us who is guilty or not. That was my point.

Spectre.6452:

But there is a major difference between the devices in real life and GW2. In real life we don’t have this device that we point against a suspect and it immediately tells us who is guilty or not. That was my point.

The device didn’t do that. It detected the arcane residue left by the compound used to kill Ashford. The culprit had to come in contact with it, so it narrowed the option. Mai Trin was marked as the most exposed, and when confronted gave in immediately (which was really sad imo).
Furthermore, the problem isn’t that the detector was technological. It might even not be (afaik it is vague asuran magitech, modified by a human necromancer). A purely magical artifact doing the same job would be equally bad. The problem was we basically just had to go from point to point without thinking involved (hello, yellow star on the map and “show me” button in the mail), then follow a choice-less conversation. So long for an “investigation”
To sum it up: it’s not the tool, it’s the mechanic that’s flawed.

Just as Elidath said, the tool revealed compound residue on Mai Trin, but not on the other four suspects (though if you tested Mai Trin first, you wouldn’t even get to check the other four, which is another big flaw in the mission). As I said, it’s not a hocus-pocus truth-detecting machine. It’s just a reasonably advanced chemical detector. Which we do have in real life.

Again for the uneducated: Theo Ashford is a human, not a charr. Ascalon was human land for more than 1,000 years.

Btw i totally agree. Thisis just lame. Asuras solve everything. Instead of thinking aout a solution and a story, they just throw in an asura (every single time) with his totally advanced godlike device that solves everything.

Why are we even there? Asura guys can’t lift it so they need the players? Seriously..

Elidath.5679:

Spectre.6452:

But there is a major difference between the devices in real life and GW2. In real life we don’t have this device that we point against a suspect and it immediately tells us who is guilty or not. That was my point.

The device didn’t do that. It detected the arcane residue left by the compound used to kill Ashford. The culprit had to come in contact with it, so it narrowed the option. Mai Trin was marked as the most exposed, and when confronted gave in immediately (which was really sad imo).
Furthermore, the problem isn’t that the detector was technological. It might even not be (afaik it is vague asuran magitech, modified by a human necromancer). A purely magical artifact doing the same job would be equally bad. The problem was we basically just had to go from point to point without thinking involved (hello, yellow star on the map and “show me” button in the mail), then follow a choice-less conversation. So long for an “investigation”
To sum it up: it’s not the tool, it’s the mechanic that’s flawed.

Oh I forgot the arcane residue, thanks for putting that out there. But still, it felt like a cop out when I did the mission, the residue tracked on Mai Tirin doesn’t cut it for me. I still don’t like the concept of it.

Maybe the quick and temporary LS releases make the developers oversee small things like this. I could see why, considering they have to pump out content very often. I could ramble on about this, but im gonna stop here for your sake.

Either which way, if technology/magi-tech isn’t going to do it then typical magic is going to do it. Instead of a wizard did it, now it’s more an engineer (that may or may not have an understanding of magic) did it.

Technobabble (or technomagibabble) sounds smarter than saying I have a spell for that.