Guild Wars 2

Doing the living story with the bi-conics is like being in a PUG you can’t get out of and have to stop your run to listen them talk how their day was. And then you find out two of your party members are dating and they constantly use pet names over Ventrilo, causing awkwardness for everyone else. Not to mention one underage player who is constantly shrieking how awesome everything is.

Point is, can we get zombie Tybalt and Canach to our party already instead of these guys? Or our guildmates? Or better yet, the characters I’ve created? I’d love if all my 5 characters would form a party to take on the bads. (that’s actually how I’ve pictured it on a RP standpoint.)

“I’m not really with these guys.”

Angel McCoy.1832:

Gundail.7594:

The current cast is light years better and shows some real progress in story telling. I hope to see some really memorable work coming from the future. This is an area where the Anet team really seems to have listened to the players and made some meaningful work.

Thank you. This is very kind of you to say, and it makes me very happy. We’ve worked hard to make the PC’s best friends interesting and not cookie-cutter buddies. They’re the PC’s supporting cast, and as such, all their stories affect and reflect the PC’s story—your story.

Why is it necessary that this gaggle of unlikeable twits be my “best friends” and why it it constantly hammered at us?

My story? Hardly, since you even force emotion onto my character. For me, the biconics are annoying, unlikable baggage, and not my “best friends” in any stretch of suspension of disbelief.

Why could there not be neutral convo that lets the PC at least assign a relationship without it being decided for them?

Why can’t it be “meet with the group” instead of “meet with your best friends forever omg” Exaggeration, but that is how I feel you want me to think. And, I fail to see how assigning affection to my PC is remotely needed to advance “My” story.

I don’t like being a puppet. It is bad enough to force the biconics and their tepid, tedious, stereotyped interplay without scripting in affection for them.

You are god-modding how we think.

You know, in light of Destiny’s Edge, I think this new group is a vast improvement. They at least have a personality, and some flavor to them. They don’t bother me in the slightest. Plus the writers drop in some welcome lighthearted humor every now and then too. I can’t think of a single one of them that I dislike.

No, not even the mesmer.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

I don’t feel the voice acting is holding the story back at all. If anything, it brings it to life. Sure it would be cheaper to use just text boxes, but I don’t want it cheaper. They made a great leap with the transition from GW1 to GW2 by making everything voice acted. I don’t think I’d want to go back to a none-voice acted world.

But it is holding the story back. You cannot get all the details into a few lines of spoken text. I’m not asking for Anet to remove spoken text. I’m just asking them to expand the lore outside of the main stories by adding more written dialogue to npcs. That way, those that want to know more can read to their leisure, those that don’t can skip it, and it hardly costs anything to add.

You yourself commented that you enjoyed reading the new books. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.

I agree that the new books they added to the Priory were a great addition for extra lore. But I don’t see the new characters as an obstruction to the story. One does not undermine the other. So why not both?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

But I don’t see the new characters as an obstruction to the story.

It’s not about the characters.

There’s quite a bit of spoken dialogue in the past LS update. In total though, it’s what? 20 lines per character? It’s hard to tell a full story with just that. Meanwhile, they could have been given say, 200 lines of written text per character in addition to what they have now.

It could be stuff like: “Do you think we should inform the Pale Tree Marjory?” “How’s Rytlock been doing Rox?” “What are you recording in those log entries you keep ordering Scruffy to take, Taimi?”

The spoke text is nice, and should remain in the game. But it’s NOT enough to convey the entire story. So why not add more written dialogue?

Wanderer.3248:

Like the Joker, Scarlet was never meant to be a fighter. And in the Arkham games, he tends to avoid direct combat, and quite frankly, he’s not good at it. The scene in Arkham origins where you do beat up the Joker is a bit disturbing really, since physically the batman is so much stronger than the Joker.

I don’t think a straight up fight with Scarlet would have made much sense either. Like the Joker she was a thinker and a schemer, not a fighter. She had thugs to do the fighting for her.

I don’t think all MMO enemies have to be great at combat. It’s kind of sad for the genre if everything has to devolve into violence.

Okay, I rephrase it a bit:
1. Yes, Scarlet was never meant to be a fighter, but a puppetmaster

2. In her first encounter we “fought” her, but she litteraly shrugged it off godmode style and then vanished in the end.
Going with the Joker here, look at the Dark Knight. Here batman punched the Joker, physicaly beaten him, but was never the winner.
Scarlet was missing something like that.
When we attacked her, she just shrugged it off, like she just does not care. That implied she had something protecting her (magitech armor or something)

3. Till the end we never fought her. We never had the satisfaction of bringing her down.
The end-instance was just kicking her while she was already down.
The “fight” or her “defeat” was brought upon by dozens of players and a system overload by her hologram.

We had her only in “can`t touch this” mode, in the pavillion, the invasions and the tower of nightmares…

The next time we see her, she has already lost everything. No real defence, no godmode, nothing. We just went over to her and stumped on her dying body.

Again with the Joker. Batman had to take all his toys away first and had to outsmart/overpower him in the end to bring him down.

That is something we never really did. All we had was a system overload caused by dozens of heroes smashing the hologram, while she was ignoring us in the back.

So yeah. I am hoping for a more engaging and satisfying ending for the next part.
have us rip away the enemies defences. Destroy his armor, crush his confidence.
Give us an adversery that makes us mad by showing us our weakness and allow us to regain that self confidence by proving him otherwise.

So yeah. Scarlet was no Joker and we (or Majory) are no Batman.

On the biconics
Sure they are better then Destiny`s Edge, at least from the ingame perspective
Never read the books so far sadly.
However i can agree with the sentiment that the “friendship” angle can feel a bit forcefull and some of the jokes are getting a bit repetative at some points.
While we have no cookie cutters like angel says, we get some “useless” characters so far which i hope they redeem.
Right now the only active members are Majory, Taimi and to some extend Kasmeer.
The rest is just following along, which was even worse in S1.

I really hope we see some improvement there.

On text lenght
Voice or no Voice, that is the question.
However i agree to MQM that both should be done.
I also agree with the Idea that there could definitely be more written “side infos” on certain topics, which need no spoken words.
The writers know what we ask for, as the forum are full of questions.
It would be the perfect way to answer them.

For example:
- How are the other ED fronts? Is the Pact engaging there?
- How are Rythlok, Caithe, Zooja, Logan, Kiel..?
- etc…

Jaken.6801:

Going with the Joker here, look at the Dark Knight. Here batman punched the Joker, physicaly beaten him, but was never the winner.
Scarlet was missing something like that.
When we attacked her, she just shrugged it off, like she just does not care.
- etc…

That is a fantastic way to put it.

Okay, S1 Entangled writing… too much handholding and jumping from one green star to the next right from the start…
I really hope that cuts back, because it is completly different from what GW2 was about till now (freedom and such)