Guild Wars 2

Some of these things were also pointed out by my husband.

One particular thing he noted is this: during Gates of Maguuma, Marjoly gives you a Sun Crystal and tells you to run through whatever is blocking the NPCs’ way. However, nothing in-game is stopping Marjoly from just saving her breath and doing it herself. Why even need me? Additionally, Kasmeer can place Portals wherever the kitten hell she wants. Outside of those magic-interfering crystals, why even bring the PC into this?

Even earlier on, during Battle of Lion’s Arch, five lone loonies adventurers (“and you”) take on Scarlet Briar. Thing is… you, the PC, have connections to not only your respective order but also the Pact. You’re buddy-buddy enough with Trahearne that you could call in a favor or five and ask for a personal battalion to siege Scarlet herself, no need for Pseudo Destiny’s Edge. In other words, you’re most certainly not a nobody and unless you’re playing a salad, at least one or two of these characters MUST have heard of you and go, “Okay, the [racial title]‘s going to bring in the Pact so we don’t need to be needlessly risking our lives.” Why can’t I call in that favor (of sorts) instead of needing to rely on these nobody NPCs?

Even more so, WHY LET SCARLET DIE THE WAY SHE DID? Yes, she caused a lot of suffering, blah blah blah, but each of the orders have something to invest into Scarlet: her information on the Dragons, on the leylines, on Caithe, and basically a lot of things that PDE should have cared about but instead went “nah ur gonna die lol”. How frustrating! The Order of Whispers would have loved to interrogate the kicks out of her. The Vigil would have at least wanted to inflict some punishment for the mass chaos she did (along with waking up an Elder Dragon). The Priory would have delighted at what she could have learned in her studies and use it against the current forces.

But no. Bad guy dies, hooray, now we’re fighting a new enemy almost completely blind. GG, PDE.

In GW1, at least it made sense that you were a nobody wherever you went because the problems were localized to each area. Go to Cantha shouting, “I’m the wo/man who defeated Abaddon!” and they’re going to respond with, “Who?” Go to Elona proclaiming you defeated the Lich and they’ll ask, “There was a Lich?” Go to Kryta shouting you’ve defeated Shiro Tagachi and they’ll look at you in confusion.

It doesn’t work here, though. You’re either a respected member of your community or of your group, you’re a high-ranking official in your respective order, and your respective Destiny’s Edge member would at least let others know about you should they ask. The Norn and the Charr especially would make sure that all of Hoelbrak and the Citadel would know of your deeds of slaying a frickin’ Elder Dragon. There really shouldn’t be a lot of people that don’t know of you.

Marjoly is a detective and would have figured out that, yes, you’re a pretty big guy in the (human) community. Kasmeer would have heard of your prestige or would have heard of it through Marjoly.
Taimi would have definitely heard of you (as an Asura) either through research or from Zojja’s mouth.
Braham would have definitely heard of you, either from Eir herself or from the skaalds singing your praises (as a Norn).
The only one that MIGHT not have heard of you is Rox. That’s really about it.

Why even have your PC become such an influential character if, by the time the LS starts, you’re just a nobody again? After only a year? Good lord.

i think you’ve summed up the complaints of alot of people, myself included, in that one post

Because if NPC were competent enough to constantly perform their feats they wouldn’t need the PC and we’d all be stuck playing TP all day long while NPC would be having fun blasting Mordemorth with thousands of illusions, meteors and other bling-bling.
Same goes for the part about story delivery and whatnot.

Freeelancer.2860:

Because if NPC were competent enough to constantly perform their feats they wouldn’t need the PC and we’d all be stuck playing TP all day long while NPC would be having fun blasting Mordemorth with thousands of illusions, meteors and other bling-bling.
Same goes for the part about story delivery and whatnot.

You can have competent NPCs while still having your involvement. Going back to the Gates of Maguuma example, you could have scrounged around for a Sun Crystal to use, a story-only consumable that disappears as soon as what you need to do with it is done (or you leave the LS instance) or can be found in multiples. If there’s supposed to be crystals all over the place due to the Zephyrite ship crash, then it wouldn’t be too hard, right? Instead of getting railroaded into an “investigation” conversation with Marjoly, let her go her own way and you on your own to investigate, prodding the bodies and examining options to get clues. THEN discuss the details with her and come to a conclusion. Yay, she still gets to be a detective and YOU’RE still the main character!

I’m not saying, “make the NPCs completely useless idiots so you can stand out,” but I’m saying that this could have been a lot more well-done and better written. Have cake, eat it, etc.

Additionally, more options to shape the story wouldn’t be too bad. Even just things like shaping how PDE acts. For example, if you’re a Warmaster from the Vigil, you’re gonna be strategizing attacks and ways to flank the enemy. A Lightbringer would prefer to gather data or put out an enemy quietly, maybe tranq him and interrogate him for information. And a Priory Magister/Arcanist would try to use knowledge to solve a situation that brute force alone can’t handle. Little details like these add a little more to immersion, make the player feel like these guys are starting to know you.

Plus, calling in that favor would give Anet an excuse to reintroduce something like the Hero or Henchmen systems from GW1, maybe even with a Sunspear callback for the former.

tl;dr: LS had a lot of potential to be a cool continuation of the Personal Story and actually live up to its title of “Living,” but alas… it fell on its head, like a lot of things Anet tends to do nowadays.

On a personal level I agree with you. There are many unexplored territories and possibilities that’d be great both for flashing out characters and making player feel more immersed and whatnot.. Tho I’m not sure if LS team would have enough time/expertise for such a feat, and I’m not sure how much player base would value all the hard work necessary to bring us a more complex and engaging LS.

On the other hand, and I’ll use Gates of Maguma example as well… “Where is Miner Toska?”
I rest my case.

I won’t quote the OP since it is rather long but I do agree with a lot of what is said. But I’m not sure about capturing Scarlet. She is very dangerous. I do think that the whole end scene could have been handled differently though. For instance, since Scarlet did everything in order to make the Breachmaker and drill a hole in LA, I would be as concerned with stopping the drilling as with detaining Scarlet. I realize that the drilling had to happen to further the plot, but I would have been trying to get past Scarlet to get to that control panel. If we had to kill her to get to it, and then we got to it too late, that would have resulted in the same story without it seeming like we just wanted to kill her for retribution. And without it looking like we were stupidly ignoring the Breachmaker.

Depending how far along in the personal story a character is, there may not even be a Pact yet. They may not have even joined an order.

Only two of my characters have finished the personal story.

Only four, out of 12, have finished claw island and become ‘second in command’ of the Pact.

Only two of them killed Scarlet.

You can see this is a bit of a problem with having Pact troops to call on.

Capturing Scarlett would have required the “writer” to have come up with actual answers to the gaping swiss cheese plot.

We would be asking Scarlet. and not left to fill in the massive gaps on our own.

I don’t think the “writer” would have been capable of doing Scarlets answers in any sort of remotely plausible fashion. Hasn’t yet. But , Ley lines, yah know.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Capturing Scarlett would have required the “writer” to have come up with actual answers to the gaping swiss cheese plot.

We would be asking Scarlet. and not left to fill in the massive gaps on our own.

I don’t think the “writer” would have been capable of doing Scarlets answers in any sort of remotely plausible fashion. Hasn’t yet. But , Ley lines, yah know.

I’m pretty sure Anet could hire a fanfiction writer for cheap and THEY’D do a better job than any “professional” that they hire.

Wanderer.3248:

Depending how far along in the personal story a character is, there may not even be a Pact yet. They may not have even joined an order.

Only two of my characters have finished the personal story.

Only four, out of 12, have finished claw island and become ‘second in command’ of the Pact.

Only two of them killed Scarlet.

You can see this is a bit of a problem with having Pact troops to call on.

That is true, but then one of the PDE members mentions you as “important” or “famous” or something along those lines. In other words, you’re supposed to have finished the PS in order to head into the LS, though I suppose you could RP it differently as I did… somewhat.

At the very least, you still have the friends to call on from early in your story.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Capturing Scarlett would have required the “writer” to have come up with actual answers to the gaping swiss cheese plot.

We would be asking Scarlet. and not left to fill in the massive gaps on our own.

I don’t think the “writer” would have been capable of doing Scarlets answers in any sort of remotely plausible fashion. Hasn’t yet. But , Ley lines, yah know.

Weird then that ley lines were being speculated about last year, well before season 1 even ended.

There are many problems with the story, but my quick rationalization is:

Your character was always about killing Elder Dragons, with Zaitan first on the list. You were never a ‘normal’ member of your Order or of the Pact, and when Zaitan was defeated you moved on. So your old Order is not giving you assignments, and you are effectively retired from the ‘Commander’ position. At best, you have some honorary/emeritus membership in those organizations.

Naevius.3185:

There are many problems with the story, but my quick rationalization is:

Your character was always about killing Elder Dragons, with Zaitan first on the list. You were never a ‘normal’ member of your Order or of the Pact, and when Zaitan was defeated you moved on. So your old Order is not giving you assignments, and you are effectively retired from the ‘Commander’ position. At best, you have some honorary/emeritus membership in those organizations.

So that means Trahearne suddenly has no reason to listen to me if I go “so uh, that bonkers sylvari that tore Lion’s Arch a new one just sort of woke up an Elder Dragon…”?