Guild Wars 2

Maybe a bit late to the party, but my 3 concerns, in no particular order.

1) Who is the protagonist?

The Personal History becomes, after join an Order, a travel about an NPC-that-is-more-important-than-you-and-will-ever-be.

I’ve seen it often in tabletop RPGs, the GM has a favourite NPC that uses to interact with the game, that NPC is immortal, has better abilities, is flawless, has better equipment, etc etc, the PC are their servants at best. They are the Players, they should shine as protagonists, not as background characters.

Then, in the Living Story main arc, the PC as protagonist is vanished again, until the end in which you kill a ¿bad person? who has not been a rival to the character directly. Also, missing any update may make you wonder who those people are, they who insist in call you ‘friend’ but you cannot remember any meaningful interaction with they.

At some point the NPC motivations, the characters presentation, the Personal History-that-get-cut-and-derived-to-Treaharne-history, etc can mess one with other and make the PC the most irrelevant part.

2) Villains and antagonist interaction.

If you want a feared Villain that doesn0t have an apparition until mid-season, the watchers/players have to, well, fear that antagonist somehow, prior to the presentation.

In Heroes (season 1), you have one of the most feared villains in fiction. Sylar. I stopped watching that show somewhere between season 3 and 4 and never looked again. But it will be difficult to me to forgot Sylar. There were only hints of his presence, but we could look at the results of his actions. Every character in that show had reasons to worry.

Scarlett stomped a public act, stating that she was better than us and that everyone should fear her. She ‘stole’ a robot army that was clearly put there just some days before in order to be stolen. Everything in that robot army was screaming “enemies! enemies!”. It was similar to Star Wars Episode 2, when they found “oh, a lost Jedi that probably is a Sith used a lot of untracked money to build a clone army, well, we will use that army anyway, what can be wrong?”

In order to make us angry about her stealing a robot army, we should have some empathy for those army. Be there when is constructed, express our concerns to the Order, watch how useful is at cleaning some area, make living story updates in which the clockwork army defeat centaurs wave after wave and events in the area are changed to reflect this. Meet the team building it. Start interacting with the young sylvari apprentice assisting in the lab, look how the Asura bully her, put her in a relationship with the PC, in which the player can select if he accepts or rejects her love experimentation, make another NPC jealous of this depending the outcome… then she can steal the army, present herself as the main antagonist and the players will say “no you kitten, this is personal”.

3) Content that vanish forever.

It feels weird, for me, to put the dev teams to develop content that will only last few weeks and that is not reused, revisited or added to exploration. I’m talking basically about PvE here. The karka zone is the only one that I can sign and clearly say “like this! permanent!”, but is an abandoned zone that is not linked to any other zone in PvE. It should be accessible from other zones and integrated in the world as any other zone.

More zones is something I expected, so if you have to left the game for some months, after login again you see the map and there is something new, somewhere to go. The last LS updates had interesting stuff in changing existing zones, but adding new ones, or new areas in the existing ones, is something that seems out of the scope of the game/LS. This and the early “there will be no expansion” statements probably make many players to worry if the updates will consist only in temporary grinding fest to get the whatever skins/equipment is available those weeks, using a material/currency that will not exist again. The last update had at least a note saying when one of that currencies was about to expire, and that we could hold on the other. But during the different updates I collected lot of stuff that I don’t have a way to know if it’s junk or not. It may help, for example, to convert it to junk items once the currency/material is not used never again.

Shriketalon.1937 : Seriously, well done ! This is so perfect and funny. I aggree with almost everything you wrote ! This is a very complete feedback on the 15 months on Living Story we had.

Bobby Stein : In my opinion, here are the top three things you should focus on :

1) The #10 of Shriketalon, which is : to concentrate on things which are really relevant : there are a lot to do in GW2 story : we want to hear more about the 5 other dragons ! Of course, the awakening of one of them is very important, but it doesn’t justify 15 months of Living Story. To give an idea of what we expect : in 12 months, we should actually kill this dragon (or he should kill us if we fail :p).
As Shriketalon stated : there are also the fate of Cantha and Elona and lots of other mysteries which are lying in the shadow. You just have to bend down and pick some random story, you made the story of GW so full and interesting that there are really a lot of things really good you could make with it !
Furthermore, we want to meet and learn more about races you introduced but didn’t full developped (for example : Largos, Kodan, Tengu, and you could do lots of things fabulous with the races forced to quit the underground by Primordius).

We know you can’t do everything in the list before, but just 50% of the dragons (and Cantha) would satisfy us ! ^^

2) The characters (#3,4,5) : the “bad” side can’t be represented by only one evil character. You introduced Mai Trin and Horrik, Slick, Sparki, but no one of them had a real role in Scarlet’s plans : there are all defeated and defeated again. Even for a genius like Scarlet, it’s hard to believe she did everything by herself. She had lieutenants who helped her in order to accomplish her plan, but they are not well described in the game : they die/lose/disappear as quickly as they appeared. THE evil boss has strong evil lieutenants. They also deserve to be well developped !
The hero will have a better role in the Living Story : he defeated each of the ennemy lieutenants to reach the final boss and kill him. This is also something important : you need to place the hero at the center of the story. OK, Trahearne did this, Kiel did this … But we don’t care ! We want to be the hero (cause we deserve it ! ^^).
For example : at the end of GW Factions, “people from all around Cantha gather and line the Divine Path to pay their respects and offer their thanks to the new heroes of Cantha” (line from GW Wiki), I never felt so proud (in a game). We want to live the same thing, to realise we really have accomplished a long long way to arrive to this moment.

3) The #1 of Shriketalon : we have to love the Living Story for what it is, not for what it will be. Don’t tell us : “Oh, hold on hold on, there will be a twist, we are sure you’ll like it !”. Come on, there’s no surprise anymore ! Just give us the twist when we don’t expect it, and we will suddenly like the Living Story even more because we didn’t expect “that” to happen like “this”.

Thanks for reading (and sorry for bad english), keep the good work !

anyone else get an impression that Shriketalon is Elliot from flight of the phoenix?

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

I applaud the OP (and agree with most of what he said, especially the ‘Lieutenants are the lifeblood of an organisation’ section, which put into words what I’d been thinking myself). Applaud the devs who have taken notice too.

Thobek.1730:

I really don’t like how the characters have been developed. The obvious lesbian relationships being pushed in our faces again and again…

…Getting a bit sick of it. We need another style of writing to balance this feminist stuff.

Hrmm, I wonder why nobody ever says that kind of stuff when a game features a heavily pro-Male ratio, or “obvious hetero relationships”. You know… like the majority of other games.

I’m not getting involved in the argument about lesbianism or feminism, but I have to ask who cares about the “majority of other games”?

Not those who bought THIS game and are playing THIS game.

And not ArenaNet, who depend on those who are playing THIS game and not those who bought and are supporting “those other games”.

If you want to play those other games, then do so. The rest of us are complaining, for various reasons, about THIS game.

All those “other games” are irrevelant and off-topic here.

Love it how anything negative/awesome/shines light on game flaws becomes a “just give us three ideas” by a passing mod then gets forgotten and ignored.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

Love it how anything negative/awesome/shines light on game flaws becomes a “just give us three ideas” by a passing mod then gets forgotten and ignored.

I love how everyone assumes it’s ignored/forgotten We got some telepaths who can work through the Internet over here, quick, someone find them and enlist them to start helping catch crooks.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

Love it how anything negative/awesome/shines light on game flaws becomes a “just give us three ideas” by a passing mod then gets forgotten and ignored.

I love how everyone assumes it’s ignored/forgotten We got some telepaths who can work through the Internet over here, quick, someone find them and enlist them to start helping catch crooks.

Everything Arena Net does has to be written and planned long in advance, so yes, everything will be ignored for the next Living Story updates. Even then if in the future they have time to implement what people ask for it is still not likely. Everything mentioned in this topic has been said many times before and after well over a year Arena Net have not really changed course to accommodate what people ask for.

No, people are not psychic, they just notice trends and assume the outcome from past experiences. I for one am not optimistic.

Aedelric.1287:

I for one am not optimistic.

The world is really a nicer place when you are, though. Not delusional in the optimism, but just hoping it will be better than it is.

And frankly, the last act of the Living Story showed they did have some effort put into things which were mentioned earlier. And it’s not too late right now to do narrative tweaking, since we’re not talking about prerendered cutscenes or potentially much voice-acting if they tweak dialogue to be inclusive and support a lot of the concerns about the story.

Namely how it seems to not track well what the players do, or really give them any feeling of contribution beyond being a warm body unto the breach.

Valrog.2059:

I’m not getting involved in the argument about lesbianism or feminism, but I have to ask who cares about the “majority of other games”?

Not those who bought THIS game and are playing THIS game.

And not ArenaNet, who depend on those who are playing THIS game and not those who bought and are supporting “those other games”.

If you want to play those other games, then do so. The rest of us are complaining, for various reasons, about THIS game.

All those “other games” are irrevelant and off-topic here.

Well, when Thobek complained about the high ratio of women-to-men, and the “obvious lesbian relationships”, I thought it was a pretty accurate guess that he wouldn’t be complaining if there was the same ratio of men-to-women in reverse, or if the relationships were straight.

I’m a person who “bought THIS game and is playing THIS game”. I simply chose to draw a comparison, as people do all the time when talking about their favourite media.

OP is brilliant. I am more than enthused by not only this very well written and displayed post, but also the response it has received from the devs. The follow up that OP did is also a fantastic assessment of the most significant problems with the Living Story. If future releases of the story really take note of this, then I think I would enjoy season 2 of the Living Story much more.

I might even say this post has made me feel a level of anticipation that I have not yet felt for the next Living Story update.

Actually there would a easy way out for A-Net
The story of Palawa Joko is already written.
Open the crystal desert and parts of cantha.
Lets defeat his rising armys and fight to conquer more and more towns until we have access to cantha and find out what happened the last 250 years.

No efford involved, all characters already written and actually someone people care for.
exactly how A-Net likes it

But i guess this would be to entertaining and satisfying for people so we go back to elder dragons and mass zerking

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas… Introduce the bad guy first. (I’m going with movies here… not books as i didnt’ read the books).

Lord of the rings: How much screen time did it take to find out who Sauron was? About 3 minutes.
The Hobbit: Smaug vaporizes a town and a city within 5 minutes of screen time.
Star Wars: Darth Vader cuts through a door, chokes a guy and captures one of the main good guys within 10 minutes of screen time.

Once you do that you can add good guys, add supporting evil characters, and give your player/viewer a place to start hating the bad guy and a reason to care about how it goes.

So for the next living story take have us visit a town on the outskirts of the Tengu place for some kind of party (we saved LA party, whatever). Then the dragon you showed us in the cutscene shows up and just straight up levels the place. Houses destroyed.. Fried chicken everywhere. We have to rescue whatever Tengu we can and ferry them to safety. One of the rescuees happens to be the main good guy. Part 2: the dragon’s main lieutenant is sent after us to “chase down the survivors”. We deal him a minor setback and thus the story begins. Where you take it from there who knows but we have
A. A main bad guy. B: A badguy lieutenant we personally know, C: a good guy we know.

I’d play that LS.

lioka qiao.8734:

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas… Introduce the bad guy first. (I’m going with movies here… not books as i didnt’ read the books).

Lord of the rings: How much screen time did it take to find out who Sauron was? About 3 minutes.
The Hobbit: Smaug vaporizes a town and a city within 5 minutes of screen time.
Star Wars: Darth Vader cuts through a door, chokes a guy and captures one of the main good guys within 10 minutes of screen time.

Once you do that you can add good guys, add supporting evil characters, and give your player/viewer a place to start hating the bad guy and a reason to care about how it goes.

So for the next living story take have us visit a town on the outskirts of the Tengu place for some kind of party (we saved LA party, whatever). Then the dragon you showed us in the cutscene shows up and just straight up levels the place. Houses destroyed.. Fried chicken everywhere. We have to rescue whatever Tengu we can and ferry them to safety. One of the rescuees happens to be the main good guy. Part 2: the dragon’s main lieutenant is sent after us to “chase down the survivors”. We deal him a minor setback and thus the story begins. Where you take it from there who knows but we have
A. A main bad guy. B: A badguy lieutenant we personally know, C: a good guy we know.

I’d play that LS.

I agree with some of this. I want a personal nemesis, someone who seems likable except for his goals. Perhaps make a person who’s sole purpose is to stop us. Someone we’d like to have on our side but has philosophical differences that pits him/her/it against us. Scarlet did not fill this role well. Perhaps evil, yes, but not a personal nemesis. More so just a villain.

lioka qiao.8734:

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas…

Please don’t compare George Lucas to Tolken. Tolken doesn’t deserve that abuse.

Kurodius.7463:

lioka qiao.8734:

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas…

Please don’t compare George Lucas to Tolken. Tolken doesn’t deserve that abuse.

. . . George Lucas is not as much of a hack as people want to hang on him. He just needs someone to collaborate with who is willing to get him to tone down and hone his vision of a story.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kurodius.7463:

lioka qiao.8734:

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas…

Please don’t compare George Lucas to Tolken. Tolken doesn’t deserve that abuse.

. . . George Lucas is not as much of a hack as people want to hang on him. He just needs someone to collaborate with who is willing to get him to tone down and hone his vision of a story.

George Lucas is enough of a hack that he needs a bunch of people who need to tell him when his ideas are bad and make up better ideas than him. The Star Wars prequels are as bad as they are because nobody questioned Lucas.

He had Protection from Editors. Ignoring/not having editors is bad almost however good you are.

That said, though, Tolkein can’t get the credit for ‘showing the villain early’. The books have extensive buildup before the main villain even gets named – it’s the people who adapted the books into movies that took the ‘show the villain first’ angle.

“Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?”

I’m sorry if I don’t sound sympathetic but really you should be looking for a top 10 rather than just top 3. The writers should have been doing these things already and it should not be a culture shock to do them in the future. If your current team can’t deliver a better story then get people who can.

I can see the technical improvements within the living story content as the game matures. Early design mistakes can be forgiven as content evolves. There are no excuses for mistakes in the writing though. The storytelling should have been strong from the start.

I’ll make the important stuff bold.

1. A more personal story, longer but don’t keep everything “repetitive”, keep the story moving with developing characters (characters shed their light on their fears, dreams, etc), don’t make deaths short lived, but painful and gives lots of things to think about. Important thing to note, don’t make every death a genocide.

2. More weapons and weapon skills

3. More hard bosses (up to par with Teq and 3-Headed Wurm)

And please, fix the well-known unintentional exploits.

Kurodius.7463:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Kurodius.7463:

lioka qiao.8734:

LS should take a page from Tolken and George Lucas…

Please don’t compare George Lucas to Tolken. Tolken doesn’t deserve that abuse.

. . . George Lucas is not as much of a hack as people want to hang on him. He just needs someone to collaborate with who is willing to get him to tone down and hone his vision of a story.

George Lucas is enough of a hack that he needs a bunch of people who need to tell him when his ideas are bad and make up better ideas than him. The Star Wars prequels are as bad as they are because nobody questioned Lucas.

Spot on! I tend to believe lucas got lucky with star wars because when he has total creative control it turns into a steaming pile of crappola!

I wasn’t making a point about Lucas being good anything (cause he isn’t). I was making a point about the original Star Wars how in the first 5 minutes you knew that Darth Vader was the bad guy. Big daunting ship. Cuts through a door. Storm troopers (aka the trash mobs that ANET threw at us) show up. Then this big black monolith of a guy about the side of a door frame walks in. He chokes a guy and lifts him off the ground by his neck and then captures a “helpless” girl.

That’s the kind of villain I want to see show up. The party crashing dragon that shows up and incinerates an entire village. He sicks his lieutenant after us to stop us from getting the party guests to safety. Dragon’s cool. Make his lieutenant a bad kitten . Anet likes their tree people so lets go with that…

Enter this huge Sylvari. His model is crossed with the look of a charr. I have 2 looks to branch out from here with. Maybe both.

• He’s topless with tattoos and plate armor leggings. He can appear armorless in some scenes. Dude should also be bald.
• He’s fully clad in armor. The armor is obsidian black with some reflective properties but obviously has some battle fatigue.

You don’t need a big imposing villain like that, which is where a lot of bad stories go wrong. You really don’t need to hang a big sign on someone going “We’ve got a bad—- here!” in the first five minutes. Identifying the villain? Sure enough, even Game of Thrones did that in ten pages or less.

(Heck, it gave you, what, three of them real fast?)

What’s needed is to show them being effective and believable instead of just “awesome”. That’s where Scarlet went wrong.

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1. Explain more, sooner. For a number of months I didn’t even see a connection between the releases and watched a Twitch episode where I was told they would all connect visibly later on. I want to follow the story, keep surprises but let us know the main plot.

2. Follow already made lore. We want to go deeper, not wider. Since the first game people wanted to know more about the Mursaat rather than have Utopia(though I still want Utopia). We have dragons, the Nightmare Court and many other lore sections that can go deeper. I would have liked to see more of a connection with Scarlet being a evil Nightmare Court commander that starts using her influence to take over parts of the world and work with or have Inquest sub commanders to create (game fitting) inventions to wake the dragons.(My example to show similar storyline and conclusion but different theme.) As it was, she popped out of nowhere, controlled masses(Aetherblade, Watchwork, and Toxic) and somehow created 50ft tall robot puppets. I enjoyed a number of the patches but was sad that for the most part lore wise it just didn’t feel like it fit.

3. Write believable characters. It seemed Scarlet got more control of the world than Zhaitan at times and a number of the updates it seemed all the good in the world could barely hold it at bay. An evasive needle in somebodies side is more interesting than an over-powerful evil genius. Side-comment: One annoying thing in films/games is when the good/bad character stands talking to its enemy about everything under the sun before they kill them and thereby leaving time for the enemy to escape. Scarlet is down, jump at the opportunity to take her out.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Guild Wars has been one of my favorite games and I still play the original quite a bit. I have confidence that you will learn from the weaknesses in this last Season and make Season 2 much better.

1.) No more one dimensional, mega-powerful, non-believable villains that seem like they popped out of a Power Ranger’s storyline. Developing for GW2 isn’t an excuse to play out your pre-adolescent, make believe fantasies or resurrect your ideas for a “awesome D&D” campaign you detailed in crayon when you were eight.

2.) Show us the story, don’t tell us the story. Focus on quality, not cliche or flash in lieu of quality writing.

3.) Enough with “twists” and “encouraging speculation”, only to sound very disappointed that people speculated right and saw your twists coming. The tactics themselves are cheap and the level of disappointment that they were predictable, by some, implies that the focus for season two is twists so far out in left field that no one will see them coming and events that are so lacking in believability or foundation that no one will be able to predict them. Stop! Put down those gaudy, amateurish and just plain sad writing strategies and write with some dignity.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You don’t need a big imposing villain like that, which is where a lot of bad stories go wrong. You really don’t need to hang a big sign on someone going “We’ve got a bad—- here!” in the first five minutes. Identifying the villain? Sure enough, even Game of Thrones did that in ten pages or less.

(Heck, it gave you, what, three of them real fast?)

What’s needed is to show them being effective and believable instead of just “awesome”. That’s where Scarlet went wrong.

I’m glad you put “awesome” in quotes. I’m sure some of the developers thought Scarlet was “Awesome” and to a degree that would make up for all the other absolute failings of the character and the story. However, “Awesome” is not how I would describe Scarlet or her story. In many ways, Scarlet and her storyline are an over the top example of how NOT to design a villain and a believable story. An example so absurd that you would be able to laugh at it and know that no one would be so bad as to actually write such a thing!

I think the best advice for ANet, as a whole, is to stop trying so hard to convince people that the studio staff has been replaced by pod people with about as much understanding of human thought and culture as the Coneheads.

I think everything is covered in here.
We are all looking forward to Season 2 and hope A-Net is working with us and not against us.

People will spend way more money or even start spending money when thay have a fantastic story and real good LS experiences.
This will lead to people actually buy story stuff from the gem store.
The shoulder and glove parts from scarlett were a good example.

- So no more zerg after zerg after zerg after zerg
- No more allmighty bad guys, give them at least a weakness or so. You guys did great in GW1 and doing the bad guys
- At least half believable and likeable charcters.
- A story people love to follow, something that is meaningful to them. We had a lot great posts in here. The real problem was actually that nobody cared about Queen Jenna or Scarlett.
-All in all create something meaningful where a player gets the feeling he is benefiting the story or the world
-

I somewhat understand Anet not building from the original lore all the time. Seems like every fantasy or even every story nowadays is One Ancient Evil Awakening and thats it. Old threats coming back, all the time, and we either look for ancient weapons that were effective against them, or develop something new and ALWAYS too dangerous. The aetherblades were a new threat at least, as well as the clockwork nightmares. Even though you can argue one is just a pirate from the sky and the other is just a golem uprising, so nothing new.

What would be great is to have the old Lore, and build on top of it, creating something new, while keeping loyal to the base idea. Dont push technology too far, and keep magic and magitech equally consistent in what it can do and why. Keep to the rules.

Okay, so on some thought, here are my three:

#1 Don’t be so stingy with information!

A lot of people have been talking about this and building up for the big payoff as being mutually incompatible, but I don’t think this is the case. It would have been possible to have included a lot more information in the early and middle steps of the Living Story while introducing Scarlet as the antagonist no earlier, and still leaving her ultimate goal (the ‘big payoff’) a mystery, while still filling in a lot of the story in the meantime.

Take, for instance, Flame and Frost. It took us until the last few months to find out much. In the finale of that, all we got was the stuff leading up to the payoff – our first hint of Scarlet, and a bit of bluster that the alliance would survive the dragons. It took us until not long ago to find that the MA only comprised of factions within the Flame Legion and dredge – that thing about moles is something we should have known (they’re like world events, like champions – we know they’re bad for us but we just can’t leave’em aloooone). We do see that there are ‘regular’ Flame Legion still around after the MA, but we didn’t know until recently that the MA Flame Legion are outcasts hoping that their heretical actions will prove to be justified by success. Our characters – and therefore us – should have known after F&F that the MA did not consist of the entirety of the Flame Legion and the dredge.

We also should have known why they were looking for an alliance in the first place – keep the identity of who brokered it a secret, sure, but we should have at least seen the grunt’s-eye view of what they’re getting out of the alliance and why it’s worth departing from the usual foreign policy of the races in question. Instead, what we basically just got was “We’ll burn you all” and “they triiiicked us!!!”

Similarly, we still know next to nothing about the Aetherblades. I don’t think we can even say for sure whether they’re native to Tyria or not, let alone anything about where they came from and what they were before joining Scarlet. It took us until recently to find anything out about the development of the Watchknights – that was a story element that could have used an opportunity to talk to one of the makers, even if the link with steam creatures was kept until later (besides: While that explains how Scarlet got control of the Watchknights, how did she get control of the steam creatures? Was she their inventor all along?)

There’s something else I was going to bring up as something big we should know (or should have known) but haven’t/hadn’t been given, but it’s slipped my mind. Maybe I’ll remember it later.

#2 Keep in mind the rest of the world:

I think one of the flaws of the Living Story is that it only really seems to acknowledge the rest of the world when it’s convenient.

This is intertwined somewhat with the Idiot Ball plots mentioned beforehand. In some cases, this is deliberate – the Lion’s Arch council clearly dropped the ball, and the Priory was embarrassed to find that one of Scarlet’s hideouts was practically underfoot the whole time. However, the bigger problem is that I don’t think the writing team for the story has been thinking enough on how the rest of the world would react to events. As some posters have pointed out earlier, the Captain’s Council failure wasn’t just theirs – the Order of Whispers also failed to manipulate them into taking the threat more seriously. Was the Order of Whispers deliberately passed the ball as well – or did the writers simply forget to consider how the Order might react? It’s an understandable mistake, but I’d have to say that my feeling is the latter.

Much of the Idiot Plot nature of the first season LS that people have referred to has come about not because of how characters in-game reacted, but where characters that one might expect to react didn’t. Why didn’t local forces such as the Seraph and Wardens take a bigger part in the Tower of Nightmares events? Or my personal bogeyman – why did the Order of Whispers and the Priory ignore probes that were practically on their doorstep throughout Wintersday?

I’m guessing the probes were put in early because of the positive response to the Tower of Nightmares teaser, but the ToN was a very good use of foreshadowing. We saw that things were changing, we saw clear evidence that people had taken an interest (although as noted above, I would expected the Seraph to have had more of a presence) and clear reasons why we couldn’t go in and deal with those problems right away – reasons that were solved within the plot.

The probes, though, were clumsily handled. Even with the forcefields, the probes should not have been effectively ignored by the authorities and orders of Tyria for the duration of the season. As soon as they went in, there should have been events of them being investigated, particularly those in strategic locations such as right outside the Chantry of Secrets. This would have shown that the rest of the world was actually taking an interest rather than only being drawn in when it was convenient for the story – and, additionally, would have given a reason for the probes to become destroyable (someone finds a way to break the forcefield around them, requiring Scarlet to start posting guards on them) rather than just magically flipping state like they seem to do from our perspective.

More generally speaking: What IS going on in the rest of the world? I think I’ve started seeing some new events popping up that aren’t LS-related in some parts of the map, so kudos for that. However, every major non-holiday event since Lost Shores has either been Scarlet or a response to something Scarlet did. That peace summit outside Ebonhawke has gone on for about year and a half now. Any progress? What about the rest of the world?

#3 Don’t load too much on one villain – keep it practical:

We’re coming into the ‘Villain Sue’ nature of Scarlet here…

The first backlash against Scarlet started with the short story on her backstory, which basically read like “and then Ceara became the best at this and this and this and this…”

How much of that was it really necessary for the story for Scarlet to be the second-best in the world at? By the end of the story, she had allies and minions of all the major races as well as dredge and krait – all Scarlet really needed to be was a skilled engineer with a solid grounding in the asura curriculum, and the rest could have come from her minions. A dredge smith with secrets stolen from the dwarves for the metallurgy, a Nightmare Court alchemist with a taste for dissecting live hylek for the poisons, and so on – instead of Scarlet being a single hard-to-swallow polymath, she could have had a full rogue’s gallery of helpers… and wouldn’t it have been much more satisfying to take them down in the second battle for Lion’s Arch than a bunch of nameless champions?

The other mismatch is… just how big is Scarlet’s organisation, really? The Twisted came from the Watchknights, but in just one Clockwork Chaos-style invasion event, there are enough Twisted that if Kryta had kept them, they could have pushed the charr back to the Wall and had enough left over to deal with that little centaur problem back home. Were there really that many to steal, or did Scarlet build her own? In that case, where did the resources come from?

The ‘resources’ side of things is also another problem. We’re told that the alliances under her command are formed of subfactions of factions, yet they can form massive armies that can afford to throw away thousands for little gain. Her organisation is small enough that it’s essentially untrackable, and yet it’s gathered the resources for the Breachmaker, the Marionette, fleets of airships, probes spread across Tyria and swarms of Twisted. Basically, whenever it’s convenient for the plot for her organisation to be small and hidden it’s small, but then she suddenly has massive armies that make the charr-human war look like a skirmish.

At the risk of over-generalising, there are two ways something can be a credible threat to a nation. One is to be a nation itself, or to have strength similar to one. The dragons fit into that category – they have large armies and more-or-less defined territories, and the downside is that it’s reasonably easy to identify the locations they operate in (accessing them may be more difficult). The other way is essentially the Bond villain approach – the villain’s conventional forces are small enough that any middle power could crush them if they were located, but they’re also small enough to hide out in an extinct island volcano and they have some superweapon or diabolical plot that magnifies their threat far beyond their conventional forces. And then, it’s up to Bond to locate and infiltrate that hidden base and put a stop to the plot.

On the face of it, Scarlet appears to be a Bond villain type. Most of the events of real story significance are Bond-villain-type escapades. The exception is Flame and Frost – the MA had an army that had Hoelbrak and the Black Citadel genuinely concerned, but it would have been perfectly okay for the threat to change in nature.

The problem is, Scarlet’s organisation is a Schrodinger’s-box of both. It would be quite reasonable for the survivors of the Molten Alliance to have switched from being an army to a part of a terrorist organisation after their defeat, although such a flip is currently purely extrapolation (going back to point 1 here). If it had stopped there, that would be fine… but instead, we had the organisation attempting to seize and hold strategic territories in Clockwork Chaos (something that Bond villain types generally don’t do, since that provides a target for superior forces to attack) and having the resources to place and have significant guards on probes all across Tyria, and that’s just what immediately comes to mind. Basically, they were too big to be an organisation that’s small enough to avoid notice until it strikes.

For the record, on this, one of the successes of the final chapters was, I think, that it actually did manage to end up being an invasion of Lion’s Arch in a manner that feels realistic for a gambit from a Bond villain that’s planning to leave afterwards. It’s the miasma that makes the attack successful. Twisted remain relatively few and are placed in strategic locations, rather than hordes that could overrun continents. The drill only needed to be defended for long enough to do its thing and then Scarlet’s forces were probably planning to leave, and it was a freak of the wind that allowed the heroes to win in the end after the miasma had been dispersed.

I guess to summarise on this point:

Keep in mind what you want the villain to be, and focus on this. Before giving the villain every skill they need for their plot, consider whether they actually need to have all of those skills, or whether subordinates can fill in instead. Know what their modus operandi is and their capabilities are, and stick to it – this may change as their fortunes rise or fall, but should do so in a realistic fashion. If you want content that doesn’t fit the villain’s modus operandi, use another villain for that month.

Here’s a suggestion.

We need to kill Zhaitan.

“But we already did that,” you say. No, no we didn’t. Zhaitan died, yes, and we fired the guns that shot him down, but we didn’t earn it. It was given to us. We literally could not lose. It felt completely predetermined, because it was.

But think about it. This is a Dragon that is the personification of death. Unlike the humorous but figurative shout of “I am death incarnate!” by the male asura player character, Zhaitan literally is Death, Incarnate.

How do you kill Death Incarnate? By shooting it a bunch of times? Really? Fighting Tequatl is more complicated than that, and he’s just Zhaitan’s laundry boy. Zhaitan has control over death itself. We kill him once and expect it to take? For Grenth’s sake, we never even saw a body.

How can we not think he will come back, twice as angry as before?

Zhaitan was toying with us. For whatever reason, he wanted us to believe we’d killed him, probably to get us to take our attention off of Orr, so that he could come back when we least expected it, ten times as powerful and a hundred times scary, and make us pay for the breathtaking hubris of assuming we could actually kill Death Made Manifest.

Bring back Zhaitan. Force us to kill him again, really kill him this time. Require that we use our brains and figure out a way to kill Death, fatally and permanently.

And this time, make us earn it.

Fiontar.4695:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You don’t need a big imposing villain like that, which is where a lot of bad stories go wrong. You really don’t need to hang a big sign on someone going “We’ve got a bad—- here!” in the first five minutes. Identifying the villain? Sure enough, even Game of Thrones did that in ten pages or less.

(Heck, it gave you, what, three of them real fast?)

What’s needed is to show them being effective and believable instead of just “awesome”. That’s where Scarlet went wrong.

I’m glad you put “awesome” in quotes. I’m sure some of the developers thought Scarlet was “Awesome” and to a degree that would make up for all the other absolute failings of the character and the story. However, “Awesome” is not how I would describe Scarlet or her story. In many ways, Scarlet and her storyline are an over the top example of how NOT to design a villain and a believable story. An example so absurd that you would be able to laugh at it and know that no one would be so bad as to actually write such a thing!

I could have made Scarlet work, though, if I’d done things only slightly differently. She had the right components, but they weren’t really handled quite correctly. But change things a little, give things a little spin differently, and it wouldn’t have been so bad as people reacted to it.

But don’t get hung up on how Scarlet wasn’t “awesome” enough, that’s not the point. The point is seeing time and time again, MMOs trying to make their villains memorable by trying too hard to sell us on how great and powerful they are. You don’t need to have world-threatening powers to be effective as a villain. You want proof?

I’ll go for an easy one: “Lord Petyr Baelish”. Almost no threatening physique, no overblown appearance, but his personality and connections make him a daunting obstacle. And he will smile as he waits for an opening to slide in the knife.

Dig hard enough and you’ll find some other villains, or at least antagonists, who hold the role and are effective (and efficient) without falling into the trap of needing to be personally powerful in the way some writers push their villains. Heck, even in GW2 we have Minister Caudecus.

I think the best advice for ANet, as a whole, is to stop trying so hard to convince people that the studio staff has been replaced by pod people with about as much understanding of human thought and culture as the Coneheads.

Nah, I’d rather they play that up so complaints like this actually feel real instead of hyperbole.

There is something else I need to mention about this story. It’s a comparison of resources between the sides involved.

Scarlet seems to have nearly limitless resources and yet is unable to conquer Lion’s arch let alone the world. Nightmare tower? Yes we have a 800 meter skyscraper in the middle of a lake hidden with a magic spell! Material strength aside it would have taken some years and some decent resources to build that in a world where the average house is thatched roof and wooden.
Flying aetherblade drill ship: Ok. It’s metal. This means that Scarlet or at least the Aetherblades have access to:

• Mines
• Metal workshops
• An Airship dock at least half the size of a mountain
• A science workshop that can research all the tech in it.

With that kind of resources we shouldn’t be able to thwart her at all.

Something I thought missing was an interlude between the main story and the greater LS surrounding Scarlet.

As brought up before, the orders had joined forces to form an nearly invincible army, navy, and air-force; with the player character as the #2 guy and the point-man on any operation that would take place outside of Orr (Trahearne having devoted himself to it’s restoration).

There needed to be explanation(s) as to the impotence of the pact and why the PC is not able to call down tanks, choppers, and massive air firepower against Scarlet’s forces.

Premise: The representatives of the three orders cannot agree on the next target. During this Trahearne stays devoted to his Wyld Hunt; the restoration of Orr, essentially shirking his duties as Marshall.
The Order of Whispers demands that Kralkatorrik be the first target; so that the order can hope to pursue it’s ancient feud with Palawa Joko. The other orders, feel differently and with the continued silence from the Marhsall, the orders go their separate ways.

This accomplishes several things:
1. Explains why Scarlet is not squashed like a bug 3 seconds after showing up
2. Explains why the Risen are still thick as fleas in Orr without any changes to the landscape (without resources, Trahearne’s task is impeded and slowed greatly
3. Also explains why no offensive actions have been undertaken against any of the other elder dragons.

This would explain why the commander is slumming it with DE 2.0; and why the original DE might not be back in the saddle.

Agree with the OP on every single bit. Anyway here is my top 3:

1) Give us some villain background (in game)
Any and all information that is important for the player to understand why something happened or why the villain did something should be ingame. Most of the players probably never read the blog-post(s) about scarlet. Let’s summarize the information we have about scarlet through the game: she used random enemies to attack random stuff to locate the ley lines underneath LA to wake up a dragon.
Why did she do that? Why did the enemies help her? Why didn’t the enemies ever revolt against her plans (we kept killing them and it’s not that they got anything in return)? Who was inside scarlet’s head? (No, can’t be the dragon because it would be very silly if the dragon needed to create “minion” to wake himself up). Why did she decide to wake up a dragon? Where did Scarlet get all the money (and materials) to build the toxic tower, her gigantic robots, the flying ufo thing?

2) The world is boring
So some crazy cat lady shows up and awakens a dragon. That story was VERY predictable and didn’t contain any surprises and often felt pieces were missing. Be honest: how many people keep watching their favorite show if they can predict exactly what will happen for the next few months? Tyria is a very big world you’re seriously telling me that there isn’t anything at all that could have been used to make a sudden unexpected turn of events?
For example: did the Jotun just figure that with scarlet out there, they should stop all of their attacks and watch tv while we focus on scarlet?

3) Reward us, but don’t put existing stuff behind a paywall
The ‘feature’ of having crafting stations, bank, trading posts close to each-other gets removed and placed behind a paywall. And to make it even worse the ‘lifetime’ access was expensive and only available for limited time.
And at the same time the content we have is at least a year old. I think that the last update that actually added content that is available permanently was … the fractals one.
Meanwhile we get a lot of updates with content that is (mostly) available for a limited time. The stuff that doesn’t get removed is more decorative then anything else (For example: see kessex hills.)

A full season later we are still were we started… no new zones, no new classes, no races, no new weapons, classes still can’t use all weapons, still no decent grouping system and wvw still needs major attention.
The ‘Zephyr Sanctum’ update was my favorite update and I was hoping for it to return as a full permanent zone that required you to use the wind/sun/etc… powers to explore, do hearts, jumping puzzles, vistas,.. but I’m currently having the feeling that even IF we see it again it will be exactly the same as last year
(Yes, there is the ‘Feature Pack’ coming, but that doesn’t really count as it is only made for new players and makes stuff easier (traits, dye, wardrobe,…), but doesn’t give new content)

NathanH.1465:

The ‘Zephyr Sanctum’ update was my favorite update and I was hoping for it to return as a full permanent zone that required you to use the wind/sun/etc… powers to explore, do hearts, jumping puzzles, vistas,.. but I’m currently having the feeling that even IF we see it again it will be exactly the same as last year

I just have to say that I was hoping for this too. Zephyr Sanctum was by far the best of the Living Story updates and it’s criminal that it wasn’t made permanent content.

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Hope you don’t mind if I drop just one.

1. Intrigue. GW2 has been very good guys vs. bad guys so far. Aside from the overarching dragon plot where there’s little room for ambiguity, we could use some bad guys who aren’t superhuman, don’t know they’re bad guys, and may change sides if it suits them.

Orr’s cleaning up. Imagine the political fireworks if some charr legion decided to finish what they started 250 years ago? Strained, perhaps broken relations with Kryta and Ebonhawke, nervous truce with the Pact and Lionguard, envy and skirmishes with the other High Legions, looking over their shoulders at Kralkatorrik and Palawa Joko, and in the middle of all this Rata Sum is going to find some way to profit.

This thread has really summed things up pretty much perfectly. As for the Anet respsonses:

BobbyStein.2315:

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

1) To stop saying exactly what I’ve quoted above. Sure, this isn’t entirely relevant to the pretty abysmal writing we’ve had in the Living Story (not trying to be mean, but I could write better than the end product of it and am willing to prove it), but it is a major flaw to feedback gathering. Every non-CDI thread that gets any notice is just referred to the CDIs and is sometimes asked the same dreaded question from every CDI – three things aren’t enough. With the path Anet’s walked down, a lot more than three things need to be done; sorry.

2) Sort out the game as a whole. The main gripe I have with the Living Story is that it’s seemingly the only thing that’s being worked on. There’s barely anything to do in this game one and a half years after release. Fractals are the only sizeable new content we’ve had that’s actually stayed around. The Living Story will attract a lot less negative attention if you can keep the playerbase entertained and happy with the core game.

3) Since you’ve asked for three, I’ll give three: write something decent. I know, it’s not very helpful, but it’s the truth. Read the forums, threads like this point out major flaws. You couldn’t just write a terrible book and expect it to become a bestseller and make a fortune, when it’s just a plain terrible book. Saying ‘oh, we’ll try harder next time’ isn’t really good enough… this time went out to your customers and not only have a large number of them disliked it – it’s actually had a negative impact on the game and has taken away from things they actually want (such as expansions or new content). Look back at Guild Wars – there were plots and stories back there. They were good. Compare them to… this… thing you’ve flung out here. How do they differ?

Sorry for the ‘bad’ feedback, because I know it’s not as constructive as you’d like. But in my opinion, you shouldn’t be trying to improve the Living Story; or even trying to salvage it. Wipe the slate clean and get working on the Crystal Desert, Cantha, Elona or write something decent involving the remaining dragons, or the White Mantle/Lazarus the Dire, or something that isn’t just an annoying, two dimensional ‘The Mary of all Sues’ being chased down by pretty shallow heroes.

4) Lesbians are fine. I have nothing against lesbians. However, human beings (along with sylvari, charr, norn, asura and I presume any other inhabitants of Tyria) can have more to them than just ‘lesbian’, or ‘lesbian who hiccups when nervous, but this was only explained in idle dialogue that the majority of players would never see’. If we’re going to keep this group of NPCs… could you please add the C to some of them?

1. Show me the bad guy early, especially if I’m going to resolve everything through violence. I should want to get my hands on the person, I should be mad if they get away, and so on. Get to the point, then build the narrative. Even if the final baddy is a bit of a swerve, I’d like to have some investment in the enemy characters as well as the friendly ones.

2. add fishing to the game

3. Better aftermath/epilogue content at the end. Right now everyone is just jumping around Vigil Keep and there are a few sad survivors NPCs in Lion’s Arch.

Still no anet reply? Are these ideas being read/cared about?

BobbyStein.2315:

I’d like to echo Colin’s sentiments. Thanks to the OP and everyone else for posting your constructive feedback here. We’re always evaluating our past work and looking for ways to improve our future releases. Sometimes those improvements may come in the form of developing new technology to support our vision or improve the player experience. Other times it means evolving our writing and game design processes. In other cases, resource and scheduling changes are necessary to support the additional workload. The potential solutions will vary depending on the challenge in front of us.

Part of the development process is prioritization, so I’d like to know what you feel are the highest impact items you think would improve our storytelling delivery. What are your top three requests?

Technology has absolutely nothing to do with the awful story of LS season 1. I feel like there is an inability to say “these characters & stories are just not good” & as long as that is one of the ways you’re looking at it, then the story will never get better.

1) Stop writing stories constructed around personal desires. Unless the writer prioritizes the Guild Wars universe over their personal fetishes the story is never going to feel right. Scarlet is the ultimate example of this. She’s such an obvious pet character Villain Sue. Her purpose seems to be to aggrandize someone’s RP persona. The massive focus on Sylvari being the key to most everything is another. No, we don’t need “catch up” for the Sylvari, they have more power, ability & importance than all the races combined. you tried, most people didn’t pic them, move on. You can’t force us to like them by making them “moar awesome”. Norn are the most throw-away race in the game, they have ZERO plot importance, but people like them 2nd only to humans. I don’t care what your world view is, or what race you like best, stop shoehorning it into Guild Wars, just make cool GW stories.

2) Make Guild Wars like Guild Wars. General Morgan, Master of Whispers, Koss, Brother Mhenlo, Vekk, & Varesh were cool. Marjory & Kasmeer are hip-lesbian-couple-for-relavance. Forgal & Tybalt were cool. Brahm is an emasculated & purposefully secondary character. The issues come when the desire to write the characters is based more on something other than Guild Wars. It’s why people keep saying this is like fan fic. It’s more about “what do I like?” than “what would be a cool GW story?” This could be happening by accident, but since the theme carries through much of the LS, it’s hard to believe. All I can think to do is talk to the GW1 (especially NF) writers. if it’s the same people.. well…

GW used to be my favorite game, with one of my favorite universes. The Living Story alone made me stop playing for a few months. The Characters are so dumb that I have to actively ignore it to enjoy the art & game systems. That has never happened. Going from my favorite game universe to my least favorite. The direction & tone change is so obvious it’s bizzare. The vision is broken. It needs to change.

Additionally:
I dont know how stories are written at Anet, or any other game developer company. However, through actually roleplaying, i came to learn that the best and most believable story comes out from interactions of different ideas.

One writer takes the side of one character/faction/area, and another writer takes the other side, through their interactions a genuine believable story is born.

What does that mean: Every relevant person should have someone in the writing team who specificly considers how that person would react to everything going around in the Living Story. Every writer must consider how their assigned characters or factions would react to both the Living Story, AND the reactions of the characters/factions of the other writer’s.
Not one writer writing one story, and another writing the next in line.

The roleplaying method preserves the actual feel of the characters (as they are not passed from writer to writer from one story to the next), while providing the possibility of character development through interactions with other characters that are not acting according to the same writer’s imagination. Also, if every important (and even less relevant) person has their dedicated writer, it is less likely that there will be an “idiot-ball” passed around between the various supposedly important persons.

That’s an interesting point, there. I’m not sure how viable the technical side of it is, but it would probably help a lot of each major faction and character at least had a dedicated writer who looked after them (even if one writer handles multiple factions, it means that at least it’s the same writer on a faction each time).

I know there’s been plenty of points made but I figured I’d like to post an opinion if the writers are truely looking for feedback because why the hell not? I play to!

1) TL;DR version.

Less focus on their sexuality and more focus on who they are, at the moment they feel like forced cool archetypes from anime. More interaction, let us be apart of their past and experience it firsthand and become apart of it! Less ignoring the universe around them and the realities of Tyria. They feel like the scooby doo gang of Tyria at the moment and that’s not a good thing.. A characters flaws is what helps make them interesting, not how perfect and powerful they are.

Less modern amercanization of themes of what was formerly a unique universe. Use words relevant to the setting, everytime someone uses “AWESOME” I die inside. More conflict between the races, less scooby doo unrealistically friendly. It feels like you’re trying to turn guild wars into a brady bunch version of itself. (http://tinyurl.com/pwwjttm)

Just to finish on this, to give a real life example Scotland has enough people that want independance and they’ve been apart of the UK officially since 1706. So in contrast why would the humans of Tyria just forget everything an entirely different race has done after only recently making peace after years of horrible war? Just putting that out there because it seems to be overlooked all the time.

-

Rant:

2)
I get the impression a lot of complaints about the current characters, Rox, Kasmeer and Jory are over looked or someone at Anet just really loves them but I think you need to work on making the characters less one dimensional.

Gwen for example, we got to interact with her right from the get go buying her that flute, seeing how her life was affected by the searing. We interact with her right up until she finally gets married, now I could actually care about that because I actually got to knew her – she had a personality – she was fleshed out.

Kas and Maj kinda feel like someones political opinion shoehorned into the media, their main focus is “we’re a lesbian couple.” there’s hardly anything else to them.. They feel like corporate USA, happy sunshine political correctness that ignores the realities of (Tyrian) life. I’m homosexual myself and I think if you’re trying to get a message across it shouldn’t be with characters whose soul persona is their sexuality, there should be more to them than that.. There is to every other person in existence.

I know they do have backgrounds and a bit of story but we never interacted with that at all, how is the player suppose to care? “Oh look Maj and Kas are an official couple—but wait why should I care I barely know them?” We don’t know them..They’re just sort of.. “there.” It just feels like fan fiction with no substance.

Next time you introduce a character why not let the player interact with them rather than be minion 646077 that follows them around. Let us engage with them like you did with Gwen! ( Seeing Kasmeers backstory actually happening infront of us, let us experience it first hand. )

3)
Rox feels kinda odd, she’s basically a “speshul snowflake” cutsie wootsie anime kitten with a bug eyed pet that doesn’t really feel like a charr at all and her side kick Braham who’s just there to sort of.. Be there. It’s just so kitten shallow to me. How is she supposed to live up to characters like Pyre when she’s not even remotely consistent to the charr themselves?

Why is it as well that we’re ignoring realities of the game? I mean for instance the charr and humans, you walk around Divinity’s Reach and the general consensus is distrust and hate. You pass a lot of NPCs saying things like “If a charr comes here I’ll show them my meat cleaver!” “Officer, that charr is back again etc etc.” “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Why doesn’t this apply to Rox, Kas and Majory? Can you imagine if they actually had to earn each others trust and use that in the story? Stuff like that adds a sense of depth and gives it a sense of “realism” and yes I know it’s not GW1 but Gwen and Pyre were much more interesting than these three to me just because they had conflict rather than feeling really.. modern america and politically correct.

“Totally super mega awesome lets be friends hihih even though my people have repeatedly tried to genocide on you silly humans. Hhihi. And humans drove us from our lands, hihih!”

pixiedancer.1526:

Less modern amercanization of themes of what was formerly a unique universe. Use words relevant to the setting, everytime someone uses “AWESOME” I die inside…..

….I get the impression a lot of complaints about the current characters, Rox, Kasmeer and Jory are over looked or someone at Anet just really loves them but I think you need to work on making the characters less one dimensional….

…..Kas and Maj kinda feel like someones political opinion shoehorned into the media, their main focus is “we’re a lesbian couple.” there’s hardly anything else to them.. They feel like corporate USA, happy sunshine political correctness that ignores the realities of (Tyrian) life. I’m homosexual myself and I think if you’re trying to get a message across it shouldn’t be with characters whose soul persona is their sexuality, there should be more to them than that…..

…..Rox feels kinda odd, she’s basically a “speshul snowflake” cutsie wootsie anime kitten with a bug eyed pet that doesn’t really feel like a charr at all and her side kick Braham who’s just there to sort of.. Be there. It’s just so kitten shallow to me. How is she supposed to live up to characters like Pyre when she’s not even remotely consistent to the charr themselves?…….

Thank you… I feel like so much damage is already done.. I don’t know if I’ll every really love the universe again, but at least it’s possible to not hate it forever more. It’s been turned into a modernized political opinion vehicle which is quite possibly the most annoying writing choice for any story on the face of the earth.

I have a few other pointers I feel that could work:

Make a Personal Nemesis, PERSONAL

Its worth noting that a Personal Nemesis should actually be someone that makes your life, hell, on a one to one level, hurting the friends you come to love, destroying the landscapes you worked hard to build.

A fantastic clip from a certain movie should give more than enough reference as to what a personal Nemesis needs to do, I believe this clip sums up exactly what emotions it should provoke.

http://youtu.be/e7X01_j_oDA?t=25s

The banter between Kahn and Kirk in this scene sums up perfectly what a Personal Nemesis should do to the Main Character, they need to “hurt” you.

Not only that but looking at the wonderful emotion conveyed and cruel emotion in Kahn’s tone you get a shiver as he hurts Kirk personally.

This, is what a Personal Nemesis, should do.

Another example?

Enemy At the Gates:

You don’t even need emotion or words in this scene, this is the kind of hatred you should feel for your personal Nemesis as they meet their final moments.

Grim, cruel, and cold, the farewell salute of the German Officer before he takes a bullet to the skull shows just how cold the protagonist is towards him, he took away everything, he wont even give him a salute or a farewell, he dies, now.

DarksunG.9537:

2) Make Guild Wars like Guild Wars. General Morgan, Master of Whispers, Koss, Brother Mhenlo, Vekk, & Varesh were cool. Marjory & Kasmeer are hip-lesbian-couple-for-relavance. Forgal & Tybalt were cool. Brahm is an emasculated & purposefully secondary character. The issues come when the desire to write the characters is based more on something other than Guild Wars. It’s why people keep saying this is like fan fic. It’s more about “what do I like?” than “what would be a cool GW story?” This could be happening by accident, but since the theme carries through much of the LS, it’s hard to believe. All I can think to do is talk to the GW1 (especially NF) writers. if it’s the same people.. well…

GW used to be my favorite game, with one of my favorite universes. The Living Story alone made me stop playing for a few months. The Characters are so dumb that I have to actively ignore it to enjoy the art & game systems. That has never happened. Going from my favorite game universe to my least favorite. The direction & tone change is so obvious it’s bizzare. The vision is broken. It needs to change.

For this I want to add:
Please do not base anything more on Guild Wars 1.

While an unpopular opinion, I thought GW1 was a bunch of really good ideas stuck in a terrible and underdeveloped game which never got anywhere lore-wise and just ticked off the “Default fantasy story”-boxes.

It’s sort-of like when people try to tell me that Diablo 2 was dark in tone, and I keep wondering whether they played the same over-the-top colour-hypefest I played. I think I outgrew those “dark” and “heroic” tales 10 years ago at least.

Anyhow the point is: Scarlet excepted, the characters of LS1 were pretty kitten good. Yes, they don’t at all fill a “usual” fantasy story. And that’s good. I played dozens of those, it’s getting stale. I also like that I was very specifically not the hero until the very last split-second. It makes no sense if I’m supposed to be “the” hero, this is a MMO. So please, more of that (of the less-Hero part :P ).
It just took a while for the actual events to pick up. So as long as the event-part aligns more towards the last 4-5 patches, I’m happy for LS2.

My one wish is this: stop trying to tell character-based stories in an MMO; it just doesn’t work. Instead of putting the story in the form of a character or collection of characters one has to stick to in order to progress, rather tell a setting-based story built into the game world itself. This works far better in an open-world non-linear game in my opinion. Of course, there are still going to be some NPCs that are more important than others, leaders of factions and so forth, but making those, or any other specific characters, the sole focus and/or conduit of the story is a fool’s errand. A legion of small(but still well done) characters is always going to do a better job of fleshing out a world than a handful of titanic personalities.

+1
Seems like Anet has replaced most of its story writers, because in GW1 story was quite good whereas in GW2’s Living Story it’s (imo) horrible.