Guild Wars 2

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

Great to have you on board!

My issues with the main storylines (Personal Story and Living Story) can be boiled down to lack o’ acknowledgement and loss without replacement.

Loss without Replacement: Others have talked a bit about how the LS feels like constant destruction without reconstruction. I can go along with destruction, but only so much, and then it feels like the writers are messing with me and just taking fun parts of the game away. This also causes problems with suspension of disbelief, because no actual living people are going to stay in the same state for a year. They would rebuild, move, etc.

Nothing has really replaced Lion’s Arch as a city that feels intriguing, surprising and alive. Kessex Hills’ story is all confused now – the human story and the Living Story both run through there, and they don’t get told well. The Sylvari racial story is also heavily impacted, although I haven’t finished LS2 so I’m withholding judgement on that.

I would love it if we could do in Dry Top what we were told would happen in Orr – cleanse the land of the dragon’s poison. That would be awesome, and a refreshing change from battling bitterly to preserve the status quo and failing even at that.

Lack o’ Acknowledgement: Both the Personal Story and the Living Story suffer from this. Players want to see that their choices matter. Without that, it feels like the stories we play through are fake, or wastes of time. This is totally separate from whether a zone is impacted or not. My experience of Tyria’s story is basically the same see-monster, slay-monster regardless of the zone art.

A game that does this better is Elder Scrolls Morrowind. In Morrowind, you start the game as nobody. As you gain power, merchants start remembering your name. Your guild members notice your achievements (sometimes only to insult you, but still). Political and religious rivals threaten you. This is all 99% text changes, but it makes the world feel alive, because it reacts to your choices.

That’s hard to do in an open world MMO, sure. But in Living Story instances, where the game knows who is there, it’s jarring to be treated like a random shmuck. The LS plots are written as a complete do over, which negates most of the work we put into the Personal Story. Why don’t people get excited about one of the heroes of Orr coming to help them? In LS1, a remark in the molten dungeon instance if the party leader had certain story achievements, for example, might have made things feel more continuous.

Both of my big issues boil down to continuity – Tyria’s stories don’t feel connected to each other or to my actions in the game. So far, the Living Story has been about losing fun experiences for a plot that ignores my choices.

I don’t want to get invested in people and places if their inevitable fate is to be disintegrated all over the landscape. I do want to see Tyria living and growing and dealing with previous changes. Dialogues in instances, letters from people I’ve met and organic changes to address the effects of previous story updates might help to tie the stories together.

TL;DR Stories that are all destruction, doom and failing to preserve peace get old. Time for a change. That change should include ways for players to see that their previous choices were important by having the player experience acknowledge those choices and not just by changing the zone art.

EDIT: Changed “lack of” to “lack o’” to avoid kittening.

On the lack o acknowledgement thing, actually:

One thing that I think contributed to the Trahearne hate is that Trahearne gets a lot of hero-worship in the personal story. The line “That’s being rescued by a Vee Eye Pee with a capital Vee” (possibly misremembered, but you know the one) comes to mind. Conversely, after we’ve been a major part of the successful operation to bring down Zhaitan, one which in the final custscene of the PS leads to fireworks and other celebrations in all the major cities… and yet in S2 we’ve largely been treated as a nobody. Even that norn who challenges you to a boastoff in Snowden (“I’m [PC name].” “Oh yeah? I’ve heard of what [PC name] has done, and you’re far too scrawny to have done that!”) gives you more acknowledgement through not believing that you are who you say you are, and that’s in a relative newbie area.

Now, being a notable hero doesn’t mean that people are necessarily going to do what you want them to, but a bit more acknowledgement from NPCs that the PC is kind of a big deal (or possibly further along that track :P) would help in that regard. Councilor Phlunt might be arrogant enough to see himself above that, but a Seraph commander should probably have recognised the name and given some sort of ‘With you here, I’m sure we can handle anything these wilds might throw at us!’ response.

Oh a new big animal in the Pay-net Headquarters ? I’m looking forward that u will change the story by alot by reducing all those unnecessary dialogues

Welcome to GW2 :P

Just one thing: don’t let your coworkers fool you, Charrs are vile beasts who should be vanquished, and not good guys as Anet tries to portray them for GW2. #ascalonremembers

Leah Hoyer.9382:

• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

I love you already! lol

Welcome!

What’s not working (in my opinion):
-The plots are kind of hamfisted. Or to be more specific:
-The characters feel limp wristed. Like they are phoning it in. The voice acting has been terrible, but recently it has been getting much better.
-I don’t like how the Living(dead) World story comes across feeling like a murder investigation. Noire-esk. (Marjory). If you are living in a world that is in imminent danger from gigantic powerful supernatural beings that can’t be rationalized or negotiated with, the focus should be on archaeology, science, and fact finding. Knowledge! Instead we get the same old, same old. Races don’t want to work together, we talk to them into working together, unity, friendship, and carebear love overcomes evil. Yay! Very generic, very unimaginative, very old.

Odyssey.2613:

I love you already! lol

Welcome!

What’s not working (in my opinion):
-The plots are kind of hamfisted. Or to be more specific:
-The characters feel limp wristed. Like they are phoning it in. The voice acting has been terrible, but recently it has been getting much better.
-I don’t like how the Living(dead) World story comes across feeling like a murder investigation. Noire-esk. (Marjory). If you are living in a world that is in imminent danger from gigantic powerful supernatural beings that can’t be rationalized or negotiated with, the focus should be on archaeology, science, and fact finding. Knowledge! Instead we get the same old, same old. Races don’t want to work together, we talk to them into working together, unity, friendship, and carebear love overcomes evil. Yay! Very generic, very unimaginative, very old.

To be honest, there are signs that they wanted to do these things, but ended up just brushing over them to get the story along (one critic was, that LS1 took too long).

Unfortunatly it created a very off paced-experience, the more episodes have been released, which is quite a bummer.

I mean, Episode 1 was great.
We go in with a rough direction (the roar) stumble upon the Zephirites and their desaster (a mystery in a new land), weird plants, Inquests and to top it off, one of Scarlets layers.
There was a lot to go by, as a small group investigating the aftermath of S1.

However starting with Episode 2, (almost) everything that has been build up, has been reduced to simple plotpoints along the way.
Stories that could have been told, ended up as nothing more than a piece of a checklist.
- Mordremoth introduction? Check
- Biconic trauma resolved or spoken upon? Check
- Scarlets Backstory? Check
- Get the Races together for a summit? Check

There is a very straight forward plot here, however the sad thing is that it is no living world.
It is a very straight forward story, with only few branching subplots, which so far did not amount to anything or if any were rather sub par.

While not everything is fault on the narrative side, there is also some on the cramed in “content and gameplay” areas, which come in combination with the so called “living world”.
Reducing “important” Lore items (Ascalon Crown), to nothing more than fetchquests, to breath live back into areas is as obvious as a big neon sign in a shut down street.
Telling us things happen, but don`t back them with ingame content is also a bad way (Brahams mother issues and their resolve in the open world)

There are several disconects between what we know, get told, see and what logicaly should happen.

We are at a point where: “you only see a portion of everything” and “supsension of disbelief” is not enough anymore, to keep the more invested players satisfied.

While the more casual crowd might overlook most of the indepht stuff, I noticed several people getting active on the forum, who aren`t that vocal normaly (by that I mean silent and just spoke up in that matter) and told us their displeasure.

It was weird having the LW boards get so vocal about things, which were usually mostly confined to the lore section.

Overall the LS2 is a big step up, if we look at the elements seperatly, however the whole picture is sadly looking like swiss cheese.

LS has had it’s ups and downs. Flame & Frost actually got me invested. I know some people complained about the pace…but there were also a lot of people who loved it. The slower pace meant that people with jobs could actually participate in the story instead of rushing through it, and the way it was clearly happening in a few zones focused the story and players.

LS1 seemed to be trying to do everything at once. It worked OK at first but got unfocused, and soon it felt too rushed to hold my interest.

Flame & Frost’s problem was not fitting smoothly with the personal story and my game experience. LS1’s problem was being boring and overwhelming at the same time. I finished F&F and bought a molten axe pick. I even didn’t finish LS1.

Odyssey.2613:

Races don’t want to work together, we talk to them into working together, unity, friendship, and carebear love overcomes evil. Yay! Very generic, very unimaginative, very old.

I think one thing that’s been a theme in S2 is that in the original PS, the races didn’t really unite. Instead, we had an alliance of NGOs consisting of those which took the dragon threat most seriously – while most of the races were supporting the Pact to a greater or lesser extent, the nations never had to directly mobilise against the threat. From a national perspective, Zhaitan got taken down by a bunch of volunteers without them having to make any sacrifices or alliances themselves. The coming together of races to fight the common enemy (that was supposed to be one of the GW2 themes) never really happened – with the exception of some multinational NGOs that were already concerned with the bigger picture, the nations of Tyria basically just continued focusing on their parochial concerns and conflicts.

Now, ArenaNet could have just had the Pact continue going around playing whack-a-dragon, but the dragons come out looking pretty weak as a threat to all of Tyria if a bunch of NGOs that, while powerful and influential, still only represent a fraction of Tyria’s total military force is capable of going around knocking them off one by one. So instead we get the scenario we’re being offered now – yes, the Pact took down one dragon, but they took too many losses in the process to lead the charge on another. Defeating Zhaitan bought time, but Tyria still needs to unite if it’s going to survive.

I think we are seeing a mix of archaeology and diplomacy aspects in S2, although in a lot of respects it probably could have been better handled (the E3 fetch quests… uggggh). Both are important – we need more knowledge, more magic, and more technology to fight the dragons, but we also need the personnel base to use those discoveries, and the Pact has a finite supply of soldiers.

From what I’ve seen from others in my circle, myself including, Living Story is a failure.
It failed to provide excitement. It failed to create immersion. It failed to deliver meaningful lore. Each chapter of Guild Wars 1 made me excited with anticipation. The day before release I’d have an eye twitch. After release, friends and I would spend 8-12-16-20 hours playing , running around in the new chapter with BIG STUPID GRINS on our faces.
“Did you see that!?”
“You guys read this?!”
“Hey guys, you think eventually this is going to happen?”
“Have you gotten to that part yet? Oh, duuuuude, just wait!”

Living World is just a “quest-esk” like thing that annoyingly gets added to the clusterf**k that is our upper right corner. We know it will take us a couple hours to a day maximum to complete. We know we MAY or MAYNOT get a new zone. We know we will get an window with new achievement points. And that’s it. There’s none of the enthusiasm I listed above. It’s all:
“Hey bud, what ya doing?”
“Hi! Doing the new living story.”
“Ah, wanna come WvW with us?”
“Sure, give me a couple minutes.”

Absent in guild chat is
“OMG!”
“This is awesome!”
“Get your butt here! Who needs a party?”
“We just went through, but we’ll wait for you here.”
“Meet up with Odyssey, he’s getting ready to start it on a different character.”
“WvW? Why would I want to WvW!? Come join us!”

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

Odyssey.2613:

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

I lean to the first more often than the second, and the horrible aspect of implementation is . . . depends on what we discuss, and I have a different value of “horrible implementation”.

I suppose then:

Acceptable writing – uneven implementation is more what I feel about the game. Seems for every cool thing we get, there’s a part where I scratch my head and go “. . . whyyyyyy?”

Odyssey.2613:

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

It’s definintely more of the former.

While the writing isn’t masterpiece quality, I wouldn’t call it horrible… entirely. There are certainly some points that are worse than the rest, which make me prefer stuff on newgrounds over what I’m seeing in GW2, but that’s not universal. The open world stuff I see few flaws on – it’s all instance storytelling thus far in Season 2 that I see as the issue.

And most of the issue is what was presented before: it feels like a checklist. There’s no depth to it. It’s just “we’re doing this, now we’re doing that, time to do these, go do those.” etc. For example:

• Belinda had next to no depth, and felt like it was intended to be character development – but it was done wrong, you don’t introduce side-plots to develop your characters, you let the main plot develop them by showing their reactions to the new aspects of the plot.
• The entire involvement of Scarlet’s past workshop felt entirely unnecessary – even the Eternal Alchemy cinematic. While cool, what purpose did it hold? None. You can remove Scarlet’s involvement completely and have roughly the same story being told. It felt like it was done for the sole point of easing players’ complaints during Season 1 that we didn’t get to see what Scarlet saw – but that’s the entirely wrong reason to impliment such, and it’s far too late to redeem Scarlet’s plot by bringing all this stuff about her now. That stuff should have been placed into Season 1, and before The Origins of Madness (or the stuff we saw during The Origins of Madness and the Edge of the Mists releases should have been earlier, while what we have in Season 2 should have been during The Origins of Madness).
• The ‘gathering the races’ side steps felt unnecessarily short and glossed over. Ideally, each one should have had their own mini-arc to ease their problems. An entire nation’s issues won’t be solved by a single campaign into the heart of the second-largest Son of Svanir stronghold, or by eliminating a single tomb of ghosts. If I were writing it, I’d have ended E1 with the fight against Aerin and a revelation about new dragon minions, had E2 begin with consulting the Pact leading to wanting assistance from the nations to bolster their forces, turning the rest of E2, the entirity of E3 and all but the finale of E4 into solving the races’ issues – rather than pointlessly (plotwise) assisting attacked forts and the Iron Marches (which could still have been attacked, but left as open world not-part-of-the-living-story content), with 2-3 steps each race; 1 race in E2, 2 in E3, and 2 in E4. This was a chance to include multiple stories and/or story progression into the main plot without deviating from the main plot; a chance to show what’s been happening to the world in the two years since Zhaitan’s death aside from Scarlet and Kiel’s plots, and it was utterly and pointlessly overlooked.

Instead of fleshing out the potential of all these plot points, they’re turned into short one-instance done-and-over checklist aspects of the story. Why? We don’t know. What purpose does Belinda’s death serve, exactly? To give Marjory and Kasmeer the unneeded personal stakes in things? What purpose does seeing the Eternal Alchemy serve, exactly? To send us to the Pale Tree (something that Trahearne would have done if we went to the Pact after seeing new dragon minions)?

These are good plots, but they’re not being fleshed out to their best potential. Making the implementation and writing sub-par.

Of course, the implementation has certainly improved since Season 1. But that improvement is like going from a 1 to a 4 on a “being done well” scale of 0-to-10.

When Season 2 began, I thought it was the best kitten thing to happen for GW2. Looking at it after the initial introduction shock, I realize now that’s not so in the least. The best aspects of Season 2 is really just going back to how things originally was (the shared format with the Personal Story) with some improvements (repeatability); the rest was just because it’s merely better than Season 1 – it isn’t better than the Personal Story (well, some of the Personal Story for sure).

The story instances have, sadly, always held a place of “feels like an amateur did it” to me. Even/especially compared to GW1, which had worse voice acting for sure. Season 2 is no different.

Leah Hoyer.9382:

• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

…what if I promise to buy gems in order to get an Elder Dragon sing along? I didn’t know I wanted this until you said it but please, please Leah…. please give me an Elder Dragon song

I hope you are good at writing compelling characters Leah, because the living story is lacking in that respect. So far season two is much better than season one, but honestly that is not a hard thing to accomplish. I hope your talent can bring to the living story the many things it is currently missing.

Odyssey.2613:

From what I’ve seen from others in my circle, myself including, Living Story is a failure.
It failed to provide excitement. It failed to create immersion. It failed to deliver meaningful lore.

I disagree on all those points. The Living Story had some of the most epic moments I’ve experienced in GW2, such as the Twisted Marionette battle. Plus, we were shown the Eternal Alchemy (sort of). Lore-wise, that’s a pretty big lore dump.

Odyssey.2613:

Living World is just a “quest-esk” like thing that annoyingly gets added to the clusterf**k that is our upper right corner.

I do agree that the upper right corner seems to be a bit of a mess.

Odyssey.2613:

We know it will take us a couple hours to a day maximum to complete. We know we MAY or MAYNOT get a new zone. We know we will get an window with new achievement points. And that’s it.

It’s episodic content. It’s not reasonable to expect them to release something equal to an expansion, when what we’re getting is the work of a limited team. Now I want an expansion as much as the next person, but lets be reasonable about what we expect from the Living Story. Not all of it was terrible. There were some genuinely fun bits.

Odyssey.2613:

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

To be fair, GW1 also had pretty dreadful writing. But I really enjoyed the lore and setting in GW1. Recent writing has been steadily improving, and I like the new characters that have been introduced.

I will also chime in here.
While the writing isn`t better as some saturday morning cartoons (which seem to die out in my region sadly) sometimes, there is still a solid base for everything.

We can see a very straightforward storyline, which tries to branch out.
However the mainproblem here is simply the pacing.
The seperate elements are right, however they often do not get the time they deserved.

They have a story in mind, which is very visible, however for whatever reason they are unable to convey it the right way.

That being said I can say that each seperate szene is great. I do not really have a lot to argue here, as most of them are beautifuly crafted, even though some dialog wants me to slam my head to the desk, and the focus and goal is understandable.

That being said, while each piece of the story is working out, it is certainly the main narrative that is lacking.
As I mentioned pacing is the key and often feel like rewrites sneak their way in because basic QA would have spotted these problems in the first run.

If we would have to pin point the problems it would be:
- Timeframe
- Pacing
- Narrow Point of view
- Slow reacting world
- Stupid intelligent characters
- Asura-Ex-Machinas (they are always there)

If we compare it to a theatre performance we got:
- Great Stagedesigners
- An epic thinking Plotwriter
- A medicore to better dialogwriter
- Great Costume designer (Gemshop ole)
- Medicore to good director
- Medicore to good performer

They are not broadway, they are no hollywood. I have certainly seen better framing for story in other games. However this is more or less a new medium for several of them and subsequently there are limits.
While it is their job to handle them, we have to give them some slack as they figure out everything. It is no easy task (even though they should have read our comments since S1 and subsequently know what is needed).
There is time and money involved.

However what do not get is this: “If you are unable to do it, why write it?”
You do not put a plane szene into a movie if you cannot afford a plane. A cheap 3D insertion is very noticable, the same way stock footage is.
If we are to take these efforts seriously, they certainly need to learn on how to pace themselves.

As slow S1 felt for some, S2 takes out all the breaks and slams right into the first obstancle.

KeyLimPi.9031:

Leah Hoyer.9382:

• Yes, I spent a lot of my career at Disney, but my passion is building great characters and telling great stories, regardless of genre. So, don’t expect the Elder Dragons to break into song anytime soon.

…what if I promise to buy gems in order to get an Elder Dragon sing along? I didn’t know I wanted this until you said it but please, please Leah…. please give me an Elder Dragon song

Get Amber involved, make it a proper crimsonian Lovecraftesque “Iaii Iaii Zhaitan” kind of tune, and I’m down for 5k gems.

Leah Hoyer.9382:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I appreciate your comments and will say that consistent, complex, nuanced characters and storytelling are absolutely my goal as well. I’m soaking up all the existing story that I can, via gameplay, wikis, our novels, and lots and lots of conversations with my coworkers who have great insights (and opinions) on our expansive lore. I really love the game and am excited to be a part of it moving forward. Keep the comments coming!

Leah
(now with fancy, red ANet banner)

Let us fight some big kitten boss soon. I will adore you if you make it happen.

I will admit I may have been a tad bombastic.

You made some very valid points Mad Queen. I will concede GW1 was far from perfect, especially in Prophecies. My whole take on GW1 is this:

Prophecies was a hodge podge of stories and ideas.
Factions was the beginning of those ideas being refined.
Nightfall was a culmination of blood, sweat, and tears that deliverd. Big time.
Eye of The North was a final polish of things with some new ideas sprinkled around.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve been conditioned by Anet to have high standards by now. I step back and look at GW2, I’m left wondering “What?” and “Why?”. I understand there’s an evolutionary path things take (greatness just doesn’t happen). But I just don’t see that now. They didn’t learn from the past. At. All.

The beginning was buggy to the point progress was halted.
Character creation choices ultimately proved pointless.
Joining an order ultimately proved pointless.
Trahearne was awful. Kormir2.0 all over again.
The ending was awful.
Go beat the ending of Nightfall then come back and beat the ending of GW2. If you do not get the urge to stand up and flip your desk over and storm out of the room, call your doctor immediately – something might be wrong with you.

How Anet’s storytelling makes me feel.

Odyssey.2613:

Prophecies was a hodge podge of stories and ideas.
Factions was the beginning of those ideas being refined.
Nightfall was a culmination of blood, sweat, and tears that deliverd. Big time.
Eye of The North was a final polish of things with some new ideas sprinkled around.

I am in total agreement.

Odyssey.2613:

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’ve been conditioned by Anet to have high standards by now. I step back and look at GW2, I’m left wondering “What?” and “Why?”. I understand there’s an evolutionary path things take (greatness just doesn’t happen). But I just don’t see that now. They didn’t learn from the past. At. All.

I see exactly what you mean, and I feel the same way. Both with the writing and the game design, they seem to be making the same mistakes all over again.

Odyssey.2613:

The beginning was buggy to the point progress was halted.

This is something that especially deserves to be called out. While Prophecies was by no means perfect on release, GW2 was simply unfinished. Almost all of the skills and traits were bugged or broken on release, and a lot of content (such as the dungeons, and the Zhaitan battle) were clearly rushed. Dozens of dynamic events were broken. And then there was a lot of content such as guild halls, that should have been in the game on release, yet still aren’t in the game today.

Odyssey.2613:

Joining an order ultimately proved pointless.

I would call that mostly a missed story telling opportunity. Had it been up to me, I would have had all the orders work together in an epic battle against Zhaitan. Where instead of guarding a particular spot (Like with the Tequatl fight), you rallied with your order, and took on a specific task for that order, to fight the dragon. And then I would have all those order events happen simultaneously in one climactic end battle.

Odyssey.2613:

Trahearne was awful. Kormir2.0 all over again.

This. So much this. I can’t fathom how they managed to pull a Kormir again. They even did it twice (Destiny’s Edge).

Odyssey.2613:

Go beat the ending of Nightfall then come back and beat the ending of GW2. If you do not get the urge to stand up and flip your desk over and storm out of the room, call your doctor immediately – something might be wrong with you.

Hahahaha, oh so true.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• The entire involvement of Scarlet’s past workshop felt entirely unnecessary – even the Eternal Alchemy cinematic. While cool, what purpose did it hold? None. You can remove Scarlet’s involvement completely and have roughly the same story being told. It felt like it was done for the sole point of easing players’ complaints during Season 1 that we didn’t get to see what Scarlet saw – but that’s the entirely wrong reason to impliment such, and it’s far too late to redeem Scarlet’s plot by bringing all this stuff about her now. That stuff should have been placed into Season 1, and before The Origins of Madness (or the stuff we saw during The Origins of Madness and the Edge of the Mists releases should have been earlier, while what we have in Season 2 should have been during The Origins of Madness).
• The ‘gathering the races’ side steps felt unnecessarily short and glossed over. Ideally, each one should have had their own mini-arc to ease their problems. An entire nation’s issues won’t be solved by a single campaign into the heart of the second-largest Son of Svanir stronghold, or by eliminating a single tomb of ghosts. If I were writing it, I’d have ended E1 with the fight against Aerin and a revelation about new dragon minions, had E2 begin with consulting the Pact leading to wanting assistance from the nations to bolster their forces, turning the rest of E2, the entirity of E3 and all but the finale of E4 into solving the races’ issues – rather than pointlessly (plotwise) assisting attacked forts and the Iron Marches (which could still have been attacked, but left as open world not-part-of-the-living-story content), with 2-3 steps each race; 1 race in E2, 2 in E3, and 2 in E4. This was a chance to include multiple stories and/or story progression into the main plot without deviating from the main plot; a chance to show what’s been happening to the world in the two years since Zhaitan’s death aside from Scarlet and Kiel’s plots, and it was utterly and pointlessly overlooked.

Instead of fleshing out the potential of all these plot points, they’re turned into short one-instance done-and-over checklist aspects of the story. Why? We don’t know. What purpose does Belinda’s death serve, exactly? To give Marjory and Kasmeer the unneeded personal stakes in things? What purpose does seeing the Eternal Alchemy serve, exactly? To send us to the Pale Tree (something that Trahearne would have done if we went to the Pact after seeing new dragon minions)?

These are good plots, but they’re not being fleshed out to their best potential. Making the implementation and writing sub-par.

Of course, the implementation has certainly improved since Season 1. But that improvement is like going from a 1 to a 4 on a “being done well” scale of 0-to-10.

When Season 2 began, I thought it was the best kitten thing to happen for GW2. Looking at it after the initial introduction shock, I realize now that’s not so in the least. The best aspects of Season 2 is really just going back to how things originally was (the shared format with the Personal Story) with some improvements (repeatability); the rest was just because it’s merely better than Season 1 – it isn’t better than the Personal Story (well, some of the Personal Story for sure).

The story instances have, sadly, always held a place of “feels like an amateur did it” to me. Even/especially compared to GW1, which had worse voice acting for sure. Season 2 is no different.

sorry i dont really know how to use the forum tools so when i try and make the quote shorter it screws it up
ANYWAY

I don’t agree with your idea that scarlet’s workshop ect arnt really needed in season 2.
Season one is not a self contained story, it leads on to season 2 and i imagine will continue to be weaved through it.
Remember we still dont know alot about scarlet(she had no confidaunt other than the journals we read)
all her inventions and all her work done in season 1 still exists in season 2. To me it only makes sense that we would want to find her lab/workshop.

though i will say this, it did feel kinda shoehorned in there in terms of the narrative
If i was to have written it (which im not and this is only opinion) we would have been drawn to prosperity by rumors or something that they had seen a sylvari matching scarlet’s description in the area(because we already knew there was a dragon called mordrimoth that had awakened and needed a way to stop it). From there we speak to locals that mention she left a while ago and her house was there, then we explore the house/workshop thing.
then we hear the zepherites crash and go check on them and continue from there

sorry tangent
anyway
TL;DR
scarlet’s workshop is needed but should have been introduced/incorporated better

It is just funny that we suddenly find basicly everything related to Scarlet at the beginning of season 2, simply by stumbling upon it, while a whole season 1 (one and a half year) wasn`t able to find any conclusive hint about her activities, beside the ones she revealed.

She was so godlike, that she put her hideouts right in front everyones nose and even with several people supposedly looking for her (she was public enemy number 1 for several races).

While I agree that the workshop was needed to give us some more insight into her (for better or the worse), it is again too late… something that becomes a theme with Guild Wars 2 in general sadly

saventis.1485:

sorry i dont really know how to use the forum tools so when i try and make the quote shorter it screws it up

Just edit it by hand. When you press the quote button in response to someone’s post, you’ll want to remove any of the excess text, and just leave “[quote playername] Text here [/ close quote]”

You can take out a lot of the original wall of text, and just add the words -snip- to make clear that what you’re quoting is an extract of the original quote. If you are quoting someone, who is quoting someone else, just leave the first [ start of quote ], and the last [ / end of quote] tags. Otherwise you’ll re-quote the previous poster as well, as you just did, and then you have two walls of text.

Big welcome hug, Leah! Little late, but I’ll leave some thoughts anyway. I have never played much of GW1 myself (started with Prophecies and reached Rin), but what I have seen from a lot of Lets Plays, it was / is awesome as f***k, storywise. Which means, the (lore / story) foundation for GW2 could not be in a better shape. I am playing GW2 since launch. Imho, Arenanet succeeded very well with the GW1 – GW2 continuation. Not only did they do a great job to implement GW1 lore into GW2 (everywhere in Tyria!), they also succeeded with the historical evolvement. The GW1 – GW2 timeline is consistent, bold, exciting. You literally ‘sense’ the historical dimension behind characters in GW2, let it be prime characters like Rytlock, Eir or Logan or supporting characters like ‘Bonny’ Anne Reid (Lions Arch!), Hao Luen (Cantha!) or Ember Doomforge (Ascalon Truce Negotiations!) … to name just a very few. I have been so excited delving into the World of Tyria, and even after two years, there is still so much to explore! ^^ Arenanet created the most beautiful and sophisticated MMO on the market (lore-, history-, graphics-, music- and mechanicswise). Simply awesome, breathtaking stuff. However, and this is the downturn, it ends here, too … There has been some really nice attempts to carry on the story during LW Season 1 (loved the Marjory character, for instance … before she got engaged …), but somehow, all these inspiring threads (like the “E” story / young boy murder, the council election of Ellen Kiel, the scheming of the Consortium, Caithe/Faolain and Caithes ‘secret’, the fights between Countess Anise and Logan, what did Scarlet – really – saw in Omadds Machine? …) ended into nothingness … There have been great events during LW Season 1, but no consistency. To make bad things worse, Destiny’s Edge 2.0 never came close to their predecessors … LW Season 2 aimed for more focus and consistency, but what did we get? Two months worth of story so far this year … if Season 1 has been full of action but chaotic, Season 2 just gave us a beautiful (if small) new zone, two fantastic cut scenes (Eternal Alchemy, Rytlocks disappearance) and some entertaining small talk between Canach and Anise, nothing more … To me, its saddening to see how the storytelling / narrative deterioriated since 2013. On a more upbeat note, it only can get better … Wish you all the best for your work! :-)

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

-snip-

thank you heaps !
was really helpfull to finally understand it lol

Jaken.6801:

While I agree that the workshop was needed to give us some more insight into her (for better or the worse), it is again too late… something that becomes a theme with Guild Wars 2 in general sadly

Unless she has more depth than we ever knew…

its just speculation but in my opinion there is still more to Scarlets story that we are yet to find out. Though the character may be dead her story is not.
im under the impression that she was infact good and that this entire time she was working on a way to deafeat the elder dragons
now when i say she was good i mean that siera was good (scarlets name beforehand)
then she was corrupted and Scarlet braiar came into being
but siera fought (a losing battle) against this corruption and essentially became two people
all the times we see her attacking and destroying it is Scarlet that is in control (by the end she is fully under the influence of mordy)
and perhaps when siera had more control she was working towards the destruction of mordremoth
perhaps siera had a plan laid out… she knew she was corrupted and that it was only a matter of time before she was no more…
what if Siera, had the knowledge of what scarlet and mordremoth where up to and was trying to stop the big thing at the end rather than the (in comparrison) small amounts of lives lost in those smaller attacks.
who knows maybe less lives were lost cause of Siera’s actions

again just speculation but something to think about

AuroraW.7149:

-snip-

I agree it does feel like they are setting up way to many questions and are answering so few and it is really annoying

i think perhaps if u think of this game like a book
I think what they are doing right now is still the “begining” of their story they are setting up exposition (the rules of the universe)
asking questions that will be answered later
whereas all the players see it as the end of the “book” cause alot of them have finished the campeign

The thing is… We have no idea how long this “book” is
and for gw1 players at least we have been waiting a loooooooooong time for some of these answers

i understand that this is sort of the beginning of there story however (for gw1 players)
this is the end of the second “book” for us and we still have ALOT of unanswered questions about the first

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

To be fair, GW1 also had pretty dreadful writing. But I really enjoyed the lore and setting in GW1. Recent writing has been steadily improving, and I like the new characters that have been introduced.

I have to disagree with it.

While alone, Prophecies is rather dreadful in its quests’ writings. They’re basically an NPC going “hero, go do this” without explanation. But this became good writing with Winds of Change, when this became highlighted in the dialogue:

“I looked at them and I saw myself. Gullible. Idealistic. Willing to do whatever was asked of me, so long as the intentions were good.”

Which turns the PC into a wanna-be hero basically shouting: “Have no fear, citizens! Tell me your woes and I shall take care of them!” naively believing that whatever was said was to be done in honest goodness.

The only bad part of the writing there was, aside from this lampshaded bit, was the voice acting. Prophecies and Factions both had rather bad voice acting – Factions got the biggest heat because it’s most obvious there, but both games had it. Nightfall, at the very least less so. GW2 has decent voice acting, though a lot of re-occuring voices in the races sadly, making different NPCs sound exactly the same which can be immersion breaking, but it’s not too bad especially if you don’t do multiple storyline playthroughs.

Prophecies also had an issue of a storyline that seemed to jump back and forth between villains, but in a way this is what made it so interesting, as there wasn’t really “a single bad guy”. Which GW2 tries to do, but there’s no “back and forth”. And all the villains die or are put on the bus after the story dungeons – only Kudu and Caudecus got real spotlighting, and Caudecus only if you’re human, and Kudu partially for that one asura storyline that you had a 1-in-15 chance (1-in-3 if asura) of getting. Which in turn only damages the game’s story.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Odyssey.2613:

Trahearne was awful. Kormir2.0 all over again.

This. So much this. I can’t fathom how they managed to pull a Kormir again. They even did it twice (Destiny’s Edge).

Trahearne isn’t really a “Kormir 2.0” nor is Destiny’s Edge.

What made Kormir so ‘bad’ of a character is that she was uninvolved with a vast majority of the plot. Once her role as tutor was fulfilled, she got captured, during imprisonment made helpless, and shortly after being freed was teleported to the Realm of Torment, where at the very end she shows up and takes leadership once more – she was literally there to introduce players and then put on the bus so players can be ‘the leader’ but then was forced back in order to take the one kind of glory that players could not take: becoming a god.

Trahearne is much different. With the exception of sylvari, he’s never a tutor – he’s a replacement for your second tutor in the form of a combatant ally. He’s quickly forced into a role that players could not take, true, but that’s pretty much where the similarity with Kormir ends. He’s there throughout the entirety of the storyline from Claw Island on, without exception, except for the Fear arc (and that’s only for two of the three possibilities and not counting Forging the Pact/Battle of Fort Trinity). He takes the role of leadership so that players aren’t put there – an act Kormir never really got – and unlike claims, he never takes the glory of the players. While the story does turn to focus on his Wyld Hunt for three story steps near the end, to those who read and listen to the dialogue and spend time talking to the NPCs in Fort Trinity’s instances they’d know that everyone praises the Commander, not the Marshal, for all these praises.

Trahearne, in fact, gets only one praise of glory throughout the entire Chapter 8 and this is in the final instance after Zhaitan’s defeat, and the glory he’s given is leading the army in the Orr campaign, and the same NPCs praise the Commander as “the Dragonslayer”.

Trahearne was forced in for non-sylvari players, but he by no means is a “Kormir 2.0”. He would be closer to being Salma during War in Kryta for those who never did that one side quest.

Destiny’s Edge also aren’t a Kormir 2.0. While they serve as tutors at the beginning and disappear from the personal story, they don’t disappear from the game’s story – the focus on them just simply separates from the personal story into side quests (much like how the story of Devona and co. in Prophecies was told throughout the campaign in sparse side-quests). And at the end, they don’t take any glory at all. Caithe praises you, immediately, and they all praise you at the end. The closest they come to Kormir is being an early tutor that disappears from the main plot – little different than if we were not forced to do Boreas Seabed in Factions and could skip strait to Eternal Grove from Arborstone (thus writing Master Togo, the mentor, for a longer while).

They have yet to make a Kormir 2.0. Or any form of glory stealer. It’s all just cries of people who don’t pay attention, and those who conform to the vocal ignorance.

The only real crime Trahearne has… is poor voice acting.

But just about all of Factions had the same. And yet it was one of the best stories in Guild Wars (if you read An Empire Divided).

saventis.1485:

i think perhaps if u think of this game like a book
I think what they are doing right now is still the “begining” of their story they are setting up exposition (the rules of the universe)
asking questions that will be answered later
whereas all the players see it as the end of the “book” cause alot of them have finished the campeign

The thing is… We have no idea how long this “book” is
and for gw1 players at least we have been waiting a loooooooooong time for some of these answers

i understand that this is sort of the beginning of there story however (for gw1 players)
this is the end of the second “book” for us and we still have ALOT of unanswered questions about the first

That’s a good interpretation, and probably true.

One could say we’re in the second book. The first being Prophecies to Nightfall, the second beginning with Eye of the North (the prologue). The issue is, as you said, we don’t know how long the book is. And at the rate it is going, it’ll be like we’re at the beginning of the book still for another year or two, making it a way too long book. Or even book series, but in such a scenario if feels like we’re skipping the fulfilling conclusion of the earlier books as we go into the next one. Kind of like if we look at Eye of the North as the prologue and Personal Story as the main book, we got to the end of the first book – some answers but many more questions; Season 1 would be like half a book, we never really got a fulfilling conclusion to it – yes, Scarlet died and we found out she was working for Mordremoth, but all the other things, her armies, herself, it’s all missing. Some got brought about in Season 2 – far too late, if you ask me, which really just resulted in a “great, more Scarlet -.-” from a lot of my friends – but only a slim few.And now we’re at the beginning of our fourth book, but no clue how far into the book we are.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Odyssey.2613:

tl;dr

Guild Wars 2:
Mediocre writing – horrible implementation.
Horrible writing – mediocre implementation.

I can’t figure out which.

It’s definintely more of the former.

While the writing isn’t masterpiece quality, I wouldn’t call it horrible… entirely. There are certainly some points that are worse than the rest, which make me prefer stuff on newgrounds over what I’m seeing in GW2, but that’s not universal. The open world stuff I see few flaws on – it’s all instance storytelling thus far in Season 2 that I see as the issue.

And most of the issue is what was presented before: it feels like a checklist. There’s no depth to it. It’s just “we’re doing this, now we’re doing that, time to do these, go do those.” etc. For example:

• Belinda had next to no depth, and felt like it was intended to be character development – but it was done wrong, you don’t introduce side-plots to develop your characters, you let the main plot develop them by showing their reactions to the new aspects of the plot.
• The entire involvement of Scarlet’s past workshop felt entirely unnecessary – even the Eternal Alchemy cinematic. While cool, what purpose did it hold? None. You can remove Scarlet’s involvement completely and have roughly the same story being told. It felt like it was done for the sole point of easing players’ complaints during Season 1 that we didn’t get to see what Scarlet saw – but that’s the entirely wrong reason to impliment such, and it’s far too late to redeem Scarlet’s plot by bringing all this stuff about her now. That stuff should have been placed into Season 1, and before The Origins of Madness (or the stuff we saw during The Origins of Madness and the Edge of the Mists releases should have been earlier, while what we have in Season 2 should have been during The Origins of Madness).
• The ‘gathering the races’ side steps felt unnecessarily short and glossed over. Ideally, each one should have had their own mini-arc to ease their problems. An entire nation’s issues won’t be solved by a single campaign into the heart of the second-largest Son of Svanir stronghold, or by eliminating a single tomb of ghosts. If I were writing it, I’d have ended E1 with the fight against Aerin and a revelation about new dragon minions, had E2 begin with consulting the Pact leading to wanting assistance from the nations to bolster their forces, turning the rest of E2, the entirity of E3 and all but the finale of E4 into solving the races’ issues – rather than pointlessly (plotwise) assisting attacked forts and the Iron Marches (which could still have been attacked, but left as open world not-part-of-the-living-story content), with 2-3 steps each race; 1 race in E2, 2 in E3, and 2 in E4. This was a chance to include multiple stories and/or story progression into the main plot without deviating from the main plot; a chance to show what’s been happening to the world in the two years since Zhaitan’s death aside from Scarlet and Kiel’s plots, and it was utterly and pointlessly overlooked.

Instead of fleshing out the potential of all these plot points, they’re turned into short one-instance done-and-over checklist aspects of the story. Why? We don’t know. What purpose does Belinda’s death serve, exactly? To give Marjory and Kasmeer the unneeded personal stakes in things? What purpose does seeing the Eternal Alchemy serve, exactly? To send us to the Pale Tree (something that Trahearne would have done if we went to the Pact after seeing new dragon minions)?

These are good plots, but they’re not being fleshed out to their best potential. Making the implementation and writing sub-par.

Of course, the implementation has certainly improved since Season 1. But that improvement is like going from a 1 to a 4 on a “being done well” scale of 0-to-10.

When Season 2 began, I thought it was the best kitten thing to happen for GW2. Looking at it after the initial introduction shock, I realize now that’s not so in the least. The best aspects of Season 2 is really just going back to how things originally was (the shared format with the Personal Story) with some improvements (repeatability); the rest was just because it’s merely better than Season 1 – it isn’t better than the Personal Story (well, some of the Personal Story for sure).

The story instances have, sadly, always held a place of “feels like an amateur did it” to me. Even/especially compared to GW1, which had worse voice acting for sure. Season 2 is no different.

Normally, I would just press the little red “+1” button and move along, but since noone would notice that, I’m writing this text to express that I wholeheartly agree with this analysis. The writing has improved compared to season 1. But If the story we had until now would be in a film, I would give it 3/10 points and probably never watch it again.

I’m really depressed when I think about the story. If you watch this video (this for our german fellows) you get the feeling that the story wasn’t that bad. But if I think back to all the disappointment we probably all had during season 1, I lose my hope to experience actual meaningful story in GW2.

saventis.1485:

thank you heaps !
was really helpfull to finally understand it lol

My pleasure darling! And extra points for proving it too.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Trahearne, in fact, gets only one praise of glory throughout the entire Chapter 8 and this is in the final instance after Zhaitan’s defeat, and the glory he’s given is leading the army in the Orr campaign, and the same NPCs praise the Commander as “the Dragonslayer”.

While you are correct, I personally felt very annoyed with Trahearne for taking a position that felt like it belonged to the player, and for never really taking part in any battles. That is where the Kormir comparison comes from. It’s not so much the role in the story, but the feeling of a boring npc being the focus, when the player should be the focus.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Destiny’s Edge also aren’t a Kormir 2.0. While they serve as tutors at the beginning and disappear from the personal story, they don’t disappear from the game’s story – the focus on them just simply separates from the personal story into side quests (much like how the story of Devona and co.

I think this pretty much goes back to the point I just made. Npc’s taking center stage, when the player should be the main character. They don’t literally act as Kormir, but the feeling is still the same. It’s the feeling that the writers felt these characters were more interesting than the player.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The only real crime Trahearne has… is poor voice acting.

I don’t actually think his voice acting is all that bad. I think it’s fine in fact. I don’t get why people complain about his voice actor so much.

saventis.1485:

TL;DR
scarlet’s workshop is needed but should have been introduced/incorporated better

Missed this post before.

I wasn’t meaning ‘it isn’t needed’ but rather ‘it has nothing needed to progress season 2.’

All of if should have been put into the game during Season 1, as I said. It has no real place in season 2 and the fact we blindly stumble upon it by pure luck when we spent a year not finding anything is just poor writing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

While you are correct, I personally felt very annoyed with Trahearne for taking a position that felt like it belonged to the player, and for never really taking part in any battles. That is where the Kormir comparison comes from. It’s not so much the role in the story, but the feeling of a boring npc being the focus, when the player should be the focus.

-snip quote on DE-

I think this pretty much goes back to the point I just made. Npc’s taking center stage, when the player should be the main character. They don’t literally act as Kormir, but the feeling is still the same. It’s the feeling that the writers felt these characters were more interesting than the player.

Oh please, then why no hate on Rurik, Evennia, Master Togo, and Brother Mhenlo? They had the main focus roles, more than the players in GW1, so why no hating them for stealing your spotlight.

I don’t think your argument works. You hate some bit not all who do that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Oh please, then why no hate on Rurik, Evennia, Master Togo, and Brother Mhenlo? They had the main focus roles, more than the players in GW1, so why no hating them for stealing your spotlight.

I did, and I think a lot of other GW1 players did as well. However, Rurik had the ‘benefit’ (in massive air quotes) of being the target of many jokes regarding his warrior mentality of charging blindly into battle. Togo and Mhenlo were pretty terrible. Evennia was rather forgettable.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t think your argument works. You hate some bit not all who do that.

Or so you assumed, but that’s not true. There are plenty of characters in GW1 as well that grind my gears, and sometimes for the same reasons.

But another thing to keep in mind, is that GW1 had rather bad voice acting, so me and guildies were used to mocking the game whenever it tried to invoke some sort of drama with these silly characters. On the whole, this meant that we were less irritated, since the story telling was pretty bad in general.

With GW2 this is not the case. I think a lot of the game is voice acted really well, and the story telling is of much better quality than GW1. It’s the story they tell, that I have a problem with. But on the whole, there are sharp improvements. But this has the negative side effect that you are less forgiving when the writers fail. When you’re not poking fun at the game, and are trying to be invested, you are also more easily annoyed.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

saventis.1485:

TL;DR
scarlet’s workshop is needed but should have been introduced/incorporated better

Missed this post before.

I wasn’t meaning ‘it isn’t needed’ but rather ‘it has nothing needed to progress season 2.’

All of if should have been put into the game during Season 1, as I said. It has no real place in season 2 and the fact we blindly stumble upon it by pure luck when we spent a year not finding anything is just poor writing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

While you are correct, I personally felt very annoyed with Trahearne for taking a position that felt like it belonged to the player, and for never really taking part in any battles. That is where the Kormir comparison comes from. It’s not so much the role in the story, but the feeling of a boring npc being the focus, when the player should be the focus.

-snip quote on DE-

I think this pretty much goes back to the point I just made. Npc’s taking center stage, when the player should be the main character. They don’t literally act as Kormir, but the feeling is still the same. It’s the feeling that the writers felt these characters were more interesting than the player.

Oh please, then why no hate on Rurik, Evennia, Master Togo, and Brother Mhenlo? They had the main focus roles, more than the players in GW1, so why no hating them for stealing your spotlight.

I don’t think your argument works. You hate some bit not all who do that.

Rurik is widely despised for being the secret inspiration for Kilroy Stonekins (Leeroy Jenkins is just a convenient cover ;D ); he ends up dead before the halfway point in the game anyway. I got sick of The Mhenlo Show long before the end of Factions. Evennia was hardly a spotlight hog.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I did, and I think a lot of other GW1 players did as well. However, Rurik had the ‘benefit’ (in massive air quotes) of being the target of many jokes regarding his warrior mentality of charging blindly into battle. Togo and Mhenlo were pretty terrible. Evennia was rather forgettable.

The only reason why people hated Togo, Mhenlo, and Rurik were due to mechanics – them running off and dying, forcing the party to restart the entire mission.

The hate on Kormir, however, comes from the story, not (entirely or mostly) the mechanics.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Or so you assumed, but that’s not true. There are plenty of characters in GW1 as well that grind my gears, and sometimes for the same reasons.

But another thing to keep in mind, is that GW1 had rather bad voice acting, so me and guildies were used to mocking the game whenever it tried to invoke some sort of drama with these silly characters. On the whole, this meant that we were less irritated, since the story telling was pretty bad in general.

With GW2 this is not the case. I think a lot of the game is voice acted really well, and the story telling is of much better quality than GW1. It’s the story they tell, that I have a problem with. But on the whole, there are sharp improvements. But this has the negative side effect that you are less forgiving when the writers fail. When you’re not poking fun at the game, and are trying to be invested, you are also more easily annoyed.

It’s rather amazing that you even say you enjoyed GW1 lore, with how you’re bashing it now.

I do have to disagree with you on what you say of GW1. While Prophecies and Factions had bad voice acting, I never really had that “poke fun” thing towards the game, and the ‘drama’ with the characters was mostly non-existent in Prophecies and Factions (sans Rurik’s banishment and death, and Togo’s death). Most that is at the very least memorable comes from Nightfall and Eye of the North, which had much much better voice acting.

So I guess I’m just not seeing your complaints taking any root. Our views of it differ too much, though with what you say it is rather curious when I see you say you liked GW1’s lore and story.

And really, it sounds like your entire argument is: “I want my character to be the spotlight! Mine mine mine, not yours but mine!” Which just comes off as Cadeyrn like to me. I don’t think our PC should always be the spotlight, let alone can in an MMO lore without using some silly moniker to refer to the PC at every spot of the turn.

Sariel V.7024:

Rurik is widely despised for being the secret inspiration for Kilroy Stonekins (Leeroy Jenkins is just a convenient cover ;D ); he ends up dead before the halfway point in the game anyway. I got sick of The Mhenlo Show long before the end of Factions. Evennia was hardly a spotlight hog.

I rather disagree with the Evennia bit, and would argue that “The Mhenlo Show” was barely part of the Factions campaign (it was there only, what, four or so times?). Rurik’s hatred you mention is just as I said above – mechanics. You don’t hate him for being a spotlight hog that takes the role of leadership away from the PC.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I did, and I think a lot of other GW1 players did as well. However, Rurik had the ‘benefit’ (in massive air quotes) of being the target of many jokes regarding his warrior mentality of charging blindly into battle. Togo and Mhenlo were pretty terrible. Evennia was rather forgettable.

The only reason why people hated Togo, Mhenlo, and Rurik were due to mechanics – them running off and dying, forcing the party to restart the entire mission.

The hate on Kormir, however, comes from the story, not (entirely or mostly) the mechanics.

Probably because for Nightfall they opted to make your “non Party NPCs” invulnerable and inactive, to prevent it from being a secret escort mission. (Escort missions suck skritt toes by the way . . . Vizunah Square still haunts my dreams.)

So, mechanic shifts caused the story shift which people despised, because they needed a reason she wasn’t actively helping and also thus vulnerable to being killed and seeing “Return to Outpost” again. And again.

I say that mechanic shift was the point where I decided I liked Nightfall’s construction more. But my favorite straight-up escort mission still is the one with the turtles.

. . . yes, it’s because I could cheat the frick out of it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It’s rather amazing that you even say you enjoyed GW1 lore, with how you’re bashing it now.

There are positives and negatives on both sides. And it would simply be unfair to pretend that GW1 is some holy grail of story telling. I enjoyed the heck of it, corny as it often was. But it was a guilty pleasure. The lore is still pretty solid.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And really, it sounds like your entire argument is: “I want my character to be the spotlight! Mine mine mine, not yours but mine!” Which just comes off as Cadeyrn like to me. I don’t think our PC should always be the spotlight, let alone can in an MMO lore without using some silly moniker to refer to the PC at every spot of the turn.

I do like being in the spotlight, when I’m playing my personal story. However, it’s not bad if another character is in the spotlight for a while. But it becomes a problem when the writers seem to like the character more than we do. This was the case for Destiny’s Edge, and also for Trahearne. I’m one of those types of players that gets really annoyed by flawless characters. I like them to be written well and convincing. To me, Logan was more bothersome than Trahearne in that respect. Trahearne was bland, but Logan constantly kept being pushed on us. And he was such a flawless character, without any edge to him. And I know what you’re thinking “Logan isn’t flawless”. And to that I’d say, they tacked on a flaw, but it is not a part of the character, and he hasn’t earned the attention he gets. And that starts to grate on you really quickly. I remember playing through the personal story with Miya, and the moment the notice “report to Logan Thackery” popped up, we both groaned simultaneously. That kind of summarizes Logan in one word: “Report to Logan, uuuuuughhhhhh”.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Rurik’s hatred you mention is just as I said above – mechanics. You don’t hate him for being a spotlight hog that takes the role of leadership away from the PC.

I agree with that, it’s mostly mechanics with Rurik. But also the voice acting, and his daddy issues. Heck, even the game poked fun at Rurik. When no one takes a character serious, it’s hard to be mad at him. But with Togo and Mhenlo, yes that got tiresome, and not because of mechanics.

welcome leah,

what is your personal opinion about the currenty personal story , its content, its gameplay, its main characters (trahearne etc.) ?

will you continue where its currently ending?

do you have plans to complete remove it to start your own story the way you would create it?

greets,

Slate

The problem with Trahearne’s voice acting is that it’s pretty much a constant monotone, particularly in the later parts of the story (it’s a little better when you meet him as a sylvari, but even for people that exclusively play sylvari that’s not going to be the majority of the screentime he occupies). It’s not as hilariously bad as Danika zu Heltzer the 13 Year Old Valleygirl, but it leaves him devoid of emotion or character, and that makes it hard for people to identify with, feel empathy for, or otherwise grow to like him.

Compare to the order mentors – love’em or hate’em, they all have distinct personalities that come through their expressions and their voice. Meanwhile, even at the depths of despair and the height of victory, Trahearne often manages to come across as if he’s reading someone else’s lines from a book.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I say that mechanic shift was the point where I decided I liked Nightfall’s construction more. But my favorite straight-up escort mission still is the one with the turtles.

. . . yes, it’s because I could cheat the frick out of it.

Ahhh, Argo. What WERE you putting in the smoke beacons, that you kept imagining Kurzick attacks when there was nothing in sight but corpses?

Mind you, if you’re not fussed about getting Masters, the non-cheating way probably is more fun. But cheating the frick out of it was certainly more fun than missing out on Masters the seventh time because a couple of the wrong type of Kurzicks got through your guard at the final hurdle.

draxynnic.3719:

Ahhh, Argo. What WERE you putting in the smoke beacons, that you kept imagining Kurzick attacks when there was nothing in sight but corpses?

Mind you, if you’re not fussed about getting Masters, the non-cheating way probably is more fun. But cheating the frick out of it was certainly more fun than missing out on Masters the seventh time because a couple of the wrong type of Kurzicks got through your guard at the final hurdle.

Haha, yeah there were a lot of missions in GW1 where everyone cheated to get the bonus. It was a really weird thing, where everyone including the designers were aware how people were abusing flaws in the game to get the bonus objectives. But it was never the less perfectly accepted.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

draxynnic.3719:

Ahhh, Argo. What WERE you putting in the smoke beacons, that you kept imagining Kurzick attacks when there was nothing in sight but corpses?

Mind you, if you’re not fussed about getting Masters, the non-cheating way probably is more fun. But cheating the frick out of it was certainly more fun than missing out on Masters the seventh time because a couple of the wrong type of Kurzicks got through your guard at the final hurdle.

Haha, yeah there were a lot of missions in GW1 where everyone cheated to get the bonus. It was a really weird thing, where everyone including the designers were aware how people were abusing flaws in the game to get the bonus objectives. But it was never the less perfectly accepted.

I doubt it was “perfectly accepted”, more “grudgingly accepted”, since the meat on the bones of GW1 was definitely its PvP modes rather than PvE.

. . . GW2 swung the other way. So they have to pay more attention to sequence breaking.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

saventis.1485:

i think perhaps if u think of this game like a book
I think what they are doing right now is still the “begining” of their story they are setting up exposition (the rules of the universe)
asking questions that will be answered later
whereas all the players see it as the end of the “book” cause alot of them have finished the campeign

The thing is… We have no idea how long this “book” is
and for gw1 players at least we have been waiting a loooooooooong time for some of these answers

i understand that this is sort of the beginning of there story however (for gw1 players)
this is the end of the second “book” for us and we still have ALOT of unanswered questions about the first

That’s a good interpretation, and probably true.

One could say we’re in the second book. The first being Prophecies to Nightfall, the second beginning with Eye of the North (the prologue). The issue is, as you said, we don’t know how long the book is. And at the rate it is going, it’ll be like we’re at the beginning of the book still for another year or two, making it a way too long book. Or even book series, but in such a scenario if feels like we’re skipping the fulfilling conclusion of the earlier books as we go into the next one. Kind of like if we look at Eye of the North as the prologue and Personal Story as the main book, we got to the end of the first book – some answers but many more questions; Season 1 would be like half a book, we never really got a fulfilling conclusion to it – yes, Scarlet died and we found out she was working for Mordremoth, but all the other things, her armies, herself, it’s all missing. Some got brought about in Season 2 – far too late, if you ask me, which really just resulted in a “great, more Scarlet -.-” from a lot of my friends – but only a slim few.And now we’re at the beginning of our fourth book, but no clue how far into the book we are.

exactly

saventis.1485:

AuroraW.7149:

-snip-

I agree it does feel like they are setting up way to many questions and are answering so few and it is really annoying

i think perhaps if u think of this game like a book
I think what they are doing right now is still the “begining” of their story they are setting up exposition (the rules of the universe)
asking questions that will be answered later
whereas all the players see it as the end of the “book” cause alot of them have finished the campeign

The thing is… We have no idea how long this “book” is
and for gw1 players at least we have been waiting a loooooooooong time for some of these answers

i understand that this is sort of the beginning of there story however (for gw1 players)
this is the end of the second “book” for us and we still have ALOT of unanswered questions about the first

Agreed, they are trying to set up an entirely different universe with GW2, witht tons of retcons because they are afraid that GW2 players wouldn’t understand a GW1-based story.

ArenaNet sometimes compares the game to Game of Thrones so i will do the same:

The TV show does not begin with the story of Robert’s rebellion (Gw1), but you need to know what happened there in order to understand the current events – Martell / Lannister hostility, fall of the Targaryan dynasty and so on. But they managed to recap that story in forms of dialogues.

But in GW2 they chose to throw their story away and rebuild from scratch. We have so many GW1 stories that they could tell, but instead they are creating even more stories they won’t finish. Fun part is that they are still doing a good job explaining the story of GW1 all around Tyria, I just don’t see why they couldn’t pull a GoT – in fact, they should, and in season 2 we might see some GW1 related stuff.

Most of the “new” story of Gw2 is highly disliked by most of the community, it would be wise to build on some Gw1 lore. It’s supposed to be a sequel anyways.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

draxynnic.3719:

Ahhh, Argo. What WERE you putting in the smoke beacons, that you kept imagining Kurzick attacks when there was nothing in sight but corpses?

Mind you, if you’re not fussed about getting Masters, the non-cheating way probably is more fun. But cheating the frick out of it was certainly more fun than missing out on Masters the seventh time because a couple of the wrong type of Kurzicks got through your guard at the final hurdle.

Haha, yeah there were a lot of missions in GW1 where everyone cheated to get the bonus. It was a really weird thing, where everyone including the designers were aware how people were abusing flaws in the game to get the bonus objectives. But it was never the less perfectly accepted.

I doubt it was “perfectly accepted”, more “grudgingly accepted”, since the meat on the bones of GW1 was definitely its PvP modes rather than PvE.

. . . GW2 swung the other way. So they have to pay more attention to sequence breaking.

It might also be a case that they figured it wasn’t an exploit worth going to the effort of fixing. Initially, you only had to get masters once per character and after that it didn’t matter, so why put effort into closing a loophole in old content when you could be making new content? Later, when Zaishen missions became a thing, the focus was on GW2 and, again, closing a loophole wasn’t a priority.

draxynnic.3719:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

draxynnic.3719:

Ahhh, Argo. What WERE you putting in the smoke beacons, that you kept imagining Kurzick attacks when there was nothing in sight but corpses?

Mind you, if you’re not fussed about getting Masters, the non-cheating way probably is more fun. But cheating the frick out of it was certainly more fun than missing out on Masters the seventh time because a couple of the wrong type of Kurzicks got through your guard at the final hurdle.

Haha, yeah there were a lot of missions in GW1 where everyone cheated to get the bonus. It was a really weird thing, where everyone including the designers were aware how people were abusing flaws in the game to get the bonus objectives. But it was never the less perfectly accepted.

I doubt it was “perfectly accepted”, more “grudgingly accepted”, since the meat on the bones of GW1 was definitely its PvP modes rather than PvE.

. . . GW2 swung the other way. So they have to pay more attention to sequence breaking.

It might also be a case that they figured it wasn’t an exploit worth going to the effort of fixing. Initially, you only had to get masters once per character and after that it didn’t matter, so why put effort into closing a loophole in old content when you could be making new content? Later, when Zaishen missions became a thing, the focus was on GW2 and, again, closing a loophole wasn’t a priority.

Mmm, also a valid interpretation.

Take the time to make us care about the characters. The best stories in GW2 aren’t Destiny’s Edge, or even the “new” Destiny’s Edge (though they are better)… it was the 3 Pact stars (Forgal, Tybalt and Sieran) that were the best written characters in the game. Why? Because Anet took some time with those characters outside of the plot to get to know them.

Also, in terms of delivering a story visually… there is no shame in Anet stealing the way SWTOR does it, as it is the way all modern day good single player RPGs deliver story. Might not be ideal for all of the living world as it may be time consuming, but it would be good for the points of major story arcs.

A recent thought I had about story and character interaction is that I think there’s too much focus on the characters in GW2.

Look at GW1, how much effort was put into focus on the individual characters? Very little, overall. And just about none in the main storyline – there was some, like the revelation of Tahlkora’s family, or Dunkoro’s son, or the fighting between Gwen and Pyre. But most of it, especially with Nightfall, happened in side-quests. Just about all of it with Devona and co. happened in side-quests in Prophecies. Yet despite how little focus there was in the main story, people loved Koss and Jurah and Jora and the others.

Which comes to a second fallacy I see in GW2: the lack of side quests that tie into the main story characters. Yes, you have invasion into Orr, you have the dungeons that focus on DE (which weren’t done poorly, narratively speaking), but you have no such side-quests that involve Trahearne, nor the mentors, nor Tonn, nor Apatia, nor the biconics.

I am feeling that the lack of a story-driven side-quest system is hindering GW2 a bit. It is just one of many things that GW1 had that GW2 doesn’t.

There’s already been a beginning implimentation of this. There are a few dynamic events in the open world that trigger by the personal story – either its progress or part of the PS itself. Making events like this to help further the characters narrative, rather than cramming it all into the main plot making it feel like there’s bits of irrelevancy, feels much more proper.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A recent thought I had about story and character interaction is that I think there’s too much focus on the characters in GW2.

Look at GW1, how much effort was put into focus on the individual characters? Very little, overall. And just about none in the main storyline – there was some, like the revelation of Tahlkora’s family, or Dunkoro’s son, or the fighting between Gwen and Pyre. But most of it, especially with Nightfall, happened in side-quests. Just about all of it with Devona and co. happened in side-quests in Prophecies. Yet despite how little focus there was in the main story, people loved Koss and Jurah and Jora and the others.

Which comes to a second fallacy I see in GW2: the lack of side quests that tie into the main story characters. Yes, you have invasion into Orr, you have the dungeons that focus on DE (which weren’t done poorly, narratively speaking), but you have no such side-quests that involve Trahearne, nor the mentors, nor Tonn, nor Apatia, nor the biconics.

I am feeling that the lack of a story-driven side-quest system is hindering GW2 a bit. It is just one of many things that GW1 had that GW2 doesn’t.

There’s already been a beginning implimentation of this. There are a few dynamic events in the open world that trigger by the personal story – either its progress or part of the PS itself. Making events like this to help further the characters narrative, rather than cramming it all into the main plot making it feel like there’s bits of irrelevancy, feels much more proper.

Now that you mention it, it feels like that.
It feels like they try to cramp everything into the main-narrative, while some of these stories could be better explored in side missions/quests.

It feels like much of the focus on minor characters (includes the biconics) in the mainstory causes it to feel disjoined and unfocused.

With the now non temporary story progression, these sidequests could also be unlocked and followed. (just something that came to mind)
If you progress the LS, you unlock more sidestories as one time adventures.

While this could be categoriezed as traditional questing (something that GW2 wanted to get away from), it could be used as an enhancement of the main-story and be added at a later time.