Guild Wars 2

If (when) Evon wins, we would get the “Fall of Abaddon” Fractal. We have already been told it will be about his first defeat, centuries before the first GW. Now, to show that conflict in a Fractal would be hard. How do you people like ArenaNet to do it?

Here’s an idea to begin the discussion:

We play as the human soldiers fighting the Margonite armies, while above us the towering figures of the gods fight Abaddon, covering nearly the entire sky. We would circle around the Temple of Abaddon, destroying fragments of the Bloodstones that the Margonites are using to empower their god, until all fragments are destroyed (the fights could be spiced up by having environmental effects linked to each of the four schools of magic at the corresponding Bloodstone fragment). Then, we see from below as Balthazar hits the weakened Abaddon and makes he fall all the way to the Realm of Torment.

Hrmmmm, except the Temple of the Six Gods was in the Crystal Sea while there is no indication that the bloodstone would have ever been at the temple. Considering the bloodstone was created by the Seer and is known to have been in Arah before being broken into pieces by the Gods and cast into Abaddons mouth (although one would assume it had a different name back then….).

I’m also somewhat doubtful that human soldiers would have been involved. The Gods hardly would have needed assistance to cast Abaddon down and it isn’t necessarily Margonite armies that were involved (also it would be more likely for them to have an Armada than an Amy since they were seafarers), all we know is that they worshipped Abaddon exclusively and desecrated the shrines of the other five Gods.

I feel like it would be more likely for players to experience the mission as the five gods or as Forgotten maybe? I can definitely see how they could include battles with Margonites over the shrines of the Gods though. It will be really interesting to see what it’s like (if we get this one), so I’m excited regardless.

Remember that giant snowman in the Wintersday jumping puzzle? So like Erasculio said, we’ll likely see the other gods battling against Abbadon in the background. I can’t imagine ANet letting players actually fight against Abbadon. It will look really epic though I’m sure. Or maybe we can fire cannons at him like we did on Zhatain. :P

If the gods are fighting in the backgroud, sparks of power from the clashing and miss-aimed magics would be a nice way to introduce environmental aoe effects.

I think we’d probably play as the minions of one of the gods. Maybe as eternals or using something similar to the avatar appearance.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Avatar_of_Balthazar.png

edit: Oh yeah, forgotten would have been a good choice, I guess they’d end up making those in game models for them eventually anyway.

Fighting as Forgotten on the seas below the fight of the gods, having environmental stuff happening tied to the domains of the gods, with as final goal defeating Jadoth, the first general of Abaddon.

It only makes sense. We are not going to play as the gods or aspects of the gods as there is no fixed group composition. You also can’t truly tie each profession to one of the five gods. If the transformation would be random that would be a mechanic which would be hated by the playerbase. The power of the gods, finally, is on a whole different level than ours (consider Abaddon is not yet weakened as he was in Nightfall).

We’ll play below the battle, with as big finale a nice cinematic with Abaddon plunging downwards into the vortex.

In the end I want the reactor more.

I believe it was the Forgotten vs the Margonites.

We can be Snake people!

There are 5 players in a Fractal.

There are 5 Gods opposing Abaddon.

~waits for it to sink in~

I can’t take any credit for this idea though. Konig made this suggestion originally in the Lore forum.

Why do people assume that we will fight Abaddon?
For all we know we will fight FOR Abaddon.

lordkrall.7241:

Why do people assume that we will fight Abaddon?
For all we know we will fight FOR Abaddon.

Being a Margonite would also rock.

Zaxares.5419:

There are 5 players in a Fractal.

There are 5 Gods opposing Abaddon.

~waits for it to sink in~

I can’t take any credit for this idea though. Konig made this suggestion originally in the Lore forum.

I don’t need to wait for it to sink in because as a gameplay mechanic it has almost zero chance of happening. You can’t have 3 warriors being Dwayna, Lyssa and Melandru for example, or if they are, what will decide who becomes who? It’s going to tick people off because there will be one god that’s subpar to another’s moveset and nobody is going to want to be that god. Also people don’t like forced skillbars.

What happens when there’s only 3 of you? It’s possible you know. Will the other gods be taken over by AI?

Nope, not going to happen.

As for why I assume we are going to fight Abaddon as apposed to fighting for him? Well it’s only a story-wise guess. The fractal would very likely end with the fall of Abaddon, which will in turn suck in the Margonites too. That would mean we’d need to be extracted ‘right’ before that happens, which mean our characters would technically not witness the fall of Abaddon. Also, we already know that Abaddon had a powerful general, Jadoth, who had been hunted by the Forgotten, but only had a minor role in GW1 despite his background. He would make for a good boss fight.

Lucky.9421:

lordkrall.7241:

Why do people assume that we will fight Abaddon?
For all we know we will fight FOR Abaddon.

Being a Margonite would also rock.

Margonite Reaper! I wanna be Margonite reaper!

zeromius.1604:

Remember that giant snowman in the Wintersday jumping puzzle? So like Erasculio said, we’ll likely see the other gods battling against Abbadon in the background. I can’t imagine ANet letting players actually fight against Abbadon. It will look really epic though I’m sure. Or maybe we can fire cannons at him like we did on Zhatain. :P

Why can’t we fight him? We did once before and killed a god.

Evans.6347:

Zaxares.5419:

There are 5 players in a Fractal.

There are 5 Gods opposing Abaddon.

~waits for it to sink in~

I can’t take any credit for this idea though. Konig made this suggestion originally in the Lore forum.

I don’t need to wait for it to sink in because as a gameplay mechanic it has almost zero chance of happening. You can’t have 3 warriors being Dwayna, Lyssa and Melandru for example, or if they are, what will decide who becomes who? It’s going to tick people off because there will be one god that’s subpar to another’s moveset and nobody is going to want to be that god. Also people don’t like forced skillbars.

What happens when there’s only 3 of you? It’s possible you know. Will the other gods be taken over by AI?

Nope, not going to happen.

As for why I assume we are going to fight Abaddon as apposed to fighting for him? Well it’s only a story-wise guess. The fractal would very likely end with the fall of Abaddon, which will in turn suck in the Margonites too. That would mean we’d need to be extracted ‘right’ before that happens, which mean our characters would technically not witness the fall of Abaddon. Also, we already know that Abaddon had a powerful general, Jadoth, who had been hunted by the Forgotten, but only had a minor role in GW1 despite his background. He would make for a good boss fight.

Yep those are very valid arguments against the possibility of impersonating the five gods. Also, I don’t see how they could represent the power of five gods put together (including the god of war !) without making the fractal trivial as hell.

Zaxares.5419:

There are 5 players in a Fractal.

There are 5 Gods opposing Abaddon.

~waits for it to sink in~

I was originally going to write something like that. ArenaNet could:

• Make our characters bigger and change a bit camera perspective (just like they did in the Super Adventure Box, but now in the other direction) to increase the illusion of being a giant.

• Add, before the fractal begins, a system in which each player gets to pick which of the five gods he/she wants to play as (nothing too fancy – just interacting with the god/goddess, just like we chose NPCs to help us before the final Factions mission, would be enough). This would allow the party of 5 players to play as the 5 gods without the need for randomization.

• Change the enemy size and build the level so the gods would appear to be towering over Abaddon’s soldiers, by giving them small sizes (miniature-sized Margonites would be fun). This could even be tied to new rewards, offering those NPCs as (real size) miniatures later on.

• Give the gods unique, extremely powerful skills so they can lay waste to hordes of Margonites. This would allow unique playstyles that cannot be found anywhere else in GW2, by making players overpowered against common enemies. It would even allow a healer playstyle, by making Dwayna a traditional healer, for those who miss that role.

I don’t think it would work, though. While I really like the mechanic of playing as something else, having a new and unique skill bar, whenever that mechanic is introduced a lot of players complain (see the fight against Canach). Maybe – maybe - it could work in a dungeon dedicated exclusively to this, since players would know from the beginning what they would be getting into, but by placing it in the Fractals it would be a random option among many, which would likely lead to a lot of groans from the community.

It also has the issue of who the bosses would be. No Margonite champion would be a match to the combined power of the Five Gods. The only option that would make some sense would be to have Abaddon as the Fractal boss, with players fighting him multiple times, just like Subject Alpha in CoE; but even that would feel somewhat repetitive, instead of being something fun.

Lastly, and IMO far most important: it would banalise the gods. Grenth is the God of Death who reigns over Ice and the Underworld; his powers are sovereignty over those aspects of reality, not to do 10.000 damage in a area and fear the foes within it. By reducing the gods’ powers to mere skill numbers, even if very high numbers, we would be banalising their roles as almost mythical beings.

I would rather fight as soldiers under the gods, killing Margonites (I’m dying to see what Margonites would look like under the GW2 engine, they were beautiful in GW1 already), and watching as the colossal gods fight each other in the background. IMO, this would properly represent the gods as the beings they are.

Keep in mind that Margonites are still humans during the battle, infused with strong magic sure, but there is no real indication that this would have corrupted them at the time being. The demonic manifestations we see in Nightfall are the same human followers, tainted and twisted but the madness of a god long shackled in isolation. Also, as Abaddon had to rebuild his own body from the realm itself, so too is it likely the Margonites did or were made to do.

Anyway, the point is that the Margonites we’d battle would pretty much look very human.

I think it should be Abaddon and Grenth walking slowly along the top of a cliff together in the sunshine, lost in their own thoughts. Then Grenth starts in…

“Abaddon… Abaddon… Abaddon…”
“Hmm? What?”
“…. Hi.”
(Abaddon gives him a strange look then sinks back into his thoughts)
“Abaddon… Abaddon… Abaddon…”
“What is it?!”
“… Hi. "
“Gah… dude, really?!”
(Grenth smirks as Abaddon falls silent again."
“Abaddon… Abaddon… Abaddon…”
“WHAT IS I… AAAAaaaaaaahhhhh…..”

“Watch your step.”

Dang… tough crowd.

I want it to be fun and show the avatars and statues of the gods as they were in gw1. I don’t like their updates to the statues, feels wrong. A few things that puzzles me, what was Menzies doing at the time, who was in charge of the underworld at the time, and who was the goddess of water and secrets before abaddon, and how long was it after he took her place that he fell?

I actually vote for the Orrian soldiers fighting Margonites seeing the gods fighting, sometimes making a little interactions, like one of them reflect/dodgess a spell that destroys a bridge and we have to chose another path.

Erasculio.2914:

I don’t think it would work, though. While I really like the mechanic of playing as something else, having a new and unique skill bar, whenever that mechanic is introduced a lot of players complain (see the fight against Canach). Maybe – maybe - it could work in a dungeon dedicated exclusively to this, since players would know from the beginning what they would be getting into, but by placing it in the Fractals it would be a random option among many, which would likely lead to a lot of groans from the community.

It also has the issue of who the bosses would be. No Margonite champion would be a match to the combined power of the Five Gods. The only option that would make some sense would be to have Abaddon as the Fractal boss, with players fighting him multiple times, just like Subject Alpha in CoE; but even that would feel somewhat repetitive, instead of being something fun.

Lastly, and IMO far most important: it would banalise the gods. Grenth is the God of Death who reigns over Ice and the Underworld; his powers are sovereignty over those aspects of reality, not to do 10.000 damage in a area and fear the foes within it. By reducing the gods’ powers to mere skill numbers, even if very high numbers, we would be banalising their roles as almost mythical beings.

I would rather fight as soldiers under the gods, killing Margonites (I’m dying to see what Margonites would look like under the GW2 engine, they were beautiful in GW1 already), and watching as the colossal gods fight each other in the background. IMO, this would properly represent the gods as the beings they are.

We can be like Gods’ champions. Or avatars.
+Not banalising gods
+We can have not only Abaddon as a dangerous enemy

The most important thing I want to know is why Abaddon hates dancing!

The party will be transformed into the gods and gain special abilites.

And then the whole map is a big jumping puzzle that you will be forced to jump.

huehuehue

High Risk / High Reward. This game needs this more than anything.

Thomas.1962:

The most important thing I want to know is why Abaddon hates dancing!

He’s a much better dance, to the point where when challenged to a dance off, you just get served.

I really hope the dancing easter egg will be included

I would like a twist.
In the depiction of the event it shows Abaddon as unjustly betrayed by a jealous pantheon and history written to silence him and tarnish his name. And have the reveal done in such a way that you couldn't really tell if the fractal was glitching up its extrapolated data to fill in the blanks, or if there was some truth to the depiction.

Redfeather.6401:

I would like a twist.
In the depiction of the event it shows Abaddon as unjustly betrayed by a jealous pantheon and history written to silence him and tarnish his name. And have the reveal done in such a way that you couldn't really tell if the fractal was glitching up its extrapolated data to fill in the blanks, or if there was some truth to the depiction.

This would be the final part of the kitten ing the lore gets.

Like Thaumanova because Kiel will win and Destroyers are way cooler than a bunch of puny gods and their shenanigans.
;)

a power station is cooler than an epic historic battle of the gods? after about 1300+ years, will the story of the thaumanova still be told?

Gandarel.5091:

Redfeather.6401:

I would like a twist.
In the depiction of the event it shows Abaddon as unjustly betrayed by a jealous pantheon and history written to silence him and tarnish his name. And have the reveal done in such a way that you couldn't really tell if the fractal was glitching up its extrapolated data to fill in the blanks, or if there was some truth to the depiction.

This would be the final part of the kitten ing the lore gets.

It’s actually pretty believable. The gods were just jealous of all the love Abaddon was getting for spreading magic :p

Getefix.9150:

a power station is cooler than an epic historic battle of the gods? after about 1300+ years, will the story of the thaumanova still be told?

Will the story of Chernobyl still be told?
Context, dear Watson.

That´s the whole point, we´re pretty much aware of the Abaddon thing and the dim outline of the event. I´d like to hear new stories, not a rehash of old stuff.

HawkMeister.4758:

Getefix.9150:

a power station is cooler than an epic historic battle of the gods? after about 1300+ years, will the story of the thaumanova still be told?

Will the story of Chernobyl still be told?
Context, dear Watson.

That´s the whole point, we´re pretty much aware of the Abaddon thing and the dim outline of the event. I´d like to hear new stories, not a rehash of old stuff.

Asuras make explosions each day. But gods don’t often make such battles that can shape 1/3 of a continent.

And we know equal amount of information about these events. Maybe even a bit more about the reactor.

If you know so much about the battle between the gods, then who actually defeated Abaddon, all the 5 combined or only Grenth/Balthazar? Or maybe the predecessor of Abaddon somehow came back, sacrificed himself and casted him down? Where did the battle take place, who else were fighting, how was he actually defeated?

Reactor:
We know the place. We know who did it. We know it was a sabotage. We know the exact results. We can go there each day.

Also, gods are unlikely to return to Tyria, this is our ONLY CHANCE to see them, and we should live with it.

A Massive Headache.1879:

I want it to be fun and show the avatars and statues of the gods as they were in gw1. I don’t like their updates to the statues, feels wrong. A few things that puzzles me, what was Menzies doing at the time, who was in charge of the underworld at the time, and who was the goddess of water and secrets before abaddon, and how long was it after he took her place that he fell?

I think (not completely sure) that Grenth was in charge of the underworld, but I might be wrong. Afaik there was no goddess of water and secrets before him, but in the GW1 campaign Nightfall Kormir replaces him.

DeShadowWolf.6854:

A Massive Headache.1879:

I want it to be fun and show the avatars and statues of the gods as they were in gw1. I don’t like their updates to the statues, feels wrong. A few things that puzzles me, what was Menzies doing at the time, who was in charge of the underworld at the time, and who was the goddess of water and secrets before abaddon, and how long was it after he took her place that he fell?

I think (not completely sure) that Grenth was in charge of the underworld, but I might be wrong. Afaik there was no goddess of water and secrets before him, but in the GW1 campaign Nightfall Kormir replaces him.

There was a predecessor to Abaddon btw, but who, is unknow.

Gandarel.5091:

Also, gods are unlikely to return to Tyria,

Good.
Puny Gods.

;)

Redfeather.6401:

I would like a twist.
In the depiction of the event it shows Abaddon as unjustly betrayed by a jealous pantheon and history written to silence him and tarnish his name. And have the reveal done in such a way that you couldn't really tell if the fractal was glitching up its extrapolated data to fill in the blanks, or if there was some truth to the depiction.

Depending on which team you end up in that could very well be true. Abaddon wasn’t a bad guy per sé. His intentions weren’t malicious, they just ended up causing a lot of harm and while the other gods decided it had to be stopped, he didn’t.

If anything, considering the real point of dispute was granting too much magic to the world, I would expect the real plot twister to be Elder Dragon knowledge, either by all the gods, or just Abaddon. I’m really starting to doubt King Doric’s influence in all this.

Depends on what we can do. If we play as five gods against abaddon I would like to see the trinity restored. It has to be more like costumed brawl in gw1. Predefinded rolls not depending on the professions who join the 5 man team. Just each one of the team is a different type of god/avatar.