Guild Wars 2

Agreed.

We do not like Scarlet Briar!

signed. I do not have much to add. I didn’t mind her at first like the OP said. I’ve had enough. Sadly she isn’t the only problem with these updates but she’s a big problem.

Who is we? I like scarlet and know others do too

Heta.8629:

I like scarlet and know others do too

Each to their own, but be warned you are in a severe minority.

I agree with the OP’s Statements

I do not like Scarlet Briar.

Its the other way around for me, I don’t like Scarlet but I found the gameplay pretty fun…

In the next living story we’ll discover it was scarlet who woke primordius and elder dragons with her terrible bad accent. We’ll also discover it was scarlet who drove abbadon insane. It was also scarlet who made vhizer khilbron sink orr, and she offhandedly drove all 5 human gods off of tyria.

Seriously kill this (or let us kill this) worthless random character already. You already had five more dragon epic villains (Primordus, Jormag, Kralkatorrik, Deep-sea dragon, Jungle dragon) another undead (Palawa Joko) and a very easily spinnable xenophobic emperor of cantha to relate the living story to since zaithan is dead. All of them are much less annoying, pointless, and lore contradicting.

Take your pick, I don’t care which, but drop scarlet briar off a cliff already.

“Who is we? I like scarlet and know others do too”

We are the people who agree with this thread. Those who do not are free to disagree or even better start a thread that states you like the character and want more. Let your opinion be heard to the Devs.

Enokitake.1742:

In the next living story we’ll discover it was scarlet who woke primordius and elder dragons with her terrible bad accent. We’ll also discover it was scarlet who drove abbadon insane. It was also scarlet who made vhizer khilbron sink orr, and she offhandedly drove all 5 human gods off of tyria.

Seriously kill this (or let us kill this) worthless random character already. You already had five more dragon epic villains (Primordus, Jormag, Kralkatorrik, Deep-sea dragon, Jungle dragon) another undead (Palawa Joko) and a very easily spinnable xenophobic emperor of cantha to relate the living story to since zaithan is dead. All of them are much less annoying, pointless, and lore contradicting.

Take your pick, I don’t care which, but drop scarlet briar off a cliff already.

I echo this and the OP

I love Scarlet! I don’t understand why everyone hates her so much.

Speak for yourself, I love her.

thetoetag.5183:

I love Scarlet! I don’t understand why everyone hates her so much.

Easy, try reading the countless topics that explain why she is hated.

I’m not opposed to the character so much as the fact that she popped up out of nowhere, and she’s ridiculously overpowered. I mean come on, graduated ALL of the asura colleges? That’s a bs backstory if I ever saw one.

I also don’t like how she’s behind EVERYTHING. There is literally no mystery to any of the living story. From the moment we hear it announced, we know who’s behind it, and exactly how it will end.

We’ll foil Scarlet’s evil plot, Scarlet will laugh and say she doesn’t care and that nothing we do matters because the devs can come up with another excuse plot for her, and then she’ll disappear for a bit.

I do not like Scarlet Briar. It isn’t the hate you feel towards a villain or stuff like that when you get absorbed by a story or something. It’s just that she sucks as a villain – just plain crazy and unoriginal and always behind everything villainy just because she wants to be a villain, i.e. too shallow a character. The only thing good about her is her voice actor.

The only issue I have with Scarlet is that if she is going to appear before us, she shouldn’t be literally standing right there in front of us. If she is, there is no reason why our characters wouldn’t try to subdue her since she is wanted for all kinds of crimes.

Yet whenever she appears, she is invulnerable, talks a lot, and then poofs off without anyone bothering to even try to stop her.

Put her someplace we can’t physically get to. Then I would be happier with no one attempting to jump and restrain her.

I like Scarlet.

but the story is getting ridiculous with her being behind every kitten plot.

Anet if you’re going to keep scarlet around please turn her into the evil she is supposed to be….make her ruthless and violent and a ture bad guy and then let us slay her and move on to the next dragon.

Aedelric.1287:

thetoetag.5183:

I love Scarlet! I don’t understand why everyone hates her so much.

Easy, try reading the countless topics that explain why she is hated.

So people hate her because they dont know how to follow along with the living story? OMG SHES THE WORST!

I like Scarlet. I love it when she says “Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.”. I am excited to see what her game is and how it ties in to any other things already in the game or lore.

It’s not that she is behind every plot. It’s all been one plot with multiple episodes. Some people I guess just don’t get how this living story thing was supposed to work. ANet wants to tell a story about Scarlet that won’t fit into a single 2 week update, so they are telling it over multiple. I can assure you Scarlet haters out there that this arc with scarlet has a planned end and that Living Story will eventually be something other than Living Scarlet, but I am enjoying it while it is.

Signed.Quit shoving this garbage into the lore, and kill her off already.

broin.3856:

Signed.Quit shoving this garbage into the lore, and kill her off already.

i agree but i think they can still fix this she just needs to go out in a blaze of glory.

Count me in in “we”

Deth.4109:

broin.3856:

Signed.Quit shoving this garbage into the lore, and kill her off already.

i agree but i think they can still fix this she just needs to go out in a blaze of glory.

I couldn’t care less about glory. She could be eaten by ambient creatures and I’d be happy as long as she’s gone.

When Scarlet first appeared, she stated she saw the world as “broken” and that she needed to fix it. That’s great motivation for a psychopathic character! However, in the year she’s been in the living story, we have seen no development in her plan to change the world into her image.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker manipulated Gotham and caused wide-spread chaos, forcing people to do terrible things. In his mind, that was how the world worked and he wanted to showcase that. With Scarlet, we don’t have any of those developments and, in fact, the world continues to operate as it always has. Just as we defeated the Molten Alliance and destroyed their sonic devices, so too will we destroy the Tower of Nightmares and keep on doing what we did before. This is where the poor writing of Scarlet Briar’s story is flawed.

I’m a die hard Scarlet fan! I love her. She’s entertaining and hilarious with a ruthless, evil genius pulling everything together. She’s great.

However, this Thaumonova Reactor stuff is really pushing the line for me. She’s not the only villain Tyria has or ever had. Hopefully it will all make sense in the end.

Very well that the Scarlet silvari.If she was human or norn then it would FAP as well as on Sylvan in Wow.

thetoetag.5183:

I love Scarlet! I don’t understand why everyone hates her so much.

It’s because she made the WvW merc camps h___ for some players.

I wasn’t bothered by her either. I just think she needs more development. Right now she’s more of a mischievous, drug-addicted villain.

Her appearance made the Merc Camp achievement harder to get for solo WvW players, but here minions weren’t much of a challenge for the TC server’s Chu Chu Zerg.

So… let’s think about this for a moment.

Scarlet’s story had started before the election, right? If they really did plan all this with her from the beginning of Frost and Fire, it had to.

The election to decide which fractal to make wasn’t held until much later. So, there’s no way this could have been an important part of her story all along, unless ANet had no intention of letting the other fractal get made.

So, which is it? Are they just adding her in where ever they can now, even though it’s not really part of her story? Or did they plan to make this fractal all along to tell an important part of her story, meaning that the election was a sham?

Sorry I’d try to date Scarlet if she was a real lady. I like them mean, intelligent and apparently psychopathic.

Either way, her character is awesome, a villain’s villain, and I find her being diametrically opposed to the pale tree’s amicable and omnipotent spirit really neat. Goes way beyond the “bad seed” trope, no pun intended. And yeah it’s just storytelling, but because of that storytelling, Arenanet got to work in some awesome new enemies and rehash the ones that were well-received, i.e. Molten Alliance. Scarlet’s actually been my favorite villain to date, and her concept art is beyond gorgeous. I like her way better than the villain from the Southsun LS content.

Heta.8629:

Who is we? I like scarlet and know others do too

I agree there are plenty of people who seem to like her.

I thought it was interesting, as soon as she appeared in the Thaumanova Reactor story mode, two of the people in my party instantly complained that she was involved (before she even finished speaking). A random group of four other people and two of them instantly groaned at the site of her.

I think this most recent patch proves that Scarlet has polarised the community. Regardless of which side has more people (more people disliking Scarlet or more people liking her) it seems clear now that the writers have lost a large portion of the audience. A lot of people don’t care about her any more (as lame as “everything must be about Scarlet” is, the Thaumanova plot fits into Scarlet building something which is a story, just one many people don’t seem to care about any more) and her presence alone is enough to lose player interest in the story.

All we can hope for now is that it’s over soon, lessons were learned and what comes next is much better because of it.

I agree, that Scarlet is not an interesting character and I’m ready for them to move on to other stories. However…the problem is that now they are stuck with her until the “story arc” finishes. It’s already been written; code has been coded, and plans in motion that can’t be stopped. As much as the player base dislikes this character we are stuck with her until ArenaNet works through the content they have planned for her.

It had better be one kitten of an ending to make up for this though! lol

I still neither like nor dislike Scarlet. I remain positively uninterested… and that’s actually in many ways worse than either extreme.

I mean, Bobby Stein, guys… I get it. You’re TRYING to get us all wrapped up in the mystery of who this woman is, what her motivations are, why she’s doing this… you want us to wonder “There’s gotta be something more than this random seeming mad woman doing random things. What’s her angle?”

You want us speculating, you want our minds running through theories… in the hope that once the big reveal hits, all the pieces will fall into place and we’ll go, “Wow.”

Unfortunately, it’s not working. Like… at all.

I think this is where the “expansion” route makes more sense. You’re throwing out a single bread crumb every two weeks… and it’s not enough to slake anyone’s hunger. It’s just annoying at this point. Maybe if all this was being dumped on us at once, it’d be more palatable. Maybe.

I’m sorry, but this plan with Scarlet isn’t up to snuff. Wrap it up. Really quickly. Because right now, the problem isn’t the people who hate it. The problem is the people who have stopped caring one way or the other.

thetoetag.5183:

Aedelric.1287:

thetoetag.5183:

I love Scarlet! I don’t understand why everyone hates her so much.

Easy, try reading the countless topics that explain why she is hated.

So people hate her because they dont know how to follow along with the living story? OMG SHES THE WORST!

I guess most of us are stupid then, or the fact is we can follow along with the living story and its an uncompelling repetitive pile of rubbish with a disgustingly one-dimensional antagonist who talks like a teenage brat, and has godlike powers and intelligence. For months now her motives are unknown, she forms all these alliances which break the original GW1 lore. What’s there to like about her?

Shiren.9532:

Heta.8629:

Who is we? I like scarlet and know others do too

I agree there are plenty of people who seem to like her.

I can see that in all the threads talking about how great she is… oh wait.

Agreed. She’s awful.

Hopefully put this way they might actually understand we DO NOT LIKE HER simple short words

People don’t like her because it’s bad writing. There’s no mystery. Nothing is unexpected. She’s not exactly hindering us. Worst of all it doesn’t feel like anything we do matters, which is especially important in a game story.
It’s not uncommon for a villain to be behind everything or to always have a way out, but usually that’s because of their superior strategy, or meticulous planning. As others have said scarlet is basically a god. Whenever we disrupt something we find out it doesn’t matter. If she’s just stalling for time why didn’t she just stay hidden? Whenever she’s cornered she escapes just because she can. If she’s really that powerful why doesn’t she just do what she wanted and be done with it? She already told us these plans weren’t that important to her, so If she’s trying to be evil why doesn’t she do something important like attack the priory/vigil/order? It wouldn’t be hard with her intellect and strength. Instead all she does is take credit for things that could have happened anyway and it’s just annoying.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I do not like Scarlet Briar. It isn’t the hate you feel towards a villain or stuff like that when you get absorbed by a story or something. It’s just that she sucks as a villain – just plain crazy and unoriginal and always behind everything villainy just because she wants to be a villain, i.e. too shallow a character. The only thing good about her is her voice actor.

This. I want an antagonist that I dislike because they are intimidating and threatening. I get neither of those vibes from Scarlet because she’s just too much of a Mary Sue and a clown to be THE head honcho. There’s no explanation for how she got to be as all-powerful and seemingly omniscient as she is, she has no explained motive for why she is doing the things she is doing, and she simply lacks personality beyond the simple prankster archetype that just doesn’t fit with the role she’s supposed to be filling. It’s really disappointing to see such a bland character being behind every loose end we’ve encountered so far without any sort of depth or insight into the backstory of the character herself even, especially when there are so many other possible candidates that would have done a better job of filling that slot.

What’s up with all the hipsters who say “I like Scarlet Briar”, but never give us any reaons why she is a compelling character?

Maybe they like her, but some people also like Twilight. It doesn’t mean it’s a good story. (Though I would rate Twilight’s cast way better than Scarlet…)

I like her.

I like that she’s overtly insane, and specifacally the reason she became that way. I wanna see what happens further.

DrPhro.5976:

People don’t like her because it’s bad writing. There’s no mystery. Nothing is unexpected. She’s not exactly hindering us. Worst of all it doesn’t feel like anything we do matters, which is especially important in a game story.

Spot on! They never tie up lose ends, or try to add some kind of mystery to it. Its like a detective on a murder case but there are no clues, no hints, no developments. The murderer just teleports in, confesses to the crime, then teleports away again without leaving a trace… And what’s worse this murderer is teleporting everywhere and admitting to all the crimes.

chemiclord.3978:

I think this is where the “expansion” route makes more sense. You’re throwing out a single bread crumb every two weeks… and it’s not enough to slake anyone’s hunger. It’s just annoying at this point. Maybe if all this was being dumped on us at once, it’d be more palatable. Maybe.

That might be part of the issue, but it doesn’t address the fact that there is no pacing in the story at all. It’s just “defeat the plan of the week, which appears entirely unrelated to the previous plan of the week, Scarlet runs away, the end.” If you want to have a “season arc” kind of plot, that’s fine, but it can be incidental in some episodes, and only indirectly addressed in others.

Arrow Season 1’s present day arc seems like a pretty good template for a “introduce related group of characters, explore those relationships, fight bad guys who have a connection either to the character arcs or at least a tangential connection to the Big Bad’s Big Plot, get kitten kicked by villain, regroup, build up a sense of impending doom while doing more of the same, epic finale.” It also handles the “deal with two story arcs, one in the present and one in the past” thing too, FWIW.

This topic is acceptable to me. I do not like the Invasive Weed.

do not like

perilisk.1874:

That might be part of the issue, but it doesn’t address the fact that there is no pacing in the story at all. It’s just “defeat the plan of the week, which appears entirely unrelated to the previous plan of the week, Scarlet runs away, the end.” If you want to have a “season arc” kind of plot, that’s fine, but it can be incidental in some episodes, and only indirectly addressed in others.

As I said, it MIGHT work if we were seeing more of it all at once.

See, this is the problem… we’re what… five, six months into this Living Story… and Arena.net is STILL in the setting up phase. There’s no resolution of a real conflict because… well… they don’t exist yet. We haven’t even started the play… they’re still putting the stage together.

They very could have this amazing way to tie it all together that will blow your mind… but how many people are willing to wait 2 some odd years to reach that point at the rate this is going?

We have finally gotten to the point that was described in an older South Park episode…..butters tries an evil plot, “Simpsons did it”, but sadly this is worst because no matter the plot we always know Scarlet did it.

This isn’t even considering the total lack of depth of the character and overall gameplay in some of the encounters or even more frustrating the taint of her presence on good instances and good combat mechanics.

Just my two cents on the topic.

chemiclord.3978:

perilisk.1874:

That might be part of the issue, but it doesn’t address the fact that there is no pacing in the story at all. It’s just “defeat the plan of the week, which appears entirely unrelated to the previous plan of the week, Scarlet runs away, the end.” If you want to have a “season arc” kind of plot, that’s fine, but it can be incidental in some episodes, and only indirectly addressed in others.

As I said, it MIGHT work if we were seeing more of it all at once.

See, this is the problem… we’re what… five, six months into this Living Story… and Arena.net is STILL in the setting up phase. There’s no resolution of a real conflict because… well… they don’t exist yet. We haven’t even started the play… they’re still putting the stage together.

They very could have this amazing way to tie it all together that will blow your mind… but how many people are willing to wait 2 some odd years to reach that point at the rate this is going?

i knoww the LS is like being stuck in traffic, ITS SO SLOOOOOWWWWWW.

To be brutally honest bordering on a little mean, Scarlet Briar seems like a character someone who’s new to roleplaying thought up. She has that obnoxious, “prankster” I-Do-What-I-Want-Because-I-Can attitude, she has a lot of power and knowledge seemingly out of nowhere in a very short amount of time that she’s been alive, she controls a whole bunch of bad guys, and she doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses.

Scarlet is boring. I mean, at first, she seemed “okay”(?) but now she’s apparently orchestrating every really bad event in the history of Tyria? Making alliances with Charr and Dredge, Krait and Court; what, is she going to ally the Sons of Svanir and the Centaur in the Frozen Alliance? Come on. Scarlet Briar is not a villain. Scarlet Briar is that annoying side character henchman who hangs on the tails of the real villain. Also, for the record, don’t let that statement give you guys any ideas. “Scarlet Briar has wreaked havoc across Tyria, but now revealed is her true master!” Please.

Scarlet isn’t a villain. You can’t relate to her. You can’t empathize with her. You can’t try to see things from her perspective, because she’s unrelatable, can’t be empathized with, and has no perspective to see anything from. Her motivations are really obscure, and if I had to guess, superficial at best. “I want to change the world in my image!” isn’t a really compelling plot hook for me. Or, at least, the way Scarlet is going about it. Her image must be “a bunch of races banding together under elemental titles”. Scarlet lacks anything close to resembling a villain. I can’t find a reason to hate her for what she does. I hate her because she’s a bad character.

I want a villain that keeps me guessing. I want a villain that’s so dangerous that it’s scary to even try to think about what they might do next, what terrible atrocity they might commit. I want a villain that’s relatable, where you almost, ALMOST are able to root for them in some way. A good villain has REASON to do the things they do; it’s not randomized chaos like Scarlet’s “I’m doing this because it’s fun” charade. I also want a villain that doesn’t hamfist (hamfist; verb — to approach a situation without any semblance of tact) the lore as badly as she does.

Before you do any more irreparable damage, thing about Scarlet accidentally catching fire. Plants burn pretty easily.