Guild Wars 2

Terra Dactyl.2047:

Soulstar.7812:

I like Scarlet.

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

Basically this. There are other bad guys in the game. Let them come up with an evil plan every once in a while. Plus the whole going back and making stuff that already happened before scarlet was around her idea… It’s like if DC went back and said the joker killed batman’s parents. And created the riddler. And scarecrow. And poison Ivy. Along with all of the other villains in the DC universe.

However, only a SINGLE event has been made to be “her fault” What other ‘pre-set’ events have been labeled as her doing? Ones without a reason or explaining already existing.

your comparsion, at the time, would make more sense if you went “It’s as if DC went back and had the joker kill batman’s parents.” And nothing else. Because what other events that existed BEFORE the Molten Alliance have been linked to her?

She is/was an interesting character, but it’s not interesting anymore if EVERY plot is Scarlet. I mean at this rate, next month they’ll probably tell us that Zhaitan and Abaddon were just giant marionettes with Scarlet literally pulling the strings. It’s out of control.[/quote]

AKGeo.6048:

I can understand this point, and especially the latter portion.

But you can’t expect Anet to constantly ramp up the scale of the enemies without having a period of, for lack of a better word, lull in the action.

This is one of the few points you’ve made where I fully agree with you. Take a look at the Harry Potter books, for example. (I assume many of the people here have read them, that’s why I’m using them.) Each book generally ended with the big battle against Voldemort, then a short ramp-down and wrap up. Next book starts small again, and builds. Sure, the “small starts” got bigger as time went on, but it still built up slowly to the climax. It’s the first 2/3 of the book that makes you care about the big fight in the last 1/3. Just about every good book series does this, ditto with video games.

AKGeo.6048:

Nobody in GW2 is an epic hero. That’s the point I think some people are missing about GW2’s story, even when it’s presented front and center at just about every turn: TEAMWORK is key. When you go in solo, that’s when you fail. When your team falls apart, the mission falls apart. Nobody is, kitten eloquently put to me in another thread on here, a “special snowflake”. All characters can fail. Scarlet’s only advantage is surprise and numbers.

Yes. Scarlet’s advantage is surprise. Surprise and numbers.
Okay, her two advantages are surprise and numbers. And being a super-genus.
Scarlet has three big advantages. Surprise, numbers, and being a super-genus. Oh, and being able to make xenophobic religious fanatics work with other xenophobic religious fanatics of opposed worldviews.
And being able to pull in forces from another reality.
And steal equipment from the most advanced military in Tyria today, without anyone even noticing.

Here is Scarlet. She is the Epic Hero, she is a Special Snowflake, and even when her plans are crashing down around her, she can not fail.

[Post too long, so continued below.]

[Post continued.]

AKGeo.6048:

Tell me: if you were to improve Scarlet’s story as we’ve seen it so far, how would you do it?

If we keep how it’s been presented so far? I would continue the story line, but downplay Scarlet’s part as much as possible. Don’t have her show up in person at all any more, nor by hologram or anything else. Not even a quickly written letter. She only appears when it’s time for her to die. Until then, have a second in command doing things for her, or just let us gather for ourselves that she’s behind things and let it go at that. People dislike the character’s presentation, so stop presenting her.

If I had it to do all over again? I’d introduce Ceara (pre Scarlet Scarlet) during the Molten storyline. Have her watching the people fleeing from the invasions, perhaps making some comments about how interesting it is to see how people react to such a crisis. Have her keep showing up as things advance, studying events and the fallout from them. Also, start dropping comments that certain asura from the three colleges are missing, as well as an expert charr marksman, and so on. I’d then have her in the crowd at Queen’s Jubilee when the Watchknight turns on Logan, but I would NOT have Scarlet show up just yet. Instead, I’d have her appear during the Queen’s Speech, but wearing a hood and a distinctive mask, so you can’t really tell who she is. In the aftermath, the asura that was with us could tell us he’s certain he’s heard the name “Scarlet Briar” somewhere before, and he’ll let us know what he can find out.

From this point on, we can encounter “Scarlet” several times more. Occasionally, we’ll even defeat her, only to find it’s either a modified watchknight or someone we don’t know. Ceara will be there beside us at times, watching events unfold and studying them as they do so. Others, such as Rox and Braham will be there as well. Eventually, we get word that our asura friend has tracked down a lab used by someone in the Inquest that worked with Scarlet Briar, and we can go investigate. When we get there, we find the remains of the device she used, and the dead bodies of the other people she’s tortured to death to extract information from them. Maybe one of them would still be alive (I’d vote for the charr on this one). We finally find out, from the survivor or some notes, the real name of Scarlet. We go to confront her, and she laughs about how fun it’s been to study all the chaos she’s created, but she’s still not found just what she’s after. We fight her, but alas it’s just another decoy in the end. Now, the real hunt for Scarlet/Ceara is on!

It would leave us with a PERSONAL reason to want her dead (betrayed by someone that seemed to be a friend), and give her a motivation (she’s after something, even if we’re not sure what) that we want to work against.

And, as a small side note, it would likely take about a month longer to play out than the current version of the story line, and we’d only now be finding out as much about her as we’ve known for months with this version.

Palador.2170:

Yes. Scarlet’s advantage is surprise. Surprise and numbers.
Okay, her two advantages are surprise and numbers. And being a super-genus.
Scarlet has three big advantages. Surprise, numbers, and being a super-genus. Oh, and being able to make xenophobic religious fanatics work with other xenophobic religious fanatics of opposed worldviews.
And being able to pull in forces from another reality.
And steal equipment from the most advanced military in Tyria today, without anyone even noticing.

Here is Scarlet. She is the Epic Hero, she is a Special Snowflake, and even when her plans are crashing down around her, she can not fail.

That was friggin’ hilarious. I like your solution to the problem, too.

I think ANet’s writers and AKG here don’t quite understand the reason they can’t truly fix this mess or explain to the poor uneducated masses why their story is actually really good, honest, and that reason is: when you write a story for other people to experience, they become the judge of your success.

There may be something good behind the idea or their intentions for this… well, this... but no one’s going to see it if you don’t present it just the right way.

It’s not invalid to like Scarlet. It’s purely personal, people like what they like, they don’t what they don’t. The problem isn’t in personal taste. The problem is that the writers aren’t doing their job.

I actually really like Scarlet.

Tom.8029:

I actually really like Scarlet.

Despite how I may seem to froth and rant about her, I’ll say flat out that there’s nothing wrong with liking her.

Hell, I love the movie “Tank Girl”, and that’s a truly awful movie. It’s just that, for me, it works.

Palador.2170:

Despite how I may seem to froth and rant about her, I’ll say flat out that there’s nothing wrong with liking her.

Amen.

(I, for one, like Frontlines: Fuel of War even though it’s utter generic schlock.)

Palador.2170:

Yes. Scarlet’s advantage is surprise. Surprise and numbers.
Okay, her two advantages are surprise and numbers. And being a super-genus.
Scarlet has three big advantages. Surprise, numbers, and being a super-genus. Oh, and being able to make xenophobic religious fanatics work with other xenophobic religious fanatics of opposed worldviews.
And being able to pull in forces from another reality.
And steal equipment from the most advanced military in Tyria today, without anyone even noticing.

Here is Scarlet. She is the Epic Hero, she is a Special Snowflake, and even when her plans are crashing down around her, she can not fail.

A: Said alliances were fragile, bar the aetherblades who personally feared her.
B: Dredge wanted power, flame legion wanted power. as I recall, both were gearing up to backstab each other anyway by the time the molten alliance was defeated. I’d wager something similar is going to happen with Toxic alliance. They’ll go until they reach their goals, then dump the other group.
C: There is NOTHING to indicate these alliances were anything more then SINGLE groups of each faction. Maybe these Krait were more willing to use another race to further their goals and bring back a prophet. the Nightmare Court isn’t really xenophobic, neither is the Inquest. Both simply give no cares about morals and will happily murder innocents for the lulz and power. Both may APPEAR to be that way, but one is a faction composed entirely of Sylvari who embrace nightmare (No other race can), and the other is almost entirely Asura-focused, because that’s who they focus recruiting from.

The only “religious fanatics” she’s worked with are flame legion and Krait. The Krait working with Nightmare court is thought to be weird, but I see people act as if in the universe nobody goes “This is REALLY weird.” Flame Legion, well we know they were clashing with the Dredge through the entire thing.

And that’s the thing, to herself, she may not see it as “failing” but to everybody else, it’s a victory against her. Also it’s clear why we haven’t fought her lately. We fought her in Clockwork chaos, we beat her (three times in that dungeon). She escaped, and she’s not going to charge into a fight again so easily.

What equipment has she stolen from militaries that “Nobody ever noticed”? Twilight Assault showed those airships are being built by the Aetherblades, so there goes “Stealing from the pact”.

edit: there is NOTHING wrong with liking or disliking her. I however, seem to keep seeing people who twist events to link to their personal hate, or even twist lore (Like those claiming she ‘learned super racial/cultural trade secrets without issue and was widely known, but never talked about. Or the whole “She graduated from the collages and learned EVERYTHING from the Asura and EVERYTHING from the other races.” Which is false, she didn’t learn everything she could, and she only took one set of classes for each Collage, about a semester’s worth).

edit2: Hell, the wiki says it’s a “splinter faction” of the nightmare court.
also

The Molten Alliance is the unlikely alliance of Flame Legion and dredge forces. The alliance utilizes the magic of the charr and the technology of the dredge to to create a synergistic and powerful enemy. They were founded when a “smooth talker” from “the city,” as said by a dredge prisoner, approached the dredge with the offer from the Flame Legion to form an alliance. The Flame Legion had planned to learn about the dredge technology and use them to seize territory, before re-enslaving the race. The dredge, on the other hand, were pushed into the alliance by the moletariate despite their hatred of oppressors like the Flame Legion, out of a greed for more power and technology, needing the fire magic of the Legion to improve their weaponry.

Yeah, a totally stable, reasonable alliance. People need to stop acting as if Scarlet hand-waved ancient, rooted cultural beliefs away and instead look at her as poking the races to get them to work together in a destructive way, resulting in backstabs (If not defeated).

I’ve said it just before:

I think ANet’s writers and AKG here don’t quite understand the reason they can’t truly fix this mess … when you write a story for other people to experience, they become the judge of your success.

There may be something good behind the idea or their intentions for this… well, this... but no one’s going to see it if you don’t present it just the right way.

It doesn’t matter where you try to make her “fit” or how much sense it all makes. Any attempts to defend Scarlet are fruitless from the get-go.

The players have spoken. They no longer care about any excuses and justifications. There is no redemption for this character or what they’ve done with her. The writers have failed (and boy did they).

As for the reasons why, Palador and Voidwater summed up about one-tenth of them as concisely as could be. There are many more. Whether people can put them into words or not, doesn’t matter.

Invalidating the other side simply for holding an opinion is a poor way to discuss things or debate.

As said, I’m indifferent about her. I just wish people would talk about her actions truthfully to the actual information given instead of twisting things to fit their viewpoints.

Kalavier.1097:

Invalidating the other side simply for holding an opinion…

No one’s doing that.

Kalavier.1097:

I just wish people would talk about her actions truthfully to the actual information given instead of twisting things to fit their viewpoints.

I think you’re wrong on all accounts there, actually. The point I was making is that it doesn’t matter one way or the other: people will rightfully hate what the writers have done regardless.

I was fine with Scarlet in the beginning as well. Although I was never a big fan of her involvement in all threats that appeared in the world over several months prior to that, the short story about her on the website was very interesting. Ever since then, though, I got more and more annoyed by her and the moment she popped up in the Thaumanova Reactor fractal was the last nail in the coffin.

Unless there’s an incredible plot twist coming, I find her one-dimensional, bland and simply an escape route for the living story writing team that needs to somehow add more and more evil alliances to the world.

At first I thought Scarlet was funny and I never took it seriously because I didnt even think anet was serious I honestly thought anet was messing with us/joking.. I thought she was just a one time character that we would eventualy kil at the end of Queens Jublee story missions. Boy was I wrong. She kept appearing and disapearing, Team Rocket was better then her. Then I thought maybe I could put up with her, boy was I wrong again!! It just became more and more annoying. A sylvari no more then 26year old allready better then elder asuras at everything.

People who have read enough books or watched anything with a plot and character development can see how mary sue she is and how boring of a character she is.

The very few anetdrones who do like her likes her because Scarlet is ‘’krazy and insane’’ and so cool and EDGY!!!

tl:tr- Scarlet needs to go

Draco.2806:

Kalavier.1097:

Invalidating the other side simply for holding an opinion…

No one’s doing that.

Kalavier.1097:

I just wish people would talk about her actions truthfully to the actual information given instead of twisting things to fit their viewpoints.

I think you’re wrong on all accounts there, actually. The point I was making is that it doesn’t matter one way or the other: people will rightfully hate what the writers have done regardless.

First point, some are. You are not, but it feels like some from both sides are doing it.

The second point, how so? I wasn’t saying YOU were doing that. I’m saying others are. they a purposefully (Or accidentally) twisting the events. Or being unclear in their statements.

They make it sound like the molten alliance had dredge and flame legion dancing around campfires, singing songs, and getting along like awesome friends.(Exaggerating) when really, it was a very uneasy alliance where both sides had plans to backstab the other as soon as the moment came where they had enough power.

Toxic alliance obviously is the Krait using the Nightmare court group to help them get a prophet to appear. Nightmare court is likely in it just because it’d be a horrible thing that fits with their goal o f corrupting the dream.

Her backstory shows that she didn’t really learn everything she could from the various masters, including Asura. yet people act as if she learned EVERYTHING in a stupidly short amount of time.

That’s what bugs me.

Kalavier.1097:

The second point, how so?

Well, I don’t want to debate lore, actually. Can’t say I care about it, the game sure hasn’t given me any reasons to.

I was just saying I think the reasons given are still valid – that it’s simply absurd how magically special and perfect this random twig is for no Divinity Dam reason, and the contradictions with (barely) established facts – or what we can assume are facts by virtue of assuming that people who inhabit Tyria aren’t stupid and insane at the same time – all simply for the sake of making her look even more wonderful are endlessly grating. This, of course, coupled with extremely weak exposition in-game meaning even what we know of the world is already ambiguous at best and full of holes at worst. So new justifications for her sake may only serve to expose weaknesses in what we previously accepted, but is now even dumber than it used to be.

I mean, the “Orders”, for god’s sake. The world doesn’t work that way. It’s already dumb, you don’t need to add to that.

But really, I was more referring to what Scarlet appears to be. Someone just said it: her first appearance looked like a bad joke, like writers making fun of their players or themselves or something else entirely.

It literally looked like a bad joke.

You can try and justify that, but – well, not “you” you – but a creator should never do that. You can’t convince your audience to like your work with arguments and explanations, you just have to make it happen. If you can’t do that, well, then you’re not a good writer.

I don’t object to the plot itself. It is a bit slow and sparse on details, but it’s not without potential. Anet could very well take the current Living Story in interesting directions. I don’t think the story has been presented well so far, but it is far from irredeemable. I’m not expecting some super deep narrative (it would be nice though), the “mastermind with a big plan” story is okay.

Scarlet, however, is simply unworthy of the role Anet has given her, and this flaw will be difficult to fix. Keeping the character, I think it would’ve been somewhat better/more plausible to have her as a subordinate/peer in a larger conspiracy, instead of compressing everything onto a can-do-everything Swiss army knife character. And please, let the other villains have some dignity.

The character itself is a cool character. But it’s time for the character to die or retire or whatever- it’s old and becoming unoriginal to slap the same villain at the top of each new LS update.

Not to mention how mush I despise attempts to umbrella all concurrent conflicts under a single scape-goat source- especially when the amount of aggressors in the lore sets them up to be better than that tired cliche.

How can you hate something you don’t even know. At most you can say is you hate her development. What do we really know about scarlet almost nothing.

If scarlet was successfully caught during the Queen’s Jubilee, i think people would have liked Scarlet better.
Then maybe 6~10months later, another villain could aid in her escape from the prison and players would likely be less kitten ed off at seeing her again.

Just like Mad King thorn,the main reason we are not sick and tired of the mad king is because we have 11~12 months of break from him.If we keep seeing the mad king for a few months of LS,i’m sure he will be the 2nd scarlet.

Probably I’m in the middle… I absolutely love the character. It’s funny, it has a great voice acting, great lines written to her, but on the other hand, I feel that she is a bit overused now. I do not want her to vanish at all, but it would be much better to keep her around as a wild card and use her twice every year for Living Story materials and introduce others as well.

She would work better as a comic book villain, not as Moriarty. And I’m not saying this because she annoys me, on the opposite, I wouldn’t like her to get overused and written off completely.

I happen to love Scarlet.

But for all those who don’t- since she’s messing around with dragon magic, I bet she’s going to turn into one. And bam…. you all will have your new dragon. Named Scarlet. Bwhahaha

Fafnir.5124:

How can you hate something you don’t even know. At most you can say is you hate her development. What do we really know about scarlet almost nothing.

Which is a big problem. She’s been an active story element since August, and a ‘passive’ one since release (if she’s apparently active at Thaumanova). How long will it be before we know anything, let alone beat her into a pulp? Years?

Sarrs.4831:

How long will it be before we know anything, let alone beat her into a pulp? Years?

Please not…let it be less please…microseconds would be a good alternative…

I like Scarlet, but I would like to fight other threats.

I gave up caring about the whole living story a long time ago.
It’s pretty sad to see such good game end up this bad. As it seems now, pve is basicly:
- Same dungeons over and over
- Way too easy
- Boring story

And then to mention they will probably not release any expansion soon. So disappointing… Really was hoping it would end up in the same state or a better version of gw1, but, pve wise, it actually got worse.

The moment we get the chance to kill Scarlet, I’m redoing the instance twenty times in a row. For me, she’s become a symbol for everything that is bad about GW2, every broken promise. I can see why half of the old team left before GW2 was released if stuff like this was being planned.

Aster.7950:

I like Scarlet, but I would like to fight other threats.

And that’s where I am at sometimes.
Maybe they’ll do something like that at the end of her time.
At least I hope, because it would be boring if we always faced one threat.
Even when we had just Zhaitan there were still minor threats as we worked our way up.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

If scarlet was successfully caught during the Queen’s Jubilee, i think people would have liked Scarlet better.
Then maybe 6~10months later, another villain could aid in her escape from the prison and players would likely be less kitten ed off at seeing her again.

Just like Mad King thorn,the main reason we are not sick and tired of the mad king is because we have 11~12 months of break from him.If we keep seeing the mad king for a few months of LS,i’m sure he will be the 2nd scarlet.

I would of liked her if she actually got something done and made herself out to be an actual threat instead of a party crasher.

Uhm…guys, how exactly could you miss the info that Scarlet’s Arc is already completely planned out and in development? I’m pretty sure Anet has registered that many people dislike Scarlet, but it’s not like they could change much now (production cycles and such). We’re stuck with her until her story has played out.

I just don’t get the necessity of another ‘we don’t like Scarlet, please take her away’ thread. It’s not gonna happen any time soon, deal with it.

Just because we’re stuck with Scarlet, doesn’t mean they can’t interpret her better. This is a script problem, not story problem. Angel McCoy cold write Shakespeare, and still read horribly if scripted badly ingame.

For example, too much emphasis is placed on how Scarlet orchestrated the alliances, rather than helping overcome their issues.

Scarlet never talks about Baelfire, or the Moletariat, or anything! A character like her should give us more exposition into the alliances. Instead we get only brief mentions how she gave the Krait an obelisk… She never tries to make us think about their situation, or show the slightest amount of concern for the Dredge.

Scarlet isn’t inheritely flawed, but the script really could be better.

Well… most of my friends left GW2 because of her. Erm, maybe not “her”, but because of what she represents, so yeah. Go figure.
It’s not even that she’s poorly written – she was implemented in the game in even worse manner, so yeah.

Aaand it’s not that I hate her or something. Not Scarlet for being Scarlet – she’s not best character out there, ofc – but she doesn’t ring my bell in any way. She’s not worthy of my hate, of my emotions – at all.
I can’t say I’m ok with her, because I know, she’s taking space, resources and time from devs and etc. All that could be invested in something… I don’t know. Worthy? For a change… But because of what Scarlet represent, I no longer care. Not her story, not even Living Story. Guild Wars as a whole become neuter. Indistinct:
-will they at last release good story? I don’t care.
-will they kill Scarlet? I don’t care.
-will they present decent LS in future? I don’t care.
-maybe they will butcher what have left from lore? I don’t care either.
-will they fulfill any promise? I don’t care.
-or maybe finally deliver that “just wait for that, wait little longer, aaaand just wait till we build it, just waaaaait…”? I don’t care.
-…will they make box expansion? I don’t care, I won’t buy it anyway. Not from these devs.

Let me think – right after I created every character I have, I saw neat animation with final words “this is MY story!”. Yeah. While nothing in PvE is really about my character, this lead me to Personal Story – first part is about me and my racial mentor (emphasis on the mentor, I understand why), second part is less about me and more about my mentor from one of the orders (emphasis on the mentor again, I’m still ok with it)… and the third part is about Trahearne (and I’m not ok with that skritt). The Trahearn part is longest… or it drags really long? Can’t really say.
Well… ok, so much for “my story” in Personal Story. Let’s search for it in Living Story. First it was all about Ellen Kiel (character I find shallow, poorly written and boring overall, but at least implemented in so-so manner), then it become Scarletfest (even more shallow, written in even worse manner, less baked and overall inconsistent).
What am I as a player? Part of unimportant crowd, that can be described as background for this Villian Sue.
Great – I play epic game in fantasy setting, sequel to a quite good fantasy online game (not best stories ever, but most of them on really decent level), just to be downgraded to a zergling. Just what I needed in my life.
Not that fighting dragons have that “great promise”, that I see many players believe in. Fighting dragons seems boring – You know it well, especially after You dealt with Zaithan. So we need good villain after all. But I think “good” is the key.
I know, I know – it’s impossible to make story that works for everyone, but it’s hard to find worse attempts than GW2 LS. I can’t think of any.
If it’s not a story about us or for us, it should be at least a good one. If You can’t engage players in storytelling, tell them such tale, that will throw them on their knees, not force them to throw up.

It’s all in storytelling. You can have bad story, poorly written and still implement (sell or whatever) it in such manner, that people will go crazy over it. Let’s look on series of books, I personally hate. Twilight.
Some of main characters share Scarlet super-“original” concept of being overpowered for sake of being more awesome than reader can handle. And then some. That’s not the end of similarities. You know those stories that seems unbelievable, because whole world is constructed in such manner, that the main plot can occur? And without this main plot (before story, after story, in different part of world, with different characters… You know what I mean) whole universe is not working properly – as a illogical, stupid setting for show that have ended? That’s what is happening with Tyria now – it’s skewed in such manner, that will allow Scarlet story to occur. Bury lore on the process, good or bad – no one cares, bully players and all that just to tell story of 1 cartoony villain.
You know why Twilight does it better? Because writer did one great thing with it – she found with who she will be dealing with, wrote her story in approachable (for that recipient) manner and delivered it. Delivered. De-li-ve-red.
If You take a book from Twilight saga to Your hands, You know exactly what You gonna get. And You… holding a book in a bookstore is still better love story than Twilight. When You take GW2 in Your hands, You hold completely different thing You were promised and, at the same time, evolving (with every update) in completely different way You were promised and could expect… and even moving away from initial (far superior) design! And it’s not better love story than Twilight… I feel used!

So why do I still play? I barely play. But till other game my friends have set their eyes on launch, I log in from time to time. It’s that sad.

I just don’t get how you can allow a character like scarlet to make your whole gaming experience so miserable you want to leave? Most living story updates take what, 3-4 days to ‘complete’? With the rest of the world still there, even a little larger than it was at release?
If you did like the game without Scarlet, why not simply ignore her?

Frotee.2634:

I just don’t get how you can allow a character like scarlet to make your whole gaming experience so miserable you want to leave? Most living story updates take what, 3-4 days to ‘complete’? With the rest of the world still there, even a little larger than it was at release?
If you did like the game without Scarlet, why not simply ignore her?

I can’t speak for other, but for me it’s 2 reasons:
1. Because it’s not much to do here. I’ve got 9 lvl 80 chars, I started another one out of boredom… I have my legendaries, have most of achievements I want (what have left is mega grindy), I know dungeons/fractals (except for the new ones) inside out. I literally have nothing interesting to see. In other case I would be killing time now, waiting for box expansion – but heeee haaaa. No expansion on the way.
[WvW is not my cup of tea and I find PvP to be really bad]
2. Because she’s interfering, changing and skewing existing lore, watering it down to really pitiful degree. And I can’t stand that. I know – quite personal reason, but still.

I’m agreeing with this also. I just think it’s about time for Scarlet to end

imo they should stop developing new content every 2 weeks(so that they dont create more of these strange characters like scarlet …), there are several other aspects in the game that still needs much love.
for example i would be glad to see guild halls in the future … or more feautures for the home instance … the home instance feels sooo useless and so underwhelming.
these are just a few points, but i hope you get my idea … the game itself needs more attention and should be improved

Frotee.2634:

I just don’t get how you can allow a character like scarlet to make your whole gaming experience so miserable you want to leave? Most living story updates take what, 3-4 days to ‘complete’? With the rest of the world still there, even a little larger than it was at release?
If you did like the game without Scarlet, why not simply ignore her?

Because people can’t remove/view things without that. It’s like the ME3 endings, for some reason after playing them you have some which LITERALLY declare the ENTIRE mass effect canon to be null and stupid. Then you have reasonable people who like everything up to the ending and go “I dislike this part and that part. everything else is okay.”

Like Traeherne. Besides the fact people (like they do with scarlet) overblow his actions/twist them entirely wrong… The game is enjoyable without him. You can level fine without doing the personal story much at all. I’ve not really seen the evidence of your character being completely invalidated by Traeherne OR the living story. Infact, a friend said ingame some soldiers talk about how your character ‘took out the champion at claw island’ as if you did it yourself. Traehrne doesn’t steal credit. In the Living story you are there, you are one of SEVERAL heroes/people stopping the problems. What’s wrong with that? It’s more realistic to say “Hey, this group of heroes/champions went into the molten alliance base and cleared it out!” then “Wow, that LONE guy took out all these bases!” Also makes for better lore writing. Instead of having to talk about the player character in vague references, they can simply refer to a GROUP of heroes who did this action.

I’m actually new to Guild Wars 2, though I played a bit of the original back in the day. I first met up with Scarlet during the Nightmare Tower mission, and right off the bat I couldn’t stand her. She was an annoying, boring “crazy-girl” archetype that seems to be popular nowadays, and the fact that she just monologues at you then teleports away at the end is just lazy, Saturday morning cartoon writing.

I actually went to the website to read up on her backstory, and kind of wished I didn’t. It is just awfully bad. She is definitely a Mary Sue villain, which is strange since I find that many of the characters in this game (at least from the main questline) are pretty good. Frankly, I can understand a lot of the grumblings from the older players here. If I had to put up with Scarlet’s super villain antics for a year, I’d be irritated too.

This situation kind of seems like the whole Lightning fiasco from Final Fantasy. A vast majority of FF fans absolutely despise Lightning, and yet Square Enix keeps making games about her. It’s very obvious that someone high up on the dev team is in love with that character. I feel the same is happening here; someone high up in Anet thinks Scarlet Briar is the greatest thing EVAR and refuses to listen to player feedback and criticism about her. Hopefully they’ll rework Scarlet to be less Mary Sue-ish, and we can get a villain that isn’t so pitifully contrived.

Kain Francois.4328:

Dragons? What’s dragons?

They should just replace the dragon in Guild Wars 2 logo with Scarlet’s face.

AKGeo.6048:

The same goes for games. “Character richness” is now defined by how much of their story is told to you up front, not by how much is concealed and revealed later on.

^ this is the issue. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. Who is this Scarlet, how did she do this, how did she do that?! All these question with no answers, no hints, no nothing.

If they wait to the end to reveal everything, sure it might all make sense but it still won’t make up for the months of confusion, boredom and frustration.

You look at one of the greatest twists in cinema history – The Usual Suspects. Even though there was a huge reveal at the end they didn’t wait til the end to show there was a character Keyser Söze, they developed him throughout the movie with the lawyer, Keaton’s knowledge of him, the cop’s knew of him… Nobody in GW2 ever talked about Scarlet and supposedly she’d been everywhere, even talking to the people she studied with don’t mention her and she’s been invading Tyria. In The Usual Suspects they gave you a motive (cocaine + Kesyer Soze) but it was a lie – but they still at least gave you a motive, we have no motive currently in the LS and its been going on for 6 months now.

Honestly the LS is a mess, just random acts and more unanswered questions piled up on other questions.

She fills the true evil roll the dragons are not evil they are just focuses. She makes players do evil to what seems to be evil and to make the good players feel good about doing this evil on to the evil players. That is true evil the ability to make others do evil with them knowing it and make them love it.

Thinking more on this if you take the western point of view the heaven and hell that is allover the stores from that part of the world you could say that Scarlet is the devil like person the pail tree more of the god like. And in being such a way Scarlet tricks groups into doing evil and making sure they will not work. That who negates to do evil will only come out as good and to do good will only come out as evil.

Know what annoys me most of all about GW2? The lack of dragons.

Even GW1 had more dragons. Waaaay more dragons! And the undead were cooler too!

Where’s the Risen Horsemen? Bone dogs? More importantly, where’s Rotscale!? And his army of Bone Dragons!?

I am disappoint.

Thobek.1730:

Nobody in GW2 ever talked about Scarlet and supposedly she’d been everywhere, even talking to the people she studied with don’t mention her and she’s been invading Tyria.

What people have we talked to that she studied with? Beigarth is ingame, but he doesn’t really talk about much in the first place. Remember, he was the FIRST person she studied with. All he’d remember is a sylvari named Ceara who wanted to learn from him, then left after a winter. The charr as far as I can tell isn’t even ingame, and again, second person. All she’d be able to say is “I taught a sylvari named Ceara for two years before she just left.” The Asura who mentored her personally is dead, and we are never given a name of who she studied with for the hylek.

She hasn’t “been everywhere”, nor did she TRULY make a big mark with besides the Asura, who seemed very happy to tear her credentials away and proceed to “We shall not talk about her at all.” Her backstory hardly makes it sound like she was super flashy and publicly known, besides to the Asura council.

This is what I was talking about. No offense to you, but her backstory does not imply she was a widespread figure that everybody knew about. She went from town to town, took a single person/group as a mentor, then moved on. She didn’t declare her arrival upon walking through the Asura gate.

I mean, would Beigarth make the connection? Probably not. What about the Charr? Again, maybe, maybe not. Asura are obviously the only ones who really remember her and Vorpp talked about her when she attacked the queen’s party. And he told them what they knew. It’s not like she publicly and explicitly told each mentor “I’m scarlet now. I’m going to go kill people for lulz” and they they did nothing.

edit: Fun fact, I saw some of the cut models (Like the Leviathan from the one trailer, two live versions instead of the skeletons we see ingame), and one looked like a living version of a grasping ghoul from GW1.

You know it’s getting out of hand when our Mary Sue shoehorned queen Scarlet is to be more feared and having a much greater impact than an Elder Dragon. Terrible, terrible writing.

Jski.6180:

She fills the true evil roll the dragons are not evil they are just focuses. She makes players do evil to what seems to be evil and to make the good players feel good about doing this evil on to the evil players. That is true evil the ability to make others do evil with them knowing it and make them love it.

I’m sorry, that doesn’t even make sense.
Scarlet doesn’t make anyone do anything (besides perhaps wanting to throttle the persons responsible for her). It’s the writers that make thing happen by giving idiot balls to everyone, and by gleefully breaking suspension of disbelief left and right.
Scarlet is neither evil, nor good, nor even gray. She’s bland.

I don’t like scarlet.
Seriously, if you were going to make an evil genius puppet master, WHY wasn’t it an Asura? I just dislike the Sylvari in general, they are so unoriginal in design, even their personal story arc is plagiarised from Arthurian tales.

Elthuzar.9478:

Seriously, if you were going to make an evil genius puppet master, WHY wasn’t it an Asura? I just dislike the Sylvari in general, they are so unoriginal in design, even their personal story arc is plagiarised from Arthurian tales.

Now that you mention it, I’m kinda wondering how the story would go if was an Asura doing it. As far as I can tell, it works far better. Scarlet seems like a character that is perfectly written to be an Asura, especially with Asura being played more comedic most of the time.

Astralporing.1957:

Jski.6180:

She fills the true evil roll the dragons are not evil they are just focuses. She makes players do evil to what seems to be evil and to make the good players feel good about doing this evil on to the evil players. That is true evil the ability to make others do evil with them knowing it and make them love it.

I’m sorry, that doesn’t even make sense.
Scarlet doesn’t make anyone do anything (besides perhaps wanting to throttle the persons responsible for her). It’s the writers that make thing happen by giving idiot balls to everyone, and by gleefully breaking suspension of disbelief left and right.
Scarlet is neither evil, nor good, nor even gray. She’s bland.

What do you call the F&F Air Balder and the toxic alines? She is making them team up and pushing these group to fight vs just laying low going on there own for domination. She is giving them instant gratification vs them slowly taking over. She IS evil a type of evil that most ppl cant see its the type of i will sell you something that is cheep at the start and worth more as time goes on. She if falling into the devil like roll. So far she only going after the outcast side of GW2 maybe we will see her start to hit at the conman ppl of GW2 images having npc start to hate the players due to there actions.

Thinking more on this what if she trying to make these group fail as in to make them want to come to a world that she is making as in she cant make life but she can make a places to live on. Or may be more on the lines that she cant make thinking life so she needs these mobs / ppl to go some where else to take is over to a point?
Any way there is a lot they can do with this type of personalty when it comes to story its just for a full story update your going to lose out on content and i am not sure if GW2 players over all would be happy with that.

Geneticide.6987:

You know it’s getting out of hand when our Mary Sue shoehorned queen Scarlet is to be more feared and having a much greater impact than an Elder Dragon. Terrible, terrible writing.

How is she more feared? Do note that until the GW2 events, only Zhaitan has ACTUALLY been making pushes/moves against the races. Jormag does slightly, but overall him, the crystal dragon and primordus are just sitting there, randomly fighting along the borders.

She’s have a greater impact (supposedly) because she’s not attacking from the borders. she’s attacking directly behind the borders that the dragons formed. Instead of being struck in frostgourge sound, which has a number of defensive groups, it’s an attack on villages in the Norn starting area. Nobody really fears Scarlet as far as I’ve seen ingame from NPCs. They are concerned about the alliances/minions of her, but not Scarlet herself. And as shown, we’ve gotten better at smacking her pals down.

Elthuzar.9478:

I don’t like scarlet.
Seriously, if you were going to make an evil genius puppet master, WHY wasn’t it an Asura? I just dislike the Sylvari in general, they are so unoriginal in design, even their personal story arc is plagiarised from Arthurian tales.

Unoriginal? Well that’s kinda a generic statment these days. And how is their storyline “plagiarized”?

Kalavier.1097:

Unoriginal? Well that’s kinda a generic statment these days. And how is their storyline “plagiarized”?

Plagiarised is a bit of a strong word, but they do take strong inspiration from Arthurian legend.