Guild Wars 2

I have been discussing the Living Story with various players, and it came to me that there is something that really bothers me about the writing.

It’s not the characters, nor the hotchpotch of plot lines. No what bothers me, is that everything always goes according to plan.

• Scarlet always gets away in time, except when she’s supposed to die.
• Scarlet plans to attack the Queen’s Pavilion, and she succeeds. No one stops her.
• Scarlet plans to create a deadly poison, and she succeeds.
• Scarlet plans to attack Lion’s Arch, and she does just that. No one can stop her.
• Scarlet plans to drill in the harbor, and her drills reaches its target.

Does everything always go exactly to plan? If that is the case, why does anyone still bother to try and stop the villains? It doesn’t seem our involvement was needed at all. It’s all rather pointless really.

Why aren’t there any plot twists? Why doesn’t anything ever go unexpected?

Um…you do realize that all stories are according to plan, right? If a villain in a story screws up or doesn’t succeed it’s all “according to plan” of the writer. Therefore Scarlet getting away with everything was, yes, according to plan. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with it.

Yes, there were no major plot twists, but her story wasn’t that well-told either.

Well what I mean is, it doesn’t really feel like the player is a factor at all. It’s not about whether it is according to plan of the writers, that goes without saying. But why should it always be according to plan for the villain? Or the heroes?

I’m reminded of a scene from the Living Story, where Logan sets a trap for the White Mantle… and that’s exactly what happens. They didn’t suspect a thing. That is not how I would write a story.

Now we have this final confrontation, where we put an end to Scarlet, and basically achieve nothing, because her drill still hits the Leyline intersection anyway. From a writing point of view, it’s a bit lazy. How come none of the rather dodgy alliances she has formed, ruin her plan in some unintended way? How come none of the races or orders, come up with some unexpected way to derail her plan, and put a stop to the drill?

When I write a story, nothing ever goes according to plan. It turns out the villain wasn’t a villain. Or it turns out there’s a second villain. Or a disaster happens, and heroes and villain are caught on the same side for a change. Or the villain is betrayed by one of his/her own men. Or it turns out things aren’t as simple as the heroes at first assumed, and something far more darker is going on. There’s always an unexpected turn of events, that changes everything, and sets into motion new things.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

How come none of the rather dodgy alliances she has formed, ruin her plan in some unintended way?

Seeing as the Aetherblades unlike her other cronies didn’t really seem to have much choice in the matter, I really wanted Mai Trin and crew to up and ditch her ie. her escape from jail and disappearance into the edge of the mists wasn’t part of Scarlets plan but more a sod this I’m getting out of here.

That would have been an interesting turn of events indeed. Maybe Mai Trin could have had a change of heart, after seeing the massacre that Scarlet and her armies were causing, and then turn her airships against her. She could have joined forces with us at the last minute. This would turn these factions into believable people, and not just cannon fodder for us to kill.

Or maybe Scarlet could have kidnapped Ellen Kiel, and then Evon Gnashblade begrudgingly would have to help us save her, which would have been ironic, since he can’t stand her and wished she was dead. But I can conceive of a situation where Evon would be cornered into doing the one thing he doesn’t want to do, and save the one person he doesn’t want to save.

Yes, that would have been very interesting. My biggest gripe with Scarlet (other than her backstory) was the fact that even when we ‘beat her’ it never really felt as if we even slowed her down. It was more of a ‘how cute are those heroes lets feign a fight just so they feel useful’.

ThiBash.5634:

Yes, that would have been very interesting. My biggest gripe with Scarlet (other than her backstory) was the fact that even when we ‘beat her’ it never really felt as if we even slowed her down. It was more of a ‘how cute are those heroes lets feign a fight just so they feel useful’.

That is the exact feeling I got as well. As if we were but a minor inconvenience, or not an inconvenience at all.

Which begs the question if we were needed in the story at all. Because the story was basically like a run away long train, that could not be stopped in any way. Try as we might, Scarlet still gets her way, and the drill still reaches it’s goal. We, the heroes, might as well have stayed home.

Just my two cents, but a straightforward good vs evil story isn’t always a bad thing. Not exactly what this is, but you can’t treat uncomplicated storytelling like it’s a sin.

Come on. You can’t have a single player RPG story in an MMO. Sure if this was a Dragon Age style game then yeah we could change how the story played out. But it’s not. We the player are just along for the ride. As we are in any MMO.

Remember that bit in Scarlet’s backstory where she trained with a charr gun expert? She learned all she wanted, then went to leave. The charr, this expert with guns and deadly sniper, was upset by this and attacked Scarlet…

…with a blade. A blade that Scarlet simply dodged, and then she walked off. No shooting Scarlet in the back, or anything else that you’d expect of an expert sniper.

We’ve been written in the same way. All our skills and incredible abilities suddenly disappear when we’re around Scarlet, unless it advances her plans for us to be capable again. Even when she’s beaten, she STILL manages to either escape or, in the end, pull off her master plan. Our being there really didn’t change anything.

I hope they’ve learned this lesson for Season 2, though I’m not sure I’m even going to bother to watch and see when the time comes.

Zelkovan.2630:

Um…you do realize that all stories are according to plan, right? If a villain in a story screws up or doesn’t succeed it’s all “according to plan” of the writer. Therefore Scarlet getting away with everything was, yes, according to plan. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with it.

Yes, there were no major plot twists, but her story wasn’t that well-told either.

Not all. Surely I’m not the only one who has read these books?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy

BrotherBelial.3094:

Come on. You can’t have a single player RPG story in an MMO. Sure if this was a Dragon Age style game then yeah we could change how the story played out. But it’s not. We the player are just along for the ride. As we are in any MMO.

I’m not asking for branching story lines at all. I’m asking for the story to not be quite so straight forward.

See, when you write a story you can have a hero travel from point A to point B, and that’s exactly what happens.

Or, you can have the hero’s journey be interrupted by unexpected factors, causing him to end up not quite where he meant to go.

Same goes for the villain. You have have the villain hatch up a plan, and then execute that plan exactly as planned.

Or you can have something unexpected happen. A twist, a sudden change of events that cause the story to take an interesting turn.

Just some examples:

• The main character sets out to find a treasure, but the treasure isn’t there. He/she finds something much more dangerous instead.
• The hero is preparing for war, but then his own soldiers abandon him just before a deciding attack, and turn against him.
• The villain sets out to find something, but unleashes something she did not intend to instead. This forces the villain to change his/her allegiance.

One of Scarlets last lines when you beat her with the zerg on the Breachmaker was “I didnt account for… Too many variables…”

So everything didnt go according to plan.

She had complete control over her troops, be it fear, promises, or anything else that assured their loyalty. We dont know how or why the krait still hung out with her, but their loyalty issues must have been something she could predict and solve before it became an issue.

What she had no control over, she tried to dominate with her technology and troops. Thats no longer direct control, but only an attempt at indirect control, and so variables got out of her hand. Mainly the players who survived her attempts and also figured out how to get to her. Additionally the weather that blew the miasma out of Lions Arch earlier than she would have liked.

Check out short story “What Scarlet Saw”. We have a villain that have seen “everything” and has some level of access and understanding of “the basic fabric of reality itself”.

I’m not surprised that everything went according to plan. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to find out that she knew that she is going to die there and had some kind of plan for it… (but ANet has said something like that we are going to get rid of her….)

Zelkovan.2630:

Um…you do realize that all stories are according to plan, right? If a villain in a story screws up or doesn’t succeed it’s all “according to plan” of the writer. Therefore Scarlet getting away with everything was, yes, according to plan. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with it.

Big difference between ‘everything according to the writer’s plan’ and ‘everything according to Scarlet’s plan’. The writer is omniscient – characters, generally, should not be.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

ThiBash.5634:

Yes, that would have been very interesting. My biggest gripe with Scarlet (other than her backstory) was the fact that even when we ‘beat her’ it never really felt as if we even slowed her down. It was more of a ‘how cute are those heroes lets feign a fight just so they feel useful’.

That is the exact feeling I got as well. As if we were but a minor inconvenience, or not an inconvenience at all.

Which begs the question if we were needed in the story at all. Because the story was basically like a run away long train, that could not be stopped in any way. Try as we might, Scarlet still gets her way, and the drill still reaches it’s goal. We, the heroes, might as well have stayed home.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit

Paul.4081:

Zelkovan.2630:

Um…you do realize that all stories are according to plan, right? If a villain in a story screws up or doesn’t succeed it’s all “according to plan” of the writer. Therefore Scarlet getting away with everything was, yes, according to plan. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with it.

Yes, there were no major plot twists, but her story wasn’t that well-told either.

Not all. Surely I’m not the only one who has read these books?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy

I preferred these

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_%28gamebooks%29

But I had a lot of FF books too.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Come on. You can’t have a single player RPG story in an MMO. Sure if this was a Dragon Age style game then yeah we could change how the story played out. But it’s not. We the player are just along for the ride. As we are in any MMO.

I have to second this. I’m not sure how you expect to satisfy the personal fantasies of several thousand players simultaneously. Realistically, only 1 person can deliver the killing blow to Scarlet, so only one can realistically be considered the overall hero of the story. Every player expects that will be he or she. I’m sure this is why we end up with so many unsatisfying conclusions with Guild Wars’ main stories, where any lasting impact is attributed to other characters. It feels even more fake to leave a blank spot to ‘insert your character here’ that will be filled the second someone else chats with that NPC.

Sariel V.7024:

I have to second this. I’m not sure how you expect to satisfy the personal fantasies of several thousand players simultaneously. Realistically, only 1 person can deliver the killing blow to Scarlet, so only one can realistically be considered the overall hero of the story. Every player expects that will be he or she. I’m sure this is why we end up with so many unsatisfying conclusions with Guild Wars’ main stories, where any lasting impact is attributed to other characters. It feels even more fake to leave a blank spot to ‘insert your character here’ that will be filled the second someone else chats with that NPC.

This is not what this thread is about at all.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Come on. You can’t have a single player RPG story in an MMO. Sure if this was a Dragon Age style game then yeah we could change how the story played out. But it’s not. We the player are just along for the ride. As we are in any MMO.

I’m not asking for branching story lines at all. I’m asking for the story to not be quite so straight forward.

See, when you write a story you can have a hero travel from point A to point B, and that’s exactly what happens.

Or, you can have the hero’s journey be interrupted by unexpected factors, causing him to end up not quite where he meant to go.

Same goes for the villain. You have have the villain hatch up a plan, and then execute that plan exactly as planned.

Or you can have something unexpected happen. A twist, a sudden change of events that cause the story to take an interesting turn.

Just some examples:

• The main character sets out to find a treasure, but the treasure isn’t there. He/she finds something much more dangerous instead.
• The hero is preparing for war, but then his own soldiers abandon him just before a deciding attack, and turn against him.
• The villain sets out to find something, but unleashes something she did not intend to instead. This forces the villain to change his/her allegiance.

Not going to lie, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I am so sick of pretty much all of these themes. They’re everywhere. They’re in anime, they’re in most video games, they’re in a lot of movies, they’re in a lot of books. And they’re always predictable and done to death.

I call it Star Wars Syndrome. Vader being Luke’s father was a fairly unique plot twist for its time, even through it had been hinted at. The correct pronounciation is VAH-DER, not VAY-DER and it’s German for “Father,” obviously. But once it had been done, it got beat almost to death, particularly in Asian cultures where they latched on to it with verve due to the father and family honor culture.

I live in a world of shades of gray. It’s refreshing just to have simple black and white somewhere. I’m thirty one. I want to play a game to escape from all the moral quandaries and just go “That’s a bad guy, kill it,” like when I played Mario in the arcade.

Let me have my goombas to stomp.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

Just my two cents, but a straightforward good vs evil story isn’t always a bad thing. Not exactly what this is, but you can’t treat uncomplicated storytelling like it’s a sin.

Oh yes we can. If the game or story is meant for the PG-13 (Teen) audience, then the story needs to be more complicated. Think of other games with the same rating in the RPG genre (like Final Fantasy). Research books in the Young Adult section of the bookstore. Teens are old enough to study the Holocaust, the American Civil War, the Middle East conflict and 9/11 in detail. The high school I went to covered American History in nitty gritty detail without censorship, and I’m sure other schools do the same. Teens often read YA books about death, suicide, drugs, vampires, and other not-so-nice things. Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Twilight are a few good examples of the YA market.

A straightforward good vs evil story is for children. Stories for a teen audience are a more complicated, emotional affair that have more detailed characters, plot twists, and subplots.

Anet really should of applied Murphy’s Law to the Scarlet storyline as well as show us cutscenes of the bad guys doing their stuff. They should of also named the main leaders of the Aetherblades, Molten Alliance, and Toxic Alliance. We should of also seen Scarlet interacting with these baddies as well.

To create more tension, I would of had the bad guys steal / destroy / threaten the one character or item that the PCs were emotionally attached to such as:

(1) For Asura PCs— During the Escape from LA event, Taimi would hotwire the portals and get onto the Breachmaker to meet Scarlet as she planned. Braham would of alerted the PCs that the kid rushed into LA and is now missing. There would be additional quests to get the Asuran PCs to search for her. While the PCs search, there is a cutscene to show Taimi meeting Scarlet and begging the villainess to let her join her. The cute little asura would of been taken hostage (without her realizing it) and used as a pawn during the fight. The PCs would be required to battle Taimi. Why would Scarlet allow Taimi to live? Scarlet saw herself as an Asura, not as a Sylvari. The short story, “What Scarlet Saw”, implied that she is a narcissist who would of seen Taimi as a tool. If I were in Scarlet’s shoes, I would of made Taimi think I was her friend, then I would backstab her.

(2) For Sylvari PCs — Scarlet would get proud and verbally threaten the Grove via holo-message. To every Dreamer, Mama Tree and the unawakened saplings are the most important thing in the world. Her threats would of put everyone on alert. All the PCs would of been called home to defend the both LA &the Grove. Why would Scarlet do this? Scarlet’s holo-diary implied that she saw herself as invincible thanks to her vision of the Eternal Alchemy. Plus the short story, “What Scarlet Saw”, implied that Scarlet hated her culture.

(3) For Human & Charr PCs — These two groups would of been witnessed to the events within the Council Meeting, which would raise suspicion. An investigation would of ensued and the two groups would join together to make an uneasy militia to defend the city. * Evon Gnashblade would get involved because he wants to defend his business, the Black Lion Trading Post.*

(4)For Norn PCs — I would of introduced a prophet or shaman who saw a vision of LA’s destruction and have them travel to LA to warn the people. This person has to be someone who is very important to the Norn PCs. The prophet gets in trouble, gets tried for disrupting the peace, and the Norn PC would help her out. After this quest, I would have the Norn PCs join the Human & Charr PCs in preparing the city for war. The prophet would of been brutally killed in the lead-up to the final battle (most likely during the Escape event). I haven’t played the Norn storyline, so I don’t know if there are any prophets or shamans that the Norn players are closely connected to. I have to admit that I’m just making a guess.

That’s just a few ideas I would of utilized for the last few Scarlet-related updates. If I could officially re-write this story, I would do it. I have to admit that the LS’s plot holes and lack of use of opportunities drives me nuts.

Sariel V.7024:

. I’m not sure how you expect to satisfy the personal fantasies of several thousand players simultaneously. Realistically, only 1 person can deliver the killing blow to Scarlet, so only one can realistically be considered the overall hero of the story. Every player expects that will be he or she.

This is simple to solve! Devise a way for the entire group to peg Scarlet to the floor as a group. Failure to group-stomp her would result in another boss fight. Failure to group-stomp after the second boss fight would result in Scarlet killing the entire group with the ship’s laser attack. It’s important to establish that Scarlet’s Armor doesn’t allow her to killed with a single stomp. FYI— This would all take place in the area where we had to fight Scarlet as a group.

I agree with you OP.

I’m not a big fan of LS in general but part of the biggest reason for that aside from how it’s all we’ve been getting attention to on the game is that the story itself lacks depth. It’s such a transparent script and mostly everything was really predictable. I didn’t feel engaged at all since I first began to pay attention to it many months ago.

It’s because of how the story was written. It wasn’t plotted out by a person, but by the departments. Not only is it a story written by committee, it’s a story written by multiple Living Story committees. There were several different groups working on different segments of this story and each group has an incentive to make the story as streamlined as possible. Adding plot twists and complications on a segment they need to get done in a month is not only extra work but causes problems and extra work for the next group to take up the story.

Astral Projections.7320:

It’s because of how the story was written. It wasn’t plotted out by a person, but by the departments. Not only is it a story written by committee, it’s a story written by multiple Living Story committees. There were several different groups working on different segments of this story and each group has an incentive to make the story as streamlined as possible. Adding plot twists and complications on a segment they need to get done in a month is not only extra work but causes problems and extra work for the next group to take up the story.

Sigh

Brace yourselves. I’m actually going to say the honest truth. I’m sorry ahead of time if I offend any devs, but this must be said.

If that’s true, it definitely explains why the LS is such a mess. It’s a case of “too many cooks spoil the stew”. These committees are not working together. It’s almost as if they are each assigned to an update and told to write a story only for the assigned stuff without checking in with the other teams. Plus the plot holes are indicative of lack of story writing experience, lack of life experience, and lack of research. Complex characters like Scarlet and Trahearne fell flat because lots of research was required to pull them off successfully. I recommend that these guys go to http://nanowrimo.org/forums and http://campnanowrimo.org/ to start getting in contact with the NaNoWriMo community. Then Anet should write short RPG stories. Once the gameplay writers get lots of experience, then they can try tackling a large, complex RPG story.

NOTE 1: When I mention “life experience”, I’m referring to an old writer’s adage that says, “Write what you know.” Not every person is familiar with neither the Narcissism Personality Disorder that Ceara had nor Treahearne’s PTSD situation. Both illnesses would require alot a research in order to write about each character in a convincing way.

NOTE 2: The Nanowrimo forums aren’t very active until November, but there are alot of good posts about writing stories. Plus there are good story ideas on there too!

From what I’ve learned in school, video game and animation companies usually require people to specialize in certain areas. There is no such thing as jack-of-all trades in the American video game and animation industries. I’m referring to people who work for established companies, not people who create their own works.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: There are computer animators who specialize in modeling, and there are some who specialize in VFX. A person who does VFX very well can’t just change to modeling. It takes years of experience to specialize in certain areas. If a person doesn’t have enough experience in a certain area, it will show in the final product.

Writers should be the only ones to write the gameplay script. For a game this big, Anet needs a team of writers, much like what the television studios do for their shows. The writing team would need one person to lead them.

The programmers can create a developer’s version of the script once the writers are finished with their work. This is similar to what a director does when he/she receives a script from the screenplay writer.

It’s like the Personal Story having a definite “modular” feel to it. You know, how you can actually see the seams where one section of character choices can slide out and another in without altering things?

The Living Story probably was developed as an outline and different teams grabbed different parts to produce at the same time. It sort of had to be developed concurrently for the release schedule to make any sense at all. Certainly, if there were a pair of updates it’s likely the two teams worked together (“Tower of Nightmares / Nightmare Within”) but for the release schedule of “every two weeks”? Yeah, it’s obvious when you think about it – they had numerous teams working together on different parts.

. . . they also for some reason had more than a few breaks in the Living Story which interrupted narrative due to the timing. Halloween’s annual tribute to the wonderful Mad King Thorn interrupted things. Wintersday interrupted things. There were also the “party/festival” events everyone knows – Dragon Bash, the Queen’s Jubilee. These things sort of started the narrative off on a stagger of a pace.

(NOT helped by Super Adventure Box v2.0 launching also.)

This really reminds me of season one of a show you really kind of like some of the time and you look at some parts and go “eh? why is this here?” and such parts wisely start to slide into the periphery so you don’t focus on them.

If you want nerdy? Seasons 1 and 2 of ST:TNG, before it got its identity were sort of like this – the weaker episodes almost entirely. LOST almost exclusively ran this way all the darn time. Fringe was really rocky in the first season until the bomb dropped during the finale.

But look on the bright side. At least it’s not daytime soaps, where the cast and writers can rotate in and out of the show and plotlines are created and forgotten about more often than the X-Files had episodes which went nowhere.

kta.6502:

They should of also named the main leaders of the Aetherblades, Molten Alliance, and Toxic Alliance. We should of also seen Scarlet interacting with these baddies as well.

^This is my opinion would have done a lot to make the bad guys be more than just cannon fodder. By giving them an actual identity, they would have become more than just another mob. Ok, so we had Mai Trin for the Aetherblades, but I would have really liked to see a prominent Krait leader, and a Molten Alliance leader.

One thing they should not have done, is take Mai Trin out of the story. She spends the majority of the story locked in jail, and then she’s sprung from jail, and escapes into the Mists. Way to go in keeping her completely uninvolved with the plot. Confronting Mai Trin with the destruction that Scarlet was causing, would have been interesting. Maybe she could have changed sides in light of the slaughter that Scarlet was creating.

Zelkovan.2630:

Um…you do realize that all stories are according to plan, right? If a villain in a story screws up or doesn’t succeed it’s all “according to plan” of the writer.

That’s not what the OP was asking. You’re straw-manning by swapping “the villain’s plan” with “the writer’s plan”. Night & day.

Even Abbadon failed in the end, but Scarlet? She always has to get in the last word, even when she dies. That’s her purpose, to be a an awesome Sue that is awesome & smart & cool.