Guild Wars 2

I think its rather sad that prior to Scarlet’s entrance into LS, players complained about each segment being too short, too easy, disconnected irreverent fodder. Take the Secret of Southsun for instance; we find the menace and arrest him all in one go, and then trivially move on to the next random update. Its too fast, there is no story telling; we’re given a problem, and then handed the solution, without any of the rising action, plot, or character development that goes on in between. You get as much out of reading the first and last chapter of a book. Just random short stories with no impact; no content to even call them stories by. Yet now that the true mastermind is exposed, now that they take time to present, unravel, and develop; players complain about that too. Can we never be satisfied, handed what we asked for, must we spit it back in their face? I had one person tell me that they didn’t like Scarlet simply because Arena Net was blaming everything on her, that she had her hands in everything; well of course she did, it wouldn’t be rising action otherwise, there would be nothing to vilify her by. The only reasonable character fault I can see at this time, is her joker persona archetype. No, I suggest we all withhold judgement, until after this ‘grand climax’ of theirs, because that’s when a story truly unfolds.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

Concern: Story schmory! ArenaNet said the climax of Season One will rock Tyria to its core but I bet that’s overblown sales talk.

No it isn’t. Johanson told me everything that will happen, and the four patches coming early this year – 21st January, 4th February, 18th February and 4th March – will bring about an end to excite even a bystander. Tyria really won’t be the same after it, and what happens at the end will also set up Season Two.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

Interesting read, thanks for linking. Overall it seems like Anet actually do listen to the community’s feedback on the LS. Glad to hear that. A few comments on the article though:

Eurogamer.net article:

By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”.

Sadly they failed here, and this was possibly my biggest gripe w/ the entire thing. (Second being the zerg mentality everything turned into at every step…) I’m normally a lore fanatic. I love to speculate, put out theories, read between the lines and so forth. However the Living Story, Scarlet in particular, was so bland and uninteresting. Nothing story wise caught my attention whatsoever. I didn’t even play GW1, but I can still sit and listen to WoodenPotatoes GW Mysteries clips on youtube and be completely mesmerized. What the heck happened?

Eurogamer.net article:

The first WVW (server versus server versus server) competition made the player-base go “through the roof”, apparently. “That was maybe the biggest thing we did in the second-half of the year to affect player population. When that league was going on, when the world-versus-world season was going on, WVW was just packed.”

It was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…
…and another single use backpack skin to take up a slot in the bank. (Where’s the Wardrobe to motivate horizontal progression Anet?)

Let’s hope this finale really do become memorable, it sure sounds like it. Let’s hope so!

Mia,

There are a few reasons I have not been fond of the story. I will list my reason.

• The introduction of many new characters, with no previous relation in Tyrian History.

While not a bad thing that the world is getting new, rising heroes and villains, there were many unanswered stories that got left in the wind, and many other heroes to expand on.

• The sparadic, slow pace of the story

I believe the beginning of the story (F&F) started off well, though F&F started slow in its own right, to start a story with unknown causes of the plot create suspense and excitement. When we finished F&F we started a new chapter in Southsun. At the time the only clear connection was the settlers, with ArenaNet stating there was more that meets the eye going on that noone saw. I excepted that and we found ourselves face to face with a plot within the consortium to profit off of the refugees. We also meet our suspected villain, Canach. But he ended up being a minor, random element within the whole picture. We then have a Dragon Bash celebrating against dragons, getting our minds on a new dragon. But we meet another villain (Mai) and the link to the Aetherblades, a new rising force, seemingly unrelated to Southsun and F&F at the time. After 3 months we realize somehow the Molten Alliance and Aetherblades are connected with the release of Sky Pirates. But then we go to another new plot regarding Zephyrites and the Bazarr. Our minds became drawn to something else, like cantha, dragons, etc.

We were then presented with Cutthroat politics, regarding politics in LA. Again our minds became drawn away from not only zephyrites and canthans, but putting the F&F and Aetherblades out of our minds.

Only until August we get back into the original story, when we are presented with Scarlet, which was handed to us, we didn’t solve anything, she was just thrown in our laps after all the time with no inclantation of who it was, besides a “she”.

Now focused on her, we realize she’s not just a villain, but one of the “smartest” sylvari on the planets with the goal to destroy. We get these massive outbreaks of her clockwork minions like this was a finale.

Then again, we are taking completely away from the story into a patch revolved around the Super Adventure Box. After that we get another update regarding Teq, with the only apparent connection to anything we previously saw in LS was Rox. Meanwhile we are told all of this is related, but we don’t know how yet.

It wasn’t until Twilight Assault and after that we started getting more deph on Scarlet and her apparent building of a massive evil army. But in the midst of this long drawn out story, we still have no conclusive plot to why she’s doing this. Not until the very end.

To me, I came into the each update thinking “Okay I want to find out where this is connected to the last update” but come out thinking “How in the world was this connected?” but after Scarlet was revealed everything became bland because it was defined as “Oh, Scarlet did this and we just cleaned after her mess”.

This ending might truly be epic, and I hope it is. Even if I was letdown by the majority of the story, the ending could at least provide a proper conclusion to this whole thing.

One thing I would have like to seen is an episode specifically tied to discovering Scarlet AKA Ceara. An update where we investigated her early contacts to build an understanding. We were provided with too many occurences I think, Krait, Flame Legion, Dredge, Pirates, robots, chaos, etc.

It’s just weird that I see where they provided deph, but at the same time there’s no deph. I need something to go off, but I just have random pieces of the plot in front of me with no glue. So I sit here staring at all the pieces and wait for the glue to hit me in the face.

I would rather get pieces, but also a tab of glue to piece some of the smaller stuff together, just to say “Hey!, it looks like we are on to something here”. This is just mass confusion.

And no offense to this idea, but trying to relate to “The Game of Thrones” creates the wrong vision. Why not create your own vision and style? Why try and match something that has already been achieved? Maybe take some of the great points that makes the series eye catching, but don’t match it paper to paper. Especially since I don’t have a DVR to record the Living Story series.

Cassio.9507:

It [WvW] was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…

While I don’t disagree, it’s easy to criticize this aspect of the game than to come up with an alternative to “bribing” players to log in and participate. The “not worth it without rewards” mentality is so prevalent that developers have to come up with something, hopefully without giving “whatever it is” away too soon, but also without creating the impression of grind.

I’m not trying to defend ANet per se, I’m pretty well stumped.

As far as the AP Grind is concerned, that’s totally optional and the rewards are don’t give me an advantage over anyone else, being purely a cosmetic reward. If the content itself is good, then I will naturally achieve those AP’s.

If your’re goal is to get all of the APs out of the updates, why complain about the grind? Cause if you look at the APs as the reward, then it does seem to be a grind, as you’re blowing through content just to reach the end goal of “5-10AP”

Like carving 250 pumpkins. I might hit a couple if its near me, but as it doesn’t benefit me in any way, I will not be running around maps slicing pumpkins. But that’s my choice.

I see nothing wrong with the AP system personally

Anet has talked up their content over and over again. They have failed to deliver over and over again. What makes you think this time will be different?

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has talked up their content over and over again. They have failed to deliver over and over again. What makes you think this time will be different?

Because it is not ArenaNet that is talking it up this time, but rather press that have been shown the content?

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has talked up their content over and over again. They have failed to deliver over and over again. What makes you think this time will be different?

Because it is not ArenaNet that is talking it up this time, but rather press that have been shown the content?

The Eurogamer quote says they were told what was in the patch. They did not see. Again it’s a case of talking big, which Anet always does — nothing different from before.

I too, have spent the majority of my time playing LS out of bribery, chasing the achievement points and rewards -as lets face it, the story has thus far been stagnant, weak, dull and poorly delivered if not non-existent. And why should we think this any different? The marketing team at ANet is well known for painting pictures that in no way resemble the outcome. But this isn’t the marketing team, they’re reporters, critics, and when informed of what is to come, told aspects of the plot that we have been left in want, they were excited. If that is the case, then perhaps we should be too.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Cassio.9507:

It [WvW] was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…

While I don’t disagree, it’s easy to criticize this aspect of the game than to come up with an alternative to “bribing” players to log in and participate. The “not worth it without rewards” mentality is so prevalent that developers have to come up with something, hopefully without giving “whatever it is” away too soon, but also without creating the impression of grind.

I’m not trying to defend ANet per se, I’m pretty well stumped.

I guess we’re derailing the thread a lil bit here, sorry about that. There’s quite easy ways to make WvW more interesting than it currently is (= make more players gladly participate):

1) If another season comes then make the achievements more flexible. Instead of just caps, add the option of actively participating the the defense of a structure during a “tick”. All of a sudden we’d see a lot more interesting fights, as the zerg Commander symbols won’t just steer the lemmings away to allow structures to be capped again for recap later. It would be fun to defend instead, and more motivating to actually upgrade and setup defense rotations.

2) Stop stimulating the zerg behaviour. Possibly by applying conditions if more than x ppl are in y range of the same commander. A few top realms actually apply this themselves by using more than one commander at a time and then have proper squads. This makes everything more interesting as things happen in more than one place at any given moment.

If players don’t want to do things, then I believe it’s wrong to try and force them todo it rather than try and make it more fun first.

LS story is just alien to me. I haven’t done half of the steps, and when I do try to jump in, I’m thrust in the middle with the expectations that I’ll know everything beforehand.

As others have pointed out, it’s a viable substitute to just catch up by watching videos of other players playing the content. I think I’ll do just that: watch this ending on YouTube; I’ve got some alt classes I’d like to learn while this blows over.

anet should have had more clues to someone behind the whole thing. we should been able to build on the clues through each chapter until we were given a name behind it. most of the chapter had up flipping here and there with no progression on the plot behind it then when we got a name it was more scarlet did it again and again with no clue why she did the stuff. if this had been a book i might have stopped reading chapter three. this story was more of sitcom type plot where are characters got into one zany adventure after another. although the ending might gives us answers i say its too late to be effectively redeem the whole ls. i think more hint clues to what the ultimate goal of our nemesis might have helped with our liking of the ls. if we can like or sort of understand why someone does something even if it is crazy we would have related to the story and liked it better. now anet has to reinterest in the story to make it decent which is going to be harder then if we related to it all along

Random incident one, random incident two, random incident three, none of which give any hints or clues as to why they are being preformed, who’s preforming them, and how they are connected… and then out of nowhere, they give us the villain responsible. I have taken the liberty of calling these incidents rising action, but that would only apply if their rise foreshadowed the conclusion. No matter how you look at it, this is a serious breach of story-craft, rising action should be like building blocks, each one giving a little more, drawing you closer to the truth, giving enough information for the reader to connect bits and form conjectures yet not enough to know for certain. But this is what Anet fails at. Nothing at Flame and Frost hints at a Sylvari mastermind, nothing connects it to Aetherblade pirates or visa versa, and nothing forebodes a bigger plan. The issue with making Scarlet responsible for all these atrocities, is that nothing within them connected to her, they could have had a control room in the molten facility with airship diagrams, or a quarter in the Aetherblade retreat with a leaf or two that fell off, to actually hint and build up to Scarlet, to give her precedence. This, is Anets greatest fail with Scarlet.

Can they really repair that at this point? If it was a book, the last four chapters are far too late to finally initiate story development, as readers would have long since abandoned it. Still, I can’t quite give up on GW2 yet…

thats the question can they repair what they did. im leading toward no on the current story but yes maybe on future stories after this one ends. im hoping they learn their mistakes and change it up more. so count me as an optimist. i havent given up yet i might go another 6 months or so to see if it changes which i hope it will. its a beautiful game and some parts better then a lot of other ive seen so im going with hope

I don’t have a problem with long, epic stories with rising action. The problem with the Living Story’s plotline is not that it’s long, but that it’s poorly written.

Secret of Southsun was shallow, and yet it still remains one of the best Living Story chapters so far. Why? Because it actually made sense. It had characters with sensical motivations and had a workable beginning/middle/end.

All of the chapters involving Scarlet ultimately hinge on her, and she has been a poorly written character from the start. When they released “What Scarlet Saw” it only did damage to her, raising even more alarming questions about her feasibility. Her backstory is bad enough that Massively wrote a three-page article about it.

So far, the overarching story with Scarlet is a bunch of nonsensical crap tied loosely together by her. I imagine the ending to this story is going to be akin to Lost. I’m not going to say they cannot absolutely salvage the storyline, but I will be extremely surprised if they do so. It still won’t make Scarlet a better character though unfortunately; her backstory and actions up to this point are set in stone and require too much suspension of disbelief to take seriously. The ending won’t change any of that.

On another note, in response to waning interest in the Living Story, Colin Johanson said in the Eurogamer article that they’re going to go back to simple, shallow one-off stories:

The Next Step… Is to keep a big story but colour it with smaller stories that begin and end every month, the hope being to keep less invested players interested.

I don’t know why they think making the stories smaller and shallower will increase people’s interest. All they have to do is improve the writing.

To be fair, there were clues of a mastermind behind Molten Aliance, at the very end, when you were questioning the prisoners. Also, at the end of Aetherblade Retreat, Mai Trin mentions Scarlet and most of the people guessed it is the same person that was behind F&F (with a little help from devs that said that there is this “personal nemesis” and that it´s a she). But all in all, they failed, there deffinetely need to be more clues and story progressing with release. Seriously, it´s over a year and we will start to learn important bits of the story just now…but they know they made a mistake there. The problem was, I think, that they saw the big picture, the whole arc, so for them, the releases made sense, since they already saw the mosaic they will fit into…but we didn´t.

@PeterThomas: shorter stories with it´s own conclusion with bigger story going on in background…how is that shallow? Nobody ever said they´ll be shallow. They might be, but let´s hope not. I, for one, liked F&F very much (F&F being around 4 releases with it´s own story, being connected to a bigger one), even though it was rather slow. Now, with bi-weekly cadence it´ll be a little more fast-paced. We just have to keep our hopes up during this finale and first releases of the new season and let´s judge after it

Perhaps we overestimate the GW2 audience.

I think all they have to do is pop a dragon out of the end of this Living Story and there will be tons of people saying how this was the most epic, awesome, well-told storyline they’ve ever seen.

well, there is always the factor of the last impression…if the end blows your mind, you are more likely to look in retrospect and think that it wasn´t that bad, actually it might been kinda cool. But we shouldn´t forget that LS we got up until this point wasn´t that much great. It had it´s bright moments, but overall, it was poorly implemented and we should have that in mind, however cool the finale will be.
I say let´s see how they´ll do with first releases of season two, there we will see if the´ve learned on their mistakes, or there is all hope lost

PeterThomas.7243:

I don’t have a problem with long, epic stories with rising action. The problem with the Living Story’s plotline is not that it’s long, but that it’s poorly written.
….
I don’t know why they think making the stories smaller and shallower will increase people’s interest. All they have to do is improve the writing.

Completely agree.

Secret of Southsun was shallow, and yet it still remains one of the best Living Story chapters so far. Why? Because it actually made sense. It had characters with sensical motivations and had a workable beginning/middle/end.

This however, I cant agree with, as secret of Southsun, had no ‘middle’, no core story to speak of. In one update we were given the problem, and in the next the solution, without a note as to how we arrived at it. Or, at least, not one properly delivered.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

This however, I cant agree with, as secret of Southsun, had no ‘middle’, no core story to speak of. In one update we were given the problem, and in the next the solution, without a note as to how we arrived at it. Or, at least, not one properly delivered.

Beginning: The Consotrium offers to relocate Charr and Norn refugees after their homes were destroyed during Flame & Frost. Unrest quickly follows when the settlers realize that their new home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (illustrated by the open world events, instigators, etc).

Middle: To make matters worse, Karka are going nuts all over the island. You find a priory camp that is investigating why this might be. You help them out by collecting plant samples that may have something to do with it (achievement hunt).

End: You discover Canach is the culprit behind the karka attacks, and you bring him to justice. Ellen Kiel confronts the Consortium in the final cutscene.

I understand that the middle bit is a bit thin because it was optional and tied to achievements, but at least there was some meat in between. The priory camp had characters and dialogue that advanced the story.

Anyway, my original point was not that Secret of Southsun was a deep or interesting story, but that it worked overall if you completed all the content. It didn’t have any loose ends or nonsensical characters.

PeterThomas.7243:

Beginning: The Consotrium offers to relocate Charr and Norn refugees after their homes were destroyed during Flame & Frost. Unrest quickly follows when the settlers realize that their new home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (illustrated by the open world events, instigators, etc).

Middle: To make matters worse, Karka are going nuts all over the island. You find a priory camp that is investigating why this might be. You help them out by collecting plant samples that may have something to do with it (achievement hunt).

End: You discover Canach is the culprit behind the karka attacks, and you bring him to justice. Ellen Kiel confronts the Consortium in the final cutscene.

I understand that the middle bit is a bit thin because it was optional and tied to achievements, but at least there was some meat in between. The priory camp had characters and dialogue that advanced the story.

Anyway, my original point was not that Secret of Southsun was a deep or interesting story, but that it worked overall if you completed all the content. It didn’t have any loose ends or nonsensical characters.

You got your timeline a little mixed up, what you call the beginning and middle, really occurred at the same time. The true middle, and what the story is missing, is what connect the karka attacks to Cannach. Though players have noted that that ‘middle’ does exist in the form of open world dialogue after an event, that only applies if you were in the right place at the right time. Most players simply ran off to the next event, and thus missed this crucial information. This servers as a turning point, and is far too important to be displayed in such a casual manor.

PeterThomas.7243:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

This however, I cant agree with, as secret of Southsun, had no ‘middle’, no core story to speak of. In one update we were given the problem, and in the next the solution, without a note as to how we arrived at it. Or, at least, not one properly delivered.

Beginning: The Consotrium offers to relocate Charr and Norn refugees after their homes were destroyed during Flame & Frost. Unrest quickly follows when the settlers realize that their new home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (illustrated by the open world events, instigators, etc).

Middle: To make matters worse, Karka are going nuts all over the island. You find a priory camp that is investigating why this might be. You help them out by collecting plant samples that may have something to do with it (achievement hunt).

End: You discover Canach is the culprit behind the karka attacks, and you bring him to justice. Ellen Kiel confronts the Consortium in the final cutscene.

I understand that the middle bit is a bit thin because it was optional and tied to achievements, but at least there was some meat in between. The priory camp had characters and dialogue that advanced the story.

Anyway, my original point was not that Secret of Southsun was a deep or interesting story, but that it worked overall if you completed all the content. It didn’t have any loose ends or nonsensical characters.

I would agree to a point but I think to the average player who skips cut scenes and rarely if ever interacts with or reads npc’s dialogue, the story was:

Beginning: A group called the consortium offer transport to a new area called Southsun cove and players help kill the local wildlife and build some settlements.

Middle: The local wildlife become crazed, some riots occur and a few principle npc’s appear on the beach. There’s quite a lot to do there for a few weeks then some guy appears in a mini dungeon that has a load of traps.

End: You help transport a Dolyak to a ship, but you can’t remember exactly what it was the Dolyak was carrying and the ship blew up anyway.

^ We’re off topic ^

If a person skips cutscenes and ignores dialogue, it’s their own puppy (instead of kitten) fault they miss the story!

The point I think, is, that we want a story we don’t have to go to other websites to look for, don’t have to make up excuses of validity for, and one that compels and drags us in while at it.

I think we can agree on those three points at least?

And personally, I won’t be entering the update with “It’s gonna suck puppy tale” mindset, hell I expect the wurm to be fun like hell, the marrionette less so, I don’t have much hope for the story, but maybe ANet is going to make me eat my words against Scarlet back, who knows?

What I want to see so I can regain faith in Scarlet and writing team: HOW exactly was Scarlet forming those alliances. I want to see how it happened with each of them. I need to see her coming to dredge, Flame Legion, krait etc, and I need to hear her convince them.

Secondly, I’d have to see her doing something else than blabbering jibberish and be do something other than being perfect, al knowing and invincible.

Then I can regain at least some faith in Scarlet story arc and look back saying it wasn’t terrible in coming months.

BTW. If I’d be to guess, the Marionette may be a rebuild and “enhanced” forgeman from Sorrow’s Embrace, she is sculpted after the artwork at least.

I was listening to VisualWood podcast yesterday, and it seems that Matt and WP both talked a little with ANet about future patch. Even though they made sure they won´t give anything away, but they sounded excited and said that there indeed is more to the patch than two bosses. And especially from a lore guy that WP is, it means something to me It´s called Origins of the Madness after all

Also, to add to the Southsun argument…If people would follow the story, they´d get it. If they care only about loots and achievements, they won´t. It´s indeed hard sometimes to make the best of the story, as you have to look for the bits and talk to people, or simply wait and listen to them talk. But I find it enjoyable.
And I don´t think we saw only beginning and end, with no middle. I think beggining ocured at the end of F&F, when the refugees talked about relocation and stuff. Then, they were relocated (off-screen), some time passed and then problems came and we arrived to handle it. So if anything, we saw only middle and the end in that release, start being the ending of previous arc.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Random incident one, random incident two, random incident three, none of which give any hints or clues as to why they are being preformed, who’s preforming them, and how they are connected… and then out of nowhere, they give us the villain responsible. I have taken the liberty of calling these incidents rising action, but that would only apply if their rise foreshadowed the conclusion. No matter how you look at it, this is a serious breach of story-craft, rising action should be like building blocks, each one giving a little more, drawing you closer to the truth, giving enough information for the reader to connect bits and form conjectures yet not enough to know for certain.

Let’s just call it as it is and stop pretending: Anet was clearly just doing random things at the start, and only lately ACTUALLY thought to let Scarlet take the fall for it.

That is a far more plausible explanation, and actually kinder to ANet than thinking that they willfully wanted to be that bad at foreshadowing and story-telling.

To be fair, the updates are getting better. The main gripes I have the Living Story are the lack of actual story and dialogue (which was adressed) and the fact that Scarlet comes across as something a 10-year old roleplayer would create. The second basically ruined the character for me even if she got more depth. I’ll admit that it’s an extension of my general dislike of Sylvari lore op’ness. It felt like…again the Sylvari are the ultimate beings ever?

However, like I said, things are getting better and if Anet can lay off the Sylvari worshipping long enough to make actually realistic characters, I think we’ll have some good stuff ahead of us.

Scarlet is my biggest beef with the story-telling, and you nailed it right on the head — she sounds like something a 10year old RPer would roll up.

And I do get the vibe that Sylvari are getting a little too much developer love. I mean, Trehearne? Than Scarlet? The Syvari feel like some Mary Sue’s personal pet garden.

Illi.3647:

I was listening to VisualWood podcast yesterday, and it seems that Matt and WP both talked a little with ANet about future patch. Even though they made sure they won´t give anything away, but they sounded excited and said that there indeed is more to the patch than two bosses. And especially from a lore guy that WP is, it means something to me It´s called Origins of the Madness after all

If there’s one thing Anet is good at, it’s hype and talking big. They pretty much always fail to deliver in the end.

Mochann.5298:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Random incident one, random incident two, random incident three, none of which give any hints or clues as to why they are being preformed, who’s preforming them, and how they are connected… and then out of nowhere, they give us the villain responsible. I have taken the liberty of calling these incidents rising action, but that would only apply if their rise foreshadowed the conclusion. No matter how you look at it, this is a serious breach of story-craft, rising action should be like building blocks, each one giving a little more, drawing you closer to the truth, giving enough information for the reader to connect bits and form conjectures yet not enough to know for certain.

Let’s just call it as it is and stop pretending: Anet was clearly just doing random things at the start, and only lately ACTUALLY thought to let Scarlet take the fall for it.

That is a far more plausible explanation, and actually kinder to ANet than thinking that they willfully wanted to be that bad at foreshadowing and story-telling.

lol, it is kinder isn’kitten “Oh, they’re not bad story tellers, they don’t suck a foreshadowing; there simply wasnt a plan in the first place, and when they later decided to add Scarlet on whim, it was too late for her intro to make sense,” If only I could believe that.

Edit: I wrote “isnt it?” but when I added the apostrophe Anet changed it to ‘kitten’… not sure why Anet thinks that phrase is a swear word…

Illi.3647:

Also, to add to the Southsun argument…If people would follow the story, they´d get it. If they care only about loots and achievements, they won´t. It´s indeed hard sometimes to make the best of the story, as you have to look for the bits and talk to people, or simply wait and listen to them talk. But I find it enjoyable.
And I don´t think we saw only beginning and end, with no middle. I think beggining ocured at the end of F&F, when the refugees talked about relocation and stuff. Then, they were relocated (off-screen), some time passed and then problems came and we arrived to handle it. So if anything, we saw only middle and the end in that release, start being the ending of previous arc.

Still, if its something that big and important to story development, it shouldn’t have been a side note that players may or may not be in the right place at the right time to hear, but rather, revealed in an instance or cut scene, where players would be sure to see it. I love lore, but I didn’t notice the convo at all, many players missed it completely, and that’s simply because it was badly placed. We’ve already long since agreed that its a matter of presentation, not sure why we’re dragging up this old debate.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Illi.3647:

Also, to add to the Southsun argument…If people would follow the story, they´d get it. If they care only about loots and achievements, they won´t. It´s indeed hard sometimes to make the best of the story, as you have to look for the bits and talk to people, or simply wait and listen to them talk. But I find it enjoyable.
And I don´t think we saw only beginning and end, with no middle. I think beggining ocured at the end of F&F, when the refugees talked about relocation and stuff. Then, they were relocated (off-screen), some time passed and then problems came and we arrived to handle it. So if anything, we saw only middle and the end in that release, start being the ending of previous arc.

Still, if its something that big and important to story development, it shouldn’t have been a side note that players may or may not be in the right place at the right time to hear, but rather, revealed in an instance or cut scene, where players would be sure to see it. I love lore, but I didn’t notice the convo at all, many players missed it completely, and that’s simply because it was badly placed. We’ve already long since agreed that its a matter of presentation, not sure why we’re dragging up this old debate.

True. I haven´t a problem with this in particular, but we can agree that ANet sometimes can´t deliver the story in comprehensible fashion. You have to truly look for it, and sometimes it´s just not worth the time to spent many hours to find a tidbit of lore

And to the matter of them deciding to link it all to one villain. There were hints on Scarlet in the end of F&F, at the beginning of LS, there were hints by devs that this arc will bring us “personal nemesis”. It´s kinda sad, but they planned Scarlet all along. It just falled at implementation. The story could be great how they initially wrote it, but it´s not so great (or just plainly bad) in-game. The true problem is, as Mia said, presentation, not story itself.

Cassio.9507:

It was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…

Not to mention that, at the time, no one knew what the chest reward for completing the S1 WvW meta achievement was. I highly suspect if people had known that not so many would have bothered, achievement points or not.

Regardless, LS is the single best method of acquiring achievement points, which is the main reason I participate in it. It’s certainly not because I enjoy the content. The writing is atrocious and the activities are not even remotely quantifiable as “fun” for the most part.

Unfortunately, I’m betting for every player like myself with 100% LS participation Anet sees a success and thus no reason to change the status quo.

It’s not the first time they have used hyperbole to describe living world events (and ultimately failed to deliver). That’s why many are sceptic. Sure I’ll give it a chance, if just to get rid of Scarlet finally.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

Though players have noted that that ‘middle’ does exist in the form of open world dialogue after an event, that only applies if you were in the right place at the right time. Most players simply ran off to the next event, and thus missed this crucial information.

Just because people skipped it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. I do agree with you that it could’ve been presented better though.

Traveller.7496:

It’s not the first time they have used hyperbole to describe living world events (and ultimately failed to deliver). That’s why many are sceptic. Sure I’ll give it a chance, if just to get rid of Scarlet finally.

At least they dont fail to fail, that’s for sure.

Lane.3410:

Not to mention that, at the time, no one knew what the chest reward for completing the S1 WvW meta achievement was. I highly suspect if people had known that not so many would have bothered, achievement points or not.

Very good point. This was actually the carrot at the end of the stick for me. The anti-climax that followed upon opening said chest felt like the same carrot coming back up again after a late night out.

Lane.3410:

Regardless, LS is the single best method of acquiring achievement points, which is the main reason I participate in it. It’s certainly not because I enjoy the content. The writing is atrocious and the activities are not even remotely quantifiable as “fun” for the most part.

Yeah, this is the same for me. However I’m getting close to zero willpower even when it comes to that. I logged on today, got the patch mail. Read that it was about Scarlet and two zerg events and couldn’t even be bothered checking either out right away. Just felt like “good thing I have time to deal with this later”… Not exactly what one foresaw when looking forward to playing GW2 for such a long time.

Lane.3410:

Unfortunately, I’m betting for every player like myself with 100% LS participation Anet sees a success and thus no reason to change the status quo.

Indeed, and this worries me a lot. I’ve said many time before in similar threads that I really hope Anet uses other means to measure actual fun factor than AP accumulation and time spent in zergs.

Cassio.9507:

Lane.3410:

Not to mention that, at the time, no one knew what the chest reward for completing the S1 WvW meta achievement was. I highly suspect if people had known that not so many would have bothered, achievement points or not.

Very good point. This was actually the carrot at the end of the stick for me. The anti-climax that followed upon opening said chest felt like the same carrot coming back up again after a late night out.

While I am generally happy to read people expressing their opinions on the forums, this was TMI.

Cassio.9507:

Yeah, this is the same for me. However I’m getting close to zero willpower even when it comes to that. I logged on today, got the patch mail. Read that it was about Scarlet and two zerg events and couldn’t even be bothered checking either out right away. Just felt like “good thing I have time to deal with this later”… Not exactly what one foresaw when looking forward to playing GW2 for such a long time.

Same. The 10k achievement chest was the ‘carrot on a stick’ for me and since I’ve gotten that I’ve lost most of my motivation to continue.

I had zero plans to participate in this patch until I noticed they annoyingly made the meta reward another instance node, so now I’m torn since I’m guessing this is a ‘one time only’ thing. Meh. I think they did that on purpose to get more people to play bad content. :P

Cassio.9507:

It was packed for the wrong reasons. The majority of the player base, even mildly interested in AP accumulation, were forced to go in there and participate. I hardly enjoyed it, but considering the truckload of achievement points I would’ve otherwise missed, it would put my other efforts related to AP accumulation to shame. It’s sad when a game starts to become about achievements, but let’s face it, most of the LS zerging was sadly only about just that…

This is me. I’m currently farming the LS for achievement points so I can get through chests faster, so I can get the laurels that come from chests, so I can get ascended armor/weapons on my guard/theif/mesmer.

The storyline is horrid and I’ve spent it wondering what happened to the team responsible for gw1.

Lane.3410:

Same. The 10k achievement chest was the ‘carrot on a stick’ for me and since I’ve gotten that I’ve lost most of my motivation to continue.

I had zero plans to participate in this patch until I noticed they annoyingly made the meta reward another instance node, so now I’m torn since I’m guessing this is a ‘one time only’ thing. Meh. I think they did that on purpose to get more people to play bad content. :P

Enokitake.1742:

This is me. I’m currently farming the LS for achievement points so I can get through chests faster, so I can get the laurels that come from chests, so I can get ascended armor/weapons on my guard/theif/mesmer.

The storyline is horrid and I’ve spent it wondering what happened to the team responsible for gw1.

Both of you are a big part of the problem. Anet only looks at metrics, then interprets them incorrectly. If you do the meta, for whatever reason, Anet counts you as a satisfied customer and is encouraged to do more of the same content.

You either sacrifice the AP boost/home instance node this time — so that next time you get decent content — or you get the same content over and over again.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Both of you are a big part of the problem. Anet only looks at metrics, then interprets them incorrectly.

Repeat that sentence to yourself.

They’re interpreting it incorrectly …but we are the problem?

(This of course ignores the dozens of “living story sucks” threads we’ve seen and had dev response to on the forums which proves they don’t only look at metrics)

And no I won’t sacrifice AP points/laurels/chests. I’ll be part of the massive negative feedback they’re getting. I shouldn’t have to pick between AP and quality content, that’s stupid.

No! Get rid of the stupid scarlet crap now.Ugly content with rewards which are dreadful is not conducive to fun gameplay.