Guild Wars 2

Yup. I still use these in sPVP. Mostly for the precision boost, though the condition cleanser is still reasonably effective.

If you’ve got more than 5 conditions on you, chances are you’re outnumbered and you really should turn tail and run anyway.

Hi there.

I bought a server transfer a few months ago. I didn’t regret my purchase at the time, but now that we have megaservers, I feel that I didn’t get my money’s worth.

I didn’t transfer due to WvW, as I don’t play that game mode. The reason I transferred was because I was sick of the toxic community on my previous server and wanted to get away from it. The server I transferred to had a really positive and casual PVE-based community, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Now every time I’m in the cities I am among hundreds of people from all servers, some of which are the very people I paid money to get away from.

I do want to apply for a refund to get my gems back if possible, but my question is this: If I apply for the refund, will it result in me being sent back to my home server? I don’t want to leave the server I transferred to. I’m really only applying for it because I feel like the money was wasted.

Thoughts?

biofrog.1568:

Megaservers are not crap. In general, they bring many more people together to play a massively multiplayer game. This is a good thing. They can be improved however…

The megaservers seem to be doing good in zones that were previously unpopulated. But that does not necessarily outweigh the problems they are creating in other respects. I’m not going to expound at length about this because it is really quite overwhelming. Browse this thread if you want to see reasons from the playerbase as to why the megaservers are indeed causing problems. A few of my stories are in there, too.

biofrog.1568:

Private Events need privatising. You can’t have an open world event that requires ultra organisation to succeed… There needs to be some method of allowing players (say guild leaders) to start a private map that they can pull other players in to.

I couldn’t agree more. I honestly don’t see a reason why they can’t instance more of the content in this game. It would make things more accessible to all players. Imagine if Tequatl was a raid-style mission that took, say, 16 people to complete – It would get a lot more traffic, that’s for sure. Keep the difficulty super high, but get the logistical bullcrap we wrestle with out of the way. The open world content simply can’t be organized effectively, especially since the game lacks a built-in voice communication system.

biofrog.1568:

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains – These players are not playing and should equally not be rewarded so… The social aspect of a farming group is a horrible place to be in my opinion, and this is where Megaservers help. You get rid of the farming group, you have open diverse player map chat that is useful for all.

Yes, but you also divide the populace all over the place. Human social interaction generally likes to congregates in a few central locations (in this game, it’s traditionally been Lion’s Arch and Queensdale). It might be good for the game in theory, but it does damage community cohesion and interaction.

biofrog.1568:

Restrictive Dailies. …I believe this is for a reason – the gearing up of Living Story 2. When this arrives, each patch will add 3-4 more dailies directly aimed at LS2.

God I hope you’re wrong. I hated the Living Story dailies and I hate the Living Story in general. I would really rather not participate in it at all, even to get my dailies.

biofrog.1568:

The FPS is customisable with graphics options, therefore irrelevant.

I disagree. The FPS and performance problems that the world events cause (partly due to megaservers) is simply not acceptable. My PC is not low-end. In fact my specs blow the minimum requirements away. I usually get 60-90 FPS in most areas of the game, anbd yet my framerate plummets to lower than 15 when I’m running with a huge zerg to the point where my GW2 client regularly crashes. Turning my detail down only reduces the frequency of my crashes. I don’t feel like it’s an irrelevant point. People with lower pc specs than mine are going to have it even worse than I do, and that’s probably a sizeable portion of the playerbase.

My game experience is best when I’m running graphics on high. Why should I have to turn down my graphics simply because the game hasn’t been coded properly? One of the reasons I still play this game is because it is the best looking MMO out there, and now I am being asked to make it look like crap just to have the privilege of playing it. Sorry, no. I’d rather just avoid the meta events altogether. The loot isn’t worth the literal headache I get when trying to play these.

biofrog.1568:

The ‘schedule’ however, is the one significantly bad decision that has been made… you are obliged to play WHERE Arena Net wants and WHEN Arena Net wants. Choosing not to do so is also choosing not to get loot! It’s counter-intuitive. It’s also really tedious when 15 minutes after 15 minutes you and 500 other people all move to the same place, to do the same thing. Usually without a break, and with no time in-between to do what you want unless it’s to clear-your-bags.

I agree with you on this point completely. The meta events are now a mindless treadmill. That was my original point.

Another fun megaserver story:

I was in a zerg of well over 100 people running Temple of Grenth. Because the zerg was so thick, my framerate plummeted and my client crashed.

So, I’m not worried – There’s is ample time to protect Jonez and get my chest…

But no. When I log back in, I’m on a different server entirely, with absolutely no way to get back. The temple has already been completed here, so I won’t get my chest, or even event completion.

Thanks megaservers. -.-

I bought a server transfer a few months ago. Now that we have megaservers, I feel that I wasted my money.

I don’t play WvW. I transferred because I was sick of the jerks on my previous server and wanted to get away from them. So, I guested around until I found a server with a really positive and casual PVE-based community, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Now every time I’m in the cities I’m crowdsurfing on hundreds of people I don’t know, some of which are the very people I paid money to get away from.

Thanks megaservers. -.-

The return of Living Story to be cancelled, in favor of permanent expansion-style content.

Yup. All of these bots are players who had their accounts hacked. We’re seeing more of them because of the megaservers.

Report on sight.

Ziwdon.3075:

We’re talking about Daily Achievements right? Cause I do nothing except WvW and I always get them.

True, you can get some of the PVE dailies from WvW. I guess WvWers will be fine then. sPVPers not so much.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I am pretty sure PvP players can get the Daily strictly in PvP, as some of the PvE activities now count in PvP. I could be mistaken, as I don’t really PvP much.

Nope. This is not possible. Even if you play sPVP and WvW you will still only get 4/5.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Whenever I go to Queensdale, the Champ Train is still running full bore. I’m not sure where it has been ‘dismantled’.

You’re right, my wording was a bit strong. They’ve simply been nerfed. A lot. (Edited my original post to reword it).

Sube Dai.8496:

Yeh I’d hardly call a one off payment of 5g for a trait a gold sink either…

It is if you have seven level 80 alts.

viralthefrog.6130:

I think the things you’re requesting are generally referred to as content, not features.

This feature patch added quite a few features, actually.

Allright. If we’re going to split hairs, then I guess I mean “content” rather than “features”. We need more content.

However, it still doesn’t change the fact that many of the features included in this patch didn’t improve things and in some cases made things worse.

CONS

Megaservers are Crap – The megaserver system has effectively smashed community cohesion. If you insist on going forward with this, at least leave the cities alone so people can RP and give shout-outs to their fellow servermates when they need help in WvW (as of now, any number of spies can be listening in). There are other reasons why these will cause problems too, but I’m not going to go into detail here, since it’s a topic worthy of its own thread, and many have been made already.

Nerfing the Queensdale and Frostgorge champ trains – Yet another way to smash community cohesion. Queensdale in particular was a very social area where people could relax and chat, and now there isn’t much of a reason to stick around since the loot is not worth it anymore. Even if you don’t care about the loot, the social aspect will now be more fragmented due to megaservers.

Removal of Town Clothes – Way to screw the RP community again, guys. Making town clothes into un-dyeable tonics and removing people’s ability to mix and match their outfits is a great way to kitten off a large portion of your playerbase. RPers probably made you a lot of money in gem sales, and now all those people are going to be asking for refunds. Everyone loses.

Restrictive Dailies – When you diversified the dailies, people breathed a sigh of relief. People don’t like being forced to do things they don’t want to. For example, PVP players don’t play PVE because they don’t like it. Forcing them to do so to get their daily is not going to make them happy. Dailies had been improved in previous builds and now they’re back to where they were originally. Why would you deliberately make your game worse when you had already taken steps to improve it? Makes no sense to me.

PVP Gear Erasure – A year and a half worth of work just so all those skins could go up in smoke. This won’t anger everybody, but it will anger anybody who A) plays pvp a lot, and B ) changes their outfit a lot. PVP players have every right to be kittened about this. Removing glory was a good move, but taking away all of our rewards? Not so much. And no, the wardrobe does not compensate for this.

Removal of the personality system because of… Reasons? – Seriously, just think up a new word for “ferocity” already. There’s no need to completely remove this from our UI.

PVP Build System is restrictive – Sure, it’s convenient, but not being able to mix and match runes is going to be a pain, especially when the changes to some of the runes were not great. This isn’t going to result in “build diversification”, in fact it will ensure that less-useful runes will be ignored completely.

New Traits are Gold Sinks – Yes, you can hunt all over the map for them, but for those who don’t have the patience (and resent the fact that they have to buy something that they traditionally have had access to for free) will have to spend gold they never had to before. It’s an obvious gold sink.

New World Boss schedule equals FPS death – The ridiculously dense crowds of people showing up at these events will ensure that people with low-end PC’s will not have a good time. Even people with high-end PC’s (like me) get a headache-inducing 15 FPS or lower. But even for people who do have the money to play GW2 on a military-grade supercomputer, all they have to do is show up on time, spam #1, and get their reward. Somehow it cheapens the experience. There was a certain satisfaction you could gain from beating one of these events with a small crew, and now you’re pretty much guaranteed never to have to bother.

SUMMARY

All in all, this feature patch is dressed up to look like we’re getting a lot of good stuff, but we didn’t. It simply changed things, and not always in a good way. The pros and cons sort of balance themselves out. Certain things were fixed, others were made worse.

This update gave us tweaks, not features. Actual features would be things like skills, zones, classes, races, dungeons, guild halls, more PVP maps, etc. We have gotten some features over the past year, but they’ve come in a small trickle: A handful of healing skills, a handful of traits, one new WvW map, one new PVP map, one PVE zone. What else? Nothing noteworthy.

It feels like the Living Story took us for a ride this past year and left us with nothing. By now the game should be filled out in ways that anybody (new players included) can enjoy. But that’s not what we have, and that’s certainly not what this feature update has given us.

All I can hope for is that Living Story Season 2 learns from the mistakes of Season 1 and we finally get the game we all thought we were paying for.

Now that I’ve fully analyzed the feature update, I am providing a feedback critique.

To weigh the features of this updates I will be sorting them into PROS, CONS and NEUTRAL followed by a summary of what I think.

PROS

Making WvW XP account bound – I don’t play WvW but this seems like a good idea.

Conversion of Transmutation Crystals and Transmutation Stones into charges – Finally I am able to put my piles of transmutation stones to use. This is a good move.

Two sigils for two-handed weapons – Excellent. Two-handed weapons are finally on par with one-handers.

Sigil changes – Most of these seem good. This was long overdue.

Reset Traits when you want – Yes, it’s true, people do not like having to go to town (or spend gems) to reset these. It’s good that this part of the game is finally on par with Guild Wars 1.

Account bound legendaries – Also good.

Ferocity and global monster HP adjustments – This has helped lessen the grind. This is a welcome addition. I don’t know if it will lead to the build diversification intended but it’s a step in the right direction.

Account bound dyes – This is a welcome change, though players who paid 200+ gold for abyss dye on all their characters might have a right to be annoyed.

Courtyard – This is a great map. I hope it ends up in the normal rotation at some point.

NEUTRAL

Wardrobe system – All this does is slicken the transmutation system we already had. That’s good, but it doesn’t really provide the player with a “feature”. It’s simply an easier way for people to spend their money. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not as great as it sounds – especially when features people loved were removed or changed (the town clothes being made into tonics, for example). Outfits are also a step backward in terms of functionality. All of this will potentially help ease the burden on inventory and bank space, but being unable to mix and match rightfully will kitten people off.

Removing Underwater PVP – Underwater PVP was annoying, it’s true. Removing it entirely is one way to deal with it, I suppose, though ideally it would have simply been worked on and improved.

Rune changes – Some of these were good, some not so much. Increasing attribute gain across the board is good but some of the changes to these left some people scratching their heads.

No repair costs – Good in a way, but also trivializes death even further than it already was.

Getting rid of heart mail – Not sure why this was done. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. The new heart dialogue does look nice though.

PVP Reward Tracks – Overall this is a much better system than Glory ever was, but the time-gating ensures that people with busy schedules will be discouraged. The time-limited reward tracks now have the same problem that Living Story had – It forces you to play a certain number of days in order to get your reward, regardless of whether your real life schedule allows for it. This serves no purpose other than to frustrate your players. I cannot imagine why you would do this.

(continued)

Quick answer to the OP: Yes.

I just finished a tier of my dungeon reward track. The weapon I chose was soulbound on acquire, which is unfortunate because would’ve been perfect for my guardian (I don’t play guardian in PVP). Now my mesmer is stuck with something I’m not going to use.

I don’t particularly see why I should spend money and transmute the skin for my guardian when I worked hard to get this weapon in the first place. Please make these account-bound, I really don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be.

It looks like an electrified baloon animal.

If you haven’t seen it yet, click here.

Yup. This needs to happen.

+1

They want to encourage PVE players to play more sPVP and vice versa. But it’s a hamfisted way to go about it.

Generally people stick to their preferred game modes because they have, in fact, tried all the game modes and have chosen one that they like the best. Forcing players to do things they don’t want is no way to run a game.

I was one of those few people who used Superior Runes of Vampirism in sPVP; and yes, I used all 6 pieces.

I like what’s been done to the 2-set bonus. I do NOT like what’s been done to the 6-set bonus.

I liked the fact that the mist form triggered at 10% – It was a failsafe against death, and I was able to chain it into Death Shroud to great effect. I use a full lifestealing build. Having mist form trigger at 20% is going to be very annoying, because at 1/5th health, the battle has just begun for me. On many occasions I’ve let people take me down that far only to steal all their health and turn the fight around. Not to mention it’s going to be harder to reap the benefits of Siphoned Power, now – That trait triggers at 25% health, and now if I lose another 5% I’m suddenly in mist form and whatever I was planning to do is interrupted.

I would just take the sixth rune off, but oh, right, I CAN’T now, because we’re forced to use all six runes. >.<

Please fix.

Wildkitten.3872:

You have to click the Equipment tab on the Hero screen.

Tried it. They’re still gone.

It’s true, there are people out there who actually liked them. I’m not here to whine about how we can’t mix and match, because somebody already made a rather loud thread about that.

I just wish I could dye mine. Now that they’re a tonic, you only get default colors. I liked my blue town clothes, and they’re gone forever.

Is there a particular reason why the town clothes cannot be made into an outfit? I really don’t see why not. You’re going to have people running around as pirates and cooks and stuff, so why not in casual gear?

Makes no sense to me.

TurtleofPower.5641:

’Tis a bummer. I was hoping for the mythical “use more weps or all weps with all classes” to give the game a new lease on combat.

They have said that new weapon proficiencies for the classes are coming, they just haven’t said when. New traits are a step in the right direction, though.

Is there any concrete word on whether guesting is staying in? I occasionally like to guest to TC to RP, and I would really rather not have to transfer servers (AGAIN) just to appease the almighty megaserver algorithm.

I can see this system backfiring for highly social people or RPers who enjoy spontaneous interactions with new people; i.e., people who are NOT in their guild or party.

I am always amazed at how these threads pop up whenever there’s even a slight break in the action. People complained over christmas break that they weren’t getting any updates. Well, Arenanet is, in fact, comprised of people – not soulless robots – and they do need a break from time to time.

But more importantly, there is a large subsection of the playerbase that welcomes the break as well. The Living Story updates way too fast for casual
players (or people with jobs, families, careers or lives) to keep up. Let us have our ten days to breathe, for crissake.

As for what you can do during the downtime, there’s a whole game world out there. If you’re bored, how about you finish some zones, run some dungeons, work on a legendary, play some PVP, play some WvW, level an alt, run guild missions, or play activities.

And if all of that somehow fails to entertain you, go play something else or read a freaking book.

Dear devs,

I just want to say that I agree with your decision to change how crit damage works; ferocity looks like a good mechanic to discourage universal use of zerk builds.

However – I have one suggestion that I hope you will take seriously:

Since damage from zerk builds will be reduced by about 10%, please lower global monster HP accordingly.

You don’t have to touch boss or champion HP if you don’t want, but for normal enemies (vets & non-vets) this will help non-zerk builds to feel a bit more powerful when doing normal PVE stuff, while the appeal of zerk builds will remain about the same.

Right now, non-zerker builds take forever to kill some enemies, even normal non-veterans. I should know, as I use a full soldier build. When I’m in level 80 zones I just feel like I’m taking much longer than I should to kill – some normal enemies take 10-12 hits to kill. The grind can be tiresome. My build has maximum power; this really shouldn’t be. Builds that don’t have power as a major stat must have it even worse than I do.

I guess my point is, nerfing only zerk builds probably won’t result in encouraging build diversification if other builds still feel too weak by comparison.

Latinkuro.9420:

PeterThomas.7243:

Yes, but I skipped the grinding and zerging and decided to just kill Scarlet in the instance. I wanted to see if Arenanet managed to put a satisfying end to the story.

I feel sorry for yah, you skipped one of the best fights the game has to offer.
when I 1st logged in and got to stomp scarlet straight away I was like you gotta be kidding me I was disappointed, than I did it the right way and man that was epic.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. When I fought the assault knights my client crashed every. single. time. I made a thread about it in the bugs forum, you can read it here. There was simply no way for me to even get to the hologram fight.

Latinkuro.9420:

Tbh, the whole Idea of allowing people to skip the fight and go straight to stomping scarlet just because they had an aetherblade spinal blades back piece did NOT need to be in there

Well, if they hadn’t given me that option, I would’ve never been able to kill scarlet at all, so I’m sort of glad. However, had they actually released content that was bug free I would probably agree with you.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

PeterThomas.7243:

With Scarlet, however, they have their work cut out for them. The threads surrounding her story are a tangled mess that I doubt will ever make complete sense.

Not much argument there. But then, it’s still better than Twilight.

Lawl. Amen to that.

DarcShriek.5829:

So Peter, I see you made it out of Lion’s Arch.

Yes, but I skipped the grinding and zerging and decided to just kill Scarlet in the instance. I wanted to see if Arenanet managed to put a satisfying end to the story.

The verdict? Not so much. But like I said in my original post, at least they didn’t make the mistake of killing off these awesomely written principal characters at the hands of Scarlet. That would’ve just made me sad.

Now at least they can go forward and be involved in something better.

MithranArkanere.8957:

By the way, get all permanent finishers you can. They get unlocked for the account. That is good, so good, that all things should be like that, toys, tools, town clothes and skins.

Sorry. I think finishers are lame. I agree with you that more store items should be permanent, but the fact that they have tried to introduce finishers into PVE content (toxic knights and scarlet) is very obviously a cash grab to try to boost sales of these undesirable items.

Despite reaching sPVP rank 30, all my permanent finishers are sticks, and I’m okay with that. I’ll leave the accumulation of useless vanity items to people with deep, deep pockets.

I know there’s been hate directed toward the epilogue instance at the Dead End, but I actually liked it. Braham, Rox, Marjory, Kasmeer and Taimi are great characters and I enjoy watching their interactions. Their dialogue is well written and it was nice to see the camraderie between them.

I should clarify though; I was wishing for some explanation for Scarlet’s motivations or a few facts that would’ve made the overall plot make sense, but I knew that was too much to ask for. In short, it wasn’t a perfect ending but at least it preserved the good things about the living story (i.e., the characters that it introduced, minus Scarlet).

I do hope whatever content we get going forward, whether it continues to be living story-based or expansion based, that these characters are recurring.

darkdomino.9578:

Blowing up Lions Arch doesn’t change the fact that this game feels tired and played out.

In what way? Would you care to elaborate?

I have my own ideas as to why this is, but you might want want to clarify your position.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The epilogue following “Hell’s Precipice” was literally only Glint giving a voiceover version of “Congraturations, you won!”. Nothing about the titans which had escaped that far…

The titan stuff was followed up with the quest line starting with The Last Day Dawns http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Last_Day_Dawns_ ending in The Titan Source http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Titan_Source_. These were only available after completing the Prophecies main quest line. The quests weren’t very heavy on story; mostly the players were just cleaning up the titans that had wandered the map, but you did get some dialogue stuffs with Adelbern.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

… nothing about the consequences of the White Mantle leaving a power vacuum in Kryta…

The Shining Blade seized that opportunity to put Queen Salma in power. That’s why we were reporting to her in War In Kryta. Not quite sure why this is causing you confusion.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

…and nothing about what happens to Ascalon when the only heir to the throne after Adelbern is dead.

Ascalon became an uninhabitable ghost-infested ruin, that’s what. Go read The Ghosts of Ascalon http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghosts_of_ascalon if you need more details.

Arenanet actually hasn’t been too bad at explaining things up until now, they just take their sweet time at it. Or they put those explanations inside purchaseable items such as the “Bonus Mission Pack” or the physical novels. The threads do get tied up eventually.

With Scarlet, however, they have their work cut out for them. The threads surrounding her story are a tangled mess that I doubt will ever make complete sense.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Every class can support themselves to the point where they don’t need anyone else. What you have is an MMO, where no player needs another player in a sense

I have bolded, underlined and italisized a portion of your statement and agree with this 100%, which brings me to say/repeat what I have said several times before in that being you can do everything yourself(there are many who has soloed things that really shouldnt be soloable, like lupicous for instance) not needing teamwork/help is akin to nothing more than a GLORIFIED SINGLE-PLAYER GAME in an MMO setting.

I take great joy in creating home-grown builds that are overpowered so I can solo things that I’m not supposed to. It’s fun.

I like that GW2 lets you feel less like a cog in the machine and more like an empowered individual who can contribute more than simply enacting a prescribed set of instructions.

If somebody has a really crappy build in sPVP or a dungeon, the team really feels it. It puts more onus on the player to improve themselves. People still copy & paste builds they find online, of course, but that’s irrelevant. If they play a meta poorly they will still let down the group, because in this game you can’t simply rely on your skillbar to save you – You actually have to be able to use all the elements of your build together effectively. You need skill and practice.

None of what I just wrote applies to huge open-world zergfests or bosses though; there’s no way Arenanet can fix those events due to their very nature. All you have to do is gather enough people, spam 1 and rez. Replacing the trinity won’t help.

omegajimes.2471:

Her biggest gripe has been that there’s no way to go back and experience the single player missions that explain what’s been going on, or even re-watch the cut scenes. I can’t find anyone who’s put together anything comprehensive on Youtube either.

That would be a momentous task. There was so much dialogue that was not presented in cutscenes and some of it was important to the story. A Youtube video like this would take ages to compile, because you’d have to literally play and record a year’s worth of mission instances. It would probably be hours long, and of course, anyone who would’ve actually WANTED to compile such a thing would’ve had to have started diligently archiving it from the very beginning of Flame & Frost.

Arenanet tried to throw the playerbase a bone by launching the “Living World Atlas” but it is not a sufficient solution in any respect.

If the previous rewards offered in the Living Story chapters could be acquired again I’m all for a “time machine” approach that allows you to replay the content; after all, our client files are bloated with all of that previous content even though it’s inaccessible to us. They may as well put it to use.

If they aren’t going to allow people to reclaim past rewards, however, I’d rather they just kill the Living Story and retire it permanently. It is an experimental approach that simply hasn’t worked.

1) Longer time limits (1 month minimum)
2) Less grinding
3) Less bugs

That would be the bare minimum… But there are plenty of other things that the Living Story should ideally have, such as:

4) A plot that actually makes sense
5) No time-gating
6) More content that is friendly to small guilds and solo players
7) Affordable items in the gem shop
8) More permanent items in the gem shop
9) Desirable items in the gem shop (enough with the gloves and pauldrons already)
10) More ways that the players can influence the story (Cutthroat Politics was a good idea but didn’t go far enough; if you really want the story to feel “Living” then make it less linear)

And many more.

To be honest, the Living Story is just rife with problems and needs to be scrapped. What we need is more development for sPVP, WvW, Dungeons, PVE, along with new skills, races, classes, zones, and bug fixing… Y’know. The stuff that matters.

motherbox.5493:

To finish it all off, the kill on Scarlet was totally rushed and didn’t explain anything! Why did she gather the molten alliance, etc.? No one knows. In fact no one knows why she did anything at all.

You could always visit the highly convoluted Living World Atlas and comb through all of the plot points in non-chronological order…

… Or be lucky enough to log on during a “recap” chapter (such as “A Study in Scarlet”) and endure vague lengthy explanations that still don’t add up…

Actually, wait, those are terrible ideas…

Nevermind. Seems you have a point.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Lol, I’d take it even further back than Scarlet attacking LA, and simply asking why no one even noticed her people putting all those drills up all over the place.

No kidding. There was one right outside the Order of Whispers headquarters and they didn’t even seem to notice.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

She didn’t make it clear the dragon is her master, and she didn’t make it clear the dragon was even there. We the players know about the dragon rising, but as of yet the characters do not. All they know is Scarlet was fighting some influence until the end when she was either not fighting or so dead-set on something it was no longer important.

If you’re an engineer, you can use Scarlet’s console to discover that it is, in fact a dragon. So the player characters -can- know that it’s a dragon.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We see what it was. She was drilling for magic. Drilling, notably, to disrupt the ley lines feeding into the dragon. If it’s her master then . . . why in Balthazar’s blue balls is she doing something to poke it with a stick

Exactly.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Easiest answer – she’s not doing it to serve it, she’s doing it to spite it.

Ironically, if true, this would make the most sense. But Scarlet’s attitude in that last battle is completely contrary to this. But if it does turn out to be the truth, there are problems with this scenario as well.

Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right. Scarlet is being driven mad by the dragon’s voice in her head, so she hatches a big-kitten master plan to disrupt its food source that involves the dredge, flame legion, krait, nightmare court, aetherblades, the captain’s council, etc., so she can finally get away with building a giant drill the size of the Black Citadel, drop it out of the sky and disrupt its food source. Takes about a year or so. Okay. Sure. Let’s assume ALL of that is feasible.

Throughout this time, the dragon has been watching her and continuing to speak to her and drive her mad. But after a while of this, wouldn’t it become conscious of the fact that Scarlet is aligning herself against him? Wouldn’t it realize after a while that Scarlet just wants to be left alone? Apparently not, it keeps screwing with her head until the very end (which we see in the hologram fight with Scarlet).

What does it have to gain by messing with her head, anyhow? In this scenario, Scarlet’s motivations make sense but the dragon’s do not, especially if the dragon’s primary motivations are to feed on magic (which they are, because that was established in the personal storyline). Essentially the dragon would be sabotaging itself.

Whether Scarlet was actively working for the dragon or not, there are problems with the writing.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Do not make me start dragging out examples of GW1 writing which was way worse than the Living Story. I’ll tell you true, all four storylines have a spot where it’s just . . . bad.

I played GW1 for six years. I know it is. But it’s still better than this.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Conversely, that . . . that totally and completely ruined the tragedy of the character. And it’s what I’m talking about when I say their backfilling started to weaken things. Shiro was far more compelling when it was his fear of his own mortality which drove him to contemplate the unquestionable, rather than “someone pulled his strings until he became a puppet”.

I agree, actually. I never thought they necessarily -needed- to explain Shiro, but they managed to get away with it because his story was vague enough that they could fill in the holes without hurting the lore too much. In the case of Scarlet, there are so many contradictions piled up around her already; tacking on a dragon to explain her has only amounted to cheapening and watering down the original premise of her character (and has raised even more questions).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

1 – The master is the dragon, and nothing we were going to do would stop her from making it rise. Assuming, of course, she intended to prod it into action. This also assumes the dragon wasn’t active already.

Yes, she made it clear the dragon is her master and that nothing we could do would stop her. But she hates the dragon, so why would she be happy about it rising?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

2 – The master is the dragon, and we stopped her attempts to try to counter it. A huge army which could be seen as a twisted mirror of the Pact, and a weapon in the marionette capable of great destruction. It’s possible she was intending to wake up the dragon and draw it to Lion’s Arch to try to kill it. Much like Destiny’s Edge chose to wait for Kralkatorrik and try to kill it there.

No. There was no indication of this whatsoever. She appeared to be happy that it was going to rise, despite her own death (i.e., she acted like a mindless pawn). Watch the ending again yourself if you don’t believe me.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, the first game managed to disguise it by back-writing things in awkward ways when it needed to. Especially around Nightfall and Eye of the North. It also did a terrible job of keeping the plotline of Prophecies straight until about 2/3 of the way through when the Mursaat bamfed onto the scene.

You’re absolutely right, and yet Guild Wars 1’s internal logic and writing was still way better than the Living Story in every way.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Nope, but this is not the bad writing you are looking for. This is the result of bad writing coming before it, and ANet dropping a hatchet on it so they can move on. Scarlet’s introduction and her first half of existence in the plot was bad writing, bad pacing, or keeping the hand too close to the chest and leaving us all just confused… To be frank, since the recap in the Dead End it’s been “good enough” as far as writing goes.

I agree with you that the writing as been bad over the past year. However, my point is that the writing has been bad all the way to the end. Especially considering the fact that they didn’t manage to put a workable bandaid over the story’s problems (like they did in Nightfall when they explained why Shiro went bonkers).

I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. You’ve heard my reasons, I don’t think they’re invalid, and at this point I’m repeating things I’ve already said.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s said earlier on – Scarlet was fighting something and it was quite probable she was doing this out of spite. I personally suspect she did it to make it stir and so even though she died . . . it was going to die too if those who killed her paid it any mind.

Then why would sneer at the players and tell them “HAR HAR HAR TYRIA HAS A NEW MASTER NOW!” She gave absolutely no indication in the last scene that she was doing anything out of spite; like I said, she acted like a mindless pawn who had done the dragon’s bidding and was proud of it. Which is completely contrary to her backstory and characterization up to this point.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We’re playing a game where there’s a race of seven foot tall men and women who run around in the snow with exposed flesh and can turn into bipedal and faintly anthropomorphic bears, wolves, ravens, and snow leopards. Where there are lava flows you can be fine standing right next to . . . and if you set foot in them you only merely die slowly. Where candy corn can grow out of the ground, be mined, and then baked into cookies.

Making sense is not Tyria’s strength

What I mean is the game can still have an internal logic that is consistent. The first game did.

shrugs

Just because the game has a fantasy setting does not excuse bad writing.

Heraldusluminare.2946:

I think ANet meant to explain Scarlet’s motivation through the cutscene after you killed her – specifically what lies at the end of it.

Still doesn’t explain a lot of things, such as:

- Why did seeing the eternal alchemy expose her to the dragon’s control?

- If dragons are connected to the Eternal Alchemy somehow, wouldn’t all of them had a chance to control her?

- So then, why this dragon? Why not one of the others? Or all of them?

- Why did she act like a mindless pawn in the last scene despite appearing completely independent and acting on her own volition up until now?

- Why was the dragon never mentioned or foreshadowed in “What Scarlet Saw”? Being “mind controlled” pretty much contradicts everything they established for her backstory.

- If dragons feed on magic, and the ley line was feeding this dragon a constant stream of magic, and Scarlet’s motivation was to disrupt the flow of magic feeding the dragon, wouldn’t that actually HARM the dragon instead of giving it what it wants? Why would the dragon manipulate her over a year-long period with the aim of interrupting its food source? Why would it want to harm itself?

MAKES. NO. SENSE.

I could go on and on. I don’t care that there’s suddenly a dragon, it does nothing to redeem this storyline or make sense of Scarlet’s motives.

FAIL

The story was horrible, the ending didn’t explain anything, the last few patches were crippled by game-breaking bugs. The content is entirely focussed on grinding for rewards that are not worth it.

3/10

The only redeeming qualities about the Living Story were the well-written character interactions between Braham, Rox, Marjory, and Kasmeer. Everything to do with Scarlet was pure garbage.

While some of the early chapters started out strong (Flame & Frost, Secret of Southsun), the quality declined with each consecutive patch. The bugginess and stability issues alone were bad enough, but when the chapters did work, the content focussed on tedious grinding. The rewards also kept getting harder to achieve, requiring more and more time, partly due to time-gating…

Also, the two-week time limit to acquire rewards was completely insensitive to a large portion of the player base (i.e., people with lives).

I’m sorry, but the Living Story format needs to be reworked or retired. This past year on Guild Wars 2 has been a severe disappointment.

I was unsatisfied simply because the ending to the story didn’t clear anything up about Scarlet, nor vindicated this horribly written story in any way.

When Scarlet offered to explain her motives, I actually wanted her to proceed, but Braham was like “NO!”

I wanted to punch him…

And now Scarlet’s dead, and she CAN’T explain herself, and therefore will go down as the worst written character in Guild Wars history.

As for the mechanics, yes, it was highly anticlimactic… So it was really unsatisfying in every way possible.

So let me get this straight.

Regarding the ending to this story, Colin Johanson said that 1 in every 10,000 people had guessed it right.

And just about EVERYBODY guessed it was a dragon.

That puts the ratio of people a little higher than 1:10000….

Was he just trolling us? WTF.

EDIT: I just read his post regarding this… Apparently he didn’t mean “dragons” he was referring to people guessing it was Primordius… Nevertheless, dragons were the most obvious guess, and everybody guessed dragons. Still kinda feels like trolling.

Midna.2195:

Did you read the crash log? I’d highly assume that it’s your client running out of vram. I had crashes twice (at the red one, since it was the last one in the rota), both times a OOM crash. So i watched my VRAM and switched to low texture resolution as it got critical. No crash since.

I didn’t read the crash log, so it’s possible it’s a VRAM issue. But as I said in my original post, I’ve never had a problem with consistent crashes until this Green Knight. So I don’t think it’s a problem with my PC.

For interest, here are my PC’s specs:

Intel i7 3.5ghz quad core
8 GB RAM
Nvidia GTX 650 ti
win 7 64 bit

I run the game on high and get 60-90 FPS at most times; in really large zergs the FPS goes down to 15-20ish, which is not good, but shouldnt’ be crash-inducing (and hasn’t been up to this point; I’ve run Tequatl with a full map before, for example, and everything was fine…)

I’ll try playing the green knight on low detail and see if it makes a difference…

Glog.4275:

Iv had this happen three times aswell, also with the green knight. Thought it was due to the mass of people on screen but then i think i do wvw so that cant be it right?.

Nope. I’ve also played a lot of WvW and highly populated meta-events (tequatl, marionette, etc) and I’ve never had a problem with crashes before… So I think it’s a localized issue.

So the “green synergetic assault knight” crashes my client during the fight with him every time. The other knights do not seem to do this (yes, I submitted a bug report).

I wouldn’t be posting about it if the solution was as simple as relogging and continuing the fight where I left off, but of course I can’t, because relogging causes me to get bumped to overflow and I lose all of the attunements gained thus far. Every time this happens, it’s another hour of my life wasted. This is extremely frustrating.

Once in overflow, I talked to the people there, and they told me that they too were experiencing massive bugs and continuous disconnects. So it’s clearly not just me (I’ve also never had a problem with client crashes before this update).

All I can say is: This is what happens when you release content too quickly without enough testing. I hope the Living Story format is retired after this story arc is over. This level of bugginess is unacceptable.

Celestina.2894:

That being said, when people toss around the gay agenda I am shocked about how none of them mention Sieran, I can’t be the only one who picked up on subtle hints she had a thing for the player character, regardless of gender.

Same with Countess Anise in the human storyline; maybe not a “thing”, but openly flirtatious at any rate.

Setsunayaki.4907:

The last eight living stories I was always thrown into an overflow after the Living Story was patched. I was a guild leader and wanted the guild to experience the story together but the different overflows and many of them filled to map cap prevented us from playing together.

This is why in my opinion the Living Story content should be instanced like dungeons. If you end up on different servers it won’t matter – You get pulled into the same instance with your party.

Setsunayaki.4907:

Other MMOs have channels. Why cant this game have channels?

This is a good point. GW1 had districts which functioned the same way, I don’t see why GW2 can’t have the same system…