Guild Wars 2

Dark Saviour.9410:

Err… So, to break it down, I don’t think it’s so much an issue that the dragons don’t have such distinct personalities or dialogue. I think the real issue is that they didn’t succeed in making them ominous and alien enough for them to be accepted without those things.

I absolutely agree with this.

There are several ways you can handle a villain or antagonist, with one of the more popular ones having the story focus on the relationship between the protagonist (here, that would be us) and the antagonist. You see this with the Sephiroth or Kefka type villains – they have interesting personalities and motivations that are still ultimately “human” at heart. Because they exist as entities that are similar enough to the protagonist (i.e. being human with human, albeit evil, motivations), you can focus energy on developing interactions between that antagonist and the protagonist that showcase the good guy versus bad guy relationship.

That was the kind of approach they seem to use with Zhaitan, when he really needed a different approach – a kind of “Elder God” or Cthulhu entity that is beyond our understanding, a creature that is alien to us. Telling a story with that kind of villain needs to both reinforce the just how unlike us the creature is and focus on the relationships and interactions of those standing against it. There’s hints of this within the personal story, but they didn’t take it far enough…and as such I agree that Zhaitan simply wasn’t alien and ominous enough as they showed him to exist without having to rely on the other approach that shows motivations and such, and that particular aspect of him was not handled well.

Egon Vidar.9125:

Analogous convergent evolution with humans+other apes, sylvari+treants? Goodness knows it happens enough in real life (look at pictures of cats and fossa sometime, or the skulls of the grey wolf and the thylacine) but I might be falling a bit into conspiracy theory-type thinking, here.

The main difference there would be that humans and apes have been around for a while, contrasted with the very new creation of the Sylvari compared to the much longer existence of plant-type creatures such as treants. Evolution really doesn’t apply to the Sylvari – they haven’t even had time to age, much less have their race evolve in any meaningful way.

That suggests that their appearance and physical construction was influenced by other factors – the Pale Tree being influenced by the human form, for example, even if it wasn’t an intentional choice.

The appearance of one other type of Sylvari from one other tree also doesn’t necessarily create as many problems or plot holes as one might think. The gestation and growth of a Pale Tree type entity, from what we currently know, takes a long time. A couple centuries ago, humans were the dominant species on Tyria. Another Pale Tree being close enough to humans to decide to mimic them is certainly not out of the question.

Unfortunately, it’s also possible that his appearance is nothing more than a gameplay or story-telling compromise, designed in such a way due to limitations technically or because the plot of that particular story required that the PC Sylvari mistake him for one of their own. I would certainly hesitate to base judgment or theories of Sylvari biology or the influence of their physical appearance on the appearance of one character. We just don’t know enough about the other Pale Tree for its existence to contradict the information we do have regarding the Pale Tree in the Grove.

Curuniel.4830:

Egon Vidar.9125:

It’s been confirmed that they do have “fun parts,” they just can’t actually make more Sylvari with them.

Don’t even get me started on this, haha – once my thesis is done, I am planning to write a blog post about how it doesn’t make sense to claim that sylvari don’t have “internal organs” only to then say that they have the parts required for sexual intercourse. I liked it better when the routine answer was what you see if what you get (that is, the ‘underwear’ leaves on a sylvari are all that’s there). Even eating is problematic when you start thinking…

Anyway, those issues aside, I simply meant that they don’t have the internal organs required for reproduction, like a womb for example.

They do have internal organs, just not necessarily exactly the same – something, made of plant or organic material, that circulates the sap that is effectively their blood, for example…a heart of sorts, but it might not work the exact same way or even be in the same spot in the body. Another organ for processing food and drink (they need both to survive, and use a stomach-like area that decomposes food that is then used to fuel the body).

So it’s not far fetched for them to have a physiology that responds to external stimuli (plants can and will do this in real life, and Tyria is a world where some plant organisms get up, walk toward you, and try to smash your face in), including sexual stimulation – which happens to be based at least in part (externally, for the most part) on that of humans. What happens on the inside is anyone’s guess – they are plants, through and through, so stimulation for them could result in any number of internal reactions they find pleasurable.

The ability to be stimulated is independent of their appearance, of course, which only happens to look human externally because of the race that influenced the Pale Tree regarding her design for the Sylvari.

Randulf.7614:

Depends on the mmo. I can happily play Anarchy and Secret World with no issues (TSW is similar to GW in some mechanics anyway and AO is so old school it was outdated long ago in all but charm and atmosphere).

LOTRO I sadly barely play now, but that may also be in part because the game is long past its best and has run out of steam/imagination (you can always tell when the focus shifts to “re-balancing” every year…) It’s also very slow and un-epic compared to GW. In that respect GW2 has killed an mmo for me (not that I’m complaining given how enjoyable GW2 turned out to be!)

I used to be big into LOTRO because of how they handled the lore and the story – keeping us adventurers as part of the Middle-earth story, but in such a way that it didn’t really run afoul of the lore and such of the books…

The pacing of the combat there never really bothered me, and I enjoyed their quest text more than others – wordy quest text for a game based on a wordy book, etc. It was the shift to “hey, it would be awesome for this to happen, though it directly contradicts events from the book” things that they started to add that got under my skin. Still, I’ve yet to see an under-ground region as epic as Moria. I thinkittenpt my Dwarven character down there, without leaving, for a solid 3 months when I was still playing.

Interesting, however, to note that they just did away with the mob-tagging mechanic on almost all the mobs – logged in a few days ago to poke around a bit for old times sake and saw that they’ve implemented a shared tag system like the one GW2 uses (Rift added something similar, as well).

While GW2 has “ruined” most other games for me (unless I’m looking for the specific story experience/atmosphere of LOTRO or TSW for a bit, or the shooty bang boom of PS2), it is nice to see ideas and mechanics from here that help promote better community play making its way into other games in the genre.

Aaron.4807:

Here it is Anet. This is the game you strived so hard to make. Here is the crystal clear vision of people working together in harmony. Always on equal footing, never worrying about arbitrary numbers locking people out of content.

Here is what you have built.

I hope the ends really justified the means.

And yet all it would take is for players to say “Ok, I’ll help you out instead of focusing solely on myself. Remember this attitude, and pass it on to others.”

That’s probably too much to ask, though. Players these days are, as a general rule, selfish.

Boomstin.3460:

Reclusiarh.2674:

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out?
Anyway, if that is true, and it is about a 40% increase in effectiveness, that’s utter insanity—I don’t think ANet would make it that hard.

Lfm dungeon run , ascended geared only, whisper gear or no invite.

“LFM dungeon run, Exotic geared only, whisper gear or no invite.”

Last I checked, that hasn’t taken over the game. Ascended gear won’t either. The sky isn’t falling just yet, Chicken Little.

Reevac.1748:

How are people translating this?

It’s more like deciphering a code – the symbols correspond to a particular letter in our alphabet, so it’s a matter of transposing rather than actually translating another language.

It’s essentially a substitution cipher.

Oh…and where can I get one of those seeing eye squirrels? Hmm? :-)

42 available, out of how many thousands are playing and doing multiple runs, and is a supply that won’t be renewed except via crafting after the 31st, meaning prices will absolutely shoot up?

Still not seeing the issue, and you’re still not looking at the long-term picture.

@aliquis

They’re not getting it on sale for cheap – they’re effectively winning it in a contest that only lasts four days.

@Magnes

You do realize that being able to memorize a pattern and then perform the steps to meet that pattern near flawlessly several times in a row is one form of skill, right?

It’s the same basic principle that allows a piano player to succeed at playing music after practicing enough.

Your definition of skill is too narrow if you think it doesn’t apply at all to these types of jumping puzzles, particularly these more difficult timed versions.

Beat it…25 times now?

Sylvari, Ranger, no speed boosts.

It’s a nice way of getting ToT bags if you can complete it often enough.

Illushia.3721:

That 6th area could just be remnants from when the Inquest were studying the Sylvari. Wanted to keep them in a ‘home-like’ environment or something, maybe?

Which brings up another possibility. The thread was started under the assumption that each area represents an ED. What if they are simply areas designed to hold and study beings of that particular elemental/magical force, and only relate to the Elder Dragons in that the areas of study and the power of a particular ED happen to overlap?

Something to consider regarding the nature of, well, nature. Often it is seen as having two sides to it; a nurturing side and a ravaging side. On one side, you have things like growth and things alive (the idea of the Pale Tree as the Mother Tree fits with this side). On the other side, you have what nature can do to other things – roots and vines taking over and tearing down buildings, predator hunting prey, etc.

It would seem more likely that there is a 6th Dragon that is related to nature, but it is the opposing force to what the Pale Tree represents in nature. In other words, balance.