Id hope not.
I want E to be male because theres already too many female characters in GW2, we need more males that are iconic and leading the story for a change.
A seperate post was needed for this as it seems to be important in its own light.
At the Sirens LAnding you encounter a ghostly fellow who claims to have been decended from an order of Orrian Sirens, these Sirens, allegedly used a form of song magic singing the various songs of the gods.
Could this be aluding to a potential form of Dervish or something new? A Lyrical bard class?
It seemed interesting, considering you literally learn how to use their magic, its possible someone might explore the depths of it one day, and thus, we might see these guys appear full time.
Yes- I know as it stands there are 9 classes and new specs are more likely to appear than new classes, but-… maybe time will tell, no?
Either as a mesmer spec, or something else, it certainly seemed… interesting.
The problem is that despite this one evil does not make another good. Jennah’s reaction and manipulations might indeed make her a lesser evil now, but her methods clearly show an early sign of a willingness to employ draconian methods to achieve her results.
Combine this with the very occultistic method of practice the Shining Blade employ in their recruitment of new inner circle members and it becomes clear that the Blade and Jennah are actually very little better if at all than the Mantle and Ministry itself.
In conclusion.
Its very likely over time Jennah will become an antagonist, because she has been playing the long game to secure power, which once she fully has, she will have no need for equality. This has already been made clear with the fact she calls her actions against the ministry a “precaution” but it becomes clear she is very unlikley to ever relinquish her new found control over them.
In essence, she is a tyrant, she is, a manipulative and clever tyrant that preceeds herself a democrat because over time, she is slowly becomming a dictator.
Notice how the Charr now help her? Why? Because she is seen as a beneficient face with a beneficial goal, to secure peace.
What you never understand is “at any cost” is also part of her agenda. She is willing to do what ever it takes, however, it takes, to secure that peace.
Over time, this will, inavoidably, make her into a tyrant.
So… Rather than talk about episode 6 I figured id now give my over-all opinion of the entire season as a whole. One of many opinions no doubt, but this one is mine:
The Delivery:
Season 3 has been a very… wild ride shall we say, of various plot twists and plot points that seem to have come and gone in less than an episode. The biggest strength and weakness of this is every episode feels like its own adventure, which in theory, works.
In practice…
The Execution:
The problem with Season 3 to me, is that alot of the plots just go into random directions, get rushed into short-to-the-point endings and feel like it was meant to be a series of closures for alot of plots that could have been explored in alot more depth and needed to be.
The Review:
On the upside… each episode, such as the much needed closure for Eir in episode 1… is countered by mysteries such as False Lazarus and Primordus awakening aswell as Jormag, only for us to put them down later on in a highly, sudden, and abrupt manner.
Season 3 feels like the pacing is all over the place. Its like a-net, you wanted to tell us a story that had alot of depth and direction but you decided to rush it to the specific points, rather than just, taking your time. We didnt need to rush Primordus, we did not, need to Rush Jourmag.
We also did not need to rush the white mantle, caudecus and lazarus in such a forced, and sudden way. I understand that to people who played GW1 this may feel like a satisfying closure, but for those of us that didnt, it feels like a rushed tale with no real idea what it wanted to be.
Constructive Feedback:
Going forwards, I suggest the following:
- No more Dragons Watch, or Destinies Edge or reoccuring characters, the next adventure should be entirely about new characters, with new vistas and new interactions, and the commander, having our personal story.
- More male characters, this season has been very very heavy in its amount of female leads and ironically feels like it suffers the opposite problem of most modern games today with just a sheer lack of male characters having any spotlight save maybe Canach and Logan, Rytlock was just a token and Braham is apparently annoying while we can forgive Livia and Anise for being extremely kitteny and to some extent, downright creepy.
- More depth on one plot as opposed to little on many. Season 2 did this right with having a specific focus on one character, while having enough story centered around their presence that it allowed for alot of story to tell because of it. Season 1, and Season 3, suffer from the same problem of telling too many smaller stories, instead of one great one.
- More antagonists that are actually people ironic I know considering I said we had no need to rush the dragons, but the Balthazar thing has been… interesting so far, one has yet to see how it will close off in the future. But we do need more antagonists like Balthazar or at least antagonists with faces, and personalities as opposed to giant dragons with little depth.
- Finally: A Norn and Charr heavy story. Asura have had some love, Sylvari have had too much and Humans are getting their fill with this story as it is. The next expansion and the story beyond it really need to deepen the lore of the current races, if that means some retcons are needed to make them better and more deep, please, retcon away, and add some layers, Norn and Charr feel so empty compared to the other races, especially in terms of lore attention over the last 5 years.
Praises:
- Balthazar as Lazarus was an interesting approach, though executed chaotically it worked to some extent but gave just enough intreague that his character could be made into something more engaging.
- Canach was just the star of the show in episode 4 with some of the best, witty lines, ever, kudos.
- Caithes closure was quite touching and so was Eir’s, both needed to be done in their own way, though Caithe does need to stop appologising now, we get it, shes sorry.
- Jory was quite quirky with her ambition and I quite liked that risky methodology behind her interests, but id still like to know exactly why she followed Lazarus around.
- The Zone stories have been hit and miss, but generally have been surpisingly engaging, especially the finale zone which to me, is actually one of the best pieces of enviromental storytelling this game has ever seen. More of Siren’s please.
- Taimi has grown on me, alot… I really do like the witty humor and her character quips plus the method of her interaction with us could be quite an itneresting thing to explore in the future in the games story.
Either way, thats my take on things, over all, its been an interesting ride, im not sure im entirley happy with the way it was done, but with improovement, it could certainly be perfected to a standard that could finally tell a cohecent but well written story, which this got half right.
In seriousness ive always thought it could be “Prophecy Of Flame” or something close to that, given it would be a huge throwback to gw1.
Been a while since ive looked back at this but interesting to see the life still going so heres a few more musings:
Anise and Jennah, Ilya and Lys Revised:
There is still reasons to believe that these two could very well be the dual incarnates of Lyssa as there are alot of hints given throughout the game and novels, a few include:
Edge of Destiny
Jennah quite “literally” charms Logan on first sight, Logan, up until that point had been quite a hard ruffian who didnt really think outside a clear set of self-important preservational rules. He became buddies with caithe/rytlock after the trouble the three got into with Magnus.
But after seeing Jennah it was like a scene from baywatch, her hair waving in slow mo and her body literally glittering (at least thats the way the scene comes across in the novel) as he looks dumbstruck and the other two blink in confusion.
This later seems even more prominant considering the scale of powerful abilities she can wield. Jennah uses her power to create illusions of increadable feats that could not be achieved by a simple mortal, even a powerful mortal.
Jennah is clearly hiding “something” and given her ability to compell Logan to obey her, so easily at that, she has a “charming” nature, much like a certain goddess.
What about Anise?
Anise, in game has alot of refferences to this, from her constant use of calling you puppet or other demeaningly minion like terms to flirting with you outright and teasing you into doing her bidding all the time. Shes manipulative, direct, and forward, if Jennah represents one aspect, Anise represents the other.
Anise often seems very passionate about her beliefs, and Lyssa’s domains dont just include passion in the sense of lust, but also in the sense of eagerness, and ambition, two things Anise has in plentiful quantities.
She also makes an effort to literally keep logan (away) from Jennah in season 1 after a skirmish with the clockwork robots in the crown pavilion during a demo. She “personally” made it turn into Rytlock to make him more eager to destroy it, then berates him for being too close to the queen.
She also seems awefully fond of playing with Canach, who counterplays her by making a joke about her age, something that irks her alot. She takes this surpisingly personally for someone who seems so young and wild.
Finally, theres also the aspect of her facination for Kasmeer, this could very well be because Kasmeer is likely the true royal bloodline (as mentioned in a quote above). Apparently there is a necklace the priory currently owns (as of season 2) that reveals the true krytan heir to the throne, and I suspect Anise is grooming Kasmeer for the role she will eventually play.
But this conspiracy doesnt end there, Kasmeer is also connected to the gods…
Kasmeer also possesses something unusual, her ability to see through lies and deception, yet curiously, she says nothing of Anise and Jennah, primarily because we dont get chance to really speak to her about it.
Kasmeer is also part of a league of mesmers that have exceptional influence over Kryta, and given the messages from E, we can almost go as far as to assume these mesmers are actually influencial enough to have people like Anise in their ring.
So, who is Kasmeer, who is E? My theory, is this, E, is the grand master of the Mesmer circle and is actually the future bodyguard of the next queen (Kasmeer) and thus, will replace Anise as spymaster when the time comes, just as Jennah will be replaced by Kasmeer as queen.
Kasmeer, being connected to the ability to detect lies, may have a connection to Kormir, the goddess of truth, thus, the reign of Jennah and Anise, which ahs been filled with lies, will be replaed with a reign of golden truth by Kormirs chosen avatar and human representative on Tyria, the speaker for the gods.
Any more crazy theories?
Jennah’s fondness for the flower gave us some clues, but lets look at Lyssa’s very dogma too. Lyssa speaks of beuaty being two things, internal and external, not all beauty is about good looking things in Lyssa’s eyes, this is why maybe Jennah represents the plutonic and gentle and serene aspect of Lyssa while Anise represents the passionate, exciteable lusty and direct aspect.
Their divine silence could possibly be because of Balthazars betrayal, if Balthazar betrayed the other gods then it is possible he defeated them and in desperation they “dimmed my light” could be a representative of their final act, possibly to live as mortals in Tyria under cover for now until they can rise once more to the throne of their power.
Either way, crazy as it sounds, it does seem likely that at the very least, the two have a connection to Lyssa, and Kasmeer has one to Kormir, or Dwayna, or perhaps both given her emblemic attires.
Time will tell how right this theory is, but I have a feeling im at least partially right.
Ive always had my suspicions about Kryta’s queen and her motives, aswell as her identity, but now im beginning to suspect those things are falling into place more clearly.
I used to think Jennah was just a puppet queen put into place as a temp, a powerless woman that had no real strength…
But I was clearly wrong, and now I think I know why…
Jennah is Lyssa in disguise
I still believe Jennah is not the true Queen of Kryta, a standin, but perhaps we are seeing an age where the gods silence is because the gods have been with us all along. They were at our side the entire time, helping us, where they could in their own small subtle ways.
In season 2, I remember that the Priory finds an amulet that “reveals the true Krytan Heir”. Now ive had a theory that the heir in question may be Kasmeer Meade, given Anise and Jennahs fondness for her. This would explain why Anise is trying so very hard to keep control of people.
If Jennah is one aspect, Anise is the other, aka: Lys and Ilya
This explains why Anise is a more ruthless part of the deviousness of Lyssa, more wrathful and playful all in the same nature. While Jennah is more proper and prononced, representing the inner half of beauty contrasting her sister’s outter beauty in contrast.
How did Balthy get the mirror?
Most likely, he stole it, during the confusion back in Season 1 with Scarlet he could have stolen it while she was causing a stirr in the reach. This would have given him a chance to escape with it, and begin his plans for a suitable disguise. Another possiblity is that due to the twin goddesses being on the mortal world, they were simply unable to stop him going into her realm to steal her mirror for himself.
How else does a tinfoil theory like this make sense?
Well, considering how utterly overpowered Jennah is when she used her true mesmer energies no “human” even a versed one, even the best of Mesmers could have ever hoped to create a forcefield that powerful and destroy the mantle so easily. Considering that, I would say Jennah is clearly on a whole other level, a divine, level of power. And unlike Xera who was empowered by bloodstone in the stronghold. She had “nothing” to give her that level of magical prowess, further cementing there being a suspicious amount of things around Jennah.
No matter the outcome, Jennah is clearly not who she says she is
One can be a powerful queen, and a leader, but one cannot be a democrat willing to murder so coldly. Jennah is clearly hiding something, something inside she cant tell others or wont.
Either way…. theres something about that girl that just isnt right.
If it is Menzies then the crazy actions of Balthazar suddenly make sense plus it actually fits with the idea that Menzies being a god of shadows and trickery was decieving us all along. There was always a story to be told with Menzies, he needed a plot so this could always be that plot.
It would be very interesting to say the least if this was Menzies, another remote possibility though unlikley is that Menzies managed to MANIPLUATE his brother into believing the gods abbandoned him, which is why hes on the war path.
The biggest problem I have is what they call the DBZ effect or dragon ball effect, where animeesque villians become more powerful with every inception and the next thing is as rediculasly over the top as the last.
GW2 suffers from this alot right now, the biggest issue is that your making us fight a DEITY after fighting dragons, whats next? The Cosmic essense of creation itself?
This kind of thing invalidates the value of such forces. It makes gods look weak because they suddenly become killable. Part of the reason a god is so great is that they “cant” die in the first place.
I will say this, GW2 has always felt like Fan-fiction over-all with only Season 2 ever showing any real talent for making that fiction its own. Season 3 has started well but got progressivly worse over time. Theres no denying, the writing has just become a cluster kitten of bad decision and poor forethought. Its like trying to make people surprised at a plot twist ANYONE could have seen comming for miles.
Its like the season 1 thing with Scarlet, “Spoiler” Scarlet did all the things, Toxic Alliance/Molten Alliance/Aether Alliance everything. We KNEW this, it was NOT surpising NOR good writing it was blatantly OBVIOUS what was comming up. You were treating your audience like complete idiots and that isnt healthy for them or for you.
IF I was A-net right now this is the things id do to move the story forwards positively for once:
The Death of Dragons Watch/Destinies Edge:
While I dont think we need a character genocide I think we need closure, the next expansion needs to END the dragons watch and allow us to move ON, meet NEW characters on NEW adventures on our PERSONAL journey of self growth. Yes we can occasionally meet members of DE and DW from time to time but we should not spend our entire lifetime as the commander being involved with them.
Its time to end a good thing while its still on its declining high rather than becomming completely stale. Allowing us to finish Krally off and then going our seperate ways allows the commander to go on NEW adventures that are truly PERSONAL and a case of finding ones self.
If the Dragons are out, then kill them, dont just knock them out:
Commit to the genocide of these Elder Dragons, let us fight something else, let us take on something FAR more interesting with personality, depth and actual goals. Lazarus was so promising and this fake lazarus is actually balthazar stuff just RUINED that for me personally. You had SO much potential for this guy to double-cross us or even NOT double-cross us and just surprise us entirely by helping us fight the gods as Lazarus the Dire not some fake.
The plot twist was also too quick and forced, much like the entirety of episode 5, too many things happen at once which essentially removes any point in them being a problem in the first place. Jormag is asleep, Primrodus is asleep, this literally eliminates both as a threat for good. So whats the next threat?
Take us beyond Tyria, but not just to Cantha/Elona but to unfamiliar continents:
Post Expansion 2 and Season 3 should focus heavily on discovery, new things, the discovery of things we have NEVER seen before and peoples we have never MET in our existance. Peoples with their own personal problems, a humbler expansion with just as much threat and evil could be more interesting, it worked for a certain other MMO a few years ago that involved pandas so it could easily work for GW2.
Sooo, lately ive been noticing a bad trend as an EU roleplayer, something that I feel is likely more a bug or simply a design flaw in the megaserver system.
But I find sometimes ive got one set of friends in one server, another in another server and even more in a third.
For some reason the megaserver system isnt working, either that, or its been revoked somehow, im not sure.
But what evers going on, its seperating roleplayers from each other in a very inconvinent way.
I honestly think this problem could be solved if in capital cities, we have a mini menu above the map where we can just choose what megaserver we are in while in capital cities.
Going forwards with GW2 I think the issue here with season 3 so far has been a combination of pacing, and suddenly forced plot development.
Episode 1’s pacing was just right, we got closure on Eir that was long enough that it let you take a sweet amount of time really just, breathing everything in.
The mystery and deciphered result, was also satisfying as there was just enough chapters to really feel content with the over-all progression of the story.
But to contrast, episode 4 only had 2 actual story segments, the one with Jennah and the one at the end, with most of the rest being World content that felt… out of place with the actual story itself.
My suggestion moving forward for A-net is this:
- In Expansion 2, Season 4 and beyond: Stick to one major story arc at a time, 3-4 is too ambitious for a 6 episode Season.
- Perhaps shorten the length between episodes, smaller regions or expanded parts of zones would work well if we had something similar to Silverwastes/Dry Top but on a medium length timegap, maybe every month rather than every 3.
- Use current zones, current characters, and current world more often, theres alot of vanillia content that makes a living-breathing world, living story should feel “lively” focusing on giving us life to older stuff we’ve left behind, maybe Orr for example.
- TAKE your time, there is “no” rush to the finish, plots should not be given away an entire episode before their reveal, they should be given away, on, that episode itself, without too much hinted until the very end.
- Episode length is honestly more important than content length, people would rather see characters growing, more audio dialogue and character dialogue than loads of new maps that feel empty after an inital run through.
- If your going to kill a character off, do it “after” we care about them, Demmi’s death was too sudden and unless you played order of whispers back in vanillia you really wouldnt care about her that much.
- If you’re going to kill a villian off, give them a moment to shine first. Caudecus never really got a proper moment to do something genuinley evil except shoot his own daughter. While it was enough motive to go kill him theres not really enough there to make me care about him as a personal threat to me. A good villian messes with you in more than one way, as a gamer, they mess with your game, perhaps killing a vital character that you need to progress a certain story segment, or, destroying something you need to defeat X, or taking it from you personally after disabling you.
- Also, less Dragons Watch and DE 2.0 or DE in general, we need more “individual” stories about people in Tyria and thus this gives us a chance to meet new, interesting individuals aswell as building relationships with them. It’d be interesting for example to spend an entire season with a completly new group, maybe just… 3 characters, maybe 1 dies, maybe 1 turns on us, maybe, these things can happen, these make for better stories.
Episode Four:
Story:
This, is where I really start to dislike the story, an entire plot that was rushed almost instantly into its conclusion with very little satisfaction in it felt entirley unnecessarily forward and gave away the best plot twist that could have happened at the end of this season too early. In conclusion, Demmi’s death was forced, Caudecus Death was also forced and unnecessarily too fast. Valette’s plot felt a little weak as honestly we barely know her or care at all. Canach was the “one” saving grace of this entire episode giving it the life it needed and humor.
Zone:
The Lake Doric sounded more fun than it actually ended up being. The inital few weeks it was fun to farm events but afterwards it became a chore, rather fast, and theres little reason to revisit the zone more than once. The forced “do events” to progress the story was also a move I despised from a-net once again, theres a reason Dragons Reach part 1 was boring in Season 2.
Feedback:
This is where the story and pacing start to go really poor, forcing us to go through plot twist after plot twist is exhausting and its too much too fast. Too many things happen in this episode for us to take them all in and care about them all at the same time. It was cool to see Demmi return, but her death utterly wasted her characters potential and depth of growth.
Episode Five:
Story:
I have one word for this plot, Marmite, you either come out of it loving it or hating it, personally I leaned alot closer to hating it more so because it felt like episode 4 didnt teach us anything about rushing plots and moving things forwards too fast. Episode 5 moved them even faster and was more or less a “well thats done k thanks bye” deus ex machina of plot twists that honestly felt… meaningless in the end.
Zone
Draconis Mon is one of those zones that makes Tangled Depths look fun, and honestly I despise vertical nightmares of cavernous clusters that just dont have any navigational purposes.
Feedback:
While im happy that Episode 4 and 5 removed the Mastery requirement, they added other forms of obligatory world intergration with the plot that feel odd and out of place more than intergrative and woven. Season 2 avoided this problem by making the plot entirley its own thing and I hope moving into episode 6, there is a stronger enphasis on that very point than trying to make it more about the zone than the story. The story is the focus, should be the focus, what ever happens next, it has to be a big deal, with alot of depth.
I should be finishing episode 6 after 3 hours of lengthy plot, not 1 hour of quick plot with a zone of content that may or may not be my cup of tea.
Frankly… I think S2 did it right, while we only had 2 zones, we had 2 meaningful zones by the end of it, and we got “alot” of story all over Tyria that helped break that up.
I do hope that moving into future expansions and seasons, the focus is a balance of story of the things we already know vs the things we dont.
Maybe change up some of the older zones and update their lore to reflect their changes, maybe seeing a restored Orr would be cool, or seeing what the subsiding corruption of various regions looks like.
So as the title says you’ve been warned, this is a review of sorts on the current state of events that season 3 has given and a personal one at that, so it does not embody the entire community but it does reprisent a players critical thoughts on the content that was added in recent months.
Episode One
Story:
The Story of this episode was probably the best introductory episode to a season we’ve had so far, the entire closure of Eir’s death and the moving forwards into Lazarus reveal was amazing, genuinley stellar stuff. Caudecus being revealed as the main leader of the White Mantle was pretty cool aswell with development for alot of the characters and just generally alot of hand crafted love into giving us a great introductory episode.
Zone:
Bloodstone Fen while being an interesting new zone was a little short, small and anticlimactic in some ways, the verticality of the zone feels very lifeless after a few runs and the place in general felt very… meh if im honest. I was worried that zone size would be an issue but fortunatley it seems I wont have to worry about that given future episodes. Still, this one was not the best zone so far, and the bloodstone ruby grind is a massive chore.
Feedback:
The story was great, but the zone was boring and lifeless after a few runs. The lack of daily quests there didnt help it much but more so, neither does the bloodstone ruby farm that just makes it even more unengaging. The mandatory requirement for a mastery to progress was also a little irritating as id thought by now we’d learned that HoT mastery grinding was a big mistake for barring story progression.
Redeeming Qualities:
The 4th Wing Raid is amazing, probably one of the best things ever made in terms of story telling and closure to the White Mantles GW1 plot revealing Sauls death and everything was a great way to end a story 10 years in mystery.
Episode Two:
Story:
Episode two’s story was a little more of an adventure, but the closing chapter with Aurene’s birth and Lazarus fighting by our side was nothing short of amazing. The dwarf story was while interesting, largely forgettable, and sadly that made the entire plot a little shallow in some respects.
Zone:
Ember Bay was a far more spacious zone with some genuinley cool molten vista’s and locales though again the petrified wood farm is a chore and even worse than the bloodstone rubies. Its a welcome return to questing however with the daily event quests in the map being introduced in this patch.
Feedback:
The bigger zone was great but the mastery grind was again a pointless progression pauser for the sake of it, plus almost arbitrarily forcing you to do the events to move on is just not fun for people that just wanna do the story. The Thermal mastery did at least provide a new style of gameplay to the mix that helped us alot in terms of progression but honestly still feels largely meaningless. The story was amazing in its ending but its main inital plot was a little weak.
Episode Three:
Story:
Things kinda went from good to bad here and have started to slowly sink ever since. Episode 3 was where the pacing really felt weird, clunky and just generally un-fun. The entire story was tied to an obligatory zone-wide quest that was mostly just boring to do and very-very-very grindy at points and just forces you to do all of the zone in essence just to get “one” potion. In conclusion… not A-nets finest moment. The actual story was also a hit-miss which was sad because while I found the cheesy Batman Braham kinda funny, the general jist of his rejective mannerisms towards us was a little over-forced. Over all I felt this episode was the beginning of a trend, that gets worse from here onwards.
Zone:
Perhaps the best zone to farm easy ascended gear and probably for a good reason that catchup is important, Bitterfrost is definately an “easy” grind for gear and honestly thats fine. We needed one for a long time and its nice to finally have an option out there to make catchup achievable in a shorter time than other maps. The new mastery however? Utterly pointless and niche.
Feedback:
There is “no” and I mean “No” excuse at all for the forced elite mobs appearing in a solo quest story. I despised the final bit forcing me to go through 5-6 waves of mobs almost entirley veteran/elite status solo, it wasnt fun, it was boringly paced and it wasnt rewarding to fight a boring as hell final boss that had nothing particularly enjoyable about the forced ranged attack stuns his mobs gave. Braham was interesting and it was cool to see him go his own way, but honestly this entire episode went bad fast, and the mastery? Dont add something we aernt going to use in more than one zone, please.
The Dragon storyline honestly had its chance in HoT and failed there after Zhaitan was a really anticlimactic boss and antagonist by the end of vanillia and Mordremoth utterly failed to redeem the dragons as interesting bad guys.
So yes, honestly, this is a good way to close the plot even if its cheap, I dont like the “Reaper” effect they’re pulling on this (For anyone thats played ME) but honestly im not surprised.
I am glad at least the dragons are being benched, we need a new and more interesting villian soon to replace them.
The plot twist lacked the impact it could have had more because much like this entire season it was rushed.
If we had been with Lazarus from episode 1, all the way to 5, then this plot twist “might” have been a genuinely interesting surprise. But I frankly feel that being too smart isnt always a good thing. There are many ways you can impliament an amazing plot twist without giving away the obvious spoiler. Episode 4 gave the game away and the problem was, by that point, we had speculated to death who Lazarus could really be.
If we had NEVER KNOWN Lazarus wa sa fake it would have been more impactful, we could have had a moment where we are working with him to defeat Primordus only for Taimi to say “commander somethings wrong” and Lazarus “Killing” Primordus would result in his reveal as Balthazar, with subtle hints left here and there about fire, honor, war, revenge.
Small snippets that weave together when you put it together.
Instead, we got a “Oh its not actually Lazarus” teaser in episode 4 that more or less spoiled the entire plot twist.
Justine, honestly thats the theory ive had since this episode…
It would make alot of sense, I also believe Kasmeer is Kormir reborn or her chosen avatar and has either got selective amnesia or simply doesnt realize her destiny yet.
But given her capacity to detect lies and her sharp reluctance to involve herself in a fight with a god, I believe theres definatley something going on with Kasmeer, also the fact she immediatley knew Balthazars mirror was from Lyssa was interesting.
Yes I believe Jennah and Anise are Lyssa divided into two people, Jennah got the lions share of the power while Anise represents Lyssa’s thoughts and ideals and that explains her rather manipulative/deceptive personality while also being more vindictive than her twin.
My proposal isnt an easy mode thats so laughably easy that you can cakewalk it, its more like the difference between 100% of the bosses capability and 70% of it, in other words, its a 30% reduction in the bosses damage/abilities over all and an extended raid timer, but generally gives enough learning curve to actually learn the encounter and the mechanics. So that when people “do” transit from easy to normal, they have a better grasp of the boss itself.
Given that they have already added all the bosses into the game so far, this wouldnt be that difficult to impliament, it would simply be a reduction of enemy boss encounters damage by 30%, their enrage timers maybe increased by another 2-3 minuates per boss, and generally that would be a far less simplistic curve change.
All it would mean is the difference between being able to do bosses in exotics, which is possible now for “some” bosses, and being able to do them in ascended, which can only be a good thing for hardcore raiders since it could allow a-net to finally make ascended gear a practical requirement for CM modes in the future.
As a player that has done quite a few of the difficult encounters, from getting the eternal title, to CM Cairn to first timing Xera and Demios which can be quite a handful and utterly crying through Matthias who just slaughters new raiders I do think its important to give them the tools to learn, perfect, and get better.
Raiders are already a minority in this MMO as it is, encouraging more to join the raid scene CANT hurt it in any way.
Thus by making a slightly easier difficulty, enphasis on SLIGHTLY its enough to give people a tutorial experience, PLUS, I disagree with some points being made about story enjoyment through encounters.
Alot of dialogue and character interactions are often impossible to hear over a TS3/Discord/whatever chat channel your using conversation, its hard enough to listen to the story if your always fighting the enemy with people VCing “Dodge this” to your eardrum 500 MPH.
Easier difficulty will allow puggable casuals to just “enjoy” the story itself, and not have that hastle which I think is a reasonable compramise.
Honestly Doric needed a new soundtrack, something with the same Motif as Keep Construct, Xera and Mantle Stronghold from the raids.
Or even using some of them would have been great, but…
They sorta did with Caudecus Manor but it wasnt much to go with its a very timid tune all things considered.
I do hope episode 5 has a more epic score.
Only a few people know where was the glint’s egg… Kasmer was one of them.
Lazarus needs a phisical body, the ritual link his soul to one body… Kasmer’s body.
If Kasmer was spying the White Mantle, she could be the vessel for the Lazarus rebirth.
Marjory feeled something when she saw Lazarus in the chamber of the egg, she feeled her lover, she feeled Kasmer inside Lazarus.
I think the memories of Lazarus and Kasmer are inside of the Fake Lazarus, trying to take control of the body. That is why Lazarus help us, thanks to the influence of Kasmer.
Kasmeer is currently involved with Mesmer Order affairs, as confirmed by letters from E where he requires her service, as a note.
So Kasmeer wont be Lazarus, like, its literally impossible, E even makes a point of saying her ability to read lies will be important in something he needs her for.
Which would likley be finding out exactly who Lazarus is.
Its literally either going to be Gleam, Balthazar or Joko, because at this point the list is getting surprisingly narrow.
I think in honesty Season 2 should go free as someone who had it when it came out for free, considering that come expansion 2 it will be irelevent content, promoting the game by making S2 entirley free wouldnt hurt the game at all.
Honestly one class im surprised never got mace from the start is engineer, considering how many engineer oriented designs there are for a mace.
I dont think it should be a spec weapon for engi’s I think they need it as a default one. I also wouldnt complain if we were to see thieves using it as it has a very billy-club function for a thief.
Is Accessiblity.
Getting into raiding once your in it isnt hard, once you’ve found a good static, or people good enough to get you into a decent training guild/training run regieme you can genuinely get through raiding fine, the difficulty isnt as hard as some might be afraid to think it is.
Id say the challenge of most raids is on par with normal mode world of warcraft for those familiar with the concept, as a comparison for refference, its accessably dooable and hell some of it can even be done with mostly exotics though id still recommend having at least ascended armor/weapons before investing into raiding, maybe a backpack too.
I would however admit, that it took me a while, like, a whole year and then some to finally “find” someone willing to take me on, Im not a confident person, the group im with though, they’re awesome, some of the best, genuinley.
And as times gone on, we went from clearing maybe 3 bosses a week, to literally clearing the entire raid, a week.
We’ve even recently done CM Cairne, I got the eternal title, working on slip-slub, is it achievable? Yes, is it hard, quite probably yes.
Now I will say again, the accessiblity can be demanding, I find alot of pug raids demand a rediculas number of LI’s even if you clearly have done some of the harder achievements in the game which honestly makes it obnoxious.
My proposal to A-net is something akin to a soft LFR like wow. My suggestion essentially is this, a tutorial mode much like how everyone keeps asking for story mode.
Tutorial mode would essentially be the beginners guide to raiding, much like how we have CM and current normal, tutorial mode would be designed for people more interested in the story, but also be designed to give you a much “much” easier time getting “into” raids for the first time.
My idea for this works as follows:
Tutorial motes are similar to challenge motes, but instead of blue glowing motes, you get a green glowing one.
When tutorial mode is activated, the damage the boss deals is significantly nerfed, and the boss enrage timer is made alot longer.
However, in this mode it is literally impossible to get raid rewards from the bosses, but you can however get mastery contribution, aswell as a very MINOR amount of mag shards, were talking maybe…, 2-3 per boss.
Some might say this would make raiding completley Irelevent but I disagree, this is “the” compramise raiding needs, because now, you have no excuse. Accessability via tutorial mode would give people the means to get into raiding, much like infantile mode to SAB. It would be designed to help you START the experience, and help unfamilair players do the bosses for the first time.
Tutorial mode would also extend to the training ground, which could be accessed now een without a squad, tutorial mode basically allows you to familiarize yourself with your class, and the general role your speicalizatoin favors such as Chronomancer Tanks, Druid Healers, etc etc.
By training people with an automated system we can essentially remove the need for trianing groups and eventially have everyone more or less ready for raiding in no time. I say keep the current difficulty, and CM, but add a training mode, to help new players who want to get into raiding for the first time.
As the OP I think its important I bring some things into clarity for people just incase there was a misunderstanding.
I do not think the game is bad, I love this game, alot, but I do agree with the points raised in the video. The biggest downside is that while this approach is definatley giving us more content when it finally arrives, we have a long, long wait, where we get “no” news at all on that contents arrival or what we can expect when it comes.
A teaser, a picture, a small indication of whats next could at least give us “something” to work with, instead, we are given silence, expected to wait 3 months per content drop, and finally be content with what ever arrived, which has hit mixed results.
Episode 4 is a good example:
When this new content first arrived people were outraged at how hard the final boss of the story segment was, almost unforgivingly hard. Immediatley it needed a day-one-nerf to even make it accessable to some extent.
This is why testing/hype is important, because that way all the problems are dealt with in advance and the people that want to play, do, play.
With minimal problems in tow.
Id say thats entirley worth the idea of hype, giving us something to look forwards to, while getting it properly built up.
Filler things, like the Treesus Ascended weapon quest chain, are a good filler for the short term, but in the long term, we need something more.
Gw2 was “meant” to be a casual game, the leveling is definatley meant to appeal to a casual audience, mind you, if your looking for challenge, play Heart of Thorns.
The real difficulty curve begins there, when you literally “need” exotic gear or higher to defeat certain things or your screwed.
Raiding may be more your thing than leveling anyway, leveling is nobodies thing, its a dated, old way of progress that has no meaning anymore than an arbitary number. Frankly 80 is too many levels as it is, 20 like Gw1 would have been fine.
Well yes a road map would be perfect.
But honestly the problem is that silence isnt always golden.
Just as much as over hyping HoT was a bad thing, underhyping Season 3 and Expansion 2 is doing just that, people dont really care enough to invest in them. Alot people go onto Season 3 to play the episode, then log off until the next one comes on.
This isnt necessarily new since it was rather similar in S2, but at least in S2 there was alot of buildup to things, we kept getting snippet teases and things going on regularly giving us information about other new updates in the meantime.
Even if it was just to give us some information a new pvp system, wvw system, a new way to make pve interesting, or maybe a revamped gemstore, it’d be “something” new to look forwards to.
But this absoleute silent treatment isnt making anyone excited, its just… lifeless.
I watched this recently and honestly I cant say hes wrong. One of the biggest issues lately is that while GW2 has been reletively successful and decent, the lack of information about each episode and indeed the upcomming expansion is not generating hype or interest but loosing it.
He has a fantastic analygy in this: A-net taking us to a surprise birthday party with no information about what we are getting or when were getting it only that we will see when we finally do. Honestly the idea that we will see things when they arrive is a nice thesis but a terrible delivery. We need hype, we need something to look forwards to.
I recommend a short 20 second teaser every 2 weeks building up to the launch of episode 5 and 6, small snippets we can get excited about and get ideas for, aswell as for the next expansion, maybe a small 1 minuate trailer of specific zones/teasers every month.
Just something to get us interested.
Right now, that lack of hype is not helping GW2, even if GW2 has been doing decently, ive noticed a massive drop in players recently and its because everyones only here for 2-3 days of new content, followed by leaving until the next big thing comes out.
Episode 5 will take us further north beyond Bitterfrost, its almost a certainty, because the Braham storyline is likely to be next so they can move into the Taimi stuff. Episode 6 will likely reveal the identity of Lazarus, and culminate with the second expansion reveal.
Episode 4 ended with a huge deal about Marjory’s new floaty friend, to the point where the commander seemed desperate about contacting Marjory. It doesn’t make sense to leave that to the side to deal with Braham first. Marjory is in immediate possible danger compared to Braham, who has not only Garm, Rox and Frostbite and the entirety of Destiny’s Edge 3.0. He seems to be able to handle himself, but if Lazarus goes rogue, well, there is little Marjory can do on her own compared to someone that absorbed a bloodstone explosion (little we could do as the commander either).
It makes more sense to directly deal with Lazarus first and then go after Braham, especially because of Braham’s attitude towards us last time and the group he surrounded himself with. Marjory had a similar attitude, but at least she is officially part of Dragon’s Watch, she’s alone with Lazarus AND she’s possibly in danger because of the commander (or so the commander would think to themself). In every way it makes more sense to tackle the Lazarus issue first.
Lazarus is not likely a threat while id almost like him to betray us in some way I hope he doesnt, it’d be too cliche and defeat the point of what he himself said, that the Mursaat of the Past were like that, not the Mursaat of now.
Also…
Lazarus isnt truly Lazarus…, and honestly, im already suspecting its going to be Gleam…
There is “one” other candidate but im not buying that its “him” because I dont believe for a second that A-net would do something that mary-sue kittened, though I have been wrong once or twice before, much to my letdown.
Most of the time though im confident the story goes a general direction ive paid attention to, my suspicion, Lazarus “is” an ally, but decieved both us and the mantle to amass followers.
Who?
Gleam, the son of Glint, who basically gave the master of peace the Egg, who was protected by the dragon cult of dwarves branded traitors to their own (Which is why we find the clawmarks in the mursaat room of Ember Bay).
The “real” Lazarus, was either destroyed in the raid, or is still licking his wounds somewhere, in pain and agony from the curse that GW1’s chars placed on him.
A few things worth remembering and never forgetting…
Mistwild Hammer/Axe/Mace for Revenant…
The Planegate Sword datamined that never got used…
Canachs infamous and never seen again Backpack.
Where are these wonderful things?
Also the Belinda sword with glowy SFX.
How anyone can complain about this happening is beyond me.
GW2 is NOT an E-sport and NEVER Would be, how ANYONE believed otherwise is baffling.
No MMO, has ever successfully made an E-sport scene OUTSIDE of Asia that is vastly popular, dont point at WoW because WoW isnt that popular, not even close to MOBA’s like League and FPSMOBA’s like Overwatch which right now are utterly dominating the e-sport scene.
GW2 never had a chance, a game built on a PVE/Dungeon/Raiding/Exploration/Open World and World Vs World Pillar never had a “place” for smaller PVP.
Small PvP shouldnt even exist in this game frankly, unlike GW1 where it actually made sense via the guild v guild structure, Team PvP just feels out of place and pointless, like it was forced in for the sake of giving a minority a thing to do. And Season PvP is even worse, forcing the rest of us to wait for an entire season to end just so we can get new content because “Balance patches will screw up everything” yeah well nobody gives a “kitten ” about you.
Your the minority, look at the ESL drop, thats the proof in the pudding, Season PvP? Nobody -cares-.
Finally A-net can move onto things like WvW, which actually NEED attention and redesigning so the game can move forwards into an actual PvP system it was “Made” for.
As opposed to one it literally wasnt.
You may call that harsh, inconsiderate, and downright ignorant, but honestly? You know im not wrong, ESL and GW2 never mixed, and it had no chance in hell of ever being an e-sport to begin with, a-net wasted god knows how many players gemstore purchased dollars/pounds/euros on something nobody cared about.
And it showed when it came to shove.
So hopefully, they will move on, invest their money into better projects, like actually fleshing out pve zones, giving longer story context, better dungeons/raids and a wvw overhaul that is long overdue.
A-net announced that theres 2 more episodes, in one of their recent livestreams.
Episode 5 wont be the last, also, we wont be going back to the Maguuma, Episode 1 was designed to be the final episode of the Maguuma storyline for a reason, so we could finally get away from Sylvari storyline for a good while.
Which is exactly why the mantle has become a big deal in Season 3, and why were looking at other dragons for once.
Episode 5 will take us further north beyond Bitterfrost, its almost a certainty, because the Braham storyline is likely to be next so they can move into the Taimi stuff. Episode 6 will likely reveal the identity of Lazarus, and culminate with the second expansion reveal.
You have a few interesting counter points Castle, but heres mine to counter them:
Faren HAS been seen in the past with Kasmeer on at LEAST two occasions, in Season 1 during Southsun as I pointed out, he was hitting on her, or at least pretending to which suggests he could have been doing that to keep an eye on the activities of the COMMANDER while he was there using that as a false pseudonim, he probably knew she was gay.
A-net also stated a long while ago in one of its older live streams that we have SEEN E, and that they ARE a character we’ve met before. Which means E is someone we Actually KNOW in game, rather than some red herring new chracter we’ve never met to date.
Narrowing the list down this does not give us many other options, Ogden? Maybe, but unlikley, he didnt have enough of a crucial role in the story to be E.
It could be our infamously missing friend Malyck but I doubt that, E apparently has been around a while. And if E is powerful enough to simply tell Kasmeer what to do, aswell as suggest Logan still has a purpose in his agenda’s, then E is someone in a very high position.
Someone in the nobility.
This doesnt really give us many other options. It might not be Faren, hell it could be Baroness Jesamine but I doubt that. Shes clearly smart enough to lead the nobles to safety which is fine, but Faren is the only one that actually owned the ship to get them into trouble in the first place.
Dont forget Farens famous quote: “Im rich you know!” Faren is rich, he has money, that money means he also has power.
If he wanted to afford people he probably could. Also theres another interesting clue thats actually based on a piece of cut-content.
Lady Wisteria Wiskington.
While that cat is hilariously over-dosed on bloodstone theres something else you should know about her. Faren retreated from DR to Southsun in the first place because he got into trouble with people who wanted Chauncy Von Snuffles to win some kind of cat contest, and he clearly gave the winning prize to Wisteria.
Given she is likley Cadecus pet cat, that means he was bribed, by the white mantle to do just that. Consider Faren’s attire colour, red, white he has the apt look of a mantle agent in disguise.
My suspicion is that E is a former or current mantle agent from a different cell, that he left the mantle or sought to change it, and now he is currently involved in or leader of the Mesmer Order.
More importantly, hes Faren, because he has the money, to make that kind of difference while other members might have the influence.
Faren is also highly involved in politics of Kryta, given the Human Noble story, and E is clearly a politician of some sort.
Put it this way, it could all be an elaborate lie and E could just be a red herring character we’ve never met before. There are a few other posibilities such as Jory’s father who according to Jory “wasnt nice like your daddy” (to kasmeer) but again, thats a character mentioned, and A-net has stated we already know who E is a few years back. If thats changed thats up to them, but im sure they left us enough clues to figure it out.
Faren is E, but theres more:
- Faren isnt just E, Faren has always BEEN E from the start, he has had the power to do alot to us but chose to let us do things for him instead. He is rich, powerful, influencial and clearly has little damage done to his economic power even having lost an entire airship.
- He is your Herald, the one thats been keeping an eye on you, why? We dont yet know, he could be a villian, he could be an anti-villian using you for his own gain, but one thing is clear, hes using you, for some reason.
- He acts like a fool because that is exactly the point, hes a fool to the public eye, an idiot that couldnt POSSIBLY deal with the complex workings of Kryta, but remember, as a human noble, he activly fights to save people from bandits, hes not a coward, even if hes not exactly brave either.
- Hes clearly a Mesmer, theres no way he’d survive falling from the pavilion any other way, and theres no way he’d be able to pull off as many deceptions as he has without that kind of power. He could be on par if not stronger still than Jennah herself.
- If he truly is E, and im right on this, then he apparently has plans for Logan, which involve keeping him alive for now, and getting him away from Jennah.
Could Faren be planning to kill the Queen? Maybe.
But its clear hes not all innocent or naieve as he appears to be.
So, ive been going through alot of speculation lately as to who E could potentially be, gathering som evidence from Season 1, 2, HoT, 3 and even Vanillia GW2.
Im beginning to have a very clear indicator as to who it might be.
So before I get to the identity, lets go through each major clue or two from each season and content update:
Vanillia: Your Herald
Your Herald, a mysterious benefactor that has been in touch with you since GW2’s launch seemed to be someone that was very interested in you. Now regardless of which race you play, this person exists from the start and constantly gives you information about all the characters in GW2’s Destinies Edge and their ongoing’s…
Now that could have been Treesus and very likely was Treaherne, however…
Im not entirley convinced it was, and heres why:
The manner in which E speaks to us in later episodes through mails is directly similar to the Herald from the launch of the game. Giving us tidbits of information worth knowing, then leaving it to us to handle the matter.
E clearly knows who we are, and has vast access to information beyond Kryta but also beyond alot of things.
As did the Herald.
Season 1 Clue’s, E’s identity part 1, and the clues in Season 1 that link him
So getting to E’s actual name lets go to the point.
E is Lord Faren.
Lets look at some clues in Season 1 that actually make this plausable:
- Faren was convinently present with Kasmeer when Southsun was introduced, at first he is seen trying to hit on her only to get rejected, but maybe he was here because he knew we would be.
- E is noted to be male in Jory’s backstory, and is supposedly involved in the political affairs of DR, saying the city is corrupted and that they could be an ideal team in exposing that corruption.
- Faren appears to directly come to the aid of Jennah during Scarlets reveal, only to fall to his seeming death, a death that no normal person could have survived. But Faren isnt normal, and we will learn why in later explination.
- After defeating Scarlet, Faren sends you a letter directly asking you not to speak of his involvement in Season 1 at all to anyone.
Season 2, E talks to us
- In the finale of Season 1, just before waiting for Season 2 to start, you get a letter from E saying that he’ll be in touch.
- Most of E’s letters refer to alot of broad information around the world, but he especially takes an interest in Krytan politics.
- E seems able to follow us, literally everywhere, and is clearly keeping tabs on us, via Kasmeer, which we will learn about soon.
- E was teased alot in Season 2, but we never saw his reveal, we were falsely believed to suspect chars like Ogden might be E, but thats unlikley, given Ogden is not interested in the world beyond the priory and keeping an interest in archived information.
- Faren is present during the events of Kasmeers investigation, convinent coincidence?
Heart of Thorns, the Playful Fool:
- We dont learn much of E here, but we do see Faren convinently appearing on his flier, something that he obviously purchased with alot of expensive money to afford a travel into the Maguuma.
- Why else would Faren do this if not to keep an eye on us, while acting like he’d gone native, he was actually able to keep monitoring us through the stranded refugee’s on his side and loyal pay.
- Faren may not show up again in the Maguuma, but he was convinently in the same region that only a heartbeat away, Season 3 begins aswell as the raid.
The White Mantle ties, the Mesmer Order, Kasmeer, and Faren:
- Season 3 clues are much more clear still, Faren is involved as ever in the protection of the Queen in the recent episode.
- Kasmeer is mysteriously missing, and letters from E suggest Kasmeer is Involved with E directly, via the mesmer order, that he supposedly owns.
- If this is true, then Faren surviving the fall in Season 1 makes sense, he could have easily created a clone of his own to trick everyone as that would make Faren a mesmer too.
- Faren is seen being fawned over by a white mantle agent in cadecus manor, a comedic jape, or a convinent teaser as to what we are ignoring?
- Finally, E clearly has influence on even the court itself. Going back to human noble personal story, Faren and Anise can work together and do work together to help defeat certain affiliates of Cadecus. Affiliates that E seems eager to be rid of, among many others. E is also convinced that Cadecus will involetnarily lead you to him, which is part of the reason he wants him to die.
- E clearly has influence on the shining blade, as Anise herself is distressed and willing to do anything to see Cadecus die, clearly she knows who E might be, or, she knows he is powerful enough to make even her uncomfortable.
Well, let us look back to Guild Wars 1 yes? There all characters are human, but each Class has its own voice actor for each gender.
With each expansion, Cantha and Elona that is, they added 2 more classes.
All in all they went up to 20 diffrent voices in the game eventually, without counting the other supported languages so that means more.
I do believe they have room to add more here.
Different beast, GW1 didnt need as many VA lines since they were confined only to cinematics.
Also, New VA’s wont happen for current races, but new ones is a remote possiblity if we get more new races.
My Largos, Tengu, Mursaat, Stone Dwarf Dream will be real, ONE DAY.
But until then, cold reality aside.
Its not likley, it costs money, alot of money, to hire VA’s, and A-nets major money pool is likely going into adding Expansion 2 content atm.
Aside from it being a meaningless chore that no longer costs money since the update a few years back, it is utterly pointless to even have this feature in the game anymore.
People already get downed state debuffs for constant deaths anyway… this feature feels like something that could be removed and no sleep would be lost if it was. Armor repair might have had meaning once, but now, its just niche.
Id say its time to remove this from the game, I can think of ways that it could still be relevent but at this point, it really isnt.
It would not be a major problem if this feature was taken out entirely.
A quality of life change suggestion regarding HoT:
HoT maps are slowly falling into disuse again and this is most likley because of the Season 3 daily rewards which incentivise you to go there every day.
Suggestion: Add a HoT daily section for the Season 2 zones and HoT (Silverwastes/Drytop/VB/AB/TD/DS) That has a plethora of ways to complete it, this would incentiveise some level of renewed interest in these zones.
Additionally:
Please add a way to purchase HoT recepies in Season 3 zones using Unbound magic, such as Viper insignia’s as it would make it easier for people to get these so they can gear up for raiding in current content.
As someone that has been a massive fan of WvW since GW2 launched I have to say with the decline of the player population, its become clear certain systems in GW2 no longer work with the intended purpose they were meant for and should be changed to reflect this in the future.
Lets look at the current system:
Main Eternal Battleground
This is fine in many ways, the big battlefield in the middle where hundreds of players fight over keeps and castles, that works, its not really a case of fixing what isnt broken here, its a case of enhancing it.
Three Borderlands
Over time, the Borderlands have had many a change, from loosing the orbs that were meant to give us powerful buffs over other borderlands to having a new borderland type added, this feels like its been a very hit miss experience, alot of it being more miss than hit.
Edge of the Mists
Meant to be a substitute for pvp to some extent but has become more of a problem to it, creating too much enphasis on EOTM and not enough on Borderlands and The Eternal Battleground itself.
Obsidian Sanctum
Yeah-… no one really cares about this unless your a massive puzzle pvp fan.
With that in mind, lets talk about what can be done to overhaul the experience to make PvP better.
Number One: Removing Edge of the Mists and moving it into the Borderlands Category
Right now, EOTM serves one role, as a distraction, and a slower, but easier alternative to farming wvw chests, its not very productive and it isnt doing the community any favors that it just splits pvp groups even more.
For this reason, I propose it be moved to the MAIN borderlands category and become a MAIN borderland like the rest have so far.
Number Two: We dont need Three Borderlands
Ironically as stated above, theres already enough clutter and aside from over-filled servers which have fluxed server activity between mostl raiding and fractals, those that do pvp are fewer in number by the day. As such, I propose that instead of having three borderlands, we reduce the number to just “one” with an overflow server if theres too many people in it.
This would vastly increase the number of pvpers activly pvping at any time. In addition, each week the borderlands would cycle at random between Alphine, Desert and Edge of the Mists.
This would create stronger and more tight knit pvp events and encounters, more groups for fights and better interaction between them, more frequent activity.
Thirdly: Change Obsidian Sanctum into an actual WvW Map
If Obsidian Sanctum still needs to exist, it needs a better role than just a glorified puzzle dungeon with pvp on the side. My proposal, is to have certain parts of it be changed into contestable encampments, allowing players multiple ways to the top. Various smaller camps could be littered at the bottom with supplies allowing you to siege the Sanctum itself, now having gates required to destroy so that a team can conquer it.
The team that successfully holds it will gain a huge benefit to their team for one whole hour giving huge stat boosts in Eternal Battlegrounds and The Borderland.
This is my proposal so far, for a revamped WvW, thoughts?
I will bite on this topic because as someone that hated raiding and recently tried GW2’s version of it I have my own view on the matter.
The biggest issue right now is that raiding is harder than ever to reach because of certain difficulties with getting the materials to earn ascended gear. While ascended gear has become significantly more easy to earn in season 3, this is still a huge problem with not enough gear dropping to help people catch up and start their experience in raiding.
I was fortunate, I had just enough gear to make a viable and very well geared PS warrior which has managed to down Vale Guardian and do the Escort encounter yesterday.
But I can understand the frustration and difficulty of ALOT of people trying to get into raiding, including me, I took -ages- to finally try, and it was only through a friend I got in.
Some people dont even have friends to -get- into raiding, and that can be the biggest problem. There is a very toxic attitude pug raiders have towards new people and thus they wont help people grow and develop unless you find guilds specifically devoted to training runs, who tend to be quite friendly and relaxed.
Raiding is a two sided blade, it is something that has become moderatley more accessable, considering wings 3 and 4 are alot easier than wings 1 and 2 by comparison for certain bosses and encounters. But theres many issues with it, many issues that are downright silly.
Story Gating is a bad idea, we need a story mode
Story Gating content behind raiding is -bad- end of story, it is just a terrible method of forced grouping that means those that dont get involved feel left out and its not encouraging for them, its off putting.
A-net needs to recognise this, and add a story mode to raiding, something that can be done entirley solo, but removes all the game based rewards. Also, something that DOES unlock the raid mastery (while not rewarding mastery points for downing bosses) as it allows people to actually start investing into it in pre-prepairation.
Secondly, We need better ways to get Ascended gear
The grind to get a vision crystal is hard enough without the thousands of other materials you need to even craft “one” item these days of ascended quality. Unless your lucky and have money for the gemstore, you’re pretty much doomed to spend Months, farming.
This just isnt healthy for GW2, at all. Id say we need a significant reduction on the cost of ascended quality materials, and previous quality materials considering that its expensive to even get to max crafting as it is.
Alternativley, redesign the system, so that crafting becomes account wide, and you can in essence, learn every crafting skill.
Sooo, im pretty sure this isnt meant to happen but as a Brit im being charged in $ instead of £
Not sure whats going on there.
Glints Prophecy
This mastery entails following the influence of the avian dragon glint and learning how to fly, by fly, one means jump, alot, and by alot I mean, double, triple, quadroople jump.
Glints Wings: Gain Access to double jump by tapping the spacebar a second time, tapping it a third time will activate your glider.
Heavenly Dive: You gain a permanent reduction to damage from falling, fall damage now deals 25% less total damage to you (This effect does not stack with superior quality talents that reduce fall damage, it also cannot be used in pvp or wvw).
Glints Spirit: Gain access to triple jump, using the evade key while leaping a second time enables you to leap a third time even higher still.
Gleaming Soul: You will now be launched twice as high by zephyrs and jumping mushrooms, in addition, you can hold the evade key to launch yourself into the air consuming all of your evade charges.
Zephyrites Prophecy: You are now able to jump four times at once, using the evade key twice will allow you to jump an additional time, allowing you to soar to unreachable heights!
Forgotten Lore
Much like a generic mastery, this one has its role in a very specific function of giving you access to new crafting materials and some new interesting challenges.
Forgotten Language: Enables you to understand the language of the ancient forgotten race.
Unveiling The Unseen: The Forgotten’s lore will teach you how to see through mirages in the desert, enabling you to fight challenging enemies, or discover mysterious treasure once per day.
To Be Unseen: With the Forgotten’s teaching, you can now approach nearly all non-veteran or champion mobs as if they were neutral to you, note getting point blank will still cause them to attack you.
Mist Mirror: Enables you to use the mysterious mirrors of the mist scattered throughout the crystal desert, taking you to the forgotten webway, a mysterious region of the mists that will allow you to transport between certain areas of zones easily.
Dune Rider: The Forgotten’s serpentine teachings will allow you to enter the inaccessably ruthless sand-storm regions of the desert, enabling you to travel further into them before suffering fatigue and defeat, uncovering secrets further away.
And finally, my last idea:
Margonite Lore
The Margonites did have a presence in the crystal desert, and though im lead to believe Joko does too, which could lead to interesting Mordent Cresent Mastery or Lich Mastery or Undead Mastery… the Margonites were tied to the desert in other interesting ways.
Arcane Greatness: Discover rogue leyline nodes and activate them to awaken a powerful evil from the mists. Defeating this evil will grant the area a temporary passage of Leyline Gliding trails to use across the map.
Abbadons Gift: Uncover the Lore of the Margonites, by discovering secret hints and imprinting yourself with their power, allowing you to open secret Margonite temples and ruins, filled with risk, and riches.
Unstoppable Power: Harness the energy of the Leylines by gliding all the way through one, the longer you do, you gain a passive benefit that increases all stats by 1% up to ten times in the world map (does not apply to raids, dungeons or pvp).
Overwhelming Force: Wield the magic of the Branded against them by exploiting crystalised magic, by drawing from this magic you are able to regenerate your abilities 50% faster for 10 seconds (can only be used once every 10 minuates).
Secrets Unleashed: With the power of Abbadon, you are able to ressist a fatal blow every hour, this ability will prevent you from being downed and instead unleash a terrible power that destroys all non veteran or above mobs around you instantly.
Well, thats what i got.
This is mostly just a mashup of random fun ideas I had regarding the masteries of the upcomming second expansion most likely comming in the not-too-distant future in announcement terms.
Where this Expansion could and may be going?
This Mastery Suggestion list covers a potential Crystal Desert themed Expansion list of content and includes possible features and ideas.
Without further adoo, lets go straight into the list of potential ideas we could have for upcomming future masteries:
Mount Mastery
A popular speculation is that expansion 2 will come with mounts, this leads me to believe that a mount mastery would naturally come with this path much like Gliders had.
With that in mind, I propose this as my idea for Mount Mastery and its paths:
Basic Saddle: You are able to ride a mount on horizontal terrain, the mount has a limited duration while riding, you will be dismounted when engaging in combat, land based movement increased by 50%.
Hedge Training: Your mount is now able to jump as are you, doing so will consume some of the mounts remaining duration but allow you to remain mounted while jumping around.
Crop Adjustment: Your mount now lasts longer, increasing its movement speed by a further 25%, while mounted you are also able to evade forwards consuming a large portion of your mount time for a quick boost of 100% speed (this speed stacks ontop of current mount speed).
War Steed: Your mount is now trained for war, as such you will no longer be dismounted when engaging in combat unless you choose to manually dismount yourself (note this does not apply for world vs world which permanently fixes mounts to tier 1 mastery).
Advanced Riding: You no longer have a duriation of mount time and can ride indefinatley as long as you wish, in addition, your movement speed is increased to 100% while mounted. (Note, you will be dismounted if you enter water, or leap too far from a high perch regardless of this benefit).
Arms Mastery
Lets assume that the next expansion does not feature something as game changing as a new class, or a new race, with that in mind it will need something new to really shake things up. This is where arms mastery comes into play. Arms mastery will enable you to gain new weapons, use underwater weapons overland, and overland weapons underwater over time.
On Land Or Sea: You are now able to use spears, tridents and harpoon guns overland, their abilities will reflect overland variables of their underwater abilities. You do not need a specialization to unlock these weapons or use them.
Lumberjack: Gain Access to the Greataxe weapon, this weapon is available to Warriors, Rangers and Necromancer.
Kama, not Karma: Gain Access to the Kama’s, two single weapons wielded by Elementalists, Thieves and Revenants.
Nuts and Bolts: Gain Access to the twohanded crossbow, used by Guardians, Engineers and Mesmers.
On Sea Or Land: All land based weapons are now useable underwater, aquatic weapon slots are permanently removed and the player can now wield underwater equivilents of overland weapon abilities.
Master Armsman: Gain Access to the ability to craft “Tiered” Ascended weapons, from Tier 1 to Tier 5, aswell as crafting Tiered Legendary weapons, from Tier 1 to Tier 3.
More to come in an additional post below:
As some feedback to this particular item am I the only one that feels it has a MAJOR issue in terms of clipping and design?
Ive tried wearing this on human female, human male, on multiple races and it looks AWEFUL in terms of clipping, its too far away from the models making it look like im wearing floating shoulderpads.
A QoL Change for RPers and indeed general players I think would be the option to “choose” which megaserver your put in while in a capital city hub like DR/LA.
Example:
[RolePlaying Megaserver]
[Groupfinder Megaserver]
[Trade Megaserver]
[Discussion Megaserver]
[PvP Megaserver]
Am I the only one finding it out of character that nearly every NPC still thinks of Cadecus as some great paragon?
I personally would say much like LA, DR needs an overhaul, albiet one that involves npcs more than anything else.
With events now -heavily- outdated we need some new story NPC’s to replace current things.
It’d be interesting if:
- We had Ministry Guards getting heckled by commoners for their ties to the Mantle aswell as Ministers.
- Shining Blade members interogating innocent people aswell as guilty ones (its clear the blade isnt perfectly good anyway).
- Having Discussions about the recent loss of Seraph soldiers in multiple regions with so few left to defend Kryta.
- People having divided opinions on weather being part of the Mantle is a good thing or a bad thing.
- Having new discussions about the relationship between Humanity and the Sylvari post Mordremoth.
Putting things into context Ive 3 theories as to who Lazarus could be, or is.
Theory 1: Lazarus is actually Lazarus:
Its a double-bluff, a ploy meant to throw us off and distrust Lazarus as almost a final blow to his inital goals of bringing unity to us, or, Lazarus is using us because his actual agenda is far more obvious.
We Know Lazarus wanted to reform the mantle into a spear against the dragon (ironically a refference to the fact there was a spear involved in trying to kill Krally in Edge of Destiny) and that he regards himself as a true god, welcoming those that refuse to follow him as welcome to burn and die.
He helps us defeat the dragon minions attacking Aurene, and this leads me to believe theres a much more logical reason for this. Lazarus is actually trying to protect Aurene because he wants to use her for some reason himself in the future.
More importantly, Lazarus is the last of his race, or is he? Maybe what were failing to realize is that he BLEW UP A BLOODSTONE, literally causing the once imprisoned magic of Tyria the gods themselves tried to restrain to be horribly unleashed on this world. As a result, that magic is going wild and chaotic, and with so much magic around, the ressurection of an entire race no longer seems impossible. Which could be his goal.
Theory 2, Lazarus, is, E:
E, could be or would be an impersonator who has managed to use some questionably unethical powers in order to gain significant supernatural influence and manage to masquerade himself as Lazarus the Dire in order to make himself seem omnipotent.
Keep in mind that Kasmeer allegedly belongs to an order of Mesmers, while I dont believe E is Kasmeer, I believe E could be part of this alleged cult Kasmeer is apart of, and may even be its leader.
Given that he speaks of using Logan, and seems to have quite a few people in his grip (im actually convinced now even Anise obeys E) I suspect E’s agenda is to reform the white mantle, and potentially is some kind of decendant of Saul or someone that was inspired by his goals.
Thesis Three: Lazarus is Gleam
This is the… probable answer given that Gleam is very much alive and Lazarus has been seen using terribly great amonts of magical firepower which fire is often assosiated with dragons regardless of their nature.
It also explains the false Lazarus inherant desire to protect Aurene given that it would make her his younger sister and he would naturally want to save her from danger.
In addition to this, Gleam would be logical because given the direction were going it seems inevitable the next expansion will pit us against Kralkatorrik at this point and that would mean Gleam has taken up his mothers mantle as prophet and aid to help us push things forwards. He also absorbed the bloodstones magic in order to become strong enough to fight the Elder Dragon so his sister wouldnt have to.
Okay ill start with my full report on this episode:
Story
For this segment im only going to detail actual story parts not the map completion or mastery segments:
Jennah’s return to form was a very interesting twist on her character, one I have a personal love/hate relationship with as I liked how she finally showed how powerful she was as a Mesmer but in some respects I disliked how she suddenly became a ruthless tyrant without warning.
I get that Jennah is a very wise, pragmatic queen, I get that shes had people try to assassiante her before (season 1) but I feel like Jennah wore ALOT of plot armor this time and frankly NEEDED to get wounded to make her seem less like a mary sue.
Because of that, I was sad to see how powerful she was because she was wearing so much plot armor it eliminate any symbol of humanity in her because she just outright murdered everyone in her path, literally.
Even so, I get shes a queen, a powerful, wise and very gifted queen, I do hope if something else happens to her in future however, she cant just so easily wave it away, it makes her seem increadably overpowered.
As for the Cadecus thing, honestly I saw it comming and its a little sad to just kill him off like that in the story so quickly and suddenly. I feel like now we literally have no relatable human antagonists (Faolain, Scarlet and Caudecus being the only noteable ones) with maybe Mai Trin somewhere in the Mists still and Evon Gnashblade who isnt really a villian, just a selfish git.
As a result, I hope that A-net brings some new humanoid villians into the frey, be they champions of the dragon with alot of personality and agenda or be they characters with nefarious goals and intentions in this changing world.
Demmi’s death was quite sad, but honestly, I again, saw it comming. Im too used to the father kills his daughter thing if hes evil and frankly it was too predictable, I actually felt sadder for Cadecus when he deludedly wanted his family back than Demmi, except for the part when she saw Tybalt, that was genuinely moving.
This episode suffered alot of Episode 3’s narrative issues with an effort to tell a story in a very confined space and rushed it a little too eagerly rather than drawing it out to its best conclusion. Im noticing a pattern with this season which seems to be a reoccuring theme of Too many Subplots not enough focus on One.
As a result, it feels like the plots are going everywhere with no real purposeful direction, and I hope soon we’ll get a clearer answer as to the focal point.
Gameplay
Lake Doric is one of the best new maps to come to GW2 since the Silverwastes, granted the Silverwastes got tedious and forgettable over time but Doric does a rather good job of being a better Silverwastes 2.0
It has some genuinley interesting encounters, events and actual progression in the map that makes it feel alive with the recapturing towns theme being quite genuinley fun to do.
The actual story missions though were a hit and miss, that final boss as everyone said was a nightmare, and frankly much like the tediously boring episode 3 boss that came before it, needs to be a lesson for a-net to tone down personal story to make it more accessable.
Also, the endless veteran/elite/champion mobs in solo content is just not acceptable at all, we really need the story segments to have alot less of those since frankly you should never be fighting dungeon tier bosses alone in a personal story.
Ill go back to my favorate boss encounters in the personal story, both come from the shadow of the dragon fights in season 2, both of those fights were genuinley challenging, but not impossible to do. Thats the key to making a good personal story fight, and frankly I hope looking back at that, a-net has a way forwards.
I do think a sit chair emote would be an ideal substitute much like SWTOR or ESO have but im not sure it will be the absoleute solution…
Even so, it’d be nice to get alot more emotes in general since cross arms is a widely popular one among roleplayers so yes, a sitting chair emote or multiple versions would be nice.
Given the build up to this second krytan civil war its likely this will go badly for the Seraph and Shining Blade.
- For a long time Jennah’s popularity has been in decline, evidenced by conversations as far back as vanillia between NPC’s.
- Season 1 didnt help her much when her unity speech was interrupted, not to mention she replaced many peoples homes with an arena.
- Her love for the Charr Peace Treaty isnt popular with nobles, which is why the Ministry gained so much power. And the bandits are heavily comprised of discontent Krytans that hate the treaty as are the Seperatists in Ascalon.
- Cadecus recently reached to the Ascalonian Settlement clearly trying to expand influence for the mantle outside just Kryta.
- The Ironicly made posters yesterday on the guild wars 2 wiki with the shining blade and white mantle, now having the poster slogans roles reversed since the origional war of Kryta, where the Mantle’s was Obey and the Blades was Dismantle, now its the other way round.
- The Seraph are scattered heavily across multiple fronts, some even went to fight Mordy and were killed by Mordy in Season 2, which leaves Jennahs military severely weakened.
- The Shining Blade may be an elite order, but against an army of angry peasants/white mantle soldiers they cant possibly survive.
The conclusion is inevitable, Jennah is about to get more than she can handle in enemies and be drowned by them rather quickly.
Not many support the queen and understandably so, tragically, she has made too many friends at the cost of her people.
And that creates malcontent.
If you had to assume a profession id say a Thief for several reasons.
Firstly, Cadecus nature and personality are very apt as he tends to be greedy, manipulative and desires power for himself by stealing it from others (including the jade constructs).
He also denounces Lazarus in his latest ramblings on scribbles and in the bandit chests which seems to again suggest his greed and personal desire.
Now why any of that is tied to a thief is simple, a thief steals things, and Cadecus is both intent on stealing the throne, and the power. He wants it all, which doesnt feel like the kind of personality a Mesmer would reflect.
You might argue he has a mysterious side that makes him mesmer like, and that old unused chamber below his house might even elivate to it.
But then if that thing ever does get used think about it like this…
Its a case of “smoke and mirrors” Cadecus seems to be fond of both and manipulating people, and smoke is always tied to thieves.
Tinfoil hat off
Asides from this, he wears a genetic mantle outfit and a long cloak, both are traits of an outfit we can wear and medium armor which suggests a thief.