Guild Wars 2

All I hear here is complain, complain, complain, we’re bored.
So, here’s a crazy question: why rely on developer content to entertain yourself?
This is a roleplaying game, so roleplay. Write down stories for your characters, motivations, and get into character, interact with others, in character. Have romance, intrigue, politics. Why does it have to be official content driven, and why does it have to involve new things to kill? Back in the day I remember text MUDs with no graphics at all, or 2D graphical roleplaying games where everyone looked the same, but great many stories were told by players themselves due to imagination. Characters became mortal enemies and formed clans and families. People created drama over paper figurines, and those days I remember as truly epic in gaming. Here today you are given an amazing looking 3D MMORPG with all this visual content, taverns, actual functional drinks that blur your vision, character emotes, voice overs. Today’s gamer is highly spoiled, boxed in, and uncreative. The more technical capabilities you are given, the more and more you demand, and the less you use your own imagination. I invite every “roleplayer” in an MMORPG to become a true roleplayer, and remember what RPG at the end of MMORPG stands for.

Time to change servers, sounds like to me. A server with spies will always be bound to become a rat’s nest.

This is where Shadowbane proved superiority over realm-based pvp games. It had no “realms”, but guilds in control of cities. A guild leader can kick a spy out of the guild and keep the city. But there is nothing a realm can do to kick a spy guild out. Maybe implement a system of voting? Guild leaders maybe should have power to kick a guild out of WvW by popular vote?

geist.3980:

none of it matters. weapon skins can be easily acquired thru multiple paths. achievements can be karma trained. 250k players can be farmed by a no skill on an arrowcart, and wxp can be bought with laurels and badges.
the one and only thing that does matter in this game is your name. toss the tournament skins in the trash and be known for leading raids, guarding a tower or scouting zergs for endless hours, not some skin waved around in lions arch.

Well said. Someone who understands PvP.

Everything else is just QQ. Why should the game reward the loser equally to the winner? If everyone gets a trophy, it’s not really a tournament anymore.

Here is an idea for next season of LS. I will put it simply and in short words.

1. Plan several branches of possible story development.
2. Give each participating player several choices to take those branches.
3. Count the totals and determine what choice the majority of the players made on each server.
4. Apply that plotline branch to that server.

Example:

Jade Quarry’s players majority made a choice not to finish off Scarlet.
Leave her alive on Jade Quarry.

I would feel more immersion into the emotion of the story, if it only was written like an actual war. What we had instead is “war” being played at. Half the decisions by the good guys were pretty much deliberately made to cause a failure. Lion’s Arch was effectively surrendered and committed suicide, with nobody bothering to assemble appropriate backup. It was a disaster, brought about by politicians and poor tacticians, when a whole force of players (tactical geniuses and heroic warriors) were sitting on their kitten unable to help or turn the course of events.

I bought guild wars 2, I looked at the top ranking server (Jade Quarry), and I joined it. Not sure why everyone didn’t do the same.

Yes, this needs to be implemented. Put in a feature to request a duel that the other person has to accept, similar to guild invitations.
Or simply an item, like the costume brawl and belcher’s bluff. Use an item – spawn a duel activity that others can join.
Doesn’t interfere with anything PvEwise. Carebears can carebear in their own care corners.

WvW towers/keeps are meaningless to anyone who doesn’t visit WvW map. Also, they don’t display which guild was the capturing guild. We’re a nameless zerg with a server name attached to us. I want everyone to see that my guild just took the castle, or even let us take over and tax the PvE map’s settlements, like Beetletun or Fort Salma, or the Trading Post.

I’d love some kind of right-click drop down to actually see all possible emotes, instead of having to memorize or look up a list of / commands.

Calys Teneb.7015:

Konrad Knox.5162:

zallis.2138:

They were celebrating the death of scarlet. It wasn’t a huge blowout party because instead of being celebrated on the streets, they wanted to hang out as friends. I think the brisban hint was awesome, and taimi is an interesting character to me. Her talking to braham was cool because they have a lot of the same things going on. Both have a hurt leg, and both agree they would rather do something than talk about doing something. But yes, I would have liked to have a little more, like what did scarlet have on caithe, and I would like to have seen the conversation with rox and rytlock. But I don’t think the party itself should have been changed, just more after that.

Here is what I don’t get? Why not have a party at a camp in Lion’s Arch? People there feel alone and hopeless right now. They need a cheer, they need a strong hand and a light of bonfire. They need hope, they need to see their heroes.

Retreating back to Divinity’s Reach, behind its sturdy safe walls, to party away from the people whose lives were destroyed, is just such a shallow, snobbish, and frankly selfish thing to do. My character is not a noble, he is a commoner, and he would never do that. He’d gather everyone around for an open invite bonfire and share stories to release people’s stress. He’d give away food, connect children to parents, have a meeting place for everyone who lost loved ones, so everyone can follow to the light and gain some comfort. Why couldn’t this party take place in a camp like that?

What’s stopping you from roleplaying that now?

Not sarcastic. Get a group together, get a cheap bonfire, set out a bunch of feasts and toys, go nuts. Make it a server event! I’m sure people would enjoy it and have fun and there’s been a farewell party for LA before the event, no sense in not making a community event to celebrate the success.

In all seriousness and with no sarcasm, because I would like to have more options, but if we’re going to be here to debate “my character would or would not do this and there should be an option canonically from the writers for every option” then months of work would go into one five minute instance.

I’d also point out in response to an earlier comment about your character being the second in command of the Pact, that in game the Pact is not a global army. There are six armies and three orders in the game. The Pact’s commission is not to supplement or oversee the six armies. The Lionguard defends LA, the Wardens defend the Grove, the Seraph defend DR, the Peacekeepers defend Rata, the Frostwolves(?) defend Hoelbrak, and the Charr are their own army.

An illustration of the separation of armies is already in game lore. In Gendarren, there’s a fort that you defend periodically from the Risen. One of the Lionguard there has an ambient chatter that his nephew in DR was proud of him and wanted to know when the centaurs would be gone. He states that he had to explain that he’s a Lionguard, not a Serpah, and isn’t part of the war against the centaurs. This is in-game lore that explains the separation of commissions, even for someone who is presumably Krytan but is not a member of the Seraph.

Every nation has races in the Pact. However, even if our character is second in command, he cannot call the Pact back. He would be overruled by his commanding officer, Trahearne, who would keep the Pact’s commission to fight Dragons, not solve all the world’s problems.

Konrad would then explain politely to Trahearne in a one on one conversation behind closed doors, that it’s absolutely deluded to let Lion’s Arch go into toilet, since it’s one of the biggest resource bases we have in the fight against Dragons. And, since Lionguard are obviously a disorganized embarrassing little mess of ragtag fighters in shiny armor, who cannot see past their noses, and already showed their incompetence twice (Claw Island and Aetherblades attack), if we don’t go in now and intervene again, we’re going to lose the city, and I don’t see how it will benefit our Dragon war efforts.

Since Konrad is clearly the most brilliant investigator (as Marjory claims) who unveiled the entire Scarlet Kessex Hills conspiracy, Trahearne would be inclined to agree with this analysis. And if not, the amount of politeness that will go into our further conversation will range from slight yelling to violently beating his whiny green face into a writing desk until he admits being wrong.

Doggie.3184:

How do you know they’re actually looters? Maybe the Lionguard are just discriminating against them?

Hahaha, cause they’re freakin’ looters! The name tag says it right above their head. Name tag don’t lie.

Max Lexandre.6279:

After the game launched and people have reach 80, did all the map, etc… Question asked “WHERE IS THE ENDGAME?!”, the reply from ANet was grind, grind, grind and moar grind. If this continues we will soon be like WoW major pain in the kitten grind required to reach what we want.

PvE Needs some oxygen, so we can play and have fun normally at PvE and achieve the things normally without be days, weeks, months, grinding for it.

The question is, what DO we want? Do we really want ascended and legendary gear?
I’m still wearing all exotics and I’m doing fine. Got a couple of sets for different roles, and no problem.

What do I want as my endgame? I want to be in control (or be in a guild who is in control) of some tangible territory on the map, persistently, and be able to say “this is our land, until someone takes it”.

No biweekly resets. And our guild crest should be displayed on the map for all to see that we own this place.

That would be a rewarding endgame for me. I could log in every day just to check that the town is still ours.

Not sure where to put this suggestion, but here’s what I’d love to see in GW2.
A competition between guilds that affects the actual political map, not some WvW or PvP mist map.

We have multiple settlements around big racial cities. Let’s say, for example, Queensdale. Queensdale has several little hamlets and towns: Claypool, Beetletun, Fort Shaemoor, and a few forts.

I propose that these camps become property assets, controllable by guilds, which generate tax from all transactions happening in the village, and all the monsters being killed on the territory. The guilds would be able to take over the settlements from each other similar to how in WvW servers can compete for supply camps.

To be able to challenge another guild for control of the settlement, you would have to plant a special banner on its territory. This banner would last some time, during which you have to hold the claim, and are able to attack members of the controlling guild.
Nearby waypoint would become contested, like during a centaur attack.

Now, the twist here is, that this special banner must be bought with Honor badges. So yes, guilds who want to control local server settlements must be fighting for their realm in WvW. A guild without honor badges would not hold ownership and thus does not deserve taxes.

Any member of the guild can purchase a banner, and any member can initiate a capture attempt, but the tax collected from the captured settlement will always go to the guild leader.

Now, this idea will not ruin anything for new players trying to do the story, since they cannot be attacked during such contests. They can explore the towns as normal, all they see is that there is some guild vs guild action happening around certain towns, and that will probably make things more alive and appealing if anything. Cause honestly, right now everyone’s just riding the Queensdale Train. What if you saw people constantly fighting for control of camps? I think that would make me immediately want to join a guild and get in on the action.

What do you think?

No trinity is like one thing that GW2 is doing right.

Silalus.8760:

Velijan.9061:

It’s easy to see how sysreqs and the limitations of the engine probably gave them reason to scale down Zhaitan.

But I’m glad they did, because the early concepts were absurdly colossal. The thing was the size of a mountain range. It could have gone on a leisurely stroll and ended civilization in Tyria. If it sneezed it would alter the planet’s rotation. There is no way of making a fight against that believable since nothing short of a meteor impact would likely do more than tickle it.

It’d be quite reasonable to fight something the size of a mountain range: you’d have to do it from the inside.

(Marcus Fenix and gang would take it out in 30 minutes or less. Pity the Asura haven’t yet invented the chainsaw bayonet.)

In fact on that scale it would barely even be capable of noticing a small army heading to it’s heart- it would have to rely on it’s horrible minions to defend it just like we rely on our immune system and symbiotic organisms.

The final battle might actually be a lot more playable. No need for airships and cannons fighting a proxy battle for the player. Instead we could personally take whatever ancient artifact is necessary and drive it into the innermost corrupted core of the beast’s heart.

It’d make a great motivation for it to extinguish all intelligent life in the first place too. We try to make dangerous microorganisms go extinct all the time. If you woke up and found out your house was filled with horrible, disease-causing black mold wouldn’t you do something about it? And by do something, I mean kill every last tiny, revolting spore?

Dang, now I gotta write this story…

I want this. Devil May Cry 3. Heart of Leviathan.

zallis.2138:

They were celebrating the death of scarlet. It wasn’t a huge blowout party because instead of being celebrated on the streets, they wanted to hang out as friends. I think the brisban hint was awesome, and taimi is an interesting character to me. Her talking to braham was cool because they have a lot of the same things going on. Both have a hurt leg, and both agree they would rather do something than talk about doing something. But yes, I would have liked to have a little more, like what did scarlet have on caithe, and I would like to have seen the conversation with rox and rytlock. But I don’t think the party itself should have been changed, just more after that.

Here is what I don’t get? Why not have a party at a camp in Lion’s Arch? People there feel alone and hopeless right now. They need a cheer, they need a strong hand and a light of bonfire. They need hope, they need to see their heroes.

Retreating back to Divinity’s Reach, behind its sturdy safe walls, to party away from the people whose lives were destroyed, is just such a shallow, snobbish, and frankly selfish thing to do. My character is not a noble, he is a commoner, and he would never do that. He’d gather everyone around for an open invite bonfire and share stories to release people’s stress. He’d give away food, connect children to parents, have a meeting place for everyone who lost loved ones, so everyone can follow to the light and gain some comfort. Why couldn’t this party take place in a camp like that?

Yunigen.2897:

I respectfully disagree however that games cannot be taken seriously as a good form of literature; there are many cases that games have provided good, compelling narratives because of their genre (“graphic novel” types like 9 Doors, Hotel Dusk, Walking Dead, etc.) and even some cases where the story was very compelling or at least sensible despite being in a weird game genre like RTS, FPS or action-adventure (Bioshock, Eternal Darkness, SC2, The Last of Us, etc.)

Oh, I’m not talking about all games. I’ve played amazing story games, especially single player. (Witcher is by far my favourite). I’m only talking about GW2.

I agree that their writing is silly and should be better. It’s just that their resources are being spent keeping the game running. It’s a free to play MMO. Limited income, limited staff. I say redesign the game, integrate pvp into real map, make all the settlements capturable by guilds, not just NPCs, charge a subscription fee monthly, and hire a real writer team.

If GW2 took at least half of the mechanics from, say, Darkfall, they would be unprecedented and kill WoW on the spot.

You have all these villages. Shaemoor, Beetletun, Fort Salma, Claypool, god, every map has a dozen of camps and hamlets. Imagine if all that was player controllable, guild-owned, possible to fight for, and taxable from all transactions.

Instead of this story bs, if they focused efforts on that – this game would be bloating with players, the user base would explode.

Darkfall’s problem was always graphics and not-casual-friendly pvp. GW2 has graphics in the bag, and they can have pvp more structured and limited to members of the contesting guilds. All they need to do is commit to it.

Yunigen.2897:

CharrGirl.7896:

Well, are you really that surprised? They did announce a “small feature patch”, – nothing major. If you were expecting a big update, blame yourself for not informing yourself. :P

And yet a few days back we had a few posters defending the horrendous LS narration by quoting the patch with the epilogue:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wait until the epilogue in two weeks.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s like reading a book, and complaining before you finish the last couple of chapters. Have patience my friend. If the final part of the LS doesn’t satisfy you in two weeks, then complain.

Vol.7601:

Are you guys impatient or what? You really want a patch that tells the whole story and makes the next few years of GW2 irrelevant?

It’s like asking a patch for Season 2 to reveal all the spoilers.

Have patience, geez.

Wait for the epilogue, then complain.

I find it funny how criticism against the terrible, terrible delivery of the LS has always been defended by a dialogue of postponement (i.e. a “payoff” in a later patch will deliver more and better narrative).

Scarlet’s nonsensical character was defended by a dev during Aetherpath through this manner. The lack of plot development in the last LS arc was also defended using the same tactic. Now with the release of the Epilogue, we have some individuals defending the lack of answers by saying “don’t worry, we’ll get `some` of those answers in season 2.”

When it comes to writing stories, if it starts bad, it’s gonna continue being bad. Never once have I read or written a story that sucked all the way until the last chapter, and then suddenly was awesome enough to justify everything. Either the whole story sucked and needed to be trashed, or the whole thing was awesome and gave pride to the author. No epilogue will ever correct poor character depth, awkward dialogue, and atmosphere breaking random behavior.

But on the other hand, let’s all agree not to take GW2 story too seriously, it’s not like we’re reading a book. This is more of a children’s school theatre play – light, humorous, full of catchy jokes, with a little inkling of sadness to make the adults think about it. Take it for what it is. Nobody really goes to watch school threatre for the plot. They go to watch it to see their kids act on stage. Same here. We watch it to play the game and do missions.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Hey, wonderful, she almost dies trying to fight all this and your character feel the need to scold her. And not just scold but eviscerate so thoroughly there’s nothing to have even an admittedly somber gathering over.

There isn’t. To me that makes perfect sense. The entire thing was a massive tragic failure, and nobody should be celebrating anything. And it’s Marjory’s own fault getting in harm’s way. For the entire campaign she did absolutely nothing worthy in combat, save for some investigation, which was also a failure, because we didn’t see it coming. And we lost a city. We couldn’t warn enough people, couldn’t reach the key people in time.
I’m not celebrating. I’m mourning.

locoman.1974:

I agree with what you’re trying to say that it wouldn’t work with players in different parts of their personal story (even among different characters in the same account).

BTW, if Konrad Kox tried that he would most likely be told that the captains council members are not military officials in the first place (they’re privateer, AKA pirate, ship captains), they don’t answer to pact authority (or anyone else’s but their own), and that threatening the captain council would only put the whole lionguard after you and a nice cell right next to Canach’s (or a place in the arena according to the books)…

Hey now. Konrad destroys catapults, turrets, golems and rock blockades with his magic sword solo. What jail cell would hold him?
Plus, my buddy Trehearne would bust me out… oh no wait, he’d prolly just faceplant vs the first guard. Nevermind, I’m screwed.

Erukk.1408:

How is this problem different than any other MMO? Once a player completes everything, the only thing really left to do until new content comes out is to make another character. Then another… Then another…

If you truly think that, then you have missed the golden age of MMOs, when never-boring and utterly addicting games like Shadowbane, Darkfall, and Dark Age of Camelot were made.

Baelnor.5483:

I am a very new player to this game and I would like to express how impressed I am with the living story content. I am currently only level 29 but I really appreciate that I can join in and be a part of something in the game with lots of activity and player interaction.

The rewards are great, the feeling of being a part of something bigger is awesome and to be honest, without this I think I would have quit again. Doing a normal level grind for end game content is just so WoW.

If you were level 80, you would already be wearing mostly orange gear. The rewards don’t look so great from that perspective.

Why can’t every achievement be a title, like in City of Heroes? Why only 1% of achievements they have can be titles? Beats me.

My response.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/escape/Epilogue-That-s-it-spoilers-obv/page/3#post3780415

Because this is not Assassin’s Creed 1. Few publishers have the courage to dive head first into social discrimination and political issues. Much easier to stay safe and just make things acceptable and everybody gets along.

The problem here is the developer’s decision to let every player, no matter how old or new, experience same exact personal story content. Which, in my opinion, was a pretty bad decision, because it forces the personal story to exist in an alternate universe. This forces the Living Story to be completely and profoundly generic. It has to apply to all characters who exist in game regardless of their progress. This will never make sense. Sadly, the whole things needs to be redone, or there will be no end to these threads.

Konrad Knox (level 80) can come up to the Captain’s Council and say:

“Silence. You are the dumbest military officials I have ever laid eyes on, and I am the motherploughing Commander of the motherploughing Pact! My resume? I killed Zhaitan. Now, on your feet and get those ships up and flying by tomorrow morning. That’s dawn, for the stupid! Anyone who has a problem with this, will face me in single combat.”

On the other hand, Atrius Karmane (level 19) can’t say that, because he did not slay Zhaitan yet and is not a commander of anything, but still can partake in the Living Story.

Constructive solutions:

For god’s sake, make the game pay to play, but hire a writers team, and branch the story into proper considerations of character choices. It can’t be that hard, other games do it. Which means, yes, more branches, a lot more branches.

And please, please don’t put words into player character’s mouth. Just give options like “respond politely”, “respond with a flirt”, “make a rude comment”, “make a joke”, “ask about Scralett’s minions”. Just give generic variants of conversation, not specific phrasing.

Mystical Digital.1603:

Konrad Knox.5162:

Um, someone bothers to actually read all that text the NPCs say? Click the guys, get the rewards, buy gems, go back to PvP.

Seriously, when will people learn to not expect devs to give you stories? This is not TV. If you want to experience good roleplay, roleplay yourself with each other. Shocking.

That’s one way to play the game… a frankly very shallow way. You just miss out on so much lore and world building that way. I for one don’t play for the rewards, I play for story and exploration.

Also, game stories are usually better than the stuff on TV. Not always, but usually.

I have read the lore of GW and GW2 off the Wiki enough to coherently roleplay in the universe. The Living Story content is not up to my quality standard for serious roleplay.

Marjory: “So tell us, Konrad, how did it feel to finally kill Scarlet? Just don’t make me laugh, my ribs still hurt.”

What my reply would be, were I able to speak for Konrad?

Konrad: "Laugh, Marjory? Laugh, really? You were there, you should know how it felt. Or maybe tongue exchange with the hiccup girl here wiped your memory? Let me refresh it for you. How did it feel to do the dirty work for you, in a mission you dragged me into? You ask for my help, and I agree to kill someone for you, because you cannot do it yourselves, and then you ask me how it felt? People are suffering in Lion’s Arch right now, dying of hunger and wounds, trying to rebuild their homes. Children are crying for their lost parents. Siblings are separated. Thousands of people are now refugees needing new homes. That makes you laugh? Well then, glad your life works out for you, you spiteful little harlot. How did it feel? Like I’ve got the easy job. The hard work begins now. I’m out of here. Anyone of you who has any decency left, get up on your feet and let’s go. People need help. There’s a lot of work left. There are huts to rebuild, and roofs to thatch, wounds to bandage, and children to feed.

((If you really are serious about the roleplay narrative, I have some food for thought. I use double parentheses for OOC.))

When Lion’s Arch is devastated, and countless defenseless families are trying to heal their wounds, rebuild their home, reconnect with their lost relatives, what is a band of 6 rich heroes doing all the way in cozy Divinity’s Reach, partying, drinking, and making jokes?
Shouldn’t they be helping? Shouldn’t these famed heroes be doing their best to rebuild people’s huts, donate their money, aid the wounded?
Decadence and corruption.
If you feel for the people of Lion’s Arch, why did you leave to begin with? Why not stay behind and help, like the rest of us?
Tears will not help here, working hands will. Grab some straw and help with the roofing. We have a lot of huts to fix.

Um, someone bothers to actually read all that text the NPCs say? Click the guys, get the rewards, buy gems, go back to PvP.

Seriously, when will people learn to not expect devs to give you stories? This is not TV. If you want to experience good roleplay, roleplay yourself with each other. Shocking.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you just want to write fan-fiction, there’s the fan-generated content forum.

Well, no, I don’t just want to write fan fiction. Like I said in the OP, I want to roleplay with other characters, i.e. interact as a medieval person would, with language, motivations, and personality.
I guess considering that you ask, you don’t really see the difference between the two?
I’m talking about collaborative writing, within the game setting.

Is roleplay non-existant in this “roleplaying” game?

I don’t understand. GW2’s main page, the starting sentence calls the game a roleplaying game.
A roleplaying game without roleplaying? Help me out here.

I have not seen a board dedicated to writing personal stories and talking in character? Is there one? Was there ever one? Will there be one?

To hell with love and peace.

Please, guys, dooo thiiis!

Perhaps they simply could not handle our heat anymore.

-Jade Quarry

Excellent addition. I couldn’t agree more.
This element was also present in Shadowbane. Controlling guilds could tax their territory, essentially even taxing other player guilds for holding the most cities in the region.

A lot of threads in this forum have players complaining about WvW dying a slow death and becoming boring.

How about this short list of small and simple suggestions, based on an old game called Shadowbane, that was discontinued in 2009, but was easily the most hardcore and engaging WvW system in existence of MMOs. It made WvW very personal and unforgiving.
It followed 2 simple rules.

1. Player accountability.
2. Persistence.

1. Player accountability.
Only a small modification is needed to make this work.

Introduce a mechanic to track the guild which performs a claim of a camp/tower/keep.
Be it the final killshot of the keep lord or supply camp boss, or maybe some form of flag capture. Display the guild’s crest on the map over the asset captured, and display the name of the guild leader.
Example:

Stonefist Castle
Held by: Guild Name
Sovereign: Guild Leader Name

This will help build camaraderie and loyalty of guild members towards their flag and their leader. It will also give bragging rights to the prominent guilds and introduce friendly rivalry between guilds on the same side.

2. Persistence

Don’t reset the keeps every 2 weeks. Make it hardcore. Let them be held until they are captured. Until someone manages to take it. It’s frustrating to lose all your siege at the end of the allotted period.

Let all the siege stay as is until destroyed, even after the asset capture, and make the capturing party have to destroy enemy siege manually when they take over the asset. Don’t automatically clear everything in a convenient way. Give players more jobs to do. Have them burn enemy oil cauldrons down so they can build their own on the cleared area. To prevent infinitely covering the landmass with siege, introduce a limit of siege units that can be maintained at the same time by one player.

Yes, this may mean a zerg guild could hold their territory for a long time, until a proper coalition assembles against them. But that’s where the fun is. The politics, the unions, and true real consequence. I am certain that players themselves will maintain healthy populations.

I would love to see branching choices with permanent consequences. That would increase replayability on multiple characters AND drive people to buy gems to unlock more character slots to experience all the quest choices. Everybody wins.

Dubbleyew.1029:

Are you kidding me? Literally every other game ever is full of male-dominant power fantasies. It still isn’t enough for you, though?
…
If you want “male empowerment,” all you have to do is go and play literally any other game.

I’m not playing any other game, I’m playing this one. My post is not so much about me (I’m a married 30 year old with children), as it is about kids who may play the game and learn to assume subservient roles. I believe in equal empowerment.

As far as outranking goes, a 50/50 ratio would count as equal. Not a 5 / 1.

But redslion actually pinpoints the issue better. Both genders of characters lack empowerment. Good point on deaths too. Claw Island was like… okay, why does Tybalt have to go in solo and die? Why can’t we all, you know, just close the gates and fall back to the city? Why does the Lionguard commander keep telling his people to not retreat or send warnings? Realistic deaths would show Lionguard running for their lives and getting snatched by the beast. But no, they just say “yes, sir!” and fight to the death with no reason whatsoever.

I actually fully agree with permanent changes idea! Why is it so important that the main map remains unchanged?
Change it, wreck it, redo personal story to take place in the changing world. Why keep static content? For the sake of new players? Why would new players be a factor? They’re new, they don’t know how the game was before anyway.

Me, buying the game for the first time for 69.99, so I really care to play an event that happened in like 2011? Heck, no. I can watch old events on YouTube. Give me new content of this era.

I don’t get this obsession with letting new players see the original world in its untouched state. There’s Wiki, that covers the chronicle plenty well. Why go “oh no, no, no, we can’t touch this part, otherwise new players won’t be able to experience this and that”. So what? Make new stuff and let them experience THAT!

CharrGirl.7896:

So if you have a female lead suddenly its a “feminist statement” ? Sorry…what? Do people care that much who’s in charge, as long as the characters are good, should it matter? You’ll find that in most video games and other forms of media the leads and majority of characters are male. I don’t see anybody complaining about that, or actually the “lack” of female characters, as long as you have one good female character among the male lot. I never have problems investing myself in stories where most characters are male. Look at LoTR for example. We have it other way around in GW2 and somehow that gets some people to demand “equality” :P

And about Traherne or Tybalt or any other DE character. All of them are tormented by doubts and their weaknesses. Eir has issues with her son and with Zojja, for failing as a leader, Caithe has the whole Faolain angst thing going on, Zojja snarks at Eir whenever they come across (but you will see that change in the final story instance you do).

In short, none of these characters are perfect. They all have their faults and flaws, and Tybalt, considered by many the best character so far, just happens to be a guy. And he’s a kitten hero!

You know, now that I have read this, I don’t feel so bad. I guess characters of both genders are tormented and depressed. Grass is greener on the other side, heh.

Thanks for clarification, you’re right. I did not play LOTR, and mostly played MMOs where gender was superficial and had no meaning, or roleplaying based RPGs where you actually had to play out your character’s gender.

But perhaps i never considered playing the game from a girl’s perspective. It’s just from a boy’s perspective it’s so depressing and not empowering so far, that I felt like the other side has it better.

Perhaps, it’s the story choices I chose. My character just felt like he is not the kitten I imagined, but rather a mama’s boy. Every figure of authority for him was a woman, until Trehearne. First he is pampered by Petra, then gets outdrunk by Maddie, then bossed around by Jenna, then the Countess, then i joined the order of whisperers, whose Grandmaster also turned out to be a woman, and I was like, oh goodness! Then we meet up with Traehearne, and he has no idea what to do about Orr, so we go meet some spirit in a spirit world, and lo and behold, again, it’s a woman, telling us lost boys what to do.
That’s kinda how it felt, the constant mommying.

And no, I’m not saying it’s necessarily bad for everyone. Some people may like it. I just find it annoying. I can only imagine what it’s like for a girl to play male-dominant games. And i feel sorry for that too.

@dronzer, Oh, I completely understand what you’re saying. However, I maintain, that nah, event bosses do not have to cater to the dumbest players, and should challenge people. I do not believe in making dumb people feel like winners, and I do think we should facilitate training players to be better and get better at the game. There is always an option to not go near the event boss. But if they are coming to fight it, they should be up to the challenge. I’m not big on the whole mushy “pat pat on the head, yes, you are special too, Billy, just stand here and press 2”.
Forgive my forwardness.
My childhood game was Shadowbane. That world did not forgive n00bs.

Boss monsters just need to be smarter. Special moves that affect everyone around, debuff strips, target prioritization. You know, stuff that makes a boss actually require teamwork.

CHIPS.6018:

A topic that was bought up a few times here is “idiot ball” and “idiot plot”. I will point out when this plot device is acceptable and when it is not.

Acceptable:
1) Only 1, or a few, character(s) are dumb.

Everyone makes mistakes. It happens, and the readers understand this. In fact a character’s mistake can be used to develop that character.

However when everyone inside the plot is an idiot, and this is required for the story to work, the plot becomes an idiot plot.

The size of the idiot population is important in making the plot believable.

2) The character admits afterwards that he is an idiot. People around the character points out that he/she is an idiot.

After the character made a major mistake, it is very important for he/she to owe up to that mistake. He/she may or may not be punished. But the point is that said character cannot act like nothing happened.

The side characters around that character should also point out the mistake to the said character. These side characters cannot act like nothing happened.

[Naruto spoiler]

In Naruto, Kabuto can summon any dead ninja to fight for him. However when he faced Itachi, Kabuto didn’t summon any dead ninja to help himself.

Kabuto was given the idiot ball.

However Kabuto right afterwards said “I never imagine that anyone would find me.”

This implies that Kabuto sent all his undead to the front lines, because he didn’t expect his location to be found. Kabuto was wrong, but he owe up to it.

[/Naruto spoiler]

Non acceptable:
1) Everyone is dumb.
2) No one (or just very few) people point out that dumb character’s mistakes. That character never admitted to being an idiot.

A good example of this in the personal story in the part where a sylvari scouting brigade is sent out to scout the road. That’s their ONLY job. And they FORGOT to tell you about the bloody MINES, which immediately disable the lead tank.

And after that everyone acts A-Okay, and nobody says anything to the sylvari scouts. In fact, right after that, a character remarks “Charr artillery, asura’s knowledge, and sylvari reconnaissance? Couldn’t get any better.”

Yes, it could. The scouts could admit they messed up and be better, lol.

CHIPS.6018:

Jski.6180:

To a point but i do not play mmorpg for lore its just nice to have an ok story there. Mmorpgs for me is more about playing with other ppl when i played ff11 i had no ideal what was going on in that game but i enjoyed it because of the ppl i played with and i love there skill-chain system.
For realty good lore and stores its best to keep with single players games or at least games made to be played alone with online drop in. When you add another person in person or adding in a lot of ppl into a game it takes a lot away from the story because the story is not what the game is telling you its the story your making with the ppl your playing with.

You will find more GW1 players who where big time into lore tend to play the game solo or used it like a drop in game and not an mmorpg that every one keeps trying to forces GW1 to fit into (its was not an mmorpg so there are just simply truth that could and could not be done with it).

For your information, it is physically impossible for you to have a “story” with the people you play with.

Why?

You are the solo commander of the Pact, TreeHero’s right hand man.
The people you played with are also all the solo commander of the Pact, TreeHero’s right hand man.

You cannot possibly exist in the universe of the people you played with. Neither can they exist in yours.

So you and them playing together was purely a game play mechanic. That didn’t actually happen in the story.

Do I like this system? Nope. GW1 was much better. And it was simple:

GW1: You are all Chosen. You are all Closer to the Star. You are all Ascended.
GW2: You and you alone is TreeHero’s right hand man.

Small wording. Big difference.

I sign every word of this.
Personal story needs to be rewritten to include multiplayer dialogue options.
SWTOR does this well. Look at them and make GW2 like that.

I would really enjoy it if GW2 featured a marriage and romance system between characters and NPCs or characters and characters (like in some other single player games and MMORPG games we can easily google, where characters can get married.)

I would enjoy some straight romance and possibility to roleplay, and maybe have dignity/ferocity/charm actually do something and affect how npcs treat you from a romantic standpoint.

That being said, I still did not complete the personal storyline yet, but I’m close, just past the charr tanks, and I find the plotline so far to be somewhat feminist oriented, with Destiny’s Edge being lead by a woman and the number of females in the group being more than the males. There was another lesbian sylvari couple in the plot, among the scouting group. One of the girls died, and the other was lamenting the loss. Which makes me wonder if all sylvari are conceived to be homosexual? And mostly the exposition of sexuality if focused on female characters, where as the male characters seem to be mostly written as either roudy and happy-go-lucky types or the Trehearne/Tybalt/Logan types – responsible for everything and tormented by doubts. The three of them are essentially the same character, and none of them act like problem-solvers.

Not to mention the human city is ruled by a Queen – another female of authority. And the sylvari avatar of the Tree is a female entity.

Just a personal opinion, but I think the male side of the house could use some empowered characters soon.

Correct me if I’m wrong though.