Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing a lot of writing for my degree lately, and reading other writer’s work to criticise them. And I’ve discovered a pattern;

Bad writers will have many unrelated plots that go nowhere, linking them with the barest thread of plausibility. This is Scarlet as we see her now. But I’ve read some stories that start out like this.

Good writers, those I’ve commended in the past, can make these seemingly impossible feats join together into one coherent plot that kept you guessing right to the very end. I am hoping that this payoff is something waiting in the wings for us. Scarlet’s an interesting personality, but she’s just one cog of the plot.

From what I’ve seen so far, she’s conducting various levels of technological and biological research. From what I know of plots, I think (depending on the talent/ideas of the writers) that we may see Scarlet come to a nasty end “playing with forces beyond her comprehension”. Then we, as the players, have to destroy the meta-super-ultra monster that she summoned.

And then we get another villain. That’s my biggest gripe with Guild Wars 2; the inhuman villains are like supernatural weather and the human(oid) villains are so random, and so without palpable motivation I’m baffled every time a new “alliance” comes up.

The single, most important question the playerbase can ask Scarlet is “What are you for?”. Right now I think the answer is “nothing at all.”

RNG. My problem with RNG isn’t that it exists (it exists in every MMO I’ve ever played and that’s a long list). My problem with GW2’s RNG is that

A) It has far too much and

B) most items you get are useless.

Take the gem store boxes we get whenever there’s a new piece of content. There’s a chance to get a rare weapon skin in most content updates but those chances are so tiny it’s almost insulting. I would prefer to spend 800 gems on the skin rather than unlock a chest and hope for the best.

Furthermore, the chest rewards for completing a jump puzzle/dungeon are rarely useful or good. Make the dungeons longer or harder, but please give us a chance of getting at least 1 salvageable material for ectos! And getting an exotic from a chest is pretty much a non-starter.

On a side note, I think Magic Find should be removed from the game entirely because it promotes placing yourself before the group (by doing less damage in exchange for greater rewards). For a game that’s supposed to promote working together, it sure does promote selfishness in SOME areas. Perhaps a reworking in which you get a buff for doing more damage? Or doing things in a guild gives magic find passively up to 100% then resets every 2 weeks?

Back to the matter at hand, RNG ruins endgame for me because it’s substituting what should actually be there; content. Endgame for me seems to be a consistant amount of farming, daily achievements and not much else. Cutthroat politics for me is just farming the challenges over and over again. The minigames however are something Anet’s doing right. More minigames please!

Getting a legendary relies more on luck than skill which is the inverse of what it should be in my view. I’d like class-specific legendaries that require you to know your class inside out for you to get one. Necromancers could get some kinda spinal scythe staff or something. Point is they’d represent the skill of the player not how much time/money he’s devoted to the game. That should be a different achievement entirely. They don’t have to be class-specific, just rely on skill. Maybe apply the personal story and cooperativeness of the community to getting the legendary itself and not just the precursor.

Lastly, the lore. Oh yes, the lore.

The lore of GW2 seems very flat, which isn’t something I’d expected. There’s a lot of intrigue, a lot of hints, but no actual substance. Cutthroat politics is a good example of this. We’re supporting a candidate for the ship’s council, that’s great. Except Ellen Kiel and Evon Gnashblade are complete unknowns to us (apart from Ellen Kiel’s introduction to us in Southsun cove). The lore doesn’t feel real or relevent yet and I’m hoping this changes in future content.

A good way for the lore to seem more at home and relevent would be to actually physically mark the world with its progress. The lighthouse in Lion’s Arch is a good example of this. Say, for example, that we can see Ascalon becoming the green utopia it once was. These are not so much criticisms but rather suggestions for the lore to take in future.

In conclusion to this very long and very dry list of criticisms, I’d like to say that GW2 has some real potential here and it’s being wasted by these large issues. Maybe an expansion will solve them, but I’m not sure at the moment. Some of these things are really quite broken and things NEED to be added to the endgame because you need to cater to more hardcore players too. My idea for solving this was stolen from WoW; rep gear.

Now here me out, put the pitch forks away!

This rep gear would be totally useless in battle. Put it on and you’d essentially be running in naked. But this armour is not for battle; it for cosmetics! If GW2 has taught us one thing, its that people will go to extreme lengths to get cool looking gear ~cough~ legendaries ~cough~. So add factions to GW2 that give you cool-looking armour for doing stuff! Like HoM but with Gw2 work!

Thereby you give players

A) More lore by giving it more factions/orders etc. than just the three it has now

B) gives sad no-life players like me something to do between content updates

C) Lets your content creation team relax and take more time between content updates

D) Creates a world in which there are conflicts of interest in which people can pick sides (Evon Gnashblade Vs Ellen Kiel). But if part C is done, it has to be done in a real literal way. Red Team and Blue team only bases and item skins etc.

and finally (AT LAST!)

E) It eliminates a large part of the RNG and allows you to add items to the gemstore which let you gain rep faster. It’s not pay to win because you win nothing but a weapon skin. You’re paying for convenience not victory, and that’s how to do a good gemstore (not that you don’t do a good one already…apart from the chests).

I am now prepared to be hung drawn and quartered by the community ^^-b

So I’ve been playing my sylvari warrior for a long time and I’ve come to a conclusion; she’s not very…warrior-like. She barely looks like she can hold her sword, she barely looks like she can stay on her feet when she swings it!

So I hatched a plan. I decided that changing her to a traditional warrior race like the Charr or (to a lesser extent) norn would solve this problem! So I rerolled a Norn warrior and she swung her sword with excellence and discipline! Problem was, I didn’t have the time or inclination to raise another warrior to 80, only to then go through the same hard work I went through with my other warrior.

So I hatched another, even more brilliant plan! I went to the gemstore to see if there was an item which could change your race. But there wasn’t one! So I came here to ask the game devs to, pretty please, put an item in the gemstore that would let me turn my weak, twiggy sylvari into a cast-iron-clad 8ft tall tattooed babe who could floor a man with one punch!

I have a few suggestions on the personal story front though;
1- You get a randomly allotted storyline (which I dislike the idea of)
2- You get to play through your story once again with no rewards (this I’m fine with; makes people SURE they want to change race)
3- You get a short endgame story in which you get to find your place in your new race. For example, as a charr you must find a warband and legion etc.
4- You get no story. (Not really an option for me…I’m a bit of an immersion freak)
5- You play your personal story with rewards from the beginning (Not so keen on this one for what I hope are obvious reasons)

On the subject of race-specific armour and skills, they should get swapped out with the actual skills and armour of your new race.

So that’s my long-winded and hopefully amusing request for race changes ^^

*Attention sylvari warriors; satirical humour is highly volatile, handle with care!