Guild Wars 2

With regards to the TV show question Colin posted:
- Game of Thrones but a less brute version (we do need some characters to stay alive) for it’s multiple storylines with surprising outcomes.
- Breaking Bad: excellent and believable flawed characters and no real bad guy (well Tuco maybe but even he’s a victim of circumstance).
- Orange is the new Black for it’s ability to turn characters upside down and build solid back story for each of them.
- Star Trek Voyager/Next Generation for it’s ability to look to ourselves and philosophy about what makes us human.

Also would like to thank Bobby for his insight into the dev process, it’s very informative and helps understand the confines in which you guys need to work.

As others have mentioned the LS updates seem unconnected, missing a solid central story arc. The story that is there feels a bit like flimsy good vs evil stuff and could really do with some more realistic and interesting characters like flawed protagonists or heroic villains who really believe that what they’re doing is the right thing.

Let’s take Scarlet for example. She would have been much more interesting if she started out as an NPC who helped the players discover something (linked to the dragons perhaps?) and/or needed the player’s help to discover it. Then events unfold (losing a friend/lover/family?) that slowly drive her to want to make us stronger against this sort of evil, maybe she evolves to loathe weakness and sees it everywhere. Then in an effort to “help” she unleashes clockwork bots (that the players have helped her create earlier) on the world to weed out that weakness. Instead of saying crazy things she could just say that she’s sorry but someone needs to do this, etc.
In the mean time though the nightmare court has been expanding operations and have been using krait obelisks to power themselves and control the krait as well. Now it seems that Scarlet and the players have a common enemy and we find ourselves working side by side with Scarlet and her bots and Aether Pirates against the nightmare court. Maybe Scarlet dies because she realizes that there’s no place for her in the world anymore, but not without taking a big chunk of the nightmare court/krait with her. After that it could progress to that some of the Aether Pirates join forces against the looming threat of a new dragon’s power, etc, yada yada You could talk to these friendly Aethers and hear their side of the story, what motivated them (booty!) and why they join us now (we won so more booty to be had, yargh!).

I personally feel that that sort of thing would be much more interesting because you, as the player, get to experience the story from the start; you helped it come to pass and get to see things from both sides of the argument. You think you have an idea of a character, then a plot twist happens that shows the character in a totally different light. Players can feel in two minds about helping a certain NPC or fighting a certain enemy. In general, hinting of the existence of something way before it’s introduced does bolster the lore and makes the player feel more part of the lore when it finally does come to pass. Sometimes surprises can be cool but they don’t help to properly build mystery and background.
Then again, maybe that’s what’s happening right now in the background but it takes time to “simmer” and players demand instant satisfaction at the same time.

Apart from that I also feel that we could do with some more prestige content; difficult stuff that (hopefully) rewards you with an achievement and possibly some unique skin. Examples are Mad King’s Clocktower, Liadri the Conceiling Dark, even ranking first in Sanctum Sprint does take some effort. I won’t say Tequatl because that requires too many people right now and is a dead event most of the time on most servers. Apply some scaling so you can do it with 15-20+ people and we have a winner I believe. Anyway I digress, right now most of the updates are achievement hunts, which I generally don’t mind – it’s something to do and a reason to play my character which I enjoy – but it’s not a feat to have done it. Prestige achievements are basically endgame for the more hardcore players, so it would be nice to see some more of that.

I like the themes in general though: Aether Pirates are pretty cool but kind of popped out of nowhere, would be cool to have had some lore in game hinting their existence before they actually arrived.
I do like the new toxic Krait and the mystery that is the tower, even if right now it’s mainly achievement hunting. Them popping out of nowhere does make sense in this context as there was something going on in Kessex before.
The Molten Alliance did have some buildup but I felt it was lacking a “sensible” backstory (if that makes sense). The F&F dungeon was cool, would like to see it permanent.
The Bazaar was lovely, the new skills well thought out and fun to use and it felt like a whole chunk of lore added onto the game… until it went away again.
Queen’s Gauntlet was brilliant too, really requiring people to know their profession inside out and play well.

Looks like it’s been fixed just now Thanks Anet!

Yup same here. Apparently it now only spawns when you summon it in melee range of your target? Since it’s a ranged phantasm I’m sure this is a bug.