The only way we’re logically getting Abaddon’s return is through a corrupted and evil Kormir.
could be fun, little bit stretchy – but fun
random thought: in before it will be huge revelation in like 3/4 of the PoF story that balthazar was not acting on his own but was actually tricked into all of it by corrupted-evil-kormir-whom-is-abaddon-but-with-bewbs-now
that would make quite a nightfall2.0reskin xD
So before we go to fight the main fallen god antagonist, as an uncomfortable ally of Palawa Joko, we first have to defeat an Elonian woman driven mad by the influence of Abaddon? This sounds vaguely familiar.
If they actually were fruit-based monsters, then they might the Papayas about which the game’s true plot revolves.
Oh, yes. There are some ancient and neighbouring religions, in fact, where the names of the demons of one religion are recognisably derived (after a couple of thousand years of linguistic drift) from the angels of the other… and vice versa.
One of them is a race in GW2…
Except it rather would because you’d have to be “no longer a god” when in the open world, and all future content – presuming such wouldn’t be the finale of GW2 – would be trivial or suffer from the Dragonball Z complex of having to up the ante to previously shown-to-be-insane levels.
In other words, there is no difference between player character becoming a god in GW1 as there is in GW2.
And if Anet ever hopes to have another sequel, having a nameless, genderless, raceless god would just be silly.
I guess you could theoretically implement it like the Mark of Cain in Supernatural (implicit spoilers) — rather than being a vessel for divine power, you’re the bearer of a mark, curse, or artifact that keeps that unbound power walled away in another realm where it can’t do harm to Tyria. While it most like has negative side effects (say, constantly fighting the influence of that power) in the story, it could also make you somewhat more powerful than an ordinary person (cue new Mastery traitline like Ancient Magics). That power could be justified either as a deliberate mechanism to help safeguard the seal, or as a result of leakage of that power corrupting you slightly. Either way, it makes you a bad kitten, not a god. And if the seal were a transferrable burden, then the nameless protagonist issue is less of a problem in a hypothetical GW3.
I’m kinda hoping that there is some difference from the Nightfall plotline. Right now, it sounds like a shot-for-shot remake.
Abaddon was still in his cell. Balthazar is fully active. We had to kill Abaddon before his escape because he was stronger than 2 Gods combined.
Our goal is to prevent Balthazar from killing Kralkatorrik not to prevent Balthazar’s escape from some cell.
Yes, and Starkiller base was a planet, not a space station.
Abaddon was perfectly capable of wreaking havoc on Tyria from within his cell (he effectively destroyed Orr, Ascalon, and the Mursaat through proxies, harmed Cantha badly, and was directly manifesting lovecraftian horrors in Tyria as well) so the distinction is not so great as you are thinking.
Either way, unless they surprise us, the plot is that 5/6 of the gods decide the 6th is too destructive, strip him of his power, and banish him. He hatches a plan to fight them and get revenge, a plan which happens to threaten Tyria. Since that’s where we keep all our stuff, we have to stop him. In Elona. With the help of Palawa Joko. And since he is Bad, we are going to definitely kill him. The whole “hey, maybe we shouldn’t kill things containing tons of magical energy” thing only applies to dragons; people are fair game, because we can’t just let them continue to exist while being Bad, can we? The main question is whether they replace him with Rytlock or with Livia. If it’s the latter, Grenth had better start getting very nervous.
So instead of building new skills, it just seems they over complicate thing by having so much going on, and it being a dexterity Challenger over a skilled knowledge one.
Change your keybinds so that it takes less dexterity to play.
Yep. I was never happier than the day I set my weapon skills to be 1-3, Q, and E, my utilities to be Shift+same, and profession skills to be Ctrl+same.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to make a stack of veggie pizzas.
I’m kinda hoping that there is some difference from the Nightfall plotline. Right now, it sounds like a shot-for-shot remake.
The whole valuing Valor reminds me of Odyn from WoW who’s quite the nasty character regardless.
Balthazar’s treatment of a scared guy who happened to end up on the battlefield(most likely due to being drafted) shows that Balthazar’s view of Honor and Valor is unjust and cruel(the God of Israel didn’t treat scared soldiers like that but rather had them sent home to preserve moral among the army and as for Greece’s War God Ares: he’s a coward himself).
Yeah, but that’s the retconned Balthazar, a story written after they decided to make him a villain.
I think holos use something like conjured weapons as a class mechanic, I don’t think it conveys that they are using two elite specs.
LS3 should have stuck to two threads: the White Mantle and Lazarus show, and Primordus (with Primordus mostly being problem-of-the-week stuff, and setting up the expansion). Putting Jormag in the mix spread things too thin for 6 episodes. Given that so much of the story revolved around the WM and Mursaat, introducing Exemplar Kerida in the final episode for a minor side quest (rather than someone introduced shortly after Lazarus makes an appearance) seemed like a real missed opportunity. And Lazarus (in any incarnation) didn’t really get enough screen time for any of the plot points about him to feel relevant. If we had worked with him more closely, his heel, face, heel, different-heel-under-the-mask turn would have been a little more stinging.
Something like this might have worked better:
Ep1: Out of the Shadows was basically fine as is, a good season opener for a narrative arc about the White Mantle.
Ep2: Rising Flames: PotW episode, Primordus is destabilizing the volcano. Stop it from erupting (play up the consequences for Tyria more). Put the Aurene instance in the front, and then let us work with “Lazarus” closely for the rest of this one to build up the character, and emphasize his affinity for fire magic.
Ep3: (PotW) Introduce Kerida. Go to the Isle of Janthir and deal with some issue (recover an aspect, stop a plot to reactive Mursaat superweapons, whatever). We could also emphasize that the Mantle is a threat to everyone in Central Tyria (by showing plans for war with the Charr, a desire to purge the Sylvari as dangerous dragon minions, and to support the Inquest in seizing control of Asura society) to build up the stakes for non-human PCs. We could also incidentally find some Mursaat anti-dragon research that Taimi could use against Primordus, setting up Flashpoint.
Ep4: (PotW/Arc) Help Kerida track and destroy the Eye of Janthir, following the events of BotP. Could be to Siren’s Landing, or somewhere else. In the end, we learn about her identity, find and fight the real L, and learn that the other one is an imposter. And no death-oaths!
Ep5: Flashpoint. Basically as-is, but without Jormag in the equation.
Ep6: Head of the Snake. No time to follow up on Flashpoint, because word rapidly got out about “Lazarus” and the death of the other one, after which the Mantle unified under Caudecus and launched an all-out assault on Divinity’s Reach. Time to put down this threat once and for all. Kerida can fight with us (as Kerida) on this one.
Just some thoughts, having seen what a total shambles LS3 turned out to be in the plot department. The sad thing is, the maps are decent enough, the worldbuilding and environmental story is decent to good. The actual serial story… the less said about it, the better.
1. Make it a complete story arc, not a preview of the next expansion. Of course the plot should flow logically from season to expac to season, but people who buy the expansion should get an entire self-contained story arc, from beginning to climax to denouement, they shouldn’t feel like they came in after intermission.
2. If we’re lucky, the end of PoF will deplete most of the story’s momentum a little, giving people a chance to take a breather. So, start over small. We’ve got a team. Let’s use it to proactively, not reactively, make the world a better place, while we don’t have an apocalypse to worry about. Between E, Aurene, Taimi, Marjory, and our contacts in the Pact and elsewhere, there are any number of ways to learn about a guild job that needs doing.
Create some maps that are tied tightly with self-contained problem-of-the-week quarter story episodes. Use a steady dribble of current events to tease the season arc and advance/close side stories (e.g. Eir’s funeral, Aurene training). Now, LS3 was rightly accused of jumping around from plot thread to plot thread at random; the difference between this and PotW is that each thread gets resolution. It has a start, rising action, and a denouement. If there’s a plot twist, it’s of the “oh, our first plan failed because we made a kittenumption. Now, we have to scramble for a plan B” variety. Scheme of the week is thwarted, monster of the week is put down. It doesn’t just raise the specter of apocalypse, and then say “later, cub” to any attempt at followup. For all that LS1 had its own problems, chiefly of the villain sue variety, it did episodic content well. Now, you can still slowly advance some side plots, but it should be through bite-sized, lower-stakes current events quests like Caladbolg, so it isn’t so unsatisfying.
3. Pace yourself. We don’t need a giant, earth-shattering twist each episode — save the big stake-raising and plot twists for the penultimate episode, and then resolve it with the last one. And actually give us a season finale, not a pointless coda with “buy the movie” tacked on. In terms of pacing, Ep4 and Ep6 should have been swapped — Ep6 is a monster of the week episode that introduces a possible recurring character. Ep4 is the conclusion of a buildup that occurred throughout the season, the raid stories, and in the vanilla story arcs, and places leaders and capital cities in jeopardy.
4. Plan it out. It just feels like each episode kinda hopped around from point to point with no real plan. Arc story team should be a separate group that works on a separate timeline. Arc story is the skeleton that everything else is built on, so it has to be right and reasonably fixed beforehand. PotW stuff, obviously, can be adapted over time.
5. Keep the season arc threads tightly related. The PotW can be anything, though, provided it makes sense for our guild to deal with it.
It would be nice if they give us some reason to buy a character slot, but I’m not holding my breath.
Hmmm… maybe once you max the passive MF, consuming it could instead give you a fixed-size, per-character, duration-stacking MF buff on top of that? Something like 5s per point of luck consumed? So, nothing too crazy, no fundamental change to what luck does, but also there is no real cap on how much you need.
Hmmm… maybe once you max the passive MF, consuming it could instead give you a fixed-size, per-character, duration-stacking MF buff on top of that? Something like 5s per point of luck consumed? So, nothing too crazy, no fundamental change to what luck does, but also there is no real cap on how much you need.
This was a terribly written episode. Not in the sense of the actual dialog or anything, just in the sense of gluing an idiot ball to the PC and being just shy of a shaggy dog plot. Nearly everything that happened seemed to happen for no reason other than narrative convenience.
So, we ask human priests about Balthazar, to figure out what his next move might be. So far, so good. Whoever came up with this part understands things like “plot following characters making justifiable choices based on their personality, goals, and the information available to them”.
We happen to run into Anise there. Why? Cuz writer says so. (Is she just camping out, waiting for us to show up?). Well, 2 minutes in and the plot is off the rails, and it’s only downhill from here.
She sends us to recover an agent, because Balthazar still has an aspect of Lazarus (they know this, how?) and we can use the Eye to track him. The Eye’s behavior might be plausible, but a) doesn’t that mean there’s an 80% chance the eye would be tracking the other aspects instead of Balthazar’s aspect? and b) why would he keep the aspect if he has no further use for the Mantle? Why did he keep it at all, in fact, when he could have just tossed into a volcano and avoided the remote chance of a second Lazarus popping up to screw up his deception? Cuz writer says so.
We recover the agent, but get inexplicably curious about what she wants with the aspect. Now, a single non-bloodstone-powered mursaat isn’t much threat relative to gods and dragons, and the shining blade’s intentions regarding Mursaat are pretty straightforward. Why are we so super-duper concerned about such petty matters? Cuz, writer says so.
The only way to learn about what they are doing is to swear a death-oath to a human-specific intelligence agency, whether or not we are human or a dutiful member of a society barely avoiding war with them. Of course, the only thing we learn relevant to saving the world is that the Eye is in Orr, which isn’t exactly a state secret. Why not just use the imminent explosion of Tyria as a justification to get them to tell us as much information as they’re allowed to, and not commit treason? Cuz writer says so.
After that, we get sent to hunt the Eye, eventually find it in the reliquary of Abaddon, and the SB shows up. We discover the Eye and the last aspect, but no Balthazar (duh). There’s also no explanation of why B was here, why he left the aspect here, or why there is a pentagram set up here in the long-abandoned reliquary of a sunken continent that seems expressly designed for the purpose of resurrecting Lazarus. (Wait, I know why! Cuz writer says so)
At this point, we are boned — our whole kittening nonsensical plan was to follow the Eye until it led us to B, but he ditched the tracking device, so to speak. Despite this, we decide to help our new annoying ally revive and destroy the last Mursaat. Aside from being fairly blase about the genocide of a race of living people, why do we not, you know, just insist that she throw the aspects into a volcano and avoid the risk of letting Lazarus loose (hey, it must be a big deal, since we swore a death oath to learn about what they planned to do about Lazarus)? Cuz, writer says so.
Having witnessed the death of the last Mursaat, the Eye of Janthir immediately disappears, and having lost Balthazar’s trail, we can only sit back helpless and watch as the world is destroyed.
Wait, no, it develops the new ability to act as a magic crystal ball (cuz…), which Livia for some reason knows about (cuz…), and conveniently waits for us to use it before self-destructing (cuz…)
You know, I like GW1. But kitten this entire episode. I did like the new map, though.
How hard would it be to record a simple, skippable “the story so far…” cinematic/trailer for each episode that would play when you set it as the active chapter (only focusing on things in the past that will be relevant to the episode in question)? It could mostly just be pasting clips of old content together if you want to save resources.
It would be doubly useful when understanding the story requires something that you can’t reasonably assume the audience knows, like raid stories, GW1 story, or LS1.
Edit: While it would be unreasonable to think they would do this for past LS content, I think it would really be advisable to add it to Ep6, since it’s otherwise so incomprehensible to a lot of people.
(edited by perilisk.1874)
I suppose it would be something of a twist if the only effect of the oath was to let Anise or some other SB leader hear your thoughts, and then they would just assassinate you if they heard you betray the SB.
Hey quick question, who urinated in your breakfast this morning?
I asked for clarification (which other people gave, albeit not in the most civil way), so it’s really not necessary to be rude about it.
Any negativity was aimed at Anet’s decision to use toughness-based aggro mechanics (mostly, a complaint about raids), not at you.
I seem to have also been wrong about Braham being an idiot, and going ahead and killing an extremely weakened Jormag leading to the world being on the verge of collapse.
I got the sense that Jormag just sort of merged with the ice, so that they couldn’t get at him. It wasn’t that they chose not to fight him, they just couldn’t reach him.
Since our characters seem to be able to escape the loop
Can they, though? How many times has your character killed the same World Boss, completed the same DE, or replayed Personal Story instances for achievements? They’re just part of a higher-level fractal.
Having some sort of in-game codex that gets unlocked over time would be nice, just as an easy reference for people regarding the world and the story.
You’re the victim of artificial stupidity, so that GW2 can be like all the cool MMO kids with their stupid outdated tanking mechanics. They might as well make enemies focus their CCs on whoever has the most stab.
Lost her once when I was dodging lightning, but otherwise I didn’t have trouble keeping her alive on a zerk guard. It did feel like it took forever for whatever she was doing to work; some bar or other indicator might be helpful just to make sure it isn’t broken.
Mapping to a controller might be possible, but it isn’t exactly fun or intuitive — going from 4-button sets to 5-skill sets is a little wonky.
That said, hopefully GW3 is built from the ground up to be more console and controller friendly. Maybe they could go full-on action adventure MMO, instead of the clunky platforming and kinda-sorta-action combat they have now.
I feel like I’m being cheated out because there’s no rewards after you do it the first time.
You get to re-experience the story, which is the main point of the story instances anyway. If you want something repeatable for rewards, do fractals or raids.
Maybe they could add a hidden “regen” stat, and each stack of regen would increase it for a time. Then, they could implement the stat such that it provided decreasing returns in actual healing as it got higher. It might help keep regen stacking from getting too crazy and requiring a massive rebalancing.
Alternatively, they could just let them run in parallel, and apply the strongest regen in effect at any time.
I would have liked the XP one on Doric Lake.
The XP helps players gain spirit shards or to train their masteries. It’s far from useless or wasted.
Unless you don’t raid.
Shortly before HoT was announced, I had predicted
(1) that after defeating Mordremoth the story would deal with being caught between Primordus and Jormag fighting one another and dealing with them at the same time,
(2) after that, the story would appear to turn to Kraalkatorrik, but then the gods would return without warning to hijack the story, trivially wrecking Kraalkatorik and dragging Tyria into a conflict with much deadlier enemies from beyond the Mists (mostly I was thinking that people would be sick of Elder Dragons at that point.)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/12-years-to-kill-the-last-dragon/4696254
While it was obviously not correct, it wasn’t all that far off the mark either.
post to fix forum bug?
Raids are a different matter than regular content. It is difficult enough that it should need dedicated roles.
Maybe, but between variety in encounters/mechanics and in the strengths and weaknesses of each profession’s take on a role, you can get to a point where it the same few builds aren’t ideal for everything, and substitutions are less painful. Losing the counterplay of builds that GW1 had has hurt things in that regard, though.
If it was done that way, I could get behind it. Maybe there’s an OP caithe/thief set of skills, but also a friend-of-caithe skill set for the other profs, too.
However, it’s pretty clear that ANet isn’t going to do that. In a recent comment, one of the devs said that it was a lot of extra work including profession-specific mechanics in story instances. They’ll do it occasionally (e.g. going after a certain minister in a recent LS episode); they just can’t afford the time to do it every episode.
Oh, I didn’t mean as some sort of special build (other than maybe the occasional special action skill), just implementing a disguise like the Thaumanova or Urban Battleground fractals.
Indeed. Make a questline for each race where members of another race go to an NPC who teaches/gives a way to earn the racial skills of that race. All races can learn all racial skillls and the racial skills can then be buffed to be worthwhile.
This. Set it up as Current Events content during LS4 to provide some news about the latest from each race in regards to their respective storylines, and get taught their skills as a bonus. For some, you could reuse dungeon maps like LS3 Ep4 did.
Correction on that, Trejgon: The Scepter of Orr had the power to control all things spiritual (just as the Staff of the Mists could control all things physical).
Is there are distinction between “spiritual” and “magical” such that “spiritual” is inclusive of both ghosts and titans, but not dragon minions?
Kormir never “left” because she was never “here”.
For all we know, Kormir doesnt even know what Orr looks like. After she became a goddess she stayed behind in the realm of torment to clean up all the mess by Abaddon, but a small 300 years have passed, so maybe she’s moved n in the meantime
Argument for K is that she has the strongest ties to Tyria, having been a human there within a few generations past, but also that it would make sense in setting up an expansion set in Elona. As someone with dominion over secrets and truth, she is also a decent candidate for issuing prophecies, and for E(lona) either being her, or someone working for her (maybe Jurah’s still kicking via divine magic?).
Argument for L (most likely playing the role of Jennah and/or Anise) is that GW2 human motif has from the beginning been focused on Lyssa more than other gods (both Jennah and Anise are powerful Mesmers, plus the Mesmer collective, and the heavy emphasis on giant works of art and beauty in the capital), her magic played a role in Balthazar’s very sneaky plan, and his plan to seize control of the White Mantle from Caudecus by, ironically, pretending to be a god is rather obviously to the Queen’s benefit. Also, having her own spy network and taking a hands-on approach to running her realm, she would make a decent E.
The chief question is whether Balthazar is going to genuinely be an antagonist, or if he’s just gone loose cannon against a god-level enemy like Menzies that hasn’t yet been revealed. Whether Canach, Caithe, or Braham, our allies have a tendency of doing things that are radical, or foolish, or suspicious, or destructive, but they mostly earn a timeout and a stern talking to, not death at our hands, however much some in the audience might request it. Trahearne excepted, but even then it was a mercy-killing.
It does work okay for the stories, except… I really hate being forced into one role/one set of skills. It’s fine playing Caithe once, but I like to repeat stories to get different perspectives and, well, Caithe’s always got the same skill sets.
It was interesting as a challenge and a chance to feel a little OP, but they’d get the same narrative effect by casting you as a random henchman (with your own profession/build) who was observing the events, if it was plausible for one to be present.
I think playing the bad guys works better for something like Fractals, or the LS episodes playing as Caithe (not saying she is a bad guy, just that sort of thing). Not really creating a villainous character so much as getting to experience a predefined character’s perspective on historical events.
grandmaster cooking could be used for fancy mount foods that upgrade specific mounts.
About the only thing I could see working (maybe) is some small passive bonus based on the number of unassigned points. E.g. 0.33% bonus per point to XP in Central Tyria or HoT areas, respectively.
And killing Balthazar seems technically unlikely.
1. Too big topic for an episode, witch already leads us into expansion with Elder Dragon
Plus, he hasn’t really had any character development. For dragons, that’s fine, because they’re incomprehensible alien forces, but the Six are basically just people with superpowers and giant egos, which would make killing him off a real lost opportunity.
Eir, Demi, Belinda, that random Asura in Personal Story.. We’ve got no shortage of “shocking” character death, and with an episode title like One Path Ends, I’m figuring someone has to die. So who’s it gonna be? Thoughts?
The Pact Commander. Next expansion, you have to start a fresh Sunspear character.
I think deploying that line and then showing B is a fakeout. B left and came back, but a different god (either Kormir or Lyssa) never left, and will be revealed in this episode.
Is it possible that the lava monsters are reimagined titans? If Livia is involved, the Scepter of Orr is involved, and while it can allegedly control the undead, it is best known for controlling the titans. They could possibly compete with B for fire energies?
Someone said the voice is similar or the same as the VA for Livia. I can’t remember how her voice sounded, so we shall see
In with the all the random PC action shots, there was one apparent elementalist with a very red motif. Probably just another PC, since Livia was a necro and the weapon doesn’t look remotely close to the scepter of Orr, but you never know.
Path of Fire.
Jesus… Was it hard to find out? New trailer is named ‘One Path Ends’. Balthazar = fire. S6 finale trailer + Balthazar = Path of Fire. EZ
Almost certainly Path of something.
Now, who do we know from history that controls the undead and is not that far away from Orr?
Livia?
And this voice in the end sounds Kormirish.
I think either Kormir (thus, providing a bridge to Elona) or Lyssa (thus, probably proving the theories about Jennah right). Might be that Kormir is “E”?
The trailer says “one god stayed behind”. While the obvious understanding of that line in light of the story so far would be that it refers to Balthazar, I think it’s actually sneakily referring to one of the two above — I think Balthazar returned from somewhere else; if he had stayed, he would not have been able to go unnoticed.
If they were going to implement a new low-level story, it seems unlikely that it would be based in Central Tyria, rather than in the Expansion Area. And most likely it would just vary in the first 40-50 levels, and then sync up with the vanilla personal story.
Pancreas of Fieryness