Guild Wars 2

I agree with this. Arena Net could learn a thing or two from the deep personal stories in the New Star Wars Universe MMO, even thought its a dying one. The personal story is truly amazingly deep they even have romance and other crazy stuff.

Anyway to return to the point, this should be taken to account, you just CANT TAKE THE GLORY OF PLAYERS CHARACTERS LIKE THAT!!! Its not nice…or even cool.

First Strike out was Kormir, Second Strike out was Trahearne, will the third strike be Oogooth quaggan? lol

You’d think that Arenanet would have figured out that players absolutely dislike “special” NPC characters who do mostly nothing and swoop in for the glory after all the hate that Kormir had from the players in Guild Wars: Nightfall.

What’s especially aggravating is that they had some really interesting characters who could have taken Trahearne’s place. I wouldn’t have minded if he was replaced with a kitten such as Warmaster Forgal Kernsson or one of the other Faction leaders. But nope, they killed them off quickly and gave us the boring plant-version of Kormir in Guild Wars 2…

The thing that kills me about Trahearne is that he overshadows/takes credit for nearly everything I’ve done in the game.

My first playthrough with him on my Thief annoyed me to no end.

Instead of feeling like a Marshall with command and power over my story, I happened to be a lackey advisory to Trahearne.

This wouldn’t have even bothered me if he had brought some compelling awesome moments to the story, but no. He doesn’t do that. He’s about as bland as celery (Insert Sylvari/Celery Comparison joke here). He doesn’t nothing exceptional; As a matter of fact, he does quite the opposite.

He literally fumbles throughout the storyline looking to you for guidance at every single turn, and what does he do? Gets all the credit as the main hero simply because he just so happened to have been given a Leek of Risen Repelling from some Ancient Radish in the grove. It’s bull crap.

And where does that leave me in the Glory? I feel more or less as a second command look-over. Sure, I have my moments where, “Oh, they acknowledge me. Nice” but it’s literally nothing compared to the ego sucking that Trahearne gets on the regular.

I’m not narcissistic saying that it ALL has to be about me, but for fudge’s sake, at least make the protagonist I’m following not a fumbling clueless who just so happens to snatch the headline while I probably get a slight honorable mention in the history book for doing practically everything.

He’s literally a vegetable the entire storyline. (Pun City in this post.)

Earlier during this college term, my creative writing instructor was mentioning something to the effect of “you don’t introduce a main character half way into a story.” My immediate thought was: Trahearne. Unless you’re Sylvari, he just randomly pops into “your” story halfway through leaving you wonder “Who the hell does this guy think he is?”

I think it would have been a better tie in to Destiny’s Edge if Caithe had taken charge. Zojja and Eir had their issues, as did Rytlock and Logan; which leaves Caithe. Wasn’t that part of what GW2 was supposed to be? The rise of Sylvari as a race? What better way than to have Caithe take charge where the members of the older races failed in Destiny’s Edge. I think this would have added better symbolism, which is greatly lacking in what was released.

I also had issue, at least as far as the Human story line goes, with the leap we had to make at level 20. We wrap up our circus story, or find the lost sister, then all of a sudden you have to leave to join one of the orders. I needed a better connection between what was happening in Kryta and the Risen.

I got this sense of:
“You did great hero! Now go join an order, bigger things you have no knowledge about are happening.” And my character just bought it. It made my character look mindless, taking orders without thought. No one wants to play that character.

The writers didn’t have enough of my trust yet to make the jump from finding my parents to going to fight elder dragons.

Simply put, Trahearne is a bad fanfiction character.

- Everyone loves him. In fact, the three orders all happily unite beneath his banner, not because he’s qualified as a military leader, a strategist, or really anything beyond being a scholar, but because he’s Trahearne.

- Trahearne is the only being brilliant enough to think that the orders should unite against the dragons. Given the mentality of each order, this is utter crap: the Priory are brilliant, the Vigil believe in victory at all costs, the OoW is incredibly cunning and clever. And I am supposed to believe that not one of them said “Hey, you know what? We’re fighting against the dragons…and you’re fighting against the dragons…and so are they. We should work together!”?

- He appears with almost no pretense and our characters blindly follow him. Let’s recap, shall we? The charr storyline has you, a soldier, ultimately follow someone with no experience. The norn are expected to follow someone who cannot demonstrate strength. The asura are expected to follow someone clearly inferior to them. The humans are told to answer to someone whose orders come from a magic tree. Only the sylvari have any real reason to follow him.

- The Pact, which is itself made up of an elite few, is expected to lead the charge. Zhaitan has gone from being a massive threat to someone felled by what is a comparatively small portion of the Tyrian population, despite being arrayed against overwhelming numbers, ancient and powerful magic, virtually unlimited resources, and not to mention sheer incredible power.

- The story goes from being about our particular race to being about our particular faction to being about the Pact. Those I have associated with in my story are gone, replaced by mere glimpses and flashes of characters that appear briefly and then vanish. The only real constant is Destiny’s Edge, who have been omnipresent: you receive letters of congratulations from them, see them in dungeons. Yet their role is petty at best.

- Furthermore, with DE, these well-known and well-established characters are made secondary to Trahearne. I can see the world uniting behind these five heroes, who even had a little spiel in Edge of Destiny about how each of them bringing their unique talents made them a superior team (during the Lion’s Arch arena bit). Heck, Rytlock has incredible military experience as a tribune! Logan has great experience too, being one of the highest-ranked military individuals in Kryta. Eir’s cunning and skill, as well as her tactical knowledge, makes her exquisite in small-group combat. Zojja is brilliant and probably has an army of golems that she and others have tinkered with. Caithe is the morale-booster, the glue, and the one who knows just how hard-hitting a surgical strike can be. If you told me at any point in the story that the world was uniting behind them, I’d be all for it because it is the most logical thing to do.

Expecting anyone to follow Trahearne because a tree said so? No. I’d not follow him any more than I’d follow the crazy man on the street corner screaming about the coming apocalypse, or the man who said that he is driven solely by a dream or some sort of providence. Trahearne is shoe-horned in, made to seem like he is important, and the real heroes – Destiny’s Edge, our characters, those characters we’ve interacted with along the way – are made to sit in the back seat and obey his every whim.

Me and my guild have always hate a deep hatred for Traherne, and how he likes to steal moments….but it all came to a hilarious climax after a moment doing a quest with were saska is conspiring against you….Traherne has this line something like “They were targeting you, but the real target is CLEEEEEARLY me”

Instantly, everyone who was with me during that guild was like “GOD kitten TREHERNE, CAN’T EVEN LET US HAVE OUR OWN ASSASSINS?!”

Ever since it is a running joke in my guild to put Treherne in every situation of our lives as the kitten friend who takes all the glory.
“You got a speeding ticket, but it was CLEARLY for me”
“You got a girls number last night, but she CLEARLY wanted me”
“You got an A on your final, but it was CLEARLY meant for me”
"Tybalt sacrificed himself for you, but he CLEARLY did it for me"
(that last one burns)

So and and so forth.

While we all hate Treherne…he does provide a source of humor.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

DaMunky.6302:

Having literally JUST played that mission for the first time, infamous cannon fight and all, I think I finally understand it.

The final showdown with Zhaitan ISN’T a fight. People all get disappointed because they’re expecting to fight him, but think about it: when was Zhaitan ever a fighter? All along, he was a chessmaster, using a large and varied stable of minions to put pressure on the heroes. Once you defeat all the pieces, he’s nothing but a helpless King. He can move one space per turn and he loses automatically the second you corner him.

The final mission isn’t a ‘fight’ with Zhaitan. It’s a chase scene.

That said, I am totally expecting we will be ‘fighting’ Primordious in the traditional sense. If that one isn’t a Warrior I don’t know who is. And I SWEAR TO GOD if they give us another “throw rocks at the boss” battle I am going to be super irritated.

This actually makes a lot of sense…but at the same time, it’s very poorly designed to have to sit and spam 2 for the final epic scene. There’s no reason he shouldn’t have been able to put up some sort of a fight to actually make it fun. After all of the great Guild Wars 1 endings, I can’t believe how badly ArenaNet messed this up.

Honestly? It’s poorly designed that the end to your personal story requires dragging along 4 other people. The rest is just things making it worse.

Honestly, the previous Living Story arch was much much better than this. Southsun has become an annoyance of massive Karka zergs that are able to completely wipe the even more massive player zergs the second they spawn. Glitchy content such as the achievements for Crab Toss which still need to be addressed and have locked players out for days now from completing them as the even draws to a close have only caused worry and frustration.

Molten Facility had very engaging and well-thought out design and mechanics, while the two dungeon instances of Southsun have been a source of frustration for many. Molten Facilities taught the crucial mechanics needed for the boss through the weapons testing segment near the start. Canach’s Lair failed to give much if any indication as to how to handle the fight properly.

Southsun as a whole, while well-intentioned is very brutal on many players, and very annoying when you find yourself suddenly in the middle of a massive spawn of deadly hostiles. Glitchy content, poor dungeon design, I think that the wise choice would be to return to a Flame and Frost style of delivery for Living Stories, taking more time to tell the story and create stronger content.

And please, please, extend crab toss. Many have been unable to complete the glitched achievements through no fault of their own. Please consider treating it such as the Flame and Frost bonfire, taking away the chest rewards in it but allowing people to play and complete their achievements who were caught in the terrible glitch that has plagued Crab Toss for several days now.

Living story well for me is just a concept that actually doesn’t work the way you are doing it now. It’s billed as major exciting event but to me they fall short. Here few things I felt from my experience of it.

Flame and Frost was a nice event. It had a great story, nice instance and was compelling with its voice acting and cutscenes. my only issue with it would be the time scale. it was spaced out so much the whole experience lost any sense of urgency or that these nations were in peril. But the dungeon added was well designed and the bosses were a welcome well thought out challenge that made players engage and rely on their skills as players. I really enjoyed this event

Southsun Cove however just falls miles short. For me the island itself is just boring, the mobs are all over powered and woefully unbalanced spawn populations at events leads to an uninspiring experience. The island is practically made up of 4 species thats it… The story was wafer thin & flat. The whole experience lacked anything that was polished. I just feel that with such a beautiful and fantastically enjoyable world such as the Tyria you have created “why did you do this?”. I am bewildered by Southsun Cove. The island is “not fun” it feels irrelvant and alien to the world of Tyria it lacks any resemblance to the level of quality you display in the rest of the world.

This world has lived in shadow from a pair of demon’s wings
But none here fear the future or the darkness that it brings
The monster puts on quite a show, expecting us to yield
But there’s just one course of action when we take up sword and shield

Bash the dragon! Smash the dragon!
Drive it right back into its den
Bash the dragon! Smash the dragon!
May it never rise up again

I have a crazy love for this song already. Hope it’s played in-game during the event at some point.

I was so let down too that I walked in and was suddenly just fighting him. I mean, realisticly it makes sense that Canach sees an intruder and just attacks, but it’s contrary to the whole GW2 theme. Where’s the monologuing? Where’s the “surrender or die” dialogue? Where’s the Canach voice saying “give up!!”

It felt very anti-climactic.

And why am I supposed to read the chat to know that he’s arming his mines? Shouldn’t that blink on screen or have an audible cue? Couldn’t Khiel be behind me screaming “look out, it’s gonna blow!”?

Canach fight is so utterly broken, it’s literally unbeatable for me. Horrible instance.

Niyo.5920:

But what I meant at my post was not that the player is sure that he/she deactivated the mine. I asked if you are sure that Canach hasn’t reactivated them.

I’ve checked the chat logs and the combat logs. Canach did nothing to affect the false-positive mine, which is what hacks me off.

As an example, I tried to figure out the issue last night. Knowing that false-positive mine results could happen, I was cautious before getting close to any mine. On one mine, I hit the poison cloud ray and it turned green. After a few seconds of my paranoid waiting, it instantly reverts back to the red hostile state. My response was to hit it with the poison ray again. Green…. then red once again. <Bleep it!> Just to be sure, I tried to immediately hit the bugged mine for a 3rd time and it immediately flip flopped back to the hostile state.

During that period of 10-15 seconds, there were no chat log messages about Canach re-arming the mines. I hit that mine consecutively for x3 times and it still flipped back, as if taunting me. This is the kind of issue that we’re complaining about. It is simply unfair and malicious.

Why would this title be any different from any other title where people have the option to use teamwork to make it easier?

Yo you guys should think about a T-shirt that says “Faren is my Homeboy”.

I might buy that.

I hope that if/when they bring whips into the game that it will be a new weapon type.

I think whips should be available to thief (think catwoman), necro (for their minions), ranger (?) and if I have my way, engineer, but I have no excuse for this, I’d jut love to be able to use a whip on my main. It is a ranged weapon after all, even if it is a rather short range.

So I hope it’s not just a scepter skin; I don’t think whips suit guardians or elementalists at all. (Mesmers: debatable for style.)

I mean you don’t really toss the crab since you’re supposed to keep hold of it, if anything it should be called Crab Grab.

StriderShinryu.6923:

As this debate continues, especially now that it now involves the personal story and the side story of the dungeons, I’ve found myself wondering what the anti-forced grouping crowd would feel about an alternative where there are essentially 2 ways to complete the story step in question.

For example, taking the Flame and Frost arc, what if Brahamm storming the Molten Facilities in a group required dungeon was one path and Rox needing your assistance in building some sort of device to help the freed refugees was the other. Completing either path would advance you to the next part of the arc, or you could to both if you wanted. The story told in the act of completing each arc, however, would of course be different. Obviously, you wouldn’t need to do the forced grouping to progress but you would need to do it if you really wanted the entire story.

That’s pretty much what I’ve been asking for, really, with competion of either of those tasks unlocking the way to the final story scenes with Rox and Braham, which in turn is the last tick for the overall completion achievement. Though again, what would be even better is having this kind of choice at every stage.

StriderShinryu.6923:

As this debate continues, especially now that it now involves the personal story and the side story of the dungeons, I’ve found myself wondering what the anti-forced grouping crowd would feel about an alternative where there are essentially 2 ways to complete the story step in question.

For example, taking the Flame and Frost arc, what if Brahamm storming the Molten Facilities in a group required dungeon was one path and Rox needing your assistance in building some sort of device to help the freed refugees was the other. Completing either path would advance you to the next part of the arc, or you could to both if you wanted. The story told in the act of completing each arc, however, would of course be different. Obviously, you wouldn’t need to do the forced grouping to progress but you would need to do it if you really wanted the entire story.

The “band-aid” fix for the F&F debacle would be something like this. If they care about the player base at all, they will push a quick fix that will allow us to complete the story with out having to do the dungeon.

However, I really want to stress that this was a bad design decision, they knew it was a bad design decision, there were alternatives that would have been much better, but, for what ever reason, they chose the path of least resistance and most harm.

They acknowledged that they knew a 5-man dungeon would tick off a lot of players, so why do it? As I’ve said before, the instanced content from Month Three scaled just about perfectly. I find it metaphysically impossible to believe that they couldn’t have produced a more in depth, scaling instance for the finale that would have looked and played almost identically to the dungeon we did get. Some things would have had to been done differently, or been designed to intelligently alter the script based on party size, but they could have given us a very satisfying ending in the same setting, with the same story and much the same game play, and done it as a scalable instance.

I’m still as dumbfounded as I was when we first learned that they intended to end the four month LS event with a dungeon. I haven’t found any reasons or thinking that make the decision any more logical or acceptable.

Jemmi.6058:

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Jemmi.6058:

The dungeons are portrayed as mandatory as the personal story. That is, neither are mandatory. They are only needed if you want the story.

And that’s the crux of the issue with me. The story is given to us without any need to group. We’re shown the vast majority of the personal story without any need to group.

Then after we’ve gotten invested in following the story, suddenly we need to group to see the end.

It’s like watching Game of Thrones for the entire season then finding out you have to go out to bar with 4 of your friends (not 3 friends or 7 friends but only 4) to see the last 20 mins of the season finale. Sure you can do it, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.

The point of what others were saying, and that I was adding on to, was that Personal Story Dungeons were shown to you at level 30. This is hardly tacked on at the end. These are as much a part of the story as the Arah Story mode.

Except…they aren’t Personal Story dungeons, they’re the story of Destiny’s Edge and what they did after they ran away from that meeting in LA, leaving you to go gather the Pact and such to save the world without them. Arah needs to be split—the first part, where you finish up getting DE back together and help them jack a ride to the Big Battle needs to remain a dungeon, just like the rest of the story. But the part actually at the battle, where you lead the Pact allies you’ve been collecting through the Personal story into the fight, (and have the Edge swoop in A-Team style), through to beating the Big Bad? That should be group-optional, same as the entire rest of that story.

Let me, for the record, state:

I am NOT against ‘group content’. Neither am I against 5 man dungeons.

I am against content which forces you to form an organized party when, and only when, it is presented as the conclusion to an (until now) entirely soloable (or unpartied dynamic group event) chain of ‘personal storyline’/‘living storyline’ content.

Guild Wars 2 offered a constantly changing ‘personal story’, updated frequently. It offered the ability to complete group content without the need to form a party.

Tell me, what is ‘personal’ about doing a long chain of solo content only to see the ‘wrap-up’ of the party leader’s story, and not your own, in a 5 man dungeon with 4 other strangers?

I’m not saying to remove 5 man content. If anything, add more and make it a completely separate story from the solo content; much like the ’Destiny’s Edge’ storyline. But please, don’t tack it onto the end of my soloable personal or living story content.

ForAce.1943:

This is MMO, not Single Player game! Come on ppl!

Im hope in this dungeon, will be parts where party must cooperate, and final fight will looks like fight with frog in SAB, where we need some kind of strategy to win.

God, I wish you people (not you specifically) but all of “you” who continue to spout the “but its an MMO” mantra would just STFU.

I personally loathe this 5 man dungeon garbage. I DONT WANT to spend my leisure time waiting around for hours to get a group together, where maybe I might actually be in one where all of the group members actually stay in the group for the entire run!
I want to get in the game, and play the kitten game, not spend hours on end socializing, or simply waiting in town spamming LFG.

This 5 man BS was a horrible decision IMHO. I’ve finished my personal story, now I have nothing else to do, and have completely lost interest in the game simply because I cannot explore the dungeons, etc. What point is there in participating in the “living story” if the only way I can complete it is to group up for a dungeon?

Silicato.4603:

Braham, on the contrary, I don´t like him. He looks to me like the eternal secondary, behind of the real protagonists.

Which is perfect. We don’t want another Kormir or Trahearne taking the spotlight from the players.

Automatically show up in your inventory. I play a warrior in WvW one of the top guilds on one of the top servers, and my job is to push through and let our back line kill down everyone. However, with all the constant movement, and the slight lag before bag spawns, the only opportunity I have to grab them is to walk back or to search for them (if they didn’t despawn) after a 5+ minute fight. However, if I walk back, I’m not helping that team. As well, if I’m frontline, I have a lot more chances to die, and thus I won’t be alive to pick up bags.

While I don’t mind the idea of picking up loot (only if you live through it and you have the opportunity to pick it up), I don’t like the idea that I don’t get my credit for the kill (i.e. Mark of Honor). Is there any discussion from devs on this, or is it a moot point that I’m trying to fight for here?

Just a thought with Loot Bags in WvW… what would be nice is if they (the actual loot bags) could be made to appear directly in your inventory and if they were stackable items (to 250). This would eliminate the entire loot issues in WvW, including the potential problem of inventory being full were an “auto loot” system implemented.

They should be either soul bound or account bound obviously. It would be nice after a hard day toiling away in WvW to be able to relax by opening the loot bags at my leisure, seeing what goodies are inside…

I’d like to chip in my opinion here.

I tried this dungeon on patch day and got through it with a PUG. We strategized and worked out how to do it all. Tonight, however, I tried it with my wife, brother, and friends (three of whom are experienced raiders/dungeoneers from other MMOs), and we weren’t able to complete the boss fight after many wipes. Everyone in my group was pretty frustrated that we couldn’t finish, especially given the limited time that this dungeon is available.

I personally enjoyed the mechanics of the boss fight, however, I would suggest for future content to implement a casual or easy mode. I always believed Guild Wars 2 was developed for the everyday person (40 hr/wk job), but this was just too rough on my group. My brother really enjoys lore and story, and to be cut off from it after battling our way through the dungeon was extremely disappointing to him. My friends both prefer to play as melee characters, but were quickly pinned by the berserker due to his insta-teleport one-hit suction wave attack. Yes, I know this can be avoided by dodging away, but your out of luck if your endurance is too low, subsequently being knocked down and blasted into a fire aoe that lasts for over 30 seconds, leaving little chance for revival by party members.

Thank you for an awesome dungeon, but in the future, please evaluate your content for the everyday player. It should have been a challenge equivalent to the other story-mode dungeons, not an explorable.

I truly enjoyed the bosses, i did it 3 times, with some people went smooth and easy and with one of those groups..well..awful.

What i loved most was the presentation like if they were the bad guys from Power Rangers or some other old Japanese show XDD

PS: i would shorten the length of the dungeon, there is a point where fighting the trash mobs its boring

While I support MOST things that aNet has done, this is ridiculous and completely wrecks any chance of time-restricted players to even participate.

Shame, would have looked cool on my primeval armoured warrior, too.

MatthewMedina.5419:

The periscopes did undergo some changes to hopefully make them better for all players. Also to clarify, not all periscopes have a chance to trigger the backup events. Only 3 out of 10 in each map have the events attached to them.

Usually the three you encounter in a given session XD

On the contrary, you are the one defending trial-and-error based newbie-unfriendly content with l2p. In case it wasn’t clear, the periscopes are a long way outside the game’s learning curve. Dodge-or-die style ranged cc is something bosses do, not level 2 turrets.

Someone who is new probably hasn’t worked out all the nuances of knowing when to dodge and how to predict enemy actions, because those things can only be learned through experience. An experience that will no doubt be extremely frustrating since the price of failure is dying repeatedly. Going by all the hate the periscopes have been getting and the fact that Anet nerfed them it’s not unreasonable to assume that’s exactly what’s been going on.