Guild Wars 2

Tutorials and new player training.

Greetings and salutations.

With Season 1 of the Living Story drawing to a close, it seems appropriate to offer review and reflection of everything that has come thus far. Sadly, there is much to consider, as the brand new path trod by Anet has many missteps and mishaps along the way.

Rather than talk about individual flaws, I thought it might be best to take a stab at the overall writing style of the Living Story and the narrative flaws it continues to exhibit. Plot holes come and go, individual complaints will always remain, but the best way to help Season 2 is to consider the pitfalls of Season 1 from a writing and gaming perspective. And so, I thought I would offer up a bit of constructive criticism in silly infographic format.

For your consideration, Fifteen Lessons From Fifteen Months of Scarlet Briar.

I just visited the Dead End bar.

So… Hero. …How did it feel to stomp out Scarlet? She asks me…

…I thought I’d offer some suggestions, to add the list of possible answers that you can select:

1. How should I know, I never made it past the Knights Guards.

2. Empty. When I got there she was already half dead. I just put on a creepy back pack, stumbled over a few orange stains on the floor, and she groaned and died at the sight of me. It was almost like we were dating or something.

3. I’ll get back to you on that… I will consult the one who actually killed her before the patch.

4. I wouldn’t know for sure, but if it was anything like killing that same single Knight’s Guard 17 times, I think it would have been pretty satisfying.

5. Scarlet’s hologram didn’t really exist silly, it was just another one of Scarlet’s tricks. If it did exist, we would have seen it after dozens of battles. …Beware, Scarlet is alive and well.

6. Wut?

7. Brahm doesn’t really want to hear this either. Get him another beer please.

8. That’s a Dead End question.

9.

Hmmm…

So we were told one thing then offered the “things have changed” line as an excuse?

Nice. PR is really not working for you at the moment.

Here’s the thing from the perspective of an ordinary player, and of course is purely my opinion, I do not claim to speak on behalf of anyone else. You tell us pretty much nothing. You keep us in the dark and make blanket statements about things that will come in X amount of days/weeks/months. In fact, you make these statements regularly in the form of big announcements. So we wait, and get nothing. I understand fundamentally we don’t work for you therefore we don’t need know the inner workings of your company or the decision processes that go on. We are however your customers. Your customer complaints are dealt with by moderators who give infractions and delete posts that are “unflattering”. If you don’t allow for criticism how will you know what we think? Sure, I get it – the internet is full of people that like to complain. But Arena Net, we have a legitimate complaint here.

You told us this game wouldn’t be about grind, that people don’t want to grind, or in the words of one of your employees “hey I swung a sword”. Guess what the game is? Grind, and a whole lot of “oh hey I swung a sword again, that’s great”. Then we get an “announcement” to look ahead – I believe the same person made this announcement too, that new features like precursor crafting would be in by the end of 2013. Then we were told well no, sorry we didn’t have time. Now we’re told the game has changed and we can’t have certain things any time soon.

What changed? Why didn’t you have time? From our perspective, all we see is small updates every 2 weeks. The last 3 LS updates were tiny – the same map with “events” that rotated every hour. That’s not a lot of programming there -if it was it certainly didn’t seem like it. We had the introduction of a wurm, a marionette and had a background LS component previously, but the last few – one map, two events that rotate every hour. So what is taking up all the time? Along that line – what has changed? The game went from being one where no grind was on offer to being a hugely grindy game. Precursors – buying them off the trading post is NOT legendary. It’s grind. New armor – grind for it. Nothing has changed. You added a few cosmetic changes, new armors, a new looking way of showing your achievements, a wallet, you added a few maps to PvP ………….. why the delay? You give out information on stuff that is meaningless and keep everything else hidden like it’s going to be mind shatteringly awesome when you reveal it. The problem is, we’ve now been conditioned to not believe you. You make grand statements constantly – eg. “no grind”, “this will rock Tyria to its core” (if you think the way Scarlet was dealt with after a year of her was equal to “rocking Tyria to its core” we clearly have different ideas of what that means. If you think the showing of a dragon mouth opening is that rocking to the core … it was a cut scene not an actual dragon), and you never, follow through. Instead you offer platitudes and excuses and add more junk to the gem store in the hope we’ll see past the misdirection by being distracted by the new “shinies”.

You took how many weeks off over Xmas? Yep, you’re allowed a break. Did the whole company have time off at the same time? You have how many teams working on LS content? You have claimed you have more “working behind the scenes” on something else. Is any of this true? Is it a case you are feeding us fluff hoping we won’t notice you consistently fail to follow through on things you claim will happen? The last few months seem like you have given up. Small updates only and nothing that would classify as huge. The same LA map with two different events that rotated every hour. That’s an hour of game play. It took you 3 months to make one map and 2 x one hour game play. Then you say you don’t have time to include things you mentioned last year.

To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. Before people come in and tell me I’m QQing. I’m a customer and player of this game just like everyone else. I’m allowed to express frustration and disappointment. Am I being too harsh? I don’t think so. Am I surprised that something we were told would happen isn’t? Sadly, not anymore. What would surprise me would be if they said “hey we’re going to introduce X” then they actually did it.

You showed a dragon mouth opening and mention it at the bar scene … I’ll believe it when I see it. For now, I’m taking the view that it won’t happen because you wont have time or the game has changed too much.

So months after what was talked about coming in late 2013… is still in development.

Honestly, the amount of “we’re looking into it”, “it’s coming at some point”, “soon”, etc things.. it’s just well.. disappointing to put it as nicely as I can. :/ (edit: though it’s better to have news, that no news which keeps us all wondering.)

This makes me angry beyond my limits (censoring myself to avoid unnecessary infractions)

Why should I have to farm gold and then give it to some (beep) who only happens to have gotten lucky with RNG ?

How is getting lucky with RNG translate into legendary ?

Stop placing bandages on it, it needs stitches !

Let me spell it out for you, having precursors attainable via RNG only is NOT acceptable any longer it has been more than 1 year already.

You know what, I’m done with this (censoring myself again) !

Why do I even bother ?

I will enjoy the game for what it is, when I can’t take the (censoring myself again) anymore I’ll just quit and look for greener pasture.

scarlet scarlet and scarlet bla bla bla devs i`m waiting for sab !! april is coming don`t fail us .

Shonie.5297:

I hope the current Lion’s Arch gets demolished so brutally that it won’t be recognizable.
The whole area just reeks of poverty.
Then we can rebuild it to something more aesthetically pleasing and modern.

It could keep the same sort of aesthetics for all I care I just want it to be built up to be the actual CITY it was always pitched as. I mean outside of the bank/trade hub area there’s next to nothing. Something like four bars and a dozen houses, that’s not a city that’s a village at best.

Why doesn’t Kiel just show the Captains Council the trailer for Escape From Lions Arch? Surely then they’d beef up their defenses!

As the Scarlet arc has gone by i’ve been enjoying it more and more. Anet is really starting to get good with the living story (Tower, Marionette, and Edge of the mists were all good imo). I still dislike the Scarlet storyline in general but I’ve been coming to like it more due to the higher amounts of storytelling. I just wish they had done that from the start.

That being said…If the “change the face of Tyria forever” is ONLY the destruction of Lion’s Arch, i’m going to be very disappointed as I would be expecting something much more.

I want this.
I want to see the world changing, and I don’t care if the changes are made by Scarlet, Abaddon or Lord Faren.

Next time vote Evon Gnashblade and this won’t happen.

Oh heavens no. That would be convenient.

Did you hear about the Sylvari couple that filed for divorce?

They felt it was time to turn over a new leaf.