Guild Wars 2

Seems that RP is a poor choice of bait for Konigs.

And now you have learnt the painful truth – a wild konig rarely appears.

Please please please no more SAB. We need permanent content and we’ve already had SAB twice.

Personally I liked the raid on those boss’s It was fun, What was not fun was doing it with pugs on overflow map. while the option for that should be there it would of been nice to organize for it more with a gaint group of guildies.

Awbee.8405:

Thobek.1730:

As for your question you really need to sit back and think about this one for yourself. Ask yourself who normally plays fantasy MMO type games? who plays PC games in general? what is the percentage of gay/lesbian people (i.e. its about 3.7% in the U.S) Then ask yourself that question again and see if you can work it out for yourself. It’s not that hard, the statistics are out there.

If you want to play a game with lore made for all the neckbeard dudebro’s out there, I encourage you to check out WoW and the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Ten or something Warlords, not a single woman among them. In general, there are only two major female lore characters that do anything at the moment, and they’re both “crazy, irrational and bordering on going evil”.

Leave the refreshing non-sexism in GW2 for those of us who are so sick of the usual sexism in video games.

Depicting women as inconsiderate and lesbian women as “lesbians first, people second” is not refreshing and it is not un-sexist. It is still misogynistic, just in a different way. Might I remind you that powerful women have been stereotyped as cruel and domineering for millennia, and it has always been part of a masculine society’s negative views of women? Adding more cruel, domineering powerful women to the mix is not helping!

I don’t want to play a game full of dudebros. I want to play a game like GW2 was before Living Story: with strong female characters working together with male characters, not acting as their protectors while simultaneously verbally abusing them. I am a woman, and I want to play a game with women in it, NOT heavily stereotyped pieces of cardboard who are somehow “not sexist” merely by existing in greater numbers than usual. There are PLENTY of female protagonists in the Soul Calibur games… with a robust jiggle-engine for all their scantily-clad bits! According to League of Angels’s advertising, it’s all ABOUT women! Is that empowering? Metroid: Other M is about a woman— a woman who starts freezing up in battles she’s done twice before because OMG EMOTIONS I’M A WOMAN I MUST CRY! Is that empowering? Why then does the presence of women in this story mean that this story is empowering either?

I’m sorry if this argument seems to have derailed the topic… but this issue is inseparably intertwined with the character of Scarlet herself and with the entire Living Story, because it has been forced into the story in a way that damages both its original cause and the characters it affects. Kasmeer and Marjory’s personalities have both been entirely subsumed to their relationship (which is unhealthy in ANY relationship, but disastrous in such a visible example when lesbian relationships are so rarely shown with any shred of finesse in games as it is). Braham has been assigned all the negative images that used to be associated with women (excessive emotionality, needing to be rescued, being needy and excessively attached), for no apparent reason aside from “time to turn the tables on men now, bwahahah!” Rox has become Braham’s big manly hero who saves him, but then has to ride off into the sunset, leaving him behind as he cries womanly tears— a simple reversal of roles, not an alteration of the roles! This is not helpful, and it is embarrassing to women like me who actually liked how they— and therefore how WE— were depicted in this game before the giant personality shift.

This is not an off-topic issue. It lies at the very heart of what has gone so very wrong with Living Story. The assumption that “if you don’t like this (horribly written and damaging) lesbian relationship, you are a MAN and a BIGOT!” (not to mention the disturbingly growing tendency to treat “man” and “bigot” as the same word) is damaging and NOT conducive to any sort of positive change— if you keep writing every critic off as a bigot, you’re never going to take any constructive criticism, and your writing will just continue to deteriorate until the Living Story becomes so much of a political cartoon it turns into an overblown parody of itself.

EDIT TO ADD: I really do hate having to emphasize my own femininity so much, given that what gender I am should not have anything to do with the merits of what I say, but I have found that people on the “Kasmory is obviously empowering because they exist” side of the debate tend to believe that men cannot have valid, informed opinions on women’s issues. So I must, in order to placate the suspicion that I might be a dumb clueless man who can’t understand enlightened things and likes ugh-ugh caveman save pretty woman stories, make a big deal about what bits I have.

All dragon fights should be permanent, Anet is working on the ability to replay old/missed LS updates (hope in time for season 2). This would make it fine for dragons to be in LS. No one thinks or suggested that dragons should be temporary.

Well. No one mentioned that only sylvari can enter the dream as projection. Plot no Jutsu can accomplish anything. Some asura invention. Or Mother Tree dont mind bringing norn projection into the dream for a time being?

And I didnt mean starting characters. I meant existing characters entering the dream like Caithe did.

I see many people here complaining about the Living Story and Living World Concepts, how they work(and how they don’t), knowing two things:
- It is a revolutionary concept, period. It is trying to achieve something different, trying to give us something no other game does, envisioning a “living, breathing world”, and taking steps towards living up to it’s own manifesto.
- It is a CONCEPT. It is an IDEA. It needs WORK, and it is GROWING.

Such a great concept, and only 1 year old. Did you expect for a new idea that has never been implemented before to suddenly be at its final phase? to be entirely perfect? One of the biggest questions when the ANet Dev’s approached such a masterpiece of a vision, wasn’t whether it would work or not. IT WORKS. It does because, when you think about it, a living breathing world in an mmo, that’s the dream, and certainly attainable. No, one of the biggest questions was HOW a player-base of, anywhere between 1 and 2 decades , into mmo’s, traditional mmo’s, would receive such a different thing.

Us, the player-base, have been asking for something like this for a long time now. We didn’t just ask, as a gamer I can say that I’ve thought of it myself, and I’m proud that ANet took the risk to try it out.
The player-base shouldn’t be saying it doesn’t work.
They should be giving feedback on HOW to make it work. Because these two concepts(LS/LW) are new, they’re young, they need to grow up.
Temporary and permanent content should be placed where they have a meaning. In the first season of the LS, things could have gotten better, but tbh, I’m glad they didn’t. With this, the Dev’s learnt, and these concepts grew a bit more. If we look back on this last year, Tyria has changed, it has gone through a lot. That is proof that the idea works. If we analyze each update technically, that’s where we’ll find the flaws. I don’t call that a failure. I call that progress. And sure it may just be me, but I’m pretty sure many more think the same way I do, and as players, are interested in helping and seeing such concepts grow.

GW2 won’t change for anything, they set out to be different and that’s what ANet is going to do with it. And players such as myself will back them up. If these concepts aren’t your thing, if they aren’t “mature” enough for you to experience them, then there are two observations I can make. You were naive to think you’d get a good experience, even after 1 year of it. You should try to find another game that pleases you through its own content delivery system, since it seems as if you don’t want to be a part of this journey that is a “living breathing world”.
It’s understandable that the current status of the LS/LW concepts aren’t for everyone’s taste. Personally I’m loving it, and I can only see it get better from here on. But to say it’s a failure just after one year?

Revolutionary things were never perfected in one year. Electricity wasn’t created in one year, neither was the Internet. Games aren’t created in one year, so I’d say these two concepts are in it’s Alpha stages, and it’s great that ANet has let us be it’s testers. We didn’t pay for the LS/LW, for all I know they’re free content. We paid for a game, with a Personal Storyline, and an evolving world(theoretically) through it’s Dynamic events System, and that’s it. The rest is a bonus, that’s how I feel, and I’m happy to be given a chance to be a part of it.
So stop it with the negative feedback stating how much of a failure it is.
Don’t like it? Leave it. Simple.
Like it? Not exactly how you’d like? Think these concepts could evolve in certain areas? In all areas? Give feedback, stating your reason and your ideas.

New writers. And, preferably, writers who have played Guild Wars 1 on more than a passing occasion.

Elbegast.6970:

New writers. And, preferably, writers who have played Guild Wars 1 on more than a passing occasion.

+1

… and so it came to pass, that fateful day when Grand Marshall Trahearne himself was captured by the remnants of the forces of Zhaitan. In their great vengeance they cast him, bound and alive, into the Bottomless Pit of Endless Despair. They say to this very day travelers that have ventured near the pit can still here his final words… “This well won’t end!”

Thank you for the kind words and constructive criticism thus far, it is appreciated.

Tom Gore.4035:

#14

You do have dialogue with the NPCs. It just isn’t voiced.

Indeed, but the problem is the weight we hold in the story. With so much of the narrative driven by those cutscenes of dialogue, our character’s silence sequesters us away from being a driving force behind the action. Right now, characters keep referring to us as a part of the team and an honored friend, but the bulk of the story content’s cutscenes treat us as a common flunkie on the side bench.

For Dwayna’s delightful derriere’s sake, Frostbite has more spoken dialogue than we do! We’re not even in Snarf territory, and if we weren’t paying customers I’d but us front and center on the “dies horribly in the first act” category of minions.

Freeelancer.2860:

Nicely put and made with allot of care, OP. +1

However, there are several things I disagree with. For example I’d like that player character is moved back completely and serve as a witness (or a grunt) to the events, especially considering the complexities and effort of making PC into one of the main protagonists, but I’m sure my opinion is in minority (and even devs stated they’ll strive to improve communication between PC and NPCs), so instead I’d be content if ANet put more time in exploring the ways to improve that part of LS… and fast… because those scenes in Aftermath made me literary sweat from awkwardness (partly from implementation partly because of feeling they were forced)..

Perhaps, perhaps. However, we’re currently caught up in a weird situation where we are included as a valued member of the Scooby Gang, constantly interacting with them throughout the latter half of the Season. This is a very odd dynamic for a silent character with no major story impetus, and further highlights our lack of voice.

If they had a much broader cast and we bounced around from tale to tale, silence would suit us just fine. But to be “good friends” with five companions to the point of being included in their little guild without getting a single word in edgewise is very jarring.

DarcShriek.5829:

I disagree with point #13. Not entirely though. You see, game designers are constantly trying to push the boundaries of what a game is and where is the game space. Personally, I think articles on an official site is well within limits, as long as players are made aware of this.

To clarify point #13, the articles such as What Scarlet Saw aren’t the bone I am particularly picking here. I’m more irritated with things like this thread. The short version is that it is Angel McCoy giving the entire list of reasons why every race in Scarlet’s alliance works for her and continues to do so. While I don’t think that all of them fit (and I’d really like to see an explanation for how Scarlet found krait obelisks in the first place), it is a decent attempt to explain the motivations of each factions and what they get out of the entire endeavor. I would normally have kudos for such an effort, but there’s one major problem.

None of those cultural trends are part of the story Anet wrote. There is no discussion among Flame Legionnaires about why they are sticking with the band, Krait dialogue about a transformative experience, or anything else but blind obedience. It does not matter if the author knows the answer to a major plot hole. If they fail to address it in the story, that hole forms a massive blemish in the grand tale’s tapestry regardless of intent or introspection. As written, none of the alliances present any compelling reason why they stick with Scarlet Briar until the end, and the story they delivered is worse off as a result.

The mark of a brilliant artist is not the ideas they conceive in their minds. Everyone has ideas, many of them amazing and magnificent. An artist excels at their craft by incarnating those ideas in the reality we all share, creating art that expresses those brilliant concepts and sharing them with others. It does not matter if the writers have good ideas, they have to make them part of the story for them to have any merit.

Words unwritten tell no tales.

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 believe this is true. The Sylvari favoritism is that bad.

So it’s still there…floating ominously just waiting for a rich story to involve it….please don’t forget about this little hidden gem. Surely it was not meant solely as an easter egg holdover from GW1….. Few things in the lore captivate me more than this tower. It has since GW1.

Rabbi Rick.3194:

Having dealt with tragedy and death for years in one of my lines of work, some words from my other line of work seems always appropriate in these situations:

“And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep” – Don Juan
Canto IV – Byron

Just my two coppers worth,

This is how I think my Sylvari viewed the laughter. He picked the “like pulling a dandelion and getting the root” option, which was very much meant not as a joke in my mind, but a sad metaphor for what he had to do – kill a living piece of the garden to prevent it from killing the flowers and grass. And it wasn’t as messy as he thought (digging for the roots).

When everyone laughed I think it might have made my boy sylvari quite sad. He didn’t mean it to be funny. I was actually really angry. But Marjory had nearly died and Scarlet’s actions made it clear she’d kill them before giving them the time of day… plus recalling a string of life or death situations over drinks leads to a strange mix of sadness and laughter. And to be fair it was a really apt analogy and very fitting coming from a sylvari about a sylvari. So I think he’s made his peace with their lightheartedness. They had somehow come through all that with their lives, despite Scarlet’s best attempts at making it otherwise. They all deserve a laugh, especially Jory.

The other responses were semi-terrible. I would have liked something that said, “She was mentally ill, she was not herself. I don’t regret my actions but I don’t want to joke about murdering someone that could have been me in another life.”

If anything, being lauded for the murder is the worst thing to him, though, worse than admitting you feel something positive in the face of so much death. Instead of how he’s helped countless citizens, he’s known for one murder. Ugh that rubbed my little sylvari absolutely the wrong way when Magnus shouted that praise at Fort Marriner. Though, I think it’ll help him in the future; at least one person is willing to give that sylvari some “good PR” considering the swell in anti-sylvari sentiment that’s going around.

Everyone has different reactions to different situations, and in a fantasy world where our sense of morality can be completely different, it’s not possible to apply every option that would encompass every player’s choice. Remember, they were at a bar drinking away the fight, so they were inebriated, with the exception of Taimi who was having some juice and even she didn’t seem too thrilled with Scarlet’s demise). They were celebrating a victory over a mass murderer and her machinations as well as their survival from the confrontation. This also took place a while afterwards, as Braham could sort of stand on his broken leg and Marjory was able to move around some.

Not to mention the early bits that were datamined had a completely different resolution, which sounded dreary and rather mean spirited. I didn’t see them breaking open a scarlet shaped pinata and cackle over the demise and laugh at her death. You need to take it with a grain of salt, because it sounds less like honoring the dead and more of being a stick in the mud.

“We managed to take down Scarlet and came back alive. Glad we’re all safe and no one will suffer from her anymore!”

With a steel-eyed glaze “We should mourn her death, it was a life we just took…”

In a rather similar situation, when I was at an airport over Ireland heading home for RnR during deployment (few months in hell), we were watching tv and they announced that Bin Laden had been located and and attempt was made to capture him, but ended up with his death. I don’t remember anyone sitting there saying that we need to be respectful of his death. At least I don’t think anyone was, there was a lot of people also on the flight from deployment happy to hear the news and cheering. I guess in the eyes of a lot of people on the forums, we should of been quiet and somber, waiting for the next flight to take us back to Afghanistan.

This is, after all, a rather complicated situation to discuss, since you’ll have hard arguments for both sides, though mostly standing on a soap box saying we should or shouldn’t do this and that because it was a life or it’s fictional. Also, don’t forget alcohol was involved.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Elleven.6541:

Except fiction can also be a reflection of the society we are living in.

Only if you attribute it as such. Stop treating a fictional fantasy game like a reflection of reality (BECAUSE IT kittenING ISNT) and there will be no problems.

It’s incredibly naive to pretend that fictional stories have no relationship to reality. If such were true, we essentially wouldn’t have religion or mythology and none of the great novels or works of a thousand influential authors would matter at all.

Now, i’m not trying to say that GW2 is on that level but the point remains that any work of fiction is the product of an author who, in turn, is a product of a culture and any sort of story they are going to tell is going to necessarily be burdened by cultural baggage. You simply cannot tell a story about “people” (humans or anthropomorphic characters) who engage with each other in any sort of relatable manner without having real world social paradigms come into play.

One the the basic foundations of writing fiction is that you need things like “believability” and “versimilitude” in order for the reader to be engaged, and that entails structures and scenarios that echo real world things like behavior and culture. If a story lacks these things to a significant degree, it essentially becomes an unrecognizable jumble of random events.

Well, then at least there’ll have been some fun had.

In GW1, there were Canthan (basically Asian) ritualists, a class that used ancestor worship, spirits, and the ashes of dead heroes to fight their enemies. They used stationary spirits to create either field-type effects for allies or attacked enemies like turrets. That’s essentially where the concept of engineer turrets in GW2 came from, and the rest of the class’s design came from the Renaissance/industrial era setting of present-day Tyria.

Guardians are essentially the successors to the monks, paragons, and dervishes of GW1. Monks were healers whose powers were derived from their faith in the human gods, and dervishes were Elonian (North African/Middle Eastern) nomads who used scythes and earth- and wind-based attacks that were also fueled by their prayers to the gods. Paragons were Elonian heavy armor users who attacked with throwing spears and used shouts and chants to buff party members, and had a lot to do with the burning condition. They also had some ties to the human gods, but their powers were more about commanding and inspiring their allies while attacking from the back lines. In GW2, guardians obviously couldn’t be based on the 6 gods because the norn are shamanists/animists, the charr are atheists, the sylvari are agnostics, and the asura are basically Buddhist scientists, so instead of faith in divinity, the class is based on faith in one’s self and beliefs. The guardian has burning from the monk and the paragon, shouts from the paragon, self- and party-buffs from the paragon and dervish, and spirit weapons from the ritualist. There’s also healing from all 4 of those classes, each of which had at least a moderate amount of healing ability (monks were the #1 healers in GW1, and ritualists were pretty good too).

I personally have a sylvari engineer. I figured that since the sylvari are naturally curious and like exploring and learning about the world, it would make sense for at least some of them to enjoy discovering how to direct their curiosity and intelligence towards such things machines and chemistry/alchemy. I don’t RP, but from an RP perspective, a sylvari engineer might have a special insight regarding the natural materials and chemicals used to create gunpowder, flamethrower fuel, and elixirs, and might have better designs for turrets and other devices because of his understanding of how organic structures work and his knowledge of physics in nature.

Mystic Starfish.2586:

engineers were created by charr, especially with the invention of gunpowder which wasn’t present in gw1. So sylvari engineer is a rather new combination. Guardians and Thieves also weren’t present in gw1, but thieves are basically updated assassins and guardians are an amalgamation of monks, paragons, and rits, which were all gw1 professions.

nitpickery but the charr didn’t create blackpowder. Dwarves did.There is even a dude named Blackpowder. The charr took the invention from the dwarven ruins. They did, however, invent guns – not cannons though.

GW2 is a superior game to almost every MMO in the western industry atm and Wildstar/ESO are both average ones. People would like WS/ESO for a fresh experience however neither bring anything major to the industry.

I don’t play a Sylvari, but I hear NPC’s can give hostile responses to Sylvari players talking to them (even if they are the hero – a bit odd, but prob difficult to programme out)

From an RP perspective, this is an interesting development. And is much more in keeping with the Living World ideals as well. Perhaps the world will turn on Sylvari hrto further actions from the Nightmare Court. A hostile uprising against the Pale Tree or maybe just a racial story of redemption. Some interesting possibilites could lay ahead.

Last year it was said Sylvari were going to get a big lore drive and we look like we are heading into it. They are by far the most under developed race right now.

Don’t even think about it, meat sacks we’ll gut you even before you make it any where near the grove

If Sylvari are born of the tree, then can they be turned into firewood?

Uhhhhh, officer I was just trying to make sure it was all there…..

Silly bookahs can’t stop this Asuran Engi from claiming the vaults contents! =P

I can vouch for Kiel being present on the Breachmaker.

Her gaze as she revived me burned into my soul.

I like what they are doing here, creating a new conflict for the Sylvari and deepening their history. I just hope Anet doesn’t overplay it.