Guild Wars 2

Tough luck
I’m very curious about the glass now though…

Absorption perhaps, but not reflect.
And considering off hand axe for ranger already does that… I’d look for something different for the warrior. Perhaps damage reduction during the channel would be good.

Its functionality was supposed to be “grab an enemy projectile and store it to later blast it back at them”.
It’s currently used as an awkwardly implemented 4secs of immunity/personal reflect.

Assuming they want to stick with the spirit of the intended use of this skill, I propose that it absorbs all damage taken for a short duration(up to a cap), and then can be activated again to blast it back as some sort of Mesmer-styled projectile. Regardless of whether the damage is melee or ranged, it absorbs it all (only storing it up to a certain cap though) and then can be thrown back as a beam or a ball or a wave or w.e
This both keeps to the spirit of it’s original intended use, while also preserving the current community use, while eliminating the awkwardness.

I like the idea of swapping places with a clone, but feel it’s better suited to a mantra where you can pop it multiple times in a short duration before triggering the cooldown.

I think leaving the rank system in is a good idea, it’s a nice long term progression that really doesn’t interfere with anything else.
I don’t understand why you’d remove the finishers from it though(if that ends up being the plan), and below rank 60 the rate really doesn’t need changing. At this point the expectation and strength of the system is that it takes a long while, and the ranks are a monument to the time you’ve spent playing. The rarity of the higher ranks is really something special.

“Currently”? As in time sensitive?
Is this going to last a few days, or is it going to continue until the rank system is gutted and replaced with ladders some time in the future?

Windwalker.7421:

And I can confirm that you, sir, don’t know your kitten from a hole in the ground.

Sorry, these horribly ignorant blanket statements can not just be ignored. If you honestly think that ANet programmers, or pretty much any games programmer working for a competitive development house are anything remotely resembling lazy, you really need a reality check.

I bet almost none of the ANet developers have the time to play nearly as many hours of GW2 as you do, because they’re spending that time working on the game instead.

And people wonder why devs don’t spend more time with their fan base. Must feel really awesome to work 70+ hour weeks for months at a time, only to be called “lazy” by people who probably spend way too much time playing a game. (Your game! Which is the kind of irony that probably is what keeps them working.)

I’m a network engineer… it’s an in-crowd joke, not a negative blanket statement. You have a lot to do, so you want to spend the least amount of effort on each individual task possible and work in a highly efficient manner.
Re-arrange that slightly and it turns into “we’re a lazy bunch who does everything through the route of least effort/clicks/keystrokes/run scripts”.

Leaving that aside, I didn’t say it in an insulting manner in the first place, and backed it up saying that they will get the job done

Pyroatheist.9031:

Not quite accurate.

The way traits work, including phantasmal haste, is that they actually call a different skill. This is evident when you see bugs crop up where they make a change to a skill, and forget to change the traited version, or the traited version has a different cooldown (this was the case with blink + long range manipulations).

So, what phantasmal haste does is it makes you summon a phantasm that has a different cooldown for the skill it uses. It doesn’t actually modify the phantasm skill recharge, it just uses a different one. It would be a 100% new and different thing to be able to affect the rate at which a phantasm uses skills from the mesmer.

Ah, good point.
Though 100% new to us(player) is different from 100% new to Arena Net. Just because we haven’t seen it implemented doesn’t mean it, or functionality similar to it, aren’t already made. It’s not like they implement every single skill concept they try.
One way or the other, it’s only a few more days till we can confirm it

Carpboy.7145:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Carpboy.7145:

Except the Mesmer has to have 3 illusions out at all times, as well as having to be dealing damage to get the heal. Eles and thieves already have the same thing.

Have fun making sure a pu mesmer doesn’t have 3 illusions up

You don’t honestly think im suggesting for you to kill all illusions first, then focus the Mesmer, just to limit their healing a tiny bit? Comprehension and common sense are great tools. The big reason its worse than healing signet is that the heal is every time you hit, not every second like HS is. However, i could see an interesting build out of either GS or staff with their multi hit autos. But this isn’t the Mesmer forum so w/e

What do you mean “every time you hit”? So far as I can tell from the tooltip, Signet of the Ether passively heals you over time based on how many Illusions you have out. It has nothing to do with hitting your enemy or attack rate.
http://dulfy.net/2013/12/05/gw2-new-healing-skills-for-next-patch/

Pyroatheist.9031:

I said this before, but I’ll say it again. I’m fairly certain that the heal will refresh the phantasm summons.

Causing the phantasms to attack again is a functionality that does not make sense. Phantasms are separate units. You the Mesmer can’t actually control them, they just fire off their skills.

This would be a fully new functionality to code, and something to remember is that coders are lazy. It’s much easier to copy paste functionality than write new stuff.

I can confirm that it is an industry rule that computer people are lazy and will take the route of least clicks. That said, they also get the job done. So I wouldn’t rule it out based on that alone.
We also don’t know how it’s coded, such functionality might be fairly available to them without a lot of work, perhaps even already there and simply not implemented into current skills. We do know that illusion attack rate can be readily manipulated, as seen with Phantasmal Haste.

AndrewSX.3794:

Now, if the traits for signets weren’t garbage or placed so oddly or other signets aside this, the active of Inspiration and passives of midnight/illusions were worth to make a build around, a signetmesmer could be a option.

Sadly that’s not the case…..but still, remember that you can trait this heal for giving you Distorsion, removing conditions and having lower CD.

The best part of the potential signet build is probably Blurred Inscriptions, but it’s so redundant with the current signets. Why would I need to be invulnerable while my enemy is blind or stunned? And I’m certainly not going to want to kill my healing and make an ill-timed Phantasm attack refresh just for the sake of 1 second of distortion.

On another note, if the passive healing ticks at fairly lengthy intervals it could actually be good for other builds and require skilled play to take advantage of. This is kind of pushing it in realistic situations, but let’s say it ticked once per 5 seconds. A good shatter mesmer would eventually get a feel for when the heals come in and may be able to time his clone generation/shatters to match.

Dr Ritter.1327:

did you not read my post? the patch is the exact same as last years i already know what it consists of

This patch will also last 3 living story updates (6 weeks), one of which is this Tuesday, the next is Christmas eve, and the last soon after the new year.
So this patch is the same as last year (as Anet planned and stated, might I add…) doesn’t mean the one on Christmas Eve will be.
There may even be a ‘new years’ themed patch going off what they said on the release page: “Celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next in this six-week winter festival!”.

And even if this is the only Christmas themed patch we get, it still has nothing to do with the living story. The original intention (which Anet did tell us) was to re-release holiday patches(adding to them here and there) so that they can focus on what ever else they’re developing at the time.

Edit: it would seem there will NOT be an update on Christmas eve (not entirely surprising now that I think about it). Rest of my post still stands.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ll respond to this to get the general idea out to everyone. Implementing a system that is in other games, older games or not, that is not in our game at all is a very time consuming project. It is not as simple as just copying and pasting some HTML code. Not only do we have to build it ourselves, but it has to fit with the design of our game both visually and from a systems standpoint. So, building any system of this sort, even one that was a direct copy of one in another game or product, would still be a significant project for us. Which isn’t a reason not to do it, but is a factor in determining when we would want to do those things.

Would it be possible to take the current party system as a basis and extend that into a larger group format though?
Not saying that’s necessarily the best route to take, just wondering if it’s a possibility.

Nikku.3562:

Arewn.2368:

subsequent “let’s kill off any character that starts to look interesting” during the Pact portion of the story that was bad.

I half agree. Trahearne had a couple of not-entirely-boring moments, but the peripheral cast were much more interesting. It was annoying to have them killed off, but even so their deaths had a strong emotional impact on me. I couldn’t care less about Tybalt for example, but when relatively minor characterTegwen died I was gutted. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and certainly goes to show that Anet can do great writing.

To be honest, I didn’t find Trahearn that bad in the first place. He just came in at a bad time and then, as you mentioned, was the focus while surrounded by more interesting characters.

A signet heal skill? awesome
An ability that lets us refresh our phantasm’s attack? pretty interesting, sounds good.
A heal skill that promotes sitting in stealth with a bunch of phantasms out doing the work? delete it please.

Seriously, I thought the point of adding new skills was to flesh out and strengthen underplayed/weak builds that need the synergy, not to add to an already strong and popular build and reward an AI based play style.

It’s just a leak/data mined, so there’s a real possibility that this isn’t what we’ll end up with, but it is worrying.

Sub-commanders
Allow a commander to designate a member of their squad as a ‘sub-commander’.
This could be as simple as letting commanders put markers over the heads of their squad members. This would allow that squad member to act as a point of reference during confrontations (everyone go to STAR marker sub-comm.) or split the squad into smaller groups that act together.

Too lazy for a full list, so I’ll just do best and worst.
For me the worst fractal is Dredge (surprise surprise), even with a good group in a smooth run it’s annoying, and the mechanics are fairly dull.
Favorite is actually a boss fractal, the Molten Duo. It’s challenging yet fair, and you can mix things up by changing the kill order.

I completely agree with the notion that the biggest fault in the “Scarlet Arc” lies in the delivery, not in the character herself.
However, regardless of her potential as a character, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s currently not fulfilling that potential and is bad.
I’m also not buying the whole “it’s better that they screw up this new stuff then the old stuff we’re all waiting for” because they have not screwed up everything and have showed that they are capable of putting out good stuff.
Flame and Frost (leaving aside the release pace being too slow), Dragonbash→aetherblades, Cutthroat Politics, and even the first part of Queen’s Jubilee were all good stories. They were then cheapened by receiving “Scarlet did it” as their tie up instead of getting a good ending.

He brings up the personal story too, but I feel that he made an unjust brush over of it as “bad”. The racial components of the PS were widely enjoyed, and the Order missions were quiet good. They even had good characters.
It was their poorly timed introduction of Traheran (seriously? right when our BFF dies?) who then takes the spotlight, and subsequent “let’s kill off any character that starts to look interesting” during the Pact portion of the story that was bad.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Arewn.2368:

They reworked how you progress, so they reset your progress. Don’t really feel like it’s something to get up in arms about, and it’s a fairly normal practice in MMOs.

Well they will / reworked how you Progress in wvw as well and in wvw it’s a Major rework compared to fractals and still there is no reset of wxp ranks… so it’s not normal practice in MMO if it is tell me where ppl got a reset of they’re work without comperision?:)

The nature of the two are different.
In one case, they reworked how you progressed and added new content to the progression. In the other case, it’s just an unlimited form of leveling.

They reworked how you progress, so they reset your progress. Don’t really feel like it’s something to get up in arms about, and it’s a fairly normal practice in MMOs.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

It’s not easy, when you’re necro with just 2 dodges without any vigors or higher endurance regen, when you don’t have blocks and invulnerabilities and even full DS goes down instantly.

You just need to walk for the most part really. WASD will suffice, I don’t even use my mouse sometimes.
It was satisfyingly challenging at first, but once you’re used to it it’s really not bad. I find the Molten duo to be more challenging, though once again when you get used to the jump timing it isn’t that hard.

lakdav.3694:

If all this was Scarlets doing, and she would be after the ley lines, what are these machines? They are just pounding the ground and have a shielding that would solve containment and warding issues a hundred times over if it was implemented.

But thats not my point. If these machines were actually about ley-lines which are the lines that magical energies follow, what about the places of power, the skill challenges where you meditate or whatever? Why arent those the target of anything like this? We know that these points exist in lore, as some of these places of power give more lore away than most NPCs.

Well we pretty much know it’s Scarlet’s doing, EVERYTHING is Scarlet’s doing in the LS at this point. It’s just a question of whether or not it’s connected to ley lines.
I’m not convinced it is, there’s just compelling reasons for why it could be, and I don’t feel the existence of ‘Places of Power’ really does anything to disprove that. The places of power were put there for gameplay reasons in the first place, not story. And while some of them have heavy lore reasoning for their existence, others are just “oh, some guy did voodoo here”. Even for those that do have heavy lore reasons for their existence, they aren’t related to ley lines.

More then anything though, I HOPE it’s connected to ley lines, because that would finally start to explain the constant disjointed random stuff they’ve been putting us through.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

As much as I like that theory, I’d like to point out that the Molten Alliance appears to be the least used of Scarlet’s alliances, and therefore is a poor source of manpower. I’d suggest instead that they have something to do with locating and identifying the lines, a mixture of dredge tunneling expertise and Flame Legion magical expertise.

Very good point about the tunneling/magic expertise.
The Molten Alliance is fairly prominent during the invasions though.
My impression of the dredge and flame legion has also been that they’re quiet numerous, and as such would make good “cannon fodder” as the manpower of Scarlet’s forces. This of course isn’t representative in game with the hundreds of mobs we slay regularly, but from a lore perspective may be. Any info that could prove/disprove my impression of the in-lore size of flame legion/dredge forces would be appreciated.

On the other hand, I don’t imagine the Sky Pirates of Tyria/Aetherblades are all that numerous, flying ships aren’t easy to come by. Presumably the inquest members/contributors of the Aetherblades would be be none-combat forces limited to a number of krewes working on the tech. Similarly, the number of Scarlet’s watchwork machines/mobs would be limited by the number of engineers who are capable of making them that are at her disposal.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Something to note: There are none in starter areas.

This is VERY important for a very particular reason: There’s none at Thaumanova. This makes it highly likely to be unrelated to the ley lines like everyone seems to think.

They don’t seem to make any shape or some such either. I’m going to say they’ll be wide-spread combat events – I say wide-spread in the feeling of something on par to Scarlet’s invasions. Why? LS combat events also fall into Queensdale (Tower of Nightmares) and Wayfarer (Flame and Frost); the invasions avoid all 25- areas.

I don’t think we can discern their purpose based on location.

Well hold on a second, there’s two possible compelling reasons why there’s none at the Thaumanova Reactor.
First, we don’t have access to the entire reactor, it could be in the “basement” we see in the Fractal. The reactor was built on the ley line in the first place, if they set up one of those “DO NOT TOUCH” things, it wouldn’t be out in a field, it’d be in the reactor facility.
Second, the ley line at the reactor may no longer be intact after the explosion. You can see the after effects of the explosion at Thaumanova if you go there in the open world, so at the very least the ley line there is pretty screwed up.

Edit: Also, the “Scarlet Invasions” now make sense if the DO NOT TOUCH beacons are something she set up. The invasion have been criticized as motiveless “hey we’re going to attack this random field!” situations. But if Scarlet was trying to find ley-lines and tap into them, we now have her motive for the Molten Alliance (manpower), Aetherblades (deployment of forces) and the invasions themselves (find ley lines and establishing the ‘beacons’).

GvG in the sense of something for guilds to do together? yea cool.
GvG as in the game mode they had in GW1? no, it’s incompatible and would be bad. Then everyone who wanted it will cry that “Arena Net ruined GvG!!!1!!” when the reality is that it wasn’t particularly feasible in the first place do to GW1 and GW2 being very different types of games.

Dawdler.8521:

Arewn.2368:

Veil’s balance is weird. They seem to not want to increase mesmer’s stealth availability, but a 2sec stealth curtain does not justify a 90 sec cooldown.

Yes it does. You can stealth a 50 man group with it. It more than warrants the 90s cooldown. It is also a glamour skill, which means that the cd reduction is a tier 1 trait, again something that justify the longer default cooldown for a very powerfull skill.

Want better personal stealth? Replace your veil with Decoy. Mass invisibility is the “middle ground” for smaller engagements. Yes, it is reduntant compared to veil if you have a massive zerg, that’s the point. You’re not meant to have every stealth skill known to man active. Anet gave us options for different situations.

Veil is incredibly powerful in WvW, mediocre in pvp, and crap in PvE. Utility skills should be more or less useful based on your situation, true, but not based on your game mode.

Oh boohoo. We get one update a year for fractals, which caters to and is enjoyed by a sizable subset of the player base, the outcry is quiet uncalled for.
Some form of ascended gear would have come along regardless of the existence of fractals since exotics didn’t hold up as an end game tier, this has been explained by the devs and is an observable reality in game. There won’t be a gear treadmill as a result, and the agony “treadmill” is isolated to fractals for those who do enjoy that kind of thing. Furthermore, agony is irrelevant to those who don’t do level 20+ fractals (you can do 10+ without AR if you’re half way competent) so you’re still free to enjoy fractals while avoiding the mini “treadmill”.

This is a wide-appeal MMO, not a niche title, players need to understand and accept the fact that they aren’t going to love every single update, and that just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it bad.

Albeit a tad shoehorned, her appearance in the Reactor makes sense and does well to further the plot. That’s not the problem. The problem is that people are just sick of seeing her.

Veil’s balance is weird. They seem to not want to increase mesmer’s stealth availability, but a 2sec stealth curtain does not justify a 90 sec cooldown. They should probably give it a secondary function of some sort, make it provide a boon or something perhaps.
Of course if they do that it makes Mass Invis, an elite skill which is supposed to be really powerful, seem weak by comparison and pointless due to redundancy.
Mass Invis should definitely hit more targets though.

I find Mender’s Purity to be reasonably strong for healing mantra already, so I’m certainly happy with the buff.

Katran.9186:

Worst excuse ever. Anet is proud of you.

Lol Konig regularly discusses in depth and criticizes the GW2 lore on these forums, Scarlet included. Kind of silly to leverage something like that against someone like him.

Dawdler.8521:

Arewn.2368:

Phantasmal Warlock isn’t nearly as good as people here seem to think so far as I can gather.

None of the Mesmer weapons are “good” compared with other classes. The attacks are designed to poke the enemy hard, not consistently.

In open PvE vs bosses I’ve seen up to 12-13K damage on hits with my 2K toughness zerg survival build. Maybe that’s not good compared to what a berserker output but its decent enough for me. That said, the staff is a defensive weapon and incidently, one of the best defensive weapons in the game (if not the best).

I wasn’t comparing the mesmer to other classes though, I was comparing one mesmer ability to another mesmer ability. And when it comes to mesmer abilities, Warlock isn’t that good for damage (not to say it’s bad either, just normal).
As you mentioned if you want it for defense then staff is ok, but people shouldn’t be trying to sell it as a great damage weapon, and they certainly shouldn’t be trying to sell it as the highest damage phantasm.
And I say the staff is only “ok” because in a 5man dungeon group(which is what the OP wants it for) you probably already have many of the staff’s boons already, unless you’re the group’s boon provider.
The only outstanding part of the staff for a damage build in 5man group content is Phase Retreat.
Scepter is even worse for that purpose. Which is really unfortunate because it’s a cool weapon and the only thing holding it back is the kitten -poor power scaling.

AKGeo.6048:

There were a lot of those gnashblade symbols over the silent peoples’ shoulders, too. That and the vocal support are all we have to go by.

Like many people’s so called arguments, that’s anecdotal at best.

Phantasmal Warlock isn’t nearly as good as people here seem to think so far as I can gather. Haven’t seen good numbers in practice either.
Warlock deals base 438 damage, unknown power scaling, and an additional 10%per condition for a maximum of +120% damage. It has an attack frequency of 6.8, or 5.7 traited. Under ideal circumstances, discounting crits and power scaling, that’s 169dps. It’s ranged.
Take a look at Phantasmal Swordsman, who deals 672 damage per strike, has a 2.0 power scaling, and an attack frequency of 4.5 without the need for Haste, and that’s 149dps. With 2k power, that’s 1038dps . It evades during it’s leap.
Duelist deals 118dps, 8 strikes per attack, 0.4 scaling. With 2kpower, that’s 1129dps.
Chances are, you don’t have all 12 conditions(which includes imob) on your target all the time in a 5 man group, and while I’m not at home to test it, I strongly suspect the Warlocks power scaling is the worst of the three phantasms I just mentioned.

Only reason to bring staff is for it’s defensive capabilities.
And I’m not sure why people would use scepter in a power build, it hits like a wet noodle, even worse then great sword.

AKGeo.6048:

I voted for Kiel. I still think the voting was rigged, because I saw a bunch more support for Gnashblade while the voting was going on. I knew that Gnashblade would have the most support from the playerbase because he’s a charr, and kind of an kitten, and that’s what gamers like.

I accept the possibility that it was rigged, I was just saying actually reasoning for it needs to be presented.
And there was a lot of vocal support for Gnashblade, that’s not necessarily representative of the actual support.

ghost.3208:

Melfice.5091:

The fact that they put scarlet into this makes me think again that the entire voting thing was a lie, and that no matter what the players actually voted anet already had kiel selected as the “winner”

I thought that was obvious… after all how come the votes were always 52% Kiel and 48% Evon? During like 2 weeks?

That literally means nothing. If they were screwing with the numbers, wouldn’t they have made “more convincing looking results”? Not that such a thing even exists. This whole “hnnggg look at the vote tally, it was clearly rigged!” excuse is just a cough out by people who didn’t like the results. At least come up with a compelling reason if you think it was rigged.
The fact that there was a 52/48 split is completely insignificant.

The fractal looked good, had fun bosses, and had interesting dialogue (referring to Dessa and the inquest). Even with Scarlet showing up (which does make sense with the current plot) and ruining it, I still feel it’s a lot more relevant and a much better decision then LulAbaddonNostolgiaFractal.

Scarlet has been widely criticized since her introduction, and her latest appearance has caused quiet the uproar, but did Arena Net really have the chance to react?
Lets take a look.
While Scarlet feels like she’s been around for forever due to being tied to the Molten Alliance all the way back in spring 2013, she wasn’t actually introduced until August during the Queen’s Jubilee. At the time of her introduction she was relatively well received, voiced by Tara Strong and having a likeable zany personality and a fairly good “Scarlet’s Playhouse” instance, things certainly weren’t bad. However there were already bitter feelings forming and criticism being made at her rather bland use as the ‘grand mastermind’ behind everything that happened to date.
We then moved on to the Super Adventure Box update, unrelated to Scarlet, and Tequatl Rising, also (at least as far as we know) unrelated to Scarlet. A September free of Scarlet, and a month where Arena Net could collect no new criticism about her.
It’s not until October that Scarlet makes another significant appearance in the Twilight Assault update. Honestly, I didn’t participate due to college, it’s the only LS I’ve missed to date . I did play a bit though and continued frequenting the forums at the time and noted occasional threads criticizing her. No uproar yet though.
—I’d like to note that it is at this point a living world team has just started working on one of the December updates, according to Arena Net’s blog post on their company structure—
We then had a rather lovely Halloween with a surprise character who turned out rather well: Bloody Prince Edrick.
Move on to November and we get Tower of Nightmares. Moving forward a bit more and we land ourselves in the previous patch and Scarlet’s next appearance: Nightmare Within. It’s at this point that the criticism against Scarlet becomes heavy handed and starts spreading like wildfire. People who disliked her from the beginning are sighing in dissatisfaction, and large crowds of the general player base are starting to see why.

Finally we have Fractured, the current update and the resulting uproar caused by Scarlet’s appearance in a place some(many) feel she did not belong. But even if Arena Net took the criticism to heart, would they actually have been able to remove Scarlet already? Sure it was only a few lines of dialogue in the Reactor, but changing that would have a wide array of implications on future updates that are already being made.
Widespread indignation towards her is surprisingly recent, impossible to be more then 3 1/2 months old, and realistically not much more then a month and a half, perhaps less.
So is this really a case of Arena Net not listening, or simply a case of them not having time to react? Truly, only time will tell as we see how they deal with Scarlet moving forward.

This is not a thread to further criticize Scarlet, but rather one to take into consideration Arena Net’s company structure and look at how feasible it was for them to react and make changes in time for this patch, as well as a setting a realistic gauge for their reaction time to future problems.

Dr Ritter.1327:

keep her out of the christmas event please

My sincerest hopes are that for the month of December, we get our WvW Edge of the Mists update, we get our Christmas update, and nothing else. Just let us mess around with Tixx for December.
Then in the month of January, we get two patches through which we finish up this whole Scarlet thing. Direct and to the point, reveal what’s left to be revealed, have our “grand confrontation”, and be done with her. PERMANENTLY.
Then we can finally move on to greener pastures, maybe actually get back to the point of GW2 and start gearing up for the campaign against the next Elder Dragon or something.

Finnway.2183:

Thobek.1730:

This fractal has been in the works for months now, the countless ‘I hate scarlet’ threads have been around since her arrival and are picking up in frequency. Plenty of time to simply remove a small part of the fractal.

In a video game it’s not as easy as it is in a movie because you have multiple people working on projects simultaneously. There are multiple teams working on code, 3D models, textures, concept art, and voice acting. By making a small change you’re potentially screwing over a team.

They can’t change things “last minute” and they’ve already said they plan things out 4 months in advance. At this point the end of Scarlett’s arc is planned out, and we have maybe 3-4 months more.

Bit of self-inconsistency here. I’m not contesting the fact that they plan things several months in advanced, but if that’s the case we should be seeing the conclusion soon, not 3-4 months from now (discounting christmas patches).

Finnway.2183:

Thobek.1730:

You would be wrong to assume this. I explain why. A couple of months ago two popular tv series had their finale. Breaking Bad and Dexter. The writers from both those shows had two different approaches.

But writing in a TV series is completely different than video game writing. In a video game they have create the models and skins months in advance and they have to record the voice actors months before the patch comes out.

If they started work on the fractal in august (as they recently stated they did), the part where they actually implemented Scarlet in there was far off from August.

Bonefield.9813:

The “collaborative mindset” is meant to be a positive thing for both the devs and the fans, and it boils down to not feeling entitled to lash out and be hostile to the developers just because you have a negative opinion of their work. Collaboration and sharing feedback will get positive changes made. Taking a stance of treating the ArenaNet staff as enemies makes it more difficult to communicate and it means that they can’t have meaningful discussions with us. The CDI threads have been full of useful discussion between the writers, the other developers, and the fans; don’t disdain it just because they don’t ask how high when you demand that they jump.

In this thread alone we have people expressing frustration because ArenaNet won’t just follow what they think is obvious and correct feedback—they see it as stubbornness when at the same time none of us can even agree on what exactly ANet should realistically be doing inside of extremely broad categories (it’s all well and good to say that they should go back to GW1 lore, for instance, but it’s not going to happen in the next patch).

I don’t always agree with the direction the writers take the story, but in your post you imply that they’ve ruined their own lore and insinuate that anyone could do their job. It’s not their job to roll over and take blatant insults under the guise of feedback, especially since it’s entirely unnecessary to say that kind of thing to get a point across. What kind of information does that give them aside from “I’m angry”? What does that actually accomplish? If you want to see things changed for the better, collaborating with the developers respectfully (as I sincerely hope that you would with any other adult in a professional context) is going to help. Trying to make them feel bad for not doing what you’d like them to is just a thinly-veiled excuse to vent.

It’s not like people are saying everything is bad, Scarlet aside, I found the new fractal to be very interesting and well written (and gameplay-wise, very fun). It’s the fact that a very specific piece of criticism that has been cried from the rooftops and explored in great detail by large numbers of players consistently for several months (which in GW2’s case, encompasses half a dozen updates) has been utterly ignored that is the problem.
And his point about other people being able to do their job is simply this: The people at Arena Net are professional writers who are highly enthused by Guild Wars, but several of their players are also professional writers who are highly enthused by Guild Wars and are offering critical and well thought out input. In fact if I’m not mistaken, Angel McCoy is a GuildWars1 player-kitten -GW2writer herself (I’ve been reading some of her interviews lately to get more insight on the matter). It wasn’t an attempt to make them sound disposable or bad, but simply looking at the reality that they are amongst many other talented people in this world.

Cliff.8679:

Arewn.2368:

They can certainly do what ever they want with the story, and their obviously letting Angel do so, but they have to deal with the resulting fall out.
If the story is crap, people aren’t going to like it. If it continues being crap, people are going to leave, and Arena Net doesn’t want that.

There’s no need to call out specific people. They work as a team and it’s a collaborative effort between them. No one person is responsible for any failures of the story.

They work as a team and they peer check their work, doesn’t change who did the work in the first place though.
And while what you said sounds ‘nice’, the people in charge of the story are certainly more responsible for the story then the rest of Arena Net.
If I have a problem with PvP, I look towards the PvP devs. If I have a problem with Dungeons, I look towards those devs. So why is it that if I have a problem with a certain piece of story, I can’t look at the devs/employees in charge of that?

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

If I’m correct Arenanet can do whatever they want with the story:

They could even pull an alternate Abbadon out of a Fractal containing his prison(since they won’t have us visit Abbadon’s defeat at the hands of the 5 Gods) and having him turn the Shiverpeaks to Bloodpeaks(like the Depths of Madness), turn the Kryta into a fleshy kingdom(like the Domain of Pain), fill Maguuma Jungle with Centipede bridges and headless Caterpillars(like the Domain of Fear) and fill Ascalon with Plinths straight from the Domain of Secrets.

I especially like the turn Shiverpeaks into Bloodpeaks idea myself…..

They can certainly do what ever they want with the story, and their obviously letting Angel do so, but they have to deal with the resulting fall out.
If the story is crap, people aren’t going to like it. If it continues being crap, people are going to leave, and Arena Net doesn’t want that.

Nothing wrong with having your own build that suits your preferences. The only time you really need to worry about optimizing your build is in speed runs or high level fractals anyways.
Go with sword, scepter does terrible damage outside of condition builds.

Iretha.7625:

Atlas.9704:

Until its found out she time traveled via spooky Steam Portals, stabbed the Gods, and then teleported out with a “Later taters”.

Even worse – she uses spooky steam portals, disguises herself as Kormir with Mesmer magic she learned in 5 seconds and is now a god.

You know what’s scary? I can actually see that fitting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxmkAoLC6_4

Evon supporters should be down on their knees thanking Kiel supporters. Would you have preferred Scarlet show up in the Abaddon fractal instead?

More to the point, we had every reason to believe that there would be actual interesting and good material revealed in the Reactor. Hell, even Kiel says at the end of the story mode fractal “Chaos energy or Dragon energy – either way, RandomInsertofScarlet’sName and the Inquest went too far too fast”. This could have actually been about the Elder Dragons and/or give us revelations on the nature of magic/chaos magic in the Guild Wars universe. We just weren’t expecting Arena Net to pander to the fanfict writer who made Scarlet and completely drop the ball on the matter.

Is this a Charr only thing? o.o

I sincerely agree with this.
The fractal itself was very fun, and how the story was rolled out and presented was quiet good.
The only problem being the event just before the last boss, who’s lore implication are absolutely dreadful.

The biggest problem with Scarlet is that once she’s finally gone there will be no villains left, because everyone and everything was turned into a little alliance beneath her

My heart sank when I saw Scarlet in there, I could feel all of my enthusiasm drain at that moment.
Just the other day, me and my friends were literally making fun of the possibility Scarlet would be behind it. You know the type of conversation where you bring up things that are ridiculous and stupid because the mere possibility is funny? It was that kind of conversation.
Yet here we are, Scarlet making her usual shpeal in front of the core. I suppose it makes sense, there were some hints that it would happen and if it was already planed Anet can’t exactly pull a 180 on it. Just incredibly disappointing that I thought we’d finally get some compelling story that was unrelated to her, and then have this happen when it could have been so much more (anyone here still remember those… what were they called? Elder Dragons).

If I knew Scarlet was going to show up, I would have voted for the Abaddon fractal despite finding it uninteresting and it being completely unrelated to GW2’s story.

Edit: at least the content itself was fun to play though.