Guild Wars 2

Chadramar.8156:

… yeah, because that’s what people are saying. Not.

The problem is that there is ZERO difference between a sylvari and an asura. Between a charr and a human. There are ZERO distinguishing features whatsoever. Everyone acts exactly the same, spews exactly the same trite lines, is treated exactly the same by everyone around them (up to and including your very own mother treating you like a complete stranger). What on Earth is the point in even having different species to begin with if you turn them all into featureless, replaceable, forgettable blobs?

What I want is simple: to play a character who feels uniquely, recognizably sylvari/charr/norn from start to finish. That is all. And that is hardly an extraordinary expectation, especially since the game delivers it at the beginning before throwing it all away for no reason. It’s storytelling 101.

Basing the main storyline on the character’s culture would have allowed for great storytelling as well as personal development, because each culture would go about recognizing the need for the others, and learning to understand, appreciate and unite them, in a different way. As it is, you are never allowed — much less required! — to learn anything. You never have to change or grow. You are never forced to confront the mistakes made by your own people and the prejudice you learned from birth. It’s all immediate perfect-shiny-happy-fun-land. Why? Because “you” don’t exist. Your character is not a character. She or he is just a blob with no culture, no history, no personality, no opinions, no friends, no family, nothing.

It’s such a huge waste of the lore’s potential.

No kidding. I played a Charr with a Barbaric personality. I was hoping that I would trash talk every human I see in my personal story. He should be saying “I will gut you, human.” and “Wait till the dragons are dead. Then me and you will have a little chat, meat!” and “If it wasn’t because of my duty, you would already be my dinner.” and “Oh poor little humans hiding behind their walls and talking big.” etc

But nope he say the same thing as my Norn later on. Totally lifeless. T_T

I mean I understand that all races are supposed to work together to kill dragons. But wait a minute! My race is not me. In fact nothing represents me except for my choices and personality. Charr as a whole might want peace with humans. My Charr might not want peace at all, at least initially.

I am all for my Charr turning his views around during Claw Island, where perhaps a human sacrificed himself to save my Charr’s life. That’s where personal story and personality comes in, the make the game more interesting. The game shouldn’t just force this personality on you. Your personality should develop over time.

Take my Barbaric Charr once again. He picked Apatia and had to tell the Norns about her death. He said “Apatia was great blah blah blah.” I was like are you kidding me? My Barbaric Charr would never say that! That’s the story for a character with a noble personality.

Instead here is what would be a good personal story for a Barbaric Charr. My Charr would trash talk Apatia. He would say “Here is proof that the weak won’t survive. Apatia died because she was too weak to defend herself!” That would of course lead to a lot of Norns being angry and and attacks the player. The player would defeat them all. Finally Eir Stegalkin herself would come to bash my character in the head. She say “Have you finally calmed down, Charr?” At this point my Barbaric Charr would break down and say “It was my fault that she died! I was the one that’s weak.” Eir would say “We all made sacrifices, and Apatia did it willingly for all of us. Swallow your pride, keep her in your heart, and put that anger against the dragons!” My Charr would say"You are right! My pride was clouding my judgement. I would use all my pain and anger against the cause of all of this. Thank you Eir!"

Same storyline, but MUCH MORE personal.

Torvarren.6295:

Disagree, at that point in the story all races had come together on one purpose, one course of action.

The common goal is indeed to kill the dragons. But there are surely more than 20 different things you can help out with, depending on your choices earlier. For example if you are a Norn who defeated your childhood foe, maybe you would get a mission in the front line offensive. However if you are a Norn who got drunk and did something dumb, maybe you would get a suicidal spec-ops mission.

Your race, your upbringing, choices you made b4, your personality, your order, etc. All of these should have a part in what missions you take, who will come to help you out and who would fight against you (other than risens).

Out of those 20 missions, your personally would allow you access to maybe 2 at a time. So you get 2 choices in round 1, 2 choices in round 2, etc all the way to round 5. At the end you would have competed 5 out of the 20.

And that’s what personal story should be.

In the middle of WvW I found it hard to pick up all the loots that should belong to me. Sometimes it is not safe to do so. Other times I was too busy fighting to see my loots.

I want an option that, when I helped to kill a mob or another player, his loots would automatically get into my inventory.

The way I see it necro is about speed. Fast casting. Fast recharge. Fast moving. And with speed comes adaptability. Not to mention they have like 3 hp bars.

Necro also fights like a ninja. It is obvious what a thief is going to do: Invisible+backstab. I got a thief to level 70 and tbh only a portion of their skills are useful. Necros have a lot more choices.

I don’t know. That Spartian chick I saw in 300 didn’t have scars.

Axe is good for group fights. That vulnerability really helps team damage. However if it is soloing, or you didn’t max the trait for power, it would be pretty weak.

So use axe when fighting a single boss with other players.

My female Norn is a necromancer. I love how in wvw she draws all the attention and everyone hits her, but she is so hard to kill. ^^

Chadramar.8156:

As I have said before, I don’t see Trahearne as a problem per se. Could be have been handled better? Could he have been written better? Of course; much better in fact. But the real problem is the fact that the “personal story” is a blatant lie. There is nothing personal, because the player has no identity — the early cultural story arcs are great, but that is erased completely once you join an order and become a generic, featureless filler. And there is no story, just a mess of disjointed mini-arcs with zero continuity or coherence.

That is what makes Trahearne a problem. Because the player has no identity nor continuity, Trahearne is the sole focus for everything. He is the one people remember while forgetting the player immediately. He is the one who gets credit even for events at which he wasn’t present. He’s the one who remains while other NPCs come and go faster than you can get to know them, much less get attached to them.

If our player characters were actually characters, if they actually had a story and a place in it, if they were allowed a personality and identity, if people remembered them, if they were able to get to know and befriend other recurring characters, then Trahearne would be fine. Still no stellar character by any means, but not a symptom for everything that’s effing WRONG with the not-story in this game, either.

Chadramar I think you got a great point there. The current story does end up like this:

>
>>
>>>
>>
>

You start off with 5 choices. Then you have 3. Then you only have 1. This isn’t a personal story with multiple end points. This is a linear story with multiple start points.

It is hard to describe. But basically the personal story falls into the problems of Mass Effects 3. All the endings being too similar to one another.

Even if the ending must be the same for everyone (dragon dies), they could have gone about it better to make the story more personal.

For example I played a Norn that joined the Priory and then helped the Grawls. After Claw Island that never made much difference. I do not see my Norn allies again, nor did they come and assist me at any point. I never got any Priory only missions, so the only point of picking a side is for their armour skin. It is funny that the Grawls end up coming to help me in a mission, who I wasn’t that close to.

Instead, how about having a late mission that relates to me being a Norn? Maybe to assist an old friend or something. How about having a late mission that is only for the Priory? etc.

How about a battle where it seems hopeless, and then Norn and Priory allies come to assist me? etc

I hasn’t done Temple of Silence or Balthazaar. So I really couldn’t comment on the other temples you guys talked about. But I did do Eternal Radiance. Initially it was tough because we lack the manpower. However as more and more people show up it became much easier. Eventually we had enough men that once the field goes down, we dealt enough damage to kill the Raisen Lyssa Priestess.

I also did Hall of Promenade of the Gods, which we did fail. We slaughtered waves after waves of mobs no problem. Hack we had so many guys we blocked the mobs up the stairway from entering the square at all. That one we failed simply because mobs would randomly spawn inside the square that we are supposed to capture. So our control never goes up. We spent so much time looking around for that one “recently spawned” risen hiding somewhere inside our square it weren’t funny. I think this is more cheap and cheating than anything. You cannot stop the random spawning of mobs.

But what start this for me was the Kraka event. It offers zero challenge to the players. Like I said, across like 40 servers, not even once did the Karka win the battle (even with all the 7 second skills lag and “invisible” enemies). The mission was also extremely boring, repetitive and too long, but that’s anther discussion.

All I am saying is that for future events (in the human’s first try at least) it would be great if out of 40 servers, 5 of them ends up the mobs winning. That’s a 20% mob winning rate in the first trial. This is important because that means the mobs could have won. It means for the other 35 servers that did win, it was still a hard fought win.

2) Small world events.

Not all world event has to be big. Here is my example of a small scale world event:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/BattleonaCliff.png
Here we have a world event where the players (in blue) are asked to kill some mobs on a cliff. There is a large roundabout on the cliff. The mobs (in red) would fight the players for a while, but eventually they would be overpowered and had to retreat. The players would give chase, all the way to the edge of a cliff.

Once the players follows the mobs to a cliff at the end of the roundabout, a second group of hidden mobs (in black) will attack them. This second group consists of riflemen, who has a knockback shot. They plan to use that to push some of the players off the cliff, into the river below. And with the players’ forces weakened, the red mobs now turns back, united with the black mobs, attacks the remaining players for a final victory.

So the mobs planned this whole thing out. The variable would be whether the players falls into the trap or not. No one forced the players to follow the red mobs all the way to the edge of the cliff. And if they weren’t so overconfident and focused only on the red mobs, they would have seen the approaching black riflemen. Being aware of your surrounding is the key to winning here.

3) Large scale world events.

Of course, there will be large scale world events also. Here is my example of one:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/Guild%20Wars/AscalonSettlementBattlePlanGendarranFields.jpg
I planned a centaur attack on Ascalon Settlement. I am going to guess that around 400 players from each server/zone would participate.

Keep in mind that centaurs in the game are fairly weak units. My necro can kill 10 of them by herself. So I will give the centaurs 1,000 men. So how can these weak units win against the powerful humans?

At the beginning there will be three main battle zones: Left, centre and right.
Humans will spread out their ranks in an unknown formation and unknown numbers across each zone. However for this demonstration I would assume 100 humans on the left, 200 humans in the centre, and 100 humans on the right.

The centaurs separated their 1,000 men into 4 groups: 200 on the left, 200 in the centre, 300 on the right, and 300 elite troops in reserve at the back.

The battle follows a series of steps and plans:

1) The beginning would be a series of small skirmishes along the human ranks from all 3 zones. The centaurs’ forces in centre zone and right zone are used to delay the humans, keep the humans busy and hold the humans there. So their attacks are fairly easy to dealt with. In fact the centaurs there will try to preserve their forces until later.

2) The main attack begins on the left zone. In the heat and chaos of the battle, the centaurs would suddenly rush the 3 elite units from the back to help the attack on the left zone. The combined might of nearly 200 regular and 300 elite centaurs should be able to overwhelm the 100 human defenders.

3) The battle moves on quickly after that. The centaurs, instead of attacking Nebo Terrance, swings around south of the town and attacks the centre zone humans from behind. The surprise factor and sandwich effect of this flanking maneuver should crush the humans.

4) The centaurs would leave a small force at the west gate of Ascalon Settlement to guard it (not attack). The main body however moves south-east to take over the southern hills of the town. The dead humans, now resurrected from a nearby Asuran gate, makes a stand there. I don’t really expect the centaurs to win this battle here. They probably lost most of their men by this point. But assuming that they did…

5) The centaurs leaves a small force to guard the southern gate of the town. The rest would move north to attack the south side of the humans in the right zone. Once again the humans are sandwiched.

6) If the centaurs wins, they moves to the northern heights and eastern heights to besiege the town with siege weapons. The centaurs, unfamiliar with siege warfare, decided not to attack the town walls directly but instead hopes to starve the town into submission. By this point, all exits in and out of Ascalon Settlement are blocked off by centaurs, so no supply can enter.

7) The players have 2 days to organize themselves and fight off the centaurs, or Ascalon Settlements will be destroyed and looted.
As you can see, even with all these planning, it will be tough for the centaurs to win. Like I said step #4 will most likely be a human victory. But the centaur gave the humans a semi-beat down.

Warning: Long read.
I have played though many world events. I have seen again and again that mobs rush mindlessly at players. And how did the humans win? They just need enough people to form into un-organized human-balls, and they win 100% of the time.
Where is the challenge? None whatsoever. Humans never need to think. They are never challenged. As long as there are enough of them in a mess they won’t lose. And without this challenge, PvE gets dull fast.

For example look at the Karka event. Out of all the servers, did the Karka even beat the humans once? Nope. Were the humans organized in any way? Nope. Not to mention that this was the first time the humans played this world event, so the mobs even had the element of surprise. So I can safely conclude that the Karka had 0% chance of winning, and hence there was 0% challenge for the humans. That’s the problem.

Now I do want humans to win, but they had to plan ahead. They can’t just rush headlong into a fight and expect to win the first time they try.
So what do I recommend? I want mobs to be lead by Hannibal. I want mobs to be lead by Genghis Khan. I want mobs to crushingly defeat these un-organized humans.
Sounds impossible? Nope. The way I see it humans are easy to defeat. Sure they are powerful. But nothing that a little trick here and there couldn’t handle.

1) Line formation

Firstly, mobs should always form a line in battle. Soldiers had done line battles for the last 4,000 years for good reasons. It allows them to surround and destroy enemies that do not form a line.
The battle of Cannae is a great example of why line formation triumphs over un-organized human ball formation. If you don’t line up, you get outflanked and destroyed.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Battle_cannae_destruction.gif

2) Small world events.

Not all world event has to be big. Here is my example of a small scale world event:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/BattleonaCliff.png

Here we have a world event where the players (in blue) are asked to kill some mobs on a cliff. There is a large roundabout on the cliff. The mobs (in red) would fight the players for a while, but eventually they would be overpowered and had to retreat. The players would give chase, all the way to the edge of a cliff.

Once the players follows the mobs to a cliff at the end of the roundabout, a second group of hidden mobs (in black) will attack them. This second group consists of riflemen, who has a knockback shot. They plan to use that to push some of the players off the cliff, into the river below. And with the players’ forces weakened, the red mobs now turns back, united with the black mobs, attacks the remaining players for a final victory.

So the mobs planned this whole thing out. The variable would be whether the players falls into the trap or not. No one forced the players to follow the red mobs all the way to the edge of the cliff. And if they weren’t so overconfident and focused only on the red mobs, they would have seen the approaching black riflemen. Being aware of your surrounding is the key to winning here.

3) Large scale world events.

Of course, there will be large scale world events also. Here is my example of one:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/CCHIPSS/Guild%20Wars/AscalonSettlementBattlePlanGendarranFields.jpg

I planned a centaur attack on Ascalon Settlement. I am going to guess that around 400 players from each server/zone would participate.

Keep in mind that centaurs in the game are fairly weak units. My necro can kill 10 of them by herself. So I will give the centaurs 1,000 men. So how can these weak units win against the powerful humans?

At the beginning there will be three main battle zones: Left, centre and right.

Humans will spread out their ranks in an unknown formation and unknown numbers across each zone. However for this demonstration I would assume 100 humans on the left, 200 humans in the centre, and 100 humans on the right.

The centaurs separated their 1,000 men into 4 groups: 200 on the left, 200 in the centre, 300 on the right, and 300 elite troops in reserve at the back.

The battle follows a series of steps and plans:

1) The beginning would be a series of small skirmishes along the human ranks from all 3 zones. The centaurs’ forces in centre zone and right zone are used to delay the humans, keep the humans busy and hold the humans there. So their attacks are fairly easy to dealt with. In fact the centaurs there will try to preserve their forces until later.

2) The main attack begins on the left zone. In the heat and chaos of the battle, the centaurs would suddenly rush the 3 elite units from the back to help the attack on the left zone. The combined might of nearly 200 regular and 300 elite centaurs should be able to overwhelm the 100 human defenders.

3) The battle moves on quickly after that. The centaurs, instead of attacking Nebo Terrance, swings around south of the town and attacks the centre zone humans from behind. The surprise factor and sandwich effect of this flanking maneuver should crush the humans.

4) The centaurs would leave a small force at the west gate of Ascalon Settlement to guard it (not attack). The main body however moves south-east to take over the southern hills of the town. The dead humans, now resurrected from a nearby Asuran gate, makes a stand there. I don’t really expect the centaurs to win this battle here. They probably lost most of their men by this point. But assuming that they did…

5) The centaurs leaves a small force to guard the southern gate of the town. The rest would move north to attack the south side of the humans in the right zone. Once again the humans are sandwiched.

6) If the centaurs wins, they moves to the northern heights and eastern heights to besiege the town with siege weapons. The centaurs, unfamiliar with siege warfare, decided not to attack the town walls directly but instead hopes to starve the town into submission. By this point, all exits in and out of Ascalon Settlement are blocked off by centaurs, so no supply can enter.

7) The players have 2 days to organize themselves and fight off the centaurs, or Ascalon Settlements will be destroyed and looted.

As you can see, even with all these planning, it will be tough for the centaurs to win. Like I said step #4 will most likely be a human victory. But the centaur gave the humans a semi-beat down.

Warning: Long read.

I have played though many world events. I have seen again and again that mobs rush mindlessly at players. And how did the humans win? They just need enough people to form into un-organized human-balls, and they win 100% of the time.

Where is the challenge? None whatsoever. Humans never need to think. They are never challenged. As long as there are enough of them in a mess they won’t lose. And without this challenge, PvE gets dull fast.

For example look at the Karka event. Out of all the servers, did the Karka even beat the humans once? Nope. Were the humans organized in any way? Nope. Not to mention that this was the first time the humans played this world event, so the mobs even had the element of surprise. So I can safely conclude that the Karka had 0% chance of winning, and hence there was 0% challenge for the humans. That’s the problem.

Now I do want humans to win, but they had to plan ahead. They can’t just rush headlong into a fight and expect to win the first time they try.

So what do I recommend? I want mobs to be lead by Hannibal. I want mobs to be lead by Genghis Khan. I want mobs to crushingly defeat these un-organized humans.

Sounds impossible? Nope. The way I see it humans are easy to defeat. Sure they are powerful. But nothing that a little trick here and there couldn’t handle.

1) Line formation

Firstly, mobs should always form a line in battle. Soldiers had done line battles for the last 4,000 years for good reasons. It allows them to surround and destroy enemies that do not form a line.

The battle of Cannae is a great example of why line formation triumphs over un-organized human ball formation. If you don’t line up, you get outflanked and destroyed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Battle_cannae_destruction.gif

Tbh, I am more disappointed that Zhaitan won’t be a future world event boss. I mean in GW1 we have 8 guys killing a chained and weakened god. That was already pushing it. Now in GW2 we got 5 guys killing an dragon which is even more powerful than a god? Seriously???

Given how hard it is for 40 humans to reclaim one corrupted temple from the raisen, this is a clear unbalance in the worst sense. The point of the game is to challenge the players so that when they do win, they felt that they achieved something. Having Zhaitan being so weak that even 5 humans can kill him does NOT give any satisfaction to the players. The players just go “That’s it? Seriously?” Not to mention battling these huge dragons was supposed to be a huge point of the game.

Now back on topic. I got to the final mission about 3 weeks ago. During this time I wasn’t able to find a party for the mission, even from my guild. Those players that tried it told me, uniformly, that the mission sucks hard. They said that you really have to push yourself to finish it though all the deaths and repetition. They said its one of the worst dungeon ever designed in gaming history. When I ask them why, they said its simply not fun at all. Many members of my guild are going though their alts, but they don’t want to do it again.

So 3 weeks after, I still hasn’t kill Zhaitan. Not sure if I should bother, after hearing what my guildmates are saying.

On trahearne, his speeches sucks. No emotions whatsoever. How would he ever encourage his men to fight till the end?

And then look at the missions he undertakes with the player. They are all special-op, semi-suicidal missions. A leader never does that. And that’s beside the fact that he is a necromancer, not even a special-op agent. He would be better off to send his special-op agents to help.

For example that mission where he wants to rescue some researches to gain the trust of his underlings. The only good thing he shown was that he is a powerful necromancer who can summon 8 elite minions at once. But which part of that demonstrated his ability to command an army? And that’s like, you know, the whole point.

When the players are with Trahearne in a mission, the mission should be major engagements. Command an actual army, like he should be doing.

Curuniel.4830:

Obsidian.1328:

GW2 likes to paint them a picture that separates them from mainline Charr, but that’s not how they were presented in the original. The GW1 Charr wanted to dominate and kill every race, not just the humans.

To be fair, in GW1 we know almost nothing of charr discourses around this stuff – the above is how the humans see it, but they would, wouldn’t they? I won’t deny the charr had a racial superiority thing going (one has to wonder if they had that before they were driven out, or if it was a defensive thing afterwards) but I don’t know if they were driven to rule the world necessarily.

Of course from our perspective it’s pretty clear the charr went from simple bad guys to a race with a more complex and sympathetic history because it suited the writers, but in lore as it stands the Flame Legion shamans are a lot like Hitler. They offered a chance at power to a people who had been beaten and shamed, and the people took that chance to return to grandeur – but atrocities ended up being committed because of it, probably beyond what most people ever intended (yes, Godwin’s Law, I plead guilty).

And from my roleplay perspective, my female charr take no responsibility for what the shaman kittens did :P

On a semi-related note, given the similarity of the Searing crystals to Kralkatorrik and his Branded, anyone else think that the Cauldron of Cataclysm was an artifact of Kralkatorrik’s?

It may be coincidental (what fantasy writer doesn’t love crystals?), but it would also fit well with the vibe I’m getting that our Kralkatorrik arc will also deal with the Ebonhawke situation (given where the gate to the Crystal Desert is).

I think the Separatists are going the path of Nazis. They just need more speeches on Charr hate, Ascalonian superiority and extermination of all races that aren’t pure Ascalonian. They are already fighting against everyone so it isn’t that far off.

From what I have seen, there are no indications that the people of Ebonhawke prefer peace over war. Queen Jennah wants peace. Logan probably wants peace. But that says nothing about the opinion of the general public.

This is clear when there are spies in the ranks of Vanguard. These people are not spies who joined later. They are existing Vanguards who are Separatist sympathisers. Heck, even a few of those Ebonhawke representatives are Separatist sympathisers if you read into the context of things.

It seems the kids and cubs have no problem friending each other. However the adults had to work very hard to not kill each other.

When all the dragons have been defeated, war might begin anew. Who knows?

Don’t worry guys I am a necro and I am working day and night to locate Sieran’s body and revive her. ^^