Guild Wars 2

Yargesh.4965:

Races scarlet has used and abused.

Norn I don’t know to me they have so far not been main puppets. What could the Sons of Sanir provide?

Once she infects the Norn story line with her lameness her fail will be complete!

What I don’t get is why people think that learning more about Scarlet will make her character better. If JarJar binks had Citizen Kane as a back story he’d still be JarJar Binks, getting his tongue stuck in things & saying “dellow felegates!”. So what if her back story makes sense? yes the backstory might be interesting, but she’ll be just as annoying, have the same cheesy b-horror-movie crazy dialog, look dumb & have a lore-trivializing power-level.

Farzo.8410:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZU8h-9nyHU

My reaction.

thank you for visualization how much we hate Scarlet.

I’m still trying to figure her obsession with Faren’s “panties”. She looking to cross-pollinate or something?

Well they have a suggested sodomy joke after you save him. Which the writers thought was funny & acceptable i guess?

Xae Isareth.1364:

Agreed. The last slide actually made her seem menacing for a split second.

Wow, really? You found that menacing? hm. To me, she just gets more eye-rolling every time they try to “develop” her “character”. I love the YouTube comment on the dev stream:
Nah they rather give us more open world zerg content and shove their beloved Scarlet “I speak like a deranged baby” Briar down our throats and twist their lore to fit her because she is so perfect and god-like.

I adored every little bit of that final instance. Scarlet was pinpoint. (Come on, her commentary while you were going through the fights was so creepy and amazing voice acting. Really enjoyable). And I loved the cutscene as well

I’m sorry, it was NOT creepy. It was annoying & cheezy. Ridiculously over-the-top “craaaaazyy” threats. Generic “ooo i’m scary” whispering. It was awful. Varesh Ossa was far more menacing & actually felt insane. She was very reserved, intelligent, but totally devoted to something that was just wrong. But she 100% felt it must be done. She was absorbed by her madness. She didn’t do the obviously-self-aware generic modern wacky-sassy-crazy-girl with cheezy b-movie horror quotes. Scarlet plays an insane cartoon.

I’m surprised people actually think any of Scarlet’s dialog is anything but laughable, & her back-story & accomplishments just insulting. Her back story & “motivation” is meaningless if her actual character is nothing more than an annoying teenage with god powers. hating Scarlet isn’t a band-wagon, there are very good reasons for it.

ProxyDamage.9826:

And, hey hey, it’s Scarlet again! Does anyone honestly give a kitten about Scarlet anymore? She’s been a Saturday morning cartoon villain from the start, and every update just piles up on it. Uuuuuuuuuh, she did Flame and Frost! Uuuhh! Oh who gives a kitten? How many months has it been now? And all we found out is that she did it. Not even why… nothing. I honestly would have forgotten why I was supposed to care, except there’s really nothing to forget is there? Everytime she talks she comes across as a “I’m doing bad things cause I’m evil!!!” cartoon villain. She’s like a 12 year old’s version of a villain. She’s “dark” and “nightmary”! And she’s EVIL! And talks about EVIIL things all the time! And, and, and..she laughs a lot too! Eviiiiiil laugh!!!!….

I liked the content in this patch, but every time Scarlet opened her mouth I couldn’t roll my eyes enough. Every time they try to “develop her character” she becomes more & more annoying.

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

-snip-
I wish I could answer each of your questions and concerns, but the reality is that I need to work on the next GW2 Living World release. We’re cruising at 200mph on these releases (to quote Stephen Clarke-Willson). I hope this explanation of our lore philosophy and where our thinking is will help you when you go back and review the pieces of your discussion. Thank you again for your passion! Know that we do pay attention, even if we can’t always take the time to respond to forum discussions like this.

Well, thanks for responding, but what you said doesn’t really change anything people had issues with. You have been changing lore to suit new stories that, as far as I can see, are not as successful as the old ones.
Saying “you didn’t know the whole story because people lie & are mistaken in real life” is meaningless in a fictional story. There was little to indicate that the lore in GW1 was “a human point of view” until you wanted to start veering it this way or that. In fact, many non-human points of view in GW1 seemed to match up with the humans. Now, sometimes it works: Abbadon was a fantastic retcon. But pretty much most of GW2 lore is meh & feels as though it is ashamed of GW1 trying to hide it with new “realistically ambiguous” lore. You even call Abbadon’s war a “tantrum”. You seem to have a disdain for the more popular aspects of GW1 lore. I mean, even the world visuals are unrecognizable! Making things realistic doesn’t instantly make them better. Also, the shift towards more modern dialog is silly.
Personally, GW2 killed most of the lore for me. It started getting meh in EotN, but I just can’t get into the new stories & new, modern, annoying characters, changing of the god’s stories & relationships, and boring dragons with the “natural cycle”. I can’t even grasp how the writers would think that is more interesting than the gods, the mursaat, Dhuum, Menziez, the Wizard’s tower, or the 100 other awesome things from GW1.
The only thing I fear is that the new writing will eventually take on those old stories & make them awful. That’d be the final Episode 1 moment of GW2. The gods have almost been ruined, so I guess I wouldn’t be surprised, but it would be a shame.

Yes, it is indeed non-human-centric, however, how you react to this feels more like “humanity was wrong” all the time with a side of “the gods are nothing special” – rather than trivializing the gods and their actions, which seems to be the direction chosen, it should be showing how the other races view and were affected by the acts of the gods. There was an interview a while back, mentioned in this thread, where a dev (I thought it was Ree but drax says it was Jeff) mentioned how the asura reacted to a magical event in the past – that, reasons unknown to them, the amount of magic in the world increased and subsequently decreased – and heavily implied it to be the asura’s reactions to the act of Abaddon gifting magic to the world. That was done properly – it didn’t trivialize the gods’ actions, but showed how another race reacted to the gods’ acts.

Agreed. I feel like in terms of GW2 lore & LS the writers seem to be going out of the way to make excuses for lore many people don’t like rather than admitting the error. To me, that’s a huge red flag for the future. No matter how much they ruin the past lore They will stick to their guns because.. well, just because. It’s interesting to note that while most of the GW2 recton excuses are “humanity was wrong”, there seems to be a thread in the new writing (even outside of the game) that “Eternal Alchemy is Accurate”. It’s just more evidence that the retcons are done just because the writer(s) personally didn’t like the old direction. I didn’t realize that you’d even gone so far as to call the magic school “constructs on this dogma”. I don’t know why you’re going through such a concerted effort to obliterate everything from GW1, but please stop. The result.. it’s.. not so good.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Yeah I played through GW1 I know all about the events that took place. I’m just thinking it’d be interesting if they were somehow related in any way… I’m tryin to find hope for this living story here lol.

You really want Scarlet to be related to Abaddon in some way? How is that to make the LS better? To me, that’d just make it worse because lo-and-behold, now a dead gods’ minions fall in line behind the scrambled-salad-brain.[/quote]
Agreed. The worst thing they could do to something awesome like Abbadon is tie it to something idiotic like Scarlet. It’s like SW Ep1. it’ll just poop on everything that was cool.

Jeff.4680:

So I’m asking Arena Net to please go back to your previous works. Study them, strengths and flaws, and use them to produce the best writing in the Guild Wars universe in the next chapter of the Living World. You really have a great world to work with. Stop trying to change it, and go back to building upon and solidifying it.

emphasis mine… Stop trying to change it. that’s a great suggestion. I feel like with GW2 they were somehow embarrassed by GW1 & tried to do everything they could to hide the old stuff. I mean is even visually unrecognizable. The characters just feel weird with maybe the exception of Tybalt & Fulgar. dunno… the world looks absolutely amazing, but everything feels off.. kinda started with EotN, but…

Finnway.2183:

DarksunG.9537:

I think each of the non-80 zones should have a unique set of armor skins that are unlocked by completing the zone [snip] Then you can have armor skins available to purchase for karma or zone faction.

I hate to pick on someone, but I just wanted to point out that this already exists in many zones. For example, the Jottun Greatsword can only be obtained from a karma-merchants in Snowden Drifts; a level 15-25 zone. As another example, Dark Armor can only be obtained from karma-merchants in Fireheart Rise and Orr.

nah, that’s nothing. I’m talking full, dungeon-like skin sets that reflect the zone that can only be unlocked by playing the zone to a large extent. Tbh, Orr should have a different set for each god/goddess. For a game that’s end-game is about skins, they seem to suck at adding armor skins to the game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We agree, this is something we’ve been discussing a lot lately and working on some various answers for, but I’m curious:

What rewards would you like to see from rewards? Would they be different when you’re leveling up than when you’re level 80? What would motivate you to want to go around the world playing as many different events as possible, rather than the same 4-5 over and over again?

Some of the fun challenges we are currently solving, but it’s great to hear peoples thoughts on this subject as well.

I think each of the non-80 zones should have a unique set of armor skins that are unlocked by completing the zone & doing a special set of zone achievements. The list should be pretty long & interesting (not just kill 500 chubas). Then you can have armor skins available to purchase for karma or zone faction. This, of course, needs to be done after the zone have been revamped to have MUCH MUCH larger metas that cross the whole zone & have lots of variations. DEs don’t split nearly enough. Every major DE should have at least 3 outcomes. It shouldn’t be just win/lose. It should be a story that plays out in lots of different ways.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Thanks for the info. I will have a think.

Chris

I totally agree with Conncept. The existing & ancient stories should be fleshed out though the evolution & expansion of the current DEs. I’m also a bit worried that this seems like a new idea. Adding more & more & more new stories for the sake of being new is disjointed & doesn’t feel alive. it just feels added on. Also, with DEs the story can progress in real time. Not just one week: oh look, a giant Scarlet-tower! Instead, we’d com into the zone & see Krait chopping down wood in an event where we have to stop them. Then if you don’t scare them off, the have an event where they bundle the wood & you have to stop them. if you do, you take the wood back to a fort to fortify it & centaurs or Krait try to stop you. If you don’t stop them, they carry the wood, into an underwater cave with a toxic krait boss & you have to stop them. this could cycle for a week along with 10 other “the Krait are doing something” DEs & make sense.. instead: no DEs, just listen to Majory tell you everything, done.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Conncept.7638:

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc…

Why couldn’t the design team have this attitude when they attempted and failed to expand on the event system? I swear it seems like they barely even tried…

Hi Conncept,

Can you provide some more details please in order to add more value to the discussion. Can you explain what you mean by attempted and failed to expand on the event system? Where do you think we failed and what do you see as success?

Chris

Essentially, it’s been said that the teams stopped adding DEs because it “was met with little fanfare”. To me, that’s a horrible design philosophy & it came when they had barely scratched the surface on what it would take to make a significant impact on DEs.
The number of DEs in the game is probably at half of what it should be to make the game feel alive. (as an aside, the LS doesn’t make the world feel live. DEs do. Which you’re kinda killing by funneling people only to the LS stuff) I would have thought (especially since there was a big deal made about how you were going to add DEs) that by 1 year, the number of DEs would have doubled & the variation in cycle length would have been drastically increased. Instead, the teams tried it for a tiny length of time & dropped it wholesale. I would have preferred that philosophy with Scarlet, not with DEs.
I feel like figuring out how to make new, more expansive kinds of DEs should be the teams focus. Making the game more live. not just having, essentially, story festivals.

Conncept.7638:

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc…

Why couldn’t the design team have this attitude when they attempted and failed to expand on the event system? I swear it seems like they barely even tried…

This is exactly my thought. I think stopping at 60 new events “around the world” was bizarre. Honestly, did the team expect people to even get a sense for added DEs until they got to almost doubling the # in the game? I’m surprised at that.
The current DEs repeat so fast & with such an obvious cycle that the world isn’t dynamic. we were told that certain events would be on month-long cycles. It seems pretty obvious that the current number of DEs, in terms of making a dynamic world, is not NEARLY enough.

If they don’t add regular DEs, i’d love for them to think about doing something that is actually more free-agent or battle-plan type stuff. I think Rifts invasions are far superior to the Scarlet invasions & I think using tech like that where, say, Centaurs actually build up forces, then move out(like, actually move), taking control of certain points on the map & disrupting current DEs & towns, would be more interesting. Especially if they vary their strategies & order & it only happens like twice a week.

I think it would behoove them to think of certain PvE maps like WvE.. with push & pull, roaming mobs, mob zergs, keeps, upgrading..etc.. but they need to do it in a way that is not scripted. the mobs need to be free-agents with agendas, not rail-following, spawn-at-this-time mobs.

mercury ranique.2170:

The first few missions we got Prince Rurik. He was annoying. He was a pain. He is the most hated NPC in the gw lore ever

I don’t remember anyone’s hate for Rurik being based on anything more than AI Leroying. That’s it. Story wise I liked him. He tried to do what was right for his people, he was a bit obsessed & petulant, but his character wasn’t annoying. It was nice to see him stand up to his father & to sacrifice himself.

BobbyStein.2315:

It’s more a matter of finishing what we started, implementing what we’ve already designed, and setting the game up for the next arc. I think it’s best that we try and give this story a satisfying conclusion rather than abandon it because some people aren’t fans of the villain.

I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not ignoring the opinions of people who don’t like elements of this Living World story. Folks such as yourself have made it pretty clear why you don’t like it. You just have to understand that catering to every taste and dropping everything that’s currently in progress in favor of a new idea just isn’t practical. But we can take that feedback, discuss it along with the rest of the lessons we’ve learned over the past year, and take it into consideration as we plan future releases.

Well. I understand finishing what you started. You can’t just keep swapping from one thing to another. that’s true. but it’s hard to square with something like the decision to drop (just as quickly) expanding the number of DEs. So we see that kind of just-move-on decision making there. why not with a reviled character arc? I guess it’s hard from a player perspective to deal with it, because every time I’m reminded that Scarlet is a major player in a game I’ve loved for almost a decade just kills the story for me. Also, I feel like the player response is significantly downplayed when it’s said that some people might not like her. Or implying that people that don’t have just arbitrarily made up their minds. I think it would be more accurate to say that _most _ people don’t like her.

I’m interested to see what is supposed to make her a so much better villain, but don’t know how that will change what she’s been so far. As I said, knowing why a character is unsatisfying doesn’t make them satisfying. Maybe it would be best to give that majority of the players something else in the story to look towards?

BobbyStein.2315:

If some folks “won’t listen or care about anything related to her” then they’ve already made up their minds. For the rest of the people playing the game, I would imagine that they’re curious as to where her story is going because we haven’t revealed as much as people have wanted. The truth of the matter is that we’ve been planning an epic conclusion to Scarlet’s story for a while now. I really wish I could say more but that would spoil what’s to come.

That seems a bit unfair. It’s like saying “the devs won’t listen & just drop her for something better because they’ve already decided she’s a good character”. I think many people won’t pay attention to her story because it’s been annoying so far. That’s not unfair. A story needs to earn the viewers attention & investment. I think most people will see what the story brings & accept it for good or bad. But I think that it’s extremely unfair to pre-lable people who are probably going to find her just as stupid as they do now. So far, every time you’ve explain more, it’s actually made her character more painful.

I feel like it’s a matter of quit-while-you’re-ahead. I’m surprised that the team quit adding DEs because there “wasn’t much fanfare” but when a character is so despised out of annoyance, lore-breaking ,meh visual design & wierdness, the team just sticks with her. I don’t get it.

I think I can sum up a lot of the fears of the future of Scarlet by saying: If you explain to me in harrowing detail why a character is annoying & groan-worthy, in the end they will still be annoying & groan-worthy. I’m not sure how that is a non-valid viewpoint.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Oh good. The update where Scarlet takes all the credit again and is still annoying.

Don’t worry! they promised that the “best parts” of her story are coming up. So we’ll finally find out why she’s supremely annoying.

And guess what?

She’ll still be supremely annoying.

Alukah.2063:

>The arc is about Scarlet.

bingo, you’ve discovered the problem.

panzer.6034:

Good thing that this isn’t a concern in fantasy fiction or this game wouldn’t have magic or dragons or asuras or golems or a million other things that are far more unrealistic than women being heroes in a disproportionate amount. If you’re suspension of disbelief is stretched thin by having more female protagonists then men, then i’m not sure how you put up with 99% of this game.

This seems to be the crux of your argument. That nothing matters because you can do anything in a fantasy setting & that a writer can choose to do anything as long as the story is good. (btw, you commented on how I said completely unrealistic in GW1 & yet ignored the part where I said I liked the story in GW1) The problem is that just like most fantasy stories, most of reality is kept, down to sexual dimorphism. It’s what makes it interesting. So, without mixing gameplay & lore like you did, the variation between the two still exists.

Men identify with male characters more. That’s not wrong. that’s not bad. that should be celebrated. like I said, it’s just about normal expectation. Could a logging camp of women work as beneficently as a logging camp of men? Highly unlikely, since all things being equal the men have an unfair physical advantage. That’s physics. you can come up with as many hypothetical situations you want, but it just is. Now, is it possible that all the women in logging town are stronger than the men in logging town? Yes. but that doesn’t mean getting strong guys in there wouldn’t help. it’s not the social construct you want it to be.

You keep talking about artificial injection of males into this game, but you’re saying it’s only wrong after the fact. Essentially you don’t have any problem with what the writers do, you have a problem with weather people like it or not? ok, I can buy that. Don’t mess with a story that isn’t yours. You have a point there. & in that context my point is: I can’t relate to these characters on the same level because my biological makeup doesn’t allow me to. You can have an all-girl squad (which, story wise, is completely arbitrary. There is no story reason for it at all which is interesting) but it wont reach as many people as a mixture.

I want a game with cool male heroes I can identify with. This game killed off the best 2 and (I noticed you keep ignoring this) has a concerted effort to make women put-down, one-up & belittle males.(to me, this is what the thread should be about) I slowly noticed this more & more over the past year. It’s especially egregious in the npc banter. all that is what made this recent LS stand out soooo much. it’s like they finally got their chance & they were “free” of male character. I’m sure certain people we be fine with any story & nothing will matter. But it’s there. people have been posting about it off & on & it’s far more disconcerting than saying “I want more male heroes because I’m a male”. Again, it’s the whole that makes this stand out. all this stuff about physicality is to explain why I find certain things normal. You don’t care that there seems to be an agenda, fine. Some people do, fine. I honestly think this would be a veeeery different thread if the the places were swapped & you had male character insulting women all over the game.

1) human male and female anatomy, though different, and generally advantageous to men in sports, is very similar between genders, scientifically. In some sports, men and women compete equally. And women beat men. Even if men, scientifically, are better at something, it doesn’t make them so dramatically better that any man can beat any woman. Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. I have beaten male opponents myself.

You beating a male is meaningless. You could beat me at most any sport. It’s when things are equal that you can measure then. As a scientist you should know that. & while there are sports that women are genetically superior, the evidence supports males being more built for war. You can’t seriously saying that sports have a vast massive divide for no physical reason. Men & women are not the same. It doesn’t mean we can’t give equal opportunity & let people choose how to live. It just means they are not the same.

panzer.6034:

2) The human brain is the same between the two (in terms of research, etc, not talking hormonal)

There are differences in violence control, willingness to reenter situations where they encountered pain & ability to emotionally detach to deal with traumatic behavior. There are plenty of marked differences. You are downplaying them significantly. That’s why if I say “murderer” you rightly assume male. It’s just true.

tmakinen.1048:

Which fantasy realm are you referring to by the above statement? Men are perhaps on average stronger and faster than women (endurance is debatable – look at a sport like free climbing that requires extreme amounts of endurance and notice that possibly the best climber of all time is a woman, Lynn Hill) but that doesn’t make all men categorically stronger and faster than any woman.

This is meaningless since you can pick any attribute & say it’s not categorically more or less anything. But all things being equal, the dimorphic difference is there & always has been. Also, even in endurance men statistically have more. The gap is smaller than strength, but it’s still there.

tmakinen.1048:

Also, this is rather irrelevant, because otherwise fighters would be chosen based on those qualities, and they aren’t.

Um, they are. They have been. if you get a 4F, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you aren’t gonna last in real combat. it’s hardly irrelevant. You may have generals & leaders that don’t need to get into direct combat, but even how men’s brains are wired makes them better suited to extended violent behavior & war. You can look into it if you don’t believe me, but men are just more suited to fighting physically & mentally. I know it’s popular to look at the past & say “oh look how dumb everyone was” but we did what worked best, & that wasn’t only because men are disposable, although that’s what ensured that all men had to fight.

tmakinen.1048:

TThose are not the qualities that make humans so formidable opponents. Instead, human dominance is based on intelligence, on the use of tools to augment one’s capabilities, and the ability to plan, communicate and cooperate to accomplish a task. On all these crucial abilities, men and women are created equal. A rifle operated by a woman is just as deadly as one operated by a man, strength doesn’t even enter the equation.

What you just said proved my point. Having two people that can essentially think the same, when one of them is faster, stronger, has more endurance & can detach themselves from emotion more easily: that one is more likely to win. saying that has nothing to do with social engineering, it’s the result of scientific observation. Again, look at top mens & womens strength & speed records. It’s not even close. Read about men’s emotional wiring as regards to violence & enduring warfare. It’s why a female serial murdered is harder to believe/accept than a male. it just don’t happen. Why is it biased/wrong to say something that is factually true, I don’t get it.

All this i’m saying isn’t about “I want all male characters durrr!” it’s about “the expectation of more male warriors is normal & justifiable”. That is the statement that you seem intent on saying is false.
Then que Anet’s questionable girl-one-ups-man dialog & stories & you get the whole story of why things stick out in this game. They can make what they want, but lets call a spade a spade. One or more of the writers clearly don’t think much of men.

panzer.6034:

The “MMOs are male oriented and so we need to have more males” argument is completely circular. It’s like arguing “we need more male doctors because being a doctor is a male oriented thing”.

No, it’s saying: Men tend to like (especially violent) games more than women. Which is a fact. it’s not a social construct, it’s not a circular anti-women statement, it’s a fact. It’s not saying “we need more male doctors because being a doctor is a male oriented thing” it’s saying: “it’s normal & logical to expect men to be loggers rather than women for physical reasons”.

panzer.6034:

It’s not some immutable fact that these thing MUST be that way or even SHOULD be and in the context of a video game or work of fiction, it’s the completely mutable, arbitrary decision of whoever makes video games or fiction.

and? We could have a game about men giving birth. In a game where Norns have an insane amount of dimorphism, none of what you said holds up. they are obviously conscious of the differences between males & females. Especially when you listen to the idle npc chatter.

panzer.6034:

You seem to say that women must be war heroes for their roles to be equal or acceptable. That war being male-centric is untrue/artificially-injected or somehow misguided.

It’s misguided to inject a certain demographic into a story just to have more of that demographic when the quality of the writing and the characters is what needs to be addressed more than anything. It’s affirmative action when none is needed.

So would you agree it’s misguided to make a fighting force half women when men are far stronger, faster, have more endurance, are physiologically wired for it & killing off the women means the end of the species? How is that not equally artificial? See, the problem here is you are picking one side over the other as “artificially-injected” without a logical reason. That’s the only reason I have an issue with it.

panzer.6034:

At this point, if you’re adding males in just to meet some made-up quota you are “injecting” things in via affirmative action when the story is perfectly fine without such agendas.

Sorry, but the only “quota” I see is injecting females so that we can be PC. There are far more female characters fitting your grievance than male. I’m baffled you can say type that & be serious. You think MEN are artificially injected into these kinda of stories? I’d like to see the logic behind that.

GW1 did it fine. Devona was cool, Margrid was cool. I even had respect for Kormir, i liked her. & all this was in a context of having a completely unrealistic number of women fighting. If that many women died, the human race would end. But now, as Tydarius said, it’s so obvious that a writer had a vendetta I can’t believe you are defending it. You turn a blind eye to all the “women gotta one-up the men” in the game. Then you accuse people of being face-palm-worthy because they find it logical that men would fight more than women (for physical reasons not social ones) & that males identify more with males.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’m unclear how a capable female in a leading role who also manages to maintain a strong degree of femininity in her dress and manner could be considered a Gurl. So no, I have not noticed any such developments.

She feels more like she based on a 30s male detective. At any rate I like Marjory’s character. I wish she was working alone though. it takes away from what they coulda done with her to have her buddies with Kassmeer. feels tacked on & weird. She seems like she’d be much more of a loner.

panzer.6034:

Lol. “Male, male, male” is what you’re telling me here. All these things must be preconceived as “male”. You’re proving my point beautifully.

So you’re saying it is factually untrue that:
men identify with men more than women
men play video games more than women
men are physically suited to war

Because that’s exactly what I said in that quote. If you can prove to me that any of these is factually untrue then I might believe I’m just arbitrarily choosing.

panzer.6034:

It’s been a few years since i studied sociology in college (i dealt more with race and authors like Cornel West anyway) but, if i recall, the jist of Farrell’s ideas regarding gender was essentially that it wasn’t so much a matter than men had power over women but that they each had “roles” in society. In the context of myth and western storytelling, men are the ones that have an overwhelming hold on the hero role as analogous to what we would see in an action RPG. Women of power exist in myth, but their role is generally different. The idea that i’m “making [my] own mythology” in order to favor more men as action heroes than women is completely laughable. I doubt Farrell is going to materialize a bunch of mythologies out of thin air that prove that women hold a “hero” or “warrior” role to an equal degree as men. He’d say that women DO have power, but that power has nothing to do with video game depictions of women as heroes…at all. When it comes to giving a spotlight to video game and mythological protagonists, men are clearly in the position of privilege.

You start by sort of explaining what Farrell said, then ignore it & jump right up to “privilege”. the main point of it is that these roles disprove privilege. As for mythology men are heroes in WAR STORIES. Not in stories of creation & birth. It’s just a connection to human physical attributes, it’s logical. You seem to say that women must be war heroes for their roles to be equal or acceptable. That war being male-centric is untrue/artificially-injected or somehow misguided.
I can’t get over how you think that having male warriors is having them “injected into it” & yet having female warriors is somehow more logical. How does that make any sense? That’s like saying I’m being unreasonable if I say “logging is male-oriented”. what?

Let me try to explain what im saying because people just loooove to jump on the “you’re a misogynist/male-only/misguided” bandwagon.

In a game about war i don’t think there is anything wrong with expecting a majority of the fighters be male. It’s logical. period. I like good female fighting characters. ie: Ripley is an effing bad——. Now, cut to GW2. They start going more & more female. Ok, that’s different. It doesn’t make logical sense for everything to just kinda go that way, but it’s kinda new. But in the light of the way the game has lots of girl-one-upping-boy stuff all over it, it stand out as just: “girl dominance good”. It’s less about this one little part & more about the whole. I liked that GW1 had both & it was just kinda there. I actually kinda liked Kormir. I felt like she was trying in the story to do what was right. but this just reeks of social/political agenda.

Aerlen.5326:

And you seem to think there’s some hidden agenda to remove male heroes from Guild Wars 2 when there isn’t. Stop with your crusade, there is no female master plan to destroy male characters in GW2.

Based on the ambient npc chatter I honestly feel like there was a concerted effort to make women put down, one-up, snarkly zing & make men look foolish. I loved GW1 & I had no reason to expect anything like that, but the more & more I listened to the audio I couldn’t deny it. I’ve never seen a game do this kind of thing so it stood out.

As for the Heroes, I just think the writers just don’t care for male heroes. Unless the are Sylvari.

panzer.6034:

This whole thread is a big facepalm. Lets all sit here and pretend that the entire history of male empowerment and privilege in mythology, books, movies and society at large never happened and then demand that we make up for it by arbitrarily injecting more male heroes into this game. This is some bizarre form of affirmative action.

males identifying with male characters in a male-focused form of entertainment about male-centric activities? Oh NOES! they MUST be hate-mongers! I used to believe that too. I suggest you listen to a little girlwriteswhat & read some Warren Farrell before you start making your own mythology. Farrell has particularly interesting insights in that he is a feminist. Your “privileged” remark holds little water in the light of history.

Cynz.9437:

there are plenty of 18+ year old “males” that think females belong in the kitchen basically and threat them like a thing

so.. where are those people in this thread? oh.. I see, you made that up.. huh.

i played quite few games and sadly there are such people who just hate females for w/e reason

There is hatred for females in this thread? where? The only anti-gender comments in this thread are directed against males. Your kind of generalization & vilification is far more egregious than anything people are saying here about “why is there a female focus in war game?”.

Aerlen.5326:

DarksunG.9537:

Aerlen.5326:

I’d go for that if the male armors had the same options – let’s see some “sexy” and impractical male armors.

There are several armors when men have their entire chest exposed. (actually looks cool too) Can we get that for women? =P

The male chest is not considered sexual or as sexual as female breasts but nice try.

If you want a “fair trade”, women can have full topless if men are allowed no pants.

actually that’s not true either. Women find suits as sexy as men find cleavage but nice try. & as RyuDragnier said, it doesn’t work that way with men either.

I suppose in your mind if women wear no pants men have to rip off their skin?

RyuDragnier.9476:

This post here is so bad, well…

Everything you said makes you look like you don’t think a single woman can do what a guy can. You’re dead wrong, they can pull off anything a guy can, including physique (seriously, have you seen some of those female body builders out there!?).

Bull. I never said woman can’t do anything men can. I never even eluded to it. I pointed out that men are suited to fighting. If something like that makes you jump to such conclusions then you’re gonna have a hard time dealing with any data that goes against your preconceptions.

Have you even read anything about the differences in strength, speed, stamina, emotional detachment, & willingness to fight/inability to restrain violence that makes men & women different? The differences are huge. yeah, if you take a bodybuilder women & have her fight an out of shape skinny guy, she will probably win, but when things are equal the differences are massive. Up to 60% stronger. The fastest women in the world is slower than certain boys highschool track speeds. Men are more likely to return to a situation in which they experienced pain. Men are wired to be more detached from emotion making violence easier (which has negative consequences in our society) It’s just the way it is. How do you interpret that data? So far is seems to support all of human history & warfare. (notice that’s not for the best. it just is)

Seriously, I feel like the guy that said the world is round & people screaming “blasphemy”! I didn’t make reality. It wasn’t an arbitrary social role, it was an evolutionary one. It’s not EVIL that they like making tons of women the main characters but it sticks out in a war game that is played mostly by men. & on top of the ambient level of anti-maleness in GW2, it becomes suspicious.

locoman.1974:

DarksunG.9537:

Aerlen.5326:

I’d go for that if the male armors had the same options – let’s see some “sexy” and impractical male armors.

There are several armors when men have their entire chest exposed. (actually looks cool too) Can we get that for women? =P

Of course you can…. as long as your race is asura or charr…

haha, you got me! =D

Aerlen.5326:

I’d go for that if the male armors had the same options – let’s see some “sexy” and impractical male armors.

There are several armors when men have their entire chest exposed. (actually looks cool too) Can we get that for women? =P

VOLKON.1290:

That fact that so many people love as well as hate Scarlet to me indicates they’re doing a great job with this “bad guy”. Love or hate, she’s making people care about her presence returning.

It’s the bad guys you never remember or don’t care at all if they return that suck. If Scarlet is getting under your skin for good or ill then they’re doing it right.

You’ve got this TOTALLY wrong.
I remember Benjamin Linus from Lost cuz he was just a total kitten & you loved to hate the guy. He was manipulative & ruthless. Great character.
I remember SW Episode 1 because it was one of the worst modern movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember the MOVIE, I remember know how bad Lucas was at making it.

If they move on, I’ll remember that I don’t care about the lore anymore because they jumped the shark with this idiot. The only thing they’ve communicated correctly is: annoying character that I want to skip.

The draxy doth protest to much, methinks.

huh? So he can’t dislike her with good reasons? ok.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Have we forgotten this line already?

“Captain Evon Gnashblade: My fault? You’re a mouse fart who thinks she’s a hurricane. Please.”

Anet intentionally makes interesting (to put it mildly) remarks through their characters to make us chuckle.

well at least that one was funny & fit. This one came outta nowhere & felt out of place.

Aedelric.1287:

Mad King Thorn and the Bloody Prince are male.

GG, so one old character (that is awesome btw) & one new one. (he’s ok. Looks totally emo but the voice work is awesome & the bickering is great). I think ppl are totally blowing the “lol everyone is a Sue” out of proportion. Only Scarlet has been called one. lot of threads, but it’s hardly a rampant label.

Tanith.5264:

As a female gamer, I’ve found myself relating just about equally to male and female characters in any game.

Or you don’t know how much you really aren’t relating to male characters as much as you think you do. Men & Women are different regardless how much writers want us to pretended we are amorphous blobs of generic “dramatic emotions”.

Hopelessalchemist.4816:

DarkWasp.7291:

Hopelessalchemist.4816:

What’s wrong with gender X same gender pairings?

We’re not necessarily saying we’re finding wrong with it.

It just doesn’t make sense that the one sex that most gamers can relate with (males) are practically non-existent in recent living story. So much so that the there aren’t enough of them to go around for the female characters to be straight even if they wanted to.

In other words:

Its not female gamers don’t matter.
Its that male gamers still do.

If you’re unable to relate to a female character, that says a lot about YOU, not about arenanet. Females aren’t a different species, they are People Like all people, they have unique motivations, personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. The fact that you have a ding-dong and the character doesn’t shouldn’t prevent you from relating to that character as another human.

Relating to a person as a human is absolutely different than relating to a person as male or female. The “they are human so they are exactly the same” is totally bogus. We are made up of what we physically are & you can’t pretend that away.

Thobek.1730:

I know they work together but when marjory says “I’ve been thinking about scarlet” and Kasmeer butts in and says “She can’t have you.”

errr… seems like a odd thing to say.

Fits into Anet GW2 charter: “just say no to males.”

Shiren.9532:

Turns out Scarlet conveniently came into possession of a magic rock that the krait wanted. She offered it to them and the rock’s magic wiped away all of their prior characteristics so they could become tools for Scarlet.

The players need a magic rock to remove Scarlet from the story.

lol would be nice.

omg, when I found out Scarlet was connected AGAIN I officially gave up on the lore..

I’ll say right now, that Marjory seemed fun before, so I don’t know if she’s lame now. But Anet has (writing wise) definitely had a suspicious focus on females & high number of occasion of making female characters “totally awesome”, male characters weak or lame, & if they can, they do the former at the expense of the latter purposefully. The ambient npc chatter is rife with it.

Cotheer.2806:

RNG skins are nothing new and I’ve learned to just ignore them. I’m all for convenience, but I’ll never buy any RNG crap they throw in our faces every “update”.

yeah. I wonder how much they make from them… I guess there are enough fools buying them, but I’d like to think that it’s not true.

Terrahero.9358:

Here’s an idea. You know, if everyone just would stop buying them they would stop putting them behind a gambling screen.

sort of.. I think the result would simply be that they’d stop making any armor skins.

I don’t understand why the female version is like.. strips of cloth or something.. got all these bands on it. It looks pretty different as well.. which I don’t usually mind.

People are over exaggerating of course, but the armor does have oddness to it.

Seras.5702:

No matter how clever Scarlet is, it just seems lame compared to stories of undead armies, fallen gods, dragons, and titans.

honestly I think she’s marginalized much of that. The idea that a plant lady could see & comprehend the Eternal Alchemy, even part of it (& no, I don’t take any of the recent retractions as anything other than damage control. She obviously couldn’t do anything she did without some deus-ex going on ) & somehow be amazing at everything & act i’m-the-cool-kind-of-crazy is so lame. And even if they did give a reasonable explanation, she’s still be an annoying person. They are going to have to pull another deus-ex with the Mursaat if they want them to seem even remotely important now. So they’ve kind of screwed themselves.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

They still have many opportunities to flesh her out and to flesh out her rivalry with the player, to give her a place in the story besides what she has now. Her story has so much potential, it’s just up to the devs and storywriters to ensure that she can realize it.

Sorry, but her “potential” is for frustration & annoyance. what they explained made her all the more annoying because they gave this idiot so much power. the more they “flesh her out” the more eye-rolling she becomes. They really, really, need to cut her short as quick as possible.

tbh, I think they best thing they could do for her right now, is have her die in the funniest, most unexpected way that make her look look like as much a chump as possible. Seriously, the WP/MV way of “hahahah! i’m Scarlet, i’m so awes-” THUMP Jormag steps on her, shift the whole story to him & never look back.

I think Anet has a bit too much of a love for it’s failed lore & visuals. They seem ok with admitting bad design choices, but when people hate they armor or story.. they just shrug keep going with it.

BlakThornArrow.2389:

I dont get this. Scarlet has been a major and decent villian ingame for a while now.
But most of the player base wants to see her get killed of or either just be ignored.
Sure i’d rather see an elder dragon awaken but if its going to be another shoot the canons at zaithan fight I prefer they wait until they are able to make it a decent encounter.

Scarlet on the other had gave us decent content with interesting enemies and more.
so whatsupp with this scarlet needs to die , its like trahearne all over again -_-

Because she’s got an extremely annoying personality, a villian-sue backstory that comes from nowhere, marginalizes previous characters buy it’s overpoweredness & is once again another “The Sylvari are soooo awesome” character & we’re getting sick of it. She’s not menacing, she’s not cool, she’s not funny & expecting me to believe that idiot could marshal an army of all those groups is laughable, based on her personality alone.

The problem with many of these kinds of characters is that they use lore to try to hide an annoying character. Many teenage Lore-hounds buy it. She’ll talk like an idiot with teenager “i’m my own person!” motivations & dime-store “crazy zaniness” & then they try to make me accept it by writing as story that gives her powers that are supposed to maker her substantial. They just make her frustrating. There is nothing more irritating than making a character whose personality sucks have lots of power & insight. it’s like coating poop with cinnamon. The core is still poop.

This talk about “let’s wait & see what the story tells us” completely ignore the fact that her personality is annoying & stupid. You can’t change that by trying to “explain” everything. In fact, if I have to wait for an explanation to enjoy a character, something is wrong. They should work regardless. knowing why she’s annoying doesn’t make her not annoying. If she is made to be an annoying, over-powered brat then congrats, she’s a success and I hate having to play anything she’s connected to. THAT’S what they want?

g e o.2589:

-Scarlet’s death!!!
…
-Scarlet’s death!!!
…
-Scarlet’s death!!!

we can only hope.. followed closely by: Scarlet’s Retcon. If they could retcon the gods to be glorified bosses, they could just make Scarlet a horrible nightmare!

panzer.6034:

“Immersion breaking” has become a cheap, trendy term people use in an attempt to give their subjective taste some kind of objective sounding weight.

like your label of inconsistency as it pertain to classes by being "gamist and arbitrary ". Just because a character’s entire profession & fighting discipline in a world of magic users isn’t enough of a reason for you, again, doesn’t make it inconsistent.

Ashadow.6874:

You want Scarlet to just “up and die” and be done with. But you probably don’t even know her story.

Many of us want her to die because her back story is so utterly idiotic that it begs a retcon. From how you explained her story i’m convinced even moreso she’s a Villian Sue & that she simply appeals to people who need that kind of character. It’s also telling that those who love her completely ignore her actual CHARACTER & focus on her shark-jumping BACKSTORY. Her CHARACTER is an annoying, cookie-cutter madman with wacky modern “killing people is funny” dialog. Of course, this is lost on anyone who puts lore over character. So far, the Mad King has a far better CHARACTER than Scarlet & already fills the madman role. And in a MUCH more entertaining & menacing way.

Yeah she needs to be scrubbed from the lore. with actually cool, fun characters like Palawa Joko & the Mursaat, I’m at a loss for why they feel the need to add modernized omniscient joker clones.

I like how Anet admitted that master togo’s voice acting was terribad, but I get this feeling that they actually believe Scarlet is good. Sorry, togo’s voice acting is award winning next to the pile that is Scarlet.

At any rate, I’m glad to see a movement away from Turdlet.

Astralporing.1957:

If i wanted to do a summary why she’s such a cartoonish cliche villain and why it would be better to just forget about her, i couldn’t have done it better. Thank you OP.

Agreed. The Back story just helped to cement how utterly ridiculous & Sue this character is. it’s not surprising that some MMO players like her, she’s the epitome of the teenage Deviant Art style character who is awesome at everything, has the stupid modern-stlye annoying sassy character that is incongruent with the setting & “bucks the system” for some “i’m great & unique” reason like every teen does in their half-informed wisdom.

Farzo.8410:

Farzo.8410:

I hope what Matt Visual and WoodenPotatoes said should happen to her.

She stands there talking, sounding boring and cliche as usual. And suddenly a big Elder Dragon just lands on her, crushing her or impaling her on its claw, or whatever.

- and that’s how Jormag/Kralkatorrik/Bubbles/Mordremoth/Primordius is introduced.

I think I’d clap for that perfect landing. Waving the signal ligts could be a part of her final fight.

would be amazing. Although they’d probably try to play the scene off like Scarlet new it would happen the whole time & wanted it so & thus making her death yet another thing that makes her “so awesome”.

For the love of frick don’t ruin the Krait too by associating them with Scarlet as well..

panzer.6034:

That’s not an “immersion” issue though. If you can have a mesmer go into a battle wearing a skimpy hooker outfit but then have a problem with a warrior running it with the same outfit, THAT is an immersion breaking double standard from a “realism” standpoint. If the immersion issue is that people can never wear clothes into a fight at all instead of armor, then that was an issue from day one.

Your problem is equating realism with immersion. They aren’t the same & wanting them to be doesn’t make it so.

BoogerSammich.7189:

Those spikes coming out of his chest look BOSS!

lolwut… everything but the spikes looks ok.. but.. those those things.. lol.. they picked the worst aspect of GW1 armor to bring over.. the silly, clunky, random spikes coming from nowhere.

Also.. why does he look emo? he looks so awesome in the concept art.. tough & menacing. Then he’s just this skinny emo guy in game. what is with that?

also costume… wut.

Implement those and I’ll end up buying every single costume and armor skin in the gem shop. Currently I won’t touch them due to their poor implementation.

agreed

I have to say, it is pretty ghetto that back armor is the only thing they added. For me Armor skins are the primary reason to play MMOs. it’s my main goal. I’d rather pay for new dungeons & be able to get new armor from actually PLAYING.

most MMOs have several entire sets of armor added each year with new dungeons or something, but in Guild Wars 2, you pay about a months worth of subscription for 1 set of skins that you can use once on one character.. yikes.

medium looks cool, light & omg.. heavy.. Heavy is the worst in the game. rather wear starter gear,.

Wow.. just looked at them in, game.. I normally would have said the OP was over stating it, but these are the worst armor sets in the game hands-down. (at least the heavy 7 light… good lord..) Either this is an awful cash-grab or dev trolling.. because these are only epic in their awfulness… woooow