Scarlet doesn’t need to be killed, she needs to be erased from history.
Admitting a mistake is the first step towards fixing it.
(Same goes for Trahearne. Any fans of Trahearne? Handcount. Come on. Anyone at all?..)
I don’t even care if there’s an in-game explanation given. The Lore has already been broken. I don’t want her dead, I want her removed. I want her retconned.
I want authority over the direction of the story taken away from the people responsible for creating and promoting her, and this whole crappy storyline, and this whole crappy content delivery schedule.
And for the people who like Scarlet (if you exist): I have a theory. Just a hunch. I can’t tell you what you think and I’m not going to tell you what to like. There’s nothing wrong with liking things, it’s fun for all involved.
But.
I don’t think you like Scarlet. I think you like Tara Strong. She’s an amazingly energetic actress capable of making even the worst script sound fun.
If Scarlet were presented solely in written dialogue (“DIE DIE DIE!”) and solely through other characters (“Scarlet is super awesome at everything and her super-armies are invading everywhere this week like the last and she can’t be beat!”) she’s be an example of pure zero-effort lazy self-indulgent third-rate Power Rangers fan fiction.
But then they release a game that lacked in the field that would’ve been one of their strongest points… The cosmetic progression.
Because the game came out (and more than one year after, the situation is almost the same) with absolutely not enough variety in skins, expecially armors’… And most of them are uninspired to say the least… Not to mention the massive clipping and sizing problems that crippled the “Mix & match-ability” of the game.
…And even without that, there was never any “Cosmetic progression” to begin with.
The transmutation system precludes that: you can only have one set of gear, and if you acquire anything new and decide it’s better, you have to wave goodbye to your old set (and pay real-life money for the privilege on top).
It’s rather like if your old skills disappeared when you unlocked new ones: that’s not progression, that’s the opposite.
But the really puzzling things is: the Dye system does actually count as proper cosmetic progression with players seeking out and collecting new ones, and it works really, really well.
Interesting stuff. How about 2.5 billion or so in a stack? Because that’s what the last game I played bank offers as well as personal inv spaces for some items like cash, runes etc. So how many bits would 2+ billion work out at, seriously I am interested lol?
What game was that?
Also, fun exercise: you can find out for yourself.
Get an ordinary calculator, multiply 2 by 2 and press “=” a few times. Pressing it seven times will get you 256 (2 in power of 8 ), and pressing it fifteen times gets you 65,536 (2 in power of 16), and to get up to 2 billion you need… Well, that’s the fun of it. Not a whole lot.
EDIT: Root, you spoilsport.
(edited by Draco.2806)
I must be playing a completely different version than you then Draco, because I have seen a massive amount of fixes and new features since last year.
Maybe you have.
When you look at the patchnotes and press releases, it definitely sounds like lots of epic stuff is being added and improved all the time. When you play the game, however, it’s downright impossible to tell the difference from the early beta.
The temporary content – what little there was – is gone without a trace, and everything that was broken or lacking then is still broken and lacking now.
I’ll give it to you that the Fractals were the one good, proper addition. Their overall quality and ascended trinkets and treadmill nonsense that came with them notwithstanding.
“We’ll add tons of new awesome content while also fixing up the game, and we’ll add tons of new features too!”
They said the same thing a year ago. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to happen now.
Hearing insincere pompous pronouncements like “Epic events that will rock you to your very core!” is just, I’m sorry, sickening. It’s such a far cry from the way developers addressed us in the Manifesto. It just sounds so… empty…
Worse yet, considering all the criticism they’ve been getting over the direction of Living Story, Scarlet, Ascended, etc., etc., it sounds outright insulting.
Although GW2 deserves praise for some great improvements over the standard MMO formula – like being able to freely change skills, reducing reliance on gear, introducing collections, freely accessible PvP, more dynamic combat, so on – underneath it’s still your generic WoW clone.
It’s no Terraria to your Minecraft or Everquest Next to your… well… Everquest.
It doesn’t introduce anything new to the standard MMO formula, but it does polish up some of the rough edges – which is basically what WoW did to Everquest/Ultima formula when it came out, too.
I can sum up the video for the impatient (like me):
Scarlet herself isn’t the problem, she’s just the latest failure of the GW2 writing staff – and at this point players just can’t take it anymore.
The straw that broke the camel’s back, so to say.
Personally, I fully agree.
To me, one of the most memorable moments of Personal Story was the gathering of all three “Orders of Tyria” on the docks of Lion’s Arch whereupon the veteran captains and masterful leaders of huge armies of exceptionally skillful people willing to selflessly sacrifice their lives for the good of the world proceeded to bicker like little children about pitiful garbage.
“Idiot balls for sale! Fresh idiot balls for sale! Get them while they’re still hot! You, sir, would you like an idiot ball? No? Too bad!”
Not even Scarlet has ever flushed so much of the story down the drain in a single roll of the DIE DIE DIE!
(edited by Draco.2806)
I wrote a post a long time ago on why RNG implementation in GW2 is outright wrong which is the reason it’s justifiably upsetting so many that get the rough end of the stick.
Short version: random-number mechanics in games were never meant to actually be “random”, they’re just a statistical way to divide the indivisible. In GW2, this is not the case.
I think they expected the community to embrace horizontal progression and instead they got a lot of “there’s nothing to doooooo” whining.
Well they were right. There IS nothing to do.
And there’s no horizontal progression either. The only way to change your looks is with a cash-exclusive item, and that change is permanent. You choose your looks and you’re done. There’s no progression.
So now chasing shinies is completely pointless – not only do they not give you better stats, they won’t give you new looks either.
And without chasing shinies, what else is there to do? Press 1 or ten different kinds of drakes that press 1 on you? Explore featureless green plains for the sake of exploring featureless green plains? Really, what do you do in the open world? Nothing. This would be a death sentence to any game.
I might have bought something in the gem store sometime if it wasn’t for this absurd policy.
But shelling out 10$ (or 100G or whatever) not on just a cosmetic item, but a cosmetic item you can only use once, on one character, and can easily lose altogether seems like an absurd investment.
Pffft, get outta here. I have one female alt and one alt of indeterminate gender (Sylvari thief) and I ain’t never seen anything like it.
I think there are too many ladies running around for this to happen. Half the player-base at least, seems about right.
The problem isn’t the weapons/utilities/traits/stats.
The problem is people come from games like WoW and think it should play like WoW.
Then you got another crowed from GW1 and expect the builds to work the same way as GW2… This is a different game after all.
I’m gonna have to stop that stereotyping right there.
Me, I’ve tried both WoW and Guild Wars for a couple of levels. Didn’t end up with either. Don’t play MMOs, don’t play many RPGs, don’t care about metagame.
My criticism is exactly the same as that of thread’s creator. It’s all to restrictive and ineffective.
I think anyone coming from any game is confused by DPS being the only viable way to play is most situaitons
The second point, how so?
Well, I don’t want to debate lore, actually. Can’t say I care about it, the game sure hasn’t given me any reasons to.
I was just saying I think the reasons given are still valid – that it’s simply absurd how magically special and perfect this random twig is for no Divinity Dam reason, and the contradictions with (barely) established facts – or what we can assume are facts by virtue of assuming that people who inhabit Tyria aren’t stupid and insane at the same time – all simply for the sake of making her look even more wonderful are endlessly grating. This, of course, coupled with extremely weak exposition in-game meaning even what we know of the world is already ambiguous at best and full of holes at worst. So new justifications for her sake may only serve to expose weaknesses in what we previously accepted, but is now even dumber than it used to be.
I mean, the “Orders”, for god’s sake. The world doesn’t work that way. It’s already dumb, you don’t need to add to that.
But really, I was more referring to what Scarlet appears to be. Someone just said it: her first appearance looked like a bad joke, like writers making fun of their players or themselves or something else entirely.
It literally looked like a bad joke.
You can try and justify that, but – well, not “you” you – but a creator should never do that. You can’t convince your audience to like your work with arguments and explanations, you just have to make it happen. If you can’t do that, well, then you’re not a good writer.
(edited by Draco.2806)
I didn’t play much of original Guild Wars, but I remember being completely overwhelmed by so many skills that did so many different things.
In GW2, locked weapon skills aside, at first you get the impression have lots and lots to choose from, but there are only a few actually useful skills for any build, and everything from that just does a slight variation of the same thing once every one or two minutes tops. And yet, still, when there are a few players on screen everything quickly turns into a mess of random graphics and effects you can barely predict, less of all react to.
I wish there was more stuff to do. Or at least if stuff that we get to use was less boring, and more dynamic.
Then we can all worship Tybalt the Applelord and carry around Apple medalians in memory of the only interesting NPC in the game.
I wonder how many people noticed that…
Personal Story Spoilers...after his death, Risen mobs will sometimes taunt you with lines like "You will join Tybald!" and "Tybald is with us now!"
This is a genuinely good and subtle touch. It’s really Divinity Dam good. And it makes you wonder if this and Scarlet Sue are really written by the same people.
(edited by Draco.2806)
Invalidating the other side simply for holding an opinion…
No one’s doing that.
I just wish people would talk about her actions truthfully to the actual information given instead of twisting things to fit their viewpoints.
I think you’re wrong on all accounts there, actually. The point I was making is that it doesn’t matter one way or the other: people will rightfully hate what the writers have done regardless.
I’ve said it just before:
I think ANet’s writers and AKG here don’t quite understand the reason they can’t truly fix this mess … when you write a story for other people to experience, they become the judge of your success.
There may be something good behind the idea or their intentions for this… well, this... but no one’s going to see it if you don’t present it just the right way.
It doesn’t matter where you try to make her “fit” or how much sense it all makes. Any attempts to defend Scarlet are fruitless from the get-go.
The players have spoken. They no longer care about any excuses and justifications. There is no redemption for this character or what they’ve done with her. The writers have failed (and boy did they).
As for the reasons why, Palador and Voidwater summed up about one-tenth of them as concisely as could be. There are many more. Whether people can put them into words or not, doesn’t matter.
ring ring
It’s Tom Hanks.
You’re welcome.
Despite how I may seem to froth and rant about her, I’ll say flat out that there’s nothing wrong with liking her.
Amen.
(I, for one, like Frontlines: Fuel of War even though it’s utter generic schlock.)
You simply gain skill points as you fill the bar with your traits already unlocked and all areas are of the same “level.”
They tried it early beta testing, it was changed to levels because people did not like it.
Of course people didn’t like it: they’d be taking out any meaningful progression out of the game.
It was a wrong solution to the wrong problem.
What they needed to do was implement a system of progression that is not tied to math behind each encounter. In fact, that’s what they needed to do even if they did – the game still lacks progression and direction in most respects.
Even WoW with its huge array of dumb fetch quests knows better. Quests give the player direction and incentive, and they enable progression. It’s not the best of solutions, but it’s better than nothing.
Yes. Scarlet’s advantage is surprise. Surprise and numbers.
Okay, her two advantages are surprise and numbers. And being a super-genus.
Scarlet has three big advantages. Surprise, numbers, and being a super-genus. Oh, and being able to make xenophobic religious fanatics work with other xenophobic religious fanatics of opposed worldviews.
And being able to pull in forces from another reality.
And steal equipment from the most advanced military in Tyria today, without anyone even noticing.Here is Scarlet. She is the Epic Hero, she is a Special Snowflake, and even when her plans are crashing down around her, she can not fail.
That was friggin’ hilarious. I like your solution to the problem, too.
I think ANet’s writers and AKG here don’t quite understand the reason they can’t truly fix this mess or explain to the poor uneducated masses why their story is actually really good, honest, and that reason is: when you write a story for other people to experience, they become the judge of your success.
There may be something good behind the idea or their intentions for this… well, this... but no one’s going to see it if you don’t present it just the right way.
It’s not invalid to like Scarlet. It’s purely personal, people like what they like, they don’t what they don’t. The problem isn’t in personal taste. The problem is that the writers aren’t doing their job.
(edited by Draco.2806)
So, because you don’t like the story of the thaumanova reactor, you just steal the plot of Half-Life.
Thaumanova itself is an obvious Black Mesa stand-in. Of course I steal it.
It would be wrong to do otherwise. When you reference work of other people, you have to acknowledge it.
Thanks for taking a look.
Yes, do something original like put you right in the middle of the disaster as it happens. You’re a lowly Asuran scientist, tasked with equipping a Hazmat Suit and delivering a sample of chaos material to a test chamber. Upon placing it into the test apparatus, everything goes haywire, you’re briefly teleported to a variety of locales inside and outside of Tyria, and then returned to a facility in chaos.
You manage to arm yourself with a simple “The Fixer” wrench to fend off the karka hatchlings now infesting the facility, along with strange creatures from outside Tyria. When Asuran Peacekeepers arrive, you’re overjoyed — only to find that they are eliminating any trace of the incident, including the surviving Thaumanova research staff. Then a bunch of stuff happens, you go to the Mists and complete an obnoxious JP and fight a Karka Queen and a giant baby that controls the invading creatures, and finally Scarlet shows up and puts you in stasis.
Just hire this guy, I don’t know.
Anyone who’s well-versed enough in interactive storytelling to recognize the parallels between Thaumanova and Black Mesa would do a much better job at it than what we got.
(edited by Draco.2806)
Yep, Warrior.
You can do anything you want with a warrior at very quickly succeed at it. While other classes have strengths and weaknesses, Warrior does everything either well or amazingly well.
The exceptions to this rule only start to appear in high-level play, but even there Warriors are a common staple.
Ah don’t worry, I’ve removed said post so it doesn’t interrupt your posts (I didn’t realise you hadn’t finished when I posted).
Thanks!
And how is that any different from what I said?
Well… I was agreeing with you.
The fact still remains that we KNOW that Scarlet worked with the Inquest, thus it is not really that unfit that she would be present at one of their biggest historical points, especially since it would most likely fit her timeline.
Sure. It fits.
I mean, if you’re a writer, you can fit her anywhere you want, really. Just say “Scarlet did it.”
The problem here isn’t that you can’t fit her inside the plot holes if you squeeze hard enough, it’s that people instinctively feel – and they’re right – that a character like Scarlet doesn’t belong in the world of Guild Wars, period. It doesn’t help that everything we’ve seen that involved her has been horrible either. Her being shoved into Thaumanova is just the latest debacle, the previous shoehorned-in plots are no better. People are getting more and more fed up with it the more they do it.
Some of the reasons for that are discussed in the OP, but there are so many others. It’s truly fascinating just how wrong ANet have approached this, on every level.
How is it immersion-breaking that someone that worked with a certain group was with said group when said group did stuff?
No, no. Scarlet herself is what’s immersion-breaking. It’s the kind of writing so bad you can’t help but notice it – and this completely shatters what could be left of any investment you may have in the story.
Bad writing takes you out of the moment. That’s it.
Scarlet is best pony!
original character plz do not steal
(edited by Draco.2806)
The whole place felt like a bad first-game prototype built by an amateur modder on the old Source engine.
The maze part was outright obscene.
“And now let’s navigate this completely featureless samey-looking maze with no map looking for we don’t what or what it does because we won’t tell you why while being shot at from every direction which kills you in two shots. It’ll be fun!”
Scarlet… No.
Get rid of her. Forget her. She’s sh*%.
Not getting almost any information about the reactor aside from short sentence from scarlet was really bad … we entered in there without any way of knowing what is going on.
It’s actually amazing how little exposition there was, or is in general.
Okay, you’re making a game, you can’t overwhelm the players with story when they’re busy slaying a dozen monsters – but it’s like they aren’t even trying now.
Failing is one thing, but first you have to at least try.
Scarlet DID work with the Inquest during said situation, so technically it was destroyed by the Inquest and their experiments.
Wiki says the explosion was the fault of an underground Inquest lab. Don’t if it’s true, frankly, don’t really care.
The point stands: any of these explanations are better than “Scarlet did it.”
It’s not just completely out of left field and nonsensical, it’s outright immersion-breaking. You can’t take a story that offers answers like this even remotely seriously.
… Just a couple more examples of how extra build tabs would improve and evolve the game …
This sounds so good.
Man, I really wish more games worked that way. It’d literally be “Play the way you want.”
Death by firing of the lead writer.
Retcon her out of existence. Throw her away.
If I am to fight God, I do not want God to be some clown that constantly spews annoying nonsense. I do not want to see God do petty and childish things like boil Faren in a cauldron. That sort of lame god belongs in a farce or children’s cartoon. I want to fight a mighty being of great majesty.
If Scarlet is not God, then the writers make her far too powerful and talented. Her backstory is awkward. Prodigy at everything? Unlikely. Makes me go o_O. Leading three armies of disparate, wildly xenophobic, very violent races/factions? She has no charisma, gravitas, or even an imposing aura. She is a silly clown that says dumb things, not a drop of leadership material in her character. Unlikely, unless this is a children’s cartoon. Her abilities and social position are qualities of a Mary Sue otherwise.
Her role in the story feels unnatural, forced and awkward.
The story has so far consisted of Scarlet trolling Tyria with the minion flavor of the week. The villain’s maturity is on the level of a bad Youtube commenter. It feels like a Super Sentai show, without the awesome giant robots. Minimal exposition and details, no complex character/plot relationships.
It doesn’t matter what they might have planned, so far the storytelling has just been bad. I will judge the future when it arrives.
I think you’ve just said everything there is to say.
I’d probably need a couple dozen pages to explain just what exactly is wrong with this whole debacle. This is much more concise.
Lore has to be consistent so that it’s followers can appreciate it however it can do just about anything because if your the developer, you create it.
It’s a fantasy game you could literally come up with some impressing, other worldly creature that strikes you with a sense of awe and excitement to meet and fight. Rather than a Mary Sue with a British accent…
It’s a failure to imagine.
In my book, that is the worst of failures a writer could ever be accused of.
When you’re in charge of writing a book, filming a movie, or making a game, your only limitations ought to be technical skills and limitations – not your lack of creativity.
I feel that so many things in GW2 can be ascribed to failure of imagination.
Sure, as a creator, sometimes you try and you fail – but first you have to try. It doesn’t really feel like they’re even trying.
I’m not a particularly high-class player, I don’t do dungeons or fractals, and I’ve only once run a five-man group through a few low-level fractals just to see what it’s like.
The dredge one was AWFUL.
It was AWFUL.
Why won’t it stop being AWFUL!?
You can’t tell if a character is a failure until the story is over.
Yes. Yes we can.
Batkitten crazy might be seen as appealing, but it’s far from perfect.
Quirkiness is common component of Mary Sues. It’s absolutely transparent.
Nobody in GW2 is an epic hero.
If by “nobody” you mean “everybody”. Mary Sues and one-dimensional heroics populate Guild Wars lore like angry locusts.
That’s the point I think some people are missing about GW2’s story, even when it’s presented front and center at just about every turn: TEAMWORK is key.
Well, yeah, we’re missing it because that theme has been just as well-developed as nothing.
Personally, I counted on this one. Using unity and teamwork in an MMO setting would show awareness of the medium. That wasn’t true.
Scarlet’s only advantage is surprise and numbers.
Yes, and four impossible degrees, being a genius, a prodigy, a superhero, a living talk, having a dozen armies at her disposal because she’ll kick their kitten if they don’t obey because she’s so scary and powerful. So her only strength, then, is being God.
Honestly, stop it. Why are you defending this twig? You’re not going to make anyone like her. Even if people don’t know the reasons they hate her, they’re still perfectly right. If people don’t like the story to such a degree they’re actively complaining about the quality of writing, it’s all over.
…I’m simply using my real-world experiences to apply a label to the majority of video game players as short-sighted fools…
And yet they see through the paper-thin shroud of horrible writing so much better than you do.
From what I can gather, you’re right.
Or, uh… Well, I think there has been a development clash somewhere, or different versions of lore were implemented at different times, and so the place ended up being vaguely unexplainedly somewhere between an experimental research lab and an inhabited city, also with inquest and magic somewhere in-between maybe mentioned somewhere.
This actually ended up being a boon: unexplained and weird places surrounded in mystery equal good writing in most cases. It’s fun to wonder.
I’ve just played through the Fractal today, and I can say, without slightest exaggeration, that it was even worse than what I expected it to be when I’ve read through a couples pages of rage on these forums.
It would literally be better if they had done nothing at all with this place.
Perfect? She’s absolutely batty!
A characteristic many see as attractive. Bad example.
And as demonstrated at Queen’s Jubilee, she’s far from unstoppable in combat.
Escaped without a trace of sweat or injury after single-handedly man-handling a huge zerg of epic heroes.
…catches players by surprise…
Actually this here is the root of problem.
You can’t tell players how to feel. Just because you make out your plot to be as if the player was “caught by surprise”, doesn’t mean he was. In fact, no one was. Scarlet is a predictable disappointment. Her existence is nothing more than annoyance.
This is how I see Scarlet.
And you shouldn’t extrapolate your views on others, either. This is where objectivity comes in, both for you and for ANet’s writers.
As a writer, you have to learn to recognize when you like a bad thing despite its flaws, or when you hate a good thing because of you don’t even know what. If you can’t do that, you end up writing horrible shlock and gasping in horror as people justifiably pile on to hate it.
As a writer, you need to get a grasp of understanding of other people if, after all, you’re writing for the sake of their enjoyment.
“Oh no, no, no – but see, there’s a reason my character should be loved! Here, have more reasons!”
You don’t just try to justify failure. You fix it.
If you want your story to be welcomed, don’t defend it, just do it right in the first place.
(edited by Draco.2806)
I’m willing to bet that a good majority of Scarlet haters wouldn’t hate her if the game itself had been as big and as convoluted a mess as what the forums were making it out to be before it was even released.
Maybe you don’t remember, but Trahearne was getting almost as much hate as Scarlet. And rightfully so. They’re horrible characters, they’re horribly presented, and they outright don’t belong where they are in the game.
See, people aren’t quite as stupid as Hollywood and Activision think they are. Just because we buy tickets to bad shows doesn’t mean we’re not going to talk about how stupid it was afterwards.
Tell me: if you were to improve Scarlet’s story as we’ve seen it so far, how would you do it?
Retcon is the only solution to problems of this magnitude.
Whoever allowed this to happen should be fired. Whoever was responsible, crucified. And I’m only exaggerating about one of the two.
(edited by Draco.2806)
DIE DIE DIE. DIE DIE DIE. DIE DIE DIE!
But yeah, I get where you’re coming from. Played through Spec Ops: The Line not long ago; that was a blast and a half.
That is exactly how you write a story for a videogame. But that’s awareness on a whole new level, knowing and exploring not just the subject of your writing, but also the medium you’re working in. Even if first part was done right in GW2, it’d be a start.
At any rate, I doubt Scarlet will actually make it to trial to answer for her crimes, and if she does, she’ll just teleport out of the courtroom. LATER TATER
I have a bad feeling that the writers expected her to be a recurring, never-ending villain because, gosh, how could anyone NOT adore their amazingly perfect super-brainiac Mary Sue?.. Surely people will want to see more and more of her till the end of time…
Depends on your GM. My GM docks points whenever you kill, so that doesn’t work out well.
The beauty of classic gaming is that you can interpret and change the rules however you like. Some do it this way, some another…
I still wonder how you’d make a character who kills innocent civilians using hidden bombs could qualify as “good”.
A character could still be convinced they were doing good even when committing utter atrocities.
They could be insane, in shock, misguided, blinded by strict ideology, thinking of it as a sacrifice towards the greater good or as punishment towards sinners, they could have a different understanding of morality and goodness than all other people, they could be subtly manipulated by evil forces, or they could simply be making a big mistake.
All this and more are things we won’t be seeing in Guild Wars until ANet hires a competent writer.
Uh, mods?
Why did the OP just vanish into thin air? The topic doesn’t make sense now. There was nothing offensive there either.
That too, yeah.
Good job with that.
I’ve personally taken up pen and paper and wrote up an alternate version of the Thaumanova explosion.
Call it “over-reacting” if you want. I call it “reasonable reaction to continuous disappointment.”
I had high hopes for GW2’s writing before launch. Hell, Personal Story and the open world still have a few neat gems in them. It was promising. It never delivered on that front, alright, so be it.
But did we really need the Scarlet Poison after all our hopes and dreams were already crushed upon the Cliffs of Trahearne? What cruel fate do writers have in store for us all? It brings but a gloomy frown to what used to be my face.
Excuse me.
Yes, do something original like put you right in the middle of the disaster as it happens. You’re a lowly Asuran scientist, tasked with equipping a Hazmat Suit and delivering a sample of chaos material to a test chamber. Upon placing it into the test apparatus, everything goes haywire, you’re briefly teleported to a variety of locales inside and outside of Tyria, and then returned to a facility in chaos.
You manage to arm yourself with a simple “The Fixer” wrench to fend off the karka hatchlings now infesting the facility, along with strange creatures from outside Tyria. When Asuran Peacekeepers arrive, you’re overjoyed — only to find that they are eliminating any trace of the incident, including the surviving Thaumanova research staff. Then a bunch of stuff happens, you go to the Mists and complete an obnoxious JP and fight a Karka Queen and a giant baby that controls the invading creatures, and finally Scarlet shows up and puts you in stasis.
Just hire this guy, I don’t know.
Anyone who’s well-versed enough in interactive storytelling to recognize the parallels between Thaumanova and Black Mesa would do a much better job at it than what we got.
(edited by Draco.2806)
Since the message in the (recently deceased) OP may be a little unclear, let me (wrongly) clarify:
Ascended weapons are soulbound.
ANet is currently busy creating a system that contradicts what they say in the recent blog post on all accounts (huge time investment, lots of added complexity, no transference between characters).
On a related note, the quoted phrase also contradicts the core idea of Professions, Levels, Crafting, Equipment and Skillpoints. I think the lead designer on this project has lost the lead of it.
(edited by Draco.2806)
It says you hate the VILLAIN. Sounds like they’ve done their job.
Uh, no.
Scarlet isn’t a bad character, she’s a bad character.
When people say they hate Scarlet, what they really mean is that they hate whoever was in charge of coming up with this garbage. This isn’t hate directed at the character, but at the game creators. Just as it was with Trahearne (who isn’t even meant to be a villain).
So we don’t really hate Scarlet per se. We hate the fact Scarlet exists.
If they do turn around and say “BUT SCARLET WAS GOOD ALL ALONG, GUYS” then it’ll just prove that this writing team has gone completely down the toilet.
At least it would be interesting. Horrible, sure, but “horrible” would still be a big improvement over “Scarlet.”
Incidentally, in DnD, you can very easily come up with a character who’s both a genocidal maniac and “Good”. In fact many Paladins end up this way: cross the road in the wrong place, off with your head.
Pretty neat, actually.
Zhaitan, the eldar dragons and their minions are the definition of generic fantasy villains. Scarlet is – for the lack of a better word – the least boring character among them.
Good point. But that’s… actually even worse than just bad.
Think about it: when the height of what you can do with your villains is for them to be bland and forgettable, and any character you try to give them makes them outright hated, what does it say?
There’s certainly value in someone behaving in an insane and childish fashion. It’s interesting. It has value. It’s something. So how do you do it in such a way that it’s even worse than nothing?
…But when you open them, it says they are empty.
Maybe there’s Traeherne hiding in one of them?
Someone should map the barrels containing all the different parts of Trahearne.
A quiet burial at sea, then a national holiday.
I agree. It’s incredibly odd this isn’t a feature already, considering that’s how it fundamentally works: go up to the retrainer, pay your fee. Do we really need to visit the retrainer every time? No, no we don’t.
Basic presets are direly needed, too. Presets for dye choices, presets for traits, presets for skill sets… It’s interface design 101, really: if you have a lot of configurable options, allow users to save and load presets.
This is what we call a “Contradiction”.
The game gives you freedom to respec your skills whenever you want, traits only when you’re far away from combat, and rest of the stats are tied to your gear that takes a long time to get and is very tedious to switch (special mention goes out to Exotics, Ascended and Transmutation Crystals).
“You can change your playstyle whenever you like!”
“On second thought, better not.”
“Changing this when you’re out in the field would be good.”
“But not this!”
It’s schizophrenic.
I don’t think there’s ever been an agreed upon definition of what a “Mary Sue” is, the only stable theme being that it’s a character that is amazing in every regard within the story and yet grating and annoying to the reader (viewer/player/whatever).
To that end, Scarlet is the absolute worst and most prominent example of a Mary Sue I’ve ever seen. Ever.
It’s actually rather amazing how horrible she is. I’ve never seen anything like it.
And this biased nonsense is why I am done here. have a good day folks.
Great refutation. I have five more pages of detailed explanations if you’d like to take a look. And that’s just me.
I think anyone with any knowledge of film or writing will immediately point to scores and scores of problems with not just Scarlet but GW2 in general…
And, in fact, they have. Lots of people on these forums bring up perfectly legitimate points in that regard. Hell, most guesses and suggestions I’ve seen are miles better than what ANet’s writers have ever come up with.
Whoah…
Math.
Attachments:
You know, everyone talks about how much they hate Scarlet. Funny…isn’t that what the devs want?
You misunderstand.
There’s a crucial difference between a bad character and a bad character.
People don’t hate Scarlet, they hate the people who made her.
(edited by Draco.2806)
I think you’re missing the point: it doesn’t matter where Scarlet fits or where they forcibly try to fit her.
The point is that she’s a terrible character. She’s annoying. She’s one-dimensional. She has no defining traits. She’s a Mary Sue and the Scrappy Doo all wrapped into a blanket of terrible. She shouldn’t exist at all – so by extension she doesn’t fit anywhere.
If people don’t like the story and the characters, the writers have failed. Not the audience. Audience is the judge and the jury, and my verdict, for one, is death.
Plus, I’ve seen paper napkins that were stronger than GW2’s lore. Does it really matter if something fits with a story that’s not there?