Guild Wars 2

Can’t compare something that is not actually there. Please, show us where you got the information that there’s no new dungeons, no templates, or how big or how many maps there are, and that you can only get all those features unless you pay.

I really doubt they’d be able to get away with sealing certain profession advancements in PvP, WvW and the like as people already pointed out.

Also, just because we literally gotten most things for free, doesn’t mean that they should be free. Hell, there are loads of games out there that charge big money for all that stuff that Guild Wars 2 has gotten out over the last few years. Do you think they should give everything free? How is that even realistic?

One could say that Guild Wars EOTN wasn’t big either, with no new profession no new race and all that. Doesn’t mean anything.

BrettM.9062:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Also remember, Glint was behind the prophecy, without it the Mursaat and the Lich wouldn’t have done such thing.

Call me a traditionalist, but prophesizing something does not equal setting something in motion. The Lich was already after the Scepter of Orr, who’s to say an army of undead wouldn’t have killed all the mursaat if he had gotten it at some point?

The Lich is to say. He got the Scepter on Sanctum Cay. If that was all he needed to defeat the mursaat and reach the Door, then why did he waste any more time on the heroes? He believed he needed the heroes to become Ascended to take out the mursaat garrisons that were blocking him from the Door. Why? Because the Prophecy said that was the path to his goal. The Lich knew the Prophecy and was doing everything in his power to make sure it was followed to the letter, which made it self-fulfilling.

That still doesn’t mean the prophecy is the cause. A prophecy generally predict what is going to happen, which means that at some point it was going to happen any way.

And if it was the cause that means Glint had forseen that it was necessary for us to do so in order to stop something bigger than the Mursaat, like Abaddon for example.

Either way, it’s very likely the new allies are the Mursaat. It’s been roughly 7-8 years when we were told they would be in GW2:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:Linsey_Murdock/Lore1#Asura_and_Mursaat

Slowpokeking.8720:

Also remember, Glint was behind the prophecy, without it the Mursaat and the Lich wouldn’t have done such thing.

Call me a traditionalist, but prophesizing something does not equal setting something in motion. The Lich was already after the Scepter of Orr, who’s to say an army of undead wouldn’t have killed all the mursaat if he had gotten it at some point?

I find it incredibly short-sighted for such a powerful race to simply kill everyone who could be a potential threat because of some silly prophecy. Protecting the door of Komalie, sure understandable. Not explaining anything? That was pretty dumb.

I’d say most of these issues stem from preferences.

The whole blending as it were is something that makes GW2 more immersive than most other games. I mean, I always disliked the super distinct area changes, as those usually feel artificial and fake. Although I can agree that it sometimes make you feel more lost , since the world flows over into eachother from zone to zone. (Probably more realistic)

Most of the other things you mentioned have different reasons of not being there additionally from it being a design decision. Like flying could be awesome (personally GW2 is prettier and fuller than most other environments.) But the zones don’t actually load over into eachother. At the edge of the map there’s nothing. :p As well as being able to get to broken locations. Which is probably something they want to avoid.

Additionally, you talk about quests being too low level, but what exactly are quests?
If you mean the hearts, which are indeed more akin to questing usually, then yes. Most heart merchants eventually sell too low gear for your character to use (although when I level up a character it’s pretty awesome to some extent)
But otherwise, you can always craft armor, or head to a zone which is closer to your character’s level. Or even do a dungeon at your level. But ultimately the difference in stats between drops/heart merchants/crafting is not that big. Even if you’re in a low level zone, you end up getting gear that is close to your level.

As such Hearts are guiding content. They are generally not voiced, because it’s the events that are the things that are voiced. Often enough, when you pay attention anyway, you can see NPCs talking about going somewhere or doing something, then usually you should probably check it out. Or even right after an event is done, the NPC walks to their resting place before turning into a merchant. (although they rarely sell anything useful) Which to me is way more immersive than the quests of WoW and ESO imo.

Test.8734:

Galen Grey.4709:

Living story has always been less then 20 people working on it and Anet since launch had more then 350 people working on the game. They may have originally planned to release everything through LS sure but regardless they’ve been working on this content since day 1.

Yeah… No. The Living World did not begin on day 1. They still had to work on fixing bugs, adding the remaining polish that wasn’t there on release, making Fractals of the Mists, and so on. Not to mention how the “20 people” team thing is ignoring those who were working on the microtransactions all this time.

“Day 1”? Without knowing when is the release day of HoT and how polished it will be, it’s hard to guess. But they are likely working on it for less than one year.

CalamityO.2890:

Show me where you said that they are working on an expansion.

They are working on an expansion See, and I’m right too!

You’re implying Designers had to work on fixing bugs.

Enough said.

That’s something anyone can claim. Plus everyone paid for the game or paid for gems or other things like that. just because a certain group with a certain intent bought the game to hold their own non official game mode, doesn’t mean the game company needs to design the game towards that direction. That would mean any minority group would be able to dictate or hijack the direction of a game.

Stronghold is Stronghold and GvG is GvG.

Arenanet never claimed otherwise, so what’s there to say, really?
It’s not like they came out and said THIS IS GVG! Because they didn’t. They said this is something for people who want to see who the best guild is. (In this specific format)

GvG is a player organised thing. And I have a suspicion it will be like that for a while. I think Arenanet also said they weren’t going to put in a GvG in the way the players wanted it to be either so, yeah.

(If you want to be technical, both “modes” are Guild versus Guild. No matter how you claim it not to be, it’s Part of a Guild vs Part of a Guild in either mode. But as for a practical matter let’s just stick to GvG and Stronghold (and conquest))

amax.8034:

I haven’t stated that AP are hard or that it displays a players skills, what I said is that AP act as a guideline, if a new player joins the game he could use the AP system to ask for information. A player with 10k AP, for example, is more likely to be able to answer a whole lot more questions then a player with 200AP.

That’s one side of the coin really. It’s not so much that you or Anet would envision it as such, because that’s pretty easy to do. The problem lies in how the user base can potentially start to exploit it, grief it or use kitten arguments that it is indeed a form of skill. It’s much better to not add an extra label to players that can potentially lead to discrimination based on that label. As stupid as it is, player will use it like that. More, they already use it, though that’s not a reason to put it in anyway.

Regarding LFG, people with a visual memory can’t always remember where certain things are placed if all looks the same, like in the case of the current LFG. Also I haven’t changed things just because of the sake of changing it, there was a reasoning behind it and please see some of my previous posts for an in-depth explanation.

This is becoming a very one sided argument imo, the world doesn’t consist of only people with a visual memory. The use of pictures IS imbalanced. Which means that certain people might be able to use it better as you say, which is all good. I agree with that, but then you forget about all the people that get overloaded and confused by all the pictures.

I partially agree with Zoltreez there, except for the silly tone. The first thing Anet needs to do is implement season 1 in a repeatable fashion. Well after this next big thing they have coming anyway.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

So Malomedies and Kahedins (given your hint, Trahearn’s Dusk) are liars in 7 instances of the Personal Story. Now, Kahedins’ (and Aife’s) lines can be interpreted on the second day but the first sunrise/sunset (implying the first of the cycle was born after the sun’s movement but during the cycle still), but Malomedies’ line (like Niamh’s) is harder to argue out (Melomedies’ more than Niamh’s).

Please feel free to explain this to me, since this is where the problem lies – less the claim that Wynne/Trahearne are first, but that the luminaries proclaim themselves they awoke on the first day of the sylvari race.

Personally I see it as saying that the first day is the first 24 hours (or however long a Tyrian day lasts :p)

I wonder, since for a human it’s pretty clear that a day is chronologically morning-noon-dusk-night. But there’s no indication that for sylvari it might just as well be dusk-night-dawn-noon, because their race started at dusk.

Personally about this whole thing I already had my suspicions that the dream isn’t all super clear and alot more vague. I’m pretty sure it’s a stretch in to the mists of sorts, while everyone knows the mists isn’t all that bound by normal rules.

AS to Angel original question:

And I’ll end this post on a question. What do you imagine that first conversation between Caithe and the Pale Tree was like, Spoiler if you haven't played all Season 2--and don't read the responsesafter Caithe killed Wynne? I’d love to hear your imaginings.

I merely presume Caithe got the task of protecting the secret of the sylvari. Of course the death of Wynne would need to be explained if it came out too early. In one way or another I usually found the Pale Tree to be pretty understanding in most cases.

And I think the egg probably has something to do with the task she got at that moment, or at least I had a feeling the Pale Tree had an idea what Caithe would be doing with the egg even though it wasn’t her intend. Which is probably why we got the memory seeds. Except it’s still not very clear why Caithe took the egg, but presuming that the egg is akin to Kralkatorrik as the sylvari are to Mordremoth then she could be devising something with that fact in hand.

Rangelost.4857:

I might be repeating myself here, but here’s what I think.

While Asura and Charr are by far my favorite races, and I’d love to see unique designs just for them, we’d probably get the same issue: what if someone actually wanted the human male design instead? Or the human female design? And why are these two specific races getting so much more love than the rest? Why not make 10 designs?

Uhhhh. Because they already got half the attention to begin with? I don’t want to be pedantic, but it’s pretty obvious that Charr and Asura as a race have half the armor options in total. So it’s not that Charr and Asura get “more love” if they were to design gender specific armor for those races.

Personally, I don’t particularly feel frustrated towards this, but then I don’t really feel the need to dress up my asura and charr females as a female. (They tend to be more “tough-personality” of sorts.)

But the suggestion to make more gender specific armor is certainly something I can see has alot of value. I mean, just because of “lore reasons” is not really good enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if a female asura or female charr would want to look more feminine at all. Unless you want to be a traditionalist ofcourse.

Either way, the whole designing armor from a human perspective is showing. Whether this is female or male alone. In my opinion it would be much more interesting to see more armor designed from a charr or asura perspective and then copy pasted* to a humanoid model. (In terms of more or less love for a race (snort) that would at least mean 20% of all the armors would be fitting on a race.)

*I’m pretty sure it’s alot more complicated than that, but yeah.

Wreave.2138:

As is clear to all of us who aren’t busy explaining away evil, Caithe is fully responsible for the slaughter of a tribe of peaceful centaurs. Moreover, she did that while on a mission to abduct and the force (probably through torture) information out of a first born Sylvari.

Frankly, I (my PC) would want to kill her for the massacre that she committed. Possibly, I would pass judgement to remaining centaurs of that and related tribes, and if they allowed some lesser punishment (such as serving as guardian for the centaur tribes for rest of her life), that would acceptable.

Separate from that is the issue of the egg, which I certainly regard as being under my protection. (And obviously I do not trust Caithe after what I’ve seen in the memories.) My highest priority would be getting it back. (Yes, rating above giving Caithe the justice she richly deserves.)

The truth is GW2 story is poor at times and outright awful at other times.
1) Caithe is presented as a good and noble person in love with a mass murderer and torturer. Umm. No. That’s just stupid. And love is not that blind or that stupid.
2) Caithe is presented as a good and noble person — after committing the massacre.
3) That the massacre is presented as “just a misunderstanding” or “dark places”. Caithe would have to be very, very stupid to not know what was going on when going in. And Caithe isn’t anywhere near that stupid.
4) Pale tree forgives Caithe. For death of Wynne (at Wynne’s request) — okay that’s somewhat believable. Massacre of centaurs though? Impression that I get is that it didn’t even cross anyone’s minds. Ventari’s ethics? Not so much.
5) Any reaction from the PC or Caithe’s friends to her slaughter of a tribe of peaceful Centaurs? Not much. “Wow, she’s been in some dark places.” I mean… that’s it??
6) Here’s the cake. After going to all that effort to chase her down, after slaughtering a whole tribe of centaurs, they have her at their mercy… And she just runs off with none of them making the slightest effort to catch her. Seriously?

Here’s where this idiocy is going:
1) Caithe turns out to be doing the right thing. PC may have a harsh word or two, but will accept whatever Caithe does.
2) Caithe’s slaughter of centaurs is never mentioned. Or if it is, it’s presented as “not her fault”.
2) Caithe’s finally gets over her love for Faolin. Yay?

Much as I despised WoW’s infatuation with Garrosh, this may actually end up being worse.

I dunno, Caithe was just a quiet person. Faolain said to Caithe she knew about what happened, and this comes forward in TA multiple times, even more so with the additional path with Scarlet. Never ever is Caithe presented as a good and noble person, but rather a person who has something dark in her past. Ever since I played through the TA path I kept wondering what it was Scarlet meant. Now it’s out.

Also Faolain was the one showing up with squadron of pre-nightmare court. It wasn’t Caithe’s plan at ALL. It’s not like she gave out orders to kill everyone, nor was it that she just said OK let’s kill them all! FULL responsibility? Because she’s responsible for what Faolain and the other sylvari there were do? That’s nonsensical.

Also Caithe was 2 years old. Yes really 2 years old. You expect a 2 year old (no matter how physically “adult” they are when born) to be so aware and mature of everything. You compare a 2 year old Caithe with her 23 year old self. That’s hardly a good comparison. Yes Caithe is alot smarter now and learned some hard lessons early on in her life. That’s very true. I though it was really obvious that the Caithe then wasn’t the same as Caithe now, especially with the different character model.

Also Caithe wasn’t Faolain’s lover since that moment with Wynne. Which is, FYI, 20 years ago at the very least. She’s been trying to stop Faolain or reason with her ever since. TA story definitely plays that out.

Also, “peaceful centaurs”? I doubt it much. If you paid attention to the dialogue with the centaurs, it’s said that they took a long and dark journey to be able to get to that point. Yet they were all too happy to jump into battle and fully armed no less. I don’t think those centaurs were that innocent themselves. Were they going in the right direction? Sure. were they all completely innocent? I don’t think we actually know.

I don’t even understand why it’s suddenly more like guild wars 1 if just the level cap changed. The game is still a whole lot different from guild wars 1.

The point of levels is that it is not a sandbox game, it’s a role playing game. Your character has a story and progresses through a story. Thus no race change, no gender change etc. Even GW1 had “level gates” of sorts where you couldn’t progress to a certain area before you had done the story. In a sense this game is no different except that you don’t have to do the story.

The only argument from comparing GW1 with GW2 is that the GW1 rocked because you could skip certain content by running through zones (Which doesn’t mean the game was so much better but that it was pretty easy to skip ahead even though that skipped basically 80% of the game. Which in a way is no different than a levelling scroll.

5. Lore Journal:
- sorry but time required to get something implemented isn’t a valid statement,
- regarding using /wiki sure that works now, however how many players actually now about that feature? how many of those actually use that? and how would new players find and get comfortable with while there are tons of other things they need to grasp. The answer to the first two is… not many, even I as a player although know that command, don’t use it, the reason is because it breaks immersion, it forces you to change to a bright white page filled with text and when you come back you realize you missed a world boss, a event, a whisper or you’re dead because a dynamic event just started and killed you. The reason why you didn’t see a search bar present is because for that certain page I didn’t think GW2 would have that many key NPC’s that it would need one. The implementation I thought of would involve right clicking an enemies icon where he’s health bar is, then selecting lore which would bring up that panel. Although I agree that a search function might be needed for some parts of the journal that are more complex.

I would say that time to implement something is definitely a good statement. Ofcourse it doesn’t particularly say anything about the UI idea other than resources being used elsewhere is better. I think Bobby Stein said something along those lines as well when talking about implementing something like that.

Other than that I must agree with Crispy that going back every time is unfavourable as NPCs and area and races are all linked to eachother. I’m not sure how that is so weird. if an area is important to a certain race who has a certain event take place with a certain key character then being able to easily switch between categories is preferable. I don’t think the human mind works in such strict categories and rather by association. So yeah.

Great idea, since levelling doesn’t matter anyway, let’s just change the max level to 20 and introduce a concept i’d like to call quarter levels. It basically means you get the same level up rewards the scaling would stay the same. The only thing that would be changed is the numbers. level 1 will be 0.25 lvl 2 will be 0.50 etc.!

Seriously though, what does it really accomplish? You say levelling is boring, but I wager that levelling in prophecies from 1 to 20 takes the same amount of time as it will from 0 to 80 in GW2.

The level simply indicates the progression of your character through the world. What you’re basically asking for is already in the game for every other character. With level scrolls, skill point scrolls experience scrolls booster and all that stuff you can zoom to 80 pretty quickly.

The only argument why levelling is potentially bad is that it limits the player from going anywhere in the world while not needing to care about armor weapons and such. Which means that it makes the player conform to a progression speed that goes with the levelling speed.

So saying that levelling is boring, really doesn’t count as a good argument per say. It just means you’re too focussed on levelling to level 80. I’ve been there, and yes it’s really boring. But once I dropped that and invested time in progressing my character as a character through the world the levelling really stopped mattering all that much. But I must say it’s not that easy to do when you’re already thinking about that max armor and that lvl 80 build you want for your character.

In the end it’s just a matter of mindset I think.

Somehow I knew you were going to use that saying.

Can I twist it around by saying that having a thousand words every time you want to select a certain category would be a bit too much or is that silly? :p

Kidding aside, aren’t icons a better way to go by that standard? I mean a piece of artwork does say alot more, but it might also say too much.

amax.8034:

@FrizzFreston.5290 Fair enough, just because a UI has multiple images doesn’t mean it’s not a UI, since that’s part of the solution to the UX UI, to make it easily usable as well as attractive. Pinterest, Adobe bridge and so on have their entire layout focused around images, thus you can’t just simply assume that those aren’t UIs. Dropdown wise it would function similar to what it’s already implemented, thus having a preview available. The character potraits would function similar to the existing party potraits, displaying a headshot of your character and unfortunately I don’t know how much stress that puts on the game since only Anet knows the tech behind their MMO. Dungeon wise that would need further testing for new players to see how they would interact with the LFG tool.

I didn’t mean it’s not an UI or anything I just meant it’s just using alot of pictures, which I’m not sure about whether that’s just very distracting or looking better and easier to use. Like I’m wondering whether it’s not just the pictures making it look nice rather than the base design itself. (Although of course graphical looks are an important part too.) I mean I haven’t really found any core structure design changes that are truly competing with the base structure of the current set. Which might be mostly because the current UI is as you put it very basic. I think the very basic part of the current UI is its actual strength.

Like the LFG is alot more readable (although the addition of paths, AP etc are a bit questionable, but sure) but then the picture selection makes it lose a nice overview. While visually probably more appealing it’s doesn’t feel like a very practical design. (At first glance)

And the Guild window looks alot better as well, but it also takes away alot of information that was there before as well. (While adding some other that may or may not be useful)

And then suddenly the hero panel puts all the information there in one screen, which is like, yeah it was a problem, but this just makes it very cluttered.

Also I find there’s some lack of unity amongst all the different redesigns, but that was already said I believe.

The note about the character portraits isn’t that it’s a bad idea, I actually like it. But currently ingame whenever your party member is further away in a map or in a transformation the portrait is affected as well, meaning it probably has some issues there. And I of course don’t quite know how it works but if that problem is there then I’m unsure that would be working as you envision it.

Either way, don’t be discouraged or anything. I find some really good ideas in there and some I simply don’t like or think might not be practical. Keep up the good work.

Because of the revelation that Sylvari are (intended) dragon minions doesn’t make them evil. That would mean that Glint is also evil.

It’s obvious to me that just because you’re a dragon minion, it doesn’t always mean that you’re evil.

Plus I don’t really see this as a faction per say, it’s more that sylvai are either more or less protected by the Pale Tree from Mordremoths influence. You could basically say that aside from a Mother Tree the Sylvari have an Evil Dragon Daddy. =P

Yeah the design is certainly flashier, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure the amount of pictures is the way to go. It looks extremely busy to the eye just at a glance. What I find that is really shining here is the artwork being featured prominently rather than a great amount of UI design.

Not to mention the addition of extra features that probably ArenaNet themselves already thought about as well, but don’t fit in the current UI, or simply not that simple to put in. (AP requirements, Lore journal, ready check, etc)

I must say the drop down menu, while people already says it doesn’t require less clicks or whatever, is in my opinion the only thing that within the current UI would be a better addition. At least a drop down menu to me usually feels more familiar and faster. The same with making things more concise rather than have a whole tab for switching out a minipet, mail carrier or finisher. Even though a preview of those things are pretty good to see too.

Character portraits in the guild window looks pretty cool, though in the party itself the portraits are already buggy and I can imagine that loading such data from afar might lead to even more problems before that’s fixed.

The LFG features a selection between P1-2-3(-4) and story, but I wonder whether people actually know first going out what that actually means. Not to mention allthe different things people set as such.
Also not sure how future dungeons will look, but looking at TA (although even that is limited now with the extra path) I always thought that dungeons are very mutable and the whole P1234 thing wouldn’t a thing per say in each dungeon. The same with buying selling dungeon runs. I don’t think that will ever end up there as that is a player organised thing, but hardly something you’d want to encourage as a thing in the game. (the whole thing “BUT it’s allowed!” doesn’t mean it’s the way to go)

Same with all the other things, with an ever growing MMO I really wonder where you’re going to put any new features. And I wonder about the loading times with all those pictures there. The TP itself already has some loading problems at times, and I’m not sure this picture gallery UI will make things easier.

I personally really like that the GW2 UI is so simplistic, rather than having all those pictures flowing around my screen.

Windsagio.1340:

A trial isn’t a summary judgement or summary punishment.

Being taken to task and questioned for her actions and having to take responsibility is only a good thing, and a court, in the end, might find her not guilty due to extenuating circumstances.

Or they might find her guilty and negligent.

The point isn’t to punish or Kill her, it’s to give a sense of closure and to show that actions have to be answered for and justified, even for ‘heroes’.

Well, while that may be interesting, there still is nowhere to hold such a trial. Her own leader already knew about her past, so any trials on that would be pretty double. As for taking the egg, we don’t really know what is going on with that to speak of a trial.

Well I didn’t meant that Logan was exactly the same as Caithe. :p It’s just that everyone has made mistakes. Everyone, even those Centaurs, has a darker past.

So what about Vorpp. He experimented on the sylvari early on, under the eye of the Arcane Eye, but later helped against Scarlet.

Same with Caithe, who, along with a whole nightmare squadron and Faolain (Never forget that part), helped with the massacre of the centaur village. (Which also had a dark past, as they say themselves) And she later helped to great extend against two of the other dragons, and now does something that she believes will protect the egg. Also the whole centaur massacre was entirely Faolain’s plan, just because Caithe is there and protects the one she loves, or so she assumes at least. Plus it’s a 20+ years old “crime”, if you can call it that. She’s an accomplice at best.

On a side note, who is to say that because we broke the seal the egg wasn’t safe anymore in that specific location, the dragon did attack shortly after the seal was broken.

Does this mean Logan should be trialed as well for not killing kralkatorrik with the rest of Destiny’s edge possibly responsible for killing loads of others since.

Not to mention that Wynne was the one asking to be killed. It’s not like Caithe was like, You have to die!

I find this whole black and white thinking to be making up a completely uninteresting for a story. So Caithe isn’t 100 % holy and shiny. So what. She basically ran away with the egg saying, Trust me, I’m on your side. and not “NYAHAHAHA I have the eee-eeggg.”

Windsagio.1340:

FrizzFreston.5290:

I don’t think I would trust anyone who could be corrupted. Who says Trahearne isn’t compromised, is he still himself? Would you go with the egg to the first Pact commander? Uh huh.

Who can you really trust in such a situation. It’s not just a secret that you put out there easily. That would’ve been really irresponsible to her very own race. I pretty much could’ve seen the destruction of the entire sylvari race with that secret out.

Counterpoint using your logic: Who’s to say that given her own guilt and her dalliances with the nightmare she wasn’t corrupted herself and stole the egg / hid vital intel due to Mordremoth’s influence? The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

And if not Traehearne, how about you? If you’re not Sylvari Mordremoth corruption isn’t in question, if you are, given that your specific dream inevitably involves slaying a dragon made out of plant bitds, it seems a safe bet.

Edit: A very strong case can be made that Caithe’s secrecy is more based on her own feelings of guilt as relates to Wynne (although the tree is complicit in hiding that) and less about safety concerns. On that note, there’s no court case for treason against the Sylvari, because the Tree knows and has always known.

Crimes against life and manslaughter would stick better, especially now, given what happened to the pact.

Sounds more and more like scapegoating to me. Caithe isn’t fully responsible for all those things. Partially responsible, maybe. But as you clearly pointed out, you don’t even have all the facts to make such an accusation. Plus the rest of the arguments on how Caithe’s actions are based upon her feelings and such are only assumptions. The Pale Tree herself ordered it to be a secret to begin with. And as such the Pale Tree is also responsible.

Trahearne send in the pact force pretty much blind, so he’s responsible for that. I mean how good of a tactical idea is it to merely bombard the jungle randomly at a huge largely unknown force, which may or may not corrupt half your army in some way. (Zaithan did, Kralkatorrik does, and Jormag does, so it’s not even that much of a stretch to expect the same to happen to begin with.)

Aside from all that, there’s no court case to made to begin with, as there is no reigning body that actually would accoutn for the whole of Tyria. There’s no “international courthouse” to begin with. The humans wouldn’t even lift a finger if some centaurs slightly further away would be killed. They are at war with the centaurs. The Lionguard are still suspicious of the one centaur in Lion’s Arch.

It’s just waaaaaay too simple to say, “Caithe is responsible. Problem solved.”

Gabby.3205:

FrizzFreston.5290:

You’re not a real role player if you can’t handle what the DM/GM throws at ya =P

I believe the problem is not what they did to the Sylvari, but the way the players reacted.
I just went in game and asked one of my RP guild what was the guild’s position regarding the Sylvari (as in, if it was “safe” to me to bring my Sylvari to RP events) exactly because of all the hate they are getting from the other players.

Although not being in any RP guild myself, I’d expect that in a role play community, at least the discussion of such points would either be discussed beforehand (before an event), or that those who aren’t sylvari would do some thinking on what their character’s stance is on the subject. It’s a pretty important thing to organize, especially during such an important change. Do you treat it as common knowledge or do you treat it as only one person knows this information.

If anything, it would be a pretty interesting scenario to play out at the very least. I don’t see why there should be any hate towards the actual players playing sylvari. It might be tough on your sylvari character, but surely it’s also a challenge to prove that your character is trustworthy. Canach is a pretty good example to go from, and I would say he’s not the purest good of the sylvari to begin with.

Ismial.3825:

I’m just… disappointed, really. That’s the only word for it.

Disappointed that the writing team thinks it’s a good idea to drop something like this on a playable race two years in. If this had been open knowledge upfront, I’d be serene with it.

Disappointed that they think it’s a good idea to throw gasoline on the fire so all the players salivating for an excuse to get their pretend-racism on can go into a feeding frenzy, in and out of character.

And more than a little disappointed that I’ve spent so much time and effort doing RP and painting sylvari. The latter in particular feels like a lot of wasted time right now.

The writing obsesses over the main species I play nowadays (making players of all the other ones feel shafted), yet they do it in such a way that just keeps throwing them under the bus and feeding the CAN’T TRUST THEM CABBAGES crowd.

There’s a chance that the writers might be able to pull this off in a way that makes it palatable to me (and I strongly suspect the end will be okay). But the trip to get there is looking so unenjoyable that I really don’t know if I want to stick around for it.

You’re not a real role player if you can’t handle what the DM/GM throws at ya =P

I don’t think I would trust anyone who could be corrupted. Who says Trahearne isn’t compromised, is he still himself? Would you go with the egg to the first Pact commander? Uh huh.

Who can you really trust in such a situation. It’s not just a secret that you put out there easily. That would’ve been really irresponsible to her very own race. I pretty much could’ve seen the destruction of the entire sylvari race with that secret out.

Dervish won’t return in the GW1 shape as the gods are only there for the humans, there other races generally don’t really believe in gods as gods.

I’m pretty sure that if humans can channel power from the gods, and norn from their Spirit beings, that where-ever those powers come from other races can draw power from that place as well, maybe in a more raw magic form rather than the physical forms the humans and norn give their sources.

It seems to me the only dailies that are a real problem are the events, because I generally just skip them. Then again I go for max rewards, which surely is mostly the PvP ones, those extra reward track things there are like mini dungeon runs. As where just getting karma experience and the like is very little in comparison.

Vayne.8563:

If anything, the announcement the way it’s phrased, is specifically telling us there will be no expansion. Anyone who expects one with that wording is just living in hope.

The wording talks about new ways to expand the Guild Wars 2 universe. Expansions aren’t new ways to expand it. That’s old school. To me this implies new things that aren’t being done in the industry at least commonly. Ergo, it won’t be an expansion announcement.

1. /saves this comment from Vayne
2. *wait for an expansion
3. …
4. blackmail material!

=P

ViperionNZ.2509:

FrizzFreston.5290:

An activity is generally the daily random PvP-like mini-game that you find during festivals. There’s an NPC on the mystic plaza that has one that changes per day, as well as things like Bell choirs, winter wonderland jumping puzzle toypocalypse and snowball arena, currently going on with wintersday.

The daily rotation ones are:
Kegbrawl, southsun survival, crabtoss and zephyr sprint (I think)

Ah ok, thanks. All they all PvP?

Well, they all keep track of score one way or another. Even if it doesn’t quite matter for the end reward.

THe wintersday jumping puzzle for example does count the amount of successful runs, but “winning” doesn’t actually matter. Same with Bellchoir ofcourse. And toypocalypse. The ones on daily rotation generally are very PvP oriented though. Though the daily on requires you to see one through to the end, you don’t actually have to win.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Crafting is a PvE activity. I’m not sure how you think it’s not. Mystic forge the same thing.

I can’t believe anyone would think it’s PvE. There’s no ‘versus’ involved in it at all. The crafting station offers neither challenge nor resistance. It’s as much ‘PvE’ as moving an item from one inventory slot to another is PvE. Why do you think crafting is PvE? Because it’s not one of the other game modes?

“There’s no versus in crafting and mystic forge”? That’s the best argument you can come up with? Wow man, you either need to step up your game, or just take a break from partaking in the discussion because that is just hilarious. xD

Next thing coming up:
Gathering is THE PvE thing because the gathering nodes “provide resistance against your tools”. snicker roflmao

What about Vistas? You don’t have any particular resistance on your F-key going on, so Vistas aren’t PvE!

… you made my day. xD

An activity is generally the daily random PvP-like mini-game that you find during festivals. There’s an NPC on the mystic plaza that has one that changes per day, as well as things like Bell choirs, winter wonderland jumping puzzle toypocalypse and snowball arena, currently going on with wintersday.

The daily rotation ones are:
Kegbrawl, southsun survival, crabtoss and zephyr sprint (I think)

I think a few more options each day should be enough. Looking at the dailies from before and the dailies now, on a per case basis rather than overall, I think these dailies, while they are specific are actually much better. They give better rewards and they offer more variety. Plus you’re not bound to do all the dailies like before.

On the other hand 4 dailies to pick from might be a little tough from one day to the next. At least if you force yourself to play strictly only one part of the game. I do wonder how much effort it takes to go into an empty pvp map and capture some stuff, or play one match of PvP at all.

The only problem is that people are in need of getting of their skinnerbox addiction of hearing a ping whenever they did whatever every day for hours on end.

If you think AP is really than important, then that tiny bit of extra effort you’d need to put in because you care for AP that much, then dailies certainly aren’t the big factor here. If anything if you like hunting achievements then you’d probably spend hours on end getting maybe 1 or 2 AP on some off hand insignificant task.

And what’s worse, if you ONLY do PvE for your AP hunting, then you’re seriously limiting yourself regarding your AP gain. That is horribly inefficient. At some point, regarding AP you need to do PvP and WvW to get more AP.

Of course in the odd case, where players only do one type of the game, and they also want to get that 10 AP every day, then sure, they might need to jump a few hoops. But they are ACHIEVEMENT points. They basically ARE “jump through these few hoops” points to begin with. But even then, as niche players get very limited AP points after a while, especially when you’re “done” sort of, then you’re out of luck and completely reliant on Dailies. But also you might need to start thinking about doing other game types, if AP is really that big kind of thing for you.

Manasa Devi.7958:

FrizzFreston.5290:

The only reason people don’t like the new dailies is because you need to do effort on them. Previously no one really cared because dailies didn’t entail anything.

Effort? Are you kidding?

Events in Queensdale, using the mystic forge, gathering 4 plant nodes. Effort? Wow…

The problem is that they’re too specific. I’d rather have to do 10 events anywhere than 4 in kittening Queensdale. I’d rather gather 50 plants anywhere than 4 in Maguuma.

This isn’t about effort, the effort involved is ridiculously tiny, verging on the non-existant. The problem is the ridiculous specificness and inanity of the achievements. I’ve never felt as stupid for playing a game as when I was doing the entirely brainless ‘effort’ of gathering my 4 plants in Maguuma. This new thing is infantile.

Now excuse me while I go click on a vista in Ascalon.

Effort busywork, whatever you call it. I still don’t care. It’s just dailies, it wasn’t anything meaningful. The only difference really is is that now it’s more obvious that it was meaningless.

It does take more effort, although I agree that these dailies are fairly simple to do even so. It’s still time spend, hence I call it effort, business, stuff to distract you from what you want to be doing. Get over it.

The only reason people don’t like the new dailies is because you need to do effort on them. Previously no one really cared because dailies didn’t entail anything.

They turned from meaningless activities you would do anyway, to an activity you could choose to do. Which means in the latter there is more "meaning"to do them, and you need to allocate time to do them.

Personally I don’t think it’s such a bad change. Then again I never had a problem with any areas in the game too much, and these dailies are simple enough. Plus we get the rewards from just logging in now anyway.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Otherwise, mesmers wouldn’t be selling ports. And other players wouldn’t be selling achievements, like in the infiltration one, as noted in the OP’s original statement.

Which is kind of the point of this thread.

That’s just an ad hoc statement. If you haven’t noticed, players always pick the easy route over the more difficult route. No matter whether the content is easy or hard. Like running Arah is extremely doable for some people, yet people buy finished paths, because of various reasons. (not having a guild, not being able to do it, not having time you name it)

Hell even stepping stones was being sold early on, and I still see people trying to sell it. But you bluntly pointed out that is not happening.

People are in it for the gain, just because people are buying it doesn’t automatically mean that the content is too hard. It just means they can easily bypass it, and thus they do a check whether they would do this achievement the hard way or the easy way. You can bet that no matter what the content is, people will get themselves a portal rather than going the long way around.

I agree that those coins are in very hard to reach places and thus “inaccessible” to some, and thus aren’t easily obtainable, sure. But the content, which is the jumping puzzle, is easily accessible. Thus putting forward that the game (which is the jumping puzzle in this specific case) isn’t accessible is simply not true. Accessibility nowhere states that that means the game needs to be a certain difficulty.

Just because something is very hard to pull off doesn’t mean the content is broken, needs to change or whichever. Otherwise the whole game difficulty would dwindle down to mediocrity, because then at least the normal players can get it all, while still feeling challenged.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Respectfully, what part of ‘lay players not being able to get to certain badges to the point where mesmers are selling ports’ are you missing?

At no point did I say put the badges ‘At the start of every jumping puzzle in order to make it more accessible’ or words to that effect. In fact, I believe quite the opposite. That’s you lashing out because I proved I knew the word and it’s use while you did not.

Literal tends to be the way a dictionary explains definition.

My apologies that’s not to your liking, but please feel free to argue against the definition offered by the dictionary.

Far be it from me to point out how silly and extreme your response was.

A word alone in a dictionary is meaningless without the context. In gaming context accessibility is meant access to the content. The content is as accessible as it can be in GW2. That the reward isn’t, is a completely different matter.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I’m quite aware of what the word means, thank you.

Yeah, it’s a jumping puzzle, let’s put the chest/coin at the start of every jumping puzzle in order to make it more accessible. Because that is what you’re saying, it’s a completely ridiculous argument.

Of course, since you take the word accessibility so literally, you’re right. Jumping puzzles rewards aren’t accessible. /facepalm Way to show that every person can use a dictionary and still not understand the word.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Exactly. When you’ve made it clear that everything is accessible, and quite casually, a sudden shift will draw attention. I’m not saying make everything easy, but I am saying if you have, don’t go and make them kitten near impossible either.

Otherwise, you get mesmers selling ports to Badge #7 & #30 in LFG. And players being grateful that they did.

And let’s be honest, the last Adventure Box pretty much ended it ever coming back for a reason. And that had nothing to do with environment or other nonsense.

Guild Wars 2 was and is advertised as a casual-friendly game with no grinding. Players are not liking the way the last and latest episode flew in the face of that.

And they were right to be unhappy about it.

I don’t think you know what accessibility means. As far as I know, just because something is hard doesn’t mean it can’t be casual nor accessible. Accessibility is NOT easy content. It just means you can access it over and over. The coin is not the content here, neither is the chest at the end of a jumping puzzle neither is the reward at the end of a hard dungeon.

Accessibility means you can access the content itself. The dungeon, the jumping puzzle, the collection. Everyone can try to get it, but that doesn’t mean everyone should get it.

Personally people selling shortcuts to certain area in the games for me is a bit broken. I’m for people helping people, but when mesmers have a monetary advantage over other profession just because of one skill, That’s pretty wrong.

In a way, I agree with the person above me that the game should be played, not shortcutted left and right. I’m all for people advertising help with certain content though, I don’t particularly see anything wrong with it. If two parties can agree on a price and such, then why should it be a problem.

As for selling dungeon runs by waiting at the end. I think that putting parts of a “end chest”- key in every single boss chest that pops up in order to get the last and final reward would help somewhat that certain dungeons don’t get run properly at all anymore. (although I’m sure that would get complaints or has it’s own issues.) I think it’s weird that people can hop in a dungeon near the end and get the full reward for it.

In my opinion, the way heavy/medium armor vs light ascended armor is way imbalanced is not a good thing at all. I don’t really like that there is not a good way of getting Tier 4 materials either with linen running out of control.

I still remember swimming in silk, sure. But that double nerf of using triple the silk to turn into bolts and then double silk for just Damask was incredibly badly done. Sure, silk is “in a nice place” economy wise, but for anyone who wants to at least sort of progress at a steady pace in order to get Damask is potentially feeling very demotivated. It’s not fun at all, and it never has been.

Of course “in favor of the economy” changing the way silk is handled would maybe be a bad idea. But I don’t think I would care too much about that. (Personally I can see linen going up faster than silk ever will.) But it still doesn’t feel like silk or any other cloth is in a nice place.

KorbanDallas.7389:

I personally would have rather watched the memories play out, and had gameplay mechanics before hand as myself to counterbalance them – watching Caithe kill a hundred centaurs in a more spectacular way than I could pull of with in game mechanics would have made me at least have more respect for her as a warrior than I do now.

I understand what people mean with being their own character and such as well. Although I think that in this case specifically, playing Caithe or forced to playing Caithe helps us understand her more. It’s not particularly meant to make her more impressive, but more that we as a character went to the Pale tree in order to understand Caithe more. The Paletree happens to have these memory seeds that let’s our character’s experience what Caithe is like, her feelings and all that. Although it is a very precarious to pull off how a memory is being experienced, of course, but it does fit right in with how the story was written. Thus as a character we feel like we are being Caithe in these seeds, we’re not bystanders.

It would’ve been different to me if it suddenly said. For this story, you’re playing as Rytlock, because Rytlock’s story is awesome. But that wasn’t the case. To me it felt like being Caithe, as much as it takes you away from your character, was expected from my character. I just see the whole Caithe thing as a memory that my character is experiencing, which includes all the things that it includes as it is in the game.

KorbanDallas.7389:

FrizzFreston.5290:

-snip-

I think the people who are being vocal over the centaur body count would have been the same way if it was our characters that did the actual killing – it’s not about how Caithe tied in, it’s about how they don’t like having to kill massive amounts of things that didn’t want to fight in the first place. I mean, obviously I’m not them so I can’t really speak on their behalf, but that’s kind of how I gathered what they were saying.

Well, of course they would have been the same way if our characters did it, but that would obviously not make any sense story wise. While they might not see it as such, playing as Caithe certainly ties into the whole thing of showing that Caithe did this instead of our characters.

Also I’m not saying the reaction is the same as for everyone, but that there is a reaction in itself is quite something. Especially regarding a fantasy race in a fantasy world.

As for myself, I was reluctant to play through it by killing everything but there was no other choice. So I took it as is rather than something else.

TexZero.7910:

Talk about missing the point. Those games have meaningful choices that impact the story and cause the plot and character to progress. This did none of those and was a forced flashback with no change our outcome that was player driven. Cinematics are the perfect tool for that. Being thrust into an unchanging outcome, where the players actions are for not is redundant. The entire point of any RPG is to give the players control over a character they are attached to not some random side character.

Sorry, I basically meant, bad analogy is bad. Even so, the point you made here is completely different from the one in your previous post.

Also not all games have meaningful choices or have any impact on what you do. Not everything you do in your life has any meaningful choices, nor don’t you always have control over what you do. Things sometimes just happen.

If anything, this episode had alot more effect on people’s characters than anything else so far. If it wasn’t so then there wouldn’t this whole discussion about Caithe being such a traitor at all. People wouldn’t say “my character will hate Caithe forever” and such things. I have seen more players showing a certain disgust over what happened and that they had to kill centaurs. I dunno if Caithe felt that too, whether that was my character, or anything else. I personally believe if it just had been a cinematic this effect would have been sidetracked as “Oh Caithe murdered a few centaurs” and no one would have been talking about it. No one would have felt how wrong that felt, and people would’ve cared marginally less.

That is why this story part is more than worthy to be portrayed as is. And some here are merely complaining you’d have to play through it 8 times through the same sequence. While I would say that is an amazing opportunity to (re-) develop your character’s stance on what Caithe has done and felt.

Because you witness something out of character, by standing exactly in another person’s shoes, because the lore actually can sort of explain that, that is an extra interesting point in any RPG and I would be appalled that for the vague reason that “RPGs are meant to only give control over your own character” I would say that I rather welcome artistic freedom rather than such conservative thoughts.

However, these story instances are not without some problems, sure. Like the problem with these story instances could be that the things witnessed maybe aren’t discussed well enough with Marjory after playing through them. How does such a thing feel, how does your character feel going through all that, etc. But regardless of that, I welcome the insight, even as a character, to understand who Caithe really is. Even though, it’s quite hard to portray another character’s feelings as well.

There are no rules in any RPG that you must always be in control of your character and must have the feeling of your character alone in order to progress your character through a story. I think the way Anet did this was original to many other games. A bit daring perhaps, sure. Not without mistakes, sure. But that it shouldn’t be done at all like this is a great oversight, and that is what many of the people that hate such things don’t quite grasp or understand in my opinion.

I honestly think that you guys need to stop thinking of dailies as “The world will explode if I don’t do all my dailies!” And rather think of it as, “If I do this specific thing I get some extra rewards.”

Especially as with that new system in place, the dailies don’t just give you a little bit of extra experience and 1 AP. (Wow much AP joy woo) but instead if you finish 3 of them you can get extra lootz with regards to which achievement you did, plus all the AP you would usually get from doing all the achievements.

Would you rather have that extra stuff you’d normally not get from achievements, or would you rather have that extra automatically gained 1 AP and experience (which you still get, just easier) and some extra fancy dingeling on your screen because you automatically did something you never REALLY paid attention to. (Much skinner box behaviour there guys)

It’s just a wait and see in regards to what the rewards will be and how specific WvW/PvP/PvE stuff will be.

A shatterer daily with an extra roll on the chest? could be interesting I’d say.

(Still seeing alot of “there are bux to be fixed, why dont designers fix bugs?” arguments as well, quite silly. Mike Z isn’t a bug fixer. (He wrote the article, so I assume he’s in on this change))

Previously: Dailies only rewarded AP
Now: Dailies will reward a selective reward with regard to the content that you’re doing. And AP is more or less marginalised to people that didn’t want to feel forced to do every part of the game. (Thus fractal rewards probably will have something like essence of the mists or agony or stuff like that I’m guessing)

To be honest this is a good change. The achievements actual feel more like actual achievements rather than the casual stuff people have been grinding on and call themselves veterans because they repeated a bunch of casual stuff. And on top of that they give out better rewards.

I myself have 18k AP and honestly I was tired of doing every single daily just to max out Daily AP or something.

Login reward giving people stuff as they login, meh. It’s indeed quite easy loot. But I seriously doubt they would give out great loot every day. There’s enough trashy items no one really needs in the game. :P

Silverwastes is great. Yes. But there’s also something wrong with the way the progression goes. In my opinion anyway.

From a pure gaming perspective, rather than the farming and reward getting perspective, the progression should not be unidirectional. Meaning the bar always goes up, you can’t fail it goes up faster or slower but always up.
This means there’s less incentive to stay and defend in the map. Always near the end of the progression bar which more often than not after a way longer time than usual, people stream in, grab the reward and switch to another map.
I wish that losing a fort would mean alot more than it does now. Right now it almost feels like it’s preferred to lose the fort for an easy retake and again some progression.
I don’t feel like there’s any pressure to hold all the forts in the map.

What I personnally think should be happening is that every failed event should decrease the bar ever so slightly so that when people don’t do anything at all, the map doesn’t progress at all.

Also then as people stick to their tasks you could give them more rewards, and with some clever balancing you can make it feel awesome.

Also, I thought the defense events did get harder. With more enemies more larger husks that trash the walls and such. But if not then I also agree with bits Serophous is saying.

It’s been known for a while that Ceara is Secondborn.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Interesting-things-in-Scarlet-s-Room-Spoilers/4194939

Anyandrell.6238:

I think in all this debate, people actually forgot the scope of the whole journey. We are to figure out where Caithe went with the egg, and why. That is the reason why we are going through all those memories.

The story is poorly written not because of the syrupy love dialogues – because, after all, we’re dealing with Sylvari, they ARE all lovey-dovey – but because it contradicts so much of the lore and history to date.

Let’s see the “sins”:

1. In this memory it’s not Rhiannoc who died first, like the PS (and the wiki itself) describes. But other 3 first born and Rhiannoc is getting ready to go on his journey.

2. The Asura, after capturing and torturing Malomedies, realize he is a sentient being and release him and apologize; then they turn around and capture more sylvari for their experiments? Also, Sylvari powering up golems?

3. The second born only now are awakening, and haven’t really gone beyond “Mother’s roots”, the first ones doing so are kidnapped by the Asura. Neveretheless, Faolain comes to the Silverwastes with a full platoon of assorted Sylvari fighters. Who are they and where did they come from? The answer some people gave me was “oh it’s been a while so they had time to get all trained and stuff”. Doesn’t seem at all like “it’s been a while” at least not long enough.

Feel free to add.

Much conjecture.
1. It is unclear if he has already died and they felt it, it has happened and whether they knew it was him right away. But I can agree that this is indeed very confusing like this. The perception of time in this regards is skewed because the dead of Rhiannoc was such a big moment in Sylvari history.
2. The asura area Caithe and Faolain headed into is now a prominent Inquest base. They don’t need to be the same asura at all. Plus Sylvari are magical beings, it’s not that weird at all that they can power golems with it.
3. The Second Born have been awakening for 2 months, I believe even that is said in the first story instance itself. Caydern being the first of the secondborn, who founded the nightmare court, I wonder what he could do in 2 months time + the time in between story chapters.

Indeed, it’s an achievement.

Other than 1 AP that you would get from doing just that one, there’s no title, no special chest. Nothing you would actually gain from it but 1 AP.

Btw, 1 AP is the best reward you can get away with in GW2 for something actually hard. Otherwise you get a huge thread full of complaints. (Liadri, anyone?)

TexZero.7910:

I disagree. History like this is better told through cut scenes as the outcome and actions are predetermined. If there was any chance for deviation it would be a game, as is it’s more of a visual novel. I adore visual novels but this one just felt forced and clunky.

In this instance imitation was not the best form of flattery and im sure while some people love playing MGS:Caithe or Assassin’s Creed: Nightmare Court, it wasn’t for me.

Great every game with only one story line is a visual novel now. Why even make games at all. Everything should be cutscenes! throws hands in the air
Not to mention that you name two games right after, basically countering your own point.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I couldn’t give half a wag of a dead dogs tail about the story. I can’t stomach Destiny’s Edge, suffering through their infantile bickering and horribly clichéd reconciliation while doing the story mode dungeons has put me off those characters forever.

I’m in it for the gameplay. GW2 is a game, its first consideration should be the quality of its gameplay. And especially when going for replay value, story is a secondary consideration. Why do you think people complain about having to sit through dialogue again and again when going for the achievements in these LS instances? Once you know the story, there’s no value to that at all anymore for repeated playthroughs.

Some of the greatest games have fairly simple gameplay while having great story, so that’s a pretty iffy statement right there. Even though the problem here is that you hate the story and only do it for the game play. However, the gameplay isn’t all that different from the rest of the game, except that it’s more uniform because it uses but one character.

The complaints about skipping dialogue are, to me, obviously about having to hear every single line again after failing time and again. But it’s not the sole purpose of the story instances to provide such -extra- challenges, it’s first and foremost to provide story. Then, in order to -add- replay value, they have made these achievements, but they are not “going for replay value”.

Sure, “replay value”-wise this episode obviously less than optimal, way too point out that elephant in the room, but this is living story, it’s about the story. You can hate the story or like the story. But story modes like this one aren’t generally made for the replay value.

It would be great to make a storymode take players into consideration that dont like the story, but eventually you’re trying to tell a story, not make the most appealing gameplay session. If you’re heading in not giving a rats kitten about it then the whole thing will lean on it’s gameplay side while those are made with story in mind. Story sucks? Gameplay will need to be able to stand on it’s own. I haven’t seen any Guild Wars 2 story instance where that was the case. Meaning that the gameplay is generally quite okay, but mostly in conjunction with the story and not as a stand alone thing.

What I think the problem is more than anything else, is that you don’t really have a choice but to play as Caithe, which makes the whole thing stand or fall with Caithe. Because you’re “forced” to relive Caithes memories. Which just clashes being your character with being Caithe. Which could be a great leap which goes beyond certain players.

I think the whole thing is fine, the story is fine, the execution is fine, and I suppose if they only had added the option to play Caithe or not, it would be all fine to everyone else as well on this specific point. To me though it’s no difference from switching from third person view to first person view though.