Guild Wars 2

Nilkemia.8507:

Do we even need a new “Destiny’s Edge”?

Of course Nilkemia. Introducing plot relavent thing (Destiny’s Edge members tolerating one another again) and not visiting it ever again is what GW2 is all about.

We can’t have completion to plots. Only lots and lots of beginnings (like the Karka invasion).

Why bother worrying about the event when the only reward for beating it is two rares?

Thats the problem. The incentive for finishing is pathetically low.

EDIT:

And the update didn’t make the community toxic. Its always been toxic. It just made it more noticeable. This is what happens when the only end game is “GET MORE GOLD!”

FateOmega.9601:

Scarlet is the anti-trahearne.

Well yeah, as I stated earlier:

Traehearne: Oh so perfect Slyvari who took all the glory from former heroes. United good guy factions despite them being more interesting standing on their own rather than merged into one generic blob.

Scarlet: Oh so perfect Slyvari who took all the glory from former villains. United bad guy factions despite them being more interesting standing on their own rather than merged into one generic blob.

Scarlet is Traehearne, only female and evil. With an extra dose of special snowflake.

Caradryan.1795:

Scarlet didn’t immediately grab my attention like some of the other GW characters (Koss, Zho, Gwen, Pyre Fierceshot, Lazarus & Anise off the top of my head), but I think it might not be inappropriate for them to do such a character.

Many times people want the staggeringly complex, darkish grey antivillain characters, but I don’t think people realize that those characters require much more build-up than a few line of text in a game (that most players will probably just skip through anyways to get to the shiny).

Scarlet’s personality is clear. A player within about ten seconds or so immediately gets that she’s the crazy type of bad guy. Good. I think insofar as a plot device goes, that’s sufficient. Sometimes simple is best.

Simple -can- be fine. The issue is she is apparently simple, while also having her hand in all these different pots. She is behind to much, doing to much, and her personality doesn’t match any of it.

People compare her to Joker a lot. And that’s just unfair to the Joker. At surface level? Yeah, they’re similar. But Joker is a much more self focused villain. He doesn’t care about others. Isn’t one for making or even encouraging Alliances, even goes so far as to attack and threaten other villain characters because when it comes down to it, he skirts the line between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil.

Joker has depth. Thus far, despite her apparently being active for almost a full year in the living story behind the scenes, Scarlet is one dimensional.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Namica.2951:

The difference is, GW1 had consistently good writing. You always had reason to believe that the next leg of the arc would be good. You expected connections.

Hahaha. No.

Prophecies didn’t have consistently good writing, and all I have to do is remember Prince Rurik’s contribution to chatter during “The Ruins of Surmia” to point out what I mean. Beyond that, the White Mantle/Shining Blade bits weren’t really good until late, and only really shone in “War in Kryta”.

Almost all of the good writing I remember out of Prophecies came post-campaign. Which means it was added after it shipped. Sorrow’s Furnace was really good, but it wasn’t initially there. And I may knock Factions for being completely predictable and by-the-numbers, but it was at least entertaining (hey, there’s another villain “cuz I’m evil” sue – Shiro Tagachi).

Nightfall, I won’t get into because I’m probably the only person who saw the Kormir Ascension and went “I like having a goddess owe me one” instead of “but it should have been meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”.

Eye of the North was uneven with the burden of introducing two new races and reworking the charr amidst the trouble of handling its own plot. Good news is it shuffled off the “meet the races” into side quests instead of forcing you to do them to advance.

Guild Wars 2 is average on story. It’s not as horrible as people say it is (as a whole) nor is it “the most awesome story evar”. It’s cliched, it’s unevenly paced, and character introductions for the important NPCs are handled poorly; this is something which has persisted into the Living Story (save for Braham and Rox, who have the benefit as starting as “nobodies” we get to watch become somewhat-kinda-useful).

That’s the big weakness in the GW2 story – a lot of things aren’t properly telegraphed in advance. But, as I said before . . . that was also a problem with almost all of GW1.

I’m not going to go into how I disagree with your post, since it’s heavily opinionated and it’ll just turn into a slap fight. But I will comment on the Shiro part.

If you don’t know about Shiro’s motivation, and how things went down in that. Who tricked him, how the deception worked, how the the Emperor only reassured him of the deceiver being right. Then you weren’t paying attention at all.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Namica.2951:

The thing is, people have been seeing “deeper meanings behind seemingly unimportant one liners.” since flame and frost.

. . . before that. WAY before that. WAY WAY before that. You should have seen things in Prophecies before anything else was ever put together, let alone the conclusions drawn from the ruined cape which used to be found somewhere ashore in Kryta on launch. Then the Preserved Red Iris in Kourna . . .

Seriously, some of the theories were incredibly . . . well let’s just be nice and say “extremely unlikely”.

Instead we got abunch of shoddy writing that’s being defended with “Oh well, surely it gets better…”

. . . worked for Star Trek: TNG and DS9. Not so much Voyager and Enterprise though, so I’ll take a 50% success rate.

The difference is, GW1 had consistently good writing. You always had reason to believe that the next leg of the arc would be good. You expected connections.

GW2 hasn’t had good writing from Traehearne on. Everything fell apart after Claw Island, and this shoddy writing has carried on for the various living stories. We no longer have any reason to believe that it will get better since it’s been bad from launch and on. The only half decent writing we get are from most of the personal storylines, and up till retaking claw island (though even then, some parts of the orders were iffy).

Did we get a new writing staff at some point? Because there is a marked drop in quality and it’s yet to claw its way back up.

Whenever Traehearne/another oh-so-perfect sylvari comes along to make us.

Chaz.5263:

Uruz Six.6594:

Chaz.5263:

That beign said I don’t see how the story or scarlet makes any sense at all ( I guess we’ll have to wait 6 more months to have her motives and background revealed to us) I think this is a real shame, specially after watching some of WoodenPotatoes videos and realizing that the guys at Anet are sitting on a gold mine of lore and history and have a thousand things to draw from and can make very rich stories.

WP’s a great lore guy, but his theories present plot holes big enough to throw both M. Night Shalyman and Damon Lindelof through.

His theories might be 10 times more interesting than the current plot of the living story, yes, but what I’m talking about is that the writers have a mountains of lore to work with, established history, heroes, vaillains and tons of misteries unresolved and I don’t see them exploiting that lore gold mine at all.

They’ve been throwing Sky Pirates at us for months and do we know where they come from and what their endgame is? at least with the Flame Legion and the Dredge we learned a lot about them through personal story/events.

And why Sky Pirates anyway? Rule of cool I guess because storywise they make no sense so far.

Is interesting we’ve gone all summer and know nothing about them.

I suppose we need to “Just keep waiting™”

Uruz Six.6594:

Namica.2951:

Well apparently everyone but our character knew about Scarlet since all the other characters talk about. The Asuran dude also keeps telling us of her various exploits. Others can be derived simply from what we’re fighting. Our characters know exactly what we the players know at this point.

No, not everyone. Vorpp. He’s the only one we meet who knew her beforehand and only because of her degrees. If we want to get into the details of the asurans keeping an embarrassment to their intellectual superiority on the down low as good/bad storytelling, sure, but Scarlet isn’t a widely known figure.

EDIT: And we only find out about her just now. Again, bad storytelling or a sign that there’s more to this than what Vorpp’s telling us?

Why don’t you pay more attention to the story before defending it.

I did. Now why don’t you stop talking down to everyone?

More than just Vorp knew about her. Heck, even ROX knew about this prodigy.

From what we’ve been told, she is like the Zephyrites: Someone the players never knew about, but everyone else apparently did.

Uruz Six.6594:

Namica.2951:

Actually no, considering she’s had her hand in so many places, this isn’t her first chapter at all. See, if a-net was writing a decent story, they would have built up motives and the character herself through ALL THESE VARIOUS THINGS WE’RE BEING TOLD SHE WAS PART OF. Instead she was just thrown at us, pointed at, and anet goes “She is to blame, kill her!”

You’re missing one obvious point. Everything you know in-game is everything your character has seen, heard, and or read first-hand. The only cut scene I can think off-hand that we never were personally witness to was Marjory’s, and that was told through her journal. We never see Scarlet cackling evilly before this LS because we never see Scarlet. The only people we meet that have met Scarlet either don’t know much about her or are too loyal to say anything. And, oddly enough, she left us few – if any – clues, up until her dramatic entrance. And even then we’re still left guessing.

(And if she did leave us clues, nobody would be complaining about Villain Balls right?)

Ok?

Well apparently everyone but our character knew about Scarlet since all the other characters talk about. The Asuran dude also keeps telling us of her various exploits. Others can be derived simply from what we’re fighting. Our characters know exactly what we the players know at this point.

Why don’t you pay more attention to the story before defending it.

BoogerSammich.7189:

The proof that ANET has done their job in creating a compelling villian? The fact that this thread is almost 300 posts strong. Love her, Hate her, doesn’t matter just so long as you are compelled by her to feel one way or the other. Personally, I have no idea wth is going on with the LS. I haven’t been able to follow a coherent thread since the beginning. But Scarlet is my favorite part so far.

People calling a villain a villain-sue isn’t proof of compelling. It’s proof that she’s so bad that people can’t stand her.

The fact that you can’t even follow the LS just shows how poorly its been handled.

Evans.6347:

Well that’s unnecessarily harsh.
The difference is that he sees deeper meanings behind seemingly unimportant one liners. That’s no baseless speculations or plot armour at all, but an open mind willing to look past the end of their own nose.

The thing is, people have been seeing “deeper meanings behind seemingly unimportant one liners.” since flame and frost. Eventually it needs to be realized that there are no hidden meanings, you can’t just keep going “Well eventually X may happen!” when so far, eventually, nothing is happening.

In a years worth of content, they’ve pretty much pushed the story no where. This was supposed to be a huge thing. A-net sent fan sites and some fans letters with gifts. They said that the queen’s speech would change Tyria forever.

Instead we got abunch of shoddy writing that’s being defended with “Oh well, surely it gets better…”

Uruz Six.6594:

I’ll try to make this quick before I dash out the door.

Scarlet is a psychopath five cans short of a six pack.
You see: Saturday morning villainy.
I see: A sylvari psycho who not once mentions the Nightmare. So, then, how did she get so bonkers?

Scarlet has an unbelievable background, like perhaps having graduated from all three asuran colleges and then some.
You see: Bad writing.
I see: Something so outrageous that there has to be more to it than that.

I also saw: Someone who literally has to die five times before Vorpp can get us into her playhouse. Seriously, you beat her to where she’s leaving enough ellipses to attract Pac-Man and yet she’s back up and shiny less than an hour later? And that’s not entirely game mechanics, because, again, Vorpp’s story requires you to do this five times.

I also saw: Someone who merged golemagical studies with necromancy. Notice the magic effects on the Twisted and how they all drop dusts.

It helps to, every so often, turn off your internal critic and take a moment to look around. You might actually catch on to some things.

In other words:
You see: <what is actually happening>
I see: <Baseless speculation>
I also saw: <plot armor>

Uruz Six.6594:

Shiren.9532:

Uruz Six.6594:

Atlas.9704:

DaShi.1368:

This is why I like Scarlet. She’s a fun, over the top villain.

No, you must have brooding villains that have been established from the very beginning of time.
How dare you have FUN in a game pfhah! I say pfhah! lol

And we have to know exactly everything about them in the first chapter too.

It’s not the first chapter. They’ve been telling the story since January/February.

They’ve been telling a story since January. This is her first chapter. And its definitely not her last chapter, either.

Actually no, considering she’s had her hand in so many places, this isn’t her first chapter at all. See, if a-net was writing a decent story, they would have built up motives and the character herself through ALL THESE VARIOUS THINGS WE’RE BEING TOLD SHE WAS PART OF. Instead she was just thrown at us, pointed at, and anet goes “She is to blame, kill her!”

I also find it funny that alot of the defense of Scarlet thus far is “Oh no, just wait. Surely it must get better.”

Atlas.9704:

Yeah she announces all but one, then blows that one up and kills folks in the process.
Almost like the others were a feint for the big one. Actually that’s decent planning when you think about it.

A shame she killed no one important and somehow forgot that the Queen was a Mesmer.

WHAT A GENIUS GUYS.

SirMoogie.9263:

Is the Order of Whisper on vacation?

It’s troubling that the intelligence arm of the pact didn’t see any of this coming. You’d think they’d take great interest in a genius sylvari, find out she’s crazy, and then maybe keep an eye on her.

I fear that the orders have all been forgotten after they merged into their one big generic mess.

There you have it. We need to just keep on waiting. I wonder how long we’re going to keep on being told to wait. This is the exact sort of thing most MMO do when they release a crappy story: “Naw man, wait, its coming.”

No. Scarlet was supposed to be the culmination of quite a few stories: Molten Alliance team up, the joining of a faction of xenophobes with a faction of air pirates, heck, she’s even connected to the steam monsters and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s connected with the Karka as well.

THIS was supposed to be a big plot relevant thing. A-net themselves thought so: they sent letters to fan sites, they said a huge game changing thing was coming with this update. And now we get a backpeddling “Oh no guys, just wait for it. Totally.” response.

I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of useless events that no one gives a crap about. It’s known what is wanted: Elder Dragons. The story moving forward. A-net has somehow got to a point where they update twice a month but don’t push a story. I suppose that’s impressive.

Cyan.6904:

Gandarel.5091:

Elidath.5679:

Gandarel.5091:

It’s not like some people don’t like this ‘new direction’, it’s like almost everyone hates it. And that’s a difference.

The same difference as in “I speak for myself” and “I am omniscient and know what everybody think”.
Please, don’t speak for me or anyone that isn’t you, because apparently you aren’t omniscient, and this new direction isn’t as hated as you make it out to be.

The almost everybody stands for almost everybody, not actually everdbody. I thought this is obvious. Check the feedbacks on the lore + living story forums about all the LS contents.

People who feel the need to comment on forums are often the people who disagree with a direction or decision. People who are fine with the content are more likely to keep quiet.

You can’t automatically discredit a whole swath of people like that. A lot of people just like going to game forums.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

You mean to tell me that we’ve been trying to find out information about a super-villain named Scarlet… and all we would have had to do was to check the University of Rata Sum’s student register?

Similar to how we should have just known about the Zephyrites, we were supposed to know about this Scarlet that has been making such a splakitten

’s poor writing. You can’t just keep making stuff up like this that’s is common knowledge to everyone but the player. It just kills any immersion the world may have had.

She’s a female Traehearne.

Traehearne: Oh so perfect Slyvari who took all the glory from former heroes. United good guy factions despite them being more interesting standing on their own rather than merged into one generic blob.

Scarlet: Oh so perfect Slyvari who took all the glory from former villains. United bad guy factions despite them being more interesting standing on their own rather than merged into one generic blob.

Characters that are this perfect are just boring. “My name is Scarlet. I’m the smartest person in Tyria who united two factions of xenophobes, and another two factions, one being major xenophobes, the other being transdimensional pirates. Despite me apparently having a silver tongue, I talk and act like I’m a partially insane 12 year old!”

A shame, I was realllllly hoping the 1yr anniversary would be something players have been asking for, for months: dragons.

Nope. Ugly weapon skins and one of the worst villains in MMO history, plus a continuation of the least favorite villain faction in GW2 (aetherblades)

She’s a anime villain.

Note that despite being uber genious and perfect, she made a huge mistake in forgetting Jehnna is a mesmer, and another in giving her enemies a means to attack her.

Let’s not forget she acts like she’s 10.

It’s not so much that I want a full removal of the pet.

I just want the option to not use it.

Chopps.5047:

Namica.2951:

solrik.6028:

ALSO A FUN-FACT:
Statistics show that a majority of people who are active on the forums are there because they have a problem with the product. Which leads us to me saying; this is partially stupid because you will obviously have a much greater amount of ‘+1’ than ‘-1’

Nice ad hominem bro.

No need to lie.

That part of the quote is not ad hominem, rather, it’s questioning the premise of the post which is basically a perspective on the usefulness of this survey: next to none.

“Everyone who posts here just hates the class so their opinion is moot”

No, it was attacking the person and not the argument by making a statement which was a lie in the first place.

solrik.6028:

ALSO A FUN-FACT:
Statistics show that a majority of people who are active on the forums are there because they have a problem with the product. Which leads us to me saying; this is partially stupid because you will obviously have a much greater amount of ‘+1’ than ‘-1’

Nice ad hominem bro.

No need to lie.

Dinged last night.

I’ve been waiting for this moment!

+1

At least make it a choice. Warriors get traits that let them ignore their class mechanic, why not us?

Currently have Carrion Shortbow, Longbow, Axe, Horn, and Dagger (I love the Legionnaire skins). And a Berserker sword.

I have… a lot of gold. I’m just cheap and wanting to keep some off the side for other toons.

I can afford any build.

Just got my Ranger up to 80. Was wondering what to do gear wise: I’m not exactly rich, so it comes down to having one set of gear for general useage. This choice being that of berserker vs knight. Was curious of peoples experience with either in WvWvW and PvE.

Raine.1394:

This is somewhat analogous to the question, what musical instrument, the guitar or piano, is hardest to play? Well, most people will say guitar as you’ll be playing something that sounds like music much sooner than on the piano. True as far as it goes, but I’ve noticed that to play any musical instrument (including a blade of grass) at the virtuoso level takes an equal amount of practice, gifting, commitment, whatever.

It’s similar here. To play a warrior at the highest level possible is not boring. You will constantly be on the edge of your seat. Most of these discussions devolve to the lowest common denominator and pronounce X profession boring. Calling any profession boring just shows that you are not approaching it in the manner required to make it art. So, why not make it art.

I’ve also noted that Warriors have the strongest tendency to defend their class.

A lot of people with high level warriors call it boring. A lot of players who play the class often in PvP call it boring. They give many concrete reasons why it’s boring, while those defending tend to give rather vague reasons while ignoring those put forth by others. Often going “Well you just play 100b, so thats why you call it boring” which is a fallacy, you’re just attacking the person rather than the argument.

It’s ok to admit that Warrior is rather base. It’s utilities are the most basic in the game. It’s weapons skills are rather cookie cutter. It’s traits are very basic. It has the highest base hp as well as highest base armor. Nothing really sets it apart from others aside from it’s simple nature. A common argument is that it requires weapon swapping, which is both untrue (little synergy between weapon types aside from the oh so popular, lay down a flame field then switch to a weapon that can use it) and need not apply, as such arguments can be applied to any class (just about all, if not all, have various incentives to weapon swap).

Morthur.3894:

Least boring: Ele
Most boring: Warrior

I’d actually like to play my warrior – especially when I play one of the other more complex classes and take about 3 times longer to actually kill things compared to a warrior that uses 2 skills and kills way faster then say an Elementalist who swaps Attunements 6 times in the process – being somewhat of a min/maxer it hurts my brain to play a class that is more complex and slower then the simple mindless hack&slash of a warrior. But the warrior is just soooo boring…

Basically it reeks of simply dismal class- and/or game design. By making this big thing of not wanting a decent and well-tested class system (trinity based classes) in their game they now have a totally broken and even more restrictive and unappealing class system. What’s the point if every class can do everything when in reality they all suck completely compared to the DPS-output and farming capability of the simplest of all classes?

Complexity should be rewarded, not punished… again… really wonderful game design right there.

I think this design was fully intentional. The classes are all fairly effiecient and can do just as well as others when worked TO THEIR LIMIT. The warrior is a easy limit to hit, elem is as hard limit to hit. They are allowing playstyles for both players that like simple gameplay, and those who like much more involved.

The issue is, they can’t allow one to outpace the other just because its simpler. Then there would be no reason to play it. So yes, you do have to work harder than a Warrior as pretty much any class, but you aren’t necessarily worse.

Though yes, I will say GS could use a small bit of a nerf. Not a big one, its power is way overstated.

Greastsword is a defensive weapon
Sword is an offensive weapon

Quit complaining, they both have their place. I’d prefer GS as it is rather than being a sword, just bigger.

cesmode.4257:

Its hilarious..it seems warriors and guardians are the most boring classes, yet the most played. Very funny…

It’s very common in MMO for the most popular classes to also be the most simple to use. For instance, WoW and Paladins (who have oddly enough gotten LESS popular as they’ve gotten more involved gameplay wise). Or perhaps more relatable, W/Mo from GW1.

The simplest most brain dead classes are always the most popular.

Jeez, seems warrior is considered thee most borin’.

What can I say? I like hearing peoples opinions. What would you say are the most and least fun of the games classes for PvE, and why do you consider them such?

avexis.9047:

warrior has the most diverse and the largest amount of weapons available in comparison to every other class in the game. it explains warrior as the weapon master on the class description on the wiki.. two handed axes will not happen as axe is a burst related weapon and greatsword already takes the cake for 2 handed burst, plus 2h axe was never a weapon in guild wars 1.

we have the most weapon sets/combinations available to our class than any other, if you think it needs more you either need to re roll to one of the other classes that has less aka all of them or deal with it

Well jeez, that was all rather dismissive. I don’t think Warriors have to many weapons: its pretty much their class specialization. It’s why their utilities are so basic compared to many other classes, they are defined by weapons.

Nor would GS have to stick with being a high burst weapon similar to the 1 handed axe. Take a look at sword compared to GS and that enough should show you that a weapon type doesn’t have to be the same as it’s predacessor. A 2 handed axe could be all sorts of things: heavy mobility (or low), high sustained, condition heavy, semi range and so forth.

That said, Warrior would do well enough with a new range option: say a pistol, which Rhytlock already uses as is.

Julie Yann.5379:

I love mine, have over 1400 hours played on it. Made dozens of builds for it, costs me a fortune, but there are so many possibilites to explore especially now that we got some buffs. It opened up a lot of builds that just weren’t viable before.

If you wouldn’t mind, could you give me some examples. I suppose maybe my imagination is a little stagnant from all the alt making, but the Warriors traits seem pretty cookie cutter basic to me.

Praise Lyssa! Goddess of beauty!

I’ve been spending weeks trying to nail down a character to really focus on and main (something you pretty much have to do nowadays due to laurals). Thing is, I’m stupidly indecisive. I think I like Warrior best, but my main issue is how they seem rather… simple. Compared to others. Was mostly wondering if those here are happy with their warriors, and indeed, if they main the class over others.

Human

Balthazar bless.

(I’m working on this character at the moment)

Simple question. I for the life of me cannot decide which of these three to make for my Warrior. What’s everyone else think?

Norn are loosely based on scandenavian culture, mustaches like the one people are complaining about aren’t to uncommon really.

If you’re truly mad about this, why aren’t you complaining about, say, Norn Engineers or Mesmers? They don’t exactly fit the viking motiff going on. You need to remember, Norn are no longer a singular culture anymore in the same way that Charr aren’t (or else we wouldn’t have, say, Evon Gnashblade).

I don’t think legions have their own fahrars. I believe that the Charr fahrar warband chooses which legion they’ll join when they are old enough to join one.

For instance, your home barracks has a section for each of the three legions, with the fahrar being its own thing.

Its not that there is a Ash Fahrar or a Iron Fahrar. There is just the Fahrar.

My ranger wears coats, I refuse to have my Thief wear them which oh so severely limits my armor choices.

Cursed lack of armor variety in this game!

Old article but still relavent:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/16/guild-wars-2-designer/

So they are disappointed that more people roll human rather than say, Charr or Asura.

Couldn’t possibly be because the armor issue. Oh no no.

The equipment boxes worth it you think? Essentially gambling I suppose.

Are they really good for anything? Given that anything worthwhile costs them + gold, it just seems like a useless waste to have them.

Crap! forgot to rate you.

Can’t see how you look all that well, but

Warrior 7/10. To human!
First engineer 8/10. Gunslinger love
Second 9/10. Would run away from in terror.
Left is current, right is eventual.

IRON LEGION STRONG

Arena net has known that the pet is a giant issue with rangers and a massive hinderence in general, they have known this for almost a year now and have taken no steps to fix it.

Just how things are sad to say.