Guild Wars 2

Honestly, I tend to use downed players as walls to ricochet the Axe #1 off of for extra hits if I’m under any sort of time pressure . Interrupts their Downed #4 and doubles my damage on the guy near them :p.

Losing the stomp is certainly something to be aware of though.

Nike.2631:

I’m not going to disagree with you directly, but for what environment are you talking about (…’cause I rarely ever build for Empathic Bond…)?

jcbroe.4329:

PvP and arguably WvW (there are those of the mindset that WvW is all about zerging, in which case if that’s the role you take, then no, because you’ll already be so glassy a breeze will kill you, let alone conditions). In general, any place you can think of that will relentlessly spam conditions at you on a very short cooldown.

Ah. Thanks . I usually found Shared Anguish sufficient for my needs in dungeons and solo camp flipping. You’re talking primarily player-based incoming threats.

For those not familiar, Nature Magic X – Hulk Out (pardon, Enlargement) will now give a Beastmaster’s Signet Ranger 8 second of +25% damage, +50% speed, and stability when your drop below 25% health (along with Fluffy going similarly super-seiyan) on a 60 second or potentially 48 second internal cooldown. And if you’re running that trait combo odds are good you’ve got the signet too, so you’ve got a 16 out of 48 second uptime in seriously pitched fights.

That’s got all kinds of clutch potential.

Indoles.1467:

jcbroe.4329:

Yeah, I thought we decided long ago that Empathic Bond our only source of viable condition removal is the biggest thing that is killing build diversity.

I wish Karl would come back and comment on whether or not there is an internal discussion happening about this very problem (or perceived problem).

I agree it is. Without it, you rely on not taking any focus in a fight and that simply won’t happen. There are some decent changes here, but the only one I see that promotes any build diversity is the spirits unbound and nature’s vengeance swap. Otherwise, rangers are still stuck 30 deep in wilderness survival with 40 points to pick from for their respective build.

I’m not going to disagree with you directly, but for what environment are you talking about (…’cause I rarely ever build for Empathic Bond…)?

Karl McLain.5604:

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.

This trait is now basically the active portion of Signet of the Wild, meaning it can be reduced with Signet Mastery and will also apply to the ranger when Signet of the Beastmaster is equipped and Might if you have Beastmaster’s Might equipped.

Oh believe me, as a Signet Ranger, I understood the patchnote perfectly the first time – and started mentally rearranging my points to get this new trait ASAP!!

So. (*#($&@ing. Cool.

Xsorus.2507:

lol, I must admit
I about kitten myself when I read this

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.

then I realized it was just for stuns lol

Shortbow 5 did just kitten itself when it heard that.

So many of my older builds are up for serious review when these hit. I feel like I’ll have meaningful options finally.

Check out some of the proposed changes for Dec. 15~

Ranger longbow auto attack is getting a proposed +20% damage at short range, +15% and medium range.

Warrior longbow burst skill is getting a reduction in direct damage.

Great fixes. Should go a ways towards rectifying the imbalance between Ranger and Warrior archery some of us were well aware of.

(I have 80s of both classes – my warrior can take the hit and keep on truckin’, my ranger might actually pull that longbow out of their bags again after the patch…)

Check out some of the proposed changed for Dec. 15~

Ranger longbow auto attack is getting a proposed +20% damage at short range, +15% and medium range.

Warrior longbow burst skill is getting a reduction in direct damage.

Great fixes. Should go a ways towards rectifying the imbalance between Ranger and Warrior archery some of us were well aware of.

So when are we getting the “Kessex Hills fractal” that uses the old Kessex map and gives us a chance to see the Tower of Nightmare being first planted in the lake…?

Yeah, I said it

bluberblasen.9684:

Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.

plz not!
This are the assurance for most Ele

And Eles can still have them… IF they are willing to pay an opportunity cost commiserate with the proven impact of these traits.

I’m finding the explanations/intentions for each class and the steps taken to implement them largely brilliant. THIS is the pass I had hoped to see mid-October before the first WvW season.

((Thumbs up))

Terkov.4138:

Warriors 100% finisher on LB AA is bug from range trait, not intended. Stop spreading BS.

Bug or not, it is the game we ARE playing, not the game we imagine it should be.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Inc.4753:

Alright, let’s give it a try:

We escort a charr tank to a certain enemy gate to take it down and invade their base. Upon failure, we could get another event that requires us to get explosives to blow up the gate instead. This event will be harder as the players now have to get close to the gate to drop the explosives. Or, to add a little diversity, an Ash Legion soldier pops up, makes some sniffy remark on how the Iron Legion can’t even keep their own toys in one piece, and offers to take the group via a second, secret (perhaps even previously locked) path into the base.

I like that. Let me generalize the concept and take on the road:

What’s being suggested is adding “second chance” events. Plan A has failed. Rather than just fall back in disarray, we get to try plan B, which is specifically designed to play to a different set of player strengths/builds than plan A did. Frontal assault didn’t work. Here’s a mini-jump puzzle that opens up that gets you to the goal – giving the avid jumper with weaker gear who couldn’t down the doorguards by brute force a way to shine.

Now imagine redoing the entire southern march from Fort Trinity to the Rally Camp with Second Chance technology. Failed to secure the beach for the trebuchets by plowing in all iron-fisted? A pact submarine pops up off shore and you get a second chance to secure it by playing siege gunner from the deck. If either event succeeds, you are able to advance on to the assault on the first island across the bridge.

Later in the chain you have to hold that first island against a counter attack. If you fail, instead of immediately being booted back to the trebuchet beach, you get a second chance event – maybe some sort of footrace to reach a horn that lets you call in an NPC Airstrike so that you end up holding on to the island and can advance to the next stage of the march. Again, giving you a way to showcase an alternate skillset, and a way to not have your progress kicked back because the guy that helped you take the island in the first place wandered off before the counter attack event started.

Second Chances, especially creative ones, would open up a world of heroism and let you actually access the later portions of some of the really long chains, better leveraging the work you’ve already done.

As to implementing DE expansion. If I were king, I’d pick pairs of zones, of radically different level ranges, and focus all the additions in those two zones so that I could announce the introduction not a~

“We added 50 events… somewhere”

But as~

“Things are heating up in Gendarren Fields. Not only have the Centaur attacks taken on a sinister new dimension, but the Inquest has begin probing the Headquarters of the Vigil for weakness. Return to this war-torn frontier in this permanent Living World release and be among the first to raise your sword against the new and renewed enemies of Kryta and Lion’s Arch!”

My Norn doesn’t show skin… just curves .

nopoet.2960:

As a complete aside, I would love to see some experiments in dynamic events where failure doesn’t stall the event but progresses it in a different direction.

BobbyStein.2315:

Interesting idea. Can you provide an example of how you would imagine it working?

Its in the game NOW. And it represents some of the best the DE system has to offer.

The pump house/waterworks in Queensdale. Bandits assault it with bombs. If you fail, it launches a new DE where you make repairs. If you succeed, the pump house is safe, but is potentially subject to the to toxin line of DEs (and visa versa). The two lines never overlap (You don’t have to stop bombs while there are oozes running amok), but they create tangibly different outcomes for winning or failing.

The single best investment of energy you can do to make the world Living (as opposed to a Living Story) is to layer on more and more DEs with branching pass/fail interdependencies so that even 6 months later, I can wander through say Mount Maelstrom, and while the geography is familiar, there things going on I’ve never seen before. And if the DE pass/fail states actually radically alter the landscape, even better. And its work that endures – its there to entertain first time new players and to enchant and surprise veteran players out for a stroll.

No, I’m acknowledge the reality that even when you start a fight at range, that range is going to shrink in most cases (and should shrink in team play), and that basing your expectation of Ranger longbow DPS off of what it does in the max range bracket vs. a more realistic medium-range damage or even mixed medium- and short-range is just deceiving yourself about what Ranger longbow does vs. almost any other ranged weapon that doesn’t rely on the “hits harder at longer ranges” gimmick.

I don’t have to be in melee to trade buffs, but I can’t do it at all from 1,200+ away from the action.

Mesket.5728:

Nike.2631:

Because when you are fighting fixed opponents (some dungeon bosses) You’re better off staying closer to the target where you can both give and recieve boons with your team?

Than why are we discussing long bow damage?

Because warrior longbow doesn’t lose effectiveness when targets close? It doesn’t rely on an unsustainable gimmick to claim effective damage output?

Oh. Well. Clearly I need to learn to play. In 20 words or less, could you summarize this amazing depth the class has the rest of us are missing?

Because most of us aren’t fighting things (AI or player) stupid enough to let us stay at max range for more than 2-3 shots?

Because when you are fighting fixed opponents (some dungeon bosses) You’re better off staying closer to the target where you can both give and recieve boons with your team?

I love my All-Settler’s gear Super Unicorn. Caltrops for everyone! ((flings spikey bits of metal into every corner of this thread))

Nike.2631:

Replace the 5 point Skirmishing minor trait with~

Lone Wolf: You gain +25% damage while your companion is stowed.

Fix the stow companion command so that when we stow a companion it stays stowed until we click the button again.

Atherakhia.4086:

Clearly you’re not as skilled at pushing 1 with your Warrior as you are with your Ranger. Damage isn’t comparable. The gap is made up for by the pet. The loss of the pet is why he’s asking for 25% more damage. 25% more damage isn’t going to compensate for the 1000dps difference between a sword ranger and a dagger thief.

I’m with ya. The +25% I’m suggesting is actually lowballing the value needed to restore parity to the ranger’s attacks, but I think its also within the realm of reason as a new option to enable a playstyle many of us were looking for from the Ranger profession.

Its not a request to make pet-less rangers uber compared to other Ranger builds (it won’t). Its a request to “Please, please give us the tools to create dungeon-friendly builds where Fluffy no longer embarrasses us in front of the rest of the party because of dodge-or-die fight mechanics!”

Mesket.5728:

Ps. We don’t have thieves stealth capability and warriors don’t have our damage with bows. Don’t be like that.

Are you kidding? Traited Warrior longbow is devastating. And plain old more interesting, as the individual attacks actually synergize with each other (both starting and completing combos just with weapons skills) and you have actual potential to spike. With greater armor and a massive hit point pool, they are also far more forgiving of the slightest mistake or missed dodge. And a sizeable chunk of their damage potential never stands in an AoE until dead.

I enjoy my ranger for light duty and zerging, but my warrior is a more effective presentation of the “archer” archetype and gameplay I thought I’d be getting from the ranger.

Diehard.1432:

Give them a break guys. I take that as tiny step towards positivity. At least we are not completely forgotten. Lets comment on it after we see the video.

They’ve had their free breaks. They have to earn them now.

McFly.2134:

Think about it this way: Take your basic level 80 exotic set. Exalted Light Armor for example. How many different derivatives are there? (ie: Rampager’s, Carrion, Berzerker’s, Cleric’s, etc.) Are you suggesting we make a collection slot for every single armor combination in the game? The list would be horrendously long.

Um… the window/list you’re talking about is already in the game. Walk up to the PvP locker in the heart of the mist and you’ll see nearly every skin in the game neatly laid out. It’s pretty much where I do all my try-before-you-buy costumery.

Copy that window, add a simple 1 bit yes/no to do you own rights to withdraw that particular skin as seen in the Achievements reward panel (again, existing, proven code) and the job is DONE.

Its a lot more a matter of ANet stylistic choice and profitability than some insurmountable coding exercise.

I don’t see any call to delete it. If you’re not enjoying it (and if you have both a warrior and a thief at 80 I totally get how you’re finding them lacking in the comparison) just shelve it.

Eventually they’re going to have to do SOMETHING with the class.

Inspired.6730:

Well in all fairness all they can really do is give you the content. If players utilize it in a way that wasn’t intended and that some don’t like then I don’t see how that’s their fault.

In all fairness, speaking as a person who has earned their living for the last 12 years as a game designer, managing emergent behavior from a fairly simple set of rules IS the job. When things like ‘Aetherblade farming rather than goal pursuit’ happen, it’s not just their fault… Avoiding those scenarios in the first place or fixing them fast is their essential job description. Some of the patches that hit within 30 hours of that episode’s release were a bit ham-fisted but they weren’t wrong (oh look, elites that drop NOTHING replace 70% of the champion spawns).

A mass of 200 players may have a lot of individual nuances and quirks, but as a body, they’re easily understood as a liquid, and that liquid will always settle downwards to the path of least resistance between them and their goals. It will permeate soil, it will seek crevices between stones, it bursts pipes, and erodes weak barriers. Its what players do: optimize their path to the goal. The goal of killing Scarlet for an achievement and 9 loot bags was a one-time deal (assuming you even care about achievements). The goal of walking way with enough champ bags to tangibly advance almost any other goal in the game was valid every single hour of those two weeks. The game has revealed time and time again that all players need to do to destroy the expected progress curve is find a place were lots of mobs spawn really fast. And then congregate there. Zerg on!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

So… that would be the event chain where the actual meta that evolved was to stack up as tightly as possible (gather on commanders) to force the individual sub-events to spawn as many champions as possible where they could then be briskly annihilated by that same poorly scaled over-mass of players because the rewards for doing so were a literal order of magnitude greater than playing out the event as you envisioned it (60 champ bags for systematic farming, 6 for event completion…).

I honestly don’t know how I could showcase more clearly that our perception of the game you created is wildly different from yours, and that you are not successfully designing towards the actual player experience.

As I said, I’m less concerned about the two week cadence than by the unusable junk or complete voids each episode leaves behind. If you fix that, then yes, the 2 weeks cycle has some possible virtue.

gidorah.4960:

Bobby already spoke on it and I would love if he went into more detail but surely you have some opinion on it as well?

To be fair, it would be a terrible call for Bobby’s boss to come in and speak over and above him when the appropriate department hasn’t had their full turn and are expected shortly anyway.

I may be disappointed that the actual effects if any of the efforts put into this thread by the players will seemly never be revealed outside of closed doors, but I certainly don’t expect a peek at their dirty laundry if there are any significant differences of opinion within their own ranks.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Part 1…

…Much of your commentary and discussions have already been raised in meetings and impacted our thought process around development moving forward already.

As laid out by the rules I will not go into specifics about future development, this said however it is very encouraging to see that much of what has been discussed matches our plans.

So we know pretty much nothing about the impact of our input to these ‘talks’. You and I, we use the word “discussion” very differently .

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

I see this an my internal parser spits out~

“We asked. You told us. HUNDREDS of you AS PLAYERS speaking of the PLAYER EXPERIENCE, the one area you unquestionably understand things in a different way and a different light than a Developer can or would. And having heard, we’re blowing you off completely.”

You and I, we use the word “collaboration” very differently too .

Nike.2631:

Replace the 5 point Skirmishing minor trait with~

Lone Wolf: You gain +25% damage while your companion is stowed.

Fix the stow companion command so that when we stow a companion it stays stowed until we click the button again.

Mesket.5728:

This would be ridiculously OP… if ANet ever decides to give you something without pet, expect around the 3%-5% increased damage without pet. They will always favor people using it.

Um, why do you say so? We’ve been told that the class has a -30% to -40% DPS modifier applied to it to offset the damage provided by the companion.

No companion, no penalty. Seem like a fairly equitable exchange. You can’t stow pets in combat, so it’s not like you can fight ‘til your pet dies then swap to this (and easy enough to set the fix “Pet Stow” command to not allow you to summon them in combat either). You’ be locking out a whole slew of (annoyingly) unavoidable pet effects, like giving up the pet’s first strike if you are invested in the Marksmanship line.

It creates a recognizable archetype and playstyle with pretty minimal changes.

I tried – I really did – to not inject my Number One concern from the issues survey thread into this one, but the Living Story (and specifically it’s after effects) really does touch upon it.

Its my feeling that the scaling of dynamic events is terrible.

It’s terrible at the low end where solo or paired players have to put up with entire zones that are nearly non-functional (Malchor’s Leap) due to the super-abundance of [Group] events and champions squatting on skill points and waypoints for hours or days at a time.

Its terrible at the high end where steps like “Destroy the Dragon Totem” in the Maw world event are over before the second wave (yes, there IS a second wave, turns out grawl come after the ice brood) even spawn. Heck, the first wave of icebrood doesn’t even get a single shot off most days. The Jungle Worm event had to be re-worked because it dies so fast the event script hung. And no, a fixed and arbitrary event timer to turn the trillion hit point snooze fests into a DPS race didn’t make it a better encounter for large groups or small.

So, in the Living Story, when the part is over, we keep getting left with new world-spanning Dynamic Events. Scarlet’s Invasions are trumpeted to the four corners of the world. Tequatl must be stopped (maybe)! Both of these event chains basically re-enact the debacle of Malchor’s Leap over and over again. They were designed to function adequately when the entire gaze of the player base turned upon them. They are terrible experiences without those kinds of focused population numbers.

No more than a week after the Living Story window closes, the lingering Dynamic Event chains introduced are dead as a doornail to the casual gamer. They are effectively dead even to the major guilds to whom they aren’t Dynamic Events, they are carefully orchestrated Planned Events – pretty much the polar opposite of the spontaneity DEs normally inspire. I can’t speak to the numbers of people still beating their heads against the new TA path without the limited-time-offer incentives plan, but I have to imagine usage plummeted similarly.

So, while I’m in the camp that the Living Story needs to help the game accrue permanent activities we can tackle more in our own time, the entire mechanic of Dynamic Events and their Scaling needs some close scrutiny so that it scales faithfully to the number of people participating (small group OR mega-zerg), rather than leaving nothing but marginally useable wreckage strewn around the landscape.

Sad Tequatl, sitting in his cage.

I feel like its an obvious sentiment shared by many and said a hundred different ways so far, but maybe it needs to be spelled out explicitly:

I don’t mind/object to/oppose new content being delivered every 2 weeks. In fact, that’s great.

I hate it that content vanishes every 2 weeks.

Consider the following two step plan for glory:

Replace the 5 point Skirmishing minor trait with~

Lone Wolf: You gain +25% damage while your companion is stowed.

Fix the stow companion command so that when we stow a companion it stays stowed until we click the button again.

Chris RJ.1843:

So, GW2 players (on this forum) really want to see the waiving of the “2 week release” policy in favor of a more “it’s ready when it’s ready” approach.

I want to vehemently disagree with this interpretation.

Saying “2 weeks is too fast” does not mean “at your leisure”.

A steady schedule is a good thing. Brilliant even. Shifting the cadence to 3 weeks or a month or whatever (and jettisoning the aspect of new content vanishing every few weeks) is rich with potential. Having the next release always just floating out there in the void of “eh, when its done” is not the only alternative to “quit wearing us out jumping through 14 day hoops”.

GOSU.9574:

Because you haven’t gone into Beastmaster to improve your pet and you insist on using melee pets against bosses/large scale encounters. The beginners stream may be just what you need.

Which leads so logically into the question ‘Why do I suffer a 25% hit to my DPS for a class mechanic that only (vaguely) works right if I sacrifice 40% of my trait points on the altar of beastmastery and even then only if I’m using a type of pet that makes up less than 20% of the range of choices?’

Ariete.6509:

What method of measurement did you used to decide power builds don’t work and that we have no burst?

Maybe a method that read the whole sentence… “at range” comes before the period. Pretty specifically meaning ‘While armed with a bow, as encouraged by the class description’.

This should be comedy gold.

Button 1: 1,000 range, decent damage 20% projectile finisher. Double taping (pops aegis and still hits for half its initial damage, a little riskier against retaliation than a single shot). Rapidly fills special resource pool.
Button 2: 1,000 range piercing fan, 2 seconds of burning.
Button 3: 1,000 range targetable small AoE and 100% blast finisher
Button 4: 1,000 range small AoE 5-second blind and 100% projectile finisher
Button 5: 1,000 range piercing 6 stacks of bleed for 12 seconds, 3 second of immobilize, and 100% projectile finisher
Button f1: Empty special resource pool to get 1,200 range, large AoE with good direct damage and up to 10 seconds of burning. Sets combo field fire.

Trait option include:
20% cooldown with increased damage against burning foes.
20% range increase with buttons 1 and 2 becoming 100% combo finishers.

…I don’t know about you, but my Ranger would KILL ALL THE PETS for a weapon that had that kind of survivability (blind & immobilizes), internal synergy (burn them to set up more direct damage), and strait up functionality (good direct damage, access to a damaging condition from any angle of attack).

The comparison to that to either of the ranger bows reflects a fundamental problem with Ranger design: Rangers get perfectly decent buttons that have little to no synergy. The tools we are allowed to have are never more then the sum of their parts.

A little tip for customers: If you think the best way to serve your one-person perspective tells you how a company serving three and a half million clients should act, you either have a LOT of clones out there or you’re just fooling yourself.

I don’t have to like or support RNG-based products, but I totally understand their profit potential over other models.

And yet all evidence based on actions rather than idle conversation is that customers vastly prefer to be nickled-&-dimed – in the form of having many small “impulse buy” priced options to modify or enhance their core investment.

Take console games – you’re title is dead on the shelves if you dare defy the locked base price of $59.95 for the basic version. And yet it’s become a failing of the producers if they don’t off two dollar, or five dollar gee-gaws for download. Gee gaws already shipped on the disk – you’re buying an unlock key! If you bundled those items and their price and offered a richer, fuller game experience right out of the box, but for $75, you’d transition from $60 mega-hit to $75 mega-flop in the blink of an eye.

Well, I for one am now much more intent on carrying frost spirit on my toolbar. Good to know!

What’s the range on the storm spirit’s attack?

Because I know opponents can see them. If this is happening because you can’t be bothered to stay out of melee with a pet that either can’t move at all, or simply NEVER actively pursues opponents, my sympathy drops to something less than nil.

We’ve been told over and over melee character deserve their massive damage compared to ranged because they face more risk. Well here it is: Risk.

Babylon 5 has come up a few times, and I think there is a subtle lesson in that’s story’s progression that the ANet writing crew could stand to refresh themselves on.

The best thing that ever happened to Babylon 5 was losing regular access to the actor who played the station commander in season 1. Not because his performance was anything less than solid, but because it forced them to split up an overwhelming amount of plot focus across two characters that was originally envisioned as a single character’s arc. Both characters were stronger for the seperation of roles it imposed.

Scarlet is simply too slender of a branch to support all the burden you’re putting on the character. People aren’t buying it. If anything she’s the walking embodiment of what happens when you forget ‘less is more.’ Graduating from 2 Asuran Colleges would have made her amazing, but you couldn’t resist making it a hat trick. Creating any two of the hostile forces we’ve faced in the Living Story would class her as extremely formidable threat, buts she’s done it four times now and shows no signs of slowing down. You’d get more mileage out of about 3 characters being attributed to what you’ve poured onto a single set of shoulders so far. You’d also have been better positioned to sacrifice one or two those character to the players’ greater glory. Instead you have the tediously untouchable Dark Trehearne and this unending “we’ll get her next time!” routine straight out of the Superfriends.

Two words:

Parallel evolution.

No one could be so full of themselves as to think ‘snakes and daggers’ is a revolutionary new mixture.

morrolan.9608:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Indeed. While your sword isn’t as flashy as, say, Twilight, I still admire ANYONE who carries it. Part of it stems from the fact that is does look nice. But the other part of it is because it’s so rare.

I don’t because its not acquired by being a skilled player its obtained by the one who is prepared to grind the most.

Thankfully, I didn’t do it for anyone’s admiration. I did it for my own sense of aesthetics.

If people want to be impressed by it, I’d rather it be because it complements the rest of my visual choices .

Similarly, the Female Norn boots clip with virtually every legging in the game, including the Phalanx leggings.

Fix it, and you have my money unreservedly. Leave it as is and its ‘No Sale’.

Just one question: Why did the armor pieces that had less than 4 color slots not all get an additional color slot added to manage the intended new flexibility?

Set up the encounter difficulty to scale meaningfully from 10 to 70 players. Likelihood of rewards also scale- the 10 man version has a 1% shiny drop rate, the full blown 70 person extravaganza has a 7% shiny drop rate.

Dragon champions – ALL of them – discard the timer concept entirely and use the already existing Siegerazer trigger tech: Any time 10+ players gather at the launch NPC and linger for a full minute, the event starts.

minbariguy.7504:

ANET: Hey guys, we’re going to give you Living Story updates every two weeks! Cool, huh?

Players: Um…that’s kind of…fast…don’t you think?

ANET: Nah, you’re going to love it! No one else is doing it! We’re unique!

Players: No, really, we’ve tried it, and it’s too fast. It’s kind of stressful actually. Can you slow it down a bit?

ANET: We’re committed to bringing you Living Story updates every two weeks! We’ll continue to work hard to make this happen, even though it limits the things we can do because of such a tight release schedule. But we’re doing this for you because we know how much you enjoy it

Players: No! Just stop it, okay? Please! We don’t like it. It’s burning us out. Are you even hearing us?

ANET: Hey, look at our new web advertisements! They say “Free DLC every two weeks!” Pretty slick, huh?

Players: <…sob!>

You missed the NEW punch line:

ANET: But we’ve finally acknowledge you have concerns. IF, and we do mean IF we choose to act on that feedback, we can change course in a mere 4 months! The next 8 episodes? They’re locked in!

I’d like to know if ANYONE came away feeling they understood Scarlet’s invasions from an in-setting perspective? Seriously, is there a single goal on any map they appear on that they take action to seize? No, of course not. They’re like deer, or dolyaks, just another form of natural resource.

Call that an episode of television and look at it again. Where’s the closure? Where’s the progression of the episode plot OR the season plot? We study the mystery and it dumps us into last week’s map, not the hidden base, the mysterious staging ground, the chance to actually move things along towards a meaningful conclusion.

Look at the waves:

We fight steam monsters… what?!? Last I checked they had their own world-striding evil mastermind to control them that should have rolled up Scarlett into a little ball for tampering with their dominion.

We fight Twisted watchknights… seriously where do these things keep coming from? Because if Queen Jenna had THAT many tucked away to be casually stolen by Uber-girl, the Queen should have being using her ‘speech’ to announce her ascension to Empress of All Tyria. We don’t have the slightest clue where these things come from. No factories, no infrastructure, nothing but flimsy cardboard plot that hands all of Jenna’s advisors the idiot ball for a total lack of safeguards on her new army.

We fight Molten Alliance… again whut, who, where, how, why!??! We smashed these guys so hard they literally disappeared from their native maps entirely and now they just sort of spring up again, thrust through a portal from All 6 Gods knows where? This is rich plot development? Or is it cheaply reused game resources because any sense of accomplishment from the ending of the Frost and Flame arc needed to be wiped away in the name of elevating Scarlet’s cred.

And then Aetherblades. I still don’t get how I overlooked airships packed with pirates for the first 79 levels of my main’s life. They just sort of appear. And I’m trying to puzzle out “They work for me, because, they like living.” Because clearly they DON’T like living given they way they throw themselves into the zerg-blender. We FARM these fools, not fear or respect them.

The lone hint of where these massive and yet totally directionless armies come from is the fuzzy fx for the portals, which appears to be nothing more than a re-used asset from the Steam critters. Still waiting to see if that was a no-effort filler or will one day have actual pay-off.