Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

So people that are not part of those “elite groups” that are doing said instanced fights should never be able to do it or even see the fight?

There is currently a grand total of 2 of these fights in the game (Tequatl and Wurm or 3 if you want to count the Marionette.) out of how many?
50?
100?
200?

They should never mechanically lock people out of content, which they would if you were required to be part of a pre-made large group.

People outside of elite groups aren’t going to complete these events. That’s by design. The content is designed for “elite” groups, not to be completed by random pugs who just turn up. By placing them in the open world they don’t become more accessible to everyone, it simply creates an obstacle for elite groups to optimally engage in them.

First of all, groups like TTS need an overflow. If it’s not NA prime time this usually means they have to force an overflow by guesting to a server. If it is NA prime time, they need to engage in the tedious task of searching for an optimal overflow – one with as few “non elite group” people in it (so much for allowing people outside of elite groups to participate). Servers like Blackgate need to deal with half of the interested player population guesting to their home server to engage in the content. Both guilds like TTS and players on privileged servers have another hurdle to get over – getting into the map. Getting into the map is something you generally need to do early. Spots fill up fast and if you’re not there 30-60 minutes before the event begins, tough luck.

Do you even think your arguments through or are you simply posting to White Knight against every legitimate criticism brought forth? Why is it wrong to “mechanically lock people out of content”? Dungeons are instanced, Personal Story was instanced, even Queen’s Gauntlet had control measures for it. The wurm already does require you to be a part of a pre-made group. You can’t just turn up in your Frostgorge farming build and expect to pull your weight, you need to know the encounter, you need to work as a team, you need to follow instructions, to divide into even groups, to have certain roles filled and ideally you will have an appropriate build. If you don’t have these things you will not succeed.

The content is already designed for organised groups. The fact that it’s in the open world instead of an instance, that’s a hurdle that players have to overcome.

Nike.2631:

Nike.2631:

I think you’re being punished for being a crappy teacher.

Grimno.6172:

Edit – Just did the one at 7pm EST in an overflow server and my god.
Before the match started, I explained everything in simple detail, did what I could… and in the end.
A Perfect Run.
No fails in any lane… Lane 5 severed the 5th chain for a mission complete.
Was amazing, everyone was cheering and it felt good. When people listen, you can succeed!

Thank you for proving my point . And its not just ‘when people listen’, it’s ‘when a good teach inspires them to listen’. Or ‘when a good teacher makes sure the students comprehend’.

Akimbo.4835:

You can tell players the trick to defeating a boss all you want. It falls on deaf ears. You’ll have more success explaining it to a brick wall. Bad players are bad and will always be bad regardless of the advice people give them.

And thank you for perfectly demonstrating what a bad teacher looks like.
There’s three million people who bought this game, and somehow our most elite players know the exact composition of the 110 they’re playing with this time, next time, and on all possible occasions because they’re just too good to even try. Better to decide in advance ‘oh, it won’t help!’

I’m not saying teaching is an easy activity or a common skill. I’m just saying it’s the skill being tested by the event, far more than any individual’s ability to dodge or kite in circles. If you want to improve your odds of succeeding, that’s the skill you need to polish.

You sound like someone who has never been a commander in WvW. To so blindly believe that if you tell people what to do, they will do it. I’ve seen very experienced guild leaders of big guilds try to coral the cats to do guild missions and they have to resort to kicking people out of the guild if they don’t listen. Any number of things could go wrong and once that happens, people start to fail.

I’ve seen commanders that command like it’s a full time job, who have the respect of their entire server, these commanders will have trouble getting people to drop water fields or turn left or run through an enemy zerg. When players are under pressure they do random things.

Now I am not saying it’s not in your best interests to help organise the numbers in the lanes and ensure that people know what to do during the platform fights, but I’m not going to go and blame failure on whether or not someone was a great teacher. It sounds all cuddly and nice but the reality is, sometimes people kitten up whether you tried to teach them or not. People are going to fail at the mechanics, people are going to miss a dodge, some people are simply not going to do enough DPS.

You know what, almost none of this has to do with the OP talking about how he doesn’t want his individual achievement tied to something completely out of his control. The five platform achievements are skill based, not completion based. It shouldn’t matter whether or not someone’s a great teacher, failure to break a chain shouldn’t stop a perfect performance on a platform from getting the achievement.

The subforum for releases usually comes out a full week in advance, coinciding with the update page on the website. This subforum is arguably late compared to the norm. This is a little abnormal because most of the information about this update is known already and many interested players have already played the map so the discussion is likely to be less spirited as a result.

In T2 and below (probably even some T1 servers) queues only happen on a single map or two and a queue on all four maps is unheard of. So for those people this update is removing the number one incentive to transfer to a non-T1 server: no queues. Population imbalances are going to be even worse now.

jsduke.6537:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Well I wish you luck during the event. I’m going to pass on this one. I have no interest in being ganked during a pve story event.

But I guess the people who like to harass/bully others in non consensual pvp need their fix too. So have fun I guess..

Yeah, I’m with you on that one. I will probably check it out, but I won’t be spending any non-LS time there. Depending on how the achieves/rewards are handled, I may not participate at all.

It figures, though. We finally get a sizable new map addition and it is PvP oriented. Oh well.

If I had to guess, the whole reason this maps exists is to cater to the WvW crowd. The fact that Scarlet has anything to do with it is simply a weak tie in to the Living Story. The map existed for WvW purposed, the writing team knew about it, so they came up with some minimal lore to tie it into the larger narrative. This map seems to have been prioritised because of the Chinese release of GW2. They don’t want players queuing to get into WvW, so they created an additional map to solve that problem before it launches in that market. Edge of the Mists has less to do with the current WvW audience or the Living Story in general and more to do with the Chinese audience of GW2.

There will be far more map additions for PvE in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got an expansion by the end of the year.

They did this with Aetherpath in TA. Most of the boss mobs there have non-DPS components (although DPS is still the most important thing) and it was met with very mixed success. Watch the TA LFG roll, it’s one of the least requested dungeon paths in the game (along with AC path 2 which has a similair design for it’s final boss).

I can’t speak for everyone, but I like to use my character’s own skills, not weird mechanics which don’t have be swing a sword at all. Having said that, if they do have unique mechanics like the one you detailed (kite it into a bomb to kill it using set damage from bombs) I’d like to see it without a DPS phase. All the DPS phase does is put pressure on you to go full glass to kill the mob as fast as possible to avoid having to do another kite phase.

Just get rid of PvE servers. Make every map an overflow. Once one map fills up, spawn another and so on. The division of PvE servers has become a problem and as player numbers dwindle and content becomes less popular, this problem is going to get bigger and bigger. Already a lot of players have no chance at Tequatl, the wurm or even marionette without guesting. It’s funny, some servers can’t fill their home map yet other servers are spawning overflows that are filling up.

Now that world events are becoming less and less viable on many servers, more and more people are guesting to popular servers, further reinforcing the privilege of populated servers and making the problem worse for home servers.

It’s open world content. You don’t control your allies yet you rely heavily on them. It’s a recipe for frustration and failure. All we can do is try to help out and hope that in six months time the average player is more skilled than we are seeing now.

I do find it really bizarre that if ArenaNet is trying to teach players to become more skilled that the difficulty spike is so steep. Not only are the failure conditions sharp, the bosses do a lot of damage, they are on a timer and they require you to learn a unique mechanic to take them down. So we have people going from auto-attack the world boss jumping to all the skills required for marionette, of course the failure rate will be high.

If ArenaNet wants players to become more skilled, the difficulty curve needs to be less steep to allow the more casual players to keep up. Everyone loses when victory rests on the shoulders of people overwhelmed by the increased challenge.

Pexx.6327:

To the OP:

Uh…. what?

Seriously, though. Yes; the content is designed to be moderately challenging and requires players to utilize their classes to a better degree (and movement and damage avoidance) than normally seen. But this is not a developer problem here. It’s the exact opposite. It is completely a player competency issue.

I’ve read the response by Josh Foreman and I completely agree with his thoughts on the structure and feel of the event that was intended. We need more content that isn’t as brain-dead as 90% of the players are mucking it up to be. We need players to get better at the game. The game only stagnates if we don’t. It sounds to me like you just want this event to be another “loot pinata” affair and not a fair accomplishment that it currently is.

(Barring bugs) Does it suck that we have to rely on other players to not suck? I can see that being a yes. But, at the same time I can see that it sucks that players are not trying to get better because the community constantly tries to trivialize content by not trying to get the players to actually learn their classes and the actual mechanics of the game.

Demonizing the devs because they are wanting their players to improve (so they can bring out more fights and encounters with interesting mechanics such as the Marionette and the Great Jungle Wurm) is entirely counter-productive to the progress of the game.

Meglobob.8620:

I like marionette but with a 100 player pug your chance of success is near 0%, no matter how hard you try.

Yet we did it (and do it) on Blackgate quite constantly… so it’s not 0%.

You have all the serious players guesting on Blackgate now (and others flat out transfered there – it’s the only full server in NA). This event is dead on most servers for a good chunk of the day. Players are guesting to a handful of servers (or specifically one) and their home servers are devoid of people. I did the event yesterday on my main server and we didn’t get past lane two because there wasn’t enough people in lanes 4 and 5 to stop the champions. This is my home server.

Blackgate and similair servers are privileged to be where they are, that doesn’t absolve the content of the very real issues impacting on most other servers.

Delvoire.8930:

All of this has been in the gameplay.. for the last 15 months.

This was merely a way for new people or people who had no idea what was going on, to get clued in.

This isn’t a re-playable single player game or multi-player game.. It’s an ever growing MMO.

Would you like a replay of the Karka Event that happened a few months after the game released? Perhaps this time you can save the lighthouse?

That’s an exaggeration. A good chunk of the exposition being handed out in the last two patches comes from the short stories from the website (“What Scarlet Saw” in particular), not the game.

I suspect she’s an engineer. She seems really interested in Scarlet and her research and when I talked to Taimi on my asuran engineer she had special slightly different dialogue than my other characters.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

As for Scarlet’s story arc leading to a new playable race – not likely. Dev’s have already stated that new playable races are further down the line in GW2’s lifetime. New professions have been stated to be more likely I think, and even those aren’t likely to be something we see in the near future.

Can you source either of these things?

Braham grew up in Craigstead, that’s like a five minute walk from Butcher’s Block, the home of Tyria’s greatest celebration of meat. Kasmeer’s father took her to Dragonbash, maybe Braham’s father took him to Meatoberfest to enjoy a nice glazed ham, a delicacy less common in the Shiverpeaks? Why isn’t the Living Story asking the important questions like these?

MatthewMedina.5419:

Regarding trimming stories of all but the “relevant details”: I would say that many of us on the dev team would actually agree with the idea that how two characters relate to one another, regardless of whether that interaction has direct bearing on the direction of the main plot-line, can and should be considered relevant. Such breadth of character traits may advance a side-plot, or no plot at all and can be used to simply establish a personality type or a behavior which informs a character’s actions as they progress through the narrative.

Of course there is a limit: Learning whether or not Braham likes ham, for example (say that five times fast) is probably better left on the cutting room floor, but exploring whether Braham likes Rox, or Taimi, or Logan (does anyone else want to see a guardian duel between these two?), well we believe that there’s real emotion there. And if it advances a plot, great…if not, it’s still part of the landscape of those characters, and that’s really important to us, and something that I would say we are more than eager and willing to explore.

Does it have to be mutually exclusive? Why can’t Marjory be a member of the Order of the Whispers specifically tasked with investigating Scarlet? Suddenly she has a solid reason for turning up when Scarlet is around and she also represents her order’s presence in the story (instead of the story ignoring or marginalising them). The story would be stronger if the core cast carried some of that weight. Rather than being random heroes plucked out of their respective races and turning up for the sake of turning up, we could have characters that represent different organisations that should be represented in the story (and currently aren’t or are sidelined to give the spotlight to the core cast). If Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, and Braham were all taken out of the story tomorrow, would it have a big impact on the story? A lot of players are having trouble following the story, other players think it’s just flat out bad. I believe part of that problem falls on the decision to make so much of the story about characters that, while they are interesting on their own, they replace characters that should be present and parts of the story that should be told.

So where is the realism behind the Aetherblades? Who founded them? Who is funding them? What did they do before they were Aetherblades? Where is their main base of operations in Tyra (is TA big enough considering how large their numbers are – and if it is, why are they so racially diverse?)?

If Scarlet is a known threat and Tyria has organisations that deal with that kind of thing, why were the only NPCs present at the marionette the Living Story cast? Why wasn’t the Vigil, Priory or Order of Whipsers there? Why not the norn (just south of their capital)? Or the Seraph (Scarlet did attack their city)? Or one of the charr warbands (the Molten Alliance supposedly threatened the Black Citadel)? Why is the Living Story cast constantly involved and the other relevant authorities not? We should be dealing with charr Tribunes and Centurions as they martial their forces to take on Scarlet (or rank and file members working under them but as part as a focused effort – it doesn’t even make sense that Rox was sent to do anything she’s doing alone, what does she prove by being present when players kill Tequatl? Is she stealing the credit from the players? From the Vigil who organised that fight?). We should see the Seraph trying to track Scarlet down after what happened in Divinity’s Reach. We should see the different orders discussing what information they have on her and see which people within these organisations are tasked with taking her down (Marjory would have been a good Order of Whispers character). Instead we see Marjory and Kasmeer talk about her father, or Rox tell us Rytlock has set a trial for her and the end result is a whole lot of story about a handful of characters and not enough story about the complex world these big events are happening in. The world is not believable when large scale events become about small time characters.

These things aren’t mutually exclusive – there is room in all of that to tell stories about characters, about their relationships and who they are as people, but you build it from a foundation of “this NPC makes sense as one of the core figures in this story”.

The Open World and Personal Story did a good job of portraying a believable world (for the most part) but the Living Story is lacking in the details and narrative choices that flesh out the story and the events they are trying to tell. I also agree that characters like Riot Alice are uncommon in the story. Usually the villains are straight up villains and you are usually not positioned to feel sympathetic towards them or view them as real people with real problems. Compare that to a show like “The Wire” (admittedly intended for a more mature audience than GW2) where often you are positioned to think the “good guys” are worse than the villains.

Wouldn’t the journal be her “old voice”? It was written before we first met Scarlet. The way she sounds in the rest of her appearances is her after whatever damage was done to her by the thing she writes about in her journal.

Flat out no. Keep the power creep out of the gem tools. Cosmetics and minor conveniences. Bonus harvesting is a horrible idea and I really want to see it removed from the current tool, not added to others.

juno.1840:

Wow I didn’t realize this was going on, but it’s rather nefarious imho. I think the API makes this kind of stuff possible to a large degree (but it’s not the only reason).

Do you think the fanboys and koolaid drinkers would actually classify this as a form of manipulation in the GW2 market?

Of course it is. They are buying the items in bulk, throwing in large numbers of buy orders to push it onto the front page of the TP and once it’s there players see it and buy lots of it. This pushes the price up so they make a large profit when they sell it. Just look at Grinning Gourd. It was almost worthless compared to the other Halloween skins. Now it’s just under 100g and one of the “top demanded” items.

If you didn’t transfer to T1 before, now is your chance. Queues are no longer a disincentive to stack servers. They have a big problem with server stacking and low population servers and they are taking a massive step backwards with EotM.

Just remove the ability to gather sprockets. Problem solved. This is power creep, kill it now before it becomes a nasty infestation that can’t be cleanly removed from the game.

Honestly, I’m not surprised the monetisation team did this. They don’t respect their customers.

Khorthall.1682:

Random Thing #2.

Saw this screenshot in a forum.. is that picture of an eye? Or.. is that a Bloodstone?

That’s not a bloodstone. It’s my storage vault. It just looks like a bloodstone because I have an entire stone’s worth of dust sitting in there.

BrunoBRS.5178:

my argument against killing off a character for emotional impact:

it’s been used to death (pun intended) on GW2 lore, it’s getting predictable. every single novel requires one token death and one protagonist death. the personal story has a body count that rivals private ryan.

it’s like ANet just reaches a point where they decide they don’t know what to do with a character, so they kill them. so no, i don’t want yet another cheap death for fake emotional struggle. try developing a character without killing them.

Killing a character isn’t a problem. It’s when you create a character simply to kill them, that’s a problem. This is Tyria, a world of death and destruction. How can you honestly portray a world like that without killing people? It’s stupid to have people die but none of them named characters, sometimes a main character is going to die.

They can’t accurately portray a world at war if they aren’t going to kill people. Not for the sake of killing people, but because that’s what happens at war. People die.

Do people watch Game of Thrones or the Walking Dead and complain that “underdeveloped and throwaway characters” keep getting killed? Part of what makes those worlds compelling is the fact that they do kill people – but their deaths are integral to the plot. They make sense in the world and they are believable conclusions to a character’s story. In GW2 at the end of the Personal Story, most of the deaths felt like they were written just so the story had someone to kill. Sacrificial Lambs.

Most of that isn’t an issue with Kasmeer or Marjory. People know who both of them are and plenty of people are attached to both of them as characters. They are not unknowns, they would not be cheap and meaningless deaths, if either of them died it would resonate with many people in the audience. Every time the main cast is in danger, the sense of danger becomes less real for the players if they don’t think anyone can die. The story loses a lot of its power (and the villains look less threatening). In a story like this, it’s necessary to kill characters.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

When a sylvari dies, it dies. There’s nothing more to it. I don’t know where people get the whole “their memories go to the Dream when they die” because that just isn’t true and has never been hinted upon. What returns to the Dream is strong and emotional memories – and they return to the Dream immediately (more or less), while the sylvari is still alive.

I misunderstood the shared memories thing. I thought it only happened when they died, not every time an important memory took place. The lore pieces say mostly the most important memories go into the Dream, but to a new born sylvari, everything is going to be important so I assumed it was kind of like a highlights reel, not a powerful experience that resonates loud enough to make it into the Dream from anywhere in the world.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Scarlet, knowingly or not, ended up becoming a Soundless after entering Omadd’s machine. It seems that the vision was the last thing the Pale Tree knows of Scarlet’s activities because Scarlet is cut off.

I just re-listened to the Wartower interview from Scarlet’s first introduction. They asked about what happens when it comes to Scarlet’s memories going into the Dream. The response was that for the moment, Scarlet is walled off (it remains to be seen if she can keep it that way) but Scott didn’t stop there. He said it opens a dramatic issue they are hoping to explore. “What happens when the next sylvari is born with some of Scarlet’s memories, what Scarlet knows?”. They aren’t straight up done with that plot I guess. Maybe as Scarlet breaks down the Pale Tree will get back inside of her head? Up until she cut herself off we are led to believe Scarlet doesn’t know anything worth speculating about (otherwise the Pale Tree would also know) so what’s there to explore unless more of her memories go into the Dream?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Malyck knew nothing of the Pale Tree or the Grove, or even the Dream of Dreams and Nightmare – this lack of knowledge led the PC in the storyline to assume he lost his memory (he didn’t as proven by Caithe’s path in the storyline). He was never tied to the Dream of Dreams, and Trahearne believes that Malyck’s tree and the Pale Tree simply have different Dream of Dreams (though this is unlikely as the Dream of Dreams is not tied to the Pale Tree alone – see the White Stag).

Doesn’t that just prove non-sylvari can dream too? If the White Stag was from Ascalon I could see it conflicting with Trahearne’s theory, but it was pretty close to the Pale Tree. Maybe Dreamers within the geographical area of the Pale Tree share in its Dream (or maybe the White Stag has a stronger connection to the dream than the average sylvari). I honestly don’t know enough about the White Stag, Malyck or the Dream.

Even if it’s the same Dream, sylvari that wake have a very weakened connection to it. If the Pale Tree is the keeper of the sylvari’s pool of experiences and memories. Is it possible that only sylvari born of the Pale Tree can share in that pool? Maybe they only have access to a portion of the Dream and their link is through the Pale Tree, without the tree you can still dream, it’s just a different Dream.

Konig. Is it possible that the Pale Tree is a dragon champion following in the foot steps of Glint? It has it’s own independence and so do its offspring (as does Glint’s)?

We know there is at least one more tree out there (Malyck’s tree – although his friendly nature implies sylvari are good by nature and not nurtured by Ventari’s Tablet) and the cave that the tree’s seed came from had other seeds, is it possible other trees that don’t have Ventari’s Tablet are more vulnerable to corruption? Malyck could be a red herring (he’s putting on an act to make us think he’s good) and we could be dealing with sentient dragon minions (something needed imo to make Elder Dragons compelling villains). Was Malyck part of the same dream as the other sylvari?

Brain storming here, is it possible Caithe’s secret that Scarlet knows is the knowledge of Malyck’s tree? I wrote it off as Scarlet toying with Caithe, but it could also help explain why the Pale Tree is so tight lipped about Scarlet (Caithe tracked down Malyck’s origin and they are hiding it from everyone).

For the record I find the sylvari minion theory to be compelling but not convincing. I’m mostly interested in “Is it possible?”.

Can someone clear up something for me. All sylvari are supposed to be connected, when a sylvari dies, fragments of their memories go into the dream and I believe the Pale Tree has a connection to sylvari still alive. How much should the Pale Tree know about Scarlet and what she saw? Given how little the Pale Tree has done to aid us in finding/stopping her, I’m guessing the connection doesn’t work like a LoJack, but she apparently knew something about What Scarlet Saw because she appeared to her in her vision (or did she – is it possible Scarlet thought she spoke with the Pale Tree?). If anyone can correct me or clear up some of that I’d be appreciative.

Also, do we know if the knowledge of the dreamers is shared with Malyck’s tree? I would presume not simply because if it did (unless Malyck is the first of his kind) we would have known something about them before now.

Kossage.9072:

This is sort of a necessity for the story in a way; since these characters are our main NPCs, the story must keep including them to keep them relevant and so that once the time comes to face Scarlet, we’ll stand side by side with them and (hopefully) see why each one is present.

Basically look at it as gameplay and story segregation.

I can view a lot of things as lore and gameplay segregation but not portraying Scarlet as a serious threat that has the attention of Tyria. I hold them to a higher standard with something like that. If Scarlet’s a threat and the story wants to treat her like one, the appropriate Tyrian forces need to be involved front and centre. If the Living Story cast are getting in the way of that, why have them at all? Not only are they not helping to tell a good story, they are making it worse by replacing the believable protagonists (the Living Story cast could have been believable protagonists but only Rox is given a marginal excuse to be as involved as she is and even that comes at the expense of a better story imo). I think Tyria and ArenaNet have more potential than that and this goes beyond reasonable suspension of disbelief.

It’s not good enough for characters to be present because they are the main characters. That’s the role of the player. The NPCs need to make sense because the burden of making this world believable and realistic falls on them.

Kossage.9072:

Rytlock has other reasons for coming to LA, so he wasn’t just there for Rox. When I visited Black Citadel during Wintersday and went to check out Rytlock’s office, he was nowhere to be found, and his aide informed me that Rytlock had left for LA on some business.

My understanding is that Rytlock has been in Lion’s Arch on business since launch, unless the story said otherwise. There are several instances (the game mechanic) in GW2 that haven’t changed since launch (or constantly change to a default state) I believe this is just another of those, not a set up for a new plot (they could use it that way, but until then I believe it’s just the default state of things). Even if they were both there at the same time, it’s a mighty coincidence Logan, Rox, Rytlock and Kasmeer’s father’s birthday all converged shortly after the marionette fight. I’ll side with reasonable suspension of disbelief here (resource limitations to do it any other way), but even that starts to pile up when used a lot.

Kossage.9072:

Assuming that the theory that something happens to Kasmeer at the end of the story turns out to be true, then this scene would serve the purpose of deepening the bond between Kas and Jory.

So even though that nice little dialogue on the beach may not initially have anything to do with the overall plot, it does serve as character development for these two characters and will likely have repercussions in the story later on.

I totally see this. It’s kind of a lame way to do it because of how they’ve set it up (but the only pay off worth the investment at this point imo), but I can see that being a viable explanation for their story. Here’s why I don’t like that if it’s true: Kasmeer was created to die. She has served no other purpose but to remove a veil any number of people could have removed and for no specific reason other than she’s the core cast that she was the one to do it when more suitable protagonists exist. I would call her the sacrificial lion (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SacrificialLion) but given how weakly any of the cast relates to the plot, she would more likely be a sacrificial lamb (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SacrificialLamb). They could go the less expected route and play decoy protagonist (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DecoyProtagonist) and kill Marjory instead, but I doubt they will kill either of them (racial imbalance, warning signs of possible death, following in the foot steps of Desinty’s Edge and the possibility of E joining the “five man team” are set-ups to make people think one of them will die, it seems too obvious).

If the dialogue pays off and she or Marjory dies (increasing the weight of the emotional impact), she/Marjory existed to die. If it doesn’t pay off and she lives, she exists largely outside of the plot (which is worse imo).

@ zwierz That all sounds perfectly constructed (like everything) to give Rox an out from joining Rytlock’s warband. She will get in, say she belongs in the field and reject them. Foreshadowing or too obvious?

The camp is still there, most of the NPCs (including Dee I believe) have moved. I noticed a bunch of crows as ambient creatures seem to be added to the area. I don’t believe they were there before. Everyone is trying to figure out Scarlet in this whole update, but I really want to know why there are crows all of a sudden. Can someone at least confirm that they existed in the area prior to this?

Erukk.1408:

The story about her father relates back to her Dragon Bash/Sky Pirate dialogue. Which was easily missed by a lot of people.

The story instance gave a lot of clarification on her background and her reasons for beginning to work with Marjory.

As for her not being apart of the group fighting against the puppet, she’s the one guarding path 5 isn’t she?

Kasmeer is one of them people in one of the lanes. She’s in the top lane. Ask yourself, of all the people in Tyria, for an event this big, why are these the five people present? Do they make sense in this location? Should other characters be there as well/instead? Does it make sense to include these five people and exclude everyone else but the player characters?

“This festival reminds me of when I was little, and my father and I used to go to the carnival in Divinity’s Reach.”
Does your father still live in Divinity’s Reach?
“No. He’s…He’s gone. My mother died when I was young, and my father…He was taken earlier this year.”
You must miss him.
“I miss the man who used to hold my hand at the carnival, yes. But, let’s not talk about that. It’s too nice a day!”

When I initially read this, the line about missing the man who held her hand seemed to imply she missed part of her father, but not all of him. I thought it was something sinister, like he used to hold her hand but he later became an alcoholic and she didn’t miss him when he was an alcoholic. I still find her phrasing weird, why not simply say she misses her father instead of singling out the man he held her hand?

I believe the criticism of it being out of place isn’t that the scene existed at all, just that it has nothing to do with anything else going on. Everyone else is talking about the recent events (although I pointed out in another thread, the location is really weird – environments are characters to and this environment seemed like the wrong one for all of these scenes). Logan and Braham are dealing with the child who found her way onto the battlefield (Why Logan? Why in Lion’s Arch?). Rytlock and Rox are talking about a mission to take down Scarlet (Why is a busy charr like Rytlock visiting Lion’s Arch to receive a report? If he was too busy to see her in Black Citadel, why is he suddenly free to travel to see her?). Marjory and Kasmeer have a random moment of backstory because this day is incidentally her father’s birthday, it felt forced into the whole scene and it’s extraneous to the overall plot (it’s relevant to Kasmeer and Marjory but it’s not relevant to anything else).

I think it certainly makes me rethink the value of the short stories (I always liked them but I used to be of the opinion everything in them should ideally be in the game – but limited resources is always going to be an issue). Ellen Kiel didn’t give much (imo) in the game, but when her story on the website about her history with Magnus came out, it changed how I viewed the dynamic of that relationship. Would it have been better to see Kiel (or Magnus) tell the story of the events that brought them into each other’s lives? “What Scarlet Saw” is one of the most important pieces of lore in this whole story and it happened outside of the game (a lot of it has been “wedged” into the game in an exposition dump, but plenty of it is missing still). Kasmeer’s story is part of building her character and her relationship, but it’s not that important to the overall story. What if they dropped the Kasmeer scene, dropped one of the Tower of Nightmare “cinematics” and instead created a scene that the Pale Tree shows you, essentially going over what Scarlet saw? That would have strengthened the plot a lot more than fleshing out a character’s back story. I guess I’m of the opinion that high value plot moments should be getting these resources, character moments are a secondary concern when they don’t relate directly to the plot.

Maybe part of my problem isn’t that developing these characters is a bad thing, but that developing these characters isn’t mutually beneficial to developing the overall plot. I can see how Taimi relates to the plot, she is a genius asura following in Scarlet’s footsteps. If she can approach things from a fresh perspective, she might see something others don’t. Rox has a weak reason (why would Rytlock send essentially an intern to deal with one of Tyria’s biggest threats?) but the others seem like they are there to be there and not because they would believably be there (especially in place of all the other important characters).

I like that this event engages a variety of roles instead of just DPS.

Snares are important for slowing the campions.
AoE skills are important for clearing waves of mobs (and a handful of people can do this well) but single target DPS is still useful for the champions.
The addition of siege is fun, barricades are also fun. I will say Toypocalypse does this better though. You have more control over the siege in Toypocalypse, this event feels like you’re just doing what your told.

I like that there is even boss encounter types of fight but I don’t like that everyone’s efforts are wasted because one group fails. One of the worst parts about the platform bit is sometimes you get a loading screen. I’ve seen several players die because they took too long to load. The platform fight is nice in that it is slightly more challenging, but again I think it’s lame that one group failing screws over everyone.

Posting it here as well.

The wurm head has a full health bar, it’s got a lot of HP. It’s immune to crowd control and it flails around the area quite fast. I think it leaves a trail behind it which weakens your damage so you might want to consider ranged DPS. I think only one wurm head dropped below 50%.

There is another phase once you decapitate all three wurms within the minute timer. The head flails around the area and you have another 2 min timer to kill it. The head seems to be immune to CC and it leaves a trail behind it which weakens you and you do less damage. I think the head can take crit damage though.

You get a gold wurm chest for getting that far.

Traveller.7496:

Chidori.9483:

I’m curious, how would you have structured the living story to prevent this feeling of being a sell-sword?

I don’t really have an answer for this, even though I’ve stated many times I’m very disappointed of this direction where the story gets ran by the NPC’s and I’m more or less an errand boy. Maybe we could call the shots instead of them? “Okay hero, how should we do this?” – “Braham, you go there, Rox goes there, Kasmeer puts some real clothes on instead of an illusion and Logan jumps off a bridge. Go!” would be a good start.

Let me take an example from LoTRO. There you always were in the shadows, following the footsteps of the Fellowship and other big name hitters. And it’s understandable. It had a good storyline where you got to do heroic stuff and help out the Fellowship, like diverting an orc attack so they could escape. I could accept something like that in GW2 if we were playing second fiddle to someone like Rytlock. But instead we have some NPC’s we never heard before promoted to basically running the show and ordering us around. It doesn’t help that IMO all the new NPC’s are like cardboard cutouts and offer nothing interesting to grab on to. I get that they were trying to make us feel symphathetic towards Kasmeer with her little story, but it was just too much, too forced. Subtlety is the key again, here.

That’s something I don’t like about the new team (that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of things to like about them). I was doing the marionette event and thinking to myself “It’s so cool that these NPCs are fighting on the battlefield with us, I like that” but then I thought about it again. Why, of all the people in Tyria are these five characters the ones protecting these five lanes (along with the players)? Why not Destiny’s Edge? Why not one of the orders (we are a 10 minute walk from the Priory HQ) or the Pact? Not one of them you would expect to see in that scenario (aside from Taimi because her role was literally an out place child), at least not as the sole NPC (compare that to Rox during Tequatl, she was present but she didn’t replace the appropriate Vigil forces). Scarlet is a threat. That was a giant laser weapon. Why are only these five people taking action?

Chidori.9483:

Seems a few people feel this way, and I can see where you’re coming from but I can also understand why they have decided to use other characters to drive the plot.

I don’t think they do drive the plot beyond their initial appearances (Rox and Braham during Flame and Frost, Marjory during Dragonbash, Kasmeer gets an honourable mention for removing the mesmer illusion). They seem incidental to the story. You could take every single one of them out of the story and it would make as much sense (replace them with event specific characters and it might make more sense). Take Kasmeer and Marjoy’s scene in the instance as an example. How would the plot be any different if it never happened? They are likeable characters but I don’t think they are doing anything for the plot.

I don’t think you can zerg each boss quickly enough. They are all a decent distance from the WP and you have to factor in the time it takes to drop combat, loading screens, run to the next event and make it vulnerable.

I was in a group that had the timer stall at 14 minutes and even when they got all three wurms down to 5-10% before triggering the 60 second timer, they ran out of time trying to WP after decapitating the first wurm. I think you might have to have three groups ready to kill the wurm at the same time the timer is beginning. The travel time (and boss vulnerability mechanic) is just not long enough.

I suspect the best strategy will either involve one giant zerg weakening each wurm but not decapitating it and then splitting into three groups before the 60 second timer is activated. Either that or three independent teams the entire time. I don’t think kill one then run to the other two has enough time.

They introduce new currencies so that you can’t use wealth you acquired prior to the patch to buy all the new stuff on day one.

Where are people getting the stuff about the golem? I didn’t see anything about it at the marionette or in the story instance.

The trait reset has a 7 day timer in the store. It seems like after this week you won’t be able to buy it directly, you will only be able to get it from random chest drops. That seems pretty lame (then again, the price of the item in the store was ridiculous).

displacedTitan.6897:

So its a mindless zerg fest that is too complicated and confusing? I gotta say, it still amuses me that people make these posts day one about how its all too hard. Give it a week or two and it will be on farm status.

There’s a good chance that in a week or two the event will be dead on most servers. That’s what happened with Tequatl and now you have to be one of the privileged few on a populated server or join the TTS guild to get it done. Just turning up to your home server’s Tequatl event is pointless for most people because no-one will be there. In many ways, these events fail as large scale world events. They are too difficult and require too many people to be reliably completed on most servers and I honestly wonder why have them as open world events at all? If they aren’t being completed by the majority of open world groups, why not make it instanced and allow people to control spawn timers and map numbers?

I’m not sure if I’d be impressed or kittened off if it has something to do with the HoM. Then again, the marienette looks like a direct evolution on from the Watchwork knights, which were human creations, not Scarlet’s creations. It’s possible the humans designed it based on HoM lore but I suspect it’s a case of recycling concept art.

Wolvenheart.9681:

I liked Kasmeer ‘s bit, makes me want to go bash in a few heads once I’ve located where that magister lives.

Why? From what I heard, they weren’t breaking the law. It was Kasmeer’s brother who was in debt and her father chose to step in for him. I don’t understand why they were going to kill her brother. How can that be legal in Kryta? It doesn’t even make good business sense – dead people don’t pay bills. Regardless, her father stepped in and was unable to pay his own debts (that’s his responsibility). He wasn’t mistreated. The only person doing anything wrong here (aside from maybe Kasmeer’s brother) is the prisoner/s who killed her father. The magister did nothing wrong.

I wonder how much of this stuff existed before the fan theories and maps and how much of it is put together in response to fan theories to play along.

MacKela.7024:

My main problem with the story instance (and the whole living story arc for that matter) is how disconnected my character feels to the overall plot. I’m just that guardian they call when they need additional muscle and nothing more. It’s getting tiring to be honest.

So much this. Whenever I grow to like the new characters I remember that they are essentially replacing my character. I don’t understand why we need characters that don’t expand the story (the story of Scarlet). The player has become a total background character and the more established the characters become, the worse it gets.

Aedelric.1287:

The new Asua seems a bit bland and almost sickeningly cute, what happened to the Vekk types?

I know we all said we wanted the lore in game and not on the website, but the Scarlet scribe is a fairly rubbish way of doing it. Go on. Go on. Go on.

Have to say I am a bit annoyed with the amount of meaningless dialogue to do with Kasmeer, it has nothing to do with the story and only makes me dislike her character more. The scene was so badly written and conceived, an obvious attempt to try and pull at the heart strings of players. It is blatant attempt to try and get characters attached to her before she is shuffled off this mortal coil, which no doubt is imminent. The money for voice acting could have been better spent actually giving us decent story with meaning rather than a background filler several months too late for a character about to die in a few weeks.

In all, good idea but needs work.

I liked the new asura, she seems in character for an asuran child, they have the child part down. I do miss the darker theme of the asura though. Vekk and his father were great characters and it seems the asura keep moving in the “cutesy” direction with the makeover kits and now this new character.

I said it elsewhere but I agree. The Kasmeer bit did seem out of place. I think the rumours of her death have been greatly exaggerated but I would still like the focus to remain on the plot related character developments.

Yeah, listening to it again it sounds like Rytlock had a different voice actor for that first line.

I enjoyed the instance. I actually laughed twice. First when Rox says “It does” in response to Rytlock talking about smelly dragon pieces. It was a cheesy sitcom joke but the voice actor nailed that line. I forget the second laugh but I think it was Taimi manipulating Logan and Braham.

All three of the scenes seemed out of place. Why was Rytlock in Lion’s Arch? Why was Rox reporting to him on a beach? She mentions going to her bunk, but that’s all the way in the Black Citadel.

Why was Logan here at all? I didn’t see him on the battlefield. Did I miss him or does his presence not really make sense? I assume they couldn’t get a hold of Felicia Day so Logan is a placeholder? Where did he come across her? Why did he take responsibility for her?

I agree Marjory and Kasmeer’s scene felt really out of place. Everyone else is talking about Scarlet, the mission, the battlefield (Rox and Braham’s fight is indirectly related to Scarlet as her admission to the war band is linked to stopping Scarlet), but these two are having a relationship moment when everyone else is talking about the issues. In particular this clashed with the big exposition dump from the Priory member. I’m glad we finally find out what happened to Kasmeer’s father (it was vaguely referenced before now) but with a super weapon and giant wurms terrorising Tyria I don’t see why it happened here and now. I think the scene should have taken place in the bar prior to now.

I like the physicality of the NPCs. Marjory runs over to Logan but tells Kasmeer she will be right back – that’s something a real person would do when leaving a friend temporarily. They face each other during their conversation, at at the end they move closer to each other. This was very effective and it shows another strength of this kind of scene over the Personal Story ones. I also liked Rox playing with Frostbite and Braham hammering away with frustration after their talk. It helped sell where those characters were at after their interactions.

On a technical note, I liked how each scene was activated when I chose, (by walking near the star) and the UI updated when each one was done and a new one was available. It made navigating the instance easier and gave me enough control so I could talk to NPCs in my own time between scenes. I do have one issue though. Logan isn’t available to talk to prior to his scene starting and once you start it there is no time to talk to him when he’s not engaged in dialogue or walking. Unlike Rytlock, he leaves the instance forcing you to either speed read his dialogue as he walks or read it as he talks (neither is a nice option). This happened with Eir in one of the Flame and Frost instances as well.

The Rox dialogue doesn’t recognise that I’ve fought Tequatl (let alone done it multiple times). As a charr it was weird having Rox explain a final patrol (as a player I’m glad she did though). I did like that Rytlock continues to talk to me like I’m a charr.

Shout out to the quaggan couple.

I’m glad this stuff is making it into the game now. I think it could be better placed in the world, but I really enjoyed these dialogues.

So I was doing the escort for Crusader Xutt (Investigate the rumors of wurm activity on Jelako Beach) and once the NPC gets to the bottle of rum it stopped moving. Last time I did the escort (the event completed properly once before it bugged), a wurm spawned, but this time nothing happened (no wurm spawned).

I’m not sure why it happened, but is it possible that people who were spamming DPS on the location the wurm spawns (a lot of times you can kill mobs before they appear if you know their spawn location) they killed the wurm before it was able to trigger the next part of the event?

I’m not a fan of all the tech stuff Scarlet brought into Tyria, but the main villain is an engineer, so it’s not surprising. Here’s hoping season 2 is full of fantasy filled stories that throw back to the Tyria of GW1.

You can find her just north of Winterthaw waypoint. She’s actually a tiny asura model on top of a golem which was interesting. I laughed at her initial dialogue “it wasn’t me” when talking to her. I got the impression she is mischievous or a little reckless and gets scolded for it (her other dialogue is “Got candy” and “I’m behaving” and given her size I’m guessing she’s not an adult). I can’t be certain, but I don’t think they gave her a new armor model.

First impressions, I like her so far, she’s an entertaining asuran character.

Marjory was standing nearby (maybe the others are there too?) talking about Kasmeer needing me time. They are certainly teasing players with the possibility she will die now, I wouldn’t be surprised if that line was added in response to the speculation.

Also unusual was the NPC portrait for her seems to use art work and not her model’s face.

I was in Thunderridge Camp after the patch and I noticed an ambient creature I don’t remember seeing before, crows. They look like ravens but they are smaller. Did these exist in Tyria prior to this patch?

It’s a female asura named Taimi. Something to do with Zojja and an obsession with Scarlet. You know, cause the Living Story was really lacking in female heroes.

I would be surprised if the sylvari were created by Melandru. It seems very deliberate that human culture in GW2 is localised to humans. There are examples of lesser races (that seems offensive) worshipping human gods (off the top of my head, grawls and Badazar, quaggan and Melagan) but they seemed like token world building, a way of making fun of how stupid these races are. I doubt the sylvari would be linked to Melandru because it seems deliberate that each race has their own identity and the human view of GW1 has been scrapped, forcing awkward lore to remove the gods all together.

It doesn’t have to be big changes or a rush. The world is set up for it already.

The humans are losing the war with the centaurs. After a big loss (Fort Salma is destroyed) Minister Caudecus criticiseses the Queen for supporting Ebonhawke when Kryta is in dire straights. All of Kryta’s resources should be going to protecting her own people, withdrawing support for Ebonhawke would also make talks with the charr easier (Caudecus doesn’t care about this, he just want to hit the Queen with it). Faced with losing support from the people and the council and possibly the war with the centaurs, the Queen decides to cut ties to Ebonhawke. Logan can’t accept that, those are his people, his family’s legacy, so he quits and leaves the Queen. This change in Kryta is big enough to make Logan question his dedication to it, a believable betrayal of Ebonhawke and a revival of Logan’s pre-Seraph identity.

Things get real bad in Ebonhawke. Without the Fallen Angels or supplies from Kryta, the city is divided and overthrown by Separatists. In attempts to replace the supplies from Kryta, Separatists become more aggressive in charr territory, kittening off the Black Citadel.

Working from behind the scenes (with the support of the Order of Whispers and Elonians wanting to maintain the door to the Crystal Desert) Logan and a few free Ebon Vanguard form an elite unit, giving hope to the oppressed people of the city by reviving legends of the Ebon Falcons, Kieran Thackeray’s unit that helped found the city 250 years ago. Ebon Vanguard propaganda starts appearing in Ebonhawke and Ascalonian settlements in Kryta.

Insert series of events showing Logan’s unit saving the charr from Separatists, Separatists swapping sides (characterise them with believable and representative villains, showing the depth of that conflict beyond “these are the bad guys hurr durr”), grandstanding villain at prisoner execution disrupted by the Ebon Vanguard etc. Mix in some charr rebels as well. Finish with a joint Vanguard/charr assault, retaking Ebonhawke and Logan refusing to hand it over the charr.

Follow it up with Logan beginning scouting missions into the Crystal Desert. His new allies help reforge Ebonhawke as a bastion at the edge of an Elder Dragon’s domain. When the Crystal Desert does open up, Logan is now positioned to proceed with his redemption.

Give Logan a makeover. Think less “Disney prince” and more “Sparatcus, rebel gladiator” from the Starz TV series. Ditch the Seraph armour (he’s not one any more) and give him some new gladiator/Ebonhawke themed armour. Less steel, more leather, maybe even some exposed skin (it’s hot in the Crystal Desert), he is a gladiator after all. Give him back his hammer (everyone loves free protection from NPC auto-attacks) or finally give him Magdaer (how long to norn smiths take?). Give him a hair cut and some stubble, he’s not trying to woo the Queen or play politics in the city, he’s a soldier on the front lines in daily skirmishes, no need for long locks and daily grooming. His appearance should help characterise his new life and how different it was from his cushy job in Kryta.

I’m really glad the OP pointed out how different Logan was in the game from how he was before he met the Queen in the book. I’m really interested to see what their proposal for how to turn him into a great character again looks like.

That’s what Marjory and Kasmeer reminded me of, kitten Tracy, not Sherlock and Watson. It’s been a while since I saw either one of those franchises but Sherlock and Watson seemed more like a partnership, I never saw Kasmeer on the same level as Watson (when she is useful it rarely has anything to do with their jobs).

I agree about Marjory feeling out of place in Tyria. I liked the stylised introduction but I didn’t like the film noir thing beyond the initial novelty. It feels like a clash of styles and Marjory ends up being the odd one out (a detective in Tyria? for one thing – Scarlet did it, case closed – and another, the scope of a detective story doesn’t utilise the epic world).

As far as Logan and Rytlock go, they are clearly in a bromance (similar to Rox and Braham) imo. It’s an age old cliché but it works well (I wish they had included Caithe a bit more because she was part of their original group yet she doesn’t seem to be shown as close as the other two). I don’t think I could ever see a charr and a human as a sexual couple (I don’t even think I could view norn and human that way despite the GW2 quest). Even if they were the same race, I don’t recall their dialogue as being as flirtatious and Marjory and Kasmeer’s (no jokes about being nude etc).

I don’t think the writers think Logan is a good hero, I think they view him as a feminist portrayal of the White Knight and the Princess. Instead of the White Knight rescuing the helpless princess (who is madly in love with the knight), the princess is smart and powerful and “needs no man” (except when she does, but not really lol). This leaves Logan standing there, being useless (because he’s written as the hero that saves the princess… who doesn’t need saving) and utterly infatuated with the her while Jennah remains composed and in control. Jennah might have feelings for Logan, but she’s not the one who failed in Edge of Destiny resulting in Snaff and Glint’s deaths, Logan was (I believe Jennah has a share of the blame). Logan ran to her rescue, but Jennah ended up saving the day anyway. Jennah is viewed as one of the most powerful people in Tyria and a hero (admittedly she has a mixed reception from players), Logan was the most hated character in the game (then we met Trahearne and then Scarlet). Jennah’s feelings didn’t stop her from making the right decision in Clockwork Chaos and she agreed to leave Logan out of the loop on the body double idea (whereas Logan was emotional about it while demonstrating he’s bad at his job).

If we are going to pick on Marjory and Kasmeer’s relationship for being contrived, it might be fair to point out this is the case for most of the Living Story (every alliance, the protagonist’s reasons for being present all the time beyond their initial appearances) let alone the Personal Story or even the books (Logan and Jennah’s relationship was so poorly written and one sided, players are convinced she’s using mesmer magic on him).