Guild Wars 2

Antara.3189:

Greetings Listenbird,

You’ve outlined many of the changes that I would say were a step back for Guild Wars 2.

Ehh, I see them as side-steps. They change things without making a sum forward development towards solving the problems intended to be solved. (Probably because some of those problems can’t be solved through patches and shifts of the game rules/construction – they’re problems more in the underlying nature of MMOs.)

But as I still find the game playable, I spare the time when I have it to play. Of course, that got pretty rare the last several weeks . . .

Stand above the vocal posters who continue to state their opinion over and over. It’s been quite obvious for some time that they only intent to belittle disgruntled players into thinking they are “wrong”, even though it’s entirely subjective.

Eh, some things are not entirely subjective. Like being required to have Ascended/Legendary to play the game (and not referring to higher-level Fractals with Agony). Or speaking of the requirement to have Best-in-Slot everything on every character.

Now, “play as I want to play” is entirely subjective, and by necessity user-defined. Not to mention possibly problematic if two players’ choices happen to contradict . . . Which is why it irritates me when it comes up in that manner.

Until they are able to post their valid opinion without either belittling anthers post or starting an argument for the sake of one, then frankly skip their post.

All right, here goes.

It is my opinion the concept of “play as you want”, much like “no grind ever” was a misinterpretation and misattribution of what was said in various early interviews and attached to a soundbite to make it sound as though the developers promised something which was not specifically promised.

It is my opinion that, while the original post outlined some interesting points of how things shifted and there was room to talk about it, he keeps shooting himself in the foot by either letting himself be baited personally or by conversation away from the original point to where he can be “right” instead of “worthy of conversation”.

(Because, mind you, the first posts aren’t about ‘right’ but about ‘this is how I see where the game has headed’. It’s subjective, which is okay in and of itself . . . but it’s not “Truth Indisputable”.)

It is my opinion Guild Wars 2 continues to be a relatively decent game underneath a pile of minor issues which stem from repeated attempts to “recalibrate” the core game from where it began. At this point, it needs to be looked at carefully as a whole and not in parts . . . because that’s how we got to this point anyway (what with specific recent changes merging together to form problems these changes were meant to solve in the first place).

It is also, sadly, my opinion we’re going to see probably another round of said “recalibration” before things begin to shift back into making forward progress.

Lastly, it is my opinion having only the people who post on the forums decide what happens to the game is an exercise in shooting yourself in the knee before you go to work in the morning. Ditto for only relying on in-game feedback . . . or survey results . . . or metrics . . .

Lishtenbird.2814:

I’m afraid the shine of your celestial armour makes it hard for you to see what people actually say.

Krall, when did you get a full set of that?! How? I want the shinies!

Tsubaki.8732:

Ashen.2907:

According to that quote dailies were supposed to get you to go to different maps and try different things, not to provide additional rewards for just doing what you were going to do anyway.

I find that design decision somewhat “insulting”. It’s like “we know what is best for you, you REALLY should try out this game mode and that game feature, and we will remind you of it every day, because we are sure you will REALLY like it !”

I, too, find it insulting when I go to a renaissance fair and people keep trying to get me to go to shows I have no interest in.

Of course, then I just don’t go and wind up in front of the pub singers again for another round of really filthy limericks.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

And then we’ll be back here in six months about how the dailies force you to do stuff you don’t want to do. Again. As has been happening since day one.

where is this magical contract that you signed that forces you to do a daily?

You must be not reading my posts here – I’m not saying I’m forced to do them. I barely worried about doing them back when I was stashing Jugs of Karma two years back. (When “forced to do them” may have had some weight since you could get your temple Exotics just through roughly one and a half to two months of daily activities. Since that was the easiest way to gear your armor, aside from crafting. . . )

I did them because they were there, for the most part.

But ever since the start of the game, I’ve seen comments about the dailies . . . about being forced into doing them, even when the rewards didn’t include Karma and it was a fixed list of simple things to do. At this point, I just start giggling when I see “forced” and “daily achievements” in the same context.

You get your laurels just for logging in.

Well, some of the days.

Lyssan.3768:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mogrey.3891:

what i dislike?well maybe dislike is a wrong word to say but i believe that the previous system was working fine.you could easily complete it really fast just by playing either pvp pve or wvw.

I thought the first daily system was okay after getting Karma Jugs appended to it. I was clearly mentally handicapped, because it kept getting tinkered with for the good of the players and I kept going “what the . . . why? It’s working . . .”

Can this be the last time the system gets overhauled? Pretty please?

Hopefully no, they need one more overhaul, and that is to put it back to how it worked before the kitten up just before this one. Where you got AP for ea daily item you completed, and if you completed more, you earned more.

And then we’ll be back here in six months about how the dailies force you to do stuff you don’t want to do. Again. As has been happening since day one.

Sturmruger.3920:

Lets see….I get the same rewards as before just for logging in. I get rewards I did not get before…nice ones at that for actually doing the dailies. So I may have to go to Ascalon to log instead of the Shiverpeaks….no biggie. Seems very win-win to me. Took me all of five minutes to do the three required today. I really dont understand the fuss over this. Seems much ado about nothing.

You know, it seems that way, until you realize there are a lot of other people who happen to feel very strongly the other way. Then it becomes much ado about something very important, instead of a Shakespeare comedy. Though in the end, I still have my giggles . . . so there’s that.

Snawbunny.3480:

I don’t see how anyone can defend the jumping puzzle for this Wintersday stuff at all with a straight face.

It’s dire. If I wanted to play an unfair platform game I would go back to Super Mario The Lost Levels.

Oh just skip to Kaizo and get it over with.

Of all the things I really like, the jumping puzzles for the holidays (Clock Tower and Winter Wonderland) are not one of them – I simply cannot get them done fast enough.

mtpelion.4562:

sorudo.9054:

mtpelion.4562:

sorudo.9054:

Pourekos.5032:

sorudo.9054:

PvE-only players: i hate this system
all around players: there is nothing to hate

you see the problem here?

I do both PvE and sPvP and I hate this change because it completely changes the philosophy behind dailies. So try again?

old system: PvE-only players had plenty of common things to do
new system: PvE-only players only have forced stuff to do or ignore it completely.

i don’t think their philosophy is to make dailies something to ignore, it’s something you get while playing the game you’re already playing it.
i would not mind the small things like daily revive or daily condition applier/remover but to completely spreading dailies out like this and even force us to do a really small specific choice of dailies is just a idiotic idea, as if they had a brain dead day while deciding this but kept on developing this anyway.

Old System: PvE-Only players had to complete 5 common things to get rewards
New System: PvE-Only players have to complete nothing to get same rewards as the Old System

so i can log and kill enemies, craft some, revive some and still get the same?
nope, i have to go to all 4 corners of the game just for the dailies, i don’t mind to skip some but i like to be able to complete at least the minimum without jumping hoops.

The daily reward is now granted upon login, so you, you can get the same. The kick is that now you don’t even have to kill the enemies, craft something, or revive people to get it. You have the option of going to all 4 corners of the game for the dailies for ADDITIONAL rewards now.

Or, and this is just crazy but it might work . . .

. . . not doing it?

Ayrilana.1396:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s gone? I log in, I do what I want, I log out.

. . . how is it gone?

Because you don’t get the rewards like how you want.

I never get the rewards how I want, I got over that playing Monster Hunter a long time ago

. . . fricking Heavenly Lao-Shan Scales . . .

It’s gone? I log in, I do what I want, I log out.

. . . how is it gone?

And this is still roaring on . . .

Look, ANet, just rip all the dailies/monthlies out of the system entirely. It’s the only way to really handle this. Rather than having to redesign it . . . again . . . in four months due to the sort of outcry we’re seeing now. (It’s not going to go away, people are vested in keeping it going.)

What about Laurels, and Coins? Turn them to a Karma purchase with a 24 hour cooldown timer on them.

Sheesh, and I thought when the Zaishen Quests got introduced I heard bad whining about “daily chores”.

Mogrey.3891:

what i dislike?well maybe dislike is a wrong word to say but i believe that the previous system was working fine.you could easily complete it really fast just by playing either pvp pve or wvw.

I thought the first daily system was okay after getting Karma Jugs appended to it. I was clearly mentally handicapped, because it kept getting tinkered with for the good of the players and I kept going “what the . . . why? It’s working . . .”

Can this be the last time the system gets overhauled? Pretty please?

I’m intrigued by each daily having a reward chest on it now . . . also I’m okay with the ones which were drawn for today, so. The “Box of Lumber” was an interesting item to get rewarded with, I wonder . . .

. . . anyway, at least the dailies aren’t tied to Laurels / Coins anymore. Now I can safely say there’s little point to them unless you’re hunting AP.

Soless.1067:

Well I say Hero tab because like mini it isn’t exactly a piece of equipment, Wardrobe is reserved specifically equipment, tonics are not equipment so should have their own storage tab

Meant Hero, but it’s late and I’m multitasking right now with something completely unrelated.

Add it to the Wardrobe tabs?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Many players = more people who complain.
Few players = less people who complain.

I am not sure if you really should be happy about this development.

I’m . . . not too sure on your logic here. On the one hand, it’s pretty much true on the surface. But it also eschews any other interpretations in favor of one . . . and only one . . . correlation of the data.

Though the sentiment of only keeping the people who don’t complain? Yeah, that one I can get behind saying is a point to be conscious of – to that way lies complacency.

I sort of hope it doesn’t, after the last CDI and lots of people clamoring for other topics to start looking at.

I used to think they were an interesting tool to gather opinions, insight, and information out of players who were willing to sit down and discuss things. But . . . lately I feel it’s a waste of the developers’ time to monitor/moderate, and less useful since they more often tend to devolve into two groups of players talking at each other rather than to each other. And of course, the drama around why some topics are picked and not others, whether anything has come from the process, and if it’s worth taking part in it at all.

After the second to last one, I seriously changed my mind regarding the potential value of the CDI program, and voiced a simple opinion on the matter. They are either an interesting tool, but more often are too much of a waste of effort to justify the intense commitment from players and developers.

It’s only worth using as a process if the majority of contributors are willing to be open-minded as well as critical. While it can be described as a brainstorming process, there is a value to breaking apart ideas and trying to refine them through discussion. But it starts to fail when a response is purely “this is a terrible idea” without an attached “and here is why I think that” willing to lay out why they think that.

Anyway, yeah, I sort of wish it doesn’t start. If it does, let it be during after the holiday break so the ANet employees are recharged and ready rather than needing to leave it unattended shortly due to the break. (Remember, it’s only ten days til Christmas Day.)

Carighan.6758:

Use a second monitor. Yes, bit of an investment but seriously, one of the best upgrades you can get for your machine.

Or your tablet. Or your smartphone. Or a laptop.

Or like I did when I was deep in EverQuest – separate computer with just enough material to surf the net or handle IM programs.

Oh, okay, I’ve tried reading through the thread but I come back to a problem: I somewhat agree with the OP and somewhat disagree.

Look, the Bonus Mission Packs in Guild Wars 1 were a lot of fun because they were departures from playing my own character. But I didn’t want to do them more than once., because I found them interesting and fun . . . but not engaging enough to put myself through more than once.

The Keiran Thackeray missions in Hearts of the North were similar, but I liked them more for basically having it be closer to playing a ranger. Which is my main there and will probably ALWAYS be my main.

So, I’d like it if playing another character through scenes was a sideways branch of story rather than the primary one. And, oh, look, now you can fit in a lot of content which isn’t hampered by requiring the PC to be there . . . you can, in fact, set up ways of enhancing what lore you want to put in by having other devices of this sort – the sylvari seeds? Sure, and norns can get a havroun to take them into the Mists.

. . . or we could use the Mistlock Observatory. Sheesh, it’s there, it’s a part of lore, and it doesn’t have to just be for group play. And there’s no need to invent new lore to establish things! We can just drop into the Mists with a trinket to focus the reliving of the scene . . . not unlike how the Scrying Pool required a focus item to unlock new chapters of Hearts of the North.

(Yes, minor gripe, but why not use things already established? Why go through the trouble inventing something like this and not just . . . re-use what already was proven and known? Heck, the Priory could even have tried studying the Scrying Pool and reinvented it . . . )

Shadow Assassin.8276:

Please add facebook chat plug-in to the gw2 chat

Err, please don’t.

It’s not that I dislike Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever it is these days. It’s how it would be tying the game to an outside service not run by ArenaNet . . . which can go sideways very fast.

aRestless.6213:

But I think that the pacing doesn’t feel right.

Perennial problem going on with the storytelling in this game, in my opinion, and similarly an issue with pacing your releases. I think pushing the time frame back to a monthly new chapter with slightly more content would probably be better for the content we get . . . less rushed fillers for instance.

Of course, I can’t be the only one thinking breaks happen because . . . well, something broke and they had to fix it first before a final build could be made to release? So they get backed up and need to then dig out.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ll be around next year, pending the good fortune of continued survival. So, once again, Happy Holidays to staff, management and fans alike.

And I, with any luck, will get enough free time to do more than haunt the forums and play mobile games due to being too darn busy to devote even an hour free time.

. . . oh, reminds me, thank you so much for the Journal method so i don’t have to ration sleep to make sure I can get enough of the episodes . . .

I’m both amused and dismayed.

Amused that nobody saw this coming when they realized what time of year it was . . .

. . . and dismayed people expected something other than just Wintersday.

Considering we got just Halloween a couple months ago sticking itself in there to keep to the holiday timing, it’s not a far stretch to see that being done with Wintersday. It doesn’t surprise me and luckily I may get time off to actually play all three previous episodes.

Oh, wait, I work retail. Nevermind.

Paradox.1380:

They use images of GW2 all the time. Especially one of the early Zaithan screenshots… my mom plays this game and its nothing like GW2 buuuut.. yeah, lol. I’ve dabbled in it and its not that great of a game poorly translated, etc. Seems to be mostly played by people who don’t speak English so they may not even know.

Well I’m pretty sure the developers of that game know, from the assets I’ve seen pulled from other games.

Sad thing, it’s pretty common as other Facebook games I checked out rip things such as music or “tunes”, or straight take art designs and shift them enough to be “homage” rather than “ripoff” (or so they’d say).

It is an entirely different world on that side of gaming, and they think nothing of basically lifting whatever they can get away with lifting. If you really want to groan, try checking what games come out on mobile.

draxynnic.3719:

And there are examples of mesmeric magic being used to read minds in Edge of Destiny – once with a willing target, once against a target that the mesmers had every reason to believe was hostile (which failed, but hey, it was an Elder Dragon…). There’s definitely precedent here.

The bigger problem was really that they introduced it initially as a Kasmeer thing rather than her just saying “I’m a mesmer, how to read people is part of my training”.

. . . again, still chalk it up to “reading” rather than straight-up magic.

It’s not just GW2. They use stuff from other games too.

CureForLiving.5360:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Oh, and new players also don’t get Living Story Season 1. In any fashion. ANet, I’d love you to rectify this somehow.

Well wouldn’t we all. But I keep getting this feeling that ANet sees the converting of Season 1 into Season 2 format to be this big complicated and possible not possible. Although then again they probably know more about the technicalities of these sorts of things (since they did make the game and all), but from my perspective it seems like the sort of thing you could throw a 5 man team together for and have them slowly trickle out adapted/converted S1 content. At the very least a story instance here or there. Doesn’t even have to be chronological, do the easy instances first and then move on to the kittenes.

I think, unlike dungeons, five people or less isn’t going to work. (Forget Lupi, solo Living Story remake is the toughest thing you can do.) I expect they’d only be able to do them at the cost of something else.

Especially if we want them, you know, decent instead of dumped in as small infobites.

Wanze.8410:

If mobs now come to your location and your rewards scale with the amount of mobs you kill, this is very easily exploitable by farmbots.

Also very easy to find the farmbots then, isn’kitten

I mean, you have a point and when you start running this through the paces of testing to see how it breaks the game? It starts breaking it on small but fundamental levels with the “ambush retaliation” concept.

Interesting . . . a few more options for depth:

- When the ambushes succeed in downing and killing you, you need to start over from the bottom. This would encourage you to travel with friends or stay near people who could help.

- Tie it into the Slayer achievements. For each rank you have, when an ambush event spawns on you increase the difficulty base one step. Again, this encourages you to keep people nearby who can help. Similarly, you could weight each person at the event differently for the ranks of Slayer relevant to the ambush . . . meaning everyone running around with maximum Centaur Slayer could have a problem event spawn, but it also encourages them to fight it off since the rewards could be more useful.

- Link each enemy to a race who deals with them the most. Centaurs are linked to humans, ogres to charr, dredge to norn . . . you get the picture. Similarly, bounties for dragon minion types are linked to the Pact primarily. Each bounty hunter NPC offers weapon skins which are like normal skins (say the kitten cultural weapons which drop in the wild) but with differences or effects on strike.

- Culminate where if the threat level hits maximum and an ambush is beaten, a legendary opponent is after you and will ambush you instead of the usual ambush event in a zone where the enemies normally hang out (so no centaur ambushes in Orr). Defeating them triggers a hidden achievement with a reward item unique to them. Perhaps it could be added as a zonewide announcement to recognize it was done. “The Centaur Warchief has been slain by [playername]!”

Just spitballing here, since we’re talking hypotheticals. Notably, this could make for a wonderful feature filler patch

. . . yeah, no. No. No.

Two jumping puzzles come to mind which are remarkably simple when you get down to it. First, Umaug’s Secret (in Lion’s Arch) is remarkably simple to run through when you know how. Secondly, Ice Floe Ruins (in Frostgorge Sound) is also incredibly simple when you avoid combat instead of fighting things with knockbacks, stuns, and launches.

I mean, I can see your argument for things like “Not So Secret” which is a pain in the skritt, or the Hidden Garden (where it is incredibly easy to die and not be able to return quickly).

But if they add rares, I think you’re going to see a lot of mesmers doing more portals for JPs now (“Tips appreciated”) and people parking alts to grab them.

Oh, and Obsidian Sanctum isn’t hard, just time consuming . . . the two annoying parts (Arena and Dark Room) get easier after the first few times.

Jaken.6801:

Her other abilties so far are however unexplained magic which feel out of place, making Shriketalons argument a valid point.

These plotpoints could have been resolved better. Kasmeer just suddenly getting vibes of truth feel even more so out of place, since we have a seasoned detective near by, and her abilties seem to be nothing more than simple deduction so far.

That’s rather my point – her “ability” for feeling out the truth really does seem to be more ‘reading’ than ‘magic’. Though a real good cold reader can appear to be truly psychic, it is not magic but a lot of work and training.

There might be some mesmer specific training she uses to make it seem like it’s all completely magical but . . . if she’s been hanging around a seasoned detective then it’s equally likely she learned how to “read” people without realizing it entirely.

. . . added to that, her abilities shown during that party? I swear, it was the most underwhelming introduction to a supposed all-powerful truth radar that people want to attribute to her. The player can tell when people are lying, the characters should be able to tell when they’re lying because the lies the guilty party spouted about started out pretty thin and dissolved into “let’s paint over the crack and hope nobody notices”.

More of interest in the terms of “inexplicably powerful magic” are the expanded potential of Kasmeer’s portals and Marjory’s bridge and enhanced minions.

insanemaniac.2456:

goemms lab is pretty hard to get portalled through, its useful for that jp.

or if you say.. dont do map completion ever and dont even have bloodtide coast uncovered, much less anything in orr, and want to take that toon to arah/cursed shore in a timely manner.

If something like this had only existed during my Drok Run days

Astral Projections.7320:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . wasn’t there already a consumable which did this? I could have sworn there was one.

Probably your thinking of the Twisted Watchwork Portal Device. It sends you to a random spot (vista, jumping puzzle, POI, maybe somewhere really random). This new one sends you to a party member, randomly chosen.

I was actually thinking of the non-twisted version but I haven’t actually logged on all week to look in on things . . . been too busy with work and mentally exhausted more often thanks to losing a few co-workers and having it mess with my schedule. (Among other RL-related affairs.)

More to the point, is this item one of those which can sometimes pop up as a “Daily Achievement Reward” like Forge Stones / Black Lion Kits / Boosters?

NewTrain.7549:

Mo Mo.1947:

How many of you revolutionaries starting all these nonsense threads are sitting behind desks in offices with the Blizzard logo shining brightly on your ID badges?

Close, if not equal, to zero.

Well, depends. Sometimes I play in my home office after work, and the best way to relax is to boot up Diablo 2 and just run rampant for a bit. So sometimes the Blizzard logo reflects off my badge from work.

. . . that counts, right?

. . . wasn’t there already a consumable which did this? I could have sworn there was one.

I can get behind it too.

I still determine if I basically don’t want the reward? I will put it on an alt I never play and never mention it again.

Kuldebar.1897:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Were you around for “The Vision” era of EverQuest? When they continuously referred to it without actually saying what it was, while tweaking the early game? Heck, in the second expansion they invented a “dungeon” zone which had a boss progression but if you completed it the zone became nigh worthless to run again . . . forever, for everyone in the server, and almost never to be useful again.

This is without getting into “it’s not broken” stuff (mostly quests) being able to have proof it’s broken, and proof later on it was patched poorly to not be broken. Or items which were completely removed from first release because Vision.

I was playing UO (very briefly) and DAoC extensively around that time perhaps.

There have been many grand experiments throughout the years, that is for sure.

Horizons: Empire of Istaria comes to mind, there were quite a bit of challenges that sprang up over the claiming of land/real estate, etc.

I played EQ from launch until sometime around . . . I think it was “Gates of Discord”, but it’s blurred quite a bit. I know the last expansion I bought was the “Lost Dungeons” and I felt so cheated I let someone else get me the next one for a present. And then felt bad because I wasn’t playing anymore anyway . . .

It can be summed up in the same “problem” which is seen and talked about here with ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2, though with EverQuest it was one man who was the Visionary and took the lightning for a lot of “the Vision” cracks. Here it’s sort of doled out among the company broadly and shared.

The path is one we both know instinctively – there are questionable decisions made, and the only (or final) defense offered is “this is the way we want the game / this is as intended”.

Minor sidenote – Mind you this is where “broken as intended” entered my lexicon from the EQ forums – either because something didn’t work and it was denied often . . . or it was broken in the other sense of gaming vernacular . . . such as NPCs of one class having an alpha-strike nuke which could deal incredible damage since it scaled up well with level. Assumedly they only got it once for a period of time, but if they reset properly then so did the ability . . .

Eventually anytime something was put in which was a little wonky, it just got laid on “the Vision” by many people. Or when a decision was made which people didn’t like . . . you get the picture.

It’s somewhat comforting, in a sense, to see it creeping in here – EQ still is running today. If GW2 can have that kind of longevity . . .

Kuldebar.1897:

I do recognize that when Dev and player expectations are in harmony, beautiful and wonderful things can happen, but there’s a lot more discord between ANet and their players relative to other MMO’s I have played. I think it arises mostly from the fact that
ANet tends to be more pushy in regards to their development output always giving their “vision” primacy at the cost of leaving the players with something they didn’t exactly ask for…it can all be fine, except when it isn’t.

I’m not trying to be snarky, but more just questioning:

Were you around for “The Vision” era of EverQuest? When they continuously referred to it without actually saying what it was, while tweaking the early game? Heck, in the second expansion they invented a “dungeon” zone which had a boss progression but if you completed it the zone became nigh worthless to run again . . . forever, for everyone in the server, and almost never to be useful again.

This is without getting into “it’s not broken” stuff (mostly quests) being able to have proof it’s broken, and proof later on it was patched poorly to not be broken. Or items which were completely removed from first release because Vision.

Filaha.1678:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

What they do with them, whether we like it or not, does not negate the fact that it was all asked for.

So ArenaNet is the monkey’s paw of the game industry?

. . . is this, well, ignoring things which get added or changed and don’t cause problems or massive complaints? Mail carrier changing, account-bound dyes, World Boss bonus chests?

So, hold on . .

If you’re not going to do Fractals, why not just delete the items? Throw em away?

Sariel V.7024:

What does the fox say?

Well, let’s listen and you can hear what they say . . . though the supremely cute ones are too loud

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I want a fox.

Then I can send a fox to someone. (Best if read with a British accent.)

What’s the fastest way to reach the villagers?

Has to sound like a dolphin.

The thing is, foxes already sound weird enough :P

I want a fox.

Then I can send a fox to someone. (Best if read with a British accent.)

Chrispy.5641:

(And….I said this three times now about graphics or story or sound being sacrificed for the other when resources are expensive. are you paying attention?)

Not really, I’m rambling a bit stream-of-consciousness. The thing is, the version of NetHack I play has a GUI attached to it . . . it’s on my iPad, because it’s practically the only way I can realistically get play in.

It barely affects anything, really, since the play behind it is still . . . balls-hard and unforgiving.

But food for thought – the most fun I had playing any game . . . ever . . . used absolutely no physical representation of what was going on and only the loosest set of rules to arbitrate whether or not you passed an obstacle. There was only six people at the table and one more person with the information running it.

On everything else…..eh…..what?

Stating in general why I see story as something not the most important thing to a game. Mechanics and play which are entertaining are more important. If we’re down to complaining about the story, and I’m talking about it instead of waving it off? It means it’s fun enough I could cheerfully ignore the problems with the story so long as it doesn’t invoke midichlorians or wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

This would be the equivalent of Destiny’s Edge being unable to solve a problem, and Eir turning to the player and saying, deadpan, “It’s alright. I can talk to bees.”

Pfft, you know these writers. It wouldn’t be Eir. It’d be Zojja speaking up about a device she knows she can “borrow” from another asura to solve the problem. Asura always can whip up a device . . . whether it explodes or not . . .

But your charr isn’t Rytlock’s BFF anymore! There can only be one Best Friend Forever! He gave you matching friendship bracelets, Tobias, and now he’s found a new BFF to pal around with and eat ice cream and go to gladiatorial matches. Doesn’t that wrack your very soul?

I’m pretty sure there’s sarcasm in here but as it’s 3am and I was watching some RoosterTeeth videos, I’m sure my calibration is off.

No, what really bothers me is someone keeps moving my chair

Absolutely agreed. What this all comes down to, though we sometimes talk in circles, is planning out exactly what is necessary for the core parts of the story, and prioritizing those elements above all else.

Which reminds me of seeing this . . . actually, as a recurring problem among many serial writers of late between some webcomics I follow (or strongly utilized in some cases like Howard Tayler and Rich Burlew) . . . and brought up sometimes in some of my favorite reviews by C. Sonnenberg.

I guess it’s because people get into writing less through learning the craft and more through practicing it as an art. There’s a marked difference in result . . . even though they may both resemble the other in the end. The path it takes to being created and the difference between fun and serviceable story and masterpiece living on to be studied later.

2/2

Shriketalon.1937:

We are clearly talking about different things. Let me phrase it another way. The author greatly enhances the story when selecting a cast who’s individual character arcs are relevant to the main plot and help push it along.

I think it’s easier to actually BACKFILL this sort of thing, honestly. Get your characters and their arcs in first and then figure out how that shapes the story overall. But then, that’s how I handled my novel/novella length writing when asked to do character centric rather than plot centric work.

It also was one of the rougher assignments I had to finish.

Otherwise you end up with the Belinda ghost scene, a mission that takes time, effort, and resources to produce that does absolutely nothing for the main plot and serves only to shine a spotlight on the author’s personal favorites.

. . . playing a devil’s advocate, we don’t know what significance it has later on. Really I think it’s possible that’s a Chekhov’s Gun getting put out there that the scene has a point . . . but later.

Either that or it is, exactly as you said, and gets vindicated later when they go pull that up again to use. (“I’m just going to write this in here and leave it as a blank hook in case someone later on needs it.”)

Most times it’s incredibly hard to tell the difference, even in poorly told stories. Seriously, it’s incredibly hard to see some things as valuable input . . . Harry Potter pulled it off with what seemed like unneeded details which later became important four or five books later. (The babysitter mentioned in the earlier chapters of the first book had a point suddenly in book five.)

Likewise, the rushed development process. You see it as pushing out content as fast as possible, thus resulting in content that isn’t well paced or polished. I see it as trying to juggle too many balls at once between plot advancement and irrelevant character arcs, and as a result they end up rushing the content. At the end of the day, it’s pretty much two sides of the same coin.

Mmm, sure, I’ll agree but I really do think it’s rooted in not giving themselves the proper timeframe to work with. Mostly because it’s been noticed before they have had that issue of leaving themselves enough time to write things . . . or test them thoroughly . . . it’s just a recurring theme, you know?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Also, again, I support the idea of mesmer mind-magic being able to sort through things. I’ll note it’s not unheard of to do it without the aid of magic, and is pulled off in real life to great effect after all. I played through that scene a few times and it seems Kasmeer’s ability isn’t 100% accurate to sniff out an exact lie, but she can catch when someone is hiding something and can use that and reasoning to figure out what part stands out as “incorrect”.

Pixar Rule of Storytelling #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great. Coincidences to get them out of trouble are cheating.

And I’ll rebut with a tabletop GM’s Rule – it’s okay to “cheat the story” if you need to keep the game going.

Likewise, Brandon Sanderson’s first of three laws of writing magic: An author’s ability to satisfactorily solve a problem with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands that magic.

Dilemma. We’ve already seen in the past mesmer magic which invokes emotions in the targets (assumedly from the names) or capitalizes on mental states . . . primal fears . . . so in theory we already know the magic has to have the ability to read minds as much as affect them.

You never, ever introduce a previously unknown mystical ability to solve a problem, and that’s exactly what Anet did. They needed to introduce the plot point that the Zephyrites were up to something and that Aerin was acting funky, but since they were relying on characters who knew nothing about the ‘rites or sylvari, they pulled a bunny out of a hat and used complete coincidence to push the plot forward simply because "it’s magic." It’s strongarming the plot rather than allowing it to flow smoothly.

I won’t deny there was a bad handling there, because there were better options to go to rather than push the biconics into it. But it is a different issue entirely than Kasmeer’s ability to detect falsehoods . . .

. . . which comes off in all aspects like good cold reading anyway, which can be taught to anyone and probably would be a good skill to hone around the nobility.

1/2

DarksunG.9537:

Well I was excited about the new narrative director. But look: more Sylvari focus.

It’s far better than asura focus, or miraculous technology from Rata Sum saving the day. I mean, it wasn’t the sole reason we beat the Great Destroyer long ago, but it became the sole reason we stood a chance against Zhaitan. I’m much more upset about that than the sylvari being in the spotlight.

. . . mostly because Mordremoth is a legitimate concern.

Chrispy.5641:

NetHack manages better….., except for the horrendous graphics and sound, which had to be sacrificed out of necessity for all that text. I’m also pretty sure I just went over that in my last post. So based on that, NetHack is twice as bad and you need a better example (…I suggest Ninja Gaiden, which had good graphics, sound design, cutscenes, and even a coherent story for the time)

Here’s the thing – it didn’t have to be sacrificed out, as of Windows 3.0. Yeah, that long ago. Furthermore, there was a game for old personal computers which likewise had better graphics than NetHack and managed to keep about the same amount of story, nearly completely running off a 5.25" floppy. I like to think the manual’s listing of what the items actually are aside from short codes is a very basic copy protection.

Also “horrendous graphics” is subjective – I mean, if people can play Dwarf Fortress and call it the best game of the year every year (yes, seriously) then I don’t see how we can knock NetHack for the same.

Of the era of games which produced NetHack, there was still better. King’s Quest 1, 2, and 3 were apparently pre-dating NetHack, had a room for a good story, and the first one avoided intense amounts of lore by using myth/fable/fairy tales to shortcut how we understand the events. Sloppy, but it works. Oh, dare I mention the first game ran off . . . also . . . one 5.25" floppy disk?

Aside from all of that, a game is just a set of rules, and your following those rules whenever you play a video game. You can do that without any story or context, but, its pretty freaking boring unless A) its a competitive game (GW2’s PvP and WvW), or you’re making up a story as you go along, which everyone does at some point anyways, in game story or not. I’d still rather the developers tell me why I need to go kill the dragon instead of being told to do it just because, and I’m left making up a reason myself.

I’d rather make up reasons myself in some cases. If I have to make the character and it’s not handed to me as a finished character? I’d like to have the say on the “why” for things. Simultaneously one thing which makes me happy to play early Bioware games and made me sad . . .

Of course, I’m an entirely different generation of gamer who was gaming before the NES got released in the NA market, and had tabletop gaming experience on top of computer gaming. Heck, my first game of the type we could consider RPGs was Tunnels of Doom . . . my standards of what a game should be shifts a lot and generally resides in three criteria which rarely shift:

1 – Is it a blast to play? If I’m not having fun, I’m not playing your game no matter how awesome the story is. (See: Final Fantasy
2 – Is the story consistent within itself? If not, go to #1. (See: Kingdom Hearts series)
3a – Do I want to take the main/viewpoint character out back and shoot them in the head? (See: Final Fantasy
3b – If 3a not applicable, is the difficult of a level where I don’t devolve into Dennis Leary levels of F-Bombs every few minutes? (See: Original X-Com and those kittykitty Chryssalids)

Yeah. I really prefer my games to be fun above all else, and once they stop being fun . . . I start finding other things to do. If I’m having enough fun to worry about the story, I’m going to care about the game enough to recommend it to people to play as a game but go “but that story, wow”.

Shakkara.2641:

In my opinion, Black Hole is one of the few awesome stories that came out of Disney.

Unfortunately, it flopped for many people and was disappointing on returns. Not hard to agree with it being “not-good” as a movie since it had a lot of padding in places and . . . “Dat Ending”.

Awesome story? Possibly. It was atmosphere and the escalating pacing which made it work better.

If only Guild Wars 2 had a villain like Reinhardt with a looming evil monsterous Maximilian sidekick instead of Scarlet with wtfmarionette, how bloody awesome would that be?

. . . ehh, not sure. That dynamic is powerful but I don’t know if it would fit all that well just lifted and placed in translation. First you’d need a villain who can muster enough charisma and “unsettling aura” to make you on edge even as you admit you don’t have a reason to distrust them yet. Second, you’d need their devoted protector to basically be a non-entity as a personality and just the enforcement stick used to beat people who get out of line . . . something which does not work well considering there’s no need for that.

Lastly . . . we can do better with what we have already.

Chrispy.5641:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I was meaning more the NES/Famicom Metroid. Where the story was only in the eyecatch on the title screen after leaving it idle, or in the end screen. Super Metroid had a story built in, sure, but it was the third in the series and reinventing the game over again into something more expansive.

It is also the only Metroid game I can stand to play for longer than an hour.

Oh, original Metroid. You should probably read the Instruction booklet if you still have it. The thing about old games, they had a choice between graphics, sound, and in-game text/tutorial/story. Metroid had decent graphics and sound design for the time, but memory is expensive, so, instead of compromising the graphics and sound, the story was printed in the instruction manual. It was done out of necessity, not because the game was better off without it.

Yeah, you know what else is a thing about old games? The manuals quite often being one of the first things lost and thus second-hand games (most of mine were) are missing it. I think for the NES I got roughly 20% of the games new and only when I got them for Christmas or a birthday. So, I also got to miss the infamous manual story for Metal Gear (NES) (I later got to read it off scanned copies.)

The weird thing is Metroid would have had space for a battery save game, but instead had passwords. So it could have actually been built a little better but . . . at least it hasn’t been given a complete remake treatment yet.

And much like a lot of people . . . I’m sorry, I have to judge what you put in the game/book/movie to be fair rather than all the stuff which never made it into the product because the writers either ran out of time, ran out of money, or ran out of space. (It may cause me to give credit for having good ideas but . . . if you can’t execute them for whatever reason, you still get a lesser grade and a “see me after class”.)

That’s why I mostly poke at older games for having a lack of story going through them – the story was either in the manuals or just badly conveyed on the screen. And I’d cut them some slack but NetHack manages better in most cases.