Guild Wars 2

There should be a Point of Interest marker on it.

I’ll add . . . even if ArenaNet listens very carefully and devotes a lot of time and resoruces, I expect they will miss the mark for two very solid reasons.

First, they don’t have the time to conceive, code, and fully test such an evolution. That last part, is where I expect it would fall apart if ANet tried it. I like the company, and I don’t think they’re idiots . . . but testing under pressure is not something I expect would yield a project which runs smooth like butter.

Secondly, and this one is rather our own fault – the target moves. All the time.

kitten .9460:

Tachenon.5270:

Found another build I’d like to try on my NPE ele. Guess what? Can’t. Don’t have four of the necessary traits. Two of them require map completions, one requires my ele to befriend the dredge in WvW, and the other requires the defeat of a Risen High Wizard in Orr.

How does that make experimenting with and learning new builds easier?

Seems to me it makes experimenting with and learning new builds a bore, a chore, and not particularly fun.

So. Any communication about this coming our way anytime soon?

ANet wanted to bring a bit of GW1 skill capturing to GW2 but since there are like no skills in GW2 traits were the next thing they thought of.. too bad we hardly have any of those as well. It was a bad idea imo.

It worked in GW1 because you could make thousands of builds

Ehh, but there were still more than a few Elites which were . . . kind of junk.

Kuldebar.1897:

Cuddy.6247:

Indifference and negation are not the same thing. Congratulations, you made a fool of yourself!

There ya go, Cuddly, you are improving, you might just come close to having an opinion yet!

Mm, stop baiting him and ignore him if you got a problem with him. Belittling him is not gentlemanly of you

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Which brings us back to their attitude. They start the next project before they’ve finished their former project.

I wouldn’t care about that, I’d care about them just underestimating the time to get things done, or not planning for snags along the way. If, at work, someone tells me a job should take me only three hours, I plan to use the whole shift to handle interruptions (bathroom, lunch, requests to help out, holding the register for someone to use the restroom or take lunch . . . needing to hunt down tools . . . ) rather than assume “three hours” is a legit timeframe.

Or tear apart the system to debug just in case something went wrong. A whole day and nobody complaining? That’d be . . .

. . . impossible.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.

That’s what I was getting at. Twice.

And that’s wrong. Removing something that worked just because it deosn’t fit your needs is the easy but messy way. A way I can’t agree with. Town clothes were fine. But their role would’ve to be altered to work with the new system. Something they didn’t want to do.

Or could not do within the time frame they had to work with, which is what my opinion of this is.

Mostly because it fits with everything else which could be brought into question. And the allusions in Beta to how they were still working on things, the admission the Zhaitan Fight was rushed . . . signs that the developers aren’t giving themselves enough time . . .

Or, well, are using it inefficiently if you want to be charitable with words.

I would rather see armor wheights removed than what you’re suggesting. First of all, I would love to have some heavy looking armor for my ranger. Not to mention that you’re still able to tell which class you face by simply clicking at them or by paying attention to their weapon combo.

That’s not removing armor weights, that’s giving them different skins. I’d not really mind at all if they expanded the selection.

Also, if you can please tell me how to figure out what six people running across a WvW Borderland field are by clicking them, before they run me over? That’d be super I prefer seeing the low-detail models and going “okay, medium with daggers, that’s a thief, heavy with greatsword . . . probably warrior, light with staff and dropping purple walls . . .”

. . . I do scouting more than actual fighting, some nights. Being able to quickly identify enemies without having to target is more useful to me.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

They do have not the resources. Otherwise they would’ve found a better solution than dancing in front of cows. That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.

I’m an engineer by learning, and in spirit. When I see something which doesn’t work and I can’t fix it, it comes out and isn’t used until I can devote time to it. If my chair develops a shaking noise when I sit down in it, I get another chair until I can figure out what happened – I don’t keep using it until it breaks on me.

I agree that you don’t destroy something . . . but neither do you leave it in, especially when we’re talking about stuff which literally has no effect at all. Remove it, leave a note “we’re pulling this feature until such time as we can do it justice” and budget time later down the line for it.

Or better yet, don’t do something halfway and leave it in due to time constraints. Dummy it out.

Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.

That’s what I was getting at. Twice.

And your point of reqognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

It comes from a comment I recall hearing based on the idea that in Team Fortress 2 you can instantly recognize a person’s class based on their appearance (well, except for the Spy but he’s a special case). In GW1, if you devoted time, you could do the same for classes based on recognizing what armor skin they were wearing, since each class and armor set had its own look.

So the idea is, with a glance you can tell who is what. Or at the least . . . guess easily.

Why Outfits don’t conform to the same standard as Toys (as in not in sPvP/WvW) I’ll never grasp. I have assumed thus far it’s another classic oversight.

Ashen.2907:

When a game developer says, “we can’t do X,” it often (if not usually) means, "we can’t do X with the current budget (time and money) assigned to that aspect of the product.

Or:

“The engine and database freaks out when we tried to do it so we decided not to do that thing until such time as we can figure out why and how to get around it. Since we don’t have time to revise the engine and/or database system and rebuild the game a la Starbound . . . we’re not doing it.”

Or in shorthand:

“Why Rangers can’t have pets smarter than a fifth grader.”

HHR LostProphet.4801:

So you want to tell me they can’t create armor models for the stuff they already had implemented as town clothes?
Do you want to tell me that they can’t implement those things because you couldn’t identify the armorweights, while they add things like outfits or the lawless skins?

No, I didn’t tell you they couldn’t do that first thing, only that they didn’t want to. I can/did conceive of a solid reason they can’t, and lead off with it – “it depends on how the wardrobe would see the Town Clothes”.

Or do you want to tell me that they hadn’t the resources to pull that off in time?
Because that’s what happened. And instead of saying “we couldn’t do better” they could’ve said that they’re going back to those things in the future when they have a little bit more time.

The game is full of things they “could have done better if they had more time”. I honestly would rather see those things ripped out rather than just left with a promise of “we’ll get to it someday”.

It really can’t be that hard to create 10 new armorpieces which use the skin of preexisting townclothes.

No? Even if you’re right on that score, I pointed out reasons not to do that thing.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

In any case, my point was, and is, that the game lacks decent story content and now feels like nothing but a pointless grind, and isn’t fun anymore, and that ArenaNet should do something about it. I initially addressed this perhaps inaccurately, as there is story content (as I’ve admitted). But the way such story content is presented makes the game feel lacking in such content because of the lack of meaning from participation.

Almost every game is a pointless grind, in some sense of the term. RPGs generally fall into that category easily if you don’t like the story or the system, and MMOs fall into it all too easily since their aim is to keep you playing rather than play once and walk away. Story isn’t going to cut it for the most part, so . . . again, while I’d like to see some better story work (at least LS2 is better that way) I’d much rather prefer any content and not be picky about it.

Especially since I have very little faith in seeing “truly amazing and breathtaking story” coming through this game. I mostly expect rather pleasant and simple, because that’s how the stories of GW1 also were. I don’t expect them to execute brilliantly, I expect them to execute passably and entertainingly.

As to changing story content so it makes sense…

Yeah, that’s a dropped ball. But I think it’s a result of the development team not giving themselves enough planning ahead with the LS1 arc. I mean, it’s clear the second half (after Scarlet’s Invasions) had an arc and an ending . . . and then they failed to really follow up on the ending. If I had done it – Lion’s Arch would have had an off-season arc of being rebuilt steadily and had it overlap into early LS2 until the Mad King’s time came around so he could wreck the fountain again.

Probably while some poor metalworker was staring at the mess and turning to Captain Magnus, throwing down his hammer, and going “I quit, you fix this mess”.

And I fail to see how that is any way a “derailment” from my original point either, as the suggestions for DEs and heart regions relates directly back to trying to address the feel of the game.

I misspoke, not “derailment” but “tangent”. Do forgive me for that.

And on that tangent, you’re right in that DEs probably should have a greater sort of impact. But then, the one place where it does – Orr, it’s interesting but not very well-thought out. Especially in terms of Straits of Devastation, or the “marching routes” which require several linked events.

And some of the technical things you ask for are more likely to break and not work than they are to function as intended. Sorry, I’m going to be blunt with that.

All of my posts (with one exception) have been about the same thing: the grind feel of the game due to (I believe) lack of worthwhile story content, and possible ways that might help alleviate that.

The grind feel of the game is because you ran out of things to do which feel satisfying. That’s when the feeling of “grind” sets in, and when people start to feel disgruntled. I don’t know how else to put this but – maybe Halloween will give you a break enough to stop feeling it as grindy? Or when LS2 starts back up afterwards and you have more story content to work through? Yes, basically I am suggesting you take a break.

The hiatus has felt like it dragged on a bit. On the plus side, it means I got to catch up through my Story Journal.

As for my ideas being less than fully formed. I’m not paid to come up with fully formed design ideas and spoon-feed them to ArenaNet staff. I have quite enough to deal with in my own life without trying to do ArenaNet’s job for them.

That’s a poor cop-out and excuse for not trying. If you’re going to raise concerns, follow up with things you think will fix it, or say you don’t have any ideas but still think it’s an issue. Don’t just go “it’s not my job to fix it” because then . . . no matter how eloquent you may write . . . you come off badly.

But then, since you obviously feel there is no problem, I doubt you could contribute very much; after all, you can’t solve a problem if you believe there is no problem.

Oh, I could take stabs at it. But I don’t believe they’d be any better than what we have now. At best I think I’d satisfy one group of players while kittening off two other ones. I’ve, once or twice, bothered to present what I think would be a Good Idea in detail . . . it’s never gone rather well. The devil is in the details, they say, and that’s usually where it falls apart.

And so I mostly make vague ideas and frameworks rather than plotting it out. I have enough of that to do for my tabletop games.

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Drake Phoenix.6158:

And your own jumping into it late doesn’t gain you anything as far as I’m concerned, as you significantly contributed to the off-topic discussion, and thereby exacerbated the derailment.

Well, usually the OPs of topics like these drop the topic and never return so . . . good on you for coming back. Again, I apologized for that. But this reply is going to also ramble a bit in places.

Hope you don’t mind.

As for the point, I’ll admit that I tend to talk a lot (or type or whatever), and will likely do so here again. As a result, points can get a little lost in the jumble, but the point has never changed, and if you want to know what it is, then go back to my very first post and read the TL;DR at the very top.

As a matter of principle I never read nor use TL:DR. I think it’s an insult to good communication. But yes, your rambling manner (something which is also a problem of mine) left me following it around and wondering where the point was going sometimes. Especially as follows:

My point has nothing to do with having to level (and I fail to see how anyone could interpret it that way), it has to do with how much of a grind it is to level, and how the game now feels like even more of a grind because you have to do it for longer durations with little to nothing purposeful to break it up, specifically more meaningful story content (or at least that would be my preference).

You’re not making a point about having to level (and were confused about me taking it that way) as your point is about how much of a grind it is to level . . . can you stop and re-read what you wrote there? You pretty much just ran that into a circle.

The rest of the thought also confirms what I thought was the point – you have a problem with the new pacing of the personal story at every ten levels. Yeah, that’s something I have a problem with too in theory. In practice, well . . . I think it solves a lot of other issues by making sure you’re ready to take the whole chapter at once and not have to “stop, come back later after some leveling for skills”.

But you said that wasn’t the point, so now I am slightly more confused.

And I don’t see how having some additional story content added, and/or options to make existing story content more noticeable for those who want it to be (but still as unnoticeable as you like depending on how you set them), would in any way push story into your face, or anyone else’s.

That’s not my complaint. Well, not my complaint about this game, but another one I am still trying to play.

If all you want is a game with no story and pure hack-and-slash, then there are plenty to choose from, but my suggestions wouldn’t make GW2 any less casual about the story if you wanted it to be.

And that’s not what I want at all. Did you read the off-topic ramble? I want a game with a coherent story which doesn’t feel like a bunch of scenes stitched together with visible seams. (All the more visible currently, with the removal of one piece.)

It’s my biggest problem with GW2’s story content – until lately, it feels like . . . like a writing exercise where a typewriter was left at a desk and everyone involved in the writing could sit down and type up ten pages before handing it off to someone else. And the next person wasn’t obligated to keep track of what the other person wrote.

(Actual writing group exercise, great fun, results in wonderfully insane stories. But I digress.)

[1/2]

IndigoSundown.5419:

It’s a gold sink.

1. Build stacks on land.
2. Don’t want to lose them by swimming across to get to the other side?
3. WP instead. 1,5 silver gone.
4. Of course, eventually the 10G for a second sigil would actually save you money.

You lose stacks on WP.

No torches? But how else do I get my Torch Master achievement?!

Oh, by the way, still wishing you folks could organize better, but that’s just been my perennial complaint – it seems from this side to be very haphazard. Hopefully it can smooth out over time.

Surbrus.6942:

Personally I think sigil stacks are a boring mechanic (as it is just arbitrary numbers), but they’re just too powerful to ignore in favour of something else.

Nothing is too powerful to ignore. Even arrow carts can be ignored with impunity if you’re sneaky

You could go ahead and report me, but really I jumped in when the conversation had derailed early. If they wanted to do anything about it, they would have locked the thread with Xtreme Prejudice. Apologies for derailing it so callously, though.

Now as to your topic . . . just what is the topic anyway? Is it how it now requires leveling, as your original post suggests? (It always did, and GW1 handled it by artifically inflating the later two campaigns so you’d be 20 almost definitely at a given point. Especially Factions.)

Is it about how there’s no story to drag you along? I think that’s part of the charm, because there’s at least some freedom there in not having it pushed into your face constantly how the lore works . . . not to mention it’s less likely to make no sense if they change things later. (Oh god did EverQuest get pretty bad for this…)

Is it about the mechanics of DEs, like your last posts seem to derail into? Because some of that just isn’t likely to work on a technical level, some of it should probably not be done, and maybe some interesting concepts which need to go back in the over to be fully ready to present as robust ideas.

Zenith.6403:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know how to break this to you, but stacking a sigil and then getting rid of the sigil but keeping the effects? Seems pretty, I dunno, “exploit-y” to me. But then, that’s just me . . . can’t imagine a meat-side game I’d play which would allow that sort of thing. “Oh, I built 20 armies in Ukraine but moved them to Mongolia, but I still get the benefit of 20 armies when defending Ukraine, right?”

- Right. It could also be seen that your character is building up bloodlust by attacking with a weapon holding a sigil that loses its progression benefit as soon as you reach max stack. This can be seen as trade-off, if you’re spending lots of time stacking the bloodlust with inferior weapon before you switch to your main weapon. Furthermore instead of stacking bloodlust the player could be stacking toughness, healing or critical chance, which grants additional layer of player customization.

We’re not discussing what stat is being stacked. Honestly, I could care less about the what is being stacked when you said “that shouldn’t be an exploit”. Except more than a few people posted how other players were exploiting the skritt out of this. Which leads me to the standard “this is why we can’t have nice things” photomeme and moving on . . .

I also used the analogy because that’s what it feels like to me by saying “I want to have all my stacks stay even if I don’t have a means of keeping them”.

Or all stacking sigils could be removed altogether and replaced with something that gives flat bonus to attributes. Personally I think the stacking mechanic is more fun, but that wasn’t really the point of this thread.

Or just letting stacking sigils operate in sPvP alone and give flat bonuses in the world.

Anyway, what was the point of this thread? Oh, right, complaining about something which works the way it does for a good reason.

Zenith.6403:

Brave Mallyki.1563:

It was put in to fix the exploit of people using a stacking weapon to gain stack and then swapping to a non-stacking weapon, but keeping the stacks.

- I’d like to address the word ‘exploit’ here. Something that is designed and coded to work like that is not exploiting. I’m guessing they removed stack loss when switching between land weapons because losing the stack like that would be stupid. But then they forgot to do the same for swapping between water and land weapons.

I don’t know how to break this to you, but stacking a sigil and then getting rid of the sigil but keeping the effects? Seems pretty, I dunno, “exploit-y” to me. But then, that’s just me . . . can’t imagine a meat-side game I’d play which would allow that sort of thing. “Oh, I built 20 armies in Ukraine but moved them to Mongolia, but I still get the benefit of 20 armies when defending Ukraine, right?”

There are much, MUCH better ways to balance a feature like stacking sigil without outright punishing the player. I think ANET should hire some player experience specialist on their ranks.

I advocate removing them entirely. Stacks work nice in a game designed to curb their effects, like a MOBA. Not so much in open world where it is easy to cheese.

Zenith.6403:

It’s nice to know that at least the player can spend 10 gold to fix an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

And why shouldn’t it be there in the first place, pray tell? I mean, I agree that Bloodlust and the associated weapon sigils shouldn’t be there at all but . . .

johnnymiller.5968:

dagrdagaz.4913:

My main issue with loot is that i am getting fed up with all them Blues and Greens i get (at lvl80). I guess a rare item is really rare, cos i rarely get a rare, unless a rare material also counts as a rare (i get those alot more).

And an Exotic, cant remember the last time i got one.

I have one suggestion, stop giving us (me) lvl80 blue items, when yer lvl80.
I consider lvl80 Green items already useless crap.
Feels so unrewarding at lvl80, getting lvl80 blue weapons and armors.

Has not always been this way. Loot drops in the past were much more rewarding.

Just completed Jormag & most items were simple trash, same with the jungle worm, Ulgoth, shadow behemoth etc. I was going to head off to complete the Taidha Covington event – why waste my time.
While I do not expect tons of rares, exotic’s or precursors to drop on a regular basis; what we receive now is mostly worthless, outside of breaking items down for increasing magic find & base components.

You’re right in that it hasn’t always been this way. World Bosses didn’t always guarantee at least one rare, meaning it was sometimes worse than it is currently. Not to mention Tequatl’s revamp allowing a successful run to get a lot more loot . . .

So, it’s actually gotten better than it used to be. Also, now Final Rest is actually more likely to be seen outside chat codes

JusticarArkiel.1564:

Eric.6109:

Karizee.8076:

I’m shooting for a full stack of Siege Commander spoons. Up to 7 so far.

Do Tequatl instead; his spoon is very close to a “sure drop”.

i call BS, ive done teq 25 times since i unlocked the spoon collection, and not once has it dropped. gotten the stupid rune of the sunless everytime though

Can we swap luck? Please? I’m getting tired of Carved Bone Spoons, I’m just donating them to orphans now.

More than a little aggressive there, chief. Also really, really off topic. But to extend, one more post:

Chris, I’m sorry, maybe you need to sit down with Gaile and Jon . . . and do that list you alluded to before this CDI about things from CDIs which made it into the game? And better make it a full list with details on what the request was, how you interpreted it, and why it didn’t exactly match.

Because this . . . this stuff is getting out of hand and it’s only going to make trying to do anything a joke running into the adversarial attitudes like this example here.

Anyway, that’s a wrap on the CDI for me, I’m off to try figuring out my latest purchases of Ars Magica on Amazon and how to work with them

Vayne.8563:

But I don’t particularly see that as being reasonable.

Maybe, but I’ll say this last thing on this before I duck out of the topic:

If they say they want their stories to be remembered, and chatted about, then they have to do better.

Well, they did say such towards the end of LS1. The problem is, there’s . . . a not insignificant amount of uneven-ness to the writing which stands out like a sore thumb to me. And to others, which they pick up on quickly as different issues entirely (see: Kas/Jory).

It’s my greatest wish for the writing team to actually get someone . . . singularly . . . to get the final product and make sure it’s consistent with previous and later parts. Tonally, thematically, and factually. Why insist on it being a single person? More writers having the final rubber-stamp means more chances they’re not on the same page.

Then you get the mess of a Personal Story where the feel seems dramatically different from piece to piece.

Vayne.8563:

That’s why almost all MMOs have mediocre writing. But mediocre doesn’t mean amateur. It doesn’t mean juvenile.

The one I’ve played with the best so far has to be A Realm Reborn, but that’s because it’s basically a Final Fantasy game with MMO aspects grafted into it. And that’s usually where a lot of focus goes in FF games.

In neither case is it amateur or juvenile. That’s why I use the “writing to purpose” line. One of the first things I wrote I wrote for a very specific audience. It’s terrible if you don’t take that audience into account. It’s fine if you think about who you’re writing for.

Pretty much this. Most of my work is actually in tabletop gaming, and writing for that purpose. It makes pretty poor literature.

And my short story / novellas are an entirely different animal which I won’t begin to talk about but they are also not masterpieces by any stretch.

Because a lot of MMO people really don’t pay much attention to what you’re stating you have to overstate it, in the same way actors on stage have to overact for people to see their reactions without close ups.

Is that why “The Producers” most recently looked so fake and overblown? Oh, wait, I saw the stage play and the recentish release was basically the stage show on a smaller stage :P

But it should be said – all of this is irrelevant to people who like to see solid, good writing are going to be disappointed. There’s just too much which has flaws, and problems. GW2’s writing is not much worse (or better) than what we got the first time around in Tyria. An opinion I’ll continue to repeat on the topic of story/writing quality . . .

Along with my opinion the reason the writing is “bad” is partly because of the medium and partly because of how it was put together – in parts rather than as a whole.

Vayne.8563:

Well, I’m am a profession writer and there’s such a thing as writing to purpose and there’s another thing called writing style. Both of those are being ignored in this conversation.

You’re correct. Because we can’t begin to approach the style or purpose in this topic – that’s a can of worms which gets rather complex fast.

In the LA guard dialogue, there really isn’t anything wrong. The writing is being intentionally exaggerated as it often is in games. What the writers got is what the writers were going for.

I could probably find something wrong, but I’m not up for picking everything apart. Especially if I’m not being paid to do so.

But it’s not just being a good writer or being a bad writer. Its’ being a writer under deadline with a specific set of instructions. No matter how good an actor is, bad direction can sink him. Until you’re written anything under time constraints with someone else calling the shots, you have no idea what it’s like.

This writing is being produced for the purpose of furthering game elements, not telling it’s own story. It would be much better if the writers were given complete freedom, which is, in this circumstance impossible.

And there lies a lot of the issue with the GW franchise story as a whole. It’s slaved to the game, much like any other game in the genre of “fantasy games” . . . there’s a lot of places where drama and mechanics meet and everything falls apart. (Not unlike “why not use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?”)

However stilted dialogue isn’t juvenile and writing a scene that shows prejudice and job corruption isn’t juvenile.

I prefer to call it “amateur” unless it really is juvenile. Not that juvenile writing is a bad thing, it paid J.K Rowling pretty nicely.

It’s not a novel it’s a game.

While you are correct, there is still a modicum of effort which needs to be met in polishing and working dialogue. Unfortunately, it’s especially difficult in the instance of the painterly “cutscenes” since they’re lacking one of the key elements of a video game – the video potential.

I’m ever so glad they cut that crap out for LS2.

NewTrain.7549:

But see, here’s the thing…I don’t claim to be a professional writer. Just as someone doesn’t need to be a professional quarterback to recognize a bad pass, you don’t need to be a professional writer to recognize bad writing. Are you trying to claim someone must be an excellent writer in order to recognize bad writing? That would be a logical fallacy sir.

And I’m not a professional writer either, I’m an amateur who occasionally gets a minor story published and has exactly one published other work under his belt. (Good luck finding it though.) I can still sit back and call you out on this, because. . . and try to stay with me here . . .

You may not need to be a pro quarterback to recognize a bad pass, or a pro outfielder to realize the ball was thrown to the wrong person, or a pro golfer to recognize someone’s using a sand wedge on the fairway. But then, turning around when someone calls you out for the heckling, it’s a poor defense to go “I’m not a professional, they should know better”. It looks sketchy, neighbor, and invites no respect.

I find it telling you took nothing from my post other than an attempt to double back and try to pin me for a logical fallacy. I explained, patiently and politely, why bad dialogue happens even in otherwise good writing. It’s not a telltale sign of bad writing. It is, however, a warning sign to look more closely.

And before you try to twist that around, no, I’m not saying GW2 has a masterpiece story. It’s serviceable and average when you look at the whole thing, with some parts which are quite good, and some parts which make you want to kill a quaggan.

(And those parts differ from person to person – I do not understand, for instance, why anyone wants to tell me how great Zojja is when I just want to punt her back to Rata Sum whenever I see her.)

If you want an example of what I mean about dialogue, and just a general “these are actual people” feel of characters? Find yourself a Spider Robinson story. I recommend Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.

I don’t play that game either. I still poke my head in and see what I can make from time to time. I’ve been surprised in finding by just casually dropping materials into the process I’ve crafted two Ascended armor pieces (medium coat and arms) and had a Wupwup bow drop for me.

So while I don’t play the game by devoting every moment slavishly tracking what I need . . . I’m still steadily getting there. Faster than I could get “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” . . . gods what a grindfest that was . . .

NewTrain.7549:

2. You responded to my post, which was a response to someone claiming it wasn’t exposition. I’m not sure what you were trying to achieve but jumping into an argument and taking neither side.

This is a forum. I’m allowed to do that, especially when I have a point to make.

3. Idiot lecture isn’t a derogatory term, it’s an actual literary device where things that should be blatantly obvious to the characters are being stated solely for the audience, usually due to a perception that the audience isn’t sharp enough to pick up on these pieces of the story. Kind of like a character referring to his wife as “wife” and not by her name, just so the audience knows the relationship, although it’s highly unrealistic dialog (this being one of the classic examples).

Yeah, right about here I’m going to call you out. You need to try writing dialogue which sounds natural and not artificial, or forced. I had to do it as part of a creative writing class, and you know what came out all around the room from the exercise? Things which were really, really hard to use in a scene.

Dialogue is a tricky beast to write well. I see otherwise good writers fail at it, or alternatively writers which make dialogue sound good fail to have the rest of the writing work as well. It’s the #1 thing I hate to do when writing, and rough drafts have . . . by necessity . . . had the dialogue reworked to be more artificial so a scene could be understood by someone other than the person who wrote it.

Astralporing.1957:

DarkWasp.7291:

I’ve tested for that, and that doesn’t seem to be the case. And if it is the case, the damage requirement shoots well over 2 million, which again points to this being a bug.

We had an Ulgoth situation where my guild (all in zerkers) missed the first hit because a ranger Point Blank Shotted him pretty far away. Afterward two of us dropped ice bows and we skill 4’d him. Then we kept the DPS up for the entire fight.

No credit.

I’m doing Ulgoth regularly, and i usually get the drops… unless i happen to be run over few times by the knockdown winds. Even if i start dps-ing late (which i often do).

I’m pretty sure there are other considerations here, and that tagging in general is bugged, but i don’t think it is bugged in the exact way you described.

I’ve had the Karka Queen not give me drops plenty of times, but I don’t know if that’s because her drops are in the chest instead . . . or this bug going on.

What I do know is if a boss dies really . . . really . . . fast, then there are a lot of people who don’t get loot. Shadow Behemoth used to be infamous that way.

DarkWasp.7291:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I think it’d be better if it could be guaranteed everyone in the zone can receive loot from a world boss in the zone, mechanically, even if everyone isn’t fighting that world boss . . . but then, I also know the more people you pour on the enemy, the faster they die, and the greater chance people don’t break the threshold for loot.

But that isn’t what’s happening. What happens is that threshold for loot is capped about 0.5 – 1 seconds after the enemy spawns despite the fact that the enemy stays intact for 2 minutes.

Yeah, I heard and read that.

That’s why I lead off that part with “I think it would be better if”. Even though part of me thinks it’d be a technical nightmare to try.

Tachenon.5270:

If I was writing this story…

Except for Sieran surviving, it works for me and is funny enough to get a giggle and a +1.

Rangers are terrible and you should totally just go engineer if you want to be amazing.

In seriousness…

I can’t quite speak for their DPS versus other classes but I will say a savvy ranger player can survive pretty well. I think they can be pretty dangerous too . . . especially if you can master the sword.

TriggerSad.2597:

Squee.7829:

I recall meeting her beforehand at some point during my personal stories, but I don’t remember the details. Something about Trehearne introducing you (apparently he helped her with something and she was indebted to him), but it was hastily brought up as kind of an aside. They really didn’t imply that she was important in any way until much later during the Orr missions, so the moment was very easy to overlook or forget.

Oh yeah, we can totally meet her!… During one of the Greatest Fear Arc’s story lines… Which were all removed…

That’s exactly where I remember her from. It’s also been talked about a lot after the NPE wiped it out.

NewTrain.7549:

Sure, good writing can, but this ain’t good writing. Your assertion also doesn’t mean it isn’t exposition, it very clearly is. It also certainly doesn’t mean it’s not an “idiot lecture”, which you actually describe it as in your post without using the term (just the definition).

1. I already said it wasn’t good writing, but that’s also not the fault of “idiot lecture”.

2. I never said it wasn’t exposition. If you want to be completely technical, it’d count as exposition. It’s not what most laypeople think of as “exposition”.

3. I wouldn’t call it an ‘idiot lecture’, since I have a less derogatory term. Which, as it stands, better encapsulates the “why” writers do this. And, notably, doesn’t preclude “good writing” from doing it either. Start looking on the list for how many things thought of as masterpieces use it.

Top three priorities?

Far in first:

1. Everyone who wants a hall, can have a hall and not be penalized over the size of the guild.

2. The Hall serves a purpose other than a replacement hub for activities (i.e. “Lion’s Arch and the main cities are dead now, nobody goes there to do anything.”)

3. There’s enough customization of appearances and such to let every guild feel it’s their home, rather than just a visual representation of a menu system.

(Push comes to shove, I’d rather push trophies and acknowledgement of achievements/completion to a “player housing” thing.)

NewTrain.7549:

You can disagree all you want, but it’s still exposition. Read those lines again, neither of them is “formulating a plan of action”. This first line even contains material that should be GLARINGLY OBVIOUS to both characters involved, yet Sieran still feels the need to say it. Poor poor writing and a classic example of “idiot lecture”. It’s also redundant with what’s happening visually. But like I said earlier, if you’re unclear about what is and what isn’t exposition then we’re very clearly talking at two different levels here and it would be a waste to continue.

Ehhh . . . no. Good writing can get away with that first line as the opening to a conversation. I’ve seen it done. It’s been done where the glaringly obvious (to the characters in scene) is spoken so the reader/observer can tell more about it.

Heck, Timothy Zahn gets good mileage out of it in his books. So did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I’ll not go so far as to say it’s “unnecessary exposition”. It’s one of those times when a character says something like that, and the player gets the realization exactly what’s coming.

“If we try to get across, we’ll never make it.”

That’s said so the audience can have that piece sink in, through the rush of watching a scene. The sudden realization one of them is going to pull a sacrifice (or address it differently, in a subversion). Sure, it bends Alfred H’s (I’m not writing his name due to censor issues) definition of drama, but it still works.

All this is moot, more or less, because I still think that sacrifice was a poor way for them to go out – there were other options which hadn’t been exhausted, and might have worked. And even if they failed, they could have made it fail in such a way the sacrificial mentor died anyway.

It didn’t need to be hamfistedly shoved there. That is the bad writing here. A problem of concept, rather than a problem with dialogue.

DarkWasp.7291:

Ok I Did It.2854:

Is the loot getting worse or is it the way its being given out, I seen a convo in map chat the other day that said only so many people get loot from an enemy/boss everyone else gets nothing, I never thought anything of this, but then I got thinking, in the mornings I usually do the world bosses, and ive noticed that they no longer drop champ bags, ( MAW, Taidha Covington, sometimes Karka Queen, usually all 3 champs and final boss at Ulgoth ) these are just some of the events I fail to get champ bags from on a daily basis, no matter how much damage I do,

This is a serious bug that has been around since the beginning of time. However, due to the players’ experiences with other MMOs, the community tends to think its a feature. Therefore there are not enough complaints about it.

Basically the system works like this. Everyone who does a certain amount of damage gets loot. HOWEVER, due to a bug, there is a cap. When things get crowded, only the first people to reach that damage threshold receive loot. This is why people in groups get loot more often (because the whole group gets damage threshold credit together) and why staff guardians get loot more often.

I have tested it. I have kitten so I loaded the karka WP first. Ice bowed the queen, then backed off and watched the rest of the fight. As a lousy mooch who did about 5k-10k damage total, I got the champ box off the corpse. Meanwhile others were complaining it didn’t drop for them. They were the ones who stuck around and did hundreds of thousands of damage to it.

I think it is definitely a feature to prevent all players from trying to swarm in at the same time. Either that or it’s an unintended feature which is supposed to do that.

I think it’d be better if it could be guaranteed everyone in the zone can receive loot from a world boss in the zone, mechanically, even if everyone isn’t fighting that world boss . . . but then, I also know the more people you pour on the enemy, the faster they die, and the greater chance people don’t break the threshold for loot.

Imaginos.3756:

Some of these are pretty good questions, others are facetious.

That’s how I work. I don’t take this game too seriously or I wind up insane and drinking.

Or maybe sane and drinking, it’s hard to tell some days.

Side note: Guild Halls were a place for guilds to meet up and chat/spar/RP in guild wars 1. That would be a nice addition to gw2.

We’re talking about it in the CDI but I still haven’t heard many good compelling reasons why to devote a huge chunk to that content when we could push for other content.

I would like Guild Halls, personally, just for fun. But when I see people talking about how starved we are for content . . . and we’re looking at getting people to put a lot of time and energy into Guild Halls . . .

I just have to step outside the whole thing and go: “Why?”

Mmm, I doubt there would have been an Elona . . . or a Tyria as it could be known now if Nightfall had finished its job and Abaddon had his revenge. Strictly speaking, failing that step was probably a reason we have a fighting chance today.

And there’s nothing wrong with them being tools, any of the three you mention. I said “tool” and not “puppet” because it’s expected of them to do something rather than merely be a mouthpiece and be distracting. Varesh was probably even aware she was a tool, an instrument to be used to begin Nightfall on Tyria. I don’t think she could have objected after what she did in Vabbi, mind you, because she’d fallen a long way. She might have balked before the Sunspear assault on Gandara, but having the strength of Abaddon proven to her? She was ready to go all-in.

As for Anise? . . . the topic and theory I’m mulling over now has been raised many times and it went from seeming a little strange to now having legs.

By the way, to laboriously get back to topic of “yelling at” the new narrative director:

Can you please get your writers into a conference room (I recommend luring them with baked goods) and getting to work figuring out the mess which is the Personal Story and Living World lines so they can mesh better? It did pick up in Season Two to making a more coherent sense but there’s still a big mess.

You have the Story Journal you can add side-stories into now, so maybe it should get used

juno.1840:

The loot is there. My first thought was ascended weapon boxes. I can’t recall if there are ascended armor boxes, but I think they are.

This is an MMO issue — the loot must be throttled to protect the economy. One solution is “Bind on Acquire”. Diablo 3 switch to BoA and now the loot drops like rain in spring. It feels very rewarding.

At the same time Diablo 3 also has the issue of the rewards not being worth it as you’re looking for upgrades . . . and after some time, you don’t often see stuff which is an upgrade.

It was one of the reasons I threw Diablo 2 out as soon as Nightmare Difficulty hit – the loot was unrewarding, even with as much as I got. It was rarely an upgrade, and even rarer was it something which would keep me alive longer in some of the nastier encounters.

And from a different angle . . . it’s not nearly as crushing as going caving in Minecraft.

Kamikae.9536:

I can sum up the answer to this whole thread [T] rating Anet is tiptoeing around many of the risqué and adult themes in the story in a juvenile manner. For example in the living story “let’t throw lesbians in” okay “lets make them say kittened unrealistic things to each other because thats what real gays do” probably was not the conversation but rather “lets put lesbians in because that will show players we are progressive” okay "but we have to water down all the dialogue because all the 8 year olds that play won’t laugh if we don’t.

I’m thinking the conversation went rather differently entirely than “let’s throw in lesbians” . . . probably because there was already some in there (arguably Caithe/Faolain) as well as “male” couples (again, arguably two ‘male’ sylvari).

No, I get the feeling they realized they had two characters which could have an interesting dynamic in Marjory/Kasmeer and someone ran a bit far with them being playful . . . so they doubled-down on it rather than shy away.

And I doubt it’s “watered down for the sake of children” so much as “watered down so we don’t get GLBT hatemail for portraying them cartoonishly”. Even though I have seen actual couples (of any orientation and combination) . . . be a whole lot worse than Jory/Kas are. A lot worse.

This is also why we lack blood, dismemberment, and some of the darker more sinister themes some games have. In order for GW2 to be as intense as we want it would have to be [M] which I wouldn’t mind honestly how many 8 year olds were prohibited from buying Call of Duty because it was rated [M]?

I . . . think it would be as off-putting as a Disney feature being moved to PG-13 so it could explore darker themes. Which is weird because they did it with a PG rating at least twice.

And Pokemon successfully gets some rather . . . fridge-horrory stuff through its games.

Ratings aren’t anything. It’s how you work at them.

Unfortunately the game is [T] is is so horrifically childish that Disney would be proud, I half expect to see mickey mouse jump out with the pirates in the Gendaran Fields, but the game is fun and we will still play it, or go buy Skyrim and enjoy watching heads roll

I’d rather expect it to be a different mouse . . . and it would still fit in the T rating to have him accurately transferred over. Food for thought.

Tachenon.5270:

Nobody ever seems to mention Zott and Elli. Then again, I don’t recall ever seeing them before last night when my NPE ele ran the missions which featured them. Anyway, I enjoyed the characters, more than a lot of the characters our commanders encounter along the way, but anet was a little too (ahem) transparent with the denouement, never mind some psych noogies along the way.

Were they only on asuran personal story, because that’d explain why I didn’t know about them.

I’ve done about the majority of the Human chapters, one slice of Charr, two slices of Norn. I really liked a lot of the characters, and the writing, for most of these parts. (Even the humorous “I blacked out at the moot and lost a charr siege machine” my norn got into.)

GOSU.9574:

Remember this game was sold on the Manifesto that quickly got an about face from Anet, designers/developers. It was supposed to be low grind, lateral progression. Then Ascended was introduced which anyone with half a brain saw as blatant vertical progression, gear treadmill, power creep, whatever you prefer to call it.

. . . in order for it to be a “gear treadmill” there needs to be more than one step up on it. It’s also hard for me to accept it as vertical progression when the secondary intentional purpose was to allow higher level Fractal access through AR, only possible on Ascended Gear . . . and the only time when the additional stats would be important.

Looking at it now, I’d have done it rather differently since its major function as a tier is for Fractals.

TOIL. Not play. WORK.

Stop toiling for it and just do what you want to do, or just take a break and check in only for the LS2 unlocks.

Honestly, I stopped chasing a lot of things because they were unsatisfying. That’s why I never ever considered “God Among Mere Mortals” to be a goal I’d chase. And yet, lots of people did and complained about the grind the whole time.

And then they forgot it.

Why aren’t there more unique, strange, interesting rewards to be found?
Why can’t there be more Regional achievements now that the section is there?
Why can’t I shave charr?
Why do we need Guild Halls in order to talk about GvG?
. . . why do we need Guild Halls at all?
Why did people not expect “night capping” to be a thing in WvW when it was described as a 24 hour persistent matchup?
Why Fractals?
Why not more Fractals?
Why a miniature arctic fox pup but no foxes anywhere?
Why, why, why, why, why isn’t there more to the “Personality” after two years?
Why take out Town Clothes for being underutilized with the wardrobe revamp, but the Personality system persists despite it doing nothing?
Why am I not allowed to load asura into trebuchets yet?
Why am I not allowed to load asura into catapults?
Why is Taimi still allowed to be running around when she’s supposed to be studying?
Why require the effort of making another Ascended weapon to unlock the other colors instead of just Mystic Forge + Material 1 + Material 2 + Dye?

NewTrain.7549:

Galen Grey.4709:

When you got mature themes dealing with them in a juvenile way is pretty hard, possible but hard and when you do its glaringly obvious because you’ll get the mother of all wrong feelings as you see it. So I guess you’ll have no trouble pointing out what you’re refering too. Saying (proof: Gw2) doesnt really tell anything to anyone. Be specific.

I disagree, it’s far easier to deal with mature themes in a juvenile way than it is in a mature way. Which have you heard more of in your life; Holocaust survivor stories or holocaust jokes? You see, people often choose juvenile because it’s far easier, far less thought provoking, and takes far less effort.

if you want specific GW2 examples, I’ll provide you with the events at Claw Island. A thinly developed character, painted in certain arcs as a goofball, needlessly sacrifices them self for no conceivable gain. Sacrificing your life for someone else’s is a powerful mature theme, yet the way GW2 handled it was essentially just doing it because it was expected, which is quite juvenile.

Magister Sieran: The dragon’s servants will never let our ships sail. If they surround the docks, they’ll slaughter us— and Zhaitan’s forces will grow.
<Character name>: Our soldiers are too injured to fight. They can barely walk. We can’t form a defense and still get them all aboard.
Magister Sieran: Someone needs to hold them off and give everyone else time to escape. No, not someone. Me.
<Character name>: You can’t win against those monsters, Sieran! There are too many of them!
Magister Sieran: If I can keep them busy, it’s enough of a win for me. Gixx always said I was an exceptional troublemaker.
Magister Sieran: When you and I met, I didn’t think about anything but myself. I wanted fun, excitement, risks… I didn’t really care about others.
Magister Sieran: In my short life, you’ve taught me the most important lesson. Friends will go through anything for each other. That’s why I have to do this.
Magister Sieran: I’ve always wondered what it would be like to go to the mists. It’ll be an adventure…

I mean seriously, you think this dialogue is mature? It reads like a poorly written after-school special with the first two lines delivered expertly by Captain Exposition and his friend Mr. Obvious.

It’s pretty terrible, but then I don’t think Tybalt did it any better. Forgal . . . I haven’t brought myself to the point of wanting to do that yet.

More mature is the conversation around the medic camp in Dry Top. “We need to do something with the bodies…” comes to mind, though the majority of the feel comes from how the voice acting lent it the hesitant air of “I really don’t want to be talking about this, but we need to discuss it”.

Of course, in the same zone there was Prosperity which felt like a cheap imitation of Deadwood (the HBO series) which itself was somewhat of a immature sort of look at things on the surface. (Underneath the veneer of immaturity, it was better than it looked but…)

Anyway.

Yeah, it could be better off but you know what? I’m more annoyed at other things in the story to start ripping it apart over every “not mature” place. I survived GW1 and it’s terribleness with Prophecies. (Also can be called “Guild Wars: Sacrificial Lambs and Transparently Evil People”)

Iason Evan.3806:

Instead of discussing it can we just fix it?

Sure, they can “just fix it”. Just like Trait Masteries. Or the Candy Corn overstock from ’12 to ’13. Or Borderlands Bloodlust. Or Tequatl.

There are places I used to like to go to just kill enemies because I could get tier 6 mats and those enemies do not drop items like before(trolls in Frostgorge, Plinx mobs, Grawl in Frostgorge). I understand why a lot of those mobs item drops were toned down 2 years ago(bots) but the bot issues are way less pronounced now and yet the drop rate has not been reset. Again, not addressed when it’s in the players advantage for such things to get fixed. At least that is what it feel like.

Well, I suspect if it was reset, the problems would come back slowly until it needed to be dealt with again. See, when there’s a “need” for people to farm something, they figure out how to do it.

One area which I used to hang out in a lot and just work on is still active and pretty nice . . . no I’m not saying where.

Honestly, my problem with loot nowadays is having not much interesting to do with 90% of it other than feed it into a salvage kit. Or sell it for a pittance to a merchant.

Interestingly enough, doing the World Summit instance now. It’s interesting watching Canach casually find the one thing which makes Countess Anise lose her veneer of civility for a second, and leverage that into a more honest conversation.

. . . though it makes me wonder a lot about why Anise responded with such venom.

MikaHR.1978:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

yawn

I think it was Vayne that compared BLCs to baseball cards? I personally feel it’s an apt comparison and the same general premise. If BLCs are gambling, then by all definitions, so is purchasing a magic the gathering booster pack. Really, if you look at it, it really is the same thing. You invest a token amount of money in the hopes of getting something good in return. The only difference between a black lion ticket and a valuable baseball card or mtg card is the real world value. You can sell the cards, you can’t (theoretically) sell that black lion ticket for real world money.

In my country TCGs are listed in same category as casino games and lottery: luck based games. And as such had same tax attached.

So yeah, you could earn decent student pocket money for selling those

And yes, its gambling, dont try to passit as something else, using loopholes is using loopholes.

On account of Anet…well…everybody is doing it so i dont see a problem with it. It would be different if there was some prederence or such.

You just brought my brain to a screeching halt since that puts MTG under “gambling”. When it’s really more about playing the primary and secondary markets wisely – buy a set amount of a new set, then use THAT to trade-bait your way to what you want or buy single cards off secondary sellers.

I just generally answer “it can be” and leave it at that. I’ve said the same things about other games I personally would never touch but still seem like they might possibly be fun.

Like Battletoads.