Guild Wars 2

Bubi.7942:

Anyone else likes Lovecraft with his adorable Ancient Ones?

Fun fact, H.P. didn’t write a lot of the mythos usually associated with him. His friends wrote a lot of it and they had a sort of “shared fiction” they all understood and worked within a certain frame of reference.

“Ancient Ones”, I think, was an invention of one of such friends. I want to say it was August Derleth but it’s been years since I was big into reading the books for details. (I was running a tabletop session and really wanted to get the atmosphere right.)

Anyway, have we established yet both the notions of GW2’s Living Story not being ripped directly from Mass Effect, and Mass Effect not being the first to use this particular plot trope?

. . . I mean, if you want a softer target, go dig up Neverwinter Nights and its main antagonist Morag. Compare the idea of a scaly, cold-blooded race of ancient times being reunited with their “god” to rule the world through magic rocks . . .

Hard Mode? Okay, what would be the benefits of challenges like this other than to do them for bragging rights? Because if it’s nice enough, it’s doubtful you’ll see anyone doing anything but the challenges after a while. Especially if it’s items which can be traded on the Trading Post.

Zackie.8923:

i didn’t know i am screaming, how can you tell?

I read it in Samuel L’s voice. Don’t you? It makes everything about 20% cooler.

Zackie.8923:

Azhure.1857:

Zackie, you’re only proving him right. Please calm down.

Do you know how absurd you sound? i laughed

Yeah except I’m not the one screaming at someone who revised their opinion over this.

I might have made a huge mistake in actually giving the idea more thought than “Do I want Mounts? Yes/No”.

Zackie.8923:

so it’s ok for you to call other people’s analogies horrible?

my analogies are simple to show how unreasonable some people are

And yet, all you do is find new ways to just discard everything the other side says as being “overly selfish” while insisting what you want isn’t.

runeblade.7514:

This thread should get locked because you disagree with mounts. Any other thread should get locked because you disagree with those too.

Start reading back.

I don’t disagree with mounts existing at all. Stop painting me as being rabidly anti-mount or a hater or whatever label you want to lay on my feet.

I met some of the people discussing this halfway by going “you know what, I don’t see the harm in it being purely a cosmetic issue with no bonuses whatsoever” and all I see is people trying to heap more drama on the coals and poke people into personal attacks.

I don’t have a problem with mounts.

I think they have a lot of issues, some of which are technical, some of which may very well be a problem. I think most glaring of all the issues is the community and how they have a really strong feel against them being added. And how apparently, the nice devs of ArenaNet agree and would rather not add them.

I don’t agree with the concept the inclusion of mounts would be beneficial for the game, I only agree that in a certain example (“cosmetic item you can put on or put away with no actual benefit statistics or gameplay wise”) . . . it couldn’t necessarily hurt.

And I don’t want the thread locked because people don’t agree with me. I want it locked because it’s descending into the same people volleying the same generalizations at anyone who steps into the topic and there’s no shortage of people on both sides more than willing to drive this to “direct to trashcan”-ville just to get it off the forums.

In short – it should be locked because all rational discussion has been exhausted. As is demonstrated by you doing nothing but parroting my post back as a personal attack.

Zackie.8923:

yea sounds like selfish people. like vegans saying all meat production should stop

At what point, exactly, are you going to stop stirring up drama for the sole purpose of trying to make the “other side” look unreasonable because you riled them up with horrible analogies and oversimplifications?

This thread should get locked, like all the others, because even with people trying to discuss this maturely things like this keep hitting, repeatedly, by the same people over and over.

I still love how everyone’s talking on the one side about how intolerant the “haters” are when the “pro mount” posts recently have been even worse than they claim others are.

I don’t hate the concept, I hate how it’s either taboo to be for it or against it fully one way or the other and nowhere in between. I hate how any objections are brushed aside with “oh if they really wanted they could solve it” while ignoring a more blatant counterpoint:

If they really wanted to add mounts, they’d have made it in with Lost Shores.

Vayne.8563:

See this is where we disagree. I think Guild Wars 2 gives players more to do than most other MMOs that I’ve played. I guess it depends on what you like to do.

I like to smear all the excess butter from the Trading Post over the nearest asura, have a mesmer moa-form them, and chase them with the torch on shouting “I feel like chicken tonight”.

Alas, the game won’t let me do this. But at least they let some enlightened soul invent Asuraball.

Azhure.1857:

Its not just the Mount argument, that happens in most debates. You’re not reasonable or understanding unless you agree with me and support my opinion, don’t you know?

Oh I know. This is why I’m part of Team “Who-Gives-A-Skritt” most times . . .

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I see there is no way to reason with the mount-haters… a sad thing.

You can reason with me, and I in fact did step back from my position of “no, never” to “meh, cosmetic only with no effects” after really re-examining the whole thing and realizing people want it that badly.

Now, though, you people are making me want to go hardline back because I just cannot win unless I collapse entirely and go “yes, mounts, woohoo, gimme shinies”.

Finale.5281:

The playerbase more or less rejected the vision (and felt that many more important concerns had been set aside during the push for the new map) and now EotM is a farm train zone.

Yes, but meanwhile I don’t actually care as my server doesn’t have insane queue times for WvW . . . which was what started that whole path towards that anyway as a means to let them do stuff like WvW while waiting for the real WvW instead of just waiting on the queue for hours.

And overall, I never can get anything done in EotM because “everyone knows it’s just about farm”. It’s worse than the karma trains rampant in WvW going “defend? Pshhh, why? We’ll just train around later and take it back”.

Xillllix.3485:

This “season 2” lacks WvW content to go with it.

Doesn’t the WvW community get upset when it gets tinkered with and expanded on? I recall hearing from some people how Edge of the Mists was an attempt to “kill” traditional WvW.

They are changed. Take your soulbound ones to the Black Lion people, should be able to get them swapped.

Erukk.1408:

Nat.4029:

If Arenanet wants to try and tell a story as well as Bioware has in the past then by all means…. Proceed.

You can’t say stuff like that when “The Ending” and Dragon Age 2 are still fresh in our minds.

Or not even The Ending but Kai Leng . . .

Tman.6349:

How bout they just make EVERY single drop in the game an Ascended chest or a completed Legendary….that would be real fun wouldn’kitten We could go from ‘free to play’ to “I feel free to quit this game at any given moment”! While we’re at it, let’s appease the PHIWs and make Nomad’s gear deal the same DPS as a full Berserker setup! Now we’re REALLY having fun aren’t we?

There’s a term for this, but it escapes me. You’re basically taking the initial argument and turning it into just being about the value of loot.

It’s not about the value of loot, it’s about feeling rewarded.

Vayne.8563:

You can tell the maturity of a society by the thickness of its lawbooks.

You can do it by counting rings, like with a tree. Only the rings you count are the number of links in chains binding down the “troublemakers”.

Zaxares.5419:

If the ghosts truly are put to rest (which I doubt they will), then I think a whole new bunch of land just landed on the list of things to be considered in the Charr-Human peace treaty.

I say we take all the spots in trebuchet distance of the Black Citadel. You know, to defend our new uneasy allies in Ascalon. Also, we can hire some asura to help improve things a bit.

Leo.2641:

Vayne.8563:

The chests and champion bags can have loot.

See the problem here is people. There are already events in the world that people yell at you for finishing because they want to farm the mobs that spawn. Because of those people, in many event, loot has been removed. It forces people to do the event to get the reward.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

So whatever happen to play it your way? No grind, and so on quote from arena.

Two answers:

The flippant: “Haven’t you heard? It’s been long since revealed that was a hoax to get your monays!”

The actual: “The problem with ‘play it your way’ is sometimes it comes into conflict with how someone else is playing it ‘their way’, and at some point there has to be a higher authority to figure out if one of those ways needs to be put down for the sake of the community or the game.”

Which is the big reason the Queensdale Train got axed like a lamed and mute norn – not that it was profitable (it wasn’t) and not that it was grindy. It’s because it was actively hurting the community by splitting it violently, without the train even needing to be anything more than . . . existing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Cassandra Nea.2507:

For me, that special sense of achievement in having discovered and made my way to a remote, hard-to-find location could be rewarded by something as simple as a “postcard” that you discover once you get there. Maybe a visually appealing picture of the area that you can then access from a tab in your personal story panel.
I doubt this would cause an uproar of protest from the people who don’t take pleasure in exploring just for the sake of it.

I’d appreciate such a reward as well. Maybe the players could have some sort of an atlas in which to keep track all of all their discoveries, with a small description along with the picture.

. . . a user-editable description, perhaps? Within text filter limits.

chemiclord.3978:

Yeah, but the power of nostalgia makes up for it.

Also the construction of it, where it was limited to X players or NPC assistants at a time, which gave it a factor which could make it fun. The speed of it, also, was good as it could take less than a week to blow through the four sets of missions and quests if you were focused.

That meant it was easy, almost the best way to enjoy the game, to replay it with a different character. GW2, not so much.

The heart of GW1 had to be the construction of how it worked and the approach to how you had to play it. Know as many skills as you want . . . you only got eight to toy with out in the field. Toy with your build all you like, but leave town and it’s locked. Know your role well, and you will excel.

GW2, though . . . it’s a different animal entirely. It’s closer to a traditional MMO, in that as long as you’re not in combat you can go swapping to your heart’s content rather than be locked as soon as you leave safe havens. But at the heart, it’s still really about the same thing.

“I’m going to have fun with some people I just jumped into things with. Maybe we’ll get some cool loot this time, maybe not. Hopefully it’ll be fun.”

Anything else is just window dressing.

So, on the approaching chapter . . .

Do we still have to fight for it if the ghosts wind up put to rest?

That’s all there was for Guild Wars 1, really.

Aerin Dark Water.6283:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I assumed mine heard of it because of his connections to some people who have secrets to keep. Now, where did I leave those apples?

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Speaking of apples. I still miss Tibult. T.T

I still do.

I mean, he’s dead and not moving. Maybe I need to stop drinking the Elonian Wine.

Nat.4029:

If Arenanet wants to try and tell a story as well as Bioware has in the past then by all means…. Proceed.

I am not sure I count Mass Effect as an example of Bioware’s better storytelling. So far, GW2’s story . . . as uneven as it is, has been about as I’ve witnessed the ME story been – really good with smaller character spots, overall it winds up lackluster and only “serviceable”.

Pretty much sums up how I felt about GW1’s story too.

. . . this is not the best game in the world, this is just a tribute.

Sorry, I could not resist.

It only feels like “Zero Reward”. But then again, that always rests on what reward you’re after.

Me? An hour of having a chance to forget about my life and what’s going on around me in the real world? All the reward I really need.

Lord Krilik.3692:

I find it odd that people even consider debating the “tropes” when the OP clearly hasn’t researched far enough to realise that Arenanet began this dragon story before Mass Effect 1 even released…

That’s because it’s older than Mass Effect, anyway.

“…although Waller did say that the writing could have better explained how the player character came by that knowledge.”

No, really?

/sarcasm

I defend a lot of lore things out of these two games, this is not really one thing to “defend” so much as “sigh, shake head, and accept before moving forward”. I mean, the other option is to get upset and invent my own fiction about what the lore really is and how everything revealed would actually hint at the true story they can’t for some reason come out and say.

But having watched someone do that in another game, loudly and repeatedly enough to get it stitched into lore because it had been “known fact” for so long? Nope. Not appealing.

Elric.6971:

And Mass Effect was ripped from the Star Control games. Seriously, there’s even racial parallels.

And we are all happy campers. This topic makes me frumple.

Thuggernaut.1250:

ya’ll can argue about tropes archetypes and all that garbage to your hearts’ content. you can say Shakespeare or whoever you want did everything first for any kitten on earth anyway. watch the youtube video from Mass Effect, then go and play the Omadd scene again.

Nope. I watched both enough times thanks to Spoiler Warning for one, and “The Great Alchemy and Moose” for the other.

You can argue all you want, I’ll just sigh and start pulling out plots from books which predate all this junk. We can start with “Memory Sorrow and Thorn” if you like, and how there are dream images a fair bit close to how Scarlet’s vision was described the first time around . . . a great pale tree and everything.

also, someone above mentioned Harbinger, now that would be straight cash. we could actually get a real villain into instead of these mindless dragon zombies. how about a dragon/Harbinger assumes direct control and taunts the kitten out of the boring useless destiny’s edge fools? and hopefully dispose of that obnoxious Taimi too.

So instead of mindless dragon zombies, mindless insectoid Collectors would be okay?

Please stop.

All it will do is make more complaint threads about how we’re being “forced” to do stuff people don’t want to do.

RoyHarmon.5398:

I’m… well, not quite surprised, but… bemused, maybe, that we haven’t seen any response yet on this. Maybe they’re busy working it into the next chapter. It could be like that scene with Yoda and Obi-Wan at the end of Episode III.

Is that the one with the really bad directing? “He . . . was killing younglings.”

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Still waiting for my chocobo with chocobo theme from FFXII.

Nah, Vama’ Allo Flanco

. . . I’m really digging my FFIX soundtrack lately.

FFXII was the first FF game for me, so strong emotions are tied to it. Good old days…

I totally get that sentiment. Mine was much, much earlier

By the way, if we get mounts I want a gold cho- . . . moa.

I don’t even want to see the Grand Canyon once, honestly. I’m more interested in things like . . . finding some small family-owned restaurant which cooks really good food at moderately sane prices. Or locating that one store where I know I can get what I want, when I want it.

Or getting lost hiking and finding an interesting cliff face which was almost all grey clay, from which I made a small paperweight. Or another time when I found several lengths of ironwood which I intended to make walking sticks out of, if I had a way to get them back home.

Or finding that Renaissance Festival which isn’t about just shopping.

But then, I’m really weird like that.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Still waiting for my chocobo with chocobo theme from FFXII.

Nah, Vama’ Allo Flanco

. . . I’m really digging my FFIX soundtrack lately.

Imperios.2543:

Now we only need to have a Harbinger-like dragon champion.

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL

I’d like to point out the only ones who had been seen to ride dolyaks had been dwarves. Ditto for a large ice drake (Dagnar Stonepate). Nicholas had Yakkington, but it always looked to me more like a pack saddle than a riding saddle.

Hmm, but then I wonder if the “scenery” can render properly . . .

Giotto.2607:

Idk, but I do feel people are more materialism, i never got a kick in gw1 in 5000 hours play, but gw2… maybe it’s just people are changing not the game.

Could be the average player isn’t as courteous, or could be that the loudest and most obnoxious ones stand out more since everyone else is pretty much quieter about it.

When I was playing GW1, people made money doing Droknar Runs from Beacon’s Perch and usually didn’t do that for free. Similarly, there were some dungeons in Eye of the North which were being speed run for a fee and UW groups which were similar . . .

And I see more people doing free stuff for GW2 like donating siege to commanders or offering gold for upgrades to WvW objectives during a tense week. There was a guild which invited me into it solely because they were doing bounties and would sign up random people for a time so they could experience it.

It’s the same as GW1 as far as the players’ good manners are concerned.

. . . so long as you do NOT bring up whether you supported Ellen or Evon.

BlueZone.4236:

They don’t need a paid expansion. They need scrap the 2 week cadence in favor of longer development time. Much longer. Like expansion development length.

I’m given to understand this latest LS bit had a bit further than a two week development cycle.

. . . but agreed in the sentiment of the quoted bit. They’d benefit from something more like a monthly cycle rather than bi-weekly. I think giving them a longer length of time (like an expansion-length window) would be giving them too much time and we’d see troubles like we did at release – stuff left unfinished because they tried to over-reach.

Boneheart.3561:

For some reason, you’re afraid to answer a question you clearly should’ve ignored rather than be conflictual.

Afraid? Not at all, aside from saying exactly what I did earlier – in my opinion, Scarlet Briar did not cross over into “Villain Sue” territory. While I have reasons to believe this, I have come to accept over almost six months of having the discussion about it . . . there’s just no way my reasons would convince anyone I’m anything other than a White Knight trying to whitewash over it.

I mean, for the sake of discussion, where should we begin? With her first appearance at the Queen’s Jubilee, where she showed up and disrupted things to take the Watchknights (derived from something she had created herself, the steam creatures)? Where there is an NPC who tosses off one bit about her training, but didn’t expand on it?

. . . where later, we found she pretty much just studied what she thought would be useful to her own ends and decided “nope, I’m done”. And wound up in the grip of the Inquest to keep pursuing these studies until she went into “the machine” and contact within there changed her over into Scarlet Briar from Ceara. Really, all her studies and honors, and what not? They were even weak back when that line was dropped from Vorpp, which contained “if you believe the stories”.

I’m going to make that point clear here: They called it rumor and hearsay, beyond “studying at all three colleges, and excelling”. They did not say she was the prettiest, specialest snowflake on Tyria and everyone loved her, and she crapped rainbow ponies whenever she walked.

Do we talk about her alliances, where she pretty much got factions to work together and then once done she held over them “serve me or else”? The alliances weren’t perfect, and weren’t mindless until it was evident she could very well pull off the “or else” bit. Then it was fight and maybe win, or refuse and certainly get executed.

Do we talk about how she’s “succeeded” even though part of that is because she was doing the same thing as before – getting what information/pieces she needed and leaving the rest to have whatever happen to it so long as her project continued? It’s not like she was infallible, unbeatable, and untouchable. She failed constantly, it’s just the failure didn’t matter against the goal which we discovered later – affecting the ley line under Lion’s Arch.

It’s not like she couldn’t be beaten by us in a straight fight. After the first time we got to her directly, she seemed careful to never put herself in that position again except in the Breachmaker. Always her flunkies, and she never came close to actually fighting us directly, because we really seemed capable of killing her.

. . . which, well, we did. The heroes won, and unlike most “victories over a Villain Sue” it didn’t require someone sacrificing themselves, it didn’t require Deus ex Machina, and it didn’t require the writer throwing the book down and going “fine, you win, she’s dead you monster”. All it took was getting into range of her again and just beating her down.

Honestly, I don’t think she met nearly the full criteria of “Villain Sue” as much as half the tabletop games I’ve played/watched . . . and even one of the authors I admired most wrote a “Villain Sue” character into his books. At least he had the grace to let the guy die with some dignity though . . .

Nerelith.7360:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

In general, I think most reasonable players aren’t opposed to mounts . . . as purely cosmetic things for fun.

basically you try to paint any person that objects to purely cosmetic mounts as unreasonable, even when they have reasons. Which is the definition of reasonable." has reasons"

You do not have to agree with their reasons, or even accept that their reasons are rational, for them to be reasonable. You do have to accept that they have reasons, even if you disagree with them.

Of course they’re unreasonable, they don’t agree with me. Isn’t that how the Internet works?

/sarcasm

By the way, I don’t mind the whole discussion about mounts as cosmetic items, because we’ve kind of had two already and not much having happened. And there’s been the tonics which haven’t caused terrible problems. If there had to be mounts added to the game? That’s where I’d want it to take the shape of.

Any other method of adding them feels like it’d be one step forward and two immediately back from what we have now, just because “it’d be cool”.

And this is me coming down from the hardline of “no, they’re completely unnecessary and wouldn’t be worth the effort to add to the game” which I held until I started really thinking about it.

I don’t think it’s quite that far.

It’s just “it’s over and let us never speak of it again”. You get over a lot of issues when you really like dealing with lore and there’s this one point which doesn’t make any sense. Like . . .

Why does Nicol Bolas get to be a Planeswalker and a godly-powerful being, and the other for Elder Dragons just get forgotten? He wasn’t even the best choice out of them for playability, back in the day.

Why is Bahamut in every Final Fantasy, but Tiamat only was in there once?

Why doesn’t the main character in Baldur’s Gate get stronger when other “lost relatives” die, but the one hunting you seems to keep growing stronger off that?

Why did crossing the streams work at all?

And most importantly . . .

Where the heck is Springfield?!

DarksunG.9537:

They haven’t had a cool character in this game since Tybalt & Forgal..

Forgal I can give you, grudgingly.

. . . but I really am not that fond of Tybalt as a character.

darkace.8925:

I was actually torn between a Charr Engineer focusing on turrets, mines, and other mechanical contraptions and an Asuran Engineer focusing on alchemy.

Make both, then when I perfect the asura-launching trebuchet we can have chemical weapons development.

darkace.8925:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I have yet to play a game which had underwater combat which actually worked out. Even the first Super Mario Bros. game was terrible at it. Everyone knows to start face-desking when they see the water-based dungeon in a Zelda game. And in every MMO I played where there was water involved there was usually some component of “get the fight out of the water” to most combat.

Bubble Man is disappointed to hear that.

Sorry, Mega Man 2? Nah, it wasn’t all that good as underwater. It was just control adjustments rather than, eh . . . actually different.

I did say “topics” not “original posts” for that very reason, actually

It gets bogged down quite a bit, and the dissenting opinions get loud and messy. In general, I think most reasonable players aren’t opposed to mounts . . . as purely cosmetic things for fun.

I have yet to play a game which had underwater combat which actually worked out. Even the first Super Mario Bros. game was terrible at it. Everyone knows to start face-desking when they see the water-based dungeon in a Zelda game. And in every MMO I played where there was water involved there was usually some component of “get the fight out of the water” to most combat.

The only worse example is space combat, where the only game I played which did it well enough to engross me forgot about inertia. The game which didn’t forget that was relatively tough to take advantage of that, despite it being potentially really effective to the AI.