Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Sorry Tobias, I’m not arguing semantics at all. I said Anet said something which I know for a fact they said. That’s not a semantic argument. I simply won’t trawl through dozens of four year old videos to find the proof.

But that’s not a semantic argument. Anet did use the Shadow Behemoth as a specific example of what they meant when they were talking about not grinding to get to the fun stuff. They said you get the fun stuff throughout the game. It’s not like other games where you have to grind to level before you get to the fun stuff.

I’m sure I’m not the only guy who remembers, but how is that a semantic argument. Test is claiming it never happened. He’s wrong.

Oh, Vayne, my friend . . . there’s not the semantics being argued. And you’re losing yourself in the inconsequential bits of the argument by being just constantly distracted by remembering the Manifesto and other interviews and all that. They’re not important at all.

No, the heart of the matter is the semantics around the topic of “grind”. See, that’s where all the argument is springing from. Some people feel there is grind which is unavoidable, and some others . . . like myself . . . feel the grind exists but is unimportant to the game – a postscript, something to do while waiting for something else to do.

(Why else does Fractals exist other than sheer busywork?)

Whatever the Manifesto said is irrelevant. Even Colin, straight up, admitted there was a problem with how to acquire Ascended Gear. But also that he felt it didn’t betray the design ideals they developed under. I sort of agree. It’s grindy as Grenth’s molars. It’s also entirely unnecessary to see every aspect of the game.

But what I think doesn’t really matter either. It’s a distracting set of thoughts which basically draws away from the heart of the issue.

People feel there is grind. Others disagree on whether it matters, and thus it descends into semantics with tons of side-shows.

Honestly? I just want people to stop trying to make me ashamed for liking the game.

Wallet, Wardrobe, Story Journal.

Three things without even looking. Also worth noting, the total lack of LS2 having a meta achievement for goodies this time around. (This is a plus in my book.)

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Guys honest question: why are we still replying to Vayne?

This is a good question. Considering neither of you or Vayne have decided to stake out a common ground to talk about, there’s not really a discussion here. Just a war over semantics.

(Which is incredibly amusing to watch. I made caramel popcorn just to eat while I watch.)

I think I stopped expecting awesome stories in my games somewhere around both Xenosaga and Metal Gear Solid 2. I’m really happy when they show up (FF12, Digital Devil Saga, SMT: Nocturne) but it stopped being something I want to force them to keep striving for.

Because it’s so . . . so. . . painful when they reach for it and fumble at the beginning (FF10) or the end (Destiny).

Colin’s probably reading this and going “what the heck?”.

Honestly, about time I finished taking a break. Dragons of Tarkir beckons . . . at least that has actual, well, dragons instead of punching bags to shoot with cannonfire.

Vayne.8563:

What do you think that sentence means and how can you possibly reconcile it to mean that it’s about gear?

Because, blindly, Colin posted into this thread addressing the Ascended Gear situation as grindy.

So it stopped becoming about anything in the Manifesto since now the goalposts got moved away from there, into Colin’s post here.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

And don’t say “but you don’t HAVE to do fractals” because that would be a BS argument. No grind means no grind, it shouldn’t mean “no grind in most cases except for some parts of the game”.

. . . yeah, chief, there’s not going to be a game which has “no grind” by that staple. Though by that interesting argument you made up, Morrowind wouldn’t be grindy since you can beat it in . . . less than 15 minutes I think someone got it to.

Bernie.8674:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lheimroo.2947:

Bernie.8674:

And you effectively clarified this argument by describing a two hour grind. That’s not so convincing.

Tobias’s routine wouldn’t count as a grind by the definition Anet has given in this thread.

It would count as one for you, and for me, and seemingly for many others. Which is why Anet’s definition is so troubling; it’s quite self-servingly limited.

I don’t count it as a grind, mostly because I could be doing anything else if I decided not to earn Gold that day. I often do, because I’ll drop into WvW for two or three hours. I’m not doing it now because . . . well, SBI. Nuff said. Silverwastes pretty closely scratches that itch for WvW, though I only sit through maybe one and a half cycles.

I barely care if you consider it a grind or not, really. It was asked how I do it and I answered. It’s a routine I use because it’s what I find interesting enough to do instead of going “meh, log in – log out, call it a night”.

Except that the question was asked in response to this statement that you made:

Is gold a grind? I find it hard to say yes when two hours a day will net me roughly 5g without sticking my head into dungeons. If I did dungeons or spent longer, probably could up that to 20g. And I’ll lay out exactly how I do the 5g to anyone who asks – it’s not a secret, it’s not hard, it’s just working with what you have to do.

So I thought I was implied that I was asking how you made 5g every night without grinding. Your response was that you grind for two hours a night. You went on to clarify that you didn’t consider it a grind because if you didn’t want to earn gold you could do other stuff without grinding. I don’t understand your contribution to this discussion. We were complaining that the sheer amount of gold required to craft end game gear requires serious grinding, and you’re trying to dismiss these complaints on the grounds that you don’t need to grind unless you want gold. It’s like we’re talking in circles here.

Hey, it’s a necroreply. I haven’t had one of those in a while.

And yes, we are talking in circles, because you don’t need to do absurd amounts of grind to craft Exotics. I literally had all I needed for my weapon-making skills to drop Exotics of my choice by the time I hit 80 and 100% World Completion. That was, for the record, three months after release and I made myself a Pearl Stinger. (And immediately transmuted the Ilthas Longbow skin on top of it.)

We’re talking in circles because I listed what I did, and you said “oh, so you grind”. I could be doing any of the other stuff and still be making positive money ever since repair costs got dropped. You’re just wanting to be pedantic about what “grind” means.

You know how much gold you actually need to outfit in serviceable Exotics? I’m betting it’s less than you think. Because you don’t need to bleed out your wallet for Berserker’s gear (Soldier’s does fine), nor Precursors, nor dolyak loads of components for Ascended.

(And don’t tell me Ascended is necessary, I ran around for 6 months after it was introduced with none and still did fantastic. Yes, even in WvW, though that was marred by plenty of dirt naps . . . which was the norm before Ascended anyway. I even had mostly green accessories on.)

Anyway. If people want to continue talking about the grind as if it’s a problem, that’s fine. Every time I want to really experience a grind I’ll watch my brother playing Destiny running Crota for no reasons at all other than “still need to try to get that last raid item”. Or sitting there frowning at my Bravely Default save and auto-running combat trying to get strong enough to not get DeRosa smacking me around.

Or just booting up Pokemon and going “nope” before returning to something more fun.

Gregori.5807:

The question is, if it is bad or buggy, will they fix it or will we have another April 15th fiasco, complete with 11 months (or longer) of ignore interspersed with vapid promises?

Well, having polled the fine residents of Lion’s Arch, I can assure you it will be bad, it will be buggy, and the game will die rapidly so that it will be dead before the end of 2015.

Guhracie.3419:

They aren’t helpless victims. That is the wrong picture to be painting.

Of course they’re not helpless victims. They certainly can put an end to it, but doing that is a worse solution than just sucking it up and being quiet. I don’t need to imagine what would happen if they decided to just “fire back” with mass deletion of posts and infractions, with up to and including forum privileges limited/revoked.

Mostly because I watched it happen before when a sysop decided he was tired of being verbally slapped continuously and said “you know what, find somewhere else to host your game, I’m not paying for the servers anymore”. It was not pretty.

Personally, I’m wondering why they haven’t been speaking up about the repeated bumping done to this topic with nothing more than snide sniping at them just on topic enough to not be off topic. This thread had little purpose to existing, and somewhere around page 50 the other one didn’t have one either other than being an echo chamber about how the revamp sucked and needed to be fixed. An echo which kept on right over the “we’re going to change it, we’re working on something”.

I rather have faith they won’t screw it up. Why so much faith, you might ask? Well, because if they do screw it up again . . .

Do you really think the game will last for a fourth birthday?

Vayne.8563:

Serdoc.7261:

This is normal. Look at WoW, the new levels and maps are only available if u buy the expansion.

And wow charges a subscription on top of that and has a cash shop.

And tie-in card game, too. I’ve been curious about it but as I’m already hopelessly enslaved to MTG . . . when it comes to my budget, there can only be one (CCG). I’ll take the one which has a nice solid foundation of mechanics and keeps proving it has legs, thanks

Galphar.3901:

Sister Swiftspell.1869:

@Tobias & Siphaed

That’s interesting, because I would of thought the ones wearing the tinfoil hats and spouting conspiracies are the ones who refuse to recognize that modern day industries (whether corporate or political) are constantly using hype, lies (wordplay/double speak), secrecy, manipulation (hype, repetition) and delusion (you need this product to feel happy, accepted and secure in life) to sell their products.

Unfortunately this is just modern day practices and how the world works, so it’s practically a given that it will be here too in one way or another…

Actually sounds more like politicians to me than CEO/COO. But then again it’s the billionaires in the corporate world who control the politicians now so guess you are right.

Sadly, I cannot quite agree. My experiences? It’s the advertising wing of companies who pull that shady stuff more often than the people at the top. And the more you have a worthwhile, solid product/service . . . the less you need to resort to it.

That’s why there’s a list of free-to-play, web-based games which have advertisements which have nothing in them about the game, nothing in the ads resembling the game itself, and just try to reel you in to take a look at them. It’s also probably why WoW now advertises with pre-rendered cutscenes rather than “isn’t it cool to be playing the game with all these people?” like it used to be.

I drop to my knees and thank the Six ArenaNet’s ads gave up trying to play “the ad game”. Those were painful.

Anyway, that tinfoil, I’d like some. It might help my friend’s Comcast run better. Wait, who am I kidding, that won’t happen. Forget about it.

phys.7689:

You are more caught up in how you feel about criticism than the criticism itself, that is a fatal flaw that most creators have to overcome, or suffer the consequences. There really isnt much difference between your two scenarios, qualitatively its just a matter of tact.

I’ll cop to that, mostly because I do create and did have a major problem over feedback when I was doing that creation. (Mostly because when I did, I would get feedback which was usually “it’s good/great” or “it’s not good/sucks” but nothing elaborating on why.)

Being tactful is overated (when it comes to solving problems)though. Being direct is actually the most useful. Being tactful is necessary, but ineffecient.
for example, the fact of the matter may be, that in order to really understand and solve the problem well, they in fact need to consult people fairly periodicly. But if you say it in a tactful way, it may not be clear that is exactly what has the most likely chance of getting a better result.

Eh, again, you very likely have a point. But there is a difference between brutal honesty and just being brutal for the sake of being brutal. And there’s also some value in tact . . . it usually forces you to slow down what you’re about to say and it gives your brain some time to actually examine it before you launch it forth into the air.

Iterative development means the strength of their development will be constantly refining their ideas based on feedback.

this means they need even more feedback than other development strategies.
the real problem is their development strategy is at odds with their communication policies.

And there’s real problem with feedback from a thread which turns into an echo chamber where “and they’re still not doing anything right” becomes what’s being echoed around. That’s not feedback, that’s just bullying a target which doesn’t fight back.

Like I said, there’s a growing sense on this topic . . . and others . . . about it not being about feedback or giving helpful insight and more about shooting down people who aren’t going to fight back. There’s not much point to going to bat into such an environment, no matter how much it’s supposed to matter when looked at empirically – the best thing to do is read it, comprehend, and not engage. Use your time elsewhere, because you’re not being paid to handle the forums. (That’s Ms. Gray’s paycheck.) You’re being paid to work out a fix to something you broke.

(Not that these are the first development team which should have known better before making the change. And this group of people had much more experience before making that error than ANet did doing theirs.)

Vayne.8563:

Eventually is the key word here. And you know, there are new Doc Savage books out. Just saying. (They’re quite awful though lol).

Is this like how about ten to twenty years ago there was new Johnny Quest?

Also, will note if you’re talking Silver Age comics about Robin? You’re not supposed to discuss the Silver Age It was, frankly, the goofiest time for comic books and continuity barely existed at all. Still terrible examples by which to base your writing unless it’s something like a newspaper comic (Blondie, Fox Trot, Garfield, Family Circle, Bloom County…).

Anyway, the funny thing is how you did have more to Kasmeer (the “bubbly blonde”) than Marjory (“tall dark and snarky”) through most of season 1 developing her. Season 2 had a small handful but instead of doing anything with the characters, it dealt a lot more with trying to move ahead and assuming the characters were fine and already handled enough.

. . . not a good assumption.

Ashen.2907:

iii) If the company releases something that it thinks is good, but which actively detracts from the game for me then it is not unreasonable for me to think that they need my input on what would be a positive change for me. What would be unreasonable would be to assume that the company, which has demonstrated that they do not understand what I want would somehow guess it without my input.

Yes but there’s a far step from “let me tell you about what I think is wrong” and “you need to consult with me constantly or else I’m going to assume you’ll mess it all up again”.

Like I said in my post, those three reasons are the ones which would make me decide to not post at all. The first one, naturally, being exactly why I couldn’t but the other two contributing to why I wouldn’t.

It’s not just this thread either. The whole forum/subreddit is basically sitting back waiting for someone with a red name who isn’t Gaile to pop up so they can begin shooting.

Snow.2048:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

If I were a dev, I would have stayed the heck away from the old thread too and only posted updates like what went on. There was no point to a dialogue when:

A – You can’t talk about anything in development, and your fixes are currently in development.

2 – A lot of the posts are convinced you broke it intentionally, or convinced you’re just plain incompetent.

iii – Few people involved think you’re capable of fixing it without their input, and will tell you how to do it. (Or you’re an idiot.)

A Company prevents communication, and yet they make threads to communicate.
I’ll give you this one as a reason not to post, but I don’t think its the players fault.
2 When responding, you can choose to ignore the conspiracy theorists or not waste too much time answering them. Not sure if this is an excuse not to talk at all.
iii The changes were made without prior input, and lead to the people here not liking the system. So it isn’t completely unexpected that the population here might think this way. If they didn’t have A blocking them, they could convince the reasonable players by presenting their ideas and supporting them.

There is no point in dialogue mainly because they arn’t allowed to have a dialogue.

Rather tangential to what I was trying to say, but valid anyway.

. . . and yes, I think (A) gets in the way of far far too much dialogue. But I understand why it’s in place.

Vayne.8563:

It’s like Doc Savages aids in Doc Savage (though you may have never read it). They’re not meant to be fully fleshed out main characters.

Your age is showing, Vayne. I think I only know of those books because they were packed away in the attic and I had to go through it once to prepare for moving.

Hell, Robin in Batman wasn’t exactly a greatly fleshed out character either. They’re side kicks.

Bad choice of example. Robin is a legacy character who has several different identities, and each person who had the name is/was different. Especially D. Grayson (it will censor the first name) . . . he had an arc, and development. J. Todd did as well. A little less certain about T. Drake.

Even Jimmy Olsen got to be fleshed out eventually, rather than just some semi-sidekick.

. . . no, you’re probably thinking more of Sheldon Cooper.

joneb.5679:

Boanoah I wouldn’t trust Colin or anyone representing any publicity or information about modern industry of any kind, whether video games, movies, technology. It has been proven time and again they will lie or use word play and things that were once promised will change and things denied are often proven to be true.

It wasn’t that long ago they denied there were plans for a paid for expansion etc though to be honest I dont think there were for a long time. This expnasion is really just content they were originally working in as LS and timed feature updates I believe.

Can I borrow some of that tinfoil? I’m cooking ribs and need something to cover them up.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

That would be a bed of their own making.

As others stated, they had a perfectly good thread to open an actual dialog with us and instead went deafeningly silent for months. It appears they are doing the same here.

I know that for me, buying HoT will depend on this in a major way.
Actually, keeping the game installed on my system will depend on this in a major way.

That makes me very sad, but its the truth. Its like they have a really large and gorgeous tower, but one small crack in the foundation can bring it tumbling down if its not handled well.

If I were a dev, I would have stayed the heck away from the old thread too and only posted updates like what went on. There was no point to a dialogue when:

A – You can’t talk about anything in development, and your fixes are currently in development.

2 – A lot of the posts are convinced you broke it intentionally, or convinced you’re just plain incompetent.

iii – Few people involved think you’re capable of fixing it without their input, and will tell you how to do it. (Or you’re an idiot.)

Behellagh.1468:

But it’s a discussion among ourselves while they are watching behind the proverbial one way mirror. Nowhere did they say it was a discussion with them.

Even when they’re around, it’s less a discussion and more target practice against the devs anyway

Yargesh.4965:

Don’t recall seeing too many half naked males or females here in Scandinavia during the winter outdoors either, that black dead tissue look from frostbite seems to not be a thing in fantasy games either.

Thank god. . .

Fext.3614:

Looks like I simply MUST be a homopohobe because I dare to criticise our angelic lesbian duo. It’s unescapable. The more I deny it in anticipation of getting the homophobic label, the more sticky the label becomes… reminds me Catch 22.

. . . methinks you doth protest too much.

I also think you’re completely reading too much into what I said. I didn’t call you such, and I didn’t push it on you. I commented what it looks like and commenting you keep digging it deeper.

Your choice of wording, continuing to use the words “lesbian duo” when you don’t need to, pretty much is why I keep pointing it out. You don’t need to use those labels, but you do.

That’s why it comes off as you having some other axe to grind. And the fact you aren’t bothering to come up with a good set of reasons they’re unlikable . . . and just keep repeating you don’t like them . . . and that they’re lesbians. . .

You’re not looking good. Stop, take a breath, and figure out something with substance.

Fext.3614:

I don’t say I hated Elminster. I did not give a skritt about him because it was easy to avoid him – and this is my point. But here I want to play the game, which I like, but I just MUST interact with the NPCs which I hate if I do not want to miss significant parts of the game.

I didn’t say you did either. Read more carefully. I’ve had at least two experiences where the FR NPCs couldn’t be avoided and you had to work through them.

Concerning the “poorly written” matter: you obviously mix the story and the narration.

Do you want to admit to mixing up the story and characters yourself? Kasmeer Meade and Marjory Delaqua are not the story, they are characters. They, themselves, aren’t poorly written – but they are poorly handled.

(Also, your comparison of the Middle Earth properties shows you probably didn’t understand them or the characters there, either.)

I think that the plot behind the LS2 is OK. The lesbian duo is OK. The selection of the other characters is pretty standard for the game, mostly dominant females with one male, who is properly harmless and tamed. But I can live with that, since I lived with that during the whole Crest of Stars series and I was having fun.

This is what I was talking about earlier – you’re not coming off as having a problem with these two characters because of how they’re written or how the story works. You’re coming off as having a problem with them because of what you protest you’re not. The way you’re writing your pleas about what you really have a problem with just seem to highlight your thought patterns and show where your problem really lies.

Whether or not it’s true is another matter.

What I can’t stand is the way the characters speak and behave. And it is pretty legal by all standards to say that, since I do not have to go through the every line they say, proving what was wrong. Most of the dialogues, cinematics and cutscenes around A-iconics and B-iconics is just a royal pain in the kitten for me and not only for me. Because of the level of cliche and flatness of the characters. You can easily guess what they do and say in advance.

. . . did you play Guild Wars 1? Because it was just plain worse there as far as how it was predictable and forced you to deal with painful acting. If you think Marjory and Kasmeer are terrible and need to be removed, you should go back and introduce yourself to Prince Rurik. Or Master Togo. Or Tahlkora.

It is not the media or mature rating. It’s just the writing. Nothing else. If a routine Harlequin writer makes a book on Midsummer Night’s Dream plot, it will be as kittenty as the rest of the Harlequin books, maybe even worse.

Yeah, Shakespeare’s play writing wasn’t all that untouchably awesome, my friend. It had loads of problems with characterization and plot, and was at the time a good example of popcorn theatre. (That is to say, the Michael Bay of Victorian theatre. Really good at being entertaining, not known so much for highbrow and being thought-provoking.) Why it got to the level of sacred cow these days is beyond me.

. . . his sonnets, on the other hand . . . different tale.

BrunoBRS.5178:

#WyvernGate

#NotMySwordAnd Shield

. . . sorry, I had to. Incidentally, still think that is one of the cooler looking weapons I owned from Freedom Unite.

Lifestealer.4910:

There are still people that gears up on rares!?!

Yeah, guess what? PvE it’s not that much make-or-break.

Exotics are decent drop but guess what?.. There is a average of 1-2 exotic drop per MONTH, that is pathetic.

Yup, we’re done talking here. Your expectations are outside the normal.

Etienne.3049:

Also, related but somewhat off-topic, there doesn’t seem to be any consistency to whether it’s -son and -dottir or -sson and -sdottir.

Probably about how it sounds when spoken.

Fext.3614:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . it’s not like the Elminster thing, because that was highly dependent on how your resident GM handled that. Which is often poorly. D&D was one of those times where you were not limited by what the writers were putting in place, you could do what you wanted.

Still, people hated him with passion. I never dmastered anything set in FR, and neither played iirc. Yet I somehow KNEW Elminster sucks. Might be the same mechanism behind him being so annoying – that he was a personal pet of one of the writers…

We’re gonna have a problem.

See, let’s agree people hated him with a passion. People hate Drizzt Do’Urden with a passion. People hate Bilbo Baggins with a passion. The problem is always cited as the same: “poorly written”, without further explanation. That’s a problem because it means there’s no way to actually refute the assertion, since there’s no substance to the complaint.

Saying “Bilbo Baggins is poorly written, because he spends most of the book doing nothing but making trouble for the rest of the dwarves until suddenly in the third act he starts becoming useful to the point of making the dwarves look useless” is something which can be argued against, or discussed.

Saying “Kasmeer and Marjory are poorly written and should exit stage left out of the story ASAP” . . . doesn’t give anything to discuss.

(And by the way, Ed Greenwood personal pet NPC was not Elminster. It was Mirt the Moneylender.)

Fext.3614:

Yeah. You’ve got a very valid point here.
Maybe this anti B-iconics crusade is just some way of me trying to find out why every encounter with the “good guys” NPCs in the game, be it with A-iconics or B-iconics makes me mad.
I’m sure it is not the gay thing. And by “sure” I mean sure… for reasons of my own. And after all, Logan & Jennah are as straight as you like and I hate them all the same. I just had a chance to stay away from them recently.
Maybe it is just something like the Elminster syndrome of old AD&D times.

Well enough of it… just give me the skip button, devs, and I’m OK.

. . . it’s not like the Elminster thing, because that was highly dependent on how your resident GM handled that. Which is often poorly. D&D was one of those times where you were not limited by what the writers were putting in place, you could do what you wanted.

It’s just that a lot of GMs for Forgotten Realms did not understand how to use those high-power NPCs.

serenke.4806:

I’ve noticed this pattern that people hate on human NPCs because it’s so trendy and when you ask what the problem is, they bring up some whacky explanations about bad writing and whatnot.

They don’t get enough focus to be fleshed out but honestly, i bet 9 out of 10 players never read the few lines in the story anyway. I kept hearing about “oh my, wall of text BORING” during missions where you had to read 3-4 lines of text… Most just click on the cute little icon to go through dialogues as fast as possible.

It’s not like fleshing them out is hard work, exactly.

. . . but it does run into eating up development time, and that’s a problem when you’re trying to meet that two week cycle.

Aedelric.1287:

BilboBaggins.5620:

Joe I love your stuff but I have to say I think you go way too easy on ArenaNet! Compare this interview to your Paradox interview and I think you’ll see what I mean.

He was easier on Arena Net, but to Arena Nets credit they have never released an completely broken game.

Depends on who you ask.

They did launch with a completely borked Black Lion though.

The crafting system in that game was both the best and worst part of the gear.

Too bad this is veering off topic.

By the way, I’m still watching some of the clips and seeing stills and going: “Rathian and Rathalos are somewhere laughing at this noob.”

Fext.3614:

you put a lesbian label on any crappy writing, and suddenly it becames sacred and out of reach of any criticism, and everybody who dares to criticise is immediatelly called a bigot and homophobe.

Well, it works for a lot of things. All they have to do is say “you’re not the target audience” and suddenly you can’t bash on Twilight, or Hunger Games, or My Little Pony. Or Fifty Shades of Grey.

Now, let’s be honest, you’re coming off now for having other reasons than bad writing of wanting them gone. Especially with some of the tone of later replies, you’re coming off as though you want them gone because you feel offended by them.

I feel offended by most of the asura. I especially am offended by Zojja, since she talks down to just about everyone. And everyone seems to like her for being voiced by Felicia Day. (Me? I don’t care, I find Ms. Day unimpressive after watching her on Tabletop.)

Guess what? I’m not campaigning several times to try to get the asura removed. I may make sarcastic and silly comments about it but I don’t have nearly the amount of vitriol you’re demonstrating for two characters who . . . while not being amazing or completely interesting . . . aren’t nearly the heart of the problem with the characterization.

I’ve said it before, the problem with the story is how it’s paced, and how it’s presented. It’s lacking because there’s not enough lateral development to these characters we could be seeing. Destiny’s Edge had some of that going on in the early personal story, which is the only reason I’m not on the “I Hate Logan Fanclub” mailing list. (He is hilarious at times, and shows some sense when not talking about Rytlock. And he gets over his crap after Citadel of Flame.)

The B-iconics? They’re just not given enough work outside of Rox and Braham. Marjory and Kasmeer both suffer there from being out of focus for the larger part of Season 1.

That’s the problem with these characters. Much the same as the biggest problem with Trahearne . . . is the voice director who gave a pass to that wooden-sounding line read. But his second biggest problem was not existing for 4 of 5 races until he suddenly shows up on Claw Island.

maddoctor.2738:

Well I don’t see how we can go from the Maguuma to the Crystal Desert or the Far Shiverpeaks. Will we get some kind of teleportation option or something?

If only there was a series of points along the way to facilitate such travel. Alas, there is not and we cannot go there unless we go through the jungle. No, no, do not try to tell me to turn around and walk the other way, for that is madness! No, first we must travel through the jungle.

(No, it didn’t make any gods-be-daft sense in Prophecies when they did it either.)

Oh, all this talk of new systems to build off from, a foundation of things which change how progression works and they wouldn’t dare insert it into the vanilla game. No, there’s no way for them to ensure it could be done without actually having the whole Heart of Thorns. There’s no way they could patch it into the vanilla game over what already exists, don’t be silly . . .

(Even though we know they did similar things in GW1’s era.)

Surely, they shall only allow people to actually play the game who bought the Expansion, and us poor feeble paupers who don’t buy it shall be forever made to sit at the kiddie table and gawk at all the cool stuff and never buy it because it is only available on release and certainly won’t be available if you save up whatever the cost is out of paychecks or allowance.

vespers.1759:

I’m seriously wondering if you’re mentally kittened or attempting to troll because i don’t see how anyone with average intelligence could respond like this. My point is that we should take everything they say with a grain of salt because we’ve been burned so many times in the past.

I think it’s the first one, really. I had to put my safety helmet on to type, you know.

Besides, you missed what I was saying. You shouldn’t be surprised some people take them at face value. They just happen to not be quite as strongly cynical, or suspend it for developers they actually like.

Anything else you want to read into it? That’s on you.

Astralporing.1957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Astralporing.1957:

If we started removing NPCs some people dislike, we might someday wake up in a NPC-less game.

I’m actually almost okay with that. Then make it so players need to create everything from crafting materials, and the only source of them are players who throw on a vendor flag in cities within designated posting areas.

Ah, but then we’d go into Phase Two of the Great Plan: removing the players someone dislikes.

They already removed me

RyuDragnier.9476:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Still not the easiest wyvern fight I’ve seen

The nightmares of that game. It was Dark Souls before Dark Souls. The bonecrushing difficulty of Vagrant Story is legendary, where you had to master all systems to have a good chance of survival…save for the final boss, Mr. “I’ll only take 1 damage from everything”. <_<

I don’t know what you were doing, I was doing at least double digits reliably. The problem was how slim a timing window you had while you could actually swing versus how often he would attack.

Oh, and how to dispose of Risk before “Bloody Sin” launched.

vespers.1759:

Actions speak louder than words and i’m shocked people like you still eat up everything they say.

You shouldn’t be, honestly. Mostly because if the reaction is to not trust anything they say, then there’s no point in pressing them for any communication . . . because it’s obviously smokescreen and/or untrue.

. . . really I wonder at the logic on display sometimes when things like this happen.

Lifestealer.4910:

Anet doing the same thing with gw2, or something similar actually. Released a finished game, break it midway by completely butchering things like the trait system and then offering the fix in the expansion. Genius

They did it before with heroes as the “fix” for how bone-dead stupid henchmen were. I’m surprised you forgot about that.

Lifestealer.4910:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

rapthorne.7345:

Unfortunately, ANet have seen fit to give us abysmally low rates for half decent drops.

I dunno, I tend to get Rares I can use fairly often.

Rares that get salvaged into mats are not “decent drops”

So define “decent drops” because I had enough Rares drop through World Boss tours (especially Teq) to kit my Warrior up when he hit 80 and before I could get Temple Armor.

Yes, that includes weapons. Three sets.

Define “decent drops”. If you decide to put it as “exotic or rares worth X gold”, you’ve lost me already in understanding how to use “decent” as a descriptor.

Fext.3614:

lordkrall.7241:

You clearly have no clue about Norn culture. Norn are not human. You can’t apply human values to them.

Every specimen which needs to protect and raise their young, who cannot care about themselves until some age, works the same way: either you protect and love your children, or the children (and your genes) die. Therefore, every culture wich is OK from evolutional point of view values highly these parents who care for their children.
Just face it, Eir is a selfish piece of crap. And Brahams dad is the true hero.

. . . sure, let’s go with that.

. . . weird name for the topic when that’s not the actual topic of the discussion, from what I can tell.

Also, really curious as to how you got that from what I watched . . . so far as I can tell, the Living Story is now the parts in the Story Journal while the rest of the updates are divorced from that and happen separately. You can still get into the Silverwastes without needing “Point of No Return”.

Astralporing.1957:

If we started removing NPCs some people dislike, we might someday wake up in a NPC-less game.

I’m actually almost okay with that. Then make it so players need to create everything from crafting materials, and the only source of them are players who throw on a vendor flag in cities within designated posting areas.

Please remove Taimi from the game. I feel she is utterly annoying and adds nothing to the game or the story.

While we’re at it, please also remove Primordius from the game, or what little there is of him and his minions. It is a complete waste to have any mention of him at all when there has been almost no use of anything outside of what existed at launch.

And can you remove miniatures? They don’t do anything other than give me messages about how my miniature isn’t visible anymore due to high population levels.

rapthorne.7345:

Unfortunately, ANet have seen fit to give us abysmally low rates for half decent drops.

I dunno, I tend to get Rares I can use fairly often.

Still not the easiest wyvern fight I’ve seen

corrosivechains.5476:

In Disney’s Gargoyles, it was pronounced Wih-vern, not Why-vern, and like any educated and intelligent person in the world, I base all my pronunciations on Gargoyles, because Gargoyles was the greatest kitten ed cartoon ever.

I disagree.

“Batman: the Animated Series” is a nice hot contender for that, if we’re only counting western/NA cartoons.

. . . and not CGI, otherwise I have “Reboot” as another contender.

Lifestealer.4910:

Its quite funny and sad that people accept this type of reward/rng system in a b2p game. I have played f2p and even f2p/p2w games that are more rewarding than this game which is saying alot.

Of course I accept this type of reward system (RNG); I’ve been playing with it for 20+ years now. It’s a matter of realizing if you want it bad enough, then it’s time to start putting your time to work for you on it.

Is it pleasant? Not all the time, really.

Can it be done better? Yeah, probably.

Dragon Warrior 2 had a supremely useful item as a random drop, from a rare enemy group, which would run at the drop of a hat and possibly TPK if they all stuck and fought. It also had a slot machine for a 25% discount item, which could only be accessed by RNG blessing you when the shopkeeper decided to hand you a ticket.

Baldur’s Gate had a lot of the nice stuff be non-random. And attached to RNG in other terrible, terrible ways. (Instakill attacks randomly targeting among six party members, and if it’s the main character then game over.)

EverQuest was the king of wasting time, what with it’s two-tiered RNG approach to really useful loot (first you have to hope the placeholder doesn’t spawn this time, then you have to hope the loot you actually want drops).

It’s really bad in SquareEnix games, though Atlus manages to one-up them by a bonus boss which can only be beaten via having a tremendous amount of lucky reactions and timing. And a lot of grinding setup which means you have a chance. Oh, and Atlus’ early partner in crimes, Nippon Ichi? Even more hilariously terrifying RNG involved in its Disgaea family of games. Also much more hilariously incredible grind.

Guild Wars 1 pinned its “highest prestige” armor set on two different items which only dropped in a single area each with no crossover, and while you could buy them off a trader it required people to be selling them to the trader. Six years of playtime and not even 10% of the way to earning it. Oh, and the chance of getting a green-rarity miniature out of a birthday gift . . .

Yeah, I’m kind of used to the whole “RNG sucks” aspect. Jaded, if you might accept the term.

CureForLiving.5360:

And you’re rather condescending. See everyone is something, otherwise we’d be nothing. So everyone is something, except those who are nothing but they’re nothing so they’re not part of everyone so everyone is still something.

Nah, I’m nothing but gas and wind. Maybe a piece of bacon, in the middle.

Besides, the smiley was there because I was actually laughing as I wrote that. Because I’ve been around the block enough to know the complaints won’t stop. They’ll just change the tune slightly. Probably to how tough it is to acquire a Precursor through the new method.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Map size? evaded.
Guild halls? eeevaded
Raids, instanced challenging content? dodged
Zathain fight was cool? As long as smashing #2 button is your definition of end boss…

Sounded like he said “looks cool” to me, which was basically a PR admission of “yeah, we know”.

You’re too soft Joe. It’s not asking the right questions that matters, it’s getting the answers to those questions that does. A great review is when you do, most of the time against the initial intention of the person being interviewed. You didn’t bust Colin once on him evading the main question and starting up PR jibba-jabba.

Doing such things might be entertaining to cynical people who want to see points get scored on Colin or whomever they put in front of the mic, but it doesn’t exactly leave either the interviewee or other potential interviewees willing to cooperate. Especially if the idea of a good interview is to push someone when they are clearly not answering the questions. Pushing won’t get the answers. It’ll get a stonewall in return, and the more you do it, the more likely it is you will get more clipped, short, and chilly answers which give even less information than the ramblings we got now.

The meat of an interview such as this one is in two parts of the footage.

First, what they did elaborate on or reveal which is new. Some of this was new information, particularly about them wanting to roll some of these systems out into the old world as well. Colin talked a bit about some new (at least I don’t recall it talked about yet) aspects for WvW it sounds like with the elemental shrines and effects.

Secondly, the alternative way to get information is to note what things weren’t talked about and look for an absence of information. These are the things to keep note of for the next round of released information – if they’re not talking about it, one can infer it’s not ready yet to really be talked about. (As per the communication policy, they don’t talk about things “in development”.) If they didn’t talk about something other than to say “it’s being looked at”, then it’s time to make a list of that mentally and cross-check it against new data being released. The more cycles go on past the initial “no comment” type response . . . the more likely it is that item will not be in there.

Vayne.8563:

Anyway at least that complaint should vanish when the expansion comes out.

You’re adorably naive sometimes, Vayne

CureForLiving.5360:

Conncept.7638:

Finally, I was just wondering earlier today why they let those other youtubers and streamers post videos just made yesterday at the ANet offices and yet they hadn’t let you post yours made a week ago.

Everyone who was at the HoT preview were under embargo. That means that no one who was at the ANet offices a week ago was allowed to post videos videos before yesterday. Well videos about the game itself though.

Well I suppose they could have, but that’d be a really bad idea and would have to be spurred on by either overwhelming negative news or overwhelming desire to see what happens when you break a NDA.