Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

It’s amazing how many people can quote a single line of the manifesto while ignoring an entire blog post.

Not really, if more people saw the first than the latter.

Vayne.8563:

Anyone who doesn’t know that MMOs change during development shouldn’t be playing MMOs.

Careful with that, friend, not everyone who plays MMOs are completely reasonable and logical adults. Some are just too young to really grasp how things happen and games have things just . . . not manage to make it.

cheshirefox.7026:

they recently admitted that scarlet was good story with poor implementation
the next few updates are supposed to recap and conclude in a manner that whatever happens shouldn’t feel ridiculous

It’s going to feel like it was crammed into the end much harder than the last third of Prophecies was crammed to make a story fit about the White Mantle and their Unseen Masters being a threat to all of Tyria.

mesme.5028:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

mesme.5028:

You could be right, but id like to think they are professionals who made decisions on how the game would be put out rather than blind panic, and it would be nice to know how they arrived at these decisions.

“Blind panic” isn’t quite it.

I always got the impression with this game that they had made the Manifesto, got to work on the game, and discovered “well this is harder than we thought” and then said “start prioritizing what we can actually get done”.

Yes, these people are professionals. So were the people who made Daikatana way back in the age of ancient ones, speaking of missing what you were aiming for. Just a little.

At least we agree somewhat the manifesto doesn’t really hold up.

. . . I never expected it to adhere to 100% of the ideas being submitted and talked about that early on. Or any of the fan conclusions reached by these things.

Just to pick one lovely detail everyone was talking about as a “filthy lie”? The combat was definitely going to involve swinging a sword more than once. Just a hunch.

Majic.4801:

I will confess that before I read the last few pages of this thread, I still harbored a tiny shred of resentment that ArenaNet employees aren’t more forthcoming about future plans for Guild Wars 2.

That shred is gone forever. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I really, really get it now. I repent.

From this moment forward, if anyone reading this should ever see me complain about ArenaNet not telling us more, or flat out lying about what they’ve said, or claiming to know their innermost thoughts, or arguing that only my interpretation of their words is the gospel truth, or insisting correlation equals causation, or that ArenaNet is staffed by lying, greedy, evil people, or otherwise net-lawyering them to death, then please, slap me.

Because I sure as kitten will have deserved it.

Thanks for this.

Please don’t take it the wrong way but you’re still welcome to disagree with anything they put out. Or to criticize them for not making good on the Manifesto as you see it. It makes no difference to me whatsoever, I’m mostly over that stuff and just want people to either:

- Try, really try, to help make things better.
- Try out other games and see if they have what you’re missing from here.
or
- Please, if you have no interest in coming back or staying, keep it to yourself.

In the meantime, I’ve got work to do studying up on the game and figuring out if it’s even possible to make a game adhering to all these things people want in a decent budget.

mesme.5028:

You could be right, but id like to think they are professionals who made decisions on how the game would be put out rather than blind panic, and it would be nice to know how they arrived at these decisions.

“Blind panic” isn’t quite it.

I always got the impression with this game that they had made the Manifesto, got to work on the game, and discovered “well this is harder than we thought” and then said “start prioritizing what we can actually get done”.

Yes, these people are professionals. So were the people who made Daikatana way back in the age of ancient ones, speaking of missing what you were aiming for. Just a little.

Astralporing.1957:

There can be a ton of good writing hidden from us, but at this point that is not going to save the story. And nothing we have seen so far even suggests there’s something better behind it all (dev comments don’t count).

“What Scarlet Saw” has me thinking there was a very interesting concept and outline which got mangled somewhere along the way.

Here’s the thing: the charr fighting humans at Ebonhawke? They weren’t winning. They had stalemated that conflict being unable to break the walls and the humans remaining there couldn’t make lasting progress. To fight the humans of Kryta, the charr would have to get over the Shiverpeaks . . . now norn territory.

The charr fought the norn once before Eye of the North – they decided they were better off not doing that.

Of course, if you were to secure Lion’s Arch for the charr legions they could funnel in people through the asura gates. Why do you think Evon’s warband was there in the first place? Except that didn’t . . . really work out, did it?

The Branded were sort of dropped on the charr while they were busy with their civil war against the Flame Legion and the final stronghold of Ascalon. So you can’t be blamed for them starting that fight, it just happened and made a mess of things.

And the Flame Legion . . . blame Pyre Fierceshot and his warband for that mess. The shaman caste of the Flame Legion had been in charge for too long and thought themselves invulnerable and answerable to no other force than their “gods”. Pyre made them eat that hubris, and over the years between then and now others gave them helping after helping until they got driven back. Of course, you can’t just exterminate them, there’s some hopes they’ll just give up those delusions and turn traitor back to the fold.

And it’s been said here – the charr work best when they are focused on enemies. If they didn’t have a lovely target-rich environment to focus on they’d be turning on each other. They cannot sustain themselves.

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

Menzies or Dhuum maybe? A pity we can’t bring an alternate Abaddon out of a Fractal and into Tyria….

Only if we can push Evon into the whole “vortex of secrets” unleashed when we kill him this time. Make a charr into a human god, just to make them cry.

mesme.5028:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

mesme.5028:

So we are to take what the devs say as perhaps lies and just marketing?

Sure, if you like. I’m not going to stop you, feel free. The marketing isn’t what drew me into this game anyway.

Id rather not, id refer you to the op, its why i asked, what happened to the manifesto.

Well, I can only speculate, but let’s see. It was written, they sat the developers down in the studio while they were still bursting with ideas and hopes for what they might be able to do with the game. They had time to work on it, get it right.

Then they started working on it, and maybe a little snip here, a trim there to make something workable so they could start putting it together. And as they worked they realized “oh carp, this project might have been more ambitious than we thought” and stood staring at vast tracts of stuff they had ideas for but no actual way to do them yet. And that release window they’d hoped for was looming closer.

Driven, they began to hustle and get things ready so they could have something – anything – other than just talk to show people. And once that was done, everything had to start clicking into place. After all, you don’t want to be Duke Nukem Forever . . . you want to release sometime before people forget about the game.

Things slipped. Before Beta even happened there were things which needed to work and didn’t. Fix them, hurry so we can get moving. Beta Weekend Events are happening, get in there and see what’s broken. Sure sure we only have half a world ready and the Personal Story is still being hammered out . . . focus on what feedback we get then we can work further. Orr can wait.

. . . oops. We, um, we have a broken final battle. It’s not working. We need to fix this, we can’t go to release with a final battle where all the setpieces work but the final one. Quick, just make it work so it can be finished. We only have a couple months left. What’s that? What kind of gear? Nevermind, toss that idea on the pile of things we’ll get to it next month, just try to make sure this thing doesn’t crash.

Okay, we’re sure everything actually works right? Good, publish that build and let’s go back through bug reports. And someone start working on Halloween because that’s coming a month after we launch, we need to have something awesome for it.

Astralporing.1957:

No, good storytelling does not require surprises. Good storytelling requires good storytelling. And so far that seems to be missing from the Scarlet story.

No, it seems to be missing from what they add into the Living Story updates. I’m sure there’s good storytelling . . . it’s just getting buried, or it’s not making it through what we actually see.

As I said earlier – there could be an interesting story under all this. It’s been handled pretty roughly to the point where that’s just potential we didn’t reach out to early on.

mesme.5028:

So we are to take what the devs say as perhaps lies and just marketing?

Sure, if you like. I’m not going to stop you, feel free. The marketing isn’t what drew me into this game anyway.

mesme.5028:

what didn’t we get?

Koss.

And this is such a major loss.

Nike.2631:

That they didn’t “solve the unsolveable” on a couple of fronts does not ruin a fairly masterfully done game for many of us.

I heard you were meddlesome, Nike. But you do sometimes make good points.

Nike.2631:

I like to think the topic of the 3 year old MMO commercial called “The Manifesto” is hooked up to an Asuran device that taps it for enough Ecto-Undeath Distillate to power the entire Necromancer class.

And yet, Warriors still stomp them just like everyone else.

Solution: More necroposting.

Vayne.8563:

Do you really think more complaining will make this game stronger? Cause I don’t.

This is a valid point, and it’s worth pointing out.

Feedback like that is one thing, saying “I don’t like this, or that” is useful to the people polling the forums for opinions. It’s useful for the developers to take a pie chart of “who’s satisfied with the game” and show it as part of a presentation. It doesn’t necessarily help them out in fixing anything, because it offers only one detail – you’re unhappy with Feature X.

Feedback going “I don’t like this and here is why” is more useful, since they can read it and understand what they did and you don’t like, and have one possible thing to fix in order to please you and people who share your opinion on Feature X. And if people actually want to add to what about Feature X they don’t like, then the nice people who can actually do something about it may be able to . . . well . . . fix it.

Feedback going “I think this game is awesome as it is” is just as unhelpful as the first group. I’m sure they’re all very happy you’re enjoying their game and are having fun. But if you don’t place any opinions on what you like and why it’s just as good for the pie chart as “I think this game stinks on ice like a icy BM”.

If you hate the game and want it to die, fine. That’s your prerogative as a consumer who purchased it. If you love the game and don’t have a problem with it? That’s awesome, keep playing and I’ll see you sometime. If you hate the game and want it better . . . or if you love the game and want to improve it?

Start posting something to help them understand why instead of just how disappointed/happy/upset/adoring/livid/supportive you are.

Vayne.8563:

People hanging on every single word and then misinterpreting what was said based on their own preconceptions happened.

There is NO mention of gear grind or vertical progression in the manifesto video. None at all. The only way you could possibly think it was mentioned is to ignore everything around it.

What happened is people placed their own definition of grind into the manifesto and decided that’s what Colin meant when he was talking about grind, when in reality Colin already defined what he was talking about…and later clarified it in other places.

Vayne, I’m sorry.

Nobody cares about that anymore. It’s been worked over, buried, dug back up to be re-examined, buried again in a chained casket, hauled up again to have DNA evidence tested, thrown in the ocean with weights, dredged from the depths next to Cthulhu’s headrest, subjected to psycological profiling, and shot into space . . .

And nobody saying the manifesto is a lie, or they failed to live up to it, is caring about what they said exactly. Or what they implied. Or what Colin said interviews later trying to explain about the combat.

There isn’t any point anymore to trying to talk about it other than “it exists”, “it is a video you can watch”, and “it mentions Guild Wars”. I mean, we can all discuss what we took away from it and how we feel it diverges, but trying to engage the people who want to go “it lied” is futile.

Sanala.7638:

It’s true, in the end it isn’t bad or good, it just is. I really want GW2 to be something, anything more than what else is out there on the market.

I really do too. I am hopeful it will start moving that way during their break from Living World material and in the wake of the CDIs.

Spritemage.4609:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Spritemage.4609:

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

This looks good.

Do yourself and all of us a favor. Save it somewhere on a notepad or email or something, and when we get to talking about it directly, post it back up. If you feel up to it, expand on it in the meantime.

That increases the odds of it being visible and looked at.

Ok, I saved a quote of it for later. Hopefully I’ll remember to look into the subclass discussion when it comes around. As for expanding on it, I would like to hear some feedback first, but I’ll think about it some more for now.

Feedback? Looks good to me. It’s not the idea I was having but hey, we can use many different ideas and this one sounds like it could work out.

And that’s all I am gonna throw into this thread I’ll save a copy too.

Theundersigned.4761:

I got the impression that ArenaNet was more concerned that the more popular element of the releases (either story or gameplay) was lost in the less popular once.

Most of the time, anyway, it would seem that the (rather weak) story was often lost in the more overwhelming gameplay portion of updates.

I don’t think they were implying that players couldn’t follow one or the other; I think what they were saying was that players would ignore the less interesting part of releases in favor of the more interesting parts.

Basically, I feel that ArenaNet is criticizing themselves for not being able to make both parts equally interesting.

This interpretation almost meshes with what I was thinking as I read it. Which was “Well don’t push your gameplay refinements or tweaks to take up the time of your LS teams, and alternate. Every two weeks we get updates, but the LS story chapters last four weeks and inbetween each of those we get the feature updates unless it is absolutely crucial.”

darkace.8925:

A lot of micro-level ideas get thrown around in these discussions. Including them all could be cumbersome, but how would we decide which ones to include and which ones to leave out?

Hm. Don’t decide. Collate them together by topic like the summary threads. All of them. Attach it to the proposal for them to look at if they feel they need to look at the micro level instead of the macro one.

Spritemage.4609:

Hey Chris, I know you plan on discussing sub-classes after the current balancing changes, but I fell like I should mention this now before I forget it.

This looks good.

Do yourself and all of us a favor. Save it somewhere on a notepad or email or something, and when we get to talking about it directly, post it back up. If you feel up to it, expand on it in the meantime.

That increases the odds of it being visible and looked at.

Sarrs.4831:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s a comment largely made out of frustration.

I see comments along the lines of “anyone could do better than this tripe”, but the thing is . . . I don’t see anyone actually trying. It’s uncommon anymore do I see people doing anything other than just say “Living Story sucks” like it’s a statement of fact which doesn’t need an explanation.

Nowadays, it’s not even a sarcastic “let’s see you do better”, it’s a plea to show me there are people who can do better story work than this with a MMO. And not “were” but “are”. Maybe if there’s some competition for good story content, the publishers will start caring about it as a component.

Two main things here;
1. You make it seem like the problem is fundamentally rooted in the game being an MMO. That is not the case. When you break down the problems in the writing, they’re far from anything that’s a cause of the medium. The same problems would exist if the story were a book or a movie.
2. SWTOR. For all its failings, story isn’t one of them.

I doubt the same problems would exist if the story were a book or movie – you can spend longer on a book or movie than they have on the Living Story to date.

But you’re correct in one aspect. The problems are not because this is an MMO. The problems are in how it was delivered and how we only got pieces at a time. Frankly, it suffers the same problem as Season One of . . . say, Fringe or Lost, in where there is some idea by the writers what’s going on but only a fraction of it is shown right away.

Or heck, if people are going to compare it to a Saturday Morning Cartoons? Consider Gargoyles . . . especially that second season, or Teen Titans. And if you’re really feeling charitable and stretch the definition of “morning”, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, where you either nod and smile as the plot sails by or you lie and say “I know exactly where this is going, and who the Laughing Man is”. (And it was still good by my estimation – just don’t expect the show to stop and explain things for you.)

CorneliusCoffin.3169:

Crazy, though, is a very human concept. It signifies a certain deviation from a social norm. This presupposes that there’s a generally accepted pattern of “normality” amongst the society. Although Sylvari tend to immitate human behaviour (and other things), it is by no means inherent to them. Therefore I’d be careful to judge Scarlet Briar’s sanity according to human standards. For all we know, she saw incredible things. However crazy it seems to us, for a Sylvari she might still be acting quite rationally.

Also of note, Nightmare Court sylvari also behave . . . erratically, irrationally, and whatever else we can use “insane” as a catchall for.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Personally, I’ve enjoyed the Living Story. But that’s a matter of preference. What I was trying to get at is that an unexpected twist can be a good thing.

Oh, yes, it can be. But some particular twist ideas . . . are not always a good thing.

Evelynddra.9265:

Which I get. I actually more or less enjoyed those games. I had lots of fun just killing things in Shaiya with a party. I’m actually a HUGE dungeon crawler fan, having played Baldurs Gate, the Champions games, and Titan Quest before I got into MMORPGs. It’s totally not for everyone which I get. It’s just people come screaming grind, but have no idea what it is. It’s now some watered-down version basically used to say “I don’t like doing this”. Not liking something is perfectly valid, but call it what it is.

It seems here to be more “this isn’t fun anymore, I’m repeating this too much”.

Nimrod.9240:

Ha, now i know what didn’t felt right as i was reading your summary yesterday. Its too heavy focused on PvE. Wheres WvW and PvP? I feel they are quite missing/underrepresented. Player housing? PvE. Guild Hall? PvE. Order progression? PvE. Grail Quest? PvE.
Don’t get me wrong, all whats up there is pretty good and important. But still…

I don’t really think this is about WvW or PvP, is the thing. It’s about the character progression. PvP has always been a case where progression is kind of stamped into “none needed” in Guild Wars. In the first one you entered at maximum level, unlocked skills as you could, and generally it was expected you never got better at anything, you just looked better or got shiny things.

WvW is weird because it’s accessible from PvE and people are supposed to be drawn into it. Thing is, a lot of the time WvW players don’t seem to want PvE players in there. (To be more specific, they don’t want people there who don’t know what they’re doing, which can be attributed to not playing WvW . . . which means they don’t want new players unless they already know how to WvW. Weird, huh?)

I try to remember there’s WvW and PvP in the game. It gets hard sometimes because I don’t go to PvP and I feel WvW doesn’t need more content as much as it needs people playing it. The content in WvW should be, and please forgive me for saying, players from one server facing two other servers’ players and outplaying them. Not “what new shiny thing is there this month”.

Currently the game is pretty much split in 2(3) parts, more or less losely tied together (this topic needs an extra CDI in the future i think). Should not something like this progression talk involve the whole game and not only a part of it?
From such an important topic/CDI that will affect how Anet will approach the game and gamedesign in the future i think it also should include that the decisions based on this proposal will be done with GW2 as one entity in mind. (you can probably word it better)

I don’t know if the players who are into WvW and PvP want anywhere near the same things the PvE players want, and what the PvE players want hold little to no interest to the other two. At least, that’s the vibe I keep getting.

If a WvW server reaches a certain goal(points?), it will unlock things in PvE, like a dungeon given access to certain skins, gear, better droprate. Maybe some free gems, given the goal in WvW is hard to get. Now if the dungeon gets cleared for a certain amount of runs, it will unlock things in WvW, faster dolyaks, sturdier walls/gates, WXP boost, better drops from rank chests and so on.

This is . . . interesting, but I can already see problems in there. Mostly summed up in the phrase: “Oh you think you saw bandwagoning before?!”

Sarrs.4831:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The response to both those questions is simple: “Why were you watching at all?” The point to storytelling is threefold: to entertain, to inspire, or to educate. Entertaining is easy, just look at Michael Bay. Education is easier, you’re just showing people what happened in the past or illustrating something to enrich your audience.

Inspiration is the thing which can’t necessarily be done on purpose, but in this case?

If nothing else stick with the Living World to be inspired to do better yourself.

I’m confused; what’re you saying? Be inspired to stick with the living story to do what better?

To be a better writer? Fair enough. The Living Story so far is a pretty good demonstration of bad characterization. That seems like it’d fall more under ‘education’.

It’s a comment largely made out of frustration.

I see comments along the lines of “anyone could do better than this tripe”, but the thing is . . . I don’t see anyone actually trying. It’s uncommon anymore do I see people doing anything other than just say “Living Story sucks” like it’s a statement of fact which doesn’t need an explanation.

Nowadays, it’s not even a sarcastic “let’s see you do better”, it’s a plea to show me there are people who can do better story work than this with a MMO. And not “were” but “are”. Maybe if there’s some competition for good story content, the publishers will start caring about it as a component.

Sanala.7638:

To be honest? I am rather disinterested in playing. The only reason I’m around is because my fiance got her first gaming laptop, and this is the first thing she wanted to play with me.

Don’t see anything wrong with any of this. So long as you enjoy doing stuff with her in here, it’s all cool with me. And it’s cool if you leave because she found another game to enjoy.

I’ll be sure to kill your shares of asura . . . I mean charr . . . I mean, er, foul dragonspawn after you’re gone

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m just trying to put myself in the writers’ shoes, where it would be mind boggling to have a twist like this. I can imagine the forums will rage over being thrown a villain, only to have her become an ally. But good storytelling is where one cannot predict the outcome. Scarlet’s death, at this point, is so predictable that it would be fun to see how they could pull off the old “bad guy turns good” arc.

Good storytelling is where one can predict the outcome, but didn’t focus on what there was in the story to see it coming. See: “Chekov’s Gun”; you are shown the gun in act one, and it is not mentioned or seen again until it is used in act three.

Bad storytelling is where you can’t predict the outcome because it turns out the dog was behind it the whole time, so it could pave the way for its alien overlords. And nowhere in the story was this ever a possibility.

Naturally, these aren’t the only forms of “good” or “bad”, and Chekov’s Gun can be done poorly enough to warrant facepalming or even an application of head to wall at high velocity.

If one could predict the outcome of the story (maybe I should have said a story with a mystery), then what’s the point of following? Look at Star Wars. When I was younger, I would have never guessed Darth Vader would sacrifice himself to save his son. He was the embodiment of pure evil, yet I found a new respect for him at the end.

And these days I would never have guessed Darth Vader was a whiny prima donna either. Though it does explain his haste to start choking people when he didn’t get his way . . .

Anyway. I can predict the outcome of Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice And Fire . . . “everyone dies”. What’s the point in following it? Because somewhere there’s something you’re interested enough in to see what happens to it. Several people I know decided they were done after a certain event I shall not name, because as they asked – “what’s the point in watching any more?”.

I also watch Doctor Who. Another series where one event happened and “well why should I watch this after this?” was said. No spoilers here, it was in response to David Tenant leaving.

The response to both those questions is simple: “Why were you watching at all?” The point to storytelling is threefold: to entertain, to inspire, or to educate. Entertaining is easy, just look at Michael Bay. Education is easier, you’re just showing people what happened in the past or illustrating something to enrich your audience.

Inspiration is the thing which can’t necessarily be done on purpose, but in this case?

If nothing else stick with the Living World to be inspired to do better yourself.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Tobias what do you mean “few”, let me introduce you to….. TRAHEARNE!!!!!!!

Traherane is still creepy. That monotone . . . also, I prefer not to stand to close to him. Not with all the ‘friendly fire’ which happens around him. You’ll understand.

But on a serious note – I’m pretty sure Majory is oblivious to Kasmeer’s affection. I always got vibes from Ellen Kiel – so maybe when Majory rejects her she can go off with Kiel into the sunset. (The short story where Ellen greets Kasmeer as she arrives on Southsun…. Am I the only one who got those vibes?)

Maybe but you know . . . there’s that whole argument between her and Evon Gnashblade, which has me thinking maybe there’s something going on there too. And Evon’s not jealous of her winning, he’s upset she hasn’t asked him out on a date yet.

Wait, wait . . . there’s an asura taking part? Hold on, I need to adjust the sights on my longbow about three feet shorter. You know, to take care of imminent threats to our lovely new companion.

Traveller.7496:

MastaNeenja.1537:

I think our minority is growing, but I am uncertain if that will matter.

I don’t think it matters. They can always wave it off with “we have metrics that show people enjoy the game” or as forum rabble. I don’t think they would give up their plans even if the majority of the people would stop logging in. All we can do is give constructive feedback and hope that they will eventually change their ways.

If one side keeps saying things like “but it doesn’t matter” and essentially giving up trying, why would the other side bother listening at all? That’s not an attempt to change things, that’s just . . . unhelpful.

One problem is a lot of people just show up go “it’s all junk”, “it sucks”, “it’s stupid” and don’t elaborate. Add points if they follow it up with “of course, they don’t care”. They care. But they’re not about to abort something in the middle. Especially if it will give yet another “broken promise” to the pile; “Anet promised an update every two weeks and now they stopped because we told them they suck.” Stop and elaborate on why you think it’s not good, it’s stupid, or whatever. Be specific, avoid broad generalizations (especially the words “everyone hates” or “everyone knows”), and suggest alternatives which you think would have worked better.

Another problem is how a lot of this stuff has been made a couple months ago and probably isn’t able to be subjected to sweeping changes without breaking things. Again, they’re not just going to pull the plug and stop it in the middle of the run. They’ll see it through and look at this last “arc” for ways to do better next time. Or if there will even be a next time.

(I’d almost love to see them just give up entirely, pack up the Living world concept in a box, and film dropping it into the ocean with the description “Players, you win, Cantha expansion 2015”)

FlamingFoxx.1305:

“Marjory Delaqua: I’ve been thinking about Scarlet.
Kasmeer Meade: She can’t have you. (She says this abruptly)
Marjory Delaqua: She’s behind all these crazy alliances. I’d rest my reputation on…wait. What did you say?
Kasmeer Meade: (laugh) I think you’re right. She has all the landmarks of a blooming psycho hag.”

Darn right Scarlet can’t have Marjory. She’s one of the few necromancers I admire for not being really really creepy.

Nike.2631:

(Oh, and I’ll be bringing up the possibility of Dev-directed ‘thank you’s’/rewards to CDI contributors again. Maybe they can mail you a few Laurels or something )

Much as it would be nice, I’d really rather they didn’t agree to reward contributors directly. I’d rather they surprise us with a reward for participating rather than us expecting it.

I hope you understand why.

Elbegast.6970:

E = 5th letter of the alphabet
5 = Roman numeral V
5th room at Infinite Coil Reactor, aka ‘Zone Green’, ties to jungle dragon energy (Mordremoth?)= Missing it’s minion.

It’s ‘V for Vinedetta’

You’re doing it wrong . . .

E is the fifth letter of the alphabet.
There were five human gods, but now are six.
Cantha has six letters.

Cantha confirmed.

Evelynddra.9265:

Think clearing the same mobs for hours, upon hours, sometimes weeks in order to get one level.

EverQuest, South Karana, the Aviak village farm. That’s what comes to mind. Or even “better”, how about faction work in Highhold Keep . . .

See also “Legendary Defender of Ascalon” in GW1.

When people talk about Korean gridners THAT’S what they mean. So when people say GW2 is grindy, I laugh.

Not a lot of people have played those games (or have much interest in them because of that fact) so those who didn’t don’t really understand the scope of what you’re talking about with this.

I kind of do, mostly this starts to become more evident on mobile platforms like iOS and Android. And a flash/Facebook game or two which get advertised on sidebars now and then and are really uncomfortably grind-oriented even if you’re “VIP/Premium Member”.

Becka Williams.4978:

The player base mostly hates Scarlet. However, the writing staff loves her. Guess who wins? (spoilers: not the player base)

No, the players win all right.

. . . they get to kill her. And her asura collaborators.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m just trying to put myself in the writers’ shoes, where it would be mind boggling to have a twist like this. I can imagine the forums will rage over being thrown a villain, only to have her become an ally. But good storytelling is where one cannot predict the outcome. Scarlet’s death, at this point, is so predictable that it would be fun to see how they could pull off the old “bad guy turns good” arc.

Good storytelling is where one can predict the outcome, but didn’t focus on what there was in the story to see it coming. See: “Chekov’s Gun”; you are shown the gun in act one, and it is not mentioned or seen again until it is used in act three.

Bad storytelling is where you can’t predict the outcome because it turns out the dog was behind it the whole time, so it could pave the way for its alien overlords. And nowhere in the story was this ever a possibility.

Naturally, these aren’t the only forms of “good” or “bad”, and Chekov’s Gun can be done poorly enough to warrant facepalming or even an application of head to wall at high velocity.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Everything the OP says is right, but the biggest problem with LS is that Anet has convinced themselves into thinking it’s good. They think they’re in the same league as Game of Thrones!

Everyone is in the same league as Game of Thrones. Every league has its Houston Texans and Cleveland Browns after all

I’d say Game of Thrones is in MLB while LS is somewhere at the bottom of the minors… or maybe NFL vs Pop Warner?

Oh you can say what you want, it’s still hard to believe the record the Texans put up for an NFL team

Every time around there’s the great stories, there’s the bad ones, and there’s the mediocre. In my opinion LS is mediocre, no better, no worse. What hurts it was not the actual story behind it – that actually could have been a great story. How it was handled to fit into the Living World system?

That’s what made it suffer.

Nike.2631:

Oh man, just trying to do that gave me a list of things to bring up in the Evolution thread. Not least of which is if you set a designated scribe, stating the Proposal early and adding to it as a living document looks about 41 times easier than going back and combing through the behemoth for bullet points after it’s grown to monstrous proportions .

Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s well worth the effort if any of this actually gets utilized.

Have a Spicy Pumpkin Cookie.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Everything the OP says is right, but the biggest problem with LS is that Anet has convinced themselves into thinking it’s good. They think they’re in the same league as Game of Thrones!

Everyone is in the same league as Game of Thrones. Every league has its Houston Texans and Cleveland Browns after all

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The problem with Anet is that they are trying to achieve something akin to Game of Thrones, where viewer are not participating in the story — 3rd person point of view.

They’re not trying to achieve something to Game of Thrones, mostly because nobody’s had their wedding rudely interrupted. Or illegitimate children everywhere

No, what they have are a bunch of narratives written as short stories which got put into an arc with a thread underneath. It is perhaps more akin to a project like “Thieves’ World” where authors have a known and shared world, a set of characters to work with from notes, but each have their own tone, their own biases, and their own particular methods in mind.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just evident when you go through a lot of the Personal Story in various races’ paths there’s some stretching in places to make it fit an arc. And the Living World’s story currently didn’t mesh together well into an arc due to the incredibly “start and stop” nature of how it was being delivered. If they can do it better without interrupting the narrative for a month due to Mad King Thorn . . .

While what they should focus on the style of telling story akin to Sherlock Holmes, because to be honest, we, the players, are more like Dr. Watson.

I wouldn’t mind that too much, it almost is how the Factions storyline felt alongside Togo. Master Togo was almost always one step ahead of the player characters.

summourn.4982:

Equilibriator.8741:

VOICES
different battle voices would be nice, I understand the cut scene voices cant change as that’s a lot of unnecessary work but why cant you earn or buy different voices for when you are actually fighting. I hate that my two female characters have the exact same voice, I want my evil character to have an evil voice, my battle hardy warrior to sound nails, my noble guardian to use holy expressions etc.

This goes back to a suggestion I posted when the game was new, somewhat. It doesn’t specifically have to do with choosing voices, but it does with a character’s personality and vocals.

I would love to see a character’s vocalizations reflect the current personality. It felt very disconnected to me to play a woman with a “barbaric” personality, only for her to kindly say: “Thank you.” And “See you around!” or whatever when she interacted with NPCs. It was simply way too friendly to hear coming from someone whose selected responses were always aggressive or prone to threaten violence. It seems like when she interacted with an NPC, she might instead say: “Out of my way.” Or maybe a surly: “Thanks.” or even “Whatever.” after the exchange with the NPC is completed.

Dignified personalities could respond with something like: “I appreciate it.” or “This is a mutually beneficial exchange.” etc. I dunno.

Also, regarding different voices: I would love to see a pitch slider. I know this can get ridiculous, no one would be able to take a chipmunk sounding character seriously, but even if there’s a large restriction on the range we can choose from, it would allow us to keep the original voice/acting/story cut scenes while also allowing us to at least have a slightly differentiated voice.

All of this is good but . . .

How are you going to pay for the voice actors to sit in the booth and record an extra hundred hours of minor pleasantries . . . or an extra thousand to revoice the whole of the game in different inflections? Voice actors don’t come cheap

This is why I really think voicing in video games is such a limiting factor for the narrative, it’s one of those trade-offs you have to decide on before you start work.

Kevan.8912:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

RPGs, the “grind threshold” for me is “out of the X hours I have gameplay wise, how much of that was spent leveling up or gearing up to have the bare minimum to pass the next boss/dungeon/area?”.

for me, grind is the time spent doing the same thing repetitively for…anything.
1000teq….or 50000silks…..or 1000000000000 dragonite ores.
or 500cof for the skins.
that repetitivity because of lack of new content, just a time/money sink.

Understand me when I say – I don’t mind that flavor of grind if and only if it’s not required to advance. As something left to do for extras I don’t need? Sure. I did play GW1 and subject myself to unholy grinds for titles because it was literally all I had left three years later.

That Sulfurous Wastes grind for Lightbringer . . . ugh . . .

what i condemn is that cheap, sad, tricky way of doing it with gear treadmill/ “power” progression….making people a mindless zombie horde.

Agreed. No to vertical progression which is chasing after the 1% of strength. Of course, I’ve always said no except in times when it was . . . again . . . all I had left to do.

anything is better than just AR and more stats. literally anything.

People would debate whether Scarlet’s mad little giggling crazy is better than that.

Mungrul.9358:

You should really revisit Doom as well. While it may seem that other games have surpassed it, something has definitely been lost over the years.
And that shotgun is STILL the best in gaming.

I have it still installed here (taps computer) and play it from time to time. Though like I said, I have other games of its ilk and era I prefer more. And more than current ones too.

But I’ll shut up now, as I’m in danger of dragging the topic severely off.

Needless to say, vertical progression and grind? Don’t like ‘em, and they’re a big part of the reason I’m not playing GW2 any more.

I don’t mind vertical progression.

Vertical progression married to a system where only roughly 10% of the population are going to have it thanks to drop rates, skill gates, or really odd processes? Yeah.

Similarly, I have an issue with grind when it is necessary to advance. When it is not necessary to advance and has limited bearing on character performance? It becomes something to do when I’ve done the rest.

CureForLiving.5360:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

TriggerSad.2597:

For the sake of diversity, however, I will say that I wouldn’t mind seeing another heterosexual relationship take stage, or maybe (and this is a bit of wishful thinking) a relationship between two men.

Calling it now, Braham/Rox. Fanfic writers, on your mark . . .

Wait you do know Rox is a girl right? So it would actually be an interracial straight relationship. Which I’d actually find rather interesting.

Actually why don’t we have interracial relationships? You like tall women? Well go get yourself a Norn. You like the furry? Charr! Dendrophiliac? I don’t know… Asura or something?!

Interracial relationships are infertile, it’s been noted.

Also, after hearing of great great grandpa’s experience with a norn bride? No thank you.

Edit: Added link

Yaj.5973:

Faces/expressions aren’t a big issue. I mean in guild wars 1, there was less facial expressions and even less voice acting than guild wars 2. however, the cutscenes told a better story than these scriptreadings we see.

I beg to differ that GW1’s story was better than GW2’s. Especially if we’re talking about Prophecies.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The level of detail is great the way it is. We read the posts and note micro suggestions in terms of the level of detail in rewards for example. This is why I don’t add specific reward types or skills in the proposal.

I see… I think .

Its more identification of topics and avenues of attack than their resolution.

Well, yes, from what I gather this is about the community and some developers getting on the forums and hashing out bullet points to discuss at a meeting “what out of this can we do realistically?” from what is there.

Mungrul.9358:

I did 100% Mario Galaxy, and while it was frustrating at times, I never saw it than other than a test of my skill at playing the game.
One of those blue coin challenges in particular drove me to the brink, but I’d never say it was grind.

Was it Luigi’s Blue Coins? That one made my roommate almost throw a controller.

And I saw the ending of Doom for the umpteenth time quite recently thankyouverymuch (20 years old and still kicking phenomenal amounts of tail, especially with Brutal Doom).
The play through both that and Doom 2 were refreshing blasts from a past when levels were abstract because designers realised it was the gameplay that counted and not the slavish recreation of reality.
:D

I’m not sure I’d hold up Doom as a pinnacle of gameplay, but that’s just me. It was technically impressive compared to some of the things but it’s overshadowed for me with Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D.

By the way, personal threshold of grind? In any non-RPG game it’s trying something over and over and over and over again trying to hope you manage to make the jump or kill the boss. The words normally used instead of “grind” are “quarter-muncher” because these are based on the idea of the arcade “get those kids’ quarters to keep playing” mentality.

Ghouls and Ghosts comes to mind as a game which went from fun to frustrating to “why am I playing this?” in about two hours.

RPGs, the “grind threshold” for me is “out of the X hours I have gameplay wise, how much of that was spent leveling up or gearing up to have the bare minimum to pass the next boss/dungeon/area?”.