Guild Wars 2

Add my vote to “not killing off Trahearne”.

This “overwhelming community hate” seems to come from isolated forum posts as far as I can tell and is not indicative of a wider “hatred” in the general player base.

I really have no issues with Trahearne – in fact, I find him quite likeable. He is a noble and driven character with depth (self-doubts etc). Indeed, I have some theories about why people hate him so much (incidentally, I believe it is partly due to a more general anti-Sylvari hatred… I went over some analysis of this topic in a GW2Guru thread that was filled with Sylvari hatred).

Maybe someone should start a “I MISS TRAHEARNE” thread. Heck, maybe I will (I won’t really, since the first 10 replies will likely be filled with vitriolic hatred.)

But yeah, where IS Trahearne? His absence in the living story is becoming increasingly conspicuous.

[CONTAINS SPOILERS for the new Living Story, insofar as the trailer for the July 29th release goes.]

Bringing this up as a discussion point arose after seeing the new Entanglement LS trailer with Rytlock seeming to release Ascalon from its curse, and how that brought up the possibility of having no more ghosts. (Nooooo!) Of course, as we know, the starter zones for Charr characters prominently feature ghosts (including the very first playable sequence), and in fact, most of Charrdom is heavily focussed against the ghost threat. Many NPCs in Charr territories list the ghosts and separatists as the major threats against the Charr. In fact, I’m fairly certain that somewhere a Charr character states that a major motivator for the fight against Zhaitan is to then free up resources to deal with the ghost problem. So getting rid of ghosts would entail major rewrites of at least one playable race’s entire personal story progression.

More generally, the problem stems from the fact that most of Tyria in GW2 – in explorable zones, granted, but that’s still most of the game – reflects pre-Zhaitan’s defeat, where there are tons of risen all over the place, etc. However, we are now increasingly seeing the effect of Mordremoth on the explorable maps, and ArenaNet themselves stated the desire to keep the world “alive”, having it change over time, etc.

I think this will increasingly be a problem since the main world is being rewritten. ArenaNet could get away with it with Lion’s Arch since… actually, did they get away with it? I’m playing a new toon now so will see what happens in the personal story once I get to Lion’s Arch.

Anyway, we can’t keep forever having risen crawling all over the place since Zhaitan is increasingly long gone, and Mordremoth is increasingly affecting the rest of the world. Taken to the extreme, we will have the ludicrous situation where two dragons will be active “simultaneously”.

This necessity to keep most areas in “pre season 1 and pre Zhaitan” versus having some areas be “up to date” is going to present an increasing synchronization problem IMO. One solution, which would be really neat, is if after this living story episode is complete (i.e., the struggle against Mordremoth), the main game ends up reflecting the new reality, so that instead of fighting Zhaitan, you start off level 1 characters in the fight against Mordremoth. The struggle against Zhaitan, the formation of the Pact, the rise of Trahearne, etc., will then be considered “past history” that some Priory scholar NPCs will be able to tell you about. :P The more I think of this the more it seems highly unlikely, but I don’t see how else they can reconcile the aftermath of a Zhaitan defeat with a Tyria-wide mobilization against a new Elder Dragon threat.

Thoughts?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

- If you can play in bootcamp then do it, I gave in a long time ago. It’s worth taking the time to restart your computer since the performance is so much better.

Sigh… I guess I should cave in, since my performance is not that spectacular (4 year-old MacBook and little wiggle room for upgrade, financially speaking, to a new gaming PC). I upgraded my MacBook’s hard drive to a relatively small SSD (due to the cost) so it’ll be painful to carve out a fairly substantial chunk just to stick on Windows + a bit extra only to be able to play GW2. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do…

I have to say, it is remarkable seeing the contrast between ArenaNet (wrapping the game in a Windows emulator and marketing it as a “native client” with a straight face) and companies such as Blizzard, which make it a priority to develop actual native ports for OS X – and have them available on release. I’ll keep Diablo 3 on OS X since it’ll be nice to alt-tab to browsers and such. If as a result of sticking GW2 onto a separate partition I don’t end up booting into it as much since otherwise my entire environment is in OS X, so be it.

Regarding toons & lore, my feeling is honestly that almost any combination can be made to work. Not the least because we almost do see every possible combination in the game (as far as NPCs are concerned, I mean, every race having trainers for each profession is the trivial example but there are plenty of other NPCs around).

For instance, Sylvari are supposed to be not very much into technology and are attuned to the Pale Tree, nature, etc. (literal tree-huggers), but you could see a Sylvari embracing technology as an outgrowth (no pun intended) of their natural curiosity. I’ve thought this way even before such obvious lore-friendly examples such as Scarlet Briar herself.

Same can be said for almost any other race/class. Someone mentioned Norn Mesmer being “out of lore”, but that is simply not true, such a combination is clearly in line with the spirit of Raven, which aligns itself with “wisdom, cunning, trickery, and knowledge” (it’s almost the Norn cultural equivalent of Lyssa).

cf., http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Raven_

We also see especially with the Pact, a mishmash and radical acceptance of any and all possible combinations of races and classes, cut across all positions (leaders, grunts, scholars, etc) A veritable melting pot. Dare I say that Anet are implicitly encouraging this kind of radical and across-the-board multicultural acceptance that is a reflection of how things can and should be in the real world (and I would agree).

Etc., etc….

So in short, I bet that any “lore unfriendly” combination can be actually made to be lore-friendly with just a little creative thinking.

Eggman.1405:

I had thought that maybe Engineer might be good for an Asura, but this was when I knew nothing about the game and wrongly expected an Asuran Engineer to be able to make a Golem. And I mean make a Golem that stays around all the time, not the ones from the racial Elites.

Actually, I find the Engineer class to be somewhat subpar as far as lore goes vis-à-vis Asura. I mean, look at all the crazy Metamagical-synergetic-alchemical-energy type technology the Asura are capable of, and you start off with a poison dart pistol and shield. C’mon. Even a flamethrower and turrets (that make tick-tock noises – of all things!) seem so … crude … when the Asura are clearly capable of very high technology.

The engineer armour you see in the character selection screen for Asura, for instance, screams high tech – energy weapons and the like – yet the actual skills you get are industrial age/steampunk type stuff.

So Engineer IMO is more of a Human-type and definitely Charr class as far as lore goes.

Ele is much more Asura-like at least as far as the College of Synergetics is concerned (studying pure energy, etc.) but regarding the other Colleges, there is no real corresponding “Asura”-friendly high-technology class, lore-wise, in the game.

Dustfinger.9510:

Lasers shouldn’t make any sound at all. So any sound that is made can be chalked up to any other piece of technology in the gun that helps it function.

If you’re making a general point about how laser sounds should be conveyed in popular culture, sci-fi mediums, etc., that’s fine, but I and most people are used to “laser sounds”. At the very least, sci-fi pistols should not be making “bullet” sounds!

This is very intriguing; apparently the new ley line pistols do make new sounds. Woot!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2av18a/ley_line_pistol_firing_sounds/

EDIT: even the staff has a sound!! Sorry, totally derailed the conversation here… See ya while I go throw my money at Anet!!!

chronometria.3708:

Asura warriors can use guns and many of the guns are themed to be energy weapons or otherwise look like future tech. Scarlets rainbow is even a full hologram.

It’s like being a starship trooper!

I wondered about this… but doesn’t the rifle/pistol still make “bullet” sounds? It would be amazing if the warrior rifle skill sounds were consistent with the skins, so a lazer zap for AA instead of a bullet shot, etc.

If it were, I’d be all over this and create both Engi and Warrior characters with futuristic themes.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Yeah well, it’s a jumping puzzle. So, did you really want to play it all? I don’t.

I finished the story on one character and that’s enough of that. I see no need to go back for the extra possible achievement points or to finish the map. Falling to my death is just not that interesting.

I, for one, found it endlessly entertaining to wait underneath the part where most players make mistakes on the way up the jumping puzzle and fall to their deaths. Two, three, or even four characters falling down to their deaths at your feet – simultaneously – is really funny. (And provides for plenty of rezzing opportunities!)

Granted, it wasn’t nearly as fun when I was the one falling down, but the challenge was eventually overcome, and superbly satisfying. Getting the Dive Master achievement as well was icing on the cake.

(NB: I’m also getting pretty low FPS numbers here, maybe 5-10 less than my average – which is about 17-25 depending on the area. Yeah, I need a system upgrade.)

One study I recall reading about came to mind as I was thinking about these issues. An fMRI study in Science recently showed that social exclusion and rejection activates the same brain regions that subserve experience of (physical) pain.

Ref is: Eisenberger NI, Lieberman MD, Williams KD (2003). Does rejection hurt? An FMRI study of social exclusion. Science 302(5643):290-2. Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=williams+eisenberger+rejection

Most interestingly, the behavioural paradigm used for eliciting these feelings was a “video game” type protocol where the player could pass a ball amongst him/herself and two computer players. The computer players ultimately stopped passing the ball to the subject, eliciting feelings of exclusion and therefore pain.

Note that this was due to being rejected or not socially included. We are social creatures, and therefore, not including us in the “choices” of the story (switching back to GW2) can thus create similar feelings of exclusion, alienation, and pain that I’m trying to refer to.

A quick follow-up to give a particular in-game example, and to demonstrate that even when “trying” to give the player more control, the sense of personal involvement can actually diminish or fail:

When searching Scarlet’s quarters in Prosperity, the designers admirably try to make the player “matter” by having the PC interact with the other major characters in exploring the room, e.g., “have a look at this” and all. So in a sense, yes, “we” (the PC) are “involved”. But it doesn’t create actual involvement. I, as a PC, obtain an experiential sense of involvement only when I perform actions such as open the door, go inside, and read the notebooks, etc. Some can be examined without the prompting of the other characters. But these moves and actions are not “recognized”, and therefore, the player is strongly invalidated. It’s as if they didn’t happen – and therefore, as if we did not exist. The actions that do matter, and the only ones that matter, are the ones taken by the other characters. They notice the “actually” important elements in the room, like the ley line schematic, journal, etc. We are “carried along for the ride” by being asked “oh take a look at this” but have very tangential roles. In fact, if I recall correctly, we are not even asked by the characters directly. We are instructed to participate by the UI, quest indicator, etc. That makes the feeling of involvement even less. Finally, when it’s time to leave, or make decisions on what to do, the other characters do it, not us. They announce what is to be done, and we definitely do not feel at all like we are “the Commander” nor “a Commander” by any stretch, just a passive observer, in fact almost just a disembodied, third-person camera.

I hope that helps convey some of the experience of the player in the Living Story that makes us (at least myself) feel quite alienated, useless, and breaks the immersion of the game in a very big way.

It almost seems that, ironically, by trying to make the story work for everyone, any particular player (any one, and thus, everyone!) becomes, in fact, excluded.

EDIT: I apologize for the excessive use of bold and italics, I just am very excited about contributing to this very fascinating discussion and IRL would express it with facial expressions, hand gestures, etc., so can only approximate this using bold & italics.

One point that seems to be getting “lost in translation”, so to speak, between the players and developers/designers/etc is the personal experience of playing the game. Aside from the issues of PC voicing, aside from the issues of first-person versus third-person (personal choice versus open world), aside from references to the player (or lack thereof), what pronouns are used, etc., etc., is the personal lack of significance or impact to the story.

Yes, it is true that all of the aforementioned points are factors in the creation of the personal sense of lack of involvement, lack of impact, but the sum is greater than the parts, and the experience I, and many others it seems, are getting is that we do not matter. It is a problem of alienation. It is a very visceral and somewhat demoralizing feeling, and it’s hard to convey here.

This, I think, sums it up very, very well:

Baltzenger.2467:

I don’t personally dislike any of our current protagonists, but I do feel distant from them, I don’t know why I’m supposed to run around with them, I don’t need them, I rather have my real friends join me on the adventures of Tyria, and we be the real group that saves the world. And of course, I am curious about their story, I wan’t to follow them, just, not pretending theirs is my story, because I don’t even decide where to go, I feel carried.

The solution is expressly not to actually have our friends be the protagonists instead of Rox et al. That would be missing the point. See below on my take on solutions (hint: I do not know what they are, only that they can be very simple, since the problem, though deep, is one of perception.)

It is this sense of feeling carried, of not knowing why the new characters are my friend, that contribute to the strong feeling of alienation. I believe part of the problem is that, as explained by Angel (IIRC), without race- or profession-specific choice points in the Living Story, there is less of involvement of the player’s particular idiosyncrasies of history to “hook onto” in the new Living Story. Of course, one aspect to a possible solution is to give player some (ultimately false, as always and as necessary for a game like this) sense of choice or personal control.

The biggest contributor to a solution is to attack the problem directly – make the player matter. This does not mean that everyone has a say and of course it’s impossible to do that. What it means can be as simple as referring to the player more often, making the player more explicit. We simply seem to not really exist in this Living World as an independent entity – we are carried along, not talked to, not referred to (except in the vaguest and briefest ways).

Others have already made my point here but I wanted to re-iterate and +1 to the player experience of alienation.

The key is that this is a perception. The solution may therefore be very simple. I am not a game psychologist (though this would be an interesting issue to study) but feel that someone like this would be best suited to addressing the problem.

Corollary: I think all game studios should have a resident psychologist or role where the experience (in a subjective, experiential or psychological sense) of the player is considered. Important player-game dynamics might otherwise be missed; the forest may be ignored due to focussing on the trees of dialog, voice acting, etc.

Corollary #2: someone less involved in the development of the game would be ideal, since as we’ve seen (and has been pointed out), there is a lack of expressing certain things about the story that are “taken for granted” by the development team (such as the curious ‘fact’ that we are not “the” Commander, but “a” Commander – not anywhere mentioned in-game). Why is this? Anyone’s guess, but a strong contender in my view is that there is office talk, there is a cohesive sense of the story in the company and during meetings that is not 100% being translated outside of the meetings and of the company – i.e., to the players. So someone who is almost an outsider, would be best to spot these issues – of course, they’d have to play the game intensely as well. (Perhaps these forums can serve as a good substitute, though there is a lot of information and voices floating around and some important unifying messages or themes might be missed, hence part of the motivation of this post.)

Slightly related, low fps is why I cannot PvP at all with my thief. Too kitten frustrating, especially in WvW. System upgrade badly needed…

(Quakeman, I liked your quote so much I put it in my sig.)

Irkie.8034:

For someone who left the game for a while (me) I came back to pretty much the same game with a few zone changes, but missed all of the content. I understand they wanted to reward the loyal players, but I don’t think the people who wanted to take a break should miss out on EVERYTHING. I came back to Lions Arch destroyed and a tower busted up in Kessex Hills….fantastic. I still enjoy playing the game, I recently found a resurgence in interest, but I feel they really detracted from “adding” to the game. Temporary content patches are a nice occasional thing, but why not tie those into a new area? just doesn’t make sense to me.

Same experience here (leaving and coming back, to largely unchanged world). It’s striking how much of a difference the current game’s structure is compared to the hyped-up things we heard during development and release, how the game constantly changes and our decisions matter, etc. I know it was describing largely the events system, but the wording used was evocative of the sorts of long-term, large-scale changes that a real “Living World” would embody.

On the one hand, large changes to the core game areas probably cannot be accommodated since the constancy of new player experiences need to be maintained (same story, etc.), but perhaps the notion of a fixed storyline needs to be revisited. Why not have new level 1 characters not even fight Zhaitan anymore, but rather the next Elder Dragon? It would admittedly require an entirely new storyline for each race/profession/etc. (for the most part), but this is just an extreme example of a general category of changes that I think a lot of players are craving and not getting. It’s especially glaring since the world – once touted as living, dynamic, and “breathing” (exact phrases used) – seems so fixed and stale now.

Since a couple of people mentioned Cantha, I should point out that it’s likely that Cantha will not make a reappearance in GW2 due to East Asian sensitivities regarding the kind of cultural mishmash that Cantha was in GW1. This led to a de factor axing of Cantha in GW2 by ANet’s owner, NCSoft (Korean company). Including consequnces for Divinity’s Reach (Canthan quarter being literally cratered.) Google for more info; but e.g.,

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Merged-The-Cantha-Thread

Personally, Cantha was my favourite part of GW1 bar none. It’s too bad that politics has to come into a fantasy game, and I don’t see Western audiences complaining about the vague cultural mishmash that the Krytan side of Tyria represents, but reality bites.

This was apparently fixed in previous dev notes but seems to still be bugged. I’m on Stormbluff Isle.

“Typical” workaround of luring veteran risen giant not so successful since he gets tired and breaks off aggro no matter what I do. (Funny that there is a “standard” workaround, even documented in the wiki…)

This really needs to be fixed. Gates of Arah is totally blocked now (not that the farmers are bothered), for hours now.

EDIT: the part of the chain that is blocked specifically is the event, “Get Warmaster Chan to Shank Anchorage before the troops’ morale breaks.” They are just standing south of Meddler’s.

EDIT#2: just south of them is another group of Vigil that are part of another event, blocked as well, “See the Pact crash survivors safely to Meddler’s Summit.” Since they are trying to go in opposite directions, perhaps this is why this is blocked?

(Should’ve made a new thread in retrospect…)