Guild Wars 2

I think as long as they think about it as an incentive thing or a gameplay thing, it will fail. If they want people there, it needs to be an interesting place to visit, and the only way for that to last beyond the initial run and whatever rewards there are to farm is other players.

So, at a minimum, some more hooks and tools for people to do RP stuff in different places. Maybe add some very challenging content, but design it in such a way that it is meant to have an audience, and be entertaining for those that don’t have the skill to hope to participate. Things like that. Ways for players to use existing areas to create additional content (without inviting griefing) for other players, and to notify other players about that content, using the LFG tool or something.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

If conditions are not fixed retroactively (i.e. across all previous content), then creating new mobs vulnerable to condition will just make me sad.

It won’t be worth speccing into condition for a few new mobs if we are severely limited in groups in the entire rest of the game.

The same old situation occurs.
- Bring 5 direct damage and everyone does 100% of their solo damage.
- Bring 5 condition specs and everyone is limited to 20% of their solo damage (as everyone can hit the 25 condition cap solo).

Anet devs please remember that half of Necromancer skills are tuned toward conditions.

They should just take the reverse approach and eliminate direct damage. Replace it with one of a few new intensity-stacking condition types called “Wounds” that are governed by power instead of condi dmg and duration (the duration is fixed, and pretty much constant between skills). Critical hits would have their own separate Wound class (and would still use crit% and dmg mult), so they don’t compete for stack space with ordinary, lower-damage Wounds— but at the same time, a group of zerkers might get more use out of taking a condi or PVT player who isn’t using the critical stack.

If it’s difficult to make existing armor calculations work with this approach for technical or balance reasons, they could repurpose armor stats so they basically just spread non-critical Wound damage across time (increase duration, lower rate, same or slightly lower overall dmg). Meaning, high armor wouldn’t do much but buy time for a single hit, but would cause sustained damage to be shrugged off due to the stack caps kicking in. That would increase the distinction with one-off defenses like Aegis.

The plus side of this approach is that everyone becomes as redundant as condi builds (yay race-to-the-bottom balance), so variety becomes valuable in and of itself. Of course, there’s only so much more damage you can squeeze out with additional damage types, so zerging becomes substantially less useful, especially for groups that can optimize their use of their stacks. So, skill gets a leg up against numbers. And you could always add a special Wound type for pets so that Rangers become less useless, if they can keep the thing alive.

On the downside, hybrid DD/condi (well, wound/condi) skills become even more of a group liability. There isn’t much you can do about poor player stat distribution, but at least skill design itself should figure out whether a weapon is geared towards Wounds or Conditions and stick with it, otherwise it will be geared toward the garbage bin.

For some reason, thinking about Dessa made me think of this: “Theorising that one could time travel within the Mists, Dessa stepped into the Fractal generator and vanished… She woke to find herself trapped in the Mists, facing mirror images that were not her own, and driven by an unknown force to change illusory recreations of history for the better. Her only companions on this journey are a bunch of random people from Lion’s Arch, to whom she appears in the form of a hologram that only they can see and hear. And so Dessa sends her mercenaries leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that the next extraction will be her extraction home”

Anyhow, what are the odds that the Uncategorized or Thaumanova fractals represent Dessa’s future? I mean, word of god says they are all in the player’s past, but we know that Dessa is a little out of date, and if she is a fractal copy of a Dessa from 30 years ago or so…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Plus a fractal being created to copy a fractal is just… odd. The Mists makes the fractals, so it would be a case of the Mists copying itself which is unprecedented.

It’s definitely odd, but when I hear the word “fractal”, I first think of concepts like “self-similar” and “recursion”.

While I think the devs have confirmed that all fractals are in the players’ past, if Dessa’s lab is a fractal, they might not all be in Dessa's past.

Meaning, if Dessa’s lab is an imprint of history that occurred before Thaumanova, it’s possible that at some point she just left Mistlock and returned to Tyria, and was subsequently (much later, probably, taking into account how far out of date her knowledge is and how recently the Reactor blew) killed in either the Reactor disaster or the events shown in the Uncategorized Fractal. Or she could even still be alive somewhere.

When people talk about Mary Sue or fanfic, the basic point they’re getting at is that Scarlet reeks, like most fanfic, of author self-gratification at the expense of either the art (for an ars gratia artis scenario) or the audience (the more relevant factor for commercial art like GW2).

The sad thing is, you can write a terrible fanfic level character and still have it be tolerated pretty well — the player character has many of the attributes of a Mary Sue character, being necessarily involved in all of the storylines and being capable of achieving things that could be game-breaking for an NPC and because GW2 players are more likely to be powergamers than role players.

You just have to write up your TOTALLY AWESOME GUY WHO DID EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE WAS LIKE WHOA YOU’RE AWESOME character’s story, and then make sure you write it so the PC is that guy. It’s audience gratification along with author gratification, and while it may be miserable dreck from a purely artistic perspective, it will go over much better than Kormir (who was really not that bad) or Trahearne (who was worse, but perhaps by necessity) or Scarlet (who is basically inexcusable).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

If you read this thread, you’d have seen the developer post in which it got confirmed that Uncategorized Fractal is not Rata Sum.

What if it wasn’t a Fractal based on the original Rata Sum, but a Fractal based on the fall of a Rata Sum Fractal? Like, hypothetically, the Inquest wanted to use Fractal research to create a pirated copy of Rata Sum, but when Thaumanova blew, the Tyria-side tech keeping Mistlock stable failed, and both the original Mistlock and the original Rata Sum Fractal were lost, along with all the personnel there.

So, now I understand Scarlet’s final goal.

Tyria is a fractal. A big fractal, but a fractal nonetheless. Occasionally, people in fractals can realize that they are in a fractal, though at the cost of their sanity or due to the loss of their sanity, like the Asuran in the Uncategorized Fractal.

That’s why Dynamic Events are stuck in an endless loop, why the personal and living story conflict, why time can’t move forward, why the only permanent changes to the world since the start of the game have been nudged by the one person who is crazy enough to understand that the world isn’t real. Like any fractal, Tyria can be stabilized or destabilized. “Chaos”, or the dragons, represent this force of destabilization, so defeating them would stabilize the Tyria fractal. Scarlet, however, wants to exploit chaos energy to remake Tyria in her own image.

I mean that literally, not “she wants to rework it to her liking”. For the end of the LS story arc, Scarlet will succeed in her plan, completely disintegrating and rewriting the Tyria fractal as a giant, planet-sized Scarlet Briar. Players logging in will be dumped into the rewritten remains of Lion’s Arch, which exists inside her bowels, and fight their way through hordes of Scarlet cells, along with Aetherblades, Molten Alliance, etkittenil they reach her brain, which is a dungeon instance where they will fight a Titanic Scarlet that, when killed, will split into two giant Scarlets, that when killed will split into two large Scarlets, and so on until the players are fighting an army of normal-sized Scarlets.

Once the lesser Scarlets are all defeated, the players gain access to a machine built to control the fractal, that lets Dessa and the players write Scarlet completely out of existence, and restore Tyria. Dessa, having come to terms with her nature, takes over as guardian of the fractal, and begins to research how to sync the fractal Tyria with the real Tyrian timeline, allowing the PS and LS to coexist peaceably. As a test of her new, godlike power, she transforms Trahearne into Tybalt.

THE END (OF FIRST LS ARC)

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

I heard you like fractals, so i made fractal to enter fractals.

Isn’t that sort of infinite recursion the nature of a fractal?

DarcShriek.5829:

3.) To me, time travel is a possibility. I say this because time travel appears to be available in game which is demonstrated by the infinity ball story. Scarlet may know of the Infinity Ball due to comments made in the krait tower. Of course, those comments may have only been imagined.

Yikes, I hope not (even though it was suggested she might have some relationship to the “old invention” phase of the Asuran personal story). The only thing that can kitten up a plot worse than Scarlet is time travel.

Durzlla.6295:

ACTUALLY!! During the Asura Weather Ball personal story you find out that the inquest are actually willing to allow Sylvari to join, and help out, with their inquesty things, however these Sylvari do NOT have the authority of an actual Asura inquest member and they tend to go “missing” (obviously very expendable servants, just like scarlet was).

This is found out by talking with NPCs during 2-3 of the personal story missions two of which are sylvari, the other is an asura.

Huh, that was the one path I haven’t played. Good to know.

Astral Projections.7320:

I thought there was going to be a story! There would be Asuran scientists who went too far and unleashed something they couldn’t control. There would be cutscenes with them talking to each other. First with their exciting, groundbreaking idea, with maybe some dissension. Then it starts to unravel. They start to panic. They are arguing what to do as it comes unglued around them. And either is all comes apart or they are forced to explode the building to fend off something even worse. Either dying because of their hubris or dying nobly to save everyone else.

Yes, do something original like put you right in the middle of the disaster as it happens. You’re a lowly Asuran scientist, tasked with equipping a Hazmat Suit and delivering a sample of chaos material to a test chamber. Upon placing it into the test apparatus, everything goes haywire, you’re briefly teleported to a variety of locales inside and outside of Tyria, and then returned to a facility in chaos.

You manage to arm yourself with a simple “The Fixer” wrench to fend off the karka hatchlings now infesting the facility, along with strange creatures from outside Tyria. When Asuran Peacekeepers arrive, you’re overjoyed — only to find that they are eliminating any trace of the incident, including the surviving Thaumanova research staff. Then a bunch of stuff happens, you go to the Mists and complete an obnoxious JP and fight a Karka Queen and a giant baby that controls the invading creatures, and finally Scarlet shows up and puts you in stasis.

chemiclord.3978:

I think this is where the “expansion” route makes more sense. You’re throwing out a single bread crumb every two weeks… and it’s not enough to slake anyone’s hunger. It’s just annoying at this point. Maybe if all this was being dumped on us at once, it’d be more palatable. Maybe.

That might be part of the issue, but it doesn’t address the fact that there is no pacing in the story at all. It’s just “defeat the plan of the week, which appears entirely unrelated to the previous plan of the week, Scarlet runs away, the end.” If you want to have a “season arc” kind of plot, that’s fine, but it can be incidental in some episodes, and only indirectly addressed in others.

Arrow Season 1’s present day arc seems like a pretty good template for a “introduce related group of characters, explore those relationships, fight bad guys who have a connection either to the character arcs or at least a tangential connection to the Big Bad’s Big Plot, get kitten kicked by villain, regroup, build up a sense of impending doom while doing more of the same, epic finale.” It also handles the “deal with two story arcs, one in the present and one in the past” thing too, FWIW.

Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

3) Nothing about her implies she can time travel. She was part of the Inquest, so it isn’t doubtful that she would be a special consultant while part of the Inquest.

No, Ceara was part of the Inquest. Despite there being no non-Asuran Inquest members in the actual game.

And Inquest member Ceara wasn’t insane, so far as we know. Maybe SB was also a member, but since the Inquest are not the Sith, I would imagine that losing your mind and wasting your boss for kicks would be the sort of thing that could result in censure or termination of membership privileges.

Edit: Though it seems likely that some of them were still willing to work with her in setting up the Aetherblades.

Edit to the Edit: The quoted lines earlier in the thread sound like she is addressing the players as players, rather than as Inquest personnel (otherwise, why say “the Inquest” instead of “you”?). Is it bad writing, or does her fractal self actually perceive that she is in a fractal rather than reality?

Soulstar.7812:

Impeach Kiel, bring in Evon

It’s the right thing to do.

You know, Scarlet didn’t appear until after Kiel was elected…

Atlas.9704:

Razor.9872:

Actually, scarlet wasn’t alive when Abbadon fell…so there’s almost no way she could be involved.

That’s right. If people would have just voted Evon, we could have possibly had a break form Scarlet.

Until its found out she time traveled via spooky Steam Portals, stabbed the Gods, and then teleported out with a “Later taters”.

I’d say that’s fairly classic her.

Do they understand that when people used to talk about adding Scarlet into Thaumanova, it was a hyperbolic remark about their overuse of the character, and not something they should actually even remotely entertain the idea of doing?

About the only way they can salvage the lore at this point is to 1) sack everyone on the writing team that doesn’t understand how terrible Scarlet is as a “character” or even as a plot device, and 2) have your Order mentor wake you up and tell you that you got a terrible concussion in the middle of the first battle at Claw Island and hallucinated the rest of the Personal Story and Living Story.

Is it just me, or does that kind of look like the field around a toxic offshoot after the event fails?

spoilers, I guess, though not really anything important.

Kasmeer Meade: “Ow! Oh, fudge, that hurt.”
Marjory Delaqua: “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
Kasmeer Meade: “It’s just a thorn. I’ll be okay. Keep moving”

By the time you reach the Hybrid, her lines are less coherent.

Starting the fight:
Marjory Delaqua: “I believe this calls for lethal force.”
Kasmeer Meade: “Hic!”

At 50% health
Marjory Delaqua: “I’ll be kitten ed if it isn’t learning as it goes.”
Kasmeer Meade: “No, thank you.”

So. Is she just trashed or hallucinating from toxic spores, or is there something more significant going on that will come up later on?

What if they changed Revealed so that it only makes thieves visible and indirectly targetable, while still otherwise treated as in stealth for backstab and traits, and then make it last much longer (30s or so). Then, since stealth is really the Thief’s main mechanic, you could convert the Thief’s special attribute to reduce Revealed length rather than Steal cooldown.

Alternatively, what if Stealth halted all initiative gain, so that if you burst off all your initiative and go into stealth, you pretty much can’t do anything but reposition and wait? Permastealth would be perma-useless, so you wouldn’t even have to worry much about balancing it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(which I prefer, as it’s hard to see someone like Scarlet meditate).

ADD seems to be her one actual character trait.

If I had to guess, I’d say that dragons were the original inhabitants of Tyria, and the Elder Dragons were to them what the gods are to humans — they look like them, they may have even used to be them and retain some tendency to think like them, but in a certain sense, they’re sentient magic.

I’d also guess that the dragons (not the Dragons) were just flesh and blood and scale creatures — sapient, magic using dinosaurs. The appearance of the Claw of Jormag and Shatterer is probably due solely to the corruption of the Elder Dragons. Human gods can do that too, as happened with Margonites. My guess is that the Elder Dragons are what happens when all of your gods are Abaddon. Though if they were going for pure bizarro gods, then the sixth dragon would be rebellious and usually kind to smaller man. Maybe it was the one that taught the forgotten how to free Glint and save the survivors of the last cycle, which could explain why the forgotten like to hang out in the realm of secrets. Aside from the name.

I think the main goal of the Dragons is to eat (magic). Why did they go to sleep? Because they had enough to eat and could rest. Why did they wake up? They got hungry. Typical reptile behavior.

Are they the same Dragons as before? Yes. You can see the sleeping forms of Kraalkatorik and Primordus in GW1. Glint was a servant of K from the previous cycle, and he remembered her well enough to seek her out and destroy her, so he is almost certainly the same being. Probably holds for the others too.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

perilisk.1874:

-snip-

Correlations between the gods and the dragons don’t work.. The Pantheon’s elements are not static, they can change as is needed.

Zhaitan is the dragon of undeath – none of the gods correspond to that at all.
Melandru is the god of Nature and Earth, Dwayna of Life and Air, Grenth of Death and Ice – none of these is undeath.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but I think the intent was to link to Melandru thematically, but in a corrupted way. Wiki says Melandru is linked to nature, growth, and earth. Zhaitan raised a sunken continent, which is earth-y. He is uniquely (among the dragons) linked to growth, insofar as his army grows continuously through killing or plague. Plague and undeath are sort of perversions of nature and life. Moreover, they commonly have an earth-y theme in fantasy.

With Kralk and Dwayna – we have never had anything that related Dwayna to lightning (just because lightning is part of elementalists air magic does not mean the two are interchangeable) , and Kralk is the dragon of crystal not of lightning.

Look at the Zephyrites. Their big themes are Air (and its Aspects, one of which is Lightning) and Crystals. Their founding and their power is closely tied to Glint. Glint is a former servant of…

Meanwhile Lyssa is not the goddess of water so could not possibly correspond to Bubbles, Abaddon was the God of water and when Kormir took over the Realm of Torment she did not take the water aspect…

“Abaddon was one of the Six Human Gods, a fallen predecessor of Kormir. His sphere was Water and Secrets, which were later absorbed by Lyssa and Kormir, respectively. He is also associated with Depths, Knowledge and Magic. " – from the GW2 wiki. Yeah, Lyssa used to be Chaos and got retconned as Water. It is what it is. Besides, the two-headed thing is too much of a coincidence.

Also note that Kormir is the goddess of truth and knowledge, not of secrets so that could not possibly correspond to the 6th dragon.

Truth, knowledge, and secrets are all pretty closely related concepts. A secret is just a hidden truth. The dragons aren’t one-to-one analogues, it’s more that the current gods represent the positive/orderly side of the Earth/Fire/Air/Ice/Water/Magic and the dragons represent the negative/chaotic side of those things. Where Balthazar’s take on war and fire emphasizes courage, Primordus emphasis its destruction. Secrets are the dark side of Truth.

The Elder dragons do not necessarily predate the gods, their presence on Tyria predates the presence of the gods, but we have absolutely no idea how old the gods are or where they came from.

Excluding Kormir. Lyssa is also a younger goddess, IIRC. Current lore says they got their power from Abaddon, and GW1 lore says that Abaddon stole his power from an older god. But for all we know, he stole it from a sleeping dragon.

Consider also that the Realm of Torment is now the redeemed realm and was taken over by Kormir and the Forgotten.

And Orr has been cleansed and was taken over by Trahearne and the Pact.

Also I doubt any link between the Nightmare Court and an Elder Dragon – the NC aren’t mindless or evil (only evil from the PC perspective). Their goal relates to removing Ventari’s influence over the Pale Tree, not to taking over the world.

Well, if you consider torturing and terrorizing for the sake of torturing and terrorizing to be evil, then they’re evil. Anyway, the Sons of Svanir aren’t mindless either. It’s not surprising that a dragon of knowledge/illusion/secrets would influence its minions in a more subtle way, leaving them with at least an illusion of free will. However, it is said that no Sylvari ever comes back from Nightmare. That sounds more fundamentally transformative than a simple ideology.

It seems like the dragons correspond to more destructive, primeval equivalents of the gods, especially their elemental aspects. Zhaitan to Melandru (corrupted Earth), Jormag to Grenth (ice and shadow), Kraalkatorik to Dwayna (thinking more about the lightning emphasis than the crystals, though you could possibly swap Melandru and Dwayna and have it make sense), and Primordus to Balthazar/Fire. Bubbles would seem to correspond to Lyssa and Water (and the picture you show is two-headed, which only reinforces the link). The secret sixth dragon would then correspond to the god of secrets and perhaps to the Realm of Torment (aka the Nightmare Realm).

Alternatively, given that the dragons predate the gods, and Abaddon was originally god of both Water/Depths and Secrets/Magic, maybe there really is no sixth dragon. Bubbles could be Mordremoth, a dragon of both Water and Secrets (hence why so little is known about it), both Illusion and Truth (and the two heads could indicate the dual role). If there is some actual metaphysical link between the dragons and the gods, then it is possible that Abaddon’s later ties to the Nightmare Realm transferred back over to Mordremoth, which would also make it a dragon of Torment/Madness/Nightmare. That strongly suggests a link to the Nightmare Court. The dragon could physically exist in the depths while still having influence on the land through the Pale Tree’s Nightmare and the Nightmare Court (and possibly Scarlet, who also has a bit of an obsession with duality and Secrets — and whose most recent merger was between creatures of Water and creatures of Nightmare).

Regarding these discussions about Personal Story and phasing, I was thinking… “This is my story”

That is, the Personal Story has always abstractly been a retelling of the player character’s personal story, which occurred in the past, to some unmentioned audience. What if that audience became an actual entity?

Say, after the initial sequence, you flash forward to the present, and you are relaying this information to a Priory researcher, so they can archive your expertise on fighting Zhaitan to use against the other Elder Dragons.

They have developed a device that augments your ability to recall events vividly, and can record the corresponding data. However, to function, it needs some base data to work with, so you still have to head out to find people, places, and things that have a strong link to those memories (more or less corresponding to the existing instance points, but perhaps with a marker or memorial of some sort). The PS rewards would officially be given by the Priory for collecting the data for them, and therefore don’t apply to repeat plays, but you can still redo the missions if you want.

The same device could also function with sites related to past LW content, letting the player enter little instances to catch up on the story. It would be clear even in-world that these are mediated, somewhat impressionist, retellings of past events, so slight deviations from the actual LS or the current state of the world would be irrelevant.

Done this way pretty much frees the devs to unlink PS and LW, so long as PS stuff is still accessible in some form.

cesmode.4257:

Actually, thats a cool idea. I hadn’t thought about a contribitution system like that, in addition to the structure I laid out. The only problem I would see is that if Im running around a low level zone like Queensdale or Kessex, Im not sure if I would want to be rewarded with low level mats. Id press onto a higher level zone.

The way I was thinking about it, outside of the initial investment, you’re just getting rewarded for it getting done, whether or not you do it, or even whether you’re logged in (but the rewards are balanced around the passive nature, and it could take 15 minutes to get a couple of mats. But multiply that across a hundred investment points, and it adds up).

Since over time most players will end up invested everywhere, it then becomes less about worrying about maintaining some specific area that gives a good reward (you can eliminate things that slow down the reward bar, but you can’t really force it to go faster), and more about keeping as many different areas cleared concurrently across the world as possible.

cesmode.4257:

I think people are talking about two different things.

1. How can players go back to experience LS content they have missed
2. Having DEs drive the LS.

Well, if arenanet plans on making the LS story-driven, it does make sense that things be taken away, and areas changed and re-changed again, etc. Stories change, TV shows change. The characters change. So if this is where they want to be, then I don’t see how DEs will solve any of this.

If arenanet decided to wrap up the Scarlet story arc, and take our suggestions to make the LS more DE driven, which I am in favor of, then there will probably need to be a lot less open-world story telling. You’ll simply have new dynamic events, the narrative between NPCs will tell the story to an extent. You complete the event, and its over. Until it starts up again.

What arenanet CAN do is take the story portion of LS, and place it inside of the realm of personal story, with all the trimmings of the personal story. This may take longer to develop, but it is a necessity. Give the players the freedom to experience the STORY when they want to, and have it well told to them. Simultaneously, put in content..just content. But re-structure the way DEs work so that theres a real sense of success and failure, a real sense of player impact. If they try to link these DEs to the LS, we will wind up in the same spot that we are in now.

One way to split the difference would be to implement PvE “seasons”, meaning, let the world grow and change, with time and with player involvement, but let the story end at some point, and then reset the world to do it all over again (but potentially with a longer or broader or deeper or more polished story the next time around — or for that matter, take it in a totally different direction, like an alternate universe concept).

So, they could reset, and then do the entire LW arc to date over again, on an accelerated time frame, unlocking areas based on player involvement (but with some built in delays to keep things from going out of control). If Anet wants it to be like TV, well, re-runs are a part of that.

If they did take that approach, I think it would be great to rework the entire Pact storyline to be LW content — that is, let the personal storyline end with the personal/race/Order content, and let the Pact stuff play out over a series of weeks, with new instances being unlocked as the Pact takes a stronger foothold in Orr (with settlements and waypoints not actually even existing until constructed) . Eventually, the cleansing would occur before the final dungeon is accessible, and it would actually noticeably affect Orr until the end of the season.

cesmode.4257:

Global Dominance

I had posted my idea/suggestion in a paragraph form and in a less structured manner, for a Global Dominance system. For organizational purposes I will re-post my idea with a bit more structure.

…
What is Global Dominance?: Global Dominance (GD) is a system, like WvW where the players must control zones against enemy NPCs. The more of the world map that the players, overall on the server, control the better the reward is for everyone on the server regardless of what you are doing. There will be a natural ebb and flow with how much territory players control depending on what time of day it is, and this is to be expected. Since this will play off of the Dynamic event system, and scaling, the GD system can scale with what could be considered ‘off-peak hours’ so that enemy npcs attack a little less frequently giving players in the off peak hours a chance.

…
Well, now that we are controlling a good portion of the world map, what kind of rewards are there?: Well, thats up for Arenanet to decide However, I would advise having Karma as the primary source of reward. I would push for a gold reward, or something that is actually valuable.

I had posted something like that on the suggestions forum. My plan for the reward aspect of what I called “WvE” was letting players “Invest” with special NPCs in various areas throughout the world.

Once you invest in an area, keeping the local economy there running (by keeping it under friendly control, but also by helping supply caravans and so on) would cause a bar for that area to fill up over time. When the bar gets full, it would reset and a special NPC in the player’s personal instance would receive a reward appropriate to the area (that is, mats from mining/logging/farming areas, karma or items from other places) that the player could pick up on return. Basically, it would be a very cooperative way of getting resources, with many economic levers to adjust, and one which encourages broader travels. Gating it with the investment mechanic would prevent access to level-inappropriate rewards, and could potentially act as a small gold sink.

I don’t think it would be appropriate for Orr, barring a cleansing, but making the temple effects global could help in that regard.

I’m really liking this update — the fuller use of mechanics like downed and ressing, combos (apparently?), boons, reflects, and conditions is the right direction for PvE to be heading in. I personally like the art direction and the variety in events, and even the grind feels more optional and less forced than in other LW events so far. From what I’ve seen, even the obelisk hunt isn’t so bad. A lot of them seem to be more about remembering where Krait areas are located than aimless wandering, so there’s a little more player engagement involved.

In terms of writing and story, I’m not blown away or anything so far, but they could do worse.

Dott.5672:

So, what, now we can add godhood to her resume?
God kitten Mary Sue.

Wouldn’t that make her less Mary Sue? No complains about the dragons being Mary Sue, they’re supposed to be super powerful and the audience can buy that. The audience ought to be able to buy that a reborn god is also pretty powerful, and that a reborn illusion god is pretty good at manipulating and deceiving. It’s when she’s just some random nutso Sylvari engineer that it feels pretty implausible.

Scarlet Briar seems obsessed with twisting pairs of things together. Her chosen name itself comes from her vision, where a red thorny vine twisted itself around the Pale Tree. If it’s a deliberate motif and not just lack of creativity, then we can hope that the creation of these new alliances will end with Scarlet’s story arc.

Coldin.2840:

Man do people love to toss out the term “Mary Sue” whenever there’s a female NPC that’s good at something.

Trahearne is a girl?

Tacking random abilities onto a character because the plot demands it and it saves on introducing a new character might not be the best writing practice (though a necro being a poison expert isn’t all that much of a kitten-pull), but it doesn’t make that character a Mary/Villain/Whatever Sue.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Either way, Perilisk, your theory of Scarlet having ascended into godhood by taking Lyssa’s divinity is fully and utterly debunked. Even if Lyssa was dead, her essence wouldn’t have gone to the Mists unless possibly if it caused an explosion the way Abaddon’s would have if not for Kormir, and Scarlet didn’t really go to the Eternal Alchemy (the device was merely a sensory deprivation device). Even if she did witness Eternal Alchemy, that’s not the same as the Mists. The Mists are protomatter that serve as the beginning and end of all life. The Eternal Alchemy is how everything interconnects and functions together. Technically speaking, the Eternal Alchemy is not a place to “go to” so even if Scarlet did see the Eternal Alchemy, she didn’t go there – as that would be an impossible act.

The path by which Lyssa’s divinity got to Ceara was pure speculation (but I never meant to suggest that it involved the actual Eternal Alchemy, just that in her hypnotic state her mind generated such a thorough and powerful illusion she somehow opened herself up to the divine essence of illusion magic — and as a Sylvari, she sort of has a permanent quasi-telepathic channel up all the time anyway). The theory was more rooted in her behavior and abilities.

Stripping the theory down to the basics, which are more supported by evidence:

• In the isolation chamber, Ceara/Scarlet had a vision of a red thorny vine intertwined with the Pale Tree. Two powerful magical (and female, FWIW) beings intertwined, which is Lyssa’s thing.
• This couldn’t have been a simple hallucination, because afterward she physically changed in appearance to mimic the red vine and gained the ability to go all Viktoria on people. Unless that sort of mind/body link is normal for Sylvari, I guess.
• Since then, she’s been obsessed with turning pairs of things into one thing (FL+Dredge, Inquest+Priates, NC+Krait). Which, again, is kind of Lyssa’s thing.
• Ceara was a simple mortal engineer, albeit a talented one. Scarlet’s power, and her ability to persuade and deceive her minions, haven’t really been explained. Lyssa’s divinity, specifically, would be an acceptable explanation.
• There is a lot of powerful Mesmer magic (like the veil in Kessex Hills, possibly Scarlet’s portals if they aren’t pure magitech) whose source hasn’t been revealed yet AFAIK. Lyssa’s divinity, specifically, would be an acceptable explanation.
• Divine transference has happened enough to be a plausible occurence, but not often enough to have clear, defined rules about how or why or under what circumstances.
• It is known that Jormag devoured at least one Norn spirit, which seem similar to gods in nature.
• There’s supporting evidence (not proof) for the idea that all or some of the gods, Lyssa in particular, died/were devoured. It is known that their presence is no longer strongly felt in Tyria.
• There no evidence one way or another what would happen if a Dragon did devour a god, and no reason to think it would become divine as Kormir did; it might just as easily simply start “digesting” the divine essence, and who knows how long that would take for such a large source of magical power?

Thalador.4218:

Aside from the staggering amount of brainstorm and the highly speculative nature of the above post and the outright debunked assumption that Scarlet did delve into the Mists (she did not, only got lost in her own consciousness and the Dream/Nightmare thanks to having her senses fully deprived)

Do we really know what happened? Other than she didn’t see what she thought she saw (ie the Eternal Alchemy)? Which would be the case if somehow hollowed herself out enough inside through sensory deprivation and her own personal rejection of Dream/Nightmare to mentally absorb the purest essence of illusion. Ok, maybe not from the Mists specifically. From somewhere.

and the totally wrong explanation for the absorption of the eternal, divine energies of a god…

Is this something that is solidly explained in lore? The only case I’m aware of that is well known is Kormir, and that was with a freshly dead god.

… there is one fatal error in the above post that destroys it completely: Lyssa is not dead.

Is that confirmed? Sure, prayers work, but “dead” for a god doesn’t mean the same thing as for a mortal, and what it does mean isn’t too well defined. Maybe prayers still work because of a combination of the remaining divine essence and the belief of the one praying. Certainly, the Risen Priestess of Lyssa in the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance claims that all the gods are dead, and that Lyssa specifically was prey for Zhaitan. She may have just been taunting players as his mouthpiece, but maybe not.

Who says Scarlet went to them as Scarlet? If she’s got access to illusions like the one that cloaked the tower, she could probably just pretend to be the ancient spirit of a Krait prophet or something. I doubt the Nightmare Court are going to rat on her, since they’ve probably been led to believe that the Krait will be disposed of once their usefulness expires. The Krait’s prophet may have told them roughly the opposite. Just speculating, of course.

She stole the Avatar of the Pale Tree’s favorite pair of shoes, and then got them all muddy and ruined. It’s how she realized she should become a thief. But still, a shameful secret.

I liked it, if nothing else for the surprise, and the chance to get my Halloween achievement. My only complaint, upon playing the first instance in Kessex Hills, was that while my Sylvari enemies went into downed, my Seraph allies just went straight into defeated. Being able to res them as quickly as a downed player might have made it more worthwhile to pay attention to their status. Though I did notice that Kasmeer got me up from downed once during the boss fight… <3<3<3

I’m starting to wonder if maybe Scarlet isn’t to Lyssa what Kormir was to Abaddon (I dunno, killing Zhaitan caused the remainder of the dead-ish goddess’s essence to get coughed up into the Mists, and Scarlet’s “Eternal Alchemy” experiment caused her to tap into that essence and perceive a mind-breaking divine illusion of total consciousness). The difference being that her apotheosis was purely accidental, so she doesn’t understand her divine nature, and since her divine nature is Illusion, she really can’t. Because of this, the mortal consciousness of Ceara and the divine essence of Lyssa are struggling against one another rather than working together, thus insanity.

It would explain the source of the powerful Mesmer magic that cloaked the ToN, her skill at manipulating others despite being a flake, and her actual physical power in combat (cuz, goddess). [Edit: The portals in her invasion, while more likely magitech in origin, could also be based on mesmers’ portal magic.] More importantly, the Molten Alliance, the Aetherblades, the Toxic Alliance — randomly taking two things and mooshing them together — would actually make sense rather than just being lazy design. Lyssa is a twin goddess, portrayed as two intertwined beings. Basically, all of Scarlet’s actions could be explained as her dualistic divine nature subconsciously acting out through the filter of an already capricious and somewhat unethical mortal’s mind.

I think the main issue with Scarlet vs. Dragons is that (while technically they haven’t really done too much after emerging), they are each supposed to be capable of presenting an existential threat to life on Tyria. Players stopping their war on the dragons is like Batman bailing out of the Justice League during a long campaign against five alien empires bent on conquering or destroying earth so he can fight the Joker. There might be a rational explanation, but it’s implausible enough to damage suspension of disbelief.

Not that it ever really made sense — the Orders lead the fight against the dragons, the nations of Tyria don’t really do much at all. But realistically, which actually has the resources for such a fight? It’s not like the Pact has a tax base. It would have made more sense as an XCOM situation (especially after the creation of the Pact) — the nations provide funding and elite soldiers, and the Pact fights the aliens… err… Dragon minions.

But as of today, I came up with a theory about Scarlet that might let me accept (moreso, anyway) her actions, her power and ability to persuade and deceive, and her obsession with creating alliances by twisting pairs of groups up together. Not to get too into it, the theory assumes her arc canonically follows the end of the Personal Story, and involves Kormir and Abaddon, a Risen Priestess of Lyssa, the illusory aspects of the experiment that drove Scarlet mad, and the powerful mesmer magic that veiled the Tower of Nightmares.

Faowri.4159:

BobbyStein.2315:

Player Agency
<snip>

We often become personal assistants to the latest NPC in each story release, but I think you could attain a lot more player agency if the NPCs helped us. Like, we stumble across evidence of the Bloody Prince and then accidentally dig him up. We start investigating a murder we witnessed, because the NPCs recognise we’ve accomplished a lot of stuff and can probably handle it.

One thing they could do is put a fair amount of stuff into different areas of the game so that you run into it in normal gameplay (doors or candy nodes for halloween, for example). Then, with PC having seen something amiss, have a go-to character in the personal instance (across all LW content) who can do research and give the player character enough direction that they can take it from there.

Lore Guy: “The phenomenon you describe seems to be related to Mad King Thorn, though it’s unlike what we’ve seen in recent years. I contacted the Priory, and they informed me that their resident expert on the Thorns is currently on an expedition, investigating the Nolani Ruins in the Black Citadel. I suggest you confer with her for more information.”

BobbyStein.2315:

Player Agency
In short, Trahearne was intended to fill a very specific role that, in terms of both gameplay and story, the PC could not fill—an order-neutral character with extensive knowledge about Orr and the magic of undeath who could coordinate a global war effort and make the necessary plans, thus leaving the actual gameplay up to the player.

As true as that is, I think it really comes to the difference between being a superior and being an advisor.

Meaning, compare:

Trahearne: “Undead magic works like this, so we should do that.”
Player: “Ok, boss.”

with

Trahearne: “Undead magic works like this”.
Player character: “If what you say is true, then we can do that.”
Trahearne: “Hey, good idea.”

Player doesn’t decide anything, of course, but player -character- is still central.

As for Order-neutral, you could have-had a single junction point at the end of the Order-specific arc where a small group of forces from the three Orders get backed into the same corner and learn to survive by working together under the player’s leadership, and that battle forms the core of the Pact. Then the next arc would be bringing people from outside that battle on board with the idea.

Really, Trahearne’s story should have been separate from, but entertwined with the Pact and Personal story (like Destiny’s Edge). It could have even been a different mode (as DE was Story Dungeon mode). Have him relay his knowledge of Orr in the form of flashbacks, like the books in GW1 where you replayed the experiences of a lore character through their eyes, and with their abilities. Maybe if people -were- Trahearne while he was stealing the spotlight, they wouldn’t mind so much.

Anyway, that was more on the topic of Personal Story than Living Story, but many of the points carry over.

Keeping it short (per-point, anyway):

• It’s a hell of a lot to keep up with for casuals/part-timers.
• Permanently missing out on things might pressure (term chosen advisedly) players into sticking around, but discourages people from joining/returning too.
• Moderate alt-friendliness and profession/race differentiation is probably more conducive to stickiness.
• Need some way for people to catch up on story — TV shows relying on past episodes often start out with something like “previously, on Living World”, with some explanatory clips.
• Scarlet is a plot device, not a character. Unlike Story Dungeons or (some of) the Personal Story, the bulk of LW gameplay doesn’t involve decent, visible characters. Fine for, say, SAB or Teq 2.0, but not for the other updates.
• Storywise, better to add depth and detail to existing lore, factions, characters; not just add random new things for the sake of having something new.
• Only persistent character in story is player avatar (and Tyria itself); need to work around it — turn avatar into a character by developing relationships with LW characters, or something.
• Too much emphasis on extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards. You shouldn’t have to bribe people to do something new and fun. If you do, maybe it’s not as fun as you think.
• Recommend a one or even two-month cycle with bigger, tighter LW; but release each episode in phases like Halloween 2012 to keep things fresh while still allowing ample time.
• Maybe have some phase gating based on difficult server-wide achievement, to increase ownership of content and sever camaraderie.
• Some sort of way to store fluff items like Tassi’s relay golem without using bank space would be nice (like the Personal Story trophies)

Re: Colin’s TV question. The Story Dungeon arc was pretty good (aside from the player being sort of a sixth wheel). Putting the player into a small, recurrent group like DE (say, Pact special forces), sending them on missions, and developing player-NPC relationships over time might result in stronger content. It could also lead into a GW1-lite situation, where NPCs in instances can be a powerful, helpful hero, or get downgraded to scenery as more players are involved.

What exactly should replace pets as a class mechanic for rangers? I was thinking that, given that they are supposed to be masters of various environments, maybe it should be a set of skills that change based on the ranger’s environment, e.g.:

F1: a “camouflage” skill that would be a ranger-specific form of stealth, with a unique graphical effect for each environment. It would last longer, but would break if an enemy came too close to the ranger (sort of tracking with the ranger’s ranged-weapon archeype).

F2: a pet summon that would call a random creature suitable for the area (then would be replaced by a pet F2 skill). There wouldn’t be any other pet control. Pets would remain until death or leaving the environment.

F3: a preparation, suitable to the environment. It would not affect melee, but would affect all ranged attacks whether from a bow or not.

F4: create an improvised weapon suitable to the enviroment, kittenain to use it, similar to steal (but based on location rather than target). It would usually be a melee or short range effect (as an alternative to F1 and F3’s emphasis on range).

Pet emphasis in traits and skills would need to be toned down as well.

One class mechanic that Rangers have right now is the need to actually “unlock” their class mechanic by exploration, and I think that should be preserved. It would be good to have the ranger start with one unlocked set of skills corresponding to his home area, then others would be unlocked by fighting in a new environment, like weapon skills.

This is sort of a combination proposal of three interlinking items, that I think could address a few items on the player base’s and anet’s wishlist.

First aspect is an extension of the personal/racial aspect of the personal story, featuring a set of higher-level missions that see you rising to a position of social/political prominence in your society alongside your DE mentor, and learning more about some of the secrets hinted in the early stages (the White Mantle and Shining Blade, the other Pale Tree, etc).

As you perform these missions, you get the ability to turn your personal instance into something of a stronghold (the second aspect), with NPCs that provide services, NPCs that give you some side missions to flesh out lore and improve the stronghold, a library that serves as the basis for collecting and examining lore (and playing old missions, including some past LW flashback content, for no reward) at your leisure, and so on.

More importantly, the stronghold and its upgrades become the foundation of the investment system which is the backbone of the reward system for WvE gameplay (the third aspect). Your stronghold accumulates WvE Supply, mats, consumables, and occasionally other rewards over time (whether or not you are logged in and playing). You get these things by expending Supply to invest in open world “resource areas”, with multiple tiers of investment for each area at exponentially increasing cost. Like Hearts, this is just personal, nothing that actually appears in the open world to other players or that is contentious. Once you invest in a resource area, a bar starts to fill up, and once it reaches 100%, your stronghold gets some reward, which (in the case of actual items) you can retrieve upon returning, sort of like a black lion pick-up.

However, your investments only bear fruit when workers are actually able to do their jobs. Meaning, if you invest in Nebo Terrace and it remains under centaur control for an hour, production of rewards from that resource area is paused for an hour. So, “WvE” means this overarching objective of trying to keep resource areas on each map under player control as much as possible.

So, the objectives of such a system would be:

• A way to get stuff without farming; right now, the game is focused far too much on extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards (i.e. grind), to its detriment. With investment, people can play the content they enjoy and let the NPCs get the mats for them.
• A good reason for level 80s to go back and do a variety of DEs across lower-level maps (other than champ farming), but one doesn’t introduce conflict between newbies and farmers — if newbies kill the centaurs and get your workers back in action, so much the better. They didn’t steal anything from the zerg.
• Additional controls on economy for anet, since there are any number of excuses they can introduce to adjust returns from various areas (the miners found a new vein of ore, there is a drought, Scarlet Briar did it, etc.)
• A good reason to care about the state of DE; also, a reason to actually like having the bad guys beaten back and dormant, rather than just considering it boring.
• A good reason for players (and anet) to focus more attention on the home instance.
• A good excuse to add some system to make it much easier to figure out what events are going on in the open world (in order to manage your investments, but also just to find things to do without having to go to mapchat)
• The stronghold/investment system could be extended to guilds and guildhalls…
• Plus, more of the better half of the personal story.

Now, the extent of the systemic changes and the content means that it’s a pretty tall order. It’s not exactly a typical LS update. But, I think it would be something good to aim for in the long run, and would solve a lot of problems.

“Unfortunately, that means the best way to implement changes to encourage completion would be what they have done with Taco. Make the champs drop nothing and only give out (decent) rewards when the event succeeds.”

They should really only spawn champions at the end of portal/AB events, and then give a reward for beating the champion (but have normal and veteran mobs drop nothing). For that matter, the overall invasion bar should just track champs killed. It would bring reward incentives in line with event success.

Ideally, they wouldn’t bother with tracking stacks at all, since it seems to be a technical resource drain. It seems like there are ways to work around the issue, though it might require some core changes to combat or character development to eliminate the necessary of remembering the link between a condition and the condition supplier.

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.