Guild Wars 2

DarcShriek.5829:

redslion.9675:

But why do all human major characters have to be beautiful?

The kiss scene sounded fake to me for this reason: both characters looked like dolls. Perfect skin, perfect makeup, the face of a 20 year old victoria secret model.

In general, human models lack the variety of norn ones (to make a comparison with another humanoid species), and that’s a pity.

Because no one wants to look at ugliness, male or female. That’s why all heroes, male or female, appear as cultural ideals.

What about Braham?

(And if that is true, then the fact that the issue whether those two are of the same sex or not might be the LAST of our problems)

But why do all human major characters have to be beautiful?

The kiss scene sounded fake to me for this reason: both characters looked like dolls. Perfect skin, perfect makeup, the face of a 20 year old victoria secret model.

In general, human models lack the variety of norn ones (to make a comparison with another humanoid species), and that’s a pity.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Whoa, whoa whoa. When did The Prince become some sort of inviolable canon? As I recall my history, it was written in a time and place where family connections among the nobles were very important, and a wrong to one member reflected on the whole. That is why he made that recommendation.

Demmi has already turned against her father, so that point is moot.

This is a story. I don’t care if it’s right or not, I care that it’s cool.XD

Yeah, Scarlet’s death was disappointing. I hoped for something more like this:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

That attack she did to knock you back? The was very clearly magic and not a gadget. Plus again she has a personal army that are very loyal to her.

There might have been a reason to keep her alive, but theres more of a reason not to. There are only 6 elder dragons in the world that we know of, and we know 4 of the 6 to be awake, and 1 dead. What are the odds of Scarlet knowing the location of and waking up the last one?

The longer we let her live, the longer she has to escape, and after months of dealing with Scarlet, after all she’s done, knowing that Scarlet still has an army down in the city against 5 people, you still let her live when she’s cornered? That was still the best decision in the character’s shoes.

Also keep in mind, we know Scarlet was doing something with the leylines, but we don’t know what. For all we know her plan was in the early stages, but i’m sure the original plan was Rox or Marjory would have shut down the drill and Scarlet was sort of in the way blocking you from stopping it.

You’d still be complaining if Braham said “Ok Scarlet what was your plan?” and then she explained it for 10 minutes giving enough time for the dragon to wake up. Asking how could the heroes fall for that obvious stall for time.

The idea was to restrain her, send an expert to see what he could do to the machine, THEN question her. When at least you TRIED to stop her plan.

Then you can break her body and her mind into telling you everything, or dissect her to see if she was corrupted.

Yeah, you didn’t know if she was tryig to do that. But whatever it is, it would have generated a lot of power. Even if it was just to fuel Molten Alliance’s war machines (example), it would still be a hell of a problem.

Enough to make you not wanting to just HOPE she was in the initial stage of her plan.

CHIPS.6018:

Anyone tired of having these idealistic “My Little Pony” types leading us around?

Queen Jennah: I was nearly captured by bandits in Caudecus’ mansion. But Caudecus’ won’t betray me so I am keeping him alive.
Logan: WTH? Kill him to end this threat!
Queen Jennah: No! I am keeping him alive so he can betray me again next time.

Everyone: Hi council. We have almost 100% evidence that Scarlet will attack LA.
LA Council: LOLWUT? No we will do nothing.
Everyone: Ok no worries. We will just clean up your mess after Scarlet arrives.
LA Council: See you in two weeks! ^^

With leaders like these, the “good guys” have no chance of protecting the people. What the good guys need right now is a strong and tough leader as described by Niccolo Machiavelli.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/niccolo_machiavelli.html
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16201.Niccol_Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli:
-It is far better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.
-Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries, for heavy ones they cannot. If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.
-There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others. War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. You cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
-It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

GW2 translation:
-If the Pact want to hold onto its power over Kryta and survive as an organization, it can go 2 ways: Ether be loved, or be feared. It is obvious that the current and future enemies of Kryta do not love the Pact. So fear is the only way to control them. Some of the potential future enemies will fear the Pact so much, that these enemies will never exist at all. This reduces the size of the future threats and make them easier to control and destroy.
-When the Pact wins a battle against a strong enemy, it must push forward until that enemy is utterly destroyed so it will never be able to seek revenge. If not, the Pact will face its own destruction in the future. Look at the White Mantle. Clearly Machiavelli was right.
-War cannot be avoided. The key is the push when the Pact have the advantage, instead of waiting until the advantage belongs to the enemies. And in times of “peace”, the Pact should equip itself for the next future threat.
-It is the job of a good leader (The Pact), on behave of his/her people, to assume that the enemies are purely evil. And when uncontrolled and unbounded, these evil forces will act in the most evil and wicked ways in the future. If the Pact do not assume and act according to this, the Pact cannot protects its people and faces its own demise.

A documentary for those interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ9a_iIuDHs

Yay or nay?

Actually, I think the Pact should act the same way with the people it protects:

Not only the enemies, but ALL of Tyria must fear the Pact. All kingdoms must be afraid off of belittling its power.

When the Pact acts, it mast be taken for granted that ALL Tyrians are evil and will act for their advantage when given the occasion. Only the Pact knows what is right and wrong, and everyone must be protected from him or herself.

And everyone in Tyria can be the enemy of the Pact. At the first sign of disagreement, his will must be broken.

Yeah, that would be pretty brutal.
I’d love it to happen, going from this:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/286b7b9f968431fef87ed1880afb8b1d/tumblr_mfmdnsk8EL1rmcyoko1_400.jpg

To this:

https://www.blastr.com/sites/blastr/files/styles/blog_post_media/public/images/Judge_Dredd_01.jpg?itok=-7_l8r7i

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

redslion.9675:

But if they don’t care about their cubs, shouldn’t they aswell see long lasting relationship as nothing more than a leisure or -worse- a weakness?

Part A does not fit into Slot B here.

Mostly because we’re talking about emotional attachments, and you don’t always get a choice in those how to behave or react rationally/logically.

This should particularly go for all relationships that don’t have reproduction as an end.

Saying that, shouldn’t Charr culture see a relationship as a waste of time?
I don’t think that there is any situation where this comes out, but maybe I just didn’t find it.

Asura, I understand, put exactly that kind of spin on relationships. Work and science first, anything else second. Not to say they don’t care for each other but they do have a skewed sense different from how human beings view things. I present to you Exhibit A: Gadd and Zekk.

I know they don’t have a choice, but I’d expect Charrs to see this as a much more private matter than humans, for example.

Something that you feel, but shoudln’t feel. Like human’s desire to eat treats. We shouldn’t do it, but we can’t help ourselves. But it would not be something to show with pride.

So I might actually see a Charr being uncomfortable in front of two humans kissing.

And Charr have a much higher sense of duty than asuras.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

ThiBash.5634:

redslion.9675:

example: when you confront Scarlet, you might decide not to kill her, and fight against your allies for it. You win, and Scarlet ends up in prison. One day later, she is found dead.

There, Scarlet is still gone, nothing actually changed, but you decided to stand up for what you felt was right and those B-iconics might see you now with resentment mixed with fear, for you faced them and made them eat dirt.

Here, now players are not the main heroes, but likeable secondary characters.

They won’t have the spotlight, but they’ll come out and kick your kitten if they want to.

If such a thing could be implemented for future LS releases, I’d be very happy.

You cant let everybody live. Scarlet has shown she’s willing and able to attack and severely cripple major cities, kill thousands, and then laugh while she’s doing it.

This isn’t modern times, we cant just lock her up in a padded room. She’s shown she can easily get people out of jail and even killed someone on the captain’s council, the governing body of lion’s arch.

If you have the option WHY do you let someone like this live? Even if you roleplay a character as being passive or non-combative, there’s a line at some point and Scarlet has crossed it. If you are RPing a character that passive that you don’t want to kill someone who has done that, what does your character do at the battle for LA anyway? Why arnt you upset at anet not including any non-combat updates?

Well, you might not want to kill Scarlet yet because you might get some information from her. And she’s an engineer.Take away her gadgets and she is harmless, as long as you are not dumb.

kitten, severe all her limbs if needed! No matter how smart she is, she wouldn’t be able to do much without arms or legs.

Seems like every NPC forgot she was actually doing SOMETHING on that ship, and nobody bothered to look at it (yeah, even at the risk of going down with the ship). And now we havea dragon on the loose. Who knew! She wasn’t just standing on that ship.

Other than that, we knew she was messing with leylines. We also knew that magical power can be used to strengthen dragons enough to awaken them. There was a chance that she was trying to do exactly that. And a pretty big chance she was corrupted to want something like that.

But didn’t we know Silvary aren’t corrupted by dragons? How is this possible? A good reason to study her.

This might be more important than justice, right?

There is no obvious right decision. Don’t try to justify this living story choice finding one.

sAdam.5876:

Alice.8694:

Best just white wash everything and just stick to white male power fantasies then, eh?

I would say GW2 goes out of it’s way to be anything but . It may be good but it’s getting improbable. Acceptance of same sex pairs is not first on my mind in that matter. We got 5 wildly different spices with different philosophy and biology and yet(in present times) nearly no problems while working together. Pardon me, only Bad one have some issues with that, all other are knights in shining armor. We got High Fantasy game in Crapsack World setting. A bit of topic, sorry. My point is it looks to me Anet is creating nearly utopian world, which while being noble is unnatural.

I agree: as of now, it looks like a politically correct world.

A question, though:

Here is what the wiki says about how Charrs raise children:

Charr children are called cubs, though female cubs are occasionally called “kits” out of affection. Infants are born fully furred, with open eyes and functional limbs. Within a few days, cubs can follow their mothers over even the harshest terrain. They eat meat within a month of birth, and are fully independent several months later.

Charr cubs are raised by their parents only during this short period of time. Thereafter, they are taken to Fahrar camps (the closest human approximation is school or education), there they are raised in large packs by the Charr of their legion. Cubs in a Fahrar are taught to unify, encouraged to define their own social structure, and are thus forced into a warband. They are given a name to claim, which the cubs within a single warband derive their surnames, such as Fierceshot or Doomclaw.

This warband serves as the primary social group–and the only family–that a young Charr will ever know. Although cubs are aware of their lineage and their parents, adults have neither an interest nor a hand in the education, rearing, or growth of a young cub once delivered to the legion’s Fahrar. The legion (and the cub’s new warband as a part of that legion) comes before any blood ties.

As of this, we learn that each Charr learns that all their efforts must be focused on the warband which they are grown into. It looks to me like they are socialized into sort of a totalitarian society: the warband, and the Legion is everything.
Okay. And that Charrs don’t have interest for their cubs once they are grown enough. That’s because they are all cogs in the same machine.

But if they don’t care about their cubs, shouldn’t they aswell see long lasting relationship as nothing more than a leisure or -worse- a weakness?
This should particularly go for all relationships that don’t have reproduction as an end.

Saying that, shouldn’t Charr culture see a relationship as a waste of time?
I don’t think that there is any situation where this comes out, but maybe I just didn’t find it.

Dynnen.6405:

Dante.8456:

Guardian’s low health pool is countered by high levels of damage mitigation. That is why I believe that Guardian’s are far more viable at surviving high end encounters than Warriors.

Hahahahahahahaha…hahahahahahaha… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ohh man thats some funny kitten right there…Can’t tell if you’re trolling or serious.

So if you are trolling refer to my first laughing, if you are serious refer to healing signet/adrenal heal/invuln spam/mobility.

But you can still retain your brain while playing. That’s a big plus.

I think the problem right now is not the balance, but how fun meta builds are.

Paavotar.3971:

You might be a warrior if you punch your keyboard and loot bags appear

Well’ it’s pve after all…

Well, I’m no lore expert, and I don’t know how things went in GW1.

But Kryta looks to me like a decadent empire. While Divinity’s Reach is one of the most glorious and beautiful cities in the world, the territory around it is costantly ravaged by enemies, and seems like central power is highly distant, so much that some captains are willing to do anything to obtain the resources they need to survive. While this happens outdoors, indoors there’s an endless game of betrayal and deceit (I like the idea that the ruler herself is a mesmer, thus an illusionist).

Ok, here starts the part I know even less about.
Queen Jenna acts in good faith, but that doesn’t mean she is not part of the decadence: she might see herself as the one fated to give her people the greater good, without knowing what they need right now. The same with the Queen’s Jubilee: a show of luxury that struggles with the moment of crysis Kryta is living. As if Queen Jennah, a powerful illusionists, was trapped in an illusion herself.

This might look like the perfect occasion for the birth of a reactionary movement in Divinity’s Reach, that preaches a “return to the old times” as a premise to a return to greatness for the human race. Some sort of “O tempora, o more”. They don’t have to be the good or the bad guys: they will be wrong, but with their mere presence they will show that something is indeed wrong.
From what I know, mankind in GW1 was MUCH more powerful than what it is now.

This would IMHO make the human setting much more fascinating. And IMHO local, complex stories and internal conflict might actually be more fun than another dragon.

If there were no notable homosexual relationships in GW1, it might become another factor in this conflict: someone might insinuate that it is a sign of decadence. That’s irrational, but it’s just something that might happen in dark times. And might help reaching the goal of making the reactionary movement unlikable, but understandable from a certain point of view.

Just a question: what do you go for Guardian?

Greatsword And Sword/Focus for Balance between single target and Aoe

Or Sword/Focus and Scepter/Shield for more survivability while gaining the most from radiance bonuses and focusing on tearing single targets apart?

UnrequitedHope.6172:

Hambow already received a nerfbat and people still QQ’ing.

Dec. 10th
Reduced burst mastery damage by 3%
Normalized combustive shot’s damage according to adrenaline level. Ergo reduced its damage by as much as 15%
Earth shaker 33% reduced damage
Staggering blow 33% reduced damage
Moved unsuspecting foe trait to master tier

Here’s the warrior dilemma: take away the warrior’s damage and he becomes a kitten guardian with no access to protection, blinds or support boon sharing. Take way the warrior’s sturdiness and he becomes a crappy thief with no blinks, invis or z-axis travel.

It’s not the hambow, but what it stands for: rolling on the keyboard.

And it’s still a beast for pressure and survivability.

CharrGirl.7896:

redslion.9675:

CharrGirl.7896:

None of ya’ll would be raging for this long if it was a hetero couple kiss. Nuff said.

I would. I hate kisses in media.

Then close your eyes and shield your senses from the despicable act of kissing and pretend it doesn’t happen :P

That’s exactly what I do.

In fact I wasn’t raging at this, I was only saying I find both annoying.

CharrGirl.7896:

None of ya’ll would be raging for this long if it was a hetero couple kiss. Nuff said.

I would. I hate kisses in media.

Considering pvp developement might be nonexistant because of living story.

We pvpers got sacrificed for that stupid kiss! Q_Q

Biggest problem with healing signet: it’s boring.

Boredom, more than anything else, is killing pvp.

Phaeton.9582:

People are dumb and ignore OP builds/play styles until they are ‘accepted’ by the meta however. The funny thing is I made a post about stun lock warriors in the summer (as the first person to run it viably on NA) only to be shouted down by players like defective about the viability of hammer.

9 months and several nerfs later we’re getting threads like this

Also @red I’ve also gone dps guard, more active play plus future proof mechanics for high tier play (ie not so easy it has to be balanced around casuals).

Well, full cc warrior has always been one of our best bets in 1v1, IMHO.

The problem is that back then Longbow wasn’t buffed, and when Defektive was still around healing signet wasn’t overbuffed either. Back then hammer warrior was cool, combining high damage taking and high pressure at the price of low mobility and no range. It felt slow and strong, without opness.

About dps guards… you mean you will add videos showing high tier dps guardian gameplay? Nice!

jihm.2315:

redslion.9675:

jihm.2315:

dont roll guardian unless you want to do team pvp with friends that know what they do or be a part of a zerk.

only reason i didnt roll a warrior yet is because i did not figure out what race and name i will be.

personally guardian is not the class that i imagined them to be
when i saw warriors base health my jaw dropped to the floor and realized how much time i have wasted on this crippled class.

and i wont roll a warrior for its power but because i like mele combat.

and to people that say that HP doesnt matter it will always matter on classes that lack mobilty and have almost no cc like guardian

I felt the same as you, until I remembered which was the class that I liked the most in Dragon Age: arcane warrior.

Then i remembered how I loved tough characters with low health.

i have played lineage 2 and there was no heavy class that had the health of a robe class

anyway i made the wrong choice, you live you learn .

Well, the arcane warrior was a mage that specialized into fighting with a melee weapon and using magic to augment his prowess and resistance. He was able to dodge blows like a rogue while having the armor of a warrior.

Guardian has high vigor uptime and self-heals, IMHO is fun to play with him, always on the edge.

CureForLiving.5360:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/too-many-npc-heroes/first#post3693466
That and now this.
Seems ANet can’t win no matter what.

Well, as of now, we got the worst of both worlds:

you are praised as if you were the centre of the universe, without being able to make choices that actually matter or to develop you character in your own way.

You are a glorified puppet.

On one side, you shouldn’t be the main hero. On the other, you should be able to make choices during Personal and Living story that change the way NPCs look at you.

You don’t need these choices to change the course of the story. At the end of the mission, the result will be the same. The thing that will change will be the dialogues between you and npcs. Time to put that personality indicator to work.

example: when you confront Scarlet, you might decide not to kill her, and fight against your allies for it. You win, and Scarlet ends up in prison. One day later, she is found dead.

There, Scarlet is still gone, nothing actually changed, but you decided to stand up for what you felt was right and those B-iconics might see you now with resentment mixed with fear, for you faced them and made them eat dirt.

Here, now players are not the main heroes, but likeable secondary characters.

They won’t have the spotlight, but they’ll come out and kick your kitten if they want to.

Carpboy.7145:

style.6173:

As I’ve said before, there are a number of specs that need to be toned down in this game. Hambow is one of them. The other problem specs are:

decap engi, spirit ranger, mm necro, pu mesmer, s/p thief, bunker guardian.

And then after all those things are nerfed, whats left? All these crappy “i play how i want” builds that are deemed “fair” and “not OP” by some magical mysterious force? Im sorry you can’t beat me with your condi guardian :/

TL;DR

Read this https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sirlin.net%2Farticles%2Fplaying-to-win-part-1.html

Jeez.

The problem is not that there are some builds that are stronger than others. That is inevitable.

The problem is that the strongest builds are ALSO the most braindead. That’s because ANet started buffing the worst mechanics for every class (passive healing, aoe and condi spam for warrior, spirits for ranger, minions and marks for necros… they also want to buff spirit weapons 18 March, if I remember correctly).

You talk about condi guardian, and that’s an exaggeration. But what about meditation guardian? I moved to it from warrior, because is much more fun and challenging (is not that hard, ok, but is all about active gameplay, positioning and picking your fights) without being forced into some funky builds that I don’t like (you can play warrior in order to be challenging too, but in order to do that you have to “nerf yourself” by choosing worse options for your build or play completely glass in a meta that hates glass cannons).

And when a meta goes braindead, there is only one move in order to achieve the “play to win” objective:

leave pvp.

jihm.2315:

dont roll guardian unless you want to do team pvp with friends that know what they do or be a part of a zerk.

only reason i didnt roll a warrior yet is because i did not figure out what race and name i will be.

personally guardian is not the class that i imagined them to be
when i saw warriors base health my jaw dropped to the floor and realized how much time i have wasted on this crippled class.

and i wont roll a warrior for its power but because i like mele combat.

and to people that say that HP doesnt matter it will always matter on classes that lack mobilty and have almost no cc like guardian

I felt the same as you, until I remembered which was the class that I liked the most in Dragon Age: arcane warrior.

Then i remembered how I loved tough characters with low health.

Sword is useful if you are into spvp roaming and downing specific targets fast is needed, IMHO.

Example: necros and similar.

I use sword and GS. One is good for AoE surprise attacks, the other for single target pressure. I go 0/30/30/5/5, pretty straightforward but I need rune of speed, so I go all the way into precision tree for sword bonuses.

Liewec.2896:

try using hammer and playing with the altruistic healing trait combined with healing/large/longer symbols traits, its pretty cool

I never tried it because it makes me dependant on group fights in spvp, but I hear is the go-to sustain in WvWvW.

Warkupo.1025:

snip

Yes, but she’s an engineer. Remove her gadgets, put her in restraints under heavy guard and she should be helpless, right? Then try to force her to say what she’s doing.

The problem is that no npc actually thought about understanding what she was doing, and they were all about killing her. Hoping she needed much more time (that’s what I was saying: they bet all their money on the fact she was trying to seize control of Lion’s Arch)

As a charr engi, all I know is that her work affected one dragon. Do we have information about where the dragon is, how much energy it needs, what its conditions will be in case of awakening and so on?

If yes, then I might understand killing Scarlet doesn’t matter, because the process would have worked nonetheless and we already gathered informations.

If not, she might have been the only way to know.

Other than that… why there wasn’t an asura engineer (I say asura because her technology seems similar to theirs) in the team sent to kill Scarlet? You know, someone with at least a chance of stopping her plan? Seems like the idea was just “kill Scarlet for justice” all along. Even during the whole battle before that, an expert on that kind of technology might have been useful.

CharrGirl.7896:

redslion.9675:

lordkrall.7241:

I really don’t see all the issues people have with the kiss.

If you had a relationship with someone, and you thought that your partner was dead, would you not kiss him/her/it when he/she/it turns out to be alive? I don’t know about you, but I would say that is a very realistic and logical reaction.

But I suppose gay couples aren’t allowed to show love?

I would have loved it if Marjory brought Kasmeer’s head on her chest.

It would have still shown they are in love, it would have been less expected and would have been more tied to the kind of relationship they have (they are in love, but Marjory is like a motherly figure for Kasmeer)

I actually like that Marjory was the one needed protecting this time, it showed that Kasmeer isn’t just a damsel to be protected by her.

Sure, but Kasmeer is still the “young one”. Even if she’s the protector this time, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see Marjory as a bigger sister anymore.

In general romances in this game might be “concept-based”, more than character-based (characters in an MMO might not have enoug developement, or it might become hard to find… by making a romance theme based, you can make something interesting while being recognizable, making also foundation for future developement).

Example: Jennah/Logan relationship seems like an odd version of courtly love. Logan is completely devoted to his lady as a soldier and as a man, but we never know how much this comes from loyalty, affection or magic boundaries. Which makes it pretty dark too.

lordkrall.7241:

I really don’t see all the issues people have with the kiss.

If you had a relationship with someone, and you thought that your partner was dead, would you not kiss him/her/it when he/she/it turns out to be alive? I don’t know about you, but I would say that is a very realistic and logical reaction.

But I suppose gay couples aren’t allowed to show love?

I would have loved it if Marjory brought Kasmeer’s head on her chest.

It would have still shown they are in love, it would have been less expected and would have been more tied to the kind of relationship they have (they are in love, but Marjory is like a motherly figure for Kasmeer)

frostyraziel.1854:

There needs to be a Kormir finisher just for OP.

Oh my.

I’d LOVE to kill Kormir.

Warkupo.1025:

ThiBash.5634:

Warkupo.1025:

You’ve been slashing and hacking your way through charr, mole-men, and aether-soldiers for the past week and now you’re having a moral dilemma about killing the chick that routinely drops orbital nukes on peaceful cities?

Yes. It’s my job to make sure she stops harming people. I leave judgement to those more qualified. Also, the issue isn’t defeating her in self defense…it’s about killing her when she’s pretty much helpless. I’m against the death penalty irl too.

I generally share that opinion to a point; orbital nuking a city is that point. Scarlet has also proven to me that she is never ‘helpless’. You have to respect her enough to know that, even as she’s kneeling in a pool of her own blood, she’s still a deadly opponent that can take your head off if your approach her carelessly. Given that she starts chucking grenades at you as soon as you get close to her I don’t think striking her down is any different than the hundreds of enemies you would have had to strike down to get to her in the first place.

She quite clearly wanted to go to jail as that was another step in her plan. You can tell it in the way she mocks you as she brings up what she assumes is the next course of action. Killing her was the only decent solution.

You know, she wasn’t actually THAT smart:

she kept hurling grenades at the mesmer who wasn’t even touching her while ignoring the guy coming to impale her.

Other than that, killing her is the really DUMB solution:

you have NO idea what she was doing and you probably won’t be able to understand what’s going on from her ship. You are just hoping that whatever she was doing by drilling in front of Lion’s Arch has been stopped soon enough will have no consequences whatsoever and that the whole process will stop with her demise.

This means counting on the fact her goal required time to be achieved, and she worked on it betting on the fact she could invade Lion’s Arch without anyone actually striking back until she was finished. Betting that no one would care about the destruction of the most important city in all of Tyria.

i.e.: Killing her means counting on the fact that the enemy who everyone recognizes as the highest mind of this time does something INCREDIBLY stupid.

Braham deserved MUCH MORE than a broken leg.

Shiren.9532:

Morrigan.2809:

CureForLiving.5360:

RedStar.4218:

I mind that when Scarlet asked “do you want to hear why I did all that ?” some idiot said “no” and we didn’t say anything.

This is actually the thing that could have been done better. For a while now I’ve been saying we need more meaningful dialog (RPG style). If we had that we could have chosen “Shut up Bro-Ham, I’ve been slogging through the Scarlet Alliance for months and I want to know WHY!?”. But since we can’t talk…

As for the final blow… well people have been asking for our characters to be the Hero for a while now, and now we have what we wanted. Another community-ANet catch-22.

EDIT: I liked the stomp itself, it felt finisher-ish to me. Hands-on if you will.

yes- I wanted to smack him in the face actually.

I was thinking- now you decide to speak up? can you shut up already and have someone with a brain decide this mmm?

It wasn’t just Braham. Marjory was actually the one who stepped forward with the seeming intent to kill Scarlet.

Yeah, what an epic fail.

“Look how heroic I am, I will finally bring justice by cold-bloodedly killing someone who already surrendered and is not even able to stand. I’m so sure of myself, what could go wrong?”

“Oh, hey, even if she is not able to stand she is still able to kick my kitten .”

Kasmeer wanted to make Scarlet pay because, even if Marjory didn’t die in the blast, her dignity did.XD

Dubbleyew.1029:

Konrad Knox.5162:

I would really enjoy it if GW2 featured a marriage and romance system between characters and NPCs or characters and characters (like in some other single player games and MMORPG games we can easily google, where characters can get married.)

I would enjoy some straight romance and possibility to roleplay, and maybe have dignity/ferocity/charm actually do something and affect how npcs treat you from a romantic standpoint.

That being said, I still did not complete the personal storyline yet, but I’m close, just past the charr tanks, and I find the plotline so far to be somewhat feminist oriented, with Destiny’s Edge being lead by a woman and the number of females in the group being more than the males. There was another lesbian sylvari couple in the plot, among the scouting group. One of the girls died, and the other was lamenting the loss. Which makes me wonder if all sylvari are conceived to be homosexual? And mostly the exposition of sexuality if focused on female characters, where as the male characters seem to be mostly written as either roudy and happy-go-lucky types or the Trehearne/Tybalt/Logan types – responsible for everything and tormented by doubts. The three of them are essentially the same character, and none of them act like problem-solvers.

Not to mention the human city is ruled by a Queen – another female of authority. And the sylvari avatar of the Tree is a female entity.

Just a personal opinion, but I think the male side of the house could use some empowered characters soon.

Correct me if I’m wrong though.

Are you kidding me? Literally every other game ever is full of male-dominant power fantasies. It still isn’t enough for you, though? Like when there’s finally a game that has many female characters (but also still many male ones) in positions of power and authority, then uh oh, can’t be letting the world not completely revolve around men for once.

I know this word sets off a lot of alarms in people’s heads, but sheesh, talk about not recognizing your privilege. If “too much feminism” means “men and women are more or less equals in this game” then I’m a proud feminist. Bring on more feminism, anet.

Speaking of, why does the idea of women “bossing you around” upset you so, but men bossing you around doesn’t? Women shouldn’t be allowed to outrank you? You always have to be dominant over them? Please.

If you want “male empowerment,” all you have to do is go and play literally any other game.

As for Marjory/Kasmeer, well, let’s just say that most of these discussions wouldn’t even be happening if it weren’t between two women. Just because they’re both attractive women doesn’t mean they’re “fan-service” or “forced,” sheesh. Couples occur in real life, I dunno why some people are so afraid of seeing romance in their games. Particularly healthy, non-abusive romances. Just because caithe and faolain are troubled and emo doesn’t make it better or more realistic writing.

The problem I had with the personal story is not the fact that it’s full of strong female characters.

It’s that most characters (from both sexes) are boring. Whole personal story is a huge disappointment. Near to no freedom of choice, near to no character building (that personality indicator is as useful as a glory boosters will be 18th March), with a plain and predictable story with plain and predictable character deaths after Claw Island which I didn’t really give a crap about (also because most of the time it feels like those people are just killing themselves for no reason other than boredom).

I just hope Anet is not counting on using the “Oh, we are so progressive, and if you don’t like the story you are a caveman” card by using same gender romances and putting more female characters around without actually caring for what they say.

Remember that med guardians have good blocks and perma vigor, though.

If you go from a necro to guardian, you are gonna need time to get the right feeling out of it. I had the same issue going from warrior (too boring now) to med guard (which is pretty BRÜTAL).

But once you get the hang of it, you can do some serious damage while having fun.

For example, I lowe to chain Binding Blade and Judgement intervention, followed up by whirling wrath, to pull people and then AoE the living crap outta them.XD

When I’m done, I slice them up with my sword.

Thanks to blinds and blocks, a med guard can defeat a warrior most of the time.

Rod.6581:

^agree

I would be happy even with minimal branching and even with same result but done in possible different way. Something like this:

Marjory is unconscious. Braham is hurt. Kasmeer is trying to kill Scarlet while Rox won’t leave Braham. You get to choose.

Option A: Choose to kill scarlet and end it just like in the game. Tiami doesn’t like you so much any more.

Option B: Choose to imprison Scarlet rather then kill her. Rox is ok with that but Kasmeer wants to kill her, and you can choose to let her or confront her. One of the following events takes place.
Option B1: Let her kill Scarlet. Kasmeer and you are ok, but Tiami is sad. And doesn’t like you any more.
Option B2: Confront Kasmeer. You fight her, but let her live. Kasmeer and Marjory are angry at you and don’t like you so much any more. Scarlet is later found dead in her cell due to unexplained events. But you know who to blame.

Option C: Let Scarlet escape so you can find out what is she up to. Rox doesn’t like this and puts an arrow trough her head. None from team B likes you no more, but Tiami is happy. You don’t need those lamers to like you anyways.

I’d love to have something like this. Not only for having a choice.

You know, the biggest problem I have with GW2 NPCs is that they all like you or are neutral. There is no main character that does NOT like you.

I find that extremely BORING.

Having the chance to make someone angry about something you did might actually make you feel like your actions matter, and you are NOT a puppet that gets all the glory.

Narcemus.1348:

ThiBash.5634:

Zaxares.5419:

@ThiBash: You can headcanon it as Kasmeer (wouldn’t that be fitting?) or Rox was the one to land the final blow. Both have ample motivations for doing it.

In my headcanon, all 5 of my characters are journeying together at the same time. My Charr Warrior is the one who gladly spiked Scarlet through the heart with his sword.

I suppose I could. I could even say ‘Kasmeer made me do it with mesmer magic’. It’s just that the whole thing makes me feel so cheap.

Exosferatu.2961:

Your character has resolve, and therefore did not spare a mass murderer.

I’m sorry, but my character is way too much of a whimp for even that. She even tries to avoid hitting critters with aoe while going about the game world if it can be done.

I understand what you’re getting at. My Guardian was originally similar to that in his back story. His only interests were in protecting others and healing wounds. Sadly, his perspective of the world changed after two large events. First, the centaurs took his sister forcing him to feel a failure for being unable to defend his own sister. Second, he walked out into Shaemoor only to find it burning under a centaur siege. When he saw this is broke him, it was then that he realized that sometimes you must kill in order to protect what you hold dear. This lead him down the path to eventually killing Kellach in order to protect his queen, and eventually killing Zhaitan. By the time he got to Scarlet, killing her was the only way to protect future generations of Tyrians from the types of evils she has performed… It was an easy task.

My charr engineer is a brutal barbarian with love for brain-powered brawl.

He might have killed Scarlet.

After burning Braham, Rox, Marjory and Kasmeer alive. Or spilling their brains out with a wrench. Or turning their pretty faces into a pulp with his shotgun.

Because the thing he hates the most is idiots beside him.

Because if you don’t mind about what a neurotic individual whose resources are unknown and has already caused enormous damage might have in store for after his death, and what her motivation might be, you DESERVE to die.

ThiBash.5634:

Just out of curiosity: did you mind that your character is the one that strikes the final blow on Scarlet? Lorewise, my character is somewhat or a pacifist. While she recognizes violence as sometimes neccesary, she fights in self defense, not to seek to end anyone’s life. Yet in this part of the Living Story, your character has to do just that: murder an enemy that’s already beaten and fighting for their lives.

I’m kinda upset that ArenaNet forces our characters to become mindless killers. I know that they’re not exactly innocent, but murdering in cold blood? I’d have preferred a capture. Or to at least have an npc strike the final blow.

What are your thoughts on this?

In the story all characters are mindless.

And yeah, considering how dumb are your allies, she can’t be locked up. I bet she could just fool the guards by saying their shoes are untied.

While they are wearing steel boots.

However, see it like this: your character has spent some time in the Heart of the Mists, where finishing players doesn’t kill them and is part of the sport. You did the same by reflex, because you got the habit of seeing stomping as something to do.

Other than that, taking and questioning her might have been kinda useful. Too bad your allies were dumb, and when she was willing to say it they just went “Lol who cares”.

I would have killed them right there. Not Scarlet.

Is meditation guardian viable then?

It’s hotjoin. Your objective there is to learn and/or have fun, not to win.XD

Leeto.1570:

Forced to play specific build TO STAY COMPETETIVE:
Obviously you already understand yourself that you can play whatever you want if you arent going for the top 50, there will always be one thing better than another and to be best you must play best thing there is. A very rough example: Condition necro vs Condition engi, if you want your team to have overpowered condition dealer ofcourse you will bring necro, if your team has overpowered condition damage already, you will surely consider bringing condition engineer instead cause he can provide more team support and more control.

The problem is not that not every build can be competitive.

Problem is the most competitive builds are also the most braindead.

Example:

Warrior – hambow and condispam. When you play one of these, it’s like the game is actually playing itself. No need for watching your hp, no need to work for landing attacks, highly resistant overall and same rotation over and over again. Strongest warrior build has nothing of what makes the class fun and challenging.

Ranger – Spirit as it is now shouldn’t even be REMOTELY viable.

Engineer – Bomb/nade spam in teamfights has become too much of a thing. Those builds have still decent skill ceiling (through combofields), but are maybe too easy on skillfloor.

Necros – where all this crap came from

Guardians – bunker is not entirely braindead, but not that fun either. It’s a pity Anet seemingly wants guardians only as bunkers, because guardian dps is really fun to watch and play.

Thief – I won’t say anything, but that doesn’t mean they are okay.

TF2 has 3 different modes. All around conquest.

And what about payload?

Andele.1306:

redslion.9675:

Andele.1306:

redslion.9675:

Chesed.2890:

Lore is definitely very important. The story is the spice that makes the game engaging.

Lore and Story are two different things.

Let’s make an example with Star Trek.

Some episodes from the Original Series had a great story. But near to no lore whatsoever (the franchise was still at its dawn).

Some episodes from Star Trek: Voyager had great lore (the one built by all those years of Star Trek) but really bad stories.

IMHO lore is what is behind the story.

Actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore
Its just different time frames and scale which split story and lore.

That’s enough of a difference. The story is the one directly concerning your character. Lore affects your character by founding the story. But lore can’t replace the story. Unless you’re in for a very boring story, where everyone acts like he is supposed to.

And I’m not even sure lore and folklore are the same thing. Most of the time lore is estabilished knowledge, while folkore isn’t.

Well in the lore its said by the jotun that they first interacted with the human gods, but the gods themselves, the forgotten and the humans all plain state that the first time they came to tyria it was with the humans. Lore of a race is very subjective.
Also the word lore came from/is a synonym to folklore.
Story just means that we have core focal points as the perspective for said events.

What you mean is actual storytelling and word/universe building for star trek (since the story is just x amount of races which are just our historical cultures with weird looks and a crew of people which explore and interact with them, lore just going in depth of each race). Either way we are splitting hairs, as MQM said there needs to be more of the “show/interact not tell” going on (or at least stuff like jorys and scarlets journals which give you a narration).

Yeah, we were talking about two different things. What I meant was that characters are generally too much defined by their culture.

Andele.1306:

redslion.9675:

Chesed.2890:

Lore is definitely very important. The story is the spice that makes the game engaging.

Lore and Story are two different things.

Let’s make an example with Star Trek.

Some episodes from the Original Series had a great story. But near to no lore whatsoever (the franchise was still at its dawn).

Some episodes from Star Trek: Voyager had great lore (the one built by all those years of Star Trek) but really bad stories.

IMHO lore is what is behind the story.

Actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore
Its just different time frames and scale which split story and lore.

That’s enough of a difference. The story is the one directly concerning your character. Lore affects your character by founding the story. But lore can’t replace the story. Unless you’re in for a very boring story, where everyone acts like he is supposed to.

And I’m not even sure lore and folklore are the same thing. Most of the time lore is estabilished knowledge, while folkore isn’t.

Problem is hambow doesn’t make you a better player.

Chesed.2890:

Lore is definitely very important. The story is the spice that makes the game engaging.

Lore and Story are two different things.

Let’s make an example with Star Trek.

Some episodes from the Original Series had a great story. But near to no lore whatsoever (the franchise was still at its dawn).

Some episodes from Star Trek: Voyager had great lore (the one built by all those years of Star Trek) but really bad stories.

IMHO lore is what is behind the story.

Dahkeus.8243:

Cynz.9437:

When you have bunch 4v5 in a row with “sweet” mix of skyhammer crap it is hard not to be toxic.

Not really…

If the game starts to get to you, here are a couple alternatives to posting immature rage posts on the forums:

- Turn off the computer.
– Watch something on TV.
– Go for a walk outside.
– Engage with your family/loved ones.
– Play a different game.
– Realize that your own personal frustration isn’t a burden to throw on someone else.

If you want to come to the forums and make a constructive criticism about these grievances, please do so, but that’s not really the issue here.

That’s what a lot of people do. Those people are the ones who already quit the game.

hellsmachine.4085:

A tougher person doesn’t bleed as much. This is just common sense.

Because he ain’t got time to bleed?

To reduce miasma levels pvp players should stop eating beans.

I agree on being kind to each other.

But devs must understand they just can’t keep us waiting forever.

Dahkeus.8243:

Sorry, but this is a bad bunker build and a bad dps build combined. If you want a DPS build, go with a meditation build like Itty Bitty Bunker’s build. If you want a bunker build, go with something like this.

Also, the signet heal is a weak choice compared to shelter since it just opens you to getting interrupted.

Other than that, Rune of speed and sustain are really important, and altruistic healing doesn’t do a great job in spvp.

(BTW I LOVE 30 radiance points in med builds)