Guild Wars 2

Meh, nothing about sylvari, we never hear about them anymore :P.

On a serious note, the above sentence is a joke!

Muchas gracias!

He had the dialogue when he was on his way out of instance, Konig. Maybe I read it wrong, was trying to stay in range and read at the same time. As I said, some question about Rytlock’s warband, the answer I didn’t manage to read because L. left instance.

I didn’t think about chatting him up when he was on his way to talk with Majory, I was interrogating Tiny Braham then.

And yeah, english is my 7th language, can’t read that fast, puppy it!

Where can we see them?

Yeah, Braham really is the underdog. He really can walk UNDER most norns. Braham the Short, I call him, or Tiny.

Yep, congratulations, it was nicely done!

Only Logan’s text chat about Rytlock’s warband I missed, he ran away. That was rude to run away in middle of conversation with my character!

But other than that, it was very well done, especially since I usually stick my nose everywhere before following main objective (the Priory person), and I was not disapointed!

Well, Logan has a history with running away…

Yes, I like how we die if we fail, and our armour brakes! It’s consequences! Not big ones, but consequences! Makes me kinda wanna try harder knowing that if I’ll win I’ll save myself than silver piece (I’m kitten poor).

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s really no such thing as a unique character anymore. Everything has already been done.

A homicidal super intelligent talking and giggling clown lettuce haven’t! Oh wait…

Umm, the Living Story text in upper right corner of the screen changed from “Fight Scarlet’s New Toy” to “Go to LA and check up on Braham the Tiny and his non norn unimportant sidekicks!”, after the marionette fight, didn’kitten

I know I found it without much trouble “Hmm what now, oh, something flashed! Coo, nice text!”

Gotta say, when I entered the new update I learned there are just the boss fights and nothing else. I was rather displeased, you can say!

Luckily I stuck around, fought the fights and learned that there is more, and I liked it!

I still don’t like Scarlet, but I enjoyed the new dialogues, very much so!
Also the fact that I could walk around and chat with character to find out more. Except Logan, who ran away before I could read what exactly he thinks about Rytlocks warband, coo!

Also, the quaggan couple! Yay for those two, I appreciate their presence!

I am yet to get in Salad Bowl AKA Scarlet’s Lair, so can’t say anything about that, but I will! I don’t care much for her (to say the least), and originally I intended to ignore anything related to her storywise, but now I changed my mind. Who knows, maybe I’ll be convinced she isn’t a waste of pixels after all?

ps. The new golden star leading the player from dialogue to dialogue after the obligatory part was over is a nice addition I think. Heck, I didn’t even notice it untill convo between Logan and Marsmeer, but it’s a good way to lead players from story node to story node nonetheless!

I’d say they are, but effects would possibly become visible after prolonged time, maybe hundreds, or even thousands of years?

I have little to support that claim of course, I can’t think of in game quotes saying how long Dragons are active when awake, but it stands to reason I think that they are awake for a long time, judging by the pacing of their efforts now, when they are awake for ages (I can’t quote exact awakening dates from wiki at the moment unfortunately) and little to no presence of Dragons is felt except places like Orr, Frostgorge or the Brand.

And since we haven’t felt diminishing in magic by now, I can safely wager that draining/corrupting of magic is a very long process by our standards.

ps. Take global warming for example from real life – it is happening, right now, yet it will take human generations to notice the effects of this relatively fast occurring events.

Ah, I was wondering if I somehow missed the Sons vs. Icebrood fight somewhere, thanks!

Is there a place in game where Icebrood attack Sons? You said “Very rarely”? is curious

Sons of Svanir say hello!

We will know… THE FEET. See what I did there?

Mochann.5298:

Yeah, Scarlet doesn’t even make sense internally from ANet’s own lore perspective. A Silvari that graduates from all three Asuran colleges, worked with the inquest, and somehow manages to forge alliances with all the evil powers despite every single one of her plans getting destroyed and failing, and despite being a massive homicidal maniac without a shred of charisma? I mean seriously, lolwut.

Someone was smoking plantations of Suspension of Disbelief Weed when they wrote Scarlet up. Saying she is badly written doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of it.

You forgot about her mastering norn metallurgy, charr engineering and hylek alchemy. And knowing the secrets of everyone on Tyria. And literally walks away slowly when players arrive just to have them stare sheepishly as she trottles casually towards the portal.

If a person skips cutscenes and ignores dialogue, it’s their own puppy (instead of kitten) fault they miss the story!

The point I think, is, that we want a story we don’t have to go to other websites to look for, don’t have to make up excuses of validity for, and one that compels and drags us in while at it.

I think we can agree on those three points at least?

And personally, I won’t be entering the update with “It’s gonna suck puppy tale” mindset, hell I expect the wurm to be fun like hell, the marrionette less so, I don’t have much hope for the story, but maybe ANet is going to make me eat my words against Scarlet back, who knows?

What I want to see so I can regain faith in Scarlet and writing team: HOW exactly was Scarlet forming those alliances. I want to see how it happened with each of them. I need to see her coming to dredge, Flame Legion, krait etc, and I need to hear her convince them.

Secondly, I’d have to see her doing something else than blabbering jibberish and be do something other than being perfect, al knowing and invincible.

Then I can regain at least some faith in Scarlet story arc and look back saying it wasn’t terrible in coming months.

BTW. If I’d be to guess, the Marionette may be a rebuild and “enhanced” forgeman from Sorrow’s Embrace, she is sculpted after the artwork at least.

Aye, few games manage to create captivating landscapes like those in Guild Wars 2, even if counting newer games with better graphics usually lack the artism!

I sometimes turn of the UI and just play without it, to let the game sink in. Too bad you can’t see dialogue without UI, or I’d play like that all the time (I remember my cooldowns, playing one proffesion since first beta).

Looking at it like that, yeah, better they have used Scarlet as a lab rat, or lab lettuce.

I think however than if she would be better written, the flaws of LS delivery I wouldn’t notice even.

After all, I have enjoyed Southsun, the storytelling flaws did not stop me from learning the story, and since I liked it, I had fun playing.

Of course, I speak only for myself!

That would actually drop my jaw to the ground! To have over a year of game, defeating Zhaitan, preparing the Pact to move again for another relatively easy (easier than expected at least) Dragon kill, only to have the world fall apart around us (let’s say Primordus and Destroyers swarm everywhere, drowning Tyria in dragon Minions) and instead of triumphant march, we’d be facing hard fight for survival?

kitten , I’d love it! I think something as awesome would definetly make me easily forgive Scarlet’s story up to that point. But yeah, dream on.

But those thousands don’t care about story at all, not one bit and wouldn’t care even if a pink pinata would start tossing coconuts at city walls as long as it drops loot.

It would be a sad day indeed if ANet will start listening to council of people who don’t care whatsoever about the story…

I bet there are, and they are fully entitled to be both happy wit it and to express their opinion about it. I also am entitled to do the same, and I’m not trying to coerce people enjoying the LS fully to cease and desist having fun, but merely to express my opinion on a platform where I can be heard.

I enjoyed parts of the LS, I enjoyed morally grey Southsun release with Consortium and Canach, I enjoyed the Bazaar for many reasons, and I really do see the imporvement in Scarlet related releases.

However I can’t shake the resemblance between Scarlet and my 10 year old’s nephew first pen and paper rp character attempt, in idea, backstory, visible motivation and execution. So it’s nigh impossible for me to enjoy scarlet related releases, and though I hope to be surprised each new release, so far I haven’t. I simply don’t like simple black and white “good and evil” stories. Guild Wars 1 enchanted me with it’s depth, sadly GW2 so far at least fails to deliver in that regard.

I will most certainly give the story and the new release an honest try, but I don’t expect anything mindblowing story wise.

Not saying that the story is impossible to like, only that it does not suit my tastes, and hence even though I really want to, I can’t enjoy it. Which is my problem, and which is why I chose to express my personal 100% subjective and biased opinion.

/end rant

Not for me it won’t, at least. I play games mostly because of the story, gameplay, graphics etc, are at best secondary values. If the story doesn’t drag me in, I’ll check it out, look in every nook and cranny, sigh and carry on my merry way never to look back.

So far it doesn’t show anything about the story, or it’s quality, hence I don’t personally give a puppy (enough of those kittens already!) until I see the tale that will or will not be told.

Maybe I’ll love it, I have strong reservations however, not gonna beat the poor dead horse again though.

I wonder when it will come to light, that the minstrel and Ho-Hmmm-Tron are having a secret affair…

Vote proposition infinity, say yes to robosexual marriage!

Sorry, it was stronger than me. On topic, I have no stronger feelings one way or another.

I’d love that! I do use waypoints hell of a lot, but having “real” consequenves of LS is worth the trouble!

darkace.8925:

Perhaps you guys could implement some sort of in-game survey after completion of various content/activities (similar to those used during the BWEs)? I wouldn’t force players to take the survey, so I’d tuck it away in the UI menu somewhere. But it could be a useful tool to determine what players actually enjoy, as opposed to whether or not they’re just showing up for the rewards. It may be the case that you guys don’t care if we enjoy it so long as we’re participating, but hopefully that’s not the case.

That option I would cherish very much!

Ah, good catch! My bad, 100%, I’m no expert in sylvari lore hides under the table in shame. I apologize for sloppiness, should have checked wiki before posting.

+1 @Shack, pretty much sums up my thoughts. I play games for stories first, everything else long, loong way behind it. Until better days I’ll still be sitting mostly on forums an playing Myth: The Fallen Lords, only occasionally poking in GW2.

One little correction, Faolain is not teh founder of the Nightmare Court. Firstborn Cadeyrn founded NC.

Faolain later took the Court over and is/was leading it ever since.

Other than that, your theory seems to hold water, gonna check out on the vines though!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

She intends to kidnap Trahearne and hold him ransom. But when none of Tyria will pay the ransom, she gets upset and throws him into Abaddon’s Mouth (which is the name of a volcano). But then the volcano erupts and hurls Trahearne all across Tyria, revealing that he had absorbed the essence of the Door of Komalie and the bloodstone in Ring of Fire, allowing himself to clone himself infinitely. And then ALL NPCs in the game gets replaced by Trahearnes, because by absorbing the essence of the Door of Komalie he also took in the essence of the Mists allowing him to replace the genetic makeup of others with his own template. And it shall no longer be sylvari, human, norn, grawl, charr, or dragon. THERE SHALL ONLY BE THE TRAHEARNE RACE!

Forever.

This won’t end well…

Of course it doesn’t prove it, it seems pretty obvious in and on itself though, with the article or without it…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The issue is that nothing thus far links the do not touch towers with Scarlet.

Well, Devs kind of sort of spilled the beans between the lines in the article in the “next release” section: “There are some major unanswered questions that remain: What is Scarlet trying to do? What is the motivation behind her actions? What are the “do not touch” devices? What will Scarlet do with the knowledge she has gained from her various collaborations?”

By asking about the devices between so many Scarlet question, they by correlation suggest what most of us think anyway, that it’s Scarlet who’s behind them.

I am vague like that sometimes, no worries!

I know, I know. My post was a feeble attempt at humour, I thought it was quite visible, but apparently wasn’t so.

Well, to be 100% sure: I do not try to imply in any way that any of what I described is going to happen, or is a valid theorem. It was a tinfoil hat gag, taking roots from many a paranoid idea that floats around. Bows, tips hat

After all, we all know that Zhaitan’s corpse will be reanimated by Scarlet using remnants of candy elementals to replace missing flesh, and she will claim ORr as her main base of operation, and turn it to a theme park, of course.

Does Zhaitan even has a pulse?

After all, he is the undead dragon, maybe he still lingers, chopped into little pieces that players made their armour of? Maybe every little shard of zhaitan is alive, waiting to take control and corrupt of the heroes that have “slain” him?

Maybe each and every player wearing Arah armour set is a ticking corruption bomb, just waiting to happen? After all, players tend to accumulate magic items!

We’re doomed, we thought we kiled the dragon, in fact, we only made his feeding easier! That explains the zerg trains all over Tyria! We’re doomed!

The only accurate way to measure what does the playerbase like and what we don’t, is by putting a poll in place, that would show up on the screen after finishing (for example) LS meta achievement asking you questions what did you enjoy and what not. That would be a pretty accurate method I think.

Plus it gives people the incentive to actively go and look for events in rarely visited zones. And yes I’m also on Tarnished Coast, and it’s very easy here to find an event not done for hours and hours on and, in some location away from main routes.

The proposed solution could possibly motivate people to hunt rarely done events, like the White Mantle ghosts event line in Maguuma for example, thus showing a bigger part of the game to players who would normally never have seen it!

I am Faleg Oglafsson and this is my favourite post on the forums! (Needed to be longer than 15 – short version: AYE!)

Alright, so most of people have encountered massive zergs of players farming through content, some of them are annoyed by it, some aren’t – but I think it’s safe to say that zerging takes away most of games’ challenge and complexity, because almost everything can be solved by zerging up and charging while pressing 1 every now and again.

Also, in dungeons, most people don’t bother to think how to beat the content and do it as intended, preferring to stack up in a corner and glitch the fight.

Here is a possible solution to the problem/giving the game some more depth in zerg content: DISEASE CONDITION.

The idea is simple and straight from GW1 (I think someone even mentioned it before the Tower of Nightmares released) – a condition that spreads when a player touches another player! One stack not being much of a hindrance… but 10? 20? The idea is to make players be aware of their surroundings and at the very least pay attention during combat

I see two possible implementations at the idea’s core –
1. coming spread: Every time a diseased player touches somebody, he spreads disease, which stacks intensity. Every a player is touched by a diseased player that player receives stack of disease.
Now that solution would cause people to pay attention so that somebody won’t run into them. That of course causes obvious issues of trolling, or suffering due to other players not paying attention. So here’s the second possibility:

2. incoming disease: Every time you touch someone who is diseased, you catch a disease, which lasts long, but only stacks intensity when a diseased player touches someone else! That way ideally players would be motivated to pay attention to mutual positioning and avoid scoring more disease by rubbing on others.

Of course, bot methods have issues, such as possible trolling, or visibility in a big zerg. While nothing can be done with trolls, the visibility issue would pretty much solve itself as people would spread a bit, this adding to fix the problem of clustered special effects making it impossible to effectively control you environment in huge zergs.

Now, the possible story I had in my head for implementing it: RETURN OF THE SCARAB PLAGUE!

It can start in many ways… a survivor coming from Elona carrying the plague… An artficat brought from Elona 250 years ago by a Sunspear, in which the eggs are hidden…

What’s important is this: Scarabs are back, and they are spreading rapidly through populated regions, with soldiers, traders, adventurers and asura gates providing vast and fast connectivity between peoples the plague has spread with lightning speed, hitting major cities (events possibly including quarantining infected citizens , preventing food stores from being infected etc, all non combat, except instanced outbreaks).

Then it hit rural regions, with seemingly random attacks on major food suply areas, and ones of military importance the plague threatens to leave us vulnerable to any attack by a dragon or other force!

What stands behind this Plague? Is it just an unfortunate mishap? Or is there some more malignant intelligence behind it? Perhaps Palawa Joko? Or some other, yet unseen enemy?

I’d imagine the Plague condition to be not much of a hindrance in this instance, just some minor health drain. But when stacks builded by either of above mentioned methods result in player dying/being downed then he or she explodes in a geyser of little scarabs that infect as many player with disease as they can latch onto to, possibly annihilating a zerg in moments, if payers aren’t quick to react! Of course the bugs would move slowly, and be easy to kill, but hard to sot in a crowd.

Well, here’s the ideas. Sorry for some possible chaos etc, I’m very tired when writing that up!

Well, I must say that it’s ok in my books, that if someone won’t go looking for the little details, he/she won’t see them. It’s important to present the main story to everyone with eyes and ears in a fashion that makes sense but leaves some questions, but answers and details must be there to find for those that look, and need not to be separately announced.

Nothing offends my intelligence like a big red arrow pointing somewhere saying “here is the answer you seek”, but the exact opposite is just as bad.

As for Scarlet added dialogues and NPC’s I personally haven’t seen them either, but only because I don’t give a little kitten about Scarlet after how she was being presented thus far (up to Nightmare Ends) I simply don’t care about her enough to go see, at least as long as Job/Hobo/Ho Ho Tron has more depth and character development than she does.

Still, it IS without doubt a step in a very good direction to have the little cookies added into the game, absolutely!

And for the future I wish for myself, and everyone else (my pocket Djinn ran away with my MP player, that rat kitten, so I can’t guarantee the results!) that those cookies will be there at right time, and right place, and will give us the story and villains/heroes we will love to love/hate/be ambivalent about.

PS. I would personally be thrilled to see more Palawa Jokos and Varesh Ossa type characters than Trahearnes and Kormirs. I simply don’t like black and white characters, grey is where my fun in stories is!

Yeah, the way it was handled in Cutthroat Politics is exactly the same case of ANet wanting players to eat the pie and have the pie at the same time. Well we can’t have that, either we loose one of possibilities when we choose, or our choice doesn’t matter.
I prefer the first option, because it is pointless to make a choice otherwise. Without getting into quantum physics of course :P.

Aye, I was sure I saw everything in the camp, but I must have missed the naked dialogue…

Actually, one more point in minus, more of aesthetics than actual complaint:

3 – all the important characters are powerful women. Not that I have anything against women, or women in power, but this is getting silly, there are only THREE male characters of any importance:
- Braham, whose sole purpose is to be a counterweight to Rox, any contribution he makes is A. comedy relief, B. Mommy issues. Braham did receive a very nice dialogue this time around, but only to put ground for the rebute from Marjory, it would seem.
- Then there is Lord Faren. Well…. Yeah.
- Then there is Magnus, who is a male character in power and not a clown, I give you that, but is a background character for Kiel.

It’s not a big complaint, and again, a matter of aesthetics. It simply seems a bit of an overuse of a female heroine stereotype to me. Some diversity I would like, but again, not a complaint really.

I gotta agree, even though I really can’t stand Scarlet and by extension everything related, so I was reluctant to try it for few days. I’m glad I have tried it!

I am impressed by very noticeable improvement in quality of that update and +1 to all the good things OP mentioned!

The only two things I could point out as a minus would be:
1- the fact that you can bypass solving the riddles (I personally dislike that solution, though I understand why it was necessary)

and 2- the fact that you have to almost all the content twice to finish the met achievement BUT you can’t skip the cinematic. It is a very nice cinematic, still I don’t wanna watch it twice within 15 minutes.

And I haven’t found the Kasmeer naked thing yet, gotta dig around!

However it is, the amount of story in “Living STORY” is by far insufficient.

Each update has at best 10 minutes of worthwhile story, with rest being repetition of action.
So not only the “story” is lacking, but action content itself is very short, and artificially fattened by repeating it over and over for achievements/loot.

An example or few:

Nightmare Tower, both updates: in first update you find out that Krait are up to something. There was a short interactive cut scene, with less than 20 lines of dialogue, maybe more if you use a big font. Then it proceeded to a content that could be done in about 2 hours MAX while eating a sandwich (and I mean every iteration of posible events), before having to repeat actions.

In second update: You climb the tower to find out that scarlet was behind it all along and she no longer has any use of the krait and NC (surprise!).
Pretty much same situation.

Basically, since Bazaar it is the same situation every two week,s with story getting scarcer and scarcer every time.

webtoehobbit.4201:

Look at Primordus, first to awaken, he had armies of Destroyers. Then we have Jormag, lots of minions as well, then Zhaitan, lots of minions there as well and finally Kralkatorrik, corrupting many many people and turning them into his army of minions.

But Mordremoth here, yeah, he just makes one minion….. I find it very doubtful that it really is a minion of Mordremoth, just because the word “corruption” is used, does not automatically tie it to an Elder Dragon.

Not to mention, if the Oakheart really is the one and only minion of Mordremoth, you’re also making the huge assumption that Mordremoth has awakened, as it seems that dragon minions are only created AFTER an Elder Dragon has awakened. I mean, if they could create minions before they awakened then we would’ve been dealing with Destroyers a lot earlier than Eye of the North…. Just sayin. And it seems very doubtful that Mordremoth has awakened because when Elder Dragons awaken, you know it.

Lets see….

Primordus’ awakening: Leigons of Destroyers wreaking havoc amongst Tyria
Jormag’s awakening: Drove the Norn from their home in the Northern Shiverpeaks
Zhaitan’s awakening: Entire body of land risen from the ocean, resulting in a tidal wave destroying Lions Arch
Kralkatorrik’s awakening: The dragonbrand

Just one little sidenote: we HAD to deal with armies of Destroyers before Primordus’ awakening. That WAS the story of Eye of the North. Primordus was still asleep and only shown SLEEPING after we killed Great Destroyer, who was Primordus’ champion.

In GW:EN we only saw Primordus for maybe 10 seconds (longer if you had a good eye during the firght), sleeping above the arena where we fought Great Destroyer.

And from Molten Alliance the computer machine? And from Aetherblades a generator to power it all?

But wouldn’t magic eating Dragons find leylines and by following them, the huge magical cloak/shield?

It might be a little like trying to hide between hamburger buns to avoid being eaten, right?

The Inquest scientist whom you are freeing in dormitories and say that they will help you, they do.

They give the “overcharged” debuff to the anomaly, I’m not sure whether you need to talk with them before boss fight or not.

She wasn’t there on her own, she is mentioned to be Inqest’s special consultant.

So she was hired as a special consultant. That much I heard from dialogues in Fractal itself.

As for why she was hired, probably because she is a genius perfect in every art and craft anyone has ever heard of and few more. And I wish that last sentence was sarcasm.

Hell, I found all of those “Need class X”, or “Class Y is baaad” to be strictly dependent on the team and team members prejudice and skill.
Everything I’ve encountered so far in the game (And that means pretty much everything since I play since first Beta Event and regularly) is totally doable with any class without much hassle provided players know how to ride the class and build.