I didn't vomit in disgust at Trahearne as some did, but his crime is twofold:
1. He stops the story being about the character and it becomes about him instead
2. He's just so insanely boring... people don't take to him. He's just this random dull git who comes along and nicks your story. It's all the worse because they actually made some good characters for the Order storylines.
As for him 'saying' it is your story- that means nothing, and it is part of a 'show, don't tell' failure on ANet's part, where they often say things are happening that become contradicted by what you can actually see and experience happening- which is one of those things I can write a lot about. The truth is, you just become a soldier in his army, and it is him that is the essential part of it all. It doesn't matter what he says is so. Defeating Zhaitan needs him, not you. I played the missions, but it wasn't about things happening to me any more, and that's not a 'personal' storyline at all.
It's not even vaguely ridiculous that the end of a single player storyline should be able to be done... single player. It doesn't have to be literally solo- you can be at the head of an army. That's what they do anyway. The fact you have to do it with four others makes no difference in that equation at all, because you don't fight him man to man; you are manning an airship. From which, incidentally, you could kill him solo.
And what are you doing in that final 'personal' story step? Just playing support to Destiny's Edge- who are all bloody useless in-game anyway. This is 'show, don't tell' again. We are told that DE are the mighty heroes who could take out a dragon by themselves, but in fact they are worse than every single player you ever team with. What I see trumps what I am told. And because it s a group instance, there's a 4/5 chance that you don't even show up in the cutscenes, and the group leader gets to be the on finishing the story.
There is nothing about that final story step that in any way thematically connected to the rest of the storyline (which effectively ends twice- once on the final Trahearne mission, and then once more in that Dungeon), and it has become a barrier that has alienated players from the game- and quite rightly. A huge cock up on ANet's part. Forcing people to group to finish something that was meant to be able to be played alone is ridiculous in of itself, and that;s before you add a. the practical difficulties of finding a group that wants to do it, at a time when the Dungeon is actually open to play and b. the technical difficulties which mean on many servers the Dungeon is permanently closed anyway.
(And the Zhaitan fight itself is absolutely god-awful! He doesn't fight back. He sits on a tower being killed. You literally just press a button repeatedly to shoot him until he dies. I thought he was bugged, but no, apparently, that's how they built him. He's the worse end game boss I ever fought, if you can call that fighting.).
No, all in all, the personal storyline part of GW2 missed its mark- and as I say, dev response indicates that they appreciate that. I doubt we'll see these issues happen again, though I also doubt that real persistence will ever come. It doesn't kill the game because it's much bigger than the storyline (in fact, ironically, it gives a better story just by exploring the world and interacting with it than it does by actually trying to tell one), but it's still a shame, and as I say it's removed any interest my friends had.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 13th, 2012 at 04:55 PM
I'll be honest- I'm just going to roll my eyes at anyone who stopped playing because of that when there is so much to the game. I also disagree that the story is as flawed as you're saying it is. It has issues but it is not that bad.
Trahearne was more concerned with restoring Orr than facing Zhaitan himself- his Wyld Hunt was to see the corruption ended, while it was Caithe's (and yours, if you are a sylvari) to face Zhaitan. It's important obviously, but it isn't his purpose.
DE sucking is simply because, as is the case in most games, NPCs are garbage. However I also don't agree that you simply play second. Fiddle to them in the end- the dungeon stories are about getting them back together to help you. I think that if they had been more included with the story outside of the dungeons that would be more clear. I also wish that the other racial stories really explained why you are the one going to do all this stuff. With sylvari it's explained right off the bat- you fight a dragon shadow in the Dream (shadow of what dragon is the question there, as it is a plant dragon), and then you learn that fighting Zhaitan is literally your destiny. With the other races you're just kind of a random nobody.
Also, I'd think it'd be pretty obvious that a high-ranking order member wouldn't be leading the Pact.
The Zhaitan fight itself was pretty disappointing, but the rest leading to it was pretty good.
I dunno. As a sylvari the story involves undead and the dragons right from the start, whereas the others don't, and later steps have the most callbacks to early sylvari stuff. So from my point of view, while it was imperfect, it wasn't that bad at all.
See. that's just words again. The narrative tries to tell you that you bring them back together- but you don't. You don't do anything in that regard, it just happens around you. They did all that themselves. Again, you don't actually have any consequence in that equation. It's like at the end of the game when they try to say "We've learned that coming together is what will give us victory." That's the theme. But the theme is not borne out by the actions. Coming together did nothing- pulling the trigger on the airship cannons killed Zhaitan. All you learned is that you need more airships. There was no genuine feel of all-around teamwork- which that mission could have contained if they had tried to make the content fit the theme, but as I mentioned above, the multi-team approach gave 'mixed results' there.
NPCs don't have to be rubbish- you just need to user them properly., Logan in Citadel of Flame, for example, actually feels like a useful person. But in general, just putting in NPCs with crap AI into combat situations leads to you cursing their existence.It's no excuse that other games have that issue as well. The stark fact is still that Destiny's Edge comes across as complete crap (and as generally unlikeable people too). Again, they can't reconcile what they say and what actually happens- and what actually happens is far more important in a computer game. If they wanted DE to be legendary, they had to build their appearances so they would look competent.
The 'restoring Orr' thing is a another narrative disconnect. What did it do? What did it even mean? It's just Trahearne sitting somewhere and saying "Right, Orr is cleansed now." You don't see anything happen- not even a cutscene to show an effect. Nothing is changed anywhere. It's just another piece of semantic emptiness. It's not remotely engaging to any sort of development. I had absolutely no idea what I was meant to have achieved.
You being a 'high ranking Order member' is in itself a joke, as the game throws accolades at you for not effort whatsoever, but as you no longer have anything to do with your Order by that point anyway, there is, again, no actual experienced reason why you couldn't be n Trahearne's place, other than that the game tries to tell you that you can't. And in any case, even if that was followed through, it's only like that because they wrote it that way. So write it differently- write a story where you are not completely displaced in importance.
(Or better still, write a story that integrates properly with the world around you. Trying to make it a single-player style story where you are the best hero at everything never makes any sense. A personal story could have been about you and your choices and being there at the great moments of the war. It could have had an actual villain for you to play off against, which it doesn't because Zhaitan is silent and boring. As it is, they tried to make it about you being the hero, and you aren't.)
My friends who left tried the game because ANet said it would be different on that account as far as pulling in people who don't normally like that sort of thing. It totally failed them in that respect, and stopping playing is reasonable. If they lack the kind of OCD approach thyat leads them to want to go exploring every nook and cranny and doing deadly-dull heart activities in every area that are the same thing (best thing about Orr is that they get rid of those), of course they will leave. PvP doesn't interest them. Dungeons lack a group finder and are effectively impossible to do now unless in a sizeable guild. There's nothing there- they played for a bit and stopped. I like exploring a world, and that's hooked me in, but even I've stopped playing now that Dungeons are effectively locked out for the average player (even at the best of times, I had to wait hours to find a group, which the average player simply won't do. Now, there are just no groups at all). I'll be back for events and when they revamp Dungeons to make them accessible again (which they have also said they will do).
The prospect of a single-player style storyline is what was meant to kept them playing, and it has been a disappointment. But then ANet have always been poor at story. They'll try something different next- Bobby Stein already said as much. As it is, you could take the entire personal story out the game, and it wouldn't affect my enjoyment to any great degree. I might miss the racial storylines a little, in places, as they were the strongest, though they often seemed petty and, as ever, they were all ultimately irrelevant. But in general... the things I enjoyed (and there is lots to enjoy about the game, IF they are things you are after) were nothing to do with the story.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 14th, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Dungeons are only hard to find groups for if you're not in a guild...and on a dead server. You're on a low population server that is dead last in WvW, and turned down an invitation to a sizeable guild that has a good number of EU players. A dungeon finder would be helpful, I'm sure (I refuse to PUG ever), but there's plenty of ways to get around that in the interim.
I disagree with pretty much everything you say. I particularly disagree about DE coming off as unlikeable as...well, they don't. Logan can be a tool, but not in a "wow, you suck" way, and while Zojja's the nastiest of the group she's no more unlikeable that any other asura - I don't like asura at all and I find her far more likeable than almost every other asuran NPC.
Well, all I know is, around 20 of the almost 30 ppl I know in my area have quit already (I keep track as we have a fb page dedicated to GW with about 85 members in our area and many of the ppl there I know as they play Magic, too). Exploration was fun and doing dungeons for skins was fun, too, I guess. To a point. But not enough to keep ppl interested. I've quit myself as solo playing the majority of the tie when most of the ppl I kmow have either gone back to Magic or is now doing TL2 or other games. "Boredom" was the reason for most of the "I quit" posts I've read. The only ones I know who still play are the hardcore pvpers and I'm almost certain they're waiting for a game to jump ship to.
I guess one can take a "you were never meant to play this game, anyway" stance to it. But just saying...
Don't get me wrong, no regrets here. I had a blast while it lasted and I got more than my money's worth in the game.
And yet ANet have admitted that, for example, getting to do Story mode has become too hard and they'll need to change how that works. They don't just say to people 'join a guild', they say it needs sorting. If you didn't do the Story modes in the opening two months you are screwed, as no-one does them any more, which is no surprise as there is no incentive to.
Similarly, you can see the very broad complaints that, since the fractals were released, getting to do other dungeons (other than Citadel, which is run repeatedly as it is considered easy) has become nigh impossible because only the fractals are considered worth doing now, and then the Fractals in turn became impossible to group for because the levels people were on became too fragmented- which, once more, ANet has admitted is a problem and are trying to come up with a solution.
There is a point where when even ANet is admitting these are issues that there is no point ignoring them. I have no regrets about GW2 either, but it certainly has noticeable issues. ANet have admitted faults with the storytelling and dungeon grouping. If they fix them- great, and I am constantly impressed by their willingess to get into the forums and say "Yup, that's not working, we'll try and work on it or do it differently in future." They bent over backwards to try and fix the fallout from the calamitous Lost Shores finale. But let's not pretend the problems are not there. Things like the inability to form dungeon groups will make people leave the game- it was part of the death knell for TOR.
'Join a guild' is not really an acceptable answer- a lot of players don't do things that way and it is really ANet's job to cater for a broad base. Which is actually their intent; it is just not currently working.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Dec 14th, 2012 at 05:07 PM
It's called that because of lore reasons (the Guild Wars was an event that happened before the first game), though guilds are far more important in the second game than the first.
Anyway, Wintersday stuff is up Kind of disappointed that so far only Lion's Arch is decorated...but holy damn it looks pretty. The jump puzzle is not horrendous like the Mad King's Clock Tower was - I nearly finished it last night but then made a silly mistake and slipped off the edge right at the end. Probably didn't help it was past midnight by then. Whoops.
The other small updates are pretty awesome, too - another update to Black Lion Chests so that they're actually worth it outside of a holiday right now with the stuff you can get from them - I got a ton of unIDed dyes going through some of mine. There's a collection tab for rare materials (ecto, slivers, holiday crafting items, etc.) which is awesome.
And my favorite, you can mouse over the name of a region on a map and it'll show your map completion. Now I don't have to hop all over the place trying to remember what I've finished and what I haven't!
Also lots and lots of skill changes. Mesmers and Guardians got a lot of skill changes, which I'm reading over right now. Guardians were definitely buffed there - speed increases on some skills and a good number were turned into fields or finishers.
Mesmer update makes me very happy. Much needed clone buffs. Making the passive effect from Signet of Inspiration work out of combat (and I love that skill) as well as increasing the amount of swiftness you can get from it, as well as making it longer from Temporal Curtain makes me very pleased, as we have pretty much no speed options besides TC. I'd combo with Blink to travel faster when mapping, but both have long recharges, so it wasn't the best option.
The only thing I have left for 100% map completion is Green Borderlands in WvW.
Which has me sorely tempted to change servers temporarily to get, because I don't see us going back up to first place any time soon (Sea of Sorrows has gotten pretty firmly entrenched there, and we keep switching with Stormbluff Isle for second and third place), nor do I see us dropping out of the first tier (I went back and looked at WvW records - JQ is the only server, NA or EU, that has never been out of the top tier).
That 99% is going to really annoy me...
Also, holy crap does playing a thief make certain dungeons extremely easy. Stealth is amazing.
So due to some amazing luck, I got my map completion done about two days after making that post It was hilarious watching so many people go for vistas and skill points in green borderlands and ignore all else. I also got my thief and ele to 80
Guesting is finally mentioned...it may finally be on its way. I sure hope so. I also like tokens for daily ahievements - I do them every day, and looks like you can exchange them for some neat stuff. Another source of obby shards is always welcome, for examples...and dye may make me start working on Bifrost again.
Yeah, pretty hopeless, just like Blizzard. Other than them having said before that they wanted people to be able to play openly with friends regardless... sigh... the fact is that games with intelligent design don't have this problem. Not just standard games- nearly all of which I can play with whomever I like, unless it's from frigging Blizzard, but also MMOs, with The Secret World being an example right now, Eve's single server system being an example from the past, and the one-world-for-all models that Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous are employing.
These WoW style server/shard systems are immensely outdated in this day and age. They just create barriers.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Jan 16th, 2013 at 07:25 PM
Hell, Guild Wars 1 had no restrictions on where you played. There were technically different server regions...but you could still go wherever you wanted.
GW1 could make a claim about not having an MMO style architecture, but the fact is that other games that do don't have this problem when designed correctly.
I think the shard system in GW2 exists almost entirely just to support WvWvW, and I am not convinced that was worthwhile (or the only way to acheive that).
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
I honestly figured that part of why guesting was taking so long to get implemented was because they were working on getting cross-center stuff working...since cross-server stuff on the same data centers already does work, as anyone that does dungeons knows.
Yeah that's been the rumor since week 1 of release I can't understand why that took so long to fix, though, especially as during Lost Shores I noticed when hopping between overflows on Southsun the rich ori node in the karka cave wouldn't still be there after I'd gotten it...so clearly that issue was ironed out a while ago.
KMC Community Forums
Dec 13th, 2012 04:29 PM
Kind of disappointed that so far only Lion's Arch is decorated...but holy damn it looks pretty. The jump puzzle is not horrendous like the Mad King's Clock Tower was - I nearly finished it last night but then made a silly mistake and slipped off the edge right at the end. Probably didn't help it was past midnight by then. Whoops. 
It was hilarious watching so many people go for vistas and skill points in green borderlands and ignore all else. I also got my thief and ele to 80 
I can't understand why that took so long to fix, though, especially as during Lost Shores I noticed when hopping between overflows on Southsun the rich ori node in the karka cave wouldn't still be there after I'd gotten it...so clearly that issue was ironed out a while ago.
