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Don't you just hate being the hero all the time?


Cynder.2509

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I don't know but I find myself wanting to be a supervillain in most RPGs and even though I enjoy the storyline of the game I sometimes feel that this isn't right for all my characters as I have backgrounds and canons for all of them and sometimes I just want to wreak havoc and watch the world burn.I hope that in the future we'll get choices that actually matter for the story.

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I feel the same, to be honest. I'd like a game that is similar to Soul Nomad and the World Eaters and Undertale, where your morality is completely reliant on how you act and react to situations. In Soul Nomad it's like: Old lady that forces this stuff on me? Dead. That budding family that used to love me? Slaughtered. The dying world? I'll destroy it and everyone in it and become a god of the world I created. Same thing with Undertale: Aww, look at that cute lil' frog. Dead. How about this horse..dead...what about the bunny rabb-dead. Even the "heroes" die (sometimes in awful ways.) So, yes, moral ambiguity would be interesting.

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If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

Even in Orr, there's literally a quest where you end up doing something bad - Depending on the option you pick when talking to the Pale Tree. You either kill a civillian scientist (You push the button to detonate the bombs), you take away the only thing preventing your comrade becoming Risen (Due to being adamant that you and only you can deliver it to Fort Trinity, leaving your comrade to be captured and then turned) or you give the order to shell a Vigil squadron (Albeit due to a mesmer illusion, though, it still underpins the fact that you were too trigger happy to bother scouting... Heck, what if there was an Eye of Zhaitan there to incur a massive counter attack?)

@"Cynder.2509" said:I don't know but I find myself wanting to be a supervillain in most RPGs and even though I enjoy the storyline of the game I sometimes feel that this isn't right for all my characters as I have backgrounds and canons for all of them and sometimes I just want to wreak havoc and watch the world burn.I hope that in the future we'll get choices that actually matter for the story.

Some of the issues of being a villain in RPG's include:

  • The extra resources it would require to flesh out multiple story paths, which would depend a lot on choices you make. Which is why most RPG's with a moral choice system still just follow a single linear path but give you options to be a butthole or be nice when interacting with people.Which is why the best "Moral Choice" games are ones that simply allow you some freedom to ignore the narrative and create your own (Such as modding Skyrim or Fallout 3/NV to allow you to kill any character, though FO3 does actually include the option to nuke a town for money... Or games like Risen 1 which allow you to kill most NPC's anyway)

  • The more ambiguous nature of a villanous story. When being a hero, the story is easy to manipulate, since the goal is always to defeat the antagonist. It doesn't matter the scope of the antagonist, just that there is one. It could be something as inocuous as "Who's stealing the chickens from the farm?" to "The big bad trying to destroy the world"Meanwhile, being the antagonist, there's no similar drive for the narrative. Your goal as an antagonist isn't really to defeat the protagonist, it's to fulfil your personal desire with the protagonist just popping up every now and then to try and stop you. As such, it's much harder to progress a story and even harder to try and truly encapture a wider audiences desire for being an antagonist, since maybe some people want to just steal things and become rich? Maybe some people want to destroy the world? Maybe some people want to just corrupt world leaders and create anarchy? How would you create a story narrative that allows all these things and more to be the end goal?

It's really hard to create a good narrative that enables a villanous PC, hence why such games are few and far between. At best you can get Anti-Heros or Vigilantes which do the right thing in morally questionable ways (I think the closest we've really seen to "Villain" is God of War series, where Kratos goes on a god-killing rampage fueled by the desire to kill the God of War, Ares after he killed Kratos' family)

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The commander seem to take extreme joy in personally dispatching death on the battlefield using things that we today has judged warcrimes - burning people to death, poisoning them, using WMDs (not sure meteor showers on the local fauna is in accordance with the Geneva convention), torturing them by purposefully inflicting more pain as they move, drug them to confuse them, all while the commanders friends help to accomplish this goal religiously believing in the commanders excellence.

Even the Inquest is appalled.

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GW2 is a MMO, if you want that kind of thing, play a single player game...dont expect the kind of freedom of choice you have in games like Witcher, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, etc in game like this...even then, most of those games you will not play as a villain...the closer to a villain protagonist with actual good story would be Legacy of Kain series, but those games are old as hell.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

How is the PC a anti-hero in No Quarter? Which warcrime that we commited?

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@Felipe.1807 said:

@"Hannelore.8153" said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

How is the PC a anti-hero in No Quarter? Which warcrime that we commited?

The "grenade" that they throw down in a science lab and kill a bunch of civilians (not soldiers) was a fragment of a Searing Crystal, which was what the Flame Legion used to destroy Ascalon and is considered the equivalent to a WMD in Tyria.

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It really is questionable what a hero is to begin with.From the standpoint of demons, it's usually their conquering King that is the hero, while the blonde right-handed (unless it's pre-Wii Link) boy with his god-blessed holy Sword is the villain.

I bet the Sons of Svanir consider the PC to be the villain.Even Joko considered (although possibly as a joke) us to be a worse villain than he considered himself.

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@"Fueki.4753" said:Even Joko considered (although possibly as a joke) us to be a worse villain than he considered himself.Oh he was definitely not telling full truths there. Chief among them was the whole "why do you think they believed that I, a villain, would ruin the world by killing two Elder Dragons? Because it was an act of villainy!" spiel. I mean...1) Average Tyrians still don't know (as evidenced by Dragon Bash dialogue) that killing Elder Dragons = killing the world.2) Elonians are the only ones who believed him and did so because he was running dystopic brainwashed nation conditioned to believe whatever he said.

And he would know these, because no Elonian ever mentioned killing dragons is bad, especially when praising Joko for such actions. And he either would know Tyrians don't think he killed the ED, or was be smart enough to doubt they'd put the deeds on him.

He knew killing Elder Dragons was considered a heroic deed, even if he also knew killing Elder Dragons would destabilize the world.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

How is the PC a anti-hero in No Quarter? Which warcrime that we commited?

The "grenade" that they throw down in a science lab and kill a bunch of civilians (not soldiers) was a fragment of a Searing Crystal, which was what the Flame Legion used to destroy Ascalon and is considered the equivalent to a WMD in Tyria.

that is saying that a single bullet is a WMD, because the powder could also be used in a bomb. And didn't people in other threads claim, that there are no charr civilians?

Anyway, blowing up a military lab doing weapon research, does not sound as much as 'war crime'. Instead it sounds like 'taking out a valid target'.

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

How is the PC a anti-hero in No Quarter? Which warcrime that we commited?

The "grenade" that they throw down in a science lab and kill a bunch of civilians (not soldiers) was a fragment of a Searing Crystal, which was what the Flame Legion used to destroy Ascalon and is considered the equivalent to a WMD in Tyria.

that is saying that a single bullet is a WMD, because the powder could also be used in a bomb. And didn't people in other threads claim, that there are no charr civilians?

Anyway, blowing up a military lab doing weapon research, does not sound as much as 'war crime'. Instead it sounds like 'taking out a valid target'.Last I checked, gunpowder doesn't cause irreperable damage to the environment for centuries. And the word "citizen" is used quite a bit in Black Citadel, so Charr civilians clearly do exist, most of them seem to be researchers, merchants and traders.
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Even if they are forced to follow the "nice" path for the main story, they could make side quests or achievs to award "faction titles", I mean titles like "Icebrood", "Awakened", "Nightmare courtier" or "Bandit"... "Inquest employee" and so on...What If we have more representation buttons or badges.... you see in addition of pvp leagues ones, you could have one representing the faction you prefer to appear next your character name....

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The best solution I found currently is to consider that the ls episodes and expansions not played by my toon never happened: my last toon never went into maguuma or the desert. Rata primus never self destruct, kralkatorrik isn't dead, aurene isn't born. Mordry is alive. I pick the episodes I want.

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@"Cynder.2509" said:I don't know but I find myself wanting to be a supervillain in most RPGs and even though I enjoy the storyline of the game I sometimes feel that this isn't right for all my characters as I have backgrounds and canons for all of them and sometimes I just want to wreak havoc and watch the world burn.I hope that in the future we'll get choices that actually matter for the story.

If you haven't yet experienced them, I recommend the Fallout games: 1, 2, 3 and New Vegas. By Fallout 4 you are forced to be the good guy.

But on topic, the Commander almost brought Tyria to "havoc" by killing Dragons, so it isn't as if the Commander is a perfect hero, and even the most Lawful Good amongst us wanted to kitten-slap Braham a couple of times back in S4 ^_^

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@hugo.4705 said:The best solution I found currently is to consider that the ls episodes and expansions not played by my toon never happened: my last toon never went into maguuma or the desert. Rata primus never self destruct, kralkatorrik isn't dead, aurene isn't born. Mordry is alive. I pick the episodes I want.

Does that mean, that character stagnated after harassing Zhaitan to death?

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@Fueki.4753 said:

@"hugo.4705" said:The best solution I found currently is to consider that the ls episodes and expansions not played by my toon never happened: my last toon never went into maguuma or the desert. Rata primus never self destruct, kralkatorrik isn't dead, aurene isn't born. Mordry is alive. I pick the episodes I want.

Does that mean, that character stagnated after harassing Zhaitan to death?

Well, kinda, but you can imagine, that wandering in maps or doing RPs is what your "commander" is doing since zhaithan, you fill the story with what you do. Example, instead of going after dragons, you keep solving local threats.

It is cannon, my toon never did ls1 so no scarlet so no mordry or aurene, no bangar dominion or kralkatorrik.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:If you think the PC is the hero all the time you haven't been keeping up with the story. They're a military leader who has made many mistakes and lead many people (hundreds, if not thousands) to their deaths. And that's just in the Pact & Dragon's Watch storylines, in open-world you also do alot of very questionable things even just for regular hearts and events here and there.

At best, the PC is an anti-hero, especially after commiting a warcrime in No Quarter.

How is the PC a anti-hero in No Quarter? Which warcrime that we commited?

The "grenade" that they throw down in a science lab and kill a bunch of civilians (not soldiers) was a fragment of a Searing Crystal, which was what the Flame Legion used to destroy Ascalon and is considered the equivalent to a WMD in Tyria.

that is saying that a single bullet is a WMD, because the powder could also be used in a bomb. And didn't people in other threads claim, that there are no charr civilians?

Anyway, blowing up a military lab doing weapon research, does not sound as much as 'war crime'. Instead it sounds like 'taking out a valid target'.Last I checked, gunpowder doesn't cause irreperable damage to the environment for centuries. And the word "citizen" is used quite a bit in Black Citadel, so Charr civilians clearly do exist, most of them seem to be researchers, merchants and traders.

and with gun powder you mean the stuff used for the last 130years? Because that stuff does horrendous things to the environment.

Anyway, it was a military lab doing military research. That is a valid target.

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