Death in-game

So I've always been curious about this.

How does dying work in game lore wise? Is death in game like blacking out and waking up at the pokemon centre or is there actual lore behind why I can get up at any waypoint after I've been ripped apart by Deimos

To my knowledge this was never explained neither was Death Penalty in GW1.

You don't die you just sleep with your eyes open

In GW2, player characters never actually die, they're just defeated.

@EnemyCrusher.7324 said:In GW2, player characters never actually die, they're just defeated.

Yea that doesn't really answer anything. That's just the in game mechanics. I mean lore wise (hence the forum) why can we get up after falling from the top of Verdant Brink? How am I only defeated?

In Guild Wars 1, death was death, but the gods tended to be pretty ambivalent about it and a priest would resurrect you at the nearest shrine when you died. It was referred to as death in the game, and some of the game's opening tutorial sequences would go so far as to have your trainer kill you to show you what resurrection was like. The Bloodstone in Guild Wars 1 was a unique thing in that it would absorb the soul of anyone who died in proximity to it, preventing resurrection. The Mursaat and the White Mantle used it to try to permanently eliminate the Chosen and keep the Flameseeker Prophecies from being fulfilled.

Of course, having death and resurrection operating like that makes lore a big pain. Why can't you use resurrection abilities on various important NPCs when they die for the plot? Why does this area have a resurrection shrine that works, but that area doesn't? Why does Grenth so happily give up his souls like that? So by the time Guild Wars 2 has rolled around, death is a more permanent thing. Resurrection as a concept still exists, as shown in the Citadel of Flame explorable Path 2, but it's a rarer and much more involved procedure, one that can be foiled by meddling heroes.

The player character never dies, as mentioned in the post above. When you're defeated, you're knocked out, essentially. Any revivable NPCs in the world are similarly unconscious. If you find a body that doesn't allow you to revive it, though, that NPC is dead as a doornail. Given how waypoints work differently for players than NPCs, some assume that the player has a portable waypoint device to transport him or her to a waypoint at will, and that said device will activate automatically in times of great danger, i.e. when knocked unconscious. That would represent respawning at a safe waypoint. That sort of thing is never directly noted in lore, though, it's just an explanation that some players have come up with to try to explain how characters can use waypoints differently than NPCs, and how you might get wiped out by White Mantle and yet be able to return to beat them up.

The question was: Should waypoints be considered from a roleplay perspective? If so, how do they function?

The answer:Absolutely! Waypoints are asuran devices, and all the money you spend to use them goes straight into the coffers at Rata Sum. The asura have been developing these magi-matter-transportive devices for centuries and have seeded them across the world. They’re often contested if creatures or bad guys disrupt the traffic coming through them, but the asura work hard to maintain this money-making web of mini-gates. The fee, in case you wondered, is automatically separated from your person and transported directly into a guarded room in Rata Sum. The coins drop in and pile up there, and workers put them in carts and carry them to the vaults.

I'm just going to stop reading this thread right at this because... The very description of how the coins are taken from you would make a vast majority of my characters very paranoid about this system. First it displaces your body from one location and deposits it in another. More importantly it takes your coins and deposits them in another location. What's to stop those Asuras from ripping people off? How do I know they won't program it to steal something else? Yes yes... this is why we stick to roads.

so, during the displacement and deposit your body can be manipulated and all injuries healed but l don't know how we activate the transport

You never die, you just get defeated.

@Rawr.9467 said:

@EnemyCrusher.7324 said:In GW2, player characters never actually die, they're just

defeated

.

You said it yourself, it's game mechanics. There's no coming back from death in the GW universe like say WoW for example.The mists is GW's version of heaven (or purgatory) so to speak.

"Heroes never die, they become legends." or in our case.. We have magical devices in our pocket that give a good old middle finger to Grenth. Lore speaking, I don't think a waypoint is considered a 're-spawn'. It's a quick travel method that has been explained in-game. So death is real.. and if you go by a role-play situation, if yer character dies.. then it is dead and it would take some serious magic, man power, and resources to bring back your rigger mortise body.. on-top of that, the soul that Grenth actually owns. So Coming back from death is going to be literally stealing a soul from Grenth.. or finding it in the Mists and forcing it back into the original body. With that.. bringing back the dead also takes Necromatic magic, Divine Healing Magic(Which does not actually exist in game currently), and a large large source of magic. Even if you brought back a dead guy and or girl. You got the problem that the body is badly wounded, decaying, and very painful for the host to re-enter and use.

@Rawr.9467 said:

@EnemyCrusher.7324 said:In GW2, player characters never actually die, they're just

defeated

.

It's more than game mechanics. They changed the mechanical terminology from gw1 being dead to defeated because in lore PCs do not die. Regardless of what puts you in defeated state - naturally things that would put people in defeated state could easily kill but they made mechanical terminology as they did to fit the new lore.

If an NPC is revivable (i.e., in defeated state) then they are unconscious but still alive. Reviving itself is a magical art that is probably closely related to CPR, arguably. There is no resurrection anymore - it is a magic that ceased to work in the past 250 years. The reason resurrection magic ceased to function is unknown - most popular theory is that Dhuum broke out of his prison after GW1 (during which time he was "repeatedly breaking free but re-imprisoned by the Seven Reapers + adventurers") and since he was able to deny resurrection and undead while a god, he may have some degree of his power as whatever he is now (former god is most accurate I suppose). Second most popular theory is that the Six Gods distancing themselves is the cause, with Grenth being the one who "allowed" resurrections as he let souls leave the Underworld - with him no longer interacting with Tyria via proxies, this magic similarly disappeared.

Both major theories do kind of go hand in hand though.

From a design perspective they removed resurrection because they felt the mechanic of it caused scripted deaths in GW1 like Saidra's, Rurik's, and Togo's to be rather cheap. Of course, when they're killing NPCs in the instance or second instance after we meet them, the deaths are still rather cheap.

I like to think we're immortal because of Snaff's device in the book: The Hole In The Pocket.A small portable waypoint connection system. Maybe Zojja refined it, and as a result we have one. Normal people still die because they're so hard to make, or so valuable, but we, the hero, don't die, because when our bodies lose consiousness, we'll be drawn into the leyline system and get transported a waypoint to save us. I mean.. it's just a random guess, but it's what I like to think. That we're pulled away from danger when we lose conciousness. Although.. we can get rezzed, so I guess maybe it's not it..

But in sense of terminology, we down, and are defeated, but never die.

In GW1, there's only "alive", "dead" and "resurrection". In the lore, Dhuum had been too strict with resurrections, but after Grenth took over, they became possible more easily with the right knowledge. Creatures could die and get resurrected with skills like the Resurrection Signet and Resurrect. As long as the body could be recovered and was not damaged beyond repair, or on Frozen Soil.Pretty much standard like in most games.

In GW2 this is no longer the case. Dead is dead. No Get out of the Underworld Free cards here. Most people assume that when the gods decided to stop involving themselves with Tyria after Abaddon was defeated, that also included Grenth no longer granting humans or anyone else the ability to bring people back from the dead as easily. This was likely done to give a stronger impact to deaths that happen during the story, as they are final. If they kept "dead" but only allowed some NPCs to be resurrected, there would always be the lingering question "Why can't I resurrect Tybalt"? Well, you can't because no one can. We can only revive.

So with the increased complexity in lore, things get slightly more confusing.

• "Downed" happens to players and a few NPCs like the Toxic Courtiers. Not enough if you ask me, players should have to finish enemies more often in PvE to use those finishers, at least against champion and legendary enemies of the player races. When downed you are not dead, but your life is in danger enough to be so close to die that you even gain a connection to the mists.
• "Rally" happens when someone gets a second wind before blacking out. You were close to defeat, but you pulled through. It may be because a jolt of adrenaline and excitement from defeating a foe, or magic used on you, or someone giving you a hand and helping you up.
• "Defeated" happens to players and many NPCs. It is not "dead", but "mostly dead". There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.
• "Revive", just like a doctor on Earth can use a resuscitation technique to bring back, is a way to heal someone in the brink of death. But no brain dead yet. It can get a bit confusing because this term is also used for "rally". For example, when a skill says "revive" it can only revive NPCs, not players. For players it won't work for that, it can only rally them.
• Dead happens to NPCs only and it is final. Dead enemies can't be revived normally. You would need a complex ritual like the one the ghost of Gaheron Baelfire attempts in Magg's path of the Citadel of Flame dungeon to resurrect himself. "Dead" is as final as it can get. All dead. With all dead, well, With all dead there's usually only one thing you can do: Go through their clothes and look for loose change.

Devs treat player defeat inconsistently, calling revive "resurrect" sometimes. This is because not all devs are as mindful of lore as others, and just like any other player they are used to the general gaming terminology used in most other games. Like when they call a profession "class". We all understand it, but it doesn't make sense from a strict lore perspective. While this sometimes leaks into the game in the form of text inconsistencies, all you can do is point them out in hopes they'll address them, or just not mind them. There's also remnants of the original terms from the older versions of the game before the terms were reworked, like how the context F-revive skill appears as [Resurrect] in the combat log, and how you see the times your character got defeated with the command /deaths.

Now, how we survive the things that we survive? How can we use waypoints when deafeated? In the books they mention a device one would carry that allows use of the waypoints. This is never told in-game, but I like to think the player characters receive one for free after leaving the starting instance, as payment for their respective heroic did at the end of the starting instance. And that's why they can use waypoints from the distance, while other NPCs you see using waypoints actually walk to them, like those in LA. They don't have the expensive thingy that allows wireless waypointing.
But you never actually get this item, you don't get in the story journal one of those story trophy icons with the item or an NPC dialog telling you they are giving you the item, it'd be really cool if they did, but they don't. So this is just an assumption of plausible explanations.I like to think that this device will also act as an insurance, reviving you, teleporting you to the nearest waypoint and healing you if it detects you are in danger.

But that can explain why you survive getting mauled to near death by an ettin, but not something like falling in lava or falling off the top of a cliff. For defeats that are too brutal to survive even with a failsafe, you can consider them non-canon. It's not like everything you see a character do is exactly everything the Commander did. Like getting naked and dancing in LA for 13 straight hours, or going around insulting people in PvP. There's only so far you can go before you have to rely on suspension of disbelief.

It would be nice if there was some lore idea behind this but sadly due to it being an MMO and death being so frequent it's really up to the players imagination, any actual lore reason ANet would give would probably turn out to seem pretty asinine.

@"Marc Warner.6417" said:It would be nice if there was some lore idea behind this but sadly due to it being an MMO and death being so frequent it's really up to the players imagination, any actual lore reason ANet would give would probably turn out to seem pretty asinine.

Not necessarily, since they already built lore around why resurrection was possible in gw1 (see aforementioned Dhuum / Grenth stuff). Plus, resurrection is brought up in the game, particularly in that the Flame Legion found a means to perform resurrection rituals somehow - this is the main focus of Magg's path in CoF explorable, as one of the three major Flame Legion factions are attempting to resurrect Gaheron Baelfire using the Eternal Flame. Though Magg seems ignorant in the fact that Shiro Tagachi had performed a very similar manner of resurrection (resurrection without the original body), and that Mad King Thorn attempted (but failed) the same via Lunatic Court, it doesn't feel asinine.

What you guys are saying makes a lot of sense but what if we pose the question in a different way - What can actually kill the PC? This always being taken from a lore standpoint obviously.

The PC can't be killed by any form of damage, be it condition or direct. The PC cannot be killed by falling from any height and is immune to drowning. Any significant damage taken just results in the PC waypointing (even though it is unclear how you can WP when defeated). So this leaves the gap as to how the PC could actually die. I mean the only method that has not been tried as of yet is old age.

I get that it's a game and that certain characters need to die to bring an emotional toll to the storyline. I just don't get where the line is. At this point, only the characters that need to die will die whilst everyone else can be thrown into the sun cos if it's not their time they'll just be revived or waypoint. Maybe I'm just nitpicking at this point :p

@Rawr.9467 said:What you guys are saying makes a lot of sense but what if we pose the question in a different way - What can actually kill the PC?

Easy answer: Shutting down the game servers ;)

@Rawr.9467 said:What you guys are saying makes a lot of sense but what if we pose the question in a different way - What can actually kill the PC? This always being taken from a lore standpoint obviously.

The PC can't be killed by any form of damage, be it condition or direct. The PC cannot be killed by falling from any height and is immune to drowning. Any significant damage taken just results in the PC waypointing (even though it is unclear how you can WP when defeated). So this leaves the gap as to how the PC could actually die. I mean the only method that has not been tried as of yet is old age.

I get that it's a game and that certain characters need to die to bring an emotional toll to the storyline. I just don't get where the line is. At this point, only the characters that need to die will die whilst everyone else can be thrown into the sun cos if it's not their time they'll just be revived or waypoint. Maybe I'm just nitpicking at this point :p

Anything 'can' kill the PC, it just won't. The PC is the hero of the story, the main character. If the main character dies, generally the story is over. I wouldn't put it past them at some point to put in a "the Commander dies, now s/he needs to barter with Grenth to return to life and finish what needs finishing". Factions had a similar scenario in Vizunah Square. But outside of something like that, or the addition of a hardcore difficulty toggle that deletes your character if you're ever defeated, the PC will never die.

That doesn't mean that the PC is going to act in-story like he's invincible, or start breaking the fourth wall. The threat of death will remain present for the PC for story purposes. We just know, from outside the story, that the Commander will prevail, or at least persevere.

@Renan.6072 said:

The question was: Should waypoints be considered from a roleplay perspective? If so, how do they function?

The answer:Absolutely! Waypoints are asuran devices, and all the money you spend to use them goes straight into the coffers at Rata Sum. The asura have been developing these magi-matter-transportive devices for centuries and have seeded them across the world.

Have waypoints been in development for centuries? Or are they younger than they seem to be? On this thread, @Konig Des Todes.2086 touched on that subject. With such a complete system of waypoints, one would assume they've been around for a long time, but GW1 lore says otherwise. Of course, it is GW1 lore, and the devs have retconned old lore before (@Artesian Waters vs. Cantha gods debate).

@Rawr.9467 said:

@EnemyCrusher.7324 said:In GW2, player characters never actually die, they're just

defeated

.

I like to think that you don't actually die if you were in a fight, or fell off a cliff, but you just became unconscious. That would solve the issue for simple deaths, but there are still deaths as deadly as falling into the abyss in Verdant Brink that are unexplained by this.

@Amaimon.7823 said:I like to think we're immortal because of Snaff's device in the book: The Hole In The Pocket.A small portable waypoint connection system. Maybe Zojja refined it, and as a result we have one. Normal people still die because they're so hard to make, or so valuable, but we, the hero, don't die, because when our bodies lose consiousness, we'll be drawn into the leyline system and get transported a waypoint to save us. I mean.. it's just a random guess, but it's what I like to think. That we're pulled away from danger when we lose conciousness. Although.. we can get rezzed, so I guess maybe it's not it..

But in sense of terminology, we down, and are defeated, but never die.

This could definitely be possible because heroes "become legends", and the remote waypoint travelling devices we assume all characters have, (developed, at least partially, by Snaff, similar to what you are mentioning) to explain being able to use waypoints while not standing under one, is definitely linked to the ley-line system. However, I think this is only if we are in an unreachable place. For example, the abyss in Verdant Brink.

But above all, we can cheat death and come back from anywhere because it's a mechanic; not all deaths can be explained in the lore. It's a video game and people die. Simple deaths can be explained, but there's always a place where lore ends and mechanics begin.

@Catbuggalicious.2548 said:

Have waypoints been in development for centuries? Or are they younger than they seem to be? On this thread, @Konig Des Todes.2086 touched on that subject. With such a complete system of waypoints, one would assume they've been around for a long time, but GW1 lore says otherwise. Of course, it is GW1 lore, and the devs have retconned old lore before (@Artesian Waters vs. Cantha gods debate).

It's pretty clear that waypoints haven't been around since GW1, considering that the asura weren't on the surface at that point. I'd even argue that it's clear they weren't around in Ascalon as recently as Edge of Destiny (when Queen Jennah is trapped in Ebonhawke once the asura gate is destroyed) and Ghosts of Ascalon (when General Soulkeeper of the Vigil sends an adventuring group on an incredibly hazardous journey on behalf of Jennah and Smodur).

I don't think that the extent of the system shows that it's old. For instance, even after being torn out of the sky, the Pact managed to put together a pretty extensive waypoint system while simultaneously pursuing their other objectives. Ditto with the Orrian campaign. It seems that as long as you stumble on a ley line, setting up a waypoint is pretty quick.

@Catbuggalicious.2548 said:Have waypoints been in development for centuries? Or are they younger than they seem to be? On this thread, @Konig Des Todes.2086 touched on that subject. With such a complete system of waypoints, one would assume they've been around for a long time, but GW1 lore says otherwise. Of course, it is GW1 lore, and the devs have retconned old lore before (@Artesian Waters vs. Cantha gods debate).

Regardless of how old waypoints are in specifics, there is no mention of them in Sea of Sorrows (or, for that matter, in Edge of Destiny or Ghosts of Ascalon) but they are definitely a post-GW1 invention as the asura had no such things underground.

As for your last statement, while there have been some retcons (Bloodstone origins), there is no such retcon in regards to what you bring up. The Artesian Waters is where the Six Gods first set foot on the world of Tyria (and the continent of Tyria). They first stepped foot on the continent of Cantha in 786 AE, sometime after (how long is unknown) arriving on the world.

We always knew that humanity didn't first appear in the world at Cantha, and we always knew that humanity settled Cantha three and a half centuries before they settled Orr and Elona. We also always knew they came from somewhere other than Cantha before arriving on the world. Turns out that somewhere else is Orr, but humans never got a chance to settle Orr (for unknown reasons - likely due to dragon corruption if I had to guess - after all, both Kralkatorrik and Zhaitan seemed to have sway over Orr at different points in time during the previous dragonrise) so they were taken elsewhere. Whether this elsewhere is Cantha, or there is an unknown location that they were at between the two events, is unclear.

@Rawr.9467 said:[...]What can actually kill the PC? [...]It's not like nothing can kill the PC, is that nothing did.

When you 'die' in the story and have to reload a checkpoint is like when you are playing Price of Persia and you 'die', but the narrator, who is also the prince, goes "No wait, that is not how it happened", and the checkpoint is loaded.

In that sense we are basically 'replaying' the canon story as if it was a fractal. Whatever happens in cannon is already established when we get to play it. So even if we do something that would not make sense, one can just consider that it really didn't happen.

Or if you prefer, that it happened in an alternate world that differs slightly from the canon story. There's some indications there's different alternate versions of Tyria, or at the very least alternate possibilities that exists within the mists.

@Xiahou Mao.9701 said:

@Rawr.9467 said:What you guys are saying makes a lot of sense but what if we pose the question in a different way - What can actually kill the PC? This always being taken from a lore standpoint obviously.

The PC can't be killed by any form of damage, be it condition or direct. The PC cannot be killed by falling from any height and is immune to drowning. Any significant damage taken just results in the PC waypointing (even though it is unclear how you can WP when defeated). So this leaves the gap as to how the PC could actually die. I mean the only method that has not been tried as of yet is old age.

I get that it's a game and that certain characters need to die to bring an emotional toll to the storyline. I just don't get where the line is. At this point, only the characters that need to die will die whilst everyone else can be thrown into the sun cos if it's not their time they'll just be revived or waypoint. Maybe I'm just nitpicking at this point :p

Well, I know I will prevail or persevere, but you would be surprised how many people fail to finish story missions even. I had to help a few guildees a while back on Season 2 bosses.

Really, PC dies as soon as you stop playing the story/quit the game entirely.

Funny thing is, just like with so many other aspects of the lore / story, the writers have become quite inconsistent within this topic as well. While originally it was stated that the PCs cannot die and only become defeated, get knocked out (with eyes rolled up and no respiration... strange way to be unconscious), by now certain NPCs speak of the downed state as being on the very doorstep of death. The Shining Blade guy who teaches us Signet of Agony in Lake Doric says that with us being "one foot in the Mists" it's easier to tap into those unobtainable magics that make Spectral Agony possible. The PC even jokes he/she likes to avoid those "almost dead" moments.

The second NPC who debunks the original concept of "being defeated and not dead" is the Siren Master, who claims when asked about Dwayna's Dirge that "fallen allies will find new vigor and be warded against death." He even goes as far as to get the PC killed by a roaming mass of darkness that sucks the life force out of the PC - sending them straight into "defeated" state - in order to demonstrate the power of the Preservation of Life, which is effectively a resurrection spell.

Of course, story-wise, from a strictly canon perspective the Commander never dies, and I'd even assume doesn't even get defeated (especially not in fights where the stakes are so high that death/losing consciousness could result in getting corrupted by an ED). All those silly moments of us falling to our deaths, being burned to cinders in lava, getting disemboweled by a saurian, or roflstomped by mushroom royalty are just the figments of our imagination (or visions of possible deadly scenarios that must be averted like in that Nick Cage movie - Next, I think?). Then again, the writers have most likely forgotten this tidbit from the past as well and gone ahead with the notion that downed is being near death and from there we'd pass straight into the Mists if not for the fact that we're wearing plot armor / it's just a mechanism.

GW2 treats it as an abstraction, which is how it should be. The idea of literally dying over and over to be revived at nearby waypoints or statues is silly, no matter what kind of lore you try to put behind it.