LuckyThirteen.4576

Thinking about this latest release, and the luke-warm response to it, the question that keeps coming back to me is: Why do we just keep coming back to story releases? Do we really need more and more and more story to the exclusion of (apparently) any other content? Can we have a major release where we just take a break from having more story, on another map, with another meta event and maybe just add new raids, strikes, fractals, pvp maps, "combat features," etc.? What I'm saying is, would the majority of the community be more upset with a release that contained only content, and no story chapters?

I don't have a problem with the gem store, I buy lots of things on the gem store and nothing there has to change necessarily but please...it's so obvious. Offer cosmetic content for completing content! Offer mount skins for gaeting crystals, jade bot/fishing rod skins for prophet shards, or other cosmetics for fractal relics. I'm fine with there being cosmetics in the store, but for the life of me I can't fathom why there can't also be similar cosmetic content being offered for engaging with the games existing systems! People will always go for the shiny, if you want more people engaging with conent, offer shinies for doing the content...

Next expansion is confirmed, what are we gonna get? Here are my thoughts. Warrior: Battlemaster Weapon: Staff The staff would be a ranged weapon, allowing the warrior to call aoe artillery strikes down on their target, as well as offering some some aoe buffs and/or healing. Profession Mechanic: Reinforcements The battlemaster builds adrenaline in all the normal ways, as well as by healing allies. The adrenaline bar would become a single, unsegmented resource bar. F1 summons reinforcement in the form of a minion to a targeted location, which can be command like other pets in the game. This minion can have different properties based on trait choices, and drains adrenaline at a constant rate. Profession Skills: Orders Orders create an area buff on a targeted ally. The buff will follow that ally as they move and grant benefits to them and other nearby for performing certain actions, like getting double-strikes on attacks, or vigor/protection on a successful dodge. Guardian: Void-Caller Weapon: Warhorn The warhorn would project cone-shaped fields that focus on controlling and interrupting enemies. Profession Mechanic: Virtuous Anthems The guardian's virtues now take the form of powerful personal buffs. The guardian may use F1-F3 to select one virtue at a time to receive the benefits from, and the benefits last until another virtue is selected. Profession Skill: Chants Chants grant unique buffs which, for their duration, will trigger an effect whenever another utility skill is used, or perhaps when certain other conditions are met. Revenant: Savant Weapon: Rifle The rifle would function in a similar vein to the engineer's firearms: focusing more on mid-ranged utility, mobility, and crowd control rather than damage. Profession Mechanic: Legendary Golemancer Stance - Snaff Golemancer stance, in addition to providing new skills, provides access to the F2 skill Overdrive, which will instantly reset all cooldowns (including weapon skills, utility skills, and profession skills) in addition to providing maximum energy at the cost of disabling energy regeneration for a period of time and a long cooldown. Profession Skills: Golemancy By temporarily summoning Snaff's golem (or parts thereof) through mist-portals, the revenant gains access to a variety of instant, percussive effects, like extra damage, defensive bubbles, or an AoE launch. Engineer: Kineticist Weapon: Staff The staff conducts the Kineticist's magnetic powers, offering the engineer powerful ranged damage options, and some ranged defense. Profession Mechanic: Magnetic Crush The Kineticist's magnetic power grows as they deal or block damage, building a tiered meter similar to warrior's adrenaline gauge. Each tier offers the engineer damage reduction, and also unlocks a more-powerful version of the new f5 skill magnetic crush: a powerful and damaging aoe CC ability. Profession Skills: Create/Destroy Create skills would use magnetic power and spare pieces of metal to create a variety of effects including walls and weapons. Once used, they become their corresponding destroy skill, which would create a secondary effect, and put the skill on cooldown. Thief: Butcher Weapon: Axe (MH) The axe would be a comparatively simple weapon for thief, focusing less on mobility and more on high, cleaving damage and supplemental vulnerability application. Profession Mechanic: Rip-Claw Instead of shadow-stepping the thief to their target, the Rip-Claw fires a projectile which will drag the thief's target to them, and offer a unique follow-up attack on the F2 based on the enemy pulled (much like how stealing does). Profession Skills: Wounds These would be powerful, single target debuffs focused on things like overcoming defenses, and stripping/corrupting boons. Ranger: Hunter Weapon: Rifle The rifle would offer a mix of ranged damage, offensive mobility, and baked in unblockable attacks. Profession Mechanic: Stalk By activating a new F5 skill, you mark a target for your pet to stalk. Your pet vanishes into stealth, becoming invisible and untargetable. For the duration of this ability your pet will hunt this target, making sudden strikes from the shadows on your command. When the ability ends, the pet reappears next to their target. If the target dies while under this effect, Stalk's cooldown is reduced. Profession Skills: Venoms Ranger gets access to its own set of venoms which affect only a single attack, but have powerful or long lasting effects. Elementalist: Spellbinder Weapon: Rifle The rifle would offer a mix of both single target and AoE ranged damage, depending on the element, and have a distinct focus on burst damage. Profession Mechanic: Arcane Shroud As the elementalist changes attunements and uses weapon skills, they build energy for their arcane shroud (F5). In Arcane Shroud, the elementalist loses arcane energy while hit instead of health, and gains access to powerful, highly damaging, ranged and Aoe abilities, based on the element they were attuned to upon activation. Casting abilities while in this form would also cost energy. Profession Skills: Greater Arcana Greater arcana would focus on offering particularly powerful arcane-style effects, but would also place a short to moderate cooldown on all utility skills once activated. Mesmer: Siren Weapon: Longbow The longbow would provide strong AoE pressure from range while offering mobility/stealth access. Profession Mechanic: Duet The mesmer may have only one clone at a time. This clone can switch targets, and will always have the same target as the player. This clone is empowered, dealing more damage per attack, every time a mesmer ability would create a clone, stacking up to three times. When a shatter is used, one level of empowerment is lost instead of destroying the clone. If the clone is not empowered, it shatters normally. Profession Skills: Harmonize A harmonize skill produces an affect that targets both the mesmer, and their clone. Necromancer: Master Weapon: Sword (MH) The sword would be a heavy striking weapon that provides life force per hit, and be able to block. Profession Mechanic: Bone-Widow Necromancer shroud is replaced with the ability to summon a massive undead minion: The Bone-Widow. While the Bone-Widow is active, the necromancer life-force acts as its health bar, which drains over time. F2-F5 are replaced with abilities used by the Bone-Widow while it is active. Profession Skills: Tolls Tolls are skills which cost the necromancer health when activated, to a minimum of 1. They provide life-force when activated, as well as additional effects.

It hardly seems a fitting conclusion to Dragons Watch's journey of killing six elder dragons, a mad god, and an ancient lich, to simply focusing on two characters, not even the biggest contributors mind you, talking about their relationship in a bar. That's kind of the whole point I've been making here. I'm not upset that you did it, I'm upset that it took a place in the narrative from something that would have been more fitting. The storytelling was sacrificed for this. Additionally, I hope you'll forgive me if I find it a furthermore odd coincidence that, out of all the numerous characters, plot points, villains, arcs, and relationships, the writers decided that it was very important that these two characters specifically got the spotlight at the end of the 9-year story. Let alone the fact that their specific conclusion was entirely focused on their relationship to each other above all the other characters they've had relationships with. One might even suspect some sort of bias at play.

An epilogue is: "A section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened." The chapter titled "epilogue" in the EoD story barely even mentions the events of the story, let alone does anything to further conclude them. So at a bare minimum, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of an epilogue's purpose here. Furthermore, it still doesn't address why these characters, on a narrative level, are singled out in the last story chapter of the game. Did Marjory and Kas' relationship play some major role in the plot of EoD? Why focus on them specifically and not, say, Gorrik and Taimi or Rama and Min? At least Rama and Min had a central plot point in EoD. What did focusing on these two characters in EoDs epilogue add to the greater narrative specifically? Sure, the credits roll, but the exit portal in Arborstone literally takes you to Divinity's Reach instead of the Echovald Wilds, one of the only instances of this sort of thing in the entire game. You can hardly argue that the epilogue is some extra, extraneous content, it is the last chapter that appears in your story journal, and the journal concludes after it is over.

This post makes me sad, really. It feels like you either genuinely don't understand the problem, or don't actually care. People aren't upset about representation, women being in powerful positions, or who is canonically banging who. The problem is that good storytelling is being sacrificed at the altar of representation and inclusivity. It's "forced" because you put dialogue, people, plot points in places where they make less or no sense because you had another box to tick for someone who can apparently only relate to an individual on the most outer, superficial of levels. Tell me, as I would love to be educated, what was the narrative purpose of putting the scene with Jory and Kas as the final chapter of the epic 9-year story arc of fighting the elder dragons? What specific plot relevance did that have to fighting Soo-Won or the void? Could you not have put it elsewhere in the story? Perhaps in the side-quest where we follow Jory around Cantha? All of dragon's watch should have been thrown the parade to end all parades for ending the elder-dragon cycle outright. What was the inspiration behind instead focusing that entire end on two characters' engagement? Genuine question.

I don't see the need to take jabs at me personally, I'm thrilled that we've actually had this much positive interaction on the topic. Actually, I feel like you're kind for making my point for me. You remark that neither Joon or Li are particularly likeable, which I agree with; but my point was that if this was the case, why does Joon get to be a hero while Li is portrayed exclusively as a villain? Also, I don't really see why history need play a factor at all, I was simply remarking that the story that was presented feels unbalanced in a noticeable way.

The point of the post was to start a discussion, not necessarily to win one. My intention isn't to boil things down; there are far bigger issues with the plot than the apparent gender imbalance of course. It simply caught me that, on the broad spectrum of the story, the balance of confident, competent, respected, and powerful characters seems skewed in one direction, and it feels noticeable and perhaps even biased. I'm not suggesting the male characters don't get their moments, or that female characters are always in the spotlight. Merely that things could, maybe, be a little more balanced. You make some good points, and I admit that my summary was crass (intentionally, but sill.) I would say that my issues with these characters specifically isn't that they show emotions or vulnerabilities, but that they are usually portrayed as being specifically, less competent. Braham does mean well, but his story usually focuses more on how he fails (repeatedly) rather than how he succeeds. Hell, even his big moment in becoming Primordus' champion feels almost as much like a failure as it does a success, as he becomes a mindless golem for the rest of the icebrood saga. I like Gorrik, I didn't mention that but I do. He's fun, plucky, and biased towards action. However, in EoD when Gorrik decides that he's tired of being pushed around and manipulated, his change in attitude and desire to play a more proactive role in his life is played for laughs, relegating him once again to mostly being comic relief. Meanwhile, who actually saves the world in this story and commands the big events? Joon, Taimi, Kas, Jory, Kunavang, Mai Trin. I guess Rama helped, though...

I'm not necessarily saying it does matter, really. As I said, it's not that the story bothers me so much as that I feel like it warranted pointing out. I like good characters and good storytelling; so it sticks out to me when certain aspects of the story are becoming stale/repetitive/very confusing.

I hesitate to even make this post for reasons that can be briefly summarized as: "It's the internet."; but I feel like it warrants discussion, and I can't think of a better place to put it. So here it is. Now that EoD has wrapped up the game's primary story arc, I've been knocking it back and forth in my head and ran across a trend. Have you noticed how the overwhelming majority of characters who are in-power/organizational leaders in the story are female, and the difference in their portrayal compared to similar male characters? This stood out to me most in the conflict between Joon and Minister Li: who are portrayed early on as the two biggest players in the Canthan government apart from the empress herself. Both are fierce advocates for their position on opening Cantha's borders, though from the very start the story implies that Li is in the wrong. This makes some sense, as Cantha's borders need to be open for the expansion to happen, but it bothers me somewhat that the story never even questioned whether or not Li had a point. Why does Li think the border should stay closed? Because he's actually just a big racist purist Disney villain in addition to being obviously wrong! It can't be because the commander's/Aurene's actions indirectly brought violence, instability, terrorism, and the literal apocalypse to Cantha's borders, he's just racist purist! What about Joon? I like Joon. I think Joon is interesting. It just bothers me that Joon becomes antagonistic to the commander for similarly misunderstood (Yong Reactor) or arrogant (wants to catch Soo-Won) reasons, and instead gets to join the main cast of heroes in the end for the big finale! Everything is forgiven, despite the fact that she sent thugs to apprehend us extra-legally, or that she tried to straight-up murder the commander in her own home. What about Rama? I also like Rama. Rama is funny and relatable. Rama helps us throughout the story, and proves himself to be more than capable in his own right. Rama also happens to be subordinate to Captain Min, who outranks him despite being the same age, and shows up right at the end of the Minister Li arc to (kinda?) help us fight him and, more importantly, take all the credit for both outing Li as a purist, something the usually pretty smart Rama was apparently too naïve to do, and taking him into custody afterwards. It's very heavily implied that she will succeed Li, thus replacing the only (evil) man in power with a (good) woman. Let me clarify, I don't dislike Min or think she doesn't work as a character. I don't hate this part of the story, or think it doesn't make sense. It does, but just strikes as ticking more boxes on a surprisingly consistent trend throughout the story. Other examples of men in the main cast: Logan Thackery: An otherwise hyper-capable warrior whose biggest character flaw is that he's a massive simp for an implied to be more capable woman in charge (Jenna). Rytlock: A once(?) hyper-capable warrior who, in the most recent storyline, has become the forever-subordinate to an implied to be more capable woman in charge (Crecia). Canach: An intelligent and confident man who has, none-the-less, become subordinate to an implied to be more capable woman in charge... twice. (Anise and Sayida, who never once gets called out for being a literal pirate by the way! At least he dumps her kitten in the end). Braham: A childish mommy's boy who only manages to be occasionally competent, and spends the rest of his time creating problems for everyone in his life. Gorrik: An effeminate nerd who spends half of his time having petty emotional outbursts, and the other half serving his implied to be more capable woman in charge (Taimi). Blish: Blish was cool. I miss Blish. Smodur the Unflinching: Just wanted to point out that he follows almost the exact same story beats as minister Li. Traditional strong male leader with older and sometimes outdated notions of leadership? Obviously incorrect Disney villain. Other examples of women in the cast: Caithe: Independent sometimes villain with a heart of gold. Get's forgiven very easily despite actively working against the commander for an extended period of time. Zojja: Who? Eir: I actually don't have a huge problem with Eir, though find it weird that everyone is just ok with her admitting how terrible a mother she was. Kas and Jory: They're ok if a little boring. Kas just suddenly being the ambassador feels a little unearned. I also don't fully understand why their little affair had to be the literal last chapter of the epic, 9-years long elder dragon story. Taimi: The tragic victim of academic unfairness, and terminal illness while also apparently being the literal most capable person on the planet. I feel like you can't really play it both ways? At least she doesn't whine about it too much. Rox: Who? Sayida: Independent sometimes villain with a heart of gold. Get's forgiven very easily despite actively working against the commander for a period of time, and also for being a literal pirate? Zafirah: Independent sometimes villain with a heart of gold. Get's forgiven very easily despite actively trying to murder the commander, and having actually murdered at least some pact members. Mai-Trin: Independent sometimes villain with a heart of gold. Get's forgiven very easily despite actively working against the commander for an extended period of time, murdering people, and being a literal pirate. (seriously?) Now please, let me be clear. I'm not necessarily saying that any of these characters are bad characters, or that the story is poorly written. I mean, it definitely is in places, but not because of this. I like Queen Jenna, I think she's cool. I like Taimi, her character is fun and animated. I like Rytlock, and his interactions with Crecia are well done and believable. For the most part, I don't question why these women are in power, nor think that it doesn't make sense in the story. I just think it's increasingly weird that the world-building has become unbalanced in this way. Maybe it's just me, but I hope to see some more *ahem* diverse, story-telling in the future. TL;DR: Why are all the most prominent and capable characters in the story women compared to usually subordinate/less capable/cartoonishly evil male counterparts? Who was the last truly in-charge, capable, and respected male character that we've had?

So, during the introduction to the EoD story Taimi rants about everyone being off doing their own thing, and mentions everyone's specific location/activities except for Zojja. Catching up with Taimi: Taimi: Gang's back together, huh? I mean, not the whole gang, obviously. Rytlock. Kas and Jory. Caithe: Taimi Taimi: Braham's at the lodge. Logan's back in Kryta. Canach is with Sayida, Zafirah with the Zaishen Caithe: Taimi! Taimi: Garm is with Braham; Eir and Snaff are dead; I don't know where the heck Zojja is! Commander: Taimi. I'll get Gorrik.It's going to be okay. Taimi: I know. The last specific mention of Zojja's whereabouts was at the beginning of LWS3, where she can be seen lying in a coma following her ordeal with Mordremoth. If this was still the case, there's no reasonable way Taimi wouldn't be aware of it; so why not say that instead of stating that she doesn't know where Zojja is? Is it possible that Zojja disappeared, or left on her own? Is it possible that she will show up in a future storyline somewhere? If so, why hasn't she seemingly attempted to contact anyone?

Seeing as the fourth expansion is confirmed, it's time, once again, to speculate wildly on the possibilities. What niches are yet left for professions to carve out? I have some broad ideas: Warrior: Lord Weapon: Staff The staff would be a ranged weapon, allowing the warrior to call AoE artillery strikes down on their target, as well as offering some personal mobility, and AoE might. Profession Mechanic: Squire The Lord builds adrenaline by damaging enemies and healing allies. The adrenaline bar is no longer segmented, and serves as a single resource bar. F1 summons your squire to a targeted location, which is on a cool-down, but costs no adrenaline. F2-F5 can be used to move, and cast buffs/healing from the squire's location at the cost of adrenaline. The squire can be targeted and killed like any other minion. The squire cannot attack enemies. Profession Skills: Orders Orders would be a mix of unique AoE buffs that land somewhere between shouts and stances. Basically, a buff is applied to allies in an area that grants benefits for performing certain actions, like getting double-strikes on attacks, or vigor/protection on a successful dodge. Guardian: Void-Caller Weapon: Warhorn The warhorn would project cone-shaped fields that damage and control enemies while buffing/ granting aegis to allies. Profession Mechanic: Virtuous Anthems The guardian's virtues now take the form of powerful personal buffs. The guardian may use F1-F3 to select one virtue at a time to receive the benefits from, and the benefits last until another virtue is selected. Profession Skill: Chants Chants create an effect field, sort of like a well, that follows the guardian as they move, providing benefits to allies or hindrances to enemies in the field of effect. Revenant: Savant Weapon: Rifle The rifle would function in a similar vein to the engineer's rifle: a mid-range, aoe type of affair with a mix of CC and mobility options. Profession Mechanic: Legendary Golemancer Stance - Snaff (Demonstrated to be active in the mists during LWS4) Golemancer stance, in addition to providing its bevy of skills, the golemancer provides access to the F2 skill Overdrive, which instantly resets cooldowns, and provides maximum energy at the cost of disabling energy regeneration for a period of time. Profession Skills: Backups By temporarily summoning Snaff's golem (or parts thereof) through mist-portals, the revenant gains access to a variety of instant, percussive effects, like extra damage, defensive bubbles, or an AoE launch. Engineer: Kinetic Weapon: Staff The staff conducts the Kinetics magnetic power, offering the engineer powerful ranged damage options, and some ranged defense. Profession Mechanic: Magnetic Crush The Kinetic's magnetic power grows as they deal or block damage, building a tiered meter similar to warrior's adrenaline gauge. Each tier offers the engineer damage reduction, and also unlocks a more-powerful version of the new f5 skill magnetic crush: a powerful and damaging AoE CC ability. Profession Skills: Manipulations Manipulations would take various forms including aoe damage, walls of metal, etc. Their defining trait would be the ability to be activated once for an initial effect, and then again within a period of time for a follow up effect. Thief: Butcher Weapon: Axe (MH) The axe would be a comparatively simple weapon for thief, focusing less on mobility and more on high, cleaving damage and supplemental vulnerability application. Profession Mechanic: Rip-Claw Instead of shadow-stepping the thief to their target, the Rip-Claw drags the thief's target to them, and offers a unique follow-up attack on the F2 based on the enemy pulled (much like how stealing does). Successfully landing this follow-up attacks increases the thief's damage to that target. Profession Skills: Injuries These utilities would be focused on locking down a single target, overcoming defenses, and stripping/corrupting boons. Ranger: Hunter Weapon: Rifle The rifle would offer a mix of ranged damage, mobility while attacking at range, and baked in unblockable attacks. Profession Mechanic: Stalk By activating a new F5 skill, you mark a target for your pet to stalk. Your pet vanishes into stealth, becoming untargetable. For the duration of this ability your pet will be focused on this target, and gain access to a new set of skills which will hit that target as long as they are within range regardless of line of sight. If a target dies while under this effect, Stalk's cooldown is reduced. Profession Skills: Venoms Ranger gets access to its own set of venoms which last for only one attack, but offer various effects that last over a period of time. Elementalist: Arcanist Weapon: Pistol (MH) The pistol would offer a mix of both single target and AoE ranged damage, depending on the element, and have a distinct focus on putting out damage quickly. Profession Mechanic: Arcane Shroud As the elementalist cycles through the elements, and for each unique weapon skill cast, they build up energy for their arcane shroud (F5). In Arcane Shroud, the elementalist loses arcane energy while hit instead of health, and gains access to powerful, highly damaging, ranged and Aoe abilities, which also consume shroud energy as they are used. Profession Skills: High Magics High Magic skills would focus on particularly powerful damaging or CC effects at the cost of having longer cooldowns compared to most utilities. Mesmer: Siren Weapon: Longbow The longbow would provide strong AoE pressure from range while offering mobility and stealth access. Profession Mechanic: Performances Shatters are replaced by performances. Activating a performance sends one clone to a targeted location, where it will provide an AoE effect similar to the one provided by the original shatter. Profession Skills: Harmonies A harmony produces an AoE effect centered on the mesmer, as well as producing the same effect from all active clones at the time of casting. Necromancer: Death Knight Weapon: Sword (MH) The sword would be a heavy striking weapon that provides life force per hit, and be able to block. Profession Mechanic: Bone-Widow Necromancer shroud is replaced with the ability to summon a massive undead minion: The Bone-Widow. While the Bone-Widow is active, the necromancer life-force acts as its health bar, which drains over time. F2-F5 are replaced with abilities used by the Bone-Widow while it is active. Profession Skills: Compacts Compacts are skills which cost the necromancer health when activated, to a minimum of 1. Compacts provide life-force when activated, as well as additional effects. Have Fun!

Yes, that. I was having trouble explaining the idea properly.

Dual classing was one of the iconic features of GW1, and while there's a lot to like about the current professions, the return of Cantha makes me feel like the devs should take another opportunity to bring back even more of what made the original game great. The thing is, I think it can be done without actually changing the current specialization system. Here's my idea: Give each core profession a new weapon to use from the existing weapon pool, usable on that profession regardless of elite specialization. Design a new elite specialization for each class, but not for that class to use; instead, you design one elite specialization inspired by the core mechanics of all 9 professions. Make all of these elite specializations, usable by every other profession except for the one inspired by their main profession. So, for example, a Warrior might choose to take the Thief elite specialization, maybe granting access to the steal mechanic, some thief utilities, and a set of traits inspired by the thief. Maybe an Elementalist could take the Mesmer elite specialization, and gain a limited ability to make clones. Obviously, the profession mechanics are where things get tricky, and I don't have a concrete solution in every scenario; but then, I'm not a game developer. I do think 3 normal elite specializations is enough per class right now, and this could be an interesting way to deliver something different on the same note, while still only have to develop 9 new elite specializations. Just a thought.

Hi, I've recently been looking to break into some higher tier content, this sounds good. If you'll have me of course.