[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

On 9/4/2022 at 2:07 PM, Sviel.7493 said:

The reason this works better in Planetside is because the battles themselves are usually slower paced and heavily rely on momentum.  You can't just rush up to a point and overwhelm a slightly smaller force because defensive force multipliers actually exist.  You also can't stack 50 deep and rely on AoE target caps to mitigate incoming damage.  You largely push in small cells, sometimes comprising a large overall force, and die in small cells then return to the push.

Distance in WvW is extremely important to the game's balance.  This is why, on their newest map, they were careful to mirror walking distances between objectives.  It's also why the addition of the Warclaw was akin to shooting themselves in the foot, but there's no going back on that now.  If players can re-enter the fight too quickly, you end up with stalemates that are epic if you're into that sort of thing but exhausting if you're not.  Battles are won not because of strength or strategy, but simply endurance.

Still, your feeling that fights in WvW are the RvR equivalent of minute-men is not wrong.  Sieges are a lot of waiting around followed by the possibility of a one-sided fight and that isn't a whole lot fun.  We could use a fix for this that works for GW2, but we can't just import the Planetside version.

I think the best solution is to make the siege part more active by toning down the inevitability of large groups.  There's already a huge advantage to splitting up an assault, but players don't bother because it's easier to just sit a fat zerg down on some proxy catas and wait a minute or two.  The zerg fight at the climax doesn't have to be the only part anyone enjoys.  This would require a bunch of changes and could be implemented in myriad ways, but the general idea is that the whole siege should be a fun and legendary event.

Honestly i think the point about stacking and boonballing is the main blocker here since even with longer sieges, it's hard to kill anyone 1 on 1 like in PS2 which is the main reason that you usually cant just blast your way into the objective in planetside (MAX pushing is a thing though), which means gw2 fights will always revolve around either rapidly smashing the enemy ball or being smashed. respawning players would just trickle into their respective commander balls since being left behind means rapid death against small knots of players, like two tornadoes constantly being fed with more particulate.

 

I think one way of fixing this would be more anti zerg mechanics and classes built around mass stripping boons ( i had an idea for a 'negate magic' class that could strip AoEs off the ground) but if im being honest, WvW fights aren't that fun to begin with. no wonder no one wants them to last more than a few minutes.

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

38 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Like I said those meatgrinders already exist with those boon ball guilds camping out keeps grinding pugs. You know why it doesn't last? because eventually the meat gets tired and moves on, guess what they will do when you have those temporary waypoints out in the zone, they'll ignore it and move on to something else. I've seen t3 keeps fall because defenders got tired of running into virtually unbeatable boon balls for 20 mins.

 

For wvw fights it's not a matter of respawning faster for players, it's whether or not you can even beat the group, if not they move on even to another map. Go ahead and find one of the grinder groups if that's what you want to do.

Well yeah that sounds like abuse of game mechanics to artificially draw out a fight. but that's not the average experience is it? that's a separate problem with a separate solution.

 

Getting beat is part of the game, someone has to be on the losing side. That's not exclusive to long or short fights. my proposal isnt to make fights last forever, its to make them last longer. Beating your enemy into giving up because its taking too long isnt the win condition.

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

2 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Why do you think we've moved into boon balling? it's to help pleb groups with sustain. It's the whole reason anet has made this push to have boon spam everywhere in the game, to help raise the level of play for players cause their own personal skill wasn't cutting it. They took away stuff like fields and blasting for more spamming because players either couldn't understand it or it was too much work for them.

 

Are you asking for longer fights through constant respawns like you're playing some random fps game like battlefield or cod? Cause tbh playing meat grinder isn't fun.

Well yeah, the meatgrinder is fun to me. It would be better than what we have now, just running from cap to cap just shattering all resistance in minutes/trying to blast through walls before people can react. its just depending on skill you can be the one doing the grinding or getting grinded. right now, the difference is either instakilling or getting instakilled.

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

8 hours ago, godfat.2604 said:

I was thinking exactly this. It’s epic and unforgettable, even though it’s like a joke. Perhaps we should bring this back, just add downed penalty to the lords so they can’t be revived for too many times in a row.

As for the topic, I actually think that SMC is exactly the place today, and also most of my experiences for bannering the lord back then. As long as the walls and gates are down, and there are not too many roamers catching zergling running back, it can still last quite some time even we can’t banner the lord now.

The only map which I think it takes a bit too much time running back is the desert map. But I have to admit that it’s also because I am still not familiar with it today, and I often got lost running back…

Imo people probably complained because repeatedly reviving the lord just feels kind of unsatisfying, like you should have won but cant finish it. functionally it leads to longer fights but thematically it would feel bad. I think from reading this thread, people dont mind having longer fights but it needs to feel right.

 

Taking from planetside, you could rework the castles to have multiple small objectives with weaker lords defending them, so that the majority of points need to be held and a bar fills up to take the objective. That would require a full map rework though so just wishful thinking here.

 

5 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 

 

This already happens, have you not witnessed fight guilds in their boon balls farming keeps or towers? happens ever day, just turn on Indo's stream to see it. Even last night it happened when ET SoR DH all had fight guilds battling around Swt on green bl. You even get the pug v pug fights in places like ogrewatch sentry or wildcreek sentry areas. The problem isn't respawns, it's the sustain and positioning of groups. Adding more spawns isn't going to make battles longer and better, it'll just be more feeding the boon ball meat grinder groups. Fun when you're the meat grinder sure, not fun when you're on the other end though.

I mean, no i really havent. I dipped my toes in for enough time to reach WvW rank 30. I also played a couple of years ago to get my other GoB and i was kind of dissapointed to find the experience is basically unchanged. I do see boon ball zergs farming objectives but when they fight eachother? fun for a few minutes then its over. If you read my post, I was suggesting the same siege camp mobile spawn mechanics found in PS2, and I remember seeing suggestions for it on the old forums as well. Again though, it's just a simple suggestion and not really the focus of the post. the focus is really: to debate whether longer fights are better and whether anet should try and facilitate them with game mechanics.

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

If you want fights to not end instantly - get better and don't die instantly. Srsly. It is already way too easy to defend close to spawn structures by nonstop respawning and eventually overwhelming opponents with sheer numbers.

WvW already has a lot of carry mechanics  for bad players and superior numbers - don't need even more.

Faster respawns would actually kill good (even and longer lasting) fights, because insta killing the entirety of your opponents becomes the only way to win.

How does this make sense? just because I'm not dying personally doesnt mean the overall fight is gonna last much longer. It's a team fight after all.

We know it's possible to make large scale games with long satisfying fights because they exist in this world. so why is it impossible in GW2?

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

2 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

We already had these features;

Originally, Warclaw had a much higher movement speed, allowing you to get back to battles very quickly, and near the start of the game revival skills could be used on lords, etc. As a result battles were extremely long (almost never-ending) in both scenarios but it was "fixed" because of complaints from the playerbase.

 

The complaints were the same as for downstate, because players don't want longer battles, they want instant gratification. If you gave the playerbase in this game the option of instagibbing enemies, they'd take it, just so they could laugh while the funny number goes up.

 

The challenge of "gut wrenching war" isn't something anyone seems to want these days.

That's a real shame I guess, since I was hoping wvw might change over the years to try and facilitate more prolonged combat. I don't see why players would shy away from being able to fight longer to farm kills and get action more easily but I guess capping objectives is ingrained into the established base at this point. Maybe in GW3.

[What would you think of trying to facilitate longer battles with game mechanics?]

There are a few games that try to deal with large scale player battles. one that comes to mind is planetside 2, in which spawning is much more close quarters and unrestricted, leading to battles that last longer and maintain momentum. In my opinion, WvW is supposed to be the big battle mode, but big battles usually only last a few minutes. It seems to me like the focus should be on getting the ball rolling, and trying to maintain it as long as possible for the "mind bending, gut wrenching all out war" as the mist recruiters like to call it.

 

As to how i would do this personally, I would add more spawns around the map, and allow people to spawn in contested areas. I would also add camps as a buildable siege option that would become a spawn location, that can only be placed within a certain radius of castles and eachother, and decay over time if not used. But that just a simple suggestion, and the main question is to whether you would support this design philosophy of "keeping the fight going and making it easy to drop into the fight" overall.

[Does EoD feel more like a Living Story or Expansion to you all?]

5 hours ago, Sunchaser.9854 said:

Pof: Here is a tribe of undead living under a city, a warring faction led by Joko of resurrected egyptian zombies enslaved against their will with zombie driven cities to fight against the branded, the flaming minions of balthazarr, a waring tribe, all these ranches for the skimmers, and everyone else.

 

EoD: Here is a empty city with only 1 meta. The only time you even see 10 people inside of it is a story instance where after completion they despawn and never appear again, leaving you in a empty city. But sometimes during the blacklight meta you at least have mechs to fight and one giant mega mini boss. Outside of 2 npcs in the meta though, Do people even exist... or spawn.. or walk in New Khaheng  though?

 

Dragon's end has good gold and decent mini events. It's not bad, just i can barely recall anything happening in echovalds wilds other than it's empty and a annoying boss on ziplines that one shots all non mechanists with the insta incap if you're not behind a barrier the mechanists can easily shoot from is a bit annoying.

Then the other area, pretty, but i think there's literally just a leviathan spawn there and nothing to do there? 

bruh dont pretend like most of the areas in PoF dont feel like stark empty polygonal models with mobs spaced over them equidistantly. You know, Id actually be fine with that if those areas were dune deserts that are meant to feel open, but there's so much empty architecture and smudgy brown terrain and rocks designed around just blasting through with your mount as fast as possible. I think EoD did a much better job at finding a balance between size and detail. Not a perfect one, but honestly? better than PoF.

[No Navies in Tyria]

Probably because airships would wreck the current classical galleon gunpower ships we've seen so far from nations. Perhaps someone somewhere is working on the battleships and cruisers it would require to host anti aircraft magi lasers, but they arent out yet.

[Please have option toggle to disable mechanist mech and turtle [Merged]]

I mean if you're alright with just a few mechs, you could wait until mechanist isnt as meta. then there'll be less jade mechs

[About future expansions, a question for ANet.]

Imo the best OW mob design is to keep the challenging mobs, but to spread them out into more deliberate encounters where they make sense, rather than trying to paint the map with aggro radii and archaic mob placement. Make it so hostile POIs have specifically placed mobs, have a few patrolling groups on specially modelled pathways, and then you'll have a bunch of packaged encounters that have the potential for some dynamic changes depending on placement (maybe two hostile patrols walk into eachother or a patrol moves through a POI), but mostly dont have the annoying domino aggro effect you get in many of the new areas. Then add the metas and hearts on top of that, and I think you have the perfect OW design for mobs.

[When you walk into a new map for the first time, what do you do?]

I'd like to get a general understanding of how people play the open world and experience new content.

 

If some new content drops with a new world map, for example: EoD, I play it slowly. My process is to:

-Not use mounts at first, and run from story object to story objective

-Allow myself to be distracted by interesting areas, and mini metas or hearts on the way to each objective

-Listen to NPCs talking

-Not do the main map meta until all the areas in which the main map meta takes place are discovered

-Not necessarily discover every POI before moving onto the next map, leaving some stuff for later

-Eventually transition to using mounts near the end of the process

 

Another thing i did for EoD was try and do the fishing collection for the map before moving onto the next one, which netted me a nice 70G in ambergris + whatever in fish meat, but that's probably not typical for me. Overall I find my method to be a good way to appreciate the finer details and discover some cool secrets organically. Although I wish anet would stop spamming mobs everywhere. Like jesus christ have you ever tried walking through echovald just trying to appreciate nature? exhausting.

 

Anyway, just curious if you try to go fast or slow, and how you go about it.

[Whelp, the Tenth Anniversary/Birthday Gift is here.]

Reading this thread sincerely makes me hope for a single lump of coal on the 11th birthday

[[Suggestion] Where are all the pirate hats?]

we have the headband from EoD, and the pirate corsair hat

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pirate_Corsair_Hat_Skin

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Martial_Artist's_Headband

 

not to meantion the peg leg and hook hand

 

I dont think complaints about gemstore clothing is valid since you can exchange gold for gems. you just gotta bite the bullet if you wanna play fashion wars 2, and use a substitute in the meantime.

[Can we have professional race trackes for Roller Beetle & griffion?]

before the haters come, i just want you to know i support you. roller beetles are cool and the racetracks we got are fun to try for gold on. i wish we had gotten some more tracks with EoD

[What's GW2's biggest lore mistake according to you?]

I think the inconsistency around deciding who the main characters are has been anets biggest mistake so far.

[Lack of Content with EoD. Anet failing to deliver.]

I for one liked the EoD maps. But i play the game in a pretty boomer kind of way. When I first enter a map, I rarely use mounts and i try to explore every nook and cranny, I do every event i come across, I read the lore pages, I listen to the NPC dialogue. I even did the full fishing list for every map before moving onto the next one in the story. I only do the main map meta when I've finished exploring all the parts of the map it takes place on. Eventually I transition to using mounts and move around faster. As a result, there was a good amount of content there for me. I think people should take it slow the first time around and they might walk away a little more satisfied.

 

Also, lets not forget that HoT is only 4 maps, and PoF is 5. 4 maps isn't exactly bad.

Also, why do people want more fractal maps so bad? if they did add one how long is it gonna take before the new fractal map gets boring? at least with raids you only get 1 reward per week so you cant burn yourself out as quickly.  My impression was these maps were designed to just mind numbingly be run over and over and over until you finally die from brain rot. to be honest, with just how little these maps and fractals in general provide, I wouldnt count on ever getting a new fractal ever again.

[GEMSTORE REQUESTS: New Items; Items offered again - [Merged]]

can we get the canthan sun hat back? my bladesworn feels imcomplete without it

[4th Expansion villain idea, yay or nay...]

interesting thread about what colour the next arc is gonna be...

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

14 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Which are all "I'm done adventuring, cya Commander".

I mean, we've been over this point multiple times at this point. just go ahead and read what I've written already for my response.
 

11 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

All these answers... are explained/obvious in EoD? Until the last Act, EoD wasn't about killing an elder dragon.

Logan: Wasn't there because there wasn't something for the Pact to deploy against + the political issue of having a fleet/army just SHOW UP IN Cantha suddenly without warning right after the borders open.

Braham is recovering still. Rytlock is busy with paperwork and rebuilding the legions. EoD literally starts off with these bits of information before the events kick off.

Nothing about EoD set up Braham, Logan, or Rytlock to be major characters. Infact it literally did the opposite and had the story be more focused on Marjory, Gorrik, and the Commander.

Again, we've covered this already.

 

No one is ever "set up" to take part in whatever the next part of the story is. it's just whoever the devs like and whoever seems to fit. Why was marjory there? well she is of canthan descent, so lets have her. And lets take kasmeer too because they're a pair, and we'll make her an ambassador now. And of course we'll take taimi, because we always take taimi. and we'll take gorrick for some reason (related to taimi perhaps? and we'll write some stuff to put him with ankka too). The story is made up as it goes along. there are no grand plans here. You're pointing out the excuses when you should be looking at the bigger picture. these characters are left out because it's too much work to put them in. not because they are set up through grand overarching plans to leave them out for extremely cool and interesting reasons.

Let me ask you this. are you satisfied with the way the player character is set up to have a main party, but then never does anything coherent with them? I am not, and we frequently see threads from people that also dont. so, how would you solve this? Getting rid of them one way or another is obvious. My solution: well i didnt really like most of them anyway so lets have a phyrric victory where they mostly die. Alright, a little harsh. perhaps theres a silent majority of people that actually like taimi. maybe there a marjory and kasmeer crowd that love watching them bickering. So, what's the alternative?

I think we're arriving to the crux of the argument here. If anet never uses these supposedly "wrapped up" characters again except as just old friends we meet from time to time, then fine, problem solved. But I think they will, and so with basically every main character relagated to being a side character, its not going to the cohesive cast I'm looking for. Well, at least we'll always have taimi, said no one ever.

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

1 hour ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Canach did not have a complete character arc by the end of Path of Fire. One could argue he was done after Season 3, and nobody really expected his return, but they created a second character arc which ended with him creating a casino. He was MIA for practically all of IBS because of this, and was a mere cameo in End of Dragons. And he ends End of Dragon with:

Canach: I've already delegated its day-to-day operations, and it's time for me to move on to my next venture.

<Character name>: Which is?

Canach: Ah-ah. Not ready for the big reveal yet. But when the time is right, you'll be the first to know.

Which is basically the writers stating "he'll only come back once we want to bring him back".

And Canach is a terrible example because as I've stated twice now, Canach is one of the characters which they create an "but may return" addendum.

Meanwhile you got Kasmeer, Taimi, Rox, and Logan. Logan ends End of Dragons with:

Logan Thackeray: By the way, I'm headed to Southsun as soon as the party's over.

Logan Thackeray: I'm looking forward to doing nothing more strenuous than locating the best local gimlet...

Logan Thackeray: Brimstone's invited to come along, but he hasn't answered my invitation.

Very literally saying "I'm retiring". He even said as much in Arborstone just before:

Logan: Well, like Dragon's Watch, the primary mission of the Pact is...ostensibly complete.

Logan: There'll be a meeting soon. We'll get all the leadership in one room and decide what's next.

Logan: While some people are eager to dissolve, others are not so sure the job is done.

Logan: Considering there is one Elder Dragon left.

Logan: Personally, I think it's also worth discussing how much the orders have been able to accomplish working together.

Logan: But if I say that out loud, pretty sure someone's going to accuse me of trying to hold on to power...

So he's basically saying he'll no doubt not be Pact Marshal unless there's high demand for him to be.

And let's look at Taimi, who says:

Taimi: But I didn't realize how much the little things were adding up. I've got more energy, I'm thinking more clearly...

Taimi: So, I'm not gonna rest until we find a way to keep the dragonjade charged.

Gorrik: Maybe a little bit of rest.

Taimi: Yes, yes... I don't actually mean NO rest. My midafternoon nap is nonnegotiable.

Taimi: But jade tech is my first, second, and third priority until we have a solution.

 

[In Dead End]

Taimi: Oh, it's so good to have an excuse to get everyone together! I've barely left Joon's lab since I saw you last.

<Character name>: How's that going? Have a long-term solution for Cantha's power needs?

Taimi: Not yet, but our experiments are going well. We've found ways to extend the life of current batteries.

Taimi: And Aurene was able to top everything off. We're getting close. I know we'll have something soon.

Taimi: But enough work talk! Let's enjoy the party. What do you think it's about? I've got a guess!

In other words, unless the future plot deals directly with jadetech continued existence, Taimi is not going to be returning until that plothook gets fixed off-screen.

And Rox? Well that's a no brainer.

Kasmeer meanwhile:

Lady Kasmeer Meade: Thank you. That title certainly feels...earned now.

Marjory Delaqua: The person it's attached to is what makes it impressive.

Lady Kasmeer Meade: Well, dealing with high-ranking people was intimidating. I'd worry, "Am I worth of their time?"

Lady Kasmeer Meade: But as I got the hang of things, I started realizing that not all of them were worthy of mine.

Lady Kasmeer Meade: Made all the difference. It's worth figuring out who should take up space in your life.

She might have held the position of Ambassador since Path of Fire, which is why she was off-screen when the main plot isn't politics, but she outright states that she's finally gotten accustomed to the job. From Season 1 to Season 3, Kasmeer wasn't an Ambassador. Which is why the earlier claim of "oh that's what they do when they're not adventuring" is silly. They began as adventurers with us, and now they're finding new jobs which they've slowly grown into - all of Destiny's Edge and Dragon's Watch.

Your repeated example of Canach is the most likely individual to return, which I've said will happen.

They become distant because they're finding a position in society. If you are aware of their origin stories, why they joined the Commander in fighting Scarlet in Season 1, then you'd be well aware that the only one of them who had a stable lifestyle was Marjory.

Logan? Pushed to go fight the Elder Dragons by Jennah. Now his task is finished and he's retiring to Southsun, injured.

Rytlock? Hates officework and was able to escape into adventuring. Now the Legions are in so much disarray and his Imperator doesn't hate his guts, so he can't escape.

Kasmeer? Her family was thrown out of nobility and she was trying to make ends meet. Now she's regained her title and has an official court position.

Taimi? Began as a student running away from schoolwork, and is now a respected scientist in her fields, with an ever growing disease that hinders her adventuring capabilities.

Marjory? Put her life on hold to help Kasmeer and the Commander and come to terms with Belinda's death, now she no longer has to and has come to terms.

Caithe? Began as a wayward fighting the Elder Dragons, and now spends her life serving Aurene as leader of the Crystal Bloom.

Canach? Rogue who harmed people as he fought for his twisted view of justice, now he's doing good by economical means rather than violent ones after making winnings through the Commander.

Braham? Began as someone trying to get away from his disappointing (and now retconned) love life, and now suffers from PTSD that keeps him from fighting.

Zojja? Coma.

 

They're distant because they are no longer adventurers. They all have new duties that they didn't at the beginning half of the story.

The fact you don't realize this and think that "Taimi and Braham are practically the same" shows that you're not paying attention. It has nothing to do with the number of characters - it has to do with the fact that the characters have grown - the new characters got added because the story needed new adventurers because the old ones have grown into non-adventuring jobs.

mate, you're just listing story beats as for what characters might do in the future. If anet want to say they're all retired using this, they can. but they can just as easily take it in the complete other direction if they want to. Hence I'm saying it's vague. They can easily gloss over how braham is supposedly lame "Well i did some soul searching with the spirits and got over it." they can easily gloss over how taimi decided to work on jade tech "Yeah we got the jade working with leyline magic huzzah." They're pretty similar in that regard. Taimi sticking around despite being a prized student and rytlock sticking around despite being a legion captain are pure examples of characters with other roles but putting them aside for the good of the dragon conflict. There is nothing stopping anet from doing this with every other character. nothing except the effort it would take to keep them all relevant which is the problem im bringing up. so the only other solution is turn these once prominent characters into these distant side characters despite the fact the story wasnt over. which is unsatisfying to me.

 

Perhaps if they decided to set the next story step as being years or even a decade or two into the future, in which every character has grown distant over the course of years of peace, I'd be happy with that.

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

1 minute ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

You only get to start the thread, you don't get to dictate to any of us whether we get to participate or how exact we get to participate.  And since you had to be a childish kitten about it, I think I'll be sticking around.

you're the one being childish bud.

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

54 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

And before, their day job was "adventurer". When Destiny's Edge formed, Logan and Rytlock were not military officials (well, Rytlock kinda was, but going AWOL is kind of his thing).

And they didn't really have those positions 'for a while', at least they didn't while they were frequently in the party. Marjory was a detective, sure, but she had put that on hold for Season 2 onward; Kasmeer got put into a political position, and that's when she was barely seen. Same with Canach and his casino stuff, or Rox and the Olmakhan.

 

They've been slowly writing these characters out of the main cast for the past few years as they slowly complete their character arcs. And with End of Dragons, all of those character arcs are complete.

 

It doesnt matter whether you think they are complete. lets look at canach, for example. we could have said, he was done after path of fire. yet they brought him back. Literally what is stopping this happening with every other character? Being supposedly indisposed has not stopped anet from feeling the need to keep them in the narrative. It's the extremely half hearted manner in which they do this that sucks. why do these characters go from prominent party members to being these sort of distant, flaky people as time goes on? It makes the cadence of the story feels extremely stilted, kind of as though you're watching an episodic show and one by one each main cast character just stops showing up for some reason.

 

The reason this is happening is because there's just such a massive number of these characters that all need to be written, programmed and VA'd to maintain their prominence. anet is trying to keep them relevant, but has to cut corners to do so. So why not solve the problem by properly wrapping things up so you dont need so many? I'm not just talking about what's likely to happen in the future. I'm also talking about what's been happening throughout the story so far. Most of the cast are still fully eligible to keep going. Rytlock is basically begging the commander to get him away from cre. logan might get bored of the southsun life and be back for oh boy another surprise ending arrival. The detective friends are basically private eyes for hire. Taimi and braham are still the same. And with all these threads left open, anet is fully primed to keep using these characters. and they will.

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

2 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

It's left ambiguous for the guild itself and the Pact, but Logan outright says he's retiring, Rox is sticking with the Olmakhan, Marjory and Gorrik are full out making a (friends) detective agency, Taimi is sticking with Joon, and Kasmeer is full out becoming a political ambassador. Rytlock is stuck reshaping the Legions and Canach going his own way for new (economical) ventures.

That just leaves Braham (and maybe Caithe and Zojja) as the only one really left able to adventure regularly, but even that's really a "call and I'll be there" thing for him given the PTSD. Rytlock and Canach technically said the same, so those three won't show up unless the Commander asks them to show up (or the plot begins to deal with their new life).

 

Dragon's Watch may still exist, though it may also disband or rebrand, but the existing members of it are pretty much all going their own way and there's zero ambiguity about that. And since they made a new guild when 2/6 of the members of Destiny's Edge were out, now that 5/9 (or 9/12) of Dragon's Watch are out and so is its namesake purpose, it'll be weird and hypocritical to keep DW going.

 

So to me, it wasn't left ambiguous at all. Every single member is pretty solidly doing their own thing, but saying "if you call, I'll show up". Chances of Commander calling? Well, they never really did before.

That's just what their day jobs are. Logan was always the captain of the seraph. rytlock was always a legion man. Yet they came together and fought as a team. There's no precedent in the story to suggest that these are the endings. And many of these characters have had these upstanding positions for a while now. It has always been ambiguous as to what their actual duties are while going around adventuring.  And anet uses this to keep bringing them back, often as a kind of cursory appearance, like ticking them off on a clipboard, like "here we are, we're still part of the team!" And they're maintaining that status quo so they can do it again. It's just such a nagging feeling that pisses me off through every story chapter that these people are supposed to be around, but never are, like they don't have the budget to get all of the avengers in one setting.

[Would have been better if eveyone died in the end?]

17 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

That said, I think "killing everyone" is a bit overboard, and similarly you don't need to kill characters to write them out. Dragon's Watch is very clearly going into retirement mode with End of Dragons' epilogue. Braham, Kasmeer, Rytlock, Logan, Canach, and Rox are all in the very clear "we're leaving main cast but may pop up from rare time to time" (Rox already did with the unceremonious disappearance after War Eternal, technically). Possibly Taimi, Gorrik, Marjory, and Caithe too, depending on what happens to the FDA.

Are they though? My reaction to it is that it's left vague. It's sort of "maybe we'll disband, maybe not" Which is is exactly the sort of thing that makes it unsatisfying when they dont show up in the next season/expac. Because if they haven't disbanded, then where are they when the commander is going on a life threatening adventure? arent they supposed to be a team? They really need to learn to commit to wrapping things up.

 

8 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Character death should meaningfully emerge from the story.

"Housecleaning" is a terrible reason for it. As is "this would give the story more gravity". If your story is lacking weight, so will character deaths.

Demolitionist Tonn's death is one of the most meaningful in the game, not because of him, but because it is a powerful part of Pact Medic Ceera's character arc.

Meanwhile, Mai Trin's was autopilot storytelling. It gave her an out from dealing with the fact that she desires to be redeemed but her past is too much for most to forgive. If a character's death makes it easier for them and everyone else, it's going to have no weight.

 

You're missing the point here. My point is that the story and character relationships are a mess. The only course forward here is a long difficult one that turns every character into a good one and give them a satisfying ending. Do you think anet can do that? The topic of this thread is to ask the question: would it have been better to just kill everyone and start over? I think it would have been a good opportunity for it. These characters man, they just aren't that good. I agree that housecleaning isnt a good ending. not in a good story, anyway. but this is a bad story that could use a reboot. And that's hard to do with all this baggage.