GW1 Factions was much more intensive than EoD's story

[Slowpokeking.8720]

We got Shiro Tagachi start the plague, even corrupt the dragon, lead his Shiroken army at the palace and had a cool fight. I feel his character could have been a bit more interesting because he was tricked. EoD didn't feel the same way, none of the conflict let me feel stressful.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

For all the misgivings I had going into it, especially because of Icebrood Saga, I found myself enjoying End of Dragons. There are, of course, portions I dislike. Any part of New Kaineng that features prominent neon signs, for example, or a certain dragon's certain backstory. But honestly, the complaint in the OP feels more like nostalgia and just growing older and becoming more jaded to new stories. Stories always leave a bigger impact on children compared to adults, and as such the stories we first experienced as kids will feel more impactful than the stories we first experience as adults.

I'd say that EoD was quite a bit more intense, but it was also a lot less focused in the main plots. The main storyline - especially act 4 - had a lot of "here and done" moments, which only really feel drawn out if you take your time going through the open world. And GW1 - all plots of GW1 - didn't have this in comparison. Even the most diverse storyline of GW1, Eye of the North, still felt like each storyline had length to it.

So rather than saying EoD was "less intensive", I'd say it's more that there's an over-reliance on players exploring the open world while going through the main story, and because they don't do that, the story feels lacking. But much like Orr maps, Season 1, and Heart of Thorns, the meta events in particular are very much a big part of the story, so much so that honestly I consider it weird that they're done for meta events, and not story steps given how time and time again, players have shown that they rush through the story without taking time to explore the open world.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Luthan.5236]

Not sure about this. I played GW1 as well - only "recently" though. (Factions 1-2 years ago, still at EotN atm, just finished Nightfall.) For the EoD story I am not finished yet. Still need to to the last battle (last 1-2 story missions) later.

But I think I genereally liked the stories with slow builup much more. Felt more "fleshed out". For Zhaitan we slowly progressed through the order (whispers, priory or vigil) missions and then into orr ... slowly with a ton of story steps every map. The whole Mordremoth thing was a bit rushed at the end as well - but I liked the season 2 that slowly let us explore Caithe's past and the backgrounds.

Later it just felt like "introduce another big dragon, suddenly find a weapon do deal with it - gather allies ... beat it". Especially Icebrood and not it seems EoD as well - pretty fast. The Balthazar/Kralk thing were a bit in between. Technically there was S3 leading to PoF (Balthazar) and Kralk still dealt with pretty fast in S4 - considering that half of that season we had to deal with Joko as well.

Imagine the core personal story vs. Zhaitan if you just had "found" a strong weapon ... skipping the order storyline - then doing a few missions in orr (now slow progress) to suddenly get an end fight.

We just have too many allies that are already there or easily gathered. (The speakers/brotherhood just have been "convinced" by the our other allies talking to them - and besides the story chapter where we infiltrated we had nothing to do with them.)

Would habe made for a nice sub-plot ... a full 1-2 chapters dealing with them and uncovering secrets and stuff. I mean ... even the thing with the purists it was just "suddenly it gets revealt that it was Li" - no interesting mission and investigational work. (The whole Atherblade thing in chapter 1 of EoD story was more interesting lol.)

Edited March 8, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Slowpokeking.8720]

7 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

For all the misgivings I had going into it, especially because of Icebrood Saga, I found myself enjoying End of Dragons. There are, of course, portions I dislike. Any part of New Kaineng that features prominent neon signs, for example, or a certain dragon's certain backstory. But honestly, the complaint in the OP feels more like nostalgia and just growing older and becoming more jaded to new stories. Stories always leave a bigger impact on children compared to adults, and as such the stories we first experienced as kids will feel more impactful than the stories we first experience as adults.

I'd say that EoD was quite a bit more intense, but it was also a lot less focused in the main plots. The main storyline - especially act 4 - had a lot of "here and done" moments, which only really feel drawn out if you take your time going through the open world. And GW1 - all plots of GW1 - didn't have this in comparison. Even the most diverse storyline of GW1, Eye of the North, still felt like each storyline had length to it.

So rather than saying EoD was "less intensive", I'd say it's more that there's an over-reliance on players exploring the open world while going through the main story, and because they don't do that, the story feels lacking. But much like Orr maps, Season 1, and Heart of Thorns, the meta events in particular are very much a big part of the story, so much so that honestly I consider it weird that they're done for meta events, and not story steps given how time and time again, players have shown that they rush through the story without taking time to explore the open world.

Yeah, EoD is very disjointed, a bit better than Hot though.

 

I think a big problem is that there wasn't a huge army of either side, even the Aether Blades feel more like a sneaky armada. 

 

GW1 doesn't have open world, but the swarming horde of the monsters also left deep impression.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 minute ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

I think a big problem is that there wasn't a huge army of either side, even the Aether Blades feel more like a sneaky armada. 

What? Have you played the story and its associated events?

[Faridah.8431]

I'd argue that as a whole, Factions was the weakest story in GW1. What they got right was the world building around it and the atmosphere created by the combined map design, environments, lore, music, etc. Going to Kaineng City and exploring in and around Wajjun Bazaar for the first time after leaving Shing Jea was something else.

After spending so much time in the city, exiting for the first time through Matuu Keep or the path in Sunjiang District into Pongmei valley became quite literally the breath of fresh air. Yet it also felt like the only portion of Cantha (that weren't Kurzick/Luxon lands) untouched by the city expansion at this point...because it was, and seeing the city expand outside the defined walls (in the area of Pongmei by Sunjiang District), you felt like it was only a matter of time.

They really knew how to set the tone and create quite the atmosphere in Factions, which in itself presented quite the departure from Prophecies and Tyria at the time.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Faridah.8431

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

1 hour ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

Yeah, EoD is very disjointed, a bit better than Hot though.

 

I think a big problem is that there wasn't a huge army of either side, even the Aether Blades feel more like a sneaky armada. 

 

GW1 doesn't have open world, but the swarming horde of the monsters also left deep impression.

I think this is proof you didn't even play End of Dragons.

The very first instance has a huge kitten armada of Aetherblades with a dozen ships we personally jump across.

The Dragon's End meta is literally a fleet of airships popping in with forces across the explored world, with Canthan forces on the ground. Very much armies involved in both beginning and end, and anyone who's bothered to look will see that.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

29 minutes ago, Faridah.8431 said:

I'd argue that as a whole, Factions was the weakest story in GW1. What they got right was the world building around it and the atmosphere created by the combined map design, environments, lore, music, etc. Going to Kaineng City and exploring in and around Wajjun Bazaar for the first time after leaving Shing Jea was something else.

As much as I love GW1's story, this is pretty much the whole of GW1 and core GW2 in a nutshell (basically up until Jeff and Ree stepped back from the spotlight of writing GW1/2). There are definitely highlights, but Guild Wars' strongest strength was always world building. That is what made Guild Wars to be Guild Wars.

 

Which is why I really disliked Tom Abernathy's way of writing, which abandoned the hard world building for others to work on, while emphasizing character development. In his interview with Deegz, he outright said that he felt lore and story wasn't important compared to story, and that he left learning lore for other devs to do while not bothering with it himself. Level of accuracy of the statement aside, it does explain some discontinuities in S4, IBS, and EoD from earlier works.

In of itself not a bad thing - it's called soft world building, and it works for many settings like Harry Potter and Star Wars - but the issue is: you can't take a hard world building setting like GW1 and core GW2 and then years into development give it a soft world building structure. It just conflicts far too much, because what makes hard world builing is, well, the world building and not the story or characters - the world defines the characters in GW1 and early GW2. But in S1, S4, IBS, and EoD, the characters defined the world and this meant inconsistencies throughout.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Slowpokeking.8720]

1 hour ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

What? Have you played the story and its associated events?

I did, compare to Factions it's little.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

44 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I think this is proof you didn't even play End of Dragons.

The very first instance has a huge kitten armada of Aetherblades with a dozen ships we personally jump across.

The Dragon's End meta is literally a fleet of airships popping in with forces across the explored world, with Canthan forces on the ground. Very much armies involved in both beginning and end, and anyone who's bothered to look will see that.

I did, that was a big armada, but then what?

 

We don't see Catha got overrunned by them, it's still peaceful and most of the plot was to investigate and talk.

 

The Last map also was focused on the Void, not Aetherblades.

 

Factions was different, you have to deal with Shiro's mob army almost from the beginning to the end. Nearly every mission(minus one for each Faction side) have huge zombie/Shiro'ken army. Even the palace was overran.

 

 

[Slowpokeking.8720]

57 minutes ago, Faridah.8431 said:

I'd argue that as a whole, Factions was the weakest story in GW1. What they got right was the world building around it and the atmosphere created by the combined map design, environments, lore, music, etc. Going to Kaineng City and exploring in and around Wajjun Bazaar for the first time after leaving Shing Jea was something else.

After spending so much time in the city, exiting for the first time through Matuu Keep or the path in Sunjiang District into Pongmei valley became quite literally the breath of fresh air. Yet it also felt like the only portion of Cantha (that weren't Kurzick/Luxon lands) untouched by the city expansion at this point...because it was, and seeing the city expand outside the defined walls (in the area of Pongmei by Sunjiang District), you felt like it was only a matter of time.

They really knew how to set the tone and create quite the atmosphere in Factions, which in itself presented quite the departure from Prophecies and Tyria at the time.

Factions has weak plot compare to the other GW story, yes. But it's also very intensive. The problem is that the tempo is a bit too fast and Shiro's character could have been expanded.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Slowpokeking.8720

[Laughing Bat.1570]

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Which is why I really disliked Tom Abernathy's way of writing, which abandoned the hard world building for others to work on, while emphasizing character development. In his interview with Deegz, he outright said that he felt lore and story wasn't important compared to story, and that he left learning lore for other devs to do while not bothering with it himself. 

I was unaware of this interview until now and it explains my disappointment with EoD and modern GW as a whole.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

1 hour ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

I did, that was a big armada, but then what?

 

We don't see Catha got overrunned by them, it's still peaceful and most of the plot was to investigate and talk.

Because we destroy most of the army in the Mists, and after that they were trying to be subtle not invasive.

1 hour ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

The Last map also was focused on the Void, not Aetherblades.

And? It was still a huge army threat versus our huge army. Which is more than what Factions gave.

Besides, Factions' plot and End of Dragons' plot are very different. There are some parallels with pulling the Speakers and Neo Brotherhood together, but that's rather the extent of it.

It might be better comparison for Winds of Change, which also had multiple enemy forces at play, and uniting enemy forces together against the greater enemy.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

56 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Because we destroy most of the army in the Mists, and after that they were trying to be subtle not invasive.

And? It was still a huge army threat versus our huge army. Which is more than what Factions gave.

Besides, Factions' plot and End of Dragons' plot are very different. There are some parallels with pulling the Speakers and Neo Brotherhood together, but that's rather the extent of it.

It might be better comparison for Winds of Change, which also had multiple enemy forces at play, and uniting enemy forces together against the greater enemy.

Exactly! That's what I'm saying.

 

They never showed much intensive threat regardless of their size. Unlike Factions we could see Shiro's influence all over the place and had to deal with legions of undead/Shiro'ken in most of the missions.

 

Winds of Change was ok other than so many undead still remain at Catha after years of Shiro's defeat. They are mindless zombies without command. They should have been wiped out, at most left some small groups in Undercity. The plot should have lead into the gangs earlier, with at most 2-3 mission focusing on dealing with the remaining zombies.

 

The Ministry of Purity is still the main focus while some other groups have some plot. Reiko felt more menacing than Ankka and Li. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Slowpokeking.8720

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

1 hour ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

Exactly! That's what I'm saying.

 

They never showed much intensive threat regardless of their size. Unlike Factions we could see Shiro's influence all over the place and had to deal with legions of undead/Shiro'ken in most of the missions.

That's not a bad thing though. "Intensive" != "good".

1 hour ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

The Ministry of Purity is still the main focus while some other groups have some plot. Reiko felt more menacing than Ankka and Li. 

I'd say Ankka felt far more menacing than Reiko.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

57 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

That's not a bad thing though. "Intensive" != "good".

I'd say Ankka felt far more menacing than Reiko.

But I was talking about intensity, not the overall quality. I do agree that Factions' story tempo was a bit too rushed and Shiro's character was a bit wasted. But he did provide enough threat as the big bad.

 

I think Ankka was scarier for showing up and killing off her former boss.

 

But overall as a leader, Reiko makes more sense, her action was not just her own decision, but backed by many supporters among the ppl to call for a strong fist. It didn't even end with her death. What happened later also showed that going extreme was inevitable. So her action left me deeper impression.

[SunRoamer.5103]

One major lesson I learned over the years of playing GW2 is that following only the Golden Path is not enough to understand the full extent of the story. EoD in particular does many things, even outside of meta events, that really reinforce just how much of a threat we face - the broadcasts are one such example, as well as the outbursts of the void throughout all of the Canthan maps during the latter parts of the story.

I do understand that this can be somewhat frustrating and isn't very well communicated within the game. I guess it would have been nice to have the Golden Path lead to a few of these void anomalies, for example, instead of leaving it for those who want to go achievement hunting. Personally, I don't like to feel like I'm getting "side-tracked" with an achievement/side quest when the stakes of the story are really high (especially when it gives me a task list of "find 5 of these"), so I didn't try to go out of my way to find more void anomalies. The two I came across by accident were excellent however, and now I wonder whether I should have tried to find at least a few more of them.

Similarly, meta events often times really flesh out the story, although I'm always worried about the order in which story and events are supposed to happen. Sometimes, the event happens before the story, sometimes after, sometimes in between. I happened to be around for the end of the Echovald Meta event very early on, for example, and left kinda confused, kinda feeling like I might have been spoiled to a certain degree. Dragon's End's "True Ending" achievement thankfully pointed out that the meta happens before the final story step, so I could go through it in the proper order.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

2 hours ago, SunRoamer.5103 said:

One major lesson I learned over the years of playing GW2 is that following only the Golden Path is not enough to understand the full extent of the story. EoD in particular does many things, even outside of meta events, that really reinforce just how much of a threat we face - the broadcasts are one such example, as well as the outbursts of the void throughout all of the Canthan maps during the latter parts of the story.

I do understand that this can be somewhat frustrating and isn't very well communicated within the game. I guess it would have been nice to have the Golden Path lead to a few of these void anomalies, for example, instead of leaving it for those who want to go achievement hunting. Personally, I don't like to feel like I'm getting "side-tracked" with an achievement/side quest when the stakes of the story are really high (especially when it gives me a task list of "find 5 of these"), so I didn't try to go out of my way to find more void anomalies. The two I came across by accident were excellent however, and now I wonder whether I should have tried to find at least a few more of them.

Similarly, meta events often times really flesh out the story, although I'm always worried about the order in which story and events are supposed to happen. Sometimes, the event happens before the story, sometimes after, sometimes in between. I happened to be around for the end of the Echovald Meta event very early on, for example, and left kinda confused, kinda feeling like I might have been spoiled to a certain degree. Dragon's End's "True Ending" achievement thankfully pointed out that the meta happens before the final story step, so I could go through it in the proper order.

GW1 also got many side quests to let you know the plot outside of the main story.

[SunRoamer.5103]

Yes, and?

GW2 has dynamic events, heart areas and collections instead. Side stories and extended lore exists in both games, just delivered through different UX systems.

Personally, I would much rather have the story-heavy collections presented as actual quests in a new UI outside of the achievement panel (and possibly make them repeatable per character), but this point relates to gameplay and personal preferences in regards to how I experience the game. The actual lore and stories are not affected.

[Legend of Rogue.5394]

On 3/7/2022 at 8:11 PM, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

We got Shiro Tagachi start the plague, even corrupt the dragon, lead his Shiroken army at the palace and had a cool fight. I feel his character could have been a bit more interesting because he was tricked. EoD didn't feel the same way, none of the conflict let me feel stressful.

factions was crazy good

[Fenella.2634]

Sounds like a lot of nostalgia. If you played Factions, say, 10 years ago, you were 10 years younger and probably easier to impress. 

I finished Factions exactly one day before EoD. It's a good story and I'm glad I got to play it, but it's a bit overrated here. 

Maybe revisit it and then compare it to EoD again. 

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Thing I remember most about factions is some of the hilariously bad VA. 

[morsdood.1987]

Following Togo around wasn't that amazing tbh

[ugrakarma.9416]

On 3/9/2022 at 8:08 AM, SunRoamer.5103 said:

Yes, and?

GW2 has dynamic events, heart areas and collections instead. Side stories and extended lore exists in both games, just delivered through different UX systems.

Personally, I would much rather have the story-heavy collections presented as actual quests in a new UI outside of the achievement panel (and possibly make them repeatable per character), but this point relates to gameplay and personal preferences in regards to how I experience the game. The actual lore and stories are not affected.

also a heavy rework of books and a good bookshelf.