Opinions on EoD?

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

Who gives a donkey about who or what Yao is? 
Im too busy yelling at people to throw CC during Soo Won fight, and rezzing peeps who didnt get out of an AoE in time.
Everything being the same shade of green, map feeling empty, and the enormous amount of BUGS when Im hunting Achieves are my biggest annoyances.

You guys are finding politics everywhere in EoD, because you are looking for it, just ignore/deal with it.

[Krzysztof.5973]

22 minutes ago, MercurialKuroSludge.8974 said:

Who gives a donkey about who or what Yao is? 
Im too busy yelling at people to throw CC during Soo Won fight, and rezzing peeps who didnt get out of an AoE in time.
Everything being the same shade of green, map feeling empty, and the enormous amount of BUGS when Im hunting Achieves are my biggest annoyances.

You guys are finding politics everywhere in EoD, because you are looking for it, just ignore/deal with it.

Oh don't even get me started with how undercooked EoD is. I recently came back into doing achievements just to find out some of them are still bugged just as I left them on release a over a year ago. The storytelling is just an icing on the cake. My opinion hasn't changed from the time it was first announced. End of Dragons, in my eyes was meant to exploit nostalgia of GW1 players. And the sad part is, it worked. 

[kharmin.7683]

40 minutes ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

 End of Dragons, in my eyes was meant to exploit nostalgia of GW1 players. And the sad part is, it worked. 

Exactly so.  Chalk this up to another one of those "be careful what you wish for" scenarios.  Like the bunny-thumper ranger spec.

[vicky.9751]

On 4/21/2023 at 8:52 AM, rylien.3824 said:

To me Guild Wars 2 : End of Dragons  is not a good extension, but it doesn’t mean everything is bad. There is no point in me fully listing the reasons, we all know them, but it is useful to point out that there has been little means and little hard work behind this extension, which many like to call "the extension of recycling". Some aspects were welcome, the artistic direction to be lowered in quality, but is not bland for all that, and sometimes still finds despite the recylage to inspire us, with a few exceptions like New-Kaineng which is a catastrophe in all respects (Fortunately, some of the corners are nice, such as the ruins, the harbour and the Monolith Square in Soo-Won).  OST are generally pretty good in reality, but all this is insufficient to make this extension exceed the average of a note, which in my opinion is very mediocre, especially when have known the golden age of a game where the artistic quality was at its maximum. Without lying too much, I can affirm that in the end the arc of ancestral dragons, the scenario of Guild Wars 2 will have been in the end a sinister joke, an old fanfiction made by turnips or at least whose decisions taken by a third party will have ruined everything.
I also have a deep respect for human rights, for all, but I found it very petty and so bad to have to propagate the culture woke up to everything on the extension itself, there are also duplicated/pasted duplicates everywhere, have is really about the culture of least effort, and it’s all this that makes this extension insipid, soporific, repellent. 

Today, it’s been over a year since their expansion came out, and this company is multiplying excuses, bad decisions, profit and malice with a now fragile community, which they have nothing to do with, so I see no future in Tyria, 

if not a short or long-term scam, which will lead us to "extensions" (Living-world hein) of nothingness, at an exhorbitant price. Their decision has been made, those who will stay can stay there, but I much prefer the quality and respect of other companies/game, than the one we have sold. And it’s not going to get better... The future of Guild Wars 2 is no longer engraved in jade, but in vaults like so many before it, where there is now no pleasure, nor the consolation of important content. 

In the end, Guild Wars 2 was bad from the beginning, until the end, there were moments of pleasure, and many moments of doubt about it which was accompanied by a continuity: because the "hope" of an improvement was felt, an improvement that has never really seen the light of day, and which today bears the weight of shame and defeat. I believe in the fact that there have been very good artists, writers perhaps qualified but constrained by the throes of decisions superior to their authority. Just as I believe in the inability of other decision-makers or artists who are bitter about common sense. That’s all I have to say, it’s useless to dwell on the ashes of those who have lost their future. 🖤

You basically typed up a lot of what i was feeling but more eloquently lol. from a player who started in 2012 when i was 14 and now that i am an adult, i dont see the game in the same way, its clear the storytelling teams who wrote base game characters like tybalt, trahearne , and the HoT storyline are no longer employed at anet.

I haven't felt confident in the management of the game for a while now. When they lose customers trust, usually everything goes down from that. At least ANET were nice enough to allow refunds for EoD. Blizzard could afford the mistakes with WoW because it's blizzard and makes money off of multiple things. Not so much with gw2, it's worrisome.

Also, i feel like every mmo that has transitioned to steam will usually try to make money off of steam players for a few years and then shut down. I've seen it with tera and some others that i've probably forgotten about.

Edited April 26, 2023 by vicky.9751

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

7 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

This points out a deeper issue that I see going on with the game's current direction. It feels like ArenaNet is trying to streamline everything down. Strikes are easy to make compared to Raids, compared to Fractals. Zones that are primarily about Metas and have little reason to be there otherwise are easier to make than the immersive, inhabited world GW2 became known for.

I was just listening to a youtuber who is starting a character from scratch in several different MMOs to compare them, and he was remarking on all the little bits of immersion that greet a new player in Queensdale. He commented that it feels like a game made by people who love MMOs and love what they are making.

The current team may still love this game, but EoD feels more like a company stretching out the earning potential on prior work. I expect the current individual creators would love to create immersive, story-rich content, but that they are no longer given the resources they were earlier in the games life.

It's not that EoD is terrible. It's that it doesn't have that feel of being an artfully crafted labor of love like GW2 used to.

Maybe what's missing is MO.  Colin doesn't seem to be anything like the old Colin.  /sigh

[Sweetbread.3678]

3 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

Theo Ashford got a husband posthumously, just because. It's not like it was developed (if I'm remembering correctly) for a long time, or part of the fabric of the story. It was just bolted on.

So if that one off line had been about Theo Ashford's wife and child instead of his husband and child, then it wouldn't be an issue? Why is that?

[lezbefriends.7516]

It's pretty to look at.

[voltaicbore.8012]

8 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

So if that one off line had been about Theo Ashford's wife and child instead of his husband and child, then it wouldn't be an issue? Why is that?

It wouldn't be an issue because the only people bothered by its current form, probably wouldn't have even noticed it in the "wife and child" form. That's all there is to it.

The "one-off" ness of that line is what annoys me. As I mentioned, it felt like just a bolted-on "hey look at how aligned we are with current issues of the day." It's the same reason people get annoyed with any other form of pandering.

Frankly this kind of stuff already has far more attention than it deserves. I'm only answering because you're asking pretty basic logical questions about it.

[Batalix.2873]

18 hours ago, voltaicbore.8012 said:

It was just a couple times here and there (could probably count them on one hand) where the game kind of hamfistedly promotes Yao as the token agender character. At the end of the Kaineng meta, Yao even pointlessly identifies themselves as such. It's like... it's like Anet made that character so flimsy that their gender identification constitutes almost the entirety of their pre-Gyala character. Theo Ashford got a husband posthumously, just because. It's not like it was developed (if I'm remembering correctly) for a long time, or part of the fabric of the story. It was just bolted on.

I honestly think both sides of the aisle should be annoyed by these clearly low-effort inserts. Left leaning folks, of all people, should resent tokenization, but it seems in the current environment any mention in one's favored media gets a pass as "representation." I presume folks on the right side of course see flimsy characters fitting some buzzwords as preachy and virtue-signal-y; such people don't often articulate what it is they actually want, and end up either saying nothing at all (a tried and true conservative tradition lol) or just sounding like hatemongers who are just totally implacable at any mention of gender issues.

Disclosure: I'm an Korean-American male, and I'd call myself politically conservative, born in the mid-1980s. I have been tokenized, to my kittening face, my entire youth from "liberals" and "conservatives" alike. From ages 0-17 I was always one of the 2-3 (if not the ONLY) Asian at school/church/wherever. Liberals at that time loved to call anything/anyone vaguely Asian "exotic," and my fellow conservatives often still used the term "Oriental." For most of that period, I just got used to the "where are you REALLY from" question, well-meaning adults speaking English veeeery slowly until I assured them my English was fine, and fielding the "so if you're not Chinese or Japanese, what are you?" I really think I missed the opportunity to say "Martian" back in those days lol.

Therefore I feel at least minimally capable of identifying low-effort "lets do some virtue signaling" levels of "representation," and I feel it's fair to say that at least pre-Gyala Yao and Ashford's identity reveal qualify. Though both were extremely short in duration, they were nonetheless memorable, and that's what people are probably unhappy about. 

Counterpoint: there is an example of higher-effort, and (at least to me) more authentic-feeling gender identity in Lion's Arch. I always hear it around the fractal gate area, but there is apparently an NPC who survived the destruction of Old Lion's Arch who got a gender change. These two NPCs have an entire voiced conversation about it, and it isn't just to promote "hey so I was a dude, now I'm a lady," but rather seemed to make a comment about resilience and change in the face of adversity. Again, not a huge thing, but memorable - and in my opinion, done right. 

Also I think Kas and Jory represent another instance the more right-leaning/conservative players don't really have complaints about. It's just been a thing for so long, and there's a lot more to those characters that have nothing to do with their orientation. They're a pair, it's just how it is, and the game never really preaches about it. Even the whole marriage thing at the Dead End was just a celebration of their relationship and characters, not so much their identities. At least that's how I saw it, and it didn't really bother me.

Not sure current Anet really does anything with that level of care anymore.

 

Even you admit here that ANet does a lot of it right, and imply that post-Gyala Yao is fine. And the reality is that some characters aren't fully fleshed out in their first appearance. Given that Yao is receiving more depth, and we only had to wait for the first post-EoD content to start seeing that, it is really difficult to make the argument that Yao was tokenized. The timeframe and data points just aren't there to support it, and if anything Yao's "tokenness" is more a consequence of EoD putting a lot of focus on Joon instead. Which feels like a larger writing misstep than merely tokenization.

Also, as a matter of "one offness", for every Jormag or Jory we are going to see "tokenized" NPCs. That's just the nature of populating an MMORPG world, most characters are a few quirky lines of dialogue. And I would rather we get a good full spread of diversity across the cast, regardless of how major or minor the NPC is. For the most part GW2 is much better about it than other games, and while it's not perfect it's far and away doing a better job of keeping my goodwill.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[voltaicbore.8012]

4 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

 

Even you admit here that ANet does a lot of it right, and imply that post-Gyala Yao is fine. And the reality is that some characters aren't fully fleshed out in their first appearance. Given that Yao is receiving more depth, and we only had to wait for the first post-EoD content to start seeing that, it is really difficult to make the argument that Yao was tokenized. The timeframe and data points just aren't there to support it, and if anything Yao's "tokenness" is more a consequence of EoD putting a lot of focus on Joon instead. Which feels like a larger writing misstep than merely tokenization.

Also, as a matter of "one offness", for every Jormag or Jory we are going to see "tokenized" NPCs. That's just the nature of populating an MMORPG world, most characters are a few quirky lines of dialogue. And I would rather we get a good full spread of diversity across the cast, regardless of how major or minor the NPC is. For the most part GW2 is much better about it than other games, and while it's not perfect it's far and away doing a better job of keeping my goodwill.

It's a gross mischaracterization of what I discussed to reduce it to "admission," as if I were only grudgingly acknowledging that objectively Anet has gotten it right so many other times. The fact that it didn't happen much at all was literally the first thing I mentioned.

What I was saying merely attempted to answer questions that seemed to indicate genuine confusion about what anyone could possibly be bothered by (on a political level) in EoD.

As for "we just had to wait for Gyala to get Yao de-tokenized," I consider that extremely weak. Good on Anet for developing Yao a bit more (I do believe his character had/has the potential to be the best narrative connection Team Commander could have with the Brotherhood faction), but I still maintain it's completely fair  and objective to say that up to that point Yao was primarily token.

To put it more clearly, my point is less "Yao was purely token" and more "these are the objectively defensible reasons why someone might have formed the impression that Yao is token."

[mandala.8507]

Nothing about someone's gender or sexuality is political. Non-cis and non-straight characters don't have to be supported with copious backstory and hinting at their orientation for their inclusion to be justified, and it's a total self-report when people laser in on these characters every single time as evidence of the politicization of the game. There's nothing political about them. My existence isn't political, so stop trying to make out like it is by insinuating that the inclusion of characters like me is anything more than an overdue recognition that non-cis and non-straight people do, in fact, exist. We play the games. We make the games. Why is it political when we are represented within the games?

Answer: it's not.

[Fueki.4753]

50 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

Nothing about someone's gender or sexuality is political. Non-cis and non-straight characters don't have to be supported with copious backstory and hinting at their orientation for their inclusion to be justified, and it's a total self-report when people laser in on these characters every single time as evidence of the politicization of the game. There's nothing political about them. My existence isn't political, so stop trying to make out like it is by insinuating that the inclusion of characters like me is anything more than an overdue recognition that non-cis and non-straight people do, in fact, exist. We play the games. We make the games. Why is it political when we are represented within the games?

Answer: it's not.

While the existence of people who don't perceive themselves as binary by itself is not political, their existence is not all to the story.

All the protests and outcry about pronouns and other kinds of actions they take to try to change how they are seen by the law, are political in nature.

Jormag and Yao distinctly being referred to by gender-free pronouns plays directly into that and can be easily interpreted to be in response to those protests.

If I remember correctly, the hearts in Echovald Wilds that have you disguise and infiltrate enemy camps, also feature disguise options that are supposed to be neither male nor female.

With Jormag having been a big antagonist and Yao being a major character in the latest release, I can understand that some players think the developers are pushing a political agenda in that direction.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[mandala.8507]

19 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Jormag and Yao distinctly being referred to by gender-free pronouns plays directly into that and can be easily interpreted to be in response to those protests.

If I remember correctly, the hearts in Echovald Wilds that have you disguise and infiltrate enemy camps, also feature disguise options that are supposed to be neither male nor female.

With Jormag having been a big antagonist and Yao being a major character in the latest release, I can understand that some players think the developers are pushing a political agenda in that direction.

So, can you give me an example of how a non-binary character could exist in a game and it not be political? Surely if their mere existence isn't what's being politicized, it can be done.

And I wasn't aware that fictional immortal ice lizards had an established gender paradigm. Could you go into detail on what would have been the appropriate non-political pronoun to use for said fictional immortal ice lizard?

And we don't have to speak for hypothetical other players here. We should be speaking for ourselves in this conversation. Do you "think the developers are pushing a political agenda?" And if so, how could we have these characters exist in their identities and it not be political? I would love to know; and since this is a critique against the studio's inclusion of these characters, I'm sure they are fascinated as to how to recognize these characters apolitically as well. 😃

[bernstein adelheid.8590]

By entering the discussion about Jormag, I think that  Jormag could have worked very well, if the we discover that the jormag's voice is actually "personalized" to the people that are hearing it. 

To explain, every people hear Jormag in a different way.
A sort of "Jormag is telling exactly what you want to hear. In order to convince you even more, it will sound in the best possible way to you". 

In short, for some people it may sound like a masculine voice, while for others, it may sound feminine. 

[DexterousGecko.6328]

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

Nothing about someone's gender or sexuality is political. Non-cis and non-straight characters don't have to be supported with copious backstory and hinting at their orientation for their inclusion to be justified, and it's a total self-report when people laser in on these characters every single time as evidence of the politicization of the game. There's nothing political about them. My existence isn't political, so stop trying to make out like it is by insinuating that the inclusion of characters like me is anything more than an overdue recognition that non-cis and non-straight people do, in fact, exist. We play the games. We make the games. Why is it political when we are represented within the games?

Answer: it's not.

I'm not sure political is the right word, but if devs purposely add in references to gender, couples, quests, etc purposely to be more inclusive, then that would be more what I think people are referring to as "political". I think people use political just to mean anything that is pushing any sort of what they perceive as an agenda. Some people don't like that, some don't care, and some love it. Those are all okay imo.

[mandala.8507]

4 minutes ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

I'm not sure political is the right word, but if devs purposely add in references to gender, couples, quests, etc purposely to be more inclusive, then that would be more what I think people are referring to as "political". I think people use political just to mean anything that is pushing any sort of what they perceive as an agenda. Some people don't like that, some don't care, and some love it. Those are all okay imo.

And so do you not see how the crux of the issue is that what the devs are really doing is not caving to pressure to be exclusive? Because as it was mentioned above, a lot of times non-cis and non-straight characters feel "bolted-on", and that is specifically because corporations are pressured by global censorship to make those characters and their identities easy to remove or recontextualize for regions where prejudice toward and erasure of non-cis and non-straight people is enforced by law.

The exclusion of non-cis and non-straight people was the choice made considering politics, not the abatement of it — because non-cis and non-straight people have always been here, and people's existence isn't political.

[Linken.6345]

5 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

Could you give us examples of what about the writing needs chemical eradication in the context of the current discussion on the inclusion of non-cis and non-straight people? 🤨

Arent those people like 2-4% of the population?

And if so arent they already over representated?

[mandala.8507]

Just now, Krzysztof.5973 said:

The fact that you use "cis". 80% around the world does not even know what that means. All I want is good writing, not catering to political aisles. 

Well Anet has never used the term "cis", so you're in luck. Problem is already solved. Not sure how latin is political, though. I used the term in science classes all the time.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, mandala.8507 said:

So, can you give me an example of how a non-binary character could exist in a game and it not be political? Surely if their mere existence isn't what's being politicized, it can be done.

And I wasn't aware that fictional immortal ice lizards had an established gender paradigm. Could you go into detail on what would have been the appropriate non-political pronoun to use for said fictional immortal ice lizard?

And we don't have to speak for hypothetical other players here. We should be speaking for ourselves in this conversation. Do you "think the developers are pushing a political agenda?" And if so, how could we have these characters exist in their identities and it not be political? I would love to know; and since this is a critique against the studio's inclusion of these characters, I'm sure they are fascinated as to how to recognize these characters apolitically as well. 😃

Personally I don't really care either way until it's being shoved at players all the time, at which point it will become annoying. I think it might be less about "how do you think it should be done" and more about having a reason to point fingers at it during the story. In other words: does that change anything about the story or their characaters' behavior? Because if character's sexuality is not important to anything there, we might as well not mention anything about it either way and anyone will freely make it whatever they want since it still changes nothing.

Tbh I don't see much harm in those "picking the disguise" hearts since whoever wants to rp their choice can do just that and whoever doesn't care can just click on the first -or random- option every time while moving on to the active gameplay.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Ashen.2907]

28 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

And so do you not see how the crux of the issue is that what the devs are really doing is not caving to pressure to be exclusive? Because as it was mentioned above, a lot of times non-cis and non-straight characters feel "bolted-on", and that is specifically because corporations are pressured by global censorship to make those characters and their identities easy to remove or recontextualize for regions where prejudice toward and erasure of non-cis and non-straight people is enforced by law.

The exclusion of non-cis and non-straight people was the choice made considering politics, not the abatement of it — because non-cis and non-straight people have always been here, and people's existence isn't political.

And yet not a single straight couple is explored among major ongoing named characters while multiple non straight couples are. The fact that all of those are lesbian couples makes it seem more like an example of fetishism by ANet writers than anything else but the agenda is obvious.

Should different individuals and their various natures exist within the game, sure thing. But when only a specific subset have their nature explored then it is not inclusion.

[mandala.8507]

Just now, Ashen.2907 said:

And yet not a single straight couple is explored among major ongoing named characters while multiple non straight couples are.

• Rox
• Braham
• Eir
• Borje
• Joon
• Gorrik
• Taimi
• Ankka
• Rytlock
• Crecia
• Dwayna
• Tonn
• Ceera
• Ai
• Rama
• Min
• Logan
• Jennah
• Koss
• Faren
• Faren
• Faren
• Caudecus
• Bangar
• Almorra
• Ryland
• Dessa

Help me out, people. I'm sure I'm missing a couple dozen.

[DexterousGecko.6328]

21 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

• Rox
• Braham
• Eir
• Borje
• Joon
• Gorrik
• Taimi
• Ankka
• Rytlock
• Crecia
• Dwayna
• Tonn
• Ceera
• Ai
• Rama
• Min
• Logan
• Jennah
• Koss
• Faren
• Faren
• Faren
• Caudecus
• Bangar
• Almorra
• Ryland
• Dessa

Help me out, people. I'm sure I'm missing a couple dozen.

 

Those are all couples?

[Krzysztof.5973]

6 minutes ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

 

Those are all couples?

Duh, Faren is in a 3way with himself. 🥰