Feedback: I miss my team!

[Zebulous.2934]

I don't mind being a side character.  The commander can't realistically have a "Hero's journey" anymore.  We are too powerful, too socially connected, and too moral.  The commander cannot improve.  Sideways progression does that in a game.  This wouldn't be so bad if the other characters did have character arcs. Satisfying character arcs.

None of the good guys have plot relevant flaws that need to be overcome in order to advance the story.  They don't fail in any substantial ways.  Only vilians suffer consequences and it's usually death.  Disposable vilians arent exciting.  It is also rather difficult to redeem someone who never does anything actually evil on camera.  Killing npcs isn't evil enough, we kill major bosses and nameless mooks all the time.

I don't want WoW type progression where we are set back to zero at every expansion.  That is more of a treadmill than a hero's journey. To keep lateral progression, Anet needs better characters. Hire writers who can write characters with depth and convincing flaws. I need to see my own bad points within the main cast.

[Caitmonster.9036]

I always kinda viewed SotO as a side story since the Dragon Cycle is over and we aren't staring complete annihilation in the face. Though I do miss (most) of Teen Destiny's Edge Dragon's Watch, there are a few characters I do kinda enjoy in the new story. Frode's alright, Galrath is a jerk and I love it, Zizzel's kinda neat as far as a weird Itzel can be. The fangirl skritt and her emotional support Charr are precious and should be protected at all costs. I really liked Mabon too, but we all know what happened there. As for Peitha, I would love just once that we keep a morally gray character on our side that doesn't just up and backstab us once they get their prize. (Looking at you, Not-Lazarus), because Peitha betraying us would almost be too obvious at this point and those betrayals have been done to death.

There is still the finale of the SotO story to consider as well. Could the threat of the Kryptis spread further into mainland Tyria and fully expose the Astral Ward to the rest of the world? (it already is creeping in, considering the rifts). It might be possible we may get our old squad rolling up at the tail end as reinforcements. Or they don't, and we saved the world again and only a bunch of Wizards will know it. I'm curious to see what plays out, honestly.

My only hope is the next time we see Braham he's upped his beard game because that thing he had on his face at the end of EoD was just tragic.

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

18 hours ago, Padrion.7382 said:

The only one I can stand of those is Rox. Because she barely says anything. Well I guess Kas & Jory are OK each on their own. But not when they are together. If I ever miss Taimi please shoot me.

No truer words have ever been spoken.

I miss Taimi like a malignant tumor. 

[Kiki.9450]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Somehow i don't think that the story not being engaging was intended at all.

Notice, the issue is not the lack of the old team. The issue is that the new team is just bad. The most sympathetic NPC (and, honestly, the only one i did manage to start caring about) just got remover from the story completely. Few others that might do didn't move to further parts of the story. Peitha, okay, is an interesting character - but i'd never consider her friendly. Others? I barely know them and couldn't care less about their issues. The story itself also, after a good start in SOtO proper (with few hiccups), just went downhill very fast. By this point i honestly do not care about neither the Kryptis revolution, nor about Astral Ward. And both sides worked really hard to make me feel that way.

At the same time story delivery is just plain bad, and makes the not-so good situation much, much worse.

My point was that part of the intention of the story is that we'd be missing our friends. We literally start he story staring at a Facebook feed going "gosh I do miss these people" (ok not literally, but we are calling them up and listening to their answering machines because we're bored and miss our buddies). Whether you are engaged or not has nothing to do with it. I certainly am (as are other players), so I'd say that there was some success there. Turns out, not every story works for everyone.

I do want to make it very clear though: I am legitimately worried this story won't end very well due to how much has been delivered to us post-SotO release. Through the Veil was over in an instant and The Realm of Dreams, while a little more interesting and a bit longer, didn't leave me with the hope that whatever's next for us in Zakiros won't be rushed. (I always blame budget.)

A huge problem I find with SotO's overall story is how quickly we went from SotO base to fighting in Nayos. We had all these NPCs that many viewed as "their new crew" (if temporarily) and then we just sort of dropped them and moved into Nayos. As I mentioned in other posts in this thread, the new characters just didn't get the time to develop into anything. Those with the most screentime are likely the most popular. A related issue is that I'd say that there's perhaps too many characters to give each one proper screentime.

I really hope the next expansion is a bit smaller in a sense. I need a story to feel like it has time to develop, and while I can keep up with the large group of characters, too many characters means not enough quality time with each one. Our old cast definitely had that time with us even within individual expansions, let alone over the course of our entire Elder Dragon Saga. This is something that PoF's story particularly good to me. It was just Commander, Rytlock, Kasmeer, and Canach for the most part, with the odd bit of Taimi (mostly through optional calls if I remember right) and a wee bit of Aurene and Marjory. We were really able to focus on our little batch as we journeyed through the desert and got a lot of good banter between them.

All in all, I think SotO's characters aren't so bad, but there's too many of them and no time to work with them, so it's hard to really like them. Aaand we dropped a bunch of them when we went to Nayos.

 

[pallas.8150]

For most of PoF and much of LW4, we tended to be Taimi's gopher. She was the brains and the team was the brawn. It was super cringe and I feel bad for any players who were rp'ing a smart character. I do not miss her and hope she dies off panel, lol.

Indifferent about many of the others. Braham, Jory, Kas are all ok. I prefer the original characters: Eir, Logan, Zojja, Rytlock, etc.

I don't mind the new cast and they are WAY better than the ones introduced in End of Dragons. I like that the tone is slightly darker and less tongue in cheek. Its just unfolding too slow and I feel like old LW stories offered more meat than this. I think I wrapped up the newest bits in maybe an hour, if that.

[sewenewes.4176]

I like Peitha because I'm a huge fan of Patty Mattison's voice acting and it's really nice to hear her again after Blizzard ruined Sylvanas. The story itself is oddly boring despite the fantastical setting and the only thing worse than the blatant padding (repeat a bunch of events you have already done every chapter to progress the story) is the laser focus on a rather juvenile depiction of emotions. I never expect overly complex writing from games because that's not their only purpose but there were multiple well-written dialogues, events, and story chapters in the base game and in the expansions.

Compare how loss, regret, grief, and post traumatic stress was portrayed with Aurene, Soo-Won, Yoon, Rama and later our character in Gyala Delve (just to focus on the most recent pre-SOTO writing) with how the same themes are portrayed with Mabon, Lyhr, Zojja, and the rest of the clown fiesta that is the Astral Ward. It's night and day! The EOD gang, for all their faults, felt like individuals who could exist in real life. The SOTO gang feels like, well, video game characters. Artificial. Robotic. I couldn't care less about any of them which is a shame.

[Zebulous.2934]

Is it that Anet doesn't want players to feel uncomfortable?  I suppose major character flaws could trigger some people.  Villains who actually say disturbing things or who say uncouth things to the player may also discomfort people. 
It is just that if you spend all of your time avoiding stepping on toes, you don't get anywhere or see anything (except the floor, you get a real good look at the flooring)

[Thormagor.5418]

6 hours ago, sewenewes.4176 said:

I like Peitha because I'm a huge fan of Patty Mattison's voice acting and it's really nice to hear her again after Blizzard ruined Sylvanas.

Now, I just want to put my game in english and redo the SoTo story.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

Is it that Anet doesn't want players to feel uncomfortable?  I suppose major character flaws could trigger some people.  Villains who actually say disturbing things or who say uncouth things to the player may also discomfort people.

Yes. They mentioned it more than once (when in the early stage of the game some people asked for options of playing the villains). They do want their story to be black-and-white, so noone would ever have a reason to doubt they are on the right side.

Now, it does not always work as well as they think it does (there's a ton of questionable NPCs here that to me do not give me that message), and it does make the story extremely cringy at some points. Still, seeing the way the story progresses, and how they present their villains and allies (notice, for example, the difference between treatment of Joon and Minister Li in the story) it seems that their general goal for this has not changed at all since those early game times.

[sewenewes.4176]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They do want their story to be black-and-white, so noone would ever have a reason to doubt they are on the right side.

It's odd because they have done it well enough before without making it black and white. Someone being the bad guy doesn't have to mean they make no good points and are irredeemable monsters who kicks kittens for fun. As much as Joko was a bit of a comedic relief he also correctly pointed out that what our merry band of heroes did was monumentally stupid and we were well on our way to doom the entire world by gunning down elder dragons and an actual god. He also had a portion of the Elonian population loyal to him because he provided not only protection from very real threats but also the possibility of your loved ones being brought back to life.

Were Joko's actions undeniably evil? Yes. Was he self-serving? Yes. It was abundantly clear that he was the enemy and us defeating him was a good thing but his absence left behind a void that needed filling and he also made us think of the fact that we have been recklessly gambling the lives of everyone on the off-chance that things will work themselves out somehow.

[Zok.4956]

On 3/9/2024 at 9:12 PM, Cameryn.5310 said:

No, it's that I miss my regulars.  I miss my team.  My pact.  Taimi, Rytlock, Rox, Braham, Aurene, Kas & Jory, and even Caithe and Canach.

Was it intentional not to mention Logan and Trahearne? 😉

Of all the above, I only miss Rytlock (from before IBS and his family squabbles) and Canach.

 

On 3/9/2024 at 9:12 PM, Cameryn.5310 said:

I haven't felt as invested in SotO, and it's taken me some time to figure out why.

It takes time in a story to bring a character to life in such a way that you feel for the character and form an emotional connection. Anet did this better with some characters than others. 

 

[Zok.4956]

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They do want their story to be black-and-white, so noone would ever have a reason to doubt they are on the right side.

I don't think that's generally the case. Anet has incorporated many nuances, especially in the many details in PoF/Elona maps. Just an example: Undead don't have to be bad people and can lead a completely normal "life". 

[Cameryn.5310]

Seriously messed up that this was moved to the "Lore" section, when it has nothing to do with Lore and everything to do with why I'm frustrated with the game in general.

[mandala.8507]

15 minutes ago, Cameryn.5310 said:

Seriously messed up that this was moved to the "Lore" section, when it has nothing to do with Lore and everything to do with why I'm frustrated with the game in general.

The subject of your original comment is entirely encapsulated by lore/story, so...it was correct to put it here.

[ugrakarma.9416]

the "team" take too much seriouness of history, and being long time "friend" at this point, excessively jokes is unavoidable,

[Bobby Stein.3612]

On 3/11/2024 at 4:12 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

They mentioned it more than once (when in the early stage of the game some people asked for options of playing the villains). They do want their story to be black-and-white, so noone would ever have a reason to doubt they are on the right side.

That may have been true of the core Personal Story, but we've definitely tried to add a bit more nuance such that it's not as black and white. Granted, you're always playing a heroic character who is trying to do the right thing, but our villains (and friends!) should have enough depth to make them feel more realistic and have shades of gray. Sometimes we hit the mark and other times we don't. Often that depends on how much "runway" we have to introduce and develop a character, including how much time you spend with them, where/when you encounter them, etc. Also, allowing the Commander to fail and/or make mistakes has always been part of the player's journey.

[Tanek.5983]

6 minutes ago, Bobby Stein.3612 said:

That may have been true of the core Personal Story, but we've definitely tried to add a bit more nuance such that it's not as black and white. Granted, you're always playing a heroic character who is trying to do the right thing, but our villains (and friends!) should have enough depth to make them feel more realistic and have shades of gray. Sometimes we hit the mark and other times we don't. Often that depends on how much "runway" we have to introduce and develop a character, including how much time you spend with them, where/when you encounter them, etc. Also, allowing the Commander to fail and/or make mistakes has always been part of the player's journey.

I just hope when we finally do get back to our team they (justifiably) rip into us for how stupid we've been to freeze them out over the course of this expansion. 😛

[vrauns.3215]

The end of the dragon story will come with trial and error, it's to be expected, because when we are used to something for so long and it ends, some of us who said we are tired of the dragon story miss it when a new expansion dosen't have them anymore and we are not fighting them, it would also be weird if we have all had the old characters like rytlock, canach, kasmeer ect, with us in soto because they wern't apart of the demon story after EOD, so it wouldn't fit, rytlock even asked for a job if we wanted him in the final scene of eod in divinitys reach, so they didn't retire him forever, they want the right time and story arc to bring him back, im assuming, same with aurene and the others and how they handled zojja when she was gone for awhile, (i could be completely wrong and we will never see them again) but we will see in time, i hope.

[Poormany.4507]

On 3/10/2024 at 2:20 PM, Kiki.9450 said:

I really hope the next expansion is a bit smaller in a sense. I need a story to feel like it has time to develop, and while I can keep up with the large group of characters, too many characters means not enough quality time with each one. Our old cast definitely had that time with us even within individual expansions, let alone over the course of our entire Elder Dragon Saga. This is something that PoF's story particularly good to me. It was just Commander, Rytlock, Kasmeer, and Canach for the most part, with the odd bit of Taimi (mostly through optional calls if I remember right) and a wee bit of Aurene and Marjory. We were really able to focus on our little batch as we journeyed through the desert and got a lot of good banter between them.

I fully agree with this! There's too many characters so we're left doing missions with one character and then not seeing them for several chapters (if ever) for so many characters to the point that I lose interest in their stories. Add in interesting characters that players want to see more of and learn about their backgrounds and stories (Mabon, Dagda, Galrath) not being given nearly enough screentime combined with forgettable characters with no personality that honestly, could have been entirely cut from the story and/or merged into others (Irja, Zizel, Arina), a lot of players, including myself, lose interest in the characters that are introduced because chances are, they'll be in one of the above categories. It is not a good thing when I have to look up multiple characters during story missions to remember who they even are and SotO is one of the few times I've had to do so.

I also hope the next stories involves a smaller, but closer character group where  we actually get to know and connect with each character.

Edited April 4 by Poormany.4507

[garpu.6210]

IMO, I'm glad they're not making the Commander be a wizard, because that would just be a cheap way to reboot the story when they don't remember all the people from the past expansions and living worlds.  I get that they're trying to be a bit more ambiguous as to who the "bad guy" is, but I'll be glad when we leave the wizards behind, because I think they're a far greater threat to Tyria than the Kryptis are.

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 3/9/2024 at 12:12 PM, Cameryn.5310 said:

I haven't felt as invested in SotO, and it's taken me some time to figure out why.  It's not just that the story is unengaging this time -- and I do agree with other people about the "filler" in story steps, i.e. fill-the-bar stuff -- or that the maps are a little too unspired.  I'm not really a fan of reused content, which is what Skywatch Archipelago feels like (just cut-and-pasted from other expansions), the Wizard's Tower is just a hub, and Amnytas and Inner Nayos aren't all that exciting.

No, it's that I miss my regulars.  I miss my team.  My pact.  Taimi, Rytlock, Rox, Braham, Aurene, Kas & Jory, and even Caithe and Canach.  Plus some of the other characters that joined me like Gorrik and Yao.  I was sad when Taimi's body started to shut down, and when we lost Aurene (we thought, for good).  I loved it when Braham came around again.  I loved Kas & Jory getting married.  I LOVE grumpy old Rytlock.  They're part of my overall GW2 game play and I miss them. 

I don't care about Peitha or any of the others.  I couldn't tell you who the others are in SotO, in fact.  I don't care about Zojja or the new folks... they just don't do it for me.

I spent YEARS becoming the Pact Commander and shaping my team.  So why have all of them been left behind?  It's really put a damper on my enjoyment of this expansion.

I don't know why ANet decided to leave all of those characters behind with this new expansion, and I really hope there's a course correction to bring them back this summer/fall.  I'm not saying it's BAD, I'm just saying I'm bored.

I think its unrealistic to always have the same companions...forever. Maybe for a long time sure but imagine the friends you had in highschool vs the ones you have now? Things change and the timeline is a bit less extended in game so we haven't seen our companions for maybe just a few months.

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:13 AM, Bobby Stein.3612 said:

That may have been true of the core Personal Story, but we've definitely tried to add a bit more nuance such that it's not as black and white. Granted, you're always playing a heroic character who is trying to do the right thing, but our villains (and friends!) should have enough depth to make them feel more realistic and have shades of gray. Sometimes we hit the mark and other times we don't. Often that depends on how much "runway" we have to introduce and develop a character, including how much time you spend with them, where/when you encounter them, etc. Also, allowing the Commander to fail and/or make mistakes has always been part of the player's journey.

I guess some feedback is if we have only a year to bond/have quality time with the expansion allies I'd include them in most of the content. A little bit of Frode and his daughter and galrath in Nayos isn't cutting it. We need the whole astral ward there right now with us doing events. My feedback is a bit more useless IF we will be seeing these characters continuously in further expansions but I wouldn't know that.

Also, killing Mabon was a mistake :P!

[Gwynnion.7364]

On 4/4/2024 at 11:11 AM, garpu.6210 said:

I get that they're trying to be a bit more ambiguous as to who the "bad guy" is, but I'll be glad when we leave the wizards behind, because I think they're a far greater threat to Tyria than the Kryptis are.

The Kryptis are just these guys, you know?

But I second this.  I don't want to see the Wizards Court or Astral Ward ever again except to put Isgarren, et al. in their place.

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:13 AM, Bobby Stein.3612 said:

That may have been true of the core Personal Story, but we've definitely tried to add a bit more nuance such that it's not as black and white. Granted, you're always playing a heroic character who is trying to do the right thing, but our villains (and friends!) should have enough depth to make them feel more realistic and have shades of gray. Sometimes we hit the mark and other times we don't. Often that depends on how much "runway" we have to introduce and develop a character, including how much time you spend with them, where/when you encounter them, etc. Also, allowing the Commander to fail and/or make mistakes has always been part of the player's journey.

Bobby for this return to heart of thorns event its still unclear if Laranthir is officially in charge of the Vigil or is second command again? Can you clarify?

[EdwinLi.1284]

I think the issue with the story currently is how they are not covering the issue that the Commander has right now they present in the begin of SoO being that the Commander is mostly lost on what to do with his/her life since he/she spent years doing one thing and that is fighting Elder Dragons to save the World. Now he/she has a hard time returning to their original life before they began their journey in the Zhaitan Arc. Literally that Veteran from War that returns and having a hard time adjusting back to civilian life.

The Commander currently is the only one having issues moving on with a normal life where he/she is no longer on a journey trying to save the world while everyone else have moved on and found something to do with their lives. Some found a job which most of Dragon's Watch have done while some are just recovering from the aftermath like Braham with his PTSD issues.

The whole SoO event was basically a happy accident for the Commander as he/she is now doing Hero work again which I do not think is healthy for the Commander because he/she been all too happy to get involved with this Save the World event since that all he/she is use to now.

Edited April 11 by EdwinLi.1284