Secrets of the Obscure: Looking Back and Forward

[Ashen.2907]

A lesson not mentioned as having been learned might be that if you implement a character specifically to be unlikable, to the point of being abusive, such as Zojja, prior to SotO it is not a good idea to hang emotional connection to expansion elements and characters on her shoulders. If you purposefully make me dislike the character and she is my connection to the expansion then you have set me up to dislike the expansion. 

[Dotveg.5108]

2 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

A lesson not mentioned as having been learned might be that if you implement a character specifically to be unlikable, to the point of being abusive, such as Zojja, prior to SotO it is not a good idea to hang emotional connection to expansion elements and characters on her shoulders. If you purposefully make me dislike the character and she is my connection to the expansion then you have set me up to dislike the expansion. 

I respect your opinion, but I'd like to add just one thing, respectfully: dislikable is highly subjective. As a person on the autistic spectrum, I liked Zojja's snappiness and struggle to belong with the "normal" people of Destiny's Edge! I loved to see her thrive in the Tower, and when I met Isgarren and Dagda, two super-clammed, super socially awkward and easily interpretable as arrogant, pedantic and downright rude characters, I had a genuine moment of "Yup, I get it. That's your people" for her.

I won't drown you under a character study since you don't like Zojja, but I just wanted to share my two cents with you. I liked her writing, which also means I understand why you didn't. I don't necessarily think there's much of a lesson to be learned other than you can't create a universally loved character, and that's totally fine. Hell, some people despise Canach when I find him hilarious. I'm glad we don't all like the same things, otherwise the world would be extremely bland.

[Ashen.2907]

42 minutes ago, Dotveg.5108 said:

I respect your opinion, but I'd like to add just one thing, respectfully: dislikable is highly subjective. As a person on the autistic spectrum, I liked Zojja's snappiness and struggle to belong with the "normal" people of Destiny's Edge! I loved to see her thrive in the Tower, and when I met Isgarren and Dagda, two super-clammed, super socially awkward and easily interpretable as arrogant, pedantic and downright rude characters, I had a genuine moment of "Yup, I get it. That's your people" for her.

I won't drown you under a character study since you don't like Zojja, but I just wanted to share my two cents with you. I liked her writing, which also means I understand why you didn't. I don't necessarily think there's much of a lesson to be learned other than you can't create a universally loved character, and that's totally fine. Hell, some people despise Canach when I find him hilarious. I'm glad we don't all like the same things, otherwise the world would be extremely bland.

If someone is actively abusive toward you they are not intended to be liked. If someone in real life was actively abusive to a person on the spectrum, or not for that matter, they would be seen as borderline evil. Abusing people because they cannot defend themselves is not acceptable behavior. Kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun are not cool either. I can, as a member of an audience, enjoy a good villain, that doesn't make their abuse of the innocent likeable.

[Dotveg.5108]

3 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

If someone is actively abusive toward you they are not intended to be liked. If someone in real life was actively abusive to a person on the spectrum, or not for that matter, they would be seen as borderline evil. Abusing people because they cannot defend themselves is not acceptable behavior. Kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun are not cool either. I can, as a member of an audience, enjoy a good villain, that doesn't make their abuse of the innocent likeable.

Okay? We're still talking about Zojja here, right? Just- just making sure. I don't know which person with antisocial personality disorder you're referring to here but uh, yeah. I mean I agree with your points there but you're extrapolating.

[Ashantara.8731]

48 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

If someone is actively abusive toward you they are not intended to be liked. If someone in real life was actively abusive to a person on the spectrum, or not for that matter, they would be seen as borderline evil. Abusing people because they cannot defend themselves is not acceptable behavior. Kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun are not cool either. I can, as a member of an audience, enjoy a good villain, that doesn't make their abuse of the innocent likeable.

No idea how we got from the initial topic of this thread to this 😄, but:

During our player character's personal story, Zojja was never "abusive" but a big whiner... like some of the other Destiny's Edge members (see Rytlock). That's what made me dislike her (and Rytlock) early on.

As for Zojja, being condescending and self-righteous are not necessarily pleasant traits 😉, but far from what makes a person "abusive". Look up what abuse (emotional/psychological) actually means.

Edited May 29 by Ashantara.8731

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

If someone is actively abusive toward you they are not intended to be liked. If someone in real life was actively abusive to a person on the spectrum, or not for that matter, they would be seen as borderline evil. Abusing people because they cannot defend themselves is not acceptable behavior. Kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun are not cool either. I can, as a member of an audience, enjoy a good villain, that doesn't make their abuse of the innocent likeable.

She is an asura that is just how they are.

[suialthor.7164]

Could Contrast and Color Accessibility be something to learn in the future?  Especially with encounter design to avoid stacking the same color over an environment that lacks enough contrast.  

Still not a fan of partial map releases. 

[VocalThought.9835]

Additional lessons to be learned...

1) Stop adding cheesy corny story telling. Most fans of the genre appreciate mature serious content with a sprinkle of humor throughout. Not the other way around.

2) Focused Story telling. Having a small cast of main characters where their journeys are fully flushed out interesting, and unpredictable is a lot better than the opposite.

3) Everything new should be an adventure. I don't understand how they just give us elite specializations, weapon mastery, or new weapons without there being a story or an adventure tied to it. Make it so I do talking to someone who can explain this new addition and sends me on a quest or trail. That would add more depth to the game, than just having these things just automatically be unlocked with my game purchases. It doesn't have to be very difficult, but make me do something more than just clicking one button. Give me a cutscene or something.

4) Expand the combat. What's the point of spending so much time on balancing and adding new weapons if people are complaining about PvP and WvW, and repetitive and monotonous fighting boring creatures in PvE. Make the combat more challenging and complex, make skills more effective and true option for player instead of there being just one or two metas per profession. 

5) Add mechanics to increase immersion into the role-playing aspect. This could be new systems to choose from for adding to the character's personal story, the use of the personality mechanics, even an alliance system would be great, that can give different players perks based on who they team with.

Edited June 2 by VocalThought.9835

[Zok.4956]

16 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

It also makes it easier to believe when they say things are going well, knowing they're willing to say when it's not.

I think that is also an important point (although not the only one) for this openness. Some problems with the maps and the story were obvious. Ignoring that and not addressing it would not only have cost credibility, but also (to a certain extent) sales for the next expansion.

And it already seems to be working. Some players have already said that they would not have wanted to buy the next expansion. But after these "lessons learned" they now have hope that things will get better and want to buy the next expansion.

Just to clarify: That's not a bad thing.

[Danikat.8537]

43 minutes ago, VocalThought.9835 said:

3) Everything new should be an adventure. I don't understand how they just give us elite specializations, weapon mastery, or new weapons without there being a story or an adventure tied to it. Make it so I do talking to someone who can explain this new addition and sends me on a quest or trail. That would add more depth to the game, than just having these things just automatically be unlocked with my game purchases. It doesn't have to be very difficult, but make me do something more than just clicking one button. Give me a cutscene or something.

They did that in HoT - you had to play through large chunks of the expansion to unlock the new elite specs and players complained until they changed it and made it possible to unlock them much, much more quickly.

[Izzy.2951]

They didnt talk about the quality of the content, which is what concern me most.

Encounter design both in metas and strikes/fractals were poor and way too much mechanic recycling.

Maps, enemys (and even events) were mostly recycled assets, animations from past expansions which is not very exciting to play around.

Yeah story in Nayos wasnt great, but i dont think that is the only or main problem of SoTo alone.

[Astralporing.1957]

The issue is that all the lessons they mentioned they have learned were something they should have already known well before SotO. If they haven't learned those lessons in previous 10 years of the game, there's not much chance this is going to change now.

There's also a number of issues they should have mentioned but didn't, like too much dependence on boring repeated grind (bar filling as primary "story" content, rifts, more and more repeat achievements, requiring tons of mats or event repeats for stuff, skyscale weapons...), or having the whole expansion revolve around legendary armor (and having that legendary armor revolve around an extremely narrow slice of content even if it's technically OW armor set). There's no mention whatsoever about the massive overall quality drop of content after changing into the new schedule either. Or about the overall impact of them apparently moving significant part of their studio resources off GW2.

The overall message they seem to push is that SotO was generally fine, but there are some minor flaws that still need to be addressed, which is, for me at least, very far from the truth. As such, i'm not really sure if they have actually learned enough. Or, if they did (or already knew about it beforehand), whether they intend to do something about all those things at all, or just plan to paint the grass green and pretend everything is flourishing when it clearly is not.

[Edge.1653]

13 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

You have over 10 years of game service, even more with the combined years of some employees at arenanet. 

ArenaNet is perpetually in a state where they act like they're a newer company trying to chart their course into the future and not a company that's been around for 20+ years.

Their support for GW2 feels more like a company trying to figure out how they can support their live-service product after launch and not as if it's been out for over a decade with multiple expansions and a huge number of major updates under their belt.

It was worst after MO left and nobody knew who was in charge of Anet or GW2, slightly better with Colin and Grouch coming back, but the game/studio is still very much in that weird position. I will never understand it.

[Bealis.6023]

This is just my take, but wouldn't it be better to have all ideas, plot points, designs, concepts etc. first and then shape both story structure and world design around it? When you have a certain model/mandate/template of the size first for which all those things need to be adhered to, doesn't it pull down the creativity? As a player I do not mind the wait if the narrative and story intentions are broader.

Edited May 29 by Bealis.6023

[Thormano.7806]

I did not like the third part of SotO until I just got the Wayfinder mastery! It allows me to mop up a load of excess accumalated stuff I'd normally destroy into materials, gold or whatever. I still haven't finished the final storyline (which would award me 500 astral credits). I don't want to. It's a long flog of bashing and I found it boring so I gave up. But I was able to get the mastery by doing adventures. I'm really pleased with the benefits the mastery gives.

[Gwynnion.7364]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

There's also a number of issues they should have mentioned but didn't, like too much dependence on boring repeated grind (bar filling as primary "story" content, rifts, more and more repeat achievements, requiring tons of mats or event repeats for stuff, skyscale weapons...), or having the whole expansion revolve around legendary armor (and having that legendary armor revolve around an extremely narrow slice of content even if it's technically OW armor set).

Yeah, it's interesting they didn't mention these because so much of SotO and especially its reward structure is built around boring, repetitive grinds as time filler, something that has been repeatedly complained about on the forums.  That kind of "content" is efficient to produce because it's lazy.  "Here's one Convergence map.  Just do it forever."  It only kind of worked with legendary armor as a carrot.  And what's to do next?

Also, I dread dealing with the Astral Ward and Wizard's Court again in the next expansion.  I don't care about those people.  "Moral ambiguity."  Yeah, you could call it that.

[Palador.2170]

I'm glad you've seen some of the mistakes you've made, but as at least one other person has said, it's lessons you should have learned by now. Still...

To be blunt, the story was bad. But why?

We have no good reason to care for ANY of these new characters save for maybe Zojja. You didn't spend enough time building them into familiar people we DO care about, and expected it to just happen automatically. You devs may have grown to love them as you developed them, but we've not had that exposure. It's the start of Dragon's Watch all over again, where you throw new characters at us at the cost of no longer seeing most of the old ones. It took a long time to develop them (sans Braham) into likable characters, and that was with them introduced in ones and twos. All at once was far worse.

Second is Zojja, and how badly she was mishandled. For all we knew, she was still barely functional back in Rata Sum, and suddenly she's been all over the world and is now here? And then, you have her join what feels a lot like a cult, only for her to let them magically lobotomize her so she barely remembers us. That's honestly horrifying, and it also throws away the one character we DID have a previous connection with.

Third would have to be the utter disrespect the Commander is shown in this story. There is NOTHING here they've not faced in some form or another before, but the story doesn't really acknowledge it. Not only that, but the Commander has been SOLVING problems like this before, and yet now they're supposed to fall in line below a bunch of people that have been struggling to deal with it for centuries? Not only that, but it's only at "normal for us" levels as of recently, until now the Wizards have been failing Easy Mode. The Commander supposed to put up with Peitha and her friends talking into their heads and trying to mess with them, when they've already dealt with the likes of Mordremoth and Jormag? Uhh...no. If the main character of the story is the Commander, than it needs to keep that history in mind. This is "You have to join the Shining Blade" all over again.

Finally, the story is too broken up, with too much filler "go fill the bar" stuff and not enough actual story. Devs, we all know that writing under some constraints can sometimes help to focus and improve writing, so I challenge you to do an entire expansion where there isn't ANY "Fill in the bar" of any kind in the story. Side events and the like? Sure. But see if you can go one full expansion without forcing us to fill a bar to advance the story. Abandon your crutch.

There are other issues, of course, like having to play through the story to unlock weapons that honestly should have had nothing to do with the story. If you have to lock things behind the story to make people play the story, then you've failed and you know it. And the just awful masteries that, once again, have no impact on the greater game. THAT's a lesson you learned after HoT, but you seem to have forgotten it. Again.

Please learn. Please remember. I want to have FUN playing this game.

[babak.3654]

14 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

There's also a number of issues they should have mentioned but didn't, like too much dependence on boring repeated grind (bar filling as primary "story" content, rifts, more and more repeat achievements, requiring tons of mats or event repeats for stuff, skyscale weapons...), or having the whole expansion revolve around legendary armor (and having that legendary armor revolve around an extremely narrow slice of content even if it's technically OW armor set). There's no mention whatsoever about the massive overall quality drop of content after changing into the new schedule either. Or about the overall impact of them apparently moving significant part of their studio resources off GW2.

Yeah, this sums up my lingering concerns about future expansions, so it's unfortunate it wasn't addressed. I have a limited amount of gaming time, even less than I had when I started playing GW2 at launch. I've always had to be a bit selective about the grinds I go for. That's been largely fine in previous GW2 content, but that approach didn't work well in SotO because so much of the expansion is built around repetitive grind for stuff I didn't really want or need anyway.

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

10 hours ago, Palador.2170 said:

To be blunt, the story was bad. But why?

We have no good reason to care for ANY of these new characters save for maybe Zojja. You didn't spend enough time building them into familiar people we DO care about, and expected it to just happen automatically.

Exactly. And I think they've recognised this and are taking steps to correct it for the next expansion. But who knows?

This entire expansion should have been a relatively low-key introduction to the new characters, places and politics. Get to know them, get to understand their motivations. Maybe the expansion could have been based around the Wizard's Tower being old and crumbling, and was in danger of failing. So we spend our time working with our new friends, getting to understand them. Helping them to shore up the building while there are just notes and teases about the Kryptis popping up.

Then, right at the end of things, we get a full scale Kryptis invasion happens. Maybe there someone important dies. And it all sets things up for the second expansion, which is war with the Kryptis. That goes on (and goes badly) for the ENTIRE second expansion, with a nice cliff hanger ending where we're on the edge. Then expansion  three comes in with the fight back, and a noble (and meaningful) sacrifice that wins the war for us.

But no, we got this rushed nonsense instead. Did nobody at any point say that this was too much to cram into one expansion? Did they really only recognise this when they've finished?

[Randulf.7614]

40 minutes ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:

Exactly. And I think they've recognised this and are taking steps to correct it for the next expansion. But who knows?

This entire expansion should have been a relatively low-key introduction to the new characters, places and politics. Get to know them, get to understand their motivations. Maybe the expansion could have been based around the Wizard's Tower being old and crumbling, and was in danger of failing. So we spend our time working with our new friends, getting to understand them. Helping them to shore up the building while there are just notes and teases about the Kryptis popping up.

Then, right at the end of things, we get a full scale Kryptis invasion happens. Maybe there someone important dies. And it all sets things up for the second expansion, which is war with the Kryptis. That goes on (and goes badly) for the ENTIRE second expansion, with a nice cliff hanger ending where we're on the edge. Then expansion  three comes in with the fight back, and a noble (and meaningful) sacrifice that wins the war for us.

But no, we got this rushed nonsense instead. Did nobody at any point say that this was too much to cram into one expansion? Did they really only recognise this when they've finished?

In order for it to affect the new expansion, the lessons would have been learnt very early on, but it’s only now they’re talking about it. I think there’s an assumption this is all a sudden realisation at the end, but it’s likely been realised months ago, with people speaking up internally and too late to change course (although it’s possible things like adventures, the mastery npc and other nice additions were manageable additions in response to these understandings)

The blog’s bigger issue for me is that it’s a quick “yeah we know” rather than a deep dive like they’ve done before and that much of these lessons are ones they prob should have learned from years of feedback and LS before (not that I’m not appreciative of their communication, I’d just prefer more depth)

Regardless, the proof is not in words but actions. If they learnt the lessons we will see it in the next expansion. It’s up to the players to decide whether to continue their journey on trust or not. 

[Gwynnion.7364]

On 5/29/2024 at 3:32 PM, Palador.2170 said:

We have no good reason to care for ANY of these new characters save for maybe Zojja.

I mean, unless you've played the Asuran personal story, and maybe even then, Zojja is nobody in particular as far as the Commander is concerned, and SotO makes it worse by portraying her as basically a substitute Taimi.

[BrightWingedBat.6829]

On 5/29/2024 at 1:34 PM, VocalThought.9835 said:

3) Everything new should be an adventure. I don't understand how they just give us elite specializations, weapon mastery, or new weapons without there being a story or an adventure tied to it. Make it so I do talking to someone who can explain this new addition and sends me on a quest or trail. That would add more depth to the game, than just having these things just automatically be unlocked with my game purchases. It doesn't have to be very difficult, but make me do something more than just clicking one button. Give me a cutscene or something.

This actually did happen in SotO. You need to be taught Weapon Mastery by an NPC before you're allowed to equip the gear, certainly not just by purchasing it. Same with the new weapons, which required you to collect lore across a new map to discover the techniques that allow you to use the weapons.

[DoctorOverlord.8620]

That was a really great restrospective and it’s great ArenaNet is sharing this with the community.  Thanks!

I personally liked SoTO overall and I feel I got more of my money’s worth compared to the last expansion EoD.  Certainly, SoTO’s story may have only been average but I didn’t EoD’s story was that great either, and it’s nice that ANet acknowledges they will work on that.   The introduction of Obsidian Armor and Weaponsmaster Training really made this expansion one where I will be making good use of the features I got from it.  

Also thank you for making the SoTO banking hub without any annoying NPCs who repeat the same phrase ad nauseum.  The voices lines of NPCs like that stupid Tengu in Arborstone are only slightly amusing the first time we hear them, and after the 5000th time they're a lot less entertaining.  The Wizard's Tower is blissfully quiet.       

As far as the zone design, many seem to be ragging on Nayos but while it does look gross, mechanically I thought the zone worked well.  Even though it only has two waypoints, I found it okay to navigate around, and I ended up liking Nayos far more than the prettier Amnytas zone which seems to be entirely designed to be skyscale-flypaper. 

Amnytas has all those arches just *barely* wide enough for a skyscale so if you’re off by a pixel gliding through them you’ll get stuck, and high walls with those outward curves on their tops certain to catch your mount while you’re rising up along them, and all those towers with nice, flat tops that would be great landing places if they weren’t all literally blocked by giant blue balls! (I swear it’s like ANet is really stretching their jokes)  

ANet’s artists and modelers are always amazing and Amnytas does look fantastic, but I really hope future map designs take into account our skyscale’s annoying habit of clinging to any outcropping or twig they can and always keep that in the forefront of their environment design.

Every expansion has pluses and minuses, but overall I’m satisfied with my purchase of SoTO, and I’m waiting to hear what ANet has planned for the next one.

Edited June 1 by DoctorOverlord.8620

[CoffeePlease.3082]

On 5/28/2024 at 12:40 PM, Navaryn.7946 said:

PS. Don't do this, don't give me hope for new Raid... that would be awesome. Bring Raids back!

omg if it isn't wing 8 after saying that, considering the 5 year mention, I will be so disappointed. I am leaning hard into it being wing 8 and the return to raids because they are notably missing compared to other games, and with all the work they've been giving to challenge modes in the last few years I'd be surprised if it wasn't that. BUT there is always that part of me with GW2 that is in "brace for impact" mode so we'll just have to cross our fingers and see. 

ANET! Participation will ALWAYS be higher in open world than in raids, it's pretty much the same in WoW, but some people LOVE raids! Give em to us, we have groups that still do them despite there being no "need" to anymore (once you get your leggos) just because they are fun!

[VocalThought.9835]

On 5/31/2024 at 1:44 PM, BrightWingedBat.6829 said:

This actually did happen in SotO. You need to be taught Weapon Mastery by an NPC before you're allowed to equip the gear, certainly not just by purchasing it. Same with the new weapons, which required you to collect lore across a new map to discover the techniques that allow you to use the weapons.

That should have been an adventure, when it was just a conversation.