The end of SotO is no ok?

[FiveBunnies.5730]

I liked the beginning of SotO: the return of Zojja, the new place in the world for commander after defeating the dragons, the sadness after parting ways with Aurene, the new locations.  I was so inspired about it.

But the end of SotO upset me in so many ways!

1. The story is very easy. We're just fighting. We're just winning. So ingenuous. A lot of interesting characters I wanted to know more about were never revealed. 

2. The last part of the story "The Eleventh Hour" had a bug that made it impossible to play with two people. I went through the WHOLE story of all adding with my friend, but the final boss SotO we had separately.

3. Zojja just says goodbye to us in the finale with a short dialog to leave again.

4. The last piece of the map, which I really wanted to explore, only available by event. 

5. And I didn't even get a reward for closing the map!

6. The new fractal is hectic, not interesting.

And I just want to know if anyone else thinks like me?

[Dean Calaway.9718]

I hated how at the start the commander boasted he could get a fleet there in two hours... The whole idea of doing away with Aurene was to throttle back the "power creep" for this new style of mini expansion, what good was that when the commander can still call on such a force... ?

Let the pact die, the Priory and the Whispers can go back to their stuff, the Vigil could appear back as mercenaries with dodgy morals after who ever took over Almora would see fit the only way for the institution to survive was with endless wars, maybe playing and financing both sides, but that might just be a tad too mature for a GW2 audience.

I hated the Astral Ward, i.e. another pact, I hated they're setting up the tower as the new main HUB for the coming mini expansions when I'd much prefer these mini expansions to be isolated self contained stories, just like GW1.

Over all SotO had way too many characters, Eparch was just uninteresting, they should have just rolled with Cerus and even him was only halfway decent because he was Deimos twin. Any other character I can only remember Frode and Isgarren names off the top of my head, everything else was forgettable background noise.

[Randulf.7614]

This might be of use to you if you want other player thoughts. But yes, I thought it ended in a whimper

 

[LolzImSquishy.4978]

Um. It was awesome. People get so picky 

[Myror.7521]

It was clearly rushed in the end and they even said themselfes that "it was too big off a Story to get it done in 1 Expansion. But instead of idk ...... take in half they just rushed it to make room for the next mini Expansion ^^

[FiveBunnies.5730]

17 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

This might be of use to you if you want other player thoughts. But yes, I thought it ended in a whimper

Thank you, this is exactly what I needed!

[Sweetbread.3678]

Yeah, imo it definitely should've just focused on the wizards dealing with the fallout of the Dragon Cycle and ended with expelling the Kryptis invasion from Tyria. Peitha could remain as the mysterious, ally of convenience she was up until Nayos, and the whole Eparch plotline could have some time to cook between expacs so it could be done proper justice. It probably would've been better to just have a Nayos-like zone that's just a fraction of it spilling over into Tyria or something instead of actually going there and one-and-doneing an entire universe in a single map; that really killed a lot of the mystique for Nayos and the demons in general to me.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

On 6/21/2024 at 4:45 PM, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

I hated how at the start the commander boasted he could get a fleet there in two hours... The whole idea of doing away with Aurene was to throttle back the "power creep" for this new style of mini expansion, what good was that when the commander can still call on such a force... ?

It's kinda difficult to make threatening villains now. 

The kryptis and Eparch were such a none threat in the end, paitha bringing (just) the commander to nayos is like bringing a Maschine gun to a knife fight. 

The best way someone described the current situation is like Buu Saga Goku having to fight a villain that would have been a threat in the Frieza Saga. 

It's extremely difficult to make a threatening villain after all we have been trough. Without some BS like Eparch making the commander feel fear. 

Bruh. The Commander looked an elder dragon directly in the eye and stood their ground. As if mister pointy legs could make the commander feel fear. 

And yes, the tyrian forces are still armed to the teeth from fighting elder dragons. 

And even more yes, they would all move if the commander says Go! The Commander is the literal savior of all of creation on planet tyria after all. Which is known to basically everyone. 

He also is the champion of THE elder dragon. Building an army of followers under Caithes command. Who all would move the moment the commander calls. 

The sheer political power the commander holds is insane. 

Ontop of the commander being one of the strongest mortal beings on planet tyria. 

Good luck with that Anet I guess. 

Edited June 24 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Liewec.2896]

it did feel very underwhelming, especially the boss fight.

they should have used Epoch in his big spider form like in the meta.

i had a theory about a cool final battle, but nah, we just hit him repeatedly until his health bar goes down and its over.

no interesting mechanics or anything.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

3 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

It's kinda difficult to make threatening villains now. 

The kryptis and Eparch were such a none threat in the end, paitha bringing (just) the commander to nayos is like bringing a Maschine gun to a knife fight. 

The best way someone described the current situation is like Buu Saga Goku having to fight a villain that would have been a threat in the Frieza Saga. 

It's extremely difficult to make a threatening villain after all we have been trough. Without some BS like Eparch making the commander feel fear. 

Bruh. The Commander looked an elder dragon directly in the eye and stood their ground. As if mister pointy legs could make the commander feel fear. 

And yes, the tyrian forces are still armed to the teeth from fighting elder dragons. 

And even more yes, they would all move if the commander says Go! The Commander is the literal savior of all of creation on planet tyria after all. Which is known to basically everyone. 

He also is the champion of THE elder dragon. Building an army of followers under Caithes command. Who all would move the moment the commander calls. 

The sheer political power the commander holds is insane. 

Ontop of the commander being one of the strongest mortal beings on planet tyria. 

Good luck with that Anet I guess. 

This is why Aurene should be permanently out, I have a feeling they won't resist bringing her back again...

The Pact should be disbanded, turn the Vigil into mercenaries that we have to fight and destroy so there's no major fighting force left to lean on.

Get rid of the Astral Ward, have them get busy with something in the mysts or just go back to disappear and being hands off like they've always been.

Approach the commander as a tired worn warfighter after over a decade of insane combat that should by all rights retire, but he's unable to, despite the degraded performance.

This way you don't have a mighty force to lean on and even the commander isn't as mighty anymore and you have the ground set for Anet vision with these mini expansions.

Scarlet worked great and is a fan favorite because she was a Sylvari and she was attacking our familiar places, Kexxes Hills was a high point of the story when we saw not just an outpost but a substantial area desimated followed by the broken tower that to this, day litters the area and brought a new heart quest and then the absolutely fantastic Attack on Lion's Arch.

Everyone knew Lion's Arch, in a time before guild halls or VIP lounges, Lion's Arch was not just the main HUB, it was the only HUB, any time of day and night it was always packed full of life, I never knew what the bank NPC looked liked because there was always too many players surrounding it, and then Scarlet destroyed everything, you'd have the feeling you're just a small part of it while everyone was running around and shouting, that original event had a real sense of chaos and urgency that the reworked in game version right now just doesn't, this is why I have little hope for great content because when all you had to do was bring something great back and you ruin it, how am I suppose to expect you can do something right... anyway...

Anet should focus on those types of villains, not some elder dragon, or some ancient God, or some fish bones from the mysts, and although I doubt they'll go around destroying old map again they could at least capture that feeling. Who knows, maybe that's what player housing is all about, give players a personal house for a few months and then destroy it, that'd be hilariously funny I'd love that.

[Axelteas.7192]

The final fight was the coolest Ive seen in my Mmorpg life.

The worst is having to fight the same mob kryptis groups every chaper hundreds of times, it's so boring, zero variety in enemies.

Edited June 24 by Axelteas.7192

[Rallicus.8367]

8 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Scarlet worked great and is a fan favorite 

Absolutely wild take my man. I'm not sure that many would agree that the Harley Quinn knockoff special snowflake is a fan favorite, though I get what you're saying in regards to her affect on the world and such. It is kind of disappointing to see a static world that doesn't feel "living" at all, one that never changes and which has NPCs spouting the same dialogue for the past decade. They could probably remedy this narratively by saying the Commander spends his time revisiting fractals of his past until a new expansion story comes out, but that might be too on the nose.

Anyway, I thought SOTO was decent overall and I don't think the Midnight King release was bad at all. Liked it better than the latter half of IBS and most of EoD. Maybe it's because I took over a year off after the release of Gyala Delve, having absolutely no faith after playing that content and returning with astronomically low expectations. I don't know. 

 

Edited June 24 by Rallicus.8367

[Randulf.7614]

Scarlet being a fan favourite was not on my bingo card for this year. And I had alien invasion on it..

[Zera.9435]

9 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Scarlet worked great and is a fan favorite because she was a Sylvari and she was attacking our familiar places, Kexxes Hills was a high point of the story when we saw not just an outpost but a substantial area desimated followed by the broken tower that to this, day litters the area and brought a new heart quest and then the absolutely fantastic Attack on Lion's Arch.

I kittening hate Scarlet. The only people who like Scarlet are psychopaths like Scarlet. Up until the very end of LS1, Scarlet was just a terrorist indiscriminately attacking everybody because she just wanted to see the world burn. It wasn't until after we kill her that ArenaNet pulled the rug from underneath us and said "Surprise! It was Mordremoth the whole time!"  Over a year of filler content with that terrorist.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

1 minute ago, Zera.9435 said:

Scarlet was just a terrorist

Yeah... a self interested one with concrete goals, that worked to further her plan and took everything she needed from her alliances.

There's no shortage of people like that.

 

[Zera.9435]

2 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Yeah... a self interested one with concrete goals, that worked to further her plan and took everything she needed from her alliances.

There's no shortage of people like that.

Yeah it's scary that there are people in this community that idolize her. People try to defend her by saying that because she was influenced by Mordremoth that she is the victim. No, she may have been influenced but her mind was her own when she did all the things that she did. She was not a mindless drone. My main character is a Sylvari, and was able to hear and understand Mordremoth's call but did not heed it. Unlike Scarlet, my character is not a demented psychopath.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

1 minute ago, Zera.9435 said:

it's scary that there are people in this community that idolize her

I'm not idolizing her, I'm saying she was a good villain because she was well written as a villain that worked to achieve her concrete goals. And the post mortem where we find her old house in dry top and all that was just the cherry on top on that story telling as we dealt with the lasting consequences of that war, we can go to the west side of LA and see a monument to the people she killed in the rightly colored jade. No other villain came close to being that well written or leaving such legacy, to this day we can stumble on thumpers left behind, we can fight the triple trouble which was the first world boss to require a team split and cross map coordination, we can the marionette which is the only world boss to take 50+ players and hinge the battle on single player individual talent on those platforms.

Meanwhile, look at Mordremorh, he sucked, Joko was straight out of a Sunday morning cartoon show, they big banged the deep sea dragon and they pulled Eparch from the drawer they keep they legally safe Chinese knock offs of generic villain #299792458.

 

[Zera.9435]

2 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

I'm not idolizing her, I'm saying she was a good villain because she was well written as a villain that worked to achieve her concrete goals. And the post mortem where we find her old house in dry top and all that was just the cherry on top on that story telling as we dealt with the lasting consequences of that war, we can go to the west side of LA and see a monument to the people she killed in the rightly colored jade. No other villain came close to being that well written or leaving such legacy, to this day we can stumble on thumpers left behind, we can fight the triple trouble which was the first world boss to require a team split and cross map coordination, we can the marionette which is the only world boss to take 50+ players and hinge the battle on single player individual talent on those platforms.

Meanwhile, look at Mordremorh, he sucked, Joko was straight out of a Sunday morning cartoon show, they big banged the deep sea dragon and they pulled Eparch from the drawer they keep they legally safe Chinese knock offs of generic villain #299792458.

 

Yeah but there are some who do idolize her. And I'm not saying Scarlet was badly written. She was well-written considering I hate her so kitten much (like Geoffrey from GoT). But she's still a goddamn psychopath (or a high functioning psychopath if you prefer). My hatred was simply compounded by the 'gotcha' reveal at the end of all that filler content, because up until then the entirety of that content had NOTHING to do with the elder dragons at all. It was a year of Scarlet Scarlet Scarlet. I just hate psychopaths.

The first Dragonbash came out and in-game we were all celebrating too kitten early acting like the dragons were no more. The whole Scarlet arc is something we should have been getting NOW, not immediately after Zhaitan was dealt with.

Heed my words, ArenaNet. Look back to the unique story that was LS1 which had nothing to do with the elder dragons until the very last second, and use that as inspiration for future content. There is plenty that you guys can do and build from that is not related to elder dragons.

[Palador.2170]

Lots of people HATED Scarlet when she was around, and I hate her still. She was poorly written. I'll say it.

There were some good ideas there, though, I'll grant them that. They just didn't know how to pull them off without making her feel cheap and unfair. They didn't know how to build her up properly without giving us shots at her, and then having her handwave it away with a "No, I get away because I said so!"

Anyway... They need to go with smaller stories now, because they can't count on someone having all of the expansions, especially going forward with the smaller ones. Plots need to be more self-contained. That makes it hard to build up to a big villain over time, but it also means that the Commander can't justify sending up a flare and calling in the Pact. The Commander is still powerful and feared/respected, but the smaller the conflict, the harder it is to justify them calling in the big guns.

[Poormany.4507]

54 minutes ago, Palador.2170 said:

Anyway... They need to go with smaller stories now, because they can't count on someone having all of the expansions, especially going forward with the smaller ones. Plots need to be more self-contained. That makes it hard to build up to a big villain over time, but it also means that the Commander can't justify sending up a flare and calling in the Pact. The Commander is still powerful and feared/respected, but the smaller the conflict, the harder it is to justify them calling in the big guns.

I really hope they give better reasons for not just "sending up a flare and calling in the Pact" than we got in SotO ("Oh noes, the shady secret wizards' club who are doing dangerous live experiments/torture on people for unknown benefits will get revealed! Nope, can't let that happen. Let's just trust this unknown demon lady's voice in my head instead cuz I'm the Wayfinder now 🤪").

Edited June 25 by Poormany.4507

[Randulf.7614]

18 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

I'm not idolizing her, I'm saying she was a good villain because she was well written as a villain that worked to achieve her concrete goals. And the post mortem where we find her old house in dry top and all that was just the cherry on top on that story telling as we dealt with the lasting consequences of that war, we can go to the west side of LA and see a monument to the people she killed in the rightly colored jade. No other villain came close to being that well written or leaving such legacy, to this day we can stumble on thumpers left behind, we can fight the triple trouble which was the first world boss to require a team split and cross map coordination, we can the marionette which is the only world boss to take 50+ players and hinge the battle on single player individual talent on those platforms.

Meanwhile, look at Mordremorh, he sucked, Joko was straight out of a Sunday morning cartoon show, they big banged the deep sea dragon and they pulled Eparch from the drawer they keep they legally safe Chinese knock offs of generic villain #299792458.

 

Most of Scarlet's backstory and writing was added later though. At the time, there was next to nothing. All the stuff in Dry Top was added because of the volume of complaints about the lack of character work they did. Scarlet - at the time of LS1 - was no better than Eparch and certainly worse than Joko in terms of cartoon villainry. She had potential as the opposite foil to our character, but in the end she was just written in a way that she could do anything the plot needed to do even if it didn't make sense. Little to no backstory or context for her motivations until LS2 came along and cleared up the problems after lengthy back and forth discussions between players and devs asking for... something.

You are right though about Mordy and Eparch (and Balthazar as well), but I'd not overlook Caudecus. Whilst patchy in terms of his appearances, I'd say he was one of the best written villains we have had, alongside perhaps Bangar and Jormag too (up until DRMS/Champions came along and undid a lot of the good work being built). They were given time at least and subtleties Scarlet, The Dragons, Balthazar never had during the time of their appearance

[Sweetbread.3678]

Scarlet (or just GW2's storytelling in general) definitely works better in retrospect. The season 2 stuff fleshed her out a lot, and the revamped season 1 had some newly added context as well (I think?), so she definitely reads better now that the full story is available. The main issue with Scarlet was that the original Season 1 content was so scattershot, drip feeded, and FOMO heavy that, at the time, it felt like the story had absolutely 0 direction and if you missed an event you just permanently had no idea what was going on. Scarlet was the connective tissue between all of these random enemy factions of the month doing their random bad guy kitten, but then it took months for her to even show up, and then months more for her plan to start making sense. The payoff with LA being destroyed and Mordy waking up was cool, but by the time we got there, the whole storyline had just dragged on for so long and with so little focus, that everyone was pretty over Scarlet in general. She basically became the mascot for a decent MMO plotline being told in the absolute worst way, anti-player way possible.

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

alongside perhaps Bangar and Jormag too (up until DRMS/Champions came along and undid a lot of the good work being built).

Bangar is sooo underrated. Unfortunately they killed all the good they had going with him already with Ryland taking over. It was a very cheap forced cliffhanger for its own sake.

It was also a good precedence on how you can still make a villain that rivals commander. Bangar was cunning, smarter than us. Feels bad but we were never the smart ones. His rally was smart and made everyone second guess the commander. And if you have a civil war of some kind you cant just unleash commander to murder everyone. If we just started murdering every Charr that followed Bangar, who was legitimate leader, Charr would not be happy about it regardless of their allegiance.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 6/24/2024 at 3:44 PM, Axelteas.7192 said:

The final fight was the coolest Ive seen in my Mmorpg life.

I guess you are rather new to GW2 and have not fought any other story bosses yet?

The Eparch story fight was lame; way too easy, simple mechanics. It does not hold a candle to, let's say, the final Balthazar story fight in PoF, which had much cooler mechanics.

[Teknomancer.4895]

On 6/24/2024 at 5:36 AM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

He also is the champion of THE elder dragon. Building an army of followers under Caithes command. Who all would move the moment the commander calls. 

I still think we should have mulched her back in the Silverwastes, but point taken.