Thoughts on living season 4...spoilers obvously

[Bast.7253]

It's just all really frustrating. Especially when the gaps are further out and far more inconsistent than they were in season 3. Perhaps this living story delivery system worked better for my personal taste when the story wasn't quite as linear like Season 3. I kind of feel like this season and its story chapters would be far better played out like Path of Fire - consecutively and released at the same time within the constraints of an expansion.

Anyone else feel similarly or prefer a living season with stand-alone chapters that, although they have an overarching and ongoing story, have their own minor victories and resolutions without each episode trying to 1-up the last with civilization/world/reality ending threats looming over us?

I like that they're pushing the story with these episodes, but is it too far? Is it too far for a plot that's this linear and episodic that leaves months in between? Maybe a bit too much drama?

I mean I get that some people will view me as implying that they're wrong if they do and they're wrong if they don't, but I don't remember being this frustrated with the release schedule last season.

Impatience aside, I just don't know how I feel about this potentially being a continuing trend for season 5.

And where does the commander even go from here in future stories? We're facing the literal end of reality with no hope, so it feels like everything we face after this will just be a cakewalk and we can just shrug it off as "I've seen worse."

And that part scares me because then the only way to not get to that point is seemingly to stretch out our current predicament which can't really happen either because we've been repeatedly beaten with the idea that we have to act NOW or everything is doomed.

I mean, at least if Aurene comes back into the picture and saves the day, the next time we face this threat it's believably just as imposing because Aurene would have fulfilled her destiny and we won't have her to fall back on this time.

I really like the idea of the elder dragons, and I'd love to finally get something on the Deep Sea Dragon, but I'm starting to see why so many people want to be done with them all together. And I feel like that's more true for me than ever due to how far they've taken Kralk and how much they've inflated him. I mean, threatening reality itself? How would another elder dragon plot ever have the same impact as this one?

I guess an underlying question to close out my thoughts is:

Do you feel like they've gone too far?

[ugrakarma.9416]

Maybe the new scenario is not so catastrophic, they can play the card of "Kralkatorrik is injured". And we do not know if he fled to Mists or to another place in Tyria.

Even if Aurene comes back, the plot has the problem of "end game" scenario: Aurene Turning an Elder Dragon is virtually an end-game, who will oppose commander, a champion of the new, overpowered Elder Dragon?

Anyone else feel similarly or prefer a living season with stand-alone chapters that, although they have an overarching and ongoing story, have their own minor victories and resolutions without each episode trying to 1-up the last with civilization/world/reality ending threats looming over us?

Sure I'd rather fight minor villains like Caudecus or Joko. because1 - We'll have excuses to explore more maps, a new villain coming in an X or Y region.2 - Regional villains give, less concern about "transformation of the world". "all civilizations destroyed, we need to remake all maps".3 - Its avoid Dragon Ball Z effects, benefits immersion while we can just assume we have won through "skills" not super magical powers. For example, remember Sohotin, why Rytlock simply did not give her to the commander again?

[Bast.7253]

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:Maybe the new scenario is not so catastrophic, they can play the card of "Kralkatorrik is injured". And we do not know if he fled to Mists or to another place in Tyria.

Even if Aurene comes back, the plot has the problem of "end game" scenario: Aurene Turning an Elder Dragon is virtually an end-game, who will oppose commander, a champion of the new, overpowered Elder Dragon?

Anyone else feel similarly or prefer a living season with stand-alone chapters that, although they have an overarching and ongoing story, have their own minor victories and resolutions without each episode trying to 1-up the last with civilization/world/reality ending threats looming over us?

Sure I'd rather fight minor villains like Caudecus or Joko. because1 - We'll have excuses to explore more maps, a new villain coming in an X or Y region.2 - Regional villains give, less concern about "transformation of the world". "all civilizations destroyed, we need to remake all maps".3 - Its avoid

Dragon Ball Z

effects, benefits immersion while we can just assume we have won through "skills" not super magical powers. For example, remember

Sohotin

, why Rytlock simply did not give her to the commander again?

Well, to the first part, I think that's part of the reason they wrote her to die this episode though. To break the bond with her so we are no longer her "champion." I mean, this bond was really only necessary to help her fulfill her destiny. So writing it as though she has no immediate involvement in our affairs from now on would be pretty easy.

No matter what way you kill Kralk you could face that problem though. Either, you find another dragon and that dragon though more neutral than Aurene, still potentially favors you and lends their guidance to you. Or you find some weapon or artifact that arguably could be used against any threat. We do it on our own and suddenly we've just beat this "endgame" reality eating dragon and suddenly every other enemy here on out is trivial.

I feel like it would be a lot easier to write Aurene to be something other than our fairy dragon mother guardian figure than people are giving credit for. They're just basing it off of what's happened so far - Balthazar and Joko. But Balthazar we stood no chance against without her and needed a magic sponge and she was already being held captive by Balthazar, and Joko was the lich that was needed as one of the signs.... meaning that she was kind of destined to be involved in that.

The ONLY exception to her not having neutrality toward future threats would be elder dragon threats. And given that she knows the balance would be tipped and she can't just kill them as she's been with us on this ride, she'll know that the only thing she can really do is help fight other dragon's minions/empower us/guide us towards a solution.

It all works out pretty easily.

And yeah, I was really hoping for season 5 to be more akin to season 3 in that we kind of jump around a bit. And maybe that's part of the plan. They knew they couldn't do Kralk justice by finishing him halfway through the season and then spending the rest building up to an expansion. With season 5 they could do smaller story, touch up on unresolved plots or things that players have always been kind of curious about, and find a way to tie them together without having such a huge focus on one major villain that trumps all other villains.

They haven't really touched on the idea of the mists merging with Tyria and what could be entering Tyria in the process.

In the end, it's just a waiting game.

[Randulf.7614]

I'm conflicted here. LS3 provides much more variety (esp for alt play) and the stand alone stuff is def my preferred way forward for episodic content (and I'm not in a fan of episodic content). However, I found the jumping around different parts of a very large World very jarring. Whilst I will always prefer GW2 to GW1, what GW1 always got right was the sense of progression in our journey. We logically moved through a map. Thunderhead broke that and was the start of many things that I hated about ep5.

LS4 has not been a good example of consistent storytelling. It started strongly enough with 1 and then 2 was outstanding, 3 was a complete disaster, 4 was decent to play, but largely forgettable to me (I can barely remember what happened) and 5 was dreadful until the end sequence which (just) saved it. But then again, LS3 was just about as inconsistent.

I don't know what the answer is really, but I can empathise that the final 3 have felt less stand alone and thus more protracted, especially as ep5 didn't really build throughout the short epsidoe then bunged it all into the finale and left us with a cliffhanger for 3+months. I guess can live with the protraction as I no longer play the game daily and have moved to playing better quality story based games between patches. I'd be happy if there was consistency and a narrative that felt like it was well planned out (kill dragons, can't kill dragons, save dragons, kill dragons..), but neither of those feel like they are in place to me.

[perilisk.1874]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:It's just all really frustrating. Especially when the gaps are further out and far more inconsistent than they were in season 3. Perhaps this living story delivery system worked better for my personal taste when the story wasn't quite as linear like Season 3. I kind of feel like this season and its story chapters would be far better played out like Path of Fire - consecutively and released at the same time within the constraints of an expansion.

Anyone else feel similarly or prefer a living season with stand-alone chapters that, although they have an overarching and ongoing story, have their own minor victories and resolutions without each episode trying to 1-up the last with civilization/world/reality ending threats looming over us?

Agreed - for whatever reason, it felt worse with the ending of episode 5, but really it was just as bad with episode 4. "Kraalkatorik is eating the universe! DOOM. Well, while other people look for the dragon we are specially bonded to and figure out a military plan, let's spend 3 months farming Istan and playing with Tixx."

It's not that the story itself is bad, though after this arc it's definitely due for a cooldown. It's just that it would fit an expansion a lot better than a seasonal release format.

Earlier seasons worked better -- each episode usually had a somewhat self-contained story and the season ended right before Kittens Got Real, leaving the expansion to deal with the urgent part, or else it got real and got dealt with in the same episode (e.g. the Battle for LA). The first half of season 4 was fine, with some logical breaks between episodes. From episode 4 on, the pacing seems off.

Hopefully we end things with finality next episode, and season 5 gets back to the pacing of earlier episodes with some almost-standalone Problem of the Week Season releases.