190 replies to this topic

[Fritanga]

Last night I was running around and started thinking about some of the info we have learned in recent days. In talking with a few guildmates, I have come to a conclusion which will most likely piss off a lot of people.

We are returning to Southsun.

Hear me out on this,

• Aidan Taylor tweeted a while back about how he was working on a massive invasion.
  
• In Southsun, we have those Asura Megalasers and trebuchets which have not been used yet (not even in the initial invasion on Southsun).
  
• Somewhere recently an NPC has said Scarlet is fascinated by islands.
  
• The Mysterious Devices seem to surround all the areas around Southsun pretty thickly.

In addition to this, there are many practical reasons to use Southsun:

• They don't have to create a new zone (and risk spreading the population out more, as has been said in interviews)
  
• They can utilize resources pretty much ignored and forgotten and bring new attention there.
  
• Southsun has some pretty interesting stuff from a lore perspective around it. The next living story season could go in a multitude of directions based on starting at Southsun
  
• it sort-of bookends the entire living story season (it started at Southsun, it ends at Southsun).

While the last thing many people want is to head to Southsun for any reason, it seems very likely to me that we will head back there again. To me, it feels like they are trying to force content into the zone in an attempt to cover the fail that is Southsun. On another approach, they admitted today in a live stream that they had some real issues with pacing and its possible that the entire Scarlet thing was around Southsun from the beginning and it was planned to be around it, they just really had pacing problems which Southsun really became to represent. Maybe after all this is said and done, Southsun might become a decent place to go?

[Noctis]

What people hoped for was: an epic entrance of Primordus, glorious Tengu, new amazing enemies and unseen before fights.


What we're getting: a screaming wurmy phallic symbol for zergs to smash every day according to timers and a five-storied high stripper.


I'm torn between gleeful Schadenfreude and genuine sadness.

[Fritanga]

What I wonder is if the 5-story tall stripper will give the Fractal guy a lapdance or if that costs extra.

[CriticKitten]

Noctis, on 14 January 2014 - 02:29 PM, said:

-snip-

See, your mistake was expecting anything out of the Living Story.

My optimistic outlook on the potential of Living Story died shortly after they took what could have been a great tale that developed the background story of the krait and their religion in-game, and ended when they summoned their "gods" to lay waste to Tyria in a multi-week epic....and turned it into yet another alliance formed by Scarlet for no good reason.  Because that was the point at which everything snapped into place for me.  I realized that it wasn't coincidence that the Personal Story ignored the existence of every other dragon and only focused on Zhaitan.  It's that the writers are incapable of telling stories independently.  Thus why the player, whose role is to defeat ALL the dragons, spends the entire Personal Story focusing on exactly one dragon: the one that Trehearne needs to kill to complete his Focus Wyld Hunt.  And this is also why every single event that takes place in the story is caused by Zhaitan, while the other dragons presumably sit in the corner and knit.

Everything in the Living Story, to date, just had to be connected through some increasingly over-complex story weaving, with Scarlet at the head.  They wanted to tell a bunch of different stories and focus on many different themes and zones, and then tied it all together with one big bow that reads "Scarlet".  Heck, they couldn't even tell the Fractal story without her.  And the reason is pretty simple: because they just can't let things run independently of each other.  Methinks the only reason SAB's story isn't also connected to Scarlet is because it was originally added as a joke and they never actually had a story laid out at the time because no one expected it to be popular.

So as soon as they put those probes in the ground, it was obvious that Scarlet was involved.  Because the writers just cannot let a story sit by itself, on its own merits.  They view their Living Story as a TV show (even calling it a "season") with only one big overarching plot line, and all of the "episodes" must be tied to that one plot line.  What they need to do is read up on the concept of "Monster of the Day" flavored TV shows.  Because those are way more popular for a very good reason: when it's always the same bad guys doing roughly the same things, things get stale fast.  Even comics had the good sense to introduce TONS of villains for just this reason.

[Fritanga]

Its not really quantity of villains, but quality that is the issue. When everything was stacked up against Zhaitan, people accepted it simply because Zhaitan was the one villain. The issue with the living story to date is not the bad story and its not the bad villain. The real problem they have had is that they have not been able to tell all their story in-game. Take the recent Southsun incident as an example.

When we went to Southsun after Flame and Frost, players just experienced a fantastic expansion of the game world. There were open-world quests going on, achievements, new story zones, a fantastic dungeon, and new characters all present in Flame and Frost. Southsun gave us an obscure villain from 6-months back, a couple traditional-style quests, a crappy story instance, and a copy of the crappy story instance with another thing to fight. When all is said and done, we know that Southsun had something to do with contracts on refugees displaced from the molten alliance and Canach was pissed about something (but we never knew what).

The reality is, though, that we were introduced to the players in Southsun back when the island was added back in November of the previous year. Ellen Kiel led the Lionguard push into the island and was placed in charge of the Lionguard presence on the island. Canach was a representative of The Consortium who got into some hot water after the Karka Incident in Lion's Arch. Canach then moved on afterwards and scavenged the Molen Facility's wreckage for tools to aid him in his fight against The Consortium. He stole a golem from one of the higher-ups and reprogrammed it for some dastardly duty. He may have even killed people. Canach was really a badass and a fierce individual. The Southsun content is actually a very fitting wrapup to what had happened on the island back in November of the previous year.

In the Southsun incidents, Canach had much backstory provided by Blog posts by ArenaNet which most more than likely did not read. Even more, it actually took almost 7 months to wrap-up the Southsun story, leaving a stagnant island which nobody gave a crap about in a state of flux while waiting for something to happen. Realistically, had the Karka incident happened in November, the Lionguard investigation happened along with Wintersday in December, Flame and Frost in January, and then Southsun return in February, it would have made much more sense and would have been more engaging for the players. Had their cutscenes like they had with the last part of Tower of Nightmares been in place during this to tell Canach's story a bit more, or perhaps even Ellen Kiel's backstory, I think that people would have found Southsun to be a pretty cool event. Where the problem comes around is not the overall story, but how much they drew it out and how bad they have been about in-game storytelling with the updates.

One thing that can be gotten from recent interviews is that they have learned more about pacing (the drawn-out problem) and the storytelling elements (with Cutscenes likes we saw in Tower of Nightmares). I am very hopeful that they learned their lessons from season one and make a splash with season 2 with more content in the updates and better story telling. They are telling a good story, just not packaging it well.

TL;DR version: They summarized the entire living story between November 2012 and January 2014 in a two-minute video and covered literally everything. The problem isn't the story, but the piss-poor development time and the poor execution of telling that story.

[Fritanga]

Not going to lie, I sort-of hope that we end up with a new batch of personal story leading to another Elder Dragon with Trahearn calling the shots a-la Charlie in Charlie's Angels (in that we don't have to do missions with him much and he just tells us whats going on) and we along with Braham, Rox, Marjory, Kasameer, and the as-of-yet-unidentified Asura go and fight our way and help the Pact get another Dragon Kill under their belts. I would love for this to take place in a steampunk-y western environment (like Firefly or Trigun) where we deal with magic and a steaming pile of GW1 lore. If its the Maguuma Wastes, give us the Mursaat and the Seers, the Bloodstone, the White Mantle. Take us to remote towns where things are wild and out of control where we are dropped in by airship and meet the roughest Norn seeking personal glory, wisecracking Asura bartenders who are secretly trying to harness the power of the region for their own gains, nefarious gladiums of the Charr legions who keep order as sheriffs in those towns, Sylvari have to become a little more cactus-like in order to survive the long treks in search of the other Pale Tree, and Humans are out there just trying to escape the confines and big-city life of Devinity's Reach.

If its the Crystal Desert, I truly hope that the gate in Ebonhawke is just a red herring and that we really go in through Orr. Let us be taken through a mystical journey continuing the story of the Elder Dragons being siphons of magic. Take us to Krait obelisks near the bandit causeway and into the desert where much of the stuff in the Maguuma wastes listed above can still apply. Instead of dealing with the bloodstone, let us deal with the Forgotten, Palawa Joko, Ascension, Glint, Kralkatoric, Those who have escaped Elona and are searching for a new life.

The world is a rich place ripe for some amazing stories to take place. I am enthusiastic and excited about what can be, I just hope that what they give us is something great.

[Unholy]

Scarlet is just a toy of the dragons who are in turn manipulated by Abaddon. Abaddon was brought back to life by a ritual of the other 6 gods, hypnotized by Oink. Oink is the true master of the universe. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-OINK.

[Fritanga]

Yes to Oink being the key.

I doubt it was Abaddon behind the dragons. I don't believe it was him simply because he was responsible for bringing magic to the world in the first place. In fact, when the races got magic, it was too much and too powerful. They made the Bloodstones to contain the magic and break it into parts so that no one being could harness all the power of the magic.

There is magic older than when Adaddon granted it to the people. Ritualists from Cantha were able to harness powers of their ancestors in a form which resembled magic. They were buffed when Magic was granted to the world though. Likewise, the Jotun claim that magic was around when the Elder Dragons were last awake, but it was chaotic and uncontrollable. The Jotun supposedly actually controlled very powerful magic in the past prior to the gods even coming to Tyria though.

Likewise, the Mursaat and Seers had magic which they used to fight one another. The Seers were ultimately defeated through Spectral Agony (a form of magic spell), prior to the gods coming to Tyria.

[Noctis]

CriticKitten, on 20 January 2014 - 10:59 AM, said:

stuff

Oh, no, Kat, I got disillusioned with the crap that we got for the Jubilee. That was the time I saw what all this Living Story truly was aiming to do: shove as much non-content and pretend lore and shiny, but ultimately meaningless stuff down our throats and hand it over to PR to spin. "GW2 is the fastest and most updated MMO! We have updates and new content every two weeks! Look how great we are!" In reality the quality of their execution was always pretty bad. We just hoped against all hopes that they would improve. They did a bit, but not nearly enough.

Jubilee was the best example. They had all this possible background in the personal story, all the mystery with steam creature portals and the great collapse just oozing with potential for a dungeon, complex intrigue and rich story lines, but they traded it for a two-week long farm fest and anticlimactic Scarlet reveal. That's literally having all the best possible tools and conditions to do great stuff and only delivering mediocre content.

The same has continued for the rest of the year. Rehashed Halloween and Wintersday. Achievement hunting instead of actual story. And so on.


Also to Frits point: a good idea delivered badly is still a bad overall story. Even if they had some good ideas at the concept stages they still screwed them up with the delivery. If a book has a good premise but is writted really badly so that you can not really enjoy reading it it's still a bad book. If a movie has a good initial script, but is filled with bad directing, bad acting and bad cinematography its still a bad movie.

They had some interesting ideas, even some really great moments, but overall this year of Living Story has been a huge disappointment.  


At this point I'm pretty confident in Anets ability to fuck up a good thing. I have lost most of my investment in the story and lore and I just want to kick back and see how they are gonna scramble to salvage what they themselves fucked up.

[Fritanga]

it just strikes me that the Lore keepers of the game wrote some good crap that was just turned into dribble by the production staff. I guess what I am trying to say is that it feels to me like when they make a movie from a book. Not everything translates well and they sometimes omit things which made the book so cool.

Think of it like Lord of the Rings, only instead of omitting the Tom Bobadill stuff like they did in the film, if the film left out the Rivendel scenes. The fellowship of the ring would come out as a very different movie that way. Thats pretty much how I feel about this living story. If they made it a book, I would buy it and I would read it. I most likely would greatly enjoy it as well. The game interpretation as a story is just somewhat lacking.

[CriticKitten]

Fritanga, on 20 January 2014 - 12:14 PM, said:

Its not really quantity of villains, but quality that is the issue. When everything was stacked up against Zhaitan, people accepted it simply because Zhaitan was the one villain.

But that's just it....he's NOT the one villain.  There were five established ones (and a sixth incoming), and we just opted to completely ignore four of them.  Then, to compound the problem, instead of making the story continue to focus on them, we spent a full year deviated away from them to focus on Scarlet.

But that would be fine if they had been smart about the way they handled the other stories.  But they weren't.  They made all of these different settings and situations, and then botched the lot of them by tying them back to Scarlet.

Quote

The real problem they have had is that they have not been able to tell all their story in-game.

That's a problem too, but it's not the biggest one.  The biggest problem is that they want to tell their story like a TV show, but don't understand how to tell a story in that fashion at all.

TV shows have a designated number of episodes per season in which to highlight the characters, the motivations, the settings, the plot, etc for that season.  Usually it's 13 episodes or so, done weekly and crammed into less than a year's span.  The Living Story has been going on for much longer than a television show, and has delivered much less than any TV show could.  And that's because, when you know how long your story needs to be, you can write it to fit within those bounds, adding enough depth for that length without overstretching it.  The Living Story, by comparison, is a very short story that has been stretched well beyond its limits, and they're still trying to stretch it even further (see: the fact that it won't end until MARCH).

Their content is too thinly spread and too rushed to be of any significant bulk.  I find it amusing that so many point to Flame and Frost as some of their best story content in the past.  Looking back, I think F&F is the very first evidence that the Living Story was never going to live up to its hype.  For over three months, we were focused on minor trivial tasks like fixing signposts and finding lost family trinkets.  There was some semblance of a story but it wasn't very bulky.  Characters weren't being developed, the plot wasn't very well laid out, and little was known of the situation until the end (when it was all rushed out at the last minute in a big "splooge" of story).  Most of the actual time was wasted, as they tried to spread a relatively small story over a long period of time, like a dab of butter across a loaf of bread.

And really, that's a good metaphor for the Living Story itself, and for all of the parts that followed F&F.  Despite all the characters, settings, and alliances they've introduced....there is almost no actual depth to the story at all.  In fact, it's had less and less depth as time's gone on.  Scarlet has very little in-game back story, and no visible motivations for her actions.  Most of the characters have been introduced in almost absurdly coincidental manners rather than having it make any sort of sense.  The plot is still anyone's guess.  All while ANet assures us that there's lots of story behind this, but refuses to tell any of it.  They're spreading the story much, much too thin, which is why it's so damn easy to summarize: there's not a lot there.

And it's sad, because they have shitloads of lore from GW1 to draw upon, and lots of effort was clearly put into the world they built with the initial release, with all different manners of factions and races of varying creeds and beliefs.  And they're choosing to ignore all that (or in some cases, retroactively toss it aside) in favor of this very thinly-spread story that lacks the meat to keep us invested even a few weeks at a time, let alone months.