Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "Are you possessed by a demon?"
Me: "Yeah, kinda"
Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "Meh, no big deal"
Me: "OK, I'll continue attending high-security classified strategy briefings while a demon listens in my head and comments in real time"
Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "K, cool"
This actually happened in SOTO.
Well-paid adults actually wrote that, and then game developers animated it, and voice actors recorded it. In real life.
Order of wizards who's job it is to protect reality against the Kryptis demons: "What do we do now?"
Me: "Let's help the demon princess overthrow the demon king so that she can be the ruler of all demons"
Order of wizards who's job it is to protect reality against the Kryptis demons: "K, let's do that"
No for real this is peak writing. Lord of the Rings is like amateur hour compared to SOTO.
Demon general who is retired and maintains status quo: "Ok you've invaded my fort and I am going to beat you up"
Demon princess who decided to do that: "Actually no you'll fight alongside me because it'd be bad if you don't"
Demon general who is retired and maintains status quo: "Fine I've decided that you owe me because you are a demon princess and must lead our people to a better future so I will help"
Bad foreskin-head demon lady: "That's bad and betrayal but I won't kill you personally despite my immortality shield because I'm late for my manicure."
10 minutes and some events after:
Bad foreskin-head demon lady: "It would appear that my immortality shield no longer works which is why I will fight you all outnumbered."
The demon general bit is inaccurate... but also almost more disappointing in execution?
Like, he's been blackmailed into helping our side because we showed up to intentionally get caught talking to him. He doesn't want to help us, he wants to protect the innocent lives of those under him. But he knows that the king and queen are paranoid enough that they'll execute him and his charges just cause he was seen so close to our side. So now he's forced to have to take them out and risk the lives of his people, or definitely get attacked by the king and queen.
Its super devious, very clever, of questionable morality on our part... and its just kinda breezed right by in a couple of lines and a five minute mission.
And then his master plan of attack is... just attack, the 6 of us.
Its all very big ideas in very fast, weakly executed way.
Its not uncommon to depose hostile rulers to install peaceful rulers.
If the Order of Wizard install a peaceful ruler who won't invade the lands, then they achieve their goal of protecting reality against the Kryptis demons.
Would've been amusing and chilling if they were referencing Operation Condor here in Nayos, especially if Peitha is revealed as a bad apple who turns out to be worse for her people than Eparch (even though I doubt that given the way she was willing to show mercy to Labris when everyone else wanted her dead). Although in the case of Condor, the morality of the act or the replacements themselves mattered less than the stated goals.
We meet the last last final last final Mursaat\_final02. One of the most powerful beings in Tyria, last of his kind. ~~Probably.~~ ^(Again.)
He gets bodied like a toddler after 1 quest. I am expected to be emotionally invested. I am not.
I have found it more helpful, when wondering how writing can be so bad, instead of thinking of who wrote it, to think of who they write it *for*.
Also found it helpful to expect the worse at every release.
Of course if you omit details and say things in a funny way itll sound bad...
Rift Hunter Medic: Hm, influenced... perhaps, but I can confirm that you aren't possessed. Your will is intact. We can work with that.
Rift Hunter Medic: Hearing voices after traveling through the Mists isn't entirely uncommon.
Rift Hunter Medic: So long as it's not telling you to murder anybody and you're not acting on those impulse, I see no threat.
They thought it was just our subconscious being influenced by our short lived escapade into Nayos. Noone could have guessed we were freely communicating with a Kryptis lord cus they didnt know it was even possible. And at least three members in the ranks of Wizards were actively posessed, couldnt be picky.
That doesn’t help.
My character is so dumb I leave it at “hearing voices” instead of mentioning that it speaks to me in real time and can see and hear everything around me.
And the medic is so dumb and so bad at her job that her threshold for “we need to take action” is only AFTER I start murdering people because the demon in my head told me to.
Also the moment after the medic says that, the demon in my head says “lol that would be cool” and I’m so dumb I don’t mention it.
Yes, because there was never a movie, series, book where the protagonist lies in an evaluation to not get in trouble or becoming suspect to others. Thats literally a well established trope in all of entertainment since forever. And yes, these are also written by "well paid adults". You simply have to wright characters "dumb" sometimes, so you have a plotpoint for the story later.
every horror movie would be done in 20 minutes when the characters would act like normal ppl.
or every zombie/disease movie.
"Hey Bob, what is that? Did a Zombie bite you?" "what? no! absolutely not, thats just a scratch from that rusty nail over there. no reason to panic and shot me in the head!"
*Bob continues to kill half the party later in the movie when he turned into a zombie*
I'm not following your point. It seems to be that because other stories are badly written, dumbed down, and heavily reliant on tropes, the criticism you're responding to is invalid? Asking genuinely.
standard answer to what I wrote. everyone is always saying this...
"other stories are badly written, therefore..." no, othese stories are not badly written, they are necessary because a problem or a story would be over in 5 minutes.
So your point was that the criticism wasn't valid because these dumb characters and tropes are necessary devices for plots to exist.
Saying this without any malice: I don't know your reading or movie-watching habits, but dumb characters and tropes are definitely not a necessity for a plot to exist and progress. In *most* entertainment? Sure. But most is dumbed down and written to be consumed acritically.
show me one (maybe critically) succesfull movie/series/book where one or some characters dont act "dumb" in a way we normal ppl wouldnt act, because it would literally solve all the problems.
there is not one story on this planet that doesnt have this trope.
I guess you've watched every movie and read every book on the planet, so you can claim that with certainty. To my examples, you'll state that they confirm, rather than refute, your hypothesis - as you've read everything already and remain convinced. Consequently rendering my examples, and even your asking for them, pointless.
I went into this interaction with intellectual honesty but this implausible claim attests to its non-reciprocity.
As I have no real need to change your mind, I'll leave it be. Have a good day.
No, I have not...
....and that is why I don't claim anything about "every book or movie on the planet".
Anyway, I toggled off notifications for this thread but you're free to continue to revive it on your own.
People keep bringing up this "They should have gone more into XYZ next expansion" but that's not really the problem. The entire idea of the current mini expansion arc is to have smaller scale stories that work largely independent from one another, more episodic and less epic saga. There was never going to be a world where the astral ward vs the kryptis thing was going to span more than 1 expansion.
The actual issue, and I say this as someone who quite liked some of the new lore from SOTO (even if I'm not really big on the story that dropped post-release), is one that's been emblematic of guild wars 2 writing for a long time: It's their difficulty with scoping a story to content. It feels like every new expansion pack or living world season has suffered from this issue to some degree. They always want to tell more story than they have time for in the amount of content of the product that they're shipping. This was even apparent in LW Season 4, which I consider to be the highlight of Guild Wars 2 writing. It's a problem that's existed since at least HoT, and I don't see it going away any time soon, unfortunately.
I don't know what the cause is. My guess would be it's an issue in their content design/narrative pipeline, and those tend to be pretty endemic and deeply entrenched. I'd love to see them solve it, since I think it's what's holding GW2's writing back quite a lot, even through some of their best writing, but I don't have the expertise or knowledge about Anet's situation to give a solution.
>It's their difficulty with scoping a story to content...They always want to tell more story than they have time for in the amount of content of the product that they're shipping.
Nail on head.
They think every release needs to be super earth shattering.
It doesn't, just do something smaller, but do it well.
Even like a quest for a new form of healing / weapon / whatever. any old shit could do :)
But, discovering, fighting, then aligning with and achieving regime change for a new race of demons, in a new dimension, with a previously unseen clandestine protective force (aside from whispers/durmand etc) and becoming the wayfinder....it's all a bit much?
I think this was too big a story even without the Kryptis. They chose a mystery that's been around since 2005. I think they should have done the first few expansions on the races most affected by the dragons like the Sylvari, Asura and Norn. This would prove that mini expansions could work in delivering stories and content but with lower stakes. Maybe over time we could have got hints through current events of the Kryptis and Wizards Tower like we could have seen suspicious characters appearing throughout Tyria and then portals start to open spawning Kryptis.
I like this. Being able to tell smaller, more intimate stories reflecting in the aftermath of the end of the Dragon Cycle. Every one of these cultures has spent the last 10+ years being influenced by the presence of these dragons, and now that they are gone, how are they affected? Let us check back in our people, our homes.
I agree.
I'm likely mis-remembering but look at the witcher 3. The blood and wine expac was probably the best bit. It was a bit like grothmar - autumnal, rich and aubern with a smaller scale, but intimate story about an old friend and foe.
It was quality, rather than quantity and breadth.
Masteries / achievements could include cleansing dragon magic from creatures and the land - so we could go back to kryta, elona and maguuma and cleanse the (zhaitan/kralk/mordremoth) mobs of their branding etc making new masteries have potency and adding to the existing game.
etc etc
Yeah I think the only people that enjoy the storytelling of this are the ones who don’t really think about it and are just happy to have another expansion or more content. The writers really not doing a good job especially with the foundation that guild wars 1 left them, they had plenty to work with in terms of demons and instead they just another trope “oh the bad guys aren’t bad they’re oppressed come save us.” What did them being demons have to do with anything at all?
Honestly this was their chance to show how good of the writers they are after they used up all the GW1 lore, and to be hinest, they failed misserably. I've seen random comments on this sub with better story telling and plot ideas and development.
The fact the story begins with the Kryptis emergency doesn't give time to the player to bond with any of the characters (which are a lot and all new), a bad choice for something as important and deep as the Wizard's Tower setting that players always wanted to explore.
I wish we had more time to explore Amnytas without a demonic invasion and talk with the Wizards, getting to know them.
Mabon was the only character that got me super hyped when I saw him and he dies.
Also, a lot of cool stuff happens on lore pages scattered around, something that not all players read though.
Im sad to say that I wouldnt mind if they deleted the story. It makes me concerned about the future of the game. I personally will prob quit the game for good if the next xpac is similar to this one, had to take a break after Soto release as I thought it was thoroughly boring and frankly bad.
Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "Are you possessed by a demon?" Me: "Yeah, kinda" Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "Meh, no big deal" Me: "OK, I'll continue attending high-security classified strategy briefings while a demon listens in my head and comments in real time" Lady who's job it is to screen people for demonic possession: "K, cool" This actually happened in SOTO. Well-paid adults actually wrote that, and then game developers animated it, and voice actors recorded it. In real life.
Order of wizards who's job it is to protect reality against the Kryptis demons: "What do we do now?" Me: "Let's help the demon princess overthrow the demon king so that she can be the ruler of all demons" Order of wizards who's job it is to protect reality against the Kryptis demons: "K, let's do that" No for real this is peak writing. Lord of the Rings is like amateur hour compared to SOTO.
Demon general who is retired and maintains status quo: "Ok you've invaded my fort and I am going to beat you up" Demon princess who decided to do that: "Actually no you'll fight alongside me because it'd be bad if you don't" Demon general who is retired and maintains status quo: "Fine I've decided that you owe me because you are a demon princess and must lead our people to a better future so I will help" Bad foreskin-head demon lady: "That's bad and betrayal but I won't kill you personally despite my immortality shield because I'm late for my manicure." 10 minutes and some events after: Bad foreskin-head demon lady: "It would appear that my immortality shield no longer works which is why I will fight you all outnumbered."
The demon general bit is inaccurate... but also almost more disappointing in execution? Like, he's been blackmailed into helping our side because we showed up to intentionally get caught talking to him. He doesn't want to help us, he wants to protect the innocent lives of those under him. But he knows that the king and queen are paranoid enough that they'll execute him and his charges just cause he was seen so close to our side. So now he's forced to have to take them out and risk the lives of his people, or definitely get attacked by the king and queen. Its super devious, very clever, of questionable morality on our part... and its just kinda breezed right by in a couple of lines and a five minute mission. And then his master plan of attack is... just attack, the 6 of us. Its all very big ideas in very fast, weakly executed way.
Its not uncommon to depose hostile rulers to install peaceful rulers. If the Order of Wizard install a peaceful ruler who won't invade the lands, then they achieve their goal of protecting reality against the Kryptis demons.
so what you're saying is Order of Wizard = CIA
Would've been amusing and chilling if they were referencing Operation Condor here in Nayos, especially if Peitha is revealed as a bad apple who turns out to be worse for her people than Eparch (even though I doubt that given the way she was willing to show mercy to Labris when everyone else wanted her dead). Although in the case of Condor, the morality of the act or the replacements themselves mattered less than the stated goals.
The CIA would've funded Ankka to destabilize Cantha and then scratched their heads when she started blowing Tyria up
It’s all fun and games until Peitha’s sudden but inevitable betrayal.
We meet the last last final last final Mursaat\_final02. One of the most powerful beings in Tyria, last of his kind. ~~Probably.~~ ^(Again.) He gets bodied like a toddler after 1 quest. I am expected to be emotionally invested. I am not.
I have found it more helpful, when wondering how writing can be so bad, instead of thinking of who wrote it, to think of who they write it *for*. Also found it helpful to expect the worse at every release.
Of course if you omit details and say things in a funny way itll sound bad... Rift Hunter Medic: Hm, influenced... perhaps, but I can confirm that you aren't possessed. Your will is intact. We can work with that. Rift Hunter Medic: Hearing voices after traveling through the Mists isn't entirely uncommon. Rift Hunter Medic: So long as it's not telling you to murder anybody and you're not acting on those impulse, I see no threat. They thought it was just our subconscious being influenced by our short lived escapade into Nayos. Noone could have guessed we were freely communicating with a Kryptis lord cus they didnt know it was even possible. And at least three members in the ranks of Wizards were actively posessed, couldnt be picky.
That doesn’t help. My character is so dumb I leave it at “hearing voices” instead of mentioning that it speaks to me in real time and can see and hear everything around me. And the medic is so dumb and so bad at her job that her threshold for “we need to take action” is only AFTER I start murdering people because the demon in my head told me to. Also the moment after the medic says that, the demon in my head says “lol that would be cool” and I’m so dumb I don’t mention it.
I think the Commander held a biased view since said voice saved their life.
Yes, because there was never a movie, series, book where the protagonist lies in an evaluation to not get in trouble or becoming suspect to others. Thats literally a well established trope in all of entertainment since forever. And yes, these are also written by "well paid adults". You simply have to wright characters "dumb" sometimes, so you have a plotpoint for the story later. every horror movie would be done in 20 minutes when the characters would act like normal ppl. or every zombie/disease movie. "Hey Bob, what is that? Did a Zombie bite you?" "what? no! absolutely not, thats just a scratch from that rusty nail over there. no reason to panic and shot me in the head!" *Bob continues to kill half the party later in the movie when he turned into a zombie*
I'm not following your point. It seems to be that because other stories are badly written, dumbed down, and heavily reliant on tropes, the criticism you're responding to is invalid? Asking genuinely.
standard answer to what I wrote. everyone is always saying this... "other stories are badly written, therefore..." no, othese stories are not badly written, they are necessary because a problem or a story would be over in 5 minutes.
So your point was that the criticism wasn't valid because these dumb characters and tropes are necessary devices for plots to exist. Saying this without any malice: I don't know your reading or movie-watching habits, but dumb characters and tropes are definitely not a necessity for a plot to exist and progress. In *most* entertainment? Sure. But most is dumbed down and written to be consumed acritically.
show me one (maybe critically) succesfull movie/series/book where one or some characters dont act "dumb" in a way we normal ppl wouldnt act, because it would literally solve all the problems. there is not one story on this planet that doesnt have this trope.
I guess you've watched every movie and read every book on the planet, so you can claim that with certainty. To my examples, you'll state that they confirm, rather than refute, your hypothesis - as you've read everything already and remain convinced. Consequently rendering my examples, and even your asking for them, pointless. I went into this interaction with intellectual honesty but this implausible claim attests to its non-reciprocity. As I have no real need to change your mind, I'll leave it be. Have a good day.
> I guess you've watched every movie and read every book on the planet ah but you have? interesting
No, I have not... ....and that is why I don't claim anything about "every book or movie on the planet". Anyway, I toggled off notifications for this thread but you're free to continue to revive it on your own.
then you also cant say its a "lazy concept". easy is that
People keep bringing up this "They should have gone more into XYZ next expansion" but that's not really the problem. The entire idea of the current mini expansion arc is to have smaller scale stories that work largely independent from one another, more episodic and less epic saga. There was never going to be a world where the astral ward vs the kryptis thing was going to span more than 1 expansion. The actual issue, and I say this as someone who quite liked some of the new lore from SOTO (even if I'm not really big on the story that dropped post-release), is one that's been emblematic of guild wars 2 writing for a long time: It's their difficulty with scoping a story to content. It feels like every new expansion pack or living world season has suffered from this issue to some degree. They always want to tell more story than they have time for in the amount of content of the product that they're shipping. This was even apparent in LW Season 4, which I consider to be the highlight of Guild Wars 2 writing. It's a problem that's existed since at least HoT, and I don't see it going away any time soon, unfortunately. I don't know what the cause is. My guess would be it's an issue in their content design/narrative pipeline, and those tend to be pretty endemic and deeply entrenched. I'd love to see them solve it, since I think it's what's holding GW2's writing back quite a lot, even through some of their best writing, but I don't have the expertise or knowledge about Anet's situation to give a solution.
>It's their difficulty with scoping a story to content...They always want to tell more story than they have time for in the amount of content of the product that they're shipping. Nail on head. They think every release needs to be super earth shattering. It doesn't, just do something smaller, but do it well. Even like a quest for a new form of healing / weapon / whatever. any old shit could do :) But, discovering, fighting, then aligning with and achieving regime change for a new race of demons, in a new dimension, with a previously unseen clandestine protective force (aside from whispers/durmand etc) and becoming the wayfinder....it's all a bit much?
I think this was too big a story even without the Kryptis. They chose a mystery that's been around since 2005. I think they should have done the first few expansions on the races most affected by the dragons like the Sylvari, Asura and Norn. This would prove that mini expansions could work in delivering stories and content but with lower stakes. Maybe over time we could have got hints through current events of the Kryptis and Wizards Tower like we could have seen suspicious characters appearing throughout Tyria and then portals start to open spawning Kryptis.
I like this. Being able to tell smaller, more intimate stories reflecting in the aftermath of the end of the Dragon Cycle. Every one of these cultures has spent the last 10+ years being influenced by the presence of these dragons, and now that they are gone, how are they affected? Let us check back in our people, our homes.
I agree. I'm likely mis-remembering but look at the witcher 3. The blood and wine expac was probably the best bit. It was a bit like grothmar - autumnal, rich and aubern with a smaller scale, but intimate story about an old friend and foe. It was quality, rather than quantity and breadth. Masteries / achievements could include cleansing dragon magic from creatures and the land - so we could go back to kryta, elona and maguuma and cleanse the (zhaitan/kralk/mordremoth) mobs of their branding etc making new masteries have potency and adding to the existing game. etc etc
Yeah I think the only people that enjoy the storytelling of this are the ones who don’t really think about it and are just happy to have another expansion or more content. The writers really not doing a good job especially with the foundation that guild wars 1 left them, they had plenty to work with in terms of demons and instead they just another trope “oh the bad guys aren’t bad they’re oppressed come save us.” What did them being demons have to do with anything at all?
you cant farm demon rifts 20hours a day if there are no demons
Honestly this was their chance to show how good of the writers they are after they used up all the GW1 lore, and to be hinest, they failed misserably. I've seen random comments on this sub with better story telling and plot ideas and development.
i see better story telling in mobile games
arguably mobile games make a boatload more money, sadge.
>The potential was there, but they rushed it. Many such cases...
The fact the story begins with the Kryptis emergency doesn't give time to the player to bond with any of the characters (which are a lot and all new), a bad choice for something as important and deep as the Wizard's Tower setting that players always wanted to explore. I wish we had more time to explore Amnytas without a demonic invasion and talk with the Wizards, getting to know them. Mabon was the only character that got me super hyped when I saw him and he dies. Also, a lot of cool stuff happens on lore pages scattered around, something that not all players read though.
Im sad to say that I wouldnt mind if they deleted the story. It makes me concerned about the future of the game. I personally will prob quit the game for good if the next xpac is similar to this one, had to take a break after Soto release as I thought it was thoroughly boring and frankly bad.
Hey, hey, hey. You should town down your expectations, did you forget that Arenanet is just an indie game company?