Oxstar.7643

Likely won't do away with dragons. They are the core of the story, and now we have an elder dragon in the family. Who very soon after her acension indirectly caused a civil war. The story seems to be shifting from killing dragons to understanding dragons.

Also, reason why we were screwed without Aurene was because she was our only way of stopping Kralk in the mists. If the mists is devoured, then it will shatter the balance of reality and do... very bad thing? It's not properly explained, but basically, super dragon ends reality by devouring the foundation is rests on (magic, which is in the mists) and poof goes reality. And regular mortals can't just go into the mists and stop him. Sorry for double post, these forums really need an edit button.

> @"Grand Marshal.4098" said:

>

> They tried to do that with Kralk and it was successful for the most part, but instead of finishing everything in Thunderhead Keep with a twist which we would overcome nonetheless, we needed unnecessary bonding with Kralkatorrik. Who should be caring for himself. Who we have been fighting (his forces) for years, the vigil exist cause of his destruction, Glint died to him before torment appeared within him. Also "boohoohoo Aurene died now we will all die" . NO, wth Anet, we defeated 2 Elder Dragons with no Aurene, how is it believable for us to drop the fight just cause the mascot died (but not rly).

This part I do not get. How is maintaining "Kralk bad and evil" interesting? The entire reason why the revelation that he isn't a blind, evil force of nature is interesting is becaus it fundamentally overturns how the world perceives elder dragons. Yes, the Vigil and many other organizations exists to combat them - and now they are slowly having to re-evaluate their ideas because an elder dragon is on our side, out of benevolent ideals. Vlast would probably not have worked for this role, because he had gone too long without a champion and likely had too much bitterness inside him. Being alive to see his sister would have changed him for the better, but not to the point where he could have worked together with mortals to become an elder dragon. Aurene was molded and born for this event, that's why her bond with her friends and her champion is unbreakable, and it's this connection that she draws on to shoulder her new role.

But, I do agree Vlast was underutilized. He's introduced, then killed off, and only expanded on via memory crystals. They could have done a lot more with him. He could have been a great part of the story, and a morale oomph to get Aurene to gather the courage to face Kralkatorrik.

The expansion is named "end of dragons" so it could end that way.

> @"vier.1327" said:

> It is time to let her go.

>

> We will never be in danger if Aurene is always around us. Even a mortal wound is not a threath anymore.

>

> Kill her maybe is too much, just take her to the Characters Fridge for some time, like Zojja or the Pale Tree. We talk about her, but she is not directly involved in the story.

Her mere existance will likely cause problems that could potentially be a threat to even her. The only reason Bangar started a civil war is because he saw a mortal become an elder dragons champion, and thought that what was a bond built on love and trust was a champion bending an elder dragon to his will. It not only sets up the war, but also revals that such a thing could not exist in his mind. Which by proxxy reveals how damaged the entire charr psyche is by eternal war.

Aurene is so centralized in the events post-ascension that writing her out now leaves too many threads loose.

> @"Cleopatra.4068" said:

> We didn’t really do much of anything with her when she was young. One story step of supposedly bonding with her, then off to kill Balthazar. Waaaaay more time was spent chasing after her egg so the supervillains couldn’t get it and start whatever world ending disaster they felt like. The story spends way to much time chasing supervillain’s and stopping Armageddon, not enough time doing mundane, everyday things. If everything is the apocalypse, the apocalypse doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. It is the contrast between normal life and a crisis that makes a crisis seem like a big deal. With no low key points in the story, the high impact parts seem low key. It’s just one world ending crisis after another, and its boring for the world to be ending...again. There is never any character development. No ebb and flow. Kill her, don’t kill her, what difference does it make?

Her living or dying is the catalyst for how the world will view elder dragons. I agree that more time could have been spent with her and a little less of world ending crisis, but the story development is that for the first time ever, there is an elder dragon who has the best interests of the mortal races at heart, not out of a selfish reason, but out of benevolence. This is not something anyone was raised to believe, or even consider possible. And even then, whenever she does something people get scared, and think it's because of her champion. That a bond with such a creature could be formed based on the same emotions that the mortal races value so highly means that the way the world view elder dragons is starting to unravel. Would anyone even think it was possible without her as living example? If that example dies, then the world returns to what it used to be - elder dragons bad, war with them forever. That world kind of sucked for everyone. But this is a hope for a positive change. What Aurene's motives are for being passive in the charr civil war and the Jormag situation is not clear yet, likely because that part of the story is not out yet.

Problem with that, is that elder dragons bad is a boring status quo. That is the narrative that during most of the games life span was prevalent. Elder dragons are very old and have seen the world through a perspective beyond mortals. That one is on our side and that the motives of the remaining elder dragons are unclear makes them more interesting than simply maintaining the idea of hungry for magic and destructive. This is a game about dragons - it has been for a long time. The closed beta had an event where we fought against Kralkatorrik's minions, and death meant conversion to a minion, with flavor text and all. Very inreresting pvp.

But anyways, point being that Aurene is a necessary plot vehicle to expand on the mentality and role of the elder dragons. Perspective.

And, side point, I have a soft spot for cool and adorable dragons.

So, the story has really had a lot of good people dying. And some people who wasn't on our side yet fought for what they thought was right.

Now we have a new elder dragon, of an aspect never seen before, crystal and light. An elder dragon of healing and preservation. One who has the lich magic of Joko and is theoretically immortal. With all that said, it would be easy to jujj up a reason for Aurene to die anyways. And end of dragons is getting closer and closer. With all that said... I really hope we can have a bit of a good ending. That it doesn't become grimdark af. In short, that little dragon, that we guided through her first steps, shared so many experiences with... please. Don't let her die.

those are in use tho, what do you substitute their functions with?

So I've been fighting the lacking remapping to try and find a combination of buttons that is less awkward than shift+1-9. Mouse 4+1-9? Nope, not supported. <+1-9? Same deal.

Right mouse+1-9? Oh no, this game does ot support dual purpose binding of keys. Honestly, why are the remapping controls so freaking lacking? Get with the times, A-net.

What shortcuts do you guys use? Please share, my left hand is slowly becokming the claw grip.

Okay, second boss fight was friggen awesome! I was on my holosmith, so darkness and light was clashing vs the necromancer with weapons phasing in and out of existence at, well... light speed. Then when it was all over, I did not want to finish her. She was clearly a slave and would rather die than going back to serving Joko. She gave her all like a true warrior. Then Braham shoots her and takes the moment away. For serious, please don't let Braham shoot her. Let the player soak in the battle they just had and feel bad about killing a most honorable adversary. Moments like these are meant to be savored and felt properly, so don't rush them. Let the player take their time. They will get to the conclusion of the story you made when they're done.

Okay, let's talk about A Kindness Repaid. While I do like the story and the thematic atmosphere of the episode, the gameplay leaves so much to be desired that it must be said. First of all, when you're done getting the cubs to safety the game tells you to "hold the line". I assumed this meant kill all the inquest, so I whack away with ranged weapons at the golem standing outside the mission border, and then I get... pulled I think, it honestly happened so fast. I get moved to outside the border and have to redo the mission. Fantastic. I seriously suggest that you expand the border a bit so that enemy cc, of which there is way too much (honestly, it just feels like a difficulty crutch) doesn't force to you fail the mission like that.

Also, if you get knocked off the bridges (because again, tons of cc) then you have to swim all the way around because the bridges are curved upwards on the sides, preventing you from just jumping up on them. This serves no practical purpose and the aesthetic value just isn't worth the tedium. Somebody should have told the designers this.

But the big black elephant in the room is without a doubt the boss at the end. Where to start with this train wreck? First of all, he is way too spammy. He keeps blasting those bouncy death balls so much and so fast that it becomes nigh on impossible to reliably dodge them, and they do a ton of damage too. However, whenever you go down an invincible bubble envelopes you and brings you back to full health. This is bad on multiple levels, because one, it takes consequence and this tension away from the player, two, it makes the boss feel cheap and lazily designed, and three, it's just an insult to the player because it feels like the boss designers did not feel like we could handle a reasonably powerful boss that required strategy and risk taking to defeat. You know, things that would make it fun. As it is now, it just becomes complete tedium with going down and up again and again while scrounging charges from the bots, who randomly fade away for some reason, then slowly pelting away at the core that barely stays still long enough to do good damage to it. Logically speaking, should not more charges disable the core movement if it could do that to the murder bot housing the core? That would have been way more interesting and encouraged charge management.

And of course, the boss has minions which is also the key to defeating him. Old, worn out and uninteresting boss trope in all honesty.

This could have been a good fight. But instead we got shoddyness incarnate. I'd have a stern talking to with the boss designers if I were ArenaNet management.

Well, that's my 2 cents. Hope this doesn't get deleted by the mods because it contained negative feedback or something.