Who is the WoL's Equal?

[Mholito]

Isn't that a case of game mechanic and story segregation, though? He was deliberately holding back at that point and simply toying with the Warrior of Light to sate his curiosity.

I got that impression as well. He seemed to just be testing how much of a fight you could put up, before deciding that you weren't worth fighting.

[Hala]

Unanswerable, devs like shonen and plot devices to much. Any entity eqal or stronger to us will remain as such only temporary and will be defeated via 'Oh we suddenly much stronger!' (Zenos etc.) or 'Oh the plot device!' (Ascians etc.) PC is a Mary Sue lol.

Otherwise for more or less serious estimation we have to look at specific moments in story. Power is not constant here.

[Theodric]

The Witcher 3 presented a wonderful antagonist during the second expansion, Blood and Wine. I'll be vague to avoid spoilers but the gist of it is that Geralt - the main character - spends his time hunting monsters for a living and has been enhanced to gain special abilities that help him achieve his goal. Much like the Warrior of Light he takes down both regular men and monstrous beasts twice his size after hard fought battles.

During Blood and Wine, though, he encounters an ancient and incredibly powerful being. This creature does not wish to be disturbed but can be reasoned with if the player picks the right dialogue choices. If the player picks the wrong dialogue choices, however, then Geralt is promptly slaughtered and it's game over. I thought that was great - because Geralt was put at the complete mercy of a powerful foe and was forced to be humble. Something similar to that would be wonderful for the Warrior of Light both to humble him and to ensure that the story does not become so predictable that we know we're just going to eventually overcome everything that stands in our way.

The plot needs to allow for some characters or monsters to be written in such a way that they simply cannot be defeated by the Warrior of Light and thus some other method of dealing with them arises such as striking up a bargain or convincing them to temporarily align themselves for the sake of a greater cause.

[YianKutku]

The plot needs to allow for some characters or monsters to be written in such a way that they simply cannot be defeated by the Warrior of Light and thus some other method of dealing with them arises such as striking up a bargain or convincing them to temporarily align themselves for the sake of a greater cause.

It depends on how broadly you define "defeat".

There are a number of ways to make a character unbeatable by the player. The most obvious one is to simply jack up their personal power until it pretty much counts as "infinite", and give that character the sort of temperament to smack down the player if the player even thinks about taking a wrong step. I don't really like this method, because it reeks of GM fiat, and inevitably leads into a power-level discussion that goes nowhere.

Another way is to have the character not be personally powerful, but be politically invincible. As mentioned, Lolorito fits into this niche very neatly. We can't fight him, because he has so many resources that he can keep throwing guards and mercs at us indefinitely, without even noticing a dent in his finances. I prefer this method; the drawback is that it's already been done, so doing it again would seem like a repeat. I think only Varis gets to be this sort of character without having the playerbase complain; Varis may be personally powerful, but that's not why he's such a threat. It doesn't matter if we can 1v1 him and win, if he never lets it be 1v1 in the first place. And even if he is defeated by the WoL, the Empire still exists; it's not going to collapse suddenly like some ontological support structure.

Yet another way is to have the character simply not be affected by the player's efforts to defeat them, for whatever reason. The Warriors of Darkness and the Ascians fall under this category, since whenever we strike them down, they just pop back up. Again, the drawback is that this has already been done, multiple times, due to the number of Ascians around, and how they can give their subordinates the same sort of power. That we obtained plot devices to defeat them anyway is just a consequence of how the story went; they are unbeatable until the story says we can beat them. (I suppose the same goes for Gilgamesh.)

Apart from all of that, there is still the issue of how we are meant to "strike a bargain". In a MMO like this, I don't think the devs want to put in a permanent fail condition. (In most single-player games, there is also no permanent fail condition, unless the game provides an Ironman mode or some such.) So if it's a matter of dialogue choices, players can brute-force their way through. If it's a free-form input or other such puzzle (cf The Secret World), it might fare a lot better, and I'd love to see something like that in-game, but again, it can theoretically be brute-forced.

So our methods of meaningfully interacting with the game world are limited to four options: moving, fighting, crafting, and gathering. And the only way I can think of to turn these into a method to "convince" a powerful being would be for that powerful being to merely be testing us.

... which has already been done, multiple times. Midgardsormr is the most obvious example. Hraesvelgr also counts in the Sohr Kai dungeon. There are multiple lesser instances which may not involve fighting; off the top of my head, there are the various dragons in the Moogle beast tribe quest who are "defeated" by your presenting a HQ crafted item to them.

Therefore, there are many ways to set an attribute of "cannot be defeated by the Warrior of Light", but markedly fewer ways to "strike up a bargain or convince them".

[Alleo]

@YianKutku: I agree with your post. I do wish we had more characters like Lolorito that might not be powerful as a fighter but still untouchable. I would also be fine with maybe one character that is way above us for certain reasons but such a character must be neutral or it would not make sense that it would not just simply kill us and destroy the world. So its more along the way of "thankfully that one is not our enemy"-character.

I do dislike powerful enemies that came out of nowhere. For me Zenos falls under that one. If you want to have a character that is stronger than someone that slayed 13 primals at the same time alone, you will have to make it believable. And even though they had given us a reason I am still feeling a bit off about him. The built up was just not good enough for me. If he would have been a character that would have stayed around til the end of this expansion this would have been kind of better imo, but we somehow stood no chance for two times and then we just defeated him. (With help or solo)

The only characters that I am fine with are either from the Void, thus an unknown zone, or like the WoDs from another plane of existents thus this is the reason why we did not hear from them until now.

In the end I believe the Ascians are the only ones that will stay near equal to us in the story. I mean we do need certain items to even be able to permanently kill them so its not that we can defeat them completely on our own. Also I am fine if the WoL gets overwhelmed by strong groups because there is a difference if one is able to kill one Diabolos or if you have to fight 20 enemies while each are having the strength of Diabolos. I am not that fine if we get defeated by a handful of NPC soldiers.

[Waliel]

Also I am fine if the WoL gets overwhelmed by strong groups because there is a difference if one is able to kill one Diabolos or if you have to fight 20 enemies while each are having the strength of Diabolos. I am not that fine if we get defeated by a handful of NPC soldiers.

To quote more of The Witcher lore, the books ended with

Geralt getting stabbed in the back with a pitchfork(?) by a normal civilian in the midst of a chaos and dying to the wounds. Pretty sure it was some form of farming equipment.

I'd say something like that done well could work to temporarily put us in a "weakened" state for story purposes.

[Spiroglyph]

Gotta be Tataru

[Alleo]

I'd say something like that done well could work to temporarily put us in a "weakened" state for story purposes.

Oh I am not saying that depending on the situation we might not get injured/defeated by soldiers. But if its a true normal fight without backstabbing I would be quite annoyed to lose to a normal soldier. There truly has to be a good reason. (You know like us getting poisoned by that barmaid because we did trust her to be a normal barmaid.)

[Theodric]

I think it could be a pretty effective story element. The Warrior of Light - and many of his allies - aren't exactly very humble these days. Underestimating a civilian or some low ranking soldier to the point of being severely injured or even killed would be very effective if done right. A knife to the throat, a dash of poison in their food, a successful feint followed by a swift followup attack, a stray arrow on the battlefield and other similar methods are all possibilities.

[EdwinLi]

Until someone else appears...

No one is the WoL's equal in power.

Lore wise the WoL is the only person known in the world who can defeat Primals, Gods, and powerful beings by him or herself.