Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[Theodric]

A 'good story' without 'philosophizing'.

Aka just meaningless action for sake of action.

Just admit you don't want actual story in your RPG and move onto a different game, rather than demanding this one be brought down to your level.

On the contrary, a lot of people with criticism towards the story do want action and meaningful consequences in the narrative. Instead, we have a story that encases both major and minor characters in ridiculous amounts of plot armour even as it preaches about loss and suffering.

Having played the game myself since the days of ARR, I'd say the people asking it to be brought down to 'their level' are in fact the same people now demanding that absolutely nothing of note ever happens to the Scions or their 'scrungly blurbos' as social media dwellers are wont to say.

The game has been notoriously preachy and saccharine in recent years, with the only actual stakes being targeted at throwaway one-scene wonders such as Tesleen and anyone even remotely antagonistic. If the game wants to be philosophical then it can put its money where its mouth is and start killing at least one decently prominent protagonist every few patches. With any luck, that might lead us to have some actual variety in the cast rather than surface level differences. It's one of the few stories where every major character exists to fawn over one's self insert and just echoes the exact same opinions and morals. Anyone who has a different world view - such as the formerly cynical Estinien or the mercenary Zero - soon end up going through Scionification to erode away any interesting differences.

[MikkoAkure]

The game has been notoriously preachy and saccharine in recent years, with the only actual stakes being targeted at throwaway one-scene wonders such as Tesleen and anyone even remotely antagonistic. If the game wants to be philosophical then it can put its money where its mouth is and start killing at least one decently prominent protagonist every few patches.

Crystal Exarch, the main NPC of ShB, gets shot at the beginning of the last act of the expansion and is whisked away by the antagonist while grievously wounded while at the same time we're suffering from our success of killing the lightwardens and are on the verge of dying and taking the entire world with us. I would count that as stakes.

As well as the twins being held captive by the Garleans, and getting pushed out of our body and needing to rush to Zenos and stop him from killing people we know while inside us. People will have opinions about Ultima Thule, and the Scions in general, but their being brought back was still tied to us being able to defeat Endsinger. No one in my examples died, but that doesn't mean there weren't stakes. "Stakes" doesn't have to always mean someone dying as a consequence of them.

Killing people left and right will do nothing but make the players stop caring about the characters and shouldn't be something that you depend on for your story to create stakes or tension. If you resort to that as an ongoing thing then your writing has already failed. Killing a character should have purpose in the story, it shouldn't be to just make it "dark" and to introduce new characters.


I think you might have a case of rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and a selective memory because the game has been super hokey since ARR and hasn't changed in tone since then. The only thing that's different is that the cutscenes are longer now.

[Theodric]

Crystal Exarch, the main NPC of ShB, gets shot at the beginning of the last act of the expansion and is whisked away by the antagonist while grievously wounded while at the same time we're suffering from our success of killing the lightwardens and are on the verge of dying and taking the entire world with us. I would count that as stakes.

As well as the twins being held captive by the Garleans, and getting pushed out of our body and needing to rush to Zenos and stop him from killing people we know while inside us. People will have opinions about Ultima Thule, and the Scions in general, but their being brought back was still tied to us being able to defeat Endsinger. No one in my examples died, but that doesn't mean there weren't stakes. "Stakes" doesn't have to always mean someone dying as a consequence of them.

Killing people left and right will do nothing but make the players stop caring about the characters and shouldn't be something that you depend on for your story to create stakes or tension. If you resort to that as an ongoing thing then your writing has already failed. Killing a character should have purpose in the story, it shouldn't be to just make it "dark" and to introduce new characters.


I think you might have a case of rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and a selective memory because the game has been super hokey since ARR and hasn't changed in tone since then. The only thing that's different is that the cutscenes are longer now.

It's interesting how often certain posters swoop in whenever the subject of character death arises in order to try and deceptively re-frame what, exactly, is being discussed.

For clarity, here's some examples of what has actually been stated whenever this has come up in the past:

It's not that people missed it. A lot of people have been weary of the Scions for quite some time, so the moment that it was presented as a possibility that the organisation would be disbanded and the Scions would go their separate ways it caused a sense of relief. It doesn't matter that in the next few sentences it resulted in a 'just kidding' moment - because that doesn't change how a lot of people are still very tired of the characters in question.

All of this has been explained many times across multiple threads already, though. Only for the same posters to come back time and time again with the bad faith insinuation that they weren't paying attention or that the game isn't Game of Thrones (as if that's the only setting in existence to ever kill off a major character).

Most settings these days are so terribly boring and predictable because 'superfans' latch on to specific characters, demand that they be cast in perpetual plot armour and never meaningfully change. Worse yet, these are the same people who will not even tolerate a single bone being thrown to people with different tastes to their own - as seen with the complete meltdowns from some over a character so much as looking at their Warrior of Light the wrong way. Then they wonder why some of us are bored of the Scions...

As has been pointed out over the numerous past occasions where the 'tHiS iS nOt GaMe Of ThRoNeS' line has been spouted, many of us aren't asking for mass death for the sake of mass death and are instead asking for death to occur where and when it makes sense. Cladding the bulk of the cast in extensive plot armour simply sends things in the opposite direction.

I would humbly suggest bookmarking this post if you're able to. It might help refresh your memory next time this same point is raised.

I've never stated anywhere that I'd like every character to be dark, edgy or brooding. I simply enjoy consistency and for maybe one or two characters to go against the grain from time to time. You've brought up 'Game of Thrones' many times, yet that's not even something I have pushed for either. I simply liked that ARR wasn't WoW - at the time - and focused primarily on world building and a healthy combination of consequences for both the protagonists and antagonists alike.

MMO's by their very nature are also meant to appeal to a broad variety of tastes, so on that basis alone there's plenty of room for variety.

A rather common retort trotted out in response to the mere suggestion that maybe, at times, a major character can actually be at risk of something bad happening to them in what is supposed to be a compelling and reasonably dark story beat.

Game of Thrones wasn't the first story in existence to kill off a major character - last I checked, stories such as Romeo and Juliet were written long before any of us posting here were even born. Though we can simply look at the single player titles in the Final Fantasy franchise or various classic JRPG's to see that fairly often major characters were at risk of being eliminated as part of the story.

There's countless other posts where I've commented on the subject in question and outlined my point of view, as well as numerous other posts from similarly minded individuals.

So, once again - nobody is asking for characters to be killed off left and right. Even in this very thread, I stated this:

The game has been notoriously preachy and saccharine in recent years, with the only actual stakes being targeted at throwaway one-scene wonders such as Tesleen and anyone even remotely antagonistic. If the game wants to be philosophical then it can put its money where its mouth is and start killing at least one decently prominent protagonist every few patches. With any luck, that might lead us to have some actual variety in the cast rather than surface level differences. It's one of the few stories where every major character exists to fawn over one's self insert and just echoes the exact same opinions and morals. Anyone who has a different world view - such as the formerly cynical Estinien or the mercenary Zero - soon end up going through Scionification to erode away any interesting differences.

With each patch taking 4.5 months to arrive, two patches would take nine months and three patches would take roughly 13.5 months. That's over a year and not at all what I would consider killing characters 'left and right' as you suggest.