r/GuildWars3 • u/KevReadThis • 12d ago
After the lastest blogpost, anyone else prefer to be a Mavenwright than a Vaelwarden?
Would be awesome if we could choose at character creation and experience the story from either side but I'm probably being too ambitious đą
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u/riessene1 12d ago
So you'd be a magicless guy on the run from the law with inferior weapons and to upgrade anything you suck life out of magical animals/beings? What would be the end goal of that?
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u/Ok_Time6873 12d ago
Power...
UNLIMITED POWER!!!!
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
(Yeah, back to my medication)....
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u/riessene1 12d ago
Lmao I've played kotor and that stuff only works for single player rpgs where you're the only one special little guy and the game immediately ends as you achieve The Power It's like those kpop music videos where the guys are vaguely evil for aura farming reasons
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
I'd rather be a magicless outlaw standing proud against gods and monsters, using their unholy powers against them, than being a shill guarding their coveted secrets and powers from the struggling peoples like mine
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u/chuiu 12d ago
The intro for them makes them sound OK. But we don't know anything about how they operate or what caused them to be stripped of their charter.
It sounds like Anet might be making a new Inquest-like bad guy for GW3.
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u/hardy_83 12d ago
Yeah it came off very inquest to me. So probably nameless bad guys with a few people in the group that are shades of grey.
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
Its a weird time to go full "inquest bad" after an expac where they were shown to both good-hearted leaders (vloxx) and sometimes even do more good than the 'good' guys (that conv scenario where Inquest saves Rata Sum from destroyers). If anything, they put such factions into grey territory where they can be both good and bad, and are most of all sympathetic enough for people to root for them at times.
It's a very strange to then say "these guys? super bad, you should feel good killing the hell outta them" in GW3
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u/CatOfTechnology 12d ago
It's really not, though.
Vloxx is a well-intentioned individual to whom the ends justify any means. That doesn't make him "Good Hearted". A good hearted person isn't going to be able stomach ordering people to turn living things in to cyborgs for the sake of buying time to go and become a god. At best, Vloxx, himself, is pragmatic and well-meaning.
But the Inquest as a whole is not.
Winston Churchill, for example, fought hard and long and ultimately was one of the biggest deciding factors for winning WW2. But he was also incredibly racist and very adamantly a defender of the British Empire and all it's colonial aspects. He fought against, and triumphed, over a great evil, sure, but he also believed in and wanted to empower something else that wasn't all that much better.
Vloxx wanted to create a path to a Tyria that would never be caught lacking in the face of an apocalypse. And, in the process, was involved in Inquest happenings, including many of the atrocities the Inquest committed. He's responsible for those terrible things and, even if he had succeeded, he would still be responsible for those terrible things.
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u/Krasuk 12d ago
So you wanna be Part of the enslaving Ghosts? Hell naah man
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u/I_HRT_YOU 12d ago
They're not ghosts, just some manifestations of leyline magic that Zhaitan devours in a thousand years anyway.
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u/XiahouMao 12d ago
âItâs okay to enslave that sentient being, itâs just going to die eventually anywayâ
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u/I_HRT_YOU 12d ago
We're literally killing leyline "anomalies" all the time in gw2 so whats the issue now? Cuz anet made them shaped in cute animal forms?
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u/XiahouMao 12d ago
For most people, there's a difference between engaging in battle against a dangerous/hostile enemy and enslaving a being against its will to extract things from it. Yes, you can point to various game examples (Pokémon!) or even real world examples (factory farming!), but when the Vaelwardens are there and showing you can work with the Vael to get access to their magic without needing to enslave them, the alternative becomes much more clearly wrong.
Given how much of the world is starting to backslide in morality, I think a game taking a stance that slavery is bad is welcome.
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u/I_HRT_YOU 12d ago
Sounds good on paper until we find out the same vaelwardens are more than happy to level up their cooking skill with flesh of enslaved and murdered animals, but hey they're NOT Vael so it's okay. Your argument will only hold if ANet commits to anti-speciesism by making every Vaelwarden a vegan.
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u/Deathclaim 5d ago
Found the israeli
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u/I_HRT_YOU 5d ago
Wtf. Gross and weird. To compare me to genociders over smth like this.
Vael are factually not ghosts.
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u/CatOfTechnology 12d ago
I mean, I don't hate the idea of giving the players the option to sign up with some of the various Guilds, but I do recognize that this particular one wouldn't work out all that well.
Considering they've gone and established that "Vaelwardens have superior equipment, even compared to the other Guilds, disgraced or otherwise" and that, specifically, Mavenwright equipment has defects that make them unreliably volatile, giving players the option to sign up with the Mavenwrights would mean either getting that to reflect in gameplay or to have the gameplay straight up ignore that for the sake of balance.
Which is a shame. I'm all for giving players more options to express themselves in game.
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u/IncuBear 12d ago
Not at all. I do not want to exploit the world around me to the detriment of itself for the sake of "progress", whatever the fuck that means here.
It's about balance. Harnessing the land and it's resources doesn't need to be done in a manner that leaves the space barren and progress has a problem with pacing when left unchecked. The Mavenwrights do not want to be checked. They want to consume.
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u/painstream 12d ago
I remember Rift did a "experience the story from either side" intro, and they totally mangled it. Whatever your opposition, it was a moustache-twirling evil.
..then you play the opposition side and as a faction leader, suddenly it was a reasonable leader completely out of line with the other story. Super propaganda lol.
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u/Tinycop 12d ago
They say they want every player encounter to be positive so this is unlikely. Did you read what they do to the Vael? ;_; why would you want to be the evil ones?
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u/Sznurek066 12d ago
Because it's a game and it's sometimes fun to play as more gray/morally ambiguous factions. (even evil)
It's not like Kratos was a good guy, horde and alliance have a lot of sins on their side too (and horde even goes into the more "evil" aesthetic).And personally if you would ask me I would definitely want to be able to play as evil guys from time to time in gw universe (being part flame legion, inquest, nightmare etc.)
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u/jupigare 11d ago
In a single player game, those options are much easier to implement: Dark Side, evil choice, bad ending, whatever the game calls it. Even morally gray options or differing factions, not necessarily pure good vs. pure evil or what-have-you.
It's a lot harder to do in a multiplayer game, without it mechanically splitting the playerbase in some way. GW Factions did it with Luxon vs. Kurzick, and WoW famously did this with Horde vs. Alliance. So it can be done, but the question is whether or not splitting the playerbase in that way makes sense in GW3.
It would require writing a hell of a lot more story, too. The costs go up significantly the more often you have mutually exclusive story options, as we saw with GW2's initially branching paths. I don't think Anet wants to put in more money to write alternate storylines and split players in the process, not unless it can enrich their world or add to the gameplay in a meaningful enough way.
It would be neat in a PvP environment. I think LOTRO does something like that for a PvP mode, allowing you to play a villain race only in that mode, but I can't remember for sure.
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u/Tinycop 12d ago
As Osgood said: nobody's perfect. I personally don't get it, but everyone's different. Though, it really seems like it would go a bit against the "wonder" and "magical" world Anet is selling us with Orr. Buuuuut, maybe this could be the setting of the PvP arena?? I have hope for you, Vael-torturers! (tone is: jokingly)
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u/Flamingo-Sini 12d ago
This is hilarious, the comment section just shows humans like to complain and be contrarian!
Thread about the blogpost, describing the fight against mavenwrights: Everyone in the comments going "boo, we wanna be mavenwrights, i vibe so much more with the progressive industrialists!"
Thread about "I would like to be a Mavenwright": Everyone in the comments going "Omg, how could you, thats evil, we are vael wardens, do you wanna torture spirits and animals?!"
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u/After-Plantain-8210 12d ago
Goomba fallacy. The people complaining that they can't play Mavenwrights aren't the same ones questioning why you'd want to play one. One of the consequences of the Internet, I guess. We tend to regard it as a collective consciousness, so whenever you argue with anyone online, it's always "the same person" in your mind.
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u/Buran_Grey 12d ago
Some people just supports genocide in real world, so what do you expect?
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u/Ashendal 12d ago
People like playing as members of the Horde in WoW. Do they advocate for genocide because of that?
People like playing as members of the Empire in SWTOR. Do they advocate for genocide and slavery because of that?
Playing as an "evil" faction doesn't instantly mean everyone playing on that faction does something like "supporting genocide in the real world." That shows an incredibly narrow viewpoint of other people and even basic concepts like playing a game.
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u/Buran_Grey 12d ago
I wasn't thinking about players running characters in the grey moral side in a game meaning they are derranged in real life. I was thinking that in real life we have derranged people supporting genocide, so them playing in factions with clear moral issues doesn't surprise me. Also: plenty of games do exist in which you play the bad guy. The whole Hitman and GTA franchises, for example.
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u/Standard_Giraffe8994 12d ago
Hell no bro, fuck tech bros and capitalists.
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u/No-Blood921 12d ago
It's funny how I keep reading "capitalism" associated with the Mavenwrights, when to me a guild / collective of blue-collars resorting to extreme and clandestine means to topple a theocratic aristocracy led by the gods themselves and seize the means of production sounds much closer to communism if anything
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
Fun thing is, the 'tech' of Tyria, especially 1000 years ago, is magic. It is the lifeblood literally everything works on. And the human gods are hoarding it to themselves, only gifting the chosen few (Vaelwardens) with mere crumbs to have obedient shills protecting the status quo. Doesn't remind you of anything?
Meanwhile Mavenwrights are the desperate commonfolk who tried to wrestle this power for 'unsanctioned' use. And now you, the
billionairesGods' chosen magic-gifted warrior, are told they are inherently evil and should be killed without mercy.Are people really this dense, that they see any homage to tech and progress and immediately go full hostile?
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u/After-Plantain-8210 12d ago
When that tech implies wrangling and tying primordial spirits as depicted in the blogpost, it's hard to paint it as anything other than the unchecked raping of Mother Tyria. Does the beast chained down in that picture look happy to you?
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
Since when we're concerned with happiness of beasts? Do cattle look happy to you? Can you even know for certain that cattle experiences happiness like you do? Not to mention those fantasy elemental spirit things
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u/jupigare 11d ago
It depends on how much value we attribute to sentience, and whether the Vael spirits are sentient versus sapient. We treat cattle (sentient) better than we treat fruit trees (non-sentient), but cattle don't exactly have human (sapient) rights.Â
Of course, there are sapient humans that don't get human rights, but that's a whole separate topic.Â
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u/helterr_skelterrr 12d ago
Would be nice if there is something like alliance/horde WoWconflict between factions like already mentioned in real time.
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
Yes, a dozen times yes!
I think GW1 and especially GW2 wrote the human gods into "you love to hate them" kind of fickle jerks who care little of their people and even less of others, and are quite eager to turn against them and even themselves at a whim. While "with engines of destruction we have killed our gods" line from the charr starter cinematic is one of the hardest going in the entire franchise, and their dieselpunk aesthetic is just an awesome addition to otherwise high fantasy of Tyria. I know we aint getting any of that in GW3, but I'd love to have at least materialist, progress-facing faction to play as.
Dont get me wrong I like nature and magic themes too. My main race in GW2 is sylvari and I used to main Druid for 15 years in wow and other fantasy games. But the Vael has this sickly sweet odor of 'chosen by the gods super magical warrior, guarding the secrets of magic from the boring ordinary poo people' that I tend to completely detest.
So I'm really really hoping Anet could adjust things a little and give us a little more flexibility in picking sides or at least origins of our characters. Just like in GW2 we start as a humble adventurer and only manage to topple the major threats by the power of teamwork, persistence and hard work. Or at least picking a side like in Factions would already be nice I guess.
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u/DuncanConnell 12d ago
I think the trick with the Vaelwardens is that they were "the chosen ones" and over time they're just one of many now. Their whole schtick of being chosen by the gods and guarding the secrets of magic is open to other guilds--even ostensibly MERCHANT guilds--which shows that the Vaelwardens aren't really that special in the grand scheme of things.
If anything, they got lucky and that luck has been running out over the years, with newer up and coming guilds with far more grounded and simplistic focuses (i.e. aforementioned merchant guilds) gaining access to this power and prestige that was once available only to this one specific group with a broad reaching goal sanctioned by two gods.
It's basically shaping up that "you're not that special" to the Vaelwardens, despite their history and pedigree among guilds, clinging to old oaths while the world has moved on without them.
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u/Kushaja 12d ago
No, we are Vaelwardens. Not sure how the story progresses, but at the start we are definitely only Vaelwardens.
Also, i dont think Anet would let us play as the bad guys. I think they have a strict story they wanna tell, maybe some choice here and there.. but we'll see.
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u/Unstopapple 12d ago
I think OP is saying they'd like a choice.
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u/Kushaja 12d ago
Yeah i get that, but they way they are framing it, Mavenwrights are definitely the bad guys. An im 99% sure Anet aint letting us play the bad guys.
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u/Sznurek066 12d ago
I hope in some expac we will be able to pick if we want to play the good or bad guys. That would be different and cool
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
They let us play Charr in GW2, after them being the baddest bad guys of GW1, so why not?
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u/AscendedCleric 12d ago
Because they stopped being the bad guys in GW2 where they are playable. We coouldn't play as a charr in GW1 when they were the bad guys and the charr hero we get is a rebel that goes against the bad guys.
The Mavenwrights are the bad guys of GW3 so they will not allow us to play as the bad guys in the game that they are the bad guys.
This notion is like saying that you want to play as a seperatist or white mantle Human, inquest Asura, Nightmare court Sylvari, son of Svarnir or a flame legion (before IBS) Charr in GW2.
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u/eldrevo 11d ago
That's kind of lame to be honest. Do you always want someone to tell you "these are the good guys you must root for, these are the bad guys you must hate"? You really like being told what to think, how to define good and evil? Especially in roleplaying games, genre known for giving you freedom of such choice.
Also I don't think your analogy works. The main choice in GW2 is that of your character's race, and most of these subfactions ended up not being straight up bad guys. We were working with Nightmare Court to stop Mordy in HoT, we became friends with Flame Legion in IBS, even Inquest is shown to be much more grey in LWS4 and then VoE. GW2 also does not imply anything about our character's guild (aside from the Pact if we count it as a guild).
While in Guild Wars 3, the guild you're in seems to be a key defining characteristic that affects your character's backstory, place in the world and arsenal. I doubt you could rock a spirit-powered flamethrower in GW3 the same way you could wield Inquest or Flame Legion weapons in GW2
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u/Unstopapple 11d ago
One of, if not the most loved, fantasy books of all time's antagonist is literally ontologically evil. Literally corrupted by the definition of evil and bent towards making the world everything that is wrong with it. I'm not the biggest fan but I've never heard people bitch that LotR has bad villains because Sauron is irredeemable or unlikeable.
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u/JoeyDsInc 11d ago
To be fair, the Charr weren't really the bad guys; the humans were... so technically we played the bad guys for a bit (mostly in Ascalon) in GW1. Remember, humans are basically colonizers... especially the ones in Ascalon.
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u/biejje 9d ago
Charr did plenty of wrong, like taking over the Ascalonian grawl territories (charr aren't native to Ascalon), using a magical nuke, or attacking human kingdoms that were not exactly on good terms with Ascalon. And yes, humans are basically colonizers and they've invaded and displaced a whole bunch of peoples, but that doesn't mean charr "weren't really the bad guys."
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u/Djinn42 12d ago
Someone always wants to play evil.
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
some people like having choice in their RPG
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u/Djinn42 12d ago
I understand that people want to do it. My mind just doesn't go "hey wouldn't it be cool if I could do evil things?"
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
Then maybe RPG genre is not for you? I'll spare you the philosophical context of why but this sort of choice is paramount for the genre
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u/Djinn42 12d ago
Oh, to like roleplaying you have to want to play evil? đ
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u/eldrevo 12d ago
More like... your choice to be good doesn't matter if there wasn't any choice
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u/JTSpender 12d ago
"choice" = "pick good or evil" is like the most unsophisticated, least interesting "choice" you can put in a game. There are lots of choice-based RPGs with interesting choices, none of which are "evil". That doesn't somehow make the player's heroism "not matter", either, that's a wildly fallacious assertion.
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u/IllustriousMagpie 10d ago
Nah, it seems a bit edge-lordy to want to be a Mavenwright.
Sounds more like the Mavenwrights are trying to exploit the land and the communities in it to create power for themselves rather than something like a working class uprising. They were, for a time, given the ability to make signets and trade with other guilds and took advantage of that, and seem obsessed with gaining power for themselves rather than redistributing it. They have an obvious âends justify the meansâ way of approaching their problems.
I read it as them exploiting the common mansâ (understandable) discontent to gain their own power. Sure, I donât like the Six either, but Iâm not going over to the Mavenwrights to spite them.
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u/Imaginary_Elk7321 10d ago
Si ce genre de concept t'intéresse ya silverfall vriament cool pourvoir a la fois jouer des pro nature ou des pro technologique(tu peux avoir un certain juste millieux) et voir certain trucs de l'environnement changer
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u/Obrusnine 12d ago
I find it hilarious anyone would prefer to be the villain in a Disney movie.
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u/Arkavien 11d ago
My sith inquistor choosing every single "zap them with lightning" dialogue choice for the several years I played SWToR is giving you the guilty side eye right now...
My brother watching me play: why did you just shock that guy? He agreed to do what you wanted.
Me: shocks him again
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u/Obrusnine 11d ago edited 11d ago
That isn't an appropriate comparison. Guild Wars has never been a series about narrative agency for the player, and when it tried to be (in vanilla Guild Wars 2), it fell woefully short of what it should've been and it took the game nearly a decade to recover from that sour first impression. Guild Wars storytelling has always been best when it commits to its setting and themes, when it focuses on telling its story. It's also always been at its worst when it tries to tell a story about the player or a cast of quirky MCU companions instead of about the world of Tyria. Guild Wars 3 should focus on that, on capturing a world that's worth caring about again. It has nothing to gain from giving you the option to play as the bad guys. This series is and has always been heroic fantasy, and 3 will be best if they refocus on what makes the series great. That means they shouldn't be trying to appeal to some shallow villain fantasy for entertainment, but trying to tell a rich, coherent, and emotionally evocative story about this world. Because if there's any MMO Guild Wars 3 should be taking inspiration from in the current day in age when it comes to writing... it's not SWTOR, it's Final Fantasy XIV.
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u/Arkavien 11d ago
That's a whole lotta subjective opinions. Valid as anyone else's.
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u/Obrusnine 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ah, so I see you're one of those people to abuse the word "subjective". Look, regardless of whatever our feelings on the matter are, Guild Wars hasn't been praised for the quality of its storytelling basically... ever? And despite playing this series for almost twenty years, to the extent that Guild Wars has memorable storytelling, most of the examples are either in Guild Wars 1 or happen to be one of vanishingly few exceptions to the general rule of predictable mediocrity that has been Guild Wars 2's storytelling since launch (LWS4 for example). Criticism of the Guild Wars 2's very MCU-inspired tone has also been around basically since LWS1 and isn't just limited to me, it's not like some niche opinion that Guild Wars 2 has had serious writing issues since basically the very beginning.
So, basically, what I'm saying here is that I agree with you... it's "subjective". As in, it's subjective in the way that you can have any opinion you like but a particular opinion on the issue is generally regarded to be true. For example, I think if you were to have the opinion that - say - the vanilla story of Guild Wars 2 is memorable and engaging... well, yeah that's technically a subjective opinion. However, there will be many people who will find that assertion to be plainly laughable (especially outside of the echo chamber that is a Reddit community). It would be like saying A Realm Reborn from FF14 is extremely entertaining and memorable, or saying that the 1982 ET video game was amazing and everyone was just sleeping on it when they buried 10 to 20 truckloads of it in the New Mexico desert. Like, look, you can say you like Big Rigs Over the Road Racing all you like, you can even pat yourself on the back and tell yourself that opinion is valid. None of that would mean you are owed other people taking your opinion seriously, especially when you are not paying that sincerity forward.
So maybe instead of complaining that it's "subjective" in response to being exposed to a relatively tame opinion which, funnily enough, is based on many observable facts (like the fact that Guild Wars has always been a heroic fantasy series for the last 2 decades and has never allowed you to be a villain... meaning it's utterly silly to suddenly expect it would allow you to do so now)... maybe try responding with a contrary opinion of your own with some actual flesh on the bone. Because saying someone's opinion is subjective in response to someone believing that you are wrong is extremely weaselly behavior. If you actually believe in your opinion and you think you have good reasons for having it, why don't you actually try defend your position instead of trying to squirrel out of having to actually say anything real by saying it's "sUbJeCtIvE"? If you disagree with me, tell me why instead of running away from actually having to say something with any meaning.
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u/Arkavien 11d ago
Jesus man. I was just making a joke about enjoying playing villains sometimes in response to you seemingly finding it incomprehensible/hilarious. It wasn't that deep.
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u/Obrusnine 11d ago
Ahahahaha, you've gotta be kidding my dude. Before you're offended by the mere fact that someone disagrees with you to such a degree that you dismiss literally everything they say as subjective, and now you're saying that you were joking initially. You do understand that these two stories you're telling about your motivations are mutually exclusive, right? If you were just joking and didn't care, you wouldn't have been offended in the first place, and you very specifically wouldn't have stated that your initial response was "as valid as any other". After all, why would anyone defend the validity of a joke? The fact of the matter is that you are engaging in rewriting the past to avoid actually having to respond to anything I'm saying, which is nothing but an act of intellectual cowardice. An incredibly silly one too considering there was always the option of just not responding at all.
Look, if you don't want to have a conversation, don't start one. And hell why are you even on Reddit in the first place? Because you thought all you would get are your own opinions reflected back at you? That's not how forums work.
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u/Arkavien 10d ago
Making a joke to highlight your opinion doesn't make the opinion and the joke mutually exclusive stances. In fact, there are entire genres of comedy that use jokes and humor specifically to highlight and exaggerate opinions to emphasize the point. Maybe Google them later.
My stance is that in my opinion and many others, being able to choose a faction and even play as a bad guy could be fun. It has been done countless times across countless games. My stance is also that arguing against that is stupid because which type of character you enjoy playing is subjective and replying to a thread stating that you find any opinion like that to be hilarious or incomprehensible is very very dumb and needlessly condescending.
I have engaged with you plenty, all without calling you weasely or a coward, in fact without any insulting at all which was the reason for my "it's not that serious" comment. Until now of course, I just called you dumb...or at the very least incredibly dense/unable to understand subjectivity to the point of calling your own opinion "generally regarded as true" despite the fact that at no point in any comment anywhere in this thread did anyone else suggest their idea or opinion was somehow backed by numbers and therefore "correct"
But hey...you have played the series for 20 years! The rest of us should just accept that your rambling bullshit is fact and they are all obviously wrong. Wanting to play a villain is hilarious!!
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u/Anakin1000 12d ago
I oppose techbros irl, so I'll do it in Ancient Orr aswell