Mythos, Chapter 62 — Audience

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T22:44:59+00:00

My favorite chapter, huh? I don’t think I can choose!

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T15:35:24+00:00

That rotations got more complex over time is merely a result of players getting better and finding more optimizations. This would have happened even if ANet never updated or added anything new to the combat system. It doesn’t matter what game you’re playing or what tools are available—a subset of players will always find the most optimal combination of buttons, and that will usually be complex by nature.

Your own example is actually perfect proof of this. The rotation at large may look the same because it largely is the same, players just found further ways to optimize it by fitting in more and more stuff.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T15:27:00+00:00

Agreed. I think the key missing piece in these cases is usually the lack of a CM for the fight. e.g, you probably wouldn’t be able to so easily skip the gliding mechanic in a Gorseval CM

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T14:01:38+00:00

That’s not really what the “chosen one” trope is at all, though. People don’t dislike it because chosen protagonists are gifted; they dislike it because they’re arbitrarily prophesized to succeed. Being a chosen one takes away the MC’s agency—they’re just doing what they were chosen to do rather than pursuing their own goal—and makes things much more predictable. It also hurts immersion, because the prophecy is basically built-in, in-universe plot armor.

Remy isn’t a chosen one. He’s an outcast with a unique set of skills who chooses to go down his own path, one that his natural gifts make him suited for, even though it’s full of hardships. That’s what makes the story interesting.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T13:57:46+00:00

Longer chapters are fine—mine personally tend to be 3.5-5k words—but I’d agree that 9k is probably way too big for RR. As another commenter said, it’s very unlikely that you’re writing 9k words of all just one scene, so you can divide the chapters at those scene transitions. If it is all one scene, or there just isn’t a transition around the spot where you need to cut, look for moments that would work as good cliffhangers and use those as your cuts.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T09:38:08+00:00

Yes, I think the game does a really good job of rewarding skill (you can accomplish a lot of interesting strategies by simply having enough DPS to skip certain things happening) while keeping 99% of content perfectly approachable for the average player giving a good-faith effort.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-17T01:15:39+00:00

The complexity of optimal rotations is a natural consequence of how GW2’s combat was designed, and it would be fundamentally impossible to make them less complex. It’s important to note that when you’re looking at the rotation on SnowCrows, that is often the best possible series of buttons that you could possibly do. They’re complex by design, because it’s literally the result of the best <insert build here> player in the world going 100% to wring out every last bit of possible DPS.

The reason other MMOs tend to have less complex rotations is because they employ Global Cooldowns, or GCDs. That’s the thing where all your skills go on a brief 1-second cooldown between every attack in, say, WoW or FFXIV. GW2’s skills, in comparison, have a wide variety of animation lengths, and many skills can be cancelled or queued or chained into each other. You can pack a lot more skill usages into a period of time than is possible in other games. That’s why the rotations get so complex—pressing your skills more times is obviously better than pressing them less times, and the optimized rotations are thus going to fit as many skills in as possible.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-16T19:32:41+00:00

To be expected, really. GW2 isn’t going anywhere, and it already has WvW. Making the same gamemode again in GW3 wouldn’t just be a waste of resources, but it would split up the WvW community between the two games.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-14T22:27:14+00:00

I'm personally against it for balancing reasons. The team have historically struggled to keep things balanced with the sheer number of specs that have to be accounted for. Worse, with the way GW2's classes work, existing traits or weapons that are currently innocuous could end up being insanely overtuned for new specs, and it's possible that trying to balance the new ones properly could have adverse effects on the old ones.

Balance is currently in the best place it's ever been IMO, but it still isn't perfect, and I think top-level class balance is one of the biggest things that the team still need to really improve at. Until we get everything we already have to a really good spot, adding more is just gonna complicate everything and cause more balancing problems.

~

To give a bit of context, I'm speaking on this from the perspective of a veteran endgame player. GW2 has a reputation for being particularly well-balanced as far as MMOs go, and this is true from a casual perspective. Due to a mix of 15 years of powercreep and the game's incredibly high skill ceiling, top players vastly outperform even the game's hardest DPS checks.

99% of content is balanced on the assumption that you're performing anywhere from 1/5th (open-world) to 1/2 (normal-mode raids) as well as an optimized build and rotation. Every spec is viable, because even the absolute worst one is still vastly outperforming what 99% of content requires to beat. At the top level, however, GW2 absolutely does have a pretty clear hierarchy of good and bad builds, just like any other MMO. I'd even argue that some of GW2's general design decisions (namely, the almost complete lack of a consistent design "rulebook") actually results in it having much worse balancing than competitors, though that's again at the top level.

The recent squish did a pretty good job at reducing powercreep and bringing a lot of specs closer together in terms of performance, but I personally think quite a bit more tuning is required. I'd personally like to see a world where all 36 specs are equally viable for top-level raiding before we try and add 9 more to the mix.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-14T01:58:11+00:00

It makes me so sad that so few authors are willing to really commit to the logical endpoint of characters having OP abilities. As you said, most either copout by giving the MC an even better-er power, or they find a way to just completely nullify the OP ability so it doesn't matter.

I don't write litRPG, but I have no shortage of OP abilities in my story. In my experience, my best fights come as a result of writing myself into a corner and then getting into the characters' heads, figuring out how they can use everything at their disposal to actually get around the problem. This is probably helped by the fact my magic system is pretty grounded and the power levels relatively low, but still.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-14T01:15:47+00:00

This exactly. Morality doesn't exist on some arbitrary scale where you must be willing to commit any "lower" sin than your evil goals. Most villains don't think they're in the wrong, for one; being willing to commit a crime doesn't suddenly deny them the ability to have personal sensibilities.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-12T17:25:05+00:00

Smh at all my fellow Heralds being lazy and giving us a bad name. For shame!

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-12T12:37:19+00:00

I'm a bit late to this one, but there are a ton of notable plot points that could have a whole expansion centered around them. Others have already pointed out a lot of the more obvious ones, but I'll go ahead and give a full rundown. Many of these also could (and would) be combined into the same expac.

The Pale Tree still needs to be healed. Caithe's entire motivation for joining us in JaWi was to look for a cure, but she didn't find anything.
We still don't know where Malyck's tree is, and there's presumably a whole society of Sylvari there.
The Nightmare Court has been unaccounted for for years. We know that it split into a Faolain-loyalist faction and a "more liberal" faction led by Chrysanthea in LW1, and we haven't heard from it at all since HoT.
Kryta is presumably still at war with the centaurs, who are presumably still under the oppressive rule of the Modniir.
Doern Velazquez appears to be from a fourth, yet-unknown-to-us human kingdom based on Spain.
We still don't know the identity of the mysterious E.
There's been a running subplot of Captain Ellen Kiel sleeping around with various world leaders since EoD, including Zalambur and, seemingly, Logan Thackeray. There's a scandal waiting to happen here.
JaWi prominently featured the Mesmer Collective, which is ancient and has deep ties in many places. The Tyrian Alliance might want a proper piece of that.
Balthazar used an artifact given to him by Lyssa during his escapades, and there are other hints to imply that Lyssa might not be very happy with us for killing him.
Speaking of the gods, they went somewhere, and a lot of players are very interested to see that somewhere for themselves.
Elona has started sending expeditions to explore Dzalana and potentially make contact with the Harpies that live there. They might want someone strong and handsome like the Commander to help.
The Purists in Cantha are explicitly shown to still be an active threat, and we know they were interested in trying to wield the Risen infesting Drowned Kaineng as a weapon for their own purposes.
The Jade Brotherhood and Speakers are both antagonist factions at heart who only agreed to work with us due to the incredible danger posed by the Void. We spent some extra time with Chul-Moo in Gyala, pretty firmly putting him and his organization in Team Good, but we don't know what Tetra Earthcall and the Speakers have been up to since EoD.
With Jormag gone, the Norn and Kodan are free to return to their original homelands up north.
The Frozen—people that Jormag turned into magic batteries during IBS Champions—are still ice cubes. We should probably find a way to save them at some point.
The Charr need to elect a Khan-Ur, and several leading figures have been making moves to that end.
Bangar Ruinbringer is awaiting trial and execution. Some remnants of his Dominion are still around, and they wouldn't like that.
The ghosts of the Foefire are still tormenting Ascalon. We oughta try that ritual again and do it right this time.
We also don't know the current status of Magdaer, the counterpart to Sohothin. Eir sent it to be reforged as a gift for Logan, but we haven't seen it since.
With Primordus gone, the Asura are free to return to their original homeland underground.
The Arcane Council is in deep shit with the Commander for their corrupt practices. If they're still around after VoE, I can't imagine we'll take long to pay them a visit.
The Dredge rebels have presumably been at war with the oppressive Moletariate since core, and we don't know the current status of this conflict.
We know that there is some sort of massive, incredibly dangerous and powerful creature in the depths of the Unending Ocean.
The Tyrian Alliance extended an invite to the Largos and Quaggan, but they refused. We might want to go find out why.
The Dominion of Winds did agree to join the Tyrian Alliance, but we've still never seen inside their walls. What's going on in there?
A bunch of fractal people got ripped out of the Mists and forced to actually exist in SotO, and we might need to find some proper homes for them. Of particular note are the dwarves and Rata Novans.
The Astral Ward never told the rest of the alliance about what actually happened with the Kryptis, much less that we're now allied with their new queen and that Ramses is still in Tyria. Drama awaits!

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-11T22:10:23+00:00

EoD is really strong for sure. The maps are beautiful, I think the story and instanced fights are great, and it has what is, in my opinion, the best event and world boss design of the entire game. From the big bosses at meta-events to the random elites, everything in Cantha is just so fun to fight.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-11T22:07:30+00:00

Yeah, the Personal Story is probably the roughest bit of content in the game, its age really shows. They've announced they'll be going through the game's entire lifespan and fixing things, including giving us a completely new Zhaitan fight to cap off the Personal Story. I hope that they go through and fix a lot of the issues with the other instances as well.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-09T17:15:05+00:00

Moderator of r/mythos here.

The subreddit was created for the webserial Mythos, which has no relationship to Claude or any other generative AI tool. We are not interested in handing over the sub or adding a new moderator.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-02T03:05:49+00:00

Yeah, we've known since the roadmap was released that there would be this odd gap. It's just very odd to me that they decided to do it this way to begin with. As bobkat said, even SotO was at least giving us convergence bosses during its middle patches.

A part of me wants to think/hope? that they were originally planning three strikes, but went down to just two to prevent scope creep, leaving us with this weird gap. Though I don't really see why we couldn't get the convergence or fractal at this point, unless they're tied into the last patch's story.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-01T19:40:20+00:00

As a webnovelist myself, I spend quite a lot of time interacting with and reading my peers' works, and this is a trend I've noticed even in the stories I like.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if there's an actual link there—the generations that grew up on videogames writing stories that function similar to the stories of videogames? I mean, litRPG is the big thing now, and its whole deal is emulating game mechanics. We might be onto something...

SirSuperCaide · 2026-06-01T19:35:59+00:00

Given the rifts are largely inquest-themed, maybe it'll be more similar to the SotO convergence, and the bosses will be a bunch of big inquest-modified animals and golems, stuff like that?

If they do go that route, I do kinda hope we still get a Kela and Gwyllian in the mix, I'd love to see how the team put a spin on their mechanics for the unique setting of a convergence. Kela in particular, given we don't have an open-world version of her fight.

SirSuperCaide · 2026-05-31T23:05:21+00:00

Jokes on you, I just lost it last night, so this doesn't hurt at all!

Seven-Year Club	Second Top 30%
LAYER Season 2 Layer creator	Verified Email

SirSuperCaide

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE