Guild Wars 2

Constructive Criticism on the Present Patch

I’ll make the introduction quick, to get right to the meat of this post. I’ve been a GW2 player since launch, and have been religiously devouring every content update so far. I have both positive and negative things to say about this patch… let’s go!

The Good

+ The new environment is so cool! It looks fantastic, and feels significantly different from everything we’ve seen so far. It really does bring that feeling of exploring a brand new world, and the scavenger hunt objectives give players incentives to comb its depths.

+ The focus on exploration and jumping with the new kit abilities makes this feel really unique. Exploring the new city and using these new abilities is an experience that GW2 hasn’t yet provided with any of its content patches, and getting a break from story dungeons and special events is quite relaxing. It’s really refreshing, and a great change of pace.

+ Shifting the story to political intrigue is, like the patch itself, a refreshing change of pace that keeps the living story from getting stale. I’m excited to see where we’re going from here, and seeing how the political rivalry with Kiel will turn out shall be interesting.

+ Achievement-based rewards are a fantastic way to lend incentive to completing achievements. It certainly has me beginning to take a good look at a lot of the content I hadn’t completed yet. Maybe it’s time to finally dive into Arah and complete those last 4 dungeon paths.

+ Asura-themed SPvP map. Enough has been said already.

+Sanctum sprint is a really neat mini-game that is a lot of fun to play. Race-type
gameplay is another one of those refreshing new experiences we haven’t seen yet in GW2.

+ Lending incentive to completing jumping puzzles via the kites is a good way to get players to discover overlooked content!

The Bad

- Lending incentive to completing the obsidian sanctum in WvW has attracted large groups of enemy team raiders who wait until players reach the kite, then kill them and /laugh, /dance, and tea-bag their corpses until they respawn. This has elicited incredibly volatile /say responses from other players, and you’ve generally created a giant swirling ball of hatred and frustration. Just saying ‘no’ to the achievement is also difficult because you’ve filed it under a meta achievement, and players may have already satisfied the prerequisites. In the future, I recommend sticking these limited time living story achievements in JPs in which players can’t grief and murder each other, (because they WILL.) and at the very most avoid placing it underneath a meta achievement with PVE-based achievements.

- Sanctum sprint’s randomness can be frustrating, and you’ve given players 2 achievements for placing high in the ranks. This means that what would otherwise be a friendly competition turns into a feverish collection of F-bombs when one player happens to receive the ultimate power-up and beat out a more skilled player. It would have been nice to just stick to race completion and crystal collection achievements – timed ‘cheevos for victory means players feel like winning is imperative, or else they will not be able to receive the achievements ever again. Maybe just make winning grant the player better rewards from the chest, or quartz?

- When dealing with such a massive environment as these cliffs, perhaps taxing players for waypoint use is a little more frustrating than it should be, especially considering there’s a massive scavenger hunt objective that requires players to zip all over, with the potential to fall into the ocean below or die. Being taxed so heavily for failure here makes this a little bit more frustrating than fun, which clashes with the relaxing and exploratory vibe of the patch as a whole. Maybe treat this like a city (which it almost is) and make the waypoints free, leaving the time lost/penalty of death to deter players from failure?

Keep up the good work, guys!

I have to agree completely with your assessment. I definitely love the looks of this new area and I love the races, but the same negatives stand out to me as well. I can’t understand why the waypoints cost in an area where falling to your death is common, but it is a persistent world map, and all world maps cost. Some people have actually helped others with the sprint achievements so it’s not all negative when it comes to attitudes, but i’ve seen a lot of the negative comments myself. The PvE living story connection to a cutthroat WvW area… I will never understand who thought this was a good idea two updates in a row!? Can’t plame the PvPers, they’re just doing what that area was meant for.

I agree with all but your last criticism. It is not a city, there are enemies so the no cost for travel is not justified. It would also make people more reckless in trying to get to the harder reachable areas.

I agree with the OP’s points entirely. I’ve really enjoyed this new content (and I am not a huge fan of the LS in general). The change of pace is entirely refreshing – refreshing to the point that I have played more in this past week than ever before, just to take everything in!

I do agree that the WP “tax” seems a bit steep, but I easily made back everything I spent on the WP costs in the Sanctum Sprint race – winning or not, the money bags are nice.

I’d say my one criticism would be that the recipes for crafting celestial gear are unlockable only per character, rather than per account. So accidentally deleting a char with some unlocked on will delete that recipe forever. Also, newcomers to the game will miss out entirely on a whole set of gear and weapons (not just skins) as the recipes are obviously limited time only, and the stock on the TP will eventually run out. It would be nice to see these added to the vendors at the crafting stations along with the other recipes you buy for karma.

I was frustrated with the WP tax, but the profits from Sanctum Sprint, plus the fairly rapidly respawing quartz nodes ion the Cliffs can recoup this cost if needed.

I HATE the WvW JP and would personally like to see it go, but that is really a separate discussion! But, as long as it is there, I am, personally, not bothered by the achievements for that, or 1st in SS. You do not need to do either to get the meta achievement.

I have only done 2 of the kite achievements – the 2 that did not require any significant jumping – and “accidentally” came first in Sanctum Sprint! I only needed 3rd to get the meta, but came 1st and got 2 achievements in one!

Here’s my feedback. I have a lot of opinions on this chapter, so I am going to keep each section as brief as possible, but there was a ton of new stuff.

Post 1/3
___________________________________________________

The Story

• The scene in Lion’s Arch was very enjoyable.
• Other than that, there was little to no story progression with Kiel/Gnashblade.
• However, instead we got the Zephyrites. I wonder whether they will play a larger role in future chapters (I hope so).

Map: Labyrinthine Cliffs

I love it here!

• Visual Design: I think we all agree that it looks absolutely beautiful. Many players have waited for a hint of Cantha, and all the new textures and building designs give them hope. The rest of us just enjoy the scenery.
• From a mechanics point of view: I think this map is not enjoyable for players who hate jumping puzzles. I love exploring and I love jumping puzzles and the aspect skills (when they were working) were super fun to use. I just wish they weren’t broken (see below at the very end of this post).
• From a technical standpoint: There is one bamboo beam that I keep trying to jump on but it isn’t solid and I fall to my death. But compared to what was (and still is) wrong with the Southsun Cove map, this is nothing. Good quality.
• ANet, please take note of us wanting to keep this map (sans kite ship and traders), as stated in several discussions.

Extras, NPCs, Dynamic Events

• Kookoochoo’s Fire Show: all around lovely. Kookoochoo is the best. He should be a mini.
• Zephyrite teacher and song: I kept missing it but I saw it on youtube. Kudos for putting work into such details. They do make a difference.
• NPC dialoges: funny and interesting. Just hanging out on this map was its own reward.
• Dynamic events: Loved the idea with the artifacts. The only thing that bothered me was that you had to drop your aspect skills in order to fight the monsters. I didn’t have that problem as I could switch to my engineer kits and back without dropping the aspect skills, but many other players (understandably) ignored the fights completely, especially during their hunt for sky crystals.
• Kite fortunes: Lovely.

Bazaar Achievements

• As I said above, I enjoy jumping puzzles, and parcour-ing around the map in order to find sky crystals was wonderful. I also liked that you “only” had to find 40 – just about doable without losing my mind, but also left me with something to do for fun (without any kind of pressure) later, long after achievement completion. Well done
• I could have done without World vs. Kite, especially so soon after Blackout Cache.
• Getting the reward after 16 achievements: good to see you’re continuing on this path.

Environmental kite baskets

Well done, ANet. By making them lootable only once per day, you have significantly decreased the stress of collecting. I could find baskets on every map without having to camp nodes. I think you have now found a mode that works. Keep it that way!

Secondly, the animation of a basket landing was wonderful.

Skritts’ pilfered kite baskets

I think the idea of getting players to try out (or re-visit) content (jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, fractals) is a good one.

But think the idea of putting a kite in the Obsidian Sanctum was counter-productive on all fronts.

Living Story Rewards

• Zephyre Sanctum Model: what a wonderful idea! I don’t care that much that it takes up room in the inventory. It is a lovely keepsake for later when the ship has left. As with Marjory’s journal, I wish we could use this to show other players what they’ve missed.
• Home instance quart node: also a nice idea. I don’t know why the quartz node was placed in the orphanage though.

Post 2/3

Other Items

• Celestial recipes, quartz, infused quartz, etc.: I have no problem with any of this. I’m now slowly crafting myself a “magic find” armour set, because why not?
• Fortune scraps, aspect back pieces and helmets: I wasn’t too interested in the back pieces and helmets, so I spent me scraps on boxes (hunting for recipes). I hope that that doesn’t bite me in the back later – will I need fortune scraps to buy or craft a kite later? I think that the scraps were dropping at a pretty low rate (although I was lucky a few times and dropped as much kitten scraps from one fortune). However, this system is still vastly better and fairer than RNG skin tickets. Please stay on this road, ANet!
• Cliffs traders accepting various items for payment: Handy.

Items that I want

These are items that I wish were in the game as rewards, and/or that I would have bought for money.

• Maddie’s hair self-style kit.
• Light/medium looking aspect helmets (masks, or something).

Sanctum Sprint

Sanctum Sprint is probably my favourite mini-game so far, and that says a lot, as I don’t really like racing games (Mario Kart and such) and I’m not very good at them either. But for some reason, I found myself returning to Sanctum Sprint even when I was done with all the achievements.

• Sanctum Sprint achievements: This time, ANet, I think you got it exactly right. You rewarded us for playing (total number of races, try each skill once, generous reward) more than for winning (1 win, and 1 top three placement). For me, that resulted in very relaxed play. I played it for the sake of it. (I remember grinding the Crab Toss and Dragonball all night without having much fun e_e)

Belcher’s Bluff

I enjoyed this mini-game already when I had to drink somebody under the table in my personal story. In gaming, I usually prefer logic and puzzles to physical action/dexterity games, so it is great to see a mini-game with a strong focus on out-thinking the opponent. I know that the NPCs were a source of frustration for some players, but I was lucky, it took me only a few tries. I enjoy playing other players more than playing NPCs.

• Belcher’s Bluff achievements: fair and not too grindy, epecially as therer is no time constraint here, at least for the PvP ones. For the futher achievements, you only have to play other players, not actually win.
• But what will happen to Poyaqui after the Bazaar ends? If the Labyrinthine Cliffs are removed from the map, will he move to Lion’s Arch instead? Will players still be able to play him, and get his special skill, which is needed for the achievements listed under “General”, not under “Living World”? Remains to be seen!
• Unlimited Belching: 100 gold was too steep for me. I would have bought the item for 10-20 gold though.

sPvP map

I haven’t tried it yet, but I will always be happy to see more PvP maps that look less human-centric.

New Achievement UI

Some improvements, but overall less practical than the old UI. I feel that ANet missed their chance to make this look good and be useful. But I have covered that in detail here.

Achievement Point rewards

• I am in two minds about this. On one hand, it’s nice to suddenly swim in WvW tokens. I got both the gift of battle and a pvt armour set without ever stepping foot into WvW. As convenient as this is for me: It completely defeats the purpose of Gift of Battle.
• I was disappointed that the armour skins were heavy, and that you have to choose between th radiant and hellfire gloves (I wanted both pairs of gloves but none of the helmets), it’s all been said elsewhere.
  (The molten gloves and dragon helmet had heavy looks already, too. It’s seriously getting a bit one-sided.)
• You shouldn’t be forced to make a decision that you will regret later.
• The rest is fine. Free gold, wheeeee!

Post 3/3

Criticism:

• It is an absolute shame that thousands of players cannot take part in what I think is the best Living Story chapter to date, for reasons beyond their control. The skill lag should have been at least acknowledged, but better, addressed by ANet.
  I fixed this for me by signing up for a VPN server set in the US, which reduced my lag to “playable”, but I don’t think that it should be expected that players pay for their internet connection twice.
• ANet, please communicate deadlines better. Or at all.

TL;DR: This was the best update so far. What it lacked in story progression, it made up for in style, mini-games that were fun, and a good balancing of achievements. The whole thing was sadly tainted by many players’ latency issues and ANet’s unwillingness to communicate.

Many many happy smileys, and only one very big sad smiley (for the skill lag thing).