Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to give my opinion on the Bazaar update overall. For the impatient, I thought that there was a whole lot of the update done well, but it did have some glaring design flaws. I’ll go over each section of the update in turn, rather than try to separate into a positive/negative section. Though taken as a whole, I think that enjoyment of jumping puzzles is a huge aspect in regards to player enjoyment here.

Keep in mind that I personally have mixed feelings on jumping — sometimes I like it, but in the real world I’m not so good with heights. This makes me feel very uncomfortable in some places in the game.

The jumping overall: Suddenly giving my character the ability to jump huge distances was amusing. I’m not entirely sure of the purpose, to be honest. Maybe it’s just a “look at the fun stuff we can do with the game” type of thing, but I have to wonder whether this whole thing would have been the same with typical abilities.

Sky crystals: I’m really glad that the achievement was 40, but there were 52 total. By the end, I had a few visible that I just couldn’t figure out how to get. And even after jumping and falling and dying and jumping and dying and falling all day, I was still a bit wibbly about some of the heights. I would really have appreciated 20-30 uses from one crystal rather than just 10. I wasted so many jumps by running into things directly above me, then I’d have to trudge back to the nearest crystal to recharge. I actually think this was more tedious than the falling and dying.

Sanctum Sprint: Wholly dependent on the players you have with you. I ran with a lot of really nice people, and a lot of really aggressive kitten-holes that derided anyone slower than they were. The lightning jump skill was the single most glitchy thing I’ve seen. Sometimes I’d jump sideways. Sometimes, with a series of the tower platforms (where the idea is to lightning leap from one to the other) the skill would bug out and I’d go shooting off the platform at a tangent — falling to my doom. Sometimes in those series I’d just get “out of range” errors. And of course falling hugely long distances then teleporting back to the checkpoints would frequently bump me back several places (in addition to falling but surviving, so I’d have to try to run around to find the boundaries to reset to checkpoint).

I’ve run the race over 50 times now, and I’m still not clear on all the mechanics. Do I need to target someone to use Gale on them? Why, at the end of the race after the finish line, do I sometimes get stunned? And so on. This is one of those areas where a tutorial would really have been beneficial — though I know it’s ArenaNet’s antithesis. No tutorials, ever, just toss people in and see if they can swim.

Kite baskets: (the ones in jumping puzzles with skritt nearby) Not bad. Though I don’t really like most of the puzzles chosen, it was easy enough to get to a few. And nice that overall I didn’t need to get to any for the meta-achievement. Again, a little confusing on what I needed to do — I was looking also at the kite basket Pilferer achievement, and tried for some time to get the skritt to let me loot the basket in Beggar’s Burrow.

Kite baskets: (the lootable ones all over the maps) Horrid. I can think of few worse ways to implement this, and I’m not even a game designer. So let’s look at the problems. One: It’s not character/account specific — if I open it, the character nearby has it opened as well. Two: I can loot these once per day per location… but the icon still shows up for me, so I could deprive someone else of getting it. Three: I can’t tell which ones I’ve opened per day, unless I memorize the location and times. Really? This is the best you folks can come up with?

Seriously, this was crummy. The only positive thing I can say is that I only needed to find 30 for the achievement, which went pretty quickly.

The story: Um. Is there one? I know Kiel and Evon are fighting for a seat on the council, though I’m not sure why. Not sure why I’d care, either. The Zephyrites are mysterious and enigmatic, and seem to have a connection to a dragon I used to know… but there’s no way I would have made that connection without someone else posting all the tidbits. When I was at the bazaar I was so concentrated on sky crystals and champions and running supplies that I never noticed random NPC speech telling the story. Yeah, maybe tucking that off to the side is not quite so useful, eh? When a random Redditor is telling the story better than ArenaNet, I think there’s a problem with the delivery.

(continued)

Labyrinthine Cliffs: Oh my freaking dog this place is gorgeous. I honestly had forgotten how much I love exploration, and stepping foot onto mysterious shores that didn’t immediately try to eat my face off (I’m looking at you, Southsun) was a huge thrill. The variety of NPCs, the wares sold from so many vendors, the music… all fantastic. I’ve spent many hours here with nothing to do. I mean sure, there are events once in a while with veterans/champions, or krait/Aetherblades attacking, but for the most part there’s nothing. Still enjoy the zone enough to randomly wander around doing a whole lot of nothing (though again — still didn’t catch any of the story until pointed out by a Redditor. ahem). I will definitely miss this once it’s gone. And I also have to express thanks that quartz can be mined even with copper tools. Bringing a low level character down here to avoid waypoint costs (due to the inevitable death due to my poor jumping skills) but I could still mine things. Unlike Southsun, of course.

Time gated content items: I just don’t get it. If I want to make Berserker armor for a character, I can do so in just a few minutes. Why is the Celestial equipment gated? After reading a number of threads on the forum and on Reddit, I have found very few classes/builds that could use Celestial effectively. So it’s not in huge demand, what’s the deal?

Fortune scraps: OK, this is just pure awesome. Now I can’t say I’m really intrigued by the back pieces or the helms, but I’m very pleased that the scraps are pretty easy to get. And there’s a chance at getting the golden ticket to bypass gathering. Or in other words, chance at instant win, but consolation prize means that even if I don’t get instant win, it’s progress anyway. This is exactly what I wished to see with the Jade Weapon Tickets, and it’s like ArenaNet read my mind in the implementation. Thanks.

And bonus extra blathering:

Belcher’s Bluff: I know this is actually permanent content added. Nifty. I’m unsure of Poyaqui’s status after the event, however. Maybe he’ll move to some other location, maybe he’ll be unavailable, and no one outside ArenaNet can tell for sure (why the mystery?). But some of the NPC opponents are truly evil, even after the patch to “fix” them. I can’t count the number of times Maddie prevented me from drinking water, even when “Woo” was not visible. Or the insanely ridiculous healing of the charr-whose-name-I-forgot going from apparently zero health to full in just a few sips. Or Adnul — whole threads devoted to Adnul, I don’t think I need to go into detail here. It’s ridiculously frustrating at times, and I feel like it’s mostly chance rather than skill. Direct contrast to things like Sanctum Sprint — after running the race a few times I had a feel for places I could pull ahead or get caught by others. With Belcher’s Bluff I never felt like my win was due to my abilities, just random chance that this time the NPC didn’t cheat by using their signature skill a thousand times in a row. I may end up doing the achievements with other players, but I’m quite happy that I never have to face the NPC opponents ever again.

Overall: There’s a lot here that was really really fun. A lot that I didn’t expect to be fun, but turned out to be. I’m thankful that I had a spare character slot open, the 5 copper waypoint cost was far more affordable than the 1s30c I was paying for my level 80 characters. Given the number of times I died from falling, I would have spent a lot more gold on waypoints than I have to date in the game. Technical glitches were irritating, but not as irritating as the design flaws (which I admit may be subjective). I think that in the end this has been a fun and interesting update.

Edit: Time gated items, not content. Armor is not content when it’s just crafted with identical appearance to other crafted armor.

Personally, I enjoyed BotFW much more than any other LS content so far (with the exception of the finale of Flame and Frost and how it was actually implemented into the world and not an entirely exclusive zone that would disappear).

I love the Sanctum and how to get around it with the special skills (though it seriously makes me feel annoyed that you can jump across chasms with them but shadowstepping/teleporting doesn’t work, as it shows me this isn’t a game mechanic problem that they glitch so often or don’t work at all). The fact that the scavenger hunt for the Sky Crystals didn’t require you to find every single one but still needed you to keep your eyes open and figure out how to get to places is also really great.

Kite Baskets are alright, every event has a random spawn in the world these days, nothing special, and not awful, either.

Sanctum Sprint is so-so. It’s certainly fun and with some knowledge of the track and skills, you can consistently score first place. Though I don’t wholeheartedly like the Mario Kart-esque nature of the game. You can be first for 3/4 of the game, then get struck by something midair, fall forever and suddenly be 8th. At the same time you can get a Light Travel powerup and get from being 8th to first right before the finishing line (that actually happened to me). But overall, I like the ‘indirect’ PvP nature of the game a LOT more than the PvP Arena minigames before. Especially Crab Toss was full of griefers that would keep a good player from winning or even playing the game by focusing on him the whole game. So for the future I’d love to see more games that embrace this idea of going against other players but not in a direct combat sense of way.

Belcher’s Bluff is a fun minigame, though the norn master is over the top. It may fit the lore, but there wasn’t really fun to be had.

Lastly, I like the notion of upgrading your home instance with the Bluff NPCs and the node. I presume future content will further upgrade it with small bits, though personally I’d prefer some kind of solitary sanctum you can reach with some kind of teleportation crystal rather than the crowdy home instance. Either way, you’re free to invite others or go there on your own. But who knows what the future will bring.

I thoroughly enjoy(ed) BotFW so far and it’s the best LS content to date, with only minor flaws. I’m glad to see Anet is apparently learning from every LS update and getting it better each time. It’s just a shame that most things just vanish forever after 2-4 weeks.

Keep it up.

Sourde Noire.5286:

Lastly, I like the notion of upgrading your home instance with the Bluff NPCs and the node. I presume future content will further upgrade it with small bits, though personally I’d prefer some kind of solitary sanctum you can reach with some kind of teleportation crystal rather than the crowdy home instance. Either way, you’re free to invite others or go there on your own. But who knows what the future will bring.

I am surprised that I forgot to mention this even with all my yammering. I definitely like the idea of upgrading the home instance. I like the fact that I did the upgrade with a human, but my asura can walk into the Grove and still use the quartz formation there (i.e., it’s not race restricted or just one character with the upgrade).

I do think that the mechanics could be explained a bit better, though. I believe I’ve mentioned in other posts that this would be a good time for one of those “Show Me” mails, maybe from the Zephyrites themselves, that explains the once-a-day thing and has a button to show the location of the nodes.

But that’s all a fairly minor quibble, and I do hope to see more home instance involvement in the future.