Guild Wars 2

I’m heartened by the fact that Anet is finally implementing a new champions reward system, a new dungeon reward system and the currency wallet. I remember suggesting the first just after the game was released (seriously Anet – why was giving greens for soloing Champions considered adequate in the first place?). And I know many others have suggested changes to the dungeon reward system were needed. The wallet is such an obvious basic upgrade I figured Anet didn’t ship it with the first release because they wanted to sell character and bank space (cynical person that I am). These upcoming changes make me think that eventually/maybe they actually listen to their players.

So . . . in the (probably foolish) hope that it will make a difference in the long run, I think we should give Anet some very direct feed back on the three pieces of new content with this update: Aspect Arena, Southsun Survival and Candidate Trials. Which of those was the best, and which of them the worst, and why?

My “votes”:

Best: Candidate Trials t3 and t4 prior to the most recent patch. Pre-patch t3 and t4 you could use a strategy of hobbling and slowing the plunderers, only killing them when absolutely necessary and complete the events. That version of the event allowed a lot of players to complete it without it being an over the top grind. That version of the event rewarded players for focusing on achieving the goal, not for just trying to play king of the hill and slaughtering everything in sight. It also allowed people the option to farm it for the rare skins etc. if they chose to do so. Teams could have employed the same tactic slow plunderers, kill the launchers, manage spawns, etc. with one or two players near the spawn point, allowing the rest of the group to kill the other mobs. Succeed or fail in completing the event, the reward would have been more loot bags and a better chance for the rare skin drops.

Worst: Candidate Trials t3 and t4 post the most recent patch. What can you say about perhaps the single worst “fix” Anet has yet implemented? An absolute failure of hoard mode/king of the hill event where actually trying to fight off the mobs would simply get you defeated with several minutes remaining. Mobs that scaled so badly that the Veterans were really Champions. Mobs that traveled half way across the map to get to you. Mobs the refused to leash and followed you to the far end of the map. Mobs that when they did leash camped in exactly the wrong place (right next to the spawn points). CT t3&t4 became an anti-group group event in which you were better off using an exploit to solo or two-man to complete. An event that virtually required a specific gear set (berserker) and clearly favored certain classes (Warrior and Thief) over the others. And all for the incredible reward of 5-15 achievement points and a miniscule chance of getting a rare weapon skin.

I will give Anet one final piece of feedback on Candidate Trials – the duplication for each candidate, while it might have been the result of rushing the content on a tight schedule, was an opportunity lost. For example – you could have left Kiel’s version the same (protect the treasure from the pirates so she can give it back to those who lost it), but changed up the Evon version by having players steal the loot for Evon to use from the pirates who got there before the Players.

I’ll admit I didn’t try Aspect Arena, and I only played Southsun Survivor until I got an achievement (Headshots! since I refused to grind Candidate Trials t3-t4 for Evon. I found Southsun just ok, but I rarely find mini-games within games that engaging/enjoyable. Did anyone think either of those mini games were the best or worst of the new content?

Worst: The voting itself. I don’t care enough to click ‘vote’ hundreds of times. Furthermore, people are probably voting for both candidates to complete all the achievements, making the ‘election’ even less accurate.

Celtus.8456:

Worst: The voting itself. I don’t care enough to click ‘vote’ hundreds of times. Furthermore, people are probably voting for both candidates to complete all the achievements, making the ‘election’ even less accurate.

To get both the achievements, it only requires at most 5 to each candidate. If you have to vote more than 5 times, you’re wasting your usages of the buffs.

The best…?

Hm… I liked the crystal… oh, thats from the Bazar… then… eh…

• The minigames… I guess… they were quite fun, despite some annoyances here and there. Was there anything else?

• Oh, you can replay the story scenes as much as you want. That’s nice. But it will be gone when the content ends… which is a massive waste of voice recordings and cinematics.

• I liked the Rose and the Rucksack. But you can hardly get more than one of each unless you are very lucky or have gold to waste, and nothing guarantees they’ll stay in the trading post. I don’t know if 5 years from now I may want to use one, and I don’t want to keep a stack of them just in case. Just another more reason anything that can’t be obtained indefinitely or at least once a year should be an unlock.

• I like this “people decide” things. I don’t like how it divides players as picking one means losing the other. Putting players against players should be something found only in competitive gameplay like WvW, PvP, GvG and GW1’s Faction competitive areas. Oh, and there’s no way to give the votes in stacks. That is baaaad for hand health. Yo really should look more into hand health instead making so many UI elements like vendors something that destroys your hands clickety-click after clickety-click.

The trials events were a nice idea, but poorly executed.

• It should have been more like GW1’s challenge missions. Instead 4 tiers, a more gradual increase in difficulty wave after wave with breaks every 5 waves, and the achievement just require the first 20 waves, then let people who is in for the loot get to the wave 8000 if the can.
• Making the higher end tier have a permanent achievement was a bad idea. The higher should have been a tier V, and it should have been had a 0 point repeatable achievement with a loot bag, like the one we’ve been having in mini-games. Part of the game is getting better with time, and when you make temporary achievements too hard, many people will feel like they waste their time even trying as they never get anything done, and some even end up buying the achievements from runners instead doing it themselves. The really kittenes should be either permanent or cyclical, repeating at least once a a year, so people can think: “I’ll get better and try again!”. How can you get better at the game to do something if you can’t do that something after 2 weeks?
• Making it harder after people had completed it using the bugs was a bad idea. You don’t do that without adding some alternate method for those who do it after that, like keeping T4 not as hard, but adding a final T5 tier with the good stuff (or endless waves of increasing difficulty like I mentioned before). When that happens, either you do not make it harder, or reset the achievement so they have to do it the way it’s intended, or you’ll be unfair to those that do it later and sending the message “Rush through the new content as soon as possible. If it’s bugged and you unknowingly exploited the bugs, you will not lose anything you earned doing that, and after they fix it you may not be able to do them”. Which is a bad message to give.

First of, I really like the Survival and Arena mini game and I’m glad they will be around. I liked the cut scene and I loved Evon Gnashblades character portrait, the little detail with the bags that said vote for him and a little silver in it.

I didn’t like the candidate trials. Mostly because the chance to actually get an aether weapon was soooo slim.
And I expected more from the elections. Some last minute scam from Evon maybe. Like vote 50 times for me and you get this cute mini or backpack. Something like this.
I didn’t really get the “Cutthroat” part of the event title. There was nothing cutthroat about it, no bickering between the two contestants, no back and forth, no surprise promise to turn things around, no revealed scandal. Some update ingame letters to inform players about the vote and the current poll data would have been nice, too. Maybe even a letter from Ellen or Evon to urge us to vote for them.

Basically they could have been done more to make the voting more exciting.

Esplen.3940:

Celtus.8456:

Worst: The voting itself. I don’t care enough to click ‘vote’ hundreds of times. Furthermore, people are probably voting for both candidates to complete all the achievements, making the ‘election’ even less accurate.

To get both the achievements, it only requires at most 5 to each candidate. If you have to vote more than 5 times, you’re wasting your usages of the buffs.

Correction.
Zero times.
Unlimited use Kiel representation buttons are available on the TP.

Worse: Temporary hard stuff