Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow forumers !

Last time I came here, I was disappointed and made some sad posts about my experience following the Southsun cove update. I felt I needed to acknowledge the amazing work Anet put into the game since then, and try to lay down some (hopefully) helpful criticism.

The Queen’s Gauntlet
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As far as the gauntlet is concerned : challenging rhythms with rewarding.
Once I reached the third tier, I had to think about traits and build for the first time since what seemed like ages.
I enjoyed having to tweak my character to adapt to the varied challenges and I finally had to explore the many possibilities my class offered.
Clearing the third tier brought me a fulfilling sense of accomplishment.

Gambits are a great way to let us choose our own difficulty.
After Liadri came another fun part : challenging myself to the limits of my skills when voluntarily choosing to fight hard opponents with handicaps.
I still struggle with the “Light Up The Darkness” achievement but the whole experience was fun for me and I keep on trying new gambit/boss combinations.

The Gauntlet produces player interaction, even though it’s about solo PvE fighting.
I’ve cheered people fighting inside the ring, and they’ve either cheered back or teased me when came my turn. I’ve shared tips about the opponents – both ingame and outside- and I’ve seen countless reddit posts about tactics, build sharing and gameplay videos.
I’ve witnessed a lot of naturally occurring player interaction, and it felt like I was in an MMO again.
I would have loved to see more options for the crowd to interact with the current fighter. A betting system would have been a neat addition. Imagine trying to guess how long the next fight will last, and the winners sharing the loosers’ money.
Some of my other utopias include cheering cries, booing noises, and some way to allow the spectators to influence the fight (pings of warning or direction giving ? Spawn of some tiny bonuses to direct the fighter ?).

There were a few kinks too.

I would suggest removing the dome to allow free camera movement.
The struggle against the camera is annoying and frustrating.
It awkwardly keeps trying to make love to the glass dome while I fight to peek above my Norn’s shoulders (He desperately needs to go on a diet).
I get that we are supposed to feel trapped inside the arena, but the camera and the character don’t need to share the same restrictions.

Another ground texture -without transparency- would allow better AoE spotting.
Red rings on small orange bars and transparent holes make it really hard to know what’s going on.
I’ve been surprised many times by oneshot AoEs because I simply didn’t see them, and my colorblind friend couldn’t even tell there were any.

An arena-dedicated area would prevent zerg-induced lag while fighting.
I love the idea of having the arena hang over some empty space. It gives an additional sense of insecurity while fighting and provides a great view.
Howerver, the occasionnal zerg visit provokes a sensible loss of fluidity, even with my above-average rig. This ruined my fights on several occasions.

The entrance tickets should have stayed account-bound, in my humble opinion.
It is my understanding that those tickets went soulbound to prevent people from abusing the 5 tickets offered to any newly created characters. But surely there was another way, that didn’t impact the whole playerbase? Maybe simply offer those 5 free tickets to previously existing chars ?
This is not a deal breaker, given how easily these tickets are found. But I still find this was a weird move.

The Crown Pavilion
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I like how this living story update was introduced into a previously existing area that was reworked, instead of just introducing a new explorable zone.
The construction of the pavilion truly made me feel like Tyria was alive, and that the living story updates truly have the potential to impact our ingame world. Seeing that huge tent over the Great Collapse (before the update) was a neat way of letting us know that something was going to happen while immersing us in the world.

The Pavilion also gave a new breath of freshness to Divinity’s Reach (which hold a special place in my heart), and I am happy to see players walking in its streets once again, even if it is only for a limited time.

Beacons of Kryta
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Not much to say. I love the idea !
Please make more of those races, preferably with increased difficulty.

Those could easily be added to existing jumping puzzles, for instance.

Daily activity in Lion’s Arch
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That’s my dream come true ! Great way to keep those temporary-content minigames available while making sure there are enough players to populate them.
It worked well for Zaishen missions in gw1, I hope the concept proves as fruitful in gw2.
I would love to see a handy interface window for minigames, akin to the WvW and PvP ones. This would be a great way to let players know what minigame is available this day, and allowing teleport from anywhere would be a neat bonus.

Hot air balloons
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The events linked to the air balloons give life to areas.
The airships flying over the zone are visible from afar and are a very neat and immersive way to broadcast what’s happening.
Those are far better than the previous click-and-leave items we were used to within the Living Story.

Achievements
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I like the idea of separation between the easy-to-achieve & lower-value achievements, guiding us to where the new content is, and the harder ones which you only chose to do if you want to challenge yourself.
This system gives more meaning to achievement points, and gives the choice to the player by not ‘forcing’ to try to have them all.
The fact that not all achievement are mandatory to complete the meta-achievement and receive the reward is a simple yet powerful idea, allowing the harder achievement to have their place.

Other
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The currency wallet is a great quality of life improvement.

I like the idea of the new champion loot system. It give more incentive to chat in /map and call reinforcements to help kill a champion. Let’s hope this farm business calms down.

I feel the dungeon reward changes are for the best. I was never one to farm citadel path 1, and I see groups popping for the other dungeons again. It’s good to have those options again.

Please forgive any grammatical and/or typo errors. I tried to proofread myself. Also, the formatting was way more complicated than I thought.

Thanks for the hard work, Anet.

I would just like to second all the points you just made.

It’s great that the Gauntlet was challenging. Defeating Liadri possibly my greatest achievement in Guild Wars that I felt I earned – it was very difficult.

The player interaction was great, people encouraging and giving tips to others. Though yes, a instance of its own would be great considering lag caused glitches and many deaths. A few people have taken it on to themselves to become dedicated resurrectors, which was pretty cool. A community element to the game done right.

I am impressed with this update. There are numerous flaws in the execution such as the queues in the gauntlet and having to revive people, as well as the champion loot seemingly rewarding failing events, but it’s a start. Once they iron out the finer details, they addressed the problems of the game being too easy and champions being worth killing. However, they need to tie in with event success, such as say, having severe DR on events that go on for too long.

I never felt compelled to do anything. The idea of challenge, without really missing out on things if you can’t do it shows a good understanding of catering to everyone. If you don’t like the gauntlet, you can go down there for some faceroll stuff.

Currency wallet goes without saying… a clear attempt at listening to players.

Finally, I enjoyed the Beacon of Kryta achievement. It was quick but pretty fun to try and figure out.

Overall, this was not without its flaws. But it’s a step in the right direction.

@DeMilano : When I defeated Liadri for the first time, I threw my arms in the air and shouted “YAHAAA”, forgetting I was on voip with the rest of my guild. Awkward !

Needless to say, I was extremely happy to vanquish her, especially after struggling so long.

I used my guardian for all the fights, having tanky armor and trinkets. I had to adapt all that do dish out a decent amount of damage to Liadri, and I had fun tinkering my traits.
These obstacles made the whole thing challenging, which in turn made the experience very fulfilling !

@ArchonWing : Oh, I agree with you ! There are many flaws that came with this last update, but they can be ironed out.
I mainly wanted to acknowledge the good work ArenaNet is doing.
As you said : this last update was a step in the right direction.

I especially appreciated the harder -optional- challenges.

Yea, the thing is that the game needed more variety, and this is a good showcase. Though it needs to keep to this path.

The only true disappointment was probably the visuals. I was expecting a bit more from the air balloons. Though it’s a nice concept. I like air balloons. ;p

That is why I wanted to make a thread, praising the bits of the update that deserve it.

I’m afraid there are a lot of unhappy people making themselves heard, and not enough recognition for the advances made in the right direction.

The OP gives excellent feedback. I can’t say much about the gauntlet as I only tried it once and realized it wasn’t my cup of tea. However, looking over the suggested improvements, I see listed some of the reasons I didn’t like it. For example, the camera problem. I get so frustrated and aggravated with the camera showing me…well nothing good… walls, floor, ceiling, my characters innards… in jumping puzzles that I tend to avoid them. I ran into camera problems on my first gauntlet try and just decided to avoid it…. obviously that wasn’t the only reason I avoided the gauntlet. It was just a contributing factor. If I liked that sort of content I would have ignored the camera problem. I do support having that sort of content and jumping puzzles as I know some people really love that type of content.

I also agree with the kudos list. I too like the separation of the gauntlet entirely from the other achievement series. The beacons of kryta were fun to complete and gave a nice appropriate reward. And the balloons having 3 activities that rotated through were an improvement over the clickies of the past.

Best of all though is the rotating daily activities. I wasn’t sure about that when first introduced but adding it as a daily and rotating through the activities is a great idea. It ensures that someone is doing the activity when you do it. Very good design for that. When more activities are added to the rotation it will be even better with the variety. I have now added that as one of the activities I do routinely for my daily.

At this point I would also like to state that adding something from the current living story as part of the daily is something that I really appreciate. I don’t always do the LS choice but some days I do and that along with the daily activity rotation has added more variety to my daily.

The posts here echoed my own thoughts. I think the update has been great, with the exception of some of the above mentioned problems. Things have been moving in the right direction, I just wish I had more time to enjoy the current current. Including the event activities to coincide with the daily achievements has been great when I’m strapped for time.

I’m glad the OP posted such a positive thread.

Well. I’m glad I’m not the only one finding this update enjoyable !

I know malcontent players are always the loudest on forums, but we need to give credit to the devs, when and where it is due.

Thanks for posting here, and proving some of us still enjoy the game !

Another little thing of positive feedback I’d like to add: Deadeye Dunwell. No not because of his “farmability”. Because of the KOTOR reference.

For anyone that hasn’t played Knights of the Old Republic: Deadeye Duncan was a human duelist fighting in the non-lethal tournaments of Ajuur the Hutt. And he was said to be the worst duelist that ever picked up a weapon. Pretty hilarious if you ask me.