Scoring the Lost Shores Event (long)

Scoring the Lost Shores Event (long)

in The Lost Shores

Posted by: Nudd.2970

Nudd.2970

This is my humble opinion thread on the Lost Shores event. I gave the same elsewhere for the halloween event.

The Halloween event turned out to be a huge success in my opinion so I was pumped up for the Lost Shores weekend. Since this event was a kick off for the new, permanent content in the game (Fractals of the Mists and Southsun Cove), I’ll talk about each part separately.

Fractals of the Mists dungeon is really cool. “A+” from me. I got to play the first round of Fractals during the weekend and I was really impressed with the level of detail and thought that went into each of the Fractals I played. Very cool. And I think you are on to something with how a dungeon run can go. Couple it with a group finder and you might change the way we play dungeons in an MMO. Looking forward to playing more.

Southsun Cove, though I haven’t played it yet post launch event, is another beautiful zone up to par with the quality standard that we have come to expect from GW2. My score is an “A”. The jumping puzzles are fun and challenging, looking forward to completing them. The challenge of the mobs (since it is geared for level 80) appears to be just a slight step up from Cursed Shore which is good as there is new ascended gear in the game and we need that challenge. I am looking forward to what you will do with that zone post event.

So again, the new content that sticks in the game was and is awesome. A real credit to your design team for rolling something like this out, so quickly after launch, which in other MMOs would mean an expansion purchase or other money making scheme. Yet it was free and paying for anything during the event was optional. Another “A” in my view.

The kickoff had its issues, as you know. There were many bugs with the NPCs on the two investigation mission lines (Noll, Fabid, Canach) and then there was the lag. Credit to the live team for taking steps to fix this stuff during the event, but quality checks should have routed out these issues before hand. Always assume that player will be doing each of these things is mass numbers AND if there is any fight events associated with NPCs, they will zerg them into oblivion. Seemed to me like that should have been apparent. I will give you a pass on the lag as I don’t think you have ever had a full test of putting massive numbers of people in the same area AND having them fight mobs simultaneously on all worlds. I know you try to replicate such a situation in BETA but you don’t really get the numbers that you have now that the game is launched. AND you made an adjustment and later, similar world events with fighting going on did not have the lag we saw during phase 1 in Lion’s Arch. So well done on fixing that. Scoring the quality of the event push I would give you a “B-” cause though it was buggy, you stepped up and fixed it as quickly as possible.

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Some guy called Nudd

Scoring the Lost Shores Event (long)

in The Lost Shores

Posted by: Nudd.2970

Nudd.2970

As for the story in the launch event, I am sad to say that it didn’t live up to the hype. So I mention it last. Phase 1 I will score a “C” because although it did have cutscenes to mark the beginning and ending, which was good so that players know what was going on, the middle piece (not talking about the lag) was kinda lame. Players just zerged one event of mobs on the south side of LA and then the event was over. You hyped the event as “Defend Lion’s Arch” and “Retake Lion’s Arch” so, though I am not saying you directly indicated that Lion’s Arch would be overrun with Karka for a day… it should have been. That would have been fun, in my view. Then phase 2 could have been really retaking LA from the Karka. I think an opportunity as something awesome was missed there, so that is why I score phase 1 as a “C”. Also, the light house being destroyed was not, emotionally, a big enough change to LA to make me remotely care that the Karka invaded. You should have destroyed the bridge and the Asura gates as well. That would have gotten my attention. Could have temporarily moved the gate system to those unbuilt gates that they are working on.

Phase 2 gets a “D” unfortunately. It was extremely confusing, the start of the event. We should have had a cutscene showing the boat enter the harbor. The building of the Trebuchet took entirely too long. I started on my server wondering when it would start and then suddenly we had a repeat of the karka invasion. It was very brief. I guess a testament to the new acid that we coated our weapons with, but in less than 15 minutes the whole thing was over and the Ancient Karka was gone. One of my guildies was on an overflow telling me the invasion hadn’t started there so I went there and was able to see the boat coming into the harbor and watch them build the Treb… but again… that was very long and drawn out and then on the overflow… the invasion event never happened. Eventually we just went to Southsun Cove and didn’t care anymore. Now following the events on Southsun as the Lionsguard moved across the island setting up outposts and stuff… that was pretty cool. I like the trees being chopped down.. that was neat. So it wasn’t a total failure, phase 2. Credit for that.

Finally phase 3 I will give a “B+”. It was really long but action packed so that was appreciated. The loot at the end was also very nice and I felt like the effort had payed off. But again, we had people reporting problems with lag and disconnects. I had a client crash and though I started on my server I ended the event on an overflow. But I did end the event, some other unfortunates didn’t get that. And I know you are working on a fix for that so kudos. The cutscene at the end was cool. Especially the “horror” movie ending where the bad guy seems to come back for one last stab. Had a laugh on that one. The only other negative thing I have to say is that there is a problem with how you render mobs and players together in these large events. The common problem I dealt with as we went through the different phases of the event were that mobs weren’t showing up on my screen. They were there cause a) people were shooting at something and b) I was dying for no apparent reason, but I just wasn’t seeing them. I have a high end ATI card, and I tried different quality graphics levels but mostly it made no difference. Rendering mobs needs to be the priority over other players. I know it is a social game but in a big zerg group like that, it really doesn’t matter if you don’t see your other people AS MUCH as seeing the mob that is killing you. I’d say on a priority rendering scale, it should be group members first, NPCs, mobs, downed or dead players, other players. Yea it might look like only 4 other people are fighting the mobs with you, but that is preferrable to not seeing the dangers around you in my view.

So overall, the event gets a C+ from me and the new content gets an A. Just wanted to shared my humble opinion on the Lost Shores weekend to help improve future events. Hope you appreciate and recieve this in the spirit in which it was given. Thanks.

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Some guy called Nudd