Guild Wars 2

Combat/NPC Fights- They are fun. You had great mechanics. I’d love to see more of these mechanics in future story lines and also the open world fights. However it should be noted that the scaling in the tower was poor. As said before, it is hard for single people to ascend the tower a lone. More often that not people leave behind others and run past tons of mobs because its too risky to try to rez people and not rewarding enough for players to kill mobs not in events

Story- Probably the poorest part. Big problem with this living story arc this year is there have been no hints to the over arcing connection. Some ideas on how to fix this are translating text/books, brain puzzles, things like that. Not really revealing it all, but giving us hints on whats ahead to those who try to find it.

Reward- Great reward system. With champion loot, hidden chest, ending chest, key at start, gasmask, etc. You guys perfected it this time.

Instanced Zones- I loved that you could solo these. I really loved the queens gauntlent fights and having these instanced zones that were hard, but not requiring a group were amazing. Best part of this patch.

Achievements- You didn’t require a ton of grinding for these achievements. I did every event on my way up, did the ending instance a few times to beat him without dieing, and boom i was half way done. It didn’t feel like a grind at all, everything was the perfect number to require dedication, but not boring grind. Great job here.

Final Review- 7/10. This living story was one of the best by far content wise. However, it is heavy sided on being with a group at the initial stages and created some unwanted characteristics with the community. The story side of it was lacking on progression too. The instanced areas, reward system, and combat mechanics of the monsters were amazing. The visuals were great too. Overall I think this is the best living story chapter in the second part of the year. Great job anet.

My favorite part of the patch was the Nightmare Chambers. The first two groups of enemies that you had to kill on the way to the boss were not really difficult and didn’t enjoy them much. This especially goes true for the Toxic creatures, which when you kill them they essentially become a punching bag that you have to kill once again.

However, some of the bosses were quite interesting. The Champion Queen Spider, Logan Thackery, and Trahearne were all quite funny. Especially Trahearne – when I walked in I wasn’t expecting to immediately die from his Whirling Wrath. The bosses had interesting melee mechanics though they were far too easy to range in my opinion (at least Logan teleported and Trahearne occasionally reflected projectiles, though). Most of the bosses I would have enjoyed a harder difficulty though. Vigil mentor and Aetherblade army as end bosses were kind of boring – lack of interesting mechanics and they hit for little damage.

One time I went through the chamber and it might have been a bug but I was infected with permanent toxin DoT. I thought this was rather interesting as it made the fights quite a bit harder with the DoT pressure! Anyways, even though it probably was a bug it would have been cool to have a gambit system for more rewards a la Queen’s Gauntlet.

However, I feel that the rewards were not enough when taking into consideration the long hike just to get to the Nightmare Chamber itself. I would have liked an easier way to access the Nightmare Chambers.

It’s interesting that the development of villians has been so poor in GW2 that are allies have to double up as enemies in the nightmare chambers.

Combat mechanics were amazing? Once again I am doubting if I am playing the same game. Feels like same old CC spam to me.

Khisanth.2948:

Combat mechanics were amazing? Once again I am doubting if I am playing the same game. Feels like same old CC spam to me.

Maybe depends on your class. Each class handles situations differently. I play engineer and I can’t take too many hits, so I have to watch for animations and dodge at right times. Combat mechanics as in the poss fights. It is interesting and fun to fight bosses who do special stuff. Spider can eat players and spawn mines. Worm and his aoe skills. The final boss was probably the worst boss in the story, but he wasn’t bad.

Deified.7520:

Khisanth.2948:

Combat mechanics were amazing? Once again I am doubting if I am playing the same game. Feels like same old CC spam to me.

Maybe depends on your class. Each class handles situations differently. I play engineer and I can’t take too many hits, so I have to watch for animations and dodge at right times. Combat mechanics as in the poss fights. It is interesting and fun to fight bosses who do special stuff. Spider can eat players and spawn mines. Worm and his aoe skills. The final boss was probably the worst boss in the story, but he wasn’t bad.

I guess my point is “but this was all in the game already”. The wurm is more or less a replica of the TA wurm with the additional swirls. As for the spider, there is Gargantula in Harathi Hinterlands, the Jellyfish boss in fractals and the Hylek bounty target in Sparkfly.

I assume by the wurms mechanic you mean the swirls because AoE spam doesn’t seem like much of a mechanic.

I’ve fought the spider several times but I don’t remember seeing any mines which means I should have been killed by them several times but that hasn’t happen yet either.

The final boss didn’t seem like much of anything. It is more a fight against the environment and everything else that spawn.

The best:

- The enemies. Nice models and fairly good move variety for trash mobs. The hybrid looks awesome (it just lacks the ability to deal damage :P)

- Climbing the tower. It has an interesting difficulty level for solo, with players still being able to adjust it through grouping.
Soloing could require waiting a couple of days more though, otherwise you might find yourself “grouped” without wanting it, or even worse, surrounded by mobs thrown at you by some nice skipper.
Con: Loot, even if not incredibly great, still favors zerging.

- Fighting Logan. I’m really excited on finding Traeharne too.

The worst:

- The instances (chambers/endboss), they’re just TOO easy. If this kind of content must be designed for being doable by almost every player, I strongly suggest adding difficulty levels the next time.

- The story. What story? you may ask. Well, there’s your answer.

The tower was a “hey neat” moment at first, but now it’s just Orr from back before Orr was pointlessly nerfed into the dirt. Zerg after zerg after zerg. The “story” instances were no such thing. Each one was the same and didn’t advance the story at all, just needless side events that distracted from the climb.

The final Chamber was neat, again, the first time, but on repeated runs is just another chore forced on players in lieu of actual content.

The one thing I absolutely HATE however, is the keys. It’s just more nesting RNG BS that this game needs like another hole in the head. I’ve run the tower bottom to top repeatedly and gotten ONLY pink drops from the third floor. Six in a row. There is a 0.13% chance of that happening assuming the same number of enemies killed on each floor, but it’s not at all unlikely when you consider the broken way the drop system for it works. The odds are not bad that any one floor will give zero keys, so it only takes one loopy floor giving a lot of keys to create this stupid situation where you wind up with a ton of completely useless trash key pieces.

Please… for the love of all that is good and holy… STOP NESTING RNG ANET. It’s bad enough you give these crap chances to get good things, PLEASE stop making the odds extremely long by doing things like having to collect multiple key pieces with their own RNG. Just. Freaking. STOP IT.

Black Regent.5897:

The tower was a “hey neat” moment at first, but now it’s just Orr from back before Orr was pointlessly nerfed into the dirt. Zerg after zerg after zerg. The “story” instances were no such thing. Each one was the same and didn’t advance the story at all, just needless side events that distracted from the climb.

The final Chamber was neat, again, the first time, but on repeated runs is just another chore forced on players in lieu of actual content.

The one thing I absolutely HATE however, is the keys. It’s just more nesting RNG BS that this game needs like another hole in the head. I’ve run the tower bottom to top repeatedly and gotten ONLY pink drops from the third floor. Six in a row. There is a 0.13% chance of that happening assuming the same number of enemies killed on each floor, but it’s not at all unlikely when you consider the broken way the drop system for it works. The odds are not bad that any one floor will give zero keys, so it only takes one loopy floor giving a lot of keys to create this stupid situation where you wind up with a ton of completely useless trash key pieces.

Please… for the love of all that is good and holy… STOP NESTING RNG ANET. It’s bad enough you give these crap chances to get good things, PLEASE stop making the odds extremely long by doing things like having to collect multiple key pieces with their own RNG. Just. Freaking. STOP IT.

Edit: My mistake, I thought you were talking about getting only pink keys from the third floor, but you meant that you’d gotten only third floor pink keys despite running the entire tower?

Bonefield.9813:

Edit: My mistake, I thought you were talking about getting only pink keys from the third floor, but you meant that you’d gotten only third floor pink keys despite running the entire tower?

Basically, I only got key drops off the third floor, so they were all pink.

Not that it matters since I can’t get back to the top to use them now. I’m currently laying on the third floor dead because I turned the second to last corner and walked straight into a huge pull of somebody else’s. So that’s fun.

Stooperdale.3560:

It’s interesting that the development of villians has been so poor in GW2 that are allies have to double up as enemies in the nightmare chambers.

It’s interesting that you don’t realise that fighting/killing off a friend is a widely used trope in vidya.

Instances: Good. Challenging without being a utter pain. And what a kick in the heartstrings the chambers were. What a kick.

Main area: With all the mob-skippers around, it looks like they need a good hard flush now and then so that someone trying to solo thier way up suddenly isn’t up to thier necks in veterans. That is a really huge pain.

Rewards: A bit soon for me to tell, havn’t made meta yet.

I think that they did pretty good with this patch in comparison to past ones. But it still suffers from some of what I perceive as flaws that have existed for a while now.

But I think the instances are quite good. Good to have the option to solo or group. I thought the final dungeon was a decent balance. Though I did it with a group once and I thought the boss just had too much HP in comparison. Felt like it took at least 2 or 3 more minutes then me just soloing him. Chambers were really good though, but the champion knights also seemed to suffer from the massive hp pool when in groups.

I like the tower and the open world dungeon idea. I really do. I just hate to see it bringing out a lot of the flaws though of the setup. Overflow is a issue, mostly a issue as in, you go into a chamber for a bit, come out and in a different overflow entirely then before, so you are potentially forced to try for another overflow or wait. Of course running in a group you can at least attempt to meet up if you get separated after a chamber. And a group has a lot better chances to continue pushing through then a solo.

The running through thing is kind of sad, but inevitable. Thats all I can really say on it. Its to be expected from MMO players, especially in content like this. But you do need to take a look at your map/enemies if you see your players avoiding stopping to kill stuff or res other players. I can only see that as there is something wrong in that area that is forcing players to ignore them. Personally I do think there IS a lot of stuff going on, lots of DoTs and exploding things that can almost one shot you, lots of enemies, etc. It can be quite hard to res someone if they die in a bad spot. Especially if most people don’t stop to help.

I think the difficulty of the tower is fine, if you have at least 6 or so competent people. Floor 3 can overwhelm a small group though despite smaller groups being able to make it to floor 3 easily. Events and the champ events difficulty are good imo.

I do feel bad for any of the people that won’t be able to mess with the tower within this first week though. I know I won’t be going back, at least not a lot. Even though I enjoyed it. I finished everything and have no reason to want to go back. But this just brings the other issue into play that we have been seeing a lot with these “zerg”/group focused LS lately. The masses dwindle down increasingly fast after everyone gets their first taste/finishes meta. I don’t know how exactly they could fix this, other then providing more reward to continue to spend time there for 2 weeks in order to draw people into staying.

Katreyn.4218:

The running through thing is kind of sad, but inevitable. Thats all I can really say on it. Its to be expected from MMO players, especially in content like this. But you do need to take a look at your map/enemies if you see your players avoiding stopping to kill stuff or res other players. I can only see that as there is something wrong in that area that is forcing players to ignore them. Personally I do think there IS a lot of stuff going on, lots of DoTs and exploding things that can almost one shot you, lots of enemies, etc. It can be quite hard to res someone if they die in a bad spot. Especially if most people don’t stop to help.

I think the difficulty of the tower is fine, if you have at least 6 or so competent people. Floor 3 can overwhelm a small group though despite smaller groups being able to make it to floor 3 easily. Events and the champ events difficulty are good imo.

I do feel bad for any of the people that won’t be able to mess with the tower within this first week though. I know I won’t be going back, at least not a lot. Even though I enjoyed it. I finished everything and have no reason to want to go back. But this just brings the other issue into play that we have been seeing a lot with these “zerg”/group focused LS lately. The masses dwindle down increasingly fast after everyone gets their first taste/finishes meta. I don’t know how exactly they could fix this, other then providing more reward to continue to spend time there for 2 weeks in order to draw people into staying.

People avoid the fights because of the massive HP pool combined with very fast respawn. So what if you clear an area? You’re not really going to help anyone. It will be repopulated before you turn the next corner. People will catch on to that sort of futile situations very quickly.

As for keeping people there how about actually having things worth getting? Since all the new stuff to get are bought with gems the place to be is whatever gets you the most gold. A place filled with people dropping trains on you, mobs with excessive HP and CC spam is not an ideal place to farm gold. The only reason to be there is either because you are not done yet, you are helping a friend or you are grinding keys in hopes of getting something good from the chest.

Khisanth.2948:

Katreyn.4218:

The running through thing is kind of sad, but inevitable. Thats all I can really say on it. Its to be expected from MMO players, especially in content like this. But you do need to take a look at your map/enemies if you see your players avoiding stopping to kill stuff or res other players. I can only see that as there is something wrong in that area that is forcing players to ignore them. Personally I do think there IS a lot of stuff going on, lots of DoTs and exploding things that can almost one shot you, lots of enemies, etc. It can be quite hard to res someone if they die in a bad spot. Especially if most people don’t stop to help.

I think the difficulty of the tower is fine, if you have at least 6 or so competent people. Floor 3 can overwhelm a small group though despite smaller groups being able to make it to floor 3 easily. Events and the champ events difficulty are good imo.

I do feel bad for any of the people that won’t be able to mess with the tower within this first week though. I know I won’t be going back, at least not a lot. Even though I enjoyed it. I finished everything and have no reason to want to go back. But this just brings the other issue into play that we have been seeing a lot with these “zerg”/group focused LS lately. The masses dwindle down increasingly fast after everyone gets their first taste/finishes meta. I don’t know how exactly they could fix this, other then providing more reward to continue to spend time there for 2 weeks in order to draw people into staying.

People avoid the fights because of the massive HP pool combined with very fast respawn. So what if you clear an area? You’re not really going to help anyone. It will be repopulated before you turn the next corner. People will catch on to that sort of futile situations very quickly.

As for keeping people there how about actually having things worth getting? Since all the new stuff to get are bought with gems the place to be is whatever gets you the most gold. A place filled with people dropping trains on you, mobs with excessive HP and CC spam is not an ideal place to farm gold. The only reason to be there is either because you are not done yet, you are helping a friend or you are grinding keys in hopes of getting something good from the chest.

I totally agree with you on both points I have to say.

I didn’t mention the respawn because even though I had a serious issue with it the first day (and ‘complained’ about it). The bit I played today it seemed a bit better, but mostly because I had the luck of getting people that actually tried to group up. The HP pool is definitely a issue as well. Considering that a group of 5 can’t even kill one of the elites before you get respawns. So the chance of getting stuck in a area for a long time is very high if you are trying to kill your way through. Its usually thin down the numbers/kill stuff to res someone and keep hauling kitten .

CC spam has been hated on since launch Orr days. I always wonder why they try to use it so much in combination with already annoying things. Cause it sure as hell doesn’t stop people from running…obviously.

Rewards wise. All I can say is I am in total agreement.

Well I guess the CC spam has been “improved” relative to the Mad King Labyrinth. It’s not as bad as the mummy + skeleton archer combo.

Edit: So I am watching http://youtu.be/Eh97jGEGA7g right now. What the devs are saying and what I experience in the game is extremely detached. It makes me wonder if they are looking at things through rose tinted glasses.