I find this new Story dungeon great, but there’s so many things to improve upon and things that are simply just executed wrong. In this post I’m going to address several Pros and what I consider flaws.
First let’s tackle an easy one.
[AR Achievements]
I love them. They’re difficult and has a sense of being an actual achievement upon completion, especially ‘Unfriendly Skies’.
The Flaws
Obviously (other than Unfriendly Skies), they’re a bunch of a bug mess. When you have these moderately ‘difficult’ achievements, you want to make them work properly. Twice, I’ve avoided all the laser beams and I’m 100% certain of it, just to not get rewarded with the achievement at all. Once I’ve avoided all the cannon barrage parts 100%, I didn’t even get hit once by any of them. To be thinking ‘Thank god I’m going to get this out of the way now’ and then instead being greeted by a ‘Nope sorry, Chuck Testa’. Very frustrating at the very least.
Secondly, it’s time limited. Combine time limited with bugged achievements and you will get a frustrating stressed environment. Just adding the time limit, will automatically add stress once you notice they’re not your average cakewalk achievements the community has been spoiled with in GW2.
Just the fact that support actually encourages people to use an exploit to complete ‘Personal Space’ is just mind blowing.
Why no reward
Unfriendly skies at the very least had ‘Give us a title!’ screaming all over it. Why this was not done so, is beyond me. It has the difficulty, it has the challenging achievement status on it and people should be rewarded for it.
[Mai Trin – Final battle]
Interesting mechanics, I love the place where the battle takes place. But in general, a big NO. This fight has no diversity at all and it’s just a tedious battle in general. Just the fact that this battle takes the same time as the rest of the dungeon (assuming you don’t wipe) is just wrong.
The first issue is the diversity of the mechanics. There are none. You do the same thing in every phase, but not only that. Every phase of the cannon barrage is increased in time.
1. Get off stacks, attack, avoid cannon barrage for X seconds.
2. Get off stacks, attack, avoid cannon barrage for X more seconds.
3. Get off stacks, attack, avoid cannon barrage for X even more seconds.
It’s a very boring fight overall.
More Flawed Mechanics
It took me three runs to even notice that Horrik has two different cannon shots. One is a regular that has no impact on Mai’s shield whatsoever (first time I thought it was bugged) and the 2nd one is a blue thing that leaves a plague kind of circle which is the one that removes the shield stacks.
What is even more mind blowing, is that there are people that has run this over ten times and their reaction is “Oh, I didn’t know that” when I tell them about it and I bet some reading this very part right now had no idea about this as well.
Secondly, Mai’s shadowstep. There’s nothing more frustrating than having Mai in the correct circle, just for her to decide to troll you and shadowstep out of it to an ally. What this brings is an unwanted strategy. You’re basically encouraged to tank her and stand in the circle so this doesn’t happen.
Also, I’ve noticed more than once that I’ve immobilized her inside the circle and she’s like ‘Immobilized? Whatever!’ and just walks out of the circle like she couldn’t give a kitten and stops outside the circle like she chooses where she wants to be immobilized.
Improvements
The whole fight needs a serious revamp, but I’m not going to address that and simply mention simple tiny mechanics that would’ve made the fight more pleasant.
1. Have both Horrik’s aoe circles damage Mai’s shield. The regular ‘bomb’ taking like 2-3 stacks at once and the ‘blue bomb’ making it a remove stacks over time.
2. The blue bomb ‘stunning’ Mai for 1-2 seconds when she is hit directly by it. So at the very least it would remove 2 stacks from her.
3. Mai not being able to shadowstep when she’s in the aoe circle
Overall, having different mechanics and phases that are not similar. The Molten Facility end boss fight had this perfectly. It was challenging, it had two phases (two different end phases on top of it) and gave a general fun experience.
This fight is not. Especially the cannon barrage having it to be the longest ones ever of just mindless dodging and avoiding.
[Rewards]
My mindset on this dungeon so far has been, ‘the moment I complete these kitten achievements, I’m out and never doing this again’. That’s just wrong. While the Molten Facility wanted me to farm it. It was long but I actually wanted to keep doing it.
Just the fact that while I’ve been doing this dungeon, I’ve actually forgotten that this actually has a chance to reward the monocle is just wrong. The monocle in itself is cool and all. But it’s not something I’m going to stress myself over to get.