Guild Wars 2

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.

Without getting all technical..I want to say difficulty vs time vs reward is totally not worth it. Mai Trin (all Bosses) should be susceptible to any and all player skills!
The Achievements as mentioned above where difficult,again reward not equal to the difficulty. The Mini does nothing for you in game and cant be sold for profit.
Greater the Difficulty should be equal to Quality of Reward!

I’d largely agree, with one caveat:

Instead of 2 and 3, have Mai be subject to being immobilised – even bosses with Defiant stacks can be immobilised, so given Mai an immunity to it really struck me as a troll move on the part of the devs which completely negated what could have been an interesting mechanic for the fight (immobilising her when the electric shot is about to go down so she gets stuck in it).

For a similar reason, and to let others get in the act, have her lose all Defiance stacks when she loses a shield level (it would even nicely explain why she has them – her her case, she has Defiant because of her shield!) – that way, carefully timed stuns and knockdowns can be used to keep her in the field and prevent her from shadowstepping out.

The really frustrating thing with Mai’s fight, IMO, was that there was so much potential for it to be an interesting fight, and it was basically squandered.

Well, I got my achievements and if this dungeon returns afterwards. I hope the end boss will be much more fun to fight than she is now

In addition, Horrik’s cannon AoE circles are not truly indicative of the AoE’s radius. I’ve been hit by them when standing well clear (25% or so of the circle’s shown radius) of any indicated AoE.

Good feedback!

I’d like to add:

• For Frizz and epecially Mai Trin (seeing as the fight takes so bloody long with or without wipes), on wipe, allow players to start with the current stage, and not always with stage 1. It will make sure that players have to complete all stages (and they get progressively more difficult) but don’t waste so much time on repeating fights they’ve already won.
• Add a waypoint closer to the end boss room.

Visual design

Overall: awesome. I love the look and feel of the dungeon. If it wasn’t so frustrating (for me), I’d run this dungeon just to be able to spend more time there, independently of any rewards.

Story

The cut scenes were so short that first I thought I’d accidentally cancelled them somehow. The MF ones were much more immersive.

And: the whole “Sky Pirates” thing needed a little more “sky”, in my opinion. Right now it is only the airship achievement that seperates the Aetherblade from other groups of bandits. (I’m hoping that my impression will change when we get to the jumping puzzle.) But some more air-related things would have added massively to the atmosphere. Examples: the end fight mechanics could have included air-dropped supplies/turrets; rocket boots instead of shadowstep; that kind of thing.

Here’s my 2 cents:

- Noir cinematic: Brilliant and beautiful. A+ on this.
– Mystery investigation living story thing: Totally spoiled on Facebook by ArenaNet’s announcements.
– Dungeon: Good dungeon with good boss fights.

However, here’s my problem with this content:
Instead of giving us more drip content with little mini stories, I’d much rather see some serious change to keep the game relevant:
– Player housing and/or guild halls. Leaving this out of the release was a tremendous step back from the original game and adding this as new content instead of these mini-story events would be a great improvement. Player housing is becoming more and more common in the MMO genre and allowing players to customize their houses/guild halls can give new potential rewards to a game where gear rewards aren’t that big of a deal compared to gear-grind mmos.

- WvW rework. Make WvW wins/losses matter (i.e. unlock PvE content like UW/FoW in GW1) or at least add to it so that it fits in with some story.

- Permanent dungeon/group content releases. ANet already said that it will focus more on permanent content, which I’m very happy to hear. Hopefully enough of this will be challenging group content like the Molten Facility and Aetherblade dungeons.

My only thing to say here

NEVER EVER do these kind of ridiculous achievements on a time limit, the CURRENT ones should be altered and made perma for the fractal merge.

Golems shouldn’t “Blitzcrank” in the center of the Room
If Anet can’t fix their AI, then remove the long knockdown effect from this pull skill.

Rewards mostly sucked too
That Aetherized metal needed a higher “Charged” gem salvaging rate/%. and the amount of crystaline dust needed for these Potent Sharpening/Oils is also out of whack

Something is borked with the golems.
I did this dungeon with two PUGs and failed at the last boss, both PUGs where just rushing it trough and mostly Zerkers.

I did the dungeon with my rookie friends and we traversed the dungeon without any problems no downing and no problems until the first boss, I told them what to do and gave all instructions and we all did manage to keep a good balance but always someone get’s knocked into a barrier and totaly mouled by both robots or suddenly a robot turns and pulls you into a barrier with no warning at all it just turns and shoots while I am trying to climb some boxes to take cover from the small beam.

There is no way of dodging it since that would make me fall down on the ground and iether hit by the small beam or crushed between the big and small beam.

I have figured out that when I did it with the PUGs we where so Zerked that the robots died before we did and/or we where lucky.
Almost that whole third phase fight is based on luck.

If the golem crosses the beams to much it shielded forever.
If you are unlucky you will be pulled down near a beam and totaly unable to do anything.
If the two beams is crossing just where you are and you get on top of some boxes and a robot is on you, you are lucky to survive.

First Living Story I don’t play till the end, no point following the story now.

I have become irritated with the achievements in this dungeon. If I’m unable to complete them in the time given it will be a huge disappointment. I don’t care about the rewards as much as I like the achievement points. And with a slight disability to my hands I’m not sure I can ever get these unlesss made permanent. Please consider this.

Good feedback BlackWyn, and i pretty much agree with everything you have said. I just wish the monocle was the reward for completing all the dungeon achievements. You know? Like actually reward players who took the time and effort to complete them all, but instead we still have good old RNG. Even a title would have been nice.

P.S The Chuck Testa bit made me laugh.

So, last night, we did the dungeon, finished the boss fight, and bam, both my boyfriend and myself got disconnected. After reconnecting, we could join our party in the dungeon again, but we were (of course) placed at the dungeon entrance. There was no way for us to enter the boss room again (the door remains closed and NPC Kiel is no longer available on the outside to let you in) so neither of us could open the chest (or try for the Airship achievement).

When you disconnect after the boss fight (I assume also during), then you can’t get back with your team and/or get the chest rewards.

This could have been fixed by

• opening the door to the room after successful boss fight or
• placing a waypoint inside the boss room after successful boss fight

It would be awesome if you could keep possible disconnects in mind in future dungeon designs.

i really liked this aetherblades….i critique the game a lot without praising it much on the forums but there are definitely events i enjoy…the other one was the festive season with the toys and some elements of the others.

Great review, I wholehearted agree with most of your points.

Blackwyn.8127:

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.

My mindset was more in the line of “no way I submit myself to this again for the sake of collecting achievements”. Once again, the last boss is rendered a tedious grind by absurd life bars and an unnecessary repetition of the same phases artificially lengthening the fight. And you make sure you don’t let crippling bugs on top of this already somewhat challenging content.

That’s a shame because the dungeon was really an overall pleasant experience and the mechanics behind the boss fight could have been really cool.

I’ll also add that, once again, we’re thrown in with no clues about what to do. The path up to the boss(es) should act as a tutorial about the mechanics, IMHO. It’s no fun to have someone in the party go find a strategy guide on the net or subject your PUG to repeated wipes every time there’s new content added in the game.