Guild Wars 2

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

I had a very unpleasant experience with my first character on this mission. So much so that it tainted the feeling I had for PS for the rest of the game. I decided to carefully analyse the issues I had with it on my second character.

Watch Commander Talon This character is weak. He is a ‘general’ but shows no sign of experience or leadership. He skulks underneath an archway for the entire mission disregarding the advice that has come directly from his sub-commanders on the front until he finally and quite randomly dies. Should we feel sympathy when he says his final ‘heroic’ line?

Why is this character here? I was wondering if it were for comedy. ‘You are just a scholar not a general what do you know about warfare?’ he spouts to Trahearne just moments before a cut-scene of a ship appearing out of the water. If it weren’t for the serious tone of the rest of the mission I would say it was trying to be funny.

You are also forced throughout the whole mission to run back and forth between the latest objective and his hiding place under the arch. This messes with the pacing. Instead of reacting to a battle field we are turning in the latest quest and picking up the next one.

Finally and most importantly for me, he demeans the threat of the undead. By this I mean, I feel the battle of claw island was lost not because the undead are a menacing threat to be reckoned with but due to the incompetence of Claw Islands commander. By this same note, the loss of your mentor also feels utterly wasted and without meaning. It’s not the undead’s fault Sieran died, it’s Talon’s. This really really jars with me.

Bad Mission Pacing I have touched on Talon’s contribution to dodgy pacing but there are many things in this mission that cause this:

- Lot’s of cutscenes: These pull control from the character and add very little atmosphere.

- Trebuchet mission: – I have all the time in the world to complete this. I missed for 5 minutes and then eventually got a hit in. There was no urgency or risk. It broke up the flow of the mission yet again.

- Back and forth: Going back and forth between Talon and the frontline throughout the whole mission felt like a very artificial way of moving the story on.

- Courtyard Fight: Throughout the mission so far there have been a mixture of re-spawning enemies and fixed ones. It feels very unclear at any one point whether an enemy is dead for good or will come back. This makes the courtyard battle feel very strange. There is no timer and there is no bar (like in dynamic events) showing ‘Enemy strength’. There are very little lionguard to actually help and there are many undead just standing still in the courtyard. I am unsure whether the mission wants me to kill enough undead to move the mission on or just survive a hidden timer.

- The final exit and cutscene: So your friend pointlessly kills herself/himself and now you are faced with a dock full of static mobs you need to clear out to finish the mission. The pacing has changed once again from a frantic battle to a leisurely exit. The mission ends with a music-less cut scene of a flat looking boat leaving a calm looking scene. No destruction, no haste, no emotion.

Bad Gameplay The mobs seem to have far more hitpoints that normal world mobs. They don’t drop any loot and they don’t provide any experience. This generally makes the fighting a very negative experience and makes me want to run passed every mob I can. This is exactly what I did in my second more ‘savvy’ play through.

Considering how much fun even just soloing in the actual world is, I find it surprising that a completely tailored experience for a solo player is so utterly poor in gameplay.

Conclusion I put the failure of this mission to entertain down to poor characters, poor pacing and poor gameplay. I find it unlikely that Anet will go back and fix this but I really wanted to provide my feedback to perhaps help steer and future PS missions created.

Thanks for reading.

Many of the battles throughout the storylines could have been fixed (or at least made more ‘logical’) with a timer or a strength bar of the incoming hordes.
Go defend X!
Ok…..Um, how long? Hack, slash, kill. Hack, slash, kill. Rinse and repeat 5Xs. 10Xs. Still waves coming at you. THEN a cutscene and…it all ends?

A strength bar showing the bad guys strength/resolve would help clear up confusion. There were times whenI didn’t know if I was even doing the right thing and wondering if I was bugged and then the fight ended. shrug

There were times whenI didn’t know if I was even doing the right thing and wondering if I was bugged and then the fight ended.

Yeah, that feeling of not knowing if I am doing the right thing or not is a problem. There have been times when I have actually been doing the wrong thing and so have become very aware of this.

One of the issues is definitely with the respawning in an area mechanic. Most world DE’s have ‘wave’ mechanics or ‘strength’ mechanics both providing far more feedback of what’s going on.

Mobs respawning in an area, often right in front of your eyes is the biggest immersion breaker. Even if the ‘wave’ mechanic is essentially respawning mobs as well, you feel less aware of it and it feels more logical.

Claw Island stood out to me as well as a spectacularly badly executed mission, I’d like to add that the return to Claw Island mission is similarly ridiculous. The dragon fight simply has to be witnessed to be believed; The thing lands, and stands almost perfectly still for about 5 minutes while you slowly whittle its life down and it dies. The thing put up a pretty poor show in my opinion and it is not worthy of the notoriety bestowed upon it.

But it was to showcase Trahearne’s leadership capabilities, not about an epic Player Character fight with a huge monster. I’m not claiming that made the fight fun, but putting him up on the high ground to repeat the same four lines is meant to show him taking charge of the fight and organizing the troops, was my take. He pulls the Orders together and uses their combined might to push the undead back so that the story can shift from despair to hope.

This, of course, highlights how unfortunate it is that the PC is not the big hero, that for many of us we unfortunately have to let Trahearne get all the credit while we do the work, and that the Orders are, despite their bravado and brains, pretty darn juvenile in their refusal to work together until we come along and make them.

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But this was originally about the first trip to the island. I agree wholeheartedly that Talon was a bad character. I didn’t care that he died, though I did find it an amusing and failed attempt to get me to appreciate the character. He really deserved it, to be honest.

And the trebuchet bit should have just been something you interacted with, like in GW 1 missions, that didn’t need aiming. No matter how long you take or how often you miss, the situation does not get worse on the island. So just remove the mini game and make it a player-triggered mini-custscene.

This mission emphasized that killing mobs isn’t often the goal of personal story missions. I guess the idea is to not let people grind the undead for XP, but *shrug* I wasn’t really motivated to fight enemies in personal story missions anymore after the mission.

synk.6907:

And the trebuchet bit should have just been something you interacted with, like in GW 1 missions, that didn’t need aiming. No matter how long you take or how often you miss, the situation does not get worse on the island. So just remove the mini game and make it a player-triggered mini-custscene.

This mission emphasized that killing mobs isn’t often the goal of personal story missions. I guess the idea is to not let people grind the undead for XP, but shrug I wasn’t really motivated to fight enemies in personal story missions anymore after the mission.

Good call on the trebuchet. That would be much smoother. Especially if you are given an order by an NPC to man a trebuchet and when you do a cutscene shows your trebuchet and a bank of other trebuchets firing at the same time.

I like missions where killing is not your goal, even if it is the goal of your allies around you. It’s an issue when you are not sure whether you are meant to be killing or meant to be running straight passed.

Played it once, not going to bother again. My PS ends at Claw island.

How is it possible that even the first two missions of GW1, from more than 7 years ago, are so much better than this one, Claw Island?

Claw Island isn’t all that bad. There are worse PS stories out there (Try the OoS mission after Claw Island. UGH! The mini map helps not!), and for it’s part, I thought the pacing and the telegraphing of what kind of action sequences you would be performing was pretty good overall. I remember enjoying my experience, and thought it was a fun experience.

(Although I agree the dragon fight on RtCI was a tad boring compared to the group Dragon Fight at Blazeridge Steppes)

I agree that this is a horrible mission. The worst I have seen in a game for years. The only thing this mission created was frustration. Where is the option to have the commander die from “friendly fire” and finish the mission early.

Someone said the next PS for the Order is worse so I guess I will give up on the PS for the order…

Agreed. This mission is pretty awful.

“Bad Gameplay The mobs seem to have far more hitpoints that normal world mobs. They don’t drop any loot and they don’t provide any experience. This generally makes the fighting a very negative experience and makes me want to run passed every mob I can. This is exactly what I did in my second more ‘savvy’ play through.”

This is my experience… first time through. My session seemed to have sat on the ‘Help Lionguard hold the Courtyard’ for a VERY long time (20+ Min) while I attempted haphazardly to kite/outrun excessive number of brutes around with my Necro… died I think about 12 times in the story, mainly due to getting chain stunned by said brutes. Got no experience, no drops from them, spent 6 silver in repairs…

The prior to the courtyard actions of run to the beach, run back to the fort, run back to the beach, with insta-infinite respawns of undead was a giant pain as well. Would have been maybe reasonable with a melee class (or something with higher dps + faster CD’s than a staff / sceptre+horn necro with pets that died in the last ‘wave’) as I’d have to slowly push my way to the beach only to have wiped all my CD’s and then ‘talk’ to somebody only to have to shove back through the same infinite crawl. IF I do priory on an alt I’d want to find a way to SKIP this story event (being said I can’t I’ll probably see if I can get some guild mates to assist), for as it stands this is one of the worst player experience events in the game (Honestly don’t know the story elements, which I plainly ignored after dieing the 3rd time as was getting aggravated).

in short REALLY PO’d at this event.

After I finaly managed to revive the lady on the beach (with mobs attacking me all the while, and getting hit by what I presume was cannon fire from the ship) things go a bit soother for me till the courtyard fight. (By this point I’ve started ignoring most mobs.)

Here I end up running in circles agroing everything because it doesn’t matter if some other npc is attacking them, they want ME and only ME. Fortuanly they can’t seem do do much if any damage to me while I’m running. I keep dropping Lava Fonts randomly shooting enemies with other abilites and eventualy the game decides I’ve had enough of that and moves on to the Dragon…. At some point I actualy managed to loose agro from all the mobs on me and am actualy in range to attack the dragon… which does nothing except doing its fear on me, I run back and can’t do anything to it still. I finaly notice what it’s saying my goal is (Stupid me, I was trying to follow the commander’s orders to attack the dragon.) For the “Clearing” the path to the ship, I decided to just run past everying and was rewarded with a cutscene and an end to the mission without having to kill any more undead… actualy I’m not sure I killed any from the point with the treb after. Wasn’t realy watching during my circles in the courtyard, I can only assume I killed a bunch…