I don’t mean no disrespect when I say: I’m disappointed with the quality of the latest content.
There are honest statements from developers who mention that there was not enough time or there were not enough ressources to do this and that and I respect that. Anet’s credo was “when it’s done” and I certainly can’t feel it here, a lot of things feel rushed to me.
- generic non-rewarding rewards from npc-vendors after a challenging (to coordinate) pre-event chain (Karka-queen).
- very bland Meta-Event with a boss-battle which shows no sign of originality (throwing eggs to reduce a shield isn’t that interesting really)
- using the same 3d-model for a boss which was used quite often on the island – it’s like just fighting a bigger version of a veteran with more health.
- the lack of cutscenes (in the first part of the Last Stand Event) which ties in with…
- a mess of storytelling. How many people are aware who Canach is and what he has done?
I feel this all could have been much more. From what I’ve got from user posts people expected:
- new armor skins OR at least something rewarding from the new vendors. People don’t want to buy anything from them, look how the price of Karkashells dropped http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/37897
- A Meta-Event which would be on par with the planed reworking of the world-bosses to be much more interesting
- A new creature which uses the tentacle / sclerite-theme (and probably much bigger – like the fractals-metaboss)
- an evolution of the cutscenes from Flame and Frost. It was a good start last month and people seemed to love it
- I didn’t expect the lack of storytelling at all.
I certainly can see that the team spent a lot of thought into this, since they improved on some aspects from Flame and Frost.
- the achievement-rewards were really customer-friendly. You didn’t have to play PvP to get the backbags. You didn’t have to do every achievement. This is really a step forward in the direction of the new daily-achievements
- the hated RNG-boxes now drop in the open world too. (still, people hate RNG because the droprates are simply too bad) A step forward indeed. The +200% Magicfind is helping here too. The intention was a good one but in the end RNG was still a letdown imho.
- permanent content. This is what we wanted. Thanks for listening, really appreciate! People who made a break find more content to do instead of standing disappointed and leaving soon after.
- a new scavenger-hunt. Seriously, we love that stuff. Everything that rewards people for exploring the beautiful world is a good thing. This should get much more attention really, since dynamic events are the core of the game and spread all over the world – but a lot of them never seen by anyone because there’s no incentive to explore. No real rewards other than the nice scenery for high level players.
- challenging enemies & events. I know karka and those drakes aren’t new. Still they haven’t been nerved and are as challenging as they’ve been. People really learn to fight those beasts which is a good thing. The events where Karka take over the camps are great, the waves feel quite threatening most of the time and it’s not a no-brainer. I’d love to see events in that difficulty in the future too. More chains would be nice though – telling a story.
- an interesting mini-boss. Canach received quite a lot of criticism but when you look at the comparison: in Flame and Frost we got Cragstead where you’d have to defeat wave after wave of enemies which was kind of boring. Now instead you had a new mechanic which had to be learned. This is a wonderful thing.
- a new mini-game. I loved it because there was a learning-curve which was imho nicely paced. I was quite bad in the beginning but when I got the hang of it I was quite successful dodging five other people and evading those big Karkas.
You see, there are quite a lot of improvements which proves that the team is at it with heart and they want to design the best content they can. I really wonder how much more this content could have been if they’d had more time and ressources. Sure, if you ask people how often they want new things they’d say more often rather than once a month… but in the end it’s the result that counts.