Guild Wars 2

Surprisingly, there isn’t one of these posted yet, and I always prefer visiting one thread for general feedback instead of several dozen. Simple topic, what do you think of Tower of Nightmares so far?

It just came out, so this is only a first impression. I like all the map changes, how Kessex is evolving and like the strong possibility of at least some of these changes staying. New DE’s are always a plus for me. Zergs never bother me, and I imagine there will be plenty of those for the next two weeks. The new skill, though, is kind of pointless for my characters.

I’m not crazy about the writing though. Another alliance between relatively unrelated foes seems like a rehash of the Molten Alliance (even borrowing the “Alliance” part of that name). I didn’t really like the cutscene, it felt bland, though better than two characters talking against a background. And I’m not happy about the potential for this new alliance to once again be crafted by Scarlet. Could always be wrong in that department though. What does everyone else think?

Antitoxin should not work in WvW, and those “nightmare seeds” shouldn’t spawn. Keep PvE out of WvW, thank you. No one wants your kitten seeds and AoE heals.

Celebratty.1632:

Antitoxin should not work in WvW, and those “nightmare seeds” shouldn’t spawn. Keep PvE out of WvW, thank you. No one wants your kitten seeds and AoE heals.

Keep pve out of wvw thhen keep perplexity runes and inflated states out also.

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Celebratty.1632:

Antitoxin should not work in WvW, and those “nightmare seeds” shouldn’t spawn. Keep PvE out of WvW, thank you. No one wants your kitten seeds and AoE heals.

Keep pve out of wvw thhen keep perplexity runes and inflated states out also.

I don’t like perplexity runes, but there is a significant difference between a new type of rune and living story PvE towers spawning living story PvE NPCs in a PvP zone.

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Celebratty.1632:

Antitoxin should not work in WvW, and those “nightmare seeds” shouldn’t spawn. Keep PvE out of WvW, thank you. No one wants your kitten seeds and AoE heals.

Keep pve out of wvw thhen keep perplexity runes and inflated states out also.

I personally think this is a nice step because it’s pushing support a little more. Most PvE content can be gotten through with all zerker, so you can see them working on pushing the support bit a little more.

I’m in class right now, and I only got to play a few minutes before class. But I liked what I saw. The AI was greatly improved. I like the down state in AI’s, and I like that they make an effort to Rez each other. From what I could tell, their health was closer to what ours were, and I got hit for 1-2k several times, which is more close to what a player would hit. Heck, one of them even dodged one of my attacks. Majorly awesome. I’ve been posting and advocating for some of that WvW genius to seep into PvE, and judging from the release notes, this could be a major step in that direction.

I can’t wait to play more!

Im quite sure the tower offshoots spawn in EB to cater to those WvWers who will complain they have to do PvE to get the new skill, otherwise it makes absolutely no logical sense for spores to traverse through the fabrics of time and space into the Mists and spawn a tower there.

Having played a bit more, I wish there was more to the achievements and DE’s than destroy the offshoot. It might help if the events were further spread out over Kessex Hills instead of in a long, narrow band. I wish more was going on. So far, this release is sort of like a mix of F&F and Secret of Southsun. But not quite as good as either of those two. Not awful (again things can always change), but not very engaging.

The next release is undoubtedly going to be a sequel to this one with the Tower being a dungeon. And judging by the release image, Scarlet as the dungeon boss. I’ll have to wait until then, though, to be sure.

redhand.7168:

I can’t wait to play more!

…and I’ve been playing for 3 hours chasing the carrot on the Obelisks… and besides that, the achievements, and the recipes… I don’t see anything left to do. Such is the quality of two week updates.

I guess ArenaNet just wants me to log in for a day every two weeks. I guess that works.

The biggest issue I’m having right now is that the events don’t scale well to deal with the zergs. If I run into an offshoot and it has 3/4 of its health I’ll still be lucky to tag 5 mobs, much less contribute in any meaningful way. For example, I just waypointed into one that was halfway through and I couldn’t tag any mob. The Scarlet invasions had a ton more mobs and the battle became massive, that’s just not going to happen when you only get 4-5 normal mobs being instantly melted by 30 people every 10 seconds.

Achieves look pretty tedious. Once I get the personal obelisk I’ll never come back. The actual story is kitten, par the course. Hopefully the zone will go back to normal because it’s just ugly now.

As an 80, I found the instance kinda tough but interesting. When I tried using an alt and teaming up with some of my lower level friends (a Living Story of their level we can play together? Sweet..)
It was disheartening to find that the instance is solo AND level 80.
Seriously. An instance you’re automatically warped into, in a 15-25 zone that is level 80?
I realize the Living Story is End Gamey but that just seems a big middle finger to anyone lower level who wants to go into the area / give it a shot.
Yes, people are up-leveled to 80 but that does doesn’t put everyone on as even a footing as it should if, say, everyone was down-leveled to 25, the, you know, area level..
IF you put living story in lower level areas, DON’T screw over people who legitimately can/should be in that area.

redhand.7168:

I guess ArenaNet just wants me to log in for a day every two weeks. I guess that works.

Yup, got that right! Been doing this since…well, this entire year. 13/14 now and waiting to log in when new daily is available, finish it and go play something less…repetitive and boring. All I did was run in circles killing the mobs I needed to finish the achievements. Not really that fun honestly…it was fun, the first time I did each event. Thanks for adding 24 more (in some cases) and sending me off to see the same map again just to be able to press F and click once.

I wish I could go back to the first month of GW2 where everything was new, fun and exciting and I could do whatever I wanted, even just run off on a road just discovered. But that was then. I get that some people simply enjoy the loot (zerg), others the running around and discovering the locations. But after playing since the release, I’m sorry if my expectations exceed the same routine:
1. Kill x of these
2. Do x events
3. Press F x times on y maps
4. Eat/collect x items
5. Play a mini-game

This isn’t content and achievements should never be QUESTS. Honestly, I feel like I log in, “pick up my quests” by watching the achievements and go do what the “quest giver” (description from achievement) tells me for extra experience, the achievement point and possibly a loot item that is useless or just something I’ll never see again (hello home instance…sorry for being rude, but I don’t really spend time there…no bank, no TP).

Sorry for the sarcasm that you might find throughout the post. I tried to keep it out as much as possible.

For those of you who still enjoy the game and find new things to do – enjoy it while you can and try to see it from our point of view also when responding.

Small edit as I forgot to add this:
For those who always say “Just quit then”, I kind of did. But still, I log in and do my silly little achievements every new LS (unfortunately, for a day) in the hopes that the game added something that might just make me want to come back, play it and have fun. However, LS will most likely never make that happen, which is the sad truth.

And here’s a thought for everyone:
I am able to watch a tv series or focus on something else while in Guild Wars 2. This is not something I consider “playing”, when I’m not even required to pay attention in most content released. Do you? Is pressing 1 (also known as auto-attack for most) really how you wish to play your game? Because this patch for example requires nothing more. Sure, I can press all my skills, but whatever for? In most cases, you’re lucky to hit the mobs with 1 skill in a zerg.

We got these big airships with those sexy cannons we used to defeat Zhaitan, right? Why don’t we just fly one of those babies over to Kessex Hills and blow the kitten out of that tower? Problem solved!

I really wanted to see Krait shapeshifting come into play, especially with PvE stomping being the flavour of the month right now. Clockwork creatures had a nice mechanic to their downed state, Krait could have made shapeshifting their unique spice, wasted potential in my opinion.

For general feedback, imo. the healing tome from marjory is overpriced, considering how easy it is to get 25 skillpoints, through champion bags and well just levels in general. For players who aren’t 80 yet it, and don’t have all their skills yet (and thus no surplus of skill points), it might be worth it but for them 5g might actually be well spent for other things.

Possibly I’m just having an off night, but so far, this LS has a “been there, done that” feeling for me, so I haven’t been able to engage with it much. I think it is partly the timing: Taking out the sprouts feels a lot like closing doors, collecting spores = collecting candy corn, etc.

I get that it is difficult to impossible to come up with something innovative on the short LS schedule, but this chapter doesn’t feel very distinct from Halloween wrt the thing you’re doing.

I liked the story instance, though I wish it had been more story and less hulk-smash. Kessex certainly looks interesting. I’m curious to see if this chapter develops into something more interesting, but I’ve feeling this will be one of the LS segments that I focus in on leveling an alt.

Glad to see we’ve moved away from the puzzle solving of the last few patches.

Really enjoyed the fights in the TA: Aether dungeon but hated the ooze escort and electrified floors part. Would certainly do that dungeon again if those two parts were removed.

Overall I am enjoying it even tho it does seem of the same ole, same ole. Would like to see the more in depth content that people are requesting like new skills, new weapons, etc but this still leaps and bounds better than Tequatl and TA: Aether.

After I’d gotten my 50 spores, I decided to bring in my alt, a level 20 Guardian, who I was doing Kessex with anyway, before the patch.
XP farming is pretty much horrible at the event, because being such a low level your damage on the mobs is no match for the damage done by downscaled level 80s, hence you sometimes can’t tag them enough to get the XP+loot.
The loot itself, my hubby got two exotic drops in the first hour of playing there, so it’s not that bad. I, myself, got nothing worth mentioning. Maybe one rare.
The fact that the regular hearts and dynamic events seem to just carry on, acting like nothing happened in the area, is a major letdown. I’ve decided to not even bother completing Kessex Hills in its current state and just do Diessa Plateau instead.

Celebratty.1632:

Antitoxin should not work in WvW, and those “nightmare seeds” shouldn’t spawn. Keep PvE out of WvW, thank you. No one wants your kitten seeds and AoE heals.

Then keep your PvP/WvW stomping and nerfing out of PvE.

Eraizul.4375:

As an 80, I found the instance kinda tough but interesting. When I tried using an alt and teaming up with some of my lower level friends (a Living Story of their level we can play together? Sweet..)
It was disheartening to find that the instance is solo AND level 80.
Seriously. An instance you’re automatically warped into, in a 15-25 zone that is level 80?
I realize the Living Story is End Gamey but that just seems a big middle finger to anyone lower level who wants to go into the area / give it a shot.
Yes, people are up-leveled to 80 but that does doesn’t put everyone on as even a footing as it should if, say, everyone was down-leveled to 25, the, you know, area level..
IF you put living story in lower level areas, DON’T screw over people who legitimately can/should be in that area.

You only zone into the instance if you are above lvl 25. If you are lower, then you have to go to Marjory and actually request to start the instance. Those people would then be upleveled to 80 so they can experience that story element. It’s basically how the game has worked since day one.

I think it’s actually cool that this happens. For lvl 80 people who have already explored this zone, it gives them something different when they come back. For lower level people who have not, it doesn’t change that experience much. Actually when they first show up, they’ll never really know the impact of this event until they do talk to Marjory and start the instance.

Kudos to this Living Story team and update. From other posts I’ve seen from Devs it looks like this portion will play out for the next few months just like Flame and Frost did. I’m looking forward to see what’s on the horizon.

Erika.8256:

…

But after playing since the release, I’m sorry if my expectations exceed the same routine:
1. Kill x of these
2. Do x events
3. Press F x times on y maps
4. Eat/collect x items
5. Play a mini-game

This isn’t content and achievements should never be QUESTS. Honestly, I feel like I log in, “pick up my quests” by watching the achievements and go do what the “quest giver” (description from achievement) tells me for extra experience, the achievement point and possibly a loot item that is useless or just something I’ll never see again (hello home instance…sorry for being rude, but I don’t really spend time there…no bank, no TP).

…..

And here’s a thought for everyone:
I am able to watch a tv series or focus on something else while in Guild Wars 2. This is not something I consider “playing”, when I’m not even required to pay attention in most content released. Do you? Is pressing 1 (also known as auto-attack for most) really how you wish to play your game? Because this patch for example requires nothing more. Sure, I can press all my skills, but whatever for? In most cases, you’re lucky to hit the mobs with 1 skill in a zerg.

Great post. It really highlights some of the major problems that LS content is facing: Each release, the living story has shipped content that’s shallow, grindy/zergy, and unthoughtful of the full impact on players (taco overflow/instancing nightmare) and setting (NPCs peripheral to events have been largely oblivious to LS content).

I sympathize for Anet because I do believe that they’re passionate about their work, but they are obviously struggling/rushing with tight deadlines and disorganized management. That said, sympathy is no more a replacement for content than the ubiquitous “Do X of Y” achievement padding we’ve been toiling away at, and I imagine it will not be enough to retain players against alternative hobbies (that’s right, it’s not just other MMOs that threaten GW2 — people are free to spend their time learning an instrument, a (computer) language, a skill, etc).

Like many others, I’m still somewhat stricken with optimism about this game because of the potential it has: The combat mechanics of the new nightmare court are headed in the right direction, and, even if only on the surface, the ambience of the nightmare tower is dark and threatening in a way that other recent threats seem to have lacked. Nonetheless, the overall continued lack of substance, both from storytelling and gameplay, has been a major letdown.

I’ve been a daily player since launch with about 3.5k hours logged, and GW2 is going on the back-burner for me. If the new content continues as it has been, I’ll likely be dropping it altogether.

I like the changes to the enemy AI & the landscape. I used to just run around & kill some bandits on Kessex Hills, now that same action feels different with the dark, smoggy sky & huge looming tower across the waters.

The story, however, desperately needs to get better. The whole business with the alliances & Scarlet is getting old, she needs to make her intentions known once & for all. She’s dragging this out for too long, & like others said, she’s like Team Rocket, always doing shenanigans but never all that threatening.

There are a lot of players that have legitimate complaints about the direction the story’s going thanks to the entire living story revolved around her. Plus, she’s been over-represented at the expense of other characters & the overall story. What happened with the elder dragons, the white mantle, tengu, kodan, the mursaat, the white mantle? Also, the largos interests me, what’re they like? Where is the STORY?

I really like this game, it has great potential. I just think developers aren’t using it fully.

-The best presentation so far(!):
The story instance, though it felt like a traditional ‘quest’ I could really sence a RP feeling in it. Something that so far I felt Tyria lack, the sense of story telling was dead on spot.

-Monotonic salvager hunt/ Champion train zerg all over again.
I noticed that as hard ANet tries to rewrd our effort the larger the zergs become and the content becomes more easy to cut through. The masses of players roaming together acting as a hive or an individual organism just hide the content. We sworm like fire ants on any event, any champion and instead of listening and feeling the content, the zerg moves onward for the sake of loot.

Late For Tea.1846:

We got these big airships with those sexy cannons we used to defeat Zhaitan, right? Why don’t we just fly one of those babies over to Kessex Hills and blow the kitten out of that tower? Problem solved!

Riiiiiiggggghhhhht?

Or just aggro a herd of deer onto them.

So far, my only complaint is that Kessex is beginning to look like Orr part 2….

I certainly hope that in future LS events they take into consideration that Orr is just fugly, and that we actually enjoy seeing trees, rocks, deer, rabbits and flowers once in a while.

If I wanted to see the “world” turned into barren wasteland, I’ll head over to Cursed Shore and farm.

The event is cool, it has added an ominous shadow over the tone of the game. I think it’s important to add events like this; events that cause anticipation and start small and (hopefully) progress into something extreme. If that was the intention (which I guess we will find out next patch) then great job!

However, the general play of Living Story has become kind of bland for me, and reading through the forums, others as well. The achievement grind is tiring, and while I do enjoy participating in the content, I find myself trudging through it just for the achievement points. I don’t care much for the reward, personally. I don’t have any suggestions as to how to change the system of achievement grind to something else, considering it probably is the best way to get players to participate.

As far as the story goes, it’s the first one that I am actually interested in seeing the progression of the plot. Blood and Madness put the players into this awesome family affair, and then slammed us into a wall of abrupt completion. This story, however, has a mysterious driving force that makes you feel like something huge is about to go down, and the player will be right in the middle of it.

Another thing that is interesting that I noticed about most living stories, but this one heavily in particular, is that the player is supposed to be central in these stories, but I feel like I’m being dragged around by the NPCs that actually matter (kind of like personal story). I guess this is a side effect of MMO story telling. I’m hoping that the future of living story brings a story that is dynamic based on player influence, rather than scripting. The Cutthroat politics was an interesting concept (though some aspects could have been handled better) and I’m anxious to see where the result leads.

In summary, in regards to ToN, I am enjoying the story but not the game play.

This particular patch has some good and some bad to it, I think.

The Good:

Elite mobs and downed mobs are a great improvement. They both add just a bit more challenge to the game without making the whole affair extremely difficult. The AI for the downed state is well executed (they’re actually trying to rez each other!) and the elite mobs are pretty fun to bring down.

The world is actually changing. Even though Kessex hills looks terrible now, at least A-net is finally setting out to do what they wanted to do in the first place. I hope some of the changes are reversed in a later patch (for example, the fact that we can’t see the sun anymore) but I also hope that the west side of the lake remains permanently scarred after the Toxic Alliance has left. Something to leave a mark, right?

It’s an interesting arc lore-wise. Krait lore has been overlooked for a long time now and it’s good to see them in the spotlight. I really want to see what their motivations are. Are they being tricked into working with the Nightmare Court by Scarlet, or are they so desperate that they need outside help? Both possibilities have interesting implications.

The Bad:

We’ve been there and we’ve done that. The gameplay is very similar to previous Living Story stuff. Even the NAME of the enemy faction is similar; Toxic Alliance, Molten Alliance. These things need more diverse content.

Gameplay-wise, Kessex Hills hasn’t changed a bit. Centaurs are still attacking Fort Salma, Draithor is still murdering Black Lion merchants and bandits are still hanging out in the woods south of Godslost Swamp. If a big, sweeping change is going to be made to a zone, something needs to happen gameplay wise. I refuse to believe the kitten necromancer Aria Venom would twiddle her thumbs in a Lionguard fortress while everything around her is slowly dying. And what are the quaggan still doing in the lake? Shouldn’t the krait have killed or enslaved them by now?

The gameplay is probably going to disappear in a month or two. We’ve seen it in Flame+Frost. This spontaneous event gameplay simply isn’t meant to last. It’s going to vanish as though the Toxic Alliance never happened, and even though I don’t like the gameplay content very much, I hate it that A-net keeps doing that.

In short, it’s not the best patch in the world, but it’s an improvement on other patches. I really hope A-net keeps listening to our feedback and continues to improve Living World. The idea is solid, they just need to work on the execution.

I do like the implementation of replaying the story by talking to the npc, and hope to see more living story done this way, maybe even the in game story too would be nice for some replay modes.
The npcs being able to rally is a nice addition as well. I personally enjoy the difficulty by them being able to rally.
The biggest problem I have with this update was the achievements being very grindy and boring to spam. I like how it involves more maps in the living story, and that some events we overlook while leveling have some reason to doing them. In doing so, we have found some of the problems within those events too. I don’t see why wvw needed the offshoot events though. It really meshes with some of the other achievements currently within the wvw season achievements and wvw gameplay itself as well.

Good Morning, Firstly I’ll go over the things I’ve enjoyed so far followed by some suggestions for improvements:

Pros:

~The story is intriguing enough that I actually started to care a little about what happened, this is the first time in a long time I can say this about the living story, a huge step in the right direction, please continue improving this.

~You guys have added some variety this time, the escorting of a siege golem, that gives a bit of wvw aspect to the living story, giving everyone of all play styles not just pve a chance to partake in the update. (I’ll also add I rarely WvW).

~You have toned down the grind significantly, I appreciate that I am now able to get the living story achievements in a reasonable amount of time with a slightly more than desired effort, you guys are at a near perfect balance there.

~Daily skill point: I had not planned on completing the meta, until I saw this and I just went: YES! More things for the home instance is always a plus, keep doing that!!

Cons:

~The Toxic Weed Whacker achievement. I don’t want to do this event 25 times, that just seems a bit grindy as, it’s not completely gone. My suggestion is: I would rather do the event once in each of the maps than a solidified number that means absolutely nothing.

~The Halloween update is still here?? I’m not sure whether or not this is a con, but it definitely feels a bit more cluttered than usual with all that stuff sitting about still.

~PvE Downing. YUCK! This just isn’t much fun, being able to see everyone’s ranks is cool for the first couple of times, but do 25 events or so and then you’ll see what I mean. I really wish you guys wouldn’t have done this, I don’t know if the pvp crowd enjoys pve more because of it, but for the pve-er it just kind of sucks.

~I thought I’d add one other thing here that i failed to mention in the original response. Giving the option to complete the achievement through only dailies is cool, but making dailies a requirement for the meta is not. This goes against your play how you want philosophy which we do hear.

Thanks for reading.

Im very conflicted with this update. Its my favorite update this far in terms of actual change and eyecandy. An entire zone was ravaged and changed, and the tower looks amazing.

However, lets be frank, there’s about a total of 15mins of actual gameplay in this update. You just need to do one event outside of the instance and you’ve see everything.

DorDor.8617:

And what are the quaggan still doing in the lake? Shouldn’t the krait have killed or enslaved them by now?

The Krait are trying, lol. Unfortunately, too many kitten adventurers keep freeing them.

I hate it and I sound like a broken record but all it feels to me is bloating the AP pool and BLC weapons with the same zerg farming.

And yea! whats with the PvE mob downed state?

Please stop doing 2 week content so you can take your time anet and make real content.

when do we get our tower dungeon?

Considering the " Toxic Krait Historian" achievement.
We had to find 24 Krait obelisks throughout Tyria. I would’ve expected them to be all near Krait enclaves, but they weren’t. If they were all near Krait enclaves I think it would be a good quest, since it would test my knowledge of the Tyrian world.

Instead the obelisks were spread out rather randomly. There were 4 in Gendarren fields, there are not even Krait living in that map! How would one be able to find those obelisks without help from Dulfy, or just randomly run through maps hoping you see the obelisks symbol?
I think this was a missed opportunity for an interesting quest.

My general feedback:

I like the two week updates, but it’s odd to me that there seems to be this “Open World Zerg” Template (Clockwork Chaos/Kessex Thing) going on here and that it’s the thing that is permanent as opposed to the dungeons that have been created.

The new Scarlet thing in Kessex is really only marginally different from the Clockwork Chaos one and yet they are both in the game at the same time here.

I like how there is a difference in the types of events we are getting, but it would have been nice to see the dungeon content remain. I know that two of them are coming back in Fractal form, but that’s my feedback: When you do new dungeons for two week content, Keep it in the game. Also, add tokens to the dungeons and vendors in LA. If you are going to make the content, leave it around for us to play and add in the robust features that are present with the other dungeons by adding armor sets to them to go with the weapons.

Fine, I get it, you want more money so you’re selling finishers (typically only seen in PvP) but adding that and the relentless tide of baddies that don’t seem to scale down if you try to destroy the off shoot alone was too much. Either mix in veterans or have the nightmare court require finishers. Don’t do both.

By the time I get the vet down after finishing off the knight/sorcerer/assassin I’m already being ganked by more knights/sorcerers/assassins the kraits and plant things. Once those are dead, again, I’m attacked by the vets. Do NOT do this in a future release. It’s nearly impossible for casual players to get these achievements after the whole ‘new’ release feeling goes away two weeks later when you release something else.

Anyone who has tried getting the aetherblade achievements after they became champion farms or the doors/champion kills for Halloween once the Nightmare Tower hit knows what I’m talking about. You have scaling techniques in place already, if having too many people is making it too easy make the curve of scaling sharper, not the baseline. I guess this may actually lie under the issue I’ve noticed that if you don’t play every day, heavily with new releases, you can’t keep up with the changing world aspect. Which, in my opinion, is just as unrealistic as waiting for expansions to change your world. Reality, unfortunately, doesn’t have this many life altering events this frequently.

Finally, I guess after being frustrated yet again with a real world release I guess I would rather see new professions/weapon proliferation more than I want an unceasing tide of achievement heavy events going on. Also, new in game armor sets (preferably easily crafted too) that don’t take weeks of grinding or $10 to buy for one character would be great, especially if they weren’t all trenchcoat/long skirt/moomoo themed. Bring back the sexy light armor (iceforge, luxon, tyrian), fitted medium armor (drakescale, studded, canthan, sunspear), and full plate armor (Kurzick, Templare, Platemail) styles of GW1 please. I’m tired of everyone (mail/female) being stuck with longer than knee length skirts or long coats. As it is now a lot of the ‘light’ armor looks as heavy or heavier than your ‘medium’ and ‘heavy’ armor.