Guild Wars 2

Figured since I’m pretty much done with Wintersday stuff (except daily jump puzzle and grabbing presents around the world before running away screaming like a little girl) and have all the achievements, I figured this would be a good time to give some feedback on all the stuffs.

Winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle
I liked this one a lot. Sure, it was easier than Mad King’s, but I don’t think holiday jump puzzles should be the hardest things in the game. Places like Skipping Stones work for hard jump puzzles (and ya, I know it’s easier than Mad King’s as well). Big kudos for making multiple paths. Still hasn’t completely fixed the whole following a Norn or Charr in a longcoat problem, but it’s an improvement. Maybe make everyone the same size via some magic trick or something next time? Also, since the rewards reset daily, I’ve been running it every day. Good balance of challenge and reward.

Snowball Mayhem
Again, this was silly fun. The problem cropped up with player behavior and the achievements. It became very common for players carrying the gift to drop it before getting downed to prevent players from scoring or working towards their achievement. While being a good defender makes sense for scoring, it needs to be keyed to something a little harder for the opposition to avoid. For example, instead of requiring downing the gift carrier, maybe make it so you only have to do 25% damage to carrier and then get credit if the gift touches the ground for any reason.

Bell Choir
My personal feedback was very blech because I play with an ergo keyboard that absolutely did not line up with the keys (split between 6 and 7). That said, so many people really enjoyed this I suspect it’s a good choice for coming up with future versions. Can you maybe just tweak it to use default home keys for typing, ie. ASDF – JKL; since that will work on any keyboard (well, any keyboard in the US)

Tixx’s Infinarium
These were just right in terms of challenge for a holiday event. They weren’t so easy you could just complete them by showing up, but not so hard you couldn’t pull them off on the first attempt with a PUG. Like a lot of players, I was disappointed I couldn’t get all the pets via the event, but whatever. I’ll end up with all the tonics and maybe buy the other pets…maybe not. My whole desire to collect all the minipets is pretty much dead anyway.

Plushie Griffon
He gets his own section of feedback cuz he’s awesomesauce. I lurves my Snugglyclaws.

Toypocolaypse
I had fun doing this, but then, I like tower defense games. On the other hand, the no premade groups was a horribad shortcoming. One of the major projects for the proggies should be creating new code so that premades can do activities together. I mean, this is “Guild” Wars, right? Side note: I’m pretty disappointed the achievement is getting nerfed. It’s entirely possible to get right now with even a basic bit of strategy. No need to nerf it.

Random presents around the world
This is a bad joke, right? You create these toys who are tough in a 1v1 fight versus most builds and classes, and then you dump 6 of them at once on players. Oh, and then you make some of the most NOTFUN decisions with how they work. It’s NOTFUN being forced to run in circles waiting for 12 stacks of confusion to wear off. It’s really NOTFUN being chainstunned until dead (honestly, the whole idea of crowd control in all MMO’s needs to be rethought because making players not play their character is pretty much the opposite of playing a game). And in exchange for these extreme high risk to most builds fights, you get a present that likely has nothing but an ugly wool sweater in it. Ya, cuz high risk no reward is always so popular.

Trading Post RNG boxes
I will never buy these. Ever. In any game. I’m sure there are people who do, and they prolly spend way more than they should which is good from ANet’s standpoint if their goal is short term gains. However, it only takes getting burned once to not only lose that players future purchases on RNG boxes, but quite likely everything else. The fact you stuck account bound minipets in them is even worse. Not only is your purchase random, but you can’t even trade around to get what you actually want. I mentioned my desire to collect minipets dying. Ya. This is why. I even went so far as to cancel my suggestion to my relatives that they get me GW2 gem cards as I was going to splurge on lots of minipet 3 packs. Now, not so much.

Mystic Forge Endless Tonics
I’m just as much not a fan of the RNG here. I like games where I’m working towards a goal and can achieve it. I don’t play games to get lucky dice rolls because there is no sense of accomplishment there.

Anyway, overall I’d rate the Wintersday event at a 7 out of 10. There was plenty of silly fun, no game breaking technical issues ala Lost Shores, and the complaints I have tend to be more with overall design, not specific to the event.

I wouldn’t honestly say the presents are that big of a deal, although I was just smart with how my characters worked. As a Necromancer I would either use my warhorn to speed through the toys after I grabbed the presents, and/or switch over to death shroud to get away. And as an engineer I would just place turrets to distract them while I got away with my presents.

Personally I have nothing to say about the jumping puzzle. My computer’s too laggy for me to be effective at them at all, but I do agree overall with much of what you’ve said here. I find it disappointing that I am unable to get any of the minipets this year without gem exchange or gem purchases. And sadly gem purchases are just something I cannot afford in this economy. But overall I would say I have enjoyed this Wintersday, though in my mind it falls into the second slot. It stands well ahead of Lost Shores, but it is quite a bit behind the awesomeness that was Halloween!

Narcemus.1348:

I find it disappointing that I am unable to get any of the minipets this year without gem exchange or gem purchases.

Did you miss the fact that you were able to create 2/5 of the toy minis completely free by just playing the dungeons?

If you mean you werent able to get ALL the minis without paying anything then yes, that sounds exactly like it should be.

Yes, I mistyped my meaning. I do enjoy my ventari and my plush griffin. I believe my mind might have been on the BLTC mini’s when I was writing this.

Heh. I like that people who say they have no problems with the toys aren’t killing them, just coming up with creative ways to run away