Guild Wars 2

Was anyone else a bit underwhelmed with the final boss. I kept thinking to myself, I cant wait until we blast him out of the sky so that we can land in his lair and fight beside Destiny and slay him with our own blades.

Instead we never get off that stupid ship.. its all cannon fire and no dodging, no moving.. nothing…

I hope future elder dragons are fought much differently.

I thought it was fantastically epic. I could see more than just his freaking foot from the boat.

The thing about Zhaitan is, you kill off his power sources prior to fighting him. In a weakened state, you clip his wings. Stuck clinging to a pillar, he doesn’t have very many options available.

So really, when you fight him, you’re kicking him when he’s down. Not very fair of you.

Plus at the end, you don’t actually kill him, he just falls into the abyss, waiting for the day to rise up and once again corrupt the heart of Orr, leading to the fall of Trahearne.

It looked Epic, but it didn’t feel Epic.

That make sense? I admired the art and the beauty of it all, the chaos and the way Zhaitan held on to the tower. However, when it came down to it, you didn’t really do anything “epic” with your character.

I was expecting an intense and mechanically interesting fight. Nope. Ships and cannons all the way. He looked like a pansy.

I could probably think of half a dozen more interesting ways for it to have “ended”, but I guess it’s all subjective.

You did do something epic. You’re taking a page out of a book and making it into the whole book. You’ve already cut off his magical food supply and partially blinded him. You also got rid of the corpses he was getting to build his undead army.

Furthermore, there’s no evidence that Zhaitan himself was particularly powerful, since he did almost all his damage by controlling undead. In the end, when you face him, you’re facing a creature you’ve already chased and have now have cornered.

There is one more point to this entire thing. Anet made a weird choice in making the very last mission in the personal story a story mode dungeon. Not everyone likes or does dungeons.

So if they make that battle challenging, everyone who doesn’t like dungeons are forced to do that dungeon to get that green text off their screen. I’ve run that story mode with people who have never entered another dungeon. They found it confusing and really really hard.

So yeah, by choosing to make the encounter a dungeon encounter, they sort of limited their options in the final boss fight. But it was still epic to me, because I was looking at the whole story, not just the last page.

Vayne.8563:

You did do something epic. You’re taking a page out of a book and making it into the whole book. You’ve already cut off his magical food supply and partially blinded him. You also got rid of the corpses he was getting to build his undead army.

Furthermore, there’s no evidence that Zhaitan himself was particularly powerful, since he did almost all his damage by controlling undead. In the end, when you face him, you’re facing a creature you’ve already chased and have now have cornered.

There is one more point to this entire thing. Anet made a weird choice in making the very last mission in the personal story a story mode dungeon. Not everyone likes or does dungeons.

So if they make that battle challenging, everyone who doesn’t like dungeons are forced to do that dungeon to get that green text off their screen. I’ve run that story mode with people who have never entered another dungeon. They found it confusing and really really hard.

So yeah, by choosing to make the encounter a dungeon encounter, they sort of limited their options in the final boss fight. But it was still epic to me, because I was looking at the whole story, not just the last page.

Elder Dragons have said to be powerful, if not more powerful, than the human gods themselves. If Zhaitan really wanted to, he could have just landed on the giant airship as soon as he entered the battle. I am sure his weight would have brought that thing tumbling down. So, the last battle does not make very much sense if you think about it.

Second off, one of the only things the final mission does right is tie both the personal story and dungeon story together and finishes them off at the same time. As the dungeon story is about Destinies Edge, it makes sense that the final mission is in a dungeon and that it ties all this together.

Third off, the game encourages you to do dungeons through the mail system by telling you whats going on and it even marks the location on your map. When I first heard about Eir getting in trouble in AC through the mail system, I wanted to do that dungeon as soon as possible (granted I play a Norn, but you get my point). In a sense, the dungeon stories are an expansion of your own story. If people did not do the dungeons, then that was their choice, not any fault of the games. To say that it is unfair that the final mission is in a dungeon is a bit unfair.

Orbys.4895:

I cant wait until we blast him out of the sky so that we can land in his lair and fight beside Destiny and slay him with our own blades.

I’d rather read a 500,000 word poorly written wall of text detailing the Elder Dragons dying to influenza than fight them alongside Destiny’s Edge.

Nurse.1085:

It looked Epic, but it didn’t feel Epic.

That make sense? I admired the art and the beauty of it all, the chaos and the way Zhaitan held on to the tower. However, when it came down to it, you didn’t really do anything “epic” with your character.

That’s how I felt about Zhaitan. Not to mention the battles against his three champions felt far more challenging and epic than the encounter against Zhaitan himself.

Don’t even try to defend that dungeon. Arguably the worst game finale ever.

Don’t give me the “he was weakened” bullkitten. It’s an elder dragon. It’s “the big bad” in the game. It’s the encounter the entire kittening story builds up to. Instead of a suitably epic fight we get… that. “Tank and Spank” is glorious by comparison. I felt more like an extra in a porno movie than a dragon slaying hero. kitten, that didn’t even qualify as a quick time event.

By the way, why did we bother with Destiny’s Edge again…? What was their contribution again…? Nearly sacrificing a member to cut a rope? Thanks! Not like we could have accomplished that from inside the safety of the airship with a single knife was it…?

The whole thing was clearly and shamelessly rushed out the door, and I hope ANet will eventually revisit that whole encounter into a suitable game ender instead of the depressing limp slap it is now.

Press 2 to win is not what I’d call “endgame boss”, even for Story Mode.

Was pretty “epic” until we got to the cannons.

We shoot Zhaitan mid-air, he starts falling….

…my guildmate yells "YAY!! He’s down, now we can land and beat him up!!!’

.
.
.

WHAT?

THAT’S IT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That. Is.
So.
Cheap.
.
.
.
(dead silence)

.
.

She has refused to ever step back into that story step for any of her alts, our alts, guild reward, etceta.

This was one of those profound moments of utter stunned disbelief. She was such a lore junkie. And without overstating it one bit, I know this is going to be the defining memory of the game for her. Sadly.

It was ok until i had to constantly press 2 to kill him with a cannon not even pointing at him, gotta say underwhelming came to mind and a bit laughable..

I’m not sure what Anet was thinking implementing the end like that, also a rare at the end was a slap in my face..

“Not to mention the battles against his three champions felt far more challenging and epic than the encounter against Zhaitan himself.”

Hell, the seemingly endless zergs on the Airship were more epic than dropping Zaitan.

Pressing a button once to trigger a cutscene that kills a boss can be awesome. Pressing a fire button for 10 minutes to kill a target that just bleeds a little on you is lame.

And the loot was underwhelming. Shouldn’t we get a rare, or maybe an ascended for killing one of the 6 !@#$ing elder dragons?

Even the Abaddon fight required that we at least move around. And dying was quite possible.

This is where ArenaNet’s lore team made it’s most egregious mistake. They gave us dragons the size of mountains with the power to corrupt life and literally reshape the planet. They wrote them “big, bad, and scary” to give us the impression that the world really is in need of saving. But they wrote them too “big, bad, and scary”. The dragons can’t win, but there’s no way for them to lose without destroying any suspension of disbelief.

A party of heroes…even the greatest heroes on the planet…wouldn’t scratch one of these dragons with a sword or a staff. Just look at the size of Jormag’s tooth in Hoelbrak. Now use that to extrapolate his full size. What could Hundred Blades, Heartseeker, or Churning Earth possible do against something that large?

And if Kralkatorrik created the Brand with just a passing breath, imagine what he could do to a party of 5, or 50, or even 5,000 players. I suppose the Elder Dragons could just stand around while being beat upon like pinatas, as is the case with their champions; but that’s hardly an epic way for these “big, bad, and scary” foes to be dispatched.

That leaves us with the “Press Button to Kill Dragons” machine. Be it magical or mechanical, a device we all work together to build so we can kill the dragons is boring. It’s trite. It’s been done to death; and it’s usually done poorly. But it’s by far a better option than us whacking them with our weapons until they die.

And no matter what means we use to kill them, an Elder Dragon’s defeat isn’t realistic. If Zhaitan wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon villain, that is to say if Zhaitan wasn’t created for the sole purpose to be defeated by the heroes, he’d destroy any force sent against him without breaking a sweat.

PS: in response to a question on another forum about what should be added / changed about the Zhaitan fight, I posted the following:

(inserts tongue in cheek)

Trahearne needed to be part of the fight.

I’d like him to utter the phrase “this won’t end well” before putting him into a cannon and shooting him straight into Zhaitain’s mouth.

As Trahearne is continuing to babble in flight, Zhaitan swallows him whole, spits the legendary Caladbolg (the sword) back at you (for your use), grabs his scaly throat, eyes bulging, promptly chokes on Trahearne and falls into the Abyss.

Two unwelcome characters gone with one flash.

With possibility of resurrection from the Abyss.

If they decide to bring back the slime-covered zombie Trahearne who wants vengence on you (and his sword back), it would be a pleasure to slay the corrupted vegetable for all eternity.

(dry look)

PPS:

That would make the fight feel more “epic” And one I would level multiple characters to see over and over again.

darkace.8925:

This is where ArenaNet’s lore team made it’s most egregious mistake. They gave us dragons the size of mountains with the power to corrupt life and literally reshape the planet. They wrote them “big, bad, and scary” to give us the impression that the world really is in need of saving. But they wrote them too “big, bad, and scary”. The dragons can’t win, but there’s no way for them to lose without destroying any suspension of disbelief.

A party of heroes…even the greatest heroes on the planet…wouldn’t scratch one of these dragons with a sword or a staff. Just look at the size of Jormag’s tooth in Hoelbrak. Now use that to extrapolate his full size. What could Hundred Blades, Heartseeker, or Churning Earth possible do against something that large?

And if Kralkatorrik created the Brand with just a passing breath, imagine what he could do to a party of 5, or 50, or even 5,000 players. I suppose the Elder Dragons could just stand around while being beat upon like pinatas, as is the case with their champions; but that’s hardly an epic way for these “big, bad, and scary” foes to be dispatched.

That leaves us with the “Press Button to Kill Dragons” machine. Be it magical or mechanical, a device we all work together to build so we can kill the dragons is boring. It’s trite. It’s been done to death; and it’s usually done poorly. But it’s by far a better option than us whacking them with our weapons until they die.

And no matter what means we use to kill them, an Elder Dragon’s defeat isn’t realistic. If Zhaitan wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon villain, that is to say if Zhaitan wasn’t created for the sole purpose to be defeated by the heroes, he’d destroy any force sent against him without breaking a sweat.

But in Factions we killed a corrupted Envoy that had enough power to petrify forests and turn the oceans to jade. In Nightfall we killed a god by devling into the depths of his tormented realm. These are some seriously big bad guys with epic powers and their final confrontations were handled far better in gw1.

Shiro in particular was a brilliant and very challenging boss fight and you were forced to fight him again in Nightfall along with the slightly less imposing lich from prophecies. All of these boss encounters and end campaign missions were significantly more challenging and entertaining than the utter dross that is Arah story mode. You finally kill the dragon by standing still and pressing 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ! It’s sickening and a huge step back from what they did with end encounters in the first game. Shame on you Anet!

As far as dealing with the power of dragons and scaling that down to a level where the player can actually have a ‘realistic’ chance of killing them. Well just write in that the dragon has been significantly weakened by the results of various missions the player has done up to then. Hell they can use an asuran shrink-ray if it lets me actually fight a dragon.

Pressing the #2 did feel a bit like hammering on Heartseeker or Hundred Blades. Hehe Zaitain dies of Hearseeker spam.

Disappointed is an understatement. When the three champions you fight prior to the last boss put up more of a fight and actually have more content, you know they screwed up. At least the reward matches the amount of effort anet put into the fight.

They dont call the game Guild Wars 2 for nothing.

Vayne speak up. Are you a plant by Anet? You seem to be speaking up for them in almost every instance even in a thread such as this where there’s no two ways about it.

An underwhelming ending.

Yes, it was a major snooze fest, I felt it was anti-climatically, with no real useable rewards after spending the hour or so to do the story. Sorry Anet I was hoping for something better

The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of you probably played the “updated” and “better” version of the fight.

After launch when these same things were said the response was that the encounter was bugged and there was supposed to be more to it.

That more turned out to be an AOE attack and some mini dragon tendrils that come through the deck. So it was neat a few more interactive obstacles were added to the fight, except that you could pretty much ignore them since the AOE tended to happen in the middle of the ship and away from the turrets, and the tendrils either had negligible attacks, usually spawned well away from the players, or could all be handled by a solo party member not using a turret.

The fight was disappointing, especially in the face of the boss fights franchise fans are used to. I honestly think there was a lot more that the devs wanted to do with this but they just didn’t have the time and weren’t sure what would and wouldn’t work on that scale. I have a fair bit of confidence that the next elder dragon will be much better.

Currently the strongest dragon in the game is also the easiest one to beat. It’s like they chose the worst from all possible solutions…

I was more dissapointed by the final loot…besides yeah i thought it was going to be huge and was going to be more agressive other than standing in a pillar screaming: ‘’sup iam here, ready cannons’’

The ending is indeed seriously disappointing with no (usable) rewards at all…

It felt like ages just to get to zhaitan, first you fight a few hundred enemies and champions and when you finally see zhatian you press a button and it’s all over? I mean did zhaitan have a life insurance on himself and he maybe just wanted to fake his own death just to (somehow) collect the money?

All the ‘final’ rewards from the dungeon were useless. They were either not for my necro or weaker then the stuff I already had… The final mission (the one after the dungeon) didn’t any good stuff either…. My armor (and weapons) were already just as strong (and better looking) exotics then one of the items I could ‘choose’ from…

Personally, I would have wanted a legendary for my necro (or at least some big help in getting one). I mean I did finish the story and you do that only once with a character

But the worst part of everything is that Trahearne didn’t die

I think it would of been much more appealing if they used the airship to “dissect” him, leading up to a final boss fight on the ground.

Meaning: you fly around on the airship shooting cannons to disable his wings, once he clings to the tower, you would use the super cannon on board to blast off his tail.

At this point Zaitain cries for help and several of the dragons flying in the sky come to his rescue and attack the ship. At this point there is no hope of the ship making it out.. so you set it on a collision course with Zaitain.

Using the convinient asuran jet packs or golems on board, your whole crew jumps off the ship in the nick of time to see a dragon infested mega ship ram dead on into Zaitain, where he plummets into the abyss.

But wait whats this, in all the wreckage he managed to hang onto the cliff, beaten and bruised he crawls back out of the giant hole, where your party and Destiny’s Edge at first looks on in despair as they wonder what can kill this beast.

Here your character finally shines as the champion he is, rallies everyone to one final assult, to believe in the power of ones self. You engage the mighty elder dragon one last time in a final effort to drive him into the abyss.

After an intense battle, it flips to a cut scene where you see your whole party, and all of destinys edge combining their powers into one final blow to finally sink the dragon into the black hole it crawled out of.

That would be epic and look a little something like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhywNh9yMk#t=1m43s

Uncle Salty.6342:

Vayne speak up. Are you a plant by Anet? You seem to be speaking up for them in almost every instance even in a thread such as this where there’s no two ways about it.

An underwhelming ending.

I’m not a plant by Anet. I am a writer. I understand WHY people think the end is unwhelming, but I didn’t find it underwhelming. Other people in my guild didn’t either. That’s because you’re playing a game, and I’m reading a book. It’s a completely different approach to the game.

Game bosses at the end of the game have to be the hardest thing in the entire process or it doesn’t make sense. I guess none of you remember Shiro from Guild Wars 1, the big bad at the end of Factions.

The next to last Factions mission was three or four times harder than the last one. You could be Shiro Tagachi solo in under a minute if you had an ele/mesmer hybrid, and clones the elite spell the Kunnevang gave you.

Or Nightfall, when you fought the god Abaddon. That mission was far, far easier than the Gates of Madness before it. The company isn’t making a game, so much as writing a story.

So you’re looking at it from the perspective of WoW dungeon bosses, or games that think in that way, and I’m looking at it from the perspective if someone who played the hell out of the original Guild Wars. It doesn’t make me an Anet plant. It makes me a person with a different set of experiences than some of you.

I really do believe the last dungeon was epic (at least before the recent nerf, it’s way too tame now), but not because of the last battle with the last boss. That wasn’t my focus. I got more of a thrill from the idea of curing Orr than the Zhaitan battle.

I also doesn’t see this as an end, but I see it as a beginning. And the lasers btw, was a special Asuran weapon designed to hurt Zhaitan. They didn’t just hit him with a sword.

Sure as a game, it was not what you were expecting. As a story, seeing the forest instead of the trees (which is how some of us see things) it was completely fine.

Re: the Ending Rewards, while the dungeon rewards were not any better than any other story mode dungeon rewards, it’s also the end of the personal story, during which you do get a choice of a rare pact weapon, in addition to a few other odds and ends, including 1000 points of influence for your guild. Could the rewards for Arah be beefed up? Sure they could. The problem is, it’s also a story mode dungeon.

So Anet didn’t want people farming story modes for those rewards. They put it in the personal story instead, so people wouldn’t run the rather easy story-mode area to farm golds.

Vayne.8563:

Uncle Salty.6342:

Vayne speak up. Are you a plant by Anet? You seem to be speaking up for them in almost every instance even in a thread such as this where there’s no two ways about it.

An underwhelming ending.

I’m not a plant by Anet. I am a writer. I understand WHY people think the end is unwhelming, but I didn’t find it underwhelming. Other people in my guild didn’t either. That’s because you’re playing a game, and I’m reading a book. It’s a completely different approach to the game.

Game bosses at the end of the game have to be the hardest thing in the entire process or it doesn’t make sense. I guess none of you remember Shiro from Guild Wars 1, the big bad at the end of Factions.

The next to last Factions mission was three or four times harder than the last one. You could be Shiro Tagachi solo in under a minute if you had an ele/mesmer hybrid, and clones the elite spell the Kunnevang gave you.

Or Nightfall, when you fought the god Abaddon. That mission was far, far easier than the Gates of Madness before it. The company isn’t making a game, so much as writing a story.

So you’re looking at it from the perspective of WoW dungeon bosses, or games that think in that way, and I’m looking at it from the perspective if someone who played the hell out of the original Guild Wars. It doesn’t make me an Anet plant. It makes me a person with a different set of experiences than some of you.

I really do believe the last dungeon was epic (at least before the recent nerf, it’s way too tame now), but not because of the last battle with the last boss. That wasn’t my focus. I got more of a thrill from the idea of curing Orr than the Zhaitan battle.

I also doesn’t see this as an end, but I see it as a beginning. And the lasers btw, was a special Asuran weapon designed to hurt Zhaitan. They didn’t just hit him with a sword.

Sure as a game, it was not what you were expecting. As a story, seeing the forest instead of the trees (which is how some of us see things) it was completely fine.

This is a game not a book. Every encounter must be FUN to play, bending the story to reach the goal if necessary. Really disappointed by the fight against Zaithan.

Not only was the fight utterly boring but Zhaitain is rather small. I mean that thing made Orr rise from the bottom of the ocean but is not much bigger than one of his lieutenants. He should have been at least 2x if not 4x the size he is now.

AcidicVision.5498:

The best part of this whole thing is that a lot of you probably played the “updated” and “better” version of the fight.

After launch when these same things were said the response was that the encounter was bugged and there was supposed to be more to it.

That more turned out to be an AOE attack and some mini dragon tendrils that come through the deck. So it was neat a few more interactive obstacles were added to the fight, except that you could pretty much ignore them since the AOE tended to happen in the middle of the ship and away from the turrets, and the tendrils either had negligible attacks, usually spawned well away from the players, or could all be handled by a solo party member not using a turret.

The fight was disappointing, especially in the face of the boss fights franchise fans are used to. I honestly think there was a lot more that the devs wanted to do with this but they just didn’t have the time and weren’t sure what would and wouldn’t work on that scale. I have a fair bit of confidence that the next elder dragon will be much better.

I just did it on an alt yesterday and it seems they took out the AOE and tentacles part at the end. Instead the camera just zooms out super far so you can see the explosions all over while you button spam and that’s it.

I feel that it was rushed and they jammed together the last dungeon story with personal story to save time. They always say ‘when it is ready’ but after several years of this people who fund projects get really nervous (even more nervous than people who want to play the game). Product gets shipped and then back-filled (hopefully).

Braindrops.6428:

This is a game not a book. Every encounter must be FUN to play, bending the story to reach the goal if necessary. Really disappointed by the fight against Zaithan.

Of course the game isn’t a book. But it’s also not a typical MMO. Everything has to be the same. It was this way in game A, so it has to be this way in game B. Shrugs.

I like that this game is different in a lot of ways. I don’t mind not having every boss some big huge crazy thing. I really don’t. If everything is the same and people get used to it, they just get jaded and it has to be bigger and more exaggerated.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion as you’re entitled to yours. In my opinion, the reason people don’t like the end game is because they’re isolating the boss fight from the rest of the story. I didn’t do that. Therefore I enjoyed it more.

It’s okay to be disappointed, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun not to be.

Vayne.8563:

Braindrops.6428:

This is a game not a book. Every encounter must be FUN to play, bending the story to reach the goal if necessary. Really disappointed by the fight against Zaithan.

Of course the game isn’t a book. But it’s also not a typical MMO. Everything has to be the same. It was this way in game A, so it has to be this way in game B. Shrugs.

I like that this game is different in a lot of ways. I don’t mind not having every boss some big huge crazy thing. I really don’t. If everything is the same and people get used to it, they just get jaded and it has to be bigger and more exaggerated.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion as you’re entitled to yours. In my opinion, the reason people don’t like the end game is because they’re isolating the boss fight from the rest of the story. I didn’t do that. Therefore I enjoyed it more.

It’s okay to be disappointed, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun not to be.

Oh god stop with this nonsense twisting everything . I play it like a book, your simply playing the game wrong, you need to play it like a piece of art. Do you realise hwo ridiculous that sounds ?

And not your typical mmo stop there, stop trying to avoid the gmaes blatent errors by falling back on such a stupid remark. The not being a “typical mmo” doesn’t detract from the fact that the final boss is terrible, it being a “non typical mmo” doesn’t justify us smashing the 2 key at the end ENDING STORY does it.

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Braindrops.6428:

This is a game not a book. Every encounter must be FUN to play, bending the story to reach the goal if necessary. Really disappointed by the fight against Zaithan.

Of course the game isn’t a book. But it’s also not a typical MMO. Everything has to be the same. It was this way in game A, so it has to be this way in game B. Shrugs.

I like that this game is different in a lot of ways. I don’t mind not having every boss some big huge crazy thing. I really don’t. If everything is the same and people get used to it, they just get jaded and it has to be bigger and more exaggerated.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion as you’re entitled to yours. In my opinion, the reason people don’t like the end game is because they’re isolating the boss fight from the rest of the story. I didn’t do that. Therefore I enjoyed it more.

It’s okay to be disappointed, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun not to be.

Oh god stop with this nonsense twisting everything . I play it like a book, your simply playing the game wrong, you need to play it like a piece of art. Do you realise hwo ridiculous that sounds ?

And not your typical mmo stop there, stop trying to avoid the gmaes blatent errors by falling back on such a stupid remark. The not being a “typical mmo” doesn’t detract from the fact that the final boss is terrible, it being a “non typical mmo” doesn’t justify us smashing the 2 key at the end ENDING STORY does it.

You stating a fact as an opinion doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have a problem with the final boss. You do. From your point of view, it’s terrible. From my point of view, it’s fine.

I’m probably a lot older than you and cut my teeth on quite different types of media and stories. So I play games differently. Who cares.

You’re entitled to express your opinion and I’m entitled to express mine. I don’t think the final boss is a problem. You do, because you’re looking forward to combat of some kind. You’re looking for that challenge. You’re looking to feel like you “did” something.

Well you did. There are different ways to kill something. When I’m in WvW, I like to cut off supply to keeps, rather than take them. It’s not a big thing, but it’s a useful thing. I often play harrasser professions. I’m perfectly happy taking down Zhaitan one stage at a time, starving him, blinding him, depriving him off corpses. This works for me. It’s how I do things.

If it doesn’t work for you, fair enough. But don’t tell me I’m making excuses. If you’re not able to see it from my point of view, that’s fine. It doesn’t make my point of view less valid than yours. And it doesn’t make your opinion into fact.

Vayne.8563:

Kakeru.2873:

Vayne.8563:

Braindrops.6428:

This is a game not a book. Every encounter must be FUN to play, bending the story to reach the goal if necessary. Really disappointed by the fight against Zaithan.

Of course the game isn’t a book. But it’s also not a typical MMO. Everything has to be the same. It was this way in game A, so it has to be this way in game B. Shrugs.

I like that this game is different in a lot of ways. I don’t mind not having every boss some big huge crazy thing. I really don’t. If everything is the same and people get used to it, they just get jaded and it has to be bigger and more exaggerated.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion as you’re entitled to yours. In my opinion, the reason people don’t like the end game is because they’re isolating the boss fight from the rest of the story. I didn’t do that. Therefore I enjoyed it more.

It’s okay to be disappointed, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun not to be.

Oh god stop with this nonsense twisting everything . I play it like a book, your simply playing the game wrong, you need to play it like a piece of art. Do you realise hwo ridiculous that sounds ?

And not your typical mmo stop there, stop trying to avoid the gmaes blatent errors by falling back on such a stupid remark. The not being a “typical mmo” doesn’t detract from the fact that the final boss is terrible, it being a “non typical mmo” doesn’t justify us smashing the 2 key at the end ENDING STORY does it.

You stating a fact as an opinion doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have a problem with the final boss. You do. From your point of view, it’s terrible. From my point of view, it’s fine.

I’m probably a lot older than you and cut my teeth on quite different types of media and stories. So I play games differently. Who cares.

You’re entitled to express your opinion and I’m entitled to express mine. I don’t think the final boss is a problem. You do, because you’re looking forward to combat of some kind. You’re looking for that challenge. You’re looking to feel like you “did” something.

Well you did. There are different ways to kill something. When I’m in WvW, I like to cut off supply to keeps, rather than take them. It’s not a big thing, but it’s a useful thing. I often play harrasser professions. I’m perfectly happy taking down Zhaitan one stage at a time, starving him, blinding him, depriving him off corpses. This works for me. It’s how I do things.

If it doesn’t work for you, fair enough. But don’t tell me I’m making excuses. If you’re not able to see it from my point of view, that’s fine. It doesn’t make my point of view less valid than yours. And it doesn’t make your opinion into fact.

I just don’t like it when you state things as fact and use them to explain the bad aspects of the game. Sorry if I don’t see it from your point of view.

And what’s a harassar profession? Perma stealth theif? 100nades engi?

Braindrops.6428:

I just don’t like it when you state things as fact and use them to explain the bad aspects of the game. Sorry if I don’t see it from your point of view.

And what’s a harassar profession? Perma stealth theif? 100nades engi?

I don’t like it when people state opinion as fact. Saying that it’s a bad aspect of the game is an opinion, not a fact. I disagree with that opinion, and that’s okay. We don’t have to agree on everything. As for a harrasser, it’s a profession that harrasses. Mesmers do a good job at it, engineers too. They annoy people….keep them guessing. Even a ranger can harrass.

Another thing I thought of. One of my favorite zones in the game is Harathi Hinterlands…because it feels like a war zone. The big bosses in the game…Claw of Jormag, couldn’t interest me less. I don’t care about them. Banging away on something for ten, fifteen minutes doesn’t feel like a battle to me, it feels like a game. That doesn’t feel epic, it feels contrived.

I’d rather take back a town that’s contested than face a single giant boss. So if Zhaitan was the way you like your bosses, I’d like it less. It’s just not my preferred style. And why should everything have to be that way. Why can’t there be some variety?

Standing around for 5m pressing 1 to hit a cannon at the “end boss” is not my idea of epic,sorry..

I’m not defending the final fight so much as trying to explain some things people overlook. I too would like a more interactive fight at the very end in some shape or form (I do not think hopping down and whacking him with our little toothpick weapons is the answer though). First off, every single thing we did leading up to that final fight was culminated at the end. Those weapons on the airship were things people would have helped the npcs work towards during various personal story lines (there are many many completely separate lines that detail exactly how all of that was done, so unless you did every single line you wouldn’t be able to appreciate that). Next, I think a shortcoming of this was not explaining pieces players might not understand, like those “lazers” that shoot him onto the side of the building, are actually magical harpoons, not lazers. They are meant to hold him in place while draining his power, which forces him onto the side of the building (I think that the players should be able to man one of those and have some interactive system, maybe a combination of keys to press to hold him there with the possibility of him breaking out and having to kill some trash spawns then retry, but with a progress cap so you’re not there forever trying to harpoon him). Also, the very airships themselves were a culmination of technology of each race. So don’t shortchange the whole idea of the fight, but like many of you, I agree there needs to be more interaction from the player for the final part, but having us hop down and hack away at his eyebrow for 30 minutes while he flops around on the ground isn’t the answer. In fact if they did that it would be 10x worse.

Aesthetically it was awesome but mechanically it was pretty disappointing. So much pressing 2.

Am i the only one who cheered when logan sacrificed himself? I thought, ‘oh, maybe this isnt half bad…’

Then….NOPE! I survived suckas!

God i want 45 min of my life back, most of it sitting on a ship doing nothing

How much you want to bet they made this battle this way because they knew people would complain “Zaitain should not be killed by no less then 40 players, he is a powerful dragon, you destroyed lore Arenanet by making him being killed by 5 players” So instead they made it a fight with airships. -.-

Vayne.8563:

Uncle Salty.6342:

Vayne speak up. Are you a plant by Anet? You seem to be speaking up for them in almost every instance even in a thread such as this where there’s no two ways about it.

An underwhelming ending.

I’m not a plant by Anet. I am a writer. I understand WHY people think the end is unwhelming, but I didn’t find it underwhelming. Other people in my guild didn’t either. That’s because you’re playing a game, and I’m reading a book. It’s a completely different approach to the game.

Game bosses at the end of the game have to be the hardest thing in the entire process or it doesn’t make sense. I guess none of you remember Shiro from Guild Wars 1, the big bad at the end of Factions.

The next to last Factions mission was three or four times harder than the last one. You could be Shiro Tagachi solo in under a minute if you had an ele/mesmer hybrid, and clones the elite spell the Kunnevang gave you.

Or Nightfall, when you fought the god Abaddon. That mission was far, far easier than the Gates of Madness before it. The company isn’t making a game, so much as writing a story.

So you’re looking at it from the perspective of WoW dungeon bosses, or games that think in that way, and I’m looking at it from the perspective if someone who played the hell out of the original Guild Wars. It doesn’t make me an Anet plant. It makes me a person with a different set of experiences than some of you.

I really do believe the last dungeon was epic (at least before the recent nerf, it’s way too tame now), but not because of the last battle with the last boss. That wasn’t my focus. I got more of a thrill from the idea of curing Orr than the Zhaitan battle.

I also doesn’t see this as an end, but I see it as a beginning. And the lasers btw, was a special Asuran weapon designed to hurt Zhaitan. They didn’t just hit him with a sword.

Sure as a game, it was not what you were expecting. As a story, seeing the forest instead of the trees (which is how some of us see things) it was completely fine.

A writer should be especially aware of how awkward the ending was. If this were a book, rather than a game, I would certainly be just as disappointed with it, if not more so. At least a writer isn’t constrained by game code and mechanics. And on top of it, regarding the part of your post I bolded, Zhaitan was unfortunately the easiest part of Arah to deal with, and I played it before it was nerfed, too.

But even with the constraints they have, with skilled writing and game design innovation, they could have made that ending far better than it was. I played the original Guild Wars, too. They pulled the endings off well in the original in three campaigns and an expansion, where they were even more limited by their medium.

Also, your post unfortunately comes across as a bit condescending. You do not need to be a writer to be able to realize that, from a game and a story-telling perspective both, the death(?) of Zhaitan is stunningly anticlimactic.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, they really dropped the ball with Zhaitan in the eyes of a great many players. If you like it, great for you, but implying that others “just don’t get it” because they’re not writers/younger than you/whatever is a little obnoxious and people will not react well to it. As I’m sure you can now see.

Maybe they could have had you land after a crash, where than you are in a whole different kind of fight.

Where you than end up fighting in a sort of psychological fight. You have a fight against maybe the original owners of magical items that Zhaitan had consumed. Make it an 8 profession fight, the most powerful of all the items absorbed. (each summoned 20 secs after the previous one is killed). Sort of the last death champions of the dragon. Tie in these last champions as the last main life forces that the dragon has before the final strike.

Than as a last ditch effort to survive, Zhaitan corrupts all that is on the ground and you are each thrown into a separate instance, where it goes around to mess with your character’s mind even more. Where depending on your character creation’s choices of things (like spirit animal, how you were raised, what your god is, etc) you are haunted by it all. You don’t have to really fight anything, have what ever you picked (be it the spirit animal, how you were raised/what you wanted to do, what your god is) appears at the end and pulls you out of the instance so you can finally kill Zhaitan.

During the whole fight with the champion’s and against zhaitan on the ground, there are corruption fissures that stack on a condition (call it: Spiritual Corruption) at 25 stacks will summon a veteran of your profession. (you could lose half your health when its summoned, or condition stacked on you).

I don’t know, this is my little suggestion on how it could have been. might be a little too much invested, but it might have been a better fight/death for an Elder dragon.

It was a completely lame fight.

You should have taken off on an airship immediately after finishing the last personal story. But for some unexplainable reason you descend into a cave after the rest of the Pact was taking off in airships. There you meet the rest of Destiny’s Edge who are suddenly hanging around in this cave for no explained reason (and magically back together). There you run around killing pointless mobs and bosses (why are their boss mobs in this random cave?) to get engine parts for a skyship that isn’t visible. Finally you take off, leaving Logan behind again for an inadequately explained reason (I am sorry but I don’t buy the BS reason of leaving one person behind to stop an entire army, that just isn’t logical, what are they going to do?) and take off to go do what you should have done from the beginning. And once you do take off you have to ask what happened to the airships of the rest of the Pact? Where are they? There should have been an entire fleet in the sky.

So then after watching dragons fly around and doing anything but attacking you (they could have easily knocked you out of the sky by raking their claws across your really fragile balloon). Then you get randomly attack in a way that instantly destroys the turrets and fall onto another airship piloted by Logan who magically managed to survive all the mobs, get picked up by an Deus Ex Machina airship and catch up to you despite the fact that you were in the middle of nowhere.

Of course the guns on this airship were just as vulnerable as the ones on the prior airship and so Zhaitain should have been able to just as easily blow those guns up. So yeah your magical big canon on top of the air ship blows off Zhaitan’s tail and I guess that cripples him forever (how?) so he lands on a column and just stays there until he gets pounded enough to fall down dead. The whole thing was stupid. I especially hate games that so marginalize the player’s power by essentially saying that everything they did to increase their own power meant nothing and they are completely inferior to an artificial turret such that they might as well not bother ever fighting and just travel around with a turret instead.

Everything about the instance was pretty subpar, from the fact that it was discontinuous with the storyline from the previous personal story mission but every aspect of the instance marginalized all the efforts the player took in leveling their character and giving them better gear and the actual progression of the story within the instance made no sense (Logan magically showing up, the dragons not attacking you, Zhaitan sitting on the pillar until he died, the random bosses in the random cave).

darkace.8925:

This is where ArenaNet’s lore team made it’s most egregious mistake. They gave us dragons the size of mountains with the power to corrupt life and literally reshape the planet. They wrote them “big, bad, and scary” to give us the impression that the world really is in need of saving. But they wrote them too “big, bad, and scary”. The dragons can’t win, but there’s no way for them to lose without destroying any suspension of disbelief.

A party of heroes…even the greatest heroes on the planet…wouldn’t scratch one of these dragons with a sword or a staff. Just look at the size of Jormag’s tooth in Hoelbrak. Now use that to extrapolate his full size. What could Hundred Blades, Heartseeker, or Churning Earth possible do against something that large?

And if Kralkatorrik created the Brand with just a passing breath, imagine what he could do to a party of 5, or 50, or even 5,000 players. I suppose the Elder Dragons could just stand around while being beat upon like pinatas, as is the case with their champions; but that’s hardly an epic way for these “big, bad, and scary” foes to be dispatched.

That leaves us with the “Press Button to Kill Dragons” machine. Be it magical or mechanical, a device we all work together to build so we can kill the dragons is boring. It’s trite. It’s been done to death; and it’s usually done poorly. But it’s by far a better option than us whacking them with our weapons until they die.

I disagree. Because the player can use magic, they can compensate for the fact that physically they are very weak but with magic they can have the power of a creature much larger than themselves. And there is plenty of precedent for that in GW, chiefly in the fact that nearly all the human gods started out as normal humans and gained godlike powers thanks to magic.

This also means that the player’s magical power should dwarf the damage that a turret can do.

Thus the better solution is to have the player work towards attaining something akin to godhood (even if it is just temporary) for the purpose of slaying the big bad dragon. That not only allows the fight to fight to make sense but now also provides a reason why the fight happens within a soloable personal story mission. Indeed they could actually dispatch the normal fight system and bring in brand new mechanics just for this fight because the player has godlike powers. I am thinking of something along the lines of Shadow of the Colussus which was really the only game that got boss fights right (generally, but the fights against the little boar bosses were lame).

I generally hate the MMO conceit that the player has to be the weakest character in a dungeon instance as this just doesn’t make any sense. Power in a story should be related on work one does in acquiring that power, and since the player was the only one who put forth effort to attain power they should be the most powerful character in the dungeon. So it makes no sense why a random nobody NPC takes 50% of hp per hit whereas my character only takes 0.02% of this NPC’s hp per hit.

I was satisfied with the ending but I feel it was a missed opportunity for ANET. I understand the epicness of going through the fights on the airship to weaken him and I even understand blowing him up with cannons at the end. However the way each part was implemented disappointed me a little and with very little effort the fight couldve been a lot more interesting and epic.

Instead of spamming the cannon what about introducing timed events for each of the group. Zhaitan is trying to climb the tower to reach the top and summon the help of his champions. At varying times each member is required to hit a specific part of Zhaitan to stop him climbing such as his claw or a weak spot. At the same time he’s flinging rocks at you that he scrapes off of the tower. If you fail he’ll land a guaranteed hit against the party member that missed. When he gets down to 1% HP a cut scene kicks in. He manages to climb to the top of the tower and is just about to call for help from his Champions when Trahearne throws Caladbolg to the party leader (ideally each player would have separate cut scenes btw but im using the system as it is now) who channels some awesome spell and blasts him off of the tower into the Abyss.

Its not hard to come up with alternatives and thats the problem. While the ending was good on paper and in principle, in application it was a slightly disappointing end to something so very important to your character. I also think you should have the choice to go into the dungeon by yourself and have the fights scale down…or even give you NPCs to fight with. It was a bit of an immersion breaker seeing someone elses character pop up during the cut scenes.

I did find the final battle a bit underwhelming, as the OP put it, although I found the rest of the dungeon did feel quite epic to me. Granted, I think that had less to do with the mechanics and more with the look, the pace, the music…OMG the music was fantastic. It really drove the pacing, for me. I think they toned it down a bit too much in the last update and it lost some of the epic feel it had (for me) prior to that, but perhaps allowing it to be easier and shorter was the right way to go, on the whole.

To go off on a brief tangent, I think the biggest mistake was to have it be the culmination of the personal story at all. I think the personal story should have remained ‘personal’ throughout. The overriding story could have been told through the dungeons, or it could have been told discontiguously, i.e. with there being lots of story arcs for characters to choose from that each play some role in contributing to the ultimate goal. But that’s probably a topic for the Personal Story forum.

Serophous.9085:

Am i the only one who cheered when logan sacrificed himself? I thought, ‘oh, maybe this isnt half bad…’

Yeah, I did too, although I’m not sure it was for the same reasons. I actually like Logan. To me he’s the only one of Destiny’s Edge who gets to have any depth at all, even if it is contrived by his being the one forced to make the hard choice. I think letting him sacrifice himself and die heroically would have been a nice touch. Having him survive cheapened the moment, in my eyes.