Guild Wars 2

My nickel’s worth – I’m thrilled, all the way around. Love the map. The story was great. No complaints at all.

I like the patch overall, and think the game continues to head in a more enioyable direction. The new mastery is fun in a hilarious “that can’t possibly be a good idea” kind of way, especially if you get cannonned through several tubes in a row. The story was a bit heavy on the legwork and light on meaningful dialogue, but I still had fun with it, especially the finale. It’s good to interact more amiably with Caithe again, too, though I missed my spiky brother Canach. While I haven’t tried fractals yet, the removal of boon thieves and an improved balance between power and condition on all levels sound very welcome.

For the future, I’d like less of the tiresome Taimi-fawning, please, and more quality time with the new dragon — as well as an overdue chat with the Pale Tree, especially for sylvari players. I could see her play a part in Aurene’s future, too.

After messing around Hal today, I have to say that the Hal achievement is particularly irksome due to other players being able to snatch your apples if you have to put them down to fight. It wouldn’t be so bad if you only had to bring a handful of apples to him, but since you have to bring so dang many, it makes an already tedious task even more tedious.

Pro

• I like the pvp arena map (expecially the artwork)
• the new jumping puzzle was fun
• The story was fun (although i find azuras annoying and taimi was a big part in it)
• but the dwarf/skritt part in the story was hilarious
• nice lightning effects (sun) and the area near performance field with those earth elementals looked awesome (like a little stonemaze)

Contra

• the music on the new map does not fit the theme
• the map feels flat and oldschool, i prefer hot maps
• the thermal tubes feel kind of useless (gliding skills in bloodstone fen were fun and felt more usefull for example when fighting justicar)
• still the same maps in the pvp ranked rotation

I overall liked the new map and i am looking forward for new releases. Cant say much about the new legendary and the new heartquests because i dont like grinding.
Edit: I forgot the circus on ember bay. Does not fit in there at all in my opinion. Sometimes i hope Guild Wars would be a little bit more serious

The stun locking whilst collecting armor parts has got to stop. Other than that? Good job with the content.

The game play and challenges are over all good. The area provides a good challenge. The one issue I have is, I returned today to do the rest of the map and all my hearts I did yesterday have rest. Is this suppose to happen? Needless to say I now have to redo the hearts again. Great job keeping the over all theme that is in Guild Wars Ring of Fire.

Mizukiaki.8590:

The game play and challenges are over all good. The area provides a good challenge. The one issue I have is, I returned today to do the rest of the map and all my hearts I did yesterday have rest. Is this suppose to happen? Needless to say I now have to redo the hearts again. Great job keeping the over all theme that is in Guild Wars Ring of Fire.

Yes, the hearts are meant to reset every day to provide daily content.

I haven’t finished the story yet but a few thoughts so far:

New map – Love the massive size and expanse. Awesome. Bit disappointing to see NO Hydra’s or other monsters that made gw1 Ring of Fire so memorable.

The introduction of the SKritt and the tent just seems immersion breaking and absurd. Why would they be in this barren, firey land. it made absolutely zero sense. The weapons are also extremely overpriced. They are not to my taste so all good.

Hearts were filler like they always have been so I’m a bit meh on that.

It seems like a good map overall though. Will finish my story this eve and take full stock.

Im a little put off by the circus as well. The Skritt are one thing. They always show up in places we visit. Because they’re essentially rats. Hardy simple vermin-like critters that can survive in whatever harsh thing you throw at them. But a circus?
Even in GW1 times, this place was a monstrous hell of a place where 5 minutes meant certain death for 90% of life. Hence its designation as the end game for prophecies. One of the books mentioned just the sea around it as hostile and nearly impossible to navigate. So…lets set up a circus here? Of all the random crap. Who would they possibly hope to entertain? A camp of exiles or something would have even been a little far fetched, but more reasonable than “lets entertain destroyers and rats with a circus”

Edit to reduce my hostility: Aside from the circus, i think the new chapter is amazing. The circus thing may cheapen the whole danger aspect of the island, but doesn’t ruin an otherwise wonderful chapter.

Mizukiaki.8590:

The game play and challenges are over all good. The area provides a good challenge. The one issue I have is, I returned today to do the rest of the map and all my hearts I did yesterday have rest. Is this suppose to happen? Needless to say I now have to redo the hearts again. Great job keeping the over all theme that is in Guild Wars Ring of Fire.

The hearts in Ember Bay are a daily redoable.

Make core world hearts repeatable, not the new content.

I’m really impressed with this episode. It’s got so much to do, so much amazing artwork. The size of the islands is astounding! The story was enjoyable and had good moments of surprise and comedy. There are so many items for us collectophiles to find. The traveling vents are fantastic fun… though sometimes buggy. I was going to come on here and rave how much I’m enjoying all of it. Well done, anet!

But the hearts… there’s the fly in the ointment.
I knew they were replayable, but I didn’t realise the heart vendors would also lock each day and have to be unlocked again. That’s a real disappointment. Hearts are not the most entertaining content to do once, but at least once they’re done there’s a feeling of progression. You’ve completed something, unlocked something.

In this map, that progression disappears each day. The same vendors have to be unlocked each day. This makes hearts even less enjoyable than before. I don’t agree it’s replayable content. It’s certainly a gate. The determined will do them repeatedly, I’m sure. I’ll just save up currency and once in a while do that one with the unbound magic tools, buying a huge amount of tools in one go.

I suppose it’s fruitless to ask, but please, anet, leave the vendors unlocked. I did the work. I earned them. By all means keep the hearts repeatable if you want and give some reward on repeated completions, but leave the vendors be.

Squee.7829:

Im a little put off by the circus as well. The Skritt are one thing. They always show up in places we visit. Because they’re essentially rats. Hardy simple vermin-like critters that can survive in whatever harsh thing you throw at them. But a circus?
Even in GW1 times, this place was a monstrous hell of a place where 5 minutes meant certain death for 90% of life. Hence its designation as the end game for prophecies. One of the books mentioned just the sea around it as hostile and nearly impossible to navigate. So…lets set up a circus here? Of all the random crap. Who would they possibly hope to entertain? A camp of exiles or something would have even been a little far fetched, but more reasonable than “lets entertain destroyers and rats with a circus”

Edit to reduce my hostility: Aside from the circus, i think the new chapter is amazing. The circus thing may cheapen the whole danger aspect of the island, but doesn’t ruin an otherwise wonderful chapter.

GW2 is full of references to movies and book, so I took this one as a reference to the novel ‘City of Baraboo’. It’s a good read. I won’t spoil it for you. Then again, it may just be coincidence.

Map is fun, skritt and circus are strange but w/e. Hearts are nice; the karma vending is pretty good too. “Patron” achievement is godly. JP is hard, but feels more like an exercise in fighting nonsense terrain rather than careful/thoughtful jumps. Sulfur sea is gross. Overall I like it.

Feedback:
Please note that I have not finished exploring it, only been looking around for 2 hours.

1- Where is the Dungeon?
How come you design maps like this and not add a dungeon?

I really don’t get it. You should be doing events across the map to unlock a dungeon, and then do the dungeon to unlock skins. It feels like you skip over the most important basic item of any MMO. Without a dungeon it feels to me bland, purposeless and unfinished. Other MMOs release new maps with new dungeons, it kinda go hand in hand.

I’m talking basic group content here for the sake of game longevity, it’s not that hard to see something is missing. Like the previous zone a good percentage of players will explore it once and then wait until the next release; most of us aren’t into farming for skins.

I’m not saying this to complain, I’m saying it because I want you to succeed. If this map had a dungeon it would be kittening amazing.

Only Silverwaste so far managed to be interesting without a dungeon, and it’s because the even chain was addictive and varied.

2- Lot of work went into it, it shows. The design in general is really good and it feels more like the original game.

3- Intro is too long for my taste again but I survived it, these intro should be group content and less dialogue driven. It’s a multiplayer game not an audio book. Anyway it’s the same comment I’ve been making since Living Story 1 and I’m sure not everyone will agree with me.

4- Playing on Mac so everything looks bad anyway at low settings, but I’m sure it looks amazing on high.

There’s a lot to like, a lot, but there are a few things that have ticked me off.

1. Destroyers can now burn. Legit? Is this just ArenaNet not wanting to kitten off people who use burning builds? It just feels out of place and not true to what they are.

2. The mission to go into the caldera and collect machine parts. There is CLEARLY a large piece of the dwarvern machine down there but we are collecting glitter off the floor. Immersion breaking.

3. Why can’t we talk to NPCs in instances for extra bits of info? I can’t even speak to Taimi at the end of Taimi’s game. Why wont she speak to me?

4. Circus. Yeah yeah I know, they washed up there… but … Circus.

5. Lack of interesting stuff underwater.

6. No book item collecting all the journal entries.

Last night I finished the Jumping puzzle which is not a jumping puzzle but a gliding puzzle. Had a good time doing it but no because was a fun puzzle but because I was doing it with some guildies. The puzzle is not “fun” cos you don’t know where your next step should be. Gliding blindly around rocks hoping to find a spot to land is not fun. The old puzzles are much better. The one in Mistlock Observatory is much more fun even if it’s (too) easy and small.
I really love jumping puzzles, especially the hard ones but this one is just meh.

Enemies are annoying rather than difficult to beat. I’d much rather have them hit harder and have more health, but remove the annoying secondary effects of their attacks (like immobilize).
On the other hand, bosses are too simple, easy to beat and have almost no secondary mechanics.
So basically you need to make bosses harder and more interesting, but tone down trash mobs. Seems like in this patch the two had their roles inversed.

Also the game engine needs a complete rework, especially after you introduced this zone with complex geometry and loads of textures. While in other parts of the game I have 60FPS with maximum graphics, in Ember Bay I frequently drop below 20FPS even with “best performance” option. At some points the game almost becomes unplayable. You built your game engine with some map design in mind and now you’re making your maps progressively more complex and difficult to render, which my PC is not able to keep up with.

Other than that, nice update, pretty fun to play. Storytelling and dialogues are amazing as always. Map design is fantastic, too bad I can’t fully enjoy it due to my PC’s HW limitations.

I do have one peeve. The jumping puzzle needs as the very final step advanced gliding, you just come up short and fall to your death on the very last leg if you don’t have it. It is not needed anywhere on the way up. I was really ticked off when I took my account without it through the puzzle only to see the pillar in the distance falling away as I fell.

Underdark.3726:

Last night I finished the Jumping puzzle which is not a jumping puzzle but a gliding puzzle. Had a good time doing it but no because was a fun puzzle but because I was doing it with some guildies. The puzzle is not “fun” cos you don’t know where your next step should be. Gliding blindly around rocks hoping to find a spot to land is not fun. The old puzzles are much better. The one in Mistlock Observatory is much more fun even if it’s (too) easy and small.
I really love jumping puzzles, especially the hard ones but this one is just meh.

Can I also add onto this that there were several parts of the JP that were frustrating, not because they were hard but because it felt like a stroke of luck that you would “catch” on the rock or slab that you had to land on and stick.

They were either slightly too high or slightly to close to the wall and I felt more like I was randomly flailing around and hoping I didn’t fall rather then making a calculated jump to get to a hard place.

The end result was rather then having fun with a challenging puzzle and feeling like I accomplished something I just felt relieved that it was over with and I wouldn’t have to do it again.

Pretty good patch. Fractal-related changes were great, but the new zone also looks fine.

Squee.7829:

Im a little put off by the circus as well. …

They are a group of circus performers that have been shipwrecked for a very long time. They are trying to maintain a connection with normalcy in the only way they know – by staging a circus. Also… they may have been stuck so long that a touch of group insanity has crept in.

Makes sense to me…

I’ve completed the second chapter and I’d say the story is going well so far. Taimi is a really fun character. The pacing seems fast and full of surprises. It’s clear that there are going to be a lot of major characters involved with potential for some big plot twists along the way! As a new player to GW2, I don’t know the lore very well, so I have a feeling I’m going to learn a lot as we go!

The new map is okay. The thermal tubes seem a little like we were looking for an excuse to add a new mastery, but they get the job done. The enemies feel like a rehash of monsters I’ve already fought before, unfortunately. And the rock and fire theme, while fitting, is a bit stark after the lush jungle environments. Along with the decidedly flatter terrain, I found exploring the zone less interesting. It is a full-sized map, though, which is nice.

I have to say I liked the original HoT maps and BF better than this one. Each of those maps offers something very different from the others. This one doesn’t have the same feel to me.

Still, it’s a pretty positive release overall, I’d say. I’m liking the new map, new story every couple of months pace.

Great map, interesting story, great fractal update, WvW doing good for now.

Where is profesion update? What about engineer gyro’s AI and turret? Make engineer great again please.

Also pretty pretty please give me pistol/pistol to any other job beside thief and engi. Prefered elementalist. Or just make weapon system like GW1. I like when we could really play how we want. Not limited to what weapon we can use. Really my deepest honest wishes. Thank you.

runeblade.7514:

Make core world hearts repeatable, not the new content.

Na, I dont fancy having to do every heart in a core map in one day so I don’t have to redo them for map completion. Maybe have them reset after you’ve finished a map.

1st of all we need Spencer has a mini pet :|

IT is a very interesting map (it actually put me back to pve at least for this one) and story ark but:

-I didnt like the lava font trampoline stuff, same reason i dont do the jormag minion nowadays…

-Some bosses are extremelly easy.

-The Mursaat need to stop being imobile and start patrolling in groups like the ones in GW1, and theres alot of stationary ones…. WTH?
I would love to see players start payign atention to the sorrounding like we had on gw1, engage or be sneaky arround the groups.

-Some lava places do no damage, also so we can go and AA the mob inside the lava.

tacticalevilnoodlefox.5694:

Underdark.3726:

Last night I finished the Jumping puzzle which is not a jumping puzzle but a gliding puzzle. Had a good time doing it but no because was a fun puzzle but because I was doing it with some guildies. The puzzle is not “fun” cos you don’t know where your next step should be. Gliding blindly around rocks hoping to find a spot to land is not fun. The old puzzles are much better. The one in Mistlock Observatory is much more fun even if it’s (too) easy and small.
I really love jumping puzzles, especially the hard ones but this one is just meh.

Can I also add onto this that there were several parts of the JP that were frustrating, not because they were hard but because it felt like a stroke of luck that you would “catch” on the rock or slab that you had to land on and stick.

They were either slightly too high or slightly to close to the wall and I felt more like I was randomly flailing around and hoping I didn’t fall rather then making a calculated jump to get to a hard place.

The end result was rather then having fun with a challenging puzzle and feeling like I accomplished something I just felt relieved that it was over with and I wouldn’t have to do it again.

I felt the same way about this. Funnily enough, while completing it – someone in the same instance mockingly regarded it as “Glide & Slide”.

kurfu.5623:

Squee.7829:

Im a little put off by the circus as well. …

They are a group of circus performers that have been shipwrecked for a very long time. They are trying to maintain a connection with normalcy in the only way they know – by staging a circus. Also… they may have been stuck so long that a touch of group insanity has crept in.

Makes sense to me…

It can make sense all it wants, we don’t have to like it.

I guess I just don’t like how “easy” the likes of the carnies and the skritt apparently find it to live there. Doesn’t seem right. It’s supposed to be inhospitable, darnit.

The new map is great, it’s really big and fun. It also feels like it was cobbled together hastily as it is marred with innumerable inescapable pitfalls. Every one of the peaks is just covered with them. With gliding there aren’t many places you can’t reach, and with mobs in unexpected locations it’s unclear where isn’t a proper place to go. So stopping off on a random ledge only to find a few feet away is a spot you can slip and fall into without a way out is kind of annoying.

Also the fact that the north edge of the map is just open into nothing is kind of strange. Especially since there is obviously supposed to be an even bigger volcano right there. I get that it probably isn’t actually made yet, but it’s very immersion breaking to look out into endless ocean when the map shows a mass of brown and red.

Elothar.4382:

My nickel’s worth – I’m thrilled, all the way around. Love the map. The story was great. No complaints at all.

/SIGNED

I enjoyed both the story and the map. But there are five simple words that are driving me nuts.

“No valid path to target.”

With the way the terrain is modeled, even if I am standing in melee range, whacking away at an enemy, I can’t activate Symbol of Blades because the enemy is on a rock a couple inches higher than my player. If some of the terrain could be smoothed out a little, that would go a long way.

I guess we’ll all agree that the content is fun, well designed and refreshing. Si I’ll just skip this and go to the “bad” points:

- I’m not totally buying the Fire/Death/Plant minion thing. But that’s just my opinion.

- Same goes for the new armor pieces and the legy, but again it’s a matter of taste.

- I liked the little winks to gw1 players (Mursaat tokens, chest design…) But I would love some quest involving a few titans. Like a surviving titan overlord, after all, we still have mursaat fortress up. In gw1, when you killed a titan it would spawn 2 smaller titans that would spawn 2 lesser titan each too. This gave us some nice gameplay and required team work to avoid being overhelmed. This would TOTALLY suit a high level boss or event a fractal champion.

- Last point, and the only real negative point, It is REALLY REALLY short. Took me more or less 2 hours to finish (21/26 achievements)

Aeolus.3615:

…snip
-The Mursaat need to stop being imobile and start patrolling in groups like the ones in GW1, and theres alot of stationary ones…. WTH?
I would love to see players start payign atention to the sorrounding like we had on gw1, engage or be sneaky arround the groups.

This ^^^^^^

1. It’s a continuation of the LS. So, I wasn’t expecting 3 days of exposition. On my first pass through, I spent a good several hours getting map completion and finishing this chapter. Twas good.
2. That JP was horribad. But obviously doable. I have mixed feelings on it.
3. I really liked how the fire tubes, once unlocked, allowed quick movement across the map. It’s making storyline completion for my alts super quick.
4. Circus?! WTF! But even my character was WTF’ing, so I guess we’ll eventually find out why they are there. haha.
5. Overall, it was a neat experience. Hope to see more relatively soon.

I liked the map, overall, with two exceptions: another wacky travel thing to master in order to get map completion, and the repeatable hearts. Standard once and done hearts would have been cool. Repeatable? As in, go back the next day and do the same thing to re-access a merchant I’ve already unlocked? No, thanks.

Is there an official explanation for the absence of hydras and various other previously indigenous lifeforms? Karka, obviously, could get there on their own. How did the raptors and the stonehead get there?

All the demonic skulls — I know some were there of old, but how did they get there? Did someone carve them into the rock?

Another thing: do jade constructs have eyes? How exactly did our mursaat disguise work? I did this mission yesterday but can’t remember the details, and can’t find a transcript…

One more thing:

The new map’s OK, although I have a feeling it will just become another Southsun Cove once people have gotten what they needed. It’s like taking a vacation; a nice place to explore, then you leave. I don’t know the profitability of this map though, if it will become the next Silverwastes, but I heard people are farming their unbound magic here, so maybe they’ll stay longer.

The instanced story content was great, as the dialogue and the combat sequences were unique and really fun. I wish that Taimi’s holodeck was a bit more difficult, or offered some harder mode (I’m getting Liadri flashbacks), but I smirked at the idea of letting us learn the enemy behaviours this way. It was smart, and developed the characters too. I am actually excited to see more of this from Taimi’s toolbox. Thanks for respecting the story threads too, it’s interesting to see that the characters doesn’t only exist to be by your side, but have their own life.

I did however find Ember Bay… lacking. The thermal tubes/wallows mastery falls flat in general, mostly because it’s annoying to know if a location requires a thermal tube to get there, or not. If I had to give one QoL thing about this kind of travel system, is to allow us to see where they lead to by hovering over the thermal tube on the map. HoT maps was an absolute mess of wallows and nothing to help me “get them”.

But the biggest culprit to me was that this island felt like it did not take itself seriously. The well manicured dwarf thumb (and the second living dwarf to date not even getting the “mouth flapping” treatment when speaking), the non-existant threat of the island erupting (it got quenched in a cutscene, I felt no inkling that I was in actual danger up to that point), the skritt that cannot become a serious part of the world despite having some potential, and the circus with their “free” skins that felt like a botched gemstore set you realized no one would buy. I’m aware that some might enjoy these skins immensely, but to me they’re just as off as the rest of the island.

So to conclude, I think the instanced content and narrative has improved immensely. But I kind of wish you’d try to maintain the same excellent sense of world building when you… you know… add new maps to the world. It felt off to me, and for that I prefer Bloodstone Fen to Ember Bay.

skeeman.3140:

I enjoyed both the story and the map. But there are five simple words that are driving me nuts.

“No valid path to target.”

With the way the terrain is modeled, even if I am standing in melee range, whacking away at an enemy, I can’t activate Symbol of Blades because the enemy is on a rock a couple inches higher than my player. If some of the terrain could be smoothed out a little, that would go a long way.

Your statement and this zone reminds me of why I hate mountains and slopes in MMOs. GW2 seems particularly prone to elevation/slope/collision issues, and the way Ember Bay is designed highlights this distinctly, and it’s not helped by our characters’ inability to hop more than about two feet in the air.

I’m still disappointed that there’s still loose ends from HoT that need tying or need further elaboration story-wise though this release did cover one of them. However, I did enjoy this release a lot more.

Just hope in future releases you’ll continue to tie up more HoT loose ends, like with regards to Zojja and Logan. A line of dialogue from Rytlock regarding the matter felt like and still feels like a slap in the face. :\

1) The story in this season of the living story has been great and the quality of the story in Rising Flames is the best I’ve ever seen in an mmo. Its dark, its been (unlike every previous story piece) completely unpredictable, the guise of innocence has been stripped from many seemingly angelic entities/factions and the slow character development is really impressive to watch – now that there is enough progression that it can actually be viewed.

2) Getting worried about the extremely grind intensive nature of all the maps being introduced. Its okay for ascended trinkets and given the sparkly red stones and uber-old twigs, I’m okay with the inevitable omgnomnognom berries we’ll be foraging on the next map. Still, I always felt that GW2 was strongly against the idea of daily grinds and I’d hate to see this reward model adopted as the norm.

3) Karka ^^. While it warms my frozen heart to see these beautiful horrors of the abyss poking around above sea level again, the power creep of players has rendered karka far less annoying then they are supposed to be. Any chance of a more durable slower moving variety – perhaps one that regens those pieces of coral armor if a break bar is not depleted in time?

Overall, I found the new content engaging. I like that the current LS under promises and over delivers, with improved storytelling and real attempts to address replay-ability in the game.

What concerns me most about LS3 is that Ember Bay design not only failed to follow logically from GW1, it had no relation to the rest of the game. [WoodenPotatoes sums up similar concerns in one of his recent videos.] Inclusion of karka, SAB, skritt, palm trees and Maguuma creatures was just – weird. I’m worried that future content may take this tact and follow Southsun into the realm of “different for different’s sake” clutter that ignores the game as a whole.

I’m guessing I’m a minority in my views; but, I’m also in the minority of players who actually spent years playing GW1.

And—still, no hydra.

Andrige.5609:

It felt off to me, and for that I prefer Bloodstone Fen to Ember Bay.

Your comments are well formed and expressed. I agree with all the points you made, Andrige.

Ya know… I’m impressed. Ember Bay is a great place to just run around in as you slowly figure out what you’re actually doing might be more than just heart quests. The achievements are … achievable as a solo player.

Yes, it kinda has the feel of a GW1 and GW2 mashup but mostly ‘cuz it’s the same kinda fun so far

Mad Props as always to the Art Dept.

Sartharina.3542:

I am going to say – I do not like the Jumping Puzzle, nor that a mastery point and the map’s Full Achievement are tied to it. From what I’ve seen (Having completed it with the help of a map-breaker enthusiast mesmer), the puzzle isn’t for Jumping Puzzle enthusiasts – it’s for map-breakers. The use of gliding in the puzzle is great… but the sheer amount of dishonest geometry (Cliffs that look to steep to land on but aren’t, and platforms that look shallow enough to land on but aren’t), glitchy jumps (Either single, seemingly-arbitrary points to stand on dishonest geometry, and jumps exceeding normal jump height and angle, and jumps combining both, over unrecoverable falls), the puzzle goes from “Fun adventure” to “Complete bullkitten”

^ 100% agree. . Without watching the online vids, I wouldn’t have a clue where to go. After watching a few vids, and a few failed tries I got my POI and will never enter the puzzle again.
Also— added items (petrified wood) need a wallet space (as do rubies and any other currency added to the game.).

Croke.9124:

tacticalevilnoodlefox.5694:

Underdark.3726:

Last night I finished the Jumping puzzle which is not a jumping puzzle but a gliding puzzle. Had a good time doing it but no because was a fun puzzle but because I was doing it with some guildies. The puzzle is not “fun” cos you don’t know where your next step should be. Gliding blindly around rocks hoping to find a spot to land is not fun. The old puzzles are much better. The one in Mistlock Observatory is much more fun even if it’s (too) easy and small.
I really love jumping puzzles, especially the hard ones but this one is just meh.

Can I also add onto this that there were several parts of the JP that were frustrating, not because they were hard but because it felt like a stroke of luck that you would “catch” on the rock or slab that you had to land on and stick.

They were either slightly too high or slightly to close to the wall and I felt more like I was randomly flailing around and hoping I didn’t fall rather then making a calculated jump to get to a hard place.

The end result was rather then having fun with a challenging puzzle and feeling like I accomplished something I just felt relieved that it was over with and I wouldn’t have to do it again.

I felt the same way about this. Funnily enough, while completing it – someone in the same instance mockingly regarded it as “Glide & Slide”.

These are the reasons why I deplore jumping puzzles in this game: the collision boxes on the geometry used fight against the controls and there’s no intuitive way to know that what you see is what you get. Either the collision geometry needs to be improved to real platformer quality or GW2 needs to stop pretending that it’s good at doing what’s done well in actual platformers.

Amazing patch- love the new map and LOVED completing Chalice of Tears. Fractal ascended gear prices should not be gold sinks, we already have too many gold sinks. Would like to see the map currency clutter be better managed, or at least see blood rubies and wood be materials. Regards – happy player

So far the islands are exactly what I expected them to look like, pretty disappointing compared to bloodstone fen, it wasn’t very large, but it’s distinctive looking and has some unique mechanics. Mobs are pretty easy and thermal tubes are just reskinned jump pads, I hate pointless mastery tracks. This just doesn’t feel like a post hot map.

I can’t see myself coming back often, the rewards for the daily hearts just aren’t interesting to me, I don’t do mini’s, the clown weapons are ugly/expensive, I have infinite tools already and unbound magic is easy to get elsewhere.

Andrige.5609:

I did however find Ember Bay… lacking. The thermal tubes/wallows mastery falls flat in general, mostly because it’s annoying to know if a location requires a thermal tube to get there, or not. If I had to give one QoL thing about this kind of travel system, is to allow us to see where they lead to by hovering over the thermal tube on the map. HoT maps was an absolute mess of wallows and nothing to help me “get them”.

Just like with the wallows, the tube points in a straight line and usually ends at another tube. Look in the direction of the tube arrow to see the next tube on that line. You’ll be shot there (and if you don’t glide before you land in it, you’ll get shot out of the next one).

Overall I like it. The island is fun to play on. Story was a little short again but that’s alright it was interesting. The Jumping Puzzle is eh. I was pretty excited hearing about how challenging it was going to be expecting creative jumps and such but what I got was a cheap game of “find the pixel” and blind jumps that either decide to let you land them or not regardless of whether or not you did the exact same thing.

It felt cheap and not like a fair challenge.

I realize this map was described as focusing more on exploration, but the enemies and events are too easy. The final story mission can’t be failed either, which is anticlimactic.

The exploration and lore snippits were excellent, although I wish the snippits were assembled into an accessible book.