Guild Wars 2

i bough karmic retribution and lost it after getting back on the map :S

Okay. I completed the map and the story. Map is pretty good with lots going on. I did get rolled back once and see others as recently as an hour ago complaining of getting rolled back. The story is quite good and challenging unless you are a Necro bleeder like my self (hehe).

Overall I had a good time with this episode. The only complaint I have is the whole elixir thing. I know it has a large amount of time for the buff but to be honest I don’t see myself farming for an elixir to go to a small area of map. Keeping it in the story so you have to do it is fine but ug…. farming for a buff.

Good job on this as I liked the cut scene at the end and again overall the area is nicely done.

The heart rewards are getting better but then again I am not much for spending karma until I get me an ascended back piece :P

Great so far! Awesome new features. Absolutely beautiful map! Looking forward to exploring it more soon. My only complaint is the ending cut-scene I, feel like they should have made it a bit longer to show the importance of the moment. Also did they remove achievement indicators from the story missions? I liked that I could complete the achievement during the first play=through and only replaying when necessary.

Overall great job, keep it up Anet!

Its great and all, but man I’d love skipable cut scenes :/

torgar.4015:

Its great and all, but man I’d love skipable cut scenes :/

And reset nodes after story steps if there is an achievement available/missed.

This is my summery , i know i might get hate for this but this was my experience
the design of the missions was so disappointing for me after first part in tarir

Disclaimer
its just my opinion , it dosnt mean every one thinks like me .

(also episode after episode currency takes space by space after every new episode release , i am afraid the next episode i will not have room to spare )
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{ SPOILERS – WARRNING – SPOILERS }
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So you arrive no one knows where braham is you kill some stuff , go talk to some kodan and quaggan , than you need to brew some elixir , you run around collecting stuff …. than you get the elixir enter a cave…. fight a boss for like 2 mins , than apparently some quaggans farmers found out where braham is …. than you go into another cave … with a kittened off braham …fight some minions … and Cool looking boss and thats it….

the design of these missions was so disappointing for me , but it felt to me that i didnt get immersed in the story this episode … maybe it was designed this way….. it felt to me like i was doing chores… instead of playing an episode

i know it seems like i criticize it sooo badly and i feel so bad doing that , i love the work you guys put into and your heart and dedication
but i guess this episode didnt appeal to me , i am soo sorry

butttttt
the map is great
i really like the reward system in the hearts ( at last we can waste some karma)
i really like the map …. the events are kinda…. okay
cuz it feels like every ZONE has one event… could of used more variation or even a cool looking “world boss”
the exploration is fun climbing mountains looking for stuff … or dead quaggans (which is really creepy but awesome HEHEH excuse me)
the story telling from the npc is great it feels like the place is alive !
the minions and the monsters are cool !
i like the way their AI works , it feels like they are like zombies on caffeine all energized to kill me
the FRACTAL is AWESOME ! felt like an Top down arcade where you avoid lots of missiles
i already talked about the reward system but the minis are awesome !
the forest area is amazing ! i wish we had a huge area like that ! HUUUUGE ONE
the acheivments are very intresting
the tamagotchi addition to the game where you go back to your “dragon pet” to play catch with him and “feed him”
my favorite part of all this is the kodan near the Grawl cave that says "respect my authority " reminded me of Cartman from Southpark

i am just sad the story wasnt appealing to me but other than that it was great and i appreciate the hard work you guys put into this game , thank you.

I really like the map! And the interaction with Aurene. (I honestly was indifferent to Aurene before, but now I actually like the little thing and want to play with it. Despite its eyes kind of creeping me out).
I always enjoy more Quaggan, and insight into Kodan lore is a nice bonus.

I did not like: Braham’s particular brand of moody hostility. And before I get a flood of replies about “but his mom died!” I know. I get it. I totally understand WHY he’s being such an emo jerk. But I don’t have to like how he’s handling it. Marjory lost her sister and she wasn’t so insufferable about it. But different people handle loss in different ways, and I just don’t care for Braham’s way.

The final boss fight. I’m glad you had confidence in my ability to finally figure it out, but a little guidance would have saved a lot of pain. The boss with the grubs had a nice little subtext for his weakness (even if my first thought was “weak to Death Magic? I’m a necromancer! I have tons of it!” In hindsight I should have known that’s not what you meant xD) The final boss had nothing.

Squee.7829:

The final boss fight. I’m glad you had confidence in my ability to finally figure it out, but a little guidance would have saved a lot of pain. The boss with the grubs had a nice little subtext for his weakness (even if my first thought was “weak to Death Magic? I’m a necromancer! I have tons of it!” In hindsight I should have known that’s not what you meant xD) The final boss had nothing.

I have several friends that managed to do this fight and yet still have no idea what had to be done there. Yep, giving players some hints would have been a good idea.

Im finding instances to be very frustrating. I have died 3+ times on the abomination solo because I was hit by his huge, fast AOE before i could dodge.

A lot of the fighting mechanincs are not well teligraphed, again the abomination losing his daze meter and riving aroound looks like thats the time to do damage. At least it is with other bosses and champs. But it turns out thats when you need to get away and heal.

A lot of the instances are near unbeatable for me, as a randomly speced mezmar. And when they are beatable they take way too much time then they should. Its really putting me off and I doubt im going to be able to finish this LS update.

I do like the map, and its amazing the amount of polish in it. Its just the instances are ether bugged or unbalanced for solo play.

Astralporing.1957:

Squee.7829:

The final boss fight. I’m glad you had confidence in my ability to finally figure it out, but a little guidance would have saved a lot of pain. The boss with the grubs had a nice little subtext for his weakness (even if my first thought was “weak to Death Magic? I’m a necromancer! I have tons of it!” In hindsight I should have known that’s not what you meant xD) The final boss had nothing.

I have several friends that managed to do this fight and yet still have no idea what had to be done there. Yep, giving players some hints would have been a good idea.

it doesn’t help that it’;s apparently bugged or something, so that even if you figure out ‘how it works’, it might not work consistently enough to let you know that you figured it out.

Love the new Map, simple, easy to navigate, enjoyable quests and fights will be coming back to it every reset.

Don’t like Salty Braham. He sounds like a he’s been playing GW2 pvp/raids too much. Maybe he’s kittened because his traps had been nerfed too much.

Last boss is weird. Maybe I missed some hint at the start.
Making him charge at mobs to destroy rocks is kinda weird. Long tooltip about how they have 98% resistance to attacks did not help either.

Two words about this episode – bretty gud.

Buuuut in the part with Irene needs to destroy Ooze generators you might get suck in the wall if other player runs into that room before player – this could be fixed.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Last boss is weird. Maybe I missed some hint at the start.
Making him charge at mobs to destroy rocks is kinda weird. Long tooltip about how they have 98% resistance to attacks did not help either.

Really ? It was the first thing me and my friend did… Even though i charged into him head-on (or maybe not, first was me glitching into one stone making boss stuck)

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Last boss is weird. Maybe I missed some hint at the start.
Making him charge at mobs to destroy rocks is kinda weird. Long tooltip about how they have 98% resistance to attacks did not help either.

Same happened to me. But learning is part of the fun. After I failed the first time I figured it out.

Pre-note that there are more positives than negatives but I explained the negatives so as to be more constructive than complain-y.

Positives

Braham’s outfit is beautiful, very well designed.

I love Bitterfrost Frontier, also beautiful and very immersive. I see a lot of players wearing coats to bundle up, myself included.

The Kodan torch skills are really fun and the mechanic is simple enough to not feel unnecessary. I also love the combat Kodan tonic which I’d love to see more of.

The character’s (at least for human female) and Braham’s voice acting in the final chapter of the story are very well done.

I love the events during the cold storms!

Mini’s being awarded in game are a nice feature that I’d like to see more of. Of course it has been this way for some time, but I enjoy this theme.

I’m happy to see under water combat being acknowledged with the ascended aquatic head gear.

Negatives

The new map is annoyingly difficult to traverse as highlighted by another poster in the Living World section of this forum. Two waypoints and very isolated thermal tubes force you to do a lot more walking than what feels necessary.

A couple of the mobs, particularly the Svanir shamans and Icebrood Kodans hit a little harder than I think a level 80 mob should. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more difficult content but I’ve been literally one shot (or at least multiple attacks happening so quickly it amounts to a one shot) by these two particular mobs. Earlier this morning a Svanir shaman hit me for 9k, 8k and 8k with that ranged attack that they do and my character has 2.8k armor. That’s a pretty nasty attack for a non-veteran.

The first half of the story, bonding with Aurene is extremely boring. Escorting the wounded soldiers in particular is very uneventful. If you destroy the portals before beginning, it’s a pretty snooze-worthy event walking NPC’s from one side of the room to the other uninterrupted. The story itself, as in the lore and dialogue are decent but the combat (at times lack there of) isn’t very enjoyable. I particularly disliked timed attacking with Aurene because of how you are basically forced to circle strafe for 60 seconds until you can attack because you can otherwise do very little.

The final boss has way too much CC coming at you. This CC obsession has to stop and I’m confident that a lot of players agree with me. It’s one thing to have attacks that punish you, it’s another to make it a game of “no matter how much stability you have or many times you dodge, you’re eventually gonna get hit.” I did the story 3 times and not getting knocked down by those 932042830948320 AOE’s was impossible and just felt irritating.

The thermal tube that sends you to the Mastery Point in the Bitter Cold half of the map is very unintuitively placed. I’ve seen a lot of players asking how to reach it and it took me quite some time to figure it out myself. I actually wound up gliding to it from the hot springs area and realized I could have gotten there a different way.

Best looking map so far. I love those giant trees!

I’m not sure what to say about this episode… On the one had, I’m super happy with the new living world season, and I love the new maps (there is so much to explore in Tyria – or beyond! – yet, and it’s great to get a new map every episode), but on the other hand, I feel like this episode was rushed and could have used more testing and polishing.

I by no mean want to be negative – again, I love the new direction the game has taken. I’m just posting this so hopefully it can be fixed:

- There are big issues with the camera when the “collision sensitivity” option is set to the max in places like the first tunnel in the Kodan ship or in the mouth of the ice dragon (where the mastery point is). The camera should be zoomed in, but it’s not, and is placed inside the model above the character, turning it transparent (see the screens attached to see what I mean).

- There are a couple of places where you can get stuck (the bottom of the waterfall in Griffon Old if you fall between ice pillars).

- There are some terrain and elevation issues (your character can “walk” into a cliff).

- The shadows around the Kodan braziers are weird. Depending on your camera angle, they change from orange to black in a very weird way.

- The inventory should show the map currency (unbound magic) next to your gold instead of karma.

So yeah, I don’t know what to say… I’m super glad we have a new map, but on the other hand I could have waited a few more weeks to have something more polished (I know wintersday made the timing tricky, but still).

I don’t like the new map. It’s using the same 2D level design of core tyria but with less waypoints.

Map design is nice. Less Waypoints are punishing in a good way and mob density seems appropriate. Map currency (Winter Berries) are easy to come by, not too easy but enough to where they can be farmed consistently unlike Blood Rubes from Bloodstone Fen.

New enemies are the only mixed bag. The new moves are nice, varied, and density provides a decent – albeit artificial – challenge. My only gripe is the insane amount of homing projectiles the new mobs have.

It’s one thing for a projectile to make a slight adjustment to hit a moving player, and another when some are doing near 180 degree turns and still hitting a player with Super Speed that has moved out of its supposed trajectory.

I found it immediately challenging and engaging but in a way that was still enjoyable. It seems with the new maps that after spending time in HOT you are prepared for the mobs and content to be exactly this way. Kudos to the design team , Im absolutely loving the tall timber and wooded areas, very realistic! Lots of loot, lots of events, and lots of players helping players (or at least in my experience) with some of the more challenging content. I’d say you nailed it 100% Keep it comin guys!

I hope we can get more wvw patchs instead of this tbh. beating on npcs is not very appealing.

I really enjoyed the content. Good story and pacing. And it wasn’t a quick 3 and out addition.

One problem I have are the achievements. 2 in particular.

1 is the Delicious Desserts achievement. It constantly says “Temporarily Disabled.”
2 is Koda’s Blessing: Super expensive, basically a gold sink. And the number of achievement points given for such an expensive, material and gold-wise venture are pitiful. 950 globs of ectos? 209 gold minimum? Please don’t create a story achievement like this ever again. And if you do it should be worth about 100 achievement points at least.

Story (No spoilers)
There was a good amount of story advancement and several intriguing possibilities for future development. Gameplay in quests was fairly bland and generally served only to advance the story. The last story quest in particular had a confusing boss battle with vague mechanics.

Bitterfrost Frontier
I have mixed feelings on this new map. There are some very interesting mechanics. The series of braziers to protect is meaningful because it supplies players with torches can be used to open chests scattered across the map. There seems to be a good balance between the availability and usage of torch ‘charges’ and the spacing of braziers which serve as a torch supply depot. Frostbite (an unbreakable stun mechanic applied by some enemies and ice storms across the map) is also interesting because it destroys wielded torches. But torch-wielders can also spend a charge for temporary immunity to frostbite. There’s a lot of cool features with this whole setup that really encourages players to protect the braziers.

The map layout, while sporting impressive visuals, seems very patchwork. Terrain ranges from an ancient forest to a Svanir outpost to a hot spring. Regions are crammed next to each other with very little transition between them, which is jarring and makes the map feel very unrealistic. Although the map is moderately large, each individual biome is fairly small and cramped. I would rather see fewer large biomes in a given map with logical transitions between them.

Bitterfrost Frontier is loaded with loot, though I don’t know if this is good or bad. I appreciate that there are a variety of rewards, from expensive / grindy status items, ascended gear, cooking recipes, and minis. Inventory bloat is pretty severe here. There’s lots of reagents needed to craft daily potions which give you temporary access to part of the map.

Were personal fractal levels reset on purpose? I was level 100 and now I have been set to 96.

Initial impressions:

I like it. More stuff to do, another home instance node to buy, great terrain. I like the torch stuff.

Negatives:

- That map seriously needs a few more way points and/or shortcuts.
- The last boss is brutal. It’s a personal story, not a raid or dungeon and many folks will be attempting it solo. Some will succeed, some will not. Even when you understand the rather obscure mechanics it is not an easy fight.

One small suggestion. It seems that the trend is to sell us a new portal scroll for each new map. That’s great but they are starting to clutter up the inventory a little. A universal portal device that we could add our scrolls and portals destinations to would be excellent. So you double-click it and it offers you a list of your available destinations.

Overall, it’s only OK.

The story was very uninteresting and the last mission is just needlessly long, there’s really no reason to fight 3 mobs, RP walk, fight 3 more mobs, RP walk again, and fight 3 more mobs before the final boss, which is a real disaster. Brewing the elixir in the hot springs is very unclear and there’s no marker to tell you where to actually do it. Also, it’s a very bad idea to put a story guy in the path of an event that spawns a bunch of mobs and has a good chance of completely killing you.

The Nightmare fractal is amazing, I love it. This one and the chaos fractal are the best fractals to date. I was a bit disappointed that the Solid Ocean fractal didn’t get a revamp it so desperately needs, but that’s OK, it was more of a hope.

I love running around the new map, the hearts are boring but the mobs are fun to fight and the loot isn’t too bad either.

One thing I’d like to bring up is the Kodan Tonic. I LOOOOVEEE this thing. There are just a few issues I have with it.

1. Whenever you get downed you lose the transformation, it can be annoying to use it again if you get attacked by mobs you weren’t prepared for.

2. There no real dodge animation, I believe it shares animations with Male Norns, is it too much to ask for you to give it a Dodge animation, it’s hard to tell if I’ve dodged sometimes, especially on a thief.

3. It’s not useable in raids. I spend the majority of my time playing in raids, I’d like to be able to use it inside. Is there a reason why they aren’t allowed? If you’re serious about making more of these combat tonics, they should really be useable in raids.

I like the story, the zone though just feels like another rise and repeat but ice and not fire.

DoctorDing.5890:

Initial impressions:

I like it. More stuff to do, another home instance node to buy, great terrain. I like the torch stuff.

Negatives:

- That map seriously needs a few more way points and/or shortcuts.
- The last boss is brutal. It’s a personal story, not a raid or dungeon and many folks will be attempting it solo. Some will succeed, some will not. Even when you understand the rather obscure mechanics it is not an easy fight.

One small suggestion. It seems that the trend is to sell us a new portal scroll for each new map. That’s great but they are starting to clutter up the inventory a little. A universal portal device that we could add our scrolls and portals destinations to would be excellent. So you double-click it and it offers you a list of your available destinations.

I found the last boss really easy. It took me a minute to realize what I was supposed to do. One look at this status should tell you he’s pro-immortal and thus needs a mechanic to kill. Then you see him constantly charging so my first thought was: run him into the walls to stun him.. didn’t work.
2nd thought: Run him into the 4 spires.. didn’t work.
3rd though: use him to kill the minis.. worked.
Then I kept killing all the minis thinking maybe some secondary effect will happen. Which it did, a scroll spawned and the boss suddenly became VERY weak. just a few hundred blades and a few dodges was all it took.

I think overall it is a greta Episode. The new Map is beautiful and quite diverse.

The weakest Point of this Episode is the last Mission in the Cave. While having an RP-Walk thats gonna interrupted isn’t bad, throwing Elite Enemies at us is quite cheap, especially with the Spider Elite Group. And then the last Boss Fight. You are in a Cave with a lot of Adds a Charging Boss which can freeze you and both are immune to Damage. And there is no clue on how to kill these Things. I figured it out after trying to find Things on the Map, mousing over the Buffs ( even this gave no clue ) etc etc.
Its not very intuitive. Also, less Knockdown AOE’s please or at least don’t let them overlap so often. I got Sure-Shot-Seamus Vibes with the last half of the Fight, because you can get chain knocked down, freezed and knockdown again and SSS is one of the worst designed Fights ever in GW2.

Edit: Profanity Filter doesnt like a bit….cheap

I like the new zone a lot, because there is stuff hiding in it that gets me excited to explore. Sometimes after playing a game for a while I grow to expect what to find in every new area, and I stop really exploring every little corner. But this new map keeps surprising me and I keep wanting to poke around everywhere.

The map is great, the ice/geyser/woods diversity makes the map versatile and pleasing to the eye.
Some mobs do a tad too much damage in this map as others have said as well, 8-9k hits from non elites is a bit much also considering they all walk in packs of 2-4.
The story was good as well, bosses weren’t too difficult although getting the final boss to charge the adds consistently was a bit of a pain.

Just 1 improvement I would like to see: give us the ability to attack braham next time. And allow us to do this with caithe as well, ’hey caithe, remember that time when you stole the dragon egg and ran off with it? slam! Hey Braham, remember that time when you went full emo on me in that cave to imbue your mothers bow with ancient magic? KICK TO THE GROIN!

In all seriousness though, it feels like there is zero control in the new guild. Marjory doing whatever the kitten she wants, braham doing whatever the kitten he wants. Only taimi and rox fill their roles in the bigger picture, taimi and personal-character having a sort of child-protective uncle relationship and rox following orders because that’s how she was brought up. It also becomes quite obvious how absent Kasmeer is in the past few episodes.

I haven’t completed the story of explored all the new map yet.
But I have to say: THANK YOU FOR THE ALTERNATING LIGHTING.
It is awesome. I would love if you do something similar (less extreme, IMO) to the rest of Tyria, to differentiate day and night.

Amaimon.7823:

DoctorDing.5890:

Initial impressions:

I like it. More stuff to do, another home instance node to buy, great terrain. I like the torch stuff.

Negatives:

- That map seriously needs a few more way points and/or shortcuts.
- The last boss is brutal. It’s a personal story, not a raid or dungeon and many folks will be attempting it solo. Some will succeed, some will not. Even when you understand the rather obscure mechanics it is not an easy fight.

One small suggestion. It seems that the trend is to sell us a new portal scroll for each new map. That’s great but they are starting to clutter up the inventory a little. A universal portal device that we could add our scrolls and portals destinations to would be excellent. So you double-click it and it offers you a list of your available destinations.

I found the last boss really easy. It took me a minute to realize what I was supposed to do. One look at this status should tell you he’s pro-immortal and thus needs a mechanic to kill. Then you see him constantly charging so my first thought was: run him into the walls to stun him.. didn’t work.
2nd thought: Run him into the 4 spires.. didn’t work.
3rd though: use him to kill the minis.. worked.
Then I kept killing all the minis thinking maybe some secondary effect will happen. Which it did, a scroll spawned and the boss suddenly became VERY weak. just a few hundred blades and a few dodges was all it took.

I was making dinner last night waiting to log in while my hubby finished the personal story. I was shocked when he solo’d one of Jormags champions and then also solo’d the end boss. It took him a minute or two to figure out what needed to be done for both and kicked some serious butt! While it seemed as I watched that the end boss would be impossible, he had it done very quickly and completed the stroy/map. People just need to think it though and not run in and hack and slash … my hubby is a casual player guys and he had no trouble with this on level 80 Guard.

Since new expac is coming out, and the last episode of LS2 is out, I decided to burn through them all as if it was one continuous story line. Got through eps 1 & 2 sunday and tried to finish up ep 3 before GoT, and killed the ice champion boss, but then I lost game connection. Tried the last mission one more time, and same thing happened. Is there a bug in the instance or were there some connection issues last night?