Guild Wars 2

Donari.5237:

And sorry, double post, here is a quick bit of feedback on something that actually did impact my enjoyment: At the end, going through the chambers, I followed Canach up to find the way in. That dumped me right by the desk, and examining that triggered the dialogues to finish up. All the other green star items I could have examined disappeared. Given the amusement of that mesmer and her, ah, partner, I imagine there may have been other fun tidbits in there.

I was very disappointed to lose the chance to see what the other items would have told me about the boss.

Canach simply tells you for each item “That’s not it”.

What makes me happy the most about this update is 2 fold:

1 – You are finally filling in the world map with these new maps and not just over the HOT side. I love it. Also green is always good, keep up with the green!

2 – This map counts as a core map so people who find the core Tyria MP’s lacking may get a few extra needed ones from here. This map also counts as Kryta for dailies so again I think this is great. Keep going in that direction (opening up new maps in the core Tyria areas that we can take advantage of for dailies and such).

Also It’s awesome you are going back and using old areas for new content (Caudicus Manor). As this can refresh our memories of what we did earlier in our games and can even show people things they may have not seen before.

Now as for the last fight, sure the room seemed small. But I have no complaints apart from that. Mind you I main an engi so I have a lot of cc cleanse and mobility etc. But I will complete this on every class in time so will cry here if need be lol. Now I do have to comment on the music for the last fight – LOVED it. Very reminiscent of some of the older FF games. Keep that up!

Cringe, memes and C-grade humor instead of immersive dialogues, as always lately. The map is quite good. The fight with Caudecus could use some adjustments, as LW is targeted for more casual part of the playerbase.

Feedback:
The story was good. I came out of it with new ideas and new suspicions, and it was very entertaining.
The new zone however leaves a lot to be desired. Once you finish the story, there is almost no reason at all to ever go back into Lake Doric. Normally I would follow up the story with doing the renown hearts, and zone completion, except that 2 of the Points of Interest, as well as what appears to be one vista and one mastery point are all inaccessible solo unless you are on a class that has lengthy stealth skills.
The mobs in Lake Doric are almost all cut and paste from Bloodstone Fen. Frankly, a lot of this “new” zone is cut and paste. They didn’t even bother to change the voice acting for the training area on the south west side. It’s just a replication of Claypool in Queensdale.
If exploration of the new zone followed the mechanics of other living story zones (i.o.w. NOT the Heart of Thorns zones), I’d spend a lot of time going through the 15+ characters I have and completing it on each one, but since “challenging group content” has taken precedence over exploration… well.. nothing to be done anymore.
Bloodstone Fen was good. Ember Bay was amazing. Bitterfrost Frontier was challenging but a lot of fun.
Lake Doric? Nope.

It’s true, the final room has been in the game since 2012!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPjvXN3DGk4

Where is Kasmeer? I swear, if you people only bring her in if you decide to Marjory off (again) and Kasmeer only shows up to cry over Marjory’s dead body… Words will not be able to express my rage if that happens. The longer you put off Kasmeer’s return, the more that scenario seems plausible because frankly, I don’t trust you.

The map is okay. I don’t see myself revisiting it, honestly, unless I’m trying to grind mastery xp with my alts.

Great map! Great chapter!

The entire chapter was on point from start to finish. Jennah, Shining Blade, White Mantle, all of it. The ONLY flaw is the boss. Holy mother of CC! Please fix that. Even as a warrior, I got CCd to oblivion. I got ping-ponged by the jade constructs, volatile bloodstones and the boss attacks.

Overall 9/10

The final boss for this episode is the best I’ve played of this game’s soloable instanced content. If a vanilla necro with squishy gear only gets downed twice then it can’t be all that hard.

If it gets nerfed I will be sad.

The map is nice too.

Potato pancakes.

The final battle of Confessor’s End is simply too insane. It’s overwhelming!

This episode was FANTASTIC overall. Great story, LOVE the political intrigue (and would love to see more of the same in the future, and not just in human cities too), but this boss fight was so terribly and cruelly designed that it genuinely tainted my enjoyment of the episode.

In the end I couldn’t beat it. The insane, endless floor AOE, the mobs, needing to activate the special skill every 5 seconds, needing to pick up and throw the dang bloodstones – it’s just too much.

When you add the crazy tiny room and how crowded it gets with allies and enemies, it’s an ADHD nightmare. I turned into a pinball. A dead one. And a naked one, once my armor shattered off my body!

I’m thankful for all your hard work on this episode, but for someone mostly here for story/exploration, the fight is just too hard. Please consider nerfing, or at least treat this as a dungeon and suggest people gather a party to beat the final boss.

Some people report not suffering that much in this fight, which baffles me, so I do wonder if it’s bugged somehow and different people are experiencing different levels of CC. Cause for me I literally could not stand up without being knocked down a few minutes into the fight. I only got him down to 3/4 HP after like… 30 minutes of trying.

I’ve managed map completion and story completion so far and one aspect of this patch really stands out for me. Something I hope gets more attention in future. Buildings you can walk around in! Lake Doric is awesome for building exploration – please keep that up.

Neural.1824:

They didn’t even bother to change the voice acting for the training area on the south west side. It’s just a replication of Claypool in Queensdale.

Not to mention context wise it has no business being on the front lines of a battle field, every time I pass it I’m thinking, “what are you noobs doing out here!”.

Theundersigned.4761:

The final boss for this episode is the best I’ve played of this game’s soloable instanced content. If a vanilla necro with squishy gear only gets downed twice then it can’t be all that hard.

If it gets nerfed I will be sad.

The map is nice too.

Potato pancakes.

Well I hope it will get changed and from the abundance of posts here it’s likely it will and it should, but congrats on getting through it without feeling an incessant desire to punch a vacuous space in your monitor.

Also, loved fighting alongside Jennah and Anise and I was absolutely thrilled to see you bring back Demmi, though I SUPPOSE she might be dead now... Ugh.

As always, Canach remains one of your best characters. More Canach. Always. HE’S THE BEST. I love him. Best boy.

I will say I was pretty irritated when I completed the map first, then focused on the story, only to find the middle “story” portion just made me repeat the heart quests again… That was really irritating and rubbed me the wrong way.

Otherwise, great map that I enjoyed exploring. Enemies/respawn rates were a bit crazy but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Hi all!

I haven’t got all the way to the end, as the "Now go and do events until this bar fills out" bit had me cursing and logging out: "I’ve just spent the last few kittening hours doing stuff around the map, and it doesn’t count?! I just want to progress story! Kitten you!" etc., etc.

I like map completion. It’s a thing for me. I’m missing a few spots in this new map: a mastery point somewhere I read may be less easy than just walking up to it, and the odd vista I appear to have ignored for no real reason, plus the centaur PoI which is heinous, but I’m sure I’ll get anyway. Other than that, I’m okay with the map. I don’t hate it, but I’m not particularly convinced I enjoyed doing stuff on it. Renown hearts are slightly tedious to fill. Some events do seem to drag a little.

Now I’ll be back in today to try and finish the map up, and in doing so, that pesky story bar. Then I’ll have a crack at the last story instance, but if I’m reading things right, I may have a lot of problems doing so. Epileptic? Check. High anxiety levels? Check. Arthritic in the hands and wrists? Check. I hate to have keep bringing this up, but if people who don’t have such conditions are having issues, what chances do I have? I’m not exactly filled with confidence the best of times. I have, however gotten through most of the game before, sometimes just by the skin of my teeth - even if I don’t go back and do it again for obvious reasons. I will try this end bit nevertheless, and will edit this post with an update.

EDIT: Have now finished map and story. Map with little zerg was fun and hairy, but not something I have a great desire to do again. The last story instance was okay, but you really need to let up on the twitch. Not all of us are blessed with cohesive reflexes! I agree with pretty much everyone else: the last encounter room is far too small, and there’s just too much spam going on. I didn’t have a seizure, sure; then again, I spent a lot of the fight with just no clue what’s going on because I’m having to look away or feel sick. Please, for the nth time, have some overall consideration in view of this when it comes to harder encounters. And the mask as a reward? Ick. At least it sells for 2 gold 50 (but I’d rather have cash-in-hand next time. * shudder *)

I enjoyed everything about this episode except the final boss, which felt unnecessarily brutal: the mechanics were easy, but the constant CC and mob spawns were ridiculous – and as a Mesmer, the usual DPS handicaps applied. The spinning walls also made me feel nauseous, which soured the whole experience. The worst part about it, however, was the unbound magic window: many times I thought I was being punished for using it instead of the intended result. That being said, I only died three times (miraculous for me because my reaction time in this game is generally bad due to a disability).

Thanks for the patch its really nice i like it most of the LS season 3 patches so far. However i do have a few issues.

1 like many already pointed out.. that last instance boss… TOO much CC in a too small room. I play mesmer and this was the first time i had to resort to the respawn killing (aka die a lot and do some damage before you die again). I carry multiple armors arround, but that did not help much, it was just all the CC and the lack of stability on my class. I do have to point out that i did not have the new skill unlocked (downstate 5) so perhaps that helps but even then having to resort on downed skills would also not be my idea of a fun boss fight.
2 I loved the story but in my opinion Kasmeer would have been a really good fit to show up during this story, However sadly we still did not see her nor did we ever hear anything from her since the end of HoT.
3 We seem to have trouble to have members join our guild (dragonswatch) So far we have only 4 members (Taimi, Marjory, Rox and Rytlock) with Braham basically leaving and the others not joining. Kasmeer did not show up since the guild was created so we could not even ask her to join yet. Also we see them so little or hear from them so little i even forget who is with us and who is not atm (Had to look up Rytlocks status on the wiki)
Perhaps some feedback you can work with.

I like to and with a big thank you for the new guildhall decorations that i stumbled upon its nice to see some paintings and other nice things added again! (its a pretty big gold sink though but well thats nothing new when it comes to guild decorations). It was a nice and unexpected surprise to me (as it was also not in the patch notes )

The final fight is very poorly conceived; gw2 camera is just not designed to handle action in such a tiny enclosed area, not to mention, the sheer amount of graphical effects just creates visual dissonance. Very messy, with spell effects, constant AOE avoidance zone cluttering a room the size of a typical apartment living hall. It’s also very badly balanced, getting knocked back every 2-3 secs does not make for a fun experience. Not to mention, the boss is capable of 2-shotting a player.

Don’t bother with confessor’s end unless u’re in a party; even then, be prepared for a frustrating experience. Or better yet, skip it altogether, the fight plays out so poorly, it sours the entire experience.

Was hoping to see more Mursaat epicness but oh well, everything else was great, except those time sinks you guys keep doing with the new chapters, like in the previous one where you had to pick up some berries and twigs and stuff. Also, its like the third time you guys put something silly that doesn’t contribute to the overall enjoyment of the chapter in the form of that little minigame with the golem… it was just press 1, 2 and 3 for like a minute… maybe doing something that actually makes you think like the riddles at the last battle would’ve been better,

Also, git gud people, I did the last battle with the squishiest character possible… zerker ele.

Things that I like:

+ The new map (especially Melandru’s Refuge, Saidra’s Haven and Lakeside Bazaar) … I had a lot of fun to explore the map
+ The music of Lake Doric
+ The design of the backpack
+ Most of the events
+ I haven’t done much of the story yet, but I like it so far. I didn’t notice any bugs in the story missions yet.
+ The achievements
+ Noran’s labyrinth

+/- The heart quests are nice, but some of them fill up a bit too slowly
+/- I don’t like the human looking Minis. But the Mini Cat and the Tornado are funny

Things that I don’t like so much:

- That I’m forced to do the story before I can enter the new map for the first time
- Another Portal Scroll (I don’t know where to put all of them)
- The Point of Interest in Watchtower Cliffs. I was not able to reach this area on the map, because the Centaurs killed me instantly. Someone told me it’s possible to reach the Point of Interest with an event, so I waited for more than 15 minutes, but nothing happened. It was very boring for me. I have 100% map completion with one character now. But I feel a bit unmotivated to do it again with my other characters, because it was so annoying for me to reach this Point of Interest
- The Vista in Watcher’s Hollow is a bit difficult to reach in my opinion.
- There are not enough Waypoints on this map. Sometimes all of the Waypoints are contested at the same time.

But alltogether I’m very pleased with this update! Thank you for your hard work

I liked it for the most part but the end boss made me want to throw my mouse through my monitor…..

Really Anet?? Did the dev who made this boss just finish playing Dark Souls? Is he/she looking to work on Dark Souls 4?

I gave up. Too frustrating and not fun. Did it on my ele…..ya…CC is ok but one shot city and as soon as you go back in….one shot….go back in…one shot.

Not even fun.

5/10 Since the final boss is important and most people look forward too.

Svennis.3852:

Some people report not suffering that much in this fight, which baffles me, so I do wonder if it’s bugged somehow and different people are experiencing different levels of CC. Cause for me I literally could not stand up without being knocked down a few minutes into the fight. I only got him down to 3/4 HP after like… 30 minutes of trying.

Just ignore them, Gw2 reddit is also reporting the same issues with the final boss fight; It’s a badly designed encounter, quite possibly the worst fight in the entire game.

It’s not even fair to compare Dark Souls to the boss fight; Dark Souls, for the most part is pretty fair, this boss fight however, feels as if it was designed to punish players.

I thought the last episode was fantastic with the huge exception that the camera couldn’t fit in the boss room. I died and respawned into the room to no idea what was killing me and no where to go, it didn’t matter if I zoomed in or out, either way it was too crowded.

I don’t mean that to be a whine though, that aspect was terrible but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the last instance.

Unknown.3976:

Just ignore them, Gw2 reddit is also reporting the same issues with the final boss fight; It’s a badly designed encounter, quite possibly the worst fight in the entire game.

It’s not even fair to compare Dark Souls to the boss fight; Dark Souls, for the most part is pretty fair, this boss fight however, feels as if it was designed to punish players.

You’re not being fair, the final fight is going to be drastically different depending on your profession and weapons and equipment type. Like you could be full nomad druid LB with pets and think it was the easiest fight ever created.

Sooo feedback: map design is awesome as always, story is also nice (though I rather felt lukewarm after the first boss) but overall I would rate it out an outstanding 8/10 and consider being it the best out of 4. Now the only big con I have found so far: the last fight story instances are too small for the difficulty you propose. I understand why because it is this freaking Caudescus who spoilers absorbed a large quantity of blood magic. However I do feel like the jade creatures are just too much in the 2 last fight instances of the story. On a mesmer, it is fine and rather engaging because you can double on your utility and you have an easy access to stability, blink and distortion. However I simply don’t know how I will be able to pull that off with a revenant. I would suggest to make the jade creatures spawn with the first boss of the story because there is enough room for it and I found the fight wayyyyyyy too easy even if I was playing with a squishy mesmer in dom/duel/chrono. And playing this build for the last fight instances was impossible so I needed to switch to chaos/insp/chrono.

Zenith.7301:

1- CC spam mobs are not fun. Not every class has short cd stunbreaks or easy stability.

2- You make toughness builds completely pointless with the condition spam. Confusion+poison+ cripple all day everyday.

Again, not every class has god condi clear.

Oh, I played it on my Berserker and trust me, stability, stunbreaks, 31k HP and condi clear didn’t help. I ended up dying roughly 25 times, eventually winning the fight on my underwear. At the very end I teleported to the room multiple times and died instantly, landing one hit per try if I was lucky. That got me through.

So yeah, a room full of AoE, mobs and a legendary boss with constant condi/stun bombardment is something that could be tweaked a little, but overall a very cool fight and an amazing episode.

I really like the new Episode, BUT the leather farm is a bad joke in my opinion. As soon as the map is dead doing the map exploration will be annoying. When Anet said something of a group farm for leather I expected more than “Run up and down a cliff with 50 ppl spamming 1”

I stayed up all night to play through the new content — I just couldn’t stop! (Who needs sleep anyway? )

Plot

• Good job, felt great to play through some classic fantasy content. The classic villains, the classic heroics, a story of suspicions and betrayals — simple, but efficient, and especially fun due to some unexpected twists and turns. The puzzle at the end was a nice touch, more of that in the future, please! Caudecus’ statue heads following your every move and the spinning room where very cool. Demmi dying broke my heart, what an unexpected twist! The pace felt right, especially the way dialogue triggered in this episode (nothing was overlapping etc.).

Characters

• Logan: I loved how a bruised and battered Logan showed up to protect his Queen, and felt so bad for him when he finally realized his feelings for the Queen are unreturned and never will be. At least now he can move on. He has been by far my favorite NPC in the game and I am glad they gave him story material in this episode.

• Jennah: When I played the first chapter, I was constantly muttering something along the lines of, “Oh no, don’t die, Jennah! Where is Anise to protect her??” Turns out she can take care of herself. That movie and tv reference of her scaring her enemy’s henchman off was classy and very funny. I knew there was more than one reason I have been a Jennah fan, although I got a bit upset with her for leading Logan on for so long (she could have talked to him a long time ago since she had obviously been aware of his feelings all along).

• Anise: I used to like her in LWS 2, but in this episode I felt that she was acting out-of-character most of the time. She had never been this brash in such a merciless and vengeful manner before. What happened?

• Demmi Beetlestone: It felt so cool to have her back! All the references to previous content was welcome. I really liked her and wished we could see more of her. Her death struck me unexpectedly hard, to be honest. Nice story-telling there.

• Caudecus: The typical sociapthic megalomaniac, so I am not surprised he was able to recruit other ministers to his cause. However, for some reason, I am still feeling rather indifferent towards him. I also find the whole plot surrouning the fake Lazarus a bit implausible, although the danger for Jory and the whole group is an interesting story twist.

• Nylia Steelpaw: Not much to say about her (yet), but I found it amusing that you used the voice of Estelle for her character, now that Estelle is no more.

• Everyone else: A shady merchant who treats his employees like slaves, hate him already. A captain who used to make sight-seeing tours and is now stranded, well, I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of him either.

Locations

• Lake Doric: Love it! Finally an area where you feel “at home”. I was getting tired of all those exotic forest locations. This felt like a classic RPG at last, thanks to the wonderful dungeon area (classic D&D touches), the beautiful cavern filled with flowers and waterfalls (swooning here), the fortress, the dam, and the small townships. I loved every detail about it (except the partial destruction and some annoying jump spots).

• Divinity’s Reach: Thanks for taking us back to my favorite place in all of Tyria, and thanks for not tearing it down (insert sigh of relief).

Story missions

• I loved every single one of them. Especially exploring Caudecus’ manor in detail was mucho fun, and I loved the final battle. However, you might want to rework one thing: when you die during the final battle, you have to teleport back into the chamber — however, due to loading times, you almost always find yourself immediately downed again by the time you are “back in action”; changing the spawn point in the room to somewhere safer than at Caudecus’ feet would be a good idea. I died three times, twice due to this very problem.

(to be continued)

(cont’d)

Miscellaneous stuff

• Teaser trailer: The trailer was misleading, but I am happy it was for the reason mentioned above (a more severe destruction of DR and Kryta would have been devastating, but also hard to implement into existent content, so praise the Six!).

• Leather farming: Okay, now that seems like a bad joke. You might want to reconsider and rework that, because it’s hardly doable alone and the nearest waypoint feels miles away, hence dying is frustrating. I assume you intended to make this a daily event for people to gather and defeat the centaurs together, but it will take time for this to establish as a group thing (if ever).

• New Seraph stats combo: Oh my, now I really hope you’ll fix the ascended PvP armor and trinkets soon so that stats can be changed in the Mystic Forge (in case this leads to a new meta for certain professions, although I can’t see that happen yet).

• Area transitions: Why are those one-sided, as they cannot be entered from the opposite side? That felt weird and led to a bit of frustration, for I was curious and then had to teleport back to a waypoint far off in order to return to were I exited the map.

Thank you for an exciting new episode, ArenaNet!

Constructive Criticism for Caudecus Fight: It took a couple of deaths to figure out that there is in fact a pattern to the spawning of the circles on the floor, and you don’t actually have to “dodge” out of any of them unless you accidentally back yourself in to a corder. Simply walking away from the location they are about to spawn, and in to the one they just were is enough. That said, perhaps make the circles spawn at ever so slightly more of a delay might make this a bit obvious.

The fight itself wouldn’t be so very difficult without a couple of factors:

A) Camera angles SUCK in this fight because of the small space that it takes place in. There is a reason that the pattern took a few deaths to figure out, and most of it was me fighting to see what was going on every time I got near a wall to pick up a bloodstone shard.

B) The Jade Spawns…. This is by far where I died the most. I wouldn’t mind if the armors spawned if perhaps the circles on the floor STOPPED and Caudecus went in to an invincible phase in between. He could even have a separate mechanic during this phase like perhaps a target reticle over your head while he aims to throw something at you. Because of the aforementioned camera angles and my need to focus on the floor spots, I didn’t even realize their WERE any adds in the room until I had downed to them at least twice. And even after that, of course, all of a sudden I had to fight the cheese chain-knockdown armors on a character with effectively zero access to stability (thief) while also dodging the circles and trying not to get perma-CC-chained. (Bandit’s defense was the only thing that saved me in this section)

Other than these couple of complaints on the last boss I loved the new LS zone more than any that have been previously released. The jumping puzzle and the hidden achievementgranted by visiting the tomb of Captain Langmar both remind me of what I always loved most about GW2. The exploration aspects are a class above any other MMO out there. The zone is well laid out, there are hidden nooks and crannies everywhere, and there are lots of little details that are easy to miss but that I seriously appreciate. Also, the sarcasm and humor were top notch in the story.

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Zenith.7301:

1- CC spam mobs are not fun. Not every class has short cd stunbreaks or easy stability.

2- You make toughness builds completely pointless with the condition spam. Confusion+poison+ cripple all day everyday.

Again, not every class has god condi clear.

Oh, I played it on my Berserker and trust me, stability, stunbreaks, 31k HP and condi clear didn’t help. I ended up dying roughly 25 times, eventually winning the fight on my underwear. At the very end I teleported to the room multiple times and died instantly, landing one hit per try if I was lucky. That got me through.

So yeah, a room full of AoE, mobs and a legendary boss with constant condi/stun bombardment is something that could be tweaked a little, but overall a very cool fight and an amazing episode.

my first impression as well. At least now we know Anet’s view of ‘condi’ specs. Their idea of making things difficult is to up the condi spam. The condi infestation from WvW/PvP has now infiltrated PvE.

Started working on it…thanks for bringing the block/condi blob from WvW to PvE. Guess the zerker ranger gets tossed into permanent retirement. Not much in the way of “personal story” when you have to round up a group to get through it.

My secret for the last step of the story

I’ll start off by saying, overall, I’m happy with the zone. As someone said in map chat, it feels like classic Tyria exploration.

I can’t speak of the story yet. I plan on finishing that tonight. What little I have done was interesting, if a bit frustrating. JENNAH, STOP STANDING IN EVERY RED CIRCLE YOU CAN FIND.

On the zone itself:

• Hearts seem to take a bit too long to complete. Upping the gains about 10-20% would probably be just right.

• Enemies feel more robust to some degree. I mean that in AI tactics and, unfortunately, in HP bars (but that’s been a thing throughout HoT). Not too difficult, though, so it feels like a decent spot for them to be in.

• Map completion has been a bit of an irritation, actually. I spent half of my swear words on invisible walls or false slopes that I know I can climb but can’t convince my character to stay perched on. Notably, there’s a bundle of rocks near a mastery point, on a slope in the bloodstone centaur corner. It looks climbable, like I should be able to get up there, but every surface just slides my character off. After bullishly suffering through sharpshooter alley (thanks for hating on melee some more, by the way…), I managed to find a jump point to explore the northern portion of the map.

• Remember that Ash Legion heart that everybody hates? …Thanks for bringing that back +1 with the eastern fort. [/sarcasm] The detection skill is unreliable, as it never seems to know what the jade constructs are doing.

Nice little jumping puzzle in Noran’s area. I appreciated the multiple paths that split and converge, giving the player a choice on which hazards to deal with.
Some items need conveyance, though.

• The entrance itself doesn’t look any different than the rest of the cramped storage.
• The key oil uses the icon for flaxseed oil. This makes it easy to skip over as loot when it is supposed to be used to create the oiled key for the end chest.
• Subsequently, I got screwed out of the chest at the end because I didn’t know what “checkpoint” I missed (I had the oil in inventory, but didn’t realize it), so I gave up and left. Found and used the oil later, then couldn’t get in because the door needed the regular key and not the oiled one. tl;dr- Recommend the door accept either key for entry.
  
  So in spite of numerous expletives, I can say I’m enjoying the new zone.
  A big thank-you nod to the entire dev team, even you make me want another legendary, stop it I can’t afford them all.

Apparently I cannot outrun a Centaur LOL

GREAT JOB on the new map and content. I found I felt right at home with it being in Kryta. Familiar buildings and settings. Some amazing vistas in this map. Lakeside Bazar is just beautiful. Great mob spawns, challenging content and great story progression! I was happy to see some old friends returning I’d say this is a WIN!

Generally speaking, I think this was a great patch, and I enjoy the new map. I also very much enjoyed the story. The dialogue in the final instance is pure gold, too.

My two complaints:

1. Gating POIs in the area of the map that’s meant to be for groups only (and isn’t even tied to a meta event or anything). That was kind of a crappy thing to do. I know there’s a “back way” we can use, but still.

2. The constant CCing from the final boss of the last instance.. It wouldn’t be that bad if the room were slightly bigger, but since it is such a small area, you’re basically just going to get tossed around like a rag doll at some point. Otherwise, though, I really enjoyed that whole final instance.

@RoseofGilead what’s so wrong with using a backway in to get to that PoI? Its possible to get there alone, isn’t that good enough?

I haven’t completed the story yet, so I can’t comment on it, but I feel the urge to speak up.

Similar to the previous release I find the new map frustrating. I tend to have a filled up inventory with all sorts of items I don’t want to throw away. Yet AGAIN my inventory gets bombed with tons of items from the new map. Take Cin’s stuff as example. There is no clear indication whether I need to keep and deliver it or if I can just throw it away. As my inventory got clogged more and more I was totally stressed out and could not enjoy playing. I’d like to get the tonics, but since that would even worsen my inventory problems that has to wait until a tonic wardrobe is implemented.

More to the point: Both releases feel like they were specifically designed to sell (loot hoarders like) me more bank tabs and bag slots. Needing to expand inventory space for interesting loot, in a sense of progression, is fine. But feeling forced like this is not – and makes me want to rather not play then give in to such tactics! One such release can be considered inconvenient or inconsiderate. Two in a row are a warning signal – thus this post.

Also, I tend to do hearts and events when I run across them. So I did them when I was sent around the map to discover it. When I came back I was sent off to grind some more events to progress the story. That felt liked forced, unnecessary content stretching at that point.

The stuff sold by the heart vendors feels spoilery, esp. a mini of a character I haven’t yet met in this episode.

Sorry for the negativity, but these are the impressions on my first evening on the new map.

OriOri.8724:

@RoseofGilead what’s so wrong with using a backway in to get to that PoI? Its possible to get there alone, isn’t that good enough?

It just rubs me the wrong way when basic elements (such as POIs and other objectives for map completion) are locked to people who are playing solo. I felt the same way about hero point challenges with multiple champs in HoT zones, too. Now, secret things, like JPs and hidden achievements, are fine to be hidden, in my opinion. And map completion objectives that are only unlocked by doing meta events are more understandable for me, too. But, at least in my opinion, you shouldn’t be forced to use a teleport to friend, join up with a group, take a longer way that may or may not be easy to reach (I haven’t personally used the back way to the POI yet, so I don’t know how easy it is to find), etc. in order to just complete a map. That’s obviously just my opinion, though; not everyone feels that way.

Killerassel.2197:

The stuff sold by the heart vendors feels spoilery, esp. a mini of a character I haven’t yet met in this episode.

Yeah. That mini you’re talking about was kind of a “wtf” moment and spoiled part of the story before the plot point was revealed.

What I liked the most?

What I did not liked so much?

I liked the new map and found it fun to explore. I enjoyed the story but did have some issues with the end fight.

Other issues with this episode:

White Mantle mobs everywhere and respawn way too quickly once you clear an area.

Event with ghosts in the forest is turning into the Ember Bay skritt redux where people talk to ghosts, get the wrong answer and run away leaving enraged ghosts for others to deal with. The ghosts are overpowered and White Mantle mobs are intermixed where the ghosts spawn making it nearly impossible to take care of the ghosts solo.

Pirate ghost event at lumber mill never spawned even though a guildie and I waited for a long time through a day/night cycle. We are not sure if something else needed to happen/fail for the ghosts to appear. They did not appear at night either as we expected.

Quaggan escort spawned White Mantle at a spot in the water that was too shallow to do underwater fighting and would not let you fight as on land.

Pirate ship supply escort spawned champs stealing supplies that you could not take down before they got away. Not that many folk were doing the event but I suspect the event ramped up due to the number of folk in the nearby town.

I did the story with two other guildies and had some issues there as well:

In the Throne Room you need to salute an aspiring guard, talk to the ladies in waiting and make a guard laugh. The first two were easy but the third one two of us got and had no idea how they got it. The tip says glide, swim, pet. We tried gliding from everywhere we could glide and saw the guards turn and look but nothing else happened. Swim is impossible as the fountain area is not deep enough. Pet is not an emote though we figured it meant playing with the cat. One guildie thought we had to get close enough to one of the guards and play with the cat as that was what he was doing when he got the achieve. I went to the same spot and was unable to get the achieve. The other guildie had no idea how she got it because it just popped.
Edit: Turns out that You have to glide, jump in the water and pet the cat quickly as you get a short buff for each as you do them and you need to complete them all before the buffs run out

Achieve to answer the riddles correctly. We did the instance twice and the second time we answered the questions correctly but only two of us got the achieve and the third didn’t.

Final Boss fight – when the door opened we all went in together but I got stuck in the door and was not able to get out until I finally was killed. I think the door closed too quickly as we did not delay at all and were together as we ran in. My guildies had to get the npc away because she kept rezzing me. Once I died then I was able to get back in and assist. Another guildie reported the same happened to him when he and some friends went in.

The map is great but the leather farm is underwhelming and meta activities don’t seem as rewarding as places like Bitterfrost.

The actual story part of the episode is great, I really like it, but there are a few mechanical misses there.

Particularly the bar that says to pass time in the zone while the seraph gear up. It’d make more sense if it were completing hearts or something.

The final battle is somewhat insane: the room is too small, and the jade constructs ruin everything with their extra knockbacks, you can get stuck in the wall, caudecus’ skills seem to randomly ignore blocking or evasive states… Four things that I can see to make that better: Replace the constructs with other mobs, preferably ones that don’t knock back, but add a different layer (honestly, the placement has a lot more wiggle room for difficulty than the CC does). Increase the size of the room (seriously). Don’t let the player spawn -under- caudecus when rejoining the fight (this messed me up quite often) and if nothing else: add an anvil before the fight.

Fix the boss fight need time to react to special skill and enough with the stuns and knockbacks

I enjoyed it, even the last fight. See I’m not the only one to not like the small room at the end. but hey maybe I need to learn to adjust if there will be more encounters like this. I felt like sometimes in the last fight, for me anyway. Winning it was more about knowing what to do than seeing what I’m able to do. If that makes sense. I feel like the story/fights are pretty much middle or slightly above middle in difficulty allowing a lot of people to enjoy the content. Thanks Anet.

Yeah. That boss fight may be more manageable with an extra second to use the special action ability. I noticed that same problem in the fight before too.

I will try to keep this positive, but not sure if it will come off as that!

So I did the LS. The beginning got me excited as I thought it would be similar to the story that happened with LA. But alas it was not! No large groups of people fighting together for a common goal.

The new map (to me) was very disappointing. It feels like you took the last two maps you have created, slapped them together and made the NPC’s a bit tougher.

TBH I was really hoping it would be more a big group thing. Kinda of like the whole Scarlet story. All in all I give it a 4 out of 10.

I do appreciate having new content, but maybe next time we can have more of a group effort like we did with a few of the previous story lines.

I hope this all makes sense, and is not taken as negative. It is obviously just my opinion on the new LS.

Hi,

I would like to thank you for this new LS content. I have been playing Guild Wars series since 2005. There were some ups and downs, but this new part is really good. I never like a new map like this one. It’s unique and meaningful. The end fight is awesome, more like this wold be nice. Thank you and keep up the good work!

P.S. I think I found an exploit: Ranger can use their pets (and pet skill) in Fort Evennia.

Story mission was deliciously hard (especially the end).. My friend and I had a blast doing tho we were half naked by the end of it! This is the first LS episode I’ve played and I’m definitely going to get the rest!

Great job on it guys!

I remember 4 years ago some friends and I found a way to glitch behind the CM portal and get into the faces room.. was really cool to see that there was a purpose for it!

The map seems ok, but ask me again after I spent some more time there.

As for the instances: I hate the last one with a passion. I hate the area it takes place in. No, I despise it. I had hoped never to set foot there again after doing the story mode for Caudecus Manor. I’ve never done any of the explorable paths because I find the whole area intolerable. The problem? The low ceilings, all over the place. I have a particular way I want the camera to be positioned, and Caudecus Manor just won’t let me. So I don’t play it. And now this episode took me there. I hated every minute of it.

For me, the final battle wasn’t worse than every other battle leading up to it. Every minute in that house and its cellars feels cramped and it annoys me to have to play with a camera angle that disagrees with my enjoyment of the game.

RoseofGilead.8907:

OriOri.8724:

@RoseofGilead what’s so wrong with using a backway in to get to that PoI? Its possible to get there alone, isn’t that good enough?

It just rubs me the wrong way when basic elements (such as POIs and other objectives for map completion) are locked to people who are playing solo. I felt the same way about hero point challenges with multiple champs in HoT zones, too. Now, secret things, like JPs and hidden achievements, are fine to be hidden, in my opinion. And map completion objectives that are only unlocked by doing meta events are more understandable for me, too. But, at least in my opinion, you shouldn’t be forced to use a teleport to friend, join up with a group, take a longer way that may or may not be easy to reach (I haven’t personally used the back way to the POI yet, so I don’t know how easy it is to find), etc. in order to just complete a map. That’s obviously just my opinion, though; not everyone feels that way.

But it isn’t locked to solo players, that’s the thing. Its entirely possible to do it solo using the shortcut. I don’t understand why you are so against this shortcut. It was purposefully added so that you can do this solo. It takes 5 minutes tops to walk from the nearest WP, find the entrance to the shortcut, figure out the path, and come out near the PoI. This isn’t like you are breaking out of the map and need to find the exact pixel to stand on. Its really easy to do it solo