Guild Wars 2

In a game were surviving depends mostly upon dodging, giving us a tiny room full of undodgeable AOE seems a bad design decision. And, when you’ve died a hundred times and have no armour left, making us play through the whole preamble stuff again just to get to that last fight is harsh. I’ve spent too long on it already. I’ll wait for the nerf. Not impressed.

DoctorDing.5890:

In a game were surviving depends mostly upon dodging, giving us a tiny room full of undodgeable AOE seems a bad design decision. And, when you’ve died a hundred times and have no armour left, making us play through the whole preamble stuff again just to get to that last fight is harsh. I’ve spent too long on it already. I’ll wait for the nerf. Not impressed.

It got nerfed last night

50-word summary:

Story is enjoyable – possibly one of the best done in LS3. Character interaction and dialogue was good, as are the various callbacks and references, while the new map feels like a believable war zone. Kasmeer’s absence, however, is growing increasingly noticeable – is she being left out because her lie detection would get in the way of intrigue?

Detailed explanation:

The opening instance made for an interesting sequence, establishing Jennah’s response to Caudecus’ threat and the remaining corruption within the Ministry. Much of the sequence had a certain predictability to it, but it was, IMO, a good kind of predictability: it makes sense that Jennah would suspend the Ministry under the circumstances, and it would make sense that the White Mantle would expect this and have their own plans in mind, and that Jennah would expect the WM to have their own plans and have her own contingencies ready.

Under the circumstances, Kasmeer’s absence is starting to feel especially jarring, as politics in Jennah’s court seemed like exactly the time she should reappear in S3. It’s starting to feel a bit like the writers feel that her ability to detect lies is too strong (it would almost certainly have unmasked Estelle, and possibly have served as a means of identifying corrupt Ministers as well) and have swept her under the carpet to avoid having to deal with it.

Apart from this, it flowed well. I did have an issue with one of the portaling mesmers running off into the background fighting, which I’m not sure is intentional or not: it certainly did make that side much harder to deal with than the other. The Estelle fight served as a good demonstration of just how strong Jennah is when her back is against the wall.

The Lake Doric instance made for a good representation of a war zone, with some good callbacks to GW1 and earlier parts of GW2, although it was a bit disappointing that turning it into a map seemed to require draining the lake: I think the map could have worked with the lake still full enough to serve as an effective moat, with various events demonstrating means by which the White Mantle seek to cross the moat. I note that I haven’t yet fully explored the zone, so I can’t go into exhaustive detail. I would agree, though, with the people saying that the ‘do events’ step felt like filler. It wasn’t too bad for me because I didn’t fill all the hearts during the tour phase (I was expecting to need to pass through more than once anyway…), so it didn’t feel like too much of an imposition to go back and finish them off – however, it would probably be reasonable for people who’ve completed a lot of hearts before they get to the progress bar stage to get some recognition for what they’ve already done.

It’s good to see the Watchknights back in action – I’d feared they were basically going to be something that had only ever existed so that Scarlet could corrupt them and would never appear again outside of Queen’s Pavilion events. It was a bit weird that they were basically only there as the odd champion fighting Jade champions, though. Seeing the charr show up was an interesting twist, although it was a bit curious that it was the Sentinels – isn’t their job primarily to defend the Dragonbrand? Regular Iron or Ash soldiers would probably have made more sense – could even have had some charr mortars or the like to shoot back at the White Mantle’s siege equipment.

Moving on: the instance to chase down Caudecus did feel like a triumphant finale to the sequence. The conflict with Demmi, Valette, and Anise made for interesting interactions (including the confirmation that Caudecus got Valette involved as revenge for the Wis “stealing” Demmi), and showcased Anise’s sociopathic nature. The various callbacks to the CM dungeon were quite well done, and makes me consider the possibility of a similar instance into the Catacombs sometime in the future, and the letters made for a good means of tying up loose ends and explaining some of the things that had been going on in the background, including making Caudecus’ role in the centaur invasion explicitly clear. Demmi’s death was unexpected but makes sense from a metastory perspective (her importance was always framed by her father’s), while Valette’s redemption could make for an interesting plot thread in the future.

The revelation that Lazarus is not all he appears is an interesting twist, which could go in an interesting direction in the future. This probably isn’t the place for speculation, though.

(I had extended criticism of the final fight, but since that’s been redone and I haven’t played it since, I’ll hold off there until I do. Increasing the window to use Counter Magic is definitely a good thing, though – otherwise I actually found the fight challenging but fair, but having the Counter Magic being on such a short window felt like it was just a test of reflexes and latency)

Pros:
-Zone closer to civilization than other LS3 maps in distance and theme, felt more connected to existing area/original story
-Zone allied npc’s that aren’t pushovers in combat
-Return of gliding skills from Bloodstone Fen
-Lore items (Caudecus letters, more dialogue available from side-npc’s)
-Intriguing story twist fake Lazarus

Cons:
-final boss fight in too small a room w/ low ceiling making camera difficult to control (but thanks for making adjustments, I’ll have to replay it after update)
-map completion tied to leather-farm/snipe area
-Oil doesn’t automatically combine with key for Noran’s safe room. did the puzzle but left when key didn’t open chest only to find out later that I had the right stuff in inventory, but wasn’t combined.

The events that have to fail to get other events to spawn is bad, bad, bad. Saidra’s Haven hidden event is impossible to do except on a nearly empty map. We just had the defend spawn and despite folk asking to let it fail so the Execute the Executioner event could pop some defended and basically said, “Hidden events are for nerds.” and proceeded the get the defend. It is a terrible conflict because folk are also there defending to get the heart open and get dailies so the achieve is nearly impossible unless you can get an empty map to do it in which I have yet to see.

Pyreo.8517:

• Demmi gets shot… with a gun. Literally a dramatic pistol fire. Like. Uh. In a fantasy game? A gun? I got shot maybe 50 million times in that instance. I have a skill that turns projectiles into healing, so couldn’t I.. ….A GUN Are you serious??

• A GUN?

• Seriously the WORST WAY to force a character to die in a cutscene! Something that everyone’s magic usually brushes off, but for no reason right now, is apparently lethal!

Alas, poor Aerith Beetlestone. If only the player had a Phoenix Orb with them, then perhaps they could have revived her. Oh well.
(In other words, I agree. That was… dumb. There needs to be a reason why that killed her when we so often survive such things.)

I would also like to amend my previous opinion to add in that there are events that need to fail in the new map. ANet, how have you not learned yet what a BAD IDEA that is? Stop it. Seriously.

I loved everything BUT the last fight, but enough people have commented on that.

there’s a BUG on the last fight though, I got killed (around th 20th time) and I couldn’t res anymore. the message would only say “you’er defeated” I waited aronud to see if I could res again, but my only choice was to relog, after which I not only lost all the boss progress but all the instance progress again. I had to start all over,.
I’ll sure as hell not try that again till the bug is fixed and the last fight is brought back to earth. it is supposed to be soloable by a regular player.

Good:

• I absolutely love the personal touches— special mentions of race and class with special abilities.
• Lore bits everywhere!
• Very event-driven map has plenty of things going on. I appreciate there are reasons for the use of the full map, too. (unlike Bitterfrost)
• I liked the fun new cats. (Other animals in future would be a nice change, though.)
• I liked the plot of the story…

Bad:

• I didn’t like how story made everyone fill hearts and an XP bar to progress the story. That was lazy.
• I didn’t like Demi’s death. C’mon, any player could’ve healed her. We had plenty of time. It felt really contrived and her death wasn’t necessary.
• Anytime an event needs to fail in order to accomplish something there are problems.
• The leather farm is a huge disappointment. The POIs (mostly) locked behind a zerg, the lack of enthusiasm for an unrewarding farm, the RNG nonsense killing reliability of sourcing mats.
• Spinning final room. Sure, the jade playing pinball with my corpse was not fun but I’m told that’s fixed now. And yes, having .2 seconds to react and hit the button under my waiting finger and still getting dead and tossed about wasn’t fun but again, I’m told that’s better now. Still, spinning the room makes me look away from the screen briefly and firmly tell myself that I’m not actually spinning. I didn’t want to ride the spinning ride, I know it makes me ill. I don’t want to play a game that makes me ill.

This is honest feedback from someone who has really enjoyed episodes 1-3 of this season.

So far, I don’t find the story and zone very interesting. I think episodes 1-3 were some of the best LW and I can appreciate that this episode might have been planned to reuse more material than usual due to the holiday season.

I do intend to finish it but I don’t really feel very compelled to do much with it now.

It feels like a lot of re-used foes and zone models. Again, given time of year, I can understand this one wasn’t planned as a heavy lift but I would have reused mobs or zones, not both.

That said, it isn’t terrible, just not as good as some of the recent ones that set a very high bar. Looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to more.

qbalrog.8017:

This is honest feedback from someone who has really enjoyed episodes 1-3 of this season.

So far, I don’t find the story and zone very interesting. I think episodes 1-3 were some of the best LW and I can appreciate that this episode might have been planned to reuse more material than usual due to the holiday season.

I do intend to finish it but I don’t really feel very compelled to do much with it now.

It feels like a lot of re-used foes and zone models. Again, given time of year, I can understand this one wasn’t planned as a heavy lift but I would have reused mobs or zones, not both.

That said, it isn’t terrible, just not as good as some of the recent ones that set a very high bar. Looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to more.

I logged into GW2 on thursday in anticipation of seeing the new zone and experiencing it. I quickly found myself asking what it was that was boring me. Was it my character, the zone, or just the game’s mechanics. It felt like I had already experienced all of it, and was merely replaying it, even though it was the first time in the new zone, and I hadn’t played GW2 in months.

Please disband Dragon’s Watch and never mention about it ever again .. even I as the pc and the player don’t want to be part of it lol. It’s so pathetic.

Copy-pastas from another thread

Story-wise I was…pleasantly surprised by this episode. Got to kill two treacherous scumbags (Minister Estelle and Confessor Caudecus) in one episode AND Logan comes back!? That made me happy. The lack of resolution of some of the characters from HoT has been bothering me.

Hopefully this is a telling trend that Anet is on the horse with regards to resolving the remainder of unresolved HoT issues in future episodes (Pale Tree’s condition, Nightmare Court’s state, and Zojja’s condition specifically).

I really miss Zojja and I’m worried about her (though I know the voice actor for her, Felicia Day, recently had a baby so maybe here’s hoping Zojja does show up again in Episode 5 or 6).

At the same time I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high. I did that and by the time Episode 3 came out I was so deeply disappointed with the story to the point where I moved onto other games and I just did log in rewards until recently.

From a game play perspective, Lake Doric isn’t Bitterfrost Frontier so that’s an improvement all on its own. :V However, the fight with Caudecus sucked. An AoE bonanza with little room to fight. Please don’t make another fight like this in the future.

50-word or less summary:

All in all, a definite improvement over Episode 3. Good job Anet. C: Hope to see more HoT-related character resolutions in the next and future episodes (especially Zojja, wink wink nudge nudge).

Kumion.7580:

• I didn’t like Demi’s death. C’mon, any player could’ve healed her. We had plenty of time. It felt really contrived and her death wasn’t necessary.

It’s fairly ambiguous just what can actually be healed or not. Our characters have plot armour that means they simply don’t take injuries that can’t be healed reasonably conveniently, but a bloodstone bullet to the gut might be beyond that.

The bigger issue is that… well, projectile hate exists. I’ve played through with a guardian and mesmer thus far (final fight is much more comfortable with the shorter action skill window, thanks! Probably could have stood still having the Jade, in fact) who had Wall of Reflection and Feedback loaded – by the time he picked the pistol up and fired, the bullet should have bounced back into his face.

What probably would have helped there is a demonstration that the bullet ignored such defenses. Have Vallette put a Feedback bubble over Demmi as Caudecus fires… and then we get a graphic that makes it clear that this bullet has punched right through – and that whatever projectile hate the PC might have been packing probably would have been punched through as well.

Probably worth keeping in mind in the future – if you want to kill someone off in a fashion as telegraphed as that, show other characters trying to stop it… and that effort failing.

Pretty nice LS episode so far. I haven’t explored all of the map, but the story, with a few exceptions, was pretty good. Especially after the disaster that episode 3 was.

The last battle is not so much a fight as it is a repair orb sink. It wasn’t fun.

Map looks great, but events are just OK. Biggest problem is AGAIN they have set achievements that need to fail events. Time and time again, this creates toxic players as 1 group wants to finish and another group will purposely sabotage the events to make them fail with nasty comments and threats. We have seen this simply does not work and causes issues, yet the devs continue to do this. Very disappointing.

The personal story is very well done to me, its almost a mini movie.

But there a problem to me(my main cha). Who is Tybalt?

Myself as player i of couse knew Tybalt, but my cha is a vigil and his mentor died was Warmaster Forgal… is Tybalt also died too? That makes me wonder…

I think she should seeing her dead mother make more sense especially she just knew her father is responsible for her mother’s death.

Now that I’ve completed the story and played a bit more on the new map:

• new map is actually quite nice (if you disregard the inventory pressure)
• good density of events
• I like the hidden corners and hidden details
• white mantle mesmers are annoying, especially the invis phase before their second health bar

• I really LOVE all the references to old content, especially to personal story and E
• background story via letters is good, I just wish those books weren’t taking inventory space (possible solution)
• I also liked going back to Caudecus Manor - and the reference to our previous visit (Demmi's dialog)
• same instance: the class limited interactions are a nice touch, though I couldn’t use any (“wrong” class)
• I also like the hidden details in the other instances. tip: try /threaten'ing the kid in the throne room

I wonder though, why Kasmeer wasn’t in the patch. We haven’t seen her for the whole season and from the topic/setting(Queen Jennah -> human nobility) announced in the trailer I would have expected to see this character.

I was also surprised to see who the end boss in this episode is. I wouldn’t have expected this character to be dealt with mid-season.

In the final instance I didn’t like

• Demmi's death… We've been through a lot worse beating just to get to Caudecus and yet she dies so easily on a single bullet. This seems unfitting, though is hard to present cinematic deaths in a world with such powerful healing magic
• Why the kitten is he even at this place!? Sure, it's his home. But isn't he supposed to be on the run?
• the original encounter design… encounters are much more fun if you can actually use a skill between CCs once in a while. Has already been hotfixed, I still wonder, though, how that version got through play tests and QA

About hidden achievements: it feels good to get an unexpected one, but their existance always leaves the doubt whether or not I have gotten them all…

“The events that have to fail to get other events to spawn is bad, bad, bad. Saidra’s Haven hidden event is impossible to do except on a nearly empty map. We just had the defend spawn and despite folk asking to let it fail so the Execute the Executioner event could pop some defended and basically said, “Hidden events are for nerds.” and proceeded the get the defend. It is a terrible conflict because folk are also there defending to get the heart open and get dailies so the achieve is nearly impossible unless you can get an empty map to do it in which I have yet to see.”

I was having a good time exploring the map, doing the hearts until apparently I accidentally stepped into someone’s “hidden event” party that I didn’t know anything about, got attacked by the ones they didn’t want anyone to kill so it will fail, even though they were killing me and I fought back, and was promptly called all kinds of names in caps about something I knew nothing about. Depending on events to fail for others to spawn didn’t work out well and still doesn’t in Orr so using the model again just is bad design. Needless to say, I just logged out and not going back again as who needs random name calling and caps, I might accidentally run into again that I don’t even know about just by doing what heart quest is there.

This may be my favorite Living World chapter yet. A bit of politics, seeing Divinity’s Reach come under attack, and having to fight back the White Mantle to start. Loved it. Then a new high-level Krytan map was revealed! I’ve wanted a high-level Krytan map for some time. Wonderful.

I enjoyed the manor fight…though it seemed a bit over-tuned on day 1.

In the instanced areas, I enjoyed the scavenger hunt aspects. In Lake Doric, I liked:
- Seeing more aspects of bloodstone corruption.
- Having new “fun” items like that endless miniature tonic.
- Having many different things to hunt down in the new zone. From the jade fragment currency to the Cin achievement parts and Letters to E to the mastery points and jumping puzzle. Exploration is one of my favorite parts of the game and this map in particular seemed to excel at that.
- The stealth-ish aspects of sneaking into the White Mantle controlled town for sabotage were excellent. I enjoyed that thoroughly.
- I liked the general tone of this map. There is a war going on, but it’s never overly grim. There are peaceful areas. There area places of beauty. Hope abounds in this war-torn place. It may not be the most realistic, but it’s what I want in this type of game.
- I always enjoy large open maps like this one.
- I’m glad to see the return of some of the glider skills – if only in limited circumstances.

Some things I haven’t cared for:
- The cannon and many other events are difficult to solo (without using a glider)…and yet so common that after a few days, people rarely bother doing them.
- I’m not a big fan of time-gated content. Waiting 20 minutes for an event because you need a piece of lumber for the Cin achievement doesn’t feel great. I do like the idea of day/night cycles and periodic events, but the effects of them haven’t been great. I’m not sure where the balance lies.
- Achievements that cannot be accomplished within a single day, given adequate time and drive. The latest of this type is Tree-Hugger Hugger.

This is my favorite Living world story and yes back to Kryta . I love the map and the events as it feels like back home.

Thanks Anet

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Map looks great, but events are just OK. Biggest problem is AGAIN they have set achievements that need to fail events. Time and time again, this creates toxic players as 1 group wants to finish and another group will purposely sabotage the events to make them fail with nasty comments and threats. We have seen this simply does not work and causes issues, yet the devs continue to do this. Very disappointing.

I think this is bringing out toxic players because of how the events are interconnected with some of the achievements and hearts.

Player A needs to fill his heart or get a daily done. Player B has the daily but would like to get an achievement or hidden achievement connected with the failure of the event in the area. A conflict is set up because of the different priorities which depend on an event failing or succeeding and what a particular player is trying to accomplish. It also leads to trolls taking advantage of that conflict especially if they know people are needing an event to fail so they can work on legitimate achieves. It gets more toxic as people get upset at the lack of cooperation to get these achieves.

I agree it is very frustrating. Last night I just left the map after it was obvious some were just not going to let anyone get the hidden achieve in Saidra’s Haven or let the skritt event spawn either.

Maybe the hidden event Execute the Executioner could be moved elsewhere and not dependent on the failure to defend the town. Possibly it could be tied to some of the small White Mantle camps in the area and move around among those either randomly or during a certain period at all of them to give players a chance at the achieve. There are plenty of NPCs roaming about that could be taken captive and need to be freed for that. That would leave only the Honorary Crew achieve tied to the failure to defend and that could be separated out from the defend fail/success as well by spawning either skritt or White Mantle randomly independent of whether the town is defended or not.

Basing the last battle on Death Spamming just gave me a headache… I’d figured out the gimmick to remove the break bar and got him down to 30% health when a Vet Jade shows up. Next time I died I bailed on it. Sheesh.

Anet, please be aware when it stops being fun… I stop doing it out of protest and tell the other players to do the same. End boss battles seem to have this problem most often.

How about some new guild missions? It’s really boring doing the exact same missions over and over and over and over….

MFoy.3284:

… End boss battles seem to have this problem most often.

That seems to be true in most of the LS chapters – the final boss is behind lengthy un-skippable RP, and seems to be designed specifically to drive $$$sales$$$ of revive orbs and repair canisters.

I love it when a story comes together!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPQlXNH36mI

10 years in the making! Great work Anet!

MFoy.3284:

Basing the last battle on Death Spamming just gave me a headache… I’d figured out the gimmick to remove the break bar and got him down to 30% health when a Vet Jade shows up. Next time I died I bailed on it. Sheesh.

Anet, please be aware when it stops being fun… I stop doing it out of protest and tell the other players to do the same. End boss battles seem to have this problem most often.

Just so you’re aware, they fixed some of the problems with the final boss encounter. You now have more time to dispel his attack, his knockbacks are less frequent, and the jade bow no longer spawns (been replaced with a carnival npc).

RoseofGilead.8907:

MFoy.3284:

Basing the last battle on Death Spamming just gave me a headache… I’d figured out the gimmick to remove the break bar and got him down to 30% health when a Vet Jade shows up. Next time I died I bailed on it. Sheesh.

Anet, please be aware when it stops being fun… I stop doing it out of protest and tell the other players to do the same. End boss battles seem to have this problem most often.

Just so you’re aware, they fixed some of the problems with the final boss encounter. You now have more time to dispel his attack, his knockbacks are less frequent, and the jade bow no longer spawns (been replaced with a carnival npc).

Yup, thank you Rose I knew they already had to “fix” this one and I played it after that. I was into it for about an hour, had used 3 or 4 repair kits, I got him down to 30% and a Vet. Jade Armor shows up. Within seconds of entering the room I immediately went into a downed state. Oddly, I didn’t see the fun in that after 4 or 5 tries.

MFoy.3284:

RoseofGilead.8907:

MFoy.3284:

Basing the last battle on Death Spamming just gave me a headache… I’d figured out the gimmick to remove the break bar and got him down to 30% health when a Vet Jade shows up. Next time I died I bailed on it. Sheesh.

Anet, please be aware when it stops being fun… I stop doing it out of protest and tell the other players to do the same. End boss battles seem to have this problem most often.

Just so you’re aware, they fixed some of the problems with the final boss encounter. You now have more time to dispel his attack, his knockbacks are less frequent, and the jade bow no longer spawns (been replaced with a carnival npc).

Yup, thank you Rose I knew they already had to “fix” this one and I played it after that. I was into it for about an hour, had used 3 or 4 repair kits, I got him down to 30% and a Vet. Jade Armor shows up. Within seconds of entering the room I immediately went into a downed state. Oddly, I didn’t see the fun in that after 4 or 5 tries.

Ah. You must be talking about the jade dude that shows up during the first fight (the one in the library). Yeah, they kept the jade bow for that part of it.

Great storytelling as always.

I had hoped to see Kasmeer earn her family’s pardon and regain her noble status in this battle.

Queen Jenna was awesome. would that real world leaders showed such integrity. It was interesting to see Logan realize she didn’t need his protection.

I went through the final battle , pre – nerf. That was unpleasant but then again I never expected it to be easy.

I’d call it a home run. The story continues to be the highlight of the game.

Well, the story was okay. A little short I feel but I was still happy to have new story. But that map is HORRID. I mean it would be fine if people in map chat were not all fighting each other about let this event fail or let this event succeed. People all upset when others don’t do it one way or the other. Or at least this was going on while I was out there and it was just awful. I don’t really understand why the jade fragments were disabled either. I mean yes they say there was a multimap exploit. Well, look at how long the AB MM was allowed to go. So okay, they are trying to stop that but I guess I don’t see what the harm is if people get extra jade fragments. Maybe I am missing something, won’t be a first. Honestly though with all the fighting going on in the new area I won’t go back in now that I have done the story as it is not fun at all for me. Still enjoy all the other maps and Ember Bay is my favorite. I hope Anet fixes this map and how the events really just are not working the way it is currently.

Redfeather.6401:

qbalrog.8017:

This is honest feedback from someone who has really enjoyed episodes 1-3 of this season.

So far, I don’t find the story and zone very interesting. I think episodes 1-3 were some of the best LW and I can appreciate that this episode might have been planned to reuse more material than usual due to the holiday season.

I do intend to finish it but I don’t really feel very compelled to do much with it now.

It feels like a lot of re-used foes and zone models. Again, given time of year, I can understand this one wasn’t planned as a heavy lift but I would have reused mobs or zones, not both.

That said, it isn’t terrible, just not as good as some of the recent ones that set a very high bar. Looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to more.

I logged into GW2 on thursday in anticipation of seeing the new zone and experiencing it. I quickly found myself asking what it was that was boring me. Was it my character, the zone, or just the game’s mechanics. It felt like I had already experienced all of it, and was merely replaying it, even though it was the first time in the new zone, and I hadn’t played GW2 in months.

I honestly am in the same boat. I really want to like the new map. It’s beautiful, and a smallish map so it should be easy to get around in, it’s got repeatable hearts and new stuff to collect and new achievements to hunt down.

But I’m bored, and I’m annoyed, and I really cannot pinpoint what it is that’s bothering me about this map. The longer I spend playing the map the less I want to play it. Last night I thought I was feeling this way because I’d had a sorta crappy day at work so I was in a rotten mood, but tonight I’m in a great mood and I just find myself not only uninterested, but disinterested.

I know that this is unhelpful. It helps to provide specific details as to what I think might be improved upon, and speaking in generalities like I am here isn’t very useful to the developers who worked so hard on this content. But there’s just something about this map that I find myself not enjoying. It’s turning me off to playing entirely and I’m frustrated in that I can’t explain why.

I’m sorry.

I like the new map, it’s big, green and inviting, with some puzzling places to get to.
I am not a story following player and usually do it once.
Also not a fan of the long fights with popping aoe blobs.
Like others said the final battle was a pingpong-revive-dmg-repeat battle.
All the time I just pressed 1 and hoped it would be over quick.
When finally over I ran around in the mansion gathering some letters.
But when I wanted to leave there was no exit, no exit button, nothing.
Boss dead, help npc standing idle.
Had to leave instance en all progress gone.
Don’t feel like replaying story.

But I completed map on 3 characters and counting :-)

drunkenpilot.9837:

Redfeather.6401:

qbalrog.8017:

This is honest feedback from someone who has really enjoyed episodes 1-3 of this season.

So far, I don’t find the story and zone very interesting. I think episodes 1-3 were some of the best LW and I can appreciate that this episode might have been planned to reuse more material than usual due to the holiday season.

I do intend to finish it but I don’t really feel very compelled to do much with it now.

It feels like a lot of re-used foes and zone models. Again, given time of year, I can understand this one wasn’t planned as a heavy lift but I would have reused mobs or zones, not both.

That said, it isn’t terrible, just not as good as some of the recent ones that set a very high bar. Looking forward to finishing it and looking forward to more.

I logged into GW2 on thursday in anticipation of seeing the new zone and experiencing it. I quickly found myself asking what it was that was boring me. Was it my character, the zone, or just the game’s mechanics. It felt like I had already experienced all of it, and was merely replaying it, even though it was the first time in the new zone, and I hadn’t played GW2 in months.

I honestly am in the same boat. I really want to like the new map. It’s beautiful, and a smallish map so it should be easy to get around in, it’s got repeatable hearts and new stuff to collect and new achievements to hunt down.

But I’m bored, and I’m annoyed, and I really cannot pinpoint what it is that’s bothering me about this map. The longer I spend playing the map the less I want to play it. Last night I thought I was feeling this way because I’d had a sorta crappy day at work so I was in a rotten mood, but tonight I’m in a great mood and I just find myself not only uninterested, but disinterested.

I know that this is unhelpful. It helps to provide specific details as to what I think might be improved upon, and speaking in generalities like I am here isn’t very useful to the developers who worked so hard on this content. But there’s just something about this map that I find myself not enjoying. It’s turning me off to playing entirely and I’m frustrated in that I can’t explain why.

I’m sorry.

That boat is getting crowded, I’m in it too.

A big part of it for me is how annoying many of the enemies are. Not hard, just annoying. The clerics with their time wasting block, the mesmers you need to kill twice, it takes all the joy out of combat for me.

I’ll take the HoT jungle maps over this one any day. Some of the critters there actually make a serious effort to kill you, and fighting them is fun. Many of the Lake Doric enemies are just speed bumps.

From this thread:

First things first: It’s a good thing, Events give Progression to the Heart tasks when completed. Doing Events is now even more rewarding, and I’m really happy with the possibilities to fill the Hearts But even so, the Heart tasks in Lake Doric are time-consuming as never before.

The white mantle is well organized and tough. Fighting the clerics or mesmers takes (comparatively) time, if you are solo, and it’s with no ordinary “trash mob” to compare. Killing these foes gives about 2 – 3 % heart progression (I dont know). Everything else seems completly the same. Extinguish fire, set traps, destroy traps, … It makes no noticeable different. Especially the Heart task at Saidra’s Haven is completly over the top. I collected 10 units of Seafood = makes about 15 % progression. Even with the 2 or 3 events around, completing this heart takes more than 15minutes, which is with no other heart in the game to compare. (I know, that I’m speaking of. 28 times of 100 % world completion.)

After 7 times of 100 % Lake Doric map completion, I’m feeling tired of doing Saidra’s Haven and the Harvest Cascades Hearts. The rest is … okay. Could be better, but okay.

I really like the new zone and the events feel engaging with lots of activity all over the map.

Really like the story until the last fight. I was away for work this week so only played through yesterday. I am susceptible to motion sickness and any inside/underground, windy type areas in any game affect me, but often can push through. However when the puzzle rooms started spinning I had to close my eyes and already felt bleh. Then to last fight. It was so awful. I had to leave my pc mid fight and was physically ill. I came back and managed to finish it. Had to lie down for at least an hour after just to recover from nauseas feeling and headache. I have never had that bad an experience in GW2 before.

Dreading trying it on my other character that I do all stories on too.

Story Instances
I very much enjoyed the story instances this time. Here are my highlights:

• Challenging fights for maxed-out characters. Loved the boss difficulty, compulsary encounters and optional encounters throughout Caudacus’s Manor. Interesting environment mechanics and bonus class mechanics during the fighting too.
• A ton of humour in the final mission – loved Canach and the Lord Faren illusion.
• Fun puzzles and riddles.
• 9/10 overall for me – much higher than normal, well done.

Lake Doric
The map looks fantastic, well done artists & designers.

• Overall most of this map came off very well with great encounters and a lot of fun mechanics all over the place.
• Most things work great. A few areas need a little more attention to wrap them up but overall I’ve been very impressed with this one.
• 9/10 again, higher than normal – seems like the practice on these LWS3 maps is paying off.

I loved the episode but i have 1 major point of feedback:
-Knockbacks =/= challenging.
Troughout this episode there is an big use of knockbacks, from the centaur leather farm to the fight with caudecus, to just in general with this entire episode in both living world and story.
I play as a valk shroud build for open world on my necro, and i hardly ever die from these mechanics, but they are really irritating. Don’t get me wrong, a good knockback can give challenge, look at the new raidwing that just came out, there the knockbacks are totally in place and bound to clear tells. But in the head of the snake episode, they were overused. Especially in the caudecus fight. The tells weren’t clear, as they were in the raid, the knockbacks were all over the place, often just bouncing you from 1 into the next into the next. Open world with the centaur camp it has it’s place, but the knockback doesn’t fit the centaur group completely, wich means a centaur can run past you, by quite a bit, and you still get knocked back. Overall, being bounced around all the time just isn’t fun, and it’s not challenging either, it feels like an attempt to build in challenge where there’s none, knockbacks are more irritating then any other thing because you loose controll of your character, i’d love there to be more creative ways to have challenge, like for example confusion, high condi stacks that require a condi clear, breakbars before a knockback… Also what i would say is, it’s not because things hurt less then in raids that it’s ok to clutter up the screen more in a living world episode then inside a raid. I honestly think the living world team could use some input from the raid team on how to create visualy clear yet decently challenging instances.

I really enjoyed the story overall. And the new map is beautiful in a battle ravaged way.
The story kept me interested and emotionally involved with the characters while the fights felt just hard enough to make me work at it while not feeling op.
Plus i really enjoyed exploring Caudacus’s manor and finding all the letters and the unusual sights behind some of the doors.

Hello,

I’m done with the story and most achievements, so I guess I can give my feedback on that release :

Story :

I really enjoyed the story for two reasons. The first one is it winks a lot to other parts of story (human personal story, order of whispers arc etc.). The second is it felt like things were evolving more than all of Braham’s drama.
Moreover, story opens on new questions, and we eventually get to guess who’s E.

Lake Doric :

The map is nice, and it’s a good thing we’re back to Kryta. It may have that “overcrowded” feeling as in Bitterfrost frontier, but it seems less annoying for some reason. Maybe because White Mantle don’t freeze.
The greatest drawback I can see is renown hearts take ages if you’re unlucky enough not to have events to help you do them. Besides, the need for some events to fail in order to get achievements is also a big flaw.

Miscelleanous :

• Seraph stats are interesting. I’m already thinking of ways to put them in use !
• New skins are nice.
• There’re far too many CC’s all around.
• The power creep needs to stop. Queen Jenah is more powerful than the commander of the Pact. Valette Wi is a more potent mesmer than the commander of the pact. Any White Mantle mesmer is more potent than the commander of the pact. Any White Mantle elementalist has more powerful spells than the commander of the pact’s. The commander of the pact is a below average character running suboptimal rusty skills. Only issue is : the commander of the pact is you.
• Some camera issues in cluttered areas, especially in the last instance : the camera moves to odd places, clips in walls, the fighting scene gets impossible to see, and it’s hard to aim AoE on the floor because they end up on the ceiling.

I liked everything except 2 things.

• I still want nodes across the world for cloth and leather. This ‘leather farm’ results in random leather. You can’t aim for specific types. Being able to find and gather nodes with a specific kind of leather would help with that.
• There’s toxicity because of some things requiring defense of Saidra’s Haven to fail. I really dislike anything that encourages failure. There’s still people harassing others to fail some events like the one with Warmaster Jofast in Cursed Shore, and the lest of that we have around the better. I think that should be changed. For example:
  • Making the skritt appear also when Saidra is not under White Mantle control.
  • Changing the Honorary Crew Member achievement to require either the skritt or white mantle events, not both.
  • Move the achievement Execute the Executioner to somewhere else that is controlled by White Mantle more often, like Fort Evennia.

New legendary weapon is lame, otherwise ok update.

Came back for the fresh part of story. Well… nothing has changed. My previous message was deleted (back then – half a year ago) – I understand it contained a piece of bitter truth with a little bit of my frustration on top. This time I will be more polite and constructive.

Fights – booooring, there are several types of enemies as always – one that can one shot you wihtout even a reason and another – huuuuge piles of minions with HP worth an elephant!

Story – lame as it should\could be. Knight + queen = ??? A daughter and father relationships – generations troubles. Ye good ol’ crap… Nothing new, engaging nor interesting.

Overall – deleted at day 4 after reinstalling (Somehow I get used to this – thx ANet – new level where you do not play smoke&mirrors anymore).

PS
GOOD side – ofc there should be one I suppose. You REALLY work hard on your shop guys! Perfectly done stuff! I even paid somehow for realm change (oh, well you know, just to repaint WvW stagnation – your trademark I suppose) but 4 days wasn’t enough for me to buy new sets of frilly clothes. ^^ Maybe next time. Anyway I have dropped 4 of your chapters, this would be 5th. I’ll be back for 6th! It’s my lucky number. From your dearest fan you ever had! Bye! XD

PPS
For mods – hey guys! I tried to be polite. You see. I learned my lesson! ^^ Chao!

PPPS
Change your writers – ye know, the ones who clicks those little letters on keyboards. Don’t look at me I already have several contracts and books to finish.

Having played this for a few days now, I’ll chip in with what I’ve experienced.

- Not done the story. And won’t. Reason? I’m very useless when it comes to gaming and the comments about the last fight have me running scared.

- Lake Doric. Love the map, love the PvE, love the fact that MP’s are attainable (with a little thought and practice), love the events that crop up. Hate the POI in the leather farm – but that’s entirely me being gaming-challenged

- Ooooh! A new druid staff! Oh yes, I want.

- Death to the White Mantle. I’m going to start a campaign of a global Tyrian cleansing of their sort, oh yes. kitten their AoE and heals. kitten their stealth. kitten their blocks.

- kitten I haven’t got any phat lewt yet.

- Could do with a new ranger pet to charm.

- Love the NPC’s taking initiative instead of just standing still watching an ally die in front of them.

- Lastly, this map made me feel I’ve really progressed my character and accomplished… stuff. Cheers for that.

Now, that POI…

So, characters:

Caudacus – once a smart villan that always had emergency exit turned out to be another generic stupid villan and here i thought that he somehow made a deal with centaurs (or fooled them into alliance) which will result in epic clash but nope, here we go with 60s Bond villan type with the exception of Bond being awesome.

Demmi (had to look up for her name) – i guess she will be like that Mirinda or whatever her name was – Jory sister that player’ve met once and she died… Yeah Demmi… and the way she died… from bubbleguts… A single bullet wound in a fantasy world where humanbeing can withstand several great hammer smashes into head…

At least we had my favorite kitten Canach is back – that’s always a huge plus and Jennah turned out to be a powerful character as it was speculated (seriously pointing a finger and making people dead – im impressed)

Story:

I’ve expected more from this episode and most of the time it felt boring – especially with “fill your map-bar to progress” part while in Lace Doric and wandering in the garden part and payoff to that was Bond level villan… Again coded the way so that it will be artificially stretched – 1h story filled with unskipable dialogs and other time fillers.

Logan as a Pact Marshall – guess i know who will steal players credits again and will have to die Like Romeo must die! (pun intended)

Fun parts from the story was infiltrating badies camp and in mr.C Manor a room where i’ve found enemy mesmer cheering for a projection of Faren in speedo – this made me laugh. I have to credit Anet for this one.

Map:

Even that requires you to fail to get somekind of achivement – did you not learned from previous mistakes ? It will create toxicity for sure.
Map currency will -again- stack up in inventory taking space.
And do we really need another source of bloodstone dust ?

Other then that it’s just an ordinary map.

Shortly:
Episode was average at best though boring as hell.
60s Bond level main villan.
Forgetable characters.

I give it 2 Jar Jar’s out of 5 Battlefield Earth Travolta’s preformance.

Oh and i’ve almost forgot!
Raid!

Same stuff as in the first one, with recycled bosses being sponges, recycled fighting mechanics and a timer again… I don’t even need to bother again.

Moving on…

I loved the final fight. It was one of the more enjoyable solo content there is in the game. If it is toned down, at least leave a challenge more on it with an achievement.

The flavor details really made this update for me. My PvE centric thoughts:

The story:
-The writing gets better w/ each update imo. This one was esp satisfying because it tied up several loose ends effectively. Keep that up, please.
-The extra dialogue for those who have done CM expl was a delight, as were the profession-specific moments (turrets, skeletons, hounds).

The new map:
-Love all the hidden achieves/locations/gw1 refs. Those little touches do a lot to breathe life into a map.
-The scavenger hunts for letters continues to be a great way to encourage exploration and fill in lore.
-Wish the heart vendors offered more items. I don’t feel motivated to replay the map as much as w/ Bitterfrost.
-Also wish the centaurs had a little more lore to tie them into the map. Their presence felt isolated and irrelevant.

Last boss fight is not fun. The room is too small. Spoke with a few guild mates and we all agree that is was doable with 5 to 10 deaths, but that it wasn’t fun.

Edited after more play time:
I still don’t really like trampling centaur and there are a lot of them in Watchtower Cliffs. But they fit the map. I like the map!

Friend of the Forest event is horrible. Competing in open world PVE against other players is why I don’t play other MMO’s. I want to play with others, not against others (in PVE). I don’t understand how this event made it into the patch. It doesn’t belong in GW 2.

I still think this could have been the best episode of S3 so far. But I don’t want to see an event like Friend of the Forest ever again in GW2. Because it made me almost quit the game. So the verdict is not positive

I’m watching the toxic build up in map chat because of the conflict between needing to fail and event and the folks who want to succeed at it. Why design this way?

15 charr fix forum bug