Guild Wars 2

Jokubas.4265:

Jennah and her secret police that suspend the rule of law at the drop of a hat need more than just Canach calling them out.

Yeah, storywise, the whole first instance was terrible. Starting with the leader tending the garden cliche, I was about to revolt on Queen Jennah after that. Didn’t we get enough weed metaphors with the Sylvari?

Then having the White mantle attack come immediately after the Queen initiates marshal law, just so her actions can go overlooked for the rest of the story. Convenient plots are never interesting.

Content was fine. Story…each episode seems to be getting worse.

Yay! Got the POI for map completion. Thank you to a fellow player “Namez”. Kudos to you. Died horribly (again) on the climb up – this needs fixing; solo-ing this is a suicide mission. Not to mention the tiny JP is well awkward.

So now, I’m after that druid staff. Bit annoying you have to repeat the heart to access the goods – having it available once a day without repeating would be better. Some hearts take way too long – which is fine the first time, but after that, life get’s tedious, dunnit?

I enjoyed the new episode and immediately got map completion and the mastery achievement. It was a bit short, but overlooking that, i only had one issue.
Why is the caudecus mask so much easier to get than the white mantle elite guard mask, when the caudecus mask is more detailed? It would make a lot more sense if these items were switched.

+i agree with a previous post: stop the powercreep. A white mantle lackey is a more potent mesmer than THE PACT COMMANDER can ever hope to be?

Lastly, why is saul d’allesio so tall? And sabetha?

Great storyline and good episode overall, until the final fight. I have never experienced a more tedious and frustrating fight in all of GW2. The final fight is a massive clusterkitten that just isn’t enjoyable in any way.

rapthorne.7345:

I have never experienced a more tedious and frustrating fight in all of GW2.

I don’t know. I’d take the Caudecus fight (even in its original form) over the Mind of Mordremoth fight any day.

I’m not sure I highlighted this in my initial post in this thread: In recent months I have been critical, even snarky about ANet’s storytelling. Mostly due to the feeling that the story details are all locked away in Seattle and we players get to see tiny plot points.

Not so this round! This is very nicely fleshed out, lots of corollary implications are dealt with, plenty of enriching detail can be found in dialogues, letters, and visuals. There’s a good mix of humor that I find genuinely funny without turning the story into something campy or sophomoric. The map feels like a place where people have lived a quiet life for a good while before the current disaster.

I did PM Bobby Stein with some questions about the current situation in Divinity’s Reach, seeing as how we don’t get to see as much there due to the main map of the city being frozen in 1325. No answer (yet?) but then it is a weekend and he’s a busy man, so I don’t really expect one. I may repost the questions in Lore, as they have a bearing on RP stories being written. (Key point: are there citizen riots fanned by the propaganda campaign we’ve seen?).

I enjoyed the story, especially Canach. I looked forward to every time he spoke just to hear his sense of humor. The Lake Doric map is a lot of fun. I like how there’s always something going on, and the on-screen notifications of which areas are under attack are helpful. Only small items I’d want to see changed are:
1. Hearts seem to fill too slowly
2. Would like to see thermal propulsion or alternate ways to traverse the map quickly

@Anet: So far, so good. The PvE game is in a good place right now. It feels like you guys are doing a really good job here. Also, thank you!

Zone too hard on squishy classes (ele in my case, my rev is fine), too few players (either by map limitation or interest level..not sure) for events…feels like no one is here.
Not impressive that the roll out has been so plagued with delays and disables.
Storyline excessively long/talky, please allow skipping of dialogue session (like with the Queen), especially if you do more than one character.

Randulf.7614:

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

That’s what the patch notes said but today I tried again and the Jade Armor is still in the last fight and the boss hits with the special attack without the tells showing and with only a fraction of a second to hit the ‘-’. key. It took me two hours, several repair canisters and about a million deaths to finally beat him. I spent 5 minutes just lying dead whilst the NPCs oh so S-L-O-W-L-Y killed the Jade. It’s a story instance for kitten’s sake.

DoctorDing.5890:

Randulf.7614:

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

That’s what the patch notes said but today I tried again and the Jade Armor is still in the last fight and the boss hits with the special attack without the tells showing and with only a fraction of a second to hit the ‘-’. key. It took me two hours, several repair canisters and about a million deaths to finally beat him. I spent 5 minutes just lying dead whilst the NPCs oh so S-L-O-W-L-Y killed the Jade. It’s a story instance for kitten’s sake.

Yeah im hearing mixed things about the nerf. I know some genuinely got through it, not easily, but without dying. And others are saying it barely feels different. Ill be back in game next week, ill see how an alt does if it is still the same by then.

Randulf.7614:

DoctorDing.5890:

Randulf.7614:

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

That’s what the patch notes said but today I tried again and the Jade Armor is still in the last fight and the boss hits with the special attack without the tells showing and with only a fraction of a second to hit the ‘-’. key. It took me two hours, several repair canisters and about a million deaths to finally beat him. I spent 5 minutes just lying dead whilst the NPCs oh so S-L-O-W-L-Y killed the Jade. It’s a story instance for kitten’s sake.

Yeah im hearing mixed things about the nerf. I know some genuinely got through it, not easily, but without dying. And others are saying it barely feels different. Ill be back in game next week, ill see how an alt does if it is still the same by then.

I ran it again yesterday afternoon on my Reaper, as the guest of a Ranger, though both of us were on the story step. We did get a Sharpshooter instead of a Jade, and we did one-shot it (though the Ranger was downed a lot).

I can’t say if it’s really easier or not, I’d have to take a second Daredevil through to compare and I only have the one.

From my experience, the final boss fight may have been reset to pre-nerf status. I just ran 3 well geared characters through this episode:

I ran one character on Sunday morning, no Jade aspect and good telegraphs from boss.
I ran another character Sunday afternoon, Jade aspect was back, didn’t notice the telegraphs from boss.
I ran another character Monday morning, Jade aspect was back, and essentially no telegraphs from boss on his big hit skill.

Without the Jade aspect and with good boss telegraphs, this is a fair fight. I actually kind of enjoyed it.
With the Jade aspect and no boss telegraphs, I can see where the complaints are coming from. It really becomes a tedious and frustrating event.

Is this a bug? Has anyone else noticed this? Can someone from Anet check on this please?

Manasa Devi.7958:

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.

Yea, the white mantle mobs are getting pretty annoying to fight. Double health bar mesmers is a very interesting mechanic, but its tedious to have to always kill them twice, especially with how many of the mobs in Lake Doric are mesmers. Maybe change it so that the actual mesmer spawns immediately when their clone is killed, which removes a good 2 seconds of waiting, and possibly give them a short stun as if a breakbar had been broken.

For the clerics, I would like to see the block reduced by 0.5 seconds and to have its cooldown increased. These guys are easy to kill, but if they pop a block you just have to wait forever in order to kill them.

I appreciate that these mobs have these mechanics, but at the same time they do make it tedious when they make up a substantial portion of the mobs on the map.

Feedback: waiting for literally hours for an event to spawn ( two day/night cycles) to get a drop for a collection is not fun. I don’t mind the wait if I can be off doing something, but the lumberyard event literally is up and down in a crazy short time frame…

Really loving the map. I describe it to new players as having a ‘’Queensdale with attitude’’ flavor; have now put my analyst on ‘’danger money’’ and have mastered it. Pity about the enemy being there in masse, I hate showing them my CHUNK but its that or suffer the indignities of a slow drawn-out death by ‘bouncing’ all over the map.

Another Disappointment Patch and no fun in the new map, Sorry but this needs more work

slamfunction.7462:

@Anet: So far, so good. The PvE game is in a good place right now. It feels like you guys are doing a really good job here. Also, thank you!

They made a dungeon? How can the PvE be in a good place without new dungeons?

All you do on these new maps is farm for skins. They saw that Silverwaste was popular and copied the formula over and over.

Xillllix.3485:

slamfunction.7462:

@Anet: So far, so good. The PvE game is in a good place right now. It feels like you guys are doing a really good job here. Also, thank you!

They made a dungeon? How can the PvE be in a good place without new dungeons?

All you do on these new maps is farm for skins.

Adding new dungeons wouldn’t do much. Players would grind out the currency daily to get the new skins, and likely achievements, before abandoning it. Fractals are what they’re focusing on as they’re pretty much no different than a dungeon path.

I’m loving the new story. I really am.

I just want to point out that the second Caudecus fight is complete and absolute garbage.

You can have either tight quarters OR aoe spam OR excessive add spawn. All three – especially with a teleport-happy boss that seems to instagib whether you use the counter or not (which? makes? no? sense???) – turns into a long, drawn out miserable experience that I’m still actually trying to finish as I type this. At this point, I’m just slogging through it because I’ll be kitten ed before I have to trudge through this no-checkpoint story instance again.

It plays like garbage. I can’t run around to avoid anything because the entire floor is orange. I can’t get a bead on the boss to do anything meaningful because the adds are always in the way. I can’t kill the boss because my armor is damaged from getting instagibbed, tanged, or knocked into something that kills me by the Jade Armor (also a terrible idea, having to dodge that thing’s knockback and freeze on top of everything else). There is no feeling of ‘yeah, I got this’, just a feeling of ‘I don’t want to stop because then I have to start all over again.’

My suggestion? Stop having the AOE spam when he’s dazed from the breakbar. Give me slightly more room to navigate, because at this point, I’m just doing 1% of damage every time I get his breakbar down, so that’s cool. And do something about the spinning room because, uh… you actually gave a friend of mine a seizure with that. That’s neat.

Sarika.3756:

Feedback: waiting for literally hours for an event to spawn ( two day/night cycles) to get a drop for a collection is not fun. I don’t mind the wait if I can be off doing something, but the lumberyard event literally is up and down in a crazy short time frame…

Lumberyard is also bugged. I made a post about this but if you aren’t seeing it come up on a map, it won’t come up. period. Hop map to map and keep asking in chat if people saw the event up. If you just missed it, it will come up again in about 20 minutes as long as it’s night time. Also comes up about 5 minutes after reset.

CC fest ! Boring and annoying ! Did once and probably never again !

I liked the chapter pretty kitten much. Particularly the little thingies like class-specific options (I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair after succesfully using the ranger one), return of at least a few dialog choices and that one Taimi’s line taking in consideration my PC’s race for a change.
The only thing I found really annoying was having to do map completion tasks to progress in the story (right after doing it out of curiosity).

I had high hopes for this season with episode one. But to me the storytelling has taken a severe drop as the season goes on. This would’ve made a solid episode 2 but the writing team is obsessed with scattershot storylines instead of picking one and sticking with it. It also reminds me of season one where npcs are doing everything and the player is just a bystander. It’s also sad that raids are getting a far better story experience while these episodes are falling flat. As it stands, the only reason I’m logging in to get them is for access to new maps and more mastery points. It sure as hell isnt for the story.

This episode is one of my favourite and most hated LS episode so far.

First of all, the babbling and the complaining: the open world stuff in Lake Doric, where I need to run arround for Logan like an errand boy, was hideously boring, it was the worst open world story stuff in season so far. And it got especially annoying, when I needed to do the same thing twice at the Mantle Fortress – I did the heart quest first, then Logan sent me 20 minutes later to do the same kitten. It was even buggy, because the task didn’t show up in my journal, just the green star and a 0/5 next to it, without any information what should I do.
Lake Doric itself isn’t a too interesting zone, it’s like a Kessex Hills 2, just with more rain and the whole map is kittened up, not just around a lake.

Compared to that, the two story instances at the start and the end were the best things I’ve experienced so far in the LS S3. The voice acting was really good, for some reason, I especially liked Valette’s voice, it really sold me the last instance. Canach was cool, easily one of my favourite character, Aniese was a kitten, but she was always like this so it totally her character. I also adored the idea of infiltrating CM from backwards. For me. it totally managed to sell the idea that Tyria is one big world and not open world + dungeons separated. I also didn’t manage to play when the original Caeducus boss fight was in the game, so what I saw yesterday night was the last bossfight was really cool and fun.

Overall, the last story instance totally saved up everything the Lake Doric did wrong, so I’m looking forward to the next episode. Thank you for your work, Anet.

I am most greatful with this episode. The map is by far the best of the entire Living Story 3. All maps share a huge attention to detail, lots of work and love. They can and do compare the the original maps, although they use new mechanics. It looks and most importantly feels like a real warzone. The timed events, the buildings and npcs create a magnificent atmosphere. Whenever I have time, I pay the map a visit and I always find something new. The minidungeon is awesome and the hidden source is my new place for relaxing. Excellent job!

The story also creates an astonishing immersion within the first minute and keeps the player bound and attracted. For old explorers the final chapter was a real giggle, especially when the rotation started. That proves me, that you have been far ahead in the future, the entire time. The letters are a nice gift for lore connection, big thank you for that. And also a very big THANKS for granting my wish ^^. I cannot beleive you actually did it. Really enjoyed it. I hope others do/did as well.

I am looking forward to the next episode, but please do not hurry. I still feel that I have not even discovered half. ^^

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it in the thread yet but the leather farm is a failure

Centaur Camp too restrictive to world exploration. Right now there is usually within a couple hours a group that can either get into the upper chamber, whether by way around cliffs or couple times a day a complete run through the camp more times on the weekend.

The elite sharpshooters can down a player in two to three shots and have far too much health to kill solo. Add to that their range and they kill practically anything even before you get within 1200 yards away. If you can reflect their attacks they kill themselves in short work. Maybe one of these would be workable for some classes, my ranger can handle one. It has more to do with they are surrounded by champions, veterans, and more elites. Even around the cliffs. Add to that the respawn rate, it will take large amounts of time to move even a few yards. I liked Bitterfrost’s solution with the gear to avoid grinding the entire Svanir area. And the vents allow access to the last point of interest in frozen heart without the slog through the difficult mobs.

Second complaint the knockdown/knockback from White Mantle Knights hits multiple times, making most mitigation ineffective. Besides my Warrior or engineer I find myself loosing large chunks of life cause I can’t prevent the attack with aegis, or other one time attack mitigation. This makes the mobs extremely frustrating for squishy classes or builds. The cleric is blocking and reflecting attacks for large chunks of the time and runs away with heavy armor at full speed allowing them to avoid damage longer from close combat classes. Mesmers have to be killed twice and seem to have more health in either of both forms than knights or clerics, there is no way to avoid this mechanic. Elementalists seem to have huge life pools about the same or a little more than the mesmers two forms.

I don’t mind challenging mobs, but one shot wonders that take advantage of game mechanics aren’t challenging they’re just annoying. I can kill them with my ele, it’s more that fact that every fight takes large chunks of time that I find it restrictive to world exploration.

The biggest reason I find the map unappealing, is the drop rate of shards. This is the one mechanic Bitterfrost got right out of the new maps. Each node not only giving a guaranteed berry, but in addition to that even with the elevated cost it’s worth grinding mobs for the berries to get the ascended gear and unbound magic. I wouldn’t care if the cost was doubled, it’s still both more efficient and rewarding grinding through mobs to get the map currency. Also the special bag from mastery doesn’t work for these currencies in any of the new maps, why?

This map may very well go the way of Bloodstone Fen. Seldom played where events are failed more than succeeded for players that don’t play during peak hours.

The positives. Yes I like certain aspecs of the map.

It’s good to see a map that is more natural and not soo much set for one way play. I loved Bitterfrost for it’s winter look, just didn’t care for the restrictive layout. Luckily I got the binoculars and so the entire map was open from an elevated position. It’s the same reason I like Verdant Brink, the lounge gives you just enough open access to open the map up without slogging through mobs.

I don’t mind the jumping puzzle with the key it’s fun and not too complicated, probably would have recommended it for the daily instead of the peach. One it requires a little work to get the key and then it’s a matter of navigating a tunnel to get to the bottom. The peach doesn’t feel very satisfying doing daily. (I know the easy path due to a previous thread, it just doesn’t feel like daily material.)

I’ll will still spend more time and effort in Bitterfrost because it’s rewarding. I like when the game doesn’t take vast amounts of time to accomplish something, for a busy lifestyle it allots more time to hop on and play.

…followup- not finding the episode worth pursing, to be honest. And judging from the fairly lackluster followup on this thread, probably have a fair amount of company.

Leaves me wondering about gw2- is this just a momentary glitch, a little hiccup over the holidays? Or is the game in a downward spiral. Will check back in a few months for an anwers…

Bazs.1470:

Lake Doric itself isn’t a too interesting zone, it’s like a Kessex Hills 2, just with more rain and the whole map is kittened up, not just around a lake.

I have to disagree with you on this point. Lake Doric is an incredibly interesting map to me. It has a wide range of landscapes blended perfectly into a small-medium sized map. It not only has these different zones, but they all feel truly different, and yet the transitions between them are nearly seamless.

It also feels like a warzone. Bands of WM mobs all around the map, siege weapons, massive WM attacks on the towns in the map, field tents, Seraph forces in disarray and just trying to survive.

But on top of that its not overly simplistic. I love how you can’t just walk straight everywhere, but have to find ways through the cliffs to get to some parts of the map. I loved the JP they put in the map (even though I did get lost trying to go through it the first time). I like the hidden areas, like with the peach daily. Its so tranquil, you would never expect that the zone housing that area was in the middle of a war if that was the first part of LD you ever saw.

Its possibly the best map that ANet has released into the game. Only maps that compete with it are VB for the verticality (even with BF I don’t feel any other map compares to VB in that regard) and the Orr maps because of their absolutely unique design and event structure

personally I didn’t find the map at all interesting. the white mantle mobs everywhere are as boring as constantly fighting centaurs in Harathi (which is another map I don’t go in). the hearts were largely uninteresting, with one being a copy/paste job from queensdale (along with the buggy blocking seraph). the exception to this was the stealth heart (at the Mantle Fortress), which I found amazingly fun. and special mention to the guy in the well.

the map aside (and the go explore the map and do stuff part of story), the story instances were great. even though parts of it (Taimi) were hugely predictable and the re-inserting of a character I didn’t care about (Demmi), I enjoyed it. I really liked how much Logan has grown as a character, and liked Canach and his sarcasm (as always).

the lead up to the boss fight was good, especially the riddle rooms, and the letters everywhere. the boss fight itself was engaging and fun. I like things that make you pause for a moment and think, and this was it. absolutely perfect boss battle if you ask me.

honestly can’t wait to see what happens next!

With this LW episode, Guild Wars 2 made (again) farming activity become funny and entertaining, which is a rare pearl among Games. I like messing around Lake Doric joining events, even a simple Jade Construct kill, with people; i loved playing the episode : great characters, a great return and a great Queen Jennah showing her tough side XD
ABSOLUTELY PERFECT Final Boss fight . You made me hate the White Mantle back on Guild Wars 1 (because you always make great stories and great character) , now i had such a pleasure on kickin’ that white…….neck ^^

Great work guys!
Cannot wait to see what’s next!

Ayrilana.1396:

Xillllix.3485:

slamfunction.7462:

@Anet: So far, so good. The PvE game is in a good place right now. It feels like you guys are doing a really good job here. Also, thank you!

They made a dungeon? How can the PvE be in a good place without new dungeons?

All you do on these new maps is farm for skins.

Adding new dungeons wouldn’t do much. Players would grind out the currency daily to get the new skins, and likely achievements, before abandoning it. Fractals are what they’re focusing on as they’re pretty much no different than a dungeon path.

There was an active dungeon running community before HoT came out. Many of the dungeon running guilds disbanded and players quit playing when there were no new dungeons in the expansion. GW2 pretty much lost a whole part of its community when they were ignored for the $50-100 expansion at release. Fractals are what they are focusing on, but the mechanics in them are a bit different with the instabilities and style. A lot of the dungeon speed running skills are gone except for the few players who are still around and teach the tactics. Fractals and dungeons have some similarities, but they aren’t the same.

Just a reminder, as it has been since the HoT cutscenes. Again the Sound effects volume in the cutscenes are so low compared to other sounds like music, dialogue etc. It has bothered me ever since. Can you have a look at this. Since it really ruins the cutscenes.
Fyi. I have tried everyting in my power to “fix” it. but nothing has worked yet. I also know of many other who has the exact same problem.

Personally I think that each living world episode was better than the one previous to it, this patch especially trumped A Crack In The Ice by far, I like how the patches have alot of small detail, and in this patch, especially, I really appreciate all the nods to things the community have been speculating about; tying up the early Human personal story to the white mantle, adding a map we knew was in the game files for a long time (even though its not the same), the hidden room in Caudecus’s Manor.

The new zone is intricate in detail and again a piece of art, the events are fun and it feels like what you’re tried to achieve: a warzone. The buff in the new map is a nice nod to GW1 Ebon Vanguard Assassin skill.

The only gripe I have, as a player who has sunk many many hours in this game, is that there is no collection achievement or any sort of “zone mastery” achievement. I would really like to see collections come in to the new zones, that reward a title or an aura, so that players can recognize that you’ve truely mastered and played the zone and should possibly know all about it. (This could include certain achievements, and locking all the different karma vendor items) I think this would also tie alot of people over untill the next patch release.

Overall, this was my favorite patch in the full 4+ years that i’ve been playing the game, keep up the good stuff!

I don’t have many thoughts on the story instances except: most of the dialogue was engaging and even made me laugh. You made my asura soft spoken but snarky and Canach is a jerk and it’s hilarious – I love him so much.

All of my praise and love go to the new map however. The rewards and challenge are great but it also has beautiful places to rest and not get attacked. I have taken a lot of screenshots there already and keep going back. You also have a vendor there. I just love it.

Thank you so much!

Braham should of been the one who died.

I’ve played it through with a warrior and an ele so far.
Some of my personal 2 cents.
Likes.
- I did like having weapon skins available for shards. More of that would be nice.
- Story, I do like lore. The letters referencing things to the past and to previous stories was fun. Fairly conclusive not sure that’s good or bad.
- Map is not complicated to navigate, much better spacing of baddies.
- Event ‘heads ups’ were nice.
- Map bosses are decent. Not OP but require awareness from most.
- Final Boss was ok, thank god his life doesn’t reset. Hope to see a continuation of not road blocking us. Challenge motes are a great thing for those who want challenges for story modes.
- Map meta achieve was very doable. Some effort but no real barriers to complete it, pleasant balance.

Dislikes
- Still quite group oriented. Cannons dailies are just tedious to solo.
- Melee seems at a disadvantage. My ele was a cake walk, my warrior seemed to get shafted especially when ‘trying’ to do break bar.
- Enemy Mesmers; killing them x2. I just ignore them now.
- Not too much incentive to come back after doing achieves. ( The legendarys should have a rare drop skin of some sort to encourage participation)
- Time limit on quaggen escort considering the enemy spawn rates. No one does them anymore.
- Maybe just bad timing on my part but I found I needed to a lot of non combat activities to finish hearts that left a feeling of no reward and waste of time. Bringing food was a good option, but I found unlocking via combat when there wasn’t evasion difficult.

I… found this to be pretty boring, actually. First off – White Mantle Mesmers and Clerics aren’t hard to fight, just tedious. Killing the first twice, and latter having eternal block is obnoxious. Not even slotting the Signet of Might made them die fast enough.

The big problem with all the latest maps, though, is the lack of waypoints. Having to start adventuring at either the gate, Northermost corner, or the one little town on the eastern side of the map makes exploration and travel tedious.

Randulf.7614:

It was an episode which occasionally felt very plodding and the story step where you just fill a bar by doing map stuff felt lazy.

Then I played the final instance and it blew me away. The final fight felt way too chaotic and tuned for more than 1 person, but in essence it was a decent mechanic in a brilliant room and finished off after with a very intriguing twist. The dialogue from the start of the final instance was excellent – from the dungeon joke, to Canach, really enjoyed it all.

Closure of a an arc felt premature, especially as it didn’t really make any sense to close it off this early, but at least a loose end is tied off for a change. Map was formulaic, but good fun. Not sure i;d repeat play it often mind you.

Leather farming area was a bad idea. It felt like we;ve gone back to the old MMO days a bit and locking a poi in a group area will prove unfair to many. Simpler would be to improve drop and salvage rates all round.

Na leather farming is good issue is that those enemy are hard to kill when solo. the poi I have access on all 9 class so no issue there. to farm leather get a couple of people to help you out.

Thoroughly enjoyed the episode as it grew to an excellent ending, I’d feedback that solo bits need tuning to solo players better and curency needs to be in the wallet without a single exception. We’ve fed this back enough now for this not to be still cropping up. Also, please stop with the 1 point per achievement. Can we get back to 5 again so we feel rewarded?

I have solo the final part on all 9 class some class are harder then other with the jade construct fight. it is possible to do it on all 9 class some class require more time to achive.

I liked everything except the achievement with the boat that seams to be to up scaled to achieve. to many foe that attack the boat and their bar seams to require a lot more cc then usual.

also moving north to south or south to north seams a bit long maybe a ley line could have help to move a little faster.

I have encounter one bug in the minister room if you go get the cat shadow to early when you come back to the minister room and kill the foe one is missing block progress. also the golem repair sometime need to be done twice probably a bug there also.

the achievement with item to many item that fill inventory space not enuff info if you need to keep or delete putting trophy on it with a price to sell as junk to merchant would have solve that issue.

the Cauducus book say not completed when it is completed another thing to look at.

some node sometime do not give shard not sure what the issue is with nodes.

the story was great, the map was great.

I loved Queen Jennah and if it wasn’t for Canach I would never have considered playing through this LS again with another toon given the horrible fight at the end but the story was pretty good and it’s nice to have a new zone to explore and do events in now.

Overall, I really loved Episode 4! It was in fact so amazing that I got around 5 Million XP on that map alone (yep, maxed my gliding there). I loved everything. The White Mantle really made you pick your battles as they were not OP, but certainly more demanding than other trashmobs, especially in groups. Really hated those clerics and mesmers.

But, no light without shadow. What were you thinking when designing the last mission?!? Despite doing quite well in all of HoT, I died on nearly every occasion or at least got downed. See that dude with the huge dog? Him, the dog and the archer guy can eat seemingly insane amounts of damage each while wrecking you with every normal AA attack. Open the door to the manor? Get rushed by 10 WM, all puking their AoEs on you with no other way than retreat. From challenging to frustrating in mere seconds.

For the final fight, I am at a loss of words. As much as I liked the whole chapter, I hated every second of that fight. Died 2 times, but all was good, killed the bad guy. But then, phase 2 happened… “What do you mean, that wasn’kitten WTH, you want me to fight THAT???” It suffices to say that I left his mansion naked save for my helmet.

TL;DR: I loved the whole chapter, except for the boss fight which I will never. Do. Again. Not for the love of all six!

I just have to say, I loved lake doric. Even better than all other LS3-Maps, lake doric managed to get me sucked into the world. Beautiful landscapes, lots of different fights and events and a manageable size, without too much waypoints.

Even the achievements were great, so this is my second ever LS-Episode, in which I managed to get the meta achievement.

After the map, I went back into the heart of maguuma to collect the caladbolg-shards and, man, I will never go back there! The maps are still hellish for people, who are on their own. And the maps (tangled depths especially) are still hell of confusing.

So, please, for the next expansion, aim more for maps like lake doric and I’m with you.

Faith restored.

Anet, you guys are breaking my heart. This is my official feedback. The number of references to fishing in the game keeps growing, and Lake Doric was just the deepest stab of them all. The cages! The fishers! The items. Cries long and hard
And that fisher in Queensdale that does the unsheathe animation with a fishing rod. Give me that fishing rod!

PS: I’m gonna edit this to add that yes, I want that chill activity in the game to take a break from all the fighting. I found myself just going round lake Doric yesterday rummaging in fishing cages as the best fishing substitute to date. Pretty exciting! What am I going to get this time? Ooo a dirty rag, niice.

I still kinda wish mesmer enemies behave more like actual mesmers rather than just “heheh one more life” thing they’re going for. It’s the only White Mantle enemy I haven’t made peace with primarily because how they break the flow of the fight.

I like the map and the activities but designing parts of a personal story to have one purpose only, which is a revival orb sink, is absolute failure.
If you can’t design personal story content that has the same approximate difficulty level across all character types, then make the rewards for the more challenging stuff greater, and leave the story completion and meta events more easy to complete and have them lead up to that final challenge.
As it is now, if a player gets stopped part way through, the entire rest of the story is wasted. Keep players in the story but add your economy sinks at the end.