Guild Wars 2

The feedback thread is more than 3 days old but feel free to merge it if it should go there instead.

Please do not make us go through story steps to get into a new zone. I like freeform exploring then doing the story whenever. Plus it makes the zone feel like it is not part of tyria if I can not just get there from a neighboring zone without waypointing. Narration would be one level of ugh but both chapters have had something challenging to even get there.

Am I the only one that has that reaction? The fact that each zone had a zone-specific mastery was also not a plus for me but hopefully their masteries will be used elsewhere.

I don’t see any problem if future maps were made so that access wasn’t determined by the initial progress in the living story and could be accessed immediately.

EDIT: Removed several posts as arguing over it was pointless.

Ayrilana.1396:

The story explains how the character arrived to that map. It wouldn’t make much sense for the zone portal to just magically appear.

Sort of like how drytop and the silverwastes did not make sense unless you had done the chapters in season 2 that introduced them? Oh, my bad, you were not forced to do the story for them.

Another thought: we have two starts to maps now. Why not build more to, say, the fire islands?

Actually, I went to those zones before buying the chapters and had no ouble at all with them. You could always do narration the first time if you really needed it (optional or not). My concern is with there being a bar that says you HAVE to do something to get in.

Say you chose a norn, did you really need an explanation the first time you walked into, oh, ascalon?

Menadena.7482:

Actually, I went to those zones before buying the chapters and had no ouble at all with them. You could always do narration the first time if you really needed it (optional or not). My concern is with there being a bar that says you HAVE to do something to get in.

Say you chose a norn, did you really need an explanation the first time you walked into, oh, ascalon?

Ascalon is not a previously undiscovered area, unknown to the world at large, needing to be, conceptually, discovered, before entering.

You don’t have to do anything. You can use ‘Teleport to a Friend’, and once there, buy a Portal Scroll.

Perhaps, this is a lore-related way to bar maps from non-expansion players. I don’t know.

A simple solution: Use Asura gates like the Southsun Cove gate. That keeps people from just wandering into the area, but ensures they can still get there if they want.

Also give us a permanent gate to Rata Novus from Rata Sum. c:

I find it quite immersion breaking that Tyria has huge swathes of land that we can’t get into at all, by any means. The suddenly open areas of Dry Top and Silverwastes are nothing more than the world becoming less ridiculous. More of that please.

I’m going to add my plea to this one as well.

I love just wandering around and exploring, the story is fine, but its something i want to do in my own time. I hate that zones are gated behind the story.

I can understand what people are saying about areas being unknown and there should be a story to finding them, but once areas are found and opened up, everyone should be able to get there. Columbus spent a lot of time and effort in organising and funding the exploratory voyage to get to America (not what he was looking for but it was what he found), but once he found it it was open to all, every other explorer knew it was there and could get there, they didn’t have to do the same sailing off into the unknown that Columbus did, so why should every player HAVE to do it at least once to get to a new zone.

With such a wide player base I know ANet can’t please all the people all the time, but please stop narrowing the options and let us chose what we want to do, being railroaded along quests and stories is what has turned me away from other games.

the zones are behind a prequel. you dont have to do the entire thing to access t hem. you have to basically do 1 minute of dialogue and then poof youre there. why is this even a topic?

Ayrilana.1396:

Manasa Devi.7958:

I find it quite immersion breaking that Tyria has huge swathes of land that we can’t get into at all, by any means. The suddenly open areas of Dry Top and Silverwastes are nothing more than the world becoming less ridiculous. More of that please.

It was never stated in GW2 dialogue that other methods could not work. These are areas where no other methods currently reach and we use a method as shown in the story. Could there be an Asura portal? Sure. Was it established in the story or map events? No.

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “where no other methods currently reach”?

If you want to go somewhere, you walk in its direction until you arrive there. If you run into an obstacle, acquire a conveyance that can overcome or circumvent it. It’s patently ridiculous that an advanced setting that has every method of transport up to and including airships has these arbitrary lines that you cannot cross without something unusual (a story!) happening first.

When you have these inaccessible parts of the world that are like that without rhyme or reason, no method of granting access to them can be immersion breaking, because there never was any immersion to begin with. It’s a stupid constraint of the game that can never make sense at all from an in-universe point of view.

I can freely step into a great many instances that are in fixed time. Why bother making a fuss about it here? Also, the entirety of that justification goes out the window the moment someone uses a portal scroll without doing the appropriate story instance first on that character. I actually have a character that completed the Ember Bay map without first doing the story. And the next day I did do the story. None of it made sense, and I didn’t care.

It would be nice if say once the next chapter is released, that the map used for the previous chapter be opened up even if you’ve not done the story, especially if a new map is put into the game. This allows for the map to have higher participation for longer as more players move onto the next map.

Would that be a decent compromise between having it make sense why you’re in the map zone wise and wanting to do map exploration before the story?

I don’t like gating of any sort — once one of my toons has access to a new zone, I prefer that all of them do. That said, access to BF and EB is relatively painless compared to the gating in GW1 Factions & Nightfall (and, to a lesser extent, in Prophecies).

Ayrilana.1396:

The access itself to the zones are fixed in time. Currently the only way to Bloodstone Fen is via the airship that you took while doing the story. Currently the only way to access Ember Bay is by taking the portal from Taimi in the Rata Novus lab within the story instance since the open world instance is still pre-LS. Deja vu? I thought I’ve stated this all before.

You did, and I replied.

“I can freely step into a great many instances that are in fixed time. Why bother making a fuss about it here?”

Design choices should be uniform. If entering “fixed time” areas only ever took a standard zoning portal before, making a fuss about these 2 new areas now makes zero sense. It’s a design choice that implies to me they don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

What difference does it make whether a map is an LS map or non-LS map?

I don’t understand where you’re leading with that question, actually. Can we just pretend I gave the answer you’re fishing for and skip to the part where it all starts making sense?

Ayrilana.1396:

Access to both LS2 maps occurred in the open world and outside the LS . None of the events within LS2 created access to the two maps.

Actually, Ft. Vandal was abandoned as a result of the events of LS2.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You don’t have to do anything. You can use ‘Teleport to a Friend’, and once there, buy a Portal Scroll.

Perhaps, this is a lore-related way to bar maps from non-expansion players. I don’t know.

Maybe you are swimming in teleport to friends ….

Felahr.9830:

the zones are behind a prequel. you dont have to do the entire thing to access t hem. you have to basically do 1 minute of dialogue and then poof youre there. why is this even a topic?

One minute of dialogue? Seriously?

The first chapter involved two ‘sub-chapters’. Each involved much dialogue and player interaction. The second part involved 2 battles.

The second chapter did not involve as much dialogue but it involved a much more intensive battle.

I am sure I was not the only one that wanted to get to the new zones the first day. This meant one of the few times I have gotten to all of my armor broken because nobody else had play-tested it before me (I did not realize you could turn off/down the flame circles).

For BF, they could have blown open access from VB. For EB, they could allow you to use the console in TD to access the gate. Alternatively, they could also do something like the original ship to Southsun by having an airship master in LA that will travel to all these places. As for the story, it’s considered to play out live regardless of if you participate.

Exactly. There is even a path in VB and a path in BF that look like they were intended to connect. Multiple possible ways to get to EB (LOL, almost typed EF because I call it Ember Farm) without story gating as well.

Having things in disjointed time frames is not a problem. Otherwise we would have seen a massive reconstruction of Orr.

TBH, I disagree with all this. Its part of the game. You can’t just skip parts of the game. Its a story. When you re-watch a star wars movie, do you complain to the producers there’s a 5 minute dialogue scroll at the start of the movie?
no, of course you don’t.
And why would you, because you can skip it! right! just like you can fast forward a movie’s intro, you can fast forward the intro of the chapters. The reason they added the map travel token to a merchant in the map is so that the player has to experience the event AT LEAST once before they can fast forward it.

The closest analogs are Drytop and the Silverwastes. I am sure I was not the only person that played them before owning the episodes. Guess what? I was not completely confused. Imagine that!

Yes, you can skip it. The problem is at least one of your characters needs to do the story (which is unlike DT/SW) unless you feel like using up a teleport to friend. I would rather skip it on ALL my characters and do the story if and when I feel like it.

Menadena.7482:

The closest analogs are Drytop and the Silverwastes. I am sure I was not the only person that played them before owning the episodes. Guess what? I was not completely confused. Imagine that!

Yes, you can skip it. The problem is at least one of your characters needs to do the story (which is unlike DT/SW) unless you feel like using up a teleport to friend. I would rather skip it on ALL my characters and do the story if and when I feel like it.

Thats the exact opposite of how a game works. I remember when I was a kid I had a gameboy color. Zelda oracle of ages had some really difficult dungeons and objectives. I remember specifically a dancing minigame I HAD to complete to continue. There were no skip buttons. There were no cheats. it was a game, with a series of goals you had to complete.
My point being, where in the course of time did we get so lazy we consider skipping content of a game a normal thing?

But why should we consider it appropriate to burden a game that used to have no story-gating to exploration at all, with well… story-gating.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that they could visit a completely equiped Fort Trinity that had members of a Pact that hadn’t even been formed. You know why? Because the people who find that sort of thing immersion-breaking can chose not to play the game that way. Like they used to say: “Play the way you want”.

Breaking this mould made no one any happier but sure made some people less happy.

Manasa Devi.7958:

But why should we consider it appropriate to burden a game that used to have no story-gating to exploration at all, with well… story-gating.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that they could visit a completely equiped Fort Trinity that had members of a Pact that hadn’t even been formed. You know why? Because the people who find that sort of thing immersion-breaking can chose not to play the game that way. Like they used to say: “Play the way you want”.

Breaking this mould made no one any happier but sure made some people less happy.

People just made a norm of an anomaly, thats all

Amaimon.7823:

My point being, where in the course of time did we get so lazy we consider skipping content of a game a normal thing?

I seem to remember something about playing as you like ….

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Menadena.7482:

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Has anyone tried running a player new to HoT through the LS3 story to see if they indirectly gain access to Bloodstone Fen that way?

Ayrilana.1396:

Menadena.7482:

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Has anyone tried running a player new to HoT through the LS3 story to see if they indirectly gain access to Bloodstone Fen that way?

No but why would they? You get access though running the episode. If you do not have the episode …

Menadena.7482:

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Yes. But it’s not as bad as it would have been last season, since it seems like the new zones and the new LS2 episodes are more closely related on a 1 to 1 basis.

Actually it is worse. I bought GW2 after DT had been introduced and wandered into it before even owning the story chapter. In fact, I still have not ran the SW introduction story chapter but go there all the time.

Menadena.7482:

Ayrilana.1396:

Menadena.7482:

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Has anyone tried running a player new to HoT through the LS3 story to see if they indirectly gain access to Bloodstone Fen that way?

No but why would they? You get access though running the episode. If you do not have the episode …

A player without the episode can join someone else’s story instance. Entrance is gained through the story instance so everyone who is party of that party should be transferred to Bloodstone Fen regardless as to whether they have the episode unlocked or not.

Amaimon.7823:

Manasa Devi.7958:

But why should we consider it appropriate to burden a game that used to have no story-gating to exploration at all, with well… story-gating.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that they could visit a completely equiped Fort Trinity that had members of a Pact that hadn’t even been formed. You know why? Because the people who find that sort of thing immersion-breaking can chose not to play the game that way. Like they used to say: “Play the way you want”.

Breaking this mould made no one any happier but sure made some people less happy.

People just made a norm of an anomaly, thats all

Anomaly? That word has no meaning that applies to this situation, so I have no idea what you mean by that.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Amaimon.7823:

Manasa Devi.7958:

But why should we consider it appropriate to burden a game that used to have no story-gating to exploration at all, with well… story-gating.

I’ve never heard anyone complain that they could visit a completely equiped Fort Trinity that had members of a Pact that hadn’t even been formed. You know why? Because the people who find that sort of thing immersion-breaking can chose not to play the game that way. Like they used to say: “Play the way you want”.

Breaking this mould made no one any happier but sure made some people less happy.

People just made a norm of an anomaly, thats all

Anomaly? That word has no meaning that applies to this situation, so I have no idea what you mean by that.

I consider it an anomaly that we have access to content of the game thats not relevant until a much later stage. Not a lot of games have that.. not a lot at all, hence, an anomaly. A deviation.

First off, content is relevant the moment we can access it. The content in Cursed Shore is no less relevant to someone who didn’t do the story than to someone who did do it.

Second, plenty of games have free exploration.

Manasa Devi.7958:

First off, content is relevant the moment we can access it. The content in Cursed Shore is no less relevant to someone who didn’t do the story than to someone who did do it.

Second, plenty of games have free exploration.

I can only call Skyrim, GTA and World of Warcraft on the top of my head. All other games I ever played unlocked the content as you get through it.
In GTA and Skyrim, the world effectively changes, so you’ll notice if you get somewhere before the story takes you there. And in World of Warcraft you have phasing, so if you move that to GW2, you would see an abandoned fort without upkeep if you get to the fort before the story takes you there. hence, anomaly still in tact

No, it really isn’t. The limitations of your knowledge don’t define the world around you.

Manasa Devi.7958:

No, it really isn’t. The limitations of your knowledge don’t define the world around you.

sigh…..

fine, you wanna feel entitled to content, feel free to do so. i’m done here..

I have no problem with how things are done now. I play the story and like it just fine. I’m just pointing out how things changed for the worse for some people, which is an objective and true statement.

You wanna throw around trigger words like “entitled”, feel free to do so.

Manasa Devi.7958:

First off, content is relevant the moment we can access it. The content in Cursed Shore is no less relevant to someone who didn’t do the story than to someone who did do it.

Second, plenty of games have free exploration.

Exactly, I came in 2 years ago so did not have all of season 2. I eventually bought the missing episodes and played some of them because I was short a few mastery points. I had 0 problems with the logic of any zone, whether it was there at the beginning, was added in a story I had yet to play, or whenever. If I was curious I could always google them or check the wiki.

In addition to story gating (say they have a mega-mega-mega champ before a zone at some point, almost nobody will be in that zone for awhile) there is another problem. Now you have sections of tyria cut off from the rest of the map. Since we are now on chapter 2 this means there are people who do not (or do not yet) have access to one of the new zones.

perilisk.1874:

Menadena.7482:

ArchonWing.9480:

So what happens to the people that don’t unlock the story? Are they barred from the zones without a teleport to friend?

Even worse then that. Say someone buys GW2 now. How do they get to BF? Buy the story? Buy (or otherwise obtain) a TP to friend?

Yes. But it’s not as bad as it would have been last season, since it seems like the new zones and the new LS2 episodes are more closely related on a 1 to 1 basis.

I think that is worse. It’d be like if you couldn’t access SW/DTop if you didn’t unlock the LS. And honestly, that just reduces the people who can readily access a zone and I feel that’s a bad thing.

Right, I do not need a zone explained to me in detail before I can have fun with it. If I need background information I can look it up.

I just completed chapter 2 but say I was still working on it when chapter 3 (and probably a new zone) was available. Would I then have the choice of giving up/putting off the rest of chapter 2 or not being able to get to the new zone? I prefer to do stories when I want to, not when anet wants me to.

Well, the new zones are all locked into Heart of Thorns content, while Dry Top and Silverwastes were all added as part of Core Tyria, so I can sort of understand why these new maps are all locked into the new chapters. All I want is a way to walk into the zones after I had already unlocked it so I don’t have to either waypoint in or use the portal map. Even if there’s a guard outside similar to how there are guards outside the Fort Trinity asura gates that keeps you out until you do the instance where they are revealed.

They already have pretty much the same trying to walk from the SW to VB. Connecting BF to VB would be obvious near the village. I am not sure about where EB would connect but presumably Orr since they were moving the fire islands anyway. No need for a story unlock, if you owned HOT you could use the gates.

Think about it looking at HOT itself. While we needed to do the prequel to get into VB you did not need to do any more of the story to get into the other zones.

Menadena.7482:

The feedback thread is more than 3 days old but feel free to merge it if it should go there instead.

Please do not make us go through story steps to get into a new zone. I like freeform exploring then doing the story whenever. Plus it makes the zone feel like it is not part of tyria if I can not just get there from a neighboring zone without waypointing. Narration would be one level of ugh but both chapters have had something challenging to even get there.

Am I the only one that has that reaction? The fact that each zone had a zone-specific mastery was also not a plus for me but hopefully their masteries will be used elsewhere.

I agree with this objection. For Ember Bay, it is part of the world that anyone should be able to get to. For Bloodstone Fen, it makes sense for it to be story gated for the first week or so, but once the events there become known to the world at large, people will naturally start to travel there of their own accord.

Sort of stories as an early access thing then throwing the doors open? That would work. Not ideal but it would solve some problems. I still am not sure why they felt the need to story-gate zones at all though as they did not do it in season 2.