~Tarnished Coast Pride~
Forever known as “that slow guardian who can’t jump worth crap”.
Forever known as “that slow guardian who can’t jump worth crap”.
Going to do this now since I’ll likely be in bed before the next test time is done.
Revenant feels unpolished. This could be because we’re all being jumped in at level 80 with little time to understand how skill sets work but it doesn’t play like the grand summoner of champions I was expecting. Range hammer is nice, heavy torment inflict is nice, but it feels like the class is lacking in something. The dwarf stance is infinitely more useful than the demon which is disappointing. I still haven’t figured out all the mechanics of the class but I’m guessing the jumped to 80 and time limit has a lot to do with that. There’s a skill lag that could be a bug but also, in character creation, the Revenant is giant on the screen. I had to take mine down to minimum height to see her head.
Cinematics are bugged. The opening to HoT has almost inaudible audio and the scene where Rytlock appears had no audio at all. I can’t imagine these are intentional features. The opening story was impressive – I enjoyed hearing my character talk more and having a lot of spoken dialogue tossed out there. That’s probably why it was a huge let down when the Verdant Brink section began.
Now before I go into this, I want to say that I like the new map. It’s beautiful. It’s got a great feel to it. I had zero lag and no issues with performance. What I wasn’t fond of was how repetitive the events are. Constantly mowing down enemies to protect the Pact wears thin on about the 3rd time, especially at night. It feels like a grind without much challenge or element of chance involved. You know what’s going to happen, you stand around and press 1. I’m guessing they’ll be more added to this and more randomized events closer to release but as it stands, it’s really boring. Compared to the story bit before, it’s a drop in mood and quality. Add to this I’m fairly certain the event with the Sylvari shooting at the champion Mordrem was hopelessly bugged unless it was intended to run ten+ minutes with nothing on the side bar and no progress.
I do want to say that the wyvern event chain is great though. Not a fan of the egg gathering but I see how this could become easier once gliding is involved. Is this the world boss of the map? Because if so, I really like it, I was hoping for something dragon-ish.
Another thing I want to point out is what a pain it is getting around. Based on how this changes once you have a glider, I’m guessing it’s intentional. You can even sail into the middle of the map and walk on the vines once you have one though I think that’s not supposed to happen, haha. This forces the player to have to grind those Pact events to get points.. which stinks. Again, I’m really really hoping for more of a variety of events and randomized events or this will get boring quick.
Little bugs I saw – vendors without names, just numbers. POIs with just numbers. Missing items. Dialogue getting cut off (during the wyvern chain in one section, the frog would just shut up mid sentence). Possible bugged event. Possible bug that you can fall through the map by walking on vines in the middle (I got warned I was leaving the demo area). Events need balance polishing – when a bunch of heavies are all falling over, it might need a little work.
All in all, I’m happy to have had the experience of betaing this section of Heart of Thorns and I look forward to the finished product.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.