-For the Night Cycle I had mixed feelings. While the idea was good, I often just gave up on events and continued exploring. The Pact Supplies that one had to ferry to the Pact Camps were way to spread out and spawned too sparsely; I’d be exploring and find a crate out in the middle of nowhere and a good ten minute walk to the nearest camp, and that’s not including the hassle of face-rolling, dodging, and limping through the Mordrem spawns between me and camp. Furthermore the escorts were events I began to actively avoid; the NPCs far to flimsy and the Mordrem spawns too close together. I’d wipe a group, finally revive the dead NPC and as soon as they got back to their feet spawn goes the Mordrem. It was maddening, frustrating and had me quoting Faolin “There [they] go again!” Also there was the camp defense itself, by the time Night occurred so many people were just ‘tagging’ an event and moving on that those who stayed behind to defend the camp were outnumbered by the Mordrem and I admit to abandoning a camp to the Mordrem simply because the nearest active waypoint was too far away to risk dying. All three of these issues are compounded by the camp defense tiers, after a whole hour of trying to defend and supply camps we’d STILL be at tier 1, which made the whole effort feel wasted. Not only that, but what would be the reward? What would be the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak to make all that effort worth it and bribe all the mouth-breathers to stay and help?
Finally, there’s the whole “Night monsters are harder” general concept that I certainly noticed when defending a camp as I was being trampled to a quarter of an inch thick but when I chickened out and explored the map I had no issue just ignoring the Mordrem. Was that purposeful? Or did you [Anet] want our characters to have to hunker down in a camp to ‘survive’ the night?
-Now we come to my speculations; if all you have read this post for is my thoughts on Day/Night then stop now because I’ll just be asking semi-rhetorical questions and theories about the Day/Night Cycles in this paragraph. If you are still reading then the cycles will need immense levels of cooperation, I’m talking Triple-Trouble-Wurm levels of cooperation on a map-wide scale if we want the tiers to go up. There’d need to be groups ferrying supplies, groups defending/kiting the camps, and somebody’s got to deal with the escorts and have the patience not to give up. And since as far as I know there is no “Map-teamspeak/VOIP” or whatever it’s called that cooperation task will most likely fall to guilds. I can easily see a guild or guilds sponsoring a map to get the level of defense as high as possible using guild teamspeak and commanders to organize who does what.
Misc. Bugs and Stuff:
Most of this stuff has been found by other people and I’m pretty sure Anet is already aware of the majority if not all of them but some things I’ve noticed that need a little polishing include:
- A bit of skill lag on revenant
-The corpses were a bit far from the ‘inspect’ interaction point in the story where you rescue the Pale Reavers.
-Rylock’s cutscene was during the day when you were fighting at night.
-The Mordrem Champion’s model would turn into a heavy TA armor clad figure (sylvari?) after Rytlock’s cutscene. (Very suspicious….)
-Masteries were more than a tad confusing to figure out but that’s probably because I was hyper-aware of the ticking timer and wanted to go see stuff rather than figure out a UI. Once I knew what to click to activate a Mastery track everything make a lot more sense.
-Some items, NPCs and monsters had ((######)) tags rather than names/labels.
-The Temple of Ameyali had extremely defined cut-offs for effect animations such as the blue mist and the ‘wall’ of darkness at the entrances. Also the wood carvings on the wall would vanish when I got too close.
-The Itzel’s mouths wouldn’t move when they talked, and I don’t think the other toad’s mouths moved either.
-The bouncing mushrooms were more evil than the Mordrem. They’d give falling damage, throw my character into a tree and then I’d fall to my death, the shroom at the Pact Camp closest to the Itzel waypoint didn’t do anything.
