Guild Wars 2

I should preface this by saying that I did NOT explore any of the VB area available in the first BWE, so I have no masteries or experience with the zone to carry over to this weekend.

That being said, I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the design and overall feel of the portions of VB we can access this weekend. I’m a PvE player through and through, and I’ve spent years now exploring and re-exploring the world of GW2 on over 20 characters (alt-oholic), and loving it. I’ve tried and utterly failed to love what I’ve seen so far of Verdant Brink. I’ll try to avoid being long-winded by bullet-pointing my thoughts.

PROS:
+ Visual aesthetic (overall pretty to look at)
+ Creative new enemy types that fit into the aesthetic of the map (love to hate the pocket raptors!)
+ I didn’t get to try out any Adventures yet, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and call them a positive feature for now, until I can experience them for myself

SO-SO (NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD):

• Map verticality. Annoying to me (I’m a great 2D thinker but not a great 3D thinker), but it’s different & interesting, and I’ll probably get used to it.

CONS:
- Scenery is visually too “busy,” hard to sort out where to go & what is going on
- Reliance on repeating event chains, like a horrible mashup of the worst parts of Dry Top & Silverwastes
- Seemed to be a lack of random enemy mobs NOT associated with events (I realize that this could have been the result of so many people in the map…hard to say)
- No renown hearts or vistas (that I found) to give a sense of “accomplishment” about progressively exploring the map…those are my favorite parts of exploring GW2 :-(
- Minimap is almost useless for figuring out how to get from point A to point B, due to the map’s verticality
- All the narrow paths in many areas seemed very linear, and made me feel almost claustrophobic
- Like DT & SW, map design itself seems to punish solo exploration (unless you happen upon a zerg)

My biggest complaint is the similarity to Dry Top & Silverwastes, and the lack of “exploration benchmarks” in the form of hearts and vistas. It basically includes everything I hated about the newer zones (sandstorm timer is like the day/night timer in VB, and the revolving door of events, very WvW style, is like SW…and I hated all those things!), and leaves out everything I’ve loved about exploring GW2 for the past 3 years (hearts & vistas). I’m aware that many people may disagree with me, but personally I’m saddened by what feels like a lost opportunity to expand upon the game I’ve loved for years.

I realize that the Orr zones are also similar to these features, so maybe this is just Anet’s vision of high-level content, and if so, I suppose that’s been consistent from day one. If so, I guess it’s just not for me. :-( I’m sure I’ll love playing a Revenant or two through the base game like I have all my other characters, but I was really looking forward to some new scenery that would give me the same old fun!

Thank you for not being a super fanboy and telling the truth about what Verdant Brink is… (the next silverwastes and dry top, complete with the annoying grindfest that exists on those maps)

Welcome to more Dynamic Events. Clearly everyone loved zerg content so we’re giving you more of it. Forget hearts and NPC interactions or hero challenges. Join the zerg train and press 1 and collect your loot bag/mastery track xp.

The thing is, Zenith, I don’t have an issue with dynamic events in and of themselves. They can be really fun content, and they can provide a lot of rewards to players.

My issue is when those events are being relied upon as the ONLY engaging content in the zone. It wouldn’t matter if Anet had 1,000 top-tier devs working on content for that zone…if all they are adding is more DE’s, the zone will still end up feeling repetitive and grindy, with no sense of progression or accomplishment because the event sequence resets every hour or two.

I agree with pretty much everything except the “punish solo exploration” part.
there is a “huge” debate on the forum between 2 type of players, those that find it hard to roam and those that find it easy. And as I said on others similar thread I think its just a L2P situation (new map, new AI, “new” class, new abilities) and after a couple of days most players will be able to roam without any troubles on the map.
But I find it weird that you think DT or SW are “punishing solo exploration”. It was common “feeling” at their release but it disapear quite fast.

Anyway I agree with most of your pros and cons but I stay optimistic because it is just a beta.

xadine.7069:

I agree with pretty much everything except the “punish solo exploration” part.
there is a “huge” debate on the forum between 2 type of players, those that find it hard to roam and those that find it easy. And as I said on others similar thread I think its just a L2P situation (new map, new AI, “new” class, new abilities) and after a couple of days most players will be able to roam without any troubles on the map.
But I find it weird that you think DT or SW are “punishing solo exploration”. It was common “feeling” at their release but it disapear quite fast.

Anyway I agree with most of your pros and cons but I stay optimistic because it is just a beta.

The punishing part comes from areas of the map suddenly being covered by dynamic events bringing zergs of mobs to the area you need to explore or jump off from. For example, try to get that mastery point on the northern side of the map where you jump through the canopy hole down to a branch holding it after killing the legendary champion from the event. If nobody comes do that “build x bombs” event and the zerg is not large enough to do the event, which can actually swarm player with tons of mobs and aoe, you then have no access to that mastery point and have to wait for the event to disappear.

On a class like thief or mesmer this is no issue as I can just spam stealth to skip through, but on a slow class like necromancer running into the zerg of veteran/elite mobs is suicide.

Soleiya Starbow.7013:

~Snip~

As you correctly pointed out in your OP the Orr zones also are devoid of Hearts, though they do have Vista’s, this was intentional on ANets part as they didn’t believe Hearts fit the concept of level 80 zones(with the exception of Frostgorge Sound). Also it was seen already in DT and SW, this is what you can expect from future maps I would presume. As for the difficulty in traversing the 3 layers that can be because you currently only are using one level of 25% of the zone, it will be much easier to traverse once you have the entire zone released as one tri-level map…and it shouldn’t take being able to use a 3D view of things…I had almost no problem using the Mini-Map to move around this Beta weekend, just had to orient myself and look around in the main view, then compare that to the mini-map, not saying it’s easy, but if you know how to read a map it shouldn’t be a problem. As for the events repeating, I believe we’re only seeing a portion of the events that will be available upon release or at least shortly there after, and they can always add more during LW episodes.

I personally love the new zone, I love the layout and complexity of the vertical aspect.

The events so far seem pretty standard, I’m assuming they scale in some way so if you found yourself lacking members you’d still have a chance at success. I do wish there were some hearts or other event types, but maybe that’s what the solo challenges will be for.

I could be an anomaly though, everyone seemed to hate the complex map design of the Lotro Mines of Moria expac but I absolutely loved it.

I suppose the OP missed the presentation a few months ago. They said HoT has a lot of things of SW&DT, including the event system. Of course, it’s similar to DT&SW, there’s nothing surprising about it.

Remember the Story parts have been removed and this section of VB comes after the part we saw in BWE1. You would normally have access to Gliding and Mushroom Bounce by the time you get to it – I think you missing out on those may have skewd your view of the verticality (with gliding and mushrooms its great).

I didn’t miss any of that, actually. I’m also very aware of why Orr is “heart”-less, since I’ve been around since GW1 and followed the development of GW2 since the beginning (even the dry years when they told us nothing). ;-)

I was just hoping that the new zones would still be enjoyable for me despite the similarity to areas I didn’t like. And to be fair, there WERE things about those zones I liked! Visually I liked how they brought a new feel to the game (we didn’t really have any natural desert environments before), and I liked the living story episodes that led characters through the new zones. I just didn’t like their WvW-like cycling event chains. It goes all the way back to the GW2 “manifesto” video, where they said they wanted players to feel like their actions in the game world really mattered (“save a village from centaurs and it stays saved,” or something to that effect). I feel like that sense of overall progress has been lost with the rapid event cycles in the newer zones. Honestly, events cycle in ALL the zones, but the addition of renown hearts helped to mitigate that sense of failing to make permanent progress. And the cycles of events seem to be much quicker in the new zones than the original ones.

I guess it seems to me that GW2 launched with three very distinct and separate game modes by design: PvE, PvP, and WvW; but more and more over time, the devs are trying to make PvE feel and play almost exactly like WvW. And for those who enjoy WvW, I’m sure that’s not a problem. But personally that’s always been my least favorite game mode, so I’m not very happy. To each their own, of course. :-)

I agree with a lot of what you have to say. I do think that you NEED to have glide and bouncing mushrooms to “properly” explore the zone, and once you do, this exploration is a lot more fun and comfortable. It’s not meant to be explored entirely on foot. On the bright side, the current chunk of map is well into the zone, and I have the feeling that unless you go hardcore into trailblazing and ignore all the content, by the time you reach this area of the map you should probably have those skills in the live game.

I do think that the enemies can be a tad aggressive and dangerous to wandering players, particularly the smokescales and the pocket raptors (which are easy for some classes but a nightmare for others). I think that generally traversing the zone should NOT be a combat challenge, the combat challenges should be reserved for events and “mini dungeon” type areas that are off the beaten path.

Soleiya Starbow.7013:

The thing is, Zenith, I don’t have an issue with dynamic events in and of themselves. They can be really fun content, and they can provide a lot of rewards to players.

My issue is when those events are being relied upon as the ONLY engaging content in the zone. It wouldn’t matter if Anet had 1,000 top-tier devs working on content for that zone…if all they are adding is more DE’s, the zone will still end up feeling repetitive and grindy, with no sense of progression or accomplishment because the event sequence resets every hour or two.

You’re not seeing the entire content of the zone. Adventures, for example, aren’t enabled in this BWE. You’re only seeing what Anet wants to test.

This is my 2nd BWE. I am enjoying much more each time I play.

I would like to see the day/night transition cranked right up so that night time is a lot darker (even have a full moon). I am not sure of what other beasts you have in store for us, but wouldnt it be great to have night time beasts that everyone hates and actually fears. Especially, if they are caught out in the open as the day transitions to night.

Visuals are awesome and I cant wait to see the actual game. The flying was a lot of fun (first time for me didnt get to try it last beta),, I do like the way that your flying energy runs out which means you have to manage your flights and cant just go zooming around everywhere.

Keep up the good work; Looking forward to the release.

I hate hearts. after playing all first time, they just get annoying. They remove the feeling of a “living world” with dynamic events, by needing to do same,most boring 0-8-15 kill x enemy / collect x item/ use item y xtimes -stuff. Its just one-time content with some story aspect maybe, but this can and should be told better.

On the other hand, the big dynamic events, like on dt/sw, or new map by time loose lots of dynamics. Its just more or less fixed timer (^= pre-event) that triggers it in a fixed order. My understanding of a living world and dynamic events is, that it is…dynamic. So assume all events can be matched into 3 levels:
1) basic, low reward, single event
2) group, good reward, 1-3 short event chain
3) meta, high reward, “3” event chain
Each single event needs 2-5 min to finish.
Then the map-event design should be like follow:
one map got 3 meta, 10group, 20 basic events(multiple for same location possible).
After a random time window between 2 and 10 min a new event starts, which is randomly selected from the event list.
On top of this, there could be some big events, like old invasion, where a ton of events pop up at the same time and when you manage to beat all you get a boss event.

So you may be forced to react to the world and not other way round.

I would kind of like to see Hearts added, but slightly simpler ones than in the normal world. Like in the normal ones, they can pass without even noticing if the right event is up, or take forever to grind out if no events are happening.

I would prefer to see them add ones where the events have nothing to do with progressing them, but the actions you have to do to close them out are fairly quick and simple, a couple minutes tops, just a little thing to help you feel attached to the area and its NPCs a bit. I suppose they could use “Hero Point” events for that though.

I can sort of see your point about dry top and silverwastes, really don’t enjoy those zones. I think however when the entire map(s) come out you will not be tied to doing chains to get to the ‘good’ stuff. That is because the place is just too big to do something like that, it is hard enough getting 4 groups to do silverwastes can you imagine 8 groups? So I could be wrong but those chains seem like something you will follow one or more chains through but all of them at all levels of the map would not work, it will be more like Orr than the last 2 maps released.
I think it is great not to have hearts, vistas are ok but the mastery point spots more than make up for their loss.
I saw a ton of mobs that where in no way connected to events.
Movement is great for me, jump off somewhere high and get to another area, or look for the mushrooms (can drop you in the middle of angry tree frogs, but meh).

Generally I’m quite a fan of what they did with Dry Top and Silverwastes, but I was looking forward to exploring jungle with a more open layout further west.

The biggest thing that turns me off Verdant Brink isn’t the gameplay – that seems fine, for what little I’ve done of it so far. Instead it’s the level design. It’s a complete departure from the naturalistic landscapes of Kryta, Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks – Timberline Falls being my favourite aesthetically. Instead we’ve got platforms in space with trees through them, which is something I just can’t relate to.

I was fine with surreal landscapes in GW1’s Domain of Anguish, because that was the point; it was in the Mists and was meant to be bizarre. Edge of the Mists has a similar explanation. But this… doesn’t make sense to me, and jars badly with my memory of the Maguuma in GW1. One of the things I enjoy about beta events, usually, is exploring the new parts of the world – that’s completely gone for this one.

I’m still looking forward to the story, but the sooner I can get out of the platforms in space, the better.

Agreed, OP.

Unhappy with the map, unhappy with the fact that the terrain is so busy I can’t see where I’m going, unhappy with the revolving door of Day/Night, unhappy with the lack of Hearts and vistas and meaningful POIs and secrets, unhappy with the lack of communication in verticality, just unhappy with Verdant Brink in general.

I was fine with surreal landscapes in GW1’s Domain of Anguish, because that was the point; it was in the Mists and was meant to be bizarre. Edge of the Mists has a similar explanation. But this… doesn’t make sense to me, and jars badly with my memory of the Maguuma in GW1. One of the things I enjoy about beta events, usually, is exploring the new parts of the world – that’s completely gone for this one.

I can understand that, and I too really enjoy naturalistic landscapes like the southern Shiverpeaks, but I do at least understand the context of these zones. They were torn apart by the massive overgrowth caused by Mordremoth, so far I don’t recall seeing anything “floating” in this zone (although floating rocks are all over the existing zones), so much as there are rocks and rubble that have been lifted up by Mordremoth’s vines (if, perhaps, at structurally unsound angles, Mordy can lift).

I do really hope that the remaining maps in the expansion are not just “Verdant Brink 2” and “Verdant Brink 3” though, I hope that they employ entirely different palates and design styles, to give more variety to the expansion. Between VB, SW, and DT, we’ve seen enough “sandstone cliffs and massive vines” to last a lifetime.

Just commenting on the jungle visuals, ask anyone who’s been in a jungle irl and they will tell you it’s the claustrophobia that gets you first, it’s supposed to be, it’s a jungle.

Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it a bad map. Tbh i’m tired of the deserts and open plains, VB it’s a welcome change for me.

I personally think the linear part is needed for the vertical elements. I imagine the bottom biosphere will be better on this point (as there is no need for gaps to go further down).

I do think the limitation it offers is solved easily by adding more updrafts. This allows kites to not only go from one path to another lower path, but also the other way around. So within the limit of the distance you can fly you can cross most chasms in two directions, eliminating the block they offer.

I do think the limitation it offers is solved easily by adding more updrafts. This allows kites to not only go from one path to another lower path, but also the other way around. So within the limit of the distance you can fly you can cross most chasms in two directions, eliminating the block they offer.

I do think that they should add more updrafts to the open spaces. So far the only once I’ve seen in the new area have been the jumping puzzle in the NE corner. Keep in mind though that updrafts don’t restore your endurance, they just pop you up, so there is still the practical limit of how far you can fly on a single jump. To solve that you need the high end glider masteries, which apparently take ridiculous amounts of XP and will not be obtained right away by all but the most serious power levelers.

I think that’s fine though, you get the basic tools for mobility fairly early, and then as you go you get more and more shortcuts to allow for even more convenient travel. There are apparently also secret tunnels or something that you need a later mastery to open, I forget if those were frog or exalted-based, maybe two different ones. and of course the speed shrooms.

Ben K.6238:

The biggest thing that turns me off Verdant Brink isn’t the gameplay – that seems fine, for what little I’ve done of it so far. Instead it’s the level design. It’s a complete departure from the naturalistic landscapes of Kryta, Ascalon and the Shiverpeaks – Timberline Falls being my favourite aesthetically. Instead we’ve got platforms in space with trees through them, which is something I just can’t relate to.

I was fine with surreal landscapes in GW1’s Domain of Anguish, because that was the point; it was in the Mists and was meant to be bizarre. Edge of the Mists has a similar explanation. But this… doesn’t make sense to me, and jars badly with my memory of the Maguuma in GW1.

Where you visiting Metrica or Caledon recently (recently = GW2 base game) ?
There are also floating trees and platforms and rocks.

Heart events are for the lesser minded. Present because some players couldn’t shake their old fashioned origins. We don’t need more.

Day time needs more frequent non-meta event chain dynamic events.

I absolutely LOATHE hearts. Please Anet, do not bring hearts to this zone for the love of god.

Anyway, while I do like the chain events I do think there needs to be more random events scattered throughout the zone. If they did that, then I think it would be fine.

As for the zone, well overall I like it a lot. But I played the first beta and unlocked gliding and the jumping mushrooms right away. If you don’t have those two masteries then the zone does get kind of annoying. But the gliding is really fun and actually makes me enjoy the vertical nature of the zone. As for vistas….did you try to get the mastery points on the map? Not exactly like vistas, but it does lead to exploring. You need the gliding for a lot of them though.

I’m not a huge fan of heats myself but I do agree that this particular portion of Verdant Brink is less than thrilling.

Although, functionally, the repeating event chains are essentially Hearts in how they work, except they’re repeatable and always give exp. The only thing missing, and I think you’re right about this, are events that aren’t part of the day/night event chain cycle.

I’m holding back from disliking the zone entirely only because we’ve only seen the map in bits and pieces: we have yet to see the entirety of Verdant Brink together. I liked the map in the first beta weekend a lot more than this one. I’m intrigued by a number of things in the map, though, like the Corpse Grove and other anomalies.

I know that there are many camps on this issue but I personally enjoy exploring Verdant Brink. There’s less “open fields” exploration and more “search for hidden clues in a giant mansion” exploration. It appeals to me, but I sympathize with people who aren’t thrilled with this sort of exploration. Hopefully when the entire map is released it’s better, or the other three maps in the expansion have varying kinds of exploration.

Also I agree, bring back vistas!

The map is quite big and with lots of objectives, if people try to zerg they will fail the daily/nightly events. When the map is 100% explorable i think it will be quite interesting to see how the “zergs” will behave.

I largely agree with the OP although I wasn’t surprised to find Verdant Brink almost identical in style and approach to Dry Top/Silverwastes. The comparison with Orr is a good one, too. The plan for high level open world PvE was always clearly to use long event chains requiring large numbers of players and some organization to complete. That was how Orr was supposed to be but it wasn’t popular and had to be revamped and simplified more than once and even then it never really became the endgame destination it was meant to be.

DT/SW were the new, refined version of that concept. They added a cyclical meta-event chain with a timer, tied every event in the zone to it and put an on-screen progress indicator in clear sight all the time. Then they attached a range of progressive reward systems to encourage repetition.

That seemed to work better so they stuck with the format for HoT. Anyone who didn’t enjoy it in DT/SW is not likely to change their minds.

The big difference, I think, is accessibility. Dry Top and Silverwastes have a degree of topographical complexity but they are basically flat and easy to navigate. Verdant Brink isn’t. Even with gliders and mushrooms it’s going to be a lot harder to just see a Commander pin on the map and head straight to it to join in an event.

I think basing a map around both “verticality” and 40-minute event chains is going to become too much like hard work once the novelty wears off but I guess we’ll have to wait 3-4 months after launch to find out.

Ohoni.6057:

I agree with a lot of what you have to say. I do think that you NEED to have glide and bouncing mushrooms to “properly” explore the zone, and once you do, this exploration is a lot more fun and comfortable. It’s not meant to be explored entirely on foot. On the bright side, the current chunk of map is well into the zone, and I have the feeling that unless you go hardcore into trailblazing and ignore all the content, by the time you reach this area of the map you should probably have those skills in the live game.

I do think that the enemies can be a tad aggressive and dangerous to wandering players, particularly the smokescales and the pocket raptors (which are easy for some classes but a nightmare for others). I think that generally traversing the zone should NOT be a combat challenge, the combat challenges should be reserved for events and “mini dungeon” type areas that are off the beaten path.

Pocket raptors are the best thing since baby quaggans. They have the best monster name too. I just wish they would award experience so killing them would refresh my “on kill” traits.