Urr. Welp. I hope this is okay having it’s own thread. Other folks have, so I guess so. If not, feel free to delete and/or poke me in the right direction. This is also the first time I’ve written anything like this before, too, so I apologise if it’s a little incoherent or long winded. I’ll try my best though and will put a tl;dr at the bottom.
It goes without saying there will be spoilers.
Context for myself as a player: I’ve currently played through up to the start of Act 3. My activity comes in waves, alternating between RP/PvE with casual PvP when I feel like it. I main thief (daredevil), with almost full ascended berserker gear. As of several months ago, my focus has been solely PvP/PvE, though I’ve kept a very close and ethusiastic eye on the story and what it’d mean for my characters. I’ve played GW2 since beta and come from Korean MMOs (might explain why I don’t mind the ’grind).
I’ve made a very small guild for myself and three other friends. We did the PvP weekly mission, which was great fun. Two of the four rarely PvP and it was really fun to try something out as a team. Talking of that, the team system is a fantastic idea and I can really see that being a helpful tool for statics of all kind.
However, my only qualm with the mission was that was graded as medium difficulty. In reality, as a team of four, we were 35 points off the goal after one game. Considering only my other guildy and I were semi-regular PvPers, this seemed a little easy.
It was nice to have the required amount of favour tokens to apply for a guild hall with remarkbly little effort and I think I can say for all four of us we very much enjoyed it! Something as tangible as a guild hall is a big and satisfying goal for us, and also got us doing something we’d not usually do. Working together for it is/was awesome. With that, though, I think maybe the fees for getting a guild hall could realitically be steeper.
With the fees out of the way, we decided to go for Lost Precipice. Having to run there together, through Verdant Brink, together as a group/guild felt really, really cool. Of course we’re doing the entirety of this out of character, but it still had that epic feeling of going on an adventure to go and get this goal we’d set for ourselves.
…Only to go get our rear ends handed to us because we had no idea what to expect.
Nothing wrong with this though! After we’d figured out what to do with the Maw thinger-majigs (and inadvertendly let the timer of two fall down), we managed to get one down \o/. Travelling was a huge issue, but we didn’t have updraft mastery and lucked out on the spawns. The killing aspect wasn’t too hard if we were careful and it seems like it’s realistic for us to at least get past the Maw stage. We’ve not seen the rest, but so far much fun was had! Making a decision as a guild to go out and train together to get better for those jump pads and stuff was great.
The scaling feels good, just getting around from point to point was tricky.
TL;DR on PvP Missions, guilds and getting the guild hall:
- PvP Missions: Felt very easy and undertuned. Was this because of the size of our guild? The reward felt a little too big for what we did (a medium scaled challenge), but it’s understandable given it’s a weekly. Teams are fantastic and I love the fact your logo appears when the game starts, and in the menu. It lists your team too, which is really cool, knowing who in a guild you’re going against.
- Guild system: I didn’t cover this in my rambles up there, but the new UI is very pretty, if feeling a little on the cluttered side. It took me some time to figure everything out, but once I did it’s clear everything has it’s place. The guide window was very helpful! Favor, to me, feels like a much superior currency/method etc. As far as I know, missions are the only/primary way to earn favor. I personally would like to see the rewards smaller, but missions repeatable.
- Guild hall/claiming: Barrels of fun! I can it being epic for both the smaller and larger guilds. However, it felt too easy to actually be able to buy the expedition in the first place. To me, this could be a lot steeper (unless it scales with guild size: answers on a postcard please!) for what a guild hall actually is and the convenience/tangibility it has for a guild. …Getting around Lost Precipice was a nightmare too, but we didn’t have all the masteries so that’s our fault. xD
Oh crumbs, where on earth to start?
I’ve just started Act 3. I’ve been doing it on and off over the past few days. Sometimes solo, sometimes with up to a group of four.
The story itself feels a little slow. This might be because there’s frequent mastery gates, but I see these are necessary and not really too much of a bad thing. Saying that though, I did interally groan when I saw yet another mastery had to be earned before I could continue. I do find the events fun though and the maps all /lookfeel very different when it comes to their appearance and meta events. My favourite so far is Verdant Brink. It’s easy to understand and everything feels linked together. I’ve yet to properly figure out Auric Basin, however and Tangled Depths is an utter mystery.
I very much enjoy the sense of progression, both with my masteries and daredevil. Both are tangible and I like the difficulty scaling with both. It feels dangerous, it feels high risk. Yes, I groan at myself when I die and there’s noone around to res me and so I have to run back, but that’s kinda my own fault for getting ahead of myself and thinking I can take on those 5 mordrem alone. Seeing the events progress with NPCs new and old is lovely too.
Whilst ideally I would rather just nuke the story then do my masteries, I understand and do enjoy the process of getting them mid story. It extends the experience, gives a sense of progression and learning how to survive in the jungle, and also comes with lots of goodies as rewards.
I said earlier the story felt slow. However in reality, it’s not and likely just slowed down by the mastery progression. It was only a day or two ago in the timeline that the Pact Fleet set off. What does this mean for roleplayers? According to that, it’s still early Zephyr 1328 canonically. But given the fact GW2 seems to support 1 game day = 1 RL day, it’s currently early Colossus.
I think that’s another matter that’s deserving of a thread of it’s own however.
I worry though, with how far I am into the story, that it will bring up more questions than answer them, especially with things relating to sylvari and Mordremoth. As a nightmare sylvari player, I was more than happy to have part of my interpretation of nightmare confirmed in the episode with Faolain and the other imprisioned courtiers, but what about Soundless? My M’alt is a soundless sylvari guardian. And whilst he hates other sylvari and avoids them whenever possible, is Mordremoth just gonna eat his mind? I’ve no issue with this, if this is how the story goes, but I need to know!
Of course, most of this can be disregarded. It’s not wholly relevant as feedback since I’ve not completed the story.
TL;DR The story, masteries, HP, and the timeline
- The masteries: Feel great. It’s a little bit annoying they’re gating the story but it’s understandable and overall does more good than harm to players. It makes sure they’re kitted out as they explore further into the jungle and won’t end up in a mess underlevelled. Perhaps a little bit steep of a curve as you level up, but isn’t too awful.
- The Hero points: I like the fact they’re challenging. Sure, it can be frustating when you just want to do them solo, but there’s a mix of ones you can solo and ones you can’t from what I’ve seen so far. This is an MMO! You’re supposed to play with people. Even if they’re people you don’t know, and GW2 supports that very, very well. You don’t even have to party with them.
- The progression of unlocking the elite specialisation is steep. But that’s what it is, elite. It’s special. It’s supposed to be hard. I can see why people don’t like the work for it, it’s a lot and you could argue it’s a little bit too much if you don’t PvE a lot. However, why not put a party up on LFG with the intention of just getting all the hero points through Maguuma?
- The timeline/story: I… uh. Yeah. This needs it’s own thread. It’ll be difficult to deal with for RPers, especially so we’ve been business as usual over the past ten months. And sylvari: How should we react? What does this mean for different ‘states’ of sylvari? I’m worried that the HoT story won’t answer many of these vital questions and leave us in a rather awkward state of RP limbo.
Other notes
- Maps: NRGH. Gorgeous! Great job with optimisation. I was very worried I’d not be able to play with decent graphics/FPS due to the sheer scale and detail of the maps. However, so far I’ve not had a single problem with FPS and it plays just like in Core Tyria. The way the maps are thought out is beautiful too. A challenge to navigate, as it should be, and the glider controls are wonderfully smooth. Seriously, I can’t lavish enough praise for this. Ireallywantmygliderincoretyriathoughpleasesomuchplease.
- EDIT FOR MAPS: Just reading another thread reminded me of a point I didn’t mention. I can’t see where events are when I first zone in. It’s tricky to see where things are going on until you’ve run around a bit.
- The Launch: I watched the stream from about fifteen minutes in to the moment of pushing the button and could only really tear myself away during one of WoodenPotatoes videos to go get a cup of tea and that was only because I’d watched it before and knew it was long. An awesome variety of content with good humour, and no cringey bits either! I felt like a kid on Christmas eve, even if it meant staying up until 8am for the release. With no disconnects or crashes for the hour and a half I played before going to sleep and little complaints all around, I think it’s one of the smoothest xpac releases I’ve ever seen.
- Action combat camera: No complaints at all. It works like a charm and I use it almost 100% of the time now in PvE. Still trying it out in PvP, though in both game modes I’ve noticed it’s difficult to land Steal and Infiltrator’s Strike correctly.
Overall: Impressed! Whilst it feels there are some tuning issues with rewards, and perhaps some pacing issues with the elite specialisation/masteries, from the content I’ve played and am interested in, I have to say I’ve very much enjoyed the experience so far. PvE in most places scales well and feels like a challenge if I’m not careful. The story is intriguing (if worrying it’ll end on a cliffhanger), the voice acting lovely, and cutscenes well put together and made.
Thank you Anet!
(edited by appaloosa.6427)