Verdant Brink is confusing to navigate.

Verdant Brink is confusing to navigate.

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Foefaller.1082

Foefaller.1082

First of all, I’d like to say that I’m enjoying the map as a whole, and love the density of things to do (at least, when the events don’t break…)

That being said, the first hour or so of playing in Verdant Brink, I was completely and utterly lost, and it was frustrating. Nearly all of the major points as well as the locations of the current events are separated by nigh-impassible cliffs or chasms and are only connected by narrow, hard-to find paths, bridges, cave entrances and inclines, and the labyrinthine nature of most of these paths makes it extremely difficult to pick out how I’m suppose to get from point A to B on the world map. My first experience in VB was trying to reach the current stage of the Itzel village chain, an effort filled with wrong turns and double-backs, with no gliding or mushrooms to help navigate, that by the time I reached where the chain was at, it had gone from the event immediately after dousing the wyvern fires to the one where you bury wyvern eggs in the Zintl base… and then night fell almost immediately afterwards.

Once I had the chance to do both of the outpost chains from the beginning which traverse most of the map’s pathways, my understanding of the map made navigating much easier. What really made exploring Verdant Brink no longer a chore, however, was getting the basic gliding Mastery and bouncing mushrooms from Itzel Lore unlocked. Having those masteries improved the experince of navigating the map so much, I’m not entirely sure that the map is meant to be explored without at least one of those masteries.

So anyway, my suggestions to improving this (that don’t involve new UI mechanics)

  • Make the connecting paths more visible. Torches, signs, friendly NPCs, anything and everything you can think of to make the footpaths easier to spot. A couple problem areas that I noticed were:
    • Ramp up to the main Itzel outpost Rally point (above the Temple of Ameyalli PoI). Right now when approaching from the south in blends into the cliff face so well that I only found it after gliding to that plateau from Jaka Itzel and started looking for a way down.
    • Jaka Itzel to the area immediately west and below it. Even though the event following the wyvern fire one has a straight line on the minimap to go there for the next event, but the multi-tier nature of the village makes finding the way to walk down almost impossible: First time I made a huge circle around the Temple of Ameyalli, every time since I’ve just jumped down and deployed my glider at the last moment.
    • Shrouded Ruins: Techincally it is suppose to be a maze, but a couple of the paths- like getting to the Pale Reaver sniping point for the final (playable) event in the chain- are too well hidden, and there is at least one place where what looks like kitten is actually the beginning of a set of stairs.
  • More mini-map icons to point the way to the current event. In one of the Iztel outpost events, you have arrows pointing the way to each location you needed to go for the event, which covered a fairly large distance. If you could give us the means to place something similar on our mini-map (perhaps by talking that outpost’s scout) that would make finding the quickest route to the event a lot easier.
  • Finally, this is more of a progression thing, but if Verdant Brink is the first area we will explore in HoT when it launches, then I would humbly suggest that the Gliding Basics mastery should have it’s XP requirement lowered significantly, perhaps even to the point that completing the HoT story instances up to that point is enough to unlock it with your first Master Point, because frankly, the idea that I will have to try to get around that map again without the glider on launch or a future BWE gives me the willies.

(edited by Foefaller.1082)

Verdant Brink is confusing to navigate.

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Foefaller.1082

Foefaller.1082

So, played some more and realized that the ramp to the plateau above the Temple of Ameyalli PoI isn’t blended into the cliffside, but just down a canyon that can be very hard to notice your first time through the area. Still think there needs to be a couple more graphical tells on how to get around the map though.

Verdant Brink is confusing to navigate.

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Kitabake.8291

Kitabake.8291

we are able to get gliding and mooshrom jumping too earlly, it breaks metroidvania style of experience last for 2 hours max