Guild Wars 2

I’m curious what other people think are the best and worst aspects of the first year of releases for GW2 (up to but not including Queen’s Jubilee). Here is my list

Best

1. Fractals of the Mists – I think this was the most significant update we’ve had to the core game: 9 short dungeons but with great variety. Best of all it was permanent, and fun.

2. Southsun Cove – People complain that Southsun is not a proper zone, because it lacks hearts, skill points, vistas, etc., but it’s the only permanent new zone we’ve received since release. (Labyrinthine Cliffs doesn’t count as it was more of a town/jumping puzzle-ish.)

3. Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon – This was a good one, and the climactic fight with the two simultaneous bosses that ended differently depending on which boss you killed first was solid gold. Too bad it was available for so short a time.

4. Shadows of the Mad King – Seemed like there was something for everyone in this release, from the Mad King’s Clock Tower to Descent into Madness, which was really fun despite being just a boss fight than a real dungeon.

5. Super Adventure Box – I usually hate mini-games, and this one isn’t for everyone, but Super Adventure Box is hefty, has substance, and polish.

Worst

1. Flame & Frost: Prelude – Fixing signs for refugees? Why was this even released independently?

2. Canach “Dungeon” – After the Molten Weapons Facility, I was exciting to see what was in store for the Southsun dungeon. Unfortunately, Canach’s Lair was simply a boss fight in a cave, and a gimmicky one at that. Whenever they take our normal open world skills away, it’s generally a bad sign, because it becomes like a mini-game.

3. Random Number Chests – Too many cool skins (Sclerite, Fused, Zodiac, etc.) locked behind gambling chests.

4. Moa Racing, Crab Toss, Belcher’s Bluff, etc., etc. – A lot of talk about improving the “core” game, yet so many updates focused on mini-games which is everything except the actual game.

5. Grind – Had to kill how many holograms? When the driving force behind an activity is not the enjoyment of the activity, but the reward, it means people are not having a good time even if they’re logging in and playing. Most people will figure out they have better things to do.

Top 5

1. Halloween, Mad King.
2. Queens Jubilee, Clockwork Chaos.
3. Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon.
4. Southsun Cove.
5. Wintersday.

Worst 5

1. Tequatl, boss week.
2. Super Adventure Box (SAB).
3. Canach “Dungeon”.
4. Flame & Frost before you met Rox & Bram.
5. Sky Pirates.

btw, you may want to put this in general discussion for ALOT more feedback…

Top 5
1. Fractals – love the idea here. Looking forward to more being added
2. Invasions. Not the zerg part, but the feeling of fighting back a real army. Has great potential for dragon invasions if the reward/farm/failure balanced is tweaked. The clockwork mobs looked awesome – kudos to the designers.
3. Southson – It’s a nice zone with harder mobs. I found little to complain about
4. Boss and champ overhauls. It’s a step in the right direction, just wish it launched bosses better
5. Achievement points. I’m a sucker for these!!

honourable mentions to the noir custscene we had. That was cool. And the wallet.

Worst 5
1. Living Story going to 2 weeks. Content feels rushed and not ready – indicated by responses from writers about time pressures and lack of UI to fill in backstory for new players.
2. Scarlet. Too cartoony for my tastes
3. Too many RNG skins. Happy to buy with gems or earn in the content.
4. A lack of Dragon activity. Not even a pact investigation. Nothing
5. Emphasis on festivals. Understood reasoning..just didn’t agree with it.

Have to say, I was finding more things to like than dislike, which is always good!

Best: Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon.
Worst: Scarlet the character.

Top 5:
1 – The Bazaar, by far.
2 – SAB. I am specially fond of W2Z2 because of Cantha.
3 – Canach himself. He is really interesting.
4 – Rox and Braham as characters, their personalities and their interactions.
5 – Molten Facility. By far my favourite dungeon ever.

Worst 5:
1 – Canach’s lair. Just plain disappointing.
2 – The election. It was just stupid. Luckily, it happened during the Bazaar. It could have been even worse othewise.
3 – Dragon ball. Awesome game, people AFK ruined it.
4 – Instances that we couldn’t run with a friend. Making instances that can be run solo is alright, but making instances that force you to solo is not. Luckily, there were not many of these.
5 – RNG chests preventing me from getting the skins I wanted. It would have been nº1, but since I can now buy the skins on TP, it doesn’t bothr me so much anymore.

The Lost Shores was the single worst event I’ve participated in.

BTW I Like FotM but the underlying principle behind it makes me sad. It was the introduction of ascended items and in turn ANet making it clear they supported a gear creep (something they had previously spoke against).

Best:
1. The whole of the Lost Shores release. From Fractals, which is the best dungeon in game, to a new explorable area, even down to the attack in LA, even though I got disconnected right before the Karka Queen battle, the release still had more permanent content than any other.
2. Shadow of the Mad King release. Slightly less important than Lost Shores since it was a holiday event and didn’t introduce as much permanent content, but still the best holiday event I’ve seen so far.
3. Wintersday. Even though I prefered how it was imagined in GW1, the holiday dungeon and jumping puzzle didn’t disappoint.
4. Ascended crafting update. Because it’s the most permanent content we got this year.
5. Changes to champions/dungeons/achievement rewards. All steps towards a positive direction in this game.

Worst:
1. Queen’s Jubilee. Really unimaginative, put all other holiday events to shame, my charr didn’t like celebrating a human queen for a month.
2. Flame & Frost. Content that took too long and didn’t give us anything and culminated into…still unsure what. Switching from guild wars lore to shallow characters and stories that are always incomplete and unimaginative. (This excludes the Molten Facility dungeon, and i hope to see it added as a fractal soon).
3. Mini games. Taking away focus from the main game is in no way a positive thing when it comes to permanent content.
4. Daily caps for everything. Not really a problem for itself, but it brings an issue that players feel forced to play every day which only makes more of them abandon it altogether.
5. No signs of expansion or any otherwise lore connected content. The promissed fractal during the Cutthroat politics was a good idea, but still unrealized… And to finish: We want Cantha!

Charons.6037:

Best:
1. The whole of the Lost Shores release.

So the bugs, crashes, lag and broken content too? lol

SoPP.7034:

Charons.6037:

Best:
1. The whole of the Lost Shores release.

So the bugs, crashes, lag and broken content too? lol

Can’t say i liked the bugs and even the fractals weren’t enjoyable at first when you couldn’t reconnect but they fixed all of those bugs, and after those fixes it remains the single largest update to date, that most of all introduced more permanent content than it did temporary ones. And even though I missed my chance at a precursor at the karka queen event, I’d go through that again if it means we’ll get the amount of permanent content we did back then.

Top 5

1. Halloween, Mad King.
2. Queens Jubilee, Clockwork Chaos, Scarlet
3. Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon.
4. Dragon Bash
5. Super Adventure Box

Worst 5

1. Tequatl, boss week.
2. November’s Karka Invasion.
3. Flame & Frost Prelude
4. Winter’s Day (and the weapon skins)
5. Canach “Solo Dungeon”.

Top 3
The opening event of Southsun
Tequatal
Mad King

Worst of the worst
SAB

Best:

1. Wintersday- To me this was the best holiday in any MMO ever. The snowball fight, choir bell, and the snow fort games were fantastic. Just put on some trans-siberian orchestra and presto: epic holiday fun! It was also the first time a musical instrument was added to the game. It was the most whimsical and festive I’ve felt in a game ever.

2. Daily Activities- There were a lot of neat mini-games added this year but that moment when there was finally enough for them to add in a daily rotation and make many of them permanent was great.

3. Dragon Ball- This was a really fun mini-game that I wish was part of the daily rotation. Just because afker’s are stupid doesn’t mean the game wasn’t really fun. Just have to take away the rewards if you do nothing during the game.

4. Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat- Really showed that Anet is learning and upping their game.

5. Friendship of Braham and Rox- I always get a chuckle out of these two. I feel more connected to them of any character since the mentor in the Durmand Priory.

6. Scarlet Invasions/Teq fight- These really show the potential of what the Elder Dragons can do one day. Maybe we will feel like the entire world is at stake eventually. When I fight Teq I put on “Fear Not This Night” and it feels epic even when we’re doomed in an overflow.

Worst:

1. Flame and Frost: Prelude- This beginning to the Living Story hurt Anet’s selling of the idea to fans more than it helped. They should have just delayed it till they had more content.

2. Queen’s Jubilee- Just a zerg fest but without the epic feeling that the Scarlet Invasions have. The Queen’s duels weren’t my thing either.

3. Confusing way of presenting the Living Story- We really need that Living Story panel they’re adding later this year and these updates need to add more lore in general.

4. Scavenger Hunts with no clues- Anything where I have to either randomly run into an item I’m searching for or go to Dulfy’s site sucks in general. I want to feel like I’m figuring out a puzzle. Not like it’s just boring busy work.

5. Super Adventure Box- I can see why people like it, it’s just not my thing because of the Minecraft style graphics.

It is funny how one person’s “best update in the history of ever” is the other person’s “worst possible thing since World War 2”.

It kinda shows that we can’t really claim that “nobody likes update x” and stuff like that.

CHIPS.6018:

Best: Molten Weapons Facility Dungeon.
Worst: Scarlet the character.

add Kiel to the worst and I agree completely!

Best:

1. Molten weapons facility (Flame&Frost in general, with hindsight)

2. Lost Shores “Conquest of southsun cove” (wish that had played out slower over a month instead of a day – please add more like it)

2.a Tequatl revamp (the OP specified up to Queens Jubilee but since many ignore that I edited this in here)

3. Aetherblade retreat (and the aetherblades themselves, before they were turned into joker minions)

4. Halloween

5. Wintersday

Worst:

1. Queens Jubilee Storyline and the character Scarlet

(loooong gap)

2. Far too much temporary content

(another long gap)

3. All the minigames

4. Invasions

5. busywork instead of content like click 300 signs/fireworks/holograms/whatevers

Worst: Ruins
Best: Halloween

Best:

• Super Adventure Box
• Bazaar of the Four Winds
• Molten Facility
• Halloween 2012
• Wintersday 2012
• Scarlet’s dungeon and invasions

Worst:

• Cutthroat Politics
• Lost Shores
• Dragon Ball (it was my favorite thing in GW1, but the GW2 version is a disgrace to its namesake)
• People farming Scarlet’s invasions and causing a failure for hundreds of people who were actually trying
• Flame and Frost: Prelude

Best permanent content added since release:

• Fractals of the Mists
• Guild Missions
• Achievement rewards
• WvW Ranks
• Minigames rotation
• Infinite tools
• LFG Tool
• sPvP Solo Queue + Interface enhancements

The best

- Pavillion
- Scarlet’s Invasions

Best:
- Lab Cliffs
Beautiful area with nice lore ties and fun diversions. I liked the election even if it was flawed in some respects and I still doubt it will have any real bearing on the future of the game
- F&F
Suffered due to the drawn out length, but a pretty decent set of stories and events when put together as a whole

Worst:
- Teq update
Nice on paper, but in practice it just ended up lumping together almost all of GW2’s technical and design limitations into one focused event
- Fractals
Once again, not at all a bad idea in concept but flawed in execution. I’m also very disheartened that the Fractal system is apparently what’s going to be used as the vehicle for future lore explorations and expansions. It’s a terrible idea because of both the inherent limitations of Fractals and the audience who they were originally targeted for.
- Canach’s Lair
Just awful. Super easy fight combined with one of my most hated gimmicks in GW2 (taking away your characters innate abilities and saddling you with a skill replacing object of some kind).

Honorable Mention:
- SAB
I love the concept and greatly enjoyed playing through it, even with the rough spots in World 2. I also love Josh Foreman as a developer for his ability to wrestle a design from his head into being in an engine that doesn’t really support it natively, and then be able to articulate his thoughts on the process. I can’t place SAB as a Best though mainly because it just doesn’t feel to me like it belongs in the world of GW2 at all.

TOP 5
1. Tequatl Revamp/Boss revamps
2. FLAME & FROST Molten Facility
3. Aetherblade Dungeon
4.AC REVAMP
5. Overall Living Story initiative

TOP LEAST FAV
1.) The Prelude of Flame & Frost (But we know the teams were restructuring)
2.) SPVP Attention in the first 2 Quarters of release
3.) Nerf to ARAH STORYMODE/Path 4 Explorable
4.) Lost Shores (November)
5.) Not enough ways to find out about LORE in game or look back on it.

Best
1. Fractals
2. SAB
3. Rose backpieces
4. Gauntlet
5. Bazaar

Worst
1. Skins locked away the Black Lion Chests
1. Kill [x], find [x], smash [x] achievements
1. Cutthroat politics voting linked to Black Lion Keys
2. Flame & Frost (exception of the dungeon)
3. Temporary Dungeons
4. Scattered storyline
5. Scarlet
Special notice: Too many small updates, looking for something of higher quality and bigger quantity at one go.

What I would absolutely want is missions. GW1 Style.
Best way to tell story. I feel that the ‘’story dungeons’’ were actually good ways of trying to get the lore across, but that it was lost in transition as you could keep on going with your personal story line. If they added those 2 together, the personal story line would’ve been so much better for me. The current dungeon has somewhat of a resemblence, as you can do additional stuff besides the main dungeon for achievements. It’s absolutely lovely.

And please for the love of God, if you’re trying to have a kind of ’’joker’’, at least give us a reason not to kill us. Her escaping ’cause she feels like it is just random, lame and pathetic.

Fractals of the Mists
WvW Ranks
Guild Missions

The rest imo is just a bunch of temp crap, and untill they open up a new area or add in new dungeons ( and I don’t mean adding in a path to an old dungeon) then the open world is just old and boring, go ahead and revamp it all, its still the same world, and people will get bored with it real fast.

Halloween stuffs were probably the best release. Nice skins, good variety of activities.
Aetherblade was okay as well, I guess. For the most part it was doable, had nice rewards.

Fractal of the mist is -plain stupid-, but we have no choice if we want to get ascended items. There is no background story whatsoever to support or even remotely explain what the hell is that thing. The path are very poorly balanced with some taking forever while others are far easier.

Molten Alliance thing was just plain confused, uninteresting in a whole.

Super Adventure Box was excessively uninteresting. What is the point of integrating Runescape in GW2? Are we running that much out of ideas on what to do? Is it because it’s easier to make mobs and maps out of cubes?

Tequatl: aside that it is impossible to beat, impossible to get on your own server all the time, and generally uninteresting after the first few people who beat it realized the loots were less than stellar for the huge waste of time and effort they combined, it was frankly uninteresting as well. Looking for little clues spread all over an entire map. Yay.

Twilight Assault: Following up with the same disaster that made Tequatl release infamous, we now have an insanely hard dungeon, with casual rewards completely unworthy of our efforts. Way to go Arenanet, not learning anything from your experiences.

Alkyone.7983:

Fractal of the mist is -plain stupid-, but we have no choice if we want to get ascended items. There is no background story whatsoever to support or even remotely explain what the hell is that thing. The path are very poorly balanced with some taking forever while others are far easier.

That’s because you don’t stop, listen or even look around, try talking to the asura at the entrance. >.>

FotM is the best Permanent Content they have added to this game yet, and it was added almost a year ago, not to mention the open possibilities that there are for this place it’s just so amazing what they could do with this place, if you’re going in there and don’t realize that then sorry to say it, you have no imagination.

BobbyStein.2315:

we have to take every post with a grain of salt, and also compare that with posts from other sites, and then compare it to player behavior in the game.

what does comparing posts to player behavior actually tell you? that players are completing the content for achievement points? you cant infer that they enjoy it just because it needs to be cleared before it vanishes forever…

anyway on topic:
best
Halloween (best overall)
SAB (april not back to school)
bazaar (fun mix of jumping and scavenger hunt )
clockwork chaos (a reason to actually revisit zones)

worst
lost shores (everything was bad, pretty much ruined the game)
Flame and frost (tedious start)
cutthroat politics (bad design to ensure split vote, nothing worth voting for)
dragon bash ( whole event was basically kill x00 click y00)

Best
Dead Eye Farm
SAB World 1
Zephyr Sanctum
Fractals
Nothing

Worst
SAB World 2
Flame and Frost Prelude
Dragon Bash
Wintersday
Return to karka land

Alright, I’ll bite.

Top 5 Releases
Note: I’m considering things on a whole per monthly update. Except being SAB (both updates) and Tequatl Rising
(from best to least best)

1. Shadow of the Mad King (though the finale was lackluster to me, everything else about it was great)
2. Flame and Frost (as a whole – though content wise it was spaced thin, I feel like later story chapters happen too fast for me to bother caring about what’s happening)
3. Bazaar of the Four Winds (it tied in GW1 lore for the first time since Halloween, excluding Dragon Festival returning as Dragon Bash)
4. Super Adventure Box (because the first time, it was bloody hilarious and enjoyable)
5. Tequatl Rising (though not perfect, a permanent update to the world boss was great)

Worst 5 Releases
(from worst to least worst)

1. Secret of Southsun (felt supriorly choppy, half-baked, and rushed – at best. Though it did give us the Karka Queen and a few new events to Southsun along with some things to speculate over properly (them spores them spores) so it wasn’t all bad).
2. Super Adventure Box: Back to School (it turned something that was 100% jokes and references for April Fool’s into canon lore… It also came out too soon since the first part with too much grind-feel with the bauble achievements that I held no gaming interest in it)
3. Wintersday (half of it felt like repeating the same kitten thing over and over and over)
4. Dragon Bash (because of the immense grind (Dragon Effigies, holograms), repeating old content (jp caches), and Aetherblade Retreat’s wtf insane bonus achievements, the intro cinematic for Marjory also felt very un-GW2-y – its plus side? Dragon Arena, fun. as. hell.).
5. The Lost Shores (too short, too little post-meta content, too kitten laggy for finale meta)

Top 5 Design concepts
Note: Here, I refer to the concept behind the content or its release – not necessarily tied to a specific content update as some span across multiple.
(from best to least best)

1. Monthly releases (RIP)
2. Progressional story (though it is not a “living story” nor is it a “living world” as it all focuses on Scarlet and her actions’ reprecussions and SAB; sans Tequatl Rising)
3. Finally adding permanent content (should have happened sooner…)
4. Those interactive objects in dredge/Flame Legion camps added during F&F Part 3; as well as the interactive objects added to Southsun. Could use more of these things.
5. Wider variety of backpack items and weapon skins (though they all have their draw backs which really reduce things)

Worst 5 Design concepts
(from worst to least worst)

1. Bi-weekly releases with too much temporary content. The lack of polish shows more of then than not (P.S., what happened to “when its ready”?).
2. How story is told (not enough details over too long a time period; I know this sounds counteractive with listing F&F as 2nd in best releases but that update gave enough throughout to keep people guessing, even at the end, but not too little that they can guess anything and everything and be equally likely; furthermore they didn’t restrict the knowledge gained from the short stories to said short stories – it wasn’t perfect, but it did a far superior job than any subsequent update has in storytelling – its placement in the timeline compared to initial release content is also confusing. Also, too much comedic relief).
3. Repeating old content with temporary changes (e.g., Caching Out and Learn to Kite )
4. Temporary achievements whom’s content can be done at any time later on (e.g.,, all Aetherblade killing achieves from Sky Pirates in Tyria, and all invasion achieves from Clockwork Chaos)
5. Scarlet Invasion happening just after Champion loot bags’ introduction (promoting farming, anyone?)
   Special Honorable Mention (because it’s just that bad): Every single update including “New items in the Gemstore!” with over half being RNG based (even Tequatl Rising had RNG gemstore items – the dyes). New items/returning items isn’t bad, but having new RNG determined items every single time with such highlights?
   Special Special Honorable Mention (because I feel it needs to be mentioned): ArenaNet giving out a pay to win item – Ellen Kiel/Evon Gnashblade Support Bundles Pay money to get an advantage over other players!

Best:
- Bazaar of the Four Winds (brilliant!)
- Aetherblade’s Retreat and now Twilight Assault (simply because these dungeons present a challenge!)
- Clockwork Chaos (for its massive invasions)
- Queen’s Gauntlet (yes, room for improvement, but the challenge was well accepted!)
- Halloween
- Wintersday

Worst
- Flame & Frost series (all of it)
- Southsun series (all of it)
- Tequatl Rising (not the boss revamp – the new Teq fight is great. But the boss week and surrounding stuff is tremendously tedious)
- SAB (NOT because of the brilliant work by Josh & kitten the JP and challenging content – without sounding like Sylar I’d like a peek into their minds! – but I could never get into it with a good feeling, it just feels so out of place in the fantasy setting. Seems more like a testament to the slapstick comedy stamp that Anet has put on GW2; I’d pay for a much darker tone overall in this game like the surrounding stories in GW1 and other games)

Best:

1. - Mad King – my fav since GW1, and the Scythe staff and Grinning shield.. awesome
2. - Molten Facility – I’m a PvP player, a species that’s going extinct soon, but i really enjoyed this bossfight. I went there only to take part in it. Once after a party wipe I even tried to solo both bosses after being the last man standing
3. - Queen’s Jubilee – the new area in DR is splendid.
4. - Wintersday – I really missed the human Gods and I just loath the asura, but loved the puzzle and the minigame where I had to defend the dolyaks – too bad the rewards were.. bad
5. - Bazaar – the only spot of magic on the techno-junk of the living story’s past year – also some nod to.. Cantha? >_>

Worst:

1. sab – this total lore and gamebreaker doesn’t even deserve capital letters. It was fun for an april fool’s day, but the fact that you can bring the weapons out and making this a pretty frequent content, giving it ties to the world………. OMKormir
2. Cutthroath Politics – could’ve been the best idea ever and my fav part of the living story, I was really excited about it – but players shouldn’t decide about which content pack they want – players who play fractals or GW1 mostly voted for Evon for the fall of Abaddon, while casuals were voting for the cheaper WP costs and the RNG hate… it was like deciding between world peace and new quaggan plush toy – not about world peace or war / bluew or brown quaggan backpack – I hope this makes sense
3. - Scarlet
4. - Technology technology and technology, asuras and charrs only, we never use magic to handle situations
5. The Scarlet content yet to come

Top:
1. Fractal
2. SAB
3. Halloween
4. Aetherblade Dungeon
5. TA p3 rewamp
6. Champion Rewamp

Worst:
1. Trahern
2. Canach ’’Dungeon’’
3. Cutthroat Voting
4. Lack of ’’titles’’ for our characters. Really, we should get more titles for things we accomplish.
5. Ascended weapon release. This just messed up the economy to much to not be here.

Honestly

I cant list a best or worst. I can name areas that need improvement still.

But that would be for another subject.

Best:
1. Taco the Sauceless revamp
2. Mad King (same level as Taco, but since TQTL got me a mini dragon and was actually improving the real pve community and filtering zerker trash and casuals away, it got first place)
3. Liadri
4. MF
5. Politics

Worst:
1. Liadri (the fight was awesome, but so many kittening little things ruined it just because of lazy devs, and being lazy on a good thing is worse than just applying a wrong design decision onto something)
2. Fractals (same as above, epic concept, kinda good/bit memorable, but such a terrible overall execution from rings to rng picking to scaling only being bigger numbers).
3. Southsun (servers dying, again it needed proper testing)
4. The only actually bad thing, Crap toss and other “activities/fake pvp in pve” instead of allowing duels and trading.
5. Second SAB (again terrible execution and ruining the fun of the original sab… not that hard content was bad, i tried to enjoy tribu mode and it was cool… till the freaking hitboxes and the water and… oh even post nerf it was just a time sink instead of a fun memory of old games), yaying more grind.

Here goes mine:

BEST:
1. Southsun Cove. New permanent area (we need more of this), with new enemies to fight and resources to gather, plus an interesting storyline (though the canach related dungeons almost made it to the “worst” list).
2. Fractals. Great dungeon design, I just wish you could also do them individually so you could also play them when you don’t have much playing time.
3. Seasonal events. Just like the 1st one, I was going to add halloween then christmas but just put them together in a single entry.
4. Some of the living story dungeons (Molten facility and Aetherblade retreat). I won’t add the new TA one yet because I haven’t played it yet, though, might be here, on the other list, or not at all.
5. The bazaar of the 4 winds. Just such a beautiful place, I just wish it was a permanent addition.

Worst:
1. Skins locked behind RNG boxes. Good that they at least added a token system, but still IMHO they’re way too rare. There’s a fine line between making them rare, and so rare that nobody will bother, and I think Anet still hasn’t found that balance. And it’s a shame, some of those skins were beautiful (zodiac, atherized…) yet I’ve never seen a single one in the open world. But as long as people keep buying them (sometimes even in the hundreds), I undestand why they keep using them.
2. Time limited achievements that are just “find X and interact with it Y times”. Good thing that the dragon bash meta could be completed without those piñatas, otherwise I would have just ignored it, and if it wasn’t for Dulfy I wouldn’t have even bothered with the boss week scavenger hunts (I wish they had at least some clues on where to find them). I didn’t have a problem with holograms (for example) as those were just in the open world and marked in the map, I hit them as I played regularly.
3. Big events that became unplayable because of lag (first southsun event, boss fights when the rewards were character instead of account based).
4. Champion loot. I do agree that champions should give good loot, and I love several of the champion weapon skins, but either champion loot shouldn’t be so much better than any other activity in the game, or they should scale with nearby players in such a way that they don’t become the single best easy loot source in the game (champion trains anyone?).
5. Condition damage caps. I understand the why (bandwith limits, engine limits, server taxing, whatever), but it sucks that condition builds get such a shaft in PvE (I play a condition mesmer as one of my chats). Something must be done about it, either change how they work in PvE (so they don’t become OP in PvP) or at least change the fights where the cap can easily be hit to have alternatives (the tequatl fight is a good start… before conditions users were kittened as tequatl was always condition capped, now at least we can do other objectives like guarding turrets).

NOTE: Edited because I had added Tequatl and other boss fights to the “BEST” list, but hadn’t read the OP of only up to but not including queens jubilee. Another honorary mention is the LFG tool.

I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything but to give a bit of feedback;

I loved the Lost Shores and will stick up for it, people complain that the Living Story hasn’t given enough real permanent change, but I went there, with my ship mates and Ellen we stormed across that island, we built forts, we carved out roads, built bridges, and drove and Ancient Karka back into its lair before finally defeating it. The event itself had a few technical issues but for me, it’s the most memorable and fun update we’ve had. More please.

The freestyle jumping puzzle at the Labrynthine Cliffs was fantastic, would love to see another please!

Love the Delaqua cutscene, would like to see that and other cutscenes collected up in a single book/item. The writing and style was amazing.

The official start of the Story was the only real issue for me, too much hype and too slow to get rolling should have done it like the whales , the rest of the updates I’ve found something in them that I have really enjoyed.

I can’t really make a full call on the SAB:B2S and Teq Rising releases, I hope they aren’t being shoe horned into the story, as much as I’ve missed the main story progression others seem like they needed a break so I think it’s ok to just have something happen to the side. I enjoyed the content though, Trib mode!

Oh jumpads are on thing that worry me, they are finding their way into more and more content and as someone living in the Southern Hemisphere they can lag out and cause issues. Just a note to not make them the only option for progression during story please.

Otherwise, thanks all for the updates!

BobbyStein.2315:

Gabby.3205:

It is funny how one person’s “best update in the history of ever” is the other person’s “worst possible thing since World War 2”.

It kinda shows that we can’t really claim that “nobody likes update x” and stuff like that.

That’s what makes the feedback so interesting. There is no content in any game that is universally appealing, but it’s helpful to know how people are reacting to each release, just the same. So we have to take every post with a grain of salt, and also compare that with posts from other sites, and then compare it to player behavior in the game.

It paints a very interesting picture. Forum comments are just one small part of it, especially since the number of active posters is a tiny fragment of the overall player base.

As always, thanks for sharing your opinions.

Except if the Mad King isn’t on anyones top list, they will suffer a horrible screaming death right right? : 3

Best:
1. Halloween – flavor was fantastic
2. Southsun Cove – permanent new zone, even if it’s small, it’s pretty
3. Fractals – interesting dungeon concept, permanent addition
4. Bazaar – acceptably temporary, great lore, high-fantasy feel
5. Wintersday – good flavor, not quite as great as halloween

Worst:
1. All the temporary stuff that isn’t tied to recurring events/holidays. So, almost everything but the above. Seriously, just stop with temporary content, it blows. The game would benefit a thousand times more by permanent expansions to the lore and game world.

I dunno, each update has good and bad parts.

Best gameplay:
Fractals. Substantial, scaling, variety, challenging, it was a strong update. It’s a shame the gameplay afterwards was so lacklustre.

Best lore:
Bazaar of the Four Winds (the Glint connection makes this a clear winner, this is one of the most interesting threads in the entire game – best of all it hasn’t been corrupted by Scarlet).

Best characters:
Braham and then Rox (in that order). They started fine in Flame and Frost but they secured the title during the Queen’s Jubilee. Too bad they haven’t been relevant to the story lately despite being involved. Faren runs a close second (third? I feel like Braham and Rox share the mantle, although I’d love to see Braham’s dynamic with someone else).

Best Quality of Life update:
LFG tool. Bar none. A launch feature that didn’t make it. Nothing comes close.

Best reward model:
SAB. Tokens earned from the relevant content that can be used to acquire the content themed weapon set. No RNG skins from the story or open world chests. Actual content which feels rewarding (Flame and Frost and Aetherblade Retreat had crappy rewards considering their respective weapon skins were monopolised by the gem store). Bazaar of the Four Winds gets an honourable mention for moving in the right direction by allowing the back skin items to be tradable and repeatedly obtainable. Acquiring a catcher, desert rose or rucksack isn’t a pipe dream and having two on the same account is actually possible. Meta achievement back skins are better than gem store RNG ones that can’t be traded and are temporary, but content reward skins are the way to go imo.

Best Open World tie-in:
I’m tempted to give this to either Scarlets invasions or the Settlers vs Consortium events but I really feel like the Balloons were the best designed story tie-in. The smallest amount of story the dynamic events held was a huge improvement from Holograms and other “press f” content.

Worst gameplay:

• Sign posts
• Pumpkin carving achievement (stand alone they are fine, achievement points to do dozens if not hundred is not fine).
• Snowmen achievement
• Piñata achievement
• Hologram achievement
• Scavenger hunts with no story, clues or lore (Mad King one was perfect, the drop box one was kinda boring, Dragon Week one was by far the worst)

Worst lore:
Anything to do with Scarlet or Ellen Kiel. Logan’s lack of character growth from past events (repeating the same themes with the Queen that were already covered with great consequence in the novel and the dungeon story modes – he doesn’t show any change).

Worst characters:
Scarlet and Ellen Kiel. Scarlet would be fine if she was not the central figure. Her shoulders aren’t broad enough to hold up the weight of the plot that she has been given. I keep having to deal with her, but I never care about her (or what she’s doing). Ellen Kiel is the most boring character I’ve ever met in an MMO. I’m very happy she’s gone.

Worst Quality of Life update:
Ascended tier. People have written encyclopaedias on why this is bad. Anything else that moves towards “daily design” and time gates.

Worst reward model:
Any of the RNG chests. I also don’t like that certain achievements seem to be exclusively intended to force you to play during a certain 2-4 week period to get them when it’s completely unnecessary. Every achievement associated with a mini game during their initial introduction is guilty of this. If coming first in Sanctum Sprint was worth an achievement during Bazaar of the Four Winds, why would it not be now?

Favourite release overall:
Bazaar of the Four Winds. The map was beautiful, the lore was some of the best stuff we’ve seen, the Zephyrites have a lot of depth and they were only around for one month – the Aetherblades have been poping in and out for months and we know nothing about them. Crystal collecting was fun(ish) and the soundtrack was awesome. The mini games were seriously overkill, but the abundance of back items (I’m counting the rewards from Southsun Survival and Aspect Arena as well) that were obtainable with added variety was welcome. The actual combat gameplay was a bit off, but the story, lore and themes of the new map and its people were all fantastic.

Wost release:
It’s hard to pick one because I usually think of something I liked in most of them. I’ll go with SAB because I didn’t buy GW2 to play an imitation platformer and the recent lore addition further roots it in the story. I wish I could give this to something Scarlet related but the gameplay in recent updates has been an improvement despite the story getting worse.

Best:
1. FOTM.
2. Tequati
3. Liadri

Worst.
1. SAB
2. The story of “Living Story”

Best:
1. Halloween ( no.1 event to wait)
2. Fractals (nothing bad to say)
3. Molten Facility (good but little too short)
4. TA new path (good dungeon not too hard or easy)
5. Sky Pirates (like the idea)

Worst:
1. Lost shores Ancient karka fight (too much Lag)
2. Cutthroat politics ( i dont like politics)
3. Super adventure box (i like it as a mini game not as whole content)
4. Last stand at southsun (boring story)
5. Wintersday (i really waited to see Grentch´s stealing presents and norn dress like a santa claus giving presents.)

best:
1. fractals – pretty fun overall
2. queen’s gauntlet – challenging, fun, nerve wrecking at times – loved it
3. zepyhr sanctum – great map design, good story to it, and fun JPs cause of the gimmicks on the map, lots of fun
4. MF redesign – something that was needed from the getgo
5. the story of living story since dragon bash – many people complain, I don’t really see a reason for complaints. Life moves on after zhaitan gets his head bashed in in a very sad way.

worst:
1. tequatl redesign – not cause it’s hard but cause it’s inaccessible to majority who don’t give a rat’s kitten about guesting or mumble or ts.
2. SAB – I don’t even know what that was supposed to be. Annoying ugly and boring as hell
3. minigames tied to the living stories – never really could make myself do any of those more than once or twice. really just a timesink for ppl who don’t find anything else to do. personally if I wanted minigames I’d go and play some flashgames not this crap.
4. southsun cove and everything tied to it – most useless map ever.
5. ascended weapon crafting and timegating – not so much the crafting of the weapon per se, more the road from 400-500 for anyone who doesn’t have a frigging gazzillion gold

Too many people listing SAB in the worst category.

1. SAB w1
2. Mad King
3. Fractals
4. SAB w2 (post bug patch, still more content than ANY other update)
6. Winter’s Day Toy Dungeon (would have been more fun if it scaled to number of players, but was rampaging awesome fighting off waves of toys and destroying the mini villages.)

Worst:
1. Lost Shores (Again because it was just a shody release, the content could have been good if it had functioned at all like it’s intention.)
2. Scarlet (basically in general)
3. All attempt at ‘story’ since flame and frost with the exception of the interesting new cutscene design and the zephyr sanctum. Although marred by:
4. The “Election” really, I mean… really? Who can buy more votes for a pointless fixed election between someone you’ve barely ever heard of and the goody twoshoes who stole all the credit for everything you’ve ever done. (Imagine if we had gotten to vote between Roxx and Brahm.)
5. Secret of Southson, second half (started out strong and hopeful, then died in a putrid fire of horrid disappointment.)

Best,

1) Bazaar of the 4 winds. Just loved how you could move around. Usually dislike jumping puzzles to an extreme.
2) From ending of flame and frost to middle of southsun living stories.
3) Queens gauntlet and jubilee
4) Common wallet
5) Introduction of Scarlet as a hyper villain. Not everyone likes the humour but to me she is a blast.

Worst
1) introduction of Southsun in November last year, all of it.
After that it is just a matter of content I do no participate in enough to be interested in. That for me was SAB on both instances. New dungeons, since I have not done all the old ones and have no real desire to do so. Teq update since I personally have no interest in tracking down a group, hoping I get on the same instance, and hoping people are able to co-ordinate enough to kill it. But like I said, I have no interest. I do not expect anyone to design a game around me, unless I create one myself that is.

Best:
1. The Mad King
2. Winter’s Day
3. SAB World 1

Worst:

1. Karka Queen One-Time Event
2. SAB World 2
3. Teq Update

Best – everything related to GW1, dragons, major lore
Worst – everything unrelated to GW1, dragons, major lore (useless fillers)

Best (great to good)

1) The mad king.. the atmosphere was truly spooky.
2) WvW rank and siege additions.
3) Bazaar (I hate jumping puzzles but even I liked these due to the skills you got).
4) Wintersday.. too repetitive, but still good.
5) Cutthroat politics, although not implemented well (voting for both to get the APs) not a bad update.

Worse (bad to terribad)
1) SAB both releases, if I wanted donkey kong or mario I would have bought them!
2) Karka queen event, I happen to work and missed the entire thing.. hence no chance at a per-cursor.
3) Taco, more one hit mechanics are NOT wanted, also this was not open world content.
4) Champ zerging (nuff said)
5) The necro update that added burning!?! (I just wanted to be a kitten vampire)

Special note: I didn’t include dungeons because I don’t (or rarely) do them. I have a hard enough time avoiding the tells and circles (when they are noticeable), without having to be forced into a tight environment while doing so.

edit: clarity

The Best: Scarlet love her <3 ( Queens gauntlet and jubilee, Clockwork Chaos)

Worst: Nothing like them all :P

Everyone loves Halloween and Mad King
MAKE IT A FULL MONTHLY EVENT.

I don’t like this half October stuff with one sylvari dungeon…

BEST:
1. Halloween/Mad King
2. Super Adventure Box
3. Molten Facility
4. Lost Shores (Despite the massive lag and disconnects)
5. Dragon Bash

I feel Bazaar of the Four Winds deserves an honorable mention. I did not like some of the things that came with Cutthroat Politics, let along the whole voting thing.

Worst:
1. Canach’s Lair (Last Stand at Southsun). I don’t think I even need to go into why.
2. Flame & Frost prelude. Introduction of tedious fetch quests and achievements, oh joy!
3. Queen’s Jubilee. Somehow this update just lost me completely. Remedied somewhat by the follow up.
4. Tequatl. Don’t get me wrong, I love that it’s more of a challenge, and challanging content is good, it just seriously highlights a few flaws with the game. From AFK leechers to overflows, to terribly teaching fight mechanics.

Splintered Coast is now a ghost town outside of maybe once daily during server prime (resets). Making fights more interesting is fine, but when it gets to the point that a large portion of the player-base no longer wants to do it, that’s evidence of something amiss. Some better event scaling and reward should be considered. I mean really, the vet swarms and champs seem to spawn regardless of how many people are actually there. It’s like they gave up on event difficulty scaling, despite it being such a unique feature to GW2

Best

The Mad King
Account Wallet
F&F dungeon end boss
New TA path mechanics
Zephyr Sanctum looked really cool had barely anything to it though
Fractals
MF Redesign

Worst

-Black Lion Ticket scraps when you need multiple tickets and they have a terrible drop rate
-Non customizable UI(terrible decision imo especially with worthless screen clutter like personal story/living story updates)
-Living story characters besides hobo/job-o tron he actually made me laugh rest I just don’t care to pay attention to
-Cutt throat politics were terribly done with terribly unbalanced rewards. The short story for Evon should of been an in game cutscene and Kiel should of had a similar cutscene.
-No new full armor sets for the different armor types from the living story that are not in the gem store
-SAB just not for me
-Camera still needs lots of work
-Friend still has audio bug that prevents him from playing
-WvW has no gem store love
-None of the new or past dungeons added by the living story have given me something cool from a boss/mob drop just greens and blues and maybe a rare seems like a pretty lackluster reward system
-Temp Content makes devs work seem worthless
-The 2 week acheive rush and move on to next update mind set of the community instead of giving players lasting quality content to do for an extend period of time for the content itself instead of the achievements
-Lackluster WvW support and constant backwards mindest of WvW Dev team(orbs favor winning server lets bring the buff back, Wxp/rank not account bound, no commander changes, see WvW forum/other forums for more)
-Barely touching commander tags
-Tequatly being designed like a raid boss when it’s an open world boss and providing no proper way to find your own instance to actually do it with a guild/organized group. Also not scaling properly with smaller groups and having no system in place to degrade its difficulty when a fail happens to give the next attempt a better chance at completion to prevent people just leaving and never coming back.
-Difficulty in GW2 being a lot of about 1 shot mechanics and huge random spikes in difficulty instead of a steady climb and mechanics that are more obvious to the player and less about 1 shotting on the first actual sight of the mechanic
-Jumping puzzles offer nothing unique for first time completion like a mini or something to remember the puzzle by and to get a bigger feeling of accomplishment.
-Removing content to put more in just means your getting rid of something your team worked kitten to put something over it pretty much the same as temporary content and makes no sense to me.
-Non Alt friendly design
-Skill lag
-Lack of Map expansion although the game still needs lots of work so maybe that’s a good thing
-The lack of Love for Engineers when it comes to back pieces and legendaries be cool if our turrets were different depending on our race as well but you know just a random dream of mine.
-No Dark/Creepy legendaries
-Grind
-no reward for successful dodges(maybe half my used endurance returned)