Guild Wars 2

I’m focusing on this episode but I’m talking about this entire Season, really. Also there are spoilers I’m not hiding, because this is feedback and if you haven’t played the current episode or the previous ones, do that and make your own informed opinions.

MAP DESIGN
Holy crap I like Lake Doric. It’s fun, has great world events, cool secrets, silly things and it’s beautiful. The watchtower was super cool because it was so hard to ascend it that it felt like a reward for those that made it to the top (and the mastery point was a sweet bonus too). I’m not going to continue on with talking about the region because I found it extremely enjoyable and have no criticism for it. Keep it up!

THE STORY
This has been really good until the most current episode.

What the actual hell is going on? It feels like Lost, and that’s not good. The creators of Lost didn’t have a goal, kept making more mysteries that had no answers, and it became a mess and everyone hates it. Every episode adds more mystery without answers or ends, and there it’s self defeating. The plot holes being created are big enough to fit a whole game in them. Like Justicar Bauer has contradicting statements so there’s no way to know anything about the Mursaat story.

The retconning needs to stop. It started with Glint and her “freeing herself,” totally ignoring Arah p2, telling us that she was freed by an Orrian ritual that unbound her from Kralk’s energy. Now with Dorian not being dead. Why do this? There obviously wasn’t any plan for this back in 2005 since there wasn’t any hint he wasn’t dead, but here he is. Back alive due to the power of Deus Ex Machina! Lazerus is a different since he was hinted at being alive all the way back in GW1. I do not like this direction that the story is going, and should be considered carefully where it’s going.

THE MISSIONS
They are not going well. LS:S1-2 were really good, what happened? There were new game mechanics in them, new enemies, bonuses and no arbitrary grinding. I am so sick of the arbitrary tasks to get from instance 1 to instance 2. I don’t mind exploring the area and doing all the things, because I’m going to do it anyway. I really like exploring and that’s GW2’s strongest trait; it requires no incentive to do.

The bosses are boring too. Most can be summed up as “needs to be broken to take damage” and rarely pose a threat. I loved the Asura in the Caithe story because there was a lot going on and you needed to figure him out to beat him. I could give reasons why I loved all the bosses in season 1 and 2 but for 3 I can’t give one.

As far as gameplay goes I can only give one part of a mission I really liked, which was in the Beetlestone Manor before getting to Cadecus. The tunnel part was executed brilliantly with both the stealth options and utilizing the environment to wipe out the bandits that have given everyone stress at least once in their CM explorable runs.

ALL THE TALKING
There is way too much talking in this living story season. Not just this one, actually the most recent one has the least, but they all have way too much talking and waiting. I cringe every time Taimi is referenced because I fear it’s going to be a literal 15 minute monologue of Taimi saying things I already know during episode 2. The writing isn’t bad and there are some good quips here and there, but this is a game. I just wanna play the game and not get told by another by another character whats going on. I want to see it. I want to experience it. I feel really bad for the VAs too. They’re good and they aren’t half assing their jobs but there is so much talking for every three months. There is as much talking in each story as in a friggen full release! The devs know this too, I remember a post by Mike (I believe) saying there was something like 1500 lines of voiced dialogue in a single episode, and wow that is too much. I don’t know why this is, but it’s too much. I resent so many characters now, because of the hours of dialogue that doesn’t need to exist. Again, it’s not bad dialogue, but there’s too much, and it needs to be edited down to eliminate any superfluous dialogue that interupts gameplay.

GOING FORWARD
Can we please get some info on this? I haven’t heard anything about what’s going on for 2017, and we’ve gotten info for every year prior. Here’s some questions I would like an answer to:

• Will there be another expansion and if so 2017 or 2018 or even 2019?
• Will there be more elite specializations?
• Will PvP continue to have new maps?
• Will Stronghold get a needed overhaul?
• What’s going on with WvW?
• Any non-raid, challenging content coming out?
• ETA for legendary armor?
• Will there be future balance changes to prevent the game from getting stale?
• Pretty much anything that doesn’t have to do with the gemstore?

I love the game but it feels like no one knows what’s going to happen next with it, and that’s worrisome.

Where is Dorian alive in the story? Do you mean Saul? Because he was specifically not killed off in GW1 and it was always believed he was alive somewhere. His fate was unknown.

I’m not sure what retconning has been added. A lot of the lore enthusiasts are saying how well things have been tied up and correlated together.

Talking – It’s always going to be a balance. More and better dialogue has been a frequent request from the community, so from that p.o.v. they have delivered from the feedback. Not everyone will approve though. Personally I welcome more – this episode felt rather light.

Expansion. Yes one is being worked upon. No we don’t know when it is coming although they specifically said they didn’t want to wait 3 years like HoT. They will release info once they are ready and when spoilers wont be forthcoming (I doubt any info will be prior to end of S3).

I vaguely remember them talking about new pvp maps, but it was part of a Reddit AMA, so I can’t remember the details.

Legendary Armour is hoped to be ready for episode 5. Not guaranteed, but that appears to be their aim based on the AMA.

Next balance change is due before episdoe 5 (presumably once they have fully analysed the pvp season data and made appropriate adjustments and QA).