Guild Wars 2

And really! Until now, it was just interesting, but The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2 won all my respect.

It actualy brings the Lore alive, and not making fun of it.
We meet nice people to have real conversations,
finally we’re not destroying the game maps even more
and we can do a unique bossfight instead!

Bonus: I’ve just found out how mutch I care about Taimi <3 !!
Her reactions was so realistic and cute, this character now had the eSoul!

I would like to say my Thanks to the team who made it, it was my first outstanding good experience of Living Story!

We hope the future brings same good episodes!

RoyalPredator.9163:

And really! Until now, it was just interesting, but The Dragon’s Reach: Part 2 won all my respect.

It actualy brings the Lore alive, and not making fun of it.
We meet nice people to have real conversations,
finally we’re not destroying the game maps even more
and we can do a unique bossfight instead!

Bonus: I’ve just found out how mutch I care about Taimi <3 !!
Her reactions was so realistic and cute, this character now had the eSoul!

I would like to say my Thanks to the team who made it, it was my first outstanding good experience of Living Story!

We hope the future brings same good episodes!

I agree, even though some improvement could have been made (mostly to the first part, bit long and not enough action, also doing 4 times in total for achievements point was just wrong)

The boss fight is actually one of my favorite in a while, just enough “puzzle”, a bit easy for experienced players, but not boring. Lore wise is was very nice, I liked how they are bringing back Canach, hell even Trahearne. I wish I could have chosen to support Taimi with her invention though, as the commander of the Pact I think we should be able to judge if a situation is unfit.

The story could bear a lot of politics IMO.
When I was in the garden party, It just felt like I’m in the Red Keep’s Jaehaera’s Gardens, with “The Spider” ’s spies everywhere. LoL.

Let’s see Trahearne DIE

RoyalPredator.9163:

Let’s see Trahearne DIE

Yea, stop teasing us Anet. It’s a bit too hard to bear after realizing WHY Canach is being sent to Fort Trinity for…. * stabby stabby time *

Didn’t car for the divinity reach part, but was pleasantly surprised with the rest…..

Well, the opposite at me. I don’t care about explorations, I care about Power, Money, Politics… and Family.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Well, the opposite at me. I don’t care about explorations, I care about Power, Money, Politics… and Family.

Slow down Frank Underwood..

I cared for all of it. Good balance.

Chauncey Von Snuffles III.

That’ll be all.

Another thing that’s pleased me in all of Season Two, but it’s again brought out in this particular episode, is that the Player Character is given a better spotlight. The NPCs look to you for aid and decisions, and you’re not playing second fiddle. When that’s combined with the better writing for the NPCs -- both the ones you interact with and the ones in the crowd -- the world comes alive more.

A bunch of nice ideas in this EP. In fact season 2 is marked by many good ideas (too bad so many of them only get used once or twice).

The garden party was somewhat hampered by the lack of decently implemented fail-states and limited interrogation mechanics (although I really would love to see this come up again, although only more naturally implemented)
The boss fight at the end of the episode was in my opinion the most cinematic so far. The summit was a bit clunky dialog wise (a bit more back and forward would have been nice… Even a convinced-progress bar where we need to argue and convince the summit members would have been nice but now it’s just walls of text).

Completely agree with you, OP. I greatly enjoy how much I am more invested and interested in the lore and in the game after this new story and it makes me want to actually start playing GW2 again.
Two things that stood out were 1)Getting to know each person in the group more with every quest, making me actually care for them instead of throwing random people in that no one cares about. 2) Being the main character in OUR story for once
Excellent job so far can’t wait for the next one!
-

To be honest, I don’t like when we’re in the spotlight and become “the hero who saves the world with a littlefinger”. We’re ain’t gods, just successful & respected citizens of our race.

When this spotlight goes to tyrian Politics; connections, decisions, statements and all that kind of things will mean something, we would see the world Living, the happenings explained.

I don’t say it has to be so mutch at edge like in Skyrim, where you really saved the world ~alone and they jail you for stealing a cookie, not to mention they still look on you like the last homeless garbage – but at a well balanced state, just like I felt at this episode.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I don’t say it has to be so mutch at edge like in Skyrim, where you really saved the world ~alone and they jail you for stealing a cookie, not to mention they still look on you like the last homeless garbage – but at a well balanced state, just like I felt at this episode.

That’s mostly just issues with state-management. It’s easier to produce a generic world reaction to you (i.e. before you’re able to slap dragons to death) and keep that in place than to crate different world reactions as the story progresses (i.e. different global reactions based on how effectively you can slap dragons). The guards were programmed with limited responses to your character (which don’t necessarily change as your character progresses through the story). So I’d say Skyrim example is more an issue with the game mechanics not reflecting game narrative (so ludo-narrative dissonance I guess?) where your example relates purely to the narrative (placing you more in the spotlight).

RoyalPredator.9163:

It actualy brings the Lore alive, and not making fun of it.

You’re going to have to point to me where this occurred. I didn’t see it. In fact, I saw the opposite.

RoyalPredator.9163:

We meet nice people to have real conversations,

Again, you’ll have to point this out to me. I didn’t see it.

RoyalPredator.9163:

finally we’re not destroying the game maps even more
and we can do a unique bossfight instead!

This, I can surprisingly agree with.

synk.6907:

Another thing that’s pleased me in all of Season Two, but it’s again brought out in this particular episode, is that the Player Character is given a better spotlight. The NPCs look to you for aid and decisions, and you’re not playing second fiddle. When that’s combined with the better writing for the NPCs — both the ones you interact with and the ones in the crowd — the world comes alive more.

I don’t know… I feel like all this conversations are just to please the players about Trahearne “taking up all the glory”, the dialogue seems so forced. Ever since this new season started the NPC’s just keep reminding us how useless they would be without us.

I mean I suppose that’s what everyone wanted, not being the “second fiddle”, but this constant reminder is just getting annoying. We already know that we’re the most powerful beings on Tyria there’s no need to keep repeating it -_-

The new season has increased the amount of content delivered in the patches and the amount of story telling, but still struggles to make it feel like the world is changing due to our actions. Outside of the improvements they made to existing events that were already pretty good, the new events added are just enemies randomly popping up and going away on a timer or persisting until completed. No matter what we do as players the world operates on a schedule and have no control over the fate of the zones as a result. Most NPCs don’t react to the new changes, but still go on their business as if nothing is going on around them.

I’d like the scheduled events to go away and more events be added that tell little stories that have player choice affecting how the zone operates should the event go one way or the other. At the moment the game just brings me back long enough to see the new story and then vacate, and even that activity is becoming low on my priority list as better games come out that tell better tales where my actions as a player matter to the world.

Andel McCoy, you’re welcome.
Nice work, keep it comming!

angel i like to express the great job youve been doing on the ls2. every time i hear something about it mainly from points of interest they are mentioning your name. either they are just pluging your name but i suspect your a lot with making it a better ls season and deserve praise

The whole LS Season 2 has comprised of farming events on the same map and doing a few story instances. I guess we have to be grateful we don’t have to fix signposts anymore now that the devs have learned from their past mistakes?

It is not LS Team’s fault/duty to handle with farm-grind behavior of players.
They’re working on the story and all the elements comming with it, not the overall concept of GW2’s endgame.

Most of Loyal player knows that world-mechanism has to be changed ASAP to get people off grinding. Not to be egoist, but in my opinion, I didn’t yet saw any post about the solution of this issue – other than mine dynamical territorry war system.

I can agree with OP. It’s very good that season 2 focused on actual story, and not on short cutscene, few senseless phrases and weeks of zerg-grinding events. Also that system when you don’t have actual time to play and can just log-in to unlock new episode to play later is so good, I couldn’t imagine… really. Huge improvement, since I had to skip few LS season 1 just for that reason. Keep it up please!

P.S. I know that’s not the right place, but it strikes me hard that Kasmeer and Marjory are, well… lesbians? Their relationships and dialogs are soooo cute =)

Anise, Canach and Kasmeer have really done brilliantly in this episode – more of them please

I thought they did a great job on this living story in terms of dialogue and development. Characters feel a bit deeper. More importantly, you feel more important. People remember who you are, you have a reputation, mulltiple parties need you etc.

What this did really well: Unique boss fight, new zone to explore, story and characters way more developed. I feel like the rewards for the story were much better, especially in terms of dragonite ore/dust/fragments.

What could do better: Could make a few instances like there was for defense of lionsarch. I liked the feeling of being under siege, it was epic to work with everyone to help the city evacuate. The multievent model here doesn’t quite feel like the same amount of teamwork… Also, Could make the content specific rewards better and acquisition more fun. Spinal blades was so much more fun to obtain then whatever this plant thing is.