Guild Wars 2

I was going to save the last two parts of this first half of the season up until it was all finished. I was gonna “binge” play it like a TV season DVR’d. I decided I wanted to go through it instead. I enjoyed it.

The Good

The boss fights. You all did a great job with the statue fight and the dragon fight in The Grove. I loved it. I did the Dragon fight with my Ranger using a sword. The sword still needs fixing guys(but that’s a thread for a different time). The pacing was great. I loved the procession in The Grove. It felt important. The rewards at the end were nice.
I really enjoyed the interactions between all of the NPCs and the dialog. At what point does Rox drop the Legion Shtick though when everyone else around her already knows she has a new warband including Rytlock?

The Bad
No items dropping in the instanced portions period. Isn’t this where the replayability comes in? The content is permanent. Great! Is the content replayable without drops? That’s up for debate, but I don’t see a strong argument for it being very replayable sans loot.
Magic Find is 100% useless. All the rewards are in the form of items that MF has zero impact on. I don’t think I need to explain why this would be frustrating to a player. With it being playable one time though because there is no loot for magic find to affefct, I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Some of the arguments from the leaders felt a tad off to me though. Phlunt saw first hand how important it was that Mordremoth be stopped and yet he was still reluctant. After what happened with The Pale Tree at the end I will be disappointed if there is any hesitation on the parts of the leaders again. At what point do the adults make Taimi stay away from anything important after she has messed up twice? Liability much?

Having to go fetch all the stuff for Rytlock felt very slapped together. Go here. Go there. I feel like even when strapped for time, something better could have been done for that and it was with little payoff. I wouldn’t have minded so much if Rytlock had told us how he got his sword. I would forgive “The Boss” having to go run simple errands for Rytlock had this been the case. There was a real opportunity to delve into the lore in a meaningful way and instead the experience was I’m not telling you how it happened even though you jsut did this super important thing for me. Gee thanks, Rytlock. Remind me to forget you on my Wintersday greeting card mailer, bro.

I think the Rytlock part sums up most of the problem I have with the lore in the GW franchise. You have these things that we have all wanted to know about for a long time and nothing ever comes to fruition on it. What happened to Evennia? Livia? Rytlock’s FDS? The Wizard’s Tower? All of the most interesting lore remains totally invisible and it’s a real shame.

Enough with the criticism though.

Thanks so much for the awesome season so far. It’s the most interested I have been in the story and my curiosity is piqued for what will happen next. You all did a great job!

Rox doesn’t have an official new warband. She may be acting independently, but she’s still a gladium, and Delaqua Investigations (if I can group the major NPCs of this season under that title, I prefer it to the nicknames given so far) is only an ersatz warband. Plus, when it is deeply ingrained that you grew up in a military culture, it’s hard to break certain instincts like saluting Smodur at his arrival.

I know that loot drops in the personal story instances, but those aren’t replayable. The fact that the instances are replayable might be why they decided not to make drops in instances, and perhaps to discourage people from farming in the instances. I feel that loot shouldn’t drop from the bosses in the chapters, but perhaps they will reconsider giving drops from the non-champion mobs that spawn.

I’m pretty sure Evennia’s dead. Livia is the only “mortal” who could possibly have lived for the 250 year span. Revealing the lore is done at the pace they feel ready and in the method they choose, so while we might want more, we have to respect their storytelling choices, at least in this respect. I do feel the crown, while it being fractured felt manufactured, added a bit, as it revealed that the sword(s) alone are not enough to fix the ghosts, but the exact ritual was clearly off. Either it lacked the wielder having the proper blood, or perhaps the sword that ignited the Foefire is the one that needs to extinguish it. Perhaps even both.

Rognik.2579:

Rox doesn’t have an official new warband. She may be acting independently, but she’s still a gladium, and Delaqua Investigations (if I can group the major NPCs of this season under that title, I prefer it to the nicknames given so far) is only an ersatz warband. Plus, when it is deeply ingrained that you grew up in a military culture, it’s hard to break certain instincts like saluting Smodur at his arrival.

I know that loot drops in the personal story instances, but those aren’t replayable. The fact that the instances are replayable might be why they decided not to make drops in instances, and perhaps to discourage people from farming in the instances. I feel that loot shouldn’t drop from the bosses in the chapters, but perhaps they will reconsider giving drops from the non-champion mobs that spawn.

I’m pretty sure Evennia’s dead. Livia is the only “mortal” who could possibly have lived for the 250 year span. Revealing the lore is done at the pace they feel ready and in the method they choose, so while we might want more, we have to respect their storytelling choices, at least in this respect. I do feel the crown, while it being fractured felt manufactured, added a bit, as it revealed that the sword(s) alone are not enough to fix the ghosts, but the exact ritual was clearly off. Either it lacked the wielder having the proper blood, or perhaps the sword that ignited the Foefire is the one that needs to extinguish it. Perhaps even both.

The stuff I was saying about Rox comes from her reactions to seeing the Charr in command. They don’t react like she was and it’s obvious from Rytlock’s reaction to her that he has moved on. The sole thing that would make the instances replayable is farming them sans maybe doing them once a year to see something you missed. That was only one point. More people were asking for permanent content because they wanted replayable content. With the lack of new maps and expansion-like content there is a lack of new replayable content in this game. I really like the new content. The only problem is that there is no incentive for me to go back and do it again. So, awesome for new content! Bummer for only being able to do it once.

The unfinished stuff I was eluding to was more to point out that we get stories that go unfinished. I am sure Evennia’s dead. That is not the point. The point is that story thread never got finished. The scepter of Orr’s story never got finished. Livia’s story never got finished. It’s a pattern that continues with Rytlock and how he acquired his sword. Here we have a really interesting piece of lore attached to a fetch quest and one of the payoffs could be a long awaited for lore nugget. Instead of a payoff, the player is rewarded with a curt answer after a favor is done for the NPC. Normally, I would say that the payoff is coming later, but the track record of that in this franchise says otherwise.

Iason Evan.3806:

Magic Find is 100% useless. All the rewards are in the form of items that MF has zero impact on. I don’t think I need to explain why this would be frustrating to a player. With it being playable one time though because there is no loot for magic find to affefct, I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Magic Find actually isn’t useless. After each LS instance you do the first time, you get a set of loot bags as part of your reward. For example, the “Mordrem Seed Pouches” from several of the instances that have to do with fighting Mordrem. Similar to PvP loot bags from the reward tracks, Magic Find does affect what you get when you open those. Essentially, each bag is the equivalent of killing five or ten Mordrem (only a dev could tell us the exact number), when you open the bag rolls are made on the Mordrem loot tables using your current Magic Find stats and random treasure is dispensed.

This has led to complaints in other threads. “Why does my Summit Hero’s Reward contain globby goop?” But as inelegant as getting junk items as rewards might be sometimes, it’s a way to make Magic Find still relevant despite them not wanting the individual enemies to drop items.

While you don’t get those loot bags again when you replay the instance, each of the achievement reward bags contains a similar random/Magic Find affected component beyond the guaranteed Geodes or Ambrite or whatever. And, of course, you can replay the missions with other characters to get the normal loot bags on completion again.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Iason Evan.3806:

Magic Find is 100% useless. All the rewards are in the form of items that MF has zero impact on. I don’t think I need to explain why this would be frustrating to a player. With it being playable one time though because there is no loot for magic find to affefct, I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Magic Find actually isn’t useless. After each LS instance you do the first time, you get a set of loot bags as part of your reward. For example, the “Mordrem Seed Pouches” from several of the instances that have to do with fighting Mordrem. Similar to PvP loot bags from the reward tracks, Magic Find does affect what you get when you open those. Essentially, each bag is the equivalent of killing five or ten Mordrem (only a dev could tell us the exact number), when you open the bag rolls are made on the Mordrem loot tables using your current Magic Find stats and random treasure is dispensed.

This has led to complaints in other threads. “Why does my Summit Hero’s Reward contain globby goop?” But as inelegant as getting junk items as rewards might be sometimes, it’s a way to make Magic Find still relevant despite them not wanting the individual enemies to drop items.

While you don’t get those loot bags again when you replay the instance, each of the achievement reward bags contains a similar random/Magic Find affected component beyond the guaranteed Geodes or Ambrite or whatever. And, of course, you can replay the missions with other characters to get the normal loot bags on completion again.

Cool. I was always under the impression that the only loot bags affected by MF were the pvp ones. I’d like to see a link to where it says that about the reward bags for the LS. That notwithstanding, it’s not repeatable, and again, what’s the point of permanent content if I have zero incentive to run it again(i.e. loot)? The multiple character thing is finite. The content should be like zone play. I can go into the instance with my friends and play it and get rewarded for doing so exactly like a dungeon as many times as I want. That’s the disconnect for me with this stuff.