First, just a quick over view, I very rarely post here but I was always one of the people who never fully enjoyed the LS updates (‘cept for the Marionette and Escape from LA. Those two were great). I was always griping about how the devs were out of touch with the playerbase, and basically only stuck around because my friends really wanted to keep playing this game.
Well, this chapter was a complete turn around. The story was awesome, the boss fights were interesting (if a bit slow paced for my taste), and the new zone is so exciting and action packed that I genuinely feel as if I’ve been immersed into a warzone. This update is a huge turn around for the GW2 dev team, and I can’t wait to see if this level of quality can be maintained.
All that being said, there are just three things that I wanted to draw attention to that I feel could potentially improve QoL for future updates. I’m sure some people will disagree with some (or even all of it), but this just happens to be what I think. No offense is intended in any way shape or form.
1) The Challenge Motes in Hidden Arcana: First off, I hope whoever came up with the idea to add these to the mission got a huge bonus. Resetting a chance for an achievement without having to do the whole mission from the start was something the Season 2 LS format desperately needed. That being said, I think this could have been taken a step further: since all the achievements occur only after you’ve entered Glint’s Lair why make me go through all the Library dialogue/running around again? The game already recognizes wether I’m doing the story for the first time or if I’m replaying it for the achievements; it would have been really great if the game simply spawned me inside of Glint’s Lair from the get go.
2) The Bosses of Hidden Arcana: I love seeing you guys play with new mechanics, and these four new bosses were all interesting— interesting but not necessarily fun. From a design standpoint I can see perfectly what you were trying to do: the first boss introduces you to the Crystal Memories moveset, the second boss introduces the colored facet mechanic (which anyone who participated in the Assault on the Breachmaker will recognize instantly), the third boss introduces you to both the fragile and the void crystal mechanics, and all this culminates into a fourth and final boss that utilizes all the new mechanics at once.
On paper, this is a brilliant plan. Serously, total props to the design team. However in practice, I personally felt that this hamstrung the pacing of the mission, leaving it at a slow crawl. What we ended up with was one fast paced, action oriented boss (the Memory of Strength or whatever his proper name was) followed by three bosses that were less like fights and more like puzzles. Puzzles which were (debatably, depending on one’s level of experience) easy to figure out, but tedious to execute (again readers, this is my opinion only). I won’t waste time and space offering solutions— I’m sure the dev team is more than capable of that. All I’m asking is that you keep in mind the overall pacing of an experience when balancing action sequences and puzzle sequences.
3) The Cool Down Timer on the Silverwastes Meta Event: Now I absolutely, positively do not want to start a debate about event completion vs chest farming. I completely and 100% respect both sides of the argument, and I completely respect each individual player’s right to set their own priorities in game.
But as far as my personal experience goes, when the events are up, I like to be in the thick of things, escorting bulls, defending forts, rebuilding forts, etc… But the downtime between Meta circuits is a scant five minutes. This is a very small window of time to aequately hunt chests. I have stockpiled a few thousand crests, just about a tousand keys, and about a full stack of shovels just because I never have an opportunity to use them without abandoning the war effort.
I feel if the window between one Meta circuit and the next was just a little longer, even just ten minutes instead of five, it would make a monumental difference. It might even eliminate the need to choose between events and chest hunting altogether. One could even take it a step further and propose that beating the Meta (killing all five bosses) could extend the prep time between battles (rewarding the players with more time to hunt chests), while losing the Meta keeps it at its current, rather quick five minute clip.
Anyway, as I said at the beginning, I am absolutely in love with the Echoes of the Past update and cannot give enough props to the dev team. All the above are merely quality of life suggestions based off my own experiences with the new content.
Thanks for the great patch! And to everyone else, happy gaming!! ^.^