After going through the update to Dry Top a few times I felt I needed to mention a couple of concerns I have.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s clear that a lot of effort was put into creating the zone. The visuals are beautiful (if somewhat graphically intensive in some places) and there’s a nice diversity to the scenery. Plus I really enjoy the idea of a zone which cycles every hour, with different enemies and events depending on the time.
However, after thinking over it a bit there are a few things about Dry Top that bug me somewhat, one of the biggest things being the linear nature of how the zone is arranged. I understand that not everywhere can be a wide open expanse like most zones and it’s good to have some diversity, but Dry Top just feels like one long, twisty corridor. A visually beautiful and well-presented corridor but a corridor nonetheless, I find it a little claustrophobic in some places. While canyons lend themselves to this kind of setup it worries me that this may be a sign of things to come. If the Living Story is going to continue to release new zones in increments I hope they can find a way of doing it that keeps the wide-open free roaming feeling of previous areas in the game.
Another problem with the linearity is that the only path between the old and new areas isn’t immediately evident. I’m thinking more of the future here, after this part of the Living story is done and we’ve moved on. Without the story to point them to Scarlet’s room there’s nothing really to indicate to new players that that’s the way to go to progress through the zone, especially since the house is so small and easily missed. Unless I missed something and there’s another way around I feel like it might help to add a more obvious route between the village and the refuge.
Another issue I have (and I wholly admit this may just be a personal thing) is that I feel there’s no real incentive to fully explore the zone. It may seem shallow, but I always felt more driven to 100% complete the vanilla zones with the promise of a reward at the end. It’s the same reason that I never returned to Southsun Cove with any of my alts; if I’m not given any enticement to explore then I don’t really want to. Dry Top has many nooks and crannies to discover, but as far as I’m aware the only reason to explore them is to find lost coins and a llama, neither of which interest me too much. A few more things to do around the place, outside events, wouldn’t hurt too much either. I can even think of a few places where you could put heart missions, like assisting the survivors of the Zepherite crash or helping to defend the Refuge against the hostilities that may threaten it. This could help towards giving Dry Top the longevity that Southsun lacks for me. Of course I may well be speaking too soon and when the zone is fully opened there will be more to do or a reward for area completion, in which case awesome, but until then these are just my thoughts on the matter.
As I said before I don’t hate this zone, I’m happy that we are finally getting new maps added to the world. I just hope Anet can keep building on what they’ve got going here.