Guild Wars 2

Liked the area but the area was to small…
like the occasional harder hitting opponent but hated the wave after wave of never ending opponents…
Liked the new challenges but hated the multitude of bugs stopping you from completing them…
Learnt new skills but really hope that Anet leaned it needs to release a bug free LS4 (or, at least, not have a “daily” that you cannot complete)

Aurene looks like a frog

Didn’t realize the elixir only worked until reset since I tend to play later at night, but definitely explains why it was gone the next night. I’ll admit I haven’t played in the map too much cause of the holidays though I did enjoy parts of it. The tubes are a nice substitute at times for a lack of waypoints, but it feels like some of the ones deeper in the map are harder to reach without going back to the beginning of the map to catch the tube train or just jump puzzle your way to them. I’m curious as to why exactly 21/25 achievements available actually count towards the overall completion/gauntlets. Maybe it’s a bug or maybe it just takes a moment to show up (unlike the other ones I accomplished for some reason?), but after completing the two collections involving Aurene my counter stayed at 15/21 and I’ve completed 18 so far… Saddens me as I really appreciated when the last living story lowered their requirements by a couple achievements so bf and I logged in to a cool helm surprise. If it’s just a glitch for whatever reason then cool, but if not then maybe having that extra one or two options would be appreciated so people who can’t or don’t want to spend a lot of resources for a simple story achievement have an alternative. It’d be nice to get the glow, but it’s not an achievement I relish after seeing the material requirements.

Hyper late to the party myself, but as this is the “we are too busy making outfits for the gemstore” time of the year for GW2, I figure it doesn’t matter too much.

Anyhoo. Aurene. Still feels… tackled. There was no real purpose to the first mission involving her. It’s a cute thing to play How To Train Your Dragon Wars 2 for a bit and the thing is adorable (if horribly disfigured taking in mind how her mother looks. But seeing how Quaggans and Skritt must be everywhere at all times now, I guess cute is the new black for GW2.), but honestly the mission was just entirely dull, non-challenging, rather bugged and to be honest felt like it bore forgettable relevance to the rest of the thing and was more of a “oh yeah we never actually did anything with the lizard we designed so we trick people into caring for it.”
That aside I guess it’s better than not showing it at all and then jumping the gun on it suddenly being our BFFs and underlings in an unnamed guild (coughcough Everyone in Dragon’s Watch).

Moving on to the new map, it feels fine. It also feels like Bloodstone Fen. Basically ain’t nobody got time fo that after a while because it honestly is just a farming ground for more boxes-inside-boxes and un-storable map related currency for the occassional “eh” backpack skin and what have you. Pretty in the design, tiny and pointless in exploration and durability. I feel no need to explore it, and no real want for it since I am sure I am just going to find quaggans by the end of it anyways. (Or an invisible wall to stop me from gliding.)

I don’t need to point out the fetch quest for the elixir is just that. A bad fetch quest. The things are even there before you do the quest. That was dearly unnecessary.

And finally, well. What can I point out about the whole Braham business people have not yet pointed out? Let’s skip the part where the living world continues to completely ignore the original personal storyline at all times because whoopsie we can’t backpeddal on that. Fine. It’s understandable. Not enough resources to cover that many grounds. But why am I not allowed to call him on his crap on everything else my character and so many others have gone through? Why does he get to play hero, why do I let him literally march out to rile up the norn population to certain death with only a “pls no.”, instead of knocking the brat out his teeth for being insufferable and indiscriminately irresponsible?
Why does my character have all this common sense yet absolutely never act on it, stand his/her ground or altogether do anything unless chance of fate dictates it or a quaggan happens to know about it?
It’s extremely infuriating.

4/10, the living world was starting to go into the right direction by making Taimi start to act on things that were common sense for absolutely everyone from day 1, and now we are fetch questing and listening to emo ballads from a selfish manchild in a blind revenge quest and doing nothing about it.

P.S Hilarious how Rox was literally so irrelevant, the commander didn’t even bother acknowledging her into the whole Dragon’s Watch business while babbling about it to Braham.

Additionally, why has nobody bothered to contact Kasmeer beyond her “oh so busy” shenanigans when she is literally in a major town, but we can bother hunting down people in the wilds? I mean, come on… At least put more emphasis in a reason for it if you want her to not show up due to technical reasons.

I don’t really know where else to place this, and I don’t want to make a new thread for expressing this, so I’ll put it here.

I think it’s absolutely great that with this recent arc of the Living World story, that there was as part of the general achievements, a cosmetic aura that was tied into the theme of the most recent map and the events revolving around it. I’m referring to Koda’s Warmth Enrichment.

The whole thing was great fun to work towards, however I was disappointed to find that the infusion in question is almost literally invisible on my character!

Given the name, you would think it would look like this, image when you’re standing at the Braziers in Bitterfrost Frontier
https://68.media.tumblr.com/1748ecad9570ebfa3c10409ac5fc8f37/tumblr_ojvuyqpBkD1rufgn2o2_1280.jpg

But it instead looks like it’s barely visible, save for the occasional weak puff of smoke that will emerge from my character’s chest.

https://68.media.tumblr.com/36064b68dedb93dc118e8d29366a6670/tumblr_ojvuyqpBkD1rufgn2o1_1280.jpg

It kind of really kills my motivation to work towards anything if that’s how things are going to turn out in the end.

But I’ll leave it on a positive note, I did enjoy this installment of the Living world, I really like how everything is panning out, I cant wait for the next chapter.

fourhim.3584:

One other thing. WHAT IN THE WORLD is the purpose of the water in this zone? OK, I had to go down there to talk to the Quaggan lady. OK, it’s pretty. But really, that’s it? No events? No hidden mastery commune points? No big roaming champions to beat? No hidden tunnels or ruins? Not even a point of interest?

You can collect Unbound Magic there. For those who prefer to dive rather than jump up some trees.

As for people complaining about the lack of a marker for the PoI at which you brew the Elexir: you should always take the time to explore a map in whole, and the abscence of a marker encourages people to get the 100% map achievement and reward.

Re: Koda’s Warmth Infusion — After I read all the complaints and checked out screenshots and videos, I decided against wasting gold, time and other resources to get it. It’s truly not worth it. What a disappointment.

I’ve come to hate bitterfrost frontier. I can’t stand spending more than 20 min on the map at a time.

• The enemy concentrations and spawn timings are ridiculous. You can literally not clear the mobs around a resource node before the next set spawns in on top of you, and the mobs amounts are stupidly high. You can easily end up swarmed by 20 mobs at a time without even pulling anything.

• Moving around the map is a chore due to badly thought out travel mechanics and the huge enemy swarms. The waypoint positioning is lacking (can actually both be contested at once making respawning impossible), the single leyline is a barely accessible afterthought that interferes in traversal more than it helps, and the thermal tubes are barely acceptable (and in some cases not even aligned right).

• I’ve stopped bothering with the thaw elixir because why should I when there is nothing AT ALL in the Bitter Cold outside of story and the berries are worth more than the daily?

• Koda’s Flame mastery is basically useless, and limited nature makes it hard to even use the torches on chests since you constantly have to use up charges due to aforementioned enemy swarms.

• Brazier “meta” suffers from a complete lack of creativity and the same enemy spawn and concentration issues, and the rewards aren’t worth it.

• Multiple areas lacking even true dynamic events, just constant kill enemy events that swarm you. 2 whole areas have literally nothing going on outside of story instances, 2 other whole areas are nothing but mobs of enemies camping on fetch quests, another areas has such a ludicrously fast event cycle that you can barely even do anything without doing the event, which again is just an enemy swarm, multiple times, and the underwater layer is literally pointless.

• Map clogs your inventory with tons of stupid items due to poor planning and an insistence on forcing in an added daily instead of making it permanent or a mastery like it should have been (and also see above about the pointlessness of doing said daily).

• Map rewards for events aren’t worth it, I just get a few magic from underwater right next to the Kodan ship and leave. There is NOTHING worth spending time on the map outside of a few things you might want to buy with winterberries. And it’s almost a better use of time to just wait and use the daily node in your home instance just to avoid coming to this map.

• Map is completely lacking in cohesion. It feels like 5 smaller ideas were bolted together in a rush to get a map out without actual testing, planning, or thought.

would be nice of the area doesn’t bombard every inch of the map with veterans and events, is it really so hard to make a nice looking area that spreads out the events and makes enemies move naturally,

First of all, thank you for a map full of ice and snow that isn’t that horrible jungle! I love the griffon forest. It could use some more waypoints though. Overall though, I feel like Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay were better designed. Now that I have advanced gliding unlocked, I feel like Bloodstone Fen is my favorite of the LWS3 areas. And that’s coming from someone who wants to run around in cold landscapes.

I also love the look of Koda’s Flame before you’ve unlocked the skills. I love it so much, in fact, that I have not unlocked the mastery for it because the unlocked skills look ugly. However, I’ve heard episode 4 is going to be coming out soon, so I’m feeling a little concerned. I don’t want there to be another mastery after Koda’s Flame that will be permanently closed to me due to my reluctance to have an ugly skillbar. Is there a way ANet could add a settings toggle? Or maybe let us buy something in the Gem Store so we can keep the pretty flames?

Like the others, I still haven’t figured out the point of keeping the braziers lit, other than easy access to torches. I’m going to guess they aren’t important since I’ve never seen anyone complain about it on map.

For the love of Pete, STOP IT with the currency type items clogging our inventory! I already have a serious packrat problem. I do not need you adding to it. Currencies, keys, elixir materials…I have most of a bank tab filled with the stuff and it’s starting to get on my nerves. The elixir especially needs to be something we should be able to just unlock and buy.

As a norn player I must say I feel completely eclipsed by Braham’s character. I don’t know what gave you the idea that Eir’s wise character would be good to replace with a temperamental brat.

There is very little reaction dialogue wise to me as a norn on the Norn areas and by norn NPC’s, despite me being the norn hero.

First off, the stars:

Thank you for making ascended backpacks we can get with a few days of simple farming – no spending 100s of gold on collections/rare mats (orders, luminate, forge) or having half a dozen characters with maxed-out crafting (mawdrey). Maybe there are even more attainable ascended backpacks out there but I’m not aware of them.

I am also personally a fan of the return of renown hearts, and liked them being dailies.

I for one like the quaggans, including this dwarf orca type, and even dropped half a day’s berries on a little babby one to follow me around.

I liked that thermal propulsion carried over from ember bay to bitterfrost – made the mastery feel less manipulative (also I really enjoy being shot violently out of cannons all over the map – way more fun than rat/toad mud tunnels). As a gamer I’m prepared to accept being manipulated, but not having that manipulation smugly rubbed in my face. My most hated part of all of GW1 was the maze of three-inch high rocks or whatever in the Glint’s lair story mission, that we had to slowly plod through to get to our objective because we couldn’t jump. Bloodstone gliding skills would have been cooler if they carried over, but at least they went deep in their own zone. If Koda’s Flame turns out to have no use other than as a key replacement and a sink of three mastery points to get to the ep4 mastery, I’m going to be irritated.

Coupla nuggets for you:

Berries, stumps, and rubies all being neither currency nor material feels like a smug kick in the teeth, exactly the kind of manipulation I was just talking about. You KNOW players are collecting them in bulk, so not giving them even a material slot’s worth of storage comes off as just plain mean.

Bitterfrost Frontier felt really… small. The svanir patch, the berry patch, a tiny quaggan patch, and a much worse svanir patch most people visit once for the story and maybe again for diving goggles… and that’s it. No secret nooks or crannies, no exciting ascents or descents (I mean there’s the steep svanir hill, but the only exciting thing on it is veteran svanir on a 10-second respawn timer and ori/ancient nodes at the top). Nothing to really explore or discover. I know exactly where every single berry node is, which I cannot say for stumps or crystals.

I’m glad you didn’t go for locked-in map-wide meta cycles in S3, although those can be very exciting once you’re in they would have started to get old if that was on the menu every time. But again, I feel Bitterfrost goes too far in the other direction: the dynamic events are so small and fast they’re not exciting at all. Bloodstone and Ember were much better, with their identifiable buildups to important-feeling battles; they got people jumping in to participate, but they could still participate without needing two free hours frontloaded by twenty minutes of trying to login to the only map where the meta was proceeding.

This is all too late for the Head of the Snake, but maybe it will make a difference in the future. Looking forward to Ch4!

I only have one problem with the map, and that is in order to reach the last vista (bottom right of map) I have to complete some terrible JP to reach a tube to fire across to reach the vista, and there appears to be no other way to complete it.

That’s the second map where I cannot complete because of a JP. last time it was the terrible molten garbage JP with waypoints that cancel if you log off or come back to try another day after quitting in frustration, this time it’s slatted bridges which are so easy to fall off for us ‘JP challenged’ people.

Boss fights were poorly/not explained at all and of course had some gimmick- and dragging a boss to a spot so you can kill things to damage the boss isn’t fun on a squishy when you’re trying to maintain distance!

Opening chests on the new map just seems a loot fest.