Guild Wars 2

• dialogue still at childish level with “oh so witty” lines that I am getting seriously annoyed
• making fun of RPG fans in the Shining Blade HQ mission
• game-breaking bug (stuck in wall, have to restart mission — see my bug report in the respective subforum)

So far, I am not amused.

“Congratulations, you escaped, now survive as long as you can”.

Oh, btw, we forgot to add that suddenly all enemies get 1000% damage boost for some reason. You now… “challenge”.

More stupid puzzles. Over and over again. If it weren’t for wvw, I’d have given up on this game over these annoyances. They’re certainly doable, but they are not fun. Not in the slightest.

It was good episode until i got stuck with fighting my self in shining blade trial. I dont know what i need to do, so this episode was over for me i guess. Now waiting for dulfy’s help. This kind of puzzle should stay out of story instances or atleast give better hint what to do. Really gave me bad taste for this episode

I’m not having fun with all these puzzles.

I enjoyed the puzzle. Took a few minutes but got there in the end.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

More stupid puzzles. Over and over again. If it weren’t for wvw, I’d have given up on this game over these annoyances. They’re certainly doable, but they are not fun. Not in the slightest.

I agree with this statement. If not for WvW I know a ton of people that would just quit.

Mara.6782:

It was good episode until i got stuck with fighting my self in shining blade trial. I dont know what i need to do, so this episode was over for me i guess. Now waiting for dulfy’s help. This kind of puzzle should stay out of story instances or atleast give better hint what to do. Really gave me bad taste for this episode

You need to speak with the ghosts of Caithe, Eir etc, then use the skill it gives you, that will make “yourself” be very vulnurable for attacks

serialkicker.5274:

“Congratulations, you escaped, now survive as long as you can”.

Oh, btw, we forgot to add that suddenly all enemies get 1000% damage boost for some reason. You now… “challenge”.

The final fight in the final instance is a clusterkitten, it’s as bad as Caudecus but with very generous checkpoints. Still not very funny and I did it as a Guardian, I had to deal with billions of AOEs and projectiles + unblockable attacks (I’m not a fan of it, it should only be a Challenge Mote thing) on top of it…

Just another No Fun Zone death grind. No thanks Anet!

re: the puzzles: I hate JPs… and to have one (even one as basic as ’jump, walk, jump) for the mission made me grunt in frustration. That said, I enjoyed the bloodstone trap puzzles. Maybe not the knockback caused by the exploding guys, but still…

The part with the Self Doubt… You can either muscle through a very long fight with cooldown on weapon skills (Fearless Achievement) or you can ‘seek closure’ by approaching the reproachful spirits (Fearful Achievement).

I got disconnected just after the fight during the talky part….going to have to go through it again. At least I can try to do the fight the long way and get Fearless achievement this time lol

Kell.9365:

Just another No Fun Zone death grind. No thanks Anet!

Same.

Came to orr, thought “maybe this time i can play the story without doing stupid things” i was wrong. i logged off.

Do you remember the good times with the old maps?

That last fight is the same utter garbage that Caudecus was, but without the broken camera angles.

Still not finished either because enough is freaking enough.

I’m not here for puzzles, and I’m not here for death grind until everything is broken.

Probably the weakest episode to date, in fact of all the Seasons. The first episode I can say I found more wrong than right and just didn’t find enjoyable and I include the map in that.

- The puzzle element didn’t really bother me, but will end up being too annoying for most. There really was no need for it other than to antagonise players

- Why is my Norn a member of the Shining Blade? This whole sequence was heavily contrived just to satisfy our own curiosity about the Exemplar. There really didn’t need to exist an oath and weird instance for them to tell us what they were up to. Killing mursaat is hardly a shocking reveal after all.

- The map is a bit more interesting than most Orr areas, but lacked any depth and consequently felt rushed and doesn’t encourage as much repeat play as the others. I could never visit here again and not feel I miss out. Balthazars area is particularly overtuned – all I saw was dead bodies everywhere. The map was a great excuse to really and thoroughly explore a great deal of lore on the Gods which it never took. We also seem to rather easily cleanse Risen corpses without fully explaining why (unless I missed something. It just felt too easy)

- How did Braham just walk up to and surround Jormag with an army? The whole build up until now is that you can’t just walk up to a fully active Elder Dragon. That has literally been a major theme in the first 2-3 years of the game. Then he writes us a letter instead of killing him whilst having the chance. What?

- Last instance. The mobs have too much HP although the mechanics are OK. The biggest issue in the last instance is that she dies to quickly from the sparks whilst charging up her magic to destroy the shield. I spent half an hour constantly rezzing her since the sparks wont aggro away.

- Interesting cutscene to end on, but still feels like we are mid season

Overall, I thought this episode was pretty terrible. NEver felt like a finale, the map was weak compared to the other 5 and the story brought in yet another mini story thread instead of keeping on point and rushing through 3 GW1 characters just to get them done and out of the way.
Season 2 as a story was much stronger – it kept to a solid narrative thread without diverting off unless it was relevant to do so. And it had a finale with a solid lead in to get excited about the expansion. The ending here was a bit flat.

A few points on my end:

- Please make up your mind what is my character supposed to be like. I don’t mind playing for something that’s not an “empty vessel”, I actually prefer it, but wobbling me from comedy to serious drama is working less than expected.
- Whee, I’ve joined another human organization! Which I unexplicably care about despite being a charr!
- While it has a nice idea in it, the fight with the Self-Doubt is more a fight with a crippling procrastinator issues. Whoever thought to have undodgable tendrils (they obviously are… but not with 120 ping, because their window is just THAT small) that give me 2 minutes cooldown on autoattack is a great idea… well. Let’s just say that your taste and mine will never align, pal. It’s also astonishingly punishing for certain classes. My particular Self-Doubt found me with a ranger longbow (15k rapid fire + knockback + range all over the room), a signet of stone (improved toughness) and signet of the hunt (health regen, which at some point heals it faster than my blocked skills can damage it). My friend, in comparison, had a lazy warrior with a greatsword telegraph. Thanks for kicking my sorry tail for maining a ranger. “Play it your way” indeed.
- The use of emotes and cinematics was nice. The Shining Blade class of horrible acting was not. Also, not sure if intentional, but “So much death…” quote from male charr sounded like a drunk freshman on a movie night.
- Fractal’s nice tho.

I’ll keep this vague, but I have this on my chest and I’m pretty upset about it.

Mid-way through the season finale, in the “HQ” instance, there is an offer to make take an oath:

Unnamed NPC: “Will you agree to take the magical oath”.
Me, the player: -scoffs- “Of course not.”
Sylvari female (VAed by Jeniffer Hale): “I do.”
Me, the player: -outraged- “WHAT?! Are you crazy??”

This was one of the more nonsensical turns I’ve seen in the Living Story. To some humans of a certain background, this made complete sense and would surely have been an honor, even. But for a non-human like a Sylvari, it involved huge caveats. With suicidal connotations, even.

The people that were keeping the secrets they wouldn’t share unless you were similarily under oath had enough history to have the matter reasonably trusted to them. The Commander didn’t need to feel entitled to a piece of a very human matter when the priorities lay elsewhere. Actually, our priorities really lay elsewhere (a certain God of Fire whom was not as defeated as the previous episode’s conclusion had lead me to think) and the ultimate result (hinting towards the expansion) didn’t even require taking that route (Aurene could just as much have given us a vision).

So, my suspension of disbelief was hit pretty hard. It feels like the whole setup was just so our nonhuman Commander could be artificially bound to a very pro-human organization with a magical leash on it. It made me drop the game for an hour or two because I was seething at that fact before I picked it up again in an effort to complete it and hopefully have a bigger picture.

I thought the representation of doubt was amusing, because I’d already gone through a similar trial not so long ago. Fortunately for me, I had ‘a thorn that pierced all doubt’.

As far as I am concerned Living Story was a failiure in story telling. And finale was a failiure in game design and execution. So sick of the OP instances and mechanics designed to fail you over and over again (Livia Instance).

I am a long time fan and supporter, I’ve been playing since GW Factions but now I have reached a point I am considering not purchasing the next expansion. This game used to be fun, now it is tedious, grindy to the point of oblivion and stressful. This game is appears to be designed to entertain the devs not the players. Because I personally believe Anet has forgotten who it’s community of players is.

Please stop trying to be too clever and treating your entire fanbase like we are all 100% hardcore players because we not and get back to the core of what made this game and series great!

1 Waypoint? Really? Are you so creatively redundant that you could not think of anything more interesting than simply making every aspect of the map a chore to get to? Our reward for soldiering through this mess of a map? More Amulet and Back slot items. Just what we needed.

I would second most of the other complaints too; poor immersion, shoddy scripts and lazy execution.
Have we really waited all these months for this? Can we expect the next expansion to be any good? Do you really expect to package Season 3 up like you did with Season 2 and SELL it?

Best episode of the season for me. We finally get to comfort Lazarus, Livia is back, we get to travel in core Tyria before going to Orr, Shining Blade HQ was a nice touch.

Zephar.4519:

1 Waypoint? Really? Are you so creatively redundant that you could not think of anything more interesting than simply making every aspect of the map a chore to get to? Our reward for soldiering through this mess of a map? More Amulet and Back slot items. Just what we needed.

You can unlock the temples as waypoints.

Livia best girl

Changer the Elder.2948:

A few points on my end:

- Please make up your mind what is my character supposed to be like. I don’t mind playing for something that’s not an “empty vessel”, I actually prefer it, but wobbling me from comedy to serious drama is working less than expected.
- Whee, I’ve joined another human organization! Which I unexplicably care about despite being a charr!
- While it has a nice idea in it, the fight with the Self-Doubt is more a fight with a crippling procrastinator issues. Whoever thought to have undodgable tendrils (they obviously are… but not with 120 ping, because their window is just THAT small) that give me 2 minutes cooldown on autoattack is a great idea… well. Let’s just say that your taste and mine will never align, pal. It’s also astonishingly punishing for certain classes. My particular Self-Doubt found me with a ranger longbow (15k rapid fire + knockback + range all over the room), a signet of stone (improved toughness) and signet of the hunt (health regen, which at some point heals it faster than my blocked skills can damage it). My friend, in comparison, had a lazy warrior with a greatsword telegraph. Thanks for kicking my sorry tail for maining a ranger. “Play it your way” indeed.
- The use of emotes and cinematics was nice. The Shining Blade class of horrible acting was not. Also, not sure if intentional, but “So much death…” quote from male charr sounded like a drunk freshman on a movie night.
- Fractal’s nice tho.

Haven’t tried the fractal yet.

BUT GEEZ, everything else above is so. freaking. true. I could have easily gotten Fearless if the tendrils were actually dodgable, and believe me, I tried. There is something seriously wrong with the effect appearance and timing.

..at least I can legitimately use my Shining Blade glider now. :\

The patch itself was ok. Being able to put more stuff in storage is always good. also the book for port scrolls is nice.

the story was meh. 80% of it was in the new map doing hearts….
nothing about balthazar.. also like ppl said a lot of missing info about other characters…
really bad overall tbh.

the map is ok-ish… the JP was probably the best part, i enjoyed it.
i dont get why it has only 1 waypoint…. thats just pure nonsense.

I would say im looking forward to the xpac.. but that’d be a lie. HoT killed wvw and i just dont have any faith left in anet to make the game fun to play again (wvw perspective at least)

Edit:

More stupid puzzles.

Actually, to me the puzzles were the only bright side to the whole ordeal.
__________________________________________________________

This episode:

• I join a group I couldn’t care less about (which was decided in a matter of seconds) only so I could learn about what Livia is up to? Sure, that was very convincing, didn’t come across as forced at all. (Since Anet prefers explanation of the obvious: yes, I was being sarcastic).
• Childish humor, bad dialogue — again. What a surprise! (Actually, it’s gotten worse, which I did not think possible, so maybe that was the surprise.)
• Everything left open, no conclusion to the current story whatsoever. But let’s just cover up that fact by having yet another historical figure suddenly appear to “enrich” the story. (That worked, I didn’t even notice Braham et al weren’t present in this episode!)
• So, apparently, you now need ley-line energy for everything in Tyria: powering waypoints, Asuran computers, Exhalted computers, even Gods, or cleaning up random toxic clouds (conveniently floating in a field of updrafts), and feeding the poor. Anet should start selling t-shirts stating “Ley-Line Energy = Life”, I am certain they would become a big seller.

So, the next expansion:

• More Braham tantrums, yay!
• More Balthazar. Yay?
• More Taimi technology lectures and turning ancient myth into futuristic content.
• More crazy maps cramped with updrafts, mushrooms, mounts (!) and a vast variety of parallel tasks that don’t make any sense other than filling the void of non-existent story-telling.
• More references to player complaints by openly making fun of them, and of course ignoring people’s criticism.

“Tune in on August 1st!” — I don’t think so.

I so agree. Self doubt with ranger longbow was a beast. Nice seeing my pets get offed in one shot. And no ability to dodge the hands, even if it said I evaded. The puzzles at the beginning I just waited until someone put a cheat up. I would have been at them for hours. I was trying to do the achievements, but I am not sure it is possible.

I do not like the so called comedy element, has it worked well for wildstar? GW2 was never silly, childish, stupid, daft … GW was serious with a little sarcasm, there is a line and i feel it has been crossed

serialkicker.5274:

“Congratulations, you escaped, now survive as long as you can”.

Oh, btw, we forgot to add that suddenly all enemies get 1000% damage boost for some reason. You now… “challenge”.

Soooo much this.
The defense was easy. So I was like no problems. Then BAM I got pretty much 1 shot….
ok then.

My biggest complaint so far has nothing to do with the story.

No entrance to the end of the world!

I was hoping since we were coming to Orr, they’d finally add a portal out of the new map and into Straights, Malchors, maybe Cursed Shore? Nope, 1 giant inescapable rectangle. No biggie, I have the 5 map shortcut from LA to Cursed Shore down pat by now, but come on, think of the alt characters.

finkle.9513:

I do not like the so called comedy element, has it worked well for wildstar? GW2 was never silly, childish, stupid, daft … GW was serious with a little sarcasm, there is a line and i feel it has been crossed

…several episodes ago (but they still manange to beat their own record, which does deserve at least some respect ).

Yes, it’s pretty bad. Like I stated earlier (and was scolded for), the dialogue has reached a level suited for children (or people with very low demands).

Ashantara.8731:

• dialogue still at childish level with “oh so witty” lines that I am getting seriously annoyed
  So far, I am not amused.

The Gilmore Girls type of “snappy” and “witty” dialogue annoys me a lot in the Living story. I don’t want that every character will be making constant snappy retorts all the time nor is it the way I want to play my character.

The maps and instances they have done are pretty clever but personally the storylines and the writing ruins it.

As far as the story, I ran out of kittens to give since the start of S2 (S1 I didn’t even get to play) simply because their characters are like straight out of cringy fan-fictions written by middle-school nerds:

- their obsession to ram kitten infatuation down our throats over and over like it’s something special and holy
- annoying and cringy blabbermouth Taimi
- emotionally incoherent emo wreck Braham
- dull and always tired/pissed-sounding wallflower Rox
- Canach, an utterly failed attempt at cool and witty
- Rytlok who’s always kittening and mourning and sighing

etc. etc. etc. This gets painful fast. I’m only playing the story bit just for shinies and to see Zojja again someday.

Changer the Elder.2948:

- While it has a nice idea in it, the fight with the Self-Doubt is more a fight with a crippling procrastinator issues. Whoever thought to have undodgable tendrils (they obviously are… but not with 120 ping, because their window is just THAT small) that give me 2 minutes cooldown on autoattack is a great idea… well. Let’s just say that your taste and mine will never align, pal. It’s also astonishingly punishing for certain classes. My particular Self-Doubt found me with a ranger longbow (15k rapid fire + knockback + range all over the room), a signet of stone (improved toughness) and signet of the hunt (health regen, which at some point heals it faster than my blocked skills can damage it). My friend, in comparison, had a lazy warrior with a greatsword telegraph. Thanks for kicking my sorry tail for maining a ranger. “Play it your way” indeed.

Said friend with the greatsword doubt here, this part really cannot be overstated.

What I got was greatsword warrior with all the bog standard greatsword attacks with huge telegraphs. You can just walk away from 100b, whirlwind doesn’t do much damage and autoattack is pitiful. Didn’t even use bladetrail or rush, I could easily outregen his futile attempts at damage with healing signet, a joke of a fight really. That coupled with headbutt being strong CC and burst doing tons of damage made bypassing the stacking defense mechanic trivial for me even with cooldown increases since all I had todo was walk around while waiting for them to come back up again.

Compare that to what he got (and I visited the instance since first I didn’t believe it would be that much more difficult for rangers)…

A longbow ranger who uses rapid fire and point blank shot.

That alone is a problem, rapid fire tracks you and does a lot of damage while point blank shot is a strong CC. You can’t even kite the boss since longbow hits the whole arena effortlessly.

So what else is a problem here? Strongest single attack ranger has (to my knowledge) is rapid fire which hits multiple times, meaning that it stacks a lot of the defense buff on the boss. On top of that, pet autoattacks stack the buff too and frankly that is ridiculous.

All this coupled with the ranger doubt having regen signet made it a very long and stupid fight. I honestly believe it wasn’t playtested at all with the fearless achievement in mind.

The difference between what I got and what he got is just way too large to be ignored.

Storytelling was awful and would make me hurt my head from all the facepalms if I wasn’t already used to this. Honestly, when did GW2 ever had a decent story? Pointing it out now fells like kicking a dead kitten (no censorship filter).

Instances, done on an old-style zerker reaper:

1. First one was easy. While I’m generally bad with puzzles, I found the bloodstone ones simple enough. No complains there.

2. Shining blade. Really bad execution there.

• Defense event felt like slap in the face – first two waves got basically eaten alive, and the third one pretty much one-shot me with 8k+ crits in quick succession. Had to check combat log to even see what hit me. Felt unfair. I think they should make later waves spawn in larger groups, throw some veterans and elites into the mix, up to the point when it couldn’t be managed by anyone, but drastically upping the damage on normal mobs feels just lazy.
• Self doubt was a long and annoying fight that had too few hints as to what needs to be done. In general I’m not in favor of encounters that drastically change the usual combat mechanics. Didn’t die (second HP bar helps) and figured it out eventually, but it felt like a chore overall. Seems fearless option is only possible on some characters using specific builds.

3. Last chance felt pretty good overall.

• Allowed me to fight moderately challenging opponents without changing my character into a frog or other “interesting” mechanics. Good thing.
• Saw people complain about Livia (who is she again? my toon seems to know her, but I’m sure I never heard of her before…) dying all the time, but it wasn’t my case – she died once and I had no problem ressing her between spark waves, possibly because all the sparks fed my LF bar nicely.
• Final fight felt pretty easy overall, comparing it to Caduceus fight feels unfair, camera angles make all the difference. No complains there.

4. New map feels just okay.

• Sort of happy it’s not another vertical maze that doesn’t work with the minimap.
• I really don’t get it why every little map they make needs a separate set of mechanics added on top of the core and HoT ones. It’s starting to get a little messy. Compared to that, old Tyria seems to have some noble simplicity about it.

Bottom line: typically bad storytelling and very bad second instance. I enjoyed the rest.

Worst episode so far, they kittened it up wherever they could by making every single thing as complicated as possible… heck im quitting this kitten

I usually don’t come to forums complaining, but I just need to get this off my chest.

kitten new map.
kitten risen.
kitten Orr in general and everything associated with it. I hated it back before HoT way, way more than any other map ever for every reason possible – from mobs to map composition to visual design to navigation problems, and new map suddenly reminded me why. kitten Orr. With a kitten sized kitten.

On a positive note, it’s good to know Traherne utterly failed to restore this kitten hole.

There is a difference between annoying and challenging.

The challenge here is to try and not get too annoyed, because so far that’s all i got. From figuring out puzzles, to fighting some over power counterpart, to disappearing updraft. One of the most awesome feature in this game is dodging, but its pretty much useless in the final fight. It felt more like ‘’Caudecus revisited’’ then anything.

On the good side, lots of GW1 lore and no lesbian love affairs.

Tristavel.9218:

Bottom line: typically bad storytelling and very bad second instance. I enjoyed the rest.

So I’m past the worst of it? That’s good to hear. I got so mad after the Shining Blade story and fight execution that I didn’t have the desire to fuss with another undead-mud map.

The Dirges seem like they’d be interesting for large group combat, though. Possible import/export of a raid mechanic?

Yeah, I’m not really sure what the Dirges are really there for if they’re meant for large group combat and then there are practically no major meta events or even overly challenging bosses in this map. I don’t think I’ve actually used any of the Dirges so far… or have the slightest clue what to use them for. lol