Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone, I have not posted here before but I felt that I had to in the current break from living world that we are having at the moment and how I think it could improve.

To start with, I have to say that I am enjoying S2 so far because: the story is interesting, I like the new way of getting achievements and that dry top is very good zone (especially the uplands/oasis, they are one of the few places that I have stopped for a minute and though ‘wow, this is beautiful’). However I have to say the last 4 episodes of S1 were much more enjoyable and I will explain why below.
Origins Of Madness:
Marionette was hands down the best thing in game for me, I absolutely loved it.
Wurm was impossible at the start but I liked failing for my server!
Scarlet’s lair was good with the hints at attacking LA and all that.
Edge of the mists:
Just dialogue story-wise, but very interesting dialogue especially the bit about Omadd’s machine.
Battle For LA:
The breachmaker fight was epic and had a feeling of ‘this really matters’ to it. decently designed fight too.
Scarlet’s End was a good finale… And that cutscene after it was so awesome I couldn’t believe it (map chat was everyone going ‘MORDREMOTH!!!’ in all caps as well lol)

But the main thing that I think those episodes had over S2 is the mystery of them (everyone thinking ‘is it Mordremoth?’). Personally on the breachmaker fight I was literally saying ‘please mordremoth, please mordremoth’ and on the end cutscene I was going ‘this has to be it’ and when we saw him open his moth and roar I was so happy that we were going to fight another elder dragon. But in season 2, now I KNOW that it’s mordremoth, I am just not enjoying it quite as much though I am still liking it nonetheless. I would like to know what all of you think on this subject. I am also hoping they can develop the ending cutscene of DR: Part 2 into something that gives me a similar feeling to the end of season 1.

The one thing I really miss in LS2 is the large-scale open-world events. It was fun (yet frustrating) to figure out how they worked and especially for LA (and FotFW), I loved that I could turbo-lvl alts (like EoTM, but more fun when ppl weren’t raging in the Pavillion.) I prefer the end of S1’s gameplay and the story in S2. Put those together and I think it’d be the best non-expansion content (not features) we’d get.

Carter.1034:

The one thing I really miss in LS2 is the large-scale open-world events.

Yeah I miss this MMO feeling as well. I guess anet are doing research on what people are interested in which alarms me because the LS seems to be very focused on being a single player game.

Don’t people like teaming up anymore and doing large scale events? I try to do Teq as much as I can because you feel like part of a larger community. The LS makes me feel less of one.

@Thobek, as I pointed out in my [PDPSI] thread on this subject, the current mechanics to make the LS replayable, which I think is a good step forward, does not lend itself well for this large scale open-world events…

And, I think that due to resources going to the replayability systems, while also needing to make content that can be replayed. The result was less content due to less resources for content, and content that was sure to be replayable. For figuring out how to achieve replayable large-scale open-world content within a replayable single player setting just needs a lot of time to come up with, construct and then test if it would work. Which would have taken even more time, while nothing could be done in the meantime (except for the LS:diary system itself)…

At least, to me that sounds like the most logical explanation, so, as we move forward I will assume that ANet will find ways to achieve both (possibly with our help, see aforementioned thread), and all can be happy ^^

The large scale, open world events as story content are gone because they were temporary. Everyone moaned and moaned about the temporary nature of LS1. Sure, it now means we have instances instead, but it’s much better than missing a month and never getting to play it ever again, and therefore no idea what went on. The open world events are being included just not as a direct part of the story (Dry Top events). T5/6 Dry Top requires serious organisation of open world play.

Let me give you a dissenting opinion – gigantic open-world events are nice in theory, but in practice, they end up being annoying clusterkittens with people disconnecting all over the place, a chat riddled with useless crap and overflowing maps that proceed at a snail’s pace. The whole thing that introduced the Karkas, for example. Or the start of LS season one (i can’t talk about the rest of it or the ending because the beginning actually drove me away from even trying it out). Or hey, let’s take Tequatl – if you’re on the right map at the right time (Coordination between Commanders, multiple groups, people actually know where to go and what to shoot), he’s toast. If you’re on the wrong map at the wrong time (something as simple as not enough people being there is enough), it’s pointless to even try. That is not exactly fun to me.

Personally, i find the big boss-events are quite enough of the stereotypical “MMO experience” for me, for better or worse. And they’re entirely optional, which is a really nice thing.
When i want dozens of complete strangers around me, i’ll go to a boss. But i would not want that when i try to experience and follow a coherent storyline or learn more about the lore of the world in my own time.