Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I am not one for lengthy discussions about a video game. I am here to announce that I changed my mind about Southsun and Canach’s Lair dungeon instance. I found a secret FPS mode in Canach’s Lair.

Just take a look my Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvuNRimu1Y8&feature=youtu.be) and observe the mines colour as I push Canach on to them. What a blast!

*If SAB can drag on for one month, I can surely make a joke at the end of May.

Just tried the 5 man instance with a group of PUGs. The experience was awful. And I am not blaming the other players. The mechanics of the fight, the knockbacks, the unavoidable AoE, the invulnerability periods and the tedious length of the encounter made the whole experience terrible. I don’t even want to bother trying to figure out the tricks in this encounter. The faster this instance is removed from the game, the better.

I was disappointed by the Secrets release and I thought Anet would learn and adapt. Some things with the previous content have been improved, but it appears from this instance that Anet thinks its customers are looking for the most unpleasant gaming experience possible. Is this to try and give a greater feeling of accomplishment for completing content? If so, that is just sad.

Edit: Okay, I just went and did the solo instance. I did complete it without looking at any online guides, though my experience in the five man instance did give me some insight. Didn’t take too long to figure out to use the mines to damage Canach, but I still think the CC is too much. Dodging to avoid is a bit of a problem as my reaction time isn’t the greatest (plus you need to dodge and not hit an active mine). But still about the most positive thing I can say about it is that I am not angry after finishing.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

I think this statement pretty much encompasses my issues with not only the Southsun content but also on the current state of the Living Story. I realize that everyone in any line of work has deadlines and due dates, but if the end result is excused by saying “well, it was pretty good given the time we had to work on it” then there’s something wrong with the way the work is being done. Either more time needs to be given or more resources need to thrown at it in the same time frame.

Southsun feels, from top to bottom, rushed. From the crab toss minigame to the storyline to the final encounters, there is the skeleton of some really good compelling content here. But it just feels like it was taken out of the oven way before it was finished. As someone on the outside, I can only chalk this up to the advanced speed of the Living Story updates that we’re now seeing. You can always argue that ANet can’t score a goal every time down the ice, and that’s true, but when SAB and F&F had such higher quality after longer gestation periods it’s an easy conclusion to come to.

Anyway, to the Last Stand content itself. I liked the concept but not the execution, particularly in the Canach fight. The fight was way too easy, even for an instance that was geared towards completion by anyone. It also employed one of my least favourite content choices in GW2: the “we take away your character specific stuff and make you rely on a gimmick” approach. In the Null fight it’s not as bad because you need to divide your team between mine duty and everything else. In Canach, the entire fight is just about the gimmick. I disliked it every time you had to do it in the open world for heart completion, but at least there were usually options you could choose to avoid or minimize it. But to base an entire critical storyline fight around it? Meh…

I hate to be another one just appearing to pile on, but the F&F content was much better executed, even if the meat and potatoes parts of the Molten Facility dungeon itself got boring really quickly. I know it’s different teams and different goals, but I hope in future Living Story development SAB and F&F are considered the standard to be achieved (or bettered) and Soushsun, particularly this phase of it, is properly viewed as a stumble.

I don’t like the Southsun updates. Problems I’m having with it:

• The story goes from: “we are relocating people to an island where the animals are more aggressive”… to… "we found out who is behind it and have him trapped in a corner. "
  So why am I there again? Just for demining the room?
• My conditions don’t work, but the ‘poison mine’ does it’s job nicely? Where is that logic? (my main is a condition necro)
• As a Necro I don’t have “easy” access to stability and that means I get knocked around by Canach pretty easily and usually get kicked into a mine and before I can get up, he’s already attacking again. (Sometimes even with a 2nd knockback. into another mine :/ ).
• It’s already bad enough that the last patch didn’t fix any of (major) issues (just fixes for tooltips that nobody reads), now I’m starting to get the feeling that (If I don’t want to miss out in the feature) I better have a lvl80 DPS warrior/guardian ready to play with
• On 1 hand I like trying to get some of the achievements, but on the other hand… what with the people who will join in this game in a few months? Do we have to tell that they are “too late for some of the achievements?”

StriderShinryu.6923:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

I think this statement pretty much encompasses my issues with not only the Southsun content but also on the current state of the Living Story. I realize that everyone in any line of work has deadlines and due dates, but if the end result is excused by saying “well, it was pretty good given the time we had to work on it” then there’s something wrong with the way the work is being done. Either more time needs to be given or more resources need to thrown at it in the same time frame.

Well, I’m sure if Robert had more time, it would have turned out differently. But I highly doubt he would tell his boss/supervisor/board (not sure how their management is set up) that if he doesn’t receive more time/resources, then hes not doing it. It’s more on the lines of "Yea I think we can design this event, with this amount of resources, in this amount of time, sir. "

There are times when things don’t go the right way in my line of work, and even if I know that’s not the correct way. I cannot say “hey, that’s wrong, do it this way”. I can recommend the way I think is right, but in the end; the big guys make the decisions.

(This is not attended to offend, harass Robert, or anyone else)

Antara.3189:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

I think this statement pretty much encompasses my issues with not only the Southsun content but also on the current state of the Living Story. I realize that everyone in any line of work has deadlines and due dates, but if the end result is excused by saying “well, it was pretty good given the time we had to work on it” then there’s something wrong with the way the work is being done. Either more time needs to be given or more resources need to thrown at it in the same time frame.

Well, I’m sure if Robert had more time, it would have turned out differently. But I highly doubt he would tell his boss/supervisor/board (not sure how their management is set up) that if he doesn’t receive more time/resources, then hes not doing it. It’s more on the lines of "Yea I think we can design this event, with this amount of resources, in this amount of time, sir. "

There are times when things don’t go the right way in my line of work, and even if I know that’s not the correct way. I cannot say “hey, that’s wrong, do it this way”. I can recommend the way I think is right, but in the end; the big guys make the decisions.

(This is not attended to offend, harass Robert, or anyone else)

Personally, the fact that Robert is actually coming out in a public forum such as this and recognizing/admitting to a lack of quality due to lack of time/resources makes me feel that it is something that he is comfortable in bringing forward. I won’t speculate out loud on the exact reasons, but I can hope that it’s basically a sign ANet is realizing pushing content out the door every couple of weeks may not be a good path to take. Regular releases of qualuty content, even if they aren’t all home runs, is better than “quick, get that out the door before the players get bored!”

Not a fan of solo instances. I like playing with other people and felt sad I could not join in the instance with them. I play MMO’s so i can play with other people. The instances themselves I found interesting. I treated it more like a puzzle then a combat situation. When looked at as a puzzle, it was not so disappointing as others have made it out to be. I have a feeling the big fight is yet to come.

But for the love of the six gods, please stop putting weapon skins behind RNG boxes that no one likes. It is just kitten ing off your customer base. If you, A.Net, really want us to spend gems, sell them as skins. I am never spending money or gems on random loot boxes. And never will. Either I get what I am buying or walk away. No one in their right mind spends money on something they may or more likely will not get. It is bad for the consumer and a shady business practice at best.

Also the crab tossing game wasn’t a favorite of mine. I felt there were good ideas in it, but if it was more team vs team oriented, it would have been way more fun.

I realise my opinion might not be popular in this thread but hey.

I would really like to thank Anet for adding a solo option to this story, many people, me included missed out on the Molten Facility because it was not soloable.
The fact that they listened to us and responded so quickly makes me very happy.

As for the encounter itself- it is easier on some classes than others- my Engi had a horrible time and died 3 times because she was being tossed around like a ragdoll and I could never get his health down pass the last 3rd.

On my mesmer it took me 3 minutes.

I am very glad to hear that we will also have a solo finish to the story.
Actually I enjoyed all the SouthSun content very much

I re-did the five-man instance to see if I was being fair earlier. I was. The design is just awful. There’s no coherency to the fight, and it’s obvious that a bunch of loose mechanics were slapped together at the last minute. The result isn’t a challenge; it’s a total mess that isn’t even difficult because all the mechanics are poorly tuned.

Also, the boss’s tells are awful and constantly bug out.

If rushing the development of content like this is what it takes to release patches every two weeks or month, slow down. Quality is way more important than quantity.

Lopez.7369:

I re-did the five-man instance to see if I was being fair earlier. I was. The design is just awful. There’s no coherency to the fight, and it’s obvious that a bunch of loose mechanics were slapped together at the last minute. The result isn’t a challenge; it’s a total mess that isn’t even difficult because all the mechanics are poorly tuned.

Also, the boss’s tells are awful and constantly bug out.

If rushing the development of content like this is what it takes to release patches every two weeks or month, slow down. Quality is way more important than quantity.

Since the patch I find him much better. You have the option of draging him over mines if your groups dps is too low for the final pahse.
That being said why can’t we have some vocal tells on when he is going to disarm/rearm mines? Would go a long way to making this more fun.
Also if defiant was changed so that the stacks came off slowly over time we could use launch/fears to throw him into disarmed mines to get aroung the crazy agro switching.
All in all, it’s one of the better fights. Tricky, but with a group that comunitcates/knows what it is doing, it’s a lot of fun without being another zerg to win (though I’ll be that still works, i just don’t roll with full zerker groups.)
As for the story… It’s hard to get into these sort of things when you know there are otehr world dragons out there. It’s like anime filler ah la Dragonball(z) or for the younger crowd Naruto/Bleach. At best it’s a nice distraction but you can’t wait for the real stuff to get going. At worst it’s just plain irritating. If we MUST have LS can’t it involve the dragons? Or even the aftermath of ‘defeating’ zahitan.
Also crab toss is probably the most polished, balanced and fun things to come out of GW2 since release. My hat goes off to the guys that designed that.

I enjoyed the F&F solo instances and I was looking forward to seeing the latest continuation of the Living Story. The Canach solo mission, however, was irritating and disappointing. I finished it with far less trouble than the F&F missions but that was only because I picked my mesmer to do it (see below for explanation).

I don’t mind the idea of short missions, in fact I like the concept. I do not like the use of bizarre mechanics that make all of our character abilities and any skill we have developed with our characters completely useless.

Additionally there are so many karka trash mobs on an absolutely ridiculous respawn rates on the way to the entrance that any solo player attempting to reach it will die. This is for a SOLO mission and they make it so you have to have a GROUP just to get to the entrance? Who thought that made any kind sense?

The mission already puts you in the wrong mood just getting to the entrance. Then you have to deal with Canach and that sinking, infuriating moment of seeing your character doing zero damage to him.

I was very fortunate, I brought my mesmer onto the mission and it turns out Canach can be damaged by Retaliation. I could spam abilities that gave it and the resulting indirect damage fight was boring but at least I won. Which is far, far better than dying even once to that irritating encounter.

When this part of the Living Story started, I was surprised to find that Southsun Cove actually became entertaining with the influx of new players and the missions from the previous part were enjoyable. Now I’m dreading the fact that I agreed to try the Canach group dungeon with friends tomorrow, and that’s not the kind of feeling any game should evoke.

Tried NULL with a 5 man PUG.
We failed several times, we then gave up.
We did get a little better evry new try though.

Still, I dont see the fun or challenge in it (NULL or Canach dungeon).
Only thing i liked was doing something with some other players for a change.
(I usually solo play GW2)

Only reason i would wanna do Canach or NULL only once is for the achievement.

Best joke would be if “upscaled” really low lvl players try this.
I hope they survive the (difficulty) shock.

That solo instance is terrible… people are asking for a solo dungeon and that’s what we get? playing with mines? Some of us actually want to play our classes, not play apprentice engineer.

The dungeon for Flame and Frost was soooo much better than the Lost Shores “dungeon”. How did we fall so far one month later? It would of been better to just not claim there was a dungeon at all…

Now I loved Canach, that was a great idea to have a single player boss encounter to finish out the story. Plus you gave us a nice mechanic that was challenging for some and too easy for others which means it was probably tuned right. However Sub-Director Noll was not a dungeon cmon. It was an encounter which could of been part of a nice dungeon, maybe as the first or second boss encounter, but no one was tricked into thinking of it as a dungeon. Let’s not do this please. If we can’t have a new temporary dungeon every month, then we just can’t. Every other month maybe, or quarterly even is plenty if we can get the Flame and Frost level or better. LOL Flame and Frost was so good people (including myself) were upset it went away, now that is a GOOD problem to have!

The canach dungeon is so bad I do not even want to try it with 5 other people. Shame I liked the rest on the island.

I was really psyched after seeing what the LS team could do with F&F, so it’s sad to say SoS came as a real disappointment. Overall I’d say if F&F was 85-90, SoS for me would be something like a 60 which is roughly the same as how I’d rate being Trahearne’s kitten in the personal story.

1) Didn’t care about the NPCs so I didn’t care about the story. No memorable NPCs that you can ‘bond’ with like Rox or Braham. The NPCs in F&F also seemed to have more of a story to tell on the whole like when you’d return trinkets to them and things.

2) The dungeon fights were just bad and I also hesitate to call it a dungeon seeing as it’s just a single room.

The single player fight vs Canach was all about using a gimmick that’d been set up to defeat him and not about using a character’s abilities. At no point did I feel threatened either because Canach was incapable of dealing real damage. I just stood there and kept disarming the same mine over and over while popping a heal.

The fight vs Null was focused on the things around him. The main boss was no real threat, it was the mines, the electric balls, and the DPS check auto damage that could kill a player. Think there needs to be a better balance between gimmick and actual fights. Maybe 20% gimmick, 80% actual fighting?

Also having mobs spawn around the entrance/exit of a dungeon without warning is bad design IMO. I had the ‘misfortune’ of going in when the path was clear and assumed it to be then popping out to see a crapload of Karka in my face and even more along my escape path.

3) Southsun as an area is unfun because of mobs focused on taking control away from the player and being HP sponges. The terrain is a pain to traverse because the design allows a player to go off the path easily (jump off, swim), but provides no easy way to get back on it due to elevation. Also having WPs constantly contested due to events makes travel an even greater pain in the kitten .

Shoujo.4395:

I was really psyched after seeing what the LS team could do with F&F, so it’s sad to say SoS came as a real disappointment. Overall I’d say if F&F was 85-90, SoS for me would be something like a 60 which is roughly the same as how I’d rate being Trahearne’s kitten in the personal story.

1) Didn’t care about the NPCs so I didn’t care about the story. No memorable NPCs that you can ‘bond’ with like Rox or Braham. The NPCs in F&F also seemed to have more of a story to tell on the whole like when you’d return trinkets to them and things.

2) The dungeon fights were just bad and I also hesitate to call it a dungeon seeing as it’s just a single room.

The single player fight vs Canach was all about using a gimmick that’d been set up to defeat him and not about using a character’s abilities. At no point did I feel threatened either because Canach was incapable of dealing real damage. I just stood there and kept disarming the same mine over and over while popping a heal.

The fight vs Null was focused on the things around him. The main boss was no real threat, it was the mines, the electric balls, and the DPS check auto damage that could kill a player. Think there needs to be a better balance between gimmick and actual fights. Maybe 20% gimmick, 80% actual fighting?

Also having mobs spawn around the entrance/exit of a dungeon without warning is bad design IMO. I had the ‘misfortune’ of going in when the path was clear and assumed it to be then popping out to see a crapload of Karka in my face and even more along my escape path.

3) Southsun as an area is unfun because of mobs focused on taking control away from the player and being HP sponges. The terrain is a pain to traverse because the design allows a player to go off the path easily (jump off, swim), but provides no easy way to get back on it due to elevation. Also having WPs constantly contested due to events makes travel an even greater pain in the kitten .

+1, I agree with everything he has said.

F&F seemed to have a lot more work into it and cooler rewards.

One thing I did like about SoS is it was in an 80 area rather then a noobie area which allowed us to farm useful materials, plus an area we hardly go, so +1 to ANET for that, but it’s true that the landscape is abit annoying to travel around especially with contested WP’s.

Did anyone else have trouble getting mines to disarm in the solo-instance? I play ranger which means my pet will trigger traps most of the time anyway, but even when I would stand close to a trap, and attempt to disarm it, there were multiple times where nothing would happen. I was using the correct skill and was standing close to and pointing in the direction of the trap, but no response. Between my pet and traps not properly disarming most of the time (not to mention the annoying knock-downs) this instance was just frustrating. Not difficult, just frustrating.

Aethersong.5189:

Did anyone else have trouble getting mines to disarm in the solo-instance? I play ranger which means my pet will trigger traps most of the time anyway, but even when I would stand close to a trap, and attempt to disarm it, there were multiple times where nothing would happen. I was using the correct skill and was standing close to and pointing in the direction of the trap, but no response. Between my pet and traps not properly disarming most of the time (not to mention the annoying knock-downs) this instance was just frustrating. Not difficult, just frustrating.

The disarm skills are ground targetted and it sounds like you have Fast-Cast Ground Targeting turned on.

And this specific issue is worthy of it’s own point in all this feedback. It seems like a significant portion of players didn’t realize how these skills worked due to having that option on. Sure there’s that little red target symbol on the skill icons, but apparently that’s not an effective enough way to inform players about how the mechanics of a new skill works.

I suppose the reason this isn’t a problem for most other environmental weapons and novel skill sets is because any ground targetted skills will usually create an obvious effect or aoe field. So a player can quickly see that the effects happen where their mouse cursor is. In contrast these disarm skills don’t really create anything visible on their own and so nothing helpfully clues the player about the targetting.

Very sorry to say this so clear (and I don’t want to hurt developer feelings but):
Flame & frost with its singleplayer content and esp. the molten facility was really great but the southsun content feels really awful to me.

The dungeon mechanic also seems to have problems when you pull the boss over mines and they sometimes don’t explode.

I would very much prefer more content like F&F and dismiss southsun.

I wanted to add a bit to my previous comments, I’ve done the dungeon with bosses who use gimmick/mini-game mechanics like Citadel of Flame and when this mechanic is done with a group, they are much more enjoyable than when you have to figure out some gimmick by yourself. It is more enjoyable because you are able to share the experience of overcoming it with others.

Single player games may be based on figure out boss gimmicks by yourself, but single player games also have difficulty scaling that MMOs generally do not for those player who don’t want to waste their time and just see the story.

That brings another point about the Personal Story or solo parts of the Living Story or any story that is meant to be a single player experience, these are not the places to put the challenging content. The challenging content is best saved for the dungeons or group encounters.

The solo story-based content we have seen is generally single-shot and no one expects it to provide the epic loot of explorer mode dungeons, so there is no point in gimmicks or difficult obstacles to gate the telling of the story. The purpose should be to tell the story, not wipe the solo player repeatedly so they can earn some amazing reward.

Again, the F&F solo dungeons were about the right balance. The fights were not push-overs but they did not rely on gimmick s(like the Canach fight) or repeatedly kill the players (like all the mobs outside the entrance to the Canach fight).

ArenaNet has shown their ability to learn, I really hope they learn from the feedback people are posting here.

I gave the solo instance another try after the Karka swarm in the passage leading to the entry had driven me away at first. I did not have any problems dealing with Canach, i had expected a more difficult challenge actually. A few mines did the trick. It’s alright as a solo instance i’d say.

I suppose I can share my views. I started off thinking that I’d just jot down a few quick thoughts, but… I ramble.

Story is really weak. I have no idea why Canach was aggravating the wildlife, nor how he was really doing it. No idea what’s going on with the Consortium, or the tourists, or… anything, really. I don’t know who I’m supposed to talk to in order to get these details. I suspect that the actual story is buried in some NPC dialogue somewhere. Or maybe random speech if I stand around all of the NPCs long enough. But this is very similar to the initial Lost Shores karka event — if you weren’t in the exact right spot in Lion’s Arch, you missed all the NPC dialogue containing the story exposition.

Solo dungeon wasn’t fun. I really loathe the “give every player the same environmental weapon” approach. It’s cheap and makes me think “we didn’t have enough time to actually balance this, so everyone does the same thing.” But of course my characters aren’t all the same. Not to mention that Canach frequently knocked me down from range, then before I could get up again knocked me down a second time into a mine. Seriously?

Champion instigators discourage team play. I spent some time today running with the zerg, just to see what they’re doing. The instigator at Kiel’s outpost died very quickly (I think it was bugged, actually). So we’d kill that one, run back to Driftglass and wait. In the meantime, I saw players running past events in progress. Or running past downed/defeated players. Meaning that if you didn’t stay with the zerg, it’s likely you’d miss the Kiel instigator entirely. But players didn’t want to stop because “OMG chest and no chest for the other events.” I even had the “pleasant” experience where the instigator spawned, and everyone around me ran off to deal with him — leaving me solo against a veteran young karka for the other event that was running. Thanks, guys! Note: Yep, it’s the community that’s the issue here, but primarily due to the “phat lewts” offered by the frequent instigator chests.

Southsun still has issues with travel. Pearl Islet waypoint is open all the time, but the others are very often contested. Considering that most people are drooling over the loot from the instigators, the events rarely are cleared. For the past few days, for instance, the waypoint at Captain’s Retreat has been unavailable due to the group event there (and utter lack of anyone willing to tackle that group event). So most travel involves running through dense fields of enemies. Bleh.

Rewards in Southsun Crates are not enticing. I got a few Southsun crates from farming, and picked up a sclerite weapon ticket. I don’t find those at all interesting, but the ticket is account bound so I can’t even give it away (and I know there are other people hoping for these). But the vast majority of the chests give me passion fruits and flowers and karka shells. Exactly the kind of stuff I can go and get on my own without the RNG factor. I’ve opened a dozen boxes or so, and so far there’s absolutely nothing in there to make me want to open more. Even Black Lion chests have more variety and unique rewards.

But now for the positive stuff:

It was easy to get the two back pieces. I followed a guide to get the achievements, because I really had no clue what I was doing with the detector thing for the samples (a ping on the compass would have helped) and got a little annoyed. But at least I didn’t have to spend forty years in a dungeon looking for the items.

The scenery is still nice, even though it’s still infested with karka.

The fact that there was a solo dungeon plus a 5-person dungeon was a nice concept. I do agree that it shouldn’t be strictly solo for the first bit — excluding people is rarely a fun approach. But I think it’s a step in the right direction (I never completed Flame and Frost due to the final dungeon requirement).

And the most positive: I think I’ve exhausted the topic now, so I’ll be quiet.

I completed F&F 3x with random groups—————that IMO, was the way the MF dungeon was supposed to work—————-and it was fun—in it’s own way. When GW2 was released, the design was such that the world was set up FOR “random parties” to interact to achieve a goal——-the expansion to “hordes of mongols” attacking the dangerous 2-year old took this idea to the limit ( yes the “Great Karka” did die———-of laughter, probably—————from the massive onslaught—————with a cast of thousands). Realistically, I sat back and wondered what is going on——-is there REALLY a target in that mob?———or is everyone re-enacting a 4th of July ceremony? It worked? (like making omelettes with sledge hammers). Canach feels contrived————-a “Kwiki-mart” fix to a chain store problem. IMO

actually really enjoying this content. Nice to have high level mats to farm and the occasional really rare drop so there is a reason to be here besides getting achievements (which I wouldnt bother spending all this time here if there wasnt a cool title or gear reward). Jumping puzzle was a disappointment as it was easy to get lost at at least 2 points, making it necessary to go outside the game for tips to finish. Group NULL dungeon is way way way too difficult. Take out those roaming AOE bots, or at least remove their ability to undo player tamed mines. As is, the exploit is the only way to do this dungeon without insane amount of frustration for un-equivalent reward.

Things I would have done differently:

Storytelling:
- A cutscene on Pearl Islet letting you know what the flip is going on, instead of Kiel stood about talking to no-one in particular. Accessed via an instance similar to the Braham/Rox cutscenes.

- An instance in Steampipe Steading following on from that cutscene where you kill waves of crazed beasts and then question the survivors and find out whodunnit. Instead of Kiel and a random settler just having a chat over and over again after a dynamic event.

Mechanics:
- Remove Canach’s knockback in the Canach’s Lair instance. It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back and it’s why people hate the instance. It is not fun.
- Add verbal cues instead of spamming the chatbox with yellow text.

- Remove the elementals from the Subdirector NULL instance. It’s the element that makes it impossible for PUGs and any group that’s not mostly guardians. It is not fun.
- Add verbal cues instead of spamming the chatbox with yellow text.

Misc:
- Either stop putting weapon skins in the game for a limited time via tokens gained from chests, or leave them in the game permanently. If I knew that from now until the end of GW2 that I had a chance to get a molten weapon skin or a sclerite skin from a BLC, then I wouldn’t throw so many of the kitten ed things away or sell them on the TP. Just saying.

- The event in Blakestone Caverns should probably have been deactivated for the duration of Last Stand at Southsun. It’s inconvenient as flip.

That’s really it, everything else I’ve enjoyed. I usually play GW2 with my partner and brother, but I’ve been flying solo for the more difficult parts of Southsun as it’s been frustrating them and they’ve just totally given up. There is a difference between elite content and alienating content. If you want to put elite content into the game then please add a “hard mode” option to dungeons rather than making things unplayable for more casual players or people new to the genre.

GW2 was marketed as being “an MMO for people who don’t play MMOs”. This feels very much like content designed for the hardcore.

EDIT: Could you also post an official feedback thread in every living story forum from now on? Since one always ends up getting made, why not just post it and sticky it at the top where everyone can find it?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

There are multiple living world teams, each with assets from all departments. The initial scope for Canach’s instance was as it is now – we had a shorter time table to build things,

I can’t give estimates on how long our team was developing this content, but it was an accelerated dev cycle for our team.

Our next schedule is much more relaxed than this one is though, so I’m very eager to see what we can do with it.

Ok, so what this shows is that the two-week pace you are shooting for…

That’s too fast.

You can code this stuff out at that pace – but these things need more time to develop logical plotlines that get proofread, and have boss fights that have dynamic mechanics AND context to a story.

I’m with those who would prefer less but more developed content.

Quality over quantity.

New stuff every week or two weeks; yet poorly storycrafted and full of recycled mechanics (Karka Queen) – that’s not ideal.

Canach was new mechanics – but just “sitting there” with no story, no depth, no context. Asian plant guy in cave, film at 11, next.

We now know ArenaNet can code at a pace to give us lots of new content every two weeks. But they can’t write and proofread good stories at that pace (No in game idea who Canach was, why we fought him, or how we found him, and until last night it looked like we were in a pro-slavery plotline… I’ve said elsewhere how similar Canach seems to John Brown / Harper’s Ferry – except Canach is less violent than our actual historical hero he seems [accidentally?] modeled on), and they’re not able to create new dynamic fight mechanics at this pace.

- That is not to ArenaNet’s discredit. There is a -REASON- the industry is mostly slower in releases than this. Quality matters.

Again, give us quality over quantity.

Essarious Quw.8946:

Things I would have done differently:

Storytelling:
- A cutscene on Pearl Islet letting you know what the flip is going on, instead of Kiel stood about talking to no-one in particular. Accessed via an instance similar to the Braham/Rox cutscenes.

- An instance in Steampipe Steading following on from that cutscene where you kill waves of crazed beasts and then question the survivors and find out whodunnit. Instead of Kiel and a random settler just having a chat over and over again after a dynamic event.

Mechanics:
- Remove Canach’s knockback in the Canach’s Lair instance. It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back and it’s why people hate the instance. It is not fun.
- Add verbal cues instead of spamming the chatbox with yellow text.

- Remove the elementals from the Subdirector NULL instance. It’s the element that makes it impossible for PUGs and any group that’s not mostly guardians. It is not fun.
- Add verbal cues instead of spamming the chatbox with yellow text.

Misc:
- Either stop putting weapon skins in the game for a limited time via tokens gained from chests, or leave them in the game permanently. If I knew that from now until the end of GW2 that I had a chance to get a molten weapon skin or a sclerite skin from a BLC, then I wouldn’t throw so many of the kitten ed things away or sell them on the TP. Just saying.

- The event in Blakestone Caverns should probably have been deactivated for the duration of Last Stand at Southsun. It’s inconvenient as flip.

That’s really it, everything else I’ve enjoyed. I usually play GW2 with my partner and brother, but I’ve been flying solo for the more difficult parts of Southsun as it’s been frustrating them and they’ve just totally given up. There is a difference between elite content and alienating content. If you want to put elite content into the game then please add a “hard mode” option to dungeons rather than making things unplayable for more casual players or people new to the genre.

GW2 was marketed as being “an MMO for people who don’t play MMOs”. This feels very much like content designed for the hardcore.

EDIT: Could you also post an official feedback thread in every living story forum from now on? Since one always ends up getting made, why not just post it and sticky it at the top where everyone can find it?

I’m sorry if you feel that this is hardmode or content for hardcore but it’s definetly pure casual player content. All the hardcore players stopped playing GW2 a while ago and the semi-hardcore ones that still play completed Canach under 5 minutes and NULL on their first try.

Southsun, for me, totalled about 2 hours of content (1 hour and a half to complete all the achivements for the two backpacks without dulfy’s guide and 30 mins to do Canach, find a group for NULL and do NULL)

Also, to those people complaining about failing with pugs…Why dont you try with players you know are decent? ask guildies maybe?

I personnaly enjoyed a lot the content :
- quick dungeons, having a solo mode included which was a god idea
- good level of drops : miniatures, crates,… they seemed to drop a lot in game
- lot of events/achievements : quick to do, often repop
- fun mini-game : it has some problems, but it’s cool to do and has a correct reward as well

Pizz.3698:

I’m sorry if you feel that this is hardmode or content for hardcore but it’s definetly pure casual player content.

After fighting the crazed karka queen last night, I really disagree.

I died three times in that fight — on a character that, at level 80, has only 10 deaths (and no crafting at all). First death was instant. Standing in Steampipe Steading and suddenly surrounded by a dozen crazed young karka all at level 84. I don’t know if it was just spawning for the event, or culling. Either way, literally nothing I could do, just standing at full health to defeated (and I was not the only one, about a dozen other people reported the same). Second death, I tried to rush through the horde of crazed beasts to get to the queen. Obviously didn’t work out. Third death, running back to try to get to the queen and got caught by two veteran karka at the “curtain” north of Owain’s Refuge. I came really close to dying a fourth time during the fight, simply due to so many kitten-ed additional spawns — and I didn’t even get to fight the queen until the last minute of the fight before she retreated.

In short, it was brutal and chaotic and not fun in any way for me (I certainly won’t be doing it again, regardless of the “double rare” chest). I’d rather go kill two world bosses and get nearly the same rewards without all the death.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not criticizing the fight aside from my subjective opinion of “fun-ness.” I think it is actually a good response from ArenaNet in reaction to many people discouraged by how easy the boss fights are in other zones. I know lots of people will enjoy how difficult it is. I just disagree that this is aimed towards the casual player.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Yeah, I was a bit perplexed on why it was called a dungeon as well. Coming from the dungeon team previously, it really felt more like a boss instance, but I don’t write the patch notes or do the marketing.
I didn’t build the Canach encounters, but I did enjoy them. It’s a neat variation that changes gameplay, and I liked the mechanics. Sure there’s a few things that can be done better (as is with everything), but given the time the designer had to work on the instance, I think he did a great job.

TBH I dont think it was in the mechanics or design of the instance where the problem lay. It was well enough designed mechanically (although I would always be worried about over-using temp skills in place of the ones a player has chosen and practiced with). The real problem with the thing was one of storytelling and characterization. So many gaps in the narrative up to that point, only the bones of a story arc very loosely and artificially constructed from some related events, talking heads and the instances. Some mechanics (such as Canach being invincible) were also wildly immersion breaking. I know you put in one line of text to explain why but still, nothing else in the game, Dragons, Gods or Demons has invincibly but this second rate Sylvari can do it? Putting the cart far off in the distance in front of the horse on that one.

Characterization is another big problem with it. None of the NPCs in this had any real depth or personality to them (apart from right at the very end Inspector Kiel comes out looking pretty cool) Canach as a villian is like bland wallpaper. His motivations are actions are told to us, rather than shown and he himself expresses practically nothing. This is a rather good summary of the problem with a lot of GW2 storytelling to be honest. Too much telling and not enough showing.

PS With regard to characters Im not talking about having super expensive voice acting or elaborate facial animations and gestures. If books can make characters come alive (and sweet mercy they can) then all you really need is some genuinely polished dialoge by writers who know how to conceive and express personality. Some sort of quirk of speech or and expression of personality traits outside the characters assigned role of well meaning doer of evil or long suffering policewoman might be all it takes.

Its all in the details. Give yourself more time, if content were to come out bi-monthly and be around the same amount as now, but significantly higher quality I hazard a guess the community would be quite chuffed.

PPS Remember all those situational comments added to the Cynn and the others back in GW1 that expressed their opinion on some matter or the reaction to a given situation? Those were fun.

Things I liked:
-plenty of events and activities to keep the zone populated
-challenging mobs that scaled well to the number of players
-good amount of loot drops in the form of exotic accessories/minis/crates
-story mode dungeon that unlocks group dungeon
-living story tie-in to last chapter and leads to next one

Things I didn’t like:
-presentation of story was not done well
-achievement log acting as a quest log
-achievement log spoils the ending

Suggestions:
-Use more story instances. There could have been a story instance where you follow Inspector Kiel on a patrol of the island to investigate the crazed wildlife, question settlers, and put down rioters.
-Short ingame cinematic to introduce the event when first talking to Inspector Kiel and another one when entering the story dungeon to introduce the villain
-Use heart NPCs to guide players rather than the achievement log. An example would be to have Researcher Levvi give you the collector and collect 10 samples to finish the heart. When you do, they offer the flower backpiece for sale. Remove all the sample achievements and let players explore the zone to find it on their own with the collector. Then you can simplify the log by having a single achievement for going out of your way to find all 11. Whether or not you tell people where things are, they will either look at a guide or ask other players if they don’t know.

Haven’t been able to take part in the karka queen event yet, tried 3 times and each time i’ve had the worst luck ever. ganked by a troop of karka just before the gates, had to res at a different camp that wasn’t contested at the time, then was as soon as i rezoned and got stomped by 4 drakes. so fed up.

Living story well for me is just a concept that actually doesn’t work the way you are doing it now. It’s billed as major exciting event but to me they fall short. Here few things I felt from my experience of it.

Flame and Frost was a nice event. It had a great story, nice instance and was compelling with its voice acting and cutscenes. my only issue with it would be the time scale. it was spaced out so much the whole experience lost any sense of urgency or that these nations were in peril. But the dungeon added was well designed and the bosses were a welcome well thought out challenge that made players engage and rely on their skills as players. I really enjoyed this event

Southsun Cove however just falls miles short. For me the island itself is just boring, the mobs are all over powered and woefully unbalanced spawn populations at events leads to an uninspiring experience. The island is practically made up of 4 species thats it… The story was wafer thin & flat. The whole experience lacked anything that was polished. I just feel that with such a beautiful and fantastically enjoyable world such as the Tyria you have created “why did you do this?”. I am bewildered by Southsun Cove. The island is “not fun” it feels irrelvant and alien to the world of Tyria it lacks any resemblance to the level of quality you display in the rest of the world.

I preferred Flame and Frost to be honest. I had expected we would be getting more information about the Consortium’s plans, and perhaps to finally start cracking down on them as they strike me as quite nefarious. Instead we got Canach again, who honestly I’d pretty much forgotten about. I also don’t think the ‘plot’ was carried through the temporary content nearly as well; you could very easily go to Southsun to farm the events and mobs without ever really understanding why you were there or why anything was happening.

The dungeon is also much more disappointing. Molten Facility had some challenging parts and took longer to complete, but it felt like a ‘proper’ dungeon (though I know this is subjective. The new one doesn’t feel like a dungeon or a story; it’s just a room with a guy in it who’s really, really annoying.

All in all, not one of their better efforts, although I am grateful for the chance to farm at least some of my T6 mats for my legendary (scales, in this case).

boring story, poorly executed, weak character development, sparse content… not good at all.

I do find Canach an interesting character only because a Anet developer explained in one of these threads why Canach is wearing those gauntlets. Because he was curious about what was happening up north and single handedly took out a molten facility. That impresses me but you would never know that part to his character unless you read that particular post hidden away in some random thread.

I don’t ever want to see another boring story where we have to deal with legal documents on an island holiday resort. I want to go into a large dungeon and seek out and destroy some ancient evil and retrieve some hidden artifact of great power (which could be used to threaten the world) with a few epic boss battles with interesting fight mechanics where I get to use my own abilities not some mine sweeper gun.

I just finished the mission with Kiel that gives the Contractually Obligated achievement and I felt it was a poor presentation of the ending of this part of the Living Story. Read after the spoilers if you’ve done it.

It’s explained but it’s not right there as you play, so it’s kind of difficult to keep track of. It’s why I think a hand full more scenes like the one at the end of the living story would have helped tell the tale. Even if they went back to the “talking heads” cut away it would help to put emphasis on what is being said at that moment.

Also on going back to the island I’d suggest making the consortium greeter some kind of scout that explains the situation on the island, holding the 4 outposts, etc. It’s a bit nebulous without it.

Debois Guilbert.6413:

Just tried the 5 man instance with a group of PUGs. The experience was awful. And I am not blaming the other players. The mechanics of the fight, the knockbacks, the unavoidable AoE, the invulnerability periods and the tedious length of the encounter made the whole experience terrible. I don’t even want to bother trying to figure out the tricks in this encounter. The faster this instance is removed from the game, the better.

I was disappointed by the Secrets release and I thought Anet would learn and adapt. Some things with the previous content have been improved, but it appears from this instance that Anet thinks its customers are looking for the most unpleasant gaming experience possible. Is this to try and give a greater feeling of accomplishment for completing content? If so, that is just sad.

Edit: Okay, I just went and did the solo instance. I did complete it without looking at any online guides, though my experience in the five man instance did give me some insight. Didn’t take too long to figure out to use the mines to damage Canach, but I still think the CC is too much. Dodging to avoid is a bit of a problem as my reaction time isn’t the greatest (plus you need to dodge and not hit an active mine). But still about the most positive thing I can say about it is that I am not angry after finishing.

Please anet, do not listen to people like this. Null was an incredibly dull and easy fight, you have to basically be playing with your feet to find it challenging. Canach was even easier, and the fight just makes it drag on if you want to 100% avoid damage(achievement) because of the 30 second cooldown on the guns knockback and the easily avoidable spam bomb rearms/explosions happen too frequently and just prolong an already boring boss fight, as well as bombs taking forever to go from yellow – > green after repopping.

Canach and Null are really, really, REALLY easy. I cannot stress this enough. They are cool ideas but implemented badly, there isn’t much challenge or teamwork, you just tank and spank Null while someone runs around disarming(or two people) bombs and bringing it to the bomb to take the shield down, then continue to tank and spank it. The lightning elementals are easily dodgable, and don’t even do much damage.

Please, I am begging you, do not listen to someone like this when taking feedback of your content. We want harder stuff, MUCH harder!

My opinion:

Canach and Null:

Cool concept, done badly. No ideas personally how to make it better, but if you want to add unique mechanics like this, test it more, see if it’s actually “fun”, make it harder until it’s too hard for your testing team, then double/triple it. I think this works for all content you make, double/triple whatever your testing team finds too hard.

Karka queen:

A veteran/champion karka that you throw eggs at to remove her armor, then you spam damage on her and she’s dead in 4 minutes. Pretty much the worst open world event boss I’ve done, even shadow behemoth was more fun. She is very easy, no real mechanics, not much dodging, she doesn’t do enough damage, and doesn’t require paying much attention to anything really. The temple bosses are much harder and more fun than her, pretty much every event in the game is. I’m not sure why a boss easier than any boss in the game was added when player feedback has been “please add harder content! please make harder bosses”.

She needs mechanics added, needs to do more damage, needs more special attacks, needs a lot of things really. No real ideas, but she’s badly done.

Overall I won’t be returning to southsun much, I have much more fun in Orr, SPV, WVW, and dungeons(not cof path1). Southsun is my least favorite PVE zone when it comes to events and bosses, but it has the most fun normal monsters. Karkas, vet karkas, drakes, and most of the mobs are all challenging and fun to fight solo/duo, much harder than any other mob in the game. Which is why I’m so confused as to why a zone with the hardest mobs in the game has the easiest event boss and had the easiest “dungeon” bosses.

Cross-posting a link for my (extremely long) Southsun feedback from another thread.

A quick summary
I hope that the Living Story and fluid content being created can catch up to the quality of the art in this game. I feel that the chapters so far have been static, unengaging, and more lackluster than it should be. ANet has a lot of talented people but I think this potential has so far been wasted, whether that be to time, budgets, or manpower restraints. There’s creativity to be tapped into, and short of the MF dungeon, I have not seen it.

I understand this is all new and growing pains are to be felt, but moving from the slow-starting F&F through the epic dungeon fight of the Molten Facility on to the chaos of Southsun and the rushed denouement of Canach and the Queen does not inspire confidence for future updates.

I’m hoping the next chapter (after Dragon Bash) is a step in the right direction.

Abazigal.3679:

I personnaly enjoyed a lot the content :
- quick dungeons, having a solo mode included which was a god idea
- good level of drops : miniatures, crates,… they seemed to drop a lot in game
- lot of events/achievements : quick to do, often repop
- fun mini-game : it has some problems, but it’s cool to do and has a correct reward as well

I’ve never seen a crate nor a miniature drop in Southsun. Not a single one. The whole Island is worthless to me. I get better drops in WvW.

My 2 cents:

This was definitely worse that F&F, but there was also a lot of fun stuff here.

Good

• Lots of events and event variety. There were some events with funny dialogue, some for big zergs, some for small groups, etc.
• The backpieces. I didn’t have a lot of time this month, but I could still get cool stuff.
• MF buff. Seriously, this had a big impact on relaxed and fun the island was. I didn’t feel the pressure of ‘This is a waste of time, why are drops so bad’ that I do in regular PvE. When a mob was hard I felt like the work I put in was worth it. I felt like I was progressing on my overall goals as well as the event content instead of having to choose one or the other.

Bad

• There were places where the speed of development impacted content quality and made my playtime less fun. Things weren’t as polished and didn’t flow as smoothly, I felt like I lost the thread of the story at several points and relied on guides to get back on track.
• RNG boxes. I know why you do this, I definitely don’t like or agree.
• Timing. I haven’t tried the instances yet, due to lack of time. Next month is also going to be crunched. I know you guys want to put out regular content updates, but I’d be happy if you went to every 6 weeks or every 2 months instead of every month. At this rate, I feel like I don’t have time to play the regular game anymore. I have to choose between the temporary stuff or the rest of the game and that’s kind of irritating.

Overall, this was OK, but not actually fun in the way F&F or SAB were.

Honestly, for me, Southsun was probably the weakest/less enjoyable living story I’ve seen so far.

The event itself paled in comparison with the Frost & Fire story stages, lorewise there was no high motivation to going and actually help, many less things were at stake, and as for the menace of Canach, it was weak (which again, in order to learn more about him, you must read from the main page, something that really should stop for the next Living Story in my opinion).

The PvP event was less than enjoyable this time, compare it to the halloween ones, the hide and seek and the pumpkin and skeleton rising were absolutely amazing.

As for this last stage, can’t say it was totally bad, but wasn’t great either (I still think the Molten Alliance dungeon did a better job on this matter). It was challenging, but perhaps, it was too much challenge for everyone to handle, and for a living story I think it was unnecessary the level of difficulty.

I really hope that Dragon Bash L.S. could deliver, got high expectations on that one!

Morrigan.2809:

I realise my opinion might not be popular in this thread but hey.

I would really like to thank Anet for adding a solo option to this story, many people, me included missed out on the Molten Facility because it was not soloable.
The fact that they listened to us and responded so quickly makes me very happy.

As for the encounter itself- it is easier on some classes than others- my Engi had a horrible time and died 3 times because she was being tossed around like a ragdoll and I could never get his health down pass the last 3rd.

On my mesmer it took me 3 minutes.

I am very glad to hear that we will also have a solo finish to the story.
Actually I enjoyed all the SouthSun content very much

Solo options are great. I’d like stuff like Rift chronicles. But there they are to let solo players see otherwise group content. Not as the main content themselves.

I think the dev who did this did well, but overall from an Anet point of view the scope of this content is not good. it needs ot be bigger, bolder and more engaging, and if that takes longer to get out….fine.

Give the devs the resources and time they need to put out the content quality we know they can produce.

Thanks for the list JerekLo, I have some comments behind the spoiler.

I agree completely that additional scenes would have been helpful, moreso I say they are absolutely necessary. This isn’t a mystery novel, they shouldn’t be hiding critical facts from the players, they should be making them readily available and repeating them to make sure everyone knows them. Particularly given the bugs that always seem to crop up in the story missions.

A little bit of repetition doesn’t hurt and insures that people understand the story being told. There are enough random bugs in the various story missions that the devs should assume important facts are going to missed if they are only presented once.

I have to say I kinda liked Canach mechanics, using his weapons against him, but it was too short. Null was better IMO, since it got gradually harder with turrets and sparks.

As for the Southsun, it was fun, ton of events, but those instigators got a bit boring after a while. After June 5th patch everything went downhill in my opinion, now there are group events everywhere and you can’t do anything on your own, and player Zerg keeps running back and forth freeing camps so that Queen Karka can spawn. It gets repetitive after a while, and as soon as players leave Southsun it will become ghost town just like before the patch.

Add more (some that don’t require a group) events, make those camps less easy to fall. West side of the map is low on events, except the Karka eggs thing, so why not add more events there? In general, more events, more diversity could make this zone better again.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if you added settlers once again, I know it breaks the continuity of the story, but running between four camps and doing the same four group events over and over gets boring after a while.

Oh, and 1000 Karka shells for Ancient Karka, and all trade shells for exotic system is just a pure grind in my opinion, and it should for differently.

This may be something that’s already been said – I just skimmed through the other posts – but to put in my 2c:

One thing I’ve been finding rather disjointed in this event is the Champion Young Karka. The impression I’ve been getting is that these have been generated as a result of the scaling up of events due to the presence of multiple players, just as champions in other events with lots of players get generated to scale up the threat in a more meaningful manner than adding more cannon fodder.

However, there are two problems with this:

The first is that there was already something in the game that came after veteran young karka in the power scale of the game – namely, veteran adult karka. Having champion juveniles that are proving tougher and almost bigger than the adults is a but of a cognitive dissonance. (It gets even sillier when you start seeing champion HATCHLINGS pop up.)

The second is that while adult karka have been designed to fight groups, veteran young karka have largely been designed to fight individuals – and are quite effective at it. The problem that when this gets scaled up to champions – unless the right support goes up at just the right time, a player that gets focused on by a young karka champion is probably taking a rapid trip into the downed state. This, combined with the possibility of one player out of a group being targeted by multiple veteran karka, is making some of the events we’re seeing in a final stage a bit of a lottery – normally you’ll be all right due to the odds of being picked out among the other players in the event, but when the aggro system decides its going to hammer you, there’s often little you can do.

As a suggestion moving forward: How about altering the scaline code for the Southsun events so that, when the event would normally call for a champion young karka (or hatchling…) it generates a veteran adult instead (with the possible further scaling to champion adults if the zerg is Just That Big)? This would have the following effects:

1) It would represent a scaling up of the overall threat to the group, rather than simply being a question of which player out of the group is unlucky enough to get singled out.

2) It would provide a clearer visual cue of when the ante has been raised, since a slightly larger champion young karka or two among a mob of veteran and regular young karka can be easily missed, while the adults are quite distinctive.

3) It would make for a clearer progression of the karka lifecycle, since instead of generating superpowered infants and juveniles, it would smoothly progress into adult members of the species.

How about instead of linear scale spawning mass hordes of hatchlings/juvenile/lower tier mobs, have the event scaler past a certain minimum player thresh-hold start exchanging 3-5 of what it would have spawned for minions at a time for veterans/etc instead.

For example, if right now the spawn code calls for 50 minions due to player presence, instead have it call for 25 minions, 5 veterans, and a champion. (ratios of course adjustable)

Might also help with client and server performance issues to spawn fewer but tougher (but individually more rewarding) mobs instead of lag hordes that either focus fire players into paste before they can react or get mass AE farmed.

Honestly, the previous Living Story arch was much much better than this. Southsun has become an annoyance of massive Karka zergs that are able to completely wipe the even more massive player zergs the second they spawn. Glitchy content such as the achievements for Crab Toss which still need to be addressed and have locked players out for days now from completing them as the even draws to a close have only caused worry and frustration.

Molten Facility had very engaging and well-thought out design and mechanics, while the two dungeon instances of Southsun have been a source of frustration for many. Molten Facilities taught the crucial mechanics needed for the boss through the weapons testing segment near the start. Canach’s Lair failed to give much if any indication as to how to handle the fight properly.

Southsun as a whole, while well-intentioned is very brutal on many players, and very annoying when you find yourself suddenly in the middle of a massive spawn of deadly hostiles. Glitchy content, poor dungeon design, I think that the wise choice would be to return to a Flame and Frost style of delivery for Living Stories, taking more time to tell the story and create stronger content.

And please, please, extend crab toss. Many have been unable to complete the glitched achievements through no fault of their own. Please consider treating it such as the Flame and Frost bonfire, taking away the chest rewards in it but allowing people to play and complete their achievements who were caught in the terrible glitch that has plagued Crab Toss for several days now.

Thought it was “ok”, didn’t have that cool feel or like I would want to really finish it. I kinda wanted the backpiece, but I really hate zergs of karka and lizards. It just didn’t seem fun, the environment felt really plotted and sectioned. I’m a farmer at heart but even the farming didn’t feel fun, even with the drops and MF. ALso i just dislike the are because it is so gloomy and dark, and farming in Orr for 5 months, it’s not really a “shiny” new place of interest for me. Still prefer Orr even with the delayed events, karka just kill you without a chance in groups. Solo they are simple as most classes but something about that place just felt dull and uninteresting to me…

Hoping for the dragon bash, can’t see myself not doing that it looks like a lot of fun. I usually spend much money on these events, boxes and such, but southsun just didn’t really see anything worth getting. Even as a person who does buy RNG boxes sometimes, just don’t see the point this time.

It’s sad, Southsun could be a really beautiful area without all the rain and gloom. Even with a few more mob types and keeping the karka and lizards, if they just made the island more inviting(environment wise) it would help.