Showing Posts For Aerial.4380:
the latest mission was the best i have seen, and the updates such as AP rewards and champion loot bring much needed change and improvement.
Did I miss something? When I did the enter-the-Jubilee instance, Jenna spoke a bit, Logan fought the fake Rytlock, and then the watchwork things went crazy. I fought maybe five of them (so there were probably 7 total). Then Scarlet (whoever) showed up, bounced around taunting people, and left.
I mean, I’ve missed most of the other living story instances for not knowing where to look for them, but… this was really the best? I thought is was kind of light on action (both story and fighting) and not very threatening-feeling. (Except for Anise’s “joke” on Logan. That I enjoyed.)
Was my version of that instance glitched or something?
It is the same with the Ascalon Settlement (North of LA), even though the Ascalon Settlement is technically in Kryta.
I know, I was there when it was founded. (Useless Rurik ….)
Alas, poor Rurik, I knew him well…
I cannot play everything, but too sum it up, I see 4 problems and have a pretty obvious suggestion for each.
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- Confusing. There are small mails and some actions like special foes and signs on the map. You have to read into the matter in your blogs and especially for new players new in the world are these too much to understand.
I didn’t know there WAS a story with any of the updates until I started reading this forum and running into posts on peoples’ theories about Scarlet’s identity. My first thought: Scarlet? Who’s Scarlet?
I missed everything in Flame and Frost, Southsun, the Aetherblade stuff… all of it… because I couldn’t figure out where to go or who to talk to in order to get going on the story. I did stumble into Brahm’s story instance, which was great until I got to the end and couldn’t finish it because I couldn’t take the final boss by myself. (Which was really frustrating, but since I had no idea what the instance was about, really, or how it connected to the signposts and stuff, I wasn’t motivated enough to try to come back and finish it.)
Too late I stumbled on the story instance where the council is attacked, but that was on the last day or two of that LS so I didn’t have time to follow the story any further. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I would swear there were no instructions to help me know I had to pass by that cordoned-off area in Lion’s Arch and stop to watch if I got lucky and they had the event “up”. I’m almost certain there were times I went there and tried to interact with the starred person and they told me to come back some other time.
If the story is truly being told outside the game, that’s pretty close to a deal-breaker for me. I am that rarest of all creatures — a female gamer over the age of 40 :-) I don’t have much time to game let alone to go off and read forums all the time to keep up with the story my game is supposed to be telling. And I’m never going to be able to really integrate with social media the way my kids do.
But if there are more pointers inside the game than a cryptic email and gold-starred NPCs that rarely tell me anything directly useful, please let me know what they are so I can be looking for them.
I believe the Gauntlet achievements were intended to be unattainable by a large portion of the player base. So the argument that the Gauntlet should have been designed to make it achievable by regular players isn’t really valid. (I say this as someone who can’t beat the first boss in the Gauntlet, probably.) The goal was to give the really elite players (you can define elite in terms of skill, gear, play time or whatever) something challenging to achieve.
The Jubilee achievements were intended to be (and are) attainable by all.
I didn’t mind the high difficulty of those achievements. In fact I had already completed most of them when I created this thread. As I mentioned in the first post, the feedback is collected from guild mates and other friends I’ve been discussing the living stories content with. The frustrating part about Queen’s Gauntlet achievements was the lack of some elegant design pertaining to the battle mechanics and arena textures. I’m quoting myself here:
“…but the whole system overall is awfully designed. And I will explain why:
– Upon death, you are teleported outside the arena and you remain dead, with your armor being damaged. So technically we MUST beg friends or guildies to wait for us outside to revive us. Otherwise we have to pay to teleport, and then run aaaall the way back up there, and wait for our turn to fight if the arena is taken. Fail, just a big fat FAIL for that one.
– The floor inside the arenas is also badly designed, the AoE circles are not visible in some of the battles.
– The time limit to kill some enemies is ridiculously low.
– The camera angle is kittenED, like the person who programmed it. I am sorry for being rude, but the game has been released since one year ago and you’ve still NOT fixed the camera angle conflicting with the ceilings or walls. It’s impossible to see what’s happening most of the time, since those Gauntlet Arenas are in fact cages and don’t resemble an arena at all.”
Sorry if I misquoted. I was actually responding to another poster who was complaining that the Gauntlet does not provide a level field for upleveled characters or characters with non-maxed gear.
it’s a pity because with no hearts exploration is really fast (it was the case in southsun) or frustrating like in orr (but the orr thing it’s just my opinion)
The hearts were never meant to be part of exploration. It’s all about dynamic events. Think of Orr. Was Orr fast/easy to explore? There are no hearts there.
The thing is, originally the game wasn’t supposed to have hearts, but people ran through areas where events happened and didn’t hang around and ended up wondering where the quests were. The hearts were added to keep people in an area to get them used to dynamic events.
The hearts themselves…mostly boring…collect, kill etc. That’s why most dynamic events count toward hearts.
Also, hearts can’t be redone, but dynamic events can. There are 300 hearts in the game and over 1500 dynamic events.
I think hearts were meant as more of a crutch than a feature of the game.
I wish they would put hearts in Orr, or at least have more small-scale, individual dynamic events whose triggers are marked. I’d like more individual dynamic events in some of the lower zones, too.
The reason is because I don’t have a lot of time to game. I get 20 minutes to an hour at a time, and it can be really disappointing to spend that time wandering around not doing much, hoping dynamic events will pop. The hearts are great because they’re easy to find and give me something to do that relates to the world and lore. Yes, they’re simple and can be boring. Yes, dynamic events are much better. But unless you’re in a few specific places, finding dynamic events going on can be a challenge.
In places like Orr, it’s infinitely worse because the dynamic events are all these long epic chains to take back temples and such, and require a fair amount of time and people to complete. Time I often don’t have.
I have always been frustrated with MMOs because the leveling portion of the game is great fun, something I can do by myself or with my family members in small chunks as I have time available. But as soon as I reach endgame, the gameplay changes to something that requires larger groups of people and much larger chunks of time to participate in. And suddenly it’s no longer a game I can (or want to) play.
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2) Open the chests near 30 “UNIQUE” (you forgot to mention that, didn’t you?) balloons. This means that a new player should rush their way to level 60-70 to have access in all the maps, since there are only two balloons in each map. So technically you say to the new players this way, level up within 2 weeks or you will never complete the achievement.
At least they should let the balloons reset each day. You can get 10 from beginning areas. It would take 3 days for newbies to get them for the balloon. Which isn’t that bad at all as opposed to being forced to level quickly. TBH their content this time focused much much more on the experienced and active player than it did the majority of their playerbase: the casuals (just look at achievement point leaderboards to see that).
I think balloons in areas equivalent to your level should reset daily. So, if you’re higher level (say 42 for a random number), the balloons in the level 35-45 and level 40-50 areas reset daily but the lower level ones don’t. If level 15 and under, the beginning area balloons would reset every day so a new character isn’t penalized for being new.
My biggest miff about the Gauntlet is that it really alienates and discourages trying it if you only have one level 80 and like alts (and it really alienates people without a level 80!). It really should’ve been a PvP instance where it’s not a gold sink to repair armor AND waypoint after every single loss. Plus you’ll want to retrait(which is free in PvP)! And you could go on alts and go into spectator mode in a PvP instance. Plus, the graphics wouldn’t kill a lot of computers as it would be an instance. It also alienates people without gaming rigs (which is a whole LOT of your populace). Everyone would have an even playing field and obviously even people with level 80s and full exotic gear are having trouble with the final boss so just imagine the trouble for sidekicked up characters. Either way, it would still be difficult (they could in fact push up the difficulty), and everyone would have a fair chance. Plus, that would get people into the Mists. And attract them in a fun, positive manner unlike how they’ve been trying to with WvW.
I believe the Gauntlet achievements were intended to be unattainable by a large portion of the player base. So the argument that the Gauntlet should have been designed to make it achievable by regular players isn’t really valid. (I say this as someone who can’t beat the first boss in the Gauntlet, probably.) The goal was to give the really elite players (you can define elite in terms of skill, gear, play time or whatever) something challenging to achieve.
The Jubilee achievements were intended to be (and are) attainable by all.
I would love to see Living World. Living Story is not a Living World. It’s mostly temporary content that does nothing to make the greater game world feel alive. A few months ago I might have conceded it makes Lion’s Arch alive, but, to be honest, Living Story has just become an overload of linear hoops to jump through, so I can’t even give it credit for achieving it’s goals on even the scale of a single Tyrian city.
Living World would be the evolution of every game zone by updating, evolving or replacing existing Dynamic Events in a way that allowed each zone to tell a story over time via what occurs there.
The type of stuff we get in the living story is the kind of stuff that’s fun as part of an occasional holiday event. Monthly or now twice monthly is just an overload of sweets, with a complete lack of meat.
At this point, many of us would be happy if Living Story would be completely phased out and real, long term or naturally evolving Dynamic Events across the game world would take it’s place.
This. I’m tired of festivals and mini games. I want to go out into the larger world and enjoy the game content.
Honestly, the end game of GW2 has been a disappointment. I freely admit to being a casual player (married, children, job, life, etc). Orr is a terrible place to go by yourself, and these days there are only a few places that have any regular dynamic events going on. At least if there were hearts there (or living story quests of some sort) there would be something to do beyond trying to get to that last point of interest despite the [Group Event] champion wandering around nearby.
I was hoping that the living story would infuse the larger game world with reasons for people to get back out into the zones, and with new things to do and accomplish in familiar and out of the way places.