Guild Wars 2

Dropping in to give my feedback.

Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you guys on the great patch! This is one of my favorite pieces of post-launch content the game has ever seen, just behind the addition of Fractals in the Lost Shore patch, EOTM, and the one-path dungeons from Season 1. This was the perfect realization of the kind of thing you’ve been going for with Season 2.

I believe the best thing you did narratively was surprise the player by taking them in unexpected directions. Going into the library and Glint’s lair were new experiences that genuinely surprised me, and blazing my way through the new map had a sensation of discovery. There are a lot of themes of adventure running through GW2’s story, (I’m a sylvari, so I’m all about striking out into the world and fulfilling my Wild Hunt) so actually showing the player something new rather than telling them something is happening is the best way to go about this.

I also like how you distributed lore optionally. In the first half of season 2 there were a few forced exposition chapters that soured the pacing, but giving lore-hungry players the option to read books in the library is a great way to fit more story in without making players who couldn’t care less sift through it.

My major piece of advice would be this: Don’t let these characters become all-good or all-evil, each should be a different mixture of the two based upon their circumstances. I remember being annoyed at how always-good and successful Ellen Kiel was, which resulted in a boring story that felt too black and white. Canach is the most interesting character right now, in my opinion; he’s a tentative ally with a jaded past who we have to watch with caution. He’s not all good or all evil, he’s unpredictable. That’s exciting.

P.S: Please don’t let that beautiful library/Glint’s lair environment only occupy the events of this chapter! We need some more content that can be replayed for years, a-la dungeons, fractals, pvp maps, and WvW maps. Glint’s Lair could be massively interesting for anything like that.

I didn’t like the cutscene, personally. For all of the hype regarding the speech itself, it only lasted two seconds and was rather abrupt. It would have been cool to have seen her slowly walk up to the podium in front of a massive audience, like the movie the title was referencing (The King’s Speech). But instead it was an incredibly quick reveal with no buildup whatsoever.

That being said, I love the rest of the content. Giant zone invasions are sort of my thing.

I hadn’t noticed this in the “Coming soon” panel yet. This is really exciting! I loved SAB.

I really, really enjoy this kind of stuff. I’m putting a lot of positivity into the forums because I want to see more like this. It is absolutely awesome seeing so many commanders branching out to a variety of different events in a huge zone-wide invasion featuring a ton of invasions. Dynamic events were what the guild wars 2 team has promised from the very beginning, and this is a massive collection of dynamic events featuring awesome new enemies and an interesting plot. (The molten alliance, steam creatures, and aetherblades in one place is a significant turning point for the legacy of tyria.)

Sinoran.9140:

It’s easy to tell that people haven’t even tried the new content out when they say that “it’s just another zergfest.” If you had tried, you would know the mechanics of the new events are anti-zerg. If you attempt to zerg this event, you WILL fail. Period. Please play through content before posting negative comments about content you have not tried.

This is also important. There’s a time limit and a large number of different events in need of completion. If you ball into one giant zerg, you WILL fail. Multiple bodies across the zone are NEEDED.

I’ve seen an entire server fail a zone because the commanders balled up and failed to spread out. The zerg wasn’t able to cover ground fast enough to succeed, and the entire operation fell apart. This isn’t a zergfest, it requires coordination.

Are you kidding me?! This one is pretty darn awesome. Putting all of these massive zerg events into old zones in the world means that players like me who love the world but have already explored all of the zones can jump back in and see them in a whole new way. Fighting off massive events that require an entire server fighting in multiple zergs across an entire zone results in a battle with a sense of scale that hasn’t been topped yet. It’s REALLY impressive!

Awesome, thank you for your response! I hope it IS instanced, as that would make sure that players would witness the whole speech from beginning to end. Wouldn’t it suck to drop into divinity’s reach just as the queen’s speech loop spoils the big surprise? That’s why I agree that it will probably be instanced.

I’m so excited! I’m pumped to see what will happen tomorrow, I’ve been sticking with GW2 from the start. I even sat through fixing all of those signposts in the hope that better times would be ahead. I’m glad I’ve stuck around this long, it’s been a blast. I hope The Queen’s Speech continues the great streak of awesome content we’ve been seeing lately.

This is a quick question before the apparent bomb that is going to be dropped on us tomorrow comes to fruition.

Will the speech make its debut live in front of players in divinity’s reach? (like the Mad King bursting out of the Lion’s Arch fountain) or will it take place in an instance that we can enter when we boot up the game? (Like the opening ceremony for the Crown Pavilion in the last update). Do I have to watch the livestream in order to check it out?

I would like to know this before tomorrow so that I can know how I should adjust my schedule. I’ve played the game since launch and really want to experience such a significant event. If this IS live, it’d be nice to know when to show up with my popcorn.

Furesy.6935:

I can understand the frustration that some people get from this achievement. But really, is it so bad? The harder something is to get too, the more satisfaction you get from actually ACHIEVING that very thing.

I got the kite in Obsidium Sanctum yesterday and there was a lot of PvP between Dragonbrand and Tarnished Coast. There was also a particular Engineer from TC who was camping the traps midway and simply kept auto throwing grenades down on the pillars, making it simply impossible to get to him as you were instantly put into combat and unable to make the jump. This was kind of annoying and the reason it took me a few hours in the JP (had a lot of fun though). I even got into a party with another TC engineer who was just trolling people and having some fun (not killing them). I had some cool chats and eventually someone from my world (DB) who was already far higher into the JP jumped down and open a can of whoop kitten on that engineer, actually throwing him down to his death. After that it was smooth sailing.

Took some time, yet a lot of fun.

Here, let me give you an example of a scenario. You are playing rock paper scissors. Your opponent will win 99 games out of 100. It is not based on whether you select the correct object, but rather whether or not your opponent chooses to make a move. If your opponent moves, you lose no matter what. The only way you can win is if your opponent does not make a move.

This is what this achievement is like if your server is outnumbered. I am constantly outnumbered, and with enemies flooding the jumping puzzle and outnumbering me 10 to 1, the only way I can win this is if the enemies decide not to attack me. That’s it. That’s the only way I can do it. Seriously.

Now, when you win that game of rock paper scissors, do you yell, “YES! My enemy just so happened to not decide to do anything, and by default I succeed!” no. You say, “Woah, that game was rigged!”

I feel great when I achieve a challenge. When i complete a difficult jumping puzzle. This isn’t a challenge. This isn’t a difficult jumping puzzle. The puzzle itself is EASY. The only difficulty here is whether or not my enemy decides they want me to live. They usually don’t.

I hope we get to choose! If so, I’m voting for Evon! Kiel lost my vote when she got stuck in the AR dungeon ;P

The Bad

- Lending incentive to completing the obsidian sanctum in WvW has attracted large groups of enemy team raiders who wait until players reach the kite, then kill them and /laugh, /dance, and tea-bag their corpses until they respawn. This has elicited incredibly volatile /say responses from other players, and you’ve generally created a giant swirling ball of hatred and frustration. Just saying ‘no’ to the achievement is also difficult because you’ve filed it under a meta achievement, and players may have already satisfied the prerequisites. In the future, I recommend sticking these limited time living story achievements in JPs in which players can’t grief and murder each other, (because they WILL.) and at the very most avoid placing it underneath a meta achievement with PVE-based achievements.

- Sanctum sprint’s randomness can be frustrating, and you’ve given players 2 achievements for placing high in the ranks. This means that what would otherwise be a friendly competition turns into a feverish collection of F-bombs when one player happens to receive the ultimate power-up and beat out a more skilled player. It would have been nice to just stick to race completion and crystal collection achievements – timed ‘cheevos for victory means players feel like winning is imperative, or else they will not be able to receive the achievements ever again. Maybe just make winning grant the player better rewards from the chest, or quartz?

- When dealing with such a massive environment as these cliffs, perhaps taxing players for waypoint use is a little more frustrating than it should be, especially considering there’s a massive scavenger hunt objective that requires players to zip all over, with the potential to fall into the ocean below or die. Being taxed so heavily for failure here makes this a little bit more frustrating than fun, which clashes with the relaxing and exploratory vibe of the patch as a whole. Maybe treat this like a city (which it almost is) and make the waypoints free, leaving the time lost/penalty of death to deter players from failure?

Keep up the good work, guys!

Constructive Criticism on the Present Patch

I’ll make the introduction quick, to get right to the meat of this post. I’ve been a GW2 player since launch, and have been religiously devouring every content update so far. I have both positive and negative things to say about this patch… let’s go!

The Good

+ The new environment is so cool! It looks fantastic, and feels significantly different from everything we’ve seen so far. It really does bring that feeling of exploring a brand new world, and the scavenger hunt objectives give players incentives to comb its depths.

+ The focus on exploration and jumping with the new kit abilities makes this feel really unique. Exploring the new city and using these new abilities is an experience that GW2 hasn’t yet provided with any of its content patches, and getting a break from story dungeons and special events is quite relaxing. It’s really refreshing, and a great change of pace.

+ Shifting the story to political intrigue is, like the patch itself, a refreshing change of pace that keeps the living story from getting stale. I’m excited to see where we’re going from here, and seeing how the political rivalry with Kiel will turn out shall be interesting.

+ Achievement-based rewards are a fantastic way to lend incentive to completing achievements. It certainly has me beginning to take a good look at a lot of the content I hadn’t completed yet. Maybe it’s time to finally dive into Arah and complete those last 4 dungeon paths.

+ Asura-themed SPvP map. Enough has been said already.

+Sanctum sprint is a really neat mini-game that is a lot of fun to play. Race-type
gameplay is another one of those refreshing new experiences we haven’t seen yet in GW2.

+ Lending incentive to completing jumping puzzles via the kites is a good way to get players to discover overlooked content!

I like doing the harder jumping puzzles, it’s one of the most enjoyable activities in the game, and I hope to see more in the future!

That being said, I hope they don’t force achievement hunters to rush into the WVW JP like this ever again. Now I can’t do a puzzle I normally do every day because organized parties are camping the kite in order to prevent PvE players from reaching it.

I love the setting here, actually. It’s a really neat environment, and I particularly like the in-game politics. I enjoy the character development in particular, and this new patch really nails down that feeling of exploring a brand new world. It’s really cool!

Vayra.3290:

Ursan.7846:

I’m a completionist. I like to complete everything. While I realize there’s really no tangible rewards for a bit of extra achievement points, I still want to finish everything.

I realize this itch is completely due to my own personal preferences. Thus to satisfy my own needs which I have set by myself, I know the effort must come from within. I don’t expect Anet to cater to my own whimsical desires, for it is me that arbitrarily assigned value to these mostly valueless numbers. I shall work for this achievement. And when I do achieve it, the satisfaction will be that much more sweet.

If only more people had this very attitude things would be so much better

As optimistic as this view is, I think it doesn’t apply in this case. I’m a jumping puzzle lover and a WvW lover. I do the WvW jumping puzzle very frequently. However, this WvW jumping puzzle achievement has actually transformed the WvW jumping puzzle into a griefing fest, as the enemy teams have now formed organized raid parties designed to infinitely murder PVE players juuust before they reach the kite, then /laugh and /dance on their corpse.

So, while I’m a puzzle jumper-lovin’ WvW player, unfortunately I’d need to be a player who enjoys putting a lot of time and effort into something only to be killed and bullied in order to think this is a good idea.

I was a little disappointed about how luck-based the minigame was, but it sort of adds to the fun. But hey, I don’t think arenanet designed this to be about winning or losing, just about having a good ti…

achievement for being in top 3
achievement for being #1

Oh, shoot. :P

Eh, it would have been nice to have seen these way-points being free. When you’ve got an environment in which the climb to the top is a massive achievement, quick movement really would have been nice. Let the penalty be in the time lost/equipment cost of death, but additionally crippling travel with the silver is a little mean. That being said, I don’t mind too much.

Holy Whirlwind.2067:

primo.3867:

I dont plan on doing any of the achievements but it still aggravates me that people find this ‘fun’… it just saddens me is all.

There is way too much complaining on this forum over small nit picky, non-important stuff. Here you open a new thread, complain about it and then add that you don’t even plan on doing ANY of the achievements…..WTF?!

Not every acievement is easy and meant for everyone to accomplish right away. No one HAS to do any of them. Find the ones you like, and do those. Simple as that. Yes this kite is in WvW, but the WvW players were having tons of fun in this area fighting their way to the top like “king of the hill”. You can’t just come in here and solo it like a jump puzzle. You need to work as a team to get this one, and like most of WvW, the time of day and server does play a role. Maybe wait till Friday (WvW reset) and see if you’re up against easier opponents.

The person below your post said it beautifully (Ursan.7846) . Its a challenge, and it should be all the more sweeter when you complete a harder achievement. Too much of the youth today just expect things handed to them….just sad.

Well, actually, when there’s an organized raid party sitting next to the kite designed to kill players from the less popular server before they reach the objective, it’s not a challenge. It’s physically impossible. There is simply no way that my server has the people to outdo the organized raid party campign the kite to make sure no one else gets to it. This isn’t a challenge – this is an achievement that I PHYSICALLY CANNOT DO.

Here’s the issue; a challenge would be a jumping puzzle that is difficult because it requires precision jumps and great skill with agility. This jumping puzzle is not difficult for that reason. I have completed every jumping puzzle in the game (including this one at non-peak hours!) and love the challenge. the issue here is that the challenge comes from the fact that the jumping puzzle – while easy to the end – literally just kills me and /dances and /laughs over my corpse. It is an easy jumping puzzle with an unavoidable insta-death mechanic at the end due to jerk players. Is that a challenge? No, that’s just downright unfair.

I would be fine with a kite at the end of this jumping puzzle, but it just so happens that this is categorized underneath a meta achievement that I have gotten all of the other achievements for! I have adventured, leaped, and fought my way through all of the jumping puzzles to acquire the other kites, but now it is physically impossible for me to complete this achievement because of a group of camping raiders.

Challenge is giving the player high expectations and asking them to complete the task ahead of them. Facing players with overwhelming odds (30 to 1) is not a challenge.

This one looks less like a content patch and more like a quality of life patch. Tangible rewards like new skins for achievement points is a dream come true. The new back piece screenshots look great! The exception to the quality-of-life rule seems to be skyhammer, which I’m really excited for. An Asura themed map in SPVP sounds like a blast.

I was in the, “This is optional, don’t whine” camp, but then I realized that this achievement adds up to a meta achievement as well (caching out) meaning if you’ve gotten all of the other caches you need to do this one as well in order to get that over-arching cache achievement. When you’re dealing with the alternative of farming holo aetherblades or dungeon achievements that require an organized group, that meta achievement really begins to mean a lot.

Man is this beginning to get really frustrating. I went through the whole darn thing for the cache (I got all of the other caches, so getting this one would net me two achievements, making it something I REALLY want to do) only to get ganked and killed at the end by 10 or so players who were just camping the end of the puzzle to kill others and prevent them from getting the cache. They all started jumping up and down on my corpse and /laughed over and over again. It was adding insult to injury.

Now I’ve just had a really huge amount of time wasted, and with no checkpoints or anything to speak of my only option is to do the ENTIRE thing all over again, only for a chance to get murdered and laughed at again. Why is this PvP achievement bundled with all of the PvE achievements in order to get the meta achievement? I could totally understand if it were some bonus cache I could get for a bonus achievement, but requiring this one in order to get “Caching out” is frustrating.

On top of this, some other players are getting pretty frustrated as well. I’ve seen some of the most foul and horrible language in /say I’ve ever seen in the course of the game. Players typing four letter words in all caps and calling the enemy team some pretty unsightly things, even though they can’t be heard. It all adds up to a pretty hostile and frustrating atmosphere.

I think having this achievement is a good idea, but I definitely would have recommended selecting a jumping puzzle in which the possibility of griefing players /dancing and /laughing over my corpse wasn’t a possibility.

Yamsandjams.3267:

It’s partially to get people back into jumping puzzles as well. Some people never bothered to do them, so this encourages them to do them. It also makes barren sections of the game see some new traffic and possibly more activity. For instance, a player goes there to get the achieve, but an event or two pops up along the way that they decide to complete.

It’s a noble goal on paper, but the issue is that it has the potential of bringing players face to face with content that arenanet still hasn’t fixed since launch. On some servers the puzzle associated with the weeping cache will break down, the face pattern no longer displaying the arrangement the tears need to be placed in.

When this happens, players soon assosciate the mini dungeon and jumping puzzle content with broken mechanics and frustrating server hopping to find a place where the darn thing isn’t broken. Arenanet may want to try this again in the future, but they REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to make sure they’re not sending players to do broken content.

Siphaed.9235:

phild.7862:

Am I missing something crucial here but aren’t those just normal chests?
So what’s the point of having to visit all those tedious JPs again? Just for achievements to get a boring mini that is yet again just a smaller version of an existing npc?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am playing a mmo so I am basically killing time I could use to, I don’t know, save the world or feed hungry children. But “run to the other end of the world, again, and get an achievement” feels like killing my time with a rusty spoon…. covered in cotton wool….

F.
U.
N.

You don’t have to do it unless you think it’s fun. If it’s not fun for you, don’t do it. Simple concept.

For me, those jumping puzzles are fun, doing them once, twice, even 30 times. The EB one, to get the cache there, was the best because I did it with a group of 6-7 guild members who had a somewhat blast killing SoR players, trying to guide poeple who have never done it, and watching so many fall deaths. It was an experience unlike any other….

The reward? So what if it’s “just a mini” to you. That mini in my bank is a reminder of this event, a reminder of my fun times, and a reminder of me kicking Horrick’s butt after he shot a cannon at mine.

But, we could always do these events before. This isn’t anything new that they have introduced, they’ve just given us an incentive to do old content. I would agree with “Fun” if these were new jumping puzzles, but they aren’t. I’ve ALWAYS been able to do these. If I wanted to have fun doing these jumping puzzles, I could have done that every single day up until this point since launch. Adding incentives to content like this is a way to get players who wouldn’t otherwise do the content to go back and do it. I want that darn mini; so I’m going to put my face to this content that I do not find fun in order to play through it.

The issue is that some of this content isn’t even working, despite it being launch content. Is reading up on the wiki to find out how to unbug the horribly mangled tears of Itlaocol mini dungeon, a piece of launch content that I’ve already played before, just so I can get an achievement toward unlocking the mini any fun? It’s way not fun!

And I know the counter-argument is, “If it’s not fun, just don’t do it!” but arenanet have given me a strong incentive: I really value that mini, as it’s a permanant timestamp that says “I took down the sky pirates of tyria!” and to choose to not do this is to give that up. i’ve taken to the forums to express my displeasure so that, in the future, my quest to get things like the mini will be actually fun and not repeating old, bugged content that hasn’t been fixed since launch.

The brand new dungeon is fun. The brand new jumping puzzle we’re getting soon will be fun. New adventures are fun. Doing old things I could have done since launch only because arenanet have offered a delicious carrot in front of my face is the antithesis of fun.

Anwar.2018:

Lopez.7369:

Play a single-player game.

No, I like a game you can play for years and I like people to listen to and talk to, I’m not anti-social, have spent many years as member and even the leader of hardcore raiding guilds.

I’m just getting old and groups are always in such a hurry that I find them more stressful than fun these days. I like to enjoy the content, not just dash through it and gobble it up as quickly as possible.

Sorry man, but that’s just the content here. If arenanet spent money retuning and reworking every single piece of content they put out to suit every single type of player. (solo player, 5 man dungeon player, 10 man raider player, 25 man raider player, 40 man raider player, open world event player, pvp player) the content would end up so amorphous and glob like that no one would enjoy it. Not to mention it would take forever.

Yeah, the downloads kinda suck, but I just came in to drop a counterargument to this quote.

“Put off the newbies enough and you end up with a gaming ghetto.”

Counterargument: Eve Online, Dark Souls

Anwar.2018:

Ahhh so the hardcore elitists are happy! Good for them, bad for everyone else…. wonder how many normal and casual players they lose over this?

This reaaaalllly is blowing it out of proportion. This dungeon isn’t anywhere near ‘hardcore elitist’ level of difficulty. ‘normal’ and ‘casual’ players should EASILY be able to deal with this level of difficulty.

The game won’t be too much fun if everything has no risk of failure. There needs to be a certain level of challenge to derive enjoyment from it. It would just be tedious grinding if you could only continue to progress forward without death.

There’s searching around Tyria for the hidden collectable content detailed in the achievements, but other than that, not much.

here’s the thing: It has been said and shown in the past many, many times that this game is going to be consistently trying to get you to play with other players. Dungeon content like this simply doesn’t work as well with one player, as the mechanics are clearly designed for a party of 5. reworking and retuning each dungeon that comes out so that single player people can play through it (Despite the game being an MMO, one that specializes in player groups) would be an unnecessarily large use of arenanet’s time.

I strongly, strongly recommend you find yourself a nice casual guild or a casual pick up group. I’ve actually never been in a dungeon group in this game in which I’ve needed to use an outside voice program, and I’ve been a dungeongoer since launch. All of the pugs on my server (maguuma) are keyboard communication only. This dungeon isn’t so difficult that it requires THAT much cooperation.

But this is going to continue. There are going to be more group-only dungeons in the future, just as there have been in the past. I suggest you try and see if you can find a nice, comfortable way to adapt so that you might enjoy the game more.

I loooove this dungeon. It’s cool to see dungeons like the Molten Facility making a return. I hope these little mini one-time dungeons you’re putting out will be smushed down and converted to fractalized versions of their current selves at one point.

This being endgame content, you should probably be doing this in a group with level 80s and exotic armor all around (not a difficult feat to achieve considering how much time the game has been out, and how much of an advantage you’ll get in this and future content for having achieved this level/gear). Everyone should also know what they are doing to some extent. As long as everyone is a decent player and luring her into the static fields with good coordination, it’s not too difficult.

You can get the item at the end of the achievement bandwagon by doing achievements other than this one. It’s not like you HAVE to get this achievement in order to get the miniature pet.

Thanks for the heads up! I’m going to use the time to purchase some armor to throw the aetherblade skin over.

This dungeon isn’t excessively challenging, it just requires a decent level of gear (level 80 with full exotics is easy to achieve, there are so many methods to getting exotics lately.) and mechanical awareness. The dungeon shouldn’t be complete-in-one-try easy, challenge makes the act of completing a dungeon fun. This dungeon was challenging enough to be fun, but easy enough to complete with good gear and mechanical awareness that it wasn’t too frustrating.

It’s currently present on Maguuma as well. I would guess this means that the servers supporting the new dungeon are filled up by player parties?

MMO communities are always going to be massive congregations of frustrated people pulling in different directions. You’ll see it in every single game: world of warcraft’s casual players and ‘hardcore’ players verbally slaying each other in order to keep/throw away looking for raid, Rift’s playerbase simultaneously lamenting and loving the recent free to play change, and SWTOR’s players clashing over more instanced group content and single player story missions. I have seen this happen with every single MMO I’ve ever played.

I think the fundamental issue here is a miscommunication between this game’s developers and its community, though. Dungeons of incredibly different levels of size and quality are both labeled as “Story Dungeons”, which leaves players to expect the same thing from Canach’s lair as they did from the molten facility. Original manifesto promises of no gear treadmill had players believing that they would never have to work at level 80 to better their character and get into more content, but ascended gear changed this. We’re being told that we’re going to be receiving consistent living story content, but the month-to-month additions vary wildly in quality and never last. It’s not an issue of GW2 being a bad game – it’s that Arenanet needs to make sure they’re communicating their goals clearly ahead of time.

I also think Arenanet needs to stop listening to every facet of the player base. Is having to put in the minimal effort to get a group together for living story content REALLY such a barrier that arenanet should make singe-player-only dungeon excursions? I don’t believe so, but it seems like they’re trying to cater to as many people as they possibly can, which is not good.

That being said, they can still pull this off. They gave us molten facility, and I believe if they stop trying to please us every month and focus more effort into bigger, more quality patches like F&F patch 3 and 4 then we will see strong improvements to the game. And here’s to hoping that some of this living story stuff sticks around!

Tawa.3180:

I don’t understand what the hell we’re doing in Southsun now. I rather work on rebuilding Cragstead and random charr settlements that were destroyed in F&F instead of helping keep refugees trapped in this island. There’s even an achievement to keeping those terrible contracts safe.

I rather have an achievement where you help refugees escape to The Grove or Sparkfly Fen. Who needs evil dragons when you have the Consortium?

Arenanet said in that developer interview video that this whole living story is connected by plot threads from each update. I’ll bet you we’re going to start delving into some conspiracy stuff with the consortium next. I want to see us start to side with the refugees after seeing what monsters we’ve become in this update. That’d be cool!

Thobek.1730:

this is annoying, and I believe its because of all those unsocial basement dwellers who cried when they had to group/talk/interact with other people in a MMO game to complete the last dungeon.

let’s learn from this and stick to group dungeons from now on…

I agree that group dungeons are better than solo dungeons and that I will also prefer these. That being said, why can’t there be both an option for group play AND solo play? (with more rewards for group play to give incentive to it, of course.)

Also, why the weird ad-hominem attacks on people who prefer solo to group play. And are you honestly labeling people as “unsocial basement dwellers” because they don’t like instanced player interactions in a video game? That seems a little silly.

Anytime! I’m looking forward to seeing the queen finale.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

pretty sure they never anounced it as dungeon, it’s a story-mission, not more, not less. They have the new meta event chain and lots of new events on southsun + a minigame instead of a dungeon (and poor open world stuff like F&F).

“Join Kiel for a mission to capture the deadly, desperate Canach! In this all-new story dungeon…” – Official statement on the Last Stand at Southsun info page. They did bill this as a dungeon, just as they billed molten facility as a dungeon.

Sieg.8439:

The Molten Facility was amazing, but to be fair, that was the end result of what, a three month buildup? This was a month long event, so it’s not exactly fair to expect something of the same caliber from a third of the time.

I think in the future ANET should make sure to specify how much content we’re going to be receiving prior to a release. If I had known that this was going to be a one-room, one-boss affair, I would have entered this update with my expectations at the proper level. However, since the only information that I had was that this would be a “story mode dungeon” like molten facility, I expected this to be on the same level of content.

I think it’s just an error in communication. The content isn’t bad if the player comes into it expecting a really, really short dungeon. But expecting molten facility inevitably makes this thing a disappointment.

Yeah, I’m thinking this plot thread is intentional to make us part of the bad guys. I’m hoping that this working for the consortium think is eventually going to end in some sort of turnaround, but at the moment the bit of amoral stuff we’re participating in is a little interesting.

There is more to come, check out the main page. There’s going to be a gigantic queen karka boss battle coming soon. (June 5th, I believe)

Molonlabe.3761:

At any given time, if Canach is NOT following you, he is setting off (or rearm) mines.

You don’t need the message.

Eh, wouldn’t you say that a better que would improve this encounter, though? Canach will also occasionally freeze in place to defend with his shield, and I’ve had issues with him just loitering around a single area for a long time without detonation. One additional thing to help us get the tip would be nice, be it a simple noise, an onscreen prompt, or a specific animation with Canach or the mines.

Deified.7520:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

hey folks,

our patch notes jumped the gun a bit. Canach instance is NOT the ending of the living story. That will come next week. Stay tuned!

So don’t get too disappointed. This is just a simple boss encounter that I personally fun and a change of pace.

FnF didn’t get the epic dungeon till the ending of that story arc. Next week the ending is supposed to come.

It’s good to see that there is more to come (this insane giant karka should satiate my blood thirst), but it is a little lame that they tagged Canach’s lair as a “New story mode dungeon”. That’s the same tag that they gave to Molten Facility, so my expectations were pretty darn high to begin with.

I think the issue here was just miscommunication. I think Arenanet needs to develop some sort of system to indicate to players the size of an update, because here the only thing players could use to guess the size of this content was the last “Story mode dungeon” introduced in the living story. The molten facility was the only real barometer we had to judge the size of this content, so when it turned out to be much smaller than we had hoped it kind of bit us in the rear.

This is one thing that I would agree on as well. It would be nice to have a sound que or really obvious animation to indicate that the mines are about to go off. Chat log awareness being essential in single player is a little silly.

That being said, I got used to the mechanic and did end up completing it pretty easily, so this isn’t a major complaint for me. Just something I hope Anet notes in the future.

Here’s my opinion on this “single player” stuff…

1: Group dungeons almost always are more mechanically interesting because they require cooperation between multiple people. This also emphasizes the qualities one associates with an MMO.

2: Certain players do not wish to group up for these dungeons, so a story-based dungeon that a single player can enjoy to experience the living story by themselves is a good way to cater to people who want to experience a story without grouping up. This isn’t a bad thing, but here’s where the issue comes in…

3: In the future, I would avoid rewarding players in the solo instance with monetary gain or new possessions. Let the solo version of a dungeon be there only to enjoy the story if someone does not want to group up, and leave the dungeon-like rewards to the players who participate through the more difficult group variant of the dungeon.

Hello everyone! I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of this new update (I particularly want to check out the new story dungeon, molten facility was AWESOME. A sylvari villain is also a pretty cool concept) and I was wondering if anyone knows at what exact time (please include time zone) I can expect to hop in and start my southsun search for vengeance.

If we don’t have that information, it would be cool if anyone happened to know generally what time updates like this have occurred in the past. Does “Tuesday” mean directly at midnight time for GW2’s development studio, or “Some general time on that day”?

Thanks in advance for reading and/or contributing!

Myst Dawnbringer.9138:

I too would like to know the answer to this question. I don’t have any problem with dungeons being in the game just having them as the end of the chain. And being forced to do them to finish the content. I hate them. I left Wow to get away from them. Dungeons are a good way to add content for players who like them but they should be reserved for enrichment content and not one time only endings. I want the dynamic, spontaneous content we were promised. I am very angry that I spent so much time doing the content for F & F just to sit out the end because it’s a pug dungeon.

I like playing with others and the Southsun Cove one time only event was awesome!!! That’s what I want, more of that. I want the PvE experience to feel more the WvW experience. Also the Madd King PvE event was great. Not so great the Wintersday dungeons. The dragon battles are good and I would like more of that dynamic feeling to the living world.

I figure they do the dungeons because it’s the cheapest way to do the ending. And yes, it’s and mmo and the dynamic version is so much more applicable to being a mmo than a 5 man dungeon to end your solo adventure or personal story.

It’s a balance between a wide variety of different elements. consider that the flame and frost storyline is told through all of the following methods…

-Massive group events designed for a large base of players
-Solo collection quests and story content designed for one player
-small personal quest-esque instances that are designed simeltaneously for one player and multiple players
-dungeon content designed for five players

It’s not just solo content followed by a sudden slap-in-the-face dungeon, guild wars 2 has an infrastructure made up of a variety of different pieces molded together that are constantly mingling and interacting with one another. This sort of variety allows players to experience the flame and frost story in different ways, without feeling as if the whole experience is homogenized to fit one playstyle. The group dungeon is also tuned to such a difficulty that anyone who is willing to put in minimal effort to find a group can complete it. It’s not a serious roadblock that is preventing people from completing the content at all. It’s an easily surpass-able speed bump that tells a story in a different way.

raiden.9024:

. If dungeons didn’t reward loot or gold would you do them? Ofc not you want fast loot, if you could make as much gold as cof in the open world in the same time still think dungeons would be popular?

This is a little ridiculous. The molten facility dungeon features reward that are shoddy at best, with the chest occasionally yielding something that is barely even worth a few silver. Yet it’s pretty wildly popular, and a lot of people are playing it. I’ve ran it several times despite never receiving anything of worth from the dungeon. It’s just a fun activity, and I choose to do it. Why do people still run story modes so frequently if it’s just about the rewards?

If you honestly feel as if every single person who runs dungeons is doing it only for gold and not at all for the enjoyment of running dungeons, then I’d like to personally be the exception to the “Rule” that disproves that statement. I’ve always really enjoyed allying with a group of friends and guildies to take down some bosses in a dungeon, even if the rewards are weak and mediocre. Dungeon content is part of the MMO experience because it gets players from this large portion of fellow adventurers to group together and bond over a smaller piece of adventuring content. It’s a great way to get guildmates to meet and greet one another, and I’ve made a lot of my friends in this way.

MMO is not just about the ‘massive’ part, but also about the social interaction. Large events are really great for huge congregations of players, but smaller and more intimate collections of adventurers can bring together individuals and give people more ‘close’ time. This lets them be significant pieces of a cooperative whole rather than small cogs in a giant machine.

panzer.6034:

I just want a new dungeon and new armor sets

same here. And new fractals too!

Elbegast.6970:

There is nothing fun or compelling or heroic about begging 4 others to run you through a dungeon so that you may have a chance of seeing the resolution to a soloable chain of content.

I’m not going to continue to reiterate the same points that I said in earlier posts, but I would like to challenge this particular line of dialogue, as I disagree greatly. I feel as if you’ve worded the scenario in a way to make it sound more ‘nasty’ than it currently is. Completing a dungeon isn’t “Begging” other players to “Run you through” a dungeon. It’s a mutual agreement made between 5 different players to complete an instance together.

When I say, “Does anyone want to run molten facility?” in map chat and receive four responses, it is not because I’ve “Begged” them to assist me and that they’re doing it just to make me shut up. They’re joining me because they too want to experience the content for themselves, and would like to ally with me in order to accomplish that goal.

I could word this really eloquently and say it’s a, “Heroic band of brothers vanquishing evil together, in an organized group, just like trehearne and the heroes of our very own personal stories encouraged us to do!” but that would be another example of using emotionally tinged wording to skew the way an event sounds.

It’s okay to feel the way you do, but I wish you wouldn’t “shame” this content by making it look like playing it means you have to be some grovelling beggar who forces others into playing with him.

Hellmet.6870:

HyJinx.4896:

being in an MMO really throws out the point that you should at least make some kind of attempt at some point to do group play…

Being an MMO means there should be the option for group play. It does not mean that it should be forced down your throat. I enjoy having the option to group and run 5 mans. What I hate is being forced into it to complete the solo content.

This issue is that story arcs in MMOs are not constantly confined to the medium in which they begin. Simply because flame and frost’s first few instances were single player does not inherently mean that any further installments in the series MUST be able to be completed solo.

Also, this content was completely and totally optional. The minimal rewards at the end (combined with a plot exposition that one could figure out in 5 minutes on google) means that the reward for completing the dungeon was mostly just the fun of playing the dungeon. There was nothing about this 5 man that forced the player to do it. No super awesome piece of gear that you’re guaranteed to get or plot details that can’t be found elsewhere. Only satisfaction and meaningless achievement points. This is completely and totally optional, and not shoved down a player’s throat at all.

I can understand if you don’t like grouping up with others for organized play, but it became apparent both in the personal story AND this arc that it’s a storytelling element that is around to stay, and with good reason. The content it provides is entertaining and worthwhile.