Showing Posts For Kyin.1678:
{Spoiler Major free, minor spoilers}
Dear ArenaNet,
Let me start this out by giving you two different perspectives of two of your customers experience playing the personal story of Heart of Thorns. First I will give you my perspective, a player who has played GW2 from day 1 and all the living story + season 2. Then my brothers perspective, a player who played GW2 at through the killing of Zhaitan but not again till Heart of Thorns release.
For me, the personal story was good and a nice final act of a 2 year long adventure to slay the jungle dragon. I do think that there were missed opportunities and that the story should have been slightly longer putting more emphasis on finding the dragons weakness, rescuing the lost hero’s and some lasting repercussions for choices made. In other words a few more missions that would have world more alive and given a sense of a struggle instead of our nearly unhindered march on our target. It felt very odd that as a commander of the pact we could just simply walk all the way to our goal with very little resistance while the entire pact fleet was destroyed in a few moments. Given these short comings (which i take for a rushed production timeline) I still thought it was a very good final act in the hunt for the jungle dragon. I believe I feel this way as I realize that this is a final act of a story that started shortly after the fall of Zhaitan.
Now, for my brother. My brother enjoys that game and views the expansion in a favorable light. Out of the two of us, he was the most excited for the expansion even though he did not play through any of the living story. Because he came into the expansion without having played through season 2 he figured that after taking out Zhaitan and a new dragon showing up after someone destroyed Lions Arch that the Pact Fleet just tried to attack the dragon and were destroyed for their hubris. He jumped straight into the story and by the 3rd day had completed it (playing about 2-3 hours a day). To him, he was highly disappointed. Zhiatan’s story for him took him across the whole world, developed slowly and ended in an epic (if not unsatisfying) encounter with Zhiatan himself. In contrast, he felt that the Heart of Thorns story felt very brief, rushed at times and ending in an encounter that never shows you the vastness of your target. When it was revealed what was the target it was done so in a very short line from 2 party members that could be missed if you were to far away from them. He did not understand that this was the final act of a much longer story and instead thought it was the whole story. After I explained to him the story from season 1 and 2 he understood more of what was actually going on. He received and read the Season 1 emails which he liked but was upset that he could not play through season 2 without paying a lot more money for the middle act.
Now what I think should have been done for the mass of returning player base that did not play through season 2 is that it should have been included in a purchase of the Heart of Thorns expansion. Once someone came back into the game after that point they should have received a message stating that they can go straight to the jungle if desired or they could play through season 2 (read season 1) first for a better understanding of the story and what is going on. In this way returning players would have received closer to 35-40 personal story steps that required them to traverse the world, experience some of the best stories that we have received so far and thus have a much better feeling for the expansion personal story when completed.
This sadly though did not happen and many of the returning players received just the final act of a much larger story without realizing that and mistaking it for a complete story by itself. At this point I do not think it is possible to completely alleviate the misconception and the effects it has caused but I would think that if all players were required to play through season 2 prior to starting the personal story in Heart of Thorns then many would view the personal story in a much better light than they do now.
In short: Season 2 should have been included with purchase of Heart of Thorns.
Personal Story Restoration
- If your character is currently playing “Against the Corruption,” “Cathedral of Silence,” “Romke’s Final Voyage,” or “The Source of Orr,” you must complete your story steps through the Source of Orr to begin chapter 8. If you do not complete “The Source of Orr” before the Personal Story restoration goes live, you will be advanced to “Victory or Death” upon completion of “The Source of Orr.” “Victory or Death” is the final Personal Story step (and you will miss out on most of chapter 8 with this character). This is due to these steps being moved back into chapter 8 and the successor steps being restored to their original state.
- The story step “Victory or Death” and “The Ruined City of Arah (story)” dungeon are being merged and revised to support 1–5 players. The previous version of the Ruined City of Arah (story) dungeon will be retired, and the explorable version will be unlocked by default.
I am glad to see that the story is being fixed, but I am highly upset at how it is being done. I was unaware that the story had been “redone” until I was so confused at all the continuity errors that I came to the forums to see if I was bugged or if this game’s main story was half-kittened together. I was happy to see that at one point the story made sense and was good. Then for some reason arena net decided to screw up the story by having you meet time traveling Eir and Rytlock that talk about the meeting in Lions arch 10 levels before you have the meeting in lions arch. Then after we barely survive fort trinity we have enough strength to push all the way to the gates of Arah to cleans Orr and kill the king eye of Zytan only to hear that I have already killed other Eyes of Z and mouths before (which I never saw). Then after I do all this I finally assault Orr? I mean why assault something I am already freely walking around on?
These were just a few of the moments I was completely lost during and wondering how this was allowed to ship. Then I come here and find that its being “fixed” but that they are not taking the time to let the people who had to play through that junk a chance to play through the fixed content. Is it so hard to just allow players when they log in the chance to start their story again from “A light in the darkness”? A pop up window or in game mail that says if you want to play the corrected story click here or talk to X npc to have your personal story reset back to that point should not be to hard to do in the grand scheme of things.
Personally, I am highly disappointed with everyone that is apart of this team. Why you would allow this content to ship back in September and then not even allow all the people who played through that the ability to see the story as it should be is just shameful. I know that my post here will not be read by those it pertains to but even still my view of Arena net, which until this point was a very high view has been massively tarnished.
Are these traits/sigil still bugged? Do we still not know the health pool of illusions and what they may or may not scale off of? The wiki does not have this information.
Hello, I just returned to GW2 after my brother picked it up on the sale. I was helping him today on his personal story (level 70 arc) when he asked me what choice I picked for the locating of the center of Orr. It was at this point I released he had some how skipped 10 missions of the personal story and as such found myself here looking for an answer. I see that Tuesday there should be a fix to this, but does that mean that my brother has permanently missed out on a large section of the personal story or does he get to finish that part after he kills Zhiatan? I am very confused. He has already completed forging the pact so if I am reading this correctly he is screwed out of 1/8th of the personal story. Which I hope is not the case …
Also, side note the Personal story should start at level 1 and not level 10… This way it lines up correctly. In its current build your told at level 30 to meet with Eir in Ascalon catacombs, which takes place after the meeting in Lions arch but you don’t see the meeting until your level 40 quest chain. At worst you could bump this meeting down to the level 30 quest chain.
Why not have set dmg u can do with out stats so condis can also do same amont of dmg to structure as zerkers would
Which is the idea behind the flat % damage from player attacks. Sense the only stat that Environmental Objects check is your power they could just set it to X% given the object an solve the entire problem. Then all builds would damage Environmental Objects at the same rate allowing developers easily set how long it will take for an object to be destroyed.
Husks on the other hand are harder to kill with zerker gear. Equality!
except that the number of times in your characters life you come across husk like objects vs the number of times you come across environmental objects such as a supply crates or doors is 1 to 100,000 (fictional number to emphasize point). Also there are plenty of monsters that are immune to conditions such as destroyers or dredge.
I agree that attacking objects as a condimancer can be a pain, because it takes forever. But I understand why conditions shouldn’t be used. Not only for realism, but for balance issues as well.
A better option (IMO) would make it so that objects only recieve base damage. That way a zerk warrior would do the same damage as a cleric guardian. This means that such things as might and other power buffs are not taken into account when attacking objects. This puts everyone on the same/similar level and doesn’t punish or reward certain builds/professions when dealing with objects.
If I understand it, all professions share the same base power so this would put everyone on an even level.
Your solution would be fine, and in fact most likely easier to code. Damage to objects could just be a flat % of its total health and developers could decide based on how strong they thought the object is and how many hits it should take to destroy.
Whether or not a door can bleed is not is not really the point on my topic. I am pointing out that conditions are completely ignored by environmental objects, thus heavily discouraging this style of play. Attacks that apply bleeding or poison could with a little extra code apply a condition to an environmental object with an adjective that feels more real such as Splintering or Decaying. These would just be cosmetic conditions and would function just like the source that applied them, that way if a warrior with a sword equipped and built for condition damage attacked a door he could be just as effective as a necromancer with a dagger equipped build for power. In this way both power builds and condition builds would have some effectiveness against environmental objects. In the games current state as condition necromancer finding an event were I am asked to destroy a bunch of boxes is just cruel.
Long Post, but on an important topic (imo)
With the games many different types of Environmental objects such as doors, supplies, blockades and the constant requirement to destroy them, why then are they immune to all condition damage?
In a general statement, there are 2 major build aspects in the game Power and Conditions. From these 2 aspects we derive our sub builds which in my opinion gives the game variety where not every warrior is the same. But due to this current mechanic the game heavy handily pushes players to Power builds as a vast number of hearts, events, pvp objectives and dungeons require your character to be able to destroy something. With a Power build these objects can melt in 1 or 2 attacks while condition players are left attacking a supply barrel for 30-120 seconds to be able to destroy the same object due to the fact that none of the conditions that the player normally uses for offence work against the objects.
I understand that if your trying to go for a realistic feel that a door or barrel would not bleed but… Why are doors and barrels of oil immune to fire? This makes little to no sense at all. Even so, would it not be so hard to create a new condition for these objects that bleeds, torments, confusion and poison would apply to objects if having them directly affect them is to offensive? Words such as rotting, decay, ethereal deconstruction, splintering could be used if absolutely necessary to convey the same conditions to environmental objects that we apply to living targets.
In the end, both game play choices should be encouraged and not so heavily penalized by the overabundance of environmental obstacles that your attacks are ineffective against.
My group had the same problem