Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to chime in and say that I really dislike the new dailies as well. My problem is with the specific zones required. It was like this before and then Anet changed that to no more specific zones and it was a very big welcomed change for me. And now it’s reverted back to specific zones for PvE dailies… even if some of them are hilariously easy (mining, vista) I just don’t want to hang out in Iron Marches to do events… when a lot of them are still broken even since the patch that introduced Mordrem events…
I’m thinking about stopping doing dailies entirely since it’s drawing me away from the fun parts of the game now.

This really made me a sad panda.

Outside the morale feedback thread and some other threads talking about it in one shape or another, I’ve yet to find a proper complete feedback thread on the events pertaining to the Twisted Marionette fight.

I’d like to start by saying that it’s my favorite group event game play wise that Anet has released so far. However, some negative points have, not ruined, but really dampened my enjoyment of these events to the point where I got really frustrated with all of this. With the achievements now done and out of the way, I sincerely do hope I’ll be able to appreciate it better until it goes away.

-Positive-
– Varied mechanics for bosses make the different fights fun and since there are 5 of them, it’s possible to switch from one to another to keep the experience somewhat fresh
- Somewhat challenging content, not really hard but not easy either, just appropriate so that we don’t feel like always auto-attacking/afking everything to oblivion
- Large enough event to bring many players together; I’ve seen some of the best camaraderie in that event so far (yes, I heard some very hateful comments as well when we lose but I think the good outweighs the bad in this case)
- The overall feeling of the fight is just nailed right and makes you feel good once you succeed at cutting a chain or at finishing the whole events
- Mitigated zerg effect due to how the event has been built (with multiple smaller groups)
- Requires some organization/tactics but not too much as to not be able to not be communicated correctly via map chat and with PUGs, thus giving a hope for success with almost each try
- LS content that we can play with friends

-Negative-
- Feeling powerless when succeeding in defeating own champion while the adjacent platform is failing horribly — it gets really frustrating to lose because of others dozens of times — if we could help them once we’re done with our own champion, it would have been awesome
- Due to the above, feeling like being forced into finding another server/overflow that have better chances/organization for succeeding and getting the achievements
- Due to the above, having to waste an incredible amount of time waiting before each try so as to not lose own spot in a server that looks like it has a good chance to win
- Parties are split when ported on platforms and platform groups sometimes look unbalanced in numbers and composition
- Those kitten timers on bosses

For the record, I’m from Borlis, and while I know that my server managed to finish the events, I’ve never been able to be on the main server when it happened… and I couldn’t get into an overflow that managed to finish it either. Thus I felt obligated to camp a spot in a bigger server over the weekend for a chance to complete it at least once. I failed my own boss 4 times out of… 30-40 tries… most of those failures in the first two days and I only succeeded with the whole events twice… on JQ. (Thanks JQ btw)

ColinJohanson.2394:

Say for example, we decided to allow your profession to gain an additional mastery as Nike and Chuggs in particular discussed above. I think we have a lot of fun ideas in here for the journey unlock specific aspects of that mastery, but what if you first had to unlock the core “mastery” track, which then allowed you collect the smaller components? What kind of experience do you think would be compelling here as an over-all journey?

I’d go with the new story branches unlocking those master tracks. Things like “upper level character enlightenment” are very personal to the character level. I think it would be inappropriate to tie this to server wide events or something else similar. The “collect smaller components” part could be though.

If it’s meant to be a higher tier of skills, it should be also only attainable after demonstrating one’s mastery of previous class abilities. So kind of a challenge run different for each class?

What comes to mind is the chain of missions in GW1’s Crystal Desert meant to ascend a character. A chain of challenges (real challenges) that could be tackled with friends is a compelling way to do this. It means instances however but I don’t know how you can make sure a character proves his mastery of his class without instances since in the open world anybody can be a train passenger at anytime and breeze through the content. What I mean is it’s not because I get gold reward in a successful event that I really proved I’m skillful. It’s still possible to be ran through instances by others but it’s less easy/probable.

ColinJohanson.2394:

What sort of systems of horizontal progression unlocking would you like to see that’d accompany a system like extended class progression?

The current system of skill points right now isn’t bad, I think it’s great but there’s a problem when skills are introduced later in the life of the game and a player has already done all skill challenges. His ways to get new skill points are via level up or tomes. Level up can be from anything and most day one hardcore (and even less hardcore) players have already unlocked all current skills and still have dozens or hundreds of skill points stashed. So when you introduce a new skill, it’s just a question if we want to buy it or not through the GUI.

If we had to do, say, five skill point challenges it would be cool… but they’re all done already. So it doesn’t give a sense of “awesome” when purchasing new skills even if we did cool skill challenges a while ago for those points we use right now.

So, I think you’ve already painted yourself in a corner with your skill points system. It was great from a new player perspective but not from a 100% map completion perspective.

My best idea would be a quest item that unlocks a skill dropped from a chest coming from a world boss at the end of an event chain. Similar to how temple karma vendors work. Upon using that item, it would unlock one specific skill per class so there would be event chain A for skill A, event chain B for skill B, etc. This way, nobody can use the least resistance path to obtain all their new skills. However, this means one new event chain per new set of skills… a bit more work than right now, but it would be a great opportunity to tie-in some interesting lore as well. I think it could be a win-win situation.

Once unlocked it would be available inside the GUI and purchasable with skill points like the other skills. (note : the event chain could unlock a skill challenge at the end as well to help alleviate the cost of that new skill for new players)

Those event chains should also give the same rewards as temple events currently give to prevent them from being impossible to do in the foreseeable future. (note : could also be an idea to simply introduce new skills inside current world boss/temple events as well so it would save a bit of work short term)

As how to announce this, first a letter is sent to all players via mailbox to inform them of the new event chain just like you do already with Living Story. Secondly, there should be a town crier in each major city giving infos on locations of these event chains. Also, ~15 minutes before a specific event that town crier should pop a ping signal on map and/or message on screen/in chat (just like Scarlet’s invasions) (option to turn off/on whichever should be given in F11 options) and announce in-game (chat bubble + speech) the event chain.

I already use a third party app for all temple/world boss/rare chest events to know exactly when they’ll be happening so I don’t have to wait around. If the feature would be in-game, I wouldn’t use a third party app.

Another idea would be to completely change all skill challenges and make them give skills directly instead of skill points thus removing one currency from the game. Multiple skill challenges of the same level could give identical skills (per example, all level 5 skill challenges of all zones could give the same skill set so norns won’t have different skills than charrs). For level up, give laurels instead of skill points. For items requiring skill points to purchase, switch it to a currency we have already (like laurels or something else).

This other idea brings a slight problem in regards to players doing only WvW though. They’d have to go PvE for skills.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would love to see you guys close out this particular area by either putting a sub class proposal together (Sentence detailing how it would work) or deciding as a group that it isn’t relevant at this point.

In short I would like to see if the CDI group thinks it is a relevant part of Horizontal Progression at this stage of GW2’s life?

I think that sub-classes (inside one main class) is actually a great idea for horizontal progression. I’d like to see some other things before that though… so to answer your last question, I think it should be put aside for a later addition…
It could be tied to lore/story though. With a new personal story segment later on, you could unlock a master of something within your class. For guardian per example, it could be a Master Monk giving access to new healing/protection utility skills upon completion of various tasks.
However, just like TheDaiBish just said, you shouldn’t be stuck in a sub-class forever and could mix match build between each you’ve unlocked.

I’d like to add a 4th point which isn’t totally horizontal progression… but somewhat. Simply more story content.
I’ll “quote” GW1 again on this. Right now, if I want to go back with a level 1 character in GW1 and do everything I can, I have :
– Prophecies campaign
– Factions campaign
– Nightfall campaign
– Eye of the North campaign
– Hard mode campaigns of the above three
– Dungeons
– Elite dungeons (or stuff like UW/Urgoz etc.)
– Different PvP modes
– Character bound achievement progression (including map completion)
– Elite skills hunting

In GW2, if I want to do the same thing, here are my options :
– Personal story (amount to one GW1 campaign maybe)
– Map completion
– Dungeons
– Fractals
– WvW
– One PvP mode

What I mean is, there isn’t much content to do once you hit 80 with a new character unless you dive into Fractals or WvW. The main reason behind that is because the Living World story content is gone and can’t be replayed. So if I wish to come back to GW2 with a new character, I’m done in a couple of weeks where it would take months to complete the story in GW1. It’s horizontal progression in a sense… since I’m not gaining any stats but I’m progressing “horizontally” with the story itself. Anyway, I think it’s important to note that the replay value of the GW2 story is somewhat low (due to its length and quality) thus diminishing an important aspect of character progression.

Where GW2 misses the mark the most in my view is with its story (which is tied to character progression). Many elements of the personal story and the living story doesn’t make my character feel like he’s awesome… it just feels like he’s a pawn of every other NPC and that he could be replaced by any other next door Joe. Thus I don’t feel like I’m progressing anywhere with my character, story-wise. Sadly, the damage has already been done and it’s hard to build a tower upon a base that is already crooked.

Here’s my personal top 3 :
1 – Wardrobe system : at least a PvE locker like the PvP one where we could store weapons, armours, skins AND town clothes/costumes. I’d be more willing to pay for gem store items if I have some place to store them and use them at will as often as I want instead of having to manage transmuting things and sometimes having to decide which skin to keep or trash away. (note that skins we get via achievement chests are great because they’re stored somewhere are re-usable — more should be like this) But to add to this it would be nice to be able to swap gear between 2-3 different outfits (outside of combat) at the click of a button (like we can swap weapons right now… but a whole set of armour and weapons instead). Also currently, I think that the selection of weapons is great. There are different tiers of weapons obtainable outside of crafting that have a varying cost attached to them. We have regular drops, rare drops (like named exotics), crafting tiers, precursors, weapons crafted in the Mystic Forge. The variety is great overall. However, the diversity isn’t up par yet with the armour sets. We have only three options outside of crafting (if I’m not mistaken) : named exotic set, temple karma set and mid-level karma set. I’m not taking into account the gem store sets because they can be bought with money. In other words, there’s not a great ladder of armour diversity. The feeling of getting a prestigious armour set is missing from the game.
Look at GW1 armour tiers for reference of what I’m talking about. (Normal armour -> low cost elite -> elite -> higher cost elite like obsidian)

2 – More skills; better elite skills; better skill acquisition system (maybe only for elite). Elite skills are really lack luster. You could put together a system where we have to work for our elite skills with quests/events/dungeons/bosses just like in GW1. That was great fun. Collecting skills by doing epic quests is way more interesting than collecting skills by acquiring skill points. The new healing skills you put in the game at 25 SP… they cost so much vs the other regular skills that unless I really need them I won’t buy them. And just paying 25 SP (or going out to grind 25 SP) isn’t what I would call fun horizontal progression. On top of new skills and skill acquisition, please add skill templates that we could swap out like in GW1. Also, since we’re talking about new skills… this also means new weapon types… since some skills are tied to weapons. Or maybe 2-3 different skill sets per weapon type?

3 – Giving importance to factions. First, guild halls/home improvement so that our home become useful. It’s a bit tied up with the personal story, so I guess maybe some personal story progress would be required for home progress as well, unless they’re untied eventually. I’d rather have a customisable guild hall (with vendors and everything and a “go to guild hall button” like GW1) before home improvement though. Guild halls unlocks could be tied to factions (per example Order of Whispers guild manager starts an event or instance which upon completion unlocks a purchasable guild hall with the faction’s look — make them possible to do for small guilds as well please… that means 5-man or less — so scalable). On top of that, daily tasks could be converted to daily faction tasks. Each faction have a daily event that you can start by talking to a faction representative in various locations. That said event could be rotated daily. More events could be added to the rotation as time goes on. Add to this achievement tracks for each faction with titles (like GW1) and you have quite a big new daily/faction/achievement system that are more fun to do than regular daily tasks.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

I think that whichever is best for you since you’ll be the ones reading it and compiling the answers.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

I don’t see exotics very often right now so I’m wondering how more often we could see ascended items. Unless the rare/exotics drop rate is increased as well, to stay proportional in availability, I don’t see a big enough change in the future to make it worthwhile thinking of acquiring ascended items in any other way than focused grind or crafting.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

It would be really great. Like how it’s possible with legendary items right now.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

A drop is bound to RNG most of the time, so I’m wondering what kind of drops are you talking about? Chest rewards? Achievement pts?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Hallelujah!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

It would be quite interesting to see this.

Colin asked which progression systems we liked more from other games, I’ll name a couple here :
– Guild Wars 1 elite skills acquisition system
– Final Fantasy VII materia slotting; it’s like GW rune/insigna system, except that we have to salvage our gear to switch “materia” or have multiple gear sets to alternate between setup. I wouldn’t mind having a cost associated with switching “materia” but not at the point of destroying my gear set just to switch them. It was the same in GW1 and I didn’t like the salvaging system either in the first game actually.
– Final Fantasy X / Path of Exile grid system; I like the versatility of those kind of systems.

The common point between each system I like is actually the customization power the player have with said system, the ease of switching between different configurations and the feeling of progress and achievement when unlocking new abilities.

On a side note, GW1’s skill templates should come back in GW2.

My opinion on this :

-Horizontal progression-
Two things are lacking I think. The first one is a ward robe/locker like the PvP locker but for PvE. With each Living Story release there’s at least one skin item available. Add to this the gem store items and even the gear that came with the game at first. The PvP locker is genius but we really need the same to stock all our skins and be able to switch between looks at will. It sucks right now to destroy a skin so that we can wear a new one instead. Instead of transmutation stones we could require to buy locker slots (just like bank/inventory tabs) for our PvE locker. I think it would be a win-win situation for both the players and Anet.

The second thing is actually a real progression in cool looking gear. I think that the best looking gear (or more refined looking gear) isn’t always the hardest to get. The easiest comparison I could make is in GW1 with non-elite gear vs elite gear. Most of the elite armor versions of their non-elite counterparts felt quite “elite” indeed. It was worth the investment most of the time and it was something to look forward to in the first game. The crafting tiers gear in GW2 aren’t up to par for me. Yes, the level 20 crafted gear looks cheap compared to level 80 exotics but level 35 rare can look better than level 80 exotics in some instances. Same with dungeon gear not really looking “grand” compared to regular gear. I don’t feel like some armors are “elite” and are worth looking towards to like in GW1.

-Vertical progression-
I’m on the side that thinks that ascended gear as it is was a big error. I would have stopped the stats increase with exotics. If the need for a tier between exotics and legendary felt really necessary, the ascended tier should have been aesthetics only. Actually, I think a “elite armor” version of GW1 would have been a great addition to GW2 instead. One per each crafted set and all of them available at ascended gear tier. Their could have been two tiers of ascended as well just like in GW1. There were cheap elite armors and more costly ones. Sunspear Elite comes to mind as an example of a cheaper one. It gives the opportunity for more players to reach a ascended tier and maybe a way to ease them into ascended crafting also without feeling obliged to do so since the best stats gear would still be exotics.

Right now, the ascended crafting isn’t so bad even if the curve is a bit too much steep. The problem comes for people that have a lot of alts. It was possible to all gear them in exotics but it’s crazy to do this with ascended now. Everything is time gated in some capacity and very costly so I might be able to have full ascended on all my characters maybe… in 2015?

Outside of the ascended tier, the whole vertical progression should have been brought down to a horizontal one. Mainly with skills. Elite skills in GW2 are uninteresting most of the time while in GW1 many where fun and useful. The whole elite skills thing should have been put together the same way — capturing skills by defeating bosses (champions) throughout the game world. They could have been instanced to prevent zerg rushing them (personal story? dungeon?). This would make the whole elite skill system more dynamic and fun. New skills could be introduced in a similar way (with a task to do for earning it in PvE).

Einlanzer.1627:

Personal Story, which is world-scale and character driven
Dynamic Event system, which is zone-scale and world driven
Living World, which is world-scale and development-driven

The LW could potentially work if you didn’t have the other two systems built into the game already, but IMO it’s just not as good a concept as you guys think it is to frequently disrupt, alter, or remove existing content to make the world feel ‘living’ (not the best way to create a world that feels dynamic and alive). You’d be better off focusing on the first two.

So, you should transform the The Living World to support the other two rather than being its own thing. You can use the Living Story to bring focus to a particular zone (existing or new) for a month to spotlight events happening within that zone without tampering with the larger, world-scale saga that fits more into the PS. You can use some temporary content to support this, but it wouldn’t be hugely significant content (such as storied instances and dungeons) and would just serve the purpose of enhancing player immersion of the story that’s playing out in the zone.

Other updates pertaining to events unfolding in the larger narrative of the world should be implemented as expansions to the Personal Story. These would be mostly permanent additions that can be experienced as part of the narrative told from the player/character perspective. You could also throw in the occasional temporary side story used to enrich random bits of lore, spotlight NPCs, or just tell a fun independent story. This should go along with updates to the PS to replay missions, enhance your home instance, and possibly recruit NPCs to travel with you in PS instanced content.

I think so too. The dynamic events system is currently under used in post release content. It should be the driving force behind open world “living world/story” content. Right now they’re more used like “here is stuff to kill in that spot with a specific objective”. Like the toxic offshoots, invasion portals, champions in the Jubilee arena, etc. It’s a weak implementation of an otherwise great system. As per the personal story system, I thought it would be built upon as well with the ongoing releases. A shame it is not.

Elaron.8150:

Make them drop not tradable weapon skins.

No please. No. No more rewards account/soul bound until there’s a PvE locker. I don’t know where to stuff all those skins I don’t like anymore. And it seems a shame to just delete them.

cesmode.4257:

Yes. Ive been saying this since Day 1 with the living story. We are fed crumbs of the story instead of a chapter. I’d much rather be given a chapter or two for a month, than a few sentences every other week (and I get the feeling you would prefer that too!)

Exactly my thoughts since all this started last year.

I just had a flash. I thought about the bonus missions from Guild Wars 1. Each mission in itself was relatively short but contained enough to be entertaining in themselves and each of them had a sort of closure. Each of them felt like a whole by themselves and they were fun. Although they weren’t related with each other, the same mentality could be applied to LS releases (again, story-wise).

BobbyStein.2315:

Some folks seem to appreciate the option to “catch up” with the story when the releases are additive.

Both options don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

BobbyStein.2315:

So you’re saying that the contents of each release are too light, and that you’d rather the two thematically related releases be part of a single build?

Exactly. They could be separated though but only if it would make sense (dramatic cliff hanger between the two releases) and if both parts would contain enough meat (story-wise). Most often than not, I think they should be released together though. The pacing of the story would be better this way. Like it would have been with the Nightmares releases I think. Both Nightmares releases felt like with a 2 weeks long TV ad in the middle of my episode.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind if there would be even one month wait between each release if they would all be released as a whole experience in themselves with some sort of closure each time.

I’m quoting relevant answers below yours that explain what I mean and make my point as well :

jayvux.4128:

I would say they are too “light” in terms of progression and depth.

Jaken.6801:

the payoff for the ones who play for the story is really small, even though it seemed so big.

wookiee.4631:

Future stories should be more concise and not spread out so far.

draxynnic.3719:

Things would probably be much more satisfying if we had some sense that our side was trying to take back the initiative rather than just waiting to see what the enemy is going to do next.

Shinzan.2908:

Rather than having the tower open up in 2 weeks it could have been us opening it which would feel more satisfying and meaningful.

StriderShinryu.6923:

If the goal is a living world, then that’s a huge step forward because, as we all know, the real living world doesn’t run on strict two week cycles when waiting for something new to happen.

Bonefield.9813:

With the two-week cycle, it seems like there’s much less opportunity for that sort of thing, and so the progression of the story doesn’t feel as organic.

Simply put, I would buy the game again for something like this in place of the current Living Story.

(continued)
1) Once you entered Kessex Hills, you were prompted to enter the story instance with your party.
2) The instance would have went on like it did but once you had reached the end, it wouldn’t have stopped there. (maybe in a different story instance though)
Instead of Kasmeer and Marjory getting to the conclusion by themselves that the antitoxin is required, them and the players organize a party with the available manpower in Kessex Hills (namely Seraph and/or Lionguard). As Commander of the Pact (tie-in personal story stuff), the player has to go recruit either or both parties through dialogue choices. Then they join up in the ruined village near Viathan Lake and the player is prompted with different choices of assault tactics given by the different factions. Once the tactic is chosen, the party and NPCs storm the base of the tower and look for an entrance.
Lo and behold, the toxic vapors prove to be too much for them and NPCs are dying like flies. Kasmeer calls for a retreat and the party has to withdraw under the anger of the kraits, back to the village.
Kasmeer and Marjory concludes that we require the antitoxin. The various factions that helped in the assault put together the new camp on the ridge and the instance ends.
3) Players need to gather the toxic spores (as was required by the living story achievement) and give them to Marjory.
4) Completion prompts a new story instance from Marjory where the player has to test that antitoxin. The mission is to use it, via the portable air conditioners, and save prisoners from the kraits (following the previous failed attempt in the story). The antitoxin work as the party saves the prisoners so a plan is put together to enter the tower. End of instance.
5) Marjory gives the next instance right away — breaching the tower. The party needs to help a group of demolitioners to break through the krait defenses and open a way inside the tower. It’s a success but the advance in the tower fails at great costs and many NPCs give their lives trying to reach the top. Reinforcements are required to continue further.
6) Queues in Nightmare Within like it is right now.

If you don’t feel right with party-based story instances, you can turn them into world events which would be awesome too :
3) World event — Players need to gather enough toxic spores for Marjory to make antitoxin to breach the tower.
4) Completion of #3 leads to follow up world event — Players need to save prisoners with antitoxin.
5) Completion of #4 leads to follow up world event — Players need to breach the tower with demo squad.
Add in some nice champion bosses/legendary bosses on the krait side and it’s a win.

Previously, the involvement of the player was barely helping out Marjory and Kasmeer with fedex tasks while waiting after them to open the way.
With that idea, the involvement of the player would have become active in breaching the tower and taking part in the whole of the story. Furthermore, no gap in one story arc. This is a main point I told Colin previously in this thread about episodic content vs tv episodes. Tower of Nightmares → 2 weeks gap → Nightmare Within feel totally disjointed. However, Tower of Nightmares + Nightmares Within together as a whole feels right, one part of a whole arc. Still, it’s one part of the whole Scarlet arc. This is a subplot of the main Scarlet plot, so it shouldn’t be broken in pieces. You’re diluting your story way too much.

Subject : Pacing of the Living Story using the latest two patches as examples of what I think should and shouldn’t be done.

My biggest gripe I think with the story in the Living Story is the pacing of it. As many discussed before, me included, we’re getting too few tidbits of story per patch to make it worthwhile story-wise. So it feels like there isn’t any progress at all. The back to back releases of Tower of Nightmares and Nightmare Within are a prime example of this.

When Tower of Nightmares released and I saw that big tower in Kessex Hills, without reading anything about it, I thought “So cool! I’m eager to get inside! Let’s get this first instance done with so we can enter that beast!”. You see my disappointment when it ended with saving Marjory and Kasmeer. I sincerely think both releases should have been one.

How?

First, the starting story instance in Tower of Nightmares was single player. I’m all for content that is soloable but it should also be scalable according to the number of players going in. We got a party together just to do this instance and experience Anet’s work together (it’s a MMOG right?) but once you enter Kessex Hills, you were thrown in a single player instance. So… our party split up and we went on our way… a little bit annoyed because of it.
The instance itself wasn’t very fun but that’s not really the point I want to make here.
Once it was done, we got back together in Kessex Hills and I looked around for a way to enter that tower… since it was the most appealing thing laying around. After some reading up, I came to the understanding that there was no way to enter that since Marjory required some spores to make the antitoxin.
Okay, story-wise it’s a great idea, it makes sense really. The antitoxin should be required to plow through that tower. However, that sound story element was rendered into a “grind X spores” achievement over the next two weeks which totally destroyed the enjoyment of that part of the story for me.

I’m not sure I’m making any sense with this but the point I want to make across is the feeling with the pacing of the story.

1) New patch, big awesome tower pops up in Kessex Hills = Excited, want to go inside!
2) First story instance, makes a party, solo instance = disappointed I can’t enjoy the content with my friends.
3) Very short story (more like an introduction to what’s going on) is done rather quickly = not that much fun.
4) We got back together in Kessex Hills… the tower! Let’s forget that bad start, the tower will surely be awesome = Excited again.
5) Learning that we can’t enter the tower = very disappointed.
6) Learning that the only thing left for the next 2 weeks is to grind achievements = depressed about the new content, not feeling like doing anything of it anymore.

How about if instead of this, we got the following?

ColinJohanson.2394:

There is a thin-line between content that drives the story forward, which if it lasts forever feels like the story never really progresses, vs. content that all goes away and ends up feeling like the world never actually progresses. Which releases, and more specifically what aspects of specific releases do you feel were successful balancing content that didn’t remain forever that progressed the story, while simultaneously leaving enough of a mark on the world to feel like the world is changing an evolving?

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

I totally agree with you on this. The big problem with the original Southsun Cove wasn’t actually how it worked but the fact that it was so laggy that we couldn’t enjoy it as you envisioned it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

Personally, I’m on the side that think that one-time events are a great idea. I think that if there would be a NPC somewhere that could makes us travel back (party travel) to a one-time event instance where that said event occurs just like the first run it would be great. People that missed it would be able to take part in it in some capacity anyway and people that liked it and would like to replay again would be able to.
However, one-time events are really problematic because of the time zones. Even with that kind of NPC, I’m sure that some time zones will always be shafted with the selected hour for the event. Maybe it would be a good idea to do rolling events at different hours? Per example, different hours for NA servers en EU servers so that it occurs during prime time for both areas. Still, Oceanic people don’t have their own server, so maybe it could be possible to do the event at a different hour on a different server? Like, 7 PM PST on Borlis, 8 PM PST on Blackgate, 9 PM PST on TC etc. Keep the same schedule for every server and give the capability for everyone once to switch server to match their schedule accordingly. But still… there are overflows? What to do with them.

I don’t really have a solution yet to appeal to everyone living everywhere in the world but one time events are great when you can be there. They’re not when you can’t.

BobbyStein.2315:

Regarding GW1 lore in Living World and beyond, let’s just say we’re looking at all GW lore right now and picking out threads that we’d like to tie up. Ideas are welcome, as always.

Mursaats. Palawa Joko. Crystal Desert. Livia. Cantha.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I was referring to the Clockwork Chaos invasions where the meta designs split groups up in order to complete the objective efficiently. Sorry for any confusion.

Speaking of Clockwork Chaos, I liked it when it was first released but since the content went away, the invasions that still occur in the world are kind of pointless? For some reason, when the waves got split in 5 instead of 3, the event got harder to do. Before, we could solo Molten tunnels easily, now they take forever to kill with a full group. The whole invasions event feel harder/longer to do but we have the same time as before and less people do them. On top of that, everyone aims for the champions farm (and I understand it, it gives pretty good loot) which prevents progressing furthermore. Now, with the new content (since Halloween), I don’t think I’ve seen an invasion go beyond the 3rd wave just before the Aetherblades. I’m wondering if it’s still possible to completely finish an invasion right now. I’ve seriously never seen Scarlet spawn on my server in an invasion over the last 6 weeks. Far from it. So… what’s the point in having content that absolutely can’t be completed at all?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

Most favorite :
It’s hard to decide between Shadow of the Mad King, Bazaar of the Four Winds and Super Adventure Box. The first reason why is that all of these releases were packed with a ton of new fun content. SotMK, even if it was based around a festival, had a lot of lore-related content too. The Blood and Madness release was a bit of a let down in comparison because there was barely any lore and many content was removed from last year. BotFW was great because we got a new zone with new interesting mechanics. Even if the zone was relatively small, it had plenty of exploration to do due to the vertical layout and hidden crystals to find. It was the best content exploration-wise that you have released so far. As per SotMK, it had a ton of new fun content as well. For SAB, it’s the whole package that is tremendous. Again, a lot of new fun content at once that was a delight to explore.

Least favorite :
I can’t decide between Tequatl Rising and Cutthroat Politics. For Tequatl Rising, it’s because of how the content has been implemented. Unless by being lucky or using a guild like TTS, it was impossible, depending on your server, to simply have a chance at completing the content. Waiting hours to be able to reach a main server with a chance to success was unacceptable. Cutthroat Politics is also a problem of implementation. The idea to make us chose between Kiel and Evon was great. I’d like more situations where we, the players, can have choices between different paths to take and where the story will go. However, the only gameplay element we had in relation to this was putting tokens in voting boxes and having a tag on while doing events for “representing” the candidates. I thought it was quite dull and lazy. On top of that, people that voted extensively to participate in the event were penalized, stuck with representative tokens while players that didn’t vote were able to sell the unused tokens. It was like a slap across the face for us that “played the game”. I still have stacks of those tokens laying around to remind me to never participate more than the game asks for achievements. (speaking of junk collecting dust in our inventories, can you do something about the ascended mats that are account bound? it feels cheap to destroy them but what else is there to do with them when you don’t need those anymore?? we should be able to sell them on TP or simply to merchants)

BobbyStein.2315:

Perhaps a better approach would have been to start and resolve each arc before introducing another.

Yes, I think that would be a better approach. Chasing multiple rabbits at once isn’t often a rewarding endeavour.

However, I guess that your multiple rotating teams structure for creating content led naturally to such a design decision. With that type of team structure and the apparent probable need to deliver more continuity in the story, it’ll be hard to get the wheel turning until some time probably. Simply because content from team A needs to have some kind of closure before the introduction of the content from team B. So team A needs to churn out a certain number of releases in a row right off the bat. So that would require piling up finished content made by team B up until it’s time to release it to the players once team A’s done.

If such a venture is planned to be tackled, it’d be wise to make a transition with one team in the background by starting to pile up their created content as soon as possible.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t prevent the release of content from different team simultaneously either. I’m sure players won’t mind having two different stories going on at the same time, as long as there’s not a lengthy pause between the different parts of each respective arc. It can be accomplished if each story doesn’t overlap. (per example, Kraits in Kessex Hills and Pact cleansing Orr)

BobbyStein.2315:

So yeah, giant, winged beasts are a part of Tyria, they’re core to the game, and we haven’t forgotten about them. That stated, I can’t say when we’ll return to them—only that we will. There is a plan in place.

Looking forward to this.

ColinJohanson.2394:

So a fun question to ask to help direct the conversation a bit: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

For me, a good TV show has either a main story going on for the whole of the season or a background storyline with a main plot driving the different episodes for a season finale. It needs some sense of continuity between the different episodes up to the end. Also, each episode in itself requires to be a whole. Meaning that there should be a cool sub plot for each episode — if not, maybe a sub plot per 2-3 contiguous episodes. (I’m stressing contiguous here.) All in all, it needs to feel complete and fun as a whole and complete and fun as each episode separately.

In relation to GW2, I think that putting festival releases in-between real LS releases is a problem. It screws the pacing of the story. I think each arc should be resolved in-between each festival. Per example, if you release Halloween on 15/10, all the releases from 29/10 up to, let’s say, 10/12 should be about the same story arc (or multiple arcs but each with closure) so that once the Wintersday release hits on 17/12, we’re not left hanging without finality to the ongoing LS until somewhere in January.

It’s great that the Living World has been chosen as the first topic to discuss since right now it’s the most important part of Guild Wars 2. This is currently the game’s driving force for those that have been playing since months and have already seen everything the game had to offer at release. This is also the one feature that needs to be set on rail towards success as quickly as possible for the future of the game (PvE wise).

After all those living world updates though, I feel that the plan missed the mark so far. I took the time to reflect on all the different updates we had so far and maybe 1/3 was good, 1/3 was okay and 1/3 was meh but none of them were really great (except maybe Shadow of the Mad King, Bazaar of the Four Winds and SAB).

Why did it miss the mark?
Simply because the living world/story is not living and doesn’t have any interesting story.

First, everything started kind of slowly. I understand that you had to adjust your development cycle and teams but it dealt quite a blow to the game. Between January and April nothing really had been going on. The ramp up for Flame & Frost was really weak and it should have been released in one go instead. It didn’t lead to any anticipation at all — I didn’t care at all about what was happening. Once Flame & Frost was done we got a bunch of totally unrelated content updates. Some were great by themselves, like SAB and the Bazaar per example, but there was no interesting and important main theme tying everything together. A bunch of different disjointed releases one after the other and it’s starting to show and wear me off after a couple of months. If GW2 is going to become the evolving festival updates galore, I’d prefer to wait 6 months with nothing before getting a worthwhile expansion.

The story part of the “living story” can be summed up by the words “weak, disjointed, uninteresting, unepic, not enough, unrelated (to the existing game world)”. It seems like Anet didn’t plan anything story-wise for the future of the game and that all the different releases so far were just fun projects of various small groups. Like if five people worked on festivals, five on SAB, five on Southsun, five on Scarlet, etc. and then everything was thrown in the box as soon as the content came trickling out.

About the living part in “living story”, I don’t feel it really… living? The words “living world” inspire a world that would be evolving and changing starting time-wise from where the game ended : with the defeat of Zhaitan. However, the whole Pact organization thing is frozen in time since one year. Most existing zones and events didn’t change much if at all. The only part of the game that really changed is Southsun but it’s about only half a zone in itself and have been thrown in at some point out of nowhere. It’s like an island isolated from the game world and living in a different dimension. The only bit of land in the whole world that is evolving. The other modifications were minor.

Another big reason why the “living” is feeling weak is because most of the new content so far is gone. We have almost nothing to show about what happened over the last year.

This leads me to talk about Orr not changing and the problem with changing it (due to screwing up the personal story of new players coming into the game). However, Anet already solved that problem in the first Guild Wars when Prophecies characters traveled to Cantha. All the things that happened before the Prophecies characters reached the new continent were labeled as “Here is a story of what happened previously.” for those characters. The same technique has been used with Elona and also with the rerun of some canthan festivals. Why not using that technique to modify Orr and preserve the personal stories of new players? The personal story is 95% instanced already. This way you’ll be able to continue on with the end of the game and truely make it a living world. By using the same technique, you’ll also be able to keep inside the game the cool temporary content that you removed, maybe via a historian NPC. This would solve two issues :
– Not enough new permanent content
– Bi-weekly updates are too fast for some people (you missed the update? no worries, you can relive the story via our historian dude anyway, so take your time)

All in all, I feel a bit disappointed where the game is going currently with the living world and I had hoped that everything would have been a bit more epic and more true to Guild Wars’ origins instead of a mashup of different ideas coming from the left field. Please, stop ignoring the existing lore of the game world and use it in your releases.

Let’s hope that Arena.net will understanding the feelings of the community and will steer the boat in the right direction for the next year!

pdg.8462:

The problem is not overflows. The problem is organizing people, the trolls, the AFKers. These problems exist on main servers as well. End this fallacious meme.

I shall say that it’s not only overflows. All that you list is true as well. But overflows can be a liability too.

All of this could be solved if the fight is presented in a different package. Except maybe trolls, that is quite hard to anticipate. People gets creative with grieving sometimes.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The simple fact is that there are multiple ways to coordinate and win, and if you want to do so you will find a way. I have killed Teq every night for the past 4 nights now, just by asking around, talking to people, and figuring out where the bigger guilds are doing the event. I don’t even belong to those guilds and I still get in by cooperating, not whining, showing a willingness to learn and following instructions.

I know there are different ways to get around the problem but the problem I’m pointing at is that we need to use a way to get around. (well many of us actually but not all)
How many hours per day in average are you devoting to your Tequatl kill? Including the event, preparation and waiting? And how many hours have you devoted the first time around including the research to find the right way for you? Because the first time certainly took you more time to do so than the others.

I’ve been looking around a bit yesterday evening during prime time and it was already dead on my server as well as at least two others I guested on to see how it was going.

I hope actually that it will be able to live once in a while a la Karka Queen. For the queen, if a good guild wants to do it, they can call on map chat and have a sizeable group organized to finish the events. I wish it’ll be possible in the future with Teq when the boss week stuff will be over… but I’m not sure.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’m sorry, but why? Where is this rule written that you can’t have open world content that requires organization?

There is certainly no written rule about this but don’t you think it’s a little bit counter intuitive? One example of why it is :
One server gets organized and has the luck to be fully in his home server (somewhat a feat already). They’re preparing at least one or two hours (well or maybe more actually when it’s prime time) in advance, for many different reasons, and a couple of minutes after arrival, they realize one guy is AFK on a west turret because he won’t answer PMs nor move. So what to do?
Either A) Wait until he gets disconnected or leaves or B) Find another server.
If they chose A), and somehow that AFK guy comes back every 15 minutes to see if Teq has arrived (resetting auto-kick timer) and goes away again, won’t see or won’t bother with PMs effectively hindering the organized group attempt and finally won’t show up to man the turret while the event starts for whatever reason (thus having to let the afk person die to mobs when they spawn to reclaim the turret).
If they chose B), one of them needs to reconnect, to fall into overflow, to check if it seems suitable for their attempt, to make the whole group from the main server join his party 4 people at a time (but then once more people join, more can join too) and to be successful in getting his message across the entire group (which almost requires third party voice communications software since there’s none in-game and no alliance system like GW1).

Don’t you agree that it’s crazy having to do all this to have a chance to succeed? And there are many other examples that could be given that could generate the same situation. An instanced fight wouldn’t have these problems.

+1 Happens to me on turrets once every two-three attempts at Tequatl as well. Nothing is lagging around me, only the turret bugs out.

The OP’s idea is great. +1

Antitheist.5306:

I have seen at least one person on a cannon who wasn’t even firing, let alone contributing to reducing the Hardened Scales buff.

Not to defend them, I’m sure some of them were not using the turret properly as they should have but I like manning turrets from time to time and I’m working my kitten off to always use the #2 skill and it happens frequently that the turret bugs out. Nothing is firing at all. You need to leave the turret and get back in. Then it could not work still. So you have to leave and get back in until it starts firing again. It’s really frustrating. So maybe some of the people you saw had that problem. In the middle of the action it’s hard to understand that something’s wrong with the turret.

I don’t know if it can happen to many turrets at once but if it’s the case, I’m sure it can be the source of many failed attempts.

I can say that it happened to me maybe once every two or three events when I was manning a turret. So much that I’m on turrets less and less often because I’m too afraid of screwing the event because of this.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

why don’t you both stop complaining and instead team up?

It’s an open world event. We shouldn’t have to do anything else other than waypoint to the event to participate and then have a chance at completing the content.
If I have to organize a group before hand, it should be instanced. As a player, I shouldn’t have to find a solution to circumvent game mechanics that are failing to be able to experience the content as designed and to enjoy a fun experience. Mechanics should be in place to facilitate our gaming experience not hinder it.

Gabby.3205:

use the LFG tool already, go to another map (you must be on your server, not overflow) […] and wait.

It sounds like a good advice and I’m kind of willing to try it out over the weekend. However, I find that a bit complex to solve an issue with the game. So, I need to get on my server in another map than Sparkfly, because I need not fall in overflow, and from that other map make/join a LFG invite for Tequatl — hoping to get a good invite actually, it’s not a certainty at all. And I still have to wait for my request to be filled. So I still need to organize myself in advance to not miss the event. It might work well actually, but I have my reserves about going out of my way like this to circumvent a flaw with the design. I shouldn’t have to do this.

Tell me, did you manage to complete the event by using this method?

For big events like this, there should be a in-game interface with a opt-in/opt-out feature. You can opt-in to be warned of Tequatl’s arrival. Once it’s time for the event, you get a popout in the corner saying “Tequatl is here! Join the Vigil in the upcoming fight!” and you have 30 seconds to click “Join” if you want to participate.

Once you click join, you get teleported (with your party if they wish) in a 100,150,200 people (whatever the number you want) instance until it’s filled up — it needs to be cross-servers too. Then you have a 2-3 minutes timer to pick your combat squad in a new interface : Western Turrets Defense, Eastern Turrets Defense, Attack Group A, Attack Group B, etc. Once you’re in your squad, you can see the clear objectives of your squad (like — Defend the turrets from the incoming risen.) and you can see their dots on the map too (it would be great!). Put a cap on different squads as well so we don’t end up with 100 people in Western Turrets Defense. It doesn’t prevent someone from East to run to the West group but I mean, it gives a little direction to new people upfront without requiring voice chat (which the game itself lacks and we must rely on third party software).

Once the timer ends up, the fight starts, with a full map of people that took the time to click join (so it weeds out some afk people), that are divided into groups with specific objectives and are overall inside a group that stands at least a chance at completing the event.

What if someone wants to join after it started? (say, someone logged in game 5 minutes after the start) Keep a “late arrival buffer cap” in each instance of 10ish people. That cap is exclusively for that kind of people to give them a chance to join a group that stands a chance even if they’re late. Or just don’t give them the opportunity to join. In any case, don’t waste people’s time by letting them joining an overflow lacking enough player to complete the content.

What if my whole guild want to participate together, parties are limited to 5-man teams! It’s time to add a new guild feature where the appropriately appointed guild members (via the current ranking system) can click join for his whole guild (and then all members online can confirm that they want to join as well). So they’re teleported together in the same instance (as long as the guild isn’t too big).

Once the event is done, since it’s an instance, you need to click the little house icon to get out. Yes however, we lose the whole effect of “Sparkfly’s coast is full of risen mouths exploding in the face of people.” but seriously, it’s not an element that makes the encounter fun, it’s only aesthetics. It gets rid of afkers that stay in the map after the event is done since the next encounter would be in a different instance.

TL;DR: My main gripe with the new Tequatl is that we need to camp the boss (YES! CAMPING a boss in Guild Wars 2… I can’t believe it myself) to be able to have a meagre chance at completing it OR be in a very organized big group (even then, they face many problems with logistics themselves as well I’m sure). I don’t want to waste long hours just waiting in-game to not be stuck in destined to fail overflows.

Sorry wall of text incoming. My impressions after 4 evenings of trying to beat Tequatl (Borlis Pass).

Anet released the API and one of its great feature is that the community is able to make websites like gw2.thelazy.net that can warn us when an event is starting. So we’re able to waypoint there right away and take part. It’s great because we don’t have to wait in map during the spawn window or worst wait in map for it to spawn. (I remember when the game came out and I wanted to beat Shatterer for the first time… no website with timers! It sucked really.)

Here’s the problem with Tequatl if you’re using a website like this. Tequatl starts, you waypoint to Sparkfly, one of two things happen :
1 – Map is full, you fall in overflow, Tequatl is starting RIGHT NOW, overflow is underpopulated, people is unorganized, event fails eventually.
2 – Map is not full, you reach the main server but…. if the map isn’t full on prime time when the event just started it’s not because you’re the lucky last one to get in, it’s because the main server itself is underpopulated. Thus the event fails eventually.

Alright, so I can’t just waypoint there when it starts… what I’m I gonna do? I tried to waste my time waypointing up front of him spawning. After hours of waiting… maybe 1… maybe 2… 4… I finally get up on the main server. Sadly, Borlis Pass isn’t one of the server that managed to beat Tequatl so far. But even if the server was able to, I would have waited FOUR HOURS just to get that meagre chance of beating him.

I admit I did more efforts than I would want to normally to try to be there, complete this event using standard open world opt-in/opt-out mechanics in place and I wasted quite a lot of time just waiting to get on main server. I tried guesting too but was unlucky with that as well. My last resort would be to join a great group like TKS or TSS. I’m sure it would work that way, but I’d like to point out that Tequatl is an open world event. The goal of open world events is having many people coming and going as they like but that design doesn’t work with the current Tequatl’s encounter.

How the community is organizing itself right now is to face instanced raid content… in an open world event. That’s how Tequatl can be beaten. I think it’s wrong for many obvious reasons that other people already pointed out.

The event itself is great, the few times I managed to be part of a group that reached at least the 2nd phase, I could see how good that encounter is. The problem is the whole container of the event that was badly thought/executed. You used what you had in place to stuff a raid-like content inside and that wasn’t really appropriate.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I know there have been some concerns about Guild Bounties being in the Art of War line. Our goal with this system is to give guilds activities and long-term progression that they can accomplish by working together as a guild.

I don’t mind if they’re hard to accomplish. I mind if I need to GRIND the game to access it.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

*We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild.

Have you thought that maybe not all guilds have the budget to upgrade ALL upgrade lines? So if all lines are equally useful to all guilds, smaller ones won’t be able to do jack unless they focus on one thing. The problem is that PvE-only guilds didn’t invest 1 influence in Art of War yet and you put the entry level guild unlock (Bounties) in that specific upgrade line giving that unlock pretty much at half price to any WvW focused guild while PvE guilds need to grind their way up the tree because they’re not interested in WvW upgrades to start with. There shouldn’t be any unlock to do at all anyway!! The influence price to start the event is just enough, it could even be higher… 1000? 2000? 3000? Sure why not. At least we would have a goal accessible after a couple of weeks.
[/quote]

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades.

If you expect this from guilds in this game with the current upgrade costs, you should prevent guild creation under 50 members. You can’t realistically expect small guilds to agree with that line of thinking. Please, next time Arena.net do a press release/interview about guild content, don’t say that even small guilds are taken into account when it’s not true at all.

I’m scared to see how much a guild hall will cost if you ever make those. I doubt we’d have any influence left for the guild hall unlocks and all that other stuff after spending it all on guild mission unlocks.

I’m part of a 21 members guild. It’s a very casual guild and most people come and go; they play when they have time. Some people play daily, others play weekly, others are gone for months and then they’re online 4 hours a day over two months straight. It took us until January to unlock all the vault upgrades (with the deep cave and everything). We just play for fun and not to grind, so we don’t optimize our online time to grind every little bit of influence. We don’t want to play a numbers game just to be able to access the new content.

The guild missions content seem to be tremendously fun but we won’t be able to do any of this. Since we’re not a PvP or WvW guild, we currently have only Architecture Lvl 5 and Politics Lvl 2. We should invest all our influence into the Art of War line, that serves basically no purpose to us at all, plus 30K influence in Guild Bounties Unlock. That’s 66500 influence. The Deep Cave upgrade cost 56500 (with all other vault upgrades : stash and trove). September-January : 56500, now we need 66500. Less and less people are playing so we don’t have as much activity in the guild as on release day. Do the math. I’ll be glad to comment on that new content… well maybe at Christmas. Over that time, shame on us if we dare spend any influence on anything else. If I see one officer spending influence on a karma banner they’ll get a slap for wasting our precious required for those ludicrous unlock expenses. So, on top of blocking us from the new content, you’re telling us to stop using any guild consumable or upgrading anything else at all if we just hope to reach that content before next year.

Small guilds get the shaft and it will be either an exile towards bigger guilds or simply small guilds stopping playing the game. We could do pretty much anything in Guild Wars 1 with a small guild. It’s really not the case now in Guild Wars 2 and that’s VERY disappointing…

— A long time GW/Anet fan just getting more and more disappointed by the overall direction the game is taking.

1. : Attented / DC’ed no loot
2. : Attended / Event bugged no loot
3. : Attended / Got loot
   No mail

Just finished the final event after my 3rd time trying to complete it. I was at it from 3 PM (EST) till almost midnight with a 2 hours break in-between. Crashed at the final boss battle the first time. My 2nd time, the demo team was bugged mid-way in their chain. I gave it another go and saw the ending this time. Also, the reinforcements phase didn’t take ages the 3rd time so it was bearable. I think the whole chain took a bit less than 2 hours including the running from landing point up to the hive (as opposed to over 3 hours on my first run). However, it was rather annoying trying to find a way to get into an overflow with a working event. If it wasn’t for the ingenuity of this fabulous community I, and many others, would have never made it to the end.

The last battle and the ending were both really brilliant. So I could up my score from 6 to 7/10 for the whole event.

But a poor 4/10 if you weight in all the lag/crashes/bugged events.

You can be sure that if I get in, I’ll try to pay it back by inviting as many people as I can.

I’m in line for an invite, just add me whenever someone can!

Mad King’s event was great and very fun the whole week. I would have given it a 9/10 (nobody can be perfect heh?)

But the Lost Shores event is really disappointing. Even before the disconnection fiasco of the final event, I was already disappointed.

Phase 1 was so bugged that some of my guild mates didn’t manage to finish it. I was lucky on that one and could do the whole phase 1 because Anet made it run till the end of phase 2.

Phase 2 event never started on my overflow. However, I managed to get to Southsun and do the whole event chain. That chain was fun, getting from the landing site up to Camp Karka. This was really a great chain that was well paced. Maybe give a warning that phase 2 is done at the end thought. What to do next was a bit confusing to figure out.

After that, I did the jumping puzzles and both were great. However, I doubt I’ll ever go back to Southsun Cove after that. No map completion, other events on the map are generic and bland. Karkas are rather hard to kill for not much loot. I prefer running around Orr or any other place with cool event chains like the temples or events like the dragons. The map is good looking but not really fun to play in once the main event is done.

Phase 3 was great up to the reinforcements part. It started to lag as hell and took forever to kill the veteran young karkas. It’s not normal that our server took over 3 hours to beat the event. It should run for about an hour max. The 2nd reinforcements was way too much, you were already testing our patience. The whole disconnecting fiasco was the cherry on the cake which screwed all the little appreciation I could have still got from that event.

Without the game crashing at the end I would have rated Lost Shore maybe 5 or 6/10.
With the disconnection and no final event credit, it’s a big 3/10.

Last bit. If that content would have cost something, that would have been the last content I would have bought for Guild Wars 2. Glady it was free, and thank you for that.

Want to add my voice to this thread as well. The same thing as Moody happened to me. 3h15 doing the event, game crashed, got nothing, pretty pissed off.

My two cents.

Our guild did AC & CM story + explorable a couple of times so far. We’re a small guild ready to tackle and complete any content. Still, most of us only have at best 2-3 hours per day available to play (over week days) — and not every day.

Story modes are fine. However, explorable modes give too few of a reward. If you want the whole exotic set from one dungeon at 30 tokens per run it will take 40 runs of one dungeon. Times 8 dungeons, that’s 320 successful runs to get all armor types. Or to be more realistic, one armor per character slot is 200 runs total. Each run ranging between 30-120 min. depending on group setup etc.
Sincerely, none of us (in our guild) want to grind one specific dungeon that much. It’s a pain. And there are no other alternative to get those specific armor skins. The time it takes to get one armor isn’t the problem here. It’s fine that some things take a lot of time. The problem is doing the same dungeon over and over.

I’d suggest, like some others did, that all dungeons give the same tokens.
Let’s say that to get the AC armor it takes 80 hours (random number) of farming AC .
Wouldn’t it be better that it takes 80 hours of farming any dungeon? It would be surely less painful to do and more fun, which is totally what matters the most here.

Some will say “but people will do the fastest run and will farm that.”
Just make it so that harder/longer routes yield more tokens than easier ones.
Per example, 20 tokens for CM explorable. 40 tokens for AC explorable.
Think of a token/hour ratio plan instead of a set # equal for each dungeon. Think like karma vendors but for dungeons. (karma vendors are great btw)

Our guild would be really grateful for that. Otherwise, we’ll end up with a bunch of stacks of dozens of useless tokens of different dungeons clogging our banks since we’ll never want to gather enough of them to get an armor set.