Showing Posts For Redwolf.8540:
Yeaaaah… Mordremoth makes the most sense, though I only knew that from out-of-game research a while back because I’ve apparently missed all the in-game references to it. Even knowing that, the first time I saw the cinematic, I thought that was an underwater, sea-floor scene rather than a jungle scene, below which we see a dragon waking. This made me initial question if it was “Bubbles” instead.
I really do like a lot of what’s in the story that’s come together. I have to say, however, that the presentation has been unclear and lacking on a number of levels. I still hold out some hope for the upcoming epilogue, but I remain doubtful the questions about Scarlet, her allies, and all their motivations and methods can be adequately addressed at this point.
Lots of good comments already spanning a range of preferences. I’ve been trying to think of what I would want to see out of Living Story content going forward and here are a few things I’ve come up with:
- I would like to see more cohesion and feel more included. The Molten Alliance felt like prelude to something, the Aetherblades felt like they came out of nowhere, and then Scarlet is revealed as being behind them both in a manner that feels almost more like a retcon – she’s all super special herself, but it’s unclear how or why all these groups are actually following her craziness while nothing about it has felt particularly personal to me. The election was an interesting idea, but while we got a little face time with Kiel prior, Gnashblade seemed to come largely out of nowhere.
- Mindfulness of technical issues. The Tequatl revamp was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it runs smack into weaknesses of the game system, with full instances pushing people to overflows in peak hours (disrupting that encounter as well as others like guild bounties) and any off-peak encounters being essentially an automatic failure. We ran into this with some of the climactic battles in the Lost Shores event as well, magnified by the limited time frame.
I don’t really know what the solution is. Any new, especially temporary, event is going to funnel a lot of people into a small area. And as much as I think being able to play cooperative PVE without grouping is a highlight of the game, it breaks down at a certain point. Encounters become trivialized. Server instances break up groups and divide people between “haves” who make it into a main, full instance and “have nots” who don’t. At that point, it stops being fun.
- While I don’t know how practical it is for Living Story updates, what I find myself really wanting to see is more development of the player characters, the Pact, and the Dragons. The Personal Story had its flaws, but I was far more invested in all of that (including the Dragons we haven’t directly seen) than I’m likely to ever be in Scarlet.
- Fewer piles of event-specific items cluttering up inventory with uncertain use after a few weeks.
I’m looking for a bit of confirmation either way. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen an entry at wiki.guildwars2.com that states you do not have to be partied to generate extra influence with multiple guild members participating in an event. And yet, I hear people in guild chat insisting otherwise – saying not partying together is in some way hindering influence.
Is the wiki inaccurate? Are guildmates basing their statements on old information somewhere?
Only got to participating in the final events Sunday. Personal experience? Not fun.
After some two hours of going through the slog of seeing the explosives set, then pushing the ancient karka most of the way back to the next, my computer apparently overheated and shut down. Upon getting back on, I ended up in an overflow server that was back on the previous (protect the demo squad) stage. Fed up with that, I simply quit. The fights to that point had been so full of mass zerging and instant-downing effects that they had been much more trying than exciting.
And for the time and frustration? Event completion for the first step – with XP, karma, and coin that seemed roughly on par with a normal group quest. Very lackluster, especially after hearing about a chest at the end, but I guess that’s the price of committing part of an afternoon rather than the whole thing.
Kudos to those who completed and enjoyed the event, but I personally found it to be one of the most souring experiences in the game to date.