For me it depends.
GW2s jumping mechanics are not the best. It’s floating and a little unwieldy. It’s no Mario game. On top of a sometimes incredibly poor camera system that doesn’t help at all.
However, most of the puzzles are still fun to do.
There ARE however some that were designed to be very “precise”, which end up just being less about a challenge and satisfying puzzle and an infuriating fight against the mechanics of the jumping and collision detection.
I always find that in a video game, if you stop “playing” the game and end up just fighting the mechanics and thinking how the code of it works, it’s stops being fun and stops being good design. This can be with movement, camera systems, AI etc.
The one on Ember Bay is a good example. Most of it is you simply fighting the camera and poor collision on what is and isn’t an area you can stand on.
I like it! I mean it’d be nice if there was a way point near the Inquest base, but you can get to it from the highest way point, so it’s not too bad.
Lots of areas to explore. The kind of maps I like.
ANet doesn’t care. They could easily release a cleared personal instance of the raid at the time of release, or a few weeks after so people aren’t begging for clears, or when the raid eventually becomes dead.
That’s the worst part. When the raid clears die down, all this lore becomes next to impossible to access for some let alone now when it’s active. Especially in a game like GW2 where the gear scaling doesn’t make it soloable over time.
Same with the dungeons and fractals. I get why some content is group based, but the story should be easily accessible to all even if that access comes in the future, and NOT in poorly summarized text blobs from an NPC or something. As well, there’s Youtube and the Wiki, but honestly, there’s a HUGE different getting the lore that way and in-game where you’re running around a cleared instance or an “easy mode” or something.
MMO stories are hard enough to follow as it is, fragmenting it with barriers is just… bad design.
Still begging for scraps.
ANet has shown that they don’t care if the mass player base has access to what some argue is their best story telling. They simply don’t.
They and other people will say to LFG a cleared instance, but that in itself is begging. Then when that raid dies as newer ones come out, that story telling will just disappear to most people. With zero access to it.
Oh sure, you’ll have maybe an NPC lazily summarize the story in a future update like the last raid, but do you REALLY think that compares to running around exploring the map and looking at the lore pieces strewn about?
It will forever boggle my mind that developers think this is a good thing. To not have a super easy story mode, or simply after x amount of time give all players access to a cleared instance of the raid without needing to beg others for it. To either never experience their story or go on Youtube, outside their game, and find someone who’ll do a better job at presenting the story to the majority of the player base than ANet.
People should simply stop caring because ANet clearly doesn’t. And speak with your wallet in telling them how disappointed you are that they poorly chop up their best story behind walls you can’t get pst.
Well Bloodstone Fen was mining. Ember Bay is wood cutting, so more than likely the next map will have gathering, and more than likely a matching cosmic tool
If they ever get the free time, going back and adding the unfinished content would be nice, but considering that’s probably REALLY low on the priority list, if it’s on there at all, I doubt we’ll ever see the Zhaitan fight improved in any way.
I like platformers but I found the mechanics of GW2 never did JP any favours.
I also don’t like when things are developed in a way that you are fighting the system rather than a genuine challenge.
“Oh, let’s see, I’m suppose to jump on this little crevasse that wouldn’t realistically hold my character, so I have to figure out where the invisible collision detection starts and ends so I don’t fall off, all while fighting a platform unfriendly camera system.”
Of course there’s a new xpac coming, it just depends on what your definition of “soon” is.
Will there be another LS season or will we jump to the next xpac after this?
Personally I predict the next expansion will come out fall/winter 2017 with the current LS season spanning until a few months before the xpac.
I’d rather have them be permanent instead. If I want a temporary dps boost, the last thing I need is to rely on AI.
I second this. Having 3-4 permanent little “pets” running around with you would make them really great. Obviously their power would have to be nerfed (like increasing the cooldown of their big move) and trait changed to make up for this, but if they are not going to be super powerful, you can at least make them fun.
You’re missing a third option. Not caring about legendaries. lol
You could save your money and just use an exotic, or spend less money and buy the mats for an ascended weapon (assuming you have a profession to craft the weapon you want), unless you REALLY want the visuals for one of the legends.
I’m not colourblind in any manner, and even I have trouble seeing those red AoE effect (though it’s mainly due to the explosion of other player spell effects and no way to tone that down). I can only imagine how much harder it is for actual colourblind people.
In all honestly, I always felt that colorblind accessibility should be like a mandated requirement for games, at least in regards to important mechanics like “tells” or “AoEs” in MMOs.
I’m always scared of jumping puzzles because I start to dread the terrible camera system and often floaty controls that makes this game NOTHING like a good 3D platformer like Mario games.
I’d love to keep seeing backpacks if they made a way to let use reduce the intensity of visual effects from other plays.
I mean really, that’s the thing that bogs down player during big public events, it also looks ugly.
Oh there’s suppose to be a boss there, but all I see is a ball of light at 15fps.
I demand free stuff! I’ll take a bloodstone staff please and thank you. :P
Technically speaking, yes I would label GW2 as pay to win, but on the scale of passable P2W to flat out imbalanced P2W, GW2, for me, falls into the very passable P2W.
You could buy your way to a legendary an ascended gear, but honestly, that doesn’t mean much vs other games were stat based armour plays a far more vital role in character dominance.
Although technically speaking, I don’t think there is an official defined definition of “pay to win”, what people define it as varies a little to a lot.
I do like the map. Those stone throwers are a bit overly annoying in their distance and accuracy, but I do like how they used the ley lines and wind drafts to get around quickly in the air.
It makes being on the ground in the forest area or in the hole/cave that much more special since you spend so much more time in the air.
Also I hope they keep the air combat moves, possible even expand it to maybe be weapon based (reconfigure water weapons maybe?).
I view celestial gear as the casual end-game gear to go for.
It’s not for the min/max type of people, but people who just want a set that serves all gameplay and roles fine.
It IS somewhat annoying how much of a grind it is, especially for just the exotic version, but that’s how I view celestial.
The accessories are the easiest to get since you just need laurels so go for those first. Also the Bloodstone back piece in Bloodstone Fen is somewhat easy to get too for a back piece you can put celestial on.
I use it cause I’m lazy, and on my Guardian, I think I can use most of the stats effectively, and for runes I just use one that increases all stats as well (I use travellers cause I like the run speed and boon duration boosts).
Probably just a visual way to show the exposure of the magic in Bloodstone Fen is having an accept on our player character.
Whether it’s just a neat visual thing or actually going to go anywhere story wise (maybe our character gets terminal magic cancer from being exposed to a Bloodstone meltdown? lol) remains to be scene.
I think the GW2 engine is probably good for quite a while. Besides, I’d rather they just expand this game, then get a GW3 with a smaller world but somewhat better looking and possible better mechanics.
I’d love personal housing, or more specifically a personal airship you can decorate and moves with content updates.
Though honestly, even though they kind of have the system in the game now, I’m not holding my breath on that ever happening.
Sure, capes, why not. The original had them. I mean clipping is an issue, but honest… Given a lot of the gear in game, does clipping even matter? lol
Everyone has favorites among the maps.
Except Tangled Depths. Am I right! A yuck!
They kind of already have mounts, I think 2-3. Those weird items you can use to change your run animation. They just need more of those. Make one a horse and I’m sure people will be happy, just like the current ones have it not actually change your movement speed or abilities.
Also when you enable gliding, have an animation so a mount that’s an animal like a horse falls to it’s death, only for you to resummon it. lol
It probably should have the timer remove, there’s no real point. For people thinking it’ll make getting certain ascended gear easier, you still need other mats that are on a “can only make one per day” timer.
Also the quartz are tradable, I see no reason why the charged ones shouldn’t be either. It’s not like they are cheap anyways, getting 25 quartz from the market has never really been that cheap let alone the 750ish you need to make 6 insignias. So I doubt charge quartz would be any different.
I found it one of the better recent events things because the reward was actually decent and it wasn’t utterly boring to do, save for waiting for the bosses you want, but what part of this game doesn’t involve pointless waiting. lol
I haven’t really bothered with the central Tyria masteries. You’re right, it’s far more annoying to get them than the HoT ones, and the XP grind for them seems more annoying too, since the majority of endgame stuff happens in HoT maps rather than ones where you get XP for Tyria masteries.
While I would love more useless zones/areas of the world map (and they could easily have some now if they brought back some season maps and made the raid zone an empty explorable zone for everyone.
I imagine the balance of cost vs production makes it hard to justify making “empty” areas of a map, and judging how dense HoT and the new S3 map have been, it seems unlikely that they would do this from a game direction stand point, unfortunately.
I think it would be cool if all weapons were permanent summons (like pets) and just stayed with the Guardian at all times. Still did what they do now.
It would be hilarious and cool seeing a Guardian running around with 3 weapons following them around. Maybe even make an elite weapon that is temporary but really cool.
Obviously the skills would have to be nerfed to some degree due to them being permanent (not the active commands, but the passive damage/support they do), but it’s hard to suggest changes that will ever make them more useful than other skills.
Or leave them as they are and simply change the trait to make them permanent summons on top of what it does now. I mean they can’t be that powerful to begin with right? No one uses them.
Even then they still might not be more useful then other skills but at least they’d be more fun.
Everything that takes place in Bloodstone Fen – and, for the most part, in the Living Story steps – is a direct result of what happened in the raid.
Could you make a summary of episode 1 and raid story to be more precise on that please?
The reason for the Commander to go there, the explosion, the investigation, the chase of Caudecus…. nothing is a result of the raid. Should the raid not have existed, only Benett would be dead now, nothing else would have changed!
This is no direct result.
Don’t know if you played the LS S3 story, but the reason for the explosion and the twist at the end is a direct result of the raid. Everything the White Mantle was doing in the raid is directly tied to the surprise at the end of the first S3 chapter and whatever future content tied with that.
Irregardless, whether one believes the lore/story in the raid is “vital” or not is just semantics. What really is the issue is that NO story content should be locked behind a raid.
While lore is behind things like dungeons and fractals, there’s a much larger barrier to get through raids to see story.
I don’t know why anyone would be against the idea of letting all players have easy access to any and all stories (and world maps for that matter). Whether delayed (such as giving broad access to the clear state of the raid already in the game to all players months after the raid has been released) or in tandem with the raids release.
There’s no reason not to do this, especially when such features are already in the game (said clear state).
And again, while is can be debated that it’s not “vital” is certainly helps with the context, as is it being a much easier way to fight content droughts than making all new content.
Also the raid will become dead, we all know it will when the next raid comes out, and then the overworld area of the raid just becomes a waste of space.
ANet can do what they want. I’m merely stating that I think this sort of content planning for story and map expansions is a bad idea and an inefficient use of developer resources, but in the end I can only vote with my wallet as a single person so they can do what they want, and clearly by looking at every other MMO, there’s apparently on ONE singly way to handle the release and content within raids. ANet has no ability to deal with raids in a more unique and better way, it HAS to be the way every other MMO company does it because laws of physics or something.
So the inaccessible lore that was in the raid that was said to be “side” lore is in fact part of the entire LS S3 storyline. Everything that happened in there is directly relevant and vital to the story of the LS… Okay.
…. Tell me again why making is inaccessible was a good idea?
That’s like showing Lore of the Ring in theaters, but having only a select few theaters in a few cities show the first 30 minutes.
Sure, people will argue you don’t NEED that story to know what’s going on but it IS pretty vital to understand the whole story.
I mean you have NPCs to recap the raids story in the new zone… Why didn’t you just make a clear state of the raid easily available to players in the first place!? It’s right there! lol
I don’t want this game to be like EVERY other MMO where raids have vital storyline hidden behind a gameplay type that not everyone participates in.
I mean I can’t even imagine lore/story is the go to reason to raid to begin with.
I really hope you guys learn your lesson, either within the 2-3 gap between chapters for LS S3 and having a clear state for the raid (timeline wise it’s beaten, there’s no reason not to) available for everyone at any time, as well as being smarter about the release schedules of future raids and accessibility to the story.
Again, raids are fine, totally fine,keep doing them, but don’t cut off people from plot when there is literally zero reason to do that. Delayed access is fine, completely cut off is not.
I’m even willing to pay for permanent access to a personal clear state if that helps. $5-$10 so I can’t explore it at will.
I am irritated that the Pact Commander stood down to stay with Guild Stupid, but not really surprised. kitten, I used to have a team, but Living Story took it away.
Would you prefer to be stuck behind a desk, and never allowed to explore and be on the front lines again? If so, I’m sorry you can’t see the bureaucratic side of Tyria.
That would be hilarious. GW2 Desk Edition.
I mean they could just rip off that stupid feature in WoW where you send people on missions effectively taking the MMO out of the MMO. lol
Here’s my take on it, just in terms of the PvE content, not so much the mechanics.
The story was good, the big reveal VO was hohum but other than that it was good, nothing really weak.
The new map is good, visually beautiful, and lots to grind for those who want it.
I’d give it a solid 8.5.
Does it make up for the almost year drought? No.
Does it make up for the fact that the raid (even though timeline wise it’s now beaten) still doesn’t have a very easily accessible clear state that a person can run around in (especially to make up for the 3-4 month gap before chapter 2)? No.
Is it somewhat insulting that the raid map is bigger than the new map? Kind of (but the raid is linear so not really?)
Is it kind of insulting that they said the raid story would be a “side” story and ends up being the entire focus of the LS S3 plot? A little. (I’m aware there are NPCs and books that update non-raiders on what happened, but then I ask… Why not just let us in the stupid raid in the first place now that it’s beaten? Why do all that work when the raid instance is sitting RIGHT there?)
Was it good enough for a 3-4 month gap? … I don’t know.
Very strong patch and update, but I still have some bitterness about some things and probably won’t go away until the raid is explorable and/or the next raid they come out is handled a lot better in terms of content release balancing.
An exploration mode for dungeons, fractals, PvP maps and raids would be great.
I never understood this. Art teams put so much effort in making these areas, yet they give us no option to just relax and enjoy the art like they do open world zones.
No mobs, no experience, keep the lore items around (like selectable things), no rewards, just letting us run around and enjoy.
Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.Their ship was destroyed in Season 2 decimating the Zephyrites. I don’t think we will be going back. I did enjoy the festival, it was fun, but just saying it isn’t likely.
Time means nothing in this game. We killed two dragons but some of the old zones are still the same since launch.
We can replay old missions essentially going back in time and people who have just gotten the game are exposed to both newer changes and frozen in time moments during the story missions. There’s no reason not to do something like reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs.
And no, I don’t see it happening either, I just find it very odd that ANet has all these events, maps and other that they could’ve used to keep people busy, but preferred to give us essentially nothing.
Well the raid is the first thing I can think of that could be reused and is a significant piece of content. Be it open world, solo or small group content reconfiguring.
Reopening the Labyrinthine Cliffs is another.
Bringing back old events is definitely a good idea, or even introducing small weekend events (even if it’s just simple temporary achievements)
There is so many small and fairly easy things they can do to have reduced this drought, but they’ve done none of it.
I’m sure NCSoft is a fine place to work at in terms of environment and management.
It’s clear though they in terms of the direction of the game, the company seems to be up a river without a paddle.
There is zero reason not to do this. There is already clear states that raiders can go into to freely explore the areas, there’s no reason not to let everyone else have access to that, even if it’s just the older raid wings.
Gosh guys, really… Wait with the disappointment until you see what’s coming.
That’s part of the reason people are complaining. Very close to one full year of absolutely zero real content updates? The only one being raids, where the rest of PvE and PvP get either just balance changes or things so minor that you might not even be bothered to do them?
Hard not to complain. It’s part of a give and take for business and consumers. If a consumer gets so disappointing for so long, it’s very hard for a business to take people out of that mindset even with announcements like this (though it’s not even official, since it’s a leak, it’s safe to assume we wouldn’t even hear anything about this until the end of July).
Let’s not even begin to think how everyone will feel if S3 of LS isn’t even as good kitten or is disappointing in one or more ways.
It also lingers questions like “Well how big will the drought be after this is over? Should I bother buying the next Xpac knowing that this can easily happen again?” and so on.
The fact it’s been almost a year when they have this raid that is full of lore, exploration and what not while giving all over PvE sections NOTHING, like literally nothing (I don’t count those pathetikittentle recent updates that are really just achievement wastes of time.
This is why I always call for every MMO to have an exploration/no-combat, solo or easy small group difficulty version of the raid because it’s literally wasted content.
A handful of people play it, an enjoy it, but everyone else just sits there staring at all that hard work from the art team, the story team etc and just go “Oh. Must be nice.”
Then new raids come out and the old raid rots.
I mean there’s barely any incentive for a lot of players to even log in and they’re just sitting on this content that as big as a new zone and lock it out to players.
I get having raids for players who want difficult content, that’s fine, but it’s such a waste of resources when you don’t add options for everyone else to at least SEE the raid.
Also it seems pretty sad that a small group of devs can make this very rich chunk of PvE content, but how big is the LS story team? Why is it too hard to do this for regular PvE content? Is this what’s going to happen for the next expansion? Almost a whole year drought (which is as bad as Blizzard by the way), with the only PvE being raids and finally getting like 6 months of small PvE updates, then another drought? I mean your loss I suppose, literally.
I just don’t understand Anets logic in this.
And a big NO to making raids easy! They are good as they are and many decent players have been successful in there. We don’t need the last percent of content to be like the other 99% cakewalk.
I’m not saying that raids should be easy. I’m saying that the story-driven experience that raids offer should also be available to players that enjoy story-driven content but not hardcore, organized raiding. All Anet needs to do is add an optional story mode. It’s quite simple. If their content appeals to two distinct audiences, then it should be accessible to both audiences.
Again, there is no story driven experience. All story elements are available in a completed raid instance.
If you want to experience the boss fights, you still can (although you won’t necessarily beat them).
Making a story mode just seems like a massive waste of time.
Then why not when the final wing is out after x amount of time, introduce a completed empty (beat) version of the raid anyone can explore solo so you don’t need to bother people asking for a beat instance to go into.
There’s definitely no reason NOT to do that.
I mean a bunch of heroes cleared this area right? I don’t see any logical reason why you can’t just code an empty version of the raid that anyone can generate by running in the instance or something.
So when there’s another massive content drought and raids are the only thing being released in terms of content and story, will you still say the same thing to gloss over how inaccessible the only major content updates are to the majority of the players?
Do you NOT want to follow the trend of making raids easy to get into for all players? Was it your intent to have an outdated view of them?
Just because you said the raid lore is “side” and not “main” lore doesn’t ignore that for almost 8sh months, it’s really been the ONLY lore (and content) to come out.
Unless you would rather us NOT play the game and instead just read the Wikipedia for the game?
Also if the raid lore is relevant to other stories that you’ll make it available in other places? Why not just make it accessible in the first place!?
I think it would be cool for spirit weapons, if ANet nerfed them (hear me out) but made them permanent buffs.
So basically, you slot the skill in you action bar and summon the weapon, and it stays summoned until you unsummon it, basically giving the Guardian 4 little pets. Maybe have the unsummon action do a buff/action of some sort, but then have the weapon on a 20-30s cooldown.
They could do passive damage, and just double or triple the cooldown of their big moves (Or have that as the unsummon action) and have it done automatically as opposed to doing the command yourself.
I just want to be a guardian running around with 4 glowing weapons lol
Yeah, permanent pets, that do their big action when you unsummon them.
So yeah, if their going to be useless, at least be visually interesting.
Then the average player must be lower than what I expected.
Problem also occurs when no one is saying anything in /s because they are just doing there own thing. To be fair it has been months since break bars were introduced so I would have guess players would have figured out what to do.
lower what? Are you genuinely trying to imply that ArenaNets failure to have in-game information about bosses and mechanics is the “lower” players fault?
Would you take a kid from school, who’s never played or seen baseball, make him play baseball, dress him up and make him pitcher, then yell at him for being terrible?
It’s a failure in design for a game if someone has to go to outside resources to get the information to play “properly”, especially for a game that sells itself of being casual friendly.
I wouldn’t say there aren’t enough, rather that the ones in the game now are tied to some rather annoying achievements.
Mastery in HoT can be had in multiple ways, from simply doing the story, to doing metas, to just flat out finding them out in the open world.
All the Tyria ones are tied to achievements only. I imagine very few people will maximize more than one track due to this.
The one thing I don’t like about these raids is that they are on the map (which is nice) but makes it impossible to explore as a casual player. Just that 80 type sitting there teasing you with more landmass that you can’t get to.
Sure you could go begging around for a guild nice enough to let you in their cleared run, but I think it’s bad design to have actual landmass in the game that not every player can access.
I’ve been asking for an “easy mode” of the raid itself, and I still want that regardless of what I’m about to suggest here, but what if they also add a “Forsaken Thicket: Aftermath” map once all three raid wings are out?
The “aftermath” map would use the same map, but just be a standard open world map, with hundreds of players running around, set after the raid is over, similar to how Kessex Hills is set after the Tower of Nightmares, and would be populated with relatively normal mob spawns. They’ve already done the set-piece work for the raid itself, and while adding in the normal mobs and maybe a few repeatable events would not be trivial, it would at least be easier than making an entirely new map, and would allow casual explorers to enjoy the map, as well as allowing the map to act as a bridge to other maps to the North.
Yeah that would be a nice solution, but I’m not holding my breath of them doing that.
The one thing I don’t like about these raids is that they are on the map (which is nice) but makes it impossible to explore as a casual player. Just that 80 type sitting there teasing you with more landmass that you can’t get to.
Sure you could go begging around for a guild nice enough to let you in their cleared run, but I think it’s bad design to have actual landmass in the game that not every player can access.
Guild halls are similar in this regard as well, though to a much lesser extent.
There should be an exploration aspect of that map for all players. It just seems like a waste of resources to have a fairly large physical location of the map made and only a fraction of the players can see it, even if most players can only explore it only.
I would rather they do something like make a new map completion meta that is only for the new HoT maps. Call it HoT Map Completion or something, and like the original one, give a reward for getting 100%.
Adding it TO the current one would probably be too hard and confusing.
It can be incredibly frustrating. From buggy server prioritizing, the LFG tool in the game being one of the worst ones I’ve ever used in MMOs, and possible bugs and connection issues on ANets end.
It definitely made my HoT expansion launch one of the worst ones I’ve ever experienced.
Though considerably improved when switching to the 64 bit client, that version is in “beta” and not encouraged by ANet to use.
They really need to make a revamp of the LFG tool as well as improvements to how the servers spread everyone a priority.
I’m actually very surprised that they seem satisfied with people rushing the almost unusable LFG tool in a desperate and sometimes vain attempt to get into metas like Dragons Stand. It boggle the mind.
Oh and even more boggling is how they tie meta progress to the MAP and not the player. Meaning a D/C or crash could ruin 1-2 hours of effort. Forcing the use of grouping NOT for the social aspect of gaming, but to try and hope to circumvent the terrible programming of the games server code. How THAT got green lit is a real head scratcher.
Trahearne’s Reverie
Other songs that sound similar
Kormir’s Whispers
Promenade of the Gods
Went through a YouTube playlist to find it. :P
I don’t mind, it was a good reminder at how amazing GW2s soundtrack is.