Guild Wars 2

How about resolving hanging HoT plotlines before pursuing new story stuff? Some of us want proper updates on Zojja, Logan, the Pale Tree, and the Nightmare Court. You guys were doing great with at least answering one unresolved issue per chapter but fell flat on this chapter.

I’m starting to lose my patience. :\

Tekey.7946:

Personally, I don’t like all the cutesy stuff in the story and don’t want to see more of it in the upcoming episodes.

I thought I was the only one. xD; I don’t mind Aurene but… -whispers- I want to punch Quaggan in the face, they are so annoying.

Sol.6213:

I did enjoy the Aurene content. Some cute every once in a while is fine with me!

Personally, I don’t like all the cutesy stuff in the story and don’t want to see more of it in the upcoming episodes. The Aurene part today felt especially forced and artificial: having her playing hide and seek, stomping on the floor while laughing and ’don’t ya eat that fishy, Aurene!’ and the like has been too much. I know that she’s still a young dragon, but she should at least have some influence or instinct of Glint. Right now, she just wants to play fetch with us.

The shiny Skritt stuff in Ember Bay doesn’t even remotely fit the atmosphere or lore of the Fire Islands, where only the toughest and strongest creatures should survive.
Seeing Quaggans as sensitive, cute creatures in the dangerous new map is exactly the same.

I hope that they’ll stick to the actual lore of GW1 again, adding dangerous creatures like Hydras to the Fire Islands instead of Skritt. It feels like they replaced all the mystical stuff of GW1 with cute, funny stuff .

I’m not a fan of the final ice beast battle, mainly because of the way the icebrood minions work. Since they move around and the only way to beat them is with another mob’s abilities, it can be annoying when they take a jank path and miss narrowly. Mechanics that depend on loose AI pathing annoy me.

Quick thought as it occurs:

Can we stop with the achievements that are “oops, messed up, have to start the whole thing over”? I don’t mind them being there, but the exclusion of a quick restart is really grating.

I agree that we need more waypoints. Those thermal things don’t take me where I want to go, lol. However, I really enjoyed the story missions and the new map (yay for snowy places!). I like this episode more than the 2nd one.

Love most of the new map except the area for the waterfall. That area has too many things to out run or (try) to kill. I have spent most of the evening running back from fixing armor to get to the next stage. I guess porting might be the only way for me to progress.

Oh, P.S.

Getting bounced around like a pinball is no fun either. Tone it down a little please.

You DEFINITELY need more waypoints in this new area! It looks at least twice the size of bloodstone fen (so far), but has TWO waypoints? I got all the way to the hot springs, died in the icebrood event, and had zero desire to WP and then run all the way back. This is because of all the enemies on the way that chill you. Add more waypoints PLEASE!

Overall, I loved it. But. There’s a few inconsistencies and design ‘flaws’ that brought the experience down a notch.

1) As other have already mentioned, the ‘mob after mob after mob’ -parts of the missions.

2) Feeling confused what you’re supposed to do at first due to the nature of the design of the quest at hand. I.e. (as others have mentioned) the Aurene and ooze. It took me a minute, but I was able to figure an effective strategy to move as fast as possible. Others may not have been as fortunate. Also, the Ice Beast boss fight design as just UGH. Combined with certain achievements, it makes you feel annoyed.

3) Braham’s characterization felt too aggressive and player character inconsistent. In previous episodes, the player character has displayed that they aren’t afraid to rough up people if it’s necessary to accomplish the mission at hand. Why are we a doormat when Braham is throwing kittens at us for no reason? Also, a few lines felt unnecessary and didn’t feel like they had a reason to be there. This is the fella who’s fell’d 2 dragons and a bunch of angry cultists and other stuff by now. Where is his confidence?

On the other hand, what I especially liked:

1) The map design was fabulous, and I really dug the choreography of the Hot Springs and Center hub areas

2) The new mastery ties nicely with the events and theme of the map.

3) There’s a lot of fun, small stuff that makes the map feel more unique and complete, such as the Svanir disguise drops and hidden chests with the changing climate. Just beware not to combine too many aspects from the past maps.

4) While the dialogue has its flaws in this episode, it still really makes me smile (occasionally laugh) and feel for the characters at certain moments. Gotta hand it to the voice actors, they’re doing heckova job.

Looking forward to the next episode. Cheers.

redux.1502:

Honestly I’m adoring your more recent releases. Took me a minute to work out some of the mechanics for the story missions, but everything (except initiating Aurene on the Ooze Generators) was pretty intuitive. Wished the ending cutscene was longer if I am honest, but I think it was a good way to end the story.
Loving how the characters are branching out into their own storylines. Seems like our character is finally being challenged at having to work with people and their personalities. Marjory and Braham are both super headstrong, so it makes sense that they’re working on their own now. I’m excited to see if the next LS focuses on Kasmeer.

Keep up the great work Anet!

Being challenged is alright but not when your character just sits there and takes it. Interesting dynamics come from when the “challenging” goes in more than one direction.

Honestly and this is just me personally, but I’m close to giving up on the story entirely in this game. LS3 started off great and has steadily declined. They try to cram these emotional moments into 30 second one-sided “conversations” that you have zero control over how they go and the “character” they are forming for us is ridiculously lacking in any self-respect to defend themselves from unwarranted attacks such as the one we saw today. It seems everyone is allowed to get frustrated and angry except us and it’s kinda annoying.

I don’t understand how they go from us showing frustration with Caithe in Bloodstone Fen and expressing ourselves in a firm but not hostile manner to being everyone’s doormat. It doesn’t help that Braham being hostile to us outta nowhere feels like forced drama and not natural at all.

I’m really disappointed in this living story release.
It started good, with Aurene stuff, foreshadowing her role in the near future (aka, breed your own elder dragon, in case you need an ally who doesn’t want to eradicate all living beings…)
Then the stuff with the Kodans was really interesting, a bit of lore about their culture, their beliefs, etc…
even the Grawls, with Chokocooka! (French name)…i really liked the chieftain’s part when he tried to explain that Jora was…Whoaaa! (definitely worshipable!!)
But then, the stuff with the elixir, and the Braham drama ruined it all.

In the end, it feels like a sub-par episode, and the only point is:
We’ll fight Primordus and Jormag next…possibly at the same time, if asuran plans fail…

and BTW, if Anet wanted us to despise Moron-Braham, then Good Job! Let him fight Jormag, i’ll be happy to kill him as an icebrood.
I felt bad when we killed zombified allies, even Trahearne, but that moron…i’d kill him 10 times…with each of my characters…

Vyrulisse.1246:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Liked the new map, though the story was a bit barebones here compared to the other ones. Braham…if you wanted to make us hate him enough to kill him off, you’ve done a perfect job of it. Please, if you continue with this, let him fail and then let the commander punch him onto the ground and then tell him the names of everybody who has died since Claw Island who played a role in the story…to hit home that we know better than anybody what it’s like to lose people. Because right now he’s insufferable and I quite literally want to kill him off.

That’s another thing. A.net is having Braham act like we haven’t lost people close to us. We’ve lost many friends on the way, including our closest one in Trahearne (who we had to kill personally). Like Trahearne as a character or not but he was placed as our character’s closest friend throughout the story.

On another note, it seems like Rytlock has taken the role of closest ally or maybe even Caithe considering how she seems starry eyed with you right now because you forgave her. It also seems like Rytlock is the only “adult” in the group.

It makes sense, Rytlock already had to deal with Snaff, so he has cooled down significantly on that front. Which makes me wonder if they’re trying to pull a Rytlock with Braham, with him having to come to terms with the death. He may be projecting blaming himself onto us, even though it was nobody’s fault but Faolain’s.

Caithe we only really forgave I believe because she went through all this crap to protect the egg, so she wouldn’t betray us on that front. Plus if Aurene absorbed most of Mordy’s power, technically she’d be able to control Caithe if necessary.

The Aurene instance was silly and a bit cringe-worthy for me, but I guess it was ok for showing that the dragon is like a child just starting to learn. The ooze part was kinda annoying though. It wasn’t clear if there was supposed to be some clever way to deal with them or just DPS through and get Aurene to the generators. And for me it was unclear what if anything Aurene was actually doing to the generators, but since they would get destroyed shortly after, I just carried on with it.

Gathering up all the items to make that elixir felt hit or miss. It’s a bit odd if the player explores the zone first since they stumble into parts of it out of order before the quest is even active.

The hybird boss was decent, although a bit too simple. It didn’t feel interesting just leading it around and killing mobs near it. But at least it was reasonably clear at communicating what the player should do.

On the other hand, the last boss was frustratingly unclear for me. As soon as it started I felt like I was being slammed with attacks and things I needed to avoid over and over without a moment to observe the situation and figure out what I was expected to do. Trying to read the tooltips on the mob buffs… nope, ceiling falling everywhere, ok now what do those tooltips say… nope, boss charging at me gotta dodge now… so those tooltips… oh, taking damage, gotta reposition and heal… maybe I can read someth… nope, frozen in place and gotta deal with that… what is even going on here… nope, ceiling falling again. I only had a chance to take stock of the situation after I died. And finally that gave me time to see that some of the pillars that shrunk and then observe the boss charging into one and apparently destroying it. But then I got stuck with the last two pillars because nothing was happening when the boss hit them…. which is of course because that’s not the real mechanic. Took a little longer to figure out that the boss tramples the little mobs which then leads to the pillars being destroyed. And by that time the last couple mobs where positioned annoyingly against the walls, so I had to do a bit of wrangling just to get the boss to pass over them properly. Not an enjoyable experience.

I’m not fully done with current episode but I do have to say ..I don’t like having to talk to the npc’s when there’s a massive group of people around. It kinda breaks immersion since you can’t even see them due to the sheer amount of them. On top of that it creates such incredible lag.. I’ll attach an example of what I mean exactly.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Liked the new map, though the story was a bit barebones here compared to the other ones. Braham…if you wanted to make us hate him enough to kill him off, you’ve done a perfect job of it. Please, if you continue with this, let him fail and then let the commander punch him onto the ground and then tell him the names of everybody who has died since Claw Island who played a role in the story…to hit home that we know better than anybody what it’s like to lose people. Because right now he’s insufferable and I quite literally want to kill him off.

That’s another thing. A.net is having Braham act like we haven’t lost people close to us. We’ve lost many friends on the way, including our closest one in Trahearne (who we had to kill personally). Like Trahearne as a character or not but he was placed as our character’s closest friend throughout the story.

On another note, it seems like Rytlock has taken the role of closest ally or maybe even Caithe considering how she seems starry eyed with you right now because you forgave her. It also seems like Rytlock is the only “adult” in the group.

Liked the new map, though the story was a bit barebones here compared to the other ones. Braham…if you wanted to make us hate him enough to kill him off, you’ve done a perfect job of it. Please, if you continue with this, let him fail and then let the commander punch him onto the ground and then tell him the names of everybody who has died since Claw Island who played a role in the story…to hit home that we know better than anybody what it’s like to lose people. Because right now he’s insufferable and I quite literally want to kill him off.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Love the map and the mechanics involved. The story this part was kinda flat. The Braham stuff was so silly and ridiculous. Either write our character as more than a doormat or give us some interaction to let us do it ourselves. It’s starting to get old that our character just takes these insults and stuff without defending themselves.

If you plan on having us “explode” in the future and give our character a chance to say our piece then that’s fine but it’s just annoying at this point to see it happening.

There is zero reason Braham should be so hostile toward us and it felt forced for “dramatic effect” or whatever. There was zero buildup to what happened and the response by our character was ridiculously lacking.

P-p-please Braham don’t hurt me -I’ll do better next time.

From the guy who literally went and killed Mordremoth. And saved Tarir. And so on and so forth.
I really love it how we let him say whatever and do whatever.
Commander doormat.

Rod.6581:

Tyloric.7520:

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Story is garbage, but all this cutesy stuff is really killing the release. Why the kitten do you need to put all this cutesy BS in the patches?! Ember Bay was one big joke all around, between skritts and frikkin clowns and OMG that stupid Aurene. Bloodstone Fen was much, much better. Atm the top 3 of your 3 releases is 1. Bloodstone Fen, 2. Bloodstone Fen, 3. Bloodstone Fen.

And why is Braham hating you? You literally killed the thing that killed his mom, and he was there too. You can crap out “explanations” but that doesn’t mean they stick. So much potential, all to waste.

That’s a lot of venom :O

The man is just being honest. I feel the same way.

Pretty much on point. You avenged his mother – yet there’s no sympathy, no thankfulness.

And if he lost his mother – shouldn’t he care more about not losing others? Would he not be more mature and less inclined to rush head on?
I mean – that’s basically what the pact did at the end of LS 2 and look how that ended up – it is literally what killed his mother – along with the pact.
And yet he seems to acknowledge none of this.

It’s funny that some people say he got “growth” and “development” when in the end he’s the same “Braham angry, Braham smash” character he was in HoT.
They just gave him a new Batman costume.

Love the map and the mechanics involved. The story this part was kinda flat. The Braham stuff was so silly and ridiculous. Either write our character as more than a doormat or give us some interaction to let us do it ourselves. It’s starting to get old that our character just takes these insults and stuff without defending themselves.

If you plan on having us “explode” in the future and give our character a chance to say our piece then that’s fine but it’s just annoying at this point to see it happening.

There is zero reason Braham should be so hostile toward us and it felt forced for “dramatic effect” or whatever. There was zero buildup to what happened and the response by our character was ridiculously lacking.

Mechanically:

The story is buggy in multiple points – also there are areas where it is not easily clear what you have to do to progress.
Bonus: Final instance has the ice pillars disappear so you can’t tell if they’re broken or not.
QA dropped the ball pretty hard – it was a frustrating experience fighting with the bugs.

Also – how come everything we do story-wise is the same – move – kill some mobs – move – kill some mobs – over and over in EVERY instance.
The gathering of stuff is good – but it takes up WAY too much inventory space for stuff that could have just been ticked on a list.

Thematically:
The new map looks amazing – both night and day – fair weather or storm – the visuals are TOP NOTCH.
But then everything is ruined since you set up this great notion of “this wilderness full of dangers in the frozen north” and fill it up with Tyria’s most inept race – the quaggans.
They’re surviving just fine and it is immersion breaking to no end. Everywhere I go – quaggan.
It completely ruins a great map for me – would have been 10/10 without the useless quaggans – in its current state I can’t give it more than a 6.5/10.

Not every map has to have comic relief cutsey races – please stop shoving them down our throats. A very vocal part of the player base loves them – I get that. But they don’t need to be in the most dangerous places on the map breaking immersion 24/7.

Story:
The story is pretty interesting – not a lot of twists or anything. Braham is insufferable (which I guess was what they were going for – they nailed it) but I hate that we can’t actually tell him off and just twiddle our metaphorical thumbs in front of him like a dazed schoolgirl.

Some “commander” we ended up being.

New map elements:
I like that you get the new map currency FASTER than in other maps.
The new mechanic with the torches is – meh. I wasn’t really interested and it didn’t feel integral to the map – just tacked on.

Overall – 5/10.

A brief synopsis:

The Story:

The weakest episode so far in season 3, I enjoyed episode 1 and 2, but 3 was too short when you consider that the most story you have revolves around farming mobs and items to progress to a lackluster “thats it?” ending. It was good to see Braham getting some much needed character growth, but Rox was very much a spare part in this episode with little story.

The Gameplay:

Horrendously bad, I mean, by far the worst for the specific solo friendly episodes. Too many mobs in that last mission forcing waves upon waves of veteran and elite mobs on a “solo” mission was really, really bad design and honestly the ugliest thing ive seen in the game so far.

Moving Forwards:

As your MMO is slowly shifting towards an RPG focus, commit, dont just be half-hearted. You need to accept that you cant please both your MMO community and your RPG community at the same time without sacrifice, as such, this is what should be done:

- All future story should focus on story specific agenda, instead of clustering lots of events on the map and slowing progress, clump up a heavy episode with dialogue, character growth and meaningful cutscene heavy events.

- Gameplay in those stories should be fun, ask yourselves next time, is having a hundred mobs to kill for a single player actually fun? Maybe if I had an item that could kill them all epicly and I had to use it for that specific encounter it could be, as an example of this done right: The Mini Boss fight against the Icebrood/Mordrem hybrid was actually fun because of its mini mechanic gimmick. But in contrast, the endless waves of icebrood/svanir/spiders/elementals and then the extremely unfair final boss with massive spams of AOE was just “not” fun at all without some means of turning the tide.

A story doesnt need to be part of your MMO, it can be its own thing, with its own appeal, to its own audience. The MMO side of the game should focus more on the fractals/raiding where it belongs, but the actual story, with the most important events, the biggest characters and the personal story being “personal” to you, should be personal to every individual playing it, you should “feel” like the hero you “should” be able to kill mobs easily with special toys or gimmicks, and maybe find special boss encounters that require you to stand infront of a mirror to reflect a laser beam, or get on a turret to shoot down flying drakes.

Etc-etc

I could go on a rampage but I am not trying to demolish here, im trying to feedback, my critique, is that this episode was too short for its story, and too long, for its grinding, and gameplay farming for any one individual to enjoy.

It’s okay, there’s some definite hiccups and rough spots though. Overall its bland and forgettable, but not necessarily bad. 4 outta 10 Quaggans would approve.

I haven’t finished it yet, but managed to play for a bit through it all. The first mission…“insert what everyone else is saying”. Its okay, feels weird… Neatish to see our characters are trying to bond with the dragon. Lots of sitting down waiting for Npc’s to tell a story. Feels forced and fake.

The new map; Its decent, really plain and flat in some areas, gives a bit of a rushed feel. Event-wise, there is really really little to do, its just the same defend/kill ez champ at x-spot in 3 different areas. The icebrood kodan are annoying in groups, but manageable. The Jp’s are plain and just simple throw spaced out blocks on cliffsides. forgettable. The new maps in general are just so empty, this I’d rate below most core maps. The Hot Spring events come out of no where, along with the stunhappy mobile mobs that nuke and kill everything, pace out there spawns and give a ‘you are going to die warning’. Ember Bay has more to do. Little replay n’ stay value.

The sky coaster is nice… if you could reliably get to it, the updrafts don’t all bring you high enough to get to it easily, place them higher. Otherwise its a good addition and plus it doesn’t make the map look like Mario Kart invaded unlike the previous maps. The thermal tubes are kinda out of the way and unused.

The inventory. You already know what I’m thinking, there is absolutely no need to add another dozen of quest/map/crafting junk items that should be either in the collection panels, moved to vendor unlocks, or in the bank materials. It’s extremely annoying to have another half of a 20 slot pack ate by this. Stop for the love of the Six. I know you’re pushing new players to buy slots. Stop.

Sorry its over 50 words, couldn’t say anything I wanted with that little.

I’m really happy that Caithe is back to normal, I can’t wait to see her going on next adventures with us. Can’t wait also for return of the Pale Tree and Logan coming with Zojja to our guild.
I was really happy to see interactions with Aurene this chapter. It was a very nice story step. The new map looks stunning! But the last instance with Braham… It made me feel so bad about him that I wouldn’t mind if he was killed off very soon. I would actually prefer that to happen. I expect his plan and Taimi’s plan to collide which in the end wil be a cause of some disaster.

Anyone else find Rox’s talk about picturing a beach when she was frozen in the ice kind of strange or out of place? Like they drew quite a bit of attention at that moment to her experience of being frozen.

Could this be a subtle hint at either future locations or somekind of wonky Mordremoth-mind meets Steve foreshadowing? I’m probably reading a lot into it but it just seemed out of place to me…

I hope Braham dives off an airship and into Jormag’s mouth. A fitting end to his legend.

Things I noticed in Epizode 3:
1) in Far Shiverpeaks we just found one icebrood corrupted by magic of another dragon.
2) About Characters, who were in chapters:
The Commander- after this big argument with Braham, everything starts to getting worst. The friends, in which the Commander could rely on, start to be our enemies- Marjory didnt listen to the Commander, Braham wants go his way and he doesnt care about the consequences. We have 2 dragons and we should be united against them, but we are not.
Caithe- Caithe starts to be open to us, she really wants be our friend as it was since killing Zhaitan.
Rox- she tried to excuse Braham, but Braham is just inexcusable. I am glad that she is still with us.
Taimi- yes, she wants rule everyone, but look, if not Taimi, we could wake up and then everything could stand in flame, because we could not get any news from Ring of Fire. She studies the magic and I like her, because she is honest with us.
Braham- an annoying Norn with a vengeance.

-whispers- I hope Braham dies, I’m so tired of his whining.