Guild Wars 2

Map looks great, but events are just OK. Biggest problem is AGAIN they have set achievements that need to fail events. Time and time again, this creates toxic players as 1 group wants to finish and another group will purposely sabotage the events to make them fail with nasty comments and threats. We have seen this simply does not work and causes issues, yet the devs continue to do this. Very disappointing.

The last battle is not so much a fight as it is a repair orb sink. It wasn’t fun.

Pretty nice LS episode so far. I haven’t explored all of the map, but the story, with a few exceptions, was pretty good. Especially after the disaster that episode 3 was.

Kumion.7580:

• I didn’t like Demi’s death. C’mon, any player could’ve healed her. We had plenty of time. It felt really contrived and her death wasn’t necessary.

It’s fairly ambiguous just what can actually be healed or not. Our characters have plot armour that means they simply don’t take injuries that can’t be healed reasonably conveniently, but a bloodstone bullet to the gut might be beyond that.

The bigger issue is that… well, projectile hate exists. I’ve played through with a guardian and mesmer thus far (final fight is much more comfortable with the shorter action skill window, thanks! Probably could have stood still having the Jade, in fact) who had Wall of Reflection and Feedback loaded – by the time he picked the pistol up and fired, the bullet should have bounced back into his face.

What probably would have helped there is a demonstration that the bullet ignored such defenses. Have Vallette put a Feedback bubble over Demmi as Caudecus fires… and then we get a graphic that makes it clear that this bullet has punched right through – and that whatever projectile hate the PC might have been packing probably would have been punched through as well.

Probably worth keeping in mind in the future – if you want to kill someone off in a fashion as telegraphed as that, show other characters trying to stop it… and that effort failing.

Copy-pastas from another thread

Story-wise I was…pleasantly surprised by this episode. Got to kill two treacherous scumbags (Minister Estelle and Confessor Caudecus) in one episode AND Logan comes back!? That made me happy. The lack of resolution of some of the characters from HoT has been bothering me.

Hopefully this is a telling trend that Anet is on the horse with regards to resolving the remainder of unresolved HoT issues in future episodes (Pale Tree’s condition, Nightmare Court’s state, and Zojja’s condition specifically).

I really miss Zojja and I’m worried about her (though I know the voice actor for her, Felicia Day, recently had a baby so maybe here’s hoping Zojja does show up again in Episode 5 or 6).

At the same time I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high. I did that and by the time Episode 3 came out I was so deeply disappointed with the story to the point where I moved onto other games and I just did log in rewards until recently.

From a game play perspective, Lake Doric isn’t Bitterfrost Frontier so that’s an improvement all on its own. :V However, the fight with Caudecus sucked. An AoE bonanza with little room to fight. Please don’t make another fight like this in the future.

50-word or less summary:

All in all, a definite improvement over Episode 3. Good job Anet. C: Hope to see more HoT-related character resolutions in the next and future episodes (especially Zojja, wink wink nudge nudge).

Please disband Dragon’s Watch and never mention about it ever again .. even I as the pc and the player don’t want to be part of it lol. It’s so pathetic.

Good:

• I absolutely love the personal touches— special mentions of race and class with special abilities.
• Lore bits everywhere!
• Very event-driven map has plenty of things going on. I appreciate there are reasons for the use of the full map, too. (unlike Bitterfrost)
• I liked the fun new cats. (Other animals in future would be a nice change, though.)
• I liked the plot of the story…

Bad:

• I didn’t like how story made everyone fill hearts and an XP bar to progress the story. That was lazy.
• I didn’t like Demi’s death. C’mon, any player could’ve healed her. We had plenty of time. It felt really contrived and her death wasn’t necessary.
• Anytime an event needs to fail in order to accomplish something there are problems.
• The leather farm is a huge disappointment. The POIs (mostly) locked behind a zerg, the lack of enthusiasm for an unrewarding farm, the RNG nonsense killing reliability of sourcing mats.
• Spinning final room. Sure, the jade playing pinball with my corpse was not fun but I’m told that’s fixed now. And yes, having .2 seconds to react and hit the button under my waiting finger and still getting dead and tossed about wasn’t fun but again, I’m told that’s better now. Still, spinning the room makes me look away from the screen briefly and firmly tell myself that I’m not actually spinning. I didn’t want to ride the spinning ride, I know it makes me ill. I don’t want to play a game that makes me ill.

I loved everything BUT the last fight, but enough people have commented on that.

there’s a BUG on the last fight though, I got killed (around th 20th time) and I couldn’t res anymore. the message would only say “you’er defeated” I waited aronud to see if I could res again, but my only choice was to relog, after which I not only lost all the boss progress but all the instance progress again. I had to start all over,.
I’ll sure as hell not try that again till the bug is fixed and the last fight is brought back to earth. it is supposed to be soloable by a regular player.

Pyreo.8517:

• Demmi gets shot… with a gun. Literally a dramatic pistol fire. Like. Uh. In a fantasy game? A gun? I got shot maybe 50 million times in that instance. I have a skill that turns projectiles into healing, so couldn’t I.. ….A GUN Are you serious??

• A GUN?

• Seriously the WORST WAY to force a character to die in a cutscene! Something that everyone’s magic usually brushes off, but for no reason right now, is apparently lethal!

Alas, poor Aerith Beetlestone. If only the player had a Phoenix Orb with them, then perhaps they could have revived her. Oh well.
(In other words, I agree. That was… dumb. There needs to be a reason why that killed her when we so often survive such things.)

I would also like to amend my previous opinion to add in that there are events that need to fail in the new map. ANet, how have you not learned yet what a BAD IDEA that is? Stop it. Seriously.

The events that have to fail to get other events to spawn is bad, bad, bad. Saidra’s Haven hidden event is impossible to do except on a nearly empty map. We just had the defend spawn and despite folk asking to let it fail so the Execute the Executioner event could pop some defended and basically said, “Hidden events are for nerds.” and proceeded the get the defend. It is a terrible conflict because folk are also there defending to get the heart open and get dailies so the achieve is nearly impossible unless you can get an empty map to do it in which I have yet to see.

Pros:
-Zone closer to civilization than other LS3 maps in distance and theme, felt more connected to existing area/original story
-Zone allied npc’s that aren’t pushovers in combat
-Return of gliding skills from Bloodstone Fen
-Lore items (Caudecus letters, more dialogue available from side-npc’s)
-Intriguing story twist fake Lazarus

Cons:
-final boss fight in too small a room w/ low ceiling making camera difficult to control (but thanks for making adjustments, I’ll have to replay it after update)
-map completion tied to leather-farm/snipe area
-Oil doesn’t automatically combine with key for Noran’s safe room. did the puzzle but left when key didn’t open chest only to find out later that I had the right stuff in inventory, but wasn’t combined.

50-word summary:

Story is enjoyable – possibly one of the best done in LS3. Character interaction and dialogue was good, as are the various callbacks and references, while the new map feels like a believable war zone. Kasmeer’s absence, however, is growing increasingly noticeable – is she being left out because her lie detection would get in the way of intrigue?

Detailed explanation:

The opening instance made for an interesting sequence, establishing Jennah’s response to Caudecus’ threat and the remaining corruption within the Ministry. Much of the sequence had a certain predictability to it, but it was, IMO, a good kind of predictability: it makes sense that Jennah would suspend the Ministry under the circumstances, and it would make sense that the White Mantle would expect this and have their own plans in mind, and that Jennah would expect the WM to have their own plans and have her own contingencies ready.

Under the circumstances, Kasmeer’s absence is starting to feel especially jarring, as politics in Jennah’s court seemed like exactly the time she should reappear in S3. It’s starting to feel a bit like the writers feel that her ability to detect lies is too strong (it would almost certainly have unmasked Estelle, and possibly have served as a means of identifying corrupt Ministers as well) and have swept her under the carpet to avoid having to deal with it.

Apart from this, it flowed well. I did have an issue with one of the portaling mesmers running off into the background fighting, which I’m not sure is intentional or not: it certainly did make that side much harder to deal with than the other. The Estelle fight served as a good demonstration of just how strong Jennah is when her back is against the wall.

The Lake Doric instance made for a good representation of a war zone, with some good callbacks to GW1 and earlier parts of GW2, although it was a bit disappointing that turning it into a map seemed to require draining the lake: I think the map could have worked with the lake still full enough to serve as an effective moat, with various events demonstrating means by which the White Mantle seek to cross the moat. I note that I haven’t yet fully explored the zone, so I can’t go into exhaustive detail. I would agree, though, with the people saying that the ‘do events’ step felt like filler. It wasn’t too bad for me because I didn’t fill all the hearts during the tour phase (I was expecting to need to pass through more than once anyway…), so it didn’t feel like too much of an imposition to go back and finish them off – however, it would probably be reasonable for people who’ve completed a lot of hearts before they get to the progress bar stage to get some recognition for what they’ve already done.

It’s good to see the Watchknights back in action – I’d feared they were basically going to be something that had only ever existed so that Scarlet could corrupt them and would never appear again outside of Queen’s Pavilion events. It was a bit weird that they were basically only there as the odd champion fighting Jade champions, though. Seeing the charr show up was an interesting twist, although it was a bit curious that it was the Sentinels – isn’t their job primarily to defend the Dragonbrand? Regular Iron or Ash soldiers would probably have made more sense – could even have had some charr mortars or the like to shoot back at the White Mantle’s siege equipment.

Moving on: the instance to chase down Caudecus did feel like a triumphant finale to the sequence. The conflict with Demmi, Valette, and Anise made for interesting interactions (including the confirmation that Caudecus got Valette involved as revenge for the Wis “stealing” Demmi), and showcased Anise’s sociopathic nature. The various callbacks to the CM dungeon were quite well done, and makes me consider the possibility of a similar instance into the Catacombs sometime in the future, and the letters made for a good means of tying up loose ends and explaining some of the things that had been going on in the background, including making Caudecus’ role in the centaur invasion explicitly clear. Demmi’s death was unexpected but makes sense from a metastory perspective (her importance was always framed by her father’s), while Valette’s redemption could make for an interesting plot thread in the future.

The revelation that Lazarus is not all he appears is an interesting twist, which could go in an interesting direction in the future. This probably isn’t the place for speculation, though.

(I had extended criticism of the final fight, but since that’s been redone and I haven’t played it since, I’ll hold off there until I do. Increasing the window to use Counter Magic is definitely a good thing, though – otherwise I actually found the fight challenging but fair, but having the Counter Magic being on such a short window felt like it was just a test of reflexes and latency)

New zone seems quite fun and the story was ok. That said, I wasn’t a fan of the final boss encounter – it felt poor & lazy, instead of coming up with actually fun fight mechanics it is yet more of the same old tons of aoe, conditions & adds – except this time in a tiny room.

Honest feedback?

First few bits – nice
Final Fight – Confessors end? Personally having my hand trapped in a meat blender and having to gnaw my arm off at the shoulder to release the trapped arm would be a pleasanter experience. How on earth your ‘game play’ testers passed this off as worthy of GW2 is simply beyond me. Counter Magic Icon – disappears far too quickly. Dying instantly when you have just used the Portal to get back into the fight. Having Countess Anise res you (which takes far too long) and then dying instantly as soon as you get back on your feet.

I’m still in the middle of my first characters fight as I type this – All of his armour is damaged beyond repair and I have no way to repair it in the instance.

The best bit? I’ve supposedly got to have fun whilst doing this with all my other characters – the sad part? I only have two arms to trap in a meat blender, so heaven knows what I’m going to do after running two characters through this travesty.

+++Things I Liked+++

• Lake Doric is a versatile map. Updrafts, ley lines, high points. Lots of back passageways and secret things, I love when a map isn’t just the bare minimum or all laid out obviously. The secret Melandru achievement for example, nice and subtle but just enough signposting so you know something’s up.

• Just because other people compared Fort Evennia to that awful sneak-based Ash Legion heart – I actually liked this mission. A situation where I can utilise skill to NOT have to fight things is something I like.

• Demmi came back! If one character had to come back for Caudecus’s demise it would be her to finish off her story from the base game. I was so happy to see her again.

• A few moments where my race/class were mentioned. Logan mentioned me being a sylvari in the Krytan throne room, and against the Manor’s beastmaster I was able to turn the dogs against their master and I THINK it was mentioned that I was a ranger?

• Really liked the humour in the final instance after Canach showed up. Barbs at Anise, sarcasm to break up the repeated fights, and joining him to snark at the weird gubbins in Caudecus’s quarters. Many chuckles. Canach is acerbic but genuine, I like him.

• Riddles! Love em. Maybe they were easy, and there were only two and I got them right without much effort, but I still felt smart because of it, so, thank you.

• The animation in the scene where Caudecus pulls a gun on Demmi deserves a proper mention. His sneering and everything had surprising quality to it. Speaking of things I’m surprised this engine did, the basement lair with spinning walls.

• Tons of callbacks to Caudecus’s Manor. Demmi asking who broke a wall, and I’m like “o yea that was me”. “Here’s the secret entrance” “ok thanks I’ve been through here before actually”. And all the collectible letters with callbacks to small past events, also showing how deep Caudecus’s treachery and corruption ran.

- Stuff I Did Not So Much Like -

• How many waypoints in Lake Doric, 3? It feels like such a struggle to get somewhere specific. Couldn’t there have been some more ley lines other than leading out from DR?

• Probably my own fault, but Logan asked me to recon points in Lake Doric. I did so, and incorporated my map completion with that. Then Logan asked me to infiltrate a White Mantle base, which I’d already done… and the NEXT part, asked me to just bum around helping out until a bar filled, but I already completed the map because I thought his ‘do recon’ section was implying I should go and see it all…!

• Demmi had to die, apparently… :/ Bringing back a character with unfinished business from our story YEARS ago and letting her take part in all this, but after all our own effort if we were in the Order of Whispers, and her being in hiding for years… she just HAD to go down too instead of being allowed to fully escape an abusive family? Kind of cruel. I don’t think minor characters need to die in main story segments just to distract from the plot armour on more vital characters, like the Queen…

• Demmi gets shot… with a gun. Literally a dramatic pistol fire. Like. Uh. In a fantasy game? A gun? I got shot maybe 50 million times in that instance. I have a skill that turns projectiles into healing, so couldn’t I.. ….A GUN Are you serious??

• A GUN?

• Seriously the WORST WAY to force a character to die in a cutscene! Something that everyone’s magic usually brushes off, but for no reason right now, is apparently lethal!

=Overall=

I liked it, exploration is one of my top priorities so I’m glad I still have things to do there and collection achievements to fill in. Story had good humour, but GOOD GRIEF it was overall depressing. A sweet old minor character dead, never able to live out of the shadow of her mad father. Two characters moving on with their own lives, turning me down for Dragon’s Watch. Some kind of new threat and priority danger for Marjory, because this Lazarus guy is apparently a fake. Divinity’s Reach saved from a threat that has infected it for years… but now in perpetual war and under a bubble shield on a new map that won’t ever be resolved or change.

Sadface.

Okay ill start with my full report on this episode:

Story

For this segment im only going to detail actual story parts not the map completion or mastery segments:

Jennah’s return to form was a very interesting twist on her character, one I have a personal love/hate relationship with as I liked how she finally showed how powerful she was as a Mesmer but in some respects I disliked how she suddenly became a ruthless tyrant without warning.

I get that Jennah is a very wise, pragmatic queen, I get that shes had people try to assassiante her before (season 1) but I feel like Jennah wore ALOT of plot armor this time and frankly NEEDED to get wounded to make her seem less like a mary sue.

Because of that, I was sad to see how powerful she was because she was wearing so much plot armor it eliminate any symbol of humanity in her because she just outright murdered everyone in her path, literally.

Even so, I get shes a queen, a powerful, wise and very gifted queen, I do hope if something else happens to her in future however, she cant just so easily wave it away, it makes her seem increadably overpowered.

As for the Cadecus thing, honestly I saw it comming and its a little sad to just kill him off like that in the story so quickly and suddenly. I feel like now we literally have no relatable human antagonists (Faolain, Scarlet and Caudecus being the only noteable ones) with maybe Mai Trin somewhere in the Mists still and Evon Gnashblade who isnt really a villian, just a selfish git.

As a result, I hope that A-net brings some new humanoid villians into the frey, be they champions of the dragon with alot of personality and agenda or be they characters with nefarious goals and intentions in this changing world.

Demmi’s death was quite sad, but honestly, I again, saw it comming. Im too used to the father kills his daughter thing if hes evil and frankly it was too predictable, I actually felt sadder for Cadecus when he deludedly wanted his family back than Demmi, except for the part when she saw Tybalt, that was genuinely moving.

This episode suffered alot of Episode 3’s narrative issues with an effort to tell a story in a very confined space and rushed it a little too eagerly rather than drawing it out to its best conclusion. Im noticing a pattern with this season which seems to be a reoccuring theme of Too many Subplots not enough focus on One.

As a result, it feels like the plots are going everywhere with no real purposeful direction, and I hope soon we’ll get a clearer answer as to the focal point.

Gameplay

Lake Doric is one of the best new maps to come to GW2 since the Silverwastes, granted the Silverwastes got tedious and forgettable over time but Doric does a rather good job of being a better Silverwastes 2.0

It has some genuinley interesting encounters, events and actual progression in the map that makes it feel alive with the recapturing towns theme being quite genuinley fun to do.

The actual story missions though were a hit and miss, that final boss as everyone said was a nightmare, and frankly much like the tediously boring episode 3 boss that came before it, needs to be a lesson for a-net to tone down personal story to make it more accessable.

Also, the endless veteran/elite/champion mobs in solo content is just not acceptable at all, we really need the story segments to have alot less of those since frankly you should never be fighting dungeon tier bosses alone in a personal story.

Ill go back to my favorate boss encounters in the personal story, both come from the shadow of the dragon fights in season 2, both of those fights were genuinley challenging, but not impossible to do. Thats the key to making a good personal story fight, and frankly I hope looking back at that, a-net has a way forwards.

PaladinVII.1647:

Overall:
The story and dialogue is top notch. Me and my guild were dying of laughter in TS during Canach’s dialogue. Continue with what you are doing, it is in the right direction.

Constructive Criticism:
1. Having cutscenes that ignore that the player would interject – such as Caucticus shooting Demi take some of the realism out of the narrative and feels like forced storytelling. I feel that the story team can do better.

2. I feel that the story is heading in a direction where Dragon’s Watch falls apart. The “Friendship saves the day” ending has been used in both the Personal Story and HoT, it should not be used again. I recommend the commander, despite being outnumbered and alone, abandoned by his/her friends in Dragon’s Watch, still fights the dragons, but suffers terrible losses because of it. Then, members of Dragon’s Watch realize that they need to group together to win the fight against future dragons and go to rejoin. When they do, Taimi berates them, perhaps to the effect of how she was the only one who stayed with the commander.
I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU DO NOT HAVE DRAGON’S WATCH COME BACK TOGETHER AT THE LAST SECOND AND SAVE THE DAY AS FRIENDS, IT HAS BEEN OVERDONE.

I have to second much of this criticism. Guild Wars nowadays often feels like the plot of a 90’s cartoon in presentation and arc. This isn’t what you want if your product is a sense of another world. Then again, maybe the cartoonish feel is intentional and it’s just part of GW2’s whole style.
All I’m going to add is that please don’t overcorrect and make everything dark/edgy/grimdark in an attempt to balance it. The late 90’s also did that and it also wasn’t fun or interesting.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

The last boss fight is fine. Players just need to learn to stop looking at their keyboards while they play.

Well, they went in and changed the Jade Bow to a different npc, gave a bit more time for us to use the Dispel Magic skill, and reduced the frequency of his knockbacks after just one day of it being live. So, apparently, it was enough of an issue to them that they found it appropriate to tweak it.

Ok, I just ran through the final boss for the first time since tonight’s patch (third time doing the boss total), and it’s much more manageable now. It’s still tough enough to keep it interesting, but there is way more time to react to what’s happening. If you do slip up, you’ll still get knocked around a lot, but it’s nowhere near as punishing as it was before the fix.

Overall:
The story and dialogue is top notch. Me and my guild were dying of laughter in TS during Canach’s dialogue. Continue with what you are doing, it is in the right direction.

Constructive Criticism:
1. Having cutscenes that ignore that the player would interject – such as Caucticus shooting Demi take some of the realism out of the narrative and feels like forced storytelling. I feel that the story team can do better.

2. I feel that the story is heading in a direction where Dragon’s Watch falls apart. The “Friendship saves the day” ending has been used in both the Personal Story and HoT, it should not be used again. I recommend the commander, despite being outnumbered and alone, abandoned by his/her friends in Dragon’s Watch, still fights the dragons, but suffers terrible losses because of it. Then, members of Dragon’s Watch realize that they need to group together to win the fight against future dragons and go to rejoin. When they do, Taimi berates them, perhaps to the effect of how she was the only one who stayed with the commander.
I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU DO NOT HAVE DRAGON’S WATCH COME BACK TOGETHER AT THE LAST SECOND AND SAVE THE DAY AS FRIENDS, IT HAS BEEN OVERDONE.

Stop with the kitten Portal Scrolls. I did the story on my main story character. Let my alts into the maps. It was at least minorly thematic with bloodstone fen, but now it’s just turning into a waste of unbound magic (which you need boatloads of) and inventory slots. If you want to pull this, at least give us a portal scroll wallet, but it would still be better to just stop it completely. We have access to the content, so stop creating artificial barriers.

The new map is mostly good. The leather farm can only be done with a group, but that is in line with the original description, though I would watch how it works once the population dies down a bit. I wish it had a bit more quick travel, but at least the waypoints are reasonably near everything of interest this time. The cohesiveness of the map is much better than bitterfrost; it feels like one map concept instead of 6. The enemy density and insane aggro has also been addressed. Some of the hearts do a horrible job of explaining what you need to do, though, as no obvious link is created between, for example, fishing traps and the adjacent town, leading you to think they are part of some other event. The hearts also fill at too slow a rate, getting boring long before they are done.

The Siege defense events are a major issue. They are too long with nothing happening. After the boss and the initial wave, you are only about halfway finished, but the amount the enemies deplete the bar and the low spawn rate mean you spend 5x as long as the first part standing there waiting for enough enemies to spawn in 1 by 1 to finish. It’s not fun or interesting at that point. I can easily see these events being abandoned soon, as they are just not worth the time once you have the achieves.

I loved the exciting approach, Since the ambush in the palace party, the battle against the traitor. And the 2nd mission at Caudecus mannor was also quite moving. I like the plot depth of this chapter.

Grate update and new map, enjoying it.

The last boss of the story mode though, Jesus Christ! In my life, I’ve played many games, many many bad games with many awful boss encounters and the end boss of gw2 ls3 part 4 is right up there with one of the worst boss encounters in a game ever, as far as I’ve played. Sorry to say that but I can see no redeeming factors in it.

Anyway apart from that all good

The map is awesome, the events are fun to play. I love the fact that the white mantle and the seraph are fighting for places and can capture/defend their ground.

The story was cool too… Until the last chapter.
Both Caudecus fight aren’t fun to play, the first one is not that hard and can be done quite easily when you learn the mechanic, but the last, oh dear lord Grenth why didn’t you just take my soul away. It was hard, frustrating, a litteral CC orgy, hopefully there was a portal to come back once you’re dead. Please Anet, next time you think about adding more CC -> don’t
Also, that’s a really personnal thing but I didn’t like the plot twist at the end, like litterally we’ve spent 4 episodes building hype arround some characters and then there’s juste that piece of paper that says “lmao it ez naht the tru Lazarus xDDXDXdxddddd”
It felt like the plot itself was spitting at my face.

On the good point I liked the characters who were along with us during the story, good to see Logan again [and seing him getting friendzoned really hard], Faren also was a well used comic relief [and seing him getting laid was funny, especially in the Caudecus manor with that white mantle mesmer], fighting with Jennah on our sides is a nice touch and, of course, Demmi ! I was not expecting her but I was so glad to see an end to her story and her father.

Have to admint it’s globaly far better than Ep3, and the map is my favorite one.

But really, that letter at the end… Killed my greatest interest in the story.

This episode was great. The map is just amazing. I really liked the look and feel of it. The story was good, and I really liked the nods to the CM path. Cracked me up about the barn door. “Yeah, that was me. I thought it would have been fixed by now.” I really enjoyed exploreing the map too I’m looking forward to having another wander tomorrow.

The only thing I didn’t like was the last boss fight. It was very annoying, not really difficult, just annoying getting stun locked and killed by Cautious and a Jade. That is my only gripe with the episode. I’ve seen people saying in map chat that the leather farm needs a lot of people to be doing it to be able to do it. I was lucky and happen to stumble in to a zurg at the right time to do it, so it’s the only thing I can’t really come to on, and I’ve not done the maze yet. But so far, my favourite LW map by far

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

As you know, we released Episode 4 of Living World Season 3 — Head of the Snake — today. As always, communications team members will be gathering feedback from players on all aspects of the release and will share it with the entire studio. Members of the dev team also will be reading your input, as well.

This is our official feedback thread, as we’ve created for each episode this season. And as normal, we’d like to use this thread to gather your high-level input. Sooo…

After you have played through the episode, please share your overall thoughts on Episode 4.

Please keep it to 50 words or fewer in this thread, offering your top-level overall impression here. More detailed analysis or feedback would be more than welcome in alternative threads and you can rest assured such comments will also be read. I hasten to add there’s no need to rush through the content, we’ll be reading this thread for a week or more.

Thank you for sharing, and I hope you have a great time in the game!

Bulltet points for ease, not really a raider, so can’t comment there:

• Really sick of you guys filling my inventory with garbage (Cin’s Business)
• Moonlighting achieve bugged
• Burning villagers event requires event fail (poor choice) and lasts all of 4 seconds in any sizable group (really annoying)
• SS Pinkeen Mantle defense is infuriating and upscales badly. Skritt is good, though.
• Relatedly, having so many WM Mesmers everywhere gets old super fast. Neat gimmick, gets tiring to go through their healthbars twice, everywhere.
• Leather farm seemed good, though it’s annoying to constantly burn through Basic Kits with all these salvageable items.
• Very much preferred ‘consume all’ of Winterberries to Jade Shards
• Not enough unbound magic on map to stay for long-term
• Hearts take way too long to complete
• Many small events makes it feel like a warzone, which is awesome.
• Love how many skins there are in this patch, from tons of different sources
• Fractals team is friggin amazing.
• Overall the polish on this patch is incredible. I could praise the great things in this patch for forever, and please don’t think that these bullet points are me saying that this patch isn’t good—it’s amazing—I’m just trying to be brief for easier digestion.
  EDIT: I’d also like to thank this patch team for my first ever pre from mob drop, 6680 hours in, [Dusk] <3

Bry.8140:

Last boss fight – utter kitten

That is all

Oh and the Jade bow is still there, so much for carnival sharpshooter

It was a carnival sharpshooter when I did it last night. Do keep in mind that they only replaced the Jade monster that spawns in the second (and final) boss fight. The one that spawns during the first boss fight (in the library) wasn’t replaced.

Thank you for nerfing Caudecus. I had to partner up to beat him previously. Which is not the end of the world, but the personal story is supposed to be soloable content that I can work through at my own pace. I like to stick to soloing most of the time because I have to go AFK frequently and unexpectedly (I have little kids), which is not very fair to my party.

I love the Lake Doric map! It feels huge, especially compared to tiny Bitterfrost, and full of Easter eggs and puzzles. The dynamic events all feel connected and progressive, instead of self-contained rapid cycles (defend a brazier! Good, you defended it! Now… defend the brazier again!) I wish there was a complete ley train loop or some thermal cannons, because I love swooping around at high speeds, but I can live without them. Overall, big improvement on Bitterfrost, well done.

Also, the story! I am seriously excited to find out what is up with Lazarus!

Last boss fight – utter kitten

That is all

Oh and the Jade bow is still there, so much for carnival sharpshooter

Hi Anet,

This episode was my least favorite so far of LS 3. The idea of a war going on for the new map is good and the map itself is nice, but there was no build up to this battle. The story was fast and very short, the boss fight at the end as many players have pointed out was cramped with camera angle difficulty in the little room. Please allow for map currencies to go into wallet. The Queen Jenna part killing people at will was silly and made me feel irrelevant.

I liked the campaign style missions and stories of GW1 more than the discontinuity with this season so far. First episode we go to bloodstone fen and fight White Mantle, second to fire islands dealing with Primordus, third episode we go to far north to fight with Jormag’s minions, 4th episode back to fighting White Mantle in a sudden large pitched battle. There was no build up because we are hopping from fighting one major enemy to another and we went from the bitterfrost frontier to fighting in a war against White Mantle in span of 1 episode. Please don’t made killing Primordus and Jormag a simple 1 episode mission using Taimi’s technology.

Appreciate all the new maps, please build with a campaign style. Thanks for all your work and effort!