-Southsun Cove. The area is artistically decent, and not out of line with similar geographies, having said that, the tropical seaside and shipwreak features do get used alot. The inhabitants are really quite limited in variety, feels to me that its a alpha iteration of what should be a richer island. For example where are krait, hylek, risen or quaggan, or their remains, considering the surrounding regions populations, heck where are the usual inquest meddling scientists?
The acual mobs are understandably tougher thought some are quite tough for conventional melee based approaches, yet really easy for long range kite approach, sadly this seems to occurs too often for the higher content, restricting enjoyment in weapon diversity in favour of optimal set ups.
While their density and minimal ranged cc is far more pleasent than Orr, the hp and combat powers available don’t make them appealing, also the loot rate from the larger karka seem skewed, i have not gotten loot of the vet unless i personally about 25%+ damage to it.
-The jump puzzle are good, and consistent with the standard of ones in the game i feel.
-Phase 1. The quests were bogged down quickly due to bugged npcs. This i found to be sloppy and careless further enforced by tales of the awful lags in the 1st fighting part. Perhaps for future, spread the ‘attack’ simultaneaously so event occurs in several relevant regions for the same event step. Add a quest tracker too for the papertrail quests eg ‘interrogate Noll at Hanto trading post’ the mail as a tool is not that intuitive, especially if clue locations are not known. This applys to the other quest to gather bits for the researcher, a tracker indication all 3 were needed b4 a handing would of been really helpful.
-Phase 2. Missed apparently laggy fight part again. The DE escort of lionguard on the island was fairly decent in the chain DE of Orr type way, the option of DE split was not obvious at the time, partly as ppl were adjusting to the mobs attacks, parties in overflows and laggy mass attended combat. The sequence was good upto when it stopped. I seemed to missed the dialogue or whatever that was ‘event over, come back tomorrow for finale’ . I wasn’t alone in that sense of confusion either, so the massed zerg sort of broke up and milled about exploring. The fights were often brutal wipes due to the champ stomp attacks and the vet rolls and acid puddles, particularly when these attacks overlapped.
-Phase 3. Took over all too long to complete, a one time epic event shouldn’t really be longer than say a movie or football match for time commitment, its no accident that such things are 1-2hrs. The mobs were too frequently super hp mobs that were quite tedious to whittle down once the figths were stable, but the mass wipes due to acid puddle saturations and rolls were awful, mostly due to the powerlessness of your actions defensivly, dodging just landed you in more poisonous goop til no dodge and cond removers left so dead. Or that the champs hitting for 13k twice in a row making melee not an option and the zerg tactic of shoot it and rez the sod that got hit. The DE event sequence was however good, but i’d prefer smaller hp mobs to speed up reinforcment stages and the vet/champ grinds. (same is true of most dungeon fights too). The rewards were suprisingly good, but the inclusion of precursors in the loot tables soured it for the many that got mediocre exotics.
-Fractals of the Mists, not entered it yet as i’m not happy with ascendent weapons and agony mechanic, but the core idea of a series of mini dungeon repeating with increasing difficulty is great. I saw some previews of Fractal weapons, have to say not to my liking, too artificial and plastic looking.
-Ascended Gear. I feel this is a very bad direction for the game future. It is not what i want, infact i found the easy reach plateau of exotic stats very liberating and refreshingly different to the horrifically un-fun gear grinds of nearly every MMO.
-Crafting materials and recipes. Seem largely pointless, other than being there for the sake of being there, the recipes on the whole are not great. The lack of bank spots for the items is a stupid oversight.
-Consortium Chests. After halloween chests. no. if there is stuff i desire i’ll buy it on tp and let some poor sap gamble. Why not simply put skins on the shop, that we can preview and buy directly, why is that so hard to do? and while there lower the cost of consumable on shop to an acceptable sum, consumables should cost same as snacks or music tracks not restaurant meals or cds, as it stand i won’t buy shop items for cash as its not worth the cash value in gems.
