Feedback: Unofficial LS4 episode 1 ''Daybreak''

Heya,

Since no official feedback thread has been created or any other threads, I guess we have to start somewhere, :tongue:So yeah, comment below about your experience and feeback to the premier opening, LS4 Episode 1, Daybreak.

Story:

• The brandstorm over Amoon was really exciting, it all felt it was all in LA's battle, which was really cool and epic! I really liked this start of this Season as we had to fight against the branded and save the Citizens of Amoon. :)
• But I LOVED we got back to Istan, soooooo many memories as I am a veteran player/GW1 player and this was such a happy moment for me. As I was exploring here and there I noticed ''Loyalists Paragon & Dervish'' enemies. I was overhyped! Dervish and Paragons are still a thing, and they're alive! :love:
• Loved that Sunspears are back on track! As Paragons and Dervish sunspears are back too! :)
• I am so glad we got to know more about the Sunspear, what they were doing and sooo much story of Istan.
• The inquest was really nice to see in the First city, Fahranur. But they were zombiesssss! :scream: :skull:
• I liked the improvments of emotes, (when we got handcuffed by Corsair Sadiy- got throw in to the cell as our PC used arms etc), camera movements, (as Warden Alama knocked us out with her Scythe)

Though, am I the only one who actually wanted Taimi to sufficate inside of her golem? I were literally keep wishing she would ran out of air... sadly she survived, :tired_face:

Map:

• The overrall map was really beautiful and amazing looking.
• Corsair clans and pirate ships, who dosen't love drunken Corsair pirates and their shady stuff? Glad we saw them, again!
• Warden Alama (the awakened boss) was so cool, I loved her Dervish abilities skills and new animations ALSO she was using the human gods stances!!!! :love:
• Beautiful map, specially at the Astralarium, that place was simply beautiful!

Overrall:The episode was really good, enjoyed every little bit of it. The theme, the lore, love, love love it! :)This episode is probably one of my favorite ones, along with the White Mantle episodes.

The only thing I hated about this episode is that....Paragon and Dervish are back but they're STILL unplayable to us players, as the NPCs got unique abilities and skills of their profession, new animations and new 'weapons'.Seeing the Sunspear and the Sunscythe (aswell other spear and scythes in this episode) has been added as staff, STAFF!?What the heck, ANet?!My point is, Scythe and Spear + new animations + new abilitis skills are used for NPCs and not us, as the playerbase has requested for god how long, atleast us veterans/gw1 players.Now that is literally the middle finger to us veterans/gw1 players from you, ANet. You could atleast have added them as sub-classes/mini-mini professions or something.... but anything!

8/10 - I would've given you 10/10 if Paragon and Dervish were somehow playable and if Taimi would have died.

I had much fun during this episode's story. My favourite part was the prison escape which actually factored in the character's profession. My mesmer pondered over the door for ages, that it could not possibly that simple to escape, before he just teleported to the outside. I genuinely laughed.Unfortunately the story took a serious downward turn during the final mission. Braham is back, stupidly braham-y as ever since Bitterfrost Frontier, and the only one to even raise his voice against him is Rytlock. Could I please have the commander's balls back? I think I still have use for them. You can have Braham's in exchange along with the rest of him.

I'm happy that the Nightfall garbage that is Dervish and paragon didn't come bakc playable with this patch... ANet has done good enough with it to integrate the best thigns of these old classes into the base classes of GW2Its fine that for lore reasons these returned as our enemies as some form of deserteurs/undeads under jokos wing, but aside of this they provide nothing, that would enrich the game and for adding just new weapon types, its totally unneccessary to add more classes, when in fact elite specs do the job as well, if it must be.

personaly id go even so far to say by now, that Id rather see the paragon return, thasn to have this dragonhunter junk any logner in the game. If it woudl go after me, id replace this spec anytime with paragon, if this one seriously has to redturn, because the whole design of its skills with the wings and such screams just paragon, the longbow could easily be replaced with the Spear being redesigned as Polearm Weapon and Traps could also easily be replaced with an other skil ltype as utility skills and et voila, there youd have your silly paragons back..

But Dervish is just 100% impossible, way too much human lore based to ever return as a playable thing, anet woudl have to completely redesign it from scratch , not worth it for just such nonsense, like scythes as weapon type to return, when a scythe is nothign else but just a polearm weapüon and could easily return as wel as spear reskin for when Anet brigns spears finalyl as Polearm Weapons to use on land as like underwater... however, enough of this off topic...

Feedback about Episode 1 of Season 4

• Visually very beautiful map
• Consistency with PoF in regard of Achievements, but pointless as long Bounties are super unrewarding and not worth its time
• Same with adventure and Races.. too unrewarding to do these things more than just once, once youve done the achievements for the meta achievment...
• Very short feeling like usual..3 missions, a bit of runnign around in the map, doing like a few hearts and collectign a few items, done, content done in 1 day ...waited for it 3 months fior content that is done in 1 day, a friend of mine has done even already today the whole meta achievmeent,s all 30 in practicalyl less than 1 day.
• One should expect as a player, that new content should at least last longer, than that ...for 3 months of waiting, new content shoudl at least give you somethign to do for 1-2 weeks.not less than 1 day in regard of story, thats how I do see that.
• Mission Design, while the first two are ok, the last one is not for one reason - the last battle. Agan somethign so unneccessary hectic.. in a small field, having a battl battle, where the enemy has mechanics with that you are constantly under stress, because like felt 99% of the whole area are under contant AOE spam!!! Seriously Anet??? Is this the very best you can come up wotjh for combat design??? Abnd to putsalt into the wounmd, you add on top of it an achivement, where you have to survive this hell, without gettign downed.. basiucalyl only doable for classes, which can staya for half an eternity immune to damage, whil all others basically die in a short matter of tiem the very moment you run out of dodges, while trying to avoid the electro balls that draw you to them like magnets to disturb your movement while the whole field is permanently on mass bombardment without a single break or any leeway to get some space where you can stay for some time without standing in aoe areas, cause all the fiels also overlap with each other >.>
• And if this is not enough, if you fail this, part, then you have basicalyl to do the whole misison from start again!Can't you just add a teleport at the start of the mission, that ports you to the boss battle, if you have done the mission successfully at least once, so that you can save time to retry quicker the boss battle for that one achievement??? that would be a real time saver
• Return of Koss, even if is as an awakened, but its nice to see the old GW1 heroes return in GW2 in somec kind of form, before of that was Dunkoro and Tahlkora, sad that Margrid gets mentioned only, but not shown also as awakened or so - would you give your original heroes just only also too their last honor that they deserve to play somehow a role in this game again, like Mhenlo, Devona, Cynn, Eve and how was that name of the ranger again ,Reydan or so, lol I forget always that one, but for now its nice to the that the elonian heroes aren't forgotten somehow and can even play 250years later some kind of role in this game- oh i wish this game would bring back Heroes as gameplay Feature in an improved form that allows to use your own characters as heroes/companions, while the game could also provide again a few pregiven story related heros like in Nightfall/EotN, which could hopefully replace some of the current unbearable/uninteresting npcs, like Braham, Rox and Marjory... it woudl have been an interestign twist of the story by now, if you could have turned Braham and eventualyl Rox against us.. but now, with this episode we had to get naturally agai ntogether with Braham in a way, that it feels like, nothing has changed - it would at least have been interestign ,if braham woudl have turned out of his convictions and anger towards us into an enemy and would have made space for a new character replacing him ... especially now what you gave him a new super terrible sounding new german VA which has a much darker sounding voice, than the previous once, makiing everythign total obvious, that you changed his VA (again)

Way too many summoned minions in the first instance, map was quite small and cannot see any ascended trinkets to buy with new map currency. Love Istan , Koss and to see Dervish and Paragons again but in all I am a bit disappointed. Feels very short and lack of rewards very unfulfilling.

It was a fun ride but for the end mission (saving Taimi), I wish Anet would ease down on the Super Mario/Megaman mechanics.

Most wanted person in Elona/sided with awakened for Amnoon makes no sense. You literally walk past awakened guards to get to the boat.The map port should have been put inside the instance.

Invisible walls on Istan could have been replaced with balistas shooting people down that get to close to the wall or some other obstruction like magic fields etc.

Constant CC:Hordes of branded with constant CC + weakness is NOT FUN. First boss fight is at the same time boring and frustrating.Hordes of undead with constant CC is NOT FUN. I thought ANET learned that back in 2012 yet here we have it once again in the last story instance.Boss that has hard CC on every melee and ranged attack + spinning sucking orbs that appear on top of you are NOT FUN. Another horrible designed boss fight.

Also can we please have the story journal achievements listed in reverse order. I hate having to scroll down past what is now 20 lines of finished story and it is only going to get worse.

@SonicTHI.3217 said:(...)Constant CC:Hordes of branded with constant CC + weakness is NOT FUN. First boss fight is at the same time boring and frustrating.Hordes of undead with constant CC is NOT FUN. I thought ANET learned that back in 2012 yet here we have it once again in the last story instance.Boss that has hard CC on every melee and ranged attack + spinning sucking orbs that appear on top of you are NOT FUN. Another horrible designed boss fight.

(...)

This. These branded things stack tons of long lasting cripple and weakness, and once you cleanse them, they are back immediately. I ran Inspi mesmer with iDisenchanter and still had trouble with these condis.If it was Vulnerability, I would not have a problem with it being applied all the time. But constant weakness kills your power damage (good thing I use hybrid build), and perma cripple is plain annoying.Amounts of harder CC are crazy, too.

I would like it if they tweaked the event, Stop the book-burning raid on the Astralarium library.Short Version Why: Victory conditions are very unsatisfying

This event, with its huge-health-pool mobs, seems to be set up as what should ideally be a large-goup event in an area where there are usually only a few people taking part. It is still possible to 'win' with just that handful, but...the victory timer is for how many books the Mordant Crescent has burned. So when you get to the end of it, it's like, "Well, they burned five hundred books, but I saved four. Yay, me!" It is not a feel-good ending. It's a pat on the back for us when Joko has actually won.

Possible changes, any one of which could make this a more satisfying event:

1. Change the timer to 'Time till the fire is lit' and have the books being piled or tossed into an unlit furnace or something instead of tossed directly into the flames. This gives the hero a chance to save ALL the books. Happier ending with no nerf, but would probably take some work. Maybe there could be torch-bearers we have to stop, like those annoying D.O.X. golems in Rata Novus who keep firing up the defense turrets while we're fighting the boss.
2. Lose the high-health-pool mobs. I know I am not a high-DPS player, but I have followed some of those targeted book-burners, blasting away at one from the library to the bottom of the staircase, and barely made a dent in its health bar. All a solo or small group can hope for is to use CC and delaying tactics enough to squeak by running down the timer, when almost all the books have been burned.
3. Give the event a reward that will attract larger groups of players. Currently, there is no reason to even bother with this event apart from being in the library when it happens and hating book-burners.

I finally got around to finishing the latest story episode on my day off and spent some time exploring the new map. I wanted to provide some feedback.

Let me start by saying fantastic job on Domain of Istan! The environments are gorgeous and varied, the layouts continue the tradition of providing a playground for the wonderful new mount system, and most importantly from my perspective, you did a MUCH better job with the event structure than you did with the original PoF release maps. The result is a beautiful map that has a lot of things to do for solo players while still providing the large-scale events that were conspicuously missing throughout much of the initial offering. I have a feeling this map is going to become one of my favorites.

The story itself was pretty solid as well. I like the turn it's taken away from fighting gods and dragons to a more "human" antagonist, even if that's only temporary. Things are getting interesting!

As far as encounter design, it was a little hit or miss. The battle with the Warden was spot on! Great action that really kept me on my toes! No interruptions from forced mechanics. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good puzzle, but you have a great combat system here and I almost universally dislike fights that are interrupted by "go fetch this object so you can hurt the enemy again."

I did not enjoy the fight with Koss (I think his name was?). He might as well have not been there at all for how easily he was defeated.

I didn't enjoy the final battle either. Unfortunately, the repeated "go get this item to continue the fight" interruptions were really annoying and the final phase made no sense: Suddenly I'm dodging around with no idea what I'm supposed to be doing (apparently just staying alive!). Then the fight ends randomly and everything is okay? What?

Otherwise, it's all good.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/18350/feedback-official-living-world-season-4-episode-1-feedback