Inquest - good, gave me Star Wars Empire vibes, especially with SW related jokes during story

Olma-something charr tribe - they're okay, yet a bit cliche, heavy inspired by Vaiana movie I suppose

Story - meh, I appreciate Joko and Lonai appearance yet it's a bit embarassing we already killed her, also bad FPS during fight; 2 new asura introduced in this episode... I mean whole story is made like I should care about them or be sad that one of them is basically washing machine, but these characters were just introduced, I have 0 sympathy for them and frankly didn't care about them

Rox - it's already obvious what character trope she's going to represent from now on, yay I suppose

Braham - nothing new

Agent Kito - officially exposition guy, second only to Taimi

Taimi - bleh

Instances - a true masterpiece in terms of new technologies you used, puzzles were cool and I really like direct transfers between instances instead of hoping to open world every time, it was already cool at the end of PoF (beast of war / to kill a god) but this time it works even better; also, elevators. Don't know why, I was really happy to see them.

New map - pretty boring to me. Looks like mount maelstrom, the map I deeply hate. not my kind of aethetics I suppose.

Claw of Khan Ur - skin is cool, the way it's delivered is absolutely scandalous, can't wait for sohothin or scepter of orr being BLC skins

Also, I hate time gated achievements. Thank you (not) for delivering them again.

All in all, this episode is worse than Daybreak but still above average. Would love to see more Joko, actually doing something.

Fantastic. I am blown away. Everything about it was just epic. This LW stuff is turning into an Oscar award-winning ensemble. I have zero gripes whatsoever. Only things that aren't being carried over anymore: dungeons :[. But yeah, kudos keep up the good work. I'm literally eating my words from part of my 1st ep. comment: "Awakened attacks needs more follow-up outside of Istan." :+1:

I had a tone of fun exploring the new Charr tribe. It’s very interesting to see how this society evolved so far from the Charr homelands. My only gripe is that I want to know more about them. These’s a lot of potential with them, (Their magic, social structure, interactions with other races, maybe even establishing contact with the Black Citadel) I’d hate to see them be locked to this episode and never seen again.

Another part I enjoyed was all the small details and mechanics added to the episode, and not just the racial dialogue. There’s a boat you can ride that drifts around the village, the Magnetics Lab which is an absolute joy to play in, and also a few new animations that I’d love to see added to the list of player emotes (Floating Meditation plz).

I was getting a message about being on the wrong story step constantly so posted it on the bugs forum .... and a lot of people agreed they were getting it as well.

Looking like my favorite living world update so far, and I haven't even finished it :DI always knew the inquest must have some giant base somewhere, and now we find a giant cube city. Even if the inquest are never on our side, they get stuff done.

The story and the map feel like we're exploring something really new, and are both really well done.I noticed some new cool things for this game engine... I don't remember seeing npcs falling off things and proper elevators in gw2 beforeReally impressive that you're able to release these updates so often.We got a very interesting mix of many things i was hoping for in a living world patch, so 10/10 from me!

I think my honest feedback for this chapter is that I've come to realise that the story just isn't for me? Any kind of emotional connection or depth in the main story is thrown aside for a joke, or for a reunion with Taimi. The moment with Braham could've been the ending of the episode, and really created a huge shift from Braham being a pain to Braham becoming a more 'united force' with the Commander over time, and this moment should've been the catalyst for it, but it was cut short for more Taimi stuff. Taimi has a place in the narrative, I'm sure, but the amount of time devoted to Taimi just puts me off so much. She's not a well-rounded character, and she's just a stereotypical, techno-babble character with a weakness that rarely ever hinders her, because it's rectified by golems that are stronger than any other character in the party.

The idea of the Charr tribe was extremely snazzy, but we only spent 5-10 minutes with them before the Inquest attacked the village, in an extremely predictable way. I'm aware that the lore is in the map, but the main story needed more connection with the inhabitants. Instead, it was a story about Rata Primus, alone, and recycled Inquest threads that need more expansion as well. The Scarab Plague was predictable to anyone that knows Elona's lore to a tiny speck of information, and Joko needed more screen time. I have no connection to Joko as a villain. He's just someone I'm opposed with? What's his motive? Why does he think this way? Is he actually the Last Primeval King? All of these questions need answers, and I don't agree that LWS4 is pristine so far. It's only just better than LWS3, at best, and I was so below average for LWS3.

Yah, the Lonai fight was super snazzy, the map design is gorgeous, the collections will keep me busy, but the Main Story just isn't for me. It's too childish and feels like a Disney flick, rather than a narrative about dark themes, with a mature villain that you could find in other Teen-rated games/films etc. The writing really needs to step up, in my opinion. Because whilst other aspects of the game are incredible, the writing seriously lets GW2 down.

Overall I liked the episode, but I do have one small pet peeve that I would like to address. Can you please stop locking map completion behind meta events? It's really annoying to have to wait for the meta event just to have the specimen chamber opened so I can pick up the one poi in there. This happened in Istan too with the Warden's Quarters and I'd like to address it is as an issue before the next LS map is completed.

@sprhavkdogi.9408 said:Overall I liked the episode, but I do have one small pet peeve that I would like to address. Can you please stop locking map completion behind meta events? It's really annoying to have to wait for the meta event just to have the specimen chamber opened so I can pick up the one poi in there. This happened in Istan too with the Warden's Quarters and I'd like to address it is as an issue before the next LS map is completed.

oh yeah, when I saw specimen chamber locking PoI I got triggered instantly, the solution in siple - they should widen the range of Poi so when I come to closed laser gate it triggers PoI, boom, everyone happy

(Talking about the episode only since I haven't played over the map time enough)

It was awesome! Every moment took my attention and put different emotions on me. Aurene clearing the path, Braham being a rock but still at your side, Taimi and Blish (confession: filled my eyes with tears). I really love how you people conduct this story and give us the opportunity to see/play/feel every step of it. Beside characteres (that I already love): the invasion was shocking, I feel responsably for those cubs, I hated the puzzles at labs (lol) and I suffered the pressure about Tyria being infested.

That was a beatifull work. Feel proud of it. I feel grateful.

PS: It is not the first time I look for a place to say this kind of thing. Finally one! All the thing in this game was awesome so far. It is that kind of thing that I change de category from 'game' to 'experience'. Guild Wars 2 has been an experience to me, grabbing me for it's characteres, history and mechanic. Thank you for that.

I'm kinda disappointed to see that Braham was left, y'know... still drawing breath?

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@"Oglaf.1074" said:I'm kinda disappointed to see that Braham was left, y'know... still drawing breath?

I really like the new map, it looks great and is a nice change from the aesthetic of the last few. I've done completion, but haven't spent enough time in it yet to get a feel for all the events, the events in the middle (specimen chamber?) seemed OK, but not sure if that'd keep me coming back to the map.

The story was OK, though the intro instance before getting to the new map felt a bit long (maybe it's quicker if you ignore trying to stealth through). But any story instances which involve Taimi get a thumbs up from me (though I thought maybe we'd get to return her bow XD). There was a lot of combat instances which was good, although all the story felt insanely easy compared to previous story stuff! I'm not even a particularly good player, maybe average at best, so I was quite surprised to breeze through it.

The section that briefly took place in Frostgorge was an absolute FPS killer! I dropped to about 10fps there! (50-60fps in most story instances normally).

I haven't properly looked at it yet, but I hear there's a collection to complete for a 32 slot bag which sounds good. Haven't yet found out if there's a JP yet either (hope so).

Overall pretty enjoyable, keep up the great work!

@killermanjaro.5670 said:I really like the new map, it looks great and is a nice change from the aesthetic of the last few. I've done completion, but haven't spent enough time in it yet to get a feel for all the events, the events in the middle (specimen chamber?) seemed OK, but not sure if that'd keep me coming back to the map.

The story was OK, though the intro instance before getting to the new map felt a bit long (maybe it's quicker if you ignore trying to stealth through). But any story instances which involve Taimi get a thumbs up from me (though I thought maybe we'd get to return her bow XD). There was a lot of combat instances which was good, although all the story felt insanely easy compared to previous story stuff! I'm not even a particularly good player, maybe average at best, so I was quite surprised to breeze through it.

The section that briefly took place in Frostgorge was an absolute FPS killer! I dropped to about 10fps there! (50-60fps in most story instances normally).

I haven't properly looked at it yet, but I hear there's a collection to complete for a 32 slot bag which sounds good. Haven't yet found out if there's a JP yet either (hope so).

Overall pretty enjoyable, keep up the great work!

You can return her bow at the end of Episode 1. Just gotta talk to her at the end of the final instance.

Sincerely, you have done a great work ANet, I'm an inquest lover and I'm very satisfied with this episode, I will begin with the good points, because I don't find many flaws:

-Great, well writing story, this episode seem for me more inquest centered than joko centered which is a very good point. No useless dialog, no blabla, no romance just what we need: action and suspense. The new golems appearances, I think It's new no? Are beautiful, I love this metallic aspect of dark gray like chainmail with red teint which remind me the watcher order. New golems concepts are great: The suppressor one look like a fusion between alien and a robot, about that, for me it's impossible to kill the champ golem at the villager for the success in the required time; I have an holosmith with a ton of armor and I'm always dying every 1-2 sec during the fight, he one shot me! By the way, the tribe part wasn't interesting... Hey ancient! Problem! Arghhhhh Inquest! Attack. END.Great touch the Inquest's attack on the village, it remind me (yes again...) the film Avatar. Like this part when we are infiltrating the floating cube, all these golems bugging, it's new and make the world more alive, it's funny!-New characters are okay, taimi's friend look great, but don't know the glasses seem a bit strange maybe because I never saw before an asura wearing reading glasses?-The new map in herself: Excellent design, more than every maps I explore, even Mount maelstrom my favourite! I love the main Inquest headquarters Rata Primus in the center of the map, It's gorgeously amazing in term of architecture! And I feel kinda disappointed by all these tar everywhere covering everything it's ugly. How a so powerful base like this is so easily invaded? They have a giant parable!!!! Just too much perimeters cannons and giant golems (Suppressor mark III factory in the south!)!! It's just make me think of balthazar, it's the same thing with joko "whoa i'm invincible, I can do anything!" seriously? We speak about technology, magic + science here, it's stronger!-Meta Events: Interesting, a real story behind they, about specimen chamber, who is this girl? Kudu's daughter? The leader of Inquest? What is the Director mentioned in all documents? Kudu?-Game mechanics: Very innovating, the magnets room, portal maker room.. All of these are awesome!

Now the flaws, very few but really impact of the player's experience:-Principally about story; Why the achievement is named "Inquest secrets" papers? I mean, I expected a lot from this not only 5 notes about nothing!! A real library or console with all gossips and interesting things in it... What I read here is just a scientist all-day live. Can't we have more? They have a great role in the story and we still know anything from they: "Aquabase terror seven?" "Eternity crucible?" "Rata Primus creation?" or more simply experiment protocols? I'm really lost too about the self-destruct delirium, the complex is 4 - 5 maybe 7x bigger than crucible of eternity and they are like "Meh. SelfDestruct protocol as usual!" ? I expected a inquest related achievement too like I dunno, "Inquest Apprentice" "Inquest honorary member" and more weapons design about them since we have the awaken skin about joko! Actual inquest skins are the dungeon ones.-Too much tar.-Very obvious unfinished things/rushed works: The flying Inquest cube Headquarter is just RATA SUM with a red Staining. Just the council level have been removed: Too bad it was the best part for me. Almost the half of doors are locked surely because they are nothing behind them!... As said before, a real lack of information, news, clues about the lore... Console everywhere but no data? All of this is only copy-pasting rata sum DONE then copy pasting weird draconic servitors display screen everywhere DONE. ...To finish with this part, it's sad we can't return to this floating cube after done the story, you should add a meta-event up there!Same critic about the ground level, visually perfect to watch, incomplete: A ton of closed inquest doors on every part of the complex.-ADD WAYPOINTS ! W A Y P O I N T S! only two!!! What is the goal here? A minimum of 5! I prefer old map about this point.

So to end this feedback, don't take it bad, If I detail so much it's in order to give you advice. You have done a really good job here!Before I forgot, add help during story! For me it was obvious the inquest symbol because I love inquest, but it's needed for others to put a note "The symbol look like this , you have to make it the same by -red green and blue colours addition at same time, you can change patern with consoles". The same with the portal maker room , it was fun but I lost easily 30 min to understand how it work, bugging on the fact "the exit portal can only have two position?" add a note too: exit portal can appear on the entrance portal or in front of it.

Dunno if the new map counts as part of the episode but Djinn boss meta is currently very boring because you can hug it and auto to death. So it basically invalidates all of its mechanics.

Please see if is possible to add some sort of melee hate without going too overboard. Ideally you can melee but have to take some sort of risk instead of literally standing inside the boss.

I was only able to play through the 2nd part. The escort with Braham and the cubs was bugged for me and he would not advance on the path, so I could go no further.

I didn't like the first 2 parts. For starters, I'm not a fan of stealth type mission play, or mazes, and part 1 was essentially a combination of both. While the slow movement of the drones makes avoiding them generally not a problem, it has the negative side-effect of forcing a lot of extra waiting along the way while trying to figure out which panel opens which door. On top of that, the time limit for how long a door will stay open is rather short, and more than once I needed to retrace my steps (along with all the waiting) to retry it. That's unnecessarily slow and complicated. After getting about 2/3 of the way through, I eventually got so fed up with it that I gave up and tried attacking the drones, only to have half a dozen swarm me instantly and down me. I kept using the restart from checkpoint which would put me right back into the fight and I would get instantly downed again. Soon, I had no armor left. Pathetic.

Supposedly the golem has a stealth skill (#2) but it didn't seem to work for me at all. However, since it's a new mechanic I may not have understood how it's supposed to work. Two times I tried activating skill 2, I wound up ejecting from the golem instead which seems redundant for the other skill to leave the transform.

When i finally reached the point where you need to enter a code, I could find no tips for what to do. By trial and error I found that I could change the orientation of squares for red, blue and green, but I could find no guidance for what final pattern was expected. After 3 failed tries, I got mobbed by golems which pretty much instantly downed me again and again since I still had no armor. Is there supposed to be a pattern somewhere to match? If so, it needs to be a lot more obvious.

The 2nd part didn't seem too bad. However, my attempts at remaining stealthy somehow failed (still not sure why), and I eventually was forced into combat. I decided to try killing all the inquest instead. I thought I did, but I didn't get the achieve for it.

Started the 3rd part with the charr village. That seemed better until the golems showed up and once again I started getting downed over and over (still no armor). Eventually I figured out that I needed to pick up the drops and use a special skill to damage some of the golems blocking the way, but there were so many smaller golems in the way that it proved difficult to hit them with it. Even with them targetted, it seemed that the smaller drones kept getting in the way and blocked the shots.

I finally reached a spot near a tree at which point Braham and the cubs stopped moving. Even after clearing all mobs in the surrounding area, they wouldn't budge, and his dialog kept saying to stay close. After several minutes of trying to figure out what to do I gave up.

Of the parts I was able to play, I didn't like it. I realize that the issue with Braham is bug that will hopefully be fixed, but aside from that, the gameplay in the other parts was not fun. The stealth map was especially frustrating with the clunky mechanics:: move a little - wait - wait - wait - move a little - wait - wait - eat a sandwich - wait - move a little - wait - wait - wait - activate a panel - do that all in reverse to reach a door - repeat since you didn't make it in time - finally get through only to realize you need to do that a bunch more times. :persevere:

Possible improvements:

1. Make the doors stay open permanently once the panel has been overloaded.
2. Insert repair stations at various points along the way. A the very least, beginning/end of a section.
3. Slightly decrease the size of the Drone detection radius or change their patrol paths to reduce how long it takes to wait in the maze sections.
4. Provide a much more obvious clue for what final pattern of colors you need to make for the code.
5. Prevent the drones from blocking shots on the larger golems during the escort or reduce/remove drone spawns so that there's not a huge wall of them in between Braham and the enemy golem.

I really liked the story, it was pretty good. Achievements were fun too, except for X-T3R-M1N-8. I'm confident in my damage output and I'm pretty sure I could get it, but the core jumping around at random just ruins it. It's the same thing as the main issue with HoT adventures where you have a strict timer and objectives move/appear in random places. You gave some time to that too. I would suggest either removing the random part of the core movement so it's more predictable or giving some more time on this achievement.

On the map and in the story I really enjoyed the puzzles, they were pretty good. Getting through the entrance puzzle in the Chapter 1 while everyone in my guild chat was like "aw you can only try 3 time", "just kick the machine" etc felt great. The stealth part was pretty good too, though it might've been a bit too easy. I can imagine some people having difficulties with it though.I liked how Braham was showing at least a tiny bit of improvement. Not much, but a little bit. At least this time the shield was used when it was needed, haha.Taimi is still the best character though, but please don't throw her into some weird love thingie. She is mine. ^^

The events on the map were fun in general. Except for 2 thingies. First the djinn boss in the northern part of the map. There is nothing keeping people from grouping up at it's feet so all those nice spells are pointless. It's just a giant glob of players are it's feet doing normal rotations and sometimes pushing that Condition removal and sidestepping from the slow and that's about it. Second thing is the ambushes on bounties. They are way too frequent. It's not bad, but too frequent. Today I joined a bounty train on the map and we ended up having to try a bounty 4 times, because the first 3 times it was an ambush.That's about it.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:

@Menadena.7482 said:I was getting a message about being on the wrong story step constantly so posted it on the bugs forum .... and a lot of people agreed they were getting it as well.

Thanks! Those of us in the thread thought it might have something to do with parties until other people started seeing it when they were soloing the story. Since the story text kept changing and I got the rewards from doing the first part of it I am going to guess people got credit and hopefully it was just another 'bug in the system' [yes, we will keep punning on that title :) ].

Let me tell you about the back-story for the Olmakhan. One day the Flame Legion sent out a bunch of troops to burn off all the vegetation in what today we call the Scorchlands in Iron Marches. Unbeknownst to anyone, that one area of the Iron Marches contained a truly unique plant. Let's call it Cosmic CharrNip. So this troop goes out there and is torching everything, the flamethrowers' are flinging flame far and wide. But those poor legionnaires are all standing around breathing in the smoke from the burning Cosmic Charrnip. As the day goes on, and the smoke gets thicker, all those legionnaires are getting higher and higher and higher, to the point where, finally, one of them says, "Charr, what are we doing here? That Blood Legion and Ash Legion fools are gonna come kill us. Let's split for someplace south, where we can smoke our charr-weed and peace out!" And the other, higher than a kite, charr all said, "Word! Grab your weed and let's split before them shaman cats find us." Fast-forward a couple hundred years, and we find out former flame legion deserters on an island, waaaay down south, chilling in the shadow of a giant floating cube.

The weed is why they don't want to fight - if they fight back, they just know that somebody's gonna call the po-po on them. And then they have the police on their tails, trying to confiscate their carefully cultivated cosmic charrnip!

This, THIS, is how you get pacifist hippie Charr living in a commune down by the sea. It was the weed. It had to be the weed. It's always the weed.

Overall I'm very disappointed.

Since completing the POF story line, which I thought was fairly well done, it was pretty jarring to have the appearance of both Balthazar and Kormir in such a short span of the story; no point in arguing this but I feel they could've had a much better story path by keeping kormir/the gods as the focus for awhile. My main point is that they seem to be ping-ponging between story paths/villain characters in attempt to keep player interest, but I really don't find it to be working with the massive plot holes they keep leaving in the story.

The biggest offender to me being Joko all of a sudden "escaping" from the UW. Like WHAT? And then shortly after killing Balthazar, Kralk absorbs all of the energy and becomes the big scary villain at the end of the POF Cutscene. Cut to the next episode and it's all about Joko. Then we flip over to episode two and it's all about inquest and you see Joko for all of 30 seconds with some new underling that's introduced and killed all in 5 minutes time. With all of this back and forth, zero character development, and massive plot holes as to how these characters are getting from place to place, I have ZERO interest in the story. This is sad because I felt the story was the only reason this game was worth playing.

The instancing and fights were alright, especially the Golem boss. The final fight with Joko's underling was terrible, especially in the arena with the Claw of Jormag. There were massive performance issues and no where to comprehensively fight if you're playing a squishy spec/class in your living story.

Performance issues seem to further plague new maps and there are/is no feedback from you guys on potential performance improvements. This game suffers from massive cpu bottlenecking (as do most MMO's), but when people can't play above 30-40 fps on 1080ti's and V64, there are serious issues.

The Grind for cosmetic items is just as bad as ever, and there is very little reward otherwise. It's a shame there is likely never to be a progressive stat system/items introduced into the game. Stop trying to re-invent the wheel, there is a reason a certain MMO is still the best pve content on the market ;).

PvP/WvW seem to be all but dead, no use beating on this topic any further.

There seem to be some interesting weapon collections added and this is nice to see but, no stat progression and if you already like what you have there is no reason to grind this content.

Overall there is very little that I would consider good about this LS release, just another foot in the grave for the GW2 community. If there is one improvement to be made, please don't leave such massive plot holes such as Joko's escape undocumented/unplayable in the main story.

@killermanjaro.5670 said:I really like the new map, it looks great and is a nice change from the aesthetic of the last few. I've done completion, but haven't spent enough time in it yet to get a feel for all the events, the events in the middle (specimen chamber?) seemed OK, but not sure if that'd keep me coming back to the map.

The story was OK, though the intro instance before getting to the new map felt a bit long (maybe it's quicker if you ignore trying to stealth through). But any story instances which involve Taimi get a thumbs up from me (though I thought maybe we'd get to return her bow XD). There was a lot of combat instances which was good, although all the story felt insanely easy compared to previous story stuff! I'm not even a particularly good player, maybe average at best, so I was quite surprised to breeze through it.

The section that briefly took place in Frostgorge was an absolute FPS killer! I dropped to about 10fps there! (50-60fps in most story instances normally).

I haven't properly looked at it yet, but I hear there's a collection to complete for a 32 slot bag which sounds good. Haven't yet found out if there's a JP yet either (hope so).

Overall pretty enjoyable, keep up the great work!

I think it is just as long. Since there were 3 of us doing it I did not bother with stealth and just killed everything with a red tag. The annoying thing was working out the mechanic ... other people in my party wanted to critique everything, even though I was doing most of the work, so I missed what Taimi said that gave some vital information and had to keep looking over to see what my party was saying. Made me wish I had never led the instance, next time I will just deadhead it and spam the 1 key.

i like the story the story everything was awesome but issue i am having is the collection for the backpack i am stuck with the specimen chamber and Mark III golem thing i did it multiple times but still seen no drops for the items to repair the golem and i got most of the stuff done before the hotfix on the part before the specimen chambers.