No quarter feedback. (GOOD) [Spoilers] - [Merged]

[Randulf.7614]

My norn thought hard over dropping the Grenade

My human of ascalonian descent didn’t even think twice ?

[LucianDK.8615]

When I first saw the keepers loot stage, I nearly panicked because I couldnt figure out how ppl was moving that fast. But I had a bundle of teleport to friends left over, that I blew, and ended with all 10 down for the achievement.

[hugo.4705]

I now saw several person mentioning1 it, it may justify why I haven't gave the higher rate; there is indeed two big odd things:

1-No main charr character like a charr apart Smodur, and I was very outraged by my character / the commander reaction gasping seeing Iron legion executing its traitors or Smodur killing Cynder... It's war! It's very infuriating to see that when someone do a little more extreme move than the other, they are all included me "Ow! Look at him! bad bad bad!!! Booh! be ashamed!" I have more intention to bow in front to Smodur than bowing in front of Crecia! Ryland was never wanting to parley, why losing time, killing cynder was to me the best option to make an electro-shock. Where are we? In a kindergarten? Our "Commander" killed its order mentor, several innocent pact soldiers during ps, several during hot even more fighting kralky without having a tear, and now, seeing 4 charrs executed and it's a slaughter? What bad writting is this, is the story writing that low in living world? Me thinking that bad cliche and stupid plot twist were the bottom... That behavior from the commander and the charrs are unacceptable. It is war, in a war, if all you squad is killed, you don't care about the last remaining member and send more troops. In war you don't care of feeling and not killing enemies, in war, both parties just kill each others. In additon, previously, ryland and bangar got 0 issues to attack the commander directly.

2-The map is full, of Norns, Humans, Dredges fortifications and outpost and somehow none of them are see-able around the map? Seraph are like meh not giving a quaggan, how all of that make any sense? Very poor lore. No respects of the inhabitants. Could have at least put some norn/humans prisoner in cage in dominion camps! There are some hints in the tengu journal... but "fleeing" is an easy solution to not put them in map, bad choice.

[Memoranda.9386]

@"hugo.4705" said:2-The map is full, of Norns, Humans, Dredges fortifications and outpost and somehow none of them are see-able around the map? Seraph are like meh not giving a quaggan, how all of that make any sense? Very poor lore. No respects of the inhabitants. Could have at least put some norn/humans prisoner in cage in dominion camps! There are some hints in the tengu journal... but "fleeing" is an easy solution to not put them in map, bad choice.

There is an achievement/journal tied to the new Tengu weapons explaining this.

[Killerassel.2197]

I like the format so I'll add my thoughts here. :)

I need to write down what frustrates me about the current episode. I hope this helps both myself to calm down and get over it as well as Anet to return to producing great content.

The Good

I could buy the home instance node and harvest it from the first day. I cannot remember when that was last possible. I am aware that there are still bugs around it. But since I wasn't affected personally, I still count this as a "good". :)

I also like that the map currency is actually a currency, not a material. I can store unlimited amounts of it. Thus it will not share the fate of Grothmar's chilis where it actually upsets me every time I get a few and have to delete them.

The Bad

Very early on I got one impression of the episode: its main purpose is to sell bag slots and/or bank tabs. And not in a good way, where I feel I need to store my many good rewards. No, in a very bad way like F2P games that create problems and timegates just to sell the "solutions".

While there were earlier episodes that pressured my inventory space, this episode takes the cake. By far. Sure, it may be a personal problem that I keep on to everything and my bags are almost full by default. But I know I am not the only player like this. In addition to the usual junk the map threw a lot of semiuseful stuff like the siege weapons at me. Somewhat useful, so I cannot simply throw them away, but also not so useful that I would be happy to have them. And why do I have to click to open these map currency containers all the time? The hotfix that made extras of the special mission unlocks non-consumable and practically unsellable on the TP didn't help either in this regard.

The map also features the return of ingots dropping from chests from the previous map. I stopped opening chests in Bjora Marches for that reason alone. While some might find that nice, my storage space for ingots is full. I keep some space for ore, so I can mine anywhere, but not currently for ingots. Maybe I need to change that and adapt, but still...

Then there are two new weapon sets. I appreciate that we get more skins for playing the game. But while they are well made, they don't fit my (characters') style. Yet still, the meta achievement requires(!) me to craft them. And since one of the sets is upgradable - thanks for the warning this time - I would need to store them. Which brings me back to the "Buy! more! bank! slots!" feel all over the episode.

In Discord someone pointed out that players were complaining about lack of rewards and that I'm now complaining about getting too many rewards. Well, that's another point. Getting the permission to spend a ton of gold and/or farm unrelated content for materials, in the shape of a recipe, doesn't feel like a reward. At least the new recipes aren't as terrible in this respect as the Boreal weapons. But I still perceive them as a useless gold sink, not as a reward. Especially since they are part of the meta achievement, not craft-if-you-like-it.

Also Drizzlewood Coast brings back a "fun" mechanic from Bloodstone Fen: snipers outside of the rendering distance that shoot me mid-air. Unlike back then they don't insta-kill me, the griffon can take two or three hits and has a chance to dodge. But no, that's still no fun, engaging gameplay. Neither is it when I did something on the ground and cannot mount up because some stupid mob at the other end of the map keeps shooting at me.

And please don't just look at the statistics to evaluate the episode's success. Sure, there will be players who are the opposite of me, always have lots of empty inventory space and enjoy the hectic fast paced champ tours after the meta event. They will farm it - a lot - and love it. Others will stay for quite some time on the map just to grind the achievements. That they play the map and the strike mission for the next two months doesn't mean that they like the map or that it was particualary good. That just means that you have raised the bar for how grindy an episode can get. I'm not yet sure if I keep playing the map or give up on it and its achievements and "rewards" early. Right now I'm not even sure if I can ever reach the meta achievement. So why bother...

The Ugly

I understand why this episode has no VO. And as much as I try not to count it against it, I think the usually great VO would have improved the overall impression of the release and put me in a better mood while playing it. The silence just is a bit depressing.

Like with Grothmar Valley, the WvW reward track for this episode feels more rewarding and more productive regarding PvE rewards than playing PvE. I play some WvW anyway, so I like getting a great reward track, but it still feels quite odd. With Grothmar it was abysmal drop rates for some of the items. With Drizzlewood I'm not sure if it is bad drop rates again or if I just haven't found out how to obtain some of the items in PvE yet.

I also haven't found a useful sink for the map currency. Since it doesn't clutter inventory space I don't really mind and hope/save for the next episode. But this still feels a bit strange.

[Mizhas.8536]

In my opinion they have lost a huge opportunity of doing something radically different and potentially awesome in this episode. When they first announced this episode, they said a WvW like map. That made my hopes up on some kind of mix between the actual pve and wvw.When I started playing the episode it looked like it would involve our character in some struggle about the reasons of the war and if it would really be justified. Suddenly I dreamed about the possibility of taking active part on the decission of supporting one or other side of the war in this episode. That decission could have led into a completely different type of episode for once. I though about the possibility of 3 sides, players who decided to support the char alliance to stop bangar those who decided to support bangar and those who decided to not support any kind of civil war that encouraged chars to kill other chars.

The idea of 3 different ideas fighting over the control of a map, combined with some pve npcs (like in other games like For Honor for example) got me really interested.

Sadly I realized quite fast that Anet has lost all capability do anything unexpected. We got another map built around a big meta event which when played in a full map becomes ridiculous.

The goodThe upgrade system got my attention. As a WvW player, I liked the possibility of gathering resources and being able to use them for something else other than just repairing. Many WvW players consider that the automatic upgrading of the objectives in WvW needs a change. I am not saying that copying the PvE implementation would be good, but it could be the base for creating a much more rich and enjoyable system.

The uglyVO... These days, saying that it was imposible to record some audio for the dialogs... I just can not believe that. Having to read all the dialogs was VERY unconfortable.

The badThe missed chance. We got another meta event, another map and another really short story piece. Anet really must start doing things different if they really are expecting people to buy their next expansion. If these episodes were supposed to contain "Expansion level content" (or something similar which made us, the players, expect great things from thi LS season), they are really being quite a dissapointment for many of us.