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Unpopular opinion: Icebrood Saga is bad


Clyan.1593

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The first map was great, apart from that I personally see not much good in the Saga.The story is boring as hell, masteries are meaningless, and the achievements... an overwhelming amount of them are just grind.At least i would have hoped for a few new enemy types, but not even that. Just the same old in green, red or blue.Bjora marches in design is really weak compared to last season's maps. Drizzlewood is a bit better, especially to coast side, beside that it's not interesting at all.And then the strike missions... I'd rather have new dungeons where I can at least travel through a map than just speedfarm a single boss for a billion times.I make an exception for the Steel & Fire mission, that one was really great.

I know a lot of people rooted for the charr "campaign", but imo it offers nothing special. Yay, we now have charr lore, but what about it really?What did we learn of them? We have 4 legions and they don't feel distinct at all. Not even on a political level. One of them went rogue and is evil.Let's go chase him down, that's about it.

And the norn? Isn't this supposed to be about them aswell? Seems like they only get a really tiny spotlight in this whole thing.

Yeah, overall I'm quite disapointed with Icebrood Saga so far.It's also the first time I really feel like this. There had been weak moments in the past of this game, but this season is really really bad.

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I've only got to the start of episode 2 but the prologue to me was hands down the best storytelling they've ever done in this game. EVER. There was subtlety for once, a sense of unease that was almost entirely natural, with only the slightest hints (and not marked with a [You Feel Uneasy] or [something's Definitely Wrong] modifier like in that laughably bad season 4 instance, by gods that was a bad choice). The start of episode 1 was also one of the better ones, with a horror mystery feel that wasn't too overblown.

Looking forward to see what was so bad with the rest of it tho.

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You can't tell the difference between the warrior caste, the builder caste, the spy caste, and the magic caste? and the final surrender and subsequent integration of the traitorous and hated mages undermined immediately by a new rebellion of the disenfranchised (and a new war on two fronts) isn't doing anything for you?

Well, "to each his own", I guess...

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Not really an unpopular opinion. There is a lot wrong with this season. At a mechanical perspective, it isn't accurate to anything they said it was going to be.

Masteries are being watered down in their importance to the game as a whole.

The short episodes clearly being half of a full with the two part maps.

Strike missions and the prophet shard system being repetitive and unengaging grind.

What "Expansion level content" even means, with no clear definition from Anet. So it means nothing.

I'm not going to bother giving examples of how to fix these anymore, because Anet knows how to learn and fix. They just refuse to go back and undo what is broken.

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@"Trise.2865" said:You can't tell the difference between the warrior caste, the builder caste, the spy caste, and the magic caste? and the final surrender and subsequent integration of the traitorous and hated mages undermined immediately by a new rebellion of the disenfranchised (and a new war on two fronts) isn't doing anything for you?

Well, "to each his own", I guess...

lolwell, i can tell, but you don't feel any of that. At this point you could mash them all together, would be the same thing.

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@coso.9173 said:How is it unpopular when most people who comment on it say the same?I've personally enjoyed it a lot. I just wish each chapter was longer to do. It takes like 1 hour to do each one at most.

Honestly I hear a lot of praise for it ingame. The forums are generally more negative. I'm usually positive, however I really feel like Icebrood Saga is a let down, at least from my personal perspective.

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I agree. The prologue and drizzlewood coast are great, but the rest are quite bad in my opinion. New masteries are dull, and bjora marches is small and monotonous. The story in the bjora marches really doesn't interest me even though I tried hard to complete it.

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@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:Not really an unpopular opinion. There is a lot wrong with this season. At a mechanical perspective, it isn't accurate to anything they said it was going to be.

Masteries are being watered down in their importance to the game as a whole.

The short episodes clearly being half of a full with the two part maps.

Strike missions and the prophet shard system being repetitive and unengaging grind.

What "Expansion level content" even means, with no clear definition from Anet. So it means nothing.

I'm not going to bother giving examples of how to fix these anymore, because Anet knows how to learn and fix. They just refuse to go back and undo what is broken.

@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:Not really an unpopular opinion. There is a lot wrong with this season. At a mechanical perspective, it isn't accurate to anything they said it was going to be.

Masteries are being watered down in their importance to the game as a whole.

The short episodes clearly being half of a full with the two part maps.

Strike missions and the prophet shard system being repetitive and unengaging grind.

What "Expansion level content" even means, with no clear definition from Anet. So it means nothing.

I'm not going to bother giving examples of how to fix these anymore, because Anet knows how to learn and fix. They just refuse to go back and undo what is broken.

Masteries haven't been a relevant grind or actual content since early HoT. They listened to people who wanted to log into a game and have everything already within 5 minutes so we don't have sidegrade char progression via masteries anymore. The system should honestly just be deleted as I don't even notice it's existence since it takes like a day, at most, to get all masteries for an entire content update done..

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I don't know what it is but this LW season hasn't really engaged me much, story wise I've not found it very interesting, in fact I've mostly found it quite forgettable. With every other LW season episode I've always played them on the day they dropped, usually map completion and story done over the next few days, with masteries then usually done within the week, after I've still spent time going back to the maps doing other events etc. With the Icebrood Saga I haven't felt like playing a single episode at the time it's dropped, I've logged in to get them free, but then left it weeks before even stating the episode, haven't been going back to the maps either. I haven't even finished the story for the latest episode yet, usually I'd play through to reduce hearing spoilers, but for this saga I'm just not bothered. Likewise I always found it satisfying to quickly max all the new masteries of any new content, but for some reason I haven't felt compelled to do that during this saga. I assume that whole Eye of the North bit was just a mini content to set it up as a hub or something, because that story wise I found very dull too, the tank mission wasn't as bad as I feared it would be but it isn't something I've ever even thought about going back to. I don't know what strike missions are like as I still haven't felt any interest to try one, which again feels a bit odd given that I've been in lockdown for ages and had loads more gaming time available. I still enjoy GW2 and I'll eventually get through all of the Icebrood saga stuff, but it just isn't clicking with me for some reason.

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The masteries from Bjora Marches are almost completely useless because they take a long time to "charge up", but by the time you do, the enemy it can work on is almost never the one around. The map itself sucked every last reservoir of enthusiasm I had left for the game and story dry.Npc deaths seem to be a writer requirement for each chapter; so ubiquitous that I wasn't even surprised by the Bjora March chapter's "surprise." The writers have thus ensured that I don't engage with the story through investing in the npcs. Which is a real shame because subsequently the voice acting and character depth seemed to have improved.The latest story update left me with more tepid feelings - I am not looking forward to or wondering about what comes next due to the writers essentially writing us down a long dark corridor. This isn't an adventure anymore.Maybe that's intentional. But with what's going on in real life and at work - I just...don't want to engage with more darkness.

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@Shiyo.3578 said:Masteries haven't been a relevant grind or actual content since early HoT. They listened to people who wanted to log into a game and have everything already within 5 minutes so we don't have sidegrade char progression via masteries anymore. The system should honestly just be deleted as I don't even notice it's existence since it takes like a day, at most, to get all masteries for an entire content update done..

Mounts.

People not wanting to spend hundreds of hours and is fine with a few dozen is not the same as 5 minutes.

The rate of getting a mastery done is irrelevant to how useful it is. Masteries shouldn't take weeks to complete unless its something as important as a like Glider.

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I definitely agree.

  1. The masteries this season are dull, tedious, and have little impact for what it takes to accumulate the special action key. They're nice in large metas like Drizzlewood where you want to quickly clear mobs, but they're not exactly game-changing. I feel like they will also be pretty difficult to incorporate into later maps/expansions like the tunnel shooting one, oakheart essence, or jumping mushrooms, etc. They have a tendency of doing this for most living seasons though.

  2. The story - The worst part imo. The prologue was cute and felt reasonably fleshed out, but then we get to Bjora and have a boring escort with a couple semi-interesting story instances. The second half of Bjora we grind some events, do a story instance, and that's pretty much it. Now, in Drizzlewood we had... completing events to fill a bar, a puzzle story instance and the final instance. The story is incredibly short and feels like it's gone nowhere. We haven't really dove into any interesting lore and it feels like it's just been pressing F and reading a bunch of dialogue for an hour. We could be visiting Jormag or learning more about Norn/Kodan/Jotun and exploring ancient cites, but instead we're just chasing some idiot power hungry Charr and dealing with a Charr version of Braham.

  3. The rewards - so many skins and items being locked behind rng loot boxes from chests or strike missions.

  4. Strike missions - the loot boxes you get from doing the 3 crystal weekly turn in are generally just a few pieces of unidentified gear. The prophet shard system seems needlessly convoluted and extravagant. I'm not sure why they can't just have ONE color of prophet shards. There are also things like Khan Ur Visage and the combat tonic from the prologue or the ceremonial outfits that I had hoped would be able to be bought with prophet shards giving some extra incentive to keep replaying the strike missions outside hoping for good luck on chest turn ins, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I think the best parts of this season so far have been Drizzlewood, the map and meta, the Vision of the Past was really good and I look forward to seeing what they do with those.. hopefully make them less Charr-focused and really take it as an opportunity to immerse us in something other than a mechanism to drive the most forefront part of the story forward... and the tree decorations from Drizzlewood. I love that they're consistently adding decorations even if they're sometimes a little disappointing like the statues...

All in all it's just been a very slooooooowwwww moving story and feels like everything that's happened so far could have happened in the span of one episode, not 6 months or however long it's been now. It just makes me wonder how long they plan on dragging out this saga. I think if they didn't announce the expansion people would be a lot more disappointed with the current season. I think people have just accepted that "expansion level content" isn't really a thing and are just anticipating the actual expansion, whenever it's coming.

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I found the story interesting enough but the masteries are not worth the bother. I’m doing them but just as something to do and to see my mastery numbers go up. /shrug.

As said above, the masteries take too long to charge up and then after they’re charged they pop up randomly and there’s no guarantee that they can be used on the mob you’re fighting. In addition they replace the Waystation special action. Which means they can replace something useful with something useless. Very poor design. They should take less time to charge up and you should be able to choose which one appears on your special action bar and when.

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It is a bad story. Their story has been crap since PoF.

It's been super predictable (we all knew Aurene wasn't really going to stay dead).

Every map is the same re-skinned boss fights against HP sponges with dodge the red zones.

And yet, people somehow think Cantha will make their writing better. I can't wait to have to fight the emperor who (surprise) has been corrupted by [fill in dragon minion with powers from other dragons we already killed here] and it leading people [down a dark path/to war/to awaken their other dragon buddy]. All while dodging red circles while DPSing a HP sponge.

Oh, wait, I won't, cause I'm not buying it until it's on super deep discount. Even then, only if the WvW meta actually changes and we get some of the stuff we were promised.

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I'm of the mind that I've been looking for expansion level content for a rather long time in that saga, and have only found some recently with the latest map. It took time for Masteries to be usable outside of the original map, and even then, it's a limited fashion (less so the skills, more the way you need to use a 1 use consumable to get access to them). I've noticed a very high amount of skins being made available, which raises the level of content, and does indeed help. The map metas for the first time, different in an overworld map, and that's a neat addition.

I'm naturally biased toward charrs, so obviously maps focusing on them are likely to raise my interest.

I am still extremely sour over the RNG for endless combat tonics. I dont understand the point. Werent they going to placate people who ask for new races with them ? What's the point if they're so rare barely anyone have gotten one ?

Overall, I believe progress have been made in a good way, not yet to an expansion level, but I can certainly appreciate the team's effort, and watching them get more involved is interesting. Contrary to before, I am watching Icebrood saga with interest now

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Regarding mastery abilities: as long as the game is monetized the way it is, they will remain filler only used on specific maps. The system of unlocking episodes by going online when they are released, and requiring payment to unlock them at a later time if you missed them, is stifling the game's potential. On every possible level.

Other than that, the Icebrood Saga has some interesting story moments, and some very good voice acting. I like that we face something different for a change, like Bangar, instead of fighting another Elder Dragon directly and I want to see what happens with Jormag. Although I like the new direction in the story and some of the new characters, from a gameplay perspective it's been very bad. To be honest, during some of the story instances I got bored multiple times and considered quitting, the system of "filling bars by doing events in order to progress the story", makes me logout and not care at all to play the story on another character. I can understand why they need to pad the runtime so much, otherwise the story would be done in 10 minutes, it just takes longer than I find "acceptable", especially for repeats of the same story! The un-interesting fights (weak boss mechanics for example) don't help either.

But more than the story, the Icebrood Saga was supposed to be something more than just another regular living world season, yet I just don't see it. It feels weaker than previous seasons, with less content, less new mechanics and ideas, less of everything.

For all those hating Bjora Marches: although I didn't find the map amazing or anything (and Drakkar is a giant HP sponge with no challenge) I really enjoyed the light puzzles, because I like puzzles and those were a bit more than doing pixel perfect jumps.

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It has been more of a missed opportunity than a bad season.

  • Bjora is fairly dull
  • Drizzlewood lacks the simplicity and refinement of Silverwastes despite being pretty and sound in principal,
  • Drakkar was squandered in story and fight
  • Masteries exist for the sake of masteries
  • Strikes are great, but have been increasingly overtaken by those wanting LI requirements and are now less accessible to those they aimed them at
  • The story is far, far too short and most of Bjora’s story is hastily written, not very interesting and one of the weakest LS story sections yet.

The Prologue was fantastic, Forged with Steel was enjoyable and Drizzlewood has a much improved story so it’s not a total washout, esp given the travesty of most of LS4. It just lacks excitement to me

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Since start ls4, it's a letdown. Was very fan of ls3 and the different themed maps... lake doric, draconis, bloodstone fen and very nice siren's landing. Ls4, I stopped cared after sandswept. Ls5, I only like grothmar and drizzlewood. Bjora gave me nightmare flashback from thunderhead. Just replace branded by icebrood. Here you go. I'm already expecting next snowy maps to be bad. But I have ton of hope for centaur land shown on trailer, promising to be closer to core tyria in appearance.Cons to me:-> Strikes, bjora, almorra and steel warband end so story. Errors of ls4 with joko and aurene are repeated. Having ton of war supplies, no real sink.

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I think people is overreacting. Found the story pretty interesting so far, but yes definitely not on the level of expansion like content. But I daresay that current virus crisis mightve affected the level of content. However, as I see it, the real meat of the current episode is the meta battle and I enjoy to play it.

Drizzlewood coast is far superior to Silverwastes and a far more colorful place. It is one of the best metas yet and not super spread out like the hot ones. The battle following back and forth much more frequently than Silverwastes.

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All these complaints were being said about PoF and LS4 too, and to some extent, LS3, which was watered-down HoT.

Even though the game is now many times easier than at release (remember Orr?, or dying to world bosses in Central Tyria even in Exotic gear), with every year that passes people ask--no, they demand that it become even easier, until everyone's walking around near-immortal, killing Veteran enemies in 5secs, and bouncing all around the map with mounts just ignoring most encounters entirely.

When will people understand, wanting the devs to water things down again and again makes it boring, and that if you don't want the game to be boring, stop forcing the devs to water it down? Its that simple, really.

But no.. I WANT IT, NOW! GIMME IT, ITS MINE!!

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I have never played MMO with good story but is average too much to ask? The base game story in GW2 was nothing special but at least it didn't suck as bad as Aurene.After all, Aurene is not the commanders pet, the commander is Aurenes pet.Aurene has all the power and all the information and the commander just bumbles around, hoping not to accidentally doom Tyria. The commander just continues to bumble around, mostly wasting time as Aurene knows what to do but tells you nothing. After all, a pet needs something to do to keep it entertained and of course, out of the way while the master does things that actually matter.If Aurene leaves for the story, it still won't make it go away, anet made it too important.Not to mention the prophecy BS where, instead of doing it because you want, you do it because "it's the way it's meant to be". No one wants to be a mindless puppet following some destiny/fate, right?What i'm saying is, it can't possibly get any worse than that.

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