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What do you think of the new Living World: Champions? (spoilers inside) - [Merged]


Aaralyna.3104

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I Have Played GW & GW2 for ever some say to much total hours for both added up 30,000 but its time gate's crafting ok i get it but still is why i dis like crafting i do not have months to spend on one item per day and need 30 in order to make one other item i need 25 of but i get it then Dragon fall and the skyscale mount that time gate was not fun at all now LWS season 5 ep5 chapter 1 i do not get it have to RR the same 3 missions over n over trying to find out what you need to get to finish an ACH + some time gate to advance in the story not my ida of fun i have a job that pays my bills and its not GW or GW2 they are for me to unwind and injoy my self ill have to pass on all the last LWS5 stuff and just hope the new Xpack is not full of time gate KITTENS NO MORE TIME GATES PLEASE THEY RUIN THE GAME

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They don't want players to blow through all the content on the first day. I honestly really don't know what is going to happen next week after the time gate... more story?This episode was a flop. We keep getting weapon sets, and this is the 3rd storm caller set we are getting which most people won't even get because of the huge gold sink when they all look the same and overly flashy.I just hope that the later masteries are not tied to Dragon Response Missions and are actually beneficial to all parts of PvE content, so that we get a sense of progression.

So from what we got so far, I am not too hopeful of anything great in the next few days after the time gate. Just go about doing your normal stuff and then be pleasantly surprised if anything comes of it.

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I can understand time gating for new content to stretch out the play time (and if some of the materials are things bought off the trading post, it may help stabilize prices there because you don't have all the players putting in orders the first day).But once content has been out a few months, neither of these seem like big issues. Time gating is one of my biggest annoyances with GW2 - it would be simple for Anet to fix this, but they tend not to go back to old content to make adjustements.

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So, the Crystal Forger mastery. "Defeating a dragon champion in a Dragon Response Mission grants additional materials while under the effect of a Dragon Boon."

As far as I can tell, I get a few extra Prismaticite Crystals. Is that right, or am I missing something?

Edit: Actually, on closer inspection, the crystals I thought were extra seem to have come from the Daily Dragon Responder achievement. I got exactly 3 materials after the champion kill and I'm pretty sure I used to get a few before completing that mastery. So, where's the extra? Am I getting 3 instead of 2 now? Not great.

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@LucianDK.8615 said:They are terribly boring and uninspired compared to Strikes, which is a lot better integrated into the game.

Yes. Also, the instance owner has the power to deprive everyone else from their final reward (from the chest that spawns) by leaving the party once they have grabbed their loot. Something like that can never happen in a Strike Mission. They need to fix this.

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They need to make npcs get knocked out of the fight like braham or main npcs where they just dont att for a bit after defeated. These npc's just die over and over and you gotta rez them esp on bridge they just dead whole fight and you always got one party member rezzing them for w/e reason. Or make them invulnerable or something otherwise they just in the way in some of these instances

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@Jilora.9524 said:They need to make npcs get knocked out of the fight like braham or main npcs where they just dont att for a bit after defeated. These npc's just die over and over and you gotta rez them esp on bridge they just dead whole fight and you always got one party member rezzing them for w/e reason. Or make them invulnerable or something otherwise they just in the way in some of these instances

I did find it frustrating how quickly NPCs died, though mostly because the field is then littered with ‘resurrect’ prompts while you’re fighting enemies and bosses. It’s certainly an issue when a party member is downed and you start resurrecting a dead villager because there are so many.

Otherwise I enjoyed the story aspect and liked the reuse of old maps, but certain aspects felt frustrating. Like the endless knockdown effects, which really only serve to punish casual players who don’t get into organized groups.

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@Jilora.9524 said:They need to make npcs get knocked out of the fight like braham or main npcs where they just dont att for a bit after defeated. These npc's just die over and over and you gotta rez them esp on bridge they just dead whole fight and you always got one party member rezzing them for w/e reason. Or make them invulnerable or something otherwise they just in the way in some of these instances

usualy target them when trying to pick up banners.

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The Narrative Arc, combined with the Bosses who violate the game's established rules, and the new achievements have led me to conclude that the 80 Gigabytes of storage drive space on my Hard Drive will be better spent empty. This entire season has been putting on full display Jormag's villainy and these Charr's complicity in it, only for this episode to treat me like a child who hasn't developed permanence yet.

The very first thing we're told, is that we're allies with Jormag now because Primordus is just too big of a threat despite no evidence of it, only for them to never contribute to our fights through out the chapter. When Taimi tells Braham to shut up and trust the plan, I blew a blood vessel in my eye, and shouted out in disgust. This is the garbage being shoved in our faces right now. Right now. The Writers in a single off-handed line made me defend the worst solitary character in their storyline, Bro-hamhead, on a basis of principle. The Man who was given an unironic failed Batman story arc.

The parallels to current events and their take on them is childish and disgusting. I was gritting and bearing my teeth hoping Cantha would deliver me back to enjoying this game and its narrative, but this is one step too far. Good bye, so long, auf weidersehen, adios, au revoir, 再见.

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Anet will probably not read all these threads, but I am not to excited about the latest update. I am okay that we didnt get a new map (i like drizzlewood and the mechanic and loot), but the response missions are boring... Bosses with way to much HP and the endless grind to get the achievements (doing the 3 missions with all challenges active, not once but i thought 10 times... cmon...)And I heard 9 more of this boring content is coming....That will be a problem for me as O have the need to get the achiements..

Please fix these boring response missions and make the next one better with less tedious achievements.

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Hello,I have to say the newest living story is really bad

  • Boring grind missions with bosses with to much hp.. just spamming skills
  • repeating achievements so have to do grind over and over. I thought yes, challenges done, but we have to do this multiple times.. pfff
    • people get on edge of map and kicked out and cant join
    • cant make a normal lfg to let them join in private match. you get in squad mode.... whats up with the lfg??

And i heard we get 9 more of these missions? I prefer rather not.. As someone who wants to get achievements and also wants to follow the story this will be a real pain...I am really afraid of the next patch.

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Story ok, but the missions are terrible. Whereas before we've had map-wide metas that have been cornerstone to Guild Wars 2 nature with big fights, now we're being split into small units of 5 players, and in the public instance you're not even grouped up so lacking that dynamic.

And the private squad... well, fix the LFG for starters... The "Champions" section under LS: Icebrood Saga a "Squad" type so if you try to make a Party there for DRMs (because obviously, why else would you group up for Champions seeing as there's no story instance nor new map to join each other in??) then you get a squad and you cannot enter the private instance mode of the DRM.

So after a while you manage to put your group together (hint: Central Tyria - Parties) and then you enter these bland missions that

a) isn't fun, takes too long and feel unrewardingb) aren't fun because you repeatedly punch a sponge for ages only to whittle away its HP, only to be swarmed by trash mobs when you've in addition got a barrage of nukes/meteors, stuff erupting from fissures plus the winged destroyers who carpet-bomb the area. Maybe it's a scaling issue but when these are intermission phases to a boss fight who hardly takes dmg, well...c) just makes me shudder if this is what we're getting moving forward, circling back to the opening argument of being stuck into 5-man instances with no sense of party... token collection hysteria from rinse & repeat 3 more or less identical missions that more or less make me want just shut down the game and watch a wall instead.

And the new masteries are time-gated behind some sort of mechanism - to do with the community-wide achievement? Or is it just time-based? Or is it based on completing the achievements of the DRM CMs? Which of course would be silly, because then we're back to arguments a - c as to why I'm not about to play those again right now.

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@Dutchdevil.6902 said:Hello,I have to say the newest living story is really bad

  • Boring grind missions with bosses with to much hp.. just spamming skills
  • repeating achievements so have to do grind over and over. I thought yes, challenges done, but we have to do this multiple times.. pfff
    • people get on edge of map and kicked out and cant join
    • cant make a normal lfg to let them join in private match. you get in squad mode.... whats up with the lfg??

And i heard we get 9 more of these missions? I prefer rather not.. As someone who wants to get achievements and also wants to follow the story this will be a real pain...I am really afraid of the next patch.

I believe the 9 missions are apart of this patch and are released every 6 days, if what I’ve been reading is true...

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@Manasa Devi.7958 said:What do I think? It's all a bit boring, just those 3 near identical missions. I won't be contributing much to advance the progress bar. Here's hoping the next few weeks will be adding some more interesting and substantial stuff.

But this was it though, wasn't it? Next up now will be Wintersday in December and next part of Champions isn't coming until January?

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Personally, I was hoping we might start using up some of those stand-in portals (i.e Lionshead Outcrops), even if only for small instanced areas.Content felt a little lackluster however, I am still curious to see where the story goes, and by the looks of it we'll have more sooner than later.

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Need to fix the afk hiders. Found one hidden in building /away. Need to kick if they don't meet up w taimi or the next part. I mean I left and told others to leave and only wasted 5m but still some bs pos players there. Obviously thats in public and until the lfg fix that seems easier

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@Dondarrion.2748 said:

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:What do I think? It's all a bit boring, just those 3 near identical missions. I won't be contributing much to advance the progress bar. Here's hoping the next few weeks will be adding some more interesting and substantial stuff.

But this was it though, wasn't it? Next up now will be Wintersday in December and next part of Champions isn't coming until January?

It has been stated by the devs they will add more content between the ‘chapters’ of Champions. So we should get more additions and updates to this story content between now and Chapter 2 in January. It probably won’t be anything MAJOR, but they’re doing a steady/staggered release of content for Champions.

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Pretty much what I was expecting and I am scratching my head as to how most players here expected more or less, because even the most basic analysis of past content releases would have prepared one for this. My reasoning so far has been as follows:

a.) we've seen an unprecedented focus on living world content with nearly no support for other game modes or more difficult content. The random fractal drop was a nice touch, but we can hardly speak of supported instanced content by now. The irony here: the new "difficult" content is not even bare bones difficult for competent players, yet still to difficult for the average pleb open world player (no disrespect, everyone can enjoy the game how they want, but the average player here just as in most MMOs is beyond shit skill wise)

b.) it has become clear that quantity was added instead of quality. By that I mean quantity in the grind which was added for achievements and "busywork". This has been evident in nearly the entire Saga by now, bar the first episode. The fault here lies with the mixed signals of the player base tbh. If the achievements are to easy/fast/complete able, the forums light up like a christmas tree over lack of content. If they are to grindy, same thing just the other way around. My personal assumption here is: the metrics show that grindy stuff keeps many players engaged longer overall, so that's what the developers are running with.

c.) the moment the last date for a big balance patch passed by without that balance patch happening made it very clear to me that those resources are being spent else where. There is no point in huge balance patches, mind you even IF the resources where there, when new elite specializations are being developed and to be released. Without going into unofficial confirmations about new elites being in the works, I would not hold my breath on any major balance reworks until shortly before the expansion or MAYBE right in the middle between now and the expansion launch, so around early next year (if at all).

d.) doing some simple research on past expansions and seasons, time frames for their development, the release schedules around those expansions and content drops, one can extrapolate just how much content one can expect. For example:

  • Living World Season 2 episode 8 released on January 15, 2015. HoT launched on October 25, 2015. That's 8 1/2 months of no PvE content pre expansion launch
  • HoT launched on Oktober 25, 2015. Season 3 episode 1 released on July 26, 2016. That's 9 months of no "new" PvE content (the studio was working on fixing HoT content mostly) post expansion launch
  • PoF was a far smaller expansion than HoT and this was also noticed in the far more fluent transition of Living World season 3 into PoF into Living World Season 4. At the same time, development time for episodes increased and lead to even some "unfinished" episodes like a Bug in the System which clearly saw content cut. So again, the more fluent release cadence came at a cost of other features.

We have had a very steady release schedule this Saga, in most cases faster or at a similar fast speed of past seasons. With an expansion in the works for the majority of time in the back ground with now minor content updates to bridge the otherwise resulting gap, as was done pre and post HoT. That is all on the back of a studio which laid off staff, is working through a pandemic AND has been fighting declining revenue and increasing age of the game.

It's pretty clear that more and more open world teams are likely shifting over into expansion mode as they finish their current living world season content. My guess is that the Dragon Response Missions as we see them right now are a filler and farm/grind release to give players something to do with some big Saga finale being worked on which will lead into the next expansion.

Given all this, I am rather surprised with the quality of the Dragon Response Missions. To me they feel a bit like a mix of Living World Season 1 and Season 2 mixed together, and we know how loud some players have been asking for Season 1 similar content. Well here you have it.

TL;DR:Far to many players are wearing their rose tinted glasses without actually looking up how things were in the past (in this case development wise). Only to then extrapolate expectations based on these rose colored memories of fairies and fantasies and the good old times, to then be disappointed when reality sets in. Reality in this case is: the studio always has had a fixed amount of developers which are able to produce a set amount of content and no wishful thinking (or expecting) will increase this.

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I like the idea of what they're going for with the missions, I just think it needs some massive improvements. The final bosses feel like damage sponges and overall they just feel kind of long compared to what you get out of it. That being said I haven't done them after the hotfix that "fixed" boss health.

Also, the Crystal Bloom support metric isn't very clear: I think I've only seen my individual contribution go up for the first achievement buying the karma, even though i bought other things with the support item. Like they need to make it way more clear to the community what they should be buying to hit the benchmarks.

For the most part I've liked IB content but haven't had time for it as I've been pushing leggies.

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@"Svennis.3852" said:

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:What do I think? It's all a bit boring, just those 3 near identical missions. I won't be contributing much to advance the progress bar. Here's hoping the next few weeks will be adding some more interesting and substantial stuff.

But this was it though, wasn't it? Next up now will be Wintersday in December and next part of Champions isn't coming until January?

It has been stated by the devs they will add more content between the ‘chapters’ of Champions. So we should get more additions and updates to this story content between now and Chapter 2 in January. It probably won’t be anything MAJOR, but they’re doing a steady/staggered release of content for Champions.

Ah, that's good to know. If that includes the 7 remaining DRMs then hopefully they can fix those before they release those, because this first batch of three really did not impress.

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@Randulf.7614 said:

@coso.9173 said:I wonder though. if this is an episode split into 4 chapters, what are these weekly updates?so we have a story (living world) divided into seasons (season 5 icebrood saga) divided into episodes (episode 5: champions) divided into chapters (truce) and divided into what now? paragraphs? XD

Just wait til we get Season 5. episode 5, Chapter 2, Paragraph 3, Sub section 4

Sub section 4 is only available after you have unlocked it with item 27B/6.

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I'm looking at this as them stretching out a single Living World episode over the span of several months because they don't have enough staff to deliver regular Living World episodes between now and the start of EoD. Like they didn't really have any options if they wanted to keep to a schedule other than possibly waiting on releasing the final Living World episode 4-6 months down the line.

I'm not going to say it's comparable to a Living World episode because it's absolutely not. But it's better than nothing.

That said, I think some of the systems could have been better explained, like the Mobilizing Allies global or the Dragon Mastery crystals for unlocking the mastery trees and how they're not all going to be available right away or something. I've had to answer questions in EotN with pure speculation and I hate doing that.

I also feel like there should have been more to the DRMs. Not saying "only releasing three" is bad, that's fine if we're playing the long game with Champions and more will get released as we go. What I am saying is that, as far as the content IN the DRMs, I feel like the challenges for Challenge Mode are kind of bland. Something that might have made things more interesting would be, like how Steel and Fire was handled. Because it feels like DRMs are a step backward from what we got with Steel and Fire. Taking Metrica Province as an example, we could have had side objectives with, say... Braham sensing more destroyers in an off-the-beaten-path area and you have to beat up a bunch of destroyers to "Rank Up" and get better rewards, or maybe separatists taking advantage of the chaos in Gendarran Fields, or a giant wurm miniboss spawns and starts wreaking havoc. Just... something like that.

I think, if we want to have good solid content in DRMs, the developers of this content could definitely take some notes from what they accomplished in Steel and Fire.

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  • Story was ok. Looking forward to what comes next.
  • Dialogue was mediocre. The overwrought Jhavi vs. Marjory bitch-fest was tiresome. Braham...well, anything with Braham inevitably pegs the emo scale. I don't know why the writer's hate him so much that they have mutilated his personality. Also, too many words. Tension and drama aren't created with words; they are created in the spaces in-between.
  • Confusing non-ending (hiatus?) that left most of us scratching our heads, even thinking that maybe the next quest step was bugged.

Response missions:

  • A nice change of pace from strike missions. Kudos.
  • Feel much more accessible to the general population.
  • A tad tedious in length, and repetitive in mob types.
  • In the first playthrough I was annoyed that much of the NPC dialogue occurred while moving and during combat, often making it difficult to hear or follow the conversation. But, repeating the missions, I am grateful that the NPCs aren't stopping to chit-chat before moving on - that would have quickly become tedious if one is repeating these daily.
  • Yes, it is a reuse of existing assets, but since the story occurs in the existing world, it seems inevitable that such reuse occurs. Also, this keeps the content from feeling like yet another siloed, disconnected, pointless strike mission which is irrelevant to the story events.

Issues like LFG party vs. squad need to be ironed out, but since it is likely that more response missions are coming, I'm sure that is being looked at now.

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