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Well to be honest I didn't really like that episode.I love the expansions (both , HoT and PoF) but this season I don't know...

SPOILER ALERT

  • The episode started pretty well but then I just had the feeling that I had to kill that many monsters or go find some objects here and there, and I didn't really pay attention to the story, I found that quite annoying.

  • I started to feel excited when I knew something happened to Taimi ( I love Taimi so I was like: Don't you dare touch her! i'm comming to the rescue!) but then Braham showed up, still super arrogant and immature. I hate him so much I wanted to kill him.

  • I wonder what you are going to do with him? Just please don't make my character say that he saved us and all ahaha

  • Otherwise well I love the game, you're doing a great job I love almost everything in gw2 and the expansions.I just didn't really like that episode, it misses something to me.

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The most stunning impressions :I am speechless. Surely ANet does listen to the community because :

  • Map exploration : I remember reading about PoF something alongside : "no need to do an event to explore the whole map", as a genuine good thing. Well. They've listened. If you don't do the meta, you've got a really hard, if not impossible time to explore Palawadan for example.
  • Paragons and dervishes : some say it's fan-service and a wink to GW1 vets ? More or less, this is how I would have considered it if there hadn't been that many threads in the forum asking for them to come back, as professions, as elites, or just the spear/scythe. That never was possible, mostly because of precious dev's time, which of course makes sense. And now, you see that precious dev's time has been used to create those classes for NPC's. Create the skills (paragons shouts, which are not boons btw. Back to the old system ?), create the animations. I'm saying "used", I could better say "wasted", because they've been created for disposable adds.
  • Big encounters : the big bosses. Uh... You really had a good time designing them eh ? So many fireworks, so many fields on the ground, so many jumps and things. And the very very last attack of the whole chapter. Instructions are just "survive". Survive to what ? To an endless flow of nonsensical attack ? A previous thread asked "When is a fight getting too long ?" My answer : when you're so bored, bewildered, and feeling that exact oblivion that's the opposite of "fun" that you end up facepalming and chuckling because you're figuring out the very serious staff meeting that ended up to that failure.

So obviously, ANet reads the forum and understands. Understands the urge to do exactly the contrary of what players are asking and enjoying. Because what ? Because they love raising the middle finger to their community ? I'm just speechless. It's a shame. It's a disgrace. This only sheds a nausea tainted shadow of the what the devs have in mind when they're creating content : their own fun. Their own toys. And waving them in front of a community starving for more than fan-service. You really should spend more time creating content for the players to use, and not for the player to see.

Now, some words about the rest :

New map :

  • Smaller than PoF's and easier too : good point.
  • Meta will probably deserted soon ?
  • Heart quests boring.
  • New awakened mobs are too insanely powerful. Paragons and dervishes are ok.
  • Some fan service which is fine.
  • Art is nice, but there's something (not in the water !) in Champion's Dawn that drops my FPS to 10 even on my high end computer.

Lore and story :

  • Too many deus ex machina : don't know something ? Ask Taimi ! Looking for something ? Ask Kito ! It feels like those sidekicks are dragging the PC from one place, one guy, and one idea to the other, in order to progress in the story. So it feels rushed, and it makes me wonder about how much they could anticipate compared to a braindead commander...
  • Overall, story was interesting and engaging
  • I'm disappointed about Koss. I understand the idea of course, but I also feel like Koss was too important of a hero to end up like that. And I bet it would be General Morghan actually. Would have correctly filled the bill, without using such a huge name. Just my two cents.

  • Braham... What to say that hasn't already been said 10,000 times before... Just kill him.

Miscelleanous :

  • QoL things were well appreciated.
  • New currencies seem less useful than LWS3.
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The map is pretty as always, but at this point I have come to expect pretty from Guild Wars 2 maps. I'm spoiled and I know it.

As mentioned before the end fight was... strange. I didn't mind the mechanics or the length, just the final part that made absolutely no sense to both me and the friend I was playing with. We were just running around like chickens. Very strange experience, and not one I'd like to repeat.

Have to say though, that he armadas of mobs in the last part gave it a really good, epic feel to it. The encounter with Amala was fun as well, especially since when we arrived at the starting point of the story part the meta was going and so we fought her two times in a row.

Also, the way we broke out of the cage was clever. I was honestly surprised about that, well done.

I put my feedback for the characters in spoiler tags. Yes, it's long.

 

Taimi

I don't mind Taimi, nor any other of the characters involved in the story atm. Yes, Taimi held a major place in this installment of the story, but the focus on her character wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I would still tone it down in the following chapters, since Taimi encompasses too many elements of a classical Mary Sue to not make players annoyed with her at some point. Her disability and age were oviously intended to counter that, but at least her age only makes the deus ex of her personality stand out more. She is a genius, everyone gets that, but I would actually like to see her struggle heavily with a problem nor simply not being able to solve it. Make her age matter more, show her inexperience that comes from being that young. Make her need actual help from someone (Zojja).

The Commander alias ME

I'm playing a human female character, and first of all I have to applaud the German voice actor again, because hell does she sound bitchy and above this shit. Marion von Stengel does an awesome job here, credit where it is due.

Storywise however, the portrayal of the commander bothers me a lot sometimes. In the personal story I picked the Vigil, so yes, it's perfectly justified for my character to go all Gryffindor "Take me as the bait, what could go wrong?", but what about a Durmand (Ravenclaw) or Whisper (Slytherin) character? Like seriously, there could have been more graceful ways to handle this. Living story isn't about different options, I know, but having at least two options to choose from would make the story a lot more believable in some aspects. They could end in the same outcome – getting knocked about by Amala – and still offer some difference in characterization.

Also the flippant use of "I died once already" irks me. Yes, the commander died, but good dammit we're still as human as they come. a) Nothing stops us from dying again & b) I doubt we'll be that fucking lucky again and come back from the Mists. I don't mind the arrogance in the dialogue, since it's justified in almost every case. The commander rocks, they deserve some respect for that. Just not the cocky I-have-immortality-by-plot-armor kind of arrogance, please. We know that we can't die, but that doesn't mean that the story has to flaunt it.

Other character

Ms. Pirate Captain S. Sly – whose first name I can't really remember – was a nice touch. Especially her warning, that if we ever came back to her ship, she would kill us. Go, girl. I like some spite in my NPCs, not to mention that her dialogue was highly entertaining.

Broham I'm still confliced with, and have been for a long time. I get that he was supposed to be an emo teenage boy hurt by the death of his mother – at least I hope so – but his entrance in this story chapter was... well, he and Rox served as plot devices here. First with the save, and then with the information of attacks in Tyria. Again, I see why it was done, but I don't necessarily agree with the way it was done. I'm some missing characterization here, with both him and Rox. It was nice touch that Rox at leats explained, why Garm isn't there. Props for that.

Koss was kind of a disappointment. The additioal dialogue, the tell, gave so much information about him, shaped him as deviant kind of fallen-against-his-will hero that defied his captors for centuries. He sounded badass. Then came the letters pinned to the cave walls. I enjoyed that a lot, it was such a nice touch. More characterization before the character, yes! And problem was that when we actually meet him he felt like so much less than I expected of him. Just another grumpy old, undead dude.

Why didn't I tell him what the old guy told me, about his history? Why didn't he act like what we were told? The tell and the show didn't match there.

 

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I've just got a small opinion to share about Mirage's Lingering Thoughts . In one of the patches this change was made:

"Lingering Thoughts: Lowered aftercast by 0.1 second. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to show an incorrect casting time. Added a 0.25-second recharge between uses of this skill to prevent accidental double use."

I personally liked it when there was not 0.25 in-between recharge time. I often do want to use this skill twice immediately. Now when I cast it for the first time, there is an awkward pause and I can't use Lingering Thoughts even after the short recharge. So in practice it seems like I need to wait a whole second before the second use.

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I just finished this and I would definitely say of all content I have played in GW2 this is the worst by a huge margin. Story started with fetch quests. We jumped all over the place with disconnected narrative trying too hard to push Joko, which 1) was locked in the mists 2) beyond uninteresting 3) will be crushed by like a bug by the pact+Charr+Human+Asura. He can barely hold a sliver in Elona and is being invaded by forged and branded, now he will try to take over Tyria?! This is suicide. Put some kitten common sense into the kitten story. Also, what the hell is this portals appearing in the middle of everywhere?! How kitten convenient.

As for the game play, too many uninteresting mobs. Both main boss fights were terrible in design and execution (HOLY KITTEN LIGHTS!!!!!).

I am really considering skipping LS 4 all together if the direction will be cheesy, disconnected and none nonsensical narrative. Story was never GW2 strongest suit, but now it is holding it back.

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I haven't done much in the new map since I was still working on PoF story and the griffon collections. I completed Daybreak story earlier tonight and soloed the last part. HOWEVER...

I don't have enough heals, dodges, condi clears, stability for all of the shit that got thrown at me, especially the last boss fight. I agree with others who have posted that more hints about what to do at 75%/50%/25% health on the final boss would have been nice, but I was able to figure out what to do with not much adverse effect. The mob HP in the last part overall should be looked at. I lost count of how much I went down, and I was trying my hardest to kite/strafe/dodge but the AOEs man.. holy wow. You're killing me, Smalls. And speaking of killing things..

Can we PLEASE have better dialogue options other than just standing there like a stump when an emo drama queen Norn HASN'T EVEN BEEN THERE WITH US SINCE BITTERFROST FRONTIER!? Your character from that point to when they were accused has been through hell and back without so much as a backbone to defend themselves!? Wow, such emo. Much whine. I'd be perfectly content to let that douchewaffle just.. die already. The dude is straight up delusional.

The map itself is fine.. but please, lay off of the stuff that made y'all put in so many freaking ibogas. If I never see ibogas again it'll be too soon.

Otherwise, the story itself was fine.

The new mastery doesn't even feel like a true mastery since we were harvesting unbound magic from the jump in Season 3. Also, with the new commitment to clear inventory thanks to the "keychain"... I think the portal tome should be a one time purchase, so separate "sections" can be made for Season 3, 4, and beyond.

Overall score of Daybreak (minus the last part) - 9/10The First City instance - 1/10

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I didn't write one for Daybreak so here it is:

Daybreak is one of the most complete episodes Arenanet has released so far with literally content for everyone on the PVE side.Raid: Due to the story behind it, I'm a bit disappointed it was done in one Wing, something like that should've been much larger, but still fun new encounters and bosses.

Fractal: I've only seen the lower tiers of the new fractal, it's fun, engaging and follows the new principle of mechanical complexity.

Map: Domain is Istan is a pretty new map that is a joy to explore, plus all the nostalgia from GW1. I dislike the Joko Wall though, it feels too game-y as a border. Maybe in the future the entire island of Istan will be one zone without walls?

Meta: The map has not one but TWO meta events. They fixed all the issues with the Path of Fire meta events, which seems like they are listening. The new meta events have fun events, lots of encounters instead of a single boss fight, lots of reward chests to get around, their notifications cover a huge area of the map so you can't miss them. Visibility, accessibility, enjoyment, reward. My one big complaint is with Archon Iberu (last boss of Palawadan) he uses an attack with a white light that is so huge it hurts my eyes. The other "problem" with the loot chests respawning even during the meta will probably be addressed SOON.

Race/Bounties/Adventures: It's a good thing that Arenanet remembered these from Path of Fire. The bounties, much like the Path of Fire bounties, need some reward push, especially the champions, it's hard to find people to hunt them, but overall it's good that they still exist.

Items: The map introduces new currencies, new weapon sets, new minis, following the reward system of Path of Fire with repeatable heart vendors, and adding new collections. The brandstone can be frustrating at times, but they found a way to make it a team-effort, more players = more rewards, which is always nice.

Achievements: There are also tons of collectibles and achievements on this rather small map to keep people busy.

Story: The story is exciting while Taimis performance is top notch. The story achievements are fair, and the instances aren't too long, expect for the last one which seems to be rather long for a story instance. There are also checkpoints that even help you in case of a DC, hopefully they will add an in-game alert that you got such a checkpoint so you know you can take a break.

Overall a great map. I hope the competitive modes get their fill like this one sometime during the Season.

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It's a tiny bit late, but I love the map metas, the Brandstone Research collection (MORE OF THESE PLEASE!), and the general design of the map. However, I dislike the idea that Anet's suddenly against killing characters off after the Eir instance. That was the best time to kill Taimi and give the main character a personal reason to go after Joko for revenge, and show a darker side to the Commander, whereas characters like the Sunspears would step in to tell the Commander to show restraint, or Kasmeer etc. Overall, the story was average for a Living World Episode, but generally speaking, I think the map and the events saved it: 6/10!

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Regarding Daily Corpse Caravan Disruptor: these should be definitely cut down in power because it's both hard to get one down alone and get people to help you (mainly because of both loot and quartz farming). Comparing with all previous Season 3 daily objectives, none was so annoying as this one - even Draconis Mons Daily Destroyer Wyvern Boss becuase for that one there was always someone needing item for collection so people were around.

So I suggest either making these easier to eliminate or completely replace it with "classic" objective - do X events in order to fill objective.

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So I enjoyed the map, enjoyed the story, but - with the exception of Koss - basically despised the instances.

Eye of the Brandstorm - The amount of particle effects going on once you enter the city is absurd. It took me 5-10 minutes of frustration just to find the first branded crystal because I couldn't tell wtf was going on. The wyvern fight was very unsatisfying because the progression of the fight is an illusion. The boss heals so rapidly that your efforts are meaningless; you're essentially stalling for time while Aurene does all the real damage. It was not fun.

The Hero of Istan - The Warden Amala fight had me barking at my screen. She. Will. Not. Stand. Still. A boss that teleports around is fine but this one leaps and spins and teleports SO often that it was pure frustration. Again, not fun.

The First City - This one is the real offender for me, and there are multiple reasons:

  • Too long. The entire instance is too long. I hate to be one to decry more content but seriously it was too long.
  • The mob swarms are too much. Once? Sure. Three or four or five times? No.
  • The condition spam on some of these awakened is ridiculous. I'm playing a S/D Water/Arcane/Weaver with swiftness spec who is basically built to never have conditions, and I couldn't keep up with all of it. I cannot imagine how other classes dealt with that Arbiter.
  • The final fight with Scruffy is about three times longer than it should be, particularly in an instance as long as this one with a couple bosses in it already. Also, again, I'm a S/D weaver; I've got CC coming out of my ears and all of it was entirely useless. These bosses with no break bar mechanics that are ALSO completely immune to CC have got to go. Not fun.
  • Braham is still being a whiny little teenager, and the Commander still doesn't say a word about it. Boy needs daddy's belt something fierce. Or mabye Taimi can tell him to stfu, I don't care. I'm just sick of him and it seems like everyone else is too.

I just finished the episode and the frustration I have coming out of it is almost Caudecus all over again. Your game should never have me yelling at my screen, Anet. Never.

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Map - I love it, I think its a really fun map to explore. Very impressed with the scale of it as well considering how quickly it came out. Overall very good map

Mastery - Pretty much what I expected, but I do think its quite boring to not be able to pick up the new currency until you have this mastery. Its also uninspired. Hopefully the rest of the mastery track in LWS4 matches stuff like the druid magic mastery.

Story - Very fun and engaging to play! Seriously, I think the story telling goes up with each release. Not going to go into any spoilers, but overall very good. Still hate Braham with a passion

Instances - Pretty good for the most part. I think the last one was too long, and I didn't actually enjoy that instance very much. The final fight was also extremely annoying to play. Quite a long fight, at the end of an already long instance. And not a single safe space to stand if you wanted to check your phone, or go grab food, or use the restroom, due to those goddamn asura cannons. And the little lightning shits that the boss spins around on the platform to create the storm of AoE,s please for the love of god remove the pull on those! They were pulling me through mirage cloak, they would pull me even as I was trying to run away. For the life of I have no idea how a class without any teleports gets out of those if they mess up and get caught. Hell, if I was caught in one, I could use Jaunt to get out and at max range, teleporting behind it (so its moving farther away from me), I would still be close enough to be pulled by them. That's not a fun mechanic to me, I was really hoping it would stay in HoT. Other than those lightning shits, the only thing I think that could make this fight better is to disable the asura cannons near one of the little gates whenever you destroy each little gate. If only to give players a spot to go stand for a few seconds, which is needed due to the length of hte instance and the fight.

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Okay i know i’m a couple months late, but life’s been crazy so I only just finished playing the story recently.I’m not sure what problem prompted you to disable selling rose quartz, but as a perpectually broke player who somehow never capped 200g in the going-on five years since I bought the game, hearing everyone lament the profits they’re no longer making is kind of a kick in the teeth. I’d appreciate a little more transparency on why you make changes to rewards when y’all do. As well as some thoughts on what you’re going to do to fix it.

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! I like the attention to detail when it comes to the story, when it comes to the human side of things, and I loved the fact that with the recent tech improvements the team at Arenanet are making great strides to make what I wanted since living world season 1 (and had the courage to write on the forum during season 2) a possible library in the home instance where we collect all of our books from our long adventures throughout Tyria, the planet. I also enjoyed the prospect of having at least 2 additional maps to go to on this archipelago and the callback to the Prophecies and Nightfall missions with the closing of the portals. I also enjoyed the fact that for the first time there was a villain that just reacted negatively to the communicator. And the jailbreak that was profession tailored was inspired, more of those, please.! What I didn't like in this episode was an issue that I still had when the Crack in the Ice episode rolled around and that's the grieving human child's attitude of Braham instead of him acting like a grieving norn young adult(besides the story journal entry error involving the frozen quaggan squad, no in story reason to talk to the NPC about the scroll in Hoelbrak prompted, not calling the Kodan chieftain vendor a Claw like their lore demands them to, no actual mention of one of the fallen totem spirits in statue form in the constantly freezing area when it comes to that Living Story season 3 release); that character breaking issue still jars me to this day. Another thing that was barely touched upon in the actual map, but not enough in the last story instance are the improvements that the Inquest made after they researched all of Scarlet's designs, or from the Zinn's lost research. The only actual improvement being the teleportation devices and nothing else visible in any way. They still acted and dressed like the 2012 inquest with just an Awakened touch up to them. It really makes that Arah wing and the Aetherblades be like the exception to what credible threats they might be and fall flat without that Kudu or Scarlet leading them.

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Being a new player and coming from another wildly popular MMORPG, I felt the actual storytelling in episode 1 was fantastic (I caught up with almost all of the pre-PoF story via youtube) and imparted a rather deep sense of urgency which is absent in most games.

One element I think would be worth exploring in future episodes (perhaps throughout the entire season and maybe even beyond through the next expansion) would be the ramifications our character's actions have and the public's perception of us because of SPOILERS our very rash, I'll thought out actions have had i.e. Joko alive and well and terrorizing Tyria and Kralkatorrik being stronger and more dangerous than before.

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I enjoy the first chapter. The final fight is a tough one, but we should be a little seasoned fighters by now after 2 expansions right? :)As far of too much of any NPC 'x' I can't decide, it's just the first chapter. I don't like Braham. Have you ever thought about a NPC becoming corrupted, like Arthas (WoW/Lich King)? Drive Braham mad in a tragic way, becoming the enemy of what he once fought for, blind, obsessed.Anyway I'm looking forward to whatever this new LS has to offer!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Liked everything a lot. A lot, a lot. Just wish the last chapter to the episode was a dungeon I could do over and over again with other people.

That and I'd like for the side story to be a bit stronger. RoX's huge eyeballs and slight smile delivering the message that Tyrian cites are under attack kind of made that seem like no big deal. That just needed a bit of a stronger narrative with more follow up outside of Istan.

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Like:

  • The new meta.
  • Great scenery.

Dislike:

  • Please stop putting story instance exit popup in the middle of the screen, it is really really really easy to accidentally click on it when helping friends to complete story instances.
  • The Scruffy fight was a bit too long for me.
  • can't find anything interesting to buy with the new currency.
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Like:

  • Domain of Istan is varied and beautiful
  • The new meta event(s)
  • The story was OK-ish. Can we please tell Bram to stop whining already?

Dislike:

  • The Astral/Stellar weapons: they are expensive (55 ectos for an Exotic on top of all that other stuff? Thanks, but no thanks.), getting them is a grind, I find them ugly, and they come in a stat combination I have no use for.
  • Related to that, there is not much else to buy for Kralkatite or Volatile Magic.
  • Can we stop doing this thing were access to a PoI, and hence map completion, is gated behind a map meta? Especially when the event doesn't even run for significant amounts of time (no Sunspear Uprising during the night, due to Palawadan meta), or stalls completely (as happened yesterday evening on at least two EU map instances).
  • The story instances were a bit long; the last one was way too long. I don't think I will replay the story on any of my alts.
  • The story fights felt frustrating because of all the AoE, conditions, control effects, boss movements and add-spawns that get thrown at you. If your goal was to get us to spec into more defense - congratulations, I've now traited my Thief main into as much evasion, sustain and condi removal as possible while remaining stealthless.
  • Performance during the Palawadan meta is abysmal. As is performance in Champion's Dawn.
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Probably the worst living story release since the Season 2 party instance. Story was boring and the the first and last boss are just horrible cc/time sinks. The last boss I literally had to look up a youtube video after dying 5 times trying to get those lightning aoe attacks to land on the sparks, if you want to use some stupid item which i'd advise against anyways atleast make it clear. Map looks good but there doesn't seem to be any reason to go back.

I'd stopped playing the game altogether after the continuing pushing for hardcore raid like content and came back to see if I was missing anything and this living story instance certainly didn't supply any reason for returning.

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PoF and LWS4 have just felt like reliving the Guild Wars 2 release back in 2012 <3 <3 <3 Enjoying the game so much more now (even though it is not really the game that was released these days :) )

Absolutely loved it! LWS4 so far is great. My only real complaints are "hidden" achievements There are some that if it not for the wiki and map chat I would never have stumbled upon and discovered, I spend a lot of time around the content (or what I consider a lot at least). I know some find that aspect fun but for me it is not, while I am not a 100% completionist I do like to get a majority of the achievements and content completed before moving to newer content. I only ask that "hidden achievements" be made as "locked achievements" but visible in the appropriate achievements section and with a hint ( a small one ;) ) of were to go.

The only other comment I wold make is that with those of us who've been here (active, no brakes in playtime) since 2012 we have accumulated many gizmoz, books, portals, passes and the like. While this would really be a post for the gem store suggestions I don't think it should be a gem item as much as an addition. I think we need a Library added to the bank/wardrobe system going forward, to add our new (YAY =) <3 =) ) lore books and gizmoz used only once or twice. I'm already using an altichar to hold the books from PoF :o Just a hope.

10/10 LWS4 <3 Good Job! (bugs are to be expected, though so are fixes ;) )

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