Hello All,
I've returned to GW2 recently, after having played a month or two around the HoT Launch, and been progressing through the story slowly but surely, grabbing some map completions here and some side-adventuring there. The game's great, with a beautiful aesthetic, intimidating monsters and honorable fights. I just made it through Living World Season 4, and while the dialogue was middle-school levels of cringe, the scenery, enemies and encounters were glorious. Excited to mount one of those cool Dragons, I started the Skyscale Quest...
Step 1. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'
Uh, okay. Not my cup of tea but if it has to happen, I'll do it.
Step 2. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'
Wait, didn't I just do this? It's roughly the same locations too... and all I have to... kitten, I guess I'll roll with it.
Step 3. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'
There is no excuse. Who designed this? Who thought of this? Why was there not one veteran interjecting and correcting this? How'd it get greenlit for launch? This isn't some silly hidden side-quest, this is the most popular mount in the game, and you're going with this?
After taking a little break I, feeling like I was being clowned while doing it, went around Dragonfall to once again press Interact at 20 random locations. Now I've just received a list of another 20 or so quests, which'll be followed by another 20 or so quests, and the first one is:
Step 4. Go to the map 'Dragonfall' and kill 150 random enemies
Yeah, this needs to desperately be reworked, top to bottom. I'm convinced not even those silly P2W Grind-Fest games have quest-lines this blatantly low quality. If you asked me "Make an absolutely terrible questline", the purposefully terrible nonsense I'd come up with would be more engaging and fun than this. A game that asks you to kill 20 wolves north of town, wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 150 wolves north of town. Can anyone explain this?
Now when I bring this up in-game, I am faced with the collective trauma of gamers that slogged through honest to God the single dumbest quest-design I've ever seen in my life. "If they change it, people would be furious!". That's bad reasoning, and is forcing newcomers / returning players obviously looking to get the kitten Dragon mount to engage with Game Design that wouldn't be acceptable in the Alpha Demo Version of the first Runescape. This can not be good for the game, and the idea that you've already had half the player-base tortured, so up-on-the-rack go the other half should be wholly ignored. If you have a Skyscale today, in your heart of hearts, do you honestly not want the people coming in now not to have to do this?
While I'd love an explanation for the philosophy of this questline... I mean, I can't rhyme the quality of the rest of the game with the literal-zero-braincell-design of this... Is the philosophy of this questline literally "Make it as bad as humanly possible"? Anyway, I feel fully justified in asking for a fix, not just for me but for every other player that's looking to get the Dragon mount, the main mount. This is a stunning stain on a game that doesn't seem to have that hardcore 'grind, grind, grind' mindset anywhere else...
TL;DR The Skyscale Questline is the dumbest thing I've seen for as long as I've been playing games, and needs to be fixed. Back me up here...