MarySueLlama.8136

I'm really not pleased with the change either. I've been playing for 10 years and I don't feel this was something that needed to be messed with. It's totally OK to leave stuff alone sometimes. I'll go through bouts of playing heavily, playing just for dailies, or just logging in for the little brown daily chest in the corner. It depends on what's going on in my life at the time. And sometimes, it's the little old "samey" details that keep me coming back. Recently, I'd been on a break, but that little chest got me logging in and starting to do some of the dailies again, and then even the post-EOD living story content. And I really enjoyed it. But honestly, I won't be able to afford the Secrets expansion anytime in the foreseeable future, and thus I'm not particularly motivated to look into what these new little blue reward things are, because I know a lot of it won't apply to me. So, I probably won't even log in anymore for a while, if they've changed up some of the other dailies too, like I'm hearing. Do the devs care if one particular player logs in or not? I have no idea if that matters to them. But I am disappointed with this. Sorry.

I'm happy that they finally (from the sound of it?) have made checkpoints for the final battle instance in HoT. If they're saying what I think they're saying, it shouldn't be a hell-gauntlet of wasted time anymore if you die from one little mistake, like accidentally gliding out of bounds during one of the phases and getting kicked, and having to start the whole darn thing over again. That's happened to me more than once, and made me dread grinding out the story content for my chars who aren't there yet. Maybe I'll stop putting it off now 😂 Re: the class changes, I'm still behind on a bunch of the elite specs, so I haven't gotten to test some of the altered skills yet, but I'm sorry to everyone whose existing builds got screwed up, I know that's a pain in the rear end. I have trouble remembering the names of my thief skills, but I've actually been getting good on my thief lately, so I hope they didn't mess around with things so much that I have to completely scrap my build and start over.

I really liked the story when all was said and done, I'd give it probably like an 8/10. Up there with HoT and LW season 4 as one of the highlights of the series for me. I think one of the HUGE things that helped me enjoy it so much was that I fully completed each map before finishing the story parts for the map, as much as possible (except for 3 POIs in Dragon's End). These maps were absolutely beautiful, and while going around exploring, I overheard a ton of ambient dialog that really enhanced the environment and gave some extra bits of lore. Also liked how the hologram news things updated as you progressed the story, that was awesome. In games, a story not reacting to itself can be a huge immersion breaker. I'll say also as a disclaimer that I've played GW1, but not completed it, so I didn't have any prior knowledge/expectations of Cantha as I haven't gotten to that part yet, and only read bits of the wiki. So I know that this could be skewing my perspective somewhat in favor of this GW2 interpretation of Cantha, whereas others who have played a ton of GW1 might be disappointed in it, and that's totally valid if it's not what they were hoping for. Mai Trin coming back in seemed a little weird, but I didn't necessarily dislike it. What I didn't fully understand, though, was why her eyes flashed red during her final standoff w/ Ankka? I felt like that was Scarlet-related, but then Mai just got shot and died. Maybe it's supposed to show that she had learned to "subdue" Scarlet, but I just feel like...wouldn't someone like Scarlet have fought tooth and nail to take control at that moment and ensure that her host *didn't* get killed? Idk, I never would've expected a revenant to use Scarlet, but as soon as that alarming and interesting thought was presented, it was just taken right away again, which was kind of a bummer. About halfway through the story, I was starting to rage over the fact that Soo-Won was good-natured, because numerous krait, largos, and quaggans in the main Tyria content have been complaining about being chased out of the deep ocean for ages. But then out of nowhere, in the act when you have to go back to NKC after Echovald, I found Ela Makkay on a rooftop somewhere (I swear she wasn't there in earlier acts), and she voiced EXACTLY the weirdness of this whole situation and I was just like thank god. So we know now from her, at least, that when Soo-Won DSD *left* the deep ocean to come to Cantha, that was when the krait/largos/quaggans got forced out. But, I still want some clarification, though, on *what* forced them out. All we ever got before this was "tentacled horrors." Were they Void tentacles? Or were they something else? There's been allusion to something melting/moving at the bottom of the Jade Sea, that whole "ione" thing...is it related to that? The Void imo has eldritch horror qualities to it, in that NPCs can lose their minds just by looking at it, and so that *would* account for horrors that Krait/Largos/Quaggan think are too terrible to describe. But, like I said, confirmation sometime? 🤞 I do feel, like some people have said, that the last act was kind of rushed, even though I loved the final story battle and epilogue. My problem was that after beating Li, we go back to Arborstone for the War Council and suddenly there's all this info about the Speakers and Brotherhood joining forces w/ us, and I feel like I missed something. But I know I didn't miss any actual story content. So either that part was rushed, or else the mention of it happened in a meta or something and I missed it while trying to not die, idk. I also have no idea who Fa is or where he came from. And where is Yao this whole time - I was so excited about this nonbinary character with a legit jade mech arm, and they seemed tied closely with Joon, but in the final battle they were nowhere to be found, and after the credits if you go and talk to them, they even talk about how they were nowhere to be found during the final battle, almost like Anet was poking a little fun at themselves for this or something? Idk, that was disappointing how they were underused. I really liked Ivan though, it's about time we have a dredge in the gang, and I like his outfit. Didn't like: upon entering Dragon's End map, trying to do the story, I was suddenly bombarded with meta dialog that was explaining stuff I wasn't ready to hear yet, and that sometimes literally interrupted the actual story dialog I was trying to listen to as I placed the extractors. That map, as pretty as it is, is kind of a playability disaster, and needs tweaking. They need to put your extractor stuff into a story instance, separate from the meta, so that this chaos doesn't happen, because it was kind of brain-frying. Also, the actual Void-stricken areas weren't as creepy as I was hoping. The 5 "Echovald Unmade" achievement spots were stomach-churning, skin-crawling, etc, really kind of digging into a horror aspect, and I didn't feel that nearly as heavily when walking around Dragon's End. There were a couple of places I couldn't even get to look at long enough because of that Void debuff that kills you in like 5 seconds. So aside from like, one unnamed laborer dude in the quarry whose ambient dialog mentioned that he "talked to the Void," the atmosphere of Dragon's End definitely felt rushed. The uneasy music was the only thing that helped with it. Also didn't like: Canach's new VA. I know a lot of people like Matthew Mercer, but he just isn't cut out for this one. Please bring back John DiMaggio, he did Canach a million times better. Anyway, trying not to stray to anything too technical, I guess the one other story point to address is that...idk, it doesn't seem clear to me how Aurene is not exploding from being overloaded with all of the dragon magic, without her having to be stuck in a reactor like Soo-Won. Is a bunch of the magic stored in the world's ley lines? Is Aurene going to have to have offspring to manage the overload, like Soo-Won did, and she'll just try harder not to let them get corrupted by the Void? I've always envisioned dragon magic in Tyria working like energy- neither created nor destroyed, just transferred around, so I just always find myself asking, where is it, where did it go? But I may be understanding wrong. Anyway I really ended up being impressed by the story overall, the voice acting other than Canach's was great and there were some really good cinematic scenes. With all the horrible things Ankka did, she still had a few elements to her character that felt relatable, which makes for a good villain. The Void, being sort of an eldritch horrory thing, is also a good villain. Gorrik was easily the Dragon's Watch MVP in this for me, he is just so well-done and his VA shines constantly. Really good music for the most part too, sometimes the GW2 soundtrack is hit-or-miss for me, but there were a lot of good tracks in this expac.

I've been struggling with figuring out what things are/are not salvageable also. The wiki page for Research Kits does not have an exhaustive list yet, so I tried going on my weaponsmith and making a Wooden Sword and Rough Sharpening Stones, and those I can confirm do not work. Probably because they are inexpensive to make. I just want to know the most cost-effective way to get research notes, because I have plenty of lower-level crafting mats that I don't use much, and I'd like to know if I should keep selling them, or try to make stuff out of them to salvage for research notes 🤔 Anet, can we has clarification on this when you get a chance? I don't have the bag space or bank space to science this out as much as I would like to. *coughs in Supreme Rune of Holding TP expense/casino RNG*

Sorry if this has been discussed, but after an intense search, I can't seem to find it. It's probably just a minor thing, and not super important to the story, but it's been bugging me every time I've done the heart: When you're doing the renown quest to help Magister Razermane match the old weapons to the correct owners' tombs, there's one tomb (close to where she stands) that says something like "the inscription looks deliberately rubbed off." And when you try to interact with it further, Magister Razermane says "There's no need to investigate this one. I'll take it from here." It seems like an unusually careful detail to me- like it's indicating this tomb has some sort of significance to her or something. And why is the name rubbed off- did she do it, or was it someone else?And why? On the GW2 wiki, it says that this tomb belongs to Viggo, an NPC from GW1, and that his ghost sometimes wanders the area as an enemy during an event, but I can't seem to find anything about his life in particular that would warrant his name being rubbed off of the tomb by other humans he knew, or who came after him. And if Razermane has a personal grudge against him, then why him, in particular, when there are so many other human ghosts around? It's certainly possible that I'm 100% overthinking this, but it's been bugging me for years, and I'm just wondering if anyone knows more about it. Thanks!

If any devs are reading, I'm totally on board for leaving these particular humanoid NPCs open for fan ships 😉 Taimi and Gorrik, on the other hand, would make an adorable couple, and I agree that the dialog hints at it. I already loved the times when they've shared the comms back and forth trying to talk to the Commander, like in Thunderhead Peaks, it was super cute.

Ok cool, thanks 👍

Still not working for me either 😞 I was hoping for a response by someone from the team at this point, somewhere, just to acknowledge that they're aware of the problem, if nothing else. Was looking forward to playing today.

Same failure to load game after logging in to launcher. I don't leave my desktop, and I don't hear any audio from the game. Alt tab does not close the game. Open Task Manager to shut the game down, but then Task Manager freezes. Have to restart pc. Would like to see a tweet from Anet acknowledging the issue and possible ETA of a fix. Thanks.

-Been playing an engi since 2013 and put together my own build, been using it so long without any complaints that it's hard for me to pop into this new elite and be impressed by the new skills. But, signets... signets are just never that cool-looking to me, and I only use them when necessary on any class. Mostly for passive run speed. -I've been using the condi-clear elixir on my toolbelt as a clutch, sometimes emergency condi clear in addition to the main Elixir C. I don't like losing it, and I don't like having the toolbelt skills in general being attached to the golem no matter what kit you have on or what skills you have in 6-9. -Idk if this is just me, but I feel like the mech also doesn't stay in my vision as well as I would like, I feel like it's hard for me to keep track of what it's doing sometimes, and I really wish there were more direct controls for it, so that it felt more like a tool. With it auto-attacking by default, it feels like a ranger pet. -General appearance of the golem: on its bottom half, the jade pieces look fine, but the jade on the shoulders/back/top part of the golem look really untextured, too light in color, and overall just kind of plastic-looking. It doesn't look right and it doesn't match the bottom half of the golem, it's weird. Maybe it's not completely finished yet or something, but the top jade parts need to be fixed to look more like the bottom ones. -I do like the visual of the golem's elite skill beam, that looks pretty cool.

ugh...I just solo'd the 3 story maps for a completely unrewarding cliffhanger? I guess that was a mistake. Not a huge fan of this update, ngl :(

LOL, I think my overall favorite is Tangled Depths, even though after years of playing in it I STILL get lost following the HP trains there ALL the time. Maybe that's what I like about it- even though I have at least one character who has 100% on it, it's so complex that it doesn't feel "used up" or "finished" or "old." I also really like the giant underwater tunnel on the lowest level. (I LOL'd because I didn't expect to see so many other people say they like it when literally every time I go there half the map chat is "OMG I hate this map!") But other than the chak eggs being icky, it's a really pretty map and I really like the Nuhoch npcs. CORE- Metrica Province/Brisban Wildlands, and then certain areas of the Shiverpeaks but not any particular map there. Timberline Falls would get it if it wasn't so full of leeks and krait. Especially the leeks. HOT - Tangled Depths, see abovePOF - Desert Highlands because it's got the least desert in it. The snowy dwarven area, the wetlands, and the big chunk of brand give it good variety. The desert areas are beautifully crafted, it's just that I don't like hot places. I do have to offer serious compliments on the palm trees- whoever designed those has absolutely been to Florida or somewhere else where you can't get away from them lol. 90% of the top part IRL is just dead tan fronds hanging off and then a tiny green fringe at the top, and you guys NAILED it! xD A meticulous detail that needs to be appreciated. LW - Draconis Mons, Bloodstone Fen, Sandswept Isles. The first 2 are aesthetically gorgeous and way more fun now that I have a skyscale. And Sandswept I just love the north meta with the eerie driftwood and the sunken chests afterward. I kind of like Ember Bay and Kourna too but not all areas of them. Siren's Landing is awesome but way too small. And Dragonfall is pretty in the Melandru area, but it's just way too flippin hard to get around before you have the skyscale, it's like prohibitively hard and I pretty much couldn't do the meta at all until I had one because I couldn't keep up with the zergs who had them.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS: I finished the episode yesterday- I enjoyed it overall, but there were a few things that didn't sit right with me:-When you step in the dark blue stuff (I think in the last instance?) and get the debuff, it says something about it being Jormag's blood or something? And Iceblood Channel, Veins of Jormag, and The Bloodfields are all locations on this new section of map, and when you go flying around in the NE corner of the map to explore, you see a bunch of large pipes with a purpose that's not really explained in the story content. I feel like there was a setup there for us to learn something interesting about how Jormag functions and what both the flowing ice and the goo are, but it's never addressed, and that disappointed me.-With trying to avoid spoilers here, "A Simple Negotiation" was really enjoyable for me personally, but then my player character's reaction to it ruined the mood. It felt inconsistent with the commander's attitude in the previous episode- the commander witnessed and was forced into literal war crimes, but now chastises an NPC who doesn't like that person? Just no, that was not ok with me. The story has occasionally railroaded my player character to act in ways that I don't personally see as appropriate for how I envision the character, and I know that can't always be avoided due to the storytelling mechanic, but this was definitely one of those times and it was irritating. It would've been nice to be able to choose from 2 or 3 different responses instead.-The stuff involving the spirit totems in front of the door felt way too cluttered with other players being there, especially while trying to read the chat bubbles of the story characters. People kept chatting in "say" and it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on with the NPCs. These parts of the story should have been in a private instance like the other private instances. I'm not even really sure what happened with Owl because that part went by so quickly and there were a ton of other players running around and being distracting.-The Wolverine adventure needs to have a different method of exiting the instance, because "Exit to Drizzlewood Coast? Yes/No" kept popping up constantly during the fight, and there wasn't much room to physically avoid it. It was distracting, and I was also worried I was going to click on the wrong thing and exit the instance before I was done and have to start over. Maybe make the room bigger, or have the player have to interact specifically with a certain object to leave.-As others have mentioned, the notices about different control points being under attack/retaken etc are just too damn big on the screen. Sometimes they make terrain hard to navigate, other times they obscure mobs that can totally see you, and when the story is going on and you're trying to read the character dialogues and story prompts and everything else, it's just too much stuff popping up on the screen.-This is just personal preference, but the "Epilogue" notation at the end made it feel like this is going to be the end of the Icebrood Saga, and if that's the case, and we don't get any more story until the next expansion, it's a real downer of a way to end a story arc. At least in season 4 we succeeded at stuff. Here, we could see all these problems coming, and we tried our hardest to stop it, but still couldn't do anything. At least some tidbit of good news elsewhere in Tyria, or some sort of new lore secret from Aurene, would've been cool. (Idk, maybe I'm too used to the Taimi stuff where no matter whether we fail or succeed, we at least collect some data we can use to prep for the future. :) )

my god, I had to fight him with Phase Shift AND Laser on at the same time today >.> Fought it again with easier ley buffs and it still failed. Feels like I'm never gonna get this bounty for the achievement- Anet, please either nerf this thing's spammy cc healing bar, or else reclassify it as a Legendary so that people know it's a doozy going into it, and it can hopefully attract a larger group of players to come fight it with "Legendary" in its name.

I appreciate very much that they released this episode in spite of current world events- the voice actors are great, and I look forward to the voice version, but I'm really glad to have had new story content to play sooner than later. This episode overall was well done IMO. Not my favorite, but still enjoyed it. PROS:-Probably the prettiest Ascalon-ish map I've seen yet. The stark autumny colors in places like Diessa are a bit hard on my eyes sometimes, but this area is really lovely. (actually not really sure whether it's part of Ascalon or not, but it's pretty nonetheless.) -Powerful tension created by Smodur- he was a timebomb waiting to go off and it was edge-of-the-seat waiting to see where the shoe was gonna drop. I'm genuinely disgusted by him now, he really stole a lot of the show in this episode and I'm looking forward to seeing him get what he deserves at some point. -Intense follow-up to Visions of the Past as well, after having done a long, grueling battle alongside the Steel warband and gotten to like the characters. It hit a lot harder to see what happened to them in this episode; honestly I got more attached to them than I am to Ryland, so it sucks to have to fight them in this one. They had some good dialogue in the Visions instance. -The airstrike horn at the end of the story, and during the meta, is genuinely unsettling, and I saw someone else saying that too. I'm actually more creeped out by it than the sound of the dragons roaring tbh. -The Tengu journal and rock-carving thing is awesome. It's an interesting way to collect weapon skins, and the area having been inhabited by Tengu makes me curious about its history. (I know that it might not ever come up directly in the narrative, but it still gives the area a certain extra appeal to have "history" to it revealed by pieces of a journal.) -The cost of teleporting to the different outposts feels pretty reasonable, considering how much currency other things can cost in the game. -Nice to have something new to use gossamer scraps for, since the bolts don't sell for much on the TP. CONS:-I didn't like having to drop the grenade in the hole after getting the choice to say no. I know Rytlock is supposed to be rash sometimes, but idk if he really would've been like "we have to throw it in" as quickly as he did, especially given how much he hates Smodur and how he had literally just agreed with me that something seemed off. It just felt a little hamhanded to me, I feel like I don't want to be given the choice if it's going to be forced to happen anyway--just have some other NPCs steal it from us and do the dirty work or something if it can't be avoided. -I didn't like running out of chest keys so quickly in the Keeper part of the meta, I'm hoping it won't turn out to be expensive/exhausting to grind the keys and purchase them ahead of the meta. -I had a pretty easy time getting around with a skyscale, but I'm not sure if a lot of the vistas and journal pages etc can even be reached with other mounts in this map? It looks like it would be tough in some spots. If this map can't be completed 100% without a skyscale, then that's not cool- I don't think every other mount should be made obsolete even if the skyscale has been out for a while, because it still takes forever for a new player to grind the collection for it since some of the components are timegated, and the stinky sausage costs a lot of money on the TP. I'm a longtime player but I've only had my skyscale for like 2 weeks, so the frustration is still very recent, it sucks when you can't keep up with a meta because most people have the mount and you don't. (cough Dragonfall) -I kind of alluded to this before, I'm still not feeling super emotional one way or another about Ryland- I only care what happens to him because he's Rytlock's kid. Maybe if Braham showed up again somewhere, since they had that instance with being drinking buddies and then the scuffle over the bow, maybe that would give opportunity for a bit more depth of character development on Ryland's part or something. -So the rest here applies to Icebrood Saga in general for me, not just this episode: this Charr civil war is interesting, well-done content, but tbh it feels like there's been civil war amongst the Charr throughout all of GW2 anyway because of the Flame Legion. So for me it's not like, as super crazy-awesome mind-bending interesting as other things could be, when there's the whole GW world to pick from. Reading up on how sometimes the devs don't have time to include certain things in the story (for example, Malyck and the existence of other Pale Trees), I feel like, if there's a limit on what aspects of the GW world we get to see, there's other stuff that would be more unique and interesting than this. We've seen a lot of Charr and Human stuff at this point. A decent amount of Norn stuff I think, though the Bjora lore fell a bit short for me. I'd love to understand more about how Sylvari came to be, though they're also a fairly new race, so there's not a huge ton of history there, and they had a lot of presence in HoT.How about something like a season focused on Asuran history, like something showing flashbacks of their escape from Primordus and them coming to the surface for the first time- something having to do with Asuran culture itself, and not just having them appear whenever their technology is needed? We got a teaser of Asuran history with Rata Novus, but it still didn't feel like it got explored to a satisfying extent, at least for me. We know that they're not just arrogant nerdy rat people, because we've seen characters like Taimi, Blish, and Gorrik with all different facets to their personalities, weaknesses they try not to reveal about themselves, etc, that kind of thing. We see cranky older NPCs like Phlunt, and that guy in Rata Sum who talks about hanging by his ears from a signpost. What was life like for these elderly Asura when they were kids? How developed was Rata Sum? What made these old people so cranky and cynical when they've got the most convenient tech out there?When and how did the Inquest start? Why do some Asura run off and join run-of-the-mill Tyrian pirate crews, like in Gendarran Fields or Bloodtide Coast- are they frustrated by technology and the pressure to innovate all the time? Do they want to be around non-Asura for various reasons? Do they genuinely think it's a good business venture, in spite of the danger and the uncertainty of being able to find good plunder? We got a bit of story on the Olmakhan who branched off from the other Charr for example, I thought that was a really cool concept. Are there Asura like that?Also, how is Zojja doing after all this time?Some of my wording on this may sound kind of silly I know, but I really do think there's a lot more Anet could do with Asura as a whole- for one of the playable races, they just don't really feel like they get as much depth as the others, they seem more like comic relief characters who are convenient for tech reasons--I'd really like to see the main story of GW2 go in a direction that's a bit less redundant than another Charr civil war. The Charr power-vacuum-without-Branded thing totally makes sense, don't get me wrong, but there doesn't have to be a whole season focused solely on it. It could be a side plot, or something that happens partially offscreen and is discussed by the Dragon's Watch members while doing something else. I'm hoping for some DSD content at some point, and it'd be cool if other aspects of the world could branch out in the story as well. There's a lot of cool stuff in the GW world to choose from.