Echovald wilds critiques

[artcreator.4859]

How would you grade the map so far? Plus do you have any critique or worries for it

[artcreator.4859]

I voted B. Whats stopping this from being an A or S is:

 

1)content - this map looks a lot like HoT,  hot had a lot of fun combat ideas and lots of new creatures, if this map can’t bring new stuff and many new creatures to the table it may just be a worse hot map, so far it felt like a more tamed HoT map (more boring). I felt like shing jea had interesting combat ideas but this map seems to have fallen off a little.

 

2) the meta - will this be one of the challenging fun ones like marionette or dragon stand , or one of the Grindy button spam ones, like jokos fortress?

 

we’ll just have to wait until the release to see 

Edited November 13, 2021 by artcreator.4859

[AgentMoore.9453]

I don't think a whole lot was shown in the teaser, so I can't fully weigh in. I also have no idea what those poll options are supposed to be, so - Lukewarm reception?

I will say, however, that I was under the impression that the Echovald region was like a dark spooky cathedral forest and I didn't get that vibe from the trailer so much as a ramshackle jungle ruin/outpost. The room with the catwalks and chains looked kind of neat, but I guess the map just doesn't feel as mysterious and foreboding as expected. Opinion may change once we can actually go there and look around.

EDIT: Finally got the opportunity to sit and watch the Guild Chat stream as well. I see now why people are saying this feels like a Heart of Thorns map, because it very much does, maybe with a bit of Metrica Province Inquest presence thrown in there. The fog and general shape of the map seem fine, but the overpowering green makes the place seem more lush than creepy.

I guess I was expecting sort of a muted, ashen palette with yellow or cold lighting in the places that light could be found.

Edited November 13, 2021 by AgentMoore.9453

[radda.8920]

It looks good visually. In the sense that we find good colors and normal saturation and not the horror of shing jea. But it looks like a generic maguma map, I even had the impression of seeing Auric Bassin a few times .. The textures, vegetation, tree trunks and even some structures are exactly  the same.

 

It has absolutely nothing to do with echovald. All the originality of the guild wars 1 area is lost: no more stone, no more sinister and gothic atmosphere, no more yellow stained glass with amber, no more mysterious and oppressive environment. It's a total failure at this level once again

 

But I understood the reason during the live. Echovald's developer makes it clear that she has never played guild wars 1. How do you want to respect the soul and style of this iconic map without ever having played the original game. Mind-blowing....

 

As for the content, we haven't seen much, the events seem basic and without challenge as usual but we will see later. The new faction and the jade structures, it's totally ridiculous, however, I already miss the kurzicks people 😔

Edited November 12, 2021 by radda.8920

[Duke Blackrose.4981]

They took one of my favorite regions - the Echovald Forest - and turned it into a generic jungle. And I thoroughly dislike Maguuma maps in general.

 

I wonder how they'll ruin the Jade Sea. I assume they'll melt most of it and turn it into an Asura-run seaworld.

[Vidit.7108]

They didn't show a whole lot but what was there was very promising and looks great. I was worried they wouldn't land the feel of Echovald but I think they got it. It will be a while before we really see what it has to offer though so I can't really critique something unfinished.

[zealex.9410]

Id preffer a darker and gloomier look but i love the sense of scale it has.

[Tazer.2157]

Remember the different races of people that lived in this region and their differences that made Cantha interesting? Well today everyone is just inclusive and have banded together to fight a "common enemy". This is a theme that has been reused in every expansion and in the core game and its BORING! Everything needs to be sanitized and "good" in GW2. I hoped the storyline in Cantha would be more daring and provocative, but its looking more like something you would read to a child. 

 

In ESO a quest that still sticks with me to this day is where an assassin does away with her entire family. We can only hope to get quests like this in GW2. I will stick with GW2 for the open world content, but the story seems to be more of what we already have, "Friendship" saves the day once again. 

[artcreator.4859]

59 minutes ago, Tazer.2157 said:

Remember the different races of people that lived in this region and their differences that made Cantha interesting? Well today everyone is just inclusive and have banded together to fight a "common enemy". This is a theme that has been reused in every expansion and in the core game and its BORING! Everything needs to be sanitized and "good" in GW2. I hoped the storyline in Cantha would be more daring and provocative, but its looking more like something you would read to a child. 

 

In ESO a quest that still sticks with me to this day is where an assassin does away with her entire family. We can only hope to get quests like this in GW2. I will stick with GW2 for the open world content, but the story seems to be more of what we already have, "Friendship" saves the day once again. 

Yeah, fully agree. 

The interesting cultures and how they clashed is what made gw2 a great story, we seem to be stepping further and further away from that.

They made the game kind of black and white, clear good and clear bad. Sometimes that's fine, but when it happens to much it gets a little boring.

[artcreator.4859]

6 hours ago, radda.8920 said:

 

 

As for the content, we haven't seen much, the events seem basic and without challenge as usual but we will see later. The new faction and the jade structures, it's totally ridiculous, however, I already miss the kurzicks people 😔

Yeah, the events are what worry me the most. The map, story, designs, rewards, hearts, will all be decent, Anet never mess those up too bad. The events is where they mess up. Will these events be a fun challenge that I go back to year after year, or something I do once, then never again.

[Nate.8146]

Architecturally, Echovald Wilds looks pretty good. The tall architectures and also the tall pillars/trees dotted throughout the land adds to the scale of the map. Potentially fun things to do with a skyscale if the ceiling limits are as high.

 

The two things I don't like though:

1. Villages are tiny and immersion breaking. GW2 mostly does miniature villages, but I'm hoping one day to have something on the scale of Divinity's Reach with a touch of new-age enhancements. Something to really immerse ourselves into a city and ideally, with a heavy meta battle focused conflict involved (something on the level of Battle for LA back in season 1).

 

 

2. I'm not overly fond of the map having 2 clans in a feud, with us being stuck in the middle as spies and instigators for a more neutral group. I'm not sure how it's going to work out in the meta event when the AI is busy fighting itself. I think this would have been a cool opportunity to introduce factions/alliances into GW2. To have players choose a side to support and add a bit of dynamic to our personal story and the activities we perform. Not necessarily PvP focused like GW1 between the Kurzicks and Luxons, but rather open access to different tools, technologies, support, masteries, and armor/weapon skins depending on what side you choose. To add something new and unique to the GW2 universe and feel part of something outside the norm.

[Dami.5046]

If I had been someone who had never played Fractions, I would of said it was a nice, interesting map. A stunning map.

Because I have spent i would say a HUGE chunk of my playing time in said region, I saw my beloved HzH as a ruin and cried a little inside . Then I saw how amazing fort Aspenwood looked, and found out it was 'reduced' to a PvE event, and I realized how much I'm going to miss being a Kurzick.

In fact i'm going to say it hasn't got the atmosphere like the first Echovald had, and i hope for dear God it's not filled with lively, bouncy music. (not saying it's not a gorgeous map, but it still feels to me like Hot does, just darker)

In fact i think it's a mistake to pretty much write out the Kurzicks/luxons and say 'but we have tomestones' I have been called worst things than 'tree hugger'

It's a copy paste of Drizzlewood, event wise, not a bad thing, i quite like that map, but needless to say, if you want to see what events you might get, you only need to look at IBS. The thing is do anet get why people go to maps again and again? Fractions on paper 'may' of not had much, but it had enough to keep me busy for over 13+ hours some days. Is just getting some loot enough?

I'm assuming that the last place the stream went is Arborstone? Stunning, stunning, stunning, but please don't be a hub instance like SS. 

And the killer?

A dev admitting they didn't even play the first game to even get a feel for it.

sorry.

 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Dami.5046

[Mizuira.8245]

Well I just saw a Maguuma reskin so far... I didn't see anything I loved in GW1 and Factions is my favorite game from GW1.

A big disappointment : F tier 😑

Edited November 13, 2021 by Mizuira.8245

[witcher.3197]

I'm starting to believe Anet doesn't understand what it means to be emotionally attached to a piece of fiction. 

They think bringing back something in any way, shape or form will cause people to immediately like something and throw money at them. Treating said thing with respect doesn't even cross their minds.

Yes we are going back to Echovald. You have however destroyed everything we loved about the region, on purpose. How is that supposed to be satisfying for us? You're trying to appeal to nostalgia but do your best as a company to ruin everything about it, and you think it's somehow going to work out just fine?

 

EoD is like a stranger bringing back your lost dog but they chopped off some limbs and poked out the eyes while also dropping a bucket of paint on the poor animal. And then they extend their hand with a smile expecting us to be grateful and pay them.

[Artyport.2084]

It’s clear the majority of people think it looks great. 
but this forum’s “keyboard complainers” are always there to complain. 
 

this map looks great and I loved the kurzricks!

 

am I sad they killed them off. Yep! 
 

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

It is absolutely amazing how Anet managed to somehow completely destroy everything that made the GW1 version of Echovald Forest so unique.  Now we get just another Maguuma map, including the same tree-root textures and even the same Mushroom enemies from the HoT maps. Smacking a few Cathedral ruins on the map does not make it Echovald.

 

I am already afraid to see what kind of atrocity they have made the Jade Sea.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[rylien.3824]

As said above this card is only a collection of recycling, so poor. Feels like an off-map (the emptiness of the map) of Maguuma.

My foreboding was therefore correct, so there is no longer any chance that I will set foot there again ...
I just have the impression that all this does not bring anything, even putting back Tengus ... it's rubbish. (When we know that we have not even had access to the Empire of the Winds ...). They have sank into the ridiculous more and more with them ... There is only the Zu Heltzer cathedral that I found nice, that's all... 💔

 

 

I can already imagine the Jade Sea as a large radioactive crater ... with flat water and without charisma... 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by rylien.3824

[Animando.7956]

10 minutes ago, Artyport.2084 said:

It’s clear the majority of people think it looks great. 
but this forum’s “keyboard complainers” are always there to complain. 

 

indeed. Can we just highlight currently > 50% of the poll votes are for A/S tier?

I like what they showed us... the gothic ruins with stained glass definitively reminds me of the old map...

 

Dears haters, can you specifically say what is in your opinion missing? I looked back at old GW1 videos and screenshots: basically echowald is the combo petrified forest+gothic building with candle lights+some ferns

 

[Dami.5046]

54 minutes ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

Seriously im so tired of the recent trend in all gaming communities over the recent years, not just gw, to just constantly kitten on everything and go out of their way to be overly pessimistic and complain about literally everything.

So annoying watching the live stream and just seeing a handful of people in the live chat just  CONSTANTLY  complaining about stuff the entire time from start to finish, like there was a guy that would not SHUT UP about how bad catalyst was and just elementalist in general, like we get it dude, you dont like catalyst,  we dont need you ruining the vibe of the stream for the entirety of it whining about it, just shut up already. 

And i swear 90% of these people "critiquing" the map dont have an original thought in their head, its just a hivemind of people regurgitating the same thing they saw someone else say just to be part of the hate parade, you can tell because a lot of their takes are just objectively false but are "word for word" copies of the same "review". Its just a bunch of pessimistic losers waiting to see what they see the other negative vocal minorities say so they can jump on the bandwagon and pretend their take is original and their own even when they probably didn't even play factions themselves to have such strong opinions on the "vibe" and "aesthetic" of a map they've probably only experienced in a YouTube video for a few minutes 

 

 Anyway, what did you think of the maps?

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Dami.5046

[Jilora.9524]

9 minutes ago, Kayberz.5346 said:

Seriously im so tired of the recent trend in all gaming communities over the recent years, not just gw, to just constantly kitten on everything and go out of their way to be overly pessimistic and complain about literally everything.

So annoying watching the live stream and just seeing a handful of people in the live chat just  CONSTANTLY  complaining about stuff the entire time from start to finish, like there was a guy that would not SHUT UP about how bad catalyst was and just elementalist in general, like we get it dude, you dont like catalyst,  we dont need you ruining the vibe of the stream for the entirety of it whining about it, just shut up already. 

And i swear 90% of these people "critiquing" the map dont have an original thought in their head, its just a hivemind of people regurgitating the same thing they saw someone else say just to be part of the hate parade, you can tell because a lot of their takes are just objectively false but are "word for word" copies of the same "review". Its just a bunch of pessimistic losers waiting to see what they see the other negative vocal minorities say so they can jump on the bandwagon and pretend their take is original and their own even when they probably didn't even play factions themselves to have such strong opinions on the "vibe" and "aesthetic" of a map they've probably only experienced in a YouTube video for a few minutes 

 

Yeah you might want to just never read comments or forums or basically anything ever again since it seems to bring out your negative side as your complaint about them complaining is pretty kitten toxic.

[Dami.5046]

53 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

It is absolutely amazing how Anet managed to somehow completely destroy everything that made the GW1 version of Echovald Forest so unique.  Now we get just another Maguuma map, including the same tree-root textures and even the same Mushroom enemies from the HoT maps. Smacking a few Cathedral ruins on the map does not make it Echovald.

 

I am already afraid to see what kind of atrocity they have made the Jade Sea.

This is basically how i see it and i've said so on other threads. I still believe the jade sea will look more like water than sand but have the same vibe as PoF.

As far as the map is concerned, it is stunning. Not hating on the map as it goes. It was as i expected. I'm just sad they felt they had write out the kurzicks and luxons in the way they did. And the fact they left HZH to rot but FA was kept. 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Dami.5046

[NotTooFoolish.7412]

Seeing the posts above, this might be a controversial opinion: I do like what we have seen so far. That being said, we haven't really seen that much. Based on the names alone we seem to cover a large area with this map. 

Meta seems dynamic enough to bring in some people, we don't know what are the exact events, so there's not much more to say about it. 

It feels a bit like HoT, but we should have expected this. The predictions were for some maps to have the HoT, some PoF feel. I guess Jade Sea would be more flat. 

I'm intrigued by the two portals, we've seen. Are they going for some outpost/instance? It might be just a portal to strike mission, i guess. 

[Kayberz.5346]

1 hour ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

It is absolutely amazing how Anet managed to somehow completely destroy everything that made the GW1 version of Echovald Forest so unique.  Now we get just another Maguuma map, including the same tree-root textures and even the same Mushroom enemies from the HoT maps. Smacking a few Cathedral ruins on the map does not make it Echovald.

 

I am already afraid to see what kind of atrocity they have made the Jade Sea.

Please enlighten us as to how they "completely destroyed' everything about gw1 Echovald

 

I want a thorough breakdown of what you think is missing from the gw2 version other than the trees not being made of stone anymore,  which we already knew was the case before gw2 even launched.

 

You say smacking cathedral ruins on the map doesn't make it Echovald but i would use that same train of logic to refute you in saying just putting some roots and mushrooms on a map doesn't make it maguuma

 

 

[Wielder Of Magic.3950]

Gothic atmosphere:  Gone.  
Nothing about this makes you feel like you are way from the Canthan Empire, makes you feel like you are in an entirely different place with different people or customs. Even if the Kurzicks got forced into the Empire, there should be traces of it somewhere and how different and alien it felt. Instead of Echovald this is random Canthans and birbs in a shadowy forest.

 

Kurzicks: Gone.
And no, the random NPC that claims Kurzick heritage is not what I mean (She does not even look Kurzick. Not even the smallest part, just a generic Canthan NPC that does not stand out. Honestly, what about her should make me go "Oooh, she has a Kurzick heritage?") Nobody returned for their heritage or to try and pick up the pieces. A unique culture and one of the selling points of Factions: Erased for the sake of "muh 250 years have passed and muh evil empire succeeded a 100% integration rate".

 

Petrified trees: Gone.
Not partially, or for the most part, no, completely gone. This is what made Echovald into such a unique environment, and it would have been so easy to fix by making at least parts of the map still petrified or half-petrified. Instead they did away with all of it. Check the lifestream when they get higher up in the biome. The shadows try to conceal it, but the big trees are all wood.

 

Original typical echovald colorscheme: Gone.
The greys are gone, the bleak bamboo greens are gone, and even the warm orange/yellow Amber tints are almost nowhere to be found aside from that random cave that apparently has to serve as an "Amber Quarry".

 

The Kurzick-Luxon clash feeling in Echovald that defined Factions:Gone.
Replaced with suddenly everything being friendly, inclusive and banding together, despite that this goes against everything that went on in Factions (both during and after GW1 events)  or the Kurzicks and Luxons, but against the characteristics from the majority of Tengu as well.   And then they remembered that complete inclusive harmony doesn't create the conflicts needed for a meta, so instead of taking the chance to help us reach a new conclusion/understanding/finale in that old Kurzick-Luxon problem, they simply import the Jade Brotherhood instead, who never had a foothold in Echovald whatsoever and had to be forcibly retconned in there for the sake of having a mapwide adversary (sure, Anet can wave the magical lore wand in this case, but it's illogical for thugs who called the slums of Kaineng home to shift their territory into the forest).

 

Flora unique to Echovald like for example the massive bioluminescent mushrooms:  Gone. 
They even managed to put some of the flowers you find in The Grove in that map somehow, on top of re-using the root models and textures from Maguuma and the exact same Mushroom enemies. Go check the livestream again and compare to the ingame HoT maps, they are exact 1:1 copies.

 

What did they do instead? 

Use leftover Maguuma textures for a forest floor, smacked HoT models and HoT shrooms on it, added some big trees and some shadows to claim "look, shadows, so gothic right?!" and then dumped some Cathedral Ruin assets because they suddenly remembered they were supposed to make Echovald Forest and not Ruined Jungle Map.

 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by Wielder Of Magic.3950

[Mizuira.8245]

43 minutes ago, Wielder Of Magic.3950 said:

What did they do instead? 

Use leftover Maguuma textures for a forest floor, smacked HoT models and HoT shrooms on it, added some big trees and some shadows to claim "look, shadows, so gothic right?!" and then dumped some Cathedral Ruin assets because they suddenly remembered they were supposed to make Echovald Forest and not Ruined Jungle Map.

 

Exactly what I though when I saw the stream... How could they think it will give a GW1 "vibe" to just add some cathedrals in a Maguuma type environnement ?