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Season 2 is a big problem


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I have just gone through season 2 again for the Return to achievements. It is a big problem. Especially toward the back half, it moves from slightly annoying due to all the slow talking to outright monitor punching frustrating. Especially once you hit the Caithe memory parts, the main fights in several chapters are maddening badly explained, badly telegraphed, and overall frustrating, and virtually require going to outside resources (YouTube, wiki) to figure out what you are supposed to do. The experience they give is horrible and also very much out of character with basically anything else in the entire game, before or after. This is a problem because it will give players going in order a very very incorrect and bad impression of how the game is going to develop. I can say that had I played this very early on in my experience with the game, I very well might have deleted it and never looked back.

Something needs to be done here, or the efforts to gain new players by launching to steam will go down in flames with people encountering this out of character content. It simply cannot be left in this state for introduction to a new large and very critical player base.

Also, the Silverwastes are confusing, due to many things there having breakbars, but some things not taking any defiance break. It's just confusing, especially as it may be many peoples' first encounter with the breakbar.

Edited by Boogiepop Void.6473
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There were a couple of episodes with Caithe and one of them is one of my favorite episodes. I love the stealth minigame that is pretty much the entire episode. I'm pretty good at it if you actually need help and you're on a US server. I never pass up a chance to do that instance.

 

I do agree making people take an entire new set of skills for an entire episode is simply not fun. You spend all your time planning your build and learning it and suddenly you have five new skills that you have to figure out for one or two story missions after which you have to forget them again, or just muddle through as best you can.


Changing skills in an MMO centered around skills always comes at a price. In Season 2, I feel that price is too high.  The best way to do that stuff is not solo it, so even if Caithe can't stay alive, you can be carried through by friends. Still that shouldn't be necessary to enjoy the story.


I don't have a huge problem with most of Season 2 otherwise, though it is my least favorite of all the stories.

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Store-wise one of my favorite seasons. The slow build-up and good writing is great there. Achievements ... some are hard and the meta achievements require all of the sub achievements to be completed I think. But I managed to solo everything. For the fights there is good information (wiki, Duly) available. And if you do not want to additional achievements then everything is doable without major problems.

Personally gameplay-wise I also dislike when you have to play with different skills (flashback with Caithe) - cause you need to "learn" how to use them best first. But I just liked the story-telling too much in season 2.

Edited by Luthan.5236
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Yes, compared to anything that came after, season 2 is very bad. Could do with a bit of editing. Cause, if new people are gonna play the story in order, and i assume you're going to a bit modernize season 1, season 2 will feel out of place, and honestly if i'd played it first, i probably wouldn't have bothered buying other seasons out of fear of being the same. Which would be sad cause i'd miss out on great content, but season 2... Yeah, not the greatest GW2 moment ever.

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10 hours ago, Boogiepop Void.6473 said:

I have just gone through season 2 again for the Return to achievements. It is a big problem. Especially toward the back half, it moves from slightly annoying due to all the slow talking to outright monitor punching frustrating. Especially once you hit the Caithe memory parts, the main fights in several chapters are maddening badly explained, badly telegraphed, and overall frustrating, and virtually require going to outside resources (YouTube, wiki) to figure out what you are supposed to do. The experience they give is horrible and also very much out of character with basically anything else in the entire game, before or after. This is a problem because it will give players going in order a very very incorrect and bad impression of how the game is going to develop. I can say that had I played this very early on in my experience with the game, I very well might have deleted it and never looked back.

Something needs to be done here, or the efforts to gain new players by launching to steam will go down in flames with people encountering this out of character content. It simply cannot be left in this state for introduction to a new large and very critical player base.

Also, the Silverwastes are confusing, due to many things there having breakbars, but some things not taking any defiance break. It's just confusing, especially as it may be many peoples' first encounter with the breakbar.


I get it, it’s not to your liking, but steam won’t “go down in flames” from it. Rather silly to make that claim. 

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They ought to rework the Caithe missions to be more and let us have a choice between her abilities and our own - similar to when we are forced to play Braham or Ryland.

In the Silverwastes, they should let us skip the Skritt tunnels or stop locking them behind the bandit event.

I'm not much of a fan of doing events just to pick up the crown pieces for Rytlock either, but that's not as annoying as the two points above.

Edited by Fueki.4753
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When replaying this for the Return achieves, I don't remember it being that bad. This might be because I got all the achieves I wanted out of it already, and was just doing the basic run through for Return.

I agree that the pacing and the Caithe mission skill overrides could use some work. While I think it might not be worth ANet's effort to re-pace the story, I think it could be quite doable to redo just the Caithe missions. Someone else already mentioned the Braham scrying pool mission, and I agree that would be a perfect rework. Keep all your same skills to manage the instance, and add a special action key (which flips over into an assassinate skill while stealthed) for stealthing if that's going to remain part of the mission.

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2 hours ago, Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.294 said:

If you thought the talking parts were bad in Season 2, wait until you get to End of Dragons.

Agreed! I played through Season 2 on five characters and once more for the Return to... achievements.. While a bit slow at times, I never alt-tabbed out to do other stuff like I'm doing now as I take my characters through End of Dragons. ArenaNet went so far as to put in effects to deliberately slow your character down many times throughout the End of Dragons story.

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Also outdated stuff have its advantages: LS2 was designed for core specs, so HoT/PoF specs are OP for that content, try some, and u finish that content really faster. The final fight(the shadow of dragon)  is a joke compared to Scruffy fight in LS4.

Edited by ugrakarma.9416
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Well I like the combat parts. Actually really liked the Caithe part, some fresh air. She is way overpowered anyway.

But on the other hand I barely got through LS2 because the walking and talking is slow and unskipable. I'm not much for this story, well better said everything about it really bores me.  And the boring characters walking sooo slow, and then reposition so slow and then have a silly conversation. And then you move to another location and again the same. Just send me a msg when you end.

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Season two was fine until the Caithe mission.

If I wanted to play a female sylvari thief I would have created one. Mandating that my character participate in the genocide of innocent sentient beings in order to advance the story made me disconnect from my then main character as a character. Thereafter he was a toon, a set of combat abilities, that I played in a manner similar to an old arcade game. The story never mattered much to me again. I had no interest in playing a mass murderer and so I stopped thinking about my main as a character in a story.

The combat in GW2 is engaging, except for the visual noise, so I have since focused primarily on instanced gameplay, WvW, and a bit of PvP. I do complete the expansions but my participation in  the LW seasons has been sporadic since season 2. 

 

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26 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

People hating on thief so hard they're now applying that hate to Caithe's story missions. I understand, though. It requires more planning and timing than your usual caster gameplay, so people are not used to that.

You have that backwards. We are "hating," on Caithe which may overlap to thief for some people. I enjoy playing my thief (though I have never played him through S2), which has nothing to do with Caithe.

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5 hours ago, Swagger.1459 said:


I get it, it’s not to your liking, but steam won’t “go down in flames” from it. Rather silly to make that claim. 

" they will quit and yes,the game will go down in flames. You only launch to steam one time. One bad impression is all it takes for people to leave for one of the other games they can get on steam. You have 1 chance to make a good impression. And season 2 as it stands is not going to do that.

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