Doghouse.1562 Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 (edited) I can't say that I expected much, so I wasn't disappointed. But seriously - way too much jaw-jaw, not remotely enough war-war (and what there was, wasn't exactly varied or stimulating). Lots of running from zone to zone just to talk to a few characters or pick a few objects up, with the same fights over and over, simply wasn't engaging, let alone fun. Not to put too fine a point on it - I didn't care. As for the story macguffin - I barely used it, except at the points where I had no choice. I can't honestly say that I feel the whole thing exactly presages well for the future, especially if ANet hopes we're going to pay money for regular, small updates (which feels a lot like moving towards a more pay-to-play model anyhow, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now at least). So I'm keeping an open mind for now - but I'm not convinced. Edited May 24, 2023 by Doghouse.1562 1 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWACS.6537 Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 For what was supposed to be the last bit of content for End of Dragons, it was pretty underwhelming in my opinion. Spoiler As far as the story goes, the entire ordeal of the commander dealing with their emotions feels incredibly short-lived, and for most players, I would imagine that some players have no emotional attachment to the characters that we're supposed to feel sorry for. As many have mentioned, Cinder being an option in the story is an incredibly strange choice, because our characters have spent very little time with them in general, and this is even reflected in the game's community since a lot of people aren't even aware of who she is, or they forgot she existed in the first place. Stranger yet is that Chul-Moo was the character they used as an emotional support here, which is even more ridiculous since he's supposed to be managing his own people back in Cantha. I can't imagine a gang leader has the time to just stand around in Tyria to say a few nice words about an enemy that barely made an appearance in the story. I think it would have been significantly more impactful if there was a legitimate reason for the player character to feel emotionally burdened about something that happens during the chapter, rather than feel guilty about something that happened a long time ago in the past, as even the characters in the story mention that the player character has already learned to deal with those events. Since the demons are using mental attacks to try to whittle down the commander, it would have made more sense to have the commander be tricked via hallucinations or illusions into mauling and injuring Gorrik or Rama and then having the demons work off the guilt from there instead of than having the players be told they should feel sad or whatever by having the commander say they feel bad because some NPC from a while ago had something happen to them. Of course, like others have said, the whole thing just feels short. The new chunk of the meta event was also disappointing. It just devolves into more green tunnels and a horde of siege turtles, all the way up to the finale, but you don't actually do much sieging with the turtle aside from busting open something, grabbing something else, and walking over to a point and repeating the cycle several more times. It could have been a lot more interesting if the boss required some sort of coordination between drivers and gunners rather than having a small platform with green laser sniper rifles and a few control points to stand on. To put it bluntly, the gameplay here isn't very engaging, and to echo what others have said, it really is just a reason to make people use siege turtles for something and it feels pretty uninspired. The new adventures dotted around End of Dragons aren't bad, but they certainly do feel like someone just wanted to pad the maps with a couple of things. Strangely enough, the siege turtle adventures require more driver/gunner coordination than the actual meta event. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batalix.2873 Posted May 24, 2023 Share Posted May 24, 2023 21 hours ago, Omega.6801 said: The Cinder thing struck me as well. I picked the name because I just couldn't remember who that was. I'm curious if the options varied depending on what episodesof the living world or expansions are unlocked on the account. Chosing Blish f.e. makes little sense if the player has not played LS4. Cinder makes no sense, if you haven't played IBS and so on. This actually makes a lot of sense that our little epilogue wrap-up was essentially a plug for HoT/PoF/IBS/LWs. Between the Mai Trin/Scarlet fight acting as advertising for LWS1 and the Aurene leggies encouraging players to pickup a lot of past content, EoD has generally felt like a very desperate attempt to funnel new players toward older content. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logos.5603 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 (edited) What the hell did I just play... STORY (1/10): There were many great stories to tell here. This was not one of them. They had all the ingredients for an excellent story. You have demons that feed from strong (negative?) emotions. Emotionally scarred characters. For example, you have a commander who should be an emotional wreck by now considering all the trauma that they have accumulated (something that really hasn't been explored in this game). You also have this idea of literally digging too deep or of going down to the depths which can serve as an excellent metaphor for exploring the unconscious feeling or deepest emotions (or our inner demons). This should've been a really dark chapter in the commander's story (and if not the commander, then on any of their companions (e.g., Gorrik and his loss of Blish!)). Instead it felt...hastily done. For example, the "Bottle Your Emotions" part (a terrible name, and strategy to deal with the kinds of emotions that the commander is dealing with), was completely unemotional: fetch this, take it here, and vaguely remember something you did years ago that kind of made you feel happy . But these same memories should bring pain, feelings of loss, of regret. For instance, exploring the memory of Aurene should remind you of almost losing her, of losing her brother, of seeing friends get branded in front of you, ect. Why is this not explored? They could've had the commander confront literal demonic manifestations of his bottled emotions. For instance: guilt for the death of his companions; or hatred against Mai Trin; etc. The could've made it into a really interesting journey of learning how to forgive oneself and others. The whole romance with Rama (though it is fine) should've been skipped, or it should've been made its own thing. It clashes with the story of an emotionally scarred character (if that's what they were going with). Note: A problem I think that this story had is that the material that they a drawing from (the connections with Aurene, Blish, Cinder!? and others) happened either too long ago and I'm no longer invested in it, or are narratively thin in the first place (e.g., Cinder). STORY GAMEPLAY (5/10): Felt repetitive. But that's expected at this point I guess. The final story fight felt repetitive with nothing really at stake. You lure this creature outside and defeat it using some technobabble stuff three (or four?) times. OK. No real choices. No real threats except stuff falling from the cave. Meh. Edited May 25, 2023 by Logos.5603 6 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logos.5603 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 3 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said: This actually makes a lot of sense that our little epilogue wrap-up was essentially a plug for HoT/PoF/IBS/LWs. Between the Mai Trin/Scarlet fight acting as advertising for LWS1 and the Aurene leggies encouraging players to pickup a lot of past content, EoD has generally felt like a very desperate attempt to funnel new players toward older content. Yep. I've had this feeling for a while that Anet is not really interested in providing a really compelling story anymore. A good story is a form of art, and that requires time and investment that ultimately might not pay off (art requires risk). I'm pretty sure that they have done their numbers or are trying to figure out a formula where we get the bare minimum story telling (and bare minimum alterations to gameplay) to introduce a map with some replay "value" to keep us hooked just long enough for the next one. It reminds me of mobile games. There is barely a story, but the content they release is enough to keep a certain kind of player coming back. It is turning into a game with no soul. Very meh. I'm pretty sure that if they could figure out a way to justify the release of a map with no story content (in an MMORPG), just a meta event with rewards they would. And people would play it. I think that's the issue. 3 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logos.5603 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 6 hours ago, Doghouse.1562 said: I can't say that I expected much, so I wasn't disappointed. But seriously - way too much jaw-jaw, not remotely enough war-war (and what there was, wasn't exactly varied or stimulating). Lots of running from zone to zone just to talk to a few characters or pick a few objects up, with the same fights over and over, simply wasn't engaging, let alone fun. Not to put too fine a point on it - I didn't care. As for the story macguffin - I barely used it, except at the points where I had no choice. I can't honestly say that I feel the whole thing exactly presages well for the future, especially if ANet hopes we're going to pay money for regular, small updates (which feels a lot like moving towards a more pay-to-play model anyhow, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now at least). So I'm keeping an open mind for now - but I'm not convinced. Right! I think I spent like 1/3 of the time on loading screens from all the jumping from one map to another. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KindredPhoenyx.8976 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 (edited) 12 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said: A good story is a form of art, and that requires time and investment that ultimately might not pay off (art requires risk). That's the issue on its own that I think even WoodenPotatoes called out recently: Anet are too afraid of taking risks to give us anything compelling. Or rather, they have the lacklustre ability to pull off something compelling when they do. Icebrood Saga and Heart of Thorns are a good example of this I'm afraid with how much got pulled from development and we were left with what we had as a final product. The story for the past... 5 years or so has been riding on GW1 nostalgia. Every single place we've gone to since PoF has been a callback to Nightfall, Prophecies and Factions, but I feel now they've closed *some* of the threads in GW2 left hanging open from GW1, they don't know where to go from here. I could be wrong, but that's just been my general impression for awhile now, but in a lot of ways they've done the story dirty and seasons have left them little room to breathe for expanding their horizons and as a result we're getting a "minimum viable product" to parrot WP's sentiment on the last patch. Edited May 25, 2023 by Darkness.3942 6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logos.5603 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 1 minute ago, Darkness.3942 said: That's the issue on its own that I think even WoodenPotatoes called out recently: Anet are too afraid of taking risks to give us anything compelling. Or rather, they have the lacklustre ability to pull off something compelling when they do. Icebrood Saga and Heart of Thorns are a good example of this I'm afraid with how much got pulled from development and we were left with what we had as a final product. The story for the past... 5 years or so has been riding on GW1 nostalgia. Every single place we've gone to since PoF has been a callback to Nightfall, Prophecies and Factions, but I feel now they've closed *some* of the threads in GW2 left hanging open from GW1, they don't know where to go from here. I could be wrong, but that's just been my general impression for awhile now, but in a lot of ways they've done the story dirty and seasons have left them little room to breathe for expanding their horizons. I think you are exactly right. I think part of the issue is that they've moved to a return of investment model with minimal risk (and relying on nostalgia is an old trick to get people to come back to something even if it is lackluster). If so, then all we can expect are shallow stories that make a mockery of actual social experiences like war trauma, loss, forgiveness, friendship, love, heroism, etc. What is weird, is that their "new" stories introduce really interesting things that they just never really pick up on. For example, Scarlett saw the Eternal Alchemy (The All). This should be a momentous event in Asuran culture that should've had reverberations across Tyria. She saw the very fabric of reality. A story about the metaphysical implications of this in the world of Tyria would be incredible. Here is another, rebuilding Tyria. You have whole lands destroyed by the dragons, and you are the commander (one of the few people with connections across the world). This places the commander in a unique position of responsibility to help repair these places. What about the dragon corpses? Etc... 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balsa.3951 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 will definitely not pre order. thanks for the warning Anet. also was that teaser trailer u laughing about us? or a Starwars palpatine ripoff? the self confidence of the writers is amazing. they are like hey remember all ur emotions for that character u barely talked to years ago? sure u do such emotional impact call me shakesbeer or at least shake my beer. how often we have to confront the past? is that the only story u can write? no new e specs with next xpact and im out. story was never good despite good starts.ISB how could u ??? maps are more and more copy paste events. living world is dead. mobs are copy and reskins. Boss fights are do the.same 6 times and wait. 4 1 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KindredPhoenyx.8976 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said: I think part of the issue is that they've moved to a return of investment model with minimal risk (and relying on nostalgia is an old trick to get people to come back to something even if it is lackluster). If so, then all we can expect are shallow stories that make a mockery of actual social experiences like war trauma, loss, forgiveness, friendship, love, heroism, etc. (Activision) Blizzard went through this phase with Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. It lost them players and more money by doing minimal viable products. Anet are kind of doing the same obviously with NCSoft choking them of what they can do financially and it's going to cost them; I'm not naive to blame solely Anet: I think the root problem really lies with NCSoft as their publisher. Until they get back on their feet with their assets, I think we are going to see what we had today as a constant going forwards. For me it's really disheartening and serves as a curtain call. Edited May 25, 2023 by Darkness.3942 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zok.4956 Posted May 25, 2023 Author Share Posted May 25, 2023 6 hours ago, Logos.5603 said: Here is another, rebuilding Tyria. You have whole lands destroyed by the dragons, and you are the commander (one of the few people with connections across the world). This places the commander in a unique position of responsibility to help repair these places. They said years ago, they changed their game direction and will not change existing maps like they did in Season 1+2 of Living World, because of replayability for new players, but instead they create new maps that represent a (kind of frozen) specific point in time of the story. That's how they want to handle phasing-problems: There is no map wide phasing, only a few NPCs are phased. Sure, this has its own problems. The game already has a lot of maps and more maps means more empty maps and also creating a new map costs a lot of ressources/dev-time and takes a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarcShriek.5829 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 Let's help Rama get laid, and in the process we'll get in touch with our feelings. I really miss Joko, he was fun. 6 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAY.2358 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 Anet, I would rather pay $15.00 dollars for new content instead of the free ones you have created today. What lies within is extremely short, its an exposition dump, game play is lacking and not repayable. GW1 set the standards high for the demons of Cantha and these fall extremely short to those stories. I have never been so disappointed in my favorite game as I am right now. If you are trying to copy the ESO model you need to add more content. Every expansion has 2 new areas. 2 new dungeons and 2 new trials. There is a lot of dialog, mechanics, areas to explore and achievements to complete. Players will pay the $15.00 a month if you make it worth their time. We receive currency and extended inventory bag. Plus, make stories like GW again. Those stories were worth repeating. I have yet replayed a story line in Guild Wars 2. Thank you. 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eldrevo.1746 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 I can appreciate the will to shift from epic stories of battling the world-ending threats at impossible odds to smaller, more personal stories. But this is not how you do it. GW2 is known for scale and spectacle, things being big and epic, with smaller moments tucked safely in between in smaller numbers... Maybe it's better to keep it this way? 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anninke.7469 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 7 minutes ago, eldrevo.1746 said: I can appreciate the will to shift from epic stories of battling the world-ending threats at impossible odds to smaller, more personal stories. But this is not how you do it. GW2 is known for scale and spectacle, things being big and epic, with smaller moments tucked safely in between in smaller numbers... Maybe it's better to keep it this way? I'd say this IS a "smaller moment". It's just not tucked in between because we had to wait for it and nothing follows right away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarcShriek.5829 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 Anet cared so little about this story that they couldn't even bother to give the final boss a name. 2 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashantara.8731 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 13 hours ago, Balsa.3951 said: was that teaser trailer u laughing about us? or a Starwars palpatine ripoff? What teaser trailer? Link? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vares.8457 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 5 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said: What teaser trailer? Link? https://twitter.com/guildwars2/status/1661074651110600705?s=46&t=26Ltl-PJbNqaKZzYsaue-Q 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logos.5603 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 5 hours ago, DarcShriek.5829 said: Let's help Rama get laid, and in the process we'll get in touch with our feelings. I really miss Joko, he was fun. You know, I actually don't mind such stories. Helping a friend find the courage to love is a worthwhile story to tell (and can be a heroic tale). Same with getting "in touch with our feelings." Not a lot of games explore this central aspect of human reality (the fact that we have emotions and that we can become emotionally/psychologically traumatized and scarred). The issue, I think, is that Anet treated them very poorly (as a filler). It was a terrible story about friendship, love and emotions...I would say very immature. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashantara.8731 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, vares.8457 said: https://twitter.com/guildwars2/status/1661074651110600705?s=46&t=26Ltl-PJbNqaKZzYsaue-Q Thanks! 🙂 Well, at least now we know there will be a male antagonist with a villainous laughter. Whoohoo! 😄 Edited May 25, 2023 by Ashantara.8731 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vrauns.3215 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 (edited) Connor fallon leaving really is leaving a mark on the story and future stories. Edited May 25, 2023 by TheRunningSquire.3621 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vrauns.3215 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 4 hours ago, eldrevo.1746 said: I can appreciate the will to shift from epic stories of battling the world-ending threats at impossible odds to smaller, more personal stories. But this is not how you do it. GW2 is known for scale and spectacle, things being big and epic, with smaller moments tucked safely in between in smaller numbers... Maybe it's better to keep it this way? I read an article with bobby stein saying they wanted to move away from the dragon story badly and than they start it off with these two updates, i'm really not understanding why they did it this way. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randulf.7614 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 1 hour ago, TheRunningSquire.3621 said: I read an article with bobby stein saying they wanted to move away from the dragon story badly and than they start it off with these two updates, i'm really not understanding why they did it this way. Is there a link to the article? I'm baffled they'd think they had to rush through the Dragon story to get to the next story and I'd like to read some context Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vrauns.3215 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 I think it's this one https://www.gamespace.com/all-articles/news/guild-wars-2-developer-interview-time-to-forget-the-dragon-cycle/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randulf.7614 Posted May 25, 2023 Share Posted May 25, 2023 1 hour ago, TheRunningSquire.3621 said: I think it's this one https://www.gamespace.com/all-articles/news/guild-wars-2-developer-interview-time-to-forget-the-dragon-cycle/ Thanks. Couldnt see anything there about badly wanting to move on though, so not sure if its the one you mean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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