why so much gated/blocked progression in "The Realm of Dreams,"?

[arron.3294]

ive played gw2 since the beta days before gw2 came out  and 1st off I'm used to some instances of gated progress since the hart of thrones days 

but this release is a bit crazy for it

so far its been opening cutscene then 
your gated to do events around the map

then new story part 
then your gated by having 150 of the maps currency to get a scroll (i know its not much i know)

then new story part and then.....
more do events around the map

why?
one is manageable and gets players to explore the map and do things they wanna do but this is a bit extreme

it just slows down the lore and story for people like me that dont have that much time these days to do the story and then get blocked by oh now do this before anything 

i hope this isnt the way its gonna be from now on 

over then that i like SoTo alot

[Ashantara.8731]

Answer: to make up for the lack of story. With those drip-fed tiny bits, they decided that this was the way to go to keep people occupied.

I finally started the new story bit today, but I quit after the first "Go do events!" directive, because those events are boring me out of my mind. I expect to be done with it by next week, hopefully.

If the next expac has the exact same structure with an equally boring design, I will never regain the joy I used to feel playing this game. At least, the new Strike CM seems interesting and I am looking forward to the upcoming QoL updates. Also curious to see how pistol plays on Guardian (have not tested it yet).

[arron.3294]

6 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Answer: to make up for the lack of story. With those drip-fed tiny bits, they decided that this was the way to go to keep people occupied.

I finally started the new story bit today, but I quit after the first "Go do events!" directive, because those events are boring me out of my mind. I expect to be done with it by next week, hopefully.

If the next expac has the exact same structure with an equally boring design, I will never regain the joy I used to feel playing this game. At least, the new Strike CM seems interesting and I am looking forward to the upcoming QoL updates. Also curious to see how pistol plays on Guardian (have not tested it yet).

i hadn't tried the mermer rifle stuff yet but one issue i have is i don't know if ive unlocked that ability or if i have to finish the story stuff ( i got to the second go do stuff thing)

[Smurfiness.3714]

It's just a lazy way since there's no more"story" So just get the player to play the Map and pretend it's part of the "story".

[Linken.6345]

OP the word your looking for is padding/stuffing to make things seem bigger.

[Atoclone.4810]

13 minutes ago, Smurfiness.3714 said:

It's just a lazy way since there's no more"story" So just get the player to play the Map and pretend it's part of the "story".

if you look at some of the older stuff playing the map really did help tell a story, whether it be one big one like drizzlewood or just smaller parts like you got in the core game. unfortunately whilst the new sota maps are pretty they're not grabbing me. 

[Sugar Min.5834]

TBH, I never liked doing stories bur still I forced myself to do them anyway. I find stories are boring. And now they made it worse by making us drag our feet over it. This updates has nothing for me because it is mostly about legendary stuff. I'll skip.

[kharmin.7683]

41 minutes ago, Sugar Min.5834 said:

TBH, I never liked doing stories bur still I forced myself to do them anyway. I find stories are boring. And now they made it worse by making us drag our feet over it. This updates has nothing for me because it is mostly about legendary stuff. I'll skip.

Yeah, I'll still bump around on the map and maybe even complete it on my main, but I don't anticipate spending any further time on it for the same reasons.

[Camniel.7238]

I'm not a fan of the amount of gate-locked content here either. In my case it's the weapon unlocks for the expanded proficiencies... Requiring a bit of story progress is fine but demanding 14 episodes is a bit much. If it was possible to skip episodes and just do the two that are actually required then I'd be ok with it... but requiring the entire story up to this point to be completed for a major selling point of the expansion is not enjoyable, nor wise, in my opinion.

Again, this wouldn't be such an issue if there were more alternatives to claim the required items than what currently exists in game. Needing 500 Jade Heroics to skip the entire story isn't realistic for a large portion of the player base. We need either another alternative or for the Jade Heroics cost to be lowered.

Honestly, I'm actually surprised that someone thought all this gate-locking was a good idea....

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Camniel.7238 said:

I'm not a fan of the amount of gate-locked content here either. In my case it's the weapon unlocks for the expanded proficiencies... Requiring a bit of story progress is fine but demanding 14 episodes is a bit much. If it was possible to skip episodes and just do the two that are actually required then I'd be ok with it... but requiring the entire story up to this point to be completed for a major selling point of the expansion is not enjoyable, nor wise, in my opinion.

Again, this wouldn't be such an issue if there were more alternatives to claim the required items than what currently exists in game. Needing 500 Jade Heroics to skip the entire story isn't realistic for a large portion of the player base. We need either another alternative or for the Jade Heroics cost to be lowered.

Honestly, I'm actually surprised that someone thought all this gate-locking was a good idea....

Or you can buy it from wvw vendor

[Camniel.7238]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

Or you can buy it from wvw vendor

That's the 500 Jade Heroics I mentioned.

[enigmatic.3576]

It's how they pad out the releases which they started doing with IBS.  I personally dislike how it interferes with the story but then we only really got like 20 minutes of story.  We'd still be disappointed; just about something else instead.  Another thing that I disliked was how repetitive the fights are as most are just wave after wave essentially feeling like a grind.  You complete one set of waves and then progress to the next story step to only be met with more.  It just feels low effort compared to what we had in LS2-4.  Even some of the map events were essentially copy and pasted as you have a three event chain that starts with destroying tentacles which is practically identical to the one on the first part.  The event in the NW corner that you have to use bombs before you can do damage is tedious due to how many things you have to kill.

[Tom.8029]

7 hours ago, arron.3294 said:

ive played gw2 since the beta days before gw2 came out  and 1st off I'm used to some instances of gated progress since the hart of thrones days 

but this release is a bit crazy for it

so far its been opening cutscene then 
your gated to do events around the map

then new story part 
then your gated by having 150 of the maps currency to get a scroll (i know its not much i know)

then new story part and then.....
more do events around the map

why?
one is manageable and gets players to explore the map and do things they wanna do but this is a bit extreme

it just slows down the lore and story for people like me that dont have that much time these days to do the story and then get blocked by oh now do this before anything 

i hope this isnt the way its gonna be from now on 

over then that i like SoTo alot

I don’t know about you, but I had lots of congealed screams left over from last patch with Inner Nayos.  And I didn’t even use them. I found out you could buy the scroll in WvW with Notary Heroics. So I used those. The entire story, including map events, maybe took me 2 hours.  I wanted more really. 

Edited February 29 by Tom.8029

[Randulf.7614]

Filler to stretch things out as thinly as possible

[Sugar Min.5834]

16 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

Filler to stretch things out as thinly as possible

Yah, just like the SotO expansion. It's only a MINI expansion with nothing new but just some upgrades on existing features and yet spread thinly over a year +/- 🤷‍♀️

Edited March 1 by Sugar Min.5834

[Zera.9435]

10 hours ago, Smurfiness.3714 said:

It's just a lazy way since there's no more"story" So just get the player to play the Map and pretend it's part of the "story".

I think of it as you actively playing the parts of the story where you set up the next steps like securing materials or locations, checking in with your allies, doing reconnaissance on the obviously intended 'climactic' location. How is doing the 'behind the scenes' not part of the story? Strategizing, discussing intel, and receiving up-to-date reports on important objectives are all part of the story. It's a war.

Can the dialog be written better? Obviously. They still seem to rely a little much on ellipses for 'dramatic pauses', but that's just a mild annoyance because it drags the dialog on. To say that including 'do a couple of events to progress our front line' is not part of the story is just wrong.