[PoF] The big Feedback Thread

[Ashantara.8731]

There hasn't been an official one yet, and there is so much I'd like to share with ANet and you. I hope you folks will share your thoughts, impressions, and criticism here as well. :).Praise:

Item mechanics:

• unidentified items leave you a choice (to salvage or to open)
• left-over event items (trophies) no longer need to be deleted, you can exchange them for karma and other useful stuff at different heart vendors
• you don’t lose your equipped (event-related) item when you mount or glide

Mounts:

• the mechanics invented for the several mounts are so much fun, I really hope we will see more of it in future content (not more mounts, but further content that makes use of their abilities; of course, adding a horse mount still wouldn't hurt ;) )
• great creature design and animations, but that goes for all of PoF’s creatures/monsters/NPCs

Maps:

• ideal layout for exploration, engaging and exciting
• breathtaking designs (architecture, environment, ambient sounds), including the story instances <3
• enjoyable, atmospheric soundtrack
• an event system that doesn’t usually stress you out nor limits your options at any time; also, many events require you to use your brain in order to figure out what to do, which I welcome
• finally, there is real adventure to be had during exploration by going everywhere to discover treasure, unlock new collections and simply feel rewarded for taking your time to explore an area (in previous releases, so much potential was constantly wasted, but not this time)
• engaging in conversations with NPCs no longer feels pointless and tedious (where you would simply skip through dialogue) but is filled with rich lore, important hints, etc.
• wonderful ambient dialogue that often has you stop and listen, making your environment feel “alive”

Story/Writing:

• the story was so well written and perfectly paced that I find myself completely immersed in it, excited, surprised, shocked, moved, a whole bandwidth of emotions that good writing evokes in the recipient; I constantly find myself craving for more, impatient to see what happens next <3 (and still am for the rest of the story)
• the player character’s personal background finally matters again, though only in small portions ("I was blessed by Lyssa at birth."), so I wish they made more use of it and gave it more depth and significance :/
• the quality of dialogue was mostly superb, the best by far in this game (no more super infantile humor and bad jokes, silly conversations, severe out-of-character behavior, and what have you; the only thing that got on my nerves that way was the childish banter between Canach and Rytlock, and especially Rytlock has become too much of a whiner in PoF)

Miscellaneous:

• your brain gets stimulated in so many different ways that you never get bored; be it side quests, Hero Point challenges, Mastery Point missions, and so on; instead of having all the focus primarily on fighting, like it was with most of the previous content, you now have a huge variety of different tasks (kudos!).

Criticism/Suggestions:

Item mechanics:

• you cannot rely on the color of common (green) and uncommon (blue) unidentified items, as some do contain rare (yellow) items as well

Mounts:

• idea: quick mount swap; just like you have two sets of weapons and two pets between which you can swap, give us that option for mounts as well?
• please make it possible to activate your respective mount as soon as the enemy is dead, even when you are still suffering from conditions
• please make it possible to activate the Skimmer even while taking damage from sulfur (equal to quicksand, where you can activate it at any time)
• dismounting often leaves your character at a different spot than where they were standing before while mounted, which can easily lead to your toon falling off the ledge
• dismounting for every action quickly becomes irritating; maybe change to remain mounted when engaging in dialogue, picking up event objects to carry to target, etc.?
• make mounts available to your companions in more story missions than just the Forged fortress one
• make it possible to switch to the glider (by holding Space) if you accidentally fall off a great height while mounted (so you don’t have to wait until you finally hit the ground, then have to work all the way back up)

Maps:

• many mobs have a disturbingly huge aggro range and/or respawn time, making some areas painful to traverse or explore
• stop enemies from interrupting dialogue; or instance, I was in a conversation with Defector Basma, but couldn't read her full response, because I had to dodge an AoE attack by a Jacaranda above me (which, once more, leads me to the annoying aggro range)
• some events overlap, getting in the way of each other and making it hard to survive unless there are other players around to help you deal with the mobs
• you often are forced to fight, whether you want to or not, due to the aforementioned issues

Story/Writing:

• even though we had one option to make a seemingly significant choice (between the two factions and neutrality), it turned out to be of no consequence, which was a huge disappointment :(
• although a major improvement to LWS3, the dialogue could still use a little less contemporary wording by the PC and her/his companions (e.g., use “Are you alright?” instead of “You okay?”)

Miscellaneous:

• people have been complaining about the difficulty level of some fights; there is a reason I started PoF with my Necromancer first (usually, my first character is my Ranger), because of his high survivability, damage, and elite spec boni (I am not sure it will be as easy with my Ranger...)
• the new character selection screen: please read
• some event notifications in the UI are huge spoilers, that was a bummer

[KTap.4381]

I'm on my phone atm but I believe you can go to options > control options > mount or something to change keybinds for each mount.

[Jokubas.4265]

I've seen some comments about the maps being empty and not enough people to do events. I can't confirm it, but I'm willing to bet that's less literally true and more an accidental side effect of a variety of other factors.

First, the fact that most events can still only be seen on the map when you're close to them. In a larger map, this means you're less likely to be close enough to that event to see it and help whoever is there.

Second, a lot of enemies seem unusually tough right now. This means that events which would otherwise be able to be done solo cannot be, so it's more glaring that you're not getting assistance. I stumbled on this Champion Sand Lion and I got one other person to help me, but despite the lion's attacks not being too much of a problem, it still took us ages to work through his health bar (so much that annoying packs of nearby enemies respawned multiple times and harassed us during a boss that had adds of his own).

These things are connected to some other event quality of life features I've wanted to see for awhile, but now seems like a good time to bring them up because I think they'd really help out Path of Fire.

1) Addressing my first point again, I really think events should be able to be viewed from a longer distance. Also, I think events should give you more information from a greater distance. Nothing's worse than choosing to head toward an event in one direction over the opposite direction, only to discover the boss is at 2% health when you get in range to see it, wasting your time coming over and preventing you from participating in either event.

This is especially true of greater events or map-wide ones. Even in Central Tyria, there are some places where the side of your screen will give you elaborate information of some interesting thing going on in the zone and encouraging you to participate, but you're not actually close enough to see where any of it is taking place, making the information practically useless if you're not already familiar with the event.

2) Speaking of information, another thing I've noticed is an inconsistency of information on events. Some events give you vague information on how to participate, and some are outright unhelpful (it's a problem I have with some Hearts as well, which I might describe later). I've passed up most Path of Fire events so far because I was focusing on the story, but what didn't help was when the screen announced something interesting, without actually giving me information on where to go or why it matters.

This reminds me of the old World Bosses from Central Tyria. Most of those meta events will say at the side of the screen something like "The boss is dead and nothing is going on" until the moment the event chain restarts. This is really jarring and unhelpful for new players or anyone else not familiar with that chain. I think the game could handle just outright giving you the timer, but even without information that direct I think they could be more helpful. So there's no too much clutter, perhaps more complicated events could have some sort of question mark icon that you could click that would open a window with more detailed information.

Then there are the events that chain into other events, but it's not obvious, so often times you'll do one event, everyone will leave, and then the next event starts and you'll be all alone. I think some of those events could use some UI or even just an icon indicating that the current event may be over, but a new one will start up shortly, so don't leave if you wanted to do more.

[Knuckle Joe.7408]

Please take it easy with the damn CC on the mobs. Seems like every trash enemy has 3 goddamn stuns/snares/knockbacks/knockdowns.

[Ashantara.8731]

After finishing map exploration and the story yesterday, I now edited my initial post to change a few things here and there (that I either was wrong about or had to add some thoughts to).

[YarrCaptainJuan.7248]

I would like to be able to mine and open chests from the back of my mounts.