Feedback: Whisper in the Dark

[Zok.4956]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Make me do asuran math equations, make me require going on a 100 enemy kill streak uninterrupted, anything, seriously anything other than easter egg hunts.

Be careful what you wish for. ;-)Players complained that the playtime of the story of the last episodes was (only) two-hours, and Anet probably read the complains and reduced it (further) to 1 hour.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

the new map seems nice. But the story is way, way too short - and artificially making it look longer hiding it behind some mastery points really does not help. The end fight was disappointingly easy tbh. Overall, I had hoped for A LOT more, after such an long time since Dragonfall.

[Flandre.2870]

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[Ayrilana.1396]

My take is that I found the episode to be enjoyable. Given what information Anet had provided to players beforehand, I found everything that we got to be well within reason. We got half the content of a LS4 episode (the full size of the map was leaked by That Shaman which is roughly twice the size of what we have now) at half the time we normally have to wait for another. If they keep the two month cadence, in two years we'll have exactly the same amount of content as we would have gotten from a regular LS season. The map and story also appear to be in similar size and length as the prologue. If they can maintain this, I feel that this would be a good direction as we won't have to wait four months for the next content drop.

[ruikarikun.9402]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Other than that I can say that the story was shorter than expected but w/e. Content was good story was for the length.

While I agree with you in some parts, I can't understand 8 years and you think this game is not boring after that time? :DJust to remind there are some new players and it's not that easy to make very interesting content (I mean in that situation on current game development not in the theory).

[hugo.4705]

So after playing a little more within the map/story, I think I can now make a feedback and divide it into pros and cons.

So the pros:-I liked the Aberrant Forest area, well made, creepy. Also liked Jormag Whispers.-It's an interesting thing seeing Jormag speaking through dead bodies. As LS4E2 experiments has shown a dragon corruption can resurrect dead. So I wonder, if a Jormag minion is killed, couldn't it just re-corrupt it to resurrect it?-In story, helping different allies and the keep discovery was okay.-Good strike mission.

The cons:-The map is small, but what is more a problem is that it's empty, the events are bad, not really interesting and repetitive because not long.-The dialogues during events are also annoying I mean, hearing Marjory crying it's not real every 2 seconds or baby Braham saying It's my friends/dad is annoying and cringy.We should have hallucinations too, it's not working currently and not immersive, if we, the players got to fight against Svanirs wearing an illusion showing them as Tonn or our deceased mentor or pact members, it would work definitely better!-Would have liked a greater presence of Boneskinner like in the whole map tracking you frenetically more like an SCP in fact. It should have been part of a greater event, even a meta it's not a threat at all. It should really have more unique mechanics. Multiply is size by 2, health by three. Make it disappear, showing illusions and creating dark fog in the whole perimeter. Almora could have been killed by it, a good story.-The end of General Almora Soulkeeper is Unacceptable, such an important character killed like a minor one.-No lores behind those three factions (aberrant/fallen/asgeir) and that's sad. They are there, not a lot stronger than the others, they are just glowing....-Useless and ugly weapon set. (Through norn players may find it ok-cool)

So let's say, sure you have the base of the map that is still here and great, but in it, nothing worthy, no real link between all the locations, no stories, not that much ambient dialogue, no efforts to tell us about those 3 colored factions. The map is just dead like those vigils in the keep. /pun

[Adzekul.3104]

My impressions (story done, map fully explored):

1. Map was not up to the usual amazing standards for map design. I guess we can't expect superlative design every time, but it has become a routine. It leaves this one a bit underwhelming, if I am honest. Something has to be cut, but it is a bit sad that it is map quality. Speaking for myself I would prefer to see you cut weapon/armour collections instead.
2. Story was short. Not a tragedy, but not amazing either. Mildly refreshing to have a short story once in a while. So long as it does not become the routine.
3. The usual gates around having to do events after you complete the first instance seemed less painful than in the past.
4. I very much dislike the weapon or armour collection philosophy. My fear is it will be mandatory for the next legendary trinket, and I am not happy about this. The time sink is massive and this is not what I am looking for from this game. Also, I am not finding the weapon skins to be so interesting. I guess the incessant "we want new weapon and armour skins" feedback from forums is a problem I could highlight. The vocal minority do not speak for all.
5. Lack of legendaries does not bother me. Frankly I consider the Gen 3 legendaries to be far too expensive to craft, and many of them do not look legendary enough. Why on earth anything should consume 11 000 mithril is beyond me, and makes the expectations of the designers/decision-makers out of sync with the players in my opinion.
6. No horrible final boss fight (like Season 2 and Season 3 and some of Season 4). I felt this one was quite good. Not every player is an Arah dungeon solo-er and the "death is meaningless, you will auto-rez or you can respawn multiple times during the boss fight" design philosophy is a real immersion-killer for me.
7. There are more mastery points from the story/map/achievements than you need to fully unlock all masteries, and this is a good thing, but it still means you have to do a tonne of content on the map. By my calculation, you can skip 2 mastery points ... so I guess the full weapon collection (oh God, how painful -- and why the design facination with 32 slot bags?? how many more times will you guys try to hook the player base on the unappealing material/time sink that is 32 slot bags??)) and either the food collection or the 15x meta. To be fair, 15 times is better than the 25 for Dragonfall.

Summary: mild positives, mild negatives, and one potentially major negative, depending upon the requirements for the next legendary trinket.

[Arkantos.7460]

I realy like the map ^^

[Jimbru.6014]

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention: the champs in the aftermath of the meta. I was VERY unpleasantly surprised when they pulled out PoF bounty boss abilities like the spinning lasers and range phasing. Totally was not expecting to see those abilities in this episode and I got downed a few times. An unexpected twist that made those fights more challenging. Nice job on that, ANet.

[LucianDK.8615]

@"Adzekul.3104" said:My impressions (story done, map fully explored):

1. Map was not up to the usual amazing standards for map design. I guess we can't expect superlative design every time, but it has become a routine. It leaves this one a bit underwhelming, if I am honest. Something has to be cut, but it is a bit sad that it is map quality. Speaking for myself I would prefer to see you cut weapon/armour collections instead.
2. Story was short. Not a tragedy, but not amazing either. Mildly refreshing to have a short story once in a while. So long as it does not become the routine.
3. The usual gates around having to do events after you complete the first instance seemed less painful than in the past.
4. I very much dislike the weapon or armour collection philosophy. My fear is it will be mandatory for the next legendary trinket, and I am not happy about this. The time sink is massive and this is not what I am looking for from this game. Also, I am not finding the weapon skins to be so interesting. I guess the incessant "we want new weapon and armour skins" feedback from forums is a problem I could highlight. The vocal minority do not speak for all.
5. Lack of legendaries does not bother me. Frankly I consider the Gen 3 legendaries to be far too expensive to craft, and many of them do not look legendary enough. Why on earth anything should consume 11 000 mithril is beyond me, and makes the expectations of the designers/decision-makers out of sync with the players in my opinion.
6. No horrible final boss fight (like Season 2 and Season 3 and some of Season 4). I felt this one was quite good. Not every player is an Arah dungeon solo-er and the "death is meaningless, you will auto-rez or you can respawn multiple times during the boss fight" design philosophy is a real immersion-killer for me.
7. There are more mastery points from the story/map/achievements than you need to fully unlock all masteries, and this is a good thing, but it still means you have to do a tonne of content on the map. By my calculation, you can skip 2 mastery points ... so I guess the full weapon collection (oh God, how painful -- and why the design facination with 32 slot bags?? how many more times will you guys try to hook the player base on the unappealing material/time sink that is 32 slot bags??)) and either the food collection or the 15x meta. To be fair, 15 times is better than the 25 for Dragonfall.

Summary: mild positives, mild negatives, and one potentially major negative, depending upon the requirements for the next legendary trinket.

Gen 3 legendaries? I think you are mixing up something. Weve only had Gen1 and Gen2.

[Danikat.8537]

Having just finished the story the first thing on my mind is that I think Jormag tried to make that corpse smile at us during the cut scene and that was freaky as all kitten. Which is good from a story perspective, but disturbing to watch. Also Almorra's death affected me more than I thought it would, and I think the prologue helped with that by reminding us of everything she's done to bring about the campaign and victories against the dragons. I really hope she gets a fitting tribute somewhere, maybe the Black Citadel or Vigil Keep.

It's hard to say whether I finished the story more quickly than usual, because I had a very rare evening alone to play it so I was able to do the entire thing uninterrupted, and focused more on finished the story and not getting distracted with other things than I usually would to make the most of that time, so it's not really comparable to my normal experience with a LW episode (which is usually spread over several evenings). I thought it was a shame that the open-world stuff seemed largely disconnected from the story though and could be pretty much ignored while playing it. But then I know other people don't like it when you have to do hearts or events or whatever to progress the story, so I guess that's a difficult one to resolve.

I liked the story though, especially the Raven test labyrinth thingy, I want to repeat that to try different choices and see how it affects what the Raven says and if it changes the bonus you get at the end.

[Jimbru.6014]

@"Tiny Doom.4380" said:It's undeniably a very short episode but I don't believe that's a problem in itself. The pacing is actually good and the content is a huge improvement over most of the tedious, longwinded and painful filler that padded out many episodes of the last two seasons. I vastly prefer the new approach, especially the absence of the "learn new skill A, learn new skill B, Learn new skill C, now put them all together while dodging lava pits during an artillery barrage" trope that served to make every episode both a boring and a miserable experience.

Amen. I much prefer this new approach we've seen in the last few stories. Also the long winded "Repeat this achieve 25 times for 1 point" that is notably absent from this new map but plagued most episodes before it.

I would certainly take these shorter episodes with better content and gameplay every time over what we suffered for the preceding several years, though.

Ditto.

That said, this episode has its problems other than length. The voiceover/dialog is very flaky. I could hear Rytlock and Cre talking all the time I was with Marjory, even though they were on another part of the map doing something entirely different. That was by no means the only time I heard the dialog from one scene while I was engaged in another, either.

Eh, so they left their communicators on. Broken as intended. ;)

Also, while the atmosphere was excellent and the plot solid enough, the charater interaction was off. Several characters really didn't sound like themselves. Rytlock was virtualy incoherent at times and Marjory was almost unrecognizeable. She was less emotional back when Belinda was actually killed and I don't recall any character development since then that would explain her almost terrified reactiion to yet another hallucination. It's not like she hasn't seen mind tricks before, either. She is going out with Kasmeer, after all...

There may be some new voice actors in the house, I think. Or simply aging voice actors. Also...well, instead of going character by character, I'll use Marjory as the example. Marjory is used to playing the cool streetwise "soft butch" goth chick whom nothing seems to faze. She's used to being the detective who always knows something you don't, used to being the one doing the sneaking around in people's heads, figuratively if not literally. Now, after her near death experience against Balthazar and relationship troubles with Kasmeer (there's your keys for personality development) the shoe is on the other foot, and she's understandably way unsettled as Jormag's whispers are forcing her inner insecurities and weaknesses to the surface. That's where ALL the characters are in this episode, really. We're seeing a different side of the characters, a hidden inner side, the things that haunt them as they're trying to go to sleep at night. And while it's shocking at times, I think it's great for adding RP depth to these NPCs we've been following for years.

[Fueki.4753]

@Adzekul.3104 said:so I guess the full weapon collection (oh God, how painful -- and why the design facination with 32 slot bags?? how many more times will you guys try to hook the player base on the unappealing material/time sink that is 32 slot bags??))I'll definitely skip that one. There isn't even a single skin I remotely like.

the food collection or the 15x meta.The food collection is easily done, half the items in the list consist of bringing back the food you collected.You might also want to do the 15x Meta by the time Episode 2 comes in, as there might be other horrible Mastery Point Achievements or you simply want the head start of one point.

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

I like the way they introduced the enw mastery: With a short intro and story line it made it feel meaningful to ahcieve it, independent of whether it indeed was meaningful later on. I'm not sure how they introduced all the previous masteries since that stuff rarely sticks in my memory but this seemed like a rly fun way to do it.I hope they are able to do the same intro quest style for future eltie spec if they ever decide to make them.

[magnusthorek.8027]

Because of the excess of visual aggressiveness, I was forced to deactivate Post-processing which made everything look darker, in all maps. I didn't test on this map in particular, but if that's really the case, I can only guide myself during meta by using the mini-map because everything is too dark and the HUGE snowy border don't make it anything easier.

Achievements-wise, while I'm still sad that WvW'ers can get the mastery reward with a single track while we, PvE'ers, as much as I understood, are time-gated (weekly-cycling strike missions' legendary bosses), I'm glad it's MUCH less than the Prologue. I just wish you stop making content for ranged players — e.g. Ice Try achievement, for example, as a Reaper is very hard. I tried 3x and finished the combat WITH the eligibility effect but I still don't have it (and had to wait the long ending cutscene after every attempt).

On the Mechanics subject, the rock-paper-scissors thing is interesting, although kind of hard to memorize to me. But they're only really useful if aiming the "gold" chest of Strike Missions with PUGs and the "recharging time" is too long to be of any usefulness (I guess only the passive effects can have some - small - impact). Without it, mobs just take a bit more time to die (shrug).

There are a few bugs here and there, like floating mobs and NPCs getting blocked by visual effects (o.O) but I believe those can be rectified in time.

But I'm not only of critics. The change in Roller Beetle was much appreciated. Not having to use Bond of Vigor all the time is very nice — even though the mounting cooldown for it is more than 4x longer now (<_<).

[Donari.5237]

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:I've been playing this game for nearly 8 years now, and as of THIS release, I am officially fed up with and done with easter egg hunts. What do I mean by this? Looking for lost coins, finding eggs for skyscale, ect ect ect. I don't know what it was about tonight, but when I was searching for a "boneskinner" for 2 #$%^ing hours to finish the hunger achievement, I just had enough.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. Do you keep Map chat on? Because in the map I was on the Boneskinner spawned almost non-stop, relatively speaking, and was called out in Map. You don't search for it, you do the event chain that starts with the escort from the keep and the Boneskinner is the end event of the chain. As long as that chain is going, you'll get the champ. I killed it, then talked to the kodan, then had the collection kill done in less than 15 more minutes.

That won't help with collection scavenger hunts if those dismay you, but in this one case your frustration was a matter of bad luck in your information flow about the new stuff.

[dmone.5631]

I found the storytelling to be great, without all the you need to do this or that for an achievement. As stated throughout it was quite short and was more along the lines of the Prologue actually.

Now for the Boneskinner, this mob needs to be patterned after the Stalker from Warframe. That NPC was just plain terrifying when playing the game, the lights would flicker, then the voice and the 50 percent chance you survived or died was great. The community is very mature at this stage so harder public bosses are going to have to be explored to keep the challenge factor. Every zone in this game needs a World Boss addition that is a challenging fight, like everything in the game the encounter should have RNG difficulty but should never be a cake walk.

The new mastery system is interesting but wasn't very useful for me doing the story, nor has it been a huge factor with the damage sponge NPCs.

I am looking forward to the new episode.

[blambidy.3216]

I will give the review a different way.

The UglyThe part where Arenanet is saying we are giving expansion "like" content is truly not showing. In this episode I honestly felt like less content was given than season 4. What I mean is this. Me and my friend were truly trying to enjoy the episode, but as soon as we get into the last instance, we got done with it around 10 minutes, then it ends. The episode truly feels like I took as much time as into a level 20 story instance and completed it. The episode took all in all maybe an hour the most including the events and getting experience to level up your mastery to continue the story. All in all nothing in the episode felt expansion "like" content was given.

The badThe meta boss in the map is truly disappointing, and feels cancer when all your doing is protecting the keeps, then after you spent 10 mins of killing mobs, you kill the meta boss within 1 min to find out you don't get a meta boss chest. No amalgamated gemstone, no map currency chest, just unidentified gear. So I think this map is going to be a ghost town. The meta wasn't fun, and you didn't get any loot. There is no map currency to farm trinkets, or a new set of armor stats. All your farming for is skins that aren't good to look at. The skins honestly look like a step back from the Desert king skins. I thought upgrading the weapons would make them into an ascended flashy weapon. But it's just an okay exotic weapon that your going to reskin on a weapon stat you need. The map has truly no replay ability unless your going for the weapons to unlock, and the achievements. The only replay ability is for fun, and to be honest this isn't the best looking map to play in, and the meta boss is not the best to play just for "fun." The strike mission still doesn't give new player any understanding of what raid mechanics are. Yes you threw in raid "like" mechanics, however a new person coming in still doesn't know what a cc break bar is. No where within your game explains what this blue bar is for. No where in your game tells you why you want to bring this blue bar down. You need a tutorial for it, you need to explain hard cc, soft cc. You need to explain what icons on your skills show hard cc, soft cc. You need to understand that Arenanet devs are creating this division of why raiders will not accept a brand new player into a raid, because you do not teach your players the basics of a raid, and these strike missions are still missing the basics. Strike missions still need to tell new players how compositions work, how boons work, how buffs work, why you cc a boss. You need to add those tutorials into the strike mission. If strike missions are the "stepping stone" into raids, you need to teach them correctly the basics of how raids work. Not everyone learns by reacting on the spot. Which this is still dividing the big gap of players that won't be accepted because, they don't know something as simple as cc.

The goodThe ending clip of the story is great and I was disappointed that it ended so fast. Glad that Arenanet is adding cinematic cut scenes into the story which you should always do. The strike mission as much as I was angry that Arenanet didn't teach new players about raids, the mission in itself is fun. And it is failable, which you should show to new players that things happen. The strike mission shows that you do need some coordination with the group, and that is a good thing. To new players it is challenging, and that is good.

Hopes and dreamsIf Arenanet is truly not jebaiting the gw2 community and strike missions are truly the "stepping stone" of raids. Arenanet has implemented a weekly reward system, and hopefully they will implement that with raid cms. The way I think of how strikes and raids intertwine is this. If people ever played fire emblem, Strike missions to me are like the game mode where your players can die and come back even though fire emblems eye candy is your players die and don't come back. Then hopefully in the future Arenanet will make raids have an easy mode so that is it a layer harder then strike missions, which would be per say normal mode to "new players." Then you have regular raids which would be considered the hard mode, which is Where raids were truly designed. Then you have weekly cms, which would be considered lunatic in fire emblem. So hopefully Arenanet does implement it, and that is what arenanets vision is. And that would be the reason why they are investing more time into strike missions. However if arenanet is not continuing raids and it is done for good, arenanet does have to make strike missions have difficulty settings, and a cm. My hopes will be that Arenanet intertwines all of what I said and then creates w1-w3 cms. So then even new players can have a taste of raids and not be so scared.

[Ashantara.8731]

Just replaying the episode and can't point out often enough how great the music is (those eerie strings!) and how much it adds to the atmosphere of this wonderful map! <3

P.S. to those complaining about the map's size: the size doesn't matter (no pun intended!), only the content does. And the content of this map is packed with fun, so...

[Reverielle.3972]

What we have is mostly great. But overall it feels very rushed.

It's Jora's Keep, a norn keep. So where are the trophies on the wall? It's bare bones, this is no norn keep. Where are the kegs? Where's the loving attention to detail? We pick up Jhavi's notes in the story, but we don't get anything; we don't get any actual notes to read, so this just becomes (another) 'go here and collect this' quest. It's really important in these games to have maps that let the environment, and events therein have space to breathe. We certainly don't have that at all. In the post mount era of GW2 considerations of space are doubly important, but the scope of the new map is just a mess in that regard. Some of the graphics/effects in the zone are woeful. Just look at that sky (then look at the quality of skies such as Crystal Oasis, Bitterfrost Frontier even Hoelbrak).

And the whole exploiting the spirits of the wild with their essence. That is just insulting (both lore-wise and it's mechanical-wise fairly flat too). What norn in their right mind would be pleased with exploiting the spirits?!? (As stated in-game by Researcher Yarixx). Norn culture is all about revering, honouring and respecting the Spirits of the Wild. Ugh. I guess it was too much to hope for for any further insight into norn culture. If norn are willing to exploit the spirits of the wild to harness their power for themselves well we might as well all join Jormag. It just doesn't make sense. A more appropriate response to Yarixx's research would be to skewer him and roast him over a spit.

It's all the little things, but they add up, to a lot. Some bits are great, but they're just too few and far between.

But at least we do know now what to expect from this living world season moving forward (and that's exactly what it is despite it being called a saga). We'll just have to temper our expectation for future ones so we are not so disappointed.

[Zoltar MacRoth.7146]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:...make me require going on a 100 enemy kill streak uninterrupted, anything, seriously anything other than easter egg hunts.

It's horrible how they make those easter egg hunts mandatory so you are forced to do them or your head explores in RL. ;)

[thepenmonster.3621]

@Jimbru.6014 said:She's used to being the detective who always knows something you don't, used to being the one doing the sneaking around in people's heads, figuratively if not literally. Now, after her near death experience against Balthazar and relationship troubles with Kasmeer (there's your keys for personality development) the shoe is on the other foot, and she's understandably way unsettled as Jormag's whispers are forcing her inner insecurities and weaknesses to the surface. That's where ALL the characters are in this episode, really. We're seeing a different side of the characters, a hidden inner side, the things that haunt them as they're trying to go to sleep at night. And while it's shocking at times, I think it's great for adding RP depth to these NPCs we've been following for years.

This is the correct take. The Commander and their pals have done a lot of questionable things over the past seven years. Half of them would see the Commander up in The Hague for crimes against humanity... crimes against dregity? ...grawlity? Anyway, we've wiped out a lot of random villagers is what I'm saying. The least believable thing in this saga is the Flame Legion children not running away from you in terror.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Zoltar MacRoth.7146 said:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:...make me require going on a 100 enemy kill streak uninterrupted, anything, seriously anything other than easter egg hunts.

It's horrible how they make those easter egg hunts mandatory so you are forced to do them or your head explores in RL. ;)

I catch your sarcasm but it's kind of off target and really not productive towards letting Arenanet know that the player base just wants something different to do at this point. And INB4 you say things like "I like item collections" or "I don't mind them" to fuel your remark. Because we all know, everyone is getting tired of easter egg hunting.

Your comment was made with some kind of conviction, as if every single achievement panel wasn't chuck full of easter egg hunting. A player won't be doing much in this game at all if they aren't partaking in easter egg hunting. Every single achievement that's worth doing, that all players desire to complete, building legends or skyscale as example, are just all entirely composed of hunting for item collections. Like really, just unengaging content where you aren't even fighting anything or being challenged at all outside of your patience. You just walk around Tyria looking under rocks and behind bushes, as you fight to stay awake while doing it.

So yeah, unless you are some kind of player who runs story only "no achievements" and then logs off and does no other content, yeah they make these easter egg hunts mandatory, because that's pretty much all the content is anymore, past the stories.

The point being is that people who are still playing GW2, who want to stay here and support this game, want something else to do man. IE they could easily replace a 25 item collection that requires going to every freaking map in Tyria that involves nothing engaging, with a 3 item collection that requires a player to actually do something engaging such as complete some kind of an objective against a raid boss or something.

People are just tired of every achievement being an adventure of closing down your window, looking at a guide for the next random hidden location of an item, open game back up, go to it, close window again, look at guide, go to the next hidden location, get the item, close game, look at guide, pinch your arm and smack your face to stay awake, go the item, close window, open window, so on and so forth.

Come on man. This isn't about "Telling me I have a choice to play the game or not." What this is about, is suggesting to Arenanet how to make the game more fun. And a GREAT start would be by pushing out content that allows me to keep my damn game window up most of the time, instead of closed and loading a youtube video or a dulfy guide, to be able to find otherwise virtually impossible to find items that are randomly hidden all over Tyria. They've beat this content to death and they need to produce achievements that give you a clear objective in the panel description, that don't require players to be in and out and in and out of their game window constantly. Crips sake man.

[Ashantara.8731]

Creepiest moment in GW2: Jormag taking control of the Fraenir's dead body and giving us that friendly smile, reaffirming her benevolent intensions...

[hugo.4705]

It was a very nice cutscene. Kinda reminded me Joko's speech. Those whispers... they are all so nice, they ask me to rest. And I kinda liked that possesed guy. But I prefer to chose Promordy. Maybe DSD if it exists.