Platformer.... I get it now...

[Humor.5763]

Hello all,

So, finally finished World Completion after 8 years, probably around 2-3 years, on and off at a time, and honestly, I could have done it a lot sooner, if I hadn't deleted my previous character, as the only maps I was actually missing was the main cities, and it was the last thing I did on my current lvl 80 (MR 17 now).

After asking around the forums, and following the advice of people to continue the story/maps in order, I finally moved onto Living Story 2 (as I missed the first one, kind of wish I didn't now, seeing the Recap video and all), and wow. I can totally tell why people are calling this game a platformer now.

This is coming from someone who's just come brand new to this particular map, and living stories in general, as I've missed them all (buying LS 2-4). At first, I thought the map was cool, and as per usual, I don't read instructions or anything, so I noticed the little glowing points, and after around 10 minutes of playing around with them, finally realized what they were actually for, and how the mechanic works.

It's an interesting Mechanic, and I guess it came before the HoT, and PoF, so, no mounts were really present (correct me if I'm wrong). I had around 20-30 minutes of entertainment with this, until pretty much "everything" required you to use this mechanic. I don't know about anyone else, but when I first enter a new map for the first time, the thing I want to accomplish first, is the map completion, so I have everything complete, and then I can proceed with the story, going from waypoint, to waypoint as required. 30 minutes was enough time for me to realize, now that we have access to mounts and such, that this mechanic becomes increasingly annoying.

The first area of Dry w/e the map is called was straight forward, and for the most part, it was simply following the glowing spots from point to point, until you get further into it, and the jumping points on the ground start to make less, and less sense, almost as if someone just randomly scattered them on the ground. A perfect example, would be this one area, where there's a Blue jump point, that seems to have you jump straight up onto a mountainous area, with a purple Jump point, that seems to lead no where. When you go on the ground, and actually look at the Jump Lines, it looks like it was intended for you to actually climb this mountain from point to point, which is fine and all. The problem is, you're not able to go from point to point, because each point above the other on the mountain is covered by a ceiling like area, and to my knowledge, you can't use the jump colors in a combo, such as "Dash", then "Jump", or something like that.

So back to google I go, trying to look at how to get to this certain hero point with no avail. I must've spent at least 40 minutes trying to figure this out, and thought to myself, "This is absolutely no fun". The gimmick became old incredibly fast, again it's probably due to being spoiled with mounts and such, but what makes this even worse, is these jump points are again, like Orr was, littered with enemies nearby, and anytime you need to make a jump, or need the speed while jumping, a monster always interrupts you, slowing you down by 50%, thus, not being able to make the jump. So I need to spend time to go kill said monster, wait another 10 seconds for the game to finally recognize that I am out of combat, and start over. But wait, if you screw up, guess what? You have to repeat that entire process again.

I could just be tired from the lack of sleep I've been getting, but, I just don't think this mechanic is any fun, and I'm starting at this point to agree, this game has turned into one massive platformer. I hope Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, and the rest of the Living Story season's aren't like this. I got so fed up with it, I made a new character (Necro), and had more fun leveling that up, and am already lvl 26, after 2, and half hours. (I don't believe in using my Tomes to Insta 80, it's boring, and I like to learn my class).

These are just my thoughts. If the other expansions, and Living Stories are like this, I might as well head out for another 3 years, and see if this game is still around then.

[Randulf.7614]

Heart of Thorns is arguably worse as the maps are vertical and the mini map isn't in 3D so you you can get lost trying to work your way up and around - especially in Tangled Depths which is at once a beautiful yet also for many, frustrating exercise in exploration and spelunking. Dry Top is the only map to use those crystals (except a festival map in the summer). Silverwastes which follows Dry Top in S2 is entirely flat.

Season 3 has a big mix of maps - only 1 or two are vertical.

Path of Fire is flat and easy to explore in comparison to what you are experiencing. If you aren't bothered about story continuity, go to Path of Fire and enjoy it there. Get the mounts which will help with older areas and then work your way backwards (LS4's skyscale whilst a long, ardous task of getting will make all map explorations in earlier maps trivial)

Jumping, verticality are part of the game though and very much a point in the game's favour, so whilst it isn't as significant later, it is something to embrace.

[Skotlex.7580]

Drytop is the only map that plays that way, and mostly (only?) on the southern/east part of it that has all that mountain/canyon design. Those crystals were introduced with the bazaar of the four winds festival, and they were meant for races and other such festival events. Lorewise, they belong to the zephyrites... and surprise, these are the guys that crashed in this map. So it was sort of logical to incorporate such crystals as part of the map design. Fortunately, that doesn't happen again.

HOT may have more vertical design, but going up is a matter of taking air drafts or leaping mushrooms, so there's less freedom than getting stuck with a jumping crystal and not knowing where to jump to.

Ps: you can collect multiple types of crystals and have all the three skills available until they run out. I can only imagine the horror if there were a crystal based jumping puzzle in drytop....

[Vayne.8563]

So many maps in this game, one map doesn't meet your specifications so the entire game has turned into a platformer. I don't like raids but there are more raids in this game than zones that require you to actually platform. The zone after that, Silverwastes has no real platforming at all.

This entire argument is absolutely overstated. I like to do things this way and when I can't do it that way it's frustrating. That's fine. It's still one map.

The HoT maps are different because stuff like jumping mushrooms require ZERO jumping kill. You get on the mushroom and it deposits you were you need to be. This is an overstated argument that really needs to be shut down.

SAB is a platformer. Jumping puzzles are platformers. And yes, Dry Top is a single zone that requires those sort of platforming skills. Certainly no better or worse than vistas behind JPs in Diessa Plateau and Dredgehaunt Cliffs that have been in the game since launch.

I'm pretty sure you're making the hero point you need harder to get than it actually is. I get it. You don't like either the jumping or the puzzle solving. But that zone was undeniably popular. And it's still the only zone in the game like it.

Edit: I disliked Lake Doric very much. But I'm not going to claim without experiencing it that the whole game is ruined because I didn't like a single zone.