Champions - Judgement is a Disgrace! *contains spoilers*

[Trigarta.3841]

To start out with, I know that halfway through IBS development the focus shifted towards End of Dragons and development of the saga was cut short. This still doesn't justify butchering the storyline like that. I have never played a more rushed, underwhelming and disappointing story conclusion in my many years playing MMO's.

We kill off 2 (!) Elder Dragons in 20 minutes in an absolutely foregettable instance. How this all goes down during the instance is just jawdropping, in a bad way.

I understand you want to bring the Elder Dragon threat to a near conclusion so you can finish it of with End of Dragons. I was becoming tired of yet another Elder Dragon to kill over the years. It was too predictable. But rushing this story development so hard while it has been the driving narrative since the inception of this game is beyond me!

We waited months for the ending with minimal content to play just to play through it in 20 minutes, left to be disappointed by poor poor writing. 

Many people are baffled and angry. All we have left is this elusive expansion which you refuse to talk about since announcing it months ago. Oh wait, you will...in another 3 months time...

The ending would have been the perfect moment to drop an information-bomb on the community to hype us up for the expansion but of course you wouldn't indulge us. Not even a tiny teaser-trailer. ArenaNet was never good at marketing though. They never learned over the years how important it is to keep your community engaged.

Just communicating with us seems hard for them at times. 

I know we won't get an official appology for this disgrace of a story release. That would be admitting failure and big companies usually don't do that.

You know, although Dragonstorm was completly foregettable, something stuck with me. The scene with Ryland and his parents. Rytlock tells his son he has nothing left to prove.

You, ArenaNet,  have A LOT to prove! Prove to us that End of Dragons was worth the shafted IBS. Prove to us that you can still tell compelling stories (with a worthy conclusion). Prove to us the expansion is the beginning of a new glorious era for GW2 and not the last hurrah for this game to squeeze out money before abandoning it and letting it die.

 

[rrusse.7058]

In terms of story telling yes this last patch has left much to be desired.

 

What about in terms of gameplay? It has been more or less fine aside from some enemies in DRMs being a little on the tanky side.

[Yggranya.5201]

If aurene doesn't die during end of dragons, it's not the end of dragons.

[Avenrise.3592]

I play solo and primarily for the story, lore and exploration. Going into the 'Champions' I knew that it would be a little bare due to the restructuring. I knew that the engine couldn't handle whole dragons so seeing just the heads was still a cool moment for me. The gameplay, while simple, I largely enjoyed as it was about maintaining the balance enough to deal with both dragons. The Champions fighting was great and the emotional ending for Ryland was a worthy moment IMO.

 

This is where the praise ends. I honestly feel cheated- you cannot and should not ever end a decade long arc with a 30 minute patch and a 30 second cutscene. Where was Jormag's manipulation and mind games? Where was Primordus' brute strength on show? Why is Aurene okay with getting involved now having wanting to stay out of it for so long? Why did Braham and Ryland survive with no...you know what, I've not got time to list all the issues here. Honestly it would have been better for ANET to say "They just disappeared" in plain text on the screen. A terrible ending but still better than the way this arc was wrapped up. 

 

I understand the lack of devs for the Saga but I can't understand the need to just push it out ASAP to get rid of the Dragon arc quickly. Its disrespectful to the playerbase and those that have played for this long and is NOT the way to build hype for an expansion. Before this patch I was really looking forward to the future of GW2, EoD and onwards. Now? I honestly think EoD will be one of the last bits of major content. I love the game but if future content is this threadbare because ANET has issues then I'd prefer it was put out of its misery sooner rather than later so that the amazing content and storytelling that has already been released isn't sullied. 

[Farohna.6247]

I enjoyed the conclusion, the gameplay is inclusive and fast paced enough for a casual, the story wraps up a little too neatly...setting us up for things to go wrong with the destruction of two dragons at once.  So as a standalone story perhaps lacking for many, as a part of a bigger picture it may prove very interesting.  I feel like many people are expecting this to be like an expansion, and it's not.  

 

[dace.8019]

It really was too abrupt on all fronts. All that build up for Jormag to be just baited into a blatant ambush. And poor Primordus. He barely got into the story at all. Everything was so short and just bewilderingly simple. Half expected the Commander to sit up in their bed at the end of the whole thing - it was just a dream.

[yoni.7015]

I actually like the last episode, the fight is fun, some cool mechanics and it’s great to fight with a large group. 

[Genadine.7253]

Hardest part of the whole event is facing Ryland at the end he needs a smack with the Nerf hammer by 50%, too  too too many HP concidering what he has just gone through, as was said by the OP whole event is a farce.

 

[Kaliwenda.3428]

1 hour ago, yoni.7015 said:

I actually like the last episode, the fight is fun, some cool mechanics and it’s great to fight with a large group. 

I like the group event too.

 

I also agree that the story fight with Ryland felt off in that he shouldn't have had that much strength after all that.  But maybe making him so crazed and unstoppable was the only way to justify Rytlock's action at the end. 

[Emmrahil.1934]

Is one of the few times i post something bad about ArenaNet..i personally liked the majority of story parts as far..but lets be honest..the drm and the whole champions part was bad..and then end of it? come on seriously? i didnt expect that bad end of this story chapter...also reading about balance patch..even if probablly is not the proper thread to ask this but still...do you plan do something about PvP and WvW? because seriously you give us the feeling you care more about PvE and the most casual side of game...

[Pifil.5193]

As an encounter the Dragonstorm instance is fine. Pretty standard stuff but OK.

 

As a release, Chapter 4 was even more threadbare than the previous 3 threadbare Champions releases.

 

As part of the overall GW2 Elder Dragon plot it was appalling.

 

After the prologue of the IBS I had hoped that the saga would have a long path that ended with Bangar awakening both Jormag and Primordus and leading us into an expansion that brought us both to the northern Shiverpeaks and down into the depths of Tyria. An expansion where we dealt with the threat of the twin Elder Dragons in an epic adventure that took up the expansion and the following LS season 6. Instead they threw away two Elder Dragons just to have them done with. A box ticking exercise. Something to get out of the way so we can go to Cantha.

 

This has been a massive disappointment for me. Primordus especially, deserved so much better, he was the first Elder Dragon we heard of, way back in GW1.

 

Instead we're going to travel away to Cantha for more human based GW1 nostalgia. Given how little care or interest they've shown to the GW1 lore I have very little faith in that expansion either.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

As someone who hasn't cared about the story since the introduction of certain insufferable NPCs, I think this was fine. Not enough NPC deaths though. At the very least, B&R should've been blown to bits along with their masters. Their survival is just silly.

[Leo G.4501]

Having not ever played any of the Ice Brood Saga, practically all of the "deaths" of the various Elder Dragons felt dumb and contrived to me.  The whole objective of killing off what amounts to a living force of nature always felt like anthropomorphizing a tornado or flood and killing it should have been pointless since there will always be more tornados and floods they can manifest in.

 

The inclusion of "dragon magic" and feuds between them should have been like a volcano fighting an earthquake.  Ultimately probably too grand a concept to be implemented into a last-generation (or even modern) MMO.  Clashing with an Elder Dragon's Champion is what should be substituted with what we've been getting, not defeating the Elder Dragon itself.  Fighting the opportunistic villains who are taking advantage of an Elder Dragon's after-brunch indigestion should be what the player is facing.

 

The game really seemed ambitious going after the top of the food chain directly but at that point, you have no other direction to go but down...or horizontal, which is why people see this all as very predictable with maybe a few minor inconsequential twists like a newly introduced character getting killed.  They could have flung us into the ground after the heights of Zhaitan's defeat by forcing some repercussions (the Pact's ships got busted tho!) like playing with resurrections mechanics or some crazy unlife story plot (every child born now is stillborn!  What have we done!) but the best that can be done is making omni-element dragons....

 

I'm curious if people's enthusiasm for the plot died here or was it on hospice during some other period of content release.  Modremoth's defeat was lacking to me but I had piqued interest for a short time when things started focusing less on the dragons in PoF but they renig-ed that pretty quick. 

[ASP.8093]

It's immeasurably weaker than the Season 4 ending, that's for sure. Somehow Braham joining Primordus just instantly makes Jormag 10x dumber and we get a "Taimi and Gorrik make a machine" ending without even the perfunctory bit of technobabble and mission legwork to justify it.

Edited May 1, 2021 by ASP.8093

[Avenrise.3592]

ANET maybe bit off more than they could chew with Elder Dragons and I do agree that some of the past encounters do seem like we're just a bunch of fruit flys smacking into a mountain. However each part of the story up until now has provided some explanation as to how we beat that dragon and it was a twisty story path to that point. This? Lure to a magical place, quick fight... dead. Aurene got the released magic.

 

No matter if you liked the encounter, hated Elder Dragons or just are waiting for Cantha you have to admit this was rushed content that failed to give any kind of satisfying conclusion to two Tyrian superpowers and a plot that has been told over an entire decade.

 

I am interested to see what the writers can do with 'regular' foes however my enthusiasm has really waned for GW2 this week. If they can do this to this arc then they can do it to future ones if they have another 'restructuring'.  

[K THEN.5162]

Preach my brother! First we lost WvW when anet delivered broken promises like alliances! Then we lost PvP when balance patches became rarer than precursors and matches became plagued with bots! Now we're losing PvE to Anet half-assing the story itself! What an absolute Fiesta, no game mode is safe!

[Perisemiotics.4579]

5 hours ago, Yggranya.5201 said:

If aurene doesn't die during end of dragons, it's not the end of dragons.

well technically if you mean the end of all dragons, we'd have to lose our skyscales as well 😛 Aurene is special and different from the original six elders, and there's Kuunavang too, is she going to die as well?

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

As the poll was removed recently, I will only stick to things I liked:

 

The skill-sets of both Ryland and Braham are nicely developed and offer quite a challenge. It is a bit of an overkill regarding the flood of crowd-control, but especially the public meta-event always has plenty of helpful players around. It is not really an issue for me.

 

In comparison with all LW meta-events, this one is the best regarding the time/result ratio. The event does not take an eternity, yet the loot is surprisingly good. I have not unlocked the final mastery-tier yet, but so far I do enjoy running the public version at least once per day.

 

Some of the achievements are not too difficult, so even the public-squads can complete them.

 

I really love the fact that you can progress the story by joining the public-squad, then return to EoTN and enter the story-instance, which continues right after the defeat of the two Elder Dragons. That is good game-design.

 

In addition they were really fast with bug-fixing. I have made a couple of reports recently, but they got repaired already. Big thanks for that!

 

Already tested the new guildhall-decoration. It is nice that it rotates.

 

Looking forward to future content. 

 

 

 

 

[Slowpokeking.8720]

It is predictable!

 

Jormag had such great setup in vanilla and the novels. And they just tossed most of it aside to make a charr focused garbage with a rush ending.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Genadine.7253 said:

Hardest part of the whole event is facing Ryland at the end he needs a smack with the Nerf hammer by 50%, too  too too many HP concidering what he has just gone through, as was said by the OP whole event is a farce.

 

It's not his HPs. It's the speed at which he keeps regenerating his defiance bar, coupled with him being constantly on the move when his bar is not broken. It's really painful for any melee build  (doubly for power melee ones). Ranged builds (and especially ranged condi ones) on the other hand have no problem with it.

Edited May 1, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[Genadine.7253]

Thanks for the clarification and yes I played a Power Melee

[Pyriin.3291]

In my humble opinion icebrood saga was so lackluster in terms of any meaningfull content that i would be absolutely fine if it didnt exist at all. Pvp, raids, fractals, wvw, got basicly nothing during this "expansion level saga"

We only got terrible pve drms and strike missions, and grindy achivements that got me off all that early into the saga.

Lorewise other then some important character deaths and new charr leadership, one could say it meant nothing at all to the story, jormag and primordus could still be asleep from taimis machine 😜

[Ashen.2907]

Considering how bad the story has been so far, expecting the finale to not be awful seems like setting yourself up for a disappointment.

[Hesione.9412]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not his HPs. It's the speed at which he keeps regenerating his defiance bar, coupled with him being constantly on the move when his bar is not broken. It's really painful for any melee build  (doubly for power melee ones). Ranged builds (and especially ranged condi ones) on the other hand have no problem with it.

Yep, on DD I swapped to bow part way through because melee was just awful. So the fight tripled in length.

 

It's even worse when combined with higher ping. When melee, I got myself out of the orange circles ahead of time *but I was still hit*. The third time that happened was when I swapped to bow.

[FrigginPaco.4178]

7 hours ago, rrusse.7058 said:

In terms of story telling yes this last patch has left much to be desired.

 

What about in terms of gameplay? It has been more or less fine aside from some enemies in DRMs being a little on the tanky side.

To me, it comes across as both a result of the Expack development squeeze as well as an unwillingness to just say what's on their plate at any given time. Don't get me wrong, I fundamentally understand that some things make more sense to keep under wraps. That's fine, that's their prerogative.

However, sticking to their guns here seemed to have produced many more negatives than positives. I don't want to say my opinion matters necessarily more than others, but people satisfied with IBS' last legs... well I don't know why the bar is so low.