Curse

Longasc · Nov 30, 2007, 11:49 AM // 11:49

What do you think of the BMP missions and the BMP in general?

Here is my vote:

Saul's Story: My personal No. 1
It is great fun to play with Thommis, Hablion and especially Dorian, he just looks too funny.

The hide and sneak part was quite nice, I also noticed that the area where this takes place is in the green jungle area between the Verdant Cascades and Kryta. This could mean the Charr tried to invade over the Norn territory and not through the more southern Stone Summit part of the Shiverpeaks near Ascalon.

Then you destroy 4 Charr Warbands. Quite cool to slaughter tons of low level foes, but it quickly gets old. They can hardly harm you after all, and you have a 7 second recharge - 3.5 with the Mantra of Inscription - 80 Holy AoE damage nuke signet. This is a general problem of all 4 missions, hordes of low level foes versus incredibly powerful player skills.

The last boss killed me, the only time I died while playing the BMP, seems to be the hardest of all 4 missions to me because of the final encounter. Which does not mean much.

The cinematics were very cool, how Saul realized his mistake and his false gods was nicely told.

Togo's Story: Rank 2

The cinematics were really nice. Especially for the assassin guy. Not so cool were the skill selections. But it was at least more challenging than Saul's mission in general, the final boss was not really strong though.

The big gripe is the 8. skill on the bar. Basically, wait for it to recharge, wait till they kill Talon and then wipe the floor with all of them. Boom. Wonderful, makes Saul's uber signet of mass carnage look like a tactical weapon. I am not sure if this should really be an example for GW2 missions.

Gwen's Story: Rank 3

Not much fighting, and often I ran around rather helpless having no idea where to go. Also, having "FLEE" and "THROW ROCK" as skills for a PvE Mesmer made me chuckle.

But killing the Devourer by destroying the pillar and playing hide and seek had some appeal. Better than killing another horde of 1.000 lowlevel Charr that do not stand a chance. Not as much replay value as the other missions though.

Gwen running around in this white prisoner garb is also a sight to behold. No, not because Pedobear agrees but because it gives the whole thing a dramatic touch.

Turai's Story: Rank 4
The Battle of Jahai is depicted from a distance, I could not really immerse myself in it. So I fought the rear guard. The ultimately BEST thing about this mission is that you get a free r9 15-22 Turai Ossa Sword, basically an Eternal Blade that is not yet Eternal. I also like the shield skin very much, I might replace my gloom shields with them.

Turai seems to be a half-Jotun, he giant stomps the little undead guys and well... pure carnage. He reminds me of William Wallace, who is also a giant, shoots lightning from his eyes and whose farts knock down people, too. He walks a bit sluggish and slow for his size, the animation was not right imo.

At least he has to fight a little bit more because he does not have the same uber-nukes as Togo and Saul.

The final cutscene was very cool, though the battle with Palawa was not very exciting.

Discoveries: Very nice idea, did only Gwen's so far (finding Hideouts). A bit like the hidden Prophecies bonus missions.

Weapon Skins: THE reason for the BMP
An unlimited source of some of the better skins ingame. I really love the skins, but I am not sure if this is a good thing... what do you think? Turai's Sword also makes a great hero weapon.

General comment: The cinematics are great. As are the rewards. My gripe with the rewards is that you can get limitless numbers of these items, even if they are customized. Endgame items are limited to the one you get on your first completion, too.

Maybe one should be given the option to exchange the item for another one from the same collector in case you made a mistake, the endless supply of great skins is just too good. Now one must be really a snob to buy rare item skins, because the BMP provides quite a lot of supreme skin styles. As I mentioned above, I will replace all my Gloom Shields with Undead Shields.

The gameplay was storydriven (rather good stories, IMO), fun and diverse. The thing I did not like was the skills given to the player and the extreme mindlessness and low level and sheer masses of enemy mobs.

I do not expect smart enemies. But they should fight back a bit harder and require some more thought than in the BMP. This should not be a gameplay design example for GW2 -> if this is the case, I am gone. UBER HERO player vs tons of level 12 foes? Not really that cool, I say go back to Prophecies, 4-6 man parties vs a bit larger enemy mobs like in the Shiverpeaks, with higher or equal level and some more challenge. I.e. kill the healer, then the rest. This is all gone in the BMP, the mobs lack diversity. Even if this is for story reasons, it is bad.

The dozen of canthan guards charging you is great the first time you do it, after that it is really silly. Use the Togo Nuke (tm) and you are done.

The story driven parts of the mission where you had to do something else besides killing were great. I think Togo's mission would be much better if you did not have the nuke and stupid enemy numbers. So yay for the fun mission objectives, nay for the actual fighting!

My Verdict:

The reason you are playing this is to experience the story and the cinematics. After that, to get your favorite skin weapons/shields. It is really just a "bonus" experience. But more of this in a game with more content is for sure nice.

What is a bit sad is that the tactical game is lacking. PvE was always easy, but now it gets dumbed down totally, and hopefully this is only the case in this BMP, and not a hint of how GW2 will be. The cinematic cutscenes rock, the mission objectives rock, but the actual fighting needs to become better and not dumber, too.

Antheus · Nov 30, 2007, 12:01 PM // 12:01

Quote:

The reason you are playing this is to experience the story and the cinematics. After that, to get your favorite skin weapons/shields. It is really just a "bonus" experience. But more of this in a game with more content is for sure nice.

What is a bit sad is that the tactical game is lacking. PvE was always easy, but now it gets dumbed down totally, and hopefully this is only the case in this BMP, and not a hint of how GW2 will be. The cinematic cutscenes rock, the mission objectives rock, but the actual fighting needs to become better and not dumber, too.

I wouldn't bet on it.

Missions are quite well done, but have zero replay value.

This format would be good for quests though.

Snow Bunny · Nov 30, 2007, 12:05 PM // 12:05

I know how you feel about replay here Antheus...

but honestly, it's free, and relatively entertaining.

On a monk with black kurzick 15k, chaos gloves white, black bandana, equip the mursaat sword and undead shield.

my monk has never looked so pretty

Redfeather1975 · Nov 30, 2007, 12:08 PM // 12:08

hmmm
I never thought about how the mesmer 'hero' is relying on playing dead, hiding and throwing rocks to get through PvE stuffz.
Now I am angry. RaWr

zwei2stein · Nov 30, 2007, 12:25 PM // 12:25

Well, bonus pack missions beat most other gws content simply by having much better stories and atmosphere. Its kinda back to old RPG. It really contrasts with other gw stuff.

Difficulty is ok for casual player i guess. Most of difficulty of hardest mission /Dalessios/ comes from fact that NPC ally has heal area which heals foes too. Kinda enemy healer you can't shutdown.

gone · Nov 30, 2007, 12:31 PM // 12:31

all good. Nice little freshener-upper. I like them all. Ty to the anet team.

(though did experience some sort of latency in Turai's mish)

IslandHermet · Nov 30, 2007, 12:45 PM // 12:45

I just love how much damg they all do compaired to how useless they all are in the present times.

icedwhitemocha · Nov 30, 2007, 12:47 PM // 12:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by flubber

all good. Nice little freshener-upper. I like them all. Ty to the anet team.

(though did experience some sort of latency in Turai's mish)

That was caused by your comp, not your internet. Hopefully this will dispel once and for all people's want for "huge battles" on the Guild Wars engine.

Missions get collective 8/10, exceeded my expectations and the new skins are <3.

Estic · Nov 30, 2007, 01:03 PM // 13:03

Absolutely love the new skins.

Missions are a nice break from normal play... I compare them to challenge missions (in Nightfall/EotN). A short mission that nets you a reward

The rewards are, IMHO,very nice.... I like new skins, be it items (BMP) or hero armor (NF/EotN).

Sirius-NZ · Nov 30, 2007, 01:03 PM // 13:03

The ONE thing that irked me a little was how nobody actually says anything in the FMVs. Most of the time it works OK; for the Gwen ending sequence it seems a little bit artificial, although it isn't *too* bad given the circumstances.

I can understand this decision though as voice actors aren't easy to get hold of. I am happy they chose to use at least a narrator, and to keep FMVs short to compensate... makes up for quite a lot.

I have to admit though, I was curious to find out how they'd VA the Tengu. Looks like I'll be waiting quite a lot longer to get an answer to that.

gone · Nov 30, 2007, 01:09 PM // 13:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by icedwhitemocha

That was caused by your comp, not your internet. Hopefully this will dispel once and for all people's want for "huge battles" on the Guild Wars engine.

Missions get collective 8/10, exceeded my expectations and the new skins are <3.

lol no...it wasn't 'my computer'.

dual core 3.0 ghz
8800gts
800 watt psu
2 gigs ballistix (dual channel)

lol crysis doesn't lag it..

/on topic. it (turai's) lagged right from the start.

take_me · Nov 30, 2007, 01:19 PM // 13:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

Saul's Story:
The last boss killed me, the only time I died while playing the BMP, seems to be the hardest of all 4 missions to me because of the final encounter. Which does not mean much.

Same here...

Snow Bunny · Nov 30, 2007, 01:21 PM // 13:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by take_me

Same here...

The Super SoJ they give you is your friend. It's a aoe interrupt fiesta.

Cebe · Nov 30, 2007, 01:36 PM // 13:36

I'm with Longasc, Saul's mission is definitely the best. Very closely followed by Togo's.

I also died on the first attempt at that last wave of Charr, with the Ele boss. On my second try I used the Mursaat as "Tanks" and let them take aggro first, it took a LONG time for them to die, they just took the Fire Storms thrown at them, by which time, we'd just about finished off the Charr.

That mission will get a lot of lovin'. I ADORE the Mursaat Skins.

pfaile · Nov 30, 2007, 01:47 PM // 13:47

I got to the last group of char with saul, noticed that I wasn't invincable like the rest of the mission, started retreating, watch entire party except the unseen get killed, used the healing command and the fall back shout and ended up with enitre party that went out and finished it.

I liked the BM very much, the first time you use those over powered skills are great, like the skins for bonuses. This might hurt the player market for a while, but upgrades might soar through the roof. 10/10 for something that was "free".

Cargan · Nov 30, 2007, 02:01 PM // 14:01

agreed. 10/10. This is a great gift and more than I had expected.

As for replayability? it's well worth replaying and I'll probably replay them a lot more than I replay normal missions. Why? because the rewards give you an incentive to replay them.

So, they're more replayable than normal missions and quests throughout the rest of the game (with the exception of dungeons).

The weapons are excellent. much more than I would ever have hoped for. They really have put a lot of thought and effort into this. Thank you Anet.

So far I've only done the Togo mission. I wanted to try one before I went to sleep last night so that was the one I chose. To be honest I got lucky to get it done first time and it really got my adrenaline going not having a party to support me. It was a fair challenge, not too hard for the average or new player to adjust to, and not too easy for a seasoned player. Perfect difficulty level for that mission at least

I can see this promoting the trade in weapon upgrades and inscriptions. I'm glad to see they're not giving perfect weapons for this and making people use resources to have the weapons they want. This should hopefully give the market a shake. Thankfully for me I have loads of storage filled with inscriptions and upgrades. This finally gives me a reason to use them

Thargor · Nov 30, 2007, 02:05 PM // 14:05

I love the new skins! I will have all my heroes set up with nothing but mursatt stuff as soon as possible. Meaning that I will have tons of trips thru sauls mission.

Overall I am amazed with the BMP. There is nothing that i didn't like about it.
Gwen is my favorite mission due to it being a big puzzle that you have to figure out as you go along. I think guild wars could use more quests/missions that work this way.

I am not really fond of the Togo mission because there is nothing worse than being forced to play a Rit. I play a rit worse than most people played assassins when they first came out so i find it annoying being forced into that role but there is no denying that I want that god mode nuke on all my skill bars! Personal issues with the rit aside, the mission itself is pretty good and is actually fun.

I think that Anet made alot of great decisions with the BMP. Top of the list is that everything is customized. Noone making 100K+XX for anything off of this thing. We got a ton of great looking skins and it isn't gonna cost us anything to fit out all our heroes and characters with them. Mod prices may go up some but only for a while i think.
Missions are fun and they kept them to a very reasonable time length for the more casual player that may not have alot of time to invest into a long mission, I personally could deal with them being longer but its good to see some shorter content now and then.
This is a great addition to the GW collection, now they just need to make more stories of other famous characters to add to it from time to time!

Antheus · Nov 30, 2007, 02:07 PM // 14:07

Quote:

As for replayability? it's well worth replaying and I'll probably replay them a lot more than I replay normal missions. Why? because the rewards give you an incentive to replay them.

So, they're more replayable than normal missions and quests throughout the rest of the game (with the exception of dungeons).

They are farmable. I was referring to replayability. Doing mission once or fifty times makes no difference. There are no additional challenges, no new discoveries (heh) to be made, no change in skills even. It's literally retracing the same steps over and over - a solo farm.

In the same way that 55 UW run has no replayability, neither do these missions. At very least, with UW, it's possible to do it with different skillsets, and different professions.

They are however farmable.

Cebe · Nov 30, 2007, 02:23 PM // 14:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cargan

As for replayability? it's well worth replaying and I'll probably replay them a lot more than I replay normal missions. Why? because the rewards give you an incentive to replay them.

So, they're more replayable than normal missions and quests throughout the rest of the game (with the exception of dungeons).

I'll replay them as many times as I want weapons from them.

It'll be a nice supply of "free" hero-weapons

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thargor

I am not really fond of the Togo mission because there is nothing worse than being forced to play a Rit.

*gasp*

stretchs · Nov 30, 2007, 02:33 PM // 14:33

Togo and Saul were definitely the best of the bunch. The wussy gwen one bothered me a bit, didnt really let you know wtf was going on. And the sneaking across the plains of 8000 char meh. The best weaps imo are the undead though, which makes Turai's the one I will repeat most