What does everyone think about the gameplay Guild Wars Beyond has presented? I've seen a lot of mixed feelings about things like WiK from difficulty fighting mobs to disliking the search for dialogues and a few criticisms of the gameplay. I know a lot of the fangirls/boys will descend like a flock of seagulls mimicking the phrase "it's free content, shut up and be grateful" but I'd like to think we are intelligent and mature enough to constructively criticise our experiences playing through the recent content additions to the game.
One of the things that stands out to me about recently added new content from a gameplay perspective is how ordinary most of the quests seem. Almost all of the WiK quests were just glorified bounties, go to location a and kill mob x - without any dialogue to break it up or make the characters interesting.
Take a little help from above. Most of us groaned when we had to fight through the respawns on the way back (until we realised wiping saved a tonne of time and pain). They tried to mix it up a little with the frustrating asuran becons which were disappointing for a single use item and pointless for martial classes. The quests felt like a beta version of the golem kilns in the EotN mission GOLEM. Having Blimm or Zinn following you around and giving you another becon on a respawn timer would have been infinitely better. In the end it just felt like someone was trying to stretch out limited content to occupy more time.
Then we have the weird spawn variations in Temple of the Intolerable (when I play through that now it feels like the re-spawns are never ending). Again it seems like someone is trying to increase the time it takes simply for the sake of taking more time. Yes it's possible to ignore the respawns and just kill the boss but I think we all know that's not a reasonable expectation for 80% of pugs.
I think the biggest problem most WiK content had was the mobs we were investing all this time and effort into killing were just voiceless mursaat. Honestly killing Lovisa and Bauer was more interesting because they actually spoke and had something to do with the story - not enough tbh, more screen time for the villains please. Generic bounty style content is vastly more entertaining if you put up a smoke screen of dialogue, story and hopefully personality (most of the dialogue takes place in static camps where nothing happens and most of the people talking never do anything at any point). Killing an ordinary mursaat was just kind of boring. I want Winds of Change to have villains I care about stopping. I want to have a purpose for what I'm doing beyond "it's a mursaat, kill it." If you are limited with the kind of gameplay you put forward, at least try and create memorable characters to participate in it.
Did anyone else end up killing Confessor Isaiah and think, "Is that it?" I personally enjoyed the Battle for Lion's Arch (as a Splinter Barrage ranger it's the perfect content with large mobs and defensive bluffs) but I found the boss encounters incredibly underwhelming to the point that I thought Isaiah was going to get up again later on and do something meaningful.
I also don't think it would have hurt Salma to aid us in some way. She wants the favour of the people, she's an important part of lore and she is supposed to be a great leader of the human nation fighting for her throne not waiting for us to finish doing it for her (Kormir 2.0). Give her some kind of awesome monk-like shout to make me enjoy fighting by her side instead of it being another run of the mill experience doing all the work for an NPC who takes the credit. People criticise Rurik for being an aggro magnet but at least he fought beside us. There is a reason people love Killroy Stoneskin and it's not just because of his personality. You can give your NPCs powerful skills and still balance content to be challenging.
As far as festival quests go there is one thing that pleases me with the new ones (aside from there being new ones) - they tell some kind of story beyond the novelty yawn inducing ones we are used to. The Lunatic Court is kind of interesting (even if the quests were incredibly ordinary in terms of gameplay). The development of the Mad King beyond his simple yearly visit is also kind of interesting, especially when it enhances depth in other parts of the world via things like his Vabbi wife (the Krytan king interacting with another part of the world makes it feel more dynamic and alive).
I think the Guild Wars Beyond content is missing memorable villains that are represented in their gameplay and the boss encounters are kind of ordinary. There seems like so much missed potential with the mission style quests from WiK to be experiences where you interact with a villain to tell a story. When you did kill a boss (Torimo, Lovisa, Isaiah) it felt anti climactic and less challenging than the rest of the content - not to mention it was a blip in the bigger picture. I want more memorable boss fights (via game mechanics), more memorable characters (via involved story telling reflected by gameplay) and more memorable heroes (make the allies in Winds of Change enjoyable to play with, not just walking cut scenes or credit ninjas).
What would you change about the gameplay and storytelling of GW:B? What do you like most about it?
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