Decided to take a break from GW2 to type this out, mainly over the pure frustration trying to complete a ‘simple’ Mastery point challenge.
Before I start, here’s a few starter notes;
–Kovo and Nova have stopped playing (as expected). Though Kovo claims they’ll only play for 1-2 hours every day, they’ve been playing some Pokemon game. And I feel they’re probably done with GW2 (unless they get bored).
–I’ve learned a lot from Nappie’s friend ‘Shiro’, mainly about the ‘Living World’ content.
–The ‘Heart of Thorns’ DLC.. let’s just say the only thing “good” that came out of it was getting the glider. Well that and ‘soloing’ Mordremoth (the second Elder Dragon).
To start off, I’m doing the ‘Path of Fire’ DLC.. even though I’m skipping. Basically the game, like all episodic games, have their addon content in chronological order.
The first one is free content after reaching Level 80, called ‘Living World Season 1’.
Before, this used to not be available for a very long time.. reasons unknown. But I feel thankful I came back when I did, as in early November (on the 8th), they unlocked it. However, the others (and there are others. Four of them plus an additional addon), costs money.
Yeah. So you might be asking “wait.. don’t they come with the DLCs?!” They do.. if you pay $75 or more. But for the standard edition, they aren’t included because BS ‘reasons’ that are unknown to me. Honestly, this makes Warframe look good if I was to compare the two games (going by what Kovo keeps telling me about it). Would be awesome if more game devs followed the same principle of what is defined as a ‘free’ game.
On top of that, I cannot just buy these additional story packs with regular money. I have to buy the ingame currency of Gems, to unlock them. And they’re 200 Gems each.
That’s 1,000 Gems. So yeah.. microtransactions. WEEEE…
-ArenaNet
Going by the wiki, 1600 Gems is the closest thing I can go, which claims to be $20. But that means I would had spent $60+ on this game ($40 for the DLC pack + $20(not including tax) for the 1600 Gems).
Now there’s ways that you don’t have to spend real world money, but they require a lot of effort. You can exchange gold for gems, or achievements for gems. All I can think
is… ArenaNet tried to copy EA’s microtransaction playbook (but thankfully stopped short by not adding randomized loot boxes you can buy, aka it isn’t seen as gambling).
But this is my opinion. I can hear Nappie’s friend Shiro telling me that they ‘need’ the money. Boy, would Kovo tell me different about Warframe‘s approach.
Anyway, there is that Black Friday sale staring tomorrow. Shiro told me I could buy the individual Living World seasons. So maybe there would be a discount for gems? I hope so. It’ll be the first time I would be checking it out. Not even Shiro knows, and he’s put in a lot more hours into the game than I have.
EDIT: I’ve asked the (unofficial) Guild Wars Discord and was told “unlikely” of discounts for gems, but “maybe from authorized 3rd party sellers” (while not giving me any links of said sellers). Went on and bought the gems anyway, for $21.40. Said it could take up ’till 12 hours until I get the gems, but it took roughly a half an hour until the payment was completed and I got them.
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But enough about Living World. I wanna move on to the DLCs themselves. Mainly, discussing a very much disliked DLC (yet I had to play to follow the story
along): Heart of Thorns.
To not reveal spoilers, something terrible happens to the Pact leaders and everyone’s scattered. But one thing I actually do like about the story is just how much of a badass they make your character, where he (or she) actually sounds like a Commander. And you have to make some.. really tough moral decisions that I swear ArenaNet was looking at Mass Effect 2‘s homework. Thankfully, unlike that game, your choices don’t seem to matter. Of course this isn’t going to be the opinion of most people, where they feel there needs to be consequences to your actions.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that. I could comment but I feel it would be best if I kept them to myself.
So you get your first means of better traversal, the Glider. And it behaves like you would expect a glider to do so. Think of it as a Slow Fall spell but has a bar that will eventually deplete, and you’ll fall like a sack of wet rocks. …And don’t get me started, that the first zone of the DLC is very hard to traverse normally, where you are required to use said glider. It is NOT optional, and this even affects the story. More on that later.
However, you can make your glider better by mastering it through the Mastery system.
But mastering your glider abilities… isn’t what you think it is. No, it’s getting XP from
kills, or doing events. Lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots… of events. Infact, events are the only fucking way to get XP!! If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. They took away the classic heart quests and made it where ONLY events (group and other) are the only ways to get XP.
But there’s also the ‘meta event’. According to Shiro, there’s one per zone. In the first
zone, what happens in the world is based on the game’s day/night cycle. In the
day, everything’s normal. But at night, is when the twisted followers of the Elder Dragon Mordremoth come out and play. Scattered around the map are several Rally points that players are tasked to defend, and assist with.
How much effort is put into this meta event (and even your own), determines the rewards for everyone that participates once the sun rises again. You, must have 100% (or
higher) participation in order to get said rewards. It also affects how high the XP boost is. Shiro said this is the best way to farm XP.
Now going back to the story. There was three times where I was forced to grind XP in order to continue it. And seeing the only way (during the day) are events, boy did I get sick of this BS very fast.
But I am thankful Shiro took me to the zone to the south, which has a much easier meta event (and a lot more rewarding). The events, are like a drop in the XP bucket compared to when the meta event starts. Because holy fuck when it’s done, it feels like I receive either
a 25% to 50% XP boost to that bar. I’ve managed to complete a few of my masteries thanks to this.
And the next zone, is hell. Not hell as in The Nether from Minecraft, but.. take what you know from the first biome and crank it up to 11, where there’s less waypoints, multi-leveled maze-like traversal that makes it harder to reach events.. and mostly underground. Claustrophobia people beware.
But the meta event, I..I’m not sure if that was it or not. All I remember (without
spoiling) is something about a cannon, running into this cavern and… that’s it? All you do is loot the goods there and then continue what you were doing.
The final zone confused me. Never did the meta event here as I was focused on wrapping up the story (taking the fight to Mordremoth). But it showed something about ‘Map closes in (time here)’. …Map closing?! As in when the timer hits 0, the zone deletes itself!?!? Wha?!
Eventually I was able to fight Mordremoth. And my character wasn’t kidding when he said it would be harder to defeat than Zhaitan. It was a small arena, where I was desperately trying to stay alive. It got to a point I was spawn-sacrificing my heal minion over and
over, only to watch that health go away with the near constant, undodgable attacks.
Plus I was running away from the adds he was spawning (my minions weren’t pinning them down), spamming my ‘3’ AoE ability behind me to slow them down in order for me to spin around and do my normal attacks.
It was a crazy, insane boss fight. There was even a stage in the fight where I had to use my glider or I’d die. ..I went down a few times but thankfully the boss’s health didn’t reset. But I was able to deliver the killing blow.
Now I’m playing the DLC: Path of Fire. And according to Nappie, Melan, and Shiro, this one is so much better than the last one. The masteries unlock ground, and flying mounts for you. The first ground mount you get, is the raptor (the one that you get for free
at Level 10 that lasts for 10 hours), except this one you can keep forever (and it’s available on all of your characters, even any new ones you create).
Oh, and by the way, the final boss of this DLC, isn’t an Elder Dragon (from what I
read), but one of the six Gods of Tyria who goes rogue. So yay.. I get to fight a God!
Well, call me Kratos then. Guild of War(s) 2. 😂
.
But before I wrap this up (which is where I want to), I want to leave you with two
things that happened (that are spoiler free).
In that DLC, you meet up with Rytlock as you’re trying to gain access to a town. They discover you’re the ‘dragon killer’.. and he kills my mood by saying “it wasn’t a solo
effort, but yeah. The commander’s taken down one or two.” …Wow, Rytlock. Though you’re right, that still stung. Way to deflate my ego there.
The second thing, involved attempting to do a ‘simple’ Mastery point challenge. Helping a chef by throwing ingredients he calls out.. the problem is the guy moves erratically, and there’s a time limit. It requires you to remember where every ingredient is, or just react the speed that a computer would.
It’s fucking ridiculous. And I’ve been told there’s another one just like him somewhere else.
.
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But, that’s it. If anything else comes up, I’ll be making another blog post.