I'm Off Balance

The latest episode of Guild Wars 2's current Living World went live a couple of days ago.  It labors under an awkward portmanteau title that varies depending on where you see it. The full version runs to Icebrood Saga: Episode 5: Champions: Chapter 3: Balance. Chew on that for a while.

At this point you might normally expect a capsule review or some pithy comments about it. Sorry. I don't have anything. For the first time in probably the entire history of GW2's Living World project I haven't been able to summon up the enthusiasm to play it yet. 

And that's not really ArenaNet's fault. As I've said consistently since it started, I've found the Icebrood Saga to be a distinct improvement over what we were getting before. In normal circumstances I'd have logged in my heal-spec druid, the one who gets to do all this stuff, pretty much as soon as the update landed.

The reason I haven't is, of course, Valheim. I'm still at the stage where I begrudge any time spent in other games. I know a recurring theme for years here has been how short the Living Story episodes are but it's all relative. It may only be three hours but that's three hours I could have been mining iron, chopping trees or sailing my longship into uncharted waters.  

I also wasn't super-hyped by the very weak trailer. That's long been another theme here; the extraordinarily variable quality of the promotional material ANet release before each of these chapters drop. This one is particularly lackluster. Here, take a look for yourself.

The worst thing about that trailer is how old it makes the game look. If there's one thing most people seem to agree on, even if GW2 is not a game they personally care to play, it's that ArenaNet has one of the better art departments in the genre. Guild Wars 2 is known for its good looks.

You wouldn't know it from that trailer, would you? It's a lot of not very convincingly animated characters engaging in stilted, cumbersome combat against a series of largely featureless backdrops. The colors are muted and muddy, the action is unconvincing and the impression I'm left with is of something discomfortingly close to a decade-old free to play import, one that probably didn't do well in the west and which few now remember.

Is that really how the way to promote a game that's still widely reckoned to be one of the larger, more successful Western mmorpgs? 

But then, I don't imagine it's intended to promote the game to anyone who isn't already playing it. Almost the entire trailer is taken up with listing the benefits to existing players, all of which could be summed up with the simple phrase "More of the same".

The one shot in the Balance trailer that actually looked interesting.

 

Massively OP's Guild Wars 2 correspondent, Colin Henry, (who, I only now realize, is also Chaosconstant of the Occasional Hero blog) sounds world-weary as he gives us his first impressions piece: "Another month, another round of Dragon Response Missions", he says, scarcely inspiring me to jump into the game to see what's happening for myself.

He goes on to clarify:

"If you have played the last couple of chapters, nothing in this release will blow your mind; everything here is the same old DRM formula. There is a pre-event with two different “click the things” objectives and one “defeat the things” objective that give everyone in the party buffs upon completions. After that, we must fight our way through some dragon minions and defeat a boss".  

I generally try not to let other people's opinions influence my behavior but that rang altogether too true to be ignored. Here's what I said about the last round of Dragon Response Missions, back in January:

"The format is different to what we've been used to but I suspect not to what we're going to have to get used to in the future. After years and years of muddling around with various combinations of open world and instanced content, none of which ever seemed to suit enough people for ArenaNet to stick with any of them, we've arrived at something called "Dragon Response Missions". 

Theese are repeatable, instanced sequences of events that can be done either solo or in groups of up to five players, either premades or put together by the game, as you prefer. They seem to tick more boxes than most of the previous content delivery systems while avoiding some of the most egregious pitfalls. They also bundle up into a relatively saleable package for the Gem Store so they would seem to have a better chance of sticking around than most of the gimmicks ANet have tried over the last eight and a half years."

And yes, it appears DRMs are here to stay, at least for now. Oh well. If ArenaNet can recycle ideas to pad out what passes for content in the game I guess I can do the same for the blog.

At this point an astute reader might be tempted to interject something along the lines of "Hold on a minute! Wasn't it just a few days ago you were praising Daybreak for adding "another by-the-numbers instance that follows the well-trodden path of many similar holiday quests before it", which you went on to emphasize was "absolutely fine", since you "don't come to EQ2 for cutting-edge innovation or out-of-the-box thinking." ?"

Yes, well, unlike the convoluted syntax of that last paragraph, I can't fault the logic. Guilty as charged. In my defence I refer you to my oft-cited favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the one about consistency and hobgoblins, something about which I've been remarkably consistent over the years. Ironically.

Wow! That really makes me want to see more!

 

And really there is no logical fallacy here. I'm quite pleased that ANet are sticking to their last, at last. Foolish inconsistency may be something to avoid but giving the customers what they want is a tried and tested maxim. It's about time they gave it a try.

I guess the question ought to be is it what the customers want? I pulled the trailer above from ArenaNet's official YouTube channel. It was posted two weeks ago and as of this moment it has 1240 views and four comments. One of those comments bluntly states "Stop producing single player content, nobody cares about the story... and even if, it has little to no replay value. Focus on wvw, spvp and challenging late game pve content. You know those game types where you have to work together... after all it is a mmo....". A second commenter agrees.

The other two comments all too predictably welcome the return of the irritating and incomprehensibly fan-favored avian race, the Tengu. Certain sections of the GW2 playerbase go into conniptions at the mere mention of these overgrown starlings and any suggestion the annoying worm-botherers might make some kind of a comeback, let alone become a playable race, has comment threads lighting up all over.

So, two votes against and just two for tengu, then? Maybe no-one really looks at YouTube any more. Just over a thousand views and four comments seems like not very much to me. I have videos on my YouTube channel with more views than that. Alright, I have one video. But the point stands.

Not if I see them first...

 It's probably safe to assume that anyone who actually cares saw the trailer on the official GW2 website and that pretty much no-one not already playing has seen it at all. It's very much a case of catering to the converted. It's not surprising the trailer has all the zest and sparkle of a contractual obligation.

Speaking of which, I think I've strung this out for about as long as I need to. I'll be back with more if and when I get around to playing through those Dragon Response Missions. Oh, and the story instance that barely even gets a mention in the trailer, the one where, bizarrely, we get to play as Braham but with the abilities of the class of whatever character we normally play. I wonder if that's contextualized in any way?

Guess I'll find out... eventually. Right now, though, I'm off to play a different surly-looking viking with bad posture and an unconvincing gait. 

In Valheim, that is. In case you couldn't guess.

I Run Missions

The latest instalment in Guild Wars 2's Icebrood Saga, which I previewed somewhat sarcastically just one week ago, dropped last night. It seems to be called either "Champions" or "Power" or "Primordus Rising" or very possibly "Icebrood Saga: Champions: Power: Primordus Rising". I admit I've lost track of the current naming convention.

Whatever it's called, it's alright. I'm not sure I'd go much further than that but I've played through the new story content and I didn't not enjoy it. It took the traditional two and a half hours, on the nose, only with more fighting and less standing around chatting than usual. 

The format is different to what we've been used to but I suspect not to what we're going to have to get used to in the future. After years and years of muddling around with various combinations of open world and instanced content, none of which ever seemed to suit enough people for ArenaNet to stick with any of them, we've arrived at something called "Dragon Response Missions". 

Theese are repeatable, instanced sequences of events that can be done either solo or in groups of up to five players, either premades or put together by the game, as you prefer. They seem to tick more boxes than most of the previous content delivery systems while avoiding some of the most egregious pitfalls. They also bundle up into a relatively saleable package for the Gem Store so they would seem to have a better chance of sticking around than most of the gimmicks ANet have tried over the last eight and a half years.

 

And I have to say, somewhat grudgingly, that they do work. I'd vastly prefer to have this content presented as it was in Season One, as time-limited events in open world maps, hanging around only as long as it takes for the next chapter to arrive but I accept that ship sailed long ago. A vociferous faction within the playerbase hates anything that's not forever and one-time content is uncommercial since it costs the same to produce as repeatable material but can't be repackaged and resold.

I was surprised at just how many DRMs (Dragon Response Missions. You'd already forgotten, hadn't you?) I had to do this time. Six of them. At least, I think it was six. Wait, no, I mean I know it was six as in that's how many I did. I'm just a little vague on whether maybe the first couple were ones I hadn't done from last chapter. I am finding it hard to keep all this stuff straight in my head these days.

Now I check the press release it does indeed look as though the first two missions I did, one down some cave and the other... no, it's no good, I already forgot where the other was and I only did it last night... aren't part of Power at all. The official four this time around seem to be the ones in Fields of Ruin, Thunderhead Peaks, Lake Doric, and Snowden Drifts.

That might explain why I noticed a significant jump in quality when I got to Ebonhawke. (That's the Fields of Ruin one for those who've never played GW2 and indeed for those that have but don't care to waste brain cells on Tyrian trivia like what city is in which map). The dialog and plot didn't change all that much but the mechanics of the fights became considerably more interesting, suggesting a different team might have had a hand in designing them.

 

This is the really surprising thing about the new chapter. The fights are genuinely enjoyable. It's been a while since I last thought that about a story instance. Sure, they have been getting much better but that's "better" on a scale that begins at "tedious" somewhere back in Season Two and floors out at "unbearable" in the middle of Season Four before slowly climbing back up to the dizzy heights of "tolerable" and even "okay"during the Icebrood Saga. 

Or something like that. Honestly, I've blanked a lot of it. Or tried to. Anyway, the instanced fights used to be something I dreaded and now they're not. In fact, on this latest evidence, they might even be something I could find myself looking forward to. I never thought I'd say that.

I'm not saying I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do and start repeating these missions over and over until the next set drops. Life is neither long enough nor dull enough for that to sound like a good option. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that I might do them again on another character, though. Maybe even more than one.  

It sounds like damning with the faintest of praise but it really isn't. These instances truck along. They don't waste a whole lot of time. Something's always happening but none of it takes too long. Well, okay, the bit with the dragon spears did drag on a little but I thik that had more to do with most of my pickup group spending more time lying down than standing up.

There was a quite a bit of that in the final instance in Snowden Drifts, too, although that group was a lot more capable. Just had too many glass cannons. I was very glad I was doing the missions on my heal-specced druid, the one I always use for story content. He's hard to down let alone kill, which came in handy for getting everyone else who can actually do more damage than a kitten on valium back up off the floor. It's not always all about the dps, even in GW2. Okay, admittedly it usually is...

I'm a little in two minds about how the new direction approaches narrative. Traditionally, the story part of the Living Story has been delivered in lengthy scenes where the player and any number of important NPCs stand around and tell each other the plot. At inordinate length. Sometimes the PC will be given something to do, like in that party we had back in Beetle Manor. Often they'll get to chip in now and again. Basically, though, it's sit back, relax, watch and listen.

With the missions it's more like trying to hold a conversation with three people while jogging through heavy traffic. Everyone's shouting over everyone else, there's a lot of background noise and you only have one ear on the conversation because you have to watch out for things that might kill you.

It's fortunate the entire dialog gets printed in the chat box because I would have missed whole chunks of plot without it. As it was, appreciating the subtle nuances of the voice actors (whom we're all very glad to see (or hear) back at work, I'm sure) took up most of my attention. Having everyone talking during the action sequences certainly works dramatically. I'm just not sure it works practically. Maybe I need to adjust my audio settings to prefer speech over the sounds of stuff being set on fire.

 

And there's a lot of stuff being set on fire. Either that or frozen solid. That's the theme - fire and ice. Believe it or not, I'd kind of missed the memo about Primordus being Tyria's official Elder FIRE Dragon. I'd always had him pegged as "Earth" or "Stone" for some reason. Possibly because he comes with attached dwarves and dwarves always suggest solidity and earthiness, not fiery armageddon.

I did know Jormag was the Ice dragon, of course. Can't really miss that. So it makes sense in a mythological way that they're twins. Twins who hate each other and want to kill each other. Or at least Jormag wants to kill Primordus. If Primordus has expressed an opinion I must have missed it. I don't think he's spoken yet.

As you can probably tell, this recent episode has re-onboarded me a little with the storyline. I do find the whole elder dragon thing quite intriguing. There were some pointed conversations on the nature of dragons between Ryland, Caithe, Braham and the Commander. Kas might have chipped in, too.

Oh yes, the gang's all here. Rytlock grunted a couple of times but he took a back seat for once since he was on Logan's home turf. Marjory and Taimi had cameos and even Gorrik showed his face although he didn't get any lines. Still, he's doing a lot better than Zoja. Seriously, recast her role already, don't just keep ghosting her. She's the greatest living Asuran! How would she not be there, telling everyone they were doing things all wrong?

Marjory's not much better off. Clearly no-one in the writers' room has clue one what to do with her, which is ironic seeing she's supposed to be a detective. Whatever happened to that, anyway? Taimi, once so over-exposed half the playerbase would cheerfully have drop-kicked her off Rata Sum, had one short scene, which she managed to steal by coming over as excitable as a dog in a sausage factory. For someone with just a few months to live (Remember that plotline? No, neither do the writers, apparently) she seemed remarkably chipper. 

Everyone seems remarkably chipper given the situation but then I guess we all know something about that these days. There's always some bleedover, isn't there?

All in all it was a creditable effort, I thought. I had fun.

I think there may have been a bunch of other non-story stuff in the update too but you'll have to wait for someone else to tell you all about that. Oh, wait, no-one else writes about this game any more, do they?

I guess that'll change when the expansion lands. For a couple of weeks, at least. And it'll take a full expansion to redirect attention this way because for sure the Living Story doesn't have much impact outside the installed base any more. 

Tough business.