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[Preview] Guild Wars 2: The Retribution is Satisfying
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
The Guild Wars 2 living story, Flame & Frost, is about to come to its epic conclusion with today's release of The Retribution. We've had a chance to check out The Retribution ahead of the patch today and have a few thoughts to share. Read on and then head to the comments.
The Living Story in Guild Wars 2 has had a pretty big build up over the last few months. The grand finale for the Flame and Frost storyline is finally here, and ArenaNet is ending it with a bang! There are a few ways they could have ended this story arch. Some of us thought a large series of dynamic events would be used. Others felt they would use an instance like they did with The Razing. While either of these could have worked just fine, you can’t go wrong with a dungeon. Dungeons are such a big part of the MMO experience, so this type of ending just feels right. ArenaNet showed us lucky members of the press the new dungeon for Retribution over this past weekend. And I have to say, they did the right thing.
Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: The Retribution is Satisfying.
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Comments
The dungeon is, imo, the best instance in the game so far. Super fun, awesome boss mechanics...it needs to stay in game and not be temporary.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
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better than the mad king fight? think that one is still my favorite.. can't wait to try this new one later tonight
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I would say it's even better than Mad King.
The guys who did this need to redo Zhaitan
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2
just finished it.. very very NICE.. loved the shockwave mechanic.. the two big boss fights were a lot of fun.. over WELL DONE:)
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Yes, way better. The designer team is the same of Mad King and Wintersday
yea it was pretty amazing.. they need this team to do an overhaul on a couple of the regular dungeons!
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Just finished the new dungeon! Very impressed (once again! lol)
Very fun fights!!! I did it with a great PUG and we had so much fun together that i ended up in their guild LOL! hehehehe
Can´t wait to expend some more time tomorrow to see all that this new patch is bringing...i want my shiniessss!!!
BTW: Is it true that the dungeon will be changing/evolving in the next days? I think i read somewhere but not quite sure about it...
I was in a PUG (2 mesmers, a thief, a necromancer, and myself as a guardian) that ran that dungeon, all of us first-timers. Wow - it can be seriously intense, especially figuring out the boss battles. Before playing, make sure you have Dodge game down, or you'll be dead, quick, fast, in a hurry.
As for the final boss tandem... we took down the flying dredge first (after several wipes), and then focused on the Charr (aka "Jump Puzzle, The Boss). Now, THAT was a fight, lasting a good 20-30 minutes (I was playing at healing Guardian through all but the last few minutes). 2-3 of our party was down for the count through most of it, but we prevailed. Truly satisfying victory. The aftermath and rewards? Meh. But the sense of accomplishment was well worth the struggle.
I think the content update is another phenomenal one for sure. GW2 continues to pump out significant, quality content at a faster pace than any other MMO I've ever played. It's awesome to know I can count on logging in to brand new, unique stuff that is sure to occupy 15-30 hours of my time each month. The game never feels like the same old same old because it keeps giving you something completely new to work on. After the first couple weeks of the new stuff passes, I tend to go back to other parts of the game. But then brand new content is only two weeks away!
As for everyone else's review of the dungeon, I don't quite share the same excitement. It was certainly epic in presentation and story, as almost all GW2 group event content has been. But the mechanics of the encounters and I guess GW2 group combat in general still just feels too easy. It was all of our first time in the PUG group I was in, and most of the others didn't seem particularly good (ie. they continued to not drag mobs out of the giant aoe fire circles, which clearly made them immune to our damage), but the entire dungeon was a breeze anyway. Like it felt impossible to die. Just as an example, the first boss where they test the various weapons against you (flame waves, shock blasts, etc) was WAY too forgiving. You could stand there and get hit by everything and it wouldn't kill you.
Apparently the last boss had a stacking enrage mechanic every time you got the other boss's health down by 25%. We didn't know that, but it didn't matter. The giant aoe blast with the fire circle had like an 8 second tell and was really the only thing you had to watch out for, other than the standard don't stand in the red circle mini game that takes place during every fight.
Overall I certainly didn't think this dungeon was better than most of the fractals.
not really true
Mad king was soloable, this one is harder.
Okay, Mad King is good too
But why the hell is this dungeon temporary content
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they added the Spirit Watch map which isn't the same type of map.. so actually theres two types of maps although I do agree they need to add in more.. a KOTH map would be nice and easy to add not sure why they haven't added one yet.. . also they added in the leaderboards and such which was a big complaint
also "meaningfull" pvp is an odd term as imho no themepark has "meaningfull" pvp its fluff arena stuff you do for fun.. even themeparks with owpvp is pointless overall
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Gotta say I agree, the content was very small for both updates, the timers for the invaders were long, the dungeon bosses were crazy zerg fest where you could be instantly killed simply because they both had AOE's that didn't completely disappear even tho the circles and the zone effects were gone. Not at all an improvement imo. Being instakill for the sake of being instakill is not an improvement, people would be changing their toon about this dungeon had they not made it temporary and we wouldnt see so many praises about it. Balance of the classes is still way off tho they have finally and at long last actually started separating the pve pvp and WvW skill behaviors something we should have seen since launch (which most likely would have saved them some grief from the pve'ers since they've broken many a class for the past 7 months by not doing this until now).