Bast.7253

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> By the time this gets decided, we will already have our mount. ;)

No, we won’t. At least one of the sub collections will take around half a month it would seem. I fully expect at this point for the collections and sub collections and sub sub sub collections and their corresponding daily cooldowns to make this take at least a month.

And apparently it takes charged quartz crystals which are daily charges.

One part of the collection has a sub collection that requires you to feed your Skyscale, it has 12 icons, and says it can only be fed three times a day. And this is just scratching the surface. So is the real timegate going to be closer to a month with the full collection?

1. Make the mount be able to climb a wall. If you run out of your flight bar and adrenaline on a ledge, if the mount can stick to the wall, why can it not climb up the rest of the way and use the propel feature when it wants to just leave the wall and fly? It’s so dumb the way it is right now because you have to awkwardly glide back down and find a ledge and start over. And the height gain is seemingly the same as a springer. So why not just use a springer?

2. Don’t make it climb the wall, leave it as clinging, but let the flight bar regenerate so it can take off and reset the canopy.

These restrictions make absolutely no sense and seem to only exist because they’re afraid of it overshadowing other mounts. But 9 times out of 10, if I see a cliff I need to get up somewhere, I’m generally going to see if it’s something I can scale with the gryphon first and then resort to springer. They’re trying to avoid abandoning mounts with adding other mounts, but it’s already happening... Raptors and jackals are land mounts that are far faster than gryphons in land, but you still see people sing flapping and gliding distances instead of using those other land mounts.

Part of this could be solved with a more intuitive mount selection system, but in general, it’s going to happen either way. And designing the Skyscale to be this clunky mount with an overarching canopy restriction on top of flight regen and adrenaline regen is just so incredibly pointless.

I also, time gating aside, wonder why they thought this collection was even worth the development time as opposed to another method like obtaining through the story. At least the first three, I get looking for the eggs and trying medicine on the sick Skyscale, but three different collections requiring you to go back to the same spots over and over again? What value does that add? Was there not a way to wrap these up into one round trip? I don’t know. I could understand doing this for a unique skin, but requiring all of this and the time gate for just base functionality mount and locking all of the mastery gain behind this timegate is ridiculous.

I mean, we need the story for the Skyscale rentals, and we have access to those during this 5 days. You mean my character isn’t going to be able to master a rental mount of the exact same kind, but can master their own?

The whole design is just disappointing. A great

patch tarnished by this mess of a mount. And I would almost understand this grind if the mount itself was better or a full flight mount but it’s just clunky, awkward, and mostly inefficient. I still want it, but I don’t think this build up or timegate is really going to be worth it to a lot of people that already have a griffin or don’t like doing tedious timegated collections.

And acquisition aside, even if it isn’t a full fledged mount, I really don’t understand why they did the clinging aspect with no flight bar or adrenaline regen instead of just making it able to climb with the same restrictions. Or leaving the cling and taking away the restrictions. It’s just poor design and if I wasn’t a completionist and didn’t want it for the inevitable skins and because it’s a dragon, I’d say why bother?

> @"Durzlla.6295" said:

> Honestly I think it’s fine, sure no time game would be fine too, but imo not everything needs to be an instant grab the day of or after the patch comes out.

>

> It also helps with keeping the map be lively longer as people continually do things for the skyscale as the game goes on (new players, people who didn’t care about rushing the skyscale etc).

>

> However, I do think it should have been said ahead of time that it would take a few days to get the skyscale, just so people would be prepared for that.

Just because the collections are locked doesn’t mean people will stay on the map and do other things. Many might just go and do fractals, pvp, or wvw until the next day. And while they’re in the map, they’re probably only going to be focusing on the mount collections if that’s what they’re after. So, a higher population map but a majority of that population could be ignoring the meta and other events.

> @"Cathbadb.6079" said:

> I'm not so annoyed by the time gating as I am by the mount being locked behind certain events in the personal story. If you don't complete the achievement perfectly you have to start completely over, not just with that part of the story but with the entire thing.

> "Salt on the Wound" requires lightning reflexes (or at least faster than mine). There's no counter to let you know how many you've gotten/need to finish for the achievement.

> "Dexterous Dodger" You have to complete the event without triggering a single trap. Considering the environment and traps are the same color it can be difficult to differentiate. I also didn't realize this achievement was part of the Skyscale process until after completing the personal story. Now I get to do it all over again. The really bad part is the achievements needed are at the very beginning and end of the story, (there are middle sections that aren't part of the achievements, so they're redundant) and as mentioned before you cannot simply replay individual sections., you have to do the whole KITTEN thing again! What in the actual kitten were you thinking?

> Then there's the Meta achievement. Not everyone has a high performance PC and even with the settings turned down it can be really difficult (because of latency) to complete certain events. It becomes a forced grind.

> I'm not too keen on the "Dragon Stand 2" type of meta where you get kicked out after a certain amount of time. Just bring the brand shielding back up. Give people not currently doing the meta time enough to search for Skyscale scales, eggs, or just explore. On my server (Sanctum of Rall) people barely played Dragons Stand. I would have thought Anet would have learned from that fiasco. Then again maybe they did but they were the ones laid off recently because their input wasn't popular. I dunno, this seems like a very poorly developed expansion. The story was "meh." It was exactly what I expected it to be, no surprises at all. I wonder did you have Rian Johnson (directer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi) write this story? It's pretty bad. It's very predictable.

> I've been playing your games since Guild Wars: Prophecies and this recent release has me longing for the old days.

> I think I'll take a few days off from Guild Wars 2.

> That's all I have to say.

>

You need story achievements for some of the later collections? Wtf...

> @"eldrin.6471" said:

> Just more of the same kitten from anet.wont be long till they realise the error of there ways.people who cant /wont do collection cant buy new skins for skyscale mount.bit dumb if you ask me.

That’s another thing I don’t get. I still have people in my guilds that play every day, but don’t have the griffin or beetle because they’re locked behind collections. So, on one hand, I get having to work for the mount, but on the other, these people are definitely not going to buy mount skins for a mount they don’t even have. The collections intimidate some people anyway. But now we have a timegate on large collections that are not only alienating the people that just don’t want to do the collections, but the people that don’t mind putting in the effort and time but can’t without waiting for daily resets. Having both a large multi series collection AND a timegate is just pointless. Pick one or the other... Why create something that can lead to massive gem store sells and then design it in a way that will deter a lot of people from having any reason to spend?

I just don’t get it. It’s not a good idea, and I hope they learn that from this moving forward for future mounts.

> @"ProtoGunner.4953" said:

> Lol complaining about a time gate of 5 days like there is no future... You will forget about it in 7 days you ever have done that. Get a grip and just play 10mins a day kitten.

It took me like 8 hours earlier to do this first part of the collection. And I only spent that much time because I dedicated my day to it. If you only spend 10 minutes a day to get this mount, it will most likely, if following the same pace, take weeks to get. And I used a guide for the eggs and sick Skyscale parts. For new players that don’t know where to find guides and are doing these on their own, the collections themselves could be a major turn off to the game, not to mention a lack of understanding as to why they can’t continue the rest of the collection.

Either do a long tedious collection with no time gate, or do a simplified collection with a time gate. Doing both is just drastically unnecessary.

And I’d like to further the sentiments that this kind of game design is exactly why I got absolutely sick of world of Warcraft. Just day after day of the the same fetch quests and chores with that shiny carrot on the stick. I didn’t like it with the golem backpack, but it was a cosmetic item. Wayfarer’s Henge was a cosmetic item.

Here we have a map that is heavily designed with this new mount in mind, but our only option is 1. Do over half of the story on a character if you want to be able to borrow one. 2. Borrow it, collect something or get dismounted and have to find a new one that will last one charge.

And these collections are just dull in general, at least so far. You essentially make three laps around the map looking for clickable items in abstract places while dealing with the frustration of knowing that these laps would be significantly easier if you didn’t have to backtrack or go out of your way to find a mount to borrow or just the right amount of ledge to use your springer to leap onto.

I think it gives a worse impression and creates more angst with the map than is deserved. I don’t usually agree with the statement that mounts should be solely obtained within the story, but I think for this one instance it probably would have been the better decision.

Timescale collections and timegates aside,

The rest of this has been substantially more exciting than the last episode.

A special thanks though for the three new decorations we got AND the combat tonic we got. I'm always excited to see these two things in a patch, and they aren't usually in the same one!

So, the timegating thing is made even worse by the fact that....

We can't borrow skyscales without doing the story on that character. I mean, the story is short, but if I've already done it twice, I'd like to not have to do it a third time just because I want to switch characters.

Is there not some account wide access unlock that could be provided once the story has been completed once?

And as a sidenote, I feel sorry for whoever had to code all of these tedious collections. I can't imagine how long that took, or how frustrating it was testing them.

> @"RizelStar.3724" said:

> It really doesn't make any sense. Hopefully ANET will chime in soon because as of right now, it really left a bad taste. I'm looking for a positive in this but due to how my RL is set up...I mean the only positive yet annoyance is if the rest of the collections aren't like the new born. If so then yea one of the worst ideas I've seen in a videogame.

>

> Could be worse, but the thought of thinking that'd be "fun" or "rewarding"...is umm...well absurd. *Shrugs*

Honestly, I'm pretty busy these days between school and work. I had today free and was hoping I could get the mount and then play the rest at a leisurely pace working towards the achievements, armor collections, and the meta itself is fun enough to come back to. The map itself is fun enough to come back to, but the map is built with the skyscale heavily in mind. And having a bunch of rentable skyscales that disappear and are in odd hard to reach places is not pleasant. The mount itself is fairly clunky, but part of the fun of getting a new mount is testing it out in other zones. Not to mention the fact that this was one of the highlights of this patch, and now it's artificially gated behind daily collections. Maybe this has something to do with the charity thing that's going on? But the scale locations are already posted on reddit and dulfy will undoubtedly follow shortly, as I would hope they would have expected. Perhaps the charity is meant to tie into this 5 day time gate.

I don't know. Just really frustrated, especially how extremely time consuming some of these collections are. And they're fun collections, they're just running around to the same areas 10 times in a row to collect something for whatever reason.

I think the medicine, scales, and eggs for the first collection is more than enough, then maybe have an event based collection. But as it stands now, it's looking like it could be more collections similar tot he medicine, scales, and eggs, for 2 or more collections, and then a final one with events and world bosses.

> @"Blocki.4931" said:

> Wouldn't get my hopes up. Location doesn't mean anything, especially not with literal islands that were ripped from another dimension.

Well I don't think that will be happening anymore.

But I do think this placement is kind of odd. Why the ocean? Why not an inland zone that we don't know of that just has masses of land thrown ontop of it? Was that Aurene creating a portal where she knew people would be safe from the falling debris? But how did she know Kralk was going to pull all of that in with him?

I also think, if Kralk was eating these domains during our chase, what's going to happen no that these domains have been tossed into the middle of the ocean? Seems like an enticing snack.

> @"tekhiun.8653" said:

> > @"Trise.2865" said:

> > How many times do we have to tell people not to blast through content in 10 minutes? to take their time and enjoy it? They never learn...

>

> I would be enjoying the content if I had the mount that I was told was going to be out today. Some people have more fun doing things at their own pace instead of having to deal with a gimmick to actually takes away the enjoyment of the map, i.e. going around pressing F and even going to the same place several times.

And this mount is pretty heavily built around the new mount. It's great that we have rentals, but when so many mobs one shot you and you have to climb just to get to the rentals most of the time, it's pretty frustrating. You also don't have the masteries with the rentals, and you can't even unlock the mastery until you unlock the mount. It would be nice to at least be able to put some of this experience into it to have the masteries later. I don't know. This whole collection design is pretty insane.

> @"tekhiun.8653" said:

> First of all, I really think all other aspects of ep6 were excellent. However I see no reason at all for time gating the Skyscale collection, and making it so grindy . Today I ran around the map and collected 56 items, in most cases I had to go to the same location 2 or 3 times to interact or collect different items. Only to find out that I will only be able to get the mount on Sunday at best,since I actually finished the first part 10 minutes after daily reset (so today no progression at all for me).

>

> I have to say that the whole thing feels really disappointing, it wouldn't be hard to believe that most people thought that they would end the story with the mount already unlocked. So please Anet, next time you release something that is going to be artificially timegated like this, at least tell us before hand. "You will be able to start unlocking the mount on the 14th and it may take a week to unlock it, maybe less" , that way we don't build up expectations about it. Also for the sake of future players that might try this, cut down on then number of things we have to interact and collect, maybe just enough so we don't have to back to the same area multiple times. If the goal is to make us come back and play the map as it is now you achieve the exact opposite. This entire aspect of the release was a big let down and all the hype about the new mount is actually gone now , at least for me

> .

>

>

Yeah, I got excited when I finished the eggs and then realized I had 4 more daily resets worth of collections to do, which might be more exhausting than these. I can understand making a lot of collections, but this is overly excessive, and locking them behind daily resets? Aside from this it seems pretty good so far.

There's no way of knowing how much time has passed in game since her death though. Sure, its' been 4 months for the players, but it may have only been a day or two for the characters or less.

Firebrand for orrian. Mirage for vabbian.

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> Yup maybe, but if you pay attention how maps are rendered, only what is in the map is rendered, they don't really care of rendering off-map cliffs, mountains or whatever, rare case of ember bay through. Example: Thunderhead peak or labyrinthine cliffs, considering the world map, you should see moutains to the horizons even very far, but just like in the trailer, at the south of thunderhead peak you just have water, no mountains, just water, a question of not rendering what is needed is my guess. Just move my frame to the left, surely then we have a bigger water surface. Frankly, the map is intriguing, a ton of plants and trees but in same time volcanic ground... and a few elonian assets. I noticed some pact airships wreckages so maybe far from there.. I'm more impatient than ever.

> Could it be the delta at the north? No ways....

True. But I wouldn’t get stuck on the volcanic ground thing. I think that’s just a Skyscale nest. We see the same thing in Dragon Stand at the Wyvern Nests.

> @"hugo.4705" said:

> My bet was and always be between mount maelstrom and desert highlands. I mean we have some hints:

> -The ancient pact symbol banner used in mount maelstrom camps, timberlines falls and fort trinity.

> -We have elonian tents thingies like desert highlands.

> -We have pact airships, holographic asuran bridges.

> -An archipelago like a shattered coast.

> -Took a look on reddit post, for me it's either aetherblade or inquest tech. Aetherblade retreat bis? Would be cool.

> So for me south maelstrom also that metal gate at the south-east was closed for too long now, time to explore.

>

> 

> In green the case of a small map, in yellow case of big map.

> Very close to pact hq fort trinity but also of Crucible of eternity.... Interesting and promising, plus proximity with crystal desert... Impatient.

>

> Edit: omg yes, in skyscale trailer we saw an aetherblade airship! But wasn't captain sly airship red like aetherblades?

> It always felt strange to me that at the end of ls1, aetherblades haven't fled somewhere else with their airships...

>

> Edit 2: I took a look on other comments, for me it's definitely there. That area has high volcanism, lava of maelstrom plus lava river at the bottom of snowy dwarven ruins of desert highlands, so volcanic rocks/ground possible there. Now about the vegetation, mount maelstrom has a very luxuriant one, see the whole west of the map/ middle north too. Not surprising to find a mushroom, since maelstrom is considered as maguuma forest. So maybe also smokescale, pocket raptors... will see.

> The elevation of the map is also corresponding to those branded canyons, little rivers with broken things....

>

The main thing making me think it won’t be that area of mount maelstrom is the fact that in the preview we see the water hit the edge of the map and nothing after. I suppose we could have a lot of water in the center of the map but I don’t know. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somewhere really out of the box like isle of janthir area. Dismissing something because of a few cliff textures or trees seems kind of foolish considering how much assets are reused. And there are arguably more maguma assets from what we’ve seen than there are Elona. Only two more days though!

I'd probably read an entire book from Canach's perspective. I'm really surprised they only did them for Rhytlock, Caithe, and Zafirah. And why them anyway? Unless their roles in the upcoming episodes are the focus of the next episode.

We had one involving Rhytlock and Balthazar's sword, then another on Zafirah involving her faith with Balthazar, and now we have some scripture read in the trailer from Balthazar? Seems like they're hitting it pretty hard, and I'm not sure what the angle is.

Another crazy theory. It’s multiple smaller maps connected by rifts.

> @"EdwinLi.1284" said:

> > @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

>

> >

> > That plot would require Kralkatorrik to survive this episode. And by the sounds of it, Kralkatorrik dies in War Eternal. Or is otherwise dealt with in a permanent fashion.

> >

> > Or some kitten-pull where everything we've been told for the past year and a half was a lie.

>

> This is most likely a Yes and No answer.

>

> Yes we kill Kralkatorrik and No Aurene is not the only solution so she say her final goodbye to us after we defeat Kralk to remain in the Mist and be with her Family so that the other Elder Dragons cannot use their new powers to enter the Mist like Kralk did.

>

> We only believed Aurene was the only solution because no one could find any other solution or present to us a actual alternative solution.

>

> However, I am almost certain we will be presented with a alternate solution at the end of this Season or get teased for it as a setup for Season 5 storyline.

>

Lol All the people complaining about Aurene despite having s several year build up for this sole purpose only to have us discover in a fraction the amount of time some new solution will be thrilled. I personally hope not, but the edgelords and backseat professional writers would probably be pleased for the sole reason that Aurenes death kept its “emotional impact” and wasn’t #cheapened.

> @"Perihen the Thawk.9527" said:

> I'm mostly intrigued by the fact that they seem to be holding back the name of the map, like it's some kind of spoiler.

>

> What could be on the coasts of Tyria, either on the Tarnished Coast, or Scavenger's Causeway, etc., such that the name of the map itself would be very significant? I can't think of anything.

I'm still not ruling Alcazia Triangle out, even if it doesn't have any Elonian assets. There are a ton of jungle assets in these images, that look A LOT more like Maguma with random Elonian assets than Elona with random Maguma assets. And the map overview would fit well.

My next completely insane theory:

We follow Kralk through a rift and wind up in Melandru's Hope in Cantha. Highly unlikely, but that would definitely be worthy of some extreme spoiler prevention.

> @"ThatOddOne.4387" said:

> Some of the backgrounds on these screenshots are not like the others...

>

> http://www.buffed.de/Guild-Wars-2-Spiel-17072/News/Termin-Ewiger-Krieg-Episode-1281572/galerie/3011306/?fullsize

I'm assuming that's a Skyscale nest, which is why the ground is fiery and the sky is kind of orange? But yeah, definitely different than the others.