How do you rate "A Star to Guide Us" in scale 1-10? [spoilers]

[Gemnaid.4219]

I give it a 1/10. Everything that could have been great about this LS is nullified by a horrible choice by smart developers.

[Scud.5067]

6/10 Not terrible, better than average.

 

I'm not a fan of Blish or Taimi. Or Braham, so take that into account.

 

Played with a friend for the last part and a group for the beginning.

 

 

The final Blish part was buggy, with spawns appearing before we needed to defend, and.. was there meant to be a dragon? The giant arrow appeared on the ground but the thing got stuck behind a pillar on the floor.

 

Then the escape - was just annoying. Time and time again we've had to learn through dieing, rather than intelligently presented, clearly communicated design. Signalling is a critical part of game design and time and time again we're forced to learn through repetition - which on its own is fine. But when the designer has taken it upon themselves to make use of some fairly heft displacement (in this case, a time limit through the explosion) then it just becomes frustrating.

 

Poor signalling again during the earlier act, where we met the delegates and were attacked. This time we played as a group of four. If you place an open doorway on a corridor that player's are encouraged to follow, expect them to run through it. If you don't want them to go there, block it off, place a barrier, close a door. This is fair basic stuff. Instead, we ran through and received the, 'you are leaving the instance area' message. I got booted and then, as I was the host, everyone else got booted. On one hand, fair play for creating a sense of urgency. On the other hand, block the damned passages or place an invisible barrier if we're not meant to go through them yet.

 

 

[Wizler.8192]

> @"Vavume.8065" said:

> Collections are just boring fetch quests that mostly require a guide to make them less tedious

 

OMG I've never minded collections before but this seemed excessive. How could I possibly find half the junk without constantly referring to Dulfy? I do think that Arena Net could do better about guiding quests so we don't have to constantly refer to wiki or third-party guides.

 

[TheBravery.9615]

4/10 fell asleep playing it

 

please kill off more characters, will raise it half a point.

[zealex.9410]

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> Prob an 8. The deadeye instance was mechanically fine but far too random for the story flow and too drawn out. The final episode had issues with narrative flow too during the escape scene, gltches and other bits that didnt hang together.

>

> It also lacked, like most of ls4, any really cool new music and that will always stop a higher score.

>

> The rest was excellent. The map, the artwork, the dialogue, the collections, the easter eggs all combined well and the emphasis in less visual noise elevated it above Istan.

>

> It is a shame ep3 couldnt raise to this height. This was def the strongest ls4 ep yet.

 

I guess music is subjective. I loved blish's sorrow (even tho its from an earlier episode but still s4) as well as the piece used on aurene's vision.

[zealex.9410]

8/10, lots to improve but se4 so far is getting better and better imo.

 

Im mostly forgiving the bugs because those get patched and u can always replay the episode at a later date and get the intented experience.

 

(not to say i find the amount of bugs acceptable in the last 2 releases)

[aszy.3804]

On par with previous expansions and LS. Hated the exiting flight at the end - up to over 50 attempts and no success. I'll keep at it, but it's not fun. When Kralk starts crushing the temple, you have a clear exit door that if you get feared into it, you get kicked for being out of bounds - bull pucky. The deadeye was challenging, but then she was cheating, or not cheating enough - if she could blink to another location, why not after every shot. Did not make much sense.

[hugo.4705]

7/10. Why?

-1 for the death of Blish

-1 for leaving a part of the map non-designed at the north.

-1 for that very bad sun refuge.

 

Good points:

+ 2 for rifts and anomalies

+ 1 for ??? and that scary mushroom

+ 1 again, poor iberu

+ 2 the new shatterer and his fight

+ 1 good story and many different map environments

[Clyan.1593]

For the first time in a very long time I feel like this Story Update was extraordinarily good. I like everything about it, the map, the story instances, the suns refuge, the achievements and so on. Really great Update.

 

10 / 10

[Anela.3867]

9/10 I really enjoyed it. Great job Anet!

[Daniel.5428]

8/10 story

Story was nice even if the sniper part was random. I enjoyed it a lot

 

1/10 map

Map is cheap....just some events here and there, nothing cool. Even shatterer feels easy.

 

1/10 achivements

Kill these 3 new champs on the map, fetch some items here and there and pay 200 gold for some sigils to get an exotic set. Anet feels like a very corrupt country. Somehow someone rushed the game, saw the sigil and grabbed all of them from tp. And then the price went from 2s to even 11 gold.

 

Sun refugee 2/10

This could have been great but they decided to put all the content behind ....what?....more collections. Collectios were ment to be used in stages for complex items, not to run around gathering papers for 2 fucking AP. Anet runs of idea so bad. No episode this season was trully great.

[Urud.4925]

Hmm, I'm between 8/10 and 7/10 (just because of your standards ArenaNet. For any other game, this content would have been a sonorous 10)

 

The story was very well done. I had my moments of "wt..." when I saw the Awakened with a green name and the flashy Eir. Though she was a bit too cold towards her son (she seemed a Charr). While Almorra was a bit overexcited at the end of the first chapter. Braham's change of attitude was very expected after seeing Eir, but I liked the acting nonetheless. The Deadeye's instance reminded me Full Metal Jacket, it was a good touch, something different. Pity for the final dialogues with Blish: I couldn't read them carefully; so I had to re-watch them on youtube. (Why someone must always die in every episode? :/ ) The flying dinosaur on the asteroids was... well, unexpected. Weird. Maybe out of the place. Not ugly though.

 

What really made the story a masterpiece, was the Aurene's vision. I shed a tier with that kitten cutscene. My compliments to ANet's artists and developers. I expected to see the final vision with her and the commander, in a triumph against Kralkatorrik, but it didn't happen. Even better.

 

The map is also well designed. When I saw that giant tornato: "let's see how I will die now", "wow, I can ride it!". I've been even more surprised when I noticed that the thing even moved along the map. Again compliments to Anet's programmers (I worked a bit as programmer and that's why I'm so envious/I appreciate their work).

 

The area reproducing the battle in Orr surprised me and even more did the following one with the mushrooms: those white shapes (really like from an outer world), the lights... very suggestive. Putting a piece of Maguuma was also a smart idea, some advertisement for the people that only bought PoF.

Small flaw: I tried to enter that hidden appendix from everywhere, thinking that there was a secret passage somewhere. Please don't leave blurred areas on the map if they cannot be explored.

Also, maybe we could be teleported directly in the middle of Sun's Refuge when we use the portal? The path through the caverns is fine if you enter from the map, but maybe we could skip it if we use the portal.

 

I still have to complete all the achievements (I started 2 days ago, to avoid major bugs). So far, most of them have been fetch quests. I'm not sure if I prefer this to the farming of Kourna. I hope I can complete the collections without spending too much gold (as I've read).

All in all: WEELL DOOONE! (Please don't bring back Trahearne from the Mists: you would kill me)

[Chaosmade.8732]

4/10

Only Story and Map are great and im on wtf mode vor Eir´s little return. But Blish died ;(

And i miss Taimi when shes not there, becouse her degenerative disease.

And Aurene vision get hurt me ;(, she died and died in that vision.

Still have no hope vor survive.

 

And a hating 0/10 to have no savespot vor doing archiment in story.!!!!!!!!

 

1/10: Vor shatterer event to much full from everything

 

0/10 vor Sunspear refuge: Why only hunt collections to get it bigger? Why we dont use Craft sation?

Im not complete finish but what im see are still awlfull.

I also do not really want to do this

 

[eyelogix.1654]

9/10 seriosuly the shatterer is pretty much annoying because of the lagfest it brings. It needs some tuning down when it comes to mobs. It's horrible!

Otherwise the story is fine.

[Urud.4925]

Sorry for the second long post: the first one was basically about the story (that I still rate high, 8 for the story itself, 9 for the production/art) while this one is about the achievements/replayability (sufficient. yeah, sufficient, like that Asura in TD would say).

 

There are interesting achievements, mainly due to the dialogues. For example the one about restoring the memorial for the Awakened. It's quite touching. And also the memorials themselves are pretty if looked from close. There are other lines (for example the heart quest at north) where I can tell that you didn't go cheap and fast on this episode. And I appreciate the care for these details. The hide-and-seek is a simple activity, but quite funny too. But some other decisions ruined a bit the experience.

Just 2, to be fair, and that's even more a pity: the choice to put a sigil of nullification as requirement for the gear collection, and the achievement If I may interrupt you.

 

- It was quite foreseeable that using an item sold on the TP, randomly dropped, would have increased its price to the stars. It went from a couple of silvers to 15g and it will probably even go exausted in the following days. Only the richest players can complete this achievement now, all the others must wait a couple of months, until this content becomes old (currently it costs more than the griffon, that at least it's a way to remove some gold from the game, with the same fixed price for everyone, handed to an NPC).

It would have been better to replace it with an item randomly dropped from the mobs on the map, like for the "Crystal attunement" or the runes of "Doors to the past". This way we were forced to play on the map (eventually you could increase a bit the drop rate later on, like you did in Kourna for the Spare parts). Currently, after 3 days, I got the staff and there are no more feasible achievements left for me, so I just have to forget about this map for a couple of months and come back later. It's a pity.

 

 

- About the achievement against Joko: you usually do a good job placing rocks/boulders in instanced encounters or providing an easy way to CC bosses during metas (both the old and the new shatterer can be CC'ed using the launching pads or the branded shards, easily accessible even for classes with few CC skills. People refuse to do it, but that's not your fault). But in open world events, it's different. You may start the fight prepared, with a class suited for the fight, with several CC skills equipped, but then random players join, scaling up the breakbar, without contributing to the CC. Sometimes it's not their fault (I tried Joko with a ranger and it worked very well for the first 2 breakbars, until more players joined. But when I was farming there with a thief, even if I equipped p/p and basilisk venom before engaging Joko, it didn't help much, since basilisk was still in the middle of its cooldown when the second breakbar arrived).

Would it be possible to "summon" Joko on command, using a special item that we receive as random drop? That way, we could collect few of these items, wait until the map dies/get closed and we can put a group in LFG to recruit only ppl that are interested in the achievement, avoiding trolls/clueless players.

[Curunen.8729]

mmm, numbers are going to be plucked out of the air but ok I'd give it 7/10.

 

Positives/things I liked:

- the voice acting as always is top quality and the characters very good

- the new map has a nice variety of environments which is also thematically consistent with the bubbles (ie not for no reason)

- the final mist instance running from Kralk was very well done - really caught the imagination.

- mushroom hallucination part is awesome!

- seamless map boundary between Jahai and Kourna is very well done.

- I love the brand aesthetic and enjoy the branded enemies.

- LOVE the lack of "big bosses" in the story. Sure there were some medium "bosses" but no ridiculous bullet sponges with stupid gimmick mechanics. Leave those in raids/fractals - I love it when the story is more organic rather than having contrived enemies with gimmick mechanics for the sake of gameplay. The almost "alien" threat of kralk in the background was good enough to carry this - you know he's there and he's coming but you don't know where/when or what to do about it and that is scarier than something like the Mordremoth story boss fight which totally diminished the scope and power of the adversity faced by the commander.

 

Things I'm indifferent to:

- don't really care for the new armour (appreciate the work put in but it doesn't suit my aesthetic, same with the birthday luminous armour)

 

Negatives/things I didn't like:

- getting a bit tired of the whole mundane "lets get leaders together and make a decision" thing. I'm one of those people that liked Trahearne being the central focus (it was only his... strange voice acting that put me off), so that our character could do other stuff rather than being tied up in similar and rather boring politics as happens IRL which doesn't help with escapism.

- also getting burnt out on the desert (lol) and the whole human/awakened stuff. Sure not as boring as Caudecus/white mantle (my god that was dull), but almost. I don't mind humans being a large part of the story - but more from a perspective like that repeating mist instance of the invasion of Orr, kind of ancient history stuff. Would rather more fantastical/"alien" stuff like uncharted underwater zones, unique mist areas and other things that play with the imagination. :)

 

Overall I'm hoping for more instances of back and forth between the mists and for more fantastical interesting stuff like the mushroom cave and the final kralk instance.

[Arden.7480]

> @"Verthurnax.2784" said:

> 2 out of 10. A crap of map just like all maps since POF came out. Single-player focus only in a mmo is the worst thing to do. Forgetable story and big map with no events at all plus trash collection all over again, just logged in once did story and all map in like 2 hours of content and since then i don't need the desire to log in again and i am back to just annoy me in old content like hot maps and pvp. People like me want from an mmo to be an mmo not a trash single player look alike game ... just look at how map is empty just as kourna, 0 comms becuase there is nothing on it, since all can solo most of it.

 

to the previous post: I, this very morning, commanded the shatterer meta, I created a squad on LFG, and after few secs had 10 ppl in it, 3 mins after- 30 ppl, almost in the end of the fight- over 40, plus there was another comms. And one was doing at the same time bounties, and had 20 ppl in the squad- while the meta was up.

 

 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

**7/10** for me. Map looks great. Story was fine, as usual.

AP rewards ridiculous low, and I don't really see the purpose of the Suns Refuge. It does not replace the home instance and is not good enough to be either a hall of Monuments nor the highly anticipated, fully featured player housing addition.

[Deimos.4263]

The overall plot was ok, but I didn't care for a lot of the writing.

 

* Braham's apology seemed forced and fake; it felt more like the writers themselves were apologizing indirectly to the players

* Dude getting squashed suddenly after making speech to the contrary -- funny but totally cribbed from Deep Blue Sea

* Too many returning NPCs making cameos, it just felt lazy after a while - Glint, Eir, Snaff (plus all the hallucinations)

* Aurene being strange and wandering off, why have her there if she does nothing

* Because we needed a reason to hate Deadeye

 

[Biff.5312]

It was relatively quick to complete, so that I liked. The raptor jumping segment didn't work for me at all - it kept telling me I was outside the map instance and I'd die unexpectedly and without apparent cause. I bet I died 20 times doing it even though the successful run I finally made involved doing EXACTLY the same thing I'd been doing all along. Story to me is just an obstacle to get past, so as this one was fairly painless I'd say like a 6/10.