The Library, a beautiful mess [Spoilers]

[Ohoni.6057]

This is a discussion of the Library instance in PoF, and will discuss TWO story areas (during the main story and in the epilogue) that take place here. Spoilers ahead.

 

I want to start by giving a lot of praise to the environment artists that worked on this map. It really is beautiful. When I first saw it, I was floored by the design. I mean the water with the graceful paths, the massive stacks of scrolls, the "infinity corridors" of tomes, the spiraling staircases into the upper decks, so many gorgeous elements to the design of the map that I really have to give them credit for that.

 

That said, there are some small but important flaws with this map that REALLY should never have made it out of testing. For one thing, the most glaring flaw, that corner of the room relatively close to the secret chamber, where the map just completely breaks down. It's near one of those staircase columns, there are just clear gaps in the map boundaries where you can see that edges are just not lining up. How hard is that to fix? You just cram an extra column or something in there so that you can't see the hole. I mean, how did that happen?

 

Then you have those "corkscrew" columns, with the staircases spiraling them. They look nice, in theory, but then you take a closer look and realize that they just don't work at all! The staircases run right into walls, making it impossible to actually traverse them top to bottom, so what's the point? There are two simple solutions here, you either move the columns out from the walls enough that you can go fully around them, or you place a horizontal arc at the top of each flight so that you can run over to the bottom of the next one. The former would be better design, but the latter would allow you to keep the columns buried in the walls.

 

And then there's that "road into the sky," which is lovely, but you eventually just hit an invisible wall. It would have been nicer to allow players to just keep going until it got too steep to traverse, and it was only about 50ft from that point already. There are a lot of invisible walls in the upper level that don't seem to serve much purpose, reaching the area beyond them wouldn't actually hurt anyone, it's mostly just another bookcase.

 

And then there's the epilogue section, what's with those demons? Some had interesting mechanics, but many of them were very tricky to solo with various builds, and more importantly they were extremely buggy, because the map seems to have not been designed to work with combat at all. The smaller enemies often would not agro on you even if you were right on top of them, I had several enemies that would randomly reset several times mid-fight (like the Imp with the "attack from a specific zone" condition), one of the Shades kept saying I was "out of range" when I was meleeing him, and many of the walkways had pathing issues where there would be a raised inner band, and if you moved from that band to the outer one and back, it would confuse the AI and make it think you were untargetable, therefore resetting them. It just seemed like that whole encounter was slapped together at the last minute, and yet at the same time the mechanics involved in each of the 10+ demons seemed very complex. Just put together too late in development for full testing?

 

I just was a bit frustrated at how an area with so much potential and so much obvious care paid to _some_ portions of it, completely dropped the ball in others. It felt like a 80% completed content that would be exceptional at 100%, which somehow hurts more than perfectly finished mediocrity.

[Fenom.9457]

All the regenerating elites made me VERY violent towards pretty much anything, some of them were terribly made

[Fatemaster.3590]

I kinda wish the devs would have made the library into an option to setup a guild hall.

[Batelle.1680]

Pro-tip- you can leave the instance whenever and the elites will respawn. I had good luck with an Elite Aatxe that wasn't too hard to take down and was close to the portal, so I just killed him 10 times to get the keys and avoided the rest.

 

Your other complaints stand, especially the Spiral Stairs to Nowhere. I'm telling myself that it's basically built on dream logic, where the beings that were meant to use it didn't actually need stairs, so it's more about an aesthetic than utility.

[Esprit Dumort.3109]

I ended up finding a handful that were less problematic and waited for them to respawn... Due to the same issues others have mentioned.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Batelle.1680 said:

> Pro-tip- you can leave the instance whenever and the elites will respawn. I had good luck with an Elite Aatxe that wasn't too hard to take down and was close to the portal, so I just killed him 10 times to get the keys and avoided the rest.

>

> Your other complaints stand, especially the Spiral Stairs to Nowhere. I'm telling myself that it's basically built on dream logic, where the beings that were meant to use it didn't actually need stairs, so it's more about an aesthetic than utility.

 

Actually, the elites seem to respawn over time too. I was moving through them relatively slowly, and by the time I'd killed about 7-8 of them, some of the first ones had respawned, so rather than deal with a few of the more annoying ones, I just took out the ones I had an easier time with. I think the easiest ones I tried were the Imp with the poison fields, and the Atax with the time stop you could jump. They both went down fairly easily and I could avoid their gimmicks. The worst was the Shade with the hammers (which was super buggy in the ways I mentioned above, and even when working right seemed to be impossible to deal with without getting hit a lot), the Imp with the "melee only/range only" switching fields, because when he was ranged only I didn't have much to work with and he kept resetting, and the redlight/greenlight ghost, because I got the mechanic after a bit, but even when "doing it right" as best I could tell, I would still get the punishment.

[killermanjaro.5670]

My only issue with this instance is the heavy use of invisible walls, like the spiral staircases you mentioned, some of those I went to walk up and was blocked by an invisible wall. Or at edges there are invisible walls a few metres in front of some of the bookcases, why not just let us walk up to the bookcases and use those as the walls? The same with the waterfalls, the invisible walls didn't seem to let me go right up to to them, the walls were a few meters in front again.

 

The amount of invisible walls really killed any immersion in that instance for me. That area had a lot of potential, but it felt kinda like it was half finished or cobbled together last minute.

[Nemo.5609]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> It just seemed like that whole encounter was slapped together at the last minute, and yet at the same time the mechanics involved in each of the 10+ demons seemed very complex. Just put together too late in development for full testing?

The mechanics are also used in the bounty system; it's possible they just slapped 1 random mechanic on every elite and called it a day.

 

 

 

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Nemo.5609 said:

> > @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > It just seemed like that whole encounter was slapped together at the last minute, and yet at the same time the mechanics involved in each of the 10+ demons seemed very complex. Just put together too late in development for full testing?

> The mechanics are also used in the bounty system; it's possible they just slapped 1 random mechanic on every elite and called it a day.

 

They probably work a lot better as Bounties, where they are in the open world and you'll likely have multiple people around, as opposed to instanced, mostly soloed content.

 

[Nemo.5609]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> They probably work a lot better as Bounties, where they are in the open world and you'll likely have multiple people around, as opposed to instanced, mostly soloed content.

Perhaps, though it was the Library instance that got me to read what the mechanics do and learn how to play around them. Bounties can get fairly chaotic and with enough people you can ignore things like red light/green light.

 

 

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Nemo.5609 said:

> > @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > They probably work a lot better as Bounties, where they are in the open world and you'll likely have multiple people around, as opposed to instanced, mostly soloed content.

> Perhaps, though it was the Library instance that got me to read what the mechanics do and learn how to play around them. Bounties can get fairly chaotic and with enough people you can ignore things like red light/green light.

 

This is also true. Those little icons make for terrible teaching aides when serious combat is going on, especially when other buffs and debuffs cause them to dance around. When mobs have fancy specific rules to them like that, it would really help if there were a toggleable message prompt, a big one that is prominently visible, telling what weird mechanic it has. Like center screen or under their bar in big letter. Again though, toggleable so that people who don't want that for whatever reason can just turn it off.

[LucianDK.8615]

I ended bringing a friend to help killing the elites, and i wearied of killing the same single elite and resetting over and over again.

[Donari.5237]

I'm a little confused about the killing elites for keys part. I did the instance with a friend, with me as instance leader. I do recall there was some fighting, though it didn't seem terribly difficult (likely due to said friend). I never noticed any keys. Did I miss something? Or is it just that since we stuck around to read all the books for the achieve and killed anything in our way that I automagically got keys needed to use the exit portal? We very carefully did not go out through the portal until the achieves were done. Should I have gone back in through it?

[MachineManXX.9746]

> @Donari.5237 said:

> I'm a little confused about the killing elites for keys part. I did the instance with a friend, with me as instance leader. I do recall there was some fighting, though it didn't seem terribly difficult (likely due to said friend). I never noticed any keys. Did I miss something? Or is it just that since we stuck around to read all the books for the achieve and killed anything in our way that I automagically got keys needed to use the exit portal? We very carefully did not go out through the portal until the achieves were done. Should I have gone back in through it?

 

There is a second mission that takes you back to the Library that is not part of the main story.

 

[Haishao.6851]

I actually went around and killed every elites, until I realize they respawn and I could have only killed a few of the same

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Donari.5237 said:

> I'm a little confused about the killing elites for keys part. I did the instance with a friend, with me as instance leader. I do recall there was some fighting, though it didn't seem terribly difficult (likely due to said friend). I never noticed any keys. Did I miss something? Or is it just that since we stuck around to read all the books for the achieve and killed anything in our way that I automagically got keys needed to use the exit portal? We very carefully did not go out through the portal until the achieves were done. Should I have gone back in through it?

 

If you're talking the first mission during the main story, there should be no fighting in the library itself. When you come back the second time after the main story, there are ten chests that require ten keys, and these keys drop off of certain "boss" type mobs roaming the area.

[zealex.9410]

The demons where fine to battle. I believe the models were mostly place holder since they prob didnt have any demon models to put in.

[Donari.5237]

Ok, thanks guys. Looks like I need to remember where the library entrance is and go back now that I've completed the story. Or is this something I should have done right away and now I have to repeat on another alt? No worries if so, I fully intend to get more alts through the story.

[Taelac.7036]

It's part of the griffon quest, so it should be available to start on any character that has finished the story.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Donari.5237 said:

> Ok, thanks guys. Looks like I need to remember where the library entrance is and go back now that I've completed the story. Or is this something I should have done right away and now I have to repeat on another alt? No worries if so, I fully intend to get more alts through the story.

 

Basically, they'll tell you when it's time to go there. Until then, you can't get in so don't worry about it.

[Orion Templar.4589]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> There are a lot of invisible walls in the upper level that don't seem to serve much purpose, reaching the area beyond them wouldn't actually hurt anyone, it's mostly just another bookcase.

 

I agree with you about the over-abundance of invisible walls in this map. When I first walked into the sanctum (library) I was impressed by the visuals and I just stopped to soak in the view for a while. But when I started to explore and bumped into all those invisible walls, I got fed up and left.

[CedarDog.9723]

Re:Staircases to nowhere.

 

The library is just the Winchester Mystery House of Guild Wars 2. :)

[Ohoni.6057]

> @CedarDog.9723 said:

> Re:Staircases to nowhere.

>

> The library is just the Winchester Mystery House of Guild Wars 2. :)

 

Now I get it, the staircases are there to confuse the ghosts! They should have sold that by having various ghost NPCs wlking up them and just bumping against the wall for eternity.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

> @Haishao.6851 said:

> I actually went around and killed every elites, until I realize they respawn and I could have only killed a few of the same

 

same. but some of them were challenging

[BunjiKugashira.9754]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > @CedarDog.9723 said:

> > Re:Staircases to nowhere.

> >

> > The library is just the Winchester Mystery House of Guild Wars 2. :)

>

> Now I get it, the staircases are there to confuse the ghosts! They should have sold that by having various ghost NPCs wlking up them and just bumping against the wall for eternity.

 

Or what if... the staircases actually continue INSIDE the wall and only ghosts can use them (because they can pass through the wall)?