Favorite Season 4 Episode

[maddoctor.2738]

It has been a while since Season 4 ended, we've had the chance to play all episodes. So here is my question to you, as 2019 is about to end, which Season 4 Episode is your favorite?

A "least favorite" poll is coming soon.

 

There is this old poll on the subject: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77682/so-what-was-your-favourite-season-4-episode but the problem with that, it was released at the same time as War Eternal so the results might've been a bit biased towards it (it was an excellent episode, but I think too recent to be in a poll).

[maddoctor.2738]

My vote goes for Daybreak, excellent new map, very good story, two new weapon sets, popular/rewarding meta events, well designed tasks/hearts (unlike some other ones) and the addition of a new Raid and a new Fractal with the same episode makes this the most complete episode of Season 4, and probably the most complete episode ever.

[Ashantara.8731]

Not a fan of "Daybreak", even when it was Istan. It didn't feel like a map of real substance, although it offers those well-populated farming meta events (yawn) and challenging story fights (which I dearly miss in The Icebrood Saga).

 

I _love_ the Joko story mission in "Long Live the Lich", it might be my all-time favorite LW mission. But the map was mostly meh, as were its events.

 

I enjoyed the Olmakhan and their village in "A Bug in the System" _a lot_, but they didn't do much with them, the focus laid heavily on the Inquest invasion attempt. I would have loved to have had a fully fledged Olmakhan story arc.

 

"A Star to Guide Us" had those great locations that were out of place and a fun-achievement with the sniper mission. Sun's Refuge was a huge disappointment, though, after we were teased about it being customizable etc. Blish's death was tragic, I miss the guy.

 

"All or Nothing" had that awesome Dwarven setting, the environment and the music truly got under my skin. The meta events were fun for a while and the treasure mechaninc was fantastic (I wish we had more like that). Unfortunately, the story missions were rather lame in comparison (especially the first two, the third was just ridiculous with us poking Kralkatorrik's eye; the ending felt off, I didn't feel much at all).

 

All things considered, I had the most fun playing "War Eternal", because exploring that map was tons of fun, it was diverse and innovative, and the meta was quite exciting for a while. It also had that beautiful sequence of Aurene's ascension that brought tears to my eyes, plus it introduced the Skyscale mount. So I voted for that one.

[Randulf.7614]

Daybreak was an excellent story, but the map is a mess in terms of visuals and a meta which is virtually unplayable due to visual noise. Kamadan alone released in that state is a huge drop in quality by the map designers and for any testing team to approve the myriad of problems it had and still has was something that began to show the lack of care that was to come later in the Season.

 

Sandswept had a great story, a great map and lots of little interesting stories and events. With a top notch trailer, it remains one of the best Living Story episodes in the entire game.

 

After that, it all went catastrophically wrong with three dire episodes (3,5,6). The finale being saved only by a cool map. The story was some of their worst from ep3 onwards with the only highlight being Jahai Bluffs snd the Kralk fight in Thunderhead.

 

Aurene basically ruined the story at every point she appeared. They almost redeemed themselves by killing her off and getting rid of a character who has spun the story miles off course, but they couldn't even pull that off, leaving us to endure all that nonsense in the finale.

 

So yeah Bug in the System wins by a wide margin. The rest of LS4 was not great and the story direction was at a level well below the standards it could be at

[Blur.3465]

All or Nothing for me. I really like the darker vibe of this episode as it finally had me FEEL something there.

The ending part really got me, as it was quite unexpected and it had that depth to it. Sure it made me feel super bad but that's what good story should do, make you care and feel for the story and characters.

Plus the music in that episode was superb. It's my all-time favorite episode/story from GW.

 

I kinda wish it stuck to this without bringing someone back to life in the next episode. It would've kept that weight and depth :(

[ZDragon.3046]

can i just say any episode that joko made me rage with his actions while also making me laugh with his dark comedy and humor.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

A Bug in the system

- Asura/Inquest theme of the infrastructure

- Amazing ambient dialogue

- Red XIII/FF VII references

- Epic assault on an enemy fortress that actually looks just mindblowing (just wish it was a little more explorable)

- The final battle, mechanics and design

- The entire storm/weather meta-event concept on the map

- By far the best fishing game

- A sub-quest which rewards a 32-slot ascended bag

- The cute living backpack

- Sharks & Dolphins

- The low-gravitation facility

- The puzzles in the inquest-facilities

- The most controversial mount-ability with an actual risk/reward feature

- imo the most beautiful map of LS4, I use the loading screen as my computer loading screen

... and many many more.

[Jimbru.6014]

The best episode to me was "Bug in the System". Loved the Olmakhan, loved the map and events, story was good, achieves were reasonable. I said at the time that it felt like the best of LS3 all rolled up in one place, and I still feel that way.

 

Next best probably was "Long Live the Lich". I hated it at first. Technically, it was obviously rushed and incomplete (map still is) and took several patches to fix. Story wise, it angered me that we basically deleted Joko -- arguably GW's best villain -- when he really could have been the subject of an entire expansion on his own. But the map and events have grown on me in retrospect, and I still sometimes go there just to go there. Which is a lot more than I can say about most of the LS maps.

 

In general, I felt like LS4 was inferior to LS3. LS4 moved through too much story content too quickly, like the closing chapters of a badly planned book. Anet wanted to get Aurene's story finished so they could move on from it, so they did things like basically deleting Joko as I mentioned. Not far different from the last season of Game of Thrones; "Oh crap, we've got enough loose plot lines to make a whole other series!" So GoT basically pulled a Hamlet and killed everybody instead of giving things proper closure. I felt like LS4 did much the same thing. I was particularly angered at the last three episodes; besides the unforgivable emotional abuse of Blish's and Aurene's deaths, there was the difficult terrain and the obvious "busy work" of achieves having to be repeated to near infinity, which we see again in Grothmar. Now to be fair, Anet was also dealing with a lot of internal things during LS4, which no doubt affected the results of their work. But still -- definitely not the best job I've ever seen done in a game.

 

 

 

[Ben K.6238]

There were a few positives in most of them - but I think the one that stood out most to me was A Star to Guide Us. There was quite a lot of side-story content in that one exploring the legacy of Joko's rule, and it gave the episode quite a lot of depth.

[hugo.4705]

ABITS was top notch. My favourite map, story, events, trailer, meta. Nothing to say.

Gratz to the ones who made that map.

Loved Gorrik and Blish. And the infiltration mission in the transport facility + lab sigma05, again was stunning. I like the character of Kuda, and all that got released along such as mkII weapons.

 

@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" sums it well, would have said the same in detail.

I've heard that at the start it was planned for the island to be a jurassic park like facility I know I woyld have liked it too, but the current layout is nice.

 

Also wanted the cube to be more explorable and part of the map meta: like you defeat the subjects, a teleporter turns on and teleport players into the cube where they have to free subjects and facing kuda and several exterminator/supervision golems.

(It was apparently planned for phlunt to be there, but dunno, him as Inquest?)

 

The best LS episode for me. Still angry about Blish's death because not properly explained. The Inquest was perfectly represented, the devs who worked on it are definitely mad scientists. Good job.

 

Would have been better to make ls4 longer like 10 episodes instead of rushing all the sub plots and ihnoring how to properly kill characters. Joko deserved one-two episodes releasing plague and becoming a real threat. Aurene was resurrected to fast, could have stay dead one more episode. And well kourna is just rushed.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

I think the whole season was high quality! Save for Kourna's map despite the chapter itself was fun and climactic. Sandswept Isles made up for it at least.

 

Hands down though War Eternal pulled out all the stops in exploration (it lacks man made structures), meta and rewards. Skyscale's availability literally the only thing that hurt the release.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Going to go with All or Nothing. A great build up, an emotional ending, and though the story and map has had some design flaws, it was overall well done.

 

If I had to rate them with a 0 to 5 rating, it'd be:

 

* Daybreak 3.5/5

* A Bug in the System 4/5

* Long Live the Lich 1.5/5

* A Star to Guide Us 4/5

* All or Nothing 4.5/5

* War Eternal 3.5/5

 

Daybreak was a good start, may even be worth a 4/5, but it created too many things that were too grindy (Astral/Stellar weapons) and too tedious to figure out (how the meteor mining system works and best way to use it). And as a GW1 fan, the drastic changes felt meh to me, a bit of bias there.

 

A Bug in the System felt overall great, no real flaws, but nothing that stood out either. The final battle also went from "feeling epic to feeling ridiculous" as we warped under the Megadestroyer and Claw of Jormag. Thus I reduced it from 5 to 4.5. Also a small disappointment that Crystallus Dominus never showed up again despite surviving the event fight.

 

Long Live the Lich was just... a major disappointment. The map design, the enemies' skills, and the gagdeath of Joko were all just. Bad. And worse was how the horrifying Scarab Plague, a source of horror in GW lore since 2007, got utterly and abysmally put into irrelevancy was just pathetic. The only thing keeping this from being a flat out 0 was the Be My Guest design - the puzzles, the suspense and horror of those corpses, the fights, and Joko's lying-lying speech were all great. So for those, and those alone, I give a 1.5.

 

A Star to Guide Us was, like A Bug in the System, an overall great episode with no real flaws. And it does a major character death pretty well (if and only if you paid attention in Ep2 and 3). But it also lacked that "epicness" feel which, along with the lack of properly utilizing Sun's Refuge, leads me to demote it a point. This was a properly done "build up" episode, overall.

 

All or Nothing, pretty much commented on above. It made a good attempt to cleanup the messes of previous episode's failures, had a great battle against Kralkatorrik, and overall it really did feel like it was an all or nothing battle against a massive Elder Dragon, which is more than I can say for the fights against Zhaitan and Mordremoth or Kralkatorrik's torment.

 

With War Eternal, it was mostly that first instance, and the particular grinding nature of the Skyscale that brought it down for me; _especially_ that first instance which remains cringy - and the dev reasoning for it just makes it worse "everyone knows Aurene will come back, so we decided to just get it over and done with", to the best of my memory, was the reasoning said).

 

Overall, I felt like Season 4 did a good job, but and like Season 3, it was the third set that ended up being a let down overall. Both Episode 3 and 6 ended up negating the emotion and dramatic "up against the wall" feeling that the prior episode had properly build up - Ep3 with making the Scarab Plague practically harmless to non-humans (and the Commander regardless), and Ep6 by making Aurene immortal because "lich magic" (which remains illogical since the Elder Dragons don't get access to the magic of _anyone_ they eat, just other Elder Dragons and gods/demigods/formergods).

 

I feel that Season 4 (and Season 3) could have improved drastically if they had just included two, or even three, more episodes.

[WIR BRAUCHEN ONE EIGHTY.42]

War Eternal

 

Best story in a season, by far best map, best meta and a skyscale collection - thing, I enjoyed most this season.

The order of rest episodes:

All or Nothing

A Star to Guide Us

A Bug in the System on par with Long Live the Lich

Daybreak - worst episode ever in all of the story.

[Arden.7480]

A Star to Guide Us, absolutely. two amazing cinematics: with Aurene's Vision (with still my favourite music Aurene's Fate), Taimi's cinematic which absolutely broke my heart, and Blish's Sacrifice music and his passing... And Eir's Return, and Snaff appearing... Unforgettable episode for me, and one of the best I've played ever.

[Hannelore.8153]

War Eternal, my one complaint being that they didn't add an an extra mission to explain Aurene's revival and just threw it out there..

 

If they ever fixed that, it'd be perfect.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

War eternal.

Only because I finally got to bring krako down... cause it was really p****ng me off.

 

Mainly because it was the dragon that caused more destruction in tyria, and which name was brought up every now and then, just like a splinter in your mind; needed to go away.

It lived long enough.

 

So yeah, was glad to finally take it down.

[Jimbru.6014]

Also, this is a good place to say this: either story instances should not have achievements in them at all, or there should be enough achievements in the map to complete the mastery WITHOUT having to repeat the story. Stories should be meant to play through once as an unlocking mechanism, and then free form play after that.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> Also, this is a good place to say this: either story instances should not have achievements in them at all, or there should be enough achievements in the map to complete the mastery WITHOUT having to repeat the story. Stories should be meant to play through once as an unlocking mechanism, and then free form play after that.

 

Was there a situation is LS4 where masteries from story were needed because not enough existed elsewhere?

[magnusthorek.8027]

I'd say Long Live the Lich just because Joko is a funny swaggerer. A swaggerer to be praised, but still a swaggerer. And final cutscene was awesome

[Jimbru.6014]

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> > @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> > Also, this is a good place to say this: either story instances should not have achievements in them at all, or there should be enough achievements in the map to complete the mastery WITHOUT having to repeat the story. Stories should be meant to play through once as an unlocking mechanism, and then free form play after that.

>

> Was there a situation is LS4 where masteries from story were needed because not enough existed elsewhere?

 

Yes. I'd have to go into the game and look to be certain, but pretty sure at least Episodes 5 and 6 didn't have enough achievements outside the story to avoid having to repeat the story to get the map mastery. So if you missed any achieves on the first run through the story (which people commonly do) then you have to repeat the story however many times it takes to successfully get those achieves for the map mastery.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> > @"Randulf.7614" said:

> > > @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> > > Also, this is a good place to say this: either story instances should not have achievements in them at all, or there should be enough achievements in the map to complete the mastery WITHOUT having to repeat the story. Stories should be meant to play through once as an unlocking mechanism, and then free form play after that.

> >

> > Was there a situation is LS4 where masteries from story were needed because not enough existed elsewhere?

>

> Yes. I'd have to go into the game and look to be certain, but pretty sure at least Episodes 5 and 6 didn't have enough achievements outside the story to avoid having to repeat the story to get the map mastery. So if you missed any achieves on the first run through the story (which people commonly do) then you have to repeat the story however many times it takes to successfully get those achieves for the map mastery.

 

But, spare masteries carried over from PoF and every previous LS4 episode. So you never _**had**_ to do story to get them surely? There are a fair chunk of excess mastery points afaik from map insights and achievements. I mean haven't counted everything up to tally that 100%, but I can't recall ever repeating anything to get a mastery and I'm really not a good enough to player to get that many on a first run through

[Jimbru.6014]

I'm not meaning Mastery Points. I mean the map mastery, the big overall achievement for the episode.

[Dante.1508]

None i hated Season 4 from start to finish.. I would never do it again because it was so difficult and tedious.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> I'm not meaning Mastery Points. I mean the map mastery, the big overall achievement for the episode.

 

Oh map completion. Ok that’s completely different. I can perhaps more agree on your point then

[Westenev.5289]

I find it hard to pick a favourite, since I have fun memories in all of them.

 

If I were pressed though, Sandswept Isles would be my favourite. Great map, the story ended as strongly as it started, the meta/bounties and glitched flying griffons were fun... and that ending was so wholesome.