Underwhelmed by this episode. The story and writing were good, but the map feels barren, the meta feels incomplete, the mount has no real purpose, and there are no long-term achievement goals, unique rewards, or interesting / rewarding repeatable content.
The meta event seems like it was intended to be a map-wide three-lane event that was heavily cut down due to time constraints. Collecting spare parts is not exciting, re-calibrating the cannons is just waiting around for waves of fodder enemies, the assault on the fortress is basically just a single 'boss' fight that doesn't seem to have any interesting mechanics and is over in the blink of an eye, and the rewards aren't exciting.
There's no real reason to go into the northern part of the map, there's nothing to do in the swamp, the entire section in the west with the lake can only be accessed through two points and doesn't really have any relevant content, there's no real reason to visit the part of the map with the corsairs after you finish their heart task, and all of the water in the east part of the map is essentially dead space as there are no events there and you don't even have to navigate it to get to the meta.
The beetle mount is cute and can be fun, but its use is extremely limited as the boost ability taking so long to charge on initial mount essentially restricts its use to when you happen to be at the top of a slope. The new map does not seem to be designed to make the most of the beetle, and I end up finding it much more convenient to just use my griffin or another mount. The ability to break through walls will likely never be utilized again due to access to the mount being limited to this episode. Even within this new map, when you have unlocked the points of interest locked behind them, there is no reason to ever break these walls ever again.
There's a general lack of rewards and as far as I can see there are no real long-term goals or interesting achievements to work towards. The one 'long-term' achievement has to do with Inquest turrets, which is barely a relevant mechanic and is completely uninteresting, with the first tier boiling down to killing several hundreds of Awakened Inquest for random blueprint drops. There's the banner, but the achievement for it doesn't require me to do anything that I haven't already done before.
I'm frustrated with the lack of rewards, the lack of progression after level 80 and attaining Ascended gear, and the refusal to utilize existing content in general.
It just seems all the interesting stuff (mount skins, armor and weapon skins) gets put in the Gem Store or locked behind Black Lion Chests, with occasional updates adding ridiculous time / gold sinks that are unattainable for regular players.
I'd love to collect more glyphs for my gathering tools, but you can only get them from gambling on Black Lion Chests or through purchasing new sets of unbreakable gathering tools through the Gem Store, they are basically useless if you don't have permanent gathering tools, and the one I would really like to have on all my tools currently goes for some 5000G on the trading post. I could get breakable variants from merchants, but that adds a lot of busywork, eats up resources over time, and devalues the unbreakable tools I currently have.
That Sunken Treasure Hunter thing they added is cool, but very heavily time-gated, with the higher infusions and the unique breather skin essentially locked behind a combination of a very high paywall and an insane time-sink, rendering them completely unattainable to anybody but whales and the wealthiest trading post barons - not to mention that this addition is very puzzling in the first place considering ArenaNet completely abandoned underwater content a long time ago and has not voiced any interest in returning to it anytime soon.
I'd love to collect that new Desert King weapon skin set, but they're locked behind Black Lion Tickets, which are in turn locked behind Black Lion Chests, which are locked behind Black Lion Chest Keys, which are essentially only available through the Gem Store.
I'd love to be able to work towards obtaining new mount skins ... but again, those are all Gem Store exclusive.
I'm currently working on getting Incinerator, but it doesn't really feel like I'm actively working towards anything - I'm just passively grinding the same content over and over again for generic rewards that incrementally build up to me eventually being to craft it.
I'd love to get some high-tier WvW armor skins, or that Legendary Backpack - but they are locked behind incredibly high WvW rank requirements that I will probably never reach even if I switch to full-time WvW for a year, and would generally eat into the resources I am currently building to be able to craft Incinerator.
The one other reward I really want is the Radiant Hauberk armor skin - but that is locked behind 30K achievement points, which I will never be able to reach unless ArenaNet significantly ups both the amount of achievements available and the points you get from them.
Yet somehow I still come back every time.
I don't know what it is.
Perhaps it is the community - though I am souring on that now too.
Yet somehow I still keep playing.
So I suppose they're doing something right ~
