This is somewhat becoming a running theme with me where I
plan to write on the Monday and don’t get to it until Friday, but having IRL
commitments does put a spanner in the works unfortunately. I had planned to write something a couple
days ago on my next topic, but I didn’t want to jus rush it out and not give it
a proper post. Because of this, I want
to take a little bit of time talking about an early morning playing Guild Wars
2 last Tuesday.
As I have mentioned in the past, one of the biggest draws
for me in MMO games (as well as single player games) is the feeling of
exploration when going into new games or pieces of content. It’s a factor that can potentially save a
game with mechanics that I’m not fond of or that I have great difficulty with. Finding out “What’s around the next corner?” or “What’s over the next hill?” ties into that natural curiosity which
can come from both physical actions and in-game. As it may come across, I’m quite the curious
person and as such would like to travel the world, experience other cultures
and learn new languages; so on a similar level when I find myself finding a
large cavernous area I never knew existed in GW2 I want to just forget my
previous intentions and explore.
This area in question features in the Silverwastes (one of
the new maps brought out during living story season 2) where after clearing a skritt
camp taken over by bandits, I find myself under the map with a large ship precariously
positioned over a dark void of nothingness.
This area signalled the start of the “Drydock
Scratch” jumping puzzle.
For those who aren’t aware of, a jumping puzzle is a
platforming mystery that tasks the player with reaching an end chest through a
series jumps, leaps and logic solving through item collection. These puzzles can vary in size, from single
structures like “Under New Management”
to multi-staged monoliths like “Hidden
Garden” and can sometimes have a polarising view from players due to the
potential pitfalls and lengthy retries. I
for one love these puzzles, so being met with this challenge even in the early
hours of Tuesday evening / Wednesday morning pushed sleep to one side as I took
in my surroundings.
Progress for this puzzle started off slow, seeing a number
of potential places to go and a cavalcade of golden badges littering the
surrounding area giving me a mixture of confusion and intrigue. This mixture of feelings kept with me as a
chose a path and started to encounter large rock formations, more badges and
milestones which somewhat informed me that I was going in the right direction;
even thou I could see a number of other opportunities to take whether they be
intentional or not. Being an engineer
and having access to a rifle, the combination allows the player to use a ‘leap
shot’ ability which has allowed me to skip parts of puzzles in the past.
I continued on, finding more milestones and gaining a bit of
verticality when suddenly I was met on the top of a mesa-like formation
overlooking the map of the Silverwastes.
At first my thoughts were that of relief as it seemed I was making clear
progress to a goal, but on the other hand a sense of still being overwhelmed by
the land mass. I continued into my
~20-30 minute journey when I started to see other players below me going about
their events defending one of the forts for the meta, only for it to hit me
what this meant. Pressing M to see the
map I noticed that I was half way across the map, a sizeable distance from
where I started covering a lot more land than what a normal puzzle would
present itself with. This made me think “how far does this thing really go?” as I
spend the next 30 minutes continue to explore this ‘map within a map’ collection
the golden badges and trying to figure out how to get around, before realising
that it was rather late and I was needing to get up in just a few hours. Although I didn’t find the finishing point on
this occasion, it entertained me for this hour period and that is one of the
many ways in interact with this medium of games.
This feeling has similar reactions when it comes to other
game genres. RPGs have that ‘one More quest’ 4x’s have ‘just one more turn’ and multiplayer
shooters just one more round’. In this jumping puzzle, it was ‘just one more badge’ or ‘just one more milestone’ and I’m happy
that I was able to experience this piece of content very naturally beyond the
thrall of day one explorers or through the use of companion guides detailing
every turn. I’ll probably look to have
another stab at it tomorrow but for now, that was a pretty cool thing you did
there.
Next time, “running up that hill” physical and mental hills
and viewpoints from architecture.
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