OK, I don't believe I will be doing this again (Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood, etc.)

I tried monking the Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood missions, and now understand why there was rarely any joining party when the timer ticked down.

It's a big map of wherethef-ami in which your 7 teammates run off in 7 different directions while I (as luck would have it, being the sole monk randomly added to a party of almost exclusively warriors and assassins) have to figure out what the priority is for healing, while only having a brief 2-second objectives list flashed before me, which tells me nothing.

Followed by, of course, by an inevitable death, a "where's the heals," one person dropping and then five more dropping.

On the plus side, the opposing side is in the same state, so I (being the sole monk) only get mobbed by one or two people at a time, instead of all 8.

Yeah, I don't think I'll be doing these missions. I hope that's not the majority of the expansion.

hehe its true - though we can do guild parties for it in the real thing and hopefully be organised.

My major complaint is that the objectives and "Whatever is X% Complete" box do not need to be just above the center of the screen, blocking my view.

Other than that, this is Random Arenas with double the people, in effect squaring the insanity. What did you expect?

That window can be moved using the customize interface button in the options.

I've found the new competitive PvE maps to be rather easy. Monking, I bring All Group heal/prots to supplement for splitting and when I'm offensive I tend to find myself comfrtably squeezed into a 4 man group with its own objectives.

thats the key: your groups need to know their objectives. So many people were confused about the win requirments, mostly because they never watched the cinimatic (a movie that they can play over and over again just by speaking with the NPC, so thats just plain lazy). While I don't endorse text spamming in most cases, I did begin listing the mission objectives for my side in the chat text after several members of my team returned to base and shouted "Whoo hoo! ANOTHER LUXON WIN!"

Once I started doing that, with a firiendly 1 time reminder in game Group Chat, my teams became more focused and wins more frequent.

1 thing I really loved was that PvE is really the focus in these Random Arenas. PvP is possible, and there are certain groups that can wreak havoc as a PvP force, but most CPvE missions i did so far hinge on Players fighting AI. Players fighting Players find themselves swamped by enemy NPCs quickly or splattered by my turtle!

In all: be patient. This is a new spin on an old idea, and one that I think Anet has done a decent job with...now if we can just get rid of the AFKers and Map Quiters it would Rock!

EDIT: yeah; the screen does tend to get a little cramped with the radar, level icon, mission icon, text box, player box and everything else open. maybe make it more clear, less opaque so we can see through it if not around? Or make it removable, like the group health box (press "P" to open group health press "P" to close)?

"J" for Job as in "this is your JOB!" or "O" for Objective

Speak with the guy you got the quest reward from and click Replay mission intro, it'll tell you everything you need to know. Ought to show that the moment you get the reward...

Agreed. I think its a bug.

i wud probably just use smiting its more fun and the main objective is to get kills, u can always bring sup healings incase u see some1 diieing or use heal pty if ur not quite sure where they are maybe, this is wat i wud do anyways

Did you try the L-button? I believe they gave us the Quest Log so we could keep track of quests/missions/objectives.

Other than that, it wasn't too bad. I had way more fun 12vs12 though.

It looks fun if you could do an organized 8 man party.

Its great...if you yell out orders and people follow them. Took me nearly 20 tries (with about 15-20 count downs for each) to get a good team on the fort and finally beat it. I do like how it gives more faction for losing than the other does for winning though.

I found the Jade Quarries mission actually enjoyable, mabee its just cause we swept them 10 to zip; I too was the only monk.

It will take some getting use too. Point I tried to do was I formed up my party of 4 first. those were the people I was concerned with. I gave full healing efforts towards them first, and party 2nd. if the party as a whole was in trouble we headed for their ping and I was able to heal more people...

Some rules of engagement will need to be worked out for 12v12 matches as it evolves... I came up with a few that worked for me. but I'll remark on those later once I recover from the event itself. lol 50 out of 72 hours is killer... its going to be a few days before I'm back in game just to let the mind rest a bit...

I dont remember even seeing a cine for the fort? Every time I just went right in to it not knowing what to do. Where was this NPC person at that shows it to you?