Well, thankfully, the raid reward is noticeably better than that (though on a weekly timer). But the fact that the boss is in the gem store of all places is fucking stupid.
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Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns |OT| Welcome to the Jungle...
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Well, thankfully, the raid reward is noticeably better than that (though on a weekly timer). But the fact that the boss is in the gem store of all places is fucking stupid.
appletoasty
Member
If there's someone in your party with a higher personal level than you, you can join into any of the levels they can open.
Yes, the good minis still come from the raid.
I kinda want to do this, but also I might hate this game now and never play it again. So it's a tough call. Yesterday was Zyra's birthday.
appletoasty
Member
I feel you. Happy birthday Zyra
Happy birthday. Did you get Zyra some shiny chaos armor? :V
Kos Luftar
Member
No one can get it until all 3 wings of raid are released, I think.
Forerunner
Member
I'm fairly certain it's not even in the game yet, since it's still unobtainable.
Keeping it hidden from data mining.
God the XP requirements are insane for masteries. I need one POI in Dragons Stand and I need Ley-line gliding for it, I guess.
Is the XP requirement the same as it was from 2 to 3, or higher? Because the 4 million for gliding 3 took forever.
Besides running the same meta-events over and over and over and over, are there any tricks for grinding out the XP?
Is the XP requirement the same as it was from 2 to 3, or higher? Because the 4 million for gliding 3 took forever.
Besides running the same meta-events over and over and over and over, are there any tricks for grinding out the XP?
Nemesis121
Member
LumpOfCole
Member
Server downtime rage!
Nemesis121
Member
Playing backlog RE4 HD, i have it for GC, bought day one on GC but never beat it, this time around i plan to finish it..
I want to watch it but Crunchyroll has region restrictions for it. Fuck region restrictions.
I know there are ways, I just want to vent.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Eh, you'd only see QUALITY. It's... meh.
Also it's still down for me, GW2 I mean :/
Also it's still down for me, GW2 I mean :/
Noisy Ninj4
Member
99.99% uptime is unacceptable! I for one am unsubbing.
Looks like Festivus came early this year and the Airing of Grievances has already commenced. I guess I'll hop on board, but first...
Thanks for stepping up and taking care of these, it's much appreciated. The Secret Santa was really cool last year, I'm looking forward to it.
Alright, on with the bitch-fest;
Retro's Airing of HoT-related Grievances
(Not exhaustive by any means, I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff).
My main gripe is that HoT was ArenaNet's first (and possibly, last) chance to really define what Guild Wars 2 is. You can attribute all the little stumbles over the last three years to them learning what works and what doesn't, but the first expansion is their chance to double down on the good and pull back from the bad. Instead, it seems like they did the opposite;
The bright spot is, the game is still a lot of fun to play, it's just that with the emphasis on repeating metas and raids, despite there being four new maps there's less room to play in. I'm not as doom-and-gloom as I sound given the length of the list, and I'm holding out hope that the Living Story will get things back to normal (and that the HoT content was meant to satisfy people who want that sort of thing)... but I didn't expect to be looking for something else to play a month after an expansion launched.
There's still enough good that I can't call it a complete mistake, but looking at it as an indicator of where the game is going... it's not good. It's moving away from what made GW2 unique and regressing towards all the shit that WoW and it's countless clones did.
Thanks for stepping up and taking care of these, it's much appreciated. The Secret Santa was really cool last year, I'm looking forward to it.
Alright, on with the bitch-fest;
Retro's Airing of HoT-related Grievances
(Not exhaustive by any means, I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff).
My main gripe is that HoT was ArenaNet's first (and possibly, last) chance to really define what Guild Wars 2 is. You can attribute all the little stumbles over the last three years to them learning what works and what doesn't, but the first expansion is their chance to double down on the good and pull back from the bad. Instead, it seems like they did the opposite;
- The story is much shorter and resolves much quicker. The Living Story will likely resolve this, but it still feels odd to have the expansion's story take a back seat after the Living Story set the bar higher. Not a fan of how little your established companions show up too (Rox has maybe a couple lines, Kasmeer makes some portals at the end, Marjory and Canach feel like bit parts, almost).
- Story Progression totally did not need to be tied to Masteries. I personally didn't encounter it or mind too much, but it's a sticking point that people are experience that they totally didn't need to, and it's just one more needless frustration.
- Masteries are okay; when they're very good (gliding) they feel satisfying to unlock. When they're not (unlocking vendors, champion fights), it feels like you spent a lot of time for nothing. Masteries should be entirely mechanic-based, and the unsatisfying stuff should just be gated behind them (i.e. instead of "Learn Nuhoch to trade with them!", just put all the special Nuhoch merchants behind wallows). Gliding is the only one that I'd say is where all of them need to be, and a large part of that is because the maps are designed to make you want to unlock it, whereas everything else felt like stuff was locked in a noticeably artificial way.
- The maps are all of the Silverwastes / Drytop variety, meant to be replayed repeatedly along very specific paths. Even in Tangled Depths (my favorite of the four) they don't even try to hide it; they straight up call the tunnels "lanes" like this is some kind of fucking MOBA. While SW and Drytop both had the repeating meta event, those maps both slowly expanded to include new events (the Labyrinth and Vinewraith were later additions, remember) or areas (the SW JP, huge swaths of Drytop) and perhaps the same will happen when the Living Story starts up, but by and large once you hit all the map pips and do each of the camps, you're done exploring. I don't feel like I see anything new a month after setting foot in VB, while I was seeing new shit on a weekly basis in the old maps. The reason seems to be that they want to funnel everyone into the meta and exploration / hidden stuff / etc. are all distractions. I seriously hope the Living Story introduces new maps that are more along the lines of the old world; not only will that give players like me what they want, but it will also give people a break from the current maps so that when they do eventually go back to them they feel a little fresher (Silverwastes is fun as hell if you take a month or two off from it).
- Dynamic Events have been replaced with just regular old Events. There's no dynamic element to them, they're not spontaneous and they don't go anywhere they aren't supposed to. At least in the core game there were so many of them that you rarely encountered them over and over again in rapid succession, and they weren't unrelentingly tied to a singular narrative push (even in Orr where there's literally a single narrative push!). As others have said, everything is on the clock and feels like a chore.
- Raiding was tested and tuned by old-school raiding guilds like Death and Taxes, the same folks largely responsible for most of the min/max'ing and theorycraft that goes on, so it's no surprise that when regular players get their hands on it the only thing they can do is ditch everything they've learned over the last 3 years and take a regressive approach; class elitism, optimal builds and better stats. Unless you adopt the same tactics that have dominated the genre for the last decade, you hit a wall that skill alone cannot overcome, in stark contrast to everything that's come before. In short, it was tuned by WoW-era poopsockers, for WoW-era poopsockers, a group that rarely composes more than 5% of any given game's population. The framework for raiding to be done right was already established with guild missions, which are much more inclusive than raids.
- On that note, guild missions got completely fucked up, and still aren't fixed, but we didn't even get any new ones to justify it. We haven't had a new guild mission in over two years (Angvar's Trove was May 2013).
- All of the challenges people are having with raids are bullshit challenges. The logistical challenge of getting 10 people together, geared, spec'd and communicating? Bullshit challenge. Getting your gear and build set up for optimal DPS to beat an arbitrary time limit? Bullshit challenge. The actual mechanics of the boss aren't that difficult; we had basically figured them out in the one chance we had at trying it in beta, and it was all about executing them, which is where the challenge should be. Instead, it's a race against a clock for reasons (spoiler alert; it's because the first page in the Generic MMO Handbook's chapter on raiding is about enrage timers).
- Did we really need more stats? One of the things that drew me to GW2 initially is that it only had four stats; Power, Precision, Vitality and Toughness. Most MMOs just dump a shitload of stats on you, so it was nice to see one come out that condensed most of that shit to a bare minimum (the same with buffs and debuffs getting streamlined, most MMOs are a g'damn mess in that regard). But they've slowly added in more and more, and now we have Expertise and Concentration for whatever reason.
- Runes and Sigils should be account-wide unlocks and function exactly like PvP. If you're expected to change your gear or re-forge your Ascended stats for raiding, you could be looking at 70g+ in runes alone. Fuck that noise.
- Guild Hall Decorations are stupidly expensive, and it looks like the new Guild Armor and Minis will be much the same. As someone who participated in the Guild Hall CDI, the big takeaway for me was "don't forget smaller guilds". Three guesses who can't possibly afford to buy that shit, and the first two don't count. Don't get me wrong, I love that the guild hall takes a lot of time to expand and a little help from everyone to unlock, but once you've unlocked something it's then also gated behind Crystalline Ore and Resonating shards for what essentially amounts to a crappy chair.
- Scribing should not be a character-based profession when damn near everything it produces is for the guild. It should have simply been another upgrade path that guilds unlock. The expense (I keep seeing 2-4000g mentioned) alone means one or two people max will have it unlocked in any given guild, and if those people don't play for a while or leave?
- Elite Specs should be account-wide unlocks, so once you've done the leg work of unlocking them once, you only have to put points into the spec like any other trait line. I would love to level my second Engineer as a scrapper, as that's what she's going to be at max level, but I have to be 80 first. We were told Elite specs weren't intended to be any more powerful than the existing specs, so what reason is there to gate it to level 80? It's just one more obnoxious thing to race to the "end game" for that isn't at all with the spirit of the core game.
- Additionally, all of my existing level 80 characters have their gear / traits / runes / sigils / skills set up exactly how I like them, meaning integrating the new Elite Specs into them is difficult without giving something up. Being able to use an elite spec on an up-and-coming character would solve that.
- Everything to do with dungeons. I like dungeons as a general rule and seeing them kind of brushed aside is disheartening. All the effort that went into raids should have gone into dungeons (where the 5-player cap is ideal for logistical reasons) or guild missions (where there is no cap). Hell, they could have diverted some of it to fixing the broken ass World Bosses that nobody likes (fixing them would have provided a great draw for Central Tyrian masteries and shown free players they're not getting ignored).
- Less emphasis on story (should be more).
- More emphasis on currency / mastery / HP grinds (should be less), which in turn negatively affects their map design.
- Less emphasis on exploration (should be more, this was always one of their strengths)
- More emphasis on the destination, less on the journey (the game should have been level-free honestly, but that bridge has been crossed... but they don't need to double down on it by pushing everything to max level)
- More emphasis on stats (should be less, I'm one of those crazy people who thinks it should be completely stat-free, but whatever.)
- Emphasis on instanced group content (which flies in the face of their far superior non-instanced world encounters like Marionette, Battle for LA, etc.)
- Less emphasis on guilds (should have been more).
The bright spot is, the game is still a lot of fun to play, it's just that with the emphasis on repeating metas and raids, despite there being four new maps there's less room to play in. I'm not as doom-and-gloom as I sound given the length of the list, and I'm holding out hope that the Living Story will get things back to normal (and that the HoT content was meant to satisfy people who want that sort of thing)... but I didn't expect to be looking for something else to play a month after an expansion launched.
There's still enough good that I can't call it a complete mistake, but looking at it as an indicator of where the game is going... it's not good. It's moving away from what made GW2 unique and regressing towards all the shit that WoW and it's countless clones did.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
gonna miss taco and queenie :/
Heh, if I had any kind of influence over the game, taking down the servers would be the last thing on the list.
Man if Retro isn't happy with the game, you know you've fucked up.
Anyway, I don't get your point of the emphasis of instanced content. Other than the raid, all other new group content is open world (and pretty well done Chak Gerent aside). The raid is mainly there to appease the "challenging end game" player base anyway.
Anyway, I don't get your point of the emphasis of instanced content. Other than the raid, all other new group content is open world (and pretty well done Chak Gerent aside). The raid is mainly there to appease the "challenging end game" player base anyway.
I think it's important to note raids are very different from dungeons and etc all. The only similarity is that they are instanced. The logistics behind making a 10 man party/squad is infinitely more complicate than a 5 man party.
That's a lot of stuff I agree with and I'm not gonna quote it all, but I just wanted to bring a perspective on the enrage timer: I actually don't mind it because it incentives people to not play passively and safe. To elaborate on that, when you remove the timer you create an issue where it's possible for players to play absolutely safe and slowly chip away the boss. Naturally, there ARE gameplay mechanics around that, but then you need to incorporate said mechanics to each encounter in a way that makes sense, and that is harder to do than an enrage timer.
Deep down I think the issues with HoT are: We all know Arenanet and we know that if something is really bad they will fix it. The issue comes from the fact that these problems happen in the first place. I can't help but feel a disconnect between what arenanet wants and what they do. I can't tell if it's a management problem or what, but the gap between what players want/think and what arenanet does is worrying me.
Like I said, it wasn't all bad, but I'm not seeing any reason to log in even for the dailies any more.
The last time I was on was for Makeup Missions on Sunday when only 4 people showed up (note: Wahanly and Apple did volunteer to help, I don't want to discount that). Lots of people were on, but they were all tied up in the raid. Now, it's nothing against them, but the way that content was designed (the logistics of getting 10 people geared / built / ready / able takes so long that when you have them all online at the same time you feel like you have to try) is vastly more exclusionary than I like my MMOs to be. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I went and played Starbound for a while and had fun.
You're right; all four maps are big open-world content and takes up a lot more real estate than the raid and guild challenge / puzzle do.
My point is that there was a time when they said the only instanced content would be dungeons and personal story missions, because they wanted to emphasize playing together in the open world. This was their response to a constant demand for instanced world bosses, and it seemed with them adding events like Guild Missions, Marionette, Queen's Gauntlet, Battle for Lion's Arch, Tequatl 2.0, Dry Top and Silverwastes that's the direction they were heading in.
I think the fact that the new maps are all driven by a single meta that all events feed into makes them feel... artificial? I mean, something like Verdant Brink is sort of the Battle of Lion's Arch taken to the next level; a bigger map, more objectives, etc... I guess I just want those events to be... well... events. That aren't running all the time, in a really obvious, artificial way. All that stuff in the paragraph above (DT and SW aside) worked because it wasn't around long enough to feel like a tedious grind, whereas with the new stuff it's obviously going to be around for a while and you need so damn much of the currency they drop... I dunno. I just know I don't like it.
So yeah, point taken; they're not emphasizing instanced content over anything else, but the fact that there's even a little more of it in the form of raids, and that they're getting so much emphasis in general, bugs me.
It's not even about immersion for me, it's a concession towards "We know you're going to run it over and over and over again so we're just going to use the nomenclature you'd come up with anyway." It's not that it reminds me I'm playing a game or that it feels artificial, it's like somebody forgot to change the internal name for the things.
One other thing that really bugs me is the placement of the new zones in the world. Why on earth is Mordremoth right next to an important racial city? Why are all these important locations just squeezed into Magus Falls? Given how they didn't notice a hugeass tower, a golden city, and a half buried cube, I'll say Asurans are all half blind.
Don't forget to add an optional superboss that drops buffs for the team when killed.
Actually that'll be kinda cool.
I pretty much agree with everything you said Retro.
I do enjoy the new maps, and I also like Tangled Depths the best. But like you said, all the new zones have a meta to them and I wish there were some zones that were more old world style as well.
Seems like everything they add lately is on some sort of timer. It's so annoying.
I do enjoy the new maps, and I also like Tangled Depths the best. But like you said, all the new zones have a meta to them and I wish there were some zones that were more old world style as well.
Seems like everything they add lately is on some sort of timer. It's so annoying.
Based on what I've seen of the raid, there's nothing going on that couldn't have been done in a dungeon, with it's more manageable group composition. I've never understood the appeal of raids, because the challenge is rarely in the actual fight itself but in getting large crowds of people to all work together (i.e. herding nerds). GW2, sadly, continues that trend.
Everything about raids should have been done with dungeons. Instead of kicking them to the curb, they should have doubled down on making them bigger, harder and more dynamic.
Enrage timers are just a mandatory speed clears. It creates an artificial barrier that skill cannot overcome, forcing players into roles they aren't familiar with or don't enjoy and reducing build / gear variety.
If the goal of a raid is to have fun, enrage timers ensure some people (anyone not running the established meta) will not.
If the goal of a raid is to be challenged, enrage timers are the lowest form it can take; the arbitrary DPS check.
If the goal of a raid is to get rewards, the group that plays "passively and safe" earns them at a much lower rate.
I have so much fun just getting lost in Tangled Depths, it would be amazing if it didn't have that giant obnoxious meta with its artificially straight and perfectly arrayed lanes squatting right on top of it, emptying out the rest of the map and drawing all of the interesting rewards away from everything else. A zone like Tangled Depths without the meta and all sorts of crazy DEs running wild in its place? Ah, what could have been.
I... can't really complain about the expansion. It gives a casual player like me a lot of long term goals, and while I do face gates for certain things, nothing seems like an insurmountable grind but instead involve a fun journey that I can work on over a month or two each. I just feel so... disconnected from the rest of the guild. The stuff that does bother me is largely stuff that needs to be fixed or implemented later anyway. Maybe I can complain about the fact that most of the PvE additions will take me so long to do that I'll never complete them before the next expansion. I just currently like having so many options as to what to do, and even just how to make money. I guess that's what happens when your favorite mode of the game is PvP, and you've already made your peace on a number of things in that dimension.
Even with raids, the first boss feels so easy mechanically that it's primarily an issue of coordination and gear, so that's something I'll get around to when I get an ascended weapon, and just do that over a few weeks to help me get ascended gear. Because I haven't played other MMOs, I can't predict how the community will shake out, but GW1 had some pretty hard endgame content and in the end a variety of builds came out for every class that could perform.
If I had to complain, it's that they're too perfectionist with PvP and WvW, and that slows them down for when they do want to do something. It may be because of whatever reason that causes most bugs in those modes to take forever to get fixed, but currently it stops them from pumping out content to those modes. Or maybe they're just afraid of going in the wrong direction. They also have a lot of ideals, like WvW is still somewhere internally a mode that's the culmination of PvP and PvE, which is often why it's a gold sink and not very populated, and the only thing they could do to improve that for the time being is more tournaments. If they don't announce a tournament for winter 2016 by the end of Wintersday I'm going to be scratching my head. Stronghold needs a little more iteration, and they need to embrace it as the longer mode game type it is while adding a shorter average time game mode.
As I said before, content variety and rewards. That's what causes issues in all three modes. PvP doesn't have enough variety but I think they finally got the rewards. WvW needs more of both. If you enjoy the gamut of PvE then you have a lot of both but if you enjoy specific parts then I can't help you.
And when will they make festival events like Snowball Fight actual modes you can queue for in the Heart of the Mists?
Even with raids, the first boss feels so easy mechanically that it's primarily an issue of coordination and gear, so that's something I'll get around to when I get an ascended weapon, and just do that over a few weeks to help me get ascended gear. Because I haven't played other MMOs, I can't predict how the community will shake out, but GW1 had some pretty hard endgame content and in the end a variety of builds came out for every class that could perform.
If I had to complain, it's that they're too perfectionist with PvP and WvW, and that slows them down for when they do want to do something. It may be because of whatever reason that causes most bugs in those modes to take forever to get fixed, but currently it stops them from pumping out content to those modes. Or maybe they're just afraid of going in the wrong direction. They also have a lot of ideals, like WvW is still somewhere internally a mode that's the culmination of PvP and PvE, which is often why it's a gold sink and not very populated, and the only thing they could do to improve that for the time being is more tournaments. If they don't announce a tournament for winter 2016 by the end of Wintersday I'm going to be scratching my head. Stronghold needs a little more iteration, and they need to embrace it as the longer mode game type it is while adding a shorter average time game mode.
As I said before, content variety and rewards. That's what causes issues in all three modes. PvP doesn't have enough variety but I think they finally got the rewards. WvW needs more of both. If you enjoy the gamut of PvE then you have a lot of both but if you enjoy specific parts then I can't help you.
And when will they make festival events like Snowball Fight actual modes you can queue for in the Heart of the Mists?
I want to get back in, but this expansion basically doubled down on everything I hated:
- Runes and stats are still complete bullshit that punish any kind of experimentation
- Getting exotics and ascended is still a joke that takes way too much stuff that's hard to get (and then they went and made it even harder!)
- What exotics we all had *cough Berserker meta cough* are useless for the thing that may finally break part of the treadmill (road to Legendary armor)
- The game can only be played in 2+ hour bursts thanks to strict timers and "participation"
Why does that bug you? Zhaitan was a stone's throw from the Grove based on the map layout.
The tower only recently formed when Mordremoth awoke (as in within months/year of Scarlet, remember that he wasn't active until only recently). Zhaitan's awakening ushered up an entire continent, Mordremoth erected a tree (Scarlet grew a corrupted Pale Tree in a few months, remember, so his offshoots grow fast and reached all the way to the Shiverpeaks during Season 2). Tarir was dormant, and just a relic covered in foliage and is actually below the canopy of the jungle, and Novus is completely buried, isn't it? We're seeing the bottom half of it in TD, the rest is under the jungle and the top half is lost
and in Fractals
None of this is all that farfetched. Their only big "flubb" for story/layout was Novus in general just being introduced out of nowhere. Even the "dragon weakness" malarky was more or less built up with Zhaitan, who's weakness was exploited (rob him of his minions, eyes, and mouth. He was overly dependent on his plague-like minions.).
Also "lanes" is perfectly standard for army movement in large columns, which is what's happening on DS. Mordremoth has little choice but to muster his forces in a similar defense, and the back-end of the Pact base is guarded by the Krait Orb preventing his minion's passage and a pincer. Its actually pretty well planned out for what it is.
I have my qualms with the expansion and ANets focus on bleeding money from its consumers with gemstore bullshit, but I am a big fan of their updated story telling, map design, and map event chaining. Its much more interesting to go to those maps (also the gliding stuff is spot-on) and partake in map wide efforts with a common end goal. The old maps were, sadly, basically barren to anything but map completion, leveling up, and farming trees/ore or bosses. Empty, dead maps for the most part. No matter how that is handled, it would always result in taxi wars 2.
I like HoT.
To be fair, I am playing it as an extra side helping to a meal I already enjoy. Its been out a month and I'm only now venturing in to the second map. In that time I've mapped VB a few time on different characters. Unlocked most elite specs save for Temptest & Chrono. Remade a few characters to condition setups (this was a bit of a chore.) And done my usual pvp, gathering (flax!), guild stuff.
I have guildmates that are more frustrated with it. But every time i see them they're in DS or TD grinding the meta events. I believe that's the major difference. I'm mostly clueless about these events by choice. I don't feel some pressing urge to get these things done, or obtain the rewards asap. Mostly, I like the idea of having fresh content to do in March. Savoring might be a better word.
Mastery Xp is surprising. I'm only 63 or so, but I feel like the core ones have gone too fast. I'm on the last tier of precursor crafting already. I dislike the notion of xp going to waste after its done. HoT ones still have a ways to go, but I still haven't felt any pressing need to get anything beyond the basics. I figure they'll be finished a good while before I'm bored with the content.
I'm not on board with the Raid hype. Never have been. Lot of bitter memories from raiding 7 days a week long ago. I was drawn to the original GW to get away from that junk. I'm glad they seem to be well received, but still think a lot of the toxic elements could've been avoided by calling them Elite Missions or something instead. Our guild has struggled to find a night that works for our active people. That's a bit of an issue. Glad to see people are pugging the bosses. If legendary armor is limited to raids rewards, that'll be bitchworthy. But otherwise I could take them or leave them.
I can say I'm annoyed some things are locked behind the clock (Nighttime VB HP/PoIs) and scale down roughly (champion HPs). I usually do HoT stuff when I'm playing alone in the off hours and I'm not good enough with every class solo champions. The reliance on using lfg/taxi so much, especially for meta events seems like it could become a bigger issue too.
Precursor collections or more or less what I wanted. Costs are about on par with buying one, but instead of giving all my gold to some lucky player, I'm buying mats. Or rather not selling mats, and making junk myself. I did Bolt off a lucky zap drop a few weeks ago, but now i'm collecting tentacles for Kraitkin. Way more fun than buying one off the TP.
Fractals are a mixed bag. I like how fast they are now. But finding pugs for some of the odd levels is rough. Luckily our guild has stepped up with weekly runs. I did manage to pug 50 today. I tried the morning of HoT and it was bad enough to scare me off, but today it felt like this pug would've struggled with a(n old) fractal 29, let alone a 50. Yet we finished it, didn't even go non-crit or use boonstrip. Maybe it was stealth nerfed? The agony jumps are also huge. I thought I was doing something special crafting three slot rings and +9 infusions, but this is only gave me enough for level 56. Bleh. Its something they're working on atleast.
PvP is starting to feel like its settling down again too, or i'm getting more accustomed to the new builds. Either way, probably time for a balance patch. Does feel like everything is super high damage. I've started winning more games by switching characters to soldier amulets to survive bursts, and whittle people down.
To be fair, I am playing it as an extra side helping to a meal I already enjoy. Its been out a month and I'm only now venturing in to the second map. In that time I've mapped VB a few time on different characters. Unlocked most elite specs save for Temptest & Chrono. Remade a few characters to condition setups (this was a bit of a chore.) And done my usual pvp, gathering (flax!), guild stuff.
I have guildmates that are more frustrated with it. But every time i see them they're in DS or TD grinding the meta events. I believe that's the major difference. I'm mostly clueless about these events by choice. I don't feel some pressing urge to get these things done, or obtain the rewards asap. Mostly, I like the idea of having fresh content to do in March. Savoring might be a better word.
Mastery Xp is surprising. I'm only 63 or so, but I feel like the core ones have gone too fast. I'm on the last tier of precursor crafting already. I dislike the notion of xp going to waste after its done. HoT ones still have a ways to go, but I still haven't felt any pressing need to get anything beyond the basics. I figure they'll be finished a good while before I'm bored with the content.
I'm not on board with the Raid hype. Never have been. Lot of bitter memories from raiding 7 days a week long ago. I was drawn to the original GW to get away from that junk. I'm glad they seem to be well received, but still think a lot of the toxic elements could've been avoided by calling them Elite Missions or something instead. Our guild has struggled to find a night that works for our active people. That's a bit of an issue. Glad to see people are pugging the bosses. If legendary armor is limited to raids rewards, that'll be bitchworthy. But otherwise I could take them or leave them.
I can say I'm annoyed some things are locked behind the clock (Nighttime VB HP/PoIs) and scale down roughly (champion HPs). I usually do HoT stuff when I'm playing alone in the off hours and I'm not good enough with every class solo champions. The reliance on using lfg/taxi so much, especially for meta events seems like it could become a bigger issue too.
Precursor collections or more or less what I wanted. Costs are about on par with buying one, but instead of giving all my gold to some lucky player, I'm buying mats. Or rather not selling mats, and making junk myself. I did Bolt off a lucky zap drop a few weeks ago, but now i'm collecting tentacles for Kraitkin. Way more fun than buying one off the TP.
Fractals are a mixed bag. I like how fast they are now. But finding pugs for some of the odd levels is rough. Luckily our guild has stepped up with weekly runs. I did manage to pug 50 today. I tried the morning of HoT and it was bad enough to scare me off, but today it felt like this pug would've struggled with a(n old) fractal 29, let alone a 50. Yet we finished it, didn't even go non-crit or use boonstrip. Maybe it was stealth nerfed? The agony jumps are also huge. I thought I was doing something special crafting three slot rings and +9 infusions, but this is only gave me enough for level 56. Bleh. Its something they're working on atleast.
PvP is starting to feel like its settling down again too, or i'm getting more accustomed to the new builds. Either way, probably time for a balance patch. Does feel like everything is super high damage. I've started winning more games by switching characters to soldier amulets to survive bursts, and whittle people down.
Kos Luftar
Member
Pro tip:
You all should just tape a sticky note over the "event log" and turn off map chat. Go into the new maps and explore, they are awesome. I'm sure you don't need an event every second just for you to explore.
To enjoy this you'll have to not care about rewards though.
ProPro Tip: You can just hide your UI and play but you'll have to memorize all the skills you have slowed and thier cool downs.
On another note, I know ANET is aware of things you guys are complaining because CJ told me the expansion's reception has been very divisive.
You all should just tape a sticky note over the "event log" and turn off map chat. Go into the new maps and explore, they are awesome. I'm sure you don't need an event every second just for you to explore.
To enjoy this you'll have to not care about rewards though.
ProPro Tip: You can just hide your UI and play but you'll have to memorize all the skills you have slowed and thier cool downs.
On another note, I know ANET is aware of things you guys are complaining because CJ told me the expansion's reception has been very divisive.
The main problem I have is that all these landmarks are just conveniently placed in this small section of the world, when they have the entire western Tyria to work with. The Grove is near Orr, and there are events with Risen in Caledon Forest to signify it. But there's nothing in Metrica to tell us that there is a massive Chak hive just over the border, right next to that legendary lost city not 100 miles away from Rata Sum. Rata Novus had almost nothing to do with the story, and adding it there just make the region too crowded.
I don't know, it just breaks my immersion in the world.
Also I think the lanes we're talking about are the ones in TD. TD in general has a lot of problems.
Yeah, I'm not denying that. I'm just saying that raids, as it is, are different from dungeons. I dont need to coordinate with 10 people with days in advance to run a dungeon.
How different is a enrage timer from, say, the liadri fight? I feel the pressure of the time is a way to add difficulty to an encounter. I do agree the DPS check can be a problematic mechanics in that it forces people to gear up for DPS, but I feel this would be less of an issue if gear was more easily accessible. Honestly, the big problem to me is how there is a big money cost associated with simple stat changes. If everything was fluid, skills and adaptability would be the main focus of a raid, and that is the ideal scenario to me.
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