It's weird to say they didn't do exactly that because of Raids, when they did ..... with Fractals !
Sure it's done in a shitty and unintersting way, and it's not really fun but they did it. ¯\_(ツ
_/¯
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Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns |OT| Welcome to the Jungle...
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It's weird to say they didn't do exactly that because of Raids, when they did ..... with Fractals !
Sure it's done in a shitty and unintersting way, and it's not really fun but they did it. ¯\_(ツ
_/¯
Freeman76
Member
The way Anet manage this game is poor really. Not just about dungeons, but in general terms. There have been worse managed MMO games for sure, but I havent played them.
They seem to be so out of touch with what people enjoy about their game. No wonder senior people are moving on so regularly at the moment.
Announcing HoT and leaving the game to die LS wise didnt help, and now HoT has been out a while it has grown tiresome very quickly as a lot of the systems for map wide events either dont work or became samey far too quickly.
I have 2k hours clocked so maybe thats an element of it too, and, this being my favourite MMo of all time, I hoped they could expand more on LS which was great while it lasted.
They made a base game that laughed in the face of usual MMO groans, made it easy to play, fun to group up, and respect the player and their time. Its now a different beast in my eyes.
Also fix the Howler already daammit.
Nemesis121
Member
A lot of the brains behind GW1/GW2 left Anet, the people here now don't know which way up or down, and Heart of Grind proves this, GW2 is a masterful experience, Heart of Grind is a nightmare i paid $50 for, I hope they can improve this pile of shit in the next 6-12 months, never paid to play MMO but i am getting ready to be a slave to some shitty developer and give them my loot, in 1 year if this game isn't improve, WoW will get a new sub..
The worst part is that, while HoT seemed to drastically reduce my enjoyment of GW2, I can't find any games to scratch the same itch.
WoW is as stale as when I left it, XIV combat is floaty and forces dungeons to progress making me wait for other people for hours and TSW has a great concept but feels clunky and buggy. There is no other MMO that does what GW2 tries to do, even with the recent great decline.
WoW is as stale as when I left it, XIV combat is floaty and forces dungeons to progress making me wait for other people for hours and TSW has a great concept but feels clunky and buggy. There is no other MMO that does what GW2 tries to do, even with the recent great decline.
Those senior people are likely leaving beause they've reached the top of their pay scale and there's nowhere at ANET for them to advance. Amazon has more money than god, of course they can make people very fetching offers to leave.
It's just business.
Basically what people were worried about, the all at once expansion content dump and then horrific drought, came true. Despite the complaints about living story season 1 content not sticking around, it was exciting and had varity, and felt far weightier than the rushed expansion. (Living story season 2 kinda bored me, except for the new zones.) I hope they can get back to that.
That's the worst part. When I got fed up with WoW back in the day, I could jump over to a bunch of other games that did some things better; LotRO, GW1, Vanguard, etc. GW2's first two years have basically made it impossible to find an MMO that's both fun to play and has the QoL upgrades needed.
That's why it's so frustrating; there's literally nothing else out there that isn't worse.
appletoasty
Member
Someone destroyed my tentacle throne
Freeman76
Member
More like they are leaving because they dont agree with the decisions being made anymore.
RIP Lump. All he wanted were more decoration space to upgrade his house statue's... pumpkin third arm.
I'm not a fan of the way the game has been going lately, but let's be realistic. Which is more likely; someone leaves a job because they have scruples with their product's design, or because another company is willing to pay them a lot more money?
I've heard this as well, but I'd never seen it confirmed or commented on so I didn't want to say it, but yeah... that's the rumor.
A lot of old timers are leaving, indeed. It is really sad, but I hope they find a more fulfilling job outside of Anet.
I've been wondering: Is Ree S. even with Anet any longer? She disappeared with the advent of the LS and the new terrible writing team. I love her writing and I was hoping she was busy with the expansion, but clearly she wasn't writing that dialogue. She used to give such amazing lore interviews pre-release.
I've been wondering: Is Ree S. even with Anet any longer? She disappeared with the advent of the LS and the new terrible writing team. I love her writing and I was hoping she was busy with the expansion, but clearly she wasn't writing that dialogue. She used to give such amazing lore interviews pre-release.
appletoasty
Member
None of you work for ArenaNet and none of you know why exactly any of them are moving on. Don't go spreading rumors. People leave jobs for plenty of reasons, and hateful speculation doesn't solve anyone's problems.
Nemesis121
Member
I don't give a damn, they made a bad game, HoT is trash, if i could get my money back after all this time i would take it and quit, Arenanet i know is fucking dead, RIP..
appletoasty
Member
Why are you still here? Go do something positive with your time instead of whining.
Nemesis121
Member
Damn Blind love anet lover, STFU
I think the line you probably shouldn't cross is right there at your feet. I'm unhappy with the direction the game has taken, but this is a different level and I think you should take Apple's advice; some distance would do you some good.
Nevermind, the aforementioned line is now well behind you.
Very much true. Our conversation up to that point was fine (none of our business, really, but still civil at least) and he sort of launched into Hulk Smash mode.
For what it's worth he also left the guild shortly after it happened.
Good, then.
The degree to which this happens on a daily basis, from corner to corner of the internet is a blight upon the simple hobby I have enjoyed my entire life. I don't exactly know how we got to this point, but the rampant speculation I see with regard to games' internal development histories or workforce changes just makes me sad. No one knows anything, but that's no cause to avoid spilling pages of digital ink talking about it. Not to get too personal here, but it's a constant reminder as to why I never "followed my dream" from childhood.
indeed, welcome to the Year of the Monkey everyone.
appletoasty
Member
ANYWAYS
Today I learned from a nice gentleman in map chat that teq doesn't do his whirlpool thing unless there's 10 mins or less left on the timer. I need to get sucked under to finish Dawn/Twilight/Eternity but both maps I tried today killed him too fast and he never did it. :< Pugs too good
Today I learned from a nice gentleman in map chat that teq doesn't do his whirlpool thing unless there's 10 mins or less left on the timer. I need to get sucked under to finish Dawn/Twilight/Eternity but both maps I tried today killed him too fast and he never did it. :< Pugs too good
Noisy Ninj4
Member
Friend of mine had this problem too. It's a shame there's a fine line between too good for whirlpool and too terribad to get there in the first place.
I've been pretty inactive on guild wars of late, other games have taken precedence. However, I'm actually not too down on how the content has gone. Perhaps it's because I have taken it in small doses, but I've been enjoying HOT by and large. I can definitely see the problems, though.
My biggest beef is probably Dragon stand. I'd like to at least have the chance to explore content without having to involve the entire map. Orr was a lot better in this case, since even if you had to slog through hordes of undead you weren't cockblocked by gates and such.
Oh, grats! It's the best looking staff in the game and I'm jelly. C:
appletoasty
Member
I am curious to hear what people were hoping for from an ideal first expansion. HoT completely missed the mark for basically everyone that was playing regularly for years before it came out. What does a 10/10 expansion look like to you
Happy birthday! Also sweet staff
Content that doesn't break GW2's rule of "you don't have to wait to have fun". HoT's PvE consists almost entirely of meta events on strict timers. And I have to endlessly grind them to unlock masteries... so I can grind more.
EDIT: ALSO IT WOULD HAVE DUNGEONS
shysaursoft
Member
Expanded map (I'm happy with the amount of new zones they added just not the content in them), massive expanded content for *existing* maps like 10-20 new dynamic events in ALL maps, removal of Sigil system replaced with something better, build templates, a new race not just a new class, reworked crafting interface, fixes for stalled DE's that have been stalled for over a year (though they're getting around to it now), NEW GROUP CONTENT like Hard Mode dungeons of the existing dungeons, or at least a few new dungeons.
I would have been much happier with HoT had it been released piecemeal over a year, and each part had more thought put behind it. The story side of HoT wasn't bad, but I think LW season 2 had better storytelling, pacing, characterization and gameplay mechanics. The new story missions in HoT don't even have goddamn restart points for people trying for achievements, UNLIKE the EXISTING Season 2 story missions... So technically, the story missions in HoT are from a technical standpoint, worse than those in HoT. Which is pretty bizarre.
I enjoyed HoT, but it was unfocused, rushed, and they took the wrong lessons learned from Season 2 and built on them, instead of keeping to the spirit of what made Season 2 so good.
Basically, I wanted HoT to make Guild Wars 2 better across the board, not just slap in some maps at the end and ignore all existing content in favour of stupid long map metas and raids. I always thought one of GW2's hidden strengths was it's dungeons, until they got utterly abandoned. And where are the new JPs for existing maps?
GW2 now feels stagnant. I know this isn't true - but it feels like if I log in now, it's the same game from 3 years ago. Same shit, different people thanks to B2P. Without Living World, GW2 has nothing that sets it apart anymore.
Living World was, in my opinion, the raison d'etre for GW2. A platform for fresh, regular content to experience, a plot that moved forward without having to wait 3 years per expac. I know the two-week pacing wasn't to everyone's taste, but it sure as hell gave everyone more of a reason to log in every few weeks, than HoT did.
If you use reddit metrics just for the sake of argument, you can see that HoT's launch had a big bump in participation and interest, but after 3 months, people actually started bailing and didn't bother coming back. 3 months after HoT, the subreddit saw it's *first ever decline* in subs to it, something that has *never* happened to the GW2 subreddit since it's launch. It likely doesn't mean anything, but I think it does.
I agree with everything. The things that were unique to GW2 that I fell in love with was basically not what they decided to expand on in the expansion.
Happy birthday Emilie!
It's hard for me to say what a perfect expansion is, I feel it's easier to say where HoT missed the mark to me:
* Creating tight schedules which force you to play in specific times
* Locking rewards behind currencies which must be grinded by playing the same content over and over again
* Removing 5 man content and not offering alternatives to it
* Giving lots of useless loot for menial things instead of good loot for effort
I would argue that the grind is also affecting other aspects the expansion was meant to help with. Long term goals are negatively affected because one has to grind the same content over and over in order to achieve them, which creates a burnout effect.
EDIT: And basically all Miktar said.
It's kind of sad, but I've resorted to having play on my sisters account and grind her masteries, because with the tiny amount of spare time she has, she can't accumulate enough XP for any meaningful progression. Especially on Anets time frames.
I find it so ironic that they were so proud of "no more waiting to have fun" in the interviews surrounding the raid, when HoT PvE is all on a timer. Missed the start on a DS map? Wait two hours. Just missed Gerent? Do events in TD for an hour and then do the same Chak event to keep your participation up for an hour until Gerent spawns again. DC'd? Back at 0% participation and no meta rewards.
I have high hopes for their next quarterly update, where they'd take another look at the HoT maps. I still have faith in them, I just think they forgot that the main draw of GW2 at release was player-centric.
You triggered a lot of events on your own. You could find hidden events and bosses. You could do it all at your own pace.
Now there's a lot of waiting around.
Kos Luftar
Member
Is lunar new year event, ending tomorrow?
Kos Luftar
Member
appletoasty
Member
I had a post written up with my thoughts on HoT but it was BIG so nevermind. If anyone cares here it is.
TLDR I agree with mostly everything that Miktar and others have said. They took one step forward, ten steps back for everything that people were hoping for. For every positive change they made with the expansion, there was more negative things that went with them. I think they could solve a lot of complaints within the community by bringing Living Story back and cut the crap with the scheduled meta events.
TLDR I agree with mostly everything that Miktar and others have said. They took one step forward, ten steps back for everything that people were hoping for. For every positive change they made with the expansion, there was more negative things that went with them. I think they could solve a lot of complaints within the community by bringing Living Story back and cut the crap with the scheduled meta events.
Getting what they promised working as intended would have been a start.
Long story short everything ended deeply flawed in a way or another, save for Raids which seem to be the only thing that are as you would have expected them (Good and bad things included)
In a way it's kind of weird as the way they designed the new maps adress many of the flaws of the old ones, but it brings a whole lot of new issues with them as well and the mega-server system really makes things worse with those maps which doesn't help.
The 'grind' argument that keeps coming everywhere I don't really agree with, but I get why people complain like that, the thing is that HoT is pretty much made exclusively of long-term goals, there is a real lack of short term goals related to the expansion and everything is tied way too tightly to the Meta events that are themselves a wee-bit to rigid as well.
Personally the real lack of new armor and weapon skins has been a MAJOR bummer, especially with the rate at which they pop weapon skins on the Gem Store.
Many of the changes they made to old content actually made it worse or less enjoyable rather than better, be it PvP, WwW, Fractals, even old zones.
Dungeons I'm strangely apathetic towards, imo if all it took to 'kill' them is a decrease in reward, it's that people were running them for the wrong reason for a long time or that they were not as great as some people make them to be in the first place, I know I wouldn't personnaly put them on top of the content a I enjoyed in the game, and they've always been a means to an end to get some skins or make some gold, and even there since reward Tracks are a thing in PvP, it has been a way more convenient way of unlocking skins sooo yeah ...
There is also a lot of things that seem way too barebones or under-develloped, and the new Winter update is basically a repeat of that in a nutshell, I mean the brew of the month thing is nice if absolutely not original, but it's also not really content.
I mean was it too hard to at least design it like a quest and have the player hunt for one or two ingredients or NPC's in the world every month ?
There is some good in all of it but past the original discovery phase the bad really overshadows it right now.
You wait for the first of every month and then visit a major city. The end.
Generally speaking, the only thing I actively disliked about Heart of Thorns as an expansion was that it existed at all; in other words, it doesn't justify its existence as a boxed expansion or make a great case for boxed expansions being a good move for the GW2 formula.
I don't have any big issue with the content itself, I really like all of the new maps (Auric Basin in particular) and have had fun doing the meta events every time I've done them- this being a total number of times that I'm certain clocks in way below the majority of you. In any game, with any activity, I never continue repeating something even close to the point where it isn't enjoyable to actually play through for me... I just don't have the patience for it. GW2's dungeons remarkably still felt fun to me ever after hundreds of completions (unless using stacking/safe spot exploits), so the dungeon reward nerf was a bit of a painful affair. But I actually consider the quality of all the content I've seen in HoT to be quite high, especially as experienced for the first time, which in some ways will actually be what ArenaNet cares most about under their model. Revenants are a great addition, and I haven't even gone through half of the new specializations yet. Masteries were a great idea with an imperfect execution, although gliding is one of my favorite things to have ever been a part of the game and its transposition to mainland Tyria has given me nothing but joy.
It's just that all of this would have so dramatically better served the game if released over time, not to reiterate too identically what Miktar was saying but something like a map each month, a story instance or two every two weeks, Revenants released when Rytlock shared the information about the Mists in the story, Raid wings unveiled at a sensible pace tied to the ongoing story rather than nigh-randomly, gliding naturally transitioned to mainland Tyria after the rollout of new maps was exhausted, new Shatterer slotted right into the schedule, and so on and so forth. I strongly believe that absolutely every aspect would have been better received, and held in positive regard for longer, if it had simply been released as a drip feed.
The all-at-once system and content-gasm of a traditional expansion has certainly left GW2 in a very awkward in-between state. The most obvious example of this is the elite specializations; HoT will make a lot more sense in the context of whatever it is that comes after adding another set of specs, and you're forced to make an actual choice to specialize. When you'll look at your build and have to consider core Thief, Daredevil, or Other Thing, and HoT will be "the one that added Daredevil," the systems originally added as part of the expansion will feel more complete. Of course, without any indication of when that will be it's no less awkward of a status quo.
Lastly, in terms of what my ideal expansion would include, I would definitely be lying if I didn't mention these as absolutely required:
I don't have any big issue with the content itself, I really like all of the new maps (Auric Basin in particular) and have had fun doing the meta events every time I've done them- this being a total number of times that I'm certain clocks in way below the majority of you. In any game, with any activity, I never continue repeating something even close to the point where it isn't enjoyable to actually play through for me... I just don't have the patience for it. GW2's dungeons remarkably still felt fun to me ever after hundreds of completions (unless using stacking/safe spot exploits), so the dungeon reward nerf was a bit of a painful affair. But I actually consider the quality of all the content I've seen in HoT to be quite high, especially as experienced for the first time, which in some ways will actually be what ArenaNet cares most about under their model. Revenants are a great addition, and I haven't even gone through half of the new specializations yet. Masteries were a great idea with an imperfect execution, although gliding is one of my favorite things to have ever been a part of the game and its transposition to mainland Tyria has given me nothing but joy.
It's just that all of this would have so dramatically better served the game if released over time, not to reiterate too identically what Miktar was saying but something like a map each month, a story instance or two every two weeks, Revenants released when Rytlock shared the information about the Mists in the story, Raid wings unveiled at a sensible pace tied to the ongoing story rather than nigh-randomly, gliding naturally transitioned to mainland Tyria after the rollout of new maps was exhausted, new Shatterer slotted right into the schedule, and so on and so forth. I strongly believe that absolutely every aspect would have been better received, and held in positive regard for longer, if it had simply been released as a drip feed.
The all-at-once system and content-gasm of a traditional expansion has certainly left GW2 in a very awkward in-between state. The most obvious example of this is the elite specializations; HoT will make a lot more sense in the context of whatever it is that comes after adding another set of specs, and you're forced to make an actual choice to specialize. When you'll look at your build and have to consider core Thief, Daredevil, or Other Thing, and HoT will be "the one that added Daredevil," the systems originally added as part of the expansion will feel more complete. Of course, without any indication of when that will be it's no less awkward of a status quo.
Lastly, in terms of what my ideal expansion would include, I would definitely be lying if I didn't mention these as absolutely required:
- New Guild Missions
- New Fractals
I think there really wasn't a single thing in your post that I didn't want to quote and reply "Me too!"
I just wanted to highlight the above portion and add that what has me frustrated is if you go back and look announcements, blogs, etc in the past couple years, we've heard an awful lot about platforms. Something gets revamped, or added, and it's touted as "a platform to build upon for future content." Missions and fractals would be the biggest contenders. It feels like we have so many platforms now, but there's not much being done with them once they're implemented. We'll see what 2016 brings, but honestly, I'm pretty skeptical.
Everything I would say has already been said by others (in much gentler language as well) so I don't really see the point in making a list, though I have some thoughts on the big picture.
I'll start by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with Miktar and Hawkian in that I reject the premise that there needed to be an expansion at all, and if there was any fault with the Living Story it was that they only had 15-30 people working on it instead of the whole company. Rather than having new content every two weeks we went months with nothing, and now it looks like we're in for more of the same. Guild Wars 2 was different in that regard and now it's not.
In fact, that right there sums up the whole expansion for me; Guild Wars 2 was different and now it's not.
It went from a big, exploration-heavy MMO to one where the zones are on rails, more than any MMO I've ever played.
It used to be very anti-grind, now it's as grindy as any MMO I've ever played, including a few Korean ones.
It used to encourage quick, fun group content with friends, now it's slipped back into old school raiding mentality and people are leaving their friends behind for not being 'hardcore' or dedicated enough, all while the Trinity slowly creeps back in at the edges.
It once had a fast development cycle; lately it's moving at something more like Blizzard's glacial pace.
It used to be completely open to anyone, but now you need the expansion and need to get to level 80 before you get into the meat of the game or have a chance to play on equal footing.
I mean, I could go on, but what's the point? I hadn't logged in for 3 weeks until last night, and once I did I poked around for about 30 seconds and logged out. It's just not the same game anymore.
Kos Luftar
Member
If ANET said we will be putting whole company behind living story concept and always have something every two weeks as everyone here agrees would have been better, would you pay like a yearly living world fee or bi-weekly to access the content?
Do you think they can do what we want, purely living story content without charging for it?
Do you think they can do what we want, purely living story content without charging for it?
More frequent Living Story updates means more chapters to buy for people who missed the initial release, and better Living Story updates means players can honestly recommend picking them up rather than the lukewarm "Eh, if you really like the story it might be worth it" we usually say when people ask.
I'll also point out that expansion-only gem store items like glider skins would then be something all players could buy instead of HoT-only ones. More frequent updates also retains players better for all of these gem store updates they keep doing.
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