Funny SWTOR and ESO now focusing on solo story content and GW2 after being successful with that switching to group and maze maps.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
#3 is total bullshit.
The bigger events yes, requires a group but saying that it's unexplorable soloing really tells me and others how terrible players are with their classes.
I remember playing in GW2's beta and how the huge selling point to me was the WvsW. It was a blast-not sure what the hell ArenaNet is thinking really. They have totally destroyed that aspect of GW2.
My thoughts; I think HoT is a terrific expansion. It clearly is, but some things are really problematic. It is not too surprising giving how much they changed many gameplay systems. HoT would benefit from a Feature Pack or two that really tries to make some of these gameplay sing.
1) WvW, it's true. It's a complete mess. This community has been unhappy for a long time. ArenaNet has done a really good job with sPvP, and PvP is in a really fun place right now, but WvW has major problems and need a makeover. I don't like the new borderlands map. It's way to gimmicky and weird for my taste.
2) Guild Missions have serious wonky bugs. Fractals 50-100 are not very fun. The nerfing of Dungeons have made this content completely unappealing. This is very sad.
3) The open world content in the HoT zone is disproportionally more difficult than the open world content in the Silverwaste and rest of Tyria. In Ascended Zerker gear I can barely kill a basic smokescale without dying on my Warrior. I can kill it on my daredevil (lots of dodge) and my Reaper (Death Shroud is a second health pool) but a lot of the enemies leave your character feel weak, and the enemy encounters frustrating.
The truth is that a lot of people like easy-mode GW2 and playing it as a casual experience. I do not find trash mobs interesting so them hitting hard or have big health pools is not exciting for me at all.
4) The loot is disappointing. A couple of new armor sets and a very little amount of loot, leaves everyone collecting micro-ammounts of collect-a-tons to trade for a vendor to get something special. GW2 used to be RNG heavy and now it is collect-able heavy. I don't mind it, but champions and legendary mobs have little exciting drops. I am disappointed in the new armors. I think they are ugly.
5) The new sPvP mode Stronghold, does not really ring with me. I only played it a couple of times but I did not have a good time. I wish they had just made more conquest maps.
I still think the expansion is amazing. The elite specs are incredible, Revernant is really something different compared to any class I have ever played, the zones are... insane in the best way possible, wonderful graphics, really unusual and interesting music, and a story while short, is actually really engaging.
The first raid wing (in the beta) was quite spectacular, druid healing is wonderful without being overpowered, mastery system is an excellent way to give you insentive to keep levelling while not making you directly more powerful after lvl 80, the zerker meta has been broken, people are wearing dire, carrion, celestial and other stat combos, a modicum of new stats have been added, condition damage is amazing, the guild halls are incredible, making money is a lot easier, a lot of the old content is still being run as guild hall/scribe upgrade constantly require things from dry top and silverwaste. The legendary crafting is really, really nice! QoL changes like cross guild chat (you can be in several guilds at once and talk to them at the same time, and the action combat system (tera-like combat) are wonderful! The last map in HoT (Dragons Stand) is the epitome of GW2. it's the most fully realized open raid concept. to have 200 people come together like that is just insane. there is nothing like it, in any game.
Clearly this expansion is pretty damn amazing, but it did break some things. I'm interested in seeing how they will address it in after the wintersday update.
They need to take dungeons into fractal rotation, move story dungeons into the personal story, make a overhaul with more unique rewards for champions, more unique rewards for high level fractals, unlock season 2 content for all the people who own HoT (season 2 story is a part of HoT), fix WvW rewards, new guild missions, new fractals, new spvp maps, balance the new elite specs in spvp, scale the zone content in HoT maps better, make more waypoints.
With the gliding I kinda think they at least should add it to zones that actually is in Maguuma like Silverwastes. Rebuilding the entire game would be a lot of work and would mess up all jumping puzzles but nthere is no logical reasons gliding works in some Maguuma zones but not others and redsigning a few zones is far less work.
I must say I really like gliding, far more than flying mounts in other games for some reason. Now, if I just could add some bombs and be able to use my pistols (prefarable against other flyers) it would be perfect.
I remember playing in GW2's beta and how the huge selling point to me was the WvsW. It was a blast-not sure what the hell ArenaNet is thinking really. They have totally destroyed that aspect of GW2.
A lot new PvE content tend to make PvP rare for a while. But it woould be nice if the next expansion offered us more focus on WvW.
Wish they would stop rampant nerfing of character classes. I have 17 max level chars, so really do not like it when the nerf everything and I have to spend months getting basic exotic gear when I could be working on getting ascended or legendaries.
Also, how about fixing some things that dearly need fixing. SB in Queensdale for example, has been broken since the release of the expansion. Also, a trade portal (also in Queensdale) is more often than not, not functioning, this means you have to go to a different map to access one!
Anet seems determined to make things harder to do. Perhaps the SB notification not being displayed onscreen is part of this, but imo all it has done is make sb fail regularly, simply because people do not know what pres still need to be done. Other things that need to be put back to how they were when the game was released, ele skills that are now line of sight, what idiot decided to make them not fire if you not facing your target and then place a delay on it so you can not simply turn and try again. Either put it back the way it was or remove the delay on reuse or place an indication of some description on screen that shows what direction your char is actually facing, so you know that you need to turn before trying to use the skill. Other things that are just stupid are placing a delay on collecting things, apparently in the name of realism. Collecting eggs for example, you do not bend completely over and pick up just one egg, you place you egg basket on the ground then bend over and pick up all the eggs.
As for HOT not being solable, thanks for the heads up on this, I have not yet bought the expansion and now that I know this, buying it is not on my list of things that I will rush in to doing, probably leaving it until it goes on special once or twice!
Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Smile
Also, how about fixing some things that dearly need fixing. SB in Queensdale for example, has been broken since the release of the expansion. Also, a trade portal (also in Queensdale) is more often than not, not functioning, this means you have to go to a different map to access one!
Anet seems determined to make things harder to do. Perhaps the SB notification not being displayed onscreen is part of this, but imo all it has done is make sb fail regularly, simply because people do not know what pres still need to be done. Other things that need to be put back to how they were when the game was released, ele skills that are now line of sight, what idiot decided to make them not fire if you not facing your target and then place a delay on it so you can not simply turn and try again. Either put it back the way it was or remove the delay on reuse or place an indication of some description on screen that shows what direction your char is actually facing, so you know that you need to turn before trying to use the skill. Other things that are just stupid are placing a delay on collecting things, apparently in the name of realism. Collecting eggs for example, you do not bend completely over and pick up just one egg, you place you egg basket on the ground then bend over and pick up all the eggs.
As for HOT not being solable, thanks for the heads up on this, I have not yet bought the expansion and now that I know this, buying it is not on my list of things that I will rush in to doing, probably leaving it until it goes on special once or twice!