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Guild Wars 2 - How Heart of Thorns Failed & Path of Fire Succeeded - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Guild Wars 2 - How Heart of Thorns Failed & Path of Fire Succeeded - MMORPG.com
In Guild Wars 2, we have had two expansions released with accompanying living world content. While opinions may differ on whether Heart of Thorns satiated the player base that clamored for more content, I’m here to make the argument that the content in the jungles of Maguuma made some substantial missteps that were eventually made right by release of the Path of Fire expansion.
Comments
Heart of Thorns maps and world are good - the story and thin lore are garbage.
Path of Fire has the opposite issue in some respects. The Desert is boring and dull as fuck. But, the story and lore is decent.
PoF as a package is also slicker straight out of the box in terms of bugs and functionality. HoT was a buggy mess at launch.
Either way as long as ANet can keep pumping out content I’m happy.
Which is funny because all you need to do is unlock level 80, rather than level it up lol.
HoT remained active with hero trains and people jumping in to doing meta events long after launch, but after a few months in PoF the maps are pretty much empty as there is very little reason for people to go back. For me I imagine there was a quicker drop off in numbers for people doing the PoF maps than there was for people doing the HoT maps.
I myself would like a happy medium, which is the PoF map designs but with meta events that keep people coming back and a handful of challenging hero points in each map to encourage grouping. It is an MMO after all and when you create content that mostly anyone can solo then it makes for a boring experience.
In a more serious tone, I still believe that they should have taken more time working in Hot instead of releasing it in that time. PS: Rip maps like Dragon stand seriously what they were thinking designing that map around that meta, 99% of times that map was empty.
I like the desert, but as stated above, not enough meats to pull people togetherness like hot did.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
I can't explain enough how much frustrated I'm about this expansion. HoT was a buggy mess and it did so many things wrong but at least I played it 9 months straight before taking my first break. I got bored after just only 1,5 months and complately quit after 2 months of playing PoF . After that there was nothing that could keep my interest in the game. I finished story, complated all collections and achievements and I literally went back to the old maps to do meta events. Other than that I only did daily fractals and played WvW till I got bored. It was a pity. Imo they wasted a huge potential with this expansion. Now I only log on to play the new living story and quit again after 2-3 days...
At least HoT had meta events and brought people together to work together to complete a massive event.
The problem however with HoT meta events is they happened too much, but also didn't last long enough. It felt non-stop almost to me.
But, there is nothing to say I can't hop on over into the HoT areas since just cause its not new doesn't mean its not viable.
And PoF has the best mounts of any MMO, maybe even game of any genre. That was why I quit WoW is cause the mount and mount animations look like stick figure wooden dummies lol. I know that might be minor to most, but if 90% of the time is on the mount they should at least have good animations.
WoW characters have no movement at all on mounts, they are completely frozen and have a very annoying "bump" at best. And the bump on some of the mounts (like raptors) strain my eyes really bad since I have poor eyesight.
I wish PoF had better meta events like HoT does. I still spend most of my time in HoT just cause of the meta events.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Anet is really one of the few companies that actually seem to improve.
"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
This is what Arena.net has been good at,creating fancy elaborate terms to make their game sound amazing when in reality it is doing very little.
"specializations" yes because no other game has that?
Masteries,again something new?
Then more importantly than fancy terms or laying claim to content quality,is HOW the content is delivered.I almost always get the feeling people that talk about their game are just fanbois with nothing but VAGUE statements about that particular game.
Example,are there static npc's standing in the middle of some field waiting for you to complete a map...sigh
Is content delivered in instances?
Does the content stick with the lore of the game or just some random content idea to say "we have new content?"
There are so many topic areas that at least imo decide weather a game's content is actually any good aside from fancy terms and fancy PR talk.In other words ,explain how exactly these ideas are good or warrant a gamer to play that game over others that perhaps do it better?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
How to become a Wizardry with 5 steps :
Step 1: Hop in every single thread about any game out there.
Step 2: Don't even read the thread and start writing bunch of things which makes no sense and nothing to do with the topic.
Step 3: Put some fancy words and try to look like you know everything even though you probably never even played that game in your life.
Step 4: Bash anything and everything you see except FFXI.
Step 5: Ignore every single reply you got and go back to your imaginary world where you think you're some kind of messiah or something.
The introduction of mounts in PoF was a definite bonus when exploring older content and wherever I go there are always players, I actually got world map completion on one character, which I never would have done before. Mount animations are superb and they did a great job there. Yet to unlock the griffin and never feel like I'm missing out, that's something I'll unlock later.
What I have really enjoyed is all the new zones unlocked with Living Seasons 3 and 4, there is so much enjoyable content now in the game, spoiled for choice, I did worry that too many zones would see empty maps but as yet I've never been short on company anywhere I've been. I'm really pleased with the direction the game has gone since HoT, Anet seemed to have learned and I'm intrigued to see where they go next. Now I've unlocked Reaper on my Necro he needn't worry about them pesky Pocket Raptors again either
But I burned out before even finishing it and getting to the main meat of the expansions. I was getting bored and the nail in the coffin was crafting. Where I discovered that Ascended had time gated crafting and a ridiculous resource grind. I then tried some fractals, but thats endless repetition too.
Maybe I am just done with MMO's and their nonsensical grinds. Why do themepark MMO's always feel like watered down RPG's?
The pve zones of HoT are awesome but the story is rather boring (unless you play as Sylvari)
PoF on the other hand has good story but very boring zones.
@Grunt350 I still consider Dragon Stand one of the most fun maps in the whole game.
You do however have to use the lfg tool and join an organized map which takes just a few seconds.
Heart of Thorns maps were fun to play a handful of times, then became incredibly dull, as they were essentially glorified missions rather than true maps. Dragon's Stand in particular wore out its welcome as the game's reward systems encourage you to play it many times, there are only 3 ways to play it, and it has time-limited exploration which requires you to do this same 60-90 minute event chain yet again to have the privilege.
Path of Fire maps are an explorer's paradise. They're beautiful, full of lore and secrets, have great enemy variety, and allow the player to pick their own pace and goals.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.