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HoT: How do you like me now?
GeezerGamer
Member EpicPosts: 8,857
Now that we have moved into Spring and the expansion has had time to mature, how is HoT now for those of you who bought it?
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The content itself, however, is of limited quantity and does not appeal to me. We got four maps that are excessively geared towards meta events. Because, you know, fuck exploration, right? Mob designs are obnoxious combinations of frustrating crowd control and high burst damage. I often feel like I'm not earning decent gold in these maps. Frankly, if these maps weren't required for obtaining the new legendary weapons, I wouldn't touch them much at all.
The thing that made Guild Wars 2 compelling to me was the ability to explore maps, have events pop up around you, and do them on a whim. That feeling doesn't exist in Dragon's Stand, where everything is built towards a linear end point. It doesn't exist in the godawfully boring Auric Basin in which you have a choice of one of four meta event chains to progress to the end. It barely exists in Verdant Brink. Tangled Depths is the only new map that vaguely feels the way a map should.
"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
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
So I really like that, and I like that we have access to four traitlines. I liked the balance more than before the trait revamp.
To me, the jungle theme is not as thematically strong as Cantha or Elona, and I think I would have loved those settings a lot more. Factions has my favorite setting, and I thought ArenaNet is one of the few to do an asian setting well even though they are a western developer.
With that said, I think the four new maps are strong.
I think they gave a bad first impression. The first week for me was not very fun. There was a lot of balancing issues, and I had many disconnects. it was not something I was used to in a game like GW2 that has run smooth for me for so long.
The world was difficult to navigate without the mastery points and it wasn't actually pleasent. But once we got the basic gliding, upwards draft and mushroom jumping, it was pretty smooth sailing.
The other thing was, that in the first month, nobody knew what they were doing. The game had gotten quite a bit harder, and the challenge was nice. It was amazing seeing waves of lvl 80s coming into the game and getting decimated by cute pocket raptors.
After 2-3 months the meta events started being succesful. I remember having tried and tried the meta in the first map, and we just couldn't get ti Tier 4. The best armor piece in the expansion is a chest piece in Light, Medium and Heavy variations that was gated behind having to 100% the meta. And this was insanely difficult.
It literally required pretty much all 200 people (a full map) to coordinate and that is difficult when not everyone wants to participate in the meta. Not only do you have to project all main camps, but also secondary camps, followed by escorting npcs, doing events, collecting supplies, defend from waves of attacks followed by reclaiming other outposts.
It was a huge and complex meta event that was really cool, but it became frustrating when it was so hard.
I saw so many meltdowns of angry players who was not used to that difficulty.
So for me, once people learned the maps and knew what to do, I had a lot more fun. That was after 2 months I think. That was also when I got a lot of the better skins.
Dragons Stand (the last map) was fucking awesome. It wasn't a zerg, but it required a 200-man continued effort, that led to many hilarious methods of progressing. To me this is the best open world raiding I have seen. I liked the pacing, I liked what they did. If I could change anything about it, then it would be that I wish this meta had something to do while waiting for the meta to restart.
I disagree with players who say that the expansion was not worth it because it lacked more landmass. I hate that argument, because landmass or maps or areas has nothing to do with value. It was smart of ArenaNet to not add like 20 watered down maps. It wouldn't have done anything.
I think what Anet did wrong however was that they overestimated the replay value of the meta events. It's true that the metas have different progressions, and I discovered there was a lot more non-linearity to the metas when I collected the achievements. In the first map you get achievements for both helping and doing different events that lead to different outcomes. And there is sub-plots in the many different regions of the map. I really like this, and its a shame that the ability and freedom was probably lost on so many players.
But the fact still is that the events, still lead up to one similar identical meta, and that meta is the same over and over.
Dragons Stand was seriously impressive. Particularly the last part. But after 30-40 times, I've had my share of it.
And I think that is the problem we run into with a meta. Meta wide events is more akin to regular themepark MMOs where you do the dungeon/raid over and over and just burn yourself out.
My favorite part of the expansion was the journey towards unlocking my elite specialization weapons. Every class has an elite spec that can unlock an impressive weapon, and the requirements for unlocking the weapon was not RNG based, but varied and based on skill and it facilitated a lot of gameplay in different parts of the world. It involved dungeon finding, core tyria quests, achievement hunting, crafting, mastery system, meta events and a lot more. It didn't feel repetitive because the requirements were so varied.
When I had unlocked my Bo staff on my Daredevil I felt amazing. That was really rewarding, and that journey probably took 75 hours or so.
Unlike the legendary weapons which have always just been a material grind, I really loved these elite spec weapons, and I think they are a good fit for GW2. Elite specialization weapons have nothing to do with RNG, the cash shop or anything and they forces the player to engage in new and old content, and that is a good thing.
I think a good expansion enhances the core game, and expands on it.
I like the mastery system. I like gliding in core tyria. I think its nice to level further up without having the vertical power creep which would have ruined GW2. I also think the UI in the mastery system needs improvement. It wasnt easily explained and people got really angry when they were not getting more xp because they themselves had to upgrade their mastery.
I think the mastery system has a lot of potential. Regardless if it will be making boats in a go-to-cantha-expansion, or airships, or things for the guild or pvp or what not, its a cool system.
It's a progressive and good idea to think about enhancing your character through other means than stats, gear and weapon/attack abillities. It's this kind of thinking where I think ArenaNet shows themselves to be some of the best developers in the game.
But honestly, besides Gliding I don't think there is a real whoop to the mastery system in this reincarnation. In the sense that gliding is the only enhancement of your character that really matters. jumping on mushrooms feels less like a mastery and more like a gated abillity put in the game to give a sense of growth. But that is not growth to me.
Growth would be something like an added dash, or a double jump, or a power slide, or the abillity to scale walls or wall jump, or whatever. Something that expands the characters ability to navigate, move and impact the world. gliding through the air does that, the other masteries- not as much.
I think HoT tells the best story that ArenaNet has told even though it is short and ends too abruptly. This doesn't say much because the story has never been great in Guild Wars games, but they have really tried. You saw that in Season 2. They really really did put in effort, and some of the characters are likeable. Anet deserves props for that, but I wish they had gone with a max payne-style-still-images method on deliving more high quality story and not spent so many resources into doing 3d cinematic cut scenes with rigged lighting and directing and MoCap. I don't think it is needed. I think high quality Voice acting and a great set of writers- Perhaps actual great fantasy writers could have done something a lot better with art-comic book style cut scenes. Would have been faster to do.
I also think Heart of Thorns should have had more base loot. There are some good and rare weapon drops, but they have a low droprate, and most of the armors and weapon sets were not good looking to me.
But due to the expansion it was easy to make a lot of gold off materials like Flax that I managed to buy over 20 pieces of cash shop weapons I wanted through the trading post. Because GW2 allows cash shop items (weapons anyway) to be on the trading post it is possible for normal players without grinding to aquire a lot of weapons through ingame gold. I really like this. Its been easier and easier to make gold in GW2. I now have most of these weapons and haven't spend any money in the gem store;
I think the guild halls were really impressive, and we spent 5 hours in my guild doing the guild reclaim mission. That was fantastic. That was one of the highlights of my MMO life, ever. However, in my guild-(and I agree with this) one thing that was missing was new guild missions. We do guild missions every saturday and its one of those things that are terrific about GW2.
Jumping puzzles, bounties, the frustrating crab race. < Doing these things with 100 of your guildies, new and old is extremely community building. The rewards have also always been significant with both money and guild commendations.
So why on earth did they not give us any new guild missions? That was the thing that hit most people in my guild the hardest. We've done the same guild missions for 2 years.
And I think its the same story with fractals. Fractals were superior to dungeons and it was an easy chance to add new fractals over time. It was sad to see no new fractals.
One thing that has changed GW2 for me is the action combat mode. This is fantastic. This makes playing GW2 soooo mucch better. It's a game changer for me.
But even ignoring those facts, WvW is in a sorry state. I am one of the people who do not like the new borderlands, and I would have prefered they had upgraded red, blue and green borderlands with new effects, features and improvements, and just created a new eternal borderlands.
It's pretty clear that they are cooking something big with WvW, but we didn't get to see it in this expansion and it really hurt it. That much is clear.
as for the PvP I am more on the fence, because doing ladders right is difficult in most games. I agree that ladder season was not at the right time and that too also hurt it. But I think the e-sport effort was a worthy attempt, I just think they didn't listened to the right people in the community when they made that call (goes for WvW too).
HoTs raids are really nice. They are really well designed and more approachable, but even so, it is not unexpected that some core GW2 players would be off put by it when they wanted support for the core systems.
So if the worst part of this expansion is the state of WvW, then I'd say that it is not a bad thing to have a community that love the content you have, they just want more of it. More world bosses like Teq, more fractals, more weapon and armorsets, more guild missions, more sPvP maps. That's a good thing.
A certain group of people in the community have been screaming for raids, and its a shame that raiding- a completely yet another game system that needs to be regularly updated and supported should come on the expense on so many other game systems.
Now the GW2 is divided, because there are many who love the raids. I like them too, but its just not something I am interested in doing in GW2. I play GW2 as a casual, smooth and transcending experience. I play GW2 to log in at reset and stand next to map full of strangers as we scatter around triple Wurm or Tequatl, and you have those non-grouping fun social experiences. These bosses that allows roles that is not just a zerg like some of GW2s other bosses.
And these world bosses that appear once in a while that is not the part of the meta but just a zone boss with still many unattached events going on in the same zone is really nice.
It's pretty clear that a lot of resources went into this expansion behind the scenes. they said on twitch that just being able to do the guild perks (guild airship bombings) in WvW required tremendous amount of work and effort. The same with revamping the traits system which they released before the expansion, much like how blizzard puts out a big pre-expansion patch to prepare for the expansion.
ArenaNet has the right idea. And I support the mastery system and I support not raising the level cap. It's just that Anet has these game systems, and they have to choose fewer things to focus on. They cannot do all these things and then just add raids. Everything else was in dire need of new volume. we need new pvp maps because pvp is fun. We need new guild missions because guild missions are fun. We need new fractals because fractals are fun.
They might have been too ambitious for their own good. And I think for the next expansion they really have to show the community that they have a lot of volume. High quality volume. high quality volume that isn't grinding or have loot that is endless amount of opening bags with 1 piece of a thing you need a million off.
GW2 is still an amazing game and there was a lot of expansive additions that came with the expansion. I love that this expansion is not intrusive for non-expansion players. Even as a F2P player you are not going to be punished for not having the expansion.
And once expansion 2 comes out, Heart of Thorns become a part of the base game (free). For people who regret buying HoT, I recommend not pre-ordering or buying the second expansion, but wait it out and see after a few weeks after launch if it holds up.
Heavensward, KOTFE, The Taken King. Honestly, I think HoT is not in a terrible place. It misses more places than I would like, but it doesn't ruin GW2. It doesn't diminish or make the old world irrellevant. Many of my guildies are back to doing the old world content mostly, and that is a good thing. Because it means that GW2 hasn't ruined all its core-world content.
Which leaves us with Dungeons. ArenaNet didn't ruin dungeons, but by reducing the amount of gold you could get from running dungeons (effective way to get money) they killed the initiative to do dungeons, and the result is that dungeons is dead.
It is fair to say you want to focus on fractals, but the change was not needed and it was a shame to those people who still like the dungeons.
The Dungeons in GW2 are quite special. They have their own flair compared to other MMOs, and many who hate them and many who love them. What I think they should do, is take the explorable dungeons, and put them inside a fractal rotation. So they become a part of the fractal system. That would add more diversity, and the many exclusive dungeon armors and weaponsets could be drops. actual drops and not vendor rewards.
I think the story mode dungeons should be just be compilied into the personal story as a solo quest line. It doesnt make sense to put long story cut scenes into a group dungeon, and the rewards were not good, and it just confuses new players who are trying to learn how to dodge and stuff. and there is actually a lot of story in these dungeons about destinys edge.
It would be a way to make dungeons relevant, put them into the fractal system and make it so there could be good rewards and skins.
Collecting skins for your wardrobe is one of the most fun activites in GW2, and that is why I would like to see Anet have a new effort put out with adding more armors in the future. the armors in HoT were just not good.
I'm glad to see stable populations inside the game. I see tons of people running around and enjoying themselves, so that is good that the world is not falling apart as Reddit claims. I think the cancellation of Legendaries will either be a really positive thing or a really negative thing. If its a negative thing its because NCsoft has given up and pulled out money and resources out of GW2 leaving Anet to be a wounded studio who cant support the many game systems, an expansion team and living world team.
It could be a positive thing if ArenaNet changes management direction and decides to get WvW, fractals, and guild missions back on track.
I hope this new expansion will be Cantha. I really hope so. I hope they dont add any new races or classes, but new elite specializations, continuing the vertical progression expansion. it adds more uniqueness and skill and build variety the more weapons and options they add. I hope Thiefs can be Ninjas, Warriors; Samurais, Guardians; Shinigami, and so on...
I hope the zones wont be meta events. I hope they will be actual zones, but I hope all of them will have really difficult bosses on par with triple wurm.
I hope there will be actual new guild missions, pvp maps (cantha themed), guild halls, weapon types (polearms!), and new mastery system abillities.
I think if they get these thing in there, they really got me hooked. I still love this game to bits, but just like in GW1, I don't play when nothing is going on. And thats okay. I dont need the game to have dailies or grind (legendary!) to carrot-me-on-a-stick until burnout. Its not needed or appreciated. I got tons of games to play.
Until you get no positive votes and then can say "right, I'm not going to buy it"?
You have hundreds of hours of play with HoT, between doing the story, completing the masteries, acquiring the elite specializations, the new profession, completing the maps, completing the achievements (some collections, some related to activities. exploration, etc), getting the maps currency, farming the metas and raids (if you are into that).
If you enjoy all/a few of the above, you will get your money's worth and it is just a quibble between a really good value and an even better value (core game).
If you have no guild, have no ability to lead, do not want to spend any time searching for an organized/semi organized map while wanting to complete the meta whenever you decide, it might not have as much value for you.
If you think the core game difficulty is just perfect, you might not enjoy HoT.
If you have bad orientation and hate getting lost in maps (ie, dread to have to do stuff in dry top), you might not like HoT.
If you have no interest in complete things, you will not like HoT.
If you don't like map wide meta events like Silver Wastes, you will not like HoT.
My personal opinion :
It is a good expansion with beautiful map design, it has significantly less content - but harder - than the core game (still hundreds of hours of gameplay, if you like the type of gameplay) but it caters to one (and just one) specific type of play (which was until HoT only present in Dry Top and Silver Wastes as Orr never worked as intended).
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
The answers to this poll have changed over time (Hence the reason I keep asking) and the popularity of this expansion has declined a lot more rapidly than I'd have liked and expected for this title. This is an expansion that ANET charged a lot of money for. Almost as much as the original release of the game. I have every right to come back and ask this question 1, 3, 6 months after a release, given the amount they charged and how apparently little ANET has delivered. At least according to the consensus. I'm sorry my repeated question bothers you, but my poll was unbiased. Look, I really enjoyed GW2 more than I thought I would. More than most other MMOs of the time. I truly wanted this expansion to deliver, but I just don't see that. I cannot help but think that ANET's decision to suspend developing new Legendary Weapons is related to the feeling in this thread. So, I still see this poll as relevant.
21 votes
5 votes Play GW2 and didn't buy HoT
12 votes for Didn't buy HoT and don't play GW2 anymore
3 bought HoT
1 Never heard of GW2
Now (atm) 39 votes
5 votes for still going strong
9 got their money worth
13 bought and regretted
12 didn't buy
So from 3 people that bought HoT now you have 27 that did buy, 5 still playing, 9 got their value and 13 didn't.
Conclusion - HoT popularity is going down.
Doesn't compute with the numbers of your other thread but it is the reality for the simple reason that people have been playing it for 6 months and many were mastery 120+ in the first week with 80%+ of the expansion content complete.
There was a bigger thread posted by d_20 which had 84 votes cast and had basically a 50-50 split on people that thought it improved the game over those that though it made it worse, which is similar to this poll of yours.
And really the Legendary weapons matter to your decision of buying HoT or not? Anyone that cares about legendary weapons pre-purchased HoT and had finished the game in the first week.
Yeah, you can find videos on youtube of players that feel that the expansion didn't have enough content and are complaining about the Legenday weapons - they only played thousands of hours on the expansion pack including 12+ hours during the first couple weeks of the expansion, but of course 6 months later there was no content and they can see now it was a bad expansion... sigh.
You don't have to like it, you don't have to buy it, but there is enough content to justify the money invested.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I guess that right there is my REAL concern. The initial rush has died down.....But how much and are there still enough people going through the early expansion content for a newcomer to complete it?
I just don't want to make the same mistake I made with ESO. Played it for a few hrs and regretted it.
There is also a feature patch coming in here in april. It has some good QOL changes.
But you should know- this Expansion will be free once expansion 2 comes out. So if you can hold out until the next expansion you'll get it for free. Who knows when that might be. Its only been announced, so probably a year away, at the least.
Then it is a question of map completion (much can be done solo) and map meta events (for achievements and farming)..
Verdant Brink and especially Auric Basin are pretty easy to do by random people as soon as a coupele people are interested in leading.
The other 2 require a bit more organization.
But you can join a guild or a community. If you play in EU look at the opencommunity - no requirements and they keep organizing meta maps alongside stuff like Tequatl and Triple Wurm. (atm they seem to have dropped auric basin and verdant brink from the event list).
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I have a few masteries left and and are missing a couple of POIs on the last zone but that is about it. Only 2 expansions in any MMORPG/CORPGs that I didn't feel were too small was GW: Factions and GW: Nightfall. So yeah, I certainly wish it were more zones in it but there never is enough.
I like the mastery system though, gives me far more then the standard 10 levels that most games gives out. The sub classes aren't that great however, they could have skipped them and added more weapons and skills or mounted combat or something. A new race would also have been welcome.
I rage quite after buying the HoT expansion. I.CAN'T.STAND.PLATFORMING...
I know a lot players love all the jumping and "verticality", but I hate hate hate it. Don't get me wrong, the odd jumping puzzle here and there are nice diversions, but converting the game to a 3D platformer just didn't work for me.
You don't really need it for most things (besides the endboss in the last zone) so you could just skip it unless you must get all vistas and POIs. Now, if you don't enjoy larger PvE fights things are worse because HoT have far more focus on that then the base game but otherwise just skip the flying part and get where you need to be on foot.
I kid.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯