Feedback: Official Path of Fire Feedback Thread

[Lanthun.7251]

Bounties are make it or break you; some are unbearable to do. Mounts are buggy, some de-mounting while in mid-animation. Story was good, but I felt it was a lot shorter compared to HoT. A lot of mapping ground to cover; so much land, where's all the metas!

[Johnny Boi.4980]

First off, want to say I >>love<< this expansion.What I thought was awesome: The darker tone in the story, I hope to see much more of this! The selection of fewer characters to focus on; while I was skeptical at first, this really paid off in the end. The hidden achievement for the griffon was a complete (and amazing) surprise. The callbacks to GW1 lore were very well integrated! Of course, then the obvious such as the beautiful maps, amazing mounts, and fun new elite specs.What I feel could have been added/improved: The lack of build templates--I really want to enjoy the new specializations on all of my classes, but on some I feel restricted because I only slightly prefer the old elite specs. Optimization could have been a bit better in some parts of the new maps, time for DX12 wink? Also the lack of new content for PvP and WvWers; I'm not one myself, but I can see why they may feel left out. And Woodenpotatoes points these out but I totally agree: story felt a bit short in the desolation (my favourite map visually), and there could have been a few more things to do that bring people together socially.Keep up the great work!

[Agent Mulder.4531]

Mounts are super awkward in tight spaces.Hearts shouldn't be repeatable, that doesn't make any sense.Please let us talk to NPC's without dismounting

Overall really disappointing. It'll keep people occupied for a few weeks before the game dies down again

[michelada.2947]

I want more cutscenes during epic moments of the story

[Nogothanc.5014]

Nearly perfect expansion with one major flaw. The story. It is presented well but in the end disappointing. Read Lore section. There are enough threads about this. Why not use existing lore and build on it and escalate something like the evil half brother Menzies the Mad, Lord of destruction? Now the brother conflict is in the trashcan. With PoF the memories of FoW get a real bad shadow. Thank you, it turns out we players fought for evil against evil in GW1. GW2 PathofFire = second release kill a god. GW1 Nightfall = second release kill a god... PoF = Abbadon 2.0.

[Dubbiz.9734]

First of all, I love this expansion.

Pros:-Maps are great, with many awesome things to explore. I like how they are more like the vanilla zones in terms of map layout and hearts.-Mounts are just spot on in terms of everything.-Love the theme of almost all elite specs.-The story was really good for the most part.

Cons:-Even though i am not a big fan of meta events, I would have liked a meta map.-Act 3 of the story was not as well made as the first two, even though the fights were great.

[Rym.1469]

The visuals for the new maps and the maps in general are outstanding. Blows HoT out of the water, same with most maps from other MMOs in competition.As for mounts - it definitely feels like a lot of resources went into them. Only Skimmer feels a little bit too niche - I'd like even more "drift" feel to it, possibly getting more speed from that.

However, while a lot of attention went into mounts, a bit less went into new elite specializations, which is visible particulary on the animations side of things. There are too many re-used ones for my liking, some repeating animations even within the same class (Eviscerate and Aura Slicer on Warrior for example).

Elite specializations are mixed-bag. Some clearly got more love than others, like Weaver vs. Renegade. Dissapointing lack of new, exciting mechanics that would push gameplay boundaries - most of the new utilities and traits are rather simplistic and lack some "playmaking" feel or big potential.

[daimon.9876]

Started playing original GuildWars in 2006 between the releases of Factions and Nightfall. In my opinion, Path of Fire contains some the best content available in either game in terms of: story, graphics, playability, re-playability, new mechanics, maps, collections and achievements, and new specializations/skills. ArenaNet has raised the bar on their other (also great) content. It still continues to shock me that this game hasn't become more successful than WoW. I tried WoW for a while, but after one playthrough to max level, I was so fed up with its inadequacies in comparison to GW1 that I was done with it. Compare that with today's latest content in GW2, and ArenaNet's game is vastly superior.

[Svarty.8019]

★WARNING★ This post contains no facts and consists entirely of my opinion. It's a ridiculous joke that I should have to state such a thing.

In my opinion, Windswept haven isn't as good as the previous guild halls because it's a big flat empty space with a few pre-decorated giant buildings in it.

• Exploration: The other two guild halls had huge areas of exploration. In Windswept haven, it feels like there's nothing to explore.
• Invisible walls are an enormous no-no for players, they hint at more content to explore and then slam the door in the player's face.
• If you're going to give us such huge spaces to decorate, we need giant decorations to place in them - and I mean GIANT decorations. We need massive walls and floor panels. Let us transform this empty space into buildings of our own design! Hint: Player-race themed architecture might be an idea.

[george.8264]

First i want to say that when the hype first talked about mounts in GW2 i thought ugh we dont need them, what are the devs thinking of. But now i love the mounts the fluidic movement is amazing so well done guys. Now my moans, as other posters have stated some of the mobs can be just too much which gives a problem when you look for a safe spot to stop and sort inventory but 2 mob groups overlap and now you are hit by 10 enemies also the lack of waypoints especially covered ones in the branded areas, which brings me to the most annoying thing in the game THAT BLASTED LIGHTNING in the branded area come on guys what the hell is that all about, i have yet to do a full run of the branded area without dying and having to go back to a waypoint so far back that i know i wont get passed the point i just died at. Now previous releases of the game had branded areas and THAT BLASTED LIGHTNING was never a problem so come on guys give some of us older guys ( 60 ) a chance just have the LIGHTNING but switch of the injury side of it and make a great game even more enjoyable. Thank for all your hard work. George.

[Alcatraz.9206]

Strong storyline and awesome new enemies (fantastic job on the creation of such epic looking enemies). Mounts are very usefull and very well intigrated in the maps for exploration. Though the storyline is epic, it leaves a void to know what's going to happen next. It feels like PoF is only a few steps in the new storyline, compared to HoT which had a strong and independent one.

[TheBravery.9615]

The PvE content is not bad, a lot better than the PvE of HoT. Glad they stopped 'muh verticallity'.

Professions are more "balanced" than HoT professions at launch, but tweaking still necessary. Pay attention to professions that deal way more damage than other classes (firebrand and scourge comes to mind)

Can't help but feel like while the content is more quality, there's far less quantity than HoT. HoT introduced more content, a new profession, raid wings, a new wvw borderland, new pvp maps, just way more content.

Verdict: C+, improve by giving competitive modes like pvp/wvw more attention, fine profession balance more. Keep up the good work.

[TheBravery.9615]

Oh the final story fight was well thought out. I wvw mostly but that was enjoyable.

[Toeofdoom.6152]

I like a lot of the exploration mechanics, and the map and story parts are great - overall, that's great as most of my experience of POF is in that area. The meta/bounty stuff I like in theory, but... in practice, the boss design makes many fights really unpleasant. The bounty mechanics are frequently horrible to experience - like phase shifting on a teleporting or charging enemy. Telegraphs are hidden under piles of allies and yet failing to dodge means death. Too often when I join one of these groups I regret it.

[athos.9034]

This expansion is really nice (I won't get on with positive elements), but I would have three concerns :

• Empty maps. Yes, they are beautiful, but the lack of meta events turn some regions into a real desert. Some areas are a nice surprise (the snowy parts of Desert Highlands with the underground ruins are great), but are not multi-layered and the larger-than-ever size seems to be a consequence of the newly introduced mounts, rather than a real effort to put surprising content.
• Bounties. This mechanic is pretty fun, but for a time. Apart from dailies and achievements, there's no point doing them regularly.
• Mastery points. I get it, mounts are the big add-on, and why not doing all the mastery tracks based on them. But, the way to get MP is boring. It's just exploration. Central Tyria MP were fun, when we had to complete events (Triple Trouble comes to mind). Too many mastery insights, really.All those concerns have a common ground : once we will all complete the maps, what will be next? For now, it's fun, because we're exploring a new/old world. Once it will be done, those maps will become a no-man's-land.

[eldrin.6471]

l Love the mounts. and story was ok.bountys just get plane boring .Ihave maxed out my mastery's and ten days into this expansion am done with these maps.Seems really dumb to design these big maps and not put in any metas or world bosses to give us a reason to come back.Tequatl and the other world bosses are still attracting players every day as are silver wastes and tangled depths metas.

[Malediktus.9250]

Just a small addition to my first post:

• the new guild hall is disappointing, much smaller, not much place to decorate and not even a weapon set like the two HoT guild halls
• a lot of secret areas and jumping puzzles do not have any achievement coming with it
• most of the new weapon and armor sets do not have a collection achievement, please add them. there should also be one for collecting every PoF miniature considering there are so many
• a lot of terrible power creep with the new elite specs, what happened to elite specs being side grades or filling new roles with your class?

I am already runing out of stuff to do in this "content heavy" expansion vs "feature rich" HoT expansion which kept me busy for months. I would rate this expansion 3 out of 10. HoT was 7 out of 10 in my books.the 3 points are for: mounts, the visual quality, exploration and difficult open world enemies-7 points for: no content worth repeating, lack of new achievements and collections, story felt like full of lore holes like always, no new dungeons/fractals/raids, new elite specs mostly too OP.

[Shaaba.5672]

Maps are beautiful and the stories contained in dialog and events is great. They feel empty though and events don't seem to be getting done unless it's for a specific collection, etc.

Mounts are great fun and well thought out and integrated. I do worry about their implementation for the long run. I've been in a few situations where people are mounting up to get from spawn point to spawn point in a fairly contained space within an event. It seems to speed the game up and make it more hectic. There is this weird dichotomy of leisurely map exploration and hectic event tagging - if you can even find people to do random events.

Better initial impression for me than HoT. Less reliance on metas is good, less frustrating travel mechanics being gated off when thrown into the map for the first time is good. I would like a better balance of meta and non-meta maps or areas of the maps. Each seems too heavily weighted on opposite ends.

[Hybarf Tics.2048]

Before the demo came out Kralkatorrik killed all the POF world bosses, therefore the expansion as well RIP POF. :'(

[Tiny Doom.4380]

Good things:

Visually sumptuous."Difficulty" closer to base game.Dynamic Events similar to base game.Richer ambient/lore/background detail than HoT or any LS maps.Storyline is the clearest and least muddled so far (including everything from Personal Story to LS3).Plenty to do and see.Good value for money.

Not Good Things:

Mount inertia/momentum induces motion sickness.Mounts in general are gimmicky.Masteries are nowhere near as compelling or even necessary as they were in HoT.Clarity of storyline comes at the expense of depth. It's thin.Lack of progression.I like the absence of a total reliance on map-wide metas but the lack of large scale, map-wide events like Dragon's Stand leaves a big hole to fill.

Overall:

Not convinced yet that I prefer, or will prefer, PoF to HoT.
HoT seemed more compelling, somehow, and that compensated for a lot of the problems there.PoF is more accessible but so far it doesn't have the hooks HoT did. I played almost nothing but HoT for well over three months and a lot of HoT for the rest of the year after that. Not seeing how PoF is going to hold my interest in the same way.

[Iason Evan.3806]

Lack of craftable and earnable armor sets is a shame.Elonian/Spearmarshal sets are variations on same thing. <--- This is a long term issue now not just a one off thing.

Griffon races are amazing. Would love to see more of them.

Surprises are good. Griffons were surprising and great. more of that please.

[Rauderi.8706]

Bounties feel like a failure. Not in execution or concept, but in expecting players to care.Currently 0/3 on getting any player involvement above spitting salt at each other. And one that I need for the griffon is a legendary bounty that no one seems to care to do.No one is doing them at all, honestly. They're not announced to the map unless you're close to them like a normal event. Bounties really ought to be regional announcements.

[PhiLL.1746]

Pros:

• Storyline awesome
• Maps are really nice. Amount of layers was spot on.
• Mounts are amazing. Everything.
• Hearts and events are really nice. You did a really good job coming up with a wide variety of mechanics and story.
• Exploration is amazing, in general.

Cons:

• Game seemed dead. Noone around to group up. Very few helping or in trouble (tried other servers and LFG). Is this a MMO or a Single player game?
• No replayability. It will be no man's land in a month.

Improvements for the future:

In HOT, map wide meta events were not well received by the community but it guaranteed replay capability.My suggestion is to make 80% of map events "chain group events" with increased rewards. Only 20% single player event. No MAP WIDE EVENTS that locks the entire map.Also, some rewards must be obtainable through EXPANSION ONLY.This way, people will have reasons to group up and replay content.

[tekfan.3179]

-Greatly enjoyed the story and design, though the last act felt kinda rushed-Rytlock said something relating to my characters’ profession(greatly appreciated, but still not enough character-specific feedback)-Race-specific reactions to Kasmeers deep faith would have been nice-found no profession-specific mechanics like in Head of the Snake, that’s bad-Mobs slightly too op for solo-exploration-Putting randomly dropped exotics into specialization collections is bad-Mounts are great, but the springer feels too clunky-Griffon is awesome!-Asura-friendly shoes in new armor sets! Very awesome!-All light armors look like Aladdin cosplay...more diversity or dwarfen armor set in desert highlands would have been nice

[Ohoni.6057]

The content teams did an excellent job. I really enjoyed the story and felt consistently engaged by it. It moved through the maps, while still providing plenty of room to explore. The maps were designed to be beautiful, easy to casually navigate, but also with plenty of secrets to reward the explorer. The amount of small details, characters, mini-quests, and collections was staggering, and it was mostly optional enough that I didn't feel pressured by it.

The Mounts were great, all of them had their own fun aspects of gameplay, and while some took more time to get used to than others, I really enjoyed switching between them as I traversed these new areas. I feel like each unlocked new aspects of the maps, bringing me back to the older maps in a natural progression, and unlocking them never felt like too much of a chore (as some HoT masteries did). It was a great idea to make the "best skills" the 3rd ones, instead of the 4th.

The class teams really dropped the ball though. None of the new classes were as good as the better HoT classes, they all had some really cool design elements to them, but had poor choices that made them way too niche, only useful in some small role in the game, rather than being flexible enough to adapt to any aspect. It's ok to have one "row" of traits that are "just for PvP" or "just for WvW," but there should also be other traits in that spec that make them just as good as the HoT specs at roaming PvE, or any other aspect of the game. I really look forward to the first major balance patch, and hope that several of the specs get top-down overhauls, but as it stands, I just do not care about most of them.