Val.7826

I don't want to say that mounts are the problem here, because Gw2 mounts are the best mounts in MMO so far, but while I try to deny this, mounts are the problem here, especially skyscale. I repeat, mounts in this game are great, the best of the best, various, useful, well animated, beautiful, and nicely integrated inside the world, but they destroy the quality of the exploration (not the efficiency, but the pleasure). The reason of the extreme immersiveness of HoT, Verdant Brink above all, besides the actual design of the area, resides in the fact that if you experience the game in chronological order, or maybe, like some people do, just with a rush for the raptor before, but no other mounts, you have to navigate the area facing the perils and the complex labyrinth that all of 4 maps of HoT can provide, struggling to reach places, thinking about which path you should take, trying to unlock meticulously masteries and hero points to proceed in your exploration. While lots of people are ready to complain about how much they "AbSoLutElY haTe ThaNgLEd DePThs I cAn'T UndErStAnd a kItTeN HerE oMG WoRSt mAp EVeR", the complexity of the maps and the difficulties of navigate them make the adventure there more like an actual adventure than all the rest of the game. At the start of my post I blamed mounts because mounts are able to make you skip all of this: distances are not an obstacle anymore, high places? pfff, just fly, or jump with the bunny. Cliffs? Are these even a problem? Enemies along the path? Just run straight on, they can't stop you. Just because of the existence of this amazing content that mounts are, It's not really possible anymore to give players the same adventure experience that HoT was. PoF managed to handle that, mostly because at times there were no skyscale, and PoF is designed for basic mounts, and maps are actually enjoyable and rich considering that are really horizontal (and vertical>horizontal in terms of design complexity almost every time, maybe with a little exception for Draconis Mons that is kinda poor) and sometimes there are mobs and traps that can dismount you so exploration and struggling vibes almost hold, but after skyscale, we must be honest here, everything of this died. Yes I know skyscale is a LW mount, long and complex to obtain, but every player that want to enjoy the game take the skyscale, whether they are able for chronological coherence, whether they want it for efficiency. After the mounts, the game it's basically a rush for objectives and events without actually caring about the place, kitten, I don't even know the geography of New Kaineng City but I exactly know where to go in Tangled Depths if I need to reach something, and that's because in HoT I was forced to learn the map by walking and gliding; after the skyscale entered the game, the exploration was mostly reduced at an helicopter pov were you have go from point A to point B and the only thing that matters is how fast you can reach point B. HoT maps were vertical, intricate, difficult, sometimes painful and very punitive, along with hard-to-reach Mastery Points and challenging Hero Points, even in therms of combat considering that for many of them you had to fight extremely powerful enemies, and having no mounts the first time you have this experience force you to feel everything, and that's what can make the game way more interesting. Sadly, I doubt ANet will be able to replicate this, not because they are not good anymore, but because they simply can't due to skyscale and mounts in general that completely override gameplay in a way so radical that sometimes override even the glider. We also should talk about the aesthetic of maps in general because I surely consider Verdant Brink a stunning map, and Auric Basin a fascinating one, and I really was dazed by the enormous ley-line cave where Chak Gerent event takes places in Tangled Depths (I don't appreciate Dragon Stand in the same way tho, I want to be honest, but I really like the meta here), but I agree with the fact that these consideration are very subjective, and many of newer maps are still really good looking almost at the same level. To conclude, I am not saying that they have to remove mounts, because that's a nonsense now, but sadly I accepted that mounts are made for efficiency and not for immersion, even if they look like so and ANet surely made an excellent job when they added them in the world, I accepted ANet wants us to use them (fair enough), and so maps should be more mount-based, that is inevitably less explorative and enjoyable, you know, if you travel faster you see less. It's not really different from real life, if you want to travel 20km through a big city, there's a big difference between doing it by car or on foot, and it's not only a matter of fatigue, but it's a matter of what you have the opportunity to see and the time you spend along the way. Edit: I forgot to make a little disclaimer. Obviously using mounts is a choice and everyone who wants can decide to walk everywhere, but the point is that maps now have to be designed considering mounts, and I believe that could reduce the quality of the immersive experience in favor of, as I said, efficiency. Btw I'm prepared to receive a lot of disagreement from skyscale obsessed enjoyers, so yeah I know it is an amazing mount, if I was not clear, I still believe mounts in this game are amazing and extremely well made, probably the best I personally have seen in a game so far.

Forgive my ignorance, what is the "ritualism" you are talking about? And I want to know more about your spoons now

They worship Deus Mechanicus and Wool Balls (pls don't bite me)

Another question a bit OT but a bit correlated come to my mind: People and Necromancers of Tyria had heard about King Joko before the events of PoF? How (in)famous was Joko at time?

I really appreciate your answer, thank you So what animate necromancer's undead minions is the energy of the aspect of death, the same energy they would gain as life force, and not souls at all? But why summoning minions does not consume life force? According to Wiki a minion is an "undead servant bound to the will of their master, fueled by the dark magics of their creator"; I'll consider the "undead" classification a little inaccurate, an undead is a former living creature dead and reanimated (always according to Wiki), and Necromancer minions are constructs made of flesh more then former living creatures. But I'm more interested on the "dark magics" here, what are dark magics in GW2? Is "dark magic" a common classification that refers to all the Death Aspect related magics? Necromancer could be called Dark Magicians?

I'm curious about all those distinctions. Zhaitan and Joko proved that they can resurrect people, so that means they can pick souls from the mists and put them back into their corpses? A necromancer can do that despite they do not 'cause of ethics? That means that necromancy actually manipulate souls? The "life force" is a mixture of souls harvested from bodies? Is that so and considered ethical on Tyria? Also Necromancer use Blood Magic so what is that? They can control blood as it is an element like fire? But what is blood then? Part of flesh magic? The same that can create their minions? I cannot understand completely the spectrum of magic fields where a necromancer can operate, and substantially what Death Magic itself is.

I'd like to know more about the types of magic used by Necromancers. What's their nature, behavior, origin? Is Blood Magic bond to the Death Magic Spectrum too? Is necromancy connected to life in some ways? (random questions used as an example) I didn't play the last part of EoD and the full SoTO yet, and I guess that they are build around magic a lot, so, pretty please, avoid spoilers. Let's put it in this way: you are a Necromancer in 1325 AE, what do you have studied about your profession? What do you know?

Yeah exactly, besides, we are talking about a 25 years gap, I don't think that is enough for a cultural weaponry sharing between races that had that kind of relationship.

I just wanted to degenerate at some point, dehehe

Agree, in fact fire is hot so it should burn, air is not hot but they used lightnings in this element which are very hot, so air should burn, an then there is water, the thing you use to cook pasta, and boiling water is hot, so it should burn, and then there is earth, earth is brown, like wood, and you put wood in the fireplace to warm yourself, and that's hot, so it should burn too.

Always hated that, plantish weapons for asura and geometric-plasma weapons for sylvari... why? I mean, they live both in maguuma jungle and they are neighbours, but in fact there are no other races more distant from each other then asura and sylvari, in cultural terms.

The problem is that LW2 is an important narrative gap between F2P content and the first expansion, and new players tend to think that after F2P content comes directly HoT, so they buy HoT and don't understand a **** of what is happening in the story. They play the expansion wondering what is going on and suddenly discover that there is this mysterious expansion that is not called expansion that connect everything (I mean, come on, it's called "Living World Season 2", the first time I read it, in my ignorance, I thought it was some sort of premium pass for something or what). When I experienced this thing was even worst 'cause LW1 didn't exist anymore (or yet), and the narrative gap was terrifying, even with Ela's summary. For LW3 is a lesser problem because players generally already understand how it function at that point, but LW2 hole is kind of hard to swallow when you start HoT for the first time, and it is a reason to blame the developers. A nice compromise could be that LW2 comes free if you buy HoT, or at least sell it together with HoT/PoF expansion adding 5 bucks to the price if they really doesn't want to lose money on it.

Mmm... Not really a big fan of this idea on my vigil militaristic mesmer, probably a good thing for mesmers in general tho, I'll give it a shot anyway (literally I guess). Ok, interesting interesting Very very interesting, I'll be there for sure! This is... kinda disappointing. I will surely buy the SoTO expansion in the future, but I think this kind of update deserves to be for F2P users too, really sad. Thank you both for the answers, fast and exhaustive, you deserve another hug 🤗

I paused the game in the last few months, but I heard about an update that is supposed to give each f2p-spec a new weapon. Since I like the idea of a rifle on my mesmer, and I'd surely want to come back to the game to try that, I'd like to know if there are any rumors regarding the release date of this particular update. Thanks for the answers dears 🤗 P.s. Sorry for any mistake, my English is not perfect

Let's imagine which actor/actress would fit best for every character: I start with Zojja and I go with Natalie Dormer