[SotO Is so good and People need to stop complaining]

I give SOTO an 8 out of 10.

Criticisms:

- relics need a rework, and runes should not have been egregiously nerfed as hard as they have been with the removal of set bonuses.

- a certain cliche line got tiring after the second time, because Marvel-esque writing I guess, and the rift rehash as filler to stretch out the story was also a headache but I persevered.

Otherwise: I agree.

I've been enjoying the expansion so far, and despite the overwhelming negativity of the forums, I'm not going to let people's nay saying stop me, and neither should you (the reader -- and OP). I like the changes to the dailies and the fact there's an in-game earnable mount skin (for once) and the characters are actually decently written compared to the mess of the last 2 patches (and I tip my hat off to people who enjoyed What Lies Within/Beneath, more power to you), the zones are aesthetically pleasing to look at (if not mildly tedious to traverse) and I've particularly enjoyed the atmosphere the music provides from the hard work the composers put in to bring the world to life. Oh and the artists. Y'all have my kitten respect for those load screens and asset designs; I know complexity when I see it.

It was certainly a fresh air to come back to something familiar feeling - being back on Tyria, that is rather than some far off distant lands across the seas.

 

[Return the missing runes to us as relics]

I feel relics have been a case of "dead on arrival.". I've seen maybe 2 or 3 that piqued my interest, and had some use to some builds, but the overwhelming majority of what we've been given are hilariously underwhelming and leave us scant of choice for theorycrafting options.

I've felt pretty bare without my 6 piece bonus missing from the runes, and I understand they wanted to tone down the power runes had but to take away the set bonuses entirely ain't it, chief.

It's either a really big oversight, or they've been watching Diablo 4's development and wanted a slice of that pie, too, given this doesn't seem too dissimilar to Malignant Hearts and the clusterf*** that's been so far.

[I want my 2 Gold]

I'm convinced people whinging about daily logins changing don't want to understand how the new system works. I get change is hard to accept, but the fact people are quitting the game over it is comical.

[Are you guys ever happy about anything?]

There's two groups of people in gaming: they're the twitter hate mob, and they can never be satisfied and wanna hate for the sake of hating because that's just how they roll - whatever, roll your eyes at those people.

 

Then there's the passionate folk who dish out probably warranted (if not slightly exaggerated) criticism but never without any malicious intent in their heart. They just want a good game. I myself have been this person aplenty: I've complained and moaned about GW2 for years and the problems that it has but I get over it the second I see something new this game has to offer.

It's a constant repeating cycle of "we hate it but we also love it". 
That's my long version of "no, probably not." 

[Literally the only reason I play GW2 is that there is no battlepass...looks like those days are over]

As I'm sure people have beat me to it, but I'm going to parrot it.

 

This isn't a seasonal battle pass as we know it; it's season pass esque WITHOUT paying money for it. It's literally the best version of one.

Imagine not paying money for battle passes. I couldn't fathom it either, LOL.

 

[GEMSTORE REQUESTS: New Items; Items offered again - [Merged]]

Going to bump this in hope of the summer themes with this reset for Festival comes with the triple Tattoo sets alongside the Zephyrite themed gear not showing up in That Shaman's gemstore schedule datamine. >_>

[About the "try and see" beta test.]

Yeah I can agree here because there's no sense in setting us with one armor set and expecting us to come up with build crafting when we're hard locked to a specific set of stats for a class. It kinda defeats the purpose of experimentation.

 

Edit: excuse me I forgot about the boxes of customisable gear but it's still very limited for how much stat bloat we have rn.

[Weapon mastery is trash for war]

I mean I've been having fun with dagger berserker but that's just me. I like their primal burst skill on that, and the fact dagger now gives me more CC options as well for a one hander considering the other options are fairly weak afaik. I haven't tried the other two specs but there's build potential even in torch or pistol spellbreaker.

Do i wish we got unique skills per elite spec or baseline? sure but I also went in with low expectations with this not being the case as well. Who knows, maybe they'll add more in later.

 

[Weaponmaster training is a BAD idea]

Quote

Im going to agree here, this is just taking the easy way out. Instead of investing in new classes races or even elites, just give everyone weapons they never had before. Its like the whole alac /quick scenario let everyone in the game do boons! Lets strip away class identity why not...

So classes are defined by their weapons and not the abilities/effects that make them unique? Ok.

I don't remember seeing a mesmer being able to raise the dead, or have nature abilities, or slinging around elemental bolts but sure this is a valid take right?

[Weaponmaster training is a BAD idea]

People really need to take more than five seconds playing around with the weapon combinations and learn to try new builds that isn't just the meta. This is also a beta we have access to, things are not going to be perfect and feedback is requested for testing with these kinds of things to improve the system instead of your armchair developer opinion of "NEW FEATURE BAD DON'T DO IT" while failing to understand why locking existing weapons behind their respective specs is a nuisance. I've been wanting weapon diversity for some time now and the gate keeping has been annoying the crap out of me as a result so I welcome this change, especially as a warrior.

[I don't want to be rude, but the writing...]

3 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i guess you're most likely referring to the trend of featuring progressive characters in media. if you missed the memo, arenanet is a progressive company and many of their employees are lgbtq+, so asking them not to write about themselves because you see them as a trend is a bit unrealistic.

This topic is a minor thing to me despite noticing its presence in GW2 when its around me everywhere else in TV shows, Movies and other games. It's grown exponentially over the past five years as a topic everyone talks about often: it's hard not to notice it.

I know Anet is a progressive company, I've known that for years, but so is Bungie (of who's games I also play) and there are respectable ways to handle that kind of thing in their game narration.

Also "not asking them to write about themselves because I see them as a trend as unrealistic"? You're looking into what I said too much.

3 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

its also very strange to say it destroys art when the art represents the artists.

You clearly haven't seen the likes of the Cleopatra documentary and the general backlash received by the MCU and Disney with their films within recent years because of the angle they've been trying to push, let alone the backlash of these past couple of LW episodes (even though the mental health thing is not the core reason why people are upset): bad productions get bad reception. It's not science.

[I don't want to be rude, but the writing...]

12 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

And most companies tend to avoid "bold" because more often then not "bold" doesn't make any sense

Objective opinion considering I've seen the opposite of this statement before but, I digress. 

 

41 minutes ago, Darkness.3942 said:

I'm as much of an armchair developer as everyone else here.

 

[I don't want to be rude, but the writing...]

9 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Outside of the Charr none of the other major races exist in any known quantities otuside of central Tyria which has already been heavily explored. Humans were the only race to be anywhere near as widespread. Other races are still too much in a tribal state to support large scale civilization.

I would highly beg to differ with how much left of the map there is to explore on Tyria alone. Shiverpeaks still has a lot of potential, the Blood Legion Homelands and even northern Maguuma. I'll even take the Woodland Cascades.

I get where you're coming from but it could be an opportunity for them to do something for those regions where other races we know in the game have expanded beyond where we have seen them localised right now. 

For instance: I've always wondered what a Icey Yggdrassil themed Pale Tree would be like. The Sylvari there could be  inspired by the way of the Norn to survive against Jormag in their time up there. Different? Sure. But that's my point. I'm tired of mediocre that the Humans tend to feel like as a whole and there's so many interesting things they could do, but Anet seem to just be scared of doing anything "bold", really.

[I don't want to be rude, but the writing...]

I'm as much of an armchair developer as everyone else here but honestly I was fine with the story when it was more Tyrian central. I don't mind going to other regions but there are so many threads left open in existing GW2 stories that could have been resolved before going to so much as Elona. We also have so many interesting, unique races to explore and go in-depth with their lore but for some reason Anet are *fixated* on Humans being the "safe" option for storytelling with every expansion, and with EOD personally, I just got bored of it; the futuristic asian cyberpunk theme has been done to death that it wasn't cool for me to see Neon Cantha.

I felt for the most part, the story was fine until Icebrood Saga happened - personally for me IBS was doing just fine until Champions happened, and you really felt the skeleton crew effect by the time Dragonstorm came around (I'll never forgive what they did to Owl. That was the dirtiest "gotcha" writing I've ever seen.) EoD was... ok, but I noticed some "social" interactions starting to creep its way into the content and it got worse with Gyala Delve, moreso with this recent patch. I won't go on a massive tangent about that because it's the sure-fire way to light a fire under my backside and I don't feel like dealing with drama of people, but if MCU and Disney are anything to go by, and the backlash of this latest patch, it needs to stop being a trend that bleeds into our media because it tarnishes art and good story-telling.

People loved the Sylvari with the introduction of GW2. Give us the resolution of the NMC as an example-- or even Malyck. The supposed second pale tree they hinted towards with the vanilla Sylvari story as well. How about the Asura now that Primordus has been defeated? An expansion where we go back underground to help them reclaim their lost civilisations would be really neat. Let the Skritt go back too. Poor sods, been on the surface and hunted for too long now. Skritt deserve some love, damnit!

 

[The "What Lies Within" Story was ...]

1 hour ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

What are everyone's thoughts on how much content the mini-expansion might have, and at what price point, compared to previous expansions?  Will we get the same value as we had with the previous two expansions or less?

Honestly I'm skeptical.

Idr what the pricings of the expansions exactly are in past, but I know for AUD its $70 to $100 depending on what edition you purchase and I'm concerned it's going to go up to about $100 to $150 if they're going to be bundling in episodic content akin to LW as well as doing it in an expansion like format. Essentially merging the two.

NCsoft has been known to be rather... fleecy with their prices with products in past and the last thing I want to see GW2 do is go down the route of "more for less." Like ordering an overpriced meal at a restaraunt but they give you the meal in pieces over the course of an hour or something because the chefs couldn't keep up with the list of things to make.

 

.... that sounded better in my head but heck it I'll throw it out there anyway. You get my point (hopefully).

[What lies within thoughts, review, about the future [Spoiler]]

I feel the rants about previous expansions and seasons is a little off topic despite the relevance to current content but aside from that this review is fair. 

I'll mirror Randulf's comment though and ask for a TL;DR for those folk who won't sit through a novel. 

[The "What Lies Within" Story was ...]

14 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

I think part of the issue is that they've moved to a return of investment model with minimal risk (and relying on nostalgia is an old trick to get people to come back to something even if it is lackluster). If so, then all we can expect are shallow stories that make a mockery of actual social experiences like war trauma, loss, forgiveness, friendship, love, heroism, etc.

(Activision) Blizzard went through this phase with Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. It lost them players and more money by doing minimal viable products. Anet are kind of doing the same obviously with NCSoft choking them of what they can do financially and it's going to cost them; I'm not naive to blame solely Anet: I think the root problem really lies with NCSoft as their publisher. Until they get back on their feet with their assets, I think we are going to see what we had today as a constant going forwards. For me it's really disheartening and serves as a curtain call.

[The "What Lies Within" Story was ...]

12 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

A good story is a form of art, and that requires time and investment that ultimately might not pay off (art requires risk).

That's the issue on its own that I think even WoodenPotatoes called out recently: Anet are too afraid of taking risks to give us anything compelling. Or rather, they have the lacklustre ability to pull off something compelling when they do. Icebrood Saga and Heart of Thorns are a good example of this I'm afraid with how much got pulled from development and we were left with what we had as a final product.

The story for the past... 5 years or so has been riding on GW1 nostalgia. Every single place we've gone to since PoF has been a callback to Nightfall, Prophecies and Factions, but I feel now they've closed *some* of the threads in GW2 left hanging open from GW1, they don't know where to go from here.

I could be wrong, but that's just been my general impression for awhile now, but in a lot of ways they've done the story dirty and seasons have left them little room to breathe for expanding their horizons and as a result we're getting a "minimum viable product" to parrot WP's sentiment on the last patch.

[The date options..]

I think the options bothered me less than the blatant "partner" part.

Idk maybe it's just the cynic in me and I'm looking into this too much, but I'm concerned picking one of these isn't just a temporary thing and they're going to do the weird route of picking NPCs for you to ship with.

[The "What Lies Within" Story was ...]

I get they didn't want to just have a singular episode be the start and finish to the new direction of what narrative they wished to tell, but with how hollow this was with such an absurdly long wait really made me ask myself "Why the hell did we just wait three months for this?" It was hilariously short and the ten week wait could have been summarised in two weeks with each log being done back to back daily and after you hear all of Gorrik's logs, you jump into the conclusion the following reset to end this chapter.

I came out of it feeling underwhelmed by the pacing of the release more than anything- doing this alongside with a friend of mine, we stopped and had to be cynical of the narrative choices- which is a bad thing, by the way; I like being optimistic and generally oblivious to things like this but jfc I was sitting there with the repetitive question (mentally and vocally) of "Why".
Like: why the hell do we care about Cinder (who from what I read had some bizarre interactions with Chul-moo of all things) when she was a bargaining chip and also our enemy caught in a megalomaniac's war and died as fast as she was introduced, Blish (I get some people got behind him and cared about him as a character but I felt nothing personally while my commander was forced to feel remorse for someone who hadn't been on the team for long) who was also torn from us as fast as he was introduced: and Vlast - I get Vlast is a big figure in Aurene's life but *once again* he was gone as fast as when we saw him to really care let alone harbor any guilt- it's a reoccurring trend with characters in this game and I tire of it.
Then we have Aurene who was the one we had the longer connection with that made some semblance of sense to our despair-- but why not have it hit harder when we lost her back in Thunderhead when we had to wait three + months to learn if she was coming back or not? That hurt a lot of people - myself including- and having the character reflect upon her and Kralk might've made more sense than her birth place if you wanted to hit the "you don't know what you have until you lose it" trope.
These choices felt really out of touch for me, and more so to have Trahaerne, Almorra, the mentors and Eir be someone who comes to support you emotionally right at the end for a few seconds to bolster your courage in defeating this unpredictable foe who we're struggling to contain/defeat rather than be at the core of our emotional trauma. It feels like the writing team has forgotten the game's lore and don't know what's important to the commander truly as a character and that just feels really bad.

That's probably my other problem: I've been thinking hard about the commander's RNR from all the trauma they've endured for 10+ years and this felt like such a weird way to address their emotional distress by them becoming bait for a 'friend's' plan to overcome a new enemy who is empowered by emotions: if Gorrik and the team had any sense they would have just said "take some time off, come back when you're ready" rather than "we're gonna exploit you lmao and here's our recorded process of how, hf" as the bulk of building the story for the new expansion.
This could have been done in a 2 episode, random fluff "just enjoy yourself and reflect on your journey" conclusion at the end of the expansion before jumping straight into the thick of danger again and having characters be emotionally unstable in an environment they're clearly not suited to be in. The fluff they did have was actually nice but the fact they ironically addressed the "full circle" of going back to the teahouse after a quick "one and done" really feels jarring tbh.

(PS: what the hell happened to Jory and Kasmeer's wedding?)

Being an avid lover of this game for 9+ years now I really just keep coping that they'll give us a good story that doesn't feel rushed and baked with some social issue undertone of trying to appeal to the modern generation through their game: it does more harm than good. Unfortunately today it has really soured my opinion on the story for this game and I'm feeling underwhelmed with every content release with EOD so far to the point it's just disappointing and I don't want to come back. I hate being a doomer: I want to be excited, I want to be passionate about this game again and continue playing, and look forwards to the new content Anet have to give us but if this is what we're expected to get both narratively and gameplay wise in the future then I'm probably done for now.
 

[Crash loading character [Merged]]

Was having the crash with discord as well, and turned down shadows from Ultra to high. It works.

 

Lmao, what a hell of a bug.

[Collection of potentially bugged achievement in New Kaineng City]

Graffiti outside Ministry Ward is still bugged on Cleanup Duty. 

Followed the wiki guide, went to all locations, and I appear to have all of them but it's showing 14/15 for the achi completion for me. I guess one I interacted with in the past didn't count and I didn't realise it until now.

[I have to know if it's just me]

On occasion I randomly hear like, a loud echoy, ghostly noise that sounds like it's coming from space in game and I've been hearing it for months now since towards the end of IBS and I'm still trying to figure out what it is.

 

I at first thought it was one of my mount skins such as the starry skins or the primeval ones but I've been on characters who don't have these skins equipped and heard this noise commonly in Gendarren, but it'll sometimes pop up in random zones in Tyria out of nowhere as well.

 

Is this tied to anything or is it just a strange bug that seems to be lingering?

["defeat the fire shaman and his minions" bug]

Progress stalls at fire elemental phase. Even after killing the embers when the bar is empty, event won't progress and more embers spawn in. Would be nice if the event had a timer so it resets after an X amount of time rather than relying on a server reset or map swap. Makes getting achievements tied to this event done, impossible.

 

Can't get a new map in Iron Marches for it either because buggy instances are infinity kept open due to the swarm of bots down by Bloodfin Lake populating the map. Been trying to find a new map for 4 hours.

[Meta + Strike Missions = Turtle. No thank you.]

9 minutes ago, battledrone.8315 said:

wow doesnt, at least not on normal difficulty.

destiny isnt a true mmo, doesnt count

that leaves 3 out of how many? yea....

 

Yes it does, even on LFR. I've played it for many years. There's been plenty of instances where I've had to wait for fights to resolve before being able to get back to progression.

 

Destiny is an MMO FPS, its a multiplayer game, yes it counts.

 

"3 out of how many" I'm sorry, I am not someone like Josh Strife Hayes that has played every MMO under the sun to give you a definitive list to validate your argument. I am limited to the knowledge that I have but I can guarantee you just about every MMO forces you to wait for fights to resolve before you can revive, and get back into more attempts for prog.

 

PS: btw re-read my comment. I listed more than just a meager "3'.