[The amount of filler content in story is out of hand]

The story this expansion feels extremely clunky with their new rollout structure. I can deal with the fill the bar stuff, but having 30 minutes (maybe) of story content several months apart just takes me out of what is otherwise so far a very nice story. 

It almost feels like it would be more fun to play waiting for the expansion to be over and then play through the story at that time so you can just do it all at once instead of this weirdly dished out piecemeal. 

[Some advice for Scrapper - utility skills]

For what it's worth, if it helps make it easier to digest using grenade kit -- the grenade 2 Shrapnel Grenade has the same CD as your hammer 2, so you can hammer 2 and immediately swap to grenade kit to toss out your 2 and swap back. Poison Grenade is a nice damage bonus, but you can try out the Hammer 2+grenade 2 usage for a bit and eyeball when Poison Grenade is available along the way and weave that in as you feel comfortable.

Also, maybe unpopular opinion, but if you are playing a dps support, your job in my mind is to keep your boons up and support the dps/healer as much as possible, so sacrificing some damage for extra breakbar for example would be totally acceptable in my eyes. 

[Do you like to have expansions and updates with a fixed and predictable deadline and content?]

I like the idea of fixed schedule and content, but unfortunately I've been really let down on the content side of things. Convergences could have just been a meta event for all that it is. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy meta events and stuff, but I need more instanced content and only 2 strike mission per expansion isn't cutting it for me right now.

So that being said, if that means a fixed schedule has to be sacrificed for the sake of them making more to do I'm leaning towards that direction. I've already stopped playing for now before I forget the things I love about the game. I know they have limited resources, but I don't know man..this isn't enough in my opinion. 

Just my two cents since an opinion was asked. Not trying to start a whole thing lol 

[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Engineer]

19 minutes ago, Benevolent.4083 said:

6. None of these skills are combo fields/finishers, meaning all the benefits from combo have to come from utility skills. Please fix that.

2 is a blast finisher on detonate and all the other skills leave combo fields when detonated. The initial skill landing isn't anything though. 

[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Engineer]

13 minutes ago, Decinomicon.4619 said:

So that begs the question, who was this weapon for? Because it certainly wasn't engineer. What is the point of this weapon? All the other profession weapons have a purpose, I am not seeing one for shortbow.

It also shines a light on the new expansion content rollout and the big flaws with it. Putting all this development time into new weapons vs new specs is going to be incredibly hit and miss, because at the end of the day there are just going to be "the best weapons for your spec" and all the other ones will either be situational or never used by anyone taking the game seriously to any extent. That compared to new specs which gives you a new way to play your class is never going to deliver.

[Expanded Weapon Proficiencies Beta Feedback: Engineer]

I mainly do instanced pve so this is just relating to pve feedback. I haven't done thorough testing inside instanced content yet but here are just my preliminary notes. 

General thoughts

* The damage would need to be brought up significantly for this to be a viable dps support weapon, it's just too weak. As it stands this appears it would just be a healer weapon. 

* Considering the damage is so low, and assuming it is meant as a pure healer weapon, I'd add an extra event of damage upon placing the arrow. 4 abilities that require ground targeting, waiting for the arrow to land, and then a follow up detonation  doesn't feel good on opener. Once your get into your rotation it speeds up significantly with the auto detonations, but it doesn't feel good at the start at least. The current total values of all 4 shortbow upfront damage events looks weaker than mace 2 on its own, let alone the auto attack chain and mace 3, plus the cc value and protection uptime of shield.

* And again, 4 ground targeted abilities just doesn't feel fun. Obviously just a personal opinion, but just putting it out there. It's one of the reasons I personally pushed back against the proposed scrapper changes that would make all gyros ranged ground target abilities. Assuming you are healing and running Elixir Gun and Mortar Kit, that's a lot of ground targeting. It's not hard, just not fun. 

Heal Alac Mechanist

* Mech Fighter doesn't seem to proc when using shortbow 3

* Usually running Inventions for the healing, but the first row of skills don't have any synergy. With the loss of shield skills while using shortbow, you don't have any way to apply protection via Over Shield, so your protection uptime appears to be 50% at best (may be missing something here, I haven't looked at some of the potential relic synergies to cover this loss).

Heal Quickness Scrapper

* Same issue with Over Shield from above. You can get 100% protection uptime if you take Expert Examination since you are also likely taking Reconstruction Enclosure in the Inventions line, but that still leaves a dead talent row in Inventions first row. 

* Applying quickness and might is fine. You can now give full Fury uptime as well if you trade out Monk relic for Relic of the Midnight King, but that is unfortunately sacrificing a good bunch of healing that you would otherwise get from Monk or Relic of Karakosa.  

 

[Why add rift events outside of the expansion area?]

6 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

P.S. Still have to see a Rune of Holding drop, but -- according to people here and the Wiki -- it's really a thing. 😁

For what it's worth, I can confirm they drop, I got one randomly. Not sure what the chance/frequency is since I stopped doing the Convergences but it happened early on. 

[Let's be honest: SOTO flops because of the drops.]

10 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Yup I did read their post. Essences are useless for people who don't need Leg armor? Good thing not alot of people have leg armor then. People complain about the grind to get OW leg armor? They are awfully ignorant then. They didn't think OW Leg armor would be a grind? I guess they aren't paying too much attention to how ALL the other endgame items are implemented in the game then. 

But here's the funny thing to me. The OP is basically saying:

Content is good but loot is bad for people that essentially already have full BIS endgame kit. 

Think about what that ACTUALLY means instead of concluding there is a problem with that. 

Well I wouldn't call people ignorant just for stating their opinion, regardless if I agree or disagree with it, but everything you are saying is dismissing the fact that the expansion didn't expand anything for many players. It didn't add anything for a lot of players, even if it did add a system for other players who felt one way or another they were locked out of apart of the game before, but even assuming that wasn't the case -- once those players get their legendary armor from open world they will be in the exact same position; full bis with nothing new to do.

One of the main benefits of GW2 is not having to worry about gear progression such as in other MMOs, but if they don't continue to add content alongside systems like this then ultimately the game reaches an end point for players with expansions like these adding nothing. 

[Any one else noticed the rise in lazy participation through the use of skyscale fireball?]

17 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

I dont think this is what Anet inteded when they did this newest bonus event week, since its not a good introduction t the game.

One would have thought that they learned from all the people lamenting the kill 4 events on x map dailies we had before.

They should have seen this coming since it's been an issue for a long time. Not sure what the thought process was here but here we are.

I was trying to help by calling out and linking events as often as possible. I'd tag and then just hang back and pulse some boons on the lower level peeps hoping they could get 1 action off while everyone was full burning mobs immediately lol

For a new player it must be initially exciting to see so many people in the low level open world areas and then quickly become frustrating when they run into the insane power creep from max level players and mounts.

[Poll- Do you think a GW2 port to consoles will be good for the game?]

2 minutes ago, Lucius.2140 said:

Adding more people to buy new expansions could mean a bigger budget to create better and more content. If it could be done, enough received and they get the budget for the ports, could be very good to the game.

Well you would be adding more people while subtracting at the same time. That's what I meant when I said it would be good for the business but not for the health. Getting new players in to buy the expansions, the shiny gemstore items, the living worlds etc would be a good bump financially, but they'd be sacrificing many existing players who have already spent that money and are just waiting for more content. Ideally they'd do both, but it seems obvious from their recent statements they only have enough resources for 1 and that's clearly the new player experience, not player retention. 

[Let's be honest: SOTO flops because of the drops.]

3 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Imagine that ... Anet creates something most of the player base wants and someone has the audacity to call it a flop. Cope harder. 

Did you actually read their post? They said they like Soto and their only complaint was about the loot.

Essences are useless for people who aren't making open world legendary armor, and even many of the people who seemingly wanted it are complaining about the grind involved. Some people enjoy rifts, but even the few people in my guild who are bothering to work on it have nothing but complaints about how it was implemented. 

Just because you personally may be enjoying yourself doesn't mean many people haven't already checked out of this expansion. It doesn't offer anything aside from a brief bit of story to people who have already earned their legendary armor from other sources in game. 

[Poll- Do you think a GW2 port to consoles will be good for the game?]

1 hour ago, Lucius.2140 said:

Yeah it is subjective and not the best place to ask, but kinda picked my curiosity.

It depends on what you mean by "good for the game." It would be good for the business to get more people in to do the existing content, but the profitability vs resource cost wouldn't be something anyone can guess.

The overall health of the game wouldn't change. They would need to create more content for any growth as far as that's concerned. Unfortunately Soto seems to be a hard lean-in to focusing on simplistic watered down open world content vs doing anything that every other game is doing that drives interest. 

[Rifts boring]

On 11/19/2023 at 10:09 AM, Sobx.1758 said:

Read OP's whole post. From start to finish. He doesn't like rifts and wants more fractals and raids. That's literally it.

Well they are allowed to have their opinion of what they want from the game. Lots of us like instanced raid/fractal/dungeon content. Rifts are boring if you like that stuff, and I'm sure vice versa. 

I'm in the same camp and have been very disappointed with Soto largely as a whole so far. Focusing on open world legendary armor for an entire expansion is obviously going to be dull for people who already have it. I was doing my weekly rifts for a while but motivations aren't worth crafting to sell anymore so unless you want to collect the skyscale weapon skins I don't really feel like I have a need to do them at all. Since they are a massive core expansion feature and we only got 2 strikes some of us are feeling a bit left out. 

 

[GW2 keeps crashing after cutscenes in meta events]

On 11/6/2023 at 6:26 PM, NIGHTHUNTER.5139 said:

In addition to crashes during cutscenes, my game occasionally crashes when I open the wiki from within the game with "/wiki [...]". Not every time, but often enough to be annoying... I almost never had crashes lately until the halloween update. I hope this will be fixed as soon as the reason for it is found (or it is solved when halloween event is over 😃 ) .

This has been happening to me too recently.

Myself and others in my guild have also been getting periodic crashes after cutscenes play, mostly in raid (last night it was after Q2 when the cutscene plays), Amnytas at the end, Dragonstorm after the first cutscene, etc. 

[Let's be honest: SOTO flops because of the drops.]

5 hours ago, ericpeggy.8206 said:

Actually, just need an infusion drop to make maps popular.

But I know the feeling.

If you don't need legendary armors, SotO is kinda dull.

Yeah SotO was very obviously aimed at trying to bring in new players (which is smart businesswise), but it is SO weighted towards that and open world legendary armor that comes at the cost of losing many of the existing player base who want more of the type of content that they no longer seem to have the resources to create anymore.

Unfortunately that seems like a cut they are willing to make. 

[Essences are another Economy failure.]

1 hour ago, Farohna.6247 said:

Turn them into motivations and sell them 

Unfortunately the profit vs cost of crafting the motivations is now pretty low. Looking at the crafting cost of the rare motivations on efficiency for example: adding in the cost of the research notes for each tier of motivation needed to make 1 (which efficiency doesn't appear to factor in, we'll say each research note is approximately 1 silver), it looks like the cost to craft is currently around 3.9 gold total for 1 Rare Motivation. The buy orders are currently about 3.5g and the listed ones are at 4.17, so filling the buy orders is a loss and selling by listing (factoring in the list and exchange fee) brings it down to about the same. The Uncommon motivations cost vs profit look to be pretty similar. 

So unfortunately unless you're working on the legendary armor the currency doesn't currently seem to have much value.

[SOTO drops and what to do with them?]

22 hours ago, Mysty Meadows.1425 said:

I have been asking and word in game is most of the drops are for crating legendary armor or weapons. If so, do the drops have any other purpose? All 8 of my characters are setup with Full Ascended gear, weapons, and trinkets. I am not interested in Legendary since based on my understanding unless I am a raider or PVP/ WvW player it holds little value for me (All I can think of is not needing trans stones but I buy those off the Wiz Vault).

So with all this said, I have 1616 unusual coins, 10.3k of static charges, etc.. and it seems like they have no use for me based on my not being interested in Legendary gear?

Side note: This is not a complaint, just a question 🙂

I also don't have any interest in the open world legendary armor as I already have the raid armor, so I have just been using the essences to craft motivations and sell those, and the map currencies to craft the weapons that can be exchanged for provisioner tokens and selling those. Outside of that unfortunately they don't hold any real value unless you plan to work towards the new open world legendary armor at the moment. 

Unfortunately they have hard pivoted to bringing in new players vs catering towards some of their existing players (I say some because I know a large amount of people actually have wanted the open world legendary armor option for a while, so it at least caters to them). Otherwise I think a lot of us are just crossing our fingers and holding our breath for the next expansion already and playing other games in the meantime.

[Poll - Would you pay more for a bigger expansion?]

If they give more strikes and reboot raids then yes I'd pay more. For what SotO has to offer though, the current price a year is fine -- though I already find myself bored of this expansion which hasn't happened for me with previous xpacs, so maybe it's not so fine? lol 

There just isn't any focus on creating content for my type of gamer anymore. 2 strikes isn't enough, and abandoning raids entirely may have seemed like a smart move for them to make on their end but it's nearly impossible to sell any friends on the game when the topic of raids and dungeons comes up. 

[Inner Nayos meta boss fight]

On 11/14/2023 at 4:50 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

In the end I think we are kinda bored with these meta events.

I prefer instanced content, but I enjoy metas in general. They are pretty uniquely implemented compared to other mmo games. There are a couple events in Dragonflight that reminded me of gw2 metas, but nowhere near on the same scale.

tl;dr remove/scaleback mounts from meta events and either re-focus or hire more devs to create combat-focused events.

Expanded thoughts: My issues lie with the recent meta events and Inner Nayos' rollout specifically. Vehicle combat has never been fun to me, and we've now had 6 metas in a row that incorporate -- or in some cases heavily rely on -- using mounts (Dragon's End saltspray gates, Gyala 1 where the turtles need to break down the gates and Gyala 2 which was probably my least enjoyed event experience in gw2 ever, Skywatch orb phase, Amnytas orbs and boss, and now beacons in Inner Nayos).

I think the goal was to highlight the mounts themselves as they have received a lot of acclaim for their mount system, but I don't think this was the play. The mounts were held in high regard because of how fresh they made the concept of mounts in general feel, but I don't think adding them into meta events, especially to fight final bosses, feels good at all. I don't want to ride around on a turtle collecting orbs only to fight the void boss for 5% of its health at the end. I don't want to do an entire series of events in Amnytas only to get to hit the boss for maybe a minute only for it to die to yoga (!?) and then using fireballs to shoot its eyes out. I want to play my class, and the recent meta events just take away from that experience, either in part of predominantly, and that's where I start to check out. 

Inner Nayos also feels really weird because they are, I'm assuming, rolling it out in phases. I know it's apart of their new xpac strategy, but strictly speaking to the meta it just felt like a very weak first major patch. If the meta had been released in full that might have felt more impactful, but really unless you are making open world legendary armor this expansion so far doesn't seem to be offering much to those of us who either already have legendary armor or just aren't interested. Having the metas also be weak on top of only adding 2 new strike missions just leads to the entire release feeling rather poor and lacking in quantity thus far. 

[[Suggestions]QoL (Quality of Life) Ideas [Merged]]

Not sure if this is the thread for this feedback, but it would be a massive QOL update -- the bots in the game seem to be a bit out of control. I don't personally mind someone farming open world mobs for dust or whatever, but it's especially bad in specific maps/events, most notably Dragon's End.

Trying to get a full squad into the map only to see a stack of bots at Soo-Won's platform literally every single run is just the norm these days. Even organized groups that force a new map have bots infiltrating them. Add on the players that jump off the platform after Soo-Won phases the first time and leaves the squad so they can afk somewhere till it's done and still get full rewards, and the entire event has just become a frustrating mess. 

An anet employee response to one of my tickets confirmed that this was indeed against the TOS, but even after sending numerous tickets with the information that they request (time of event, name of players, screenshots, etc), I still see the same bots in their various farming timezones. 

I now just get the scripted response of "We understand that their behavior can be frustrating and we appreciate your patience as these investigations take time." Out of curiosity I checked the first time I reported some of these bots and it was back on June 9th, yet they still seem to just be allowed to take up space on the map.

I've mostly just given up on even bothering reporting this anymore and have just accepted this is what life is like in gw2 as I am sure many others have, but it was made especially frustrating today as my internet briefly crashed and I had to queue back into the map, only to be removed from queue when the map inevitably closed. Today we counted 10 bots on the boss platform when we got up top (all mechs named Chill), so even though my DC wasn't the games fault just knowing all that time I spent doing the prep and escorts has now gone to waste -- meanwhile someone multiboxing several accounts and literally doing nothing but tagging the boss -- just makes me not want to bother logging back in for now.

[Constant Freezes/CTDs after 2023-11-08 patch]

I've also been experiencing a high number of game crashes since the patch. Once in convergences, and 3 times just now while in open world. 1 of those crashes happened when I dismounted, and 2 happened right as I started trying to mine/fish, and once just standing there looking at the map. 

[Kryptis motivation crafting cost]

I have to assume that this is just an expense that is to be expected with farming for open world legendary armor. Aside from instanced content, crafting is a system that people are pushed to interact with at some point eventually. Almost every step of the process looks more expensive than just getting your legendary armor through raids (idk about the cost associated with pvp and wvw as I don't engage with those parts of the game much), so the extra cost of crafting or buying motivations makes sense with that in mind. I've only been raiding since about June of this year and I already have two sets done and have made a lot of friends along the way.

If you want faster and cheaper legendary armor, engage with the group content raiding/wvw/pvp system. If not, here is your alternative that you can work on by yourself at your own pace.  It will cost more and take longer but if you really don't want to do group content then here it is. 

[Heart of thorns is like a dream]

To this day Tangled Depths remains one of my favorite maps. The sheer scope of the design is so impressive, and it accomplished its goals in being mazey and dangerous. I know a lot of players hate the map, but honestly for myself it's one of the most fun exploration maps in the game. I remember the first time I found the underwater part and eventually the area where you can now fish, I had already been playing on the map for so long and thought I had seen it all. But nope here is a whole other layer I didn't even know about. Very cool imo, I wouldn't want every zone to be like TD but I would enjoy at least 1 popping up every now and then. 

As much as I enjoyed PoF, that was one of the things that felt missing for me. Everything felt flat and simple, which I can only assume was done intentionally due to possibly the mounts being added but maybe more likely the feedback from HoT maps. 

[Gyala Delve is a dead map [Merged]]

On 10/21/2023 at 4:29 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

I think I've done the full thing only twice: Once on my Warrior, because it's my main, and once on my Renegade for experiencing it on modern profession design that is in line with how Arenanet designed the game in the recent years.

But neither experience was anywhere close to enjoyable. Even with Renegade being more efficient, it was still a boring slog.

I really think them moving the meta away from a once-a-day thing to an endlessly farmable meta is what killed it for a lot of players. I personally didn't enjoy it, but it was potentially good rewards once a day so I didn't mind running through it every couple of days. But then they made it farmable, which of course in turn meant they nerfed the rewards, and that's when it started to crumble.

Add on the fact that Part 2 of the meta is probably one of the worst meta experiences I've ever played through in the game, the meta itself went from being something that some people would do once a day and turned into something that many people actively avoid. It still amazes me that a meta like Dragon's End was followed up by Gyala Delves, but I think they were nervous about getting backlash like they did from DE.

And personally -- I have never liked vehicle/mount combat in metas. WoW learned this lesson years ago, though it seems with their new raid tier they are experimenting with it again in one of their boss fights. Make it a brief part of the event sure, but the tunnel/last boss being basically a turtle ride is just a joke. Amnytas has the same issue. If I'm playing my guardian or engie or whatever, I don't want to be riding on a mount and spamming a fireball, I want to play my class and push my buttons.

[Just delete the turtle mount & the Jade Bot from the game]

1 hour ago, Manpag.6421 said:

It does still fail, but that in itself doesn’t mean the turtle is necessarily “hard” to get, as the egg to start the collection can be bought with writs of Dragon’s End, and the part previously exclusive to the Kaineng Overlook strike mission can be bought in Gyala Delve. So now the hardest part is probably the Jade Maw. Starting it without doing Dragon’s End is likely to be slower unless you’ve already built up an excess of writs, but is entirely viable.

Oh yeah I wasn't responding to the op post, just this comment about "how does it fail still."