How did you experience the past expansions?

[Avenrise.3592]

So despite me playing from beta my extended break encompassed both HoT and PoF launches. I experienced these after the fact (just before IBS) so I have no experience with regards to what these times were like for the playerbase. 

• Did you wait a few days to enable bug fixes to be patched?
• I'm most interested in the lore and world of GW2 and will choose this over rewards every time. For those that think similarly... did you stop the story at intervals to go exploring? Before moving to the next map maybe? If so how long did you explore for before moving on?
• How did you avoid spoilers both inside and outside of the game? 
• With regards to the Guild Halls, did you jump straight in and grab ASAP? If so, did this cause any issues with spoilers?
• With regards to the Strikes are you going to experience them as they are presented to you or once the story has concluded?

I'm sure I'm going to think of some more but this will do for now!

[Flapjackson.1596]

I leapt right into both expansions on launch day. I didn’t worry so much about exploring or spoilers. I just worked my way through the story as fast I could. As I went, I had to pause at times for unlocking an elite spec or doing events to farm for masteries. I took in the scenery and sights as I went. Guild Halls didn’t really spoil anything. Anet doesn’t treat them like serious zones, they are unfortunately very ignored content. If you want to avoid spoilers outside the game, stay off social media and YouTube of course. I plan on doing the story strikes as I hit them in the story and the Strike CMs as they release after launch.

[Danikat.8537]

I didn't wait for bugs to be patched, but I was a bit late starting HoT because it launched at the same time as Halloween and I prioritised the tempoary content over stuff that would be around forever. There were bugs at launch of course but as far as I remember both expansions were playable from the start.

I would frequently take breaks from the story to explore the map, and when I did I took as long as I needed to. It's not really something I think about, I use the story to give me a general direction and as I'm making my way there I'll check out anything which seems interesting. Then when I feel like it I'll finish off exploring the map, which might be before or after I've finished the story.

I made absolutely no attempt to avoid spoilers because they don't bother me.

I didn't actually get to claim a guild hall until sometime after HoT came out and only recently claimed the PoF one. My guilds got them very early on but it only takes about 5 people and I wasn't online when they did it.

I have no plans for how I'm going to do strikes (as you might have noticed by now I'm not the type to set up a schedule for playing a game). If the story directs me to them I'll do them the next time it's convenient for me, if not I'll do them when I want something from them or someone in my guilds needs an extra person.

[Vidit.7108]

I jumped in right away the two expacs existed in different worlds though.

HoT when it launched had some notable bugs, but mostly it had some bad design choices that made people mad.
Gw2 had a lot more casual players back then than now, story progression was blocked by the mastery system (you needed poison breathing) which meant hours of doing events for exp and struggling to find mastery points in places like tangled depths. Imagine doing that map without mounts. The story, which the player base considered a lot more important than it does now, was underwhelming. Long established Sylvari/maguuma story bits were never touched on. Earning your elite specs was also not very easy, some HPs required masteries so some people didn't have their grandmasters for weeks. Those first couple patches were pretty critical. I think I had just gotten out of auric basin when they patched out a mastery needed for story.

PoF had none of those problems and getting the mounts to progress wasn't as big an obstacle since you only need like 2 or 3.

Exploring past where you were in the story was more difficult in HoT than PoF, I went all the way to Vabbi on day 1 in PoF, I don't recall being spoiled by anything there though. One of the entrances to Dragon's stand might have had a poison cloud at launch I don't remember, either way though it was hard to get to because a lot of those enemies (in Hot) hit hard and could take more damage than they do now. People didn't know a lot at HoT launch because progression was slow and harder to get around those maps alone. By PoF a chunk of the player base didn't do story so LA map chat spoiling stuff wasn't an issue for me at least. The community has changed a lot over the years.

We had to wait awhile in HoT to claim our Guild Hall because that system was new and required getting together materials, we didn't move after PoF but from what I understand it wouldn't have been that hard to do on launch.

We don't really know anything about how strikes will work but I'm assuming right now you have to do the story to unlock.

[Redfeather.6401]

I left a month after southsun cove released and didn't come back until a month or two after heart of thorns released. I just went in blind and got really frustrated at the difficulty spike, but later learned to appreciate it. Not being able to level to handle tough stuff threw me off.

 

For path of fire I played it at release and ran around playing with all the toys and wanting to get it all asap which I think ruined it for me as I burnt out faster than heart of thorns for sure.

[notebene.3190]

13 hours ago, Thereon.3495 said:

• 1. Did you wait a few days to enable bug fixes to be patched?
• 2. I'm most interested in the lore and world of GW2 and will choose this over rewards every time. For those that think similarly... did you stop the story at intervals to go exploring? Before moving to the next map maybe? If so how long did you explore for before moving on?
• 4. How did you avoid spoilers both inside and outside of the game? 
• 5. With regards to the Guild Halls, did you jump straight in and grab ASAP? If so, did this cause any issues with spoilers?
• 6. With regards to the Strikes are you going to experience them as they are presented to you or once the story has concluded?

 

1. I start within a day or two.

2. I stop pushing the story and will finish exploring an area when the story sends me to a new zone.

3. If I see people spoiling, I'll click on another tab I have that doesn't have map, say, etc chat (only npcs and system). Outside of the game, I'll stay away from YTers I follow, be careful what I look for in the forum, etc, until I'm done with the story.

4. N/A

5. N/A

[Ashantara.8731]

14 hours ago, Thereon.3495 said:

1. Did you wait a few days to enable bug fixes to be patched?
2. I'm most interested in the lore and world of GW2 and will choose this over rewards every time. For those that think similarly... did you stop the story at intervals to go exploring? Before moving to the next map maybe? If so how long did you explore for before moving on?
3. How did you avoid spoilers both inside and outside of the game? 
4. With regards to the Guild Halls, did you jump straight in and grab ASAP? If so, did this cause any issues with spoilers?
5. With regards to the Strikes are you going to experience them as they are presented to you or once the story has concluded?

1. Nope, dived right into it.
2. Yes, I always complete a whole map, including all hearts (if present) before I proceed to the next one.
3. By deactivating map, say and guild chat.
4. No, I have kept the one I own (from HoT). And no, guild halls do not include any story spoilers. They might spoil a bit of location design, but no story content.
5. If they are not part of the story, I will first finish the story and full map exploration before jumping into the new Strike Missions for EoD.

[Nemo.5609]

1. I don't remember any big bugs on either HoT or PoF launch, so there is no reason to wait.

2. At launch I focus on the story and will go back to finish the maps afterward.

3. Stay away from social media, don't pay attention to mapchat. If you move quickly enough there won't be much chance to get spoiled.

4. I'm mostly a solo player, so I don't much care about the Guildhalls. I will try to solo the new hall for my bank guild, to check the scaling for small guilds they were talking about on stream.

5. No, I will leave the strikes for last.

 

[TwinFrozr.6214]

HoT: gliding and guild halls.

PoF: mounts and Istan.

 

Also: death to PvE/WvW farms, daily/monthly achievement hunting, levelling and other things hugely appreciated by the playerbase. New maps feel like quantity content. Still prefer core world, maps, and specs.

 

All in all, GW2 was a better game pre-expansion and pre-unvariegating everything.

[Omega.6801]

Spoiler

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

So despite me playing from beta my extended break encompassed both HoT and PoF launches. I experienced these after the fact (just before IBS) so I have no experience with regards to what these times were like for the playerbase. 

• Did you wait a few days to enable bug fixes to be patched?
• I'm most interested in the lore and world of GW2 and will choose this over rewards every time. For those that think similarly... did you stop the story at intervals to go exploring? Before moving to the next map maybe? If so how long did you explore for before moving on?
• How did you avoid spoilers both inside and outside of the game? 
• With regards to the Guild Halls, did you jump straight in and grab ASAP? If so, did this cause any issues with spoilers?
• With regards to the Strikes are you going to experience them as they are presented to you or once the story has concluded?

I'm sure I'm going to think of some more but this will do for now!

1) I experienced both expansions on launch. The bugs, the excessive loading and crashes, it was all expected, so I didn't mind it and accepted them as part of the "launch-experience". With PoF I made a small event for my guild where we agreed to rush "as far south as possible". Having maps crash, whenever a legendary bouty was completed and the 30-50 min loading between tries didn't help but we made it to Vabbi that day and had fun.
2) I mostly look forward to new elites, the story and the maps, but I think, for launch I will do something similar to the event mentioned above. I can take a look at everything in detail later. I'll be doing exploration and story on 9 characters anyway, so there's plenty of time for that.
3) I don't care for spoilers and I think people are too sensitive when it comes tp spoilers. Most of the time a name, a piece of concept art, a line of dialogue, whatever is "spoilt" comes out of context and therefor can hardly spoil an entire story arc. If I told you, there's this guy called dumbledore in the book, before you start reading it, what is spoiled for you? If I tell you, there might an elder Dragon somewhere in the PoF story, how much about the story do you actually know? But I'm also not the one to ruin anyones experience so I mostly keep to myself what I've seen on the new maps for a few weeks when talking to f.e. guildmates who haven't been there or in mapchat.
Disabling mapchat for a week or so, if you can't get into it right away, might be a good idea if you want to avoid spoilers.
4) Guilds are abandoned content at this point. My guild got the PoF GH because the nodes have a chance to give obsidion shards instead of the materials needed to craft guild skins. Obsidian shards just seemed more useful. Iirc the mission to get the new GH didn't spoil much, the only thing that might be poblematic if you care about spoilers was its placement down in Vabbi. It gave people the option to enter the "last" map of PoF without even starting the story. Since we don't know these things about the new GH, it's hard to say how spoiler-heavy it will be or what materials will be harvested in it.
5) Depends. I think I will rush the story on my main, so I think I will be able to do strikes relatively early without being spoiled. Not so hyped for strikes, but we'll see.
 

[AquaBR.9250]

HoT got me literally 4-5 years of gameplay exploring maps and leveling masteries, and i still come back to those maps because they are still fun and i still have fun things to do there.

PoF i finished all masteries within 1 month since theY butchered the XP req to level masteries by 3/4 compared to HoT, i completed the maps once and only returned there to level elite specs and to make collections that forced me to play that content

[AquaBR.9250]

2 hours ago, TwinFrozr.6214 said:

HoT: gliding and guild halls.

PoF: mounts and Istan.

 

Also: death to PvE/WvW farms, daily/monthly achievement hunting, levelling and other things hugely appreciated by the playerbase. New maps feel like quantity content. Still prefer core world, maps, and specs.

 

All in all, GW2 was a better game pre-expansion and pre-unvariegating everything.

Theres is leveling with the masteries, but is so fast now, and the player base appear to like it that way by the posts in the forums... They don't like to do stuff, they want everything the easiest way possible, is like they don't have fun playing the game, what is literally what you have to do to level masteries, just play the game

[AquaBR.9250]

15 hours ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

I left a month after southsun cove released and didn't come back until a month or two after heart of thorns released. I just went in blind and got really frustrated at the difficulty spike, but later learned to appreciate it. Not being able to level to handle tough stuff threw me off.

 

For path of fire I played it at release and ran around playing with all the toys and wanting to get it all asap which I think ruined it for me as I burnt out faster than heart of thorns for sure.

Is not a spike if you played season 2.

The average cost of the fifth mastery of a line on HoT was like 12 mastery points and 5kk exp, in PoF is 6 mastery points and 1,5kk, that explains why you burned it so fast

Edited December 21, 2021 by AquaBR.9250

[Ariurotl.3718]

I waited for up to several weeks before wading in to let Anet patch up things and just generally avoid the massive crowds at plot-relevant points which really take me out of the story.

[Teratus.2859]

Story is important to me so I jumped in asap and played through it as much as I could as quickly as I could without ruining my enjoyment.

I do this mainly to avoid "those kinds of people" who rush through story content just to spoil it for other people.
No more than a few minutes after I finished some story instances were people putting spoilers in the local chat.
Eir's death, Lazarus is Balthazar, Aurine ate Joko.. always happens.
Disabling global chat helps but only goes so far lol

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

• Did you wait a few days to enable bug fixes to be patched?

The longer you wait, the more spoilers will be in the map-chat and LFG. Early access comes with the bonus of finding those bugs and get an idea how the process works. Depending on your level of interest, you can use that knowledge & experience in the future. In addition, you have a chance to actively participate and contribute to make the game better. That is my motivation to always play on patch day, even if it is just a few minutes.
 

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

• I'm most interested in the lore and world of GW2 and will choose this over rewards every time. For those that think similarly... did you stop the story at intervals to go exploring? Before moving to the next map maybe? If so how long did you explore for before moving on?

As an explorer-type player (bartel), I cannot resist the urge to turn every stone in the map XD. I stop with the story until I have the entire map revealed, or everything I can reveal at that moment. Great example was Glinth's Legacy in the Crystal Oasis, which I reached the normal way with the bunny on my first back-track-tour. When I get new masteries, I usually travel to previous maps and see if I can get anything new. So the exploration definitely slows down my story-progression significantly.

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

• How did you avoid spoilers both inside and outside of the game? 

Not really possible. While our guild has an agenda that prevents spoiling, the players usually ignore it when talking to me. They need someone to vent their frustration or talk about the cool things they have seen. Once the entire thing is done, some dare to ask "You've finished it too, right?" At that point, it does not matter.

Forums are significantly worse. People enjoy ranting about things they disslike, spoling right away. Looking at the constant waves of complaints regarding everything in EoD that also existed in GW1, I have a bad feeling. Honestly, I guess I will know the end of EoD before I finished the first chapter. Some of the GW1 veterans will speed-clear the expansion in record time, only to rant about it on all frequencies. As an example, I knew about Aurene's special role in 'All or Nothing' before my loader even finished patching. It was a controversial episode with emotions of the community boiling over. I'm not mad at those who spoiled it. But it has been years since I've experienced a story without spoilers. You get used to everything, somehow.

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

• With regards to the Guild Halls, did you jump straight in and grab ASAP? If so, did this cause any issues with spoilers?

Usually weeks after the patch, I get my first look into the new guildhall. When I am done with the story and started working on certain collections. My main-guild wants to take it, they have promised everyone shall have a look first. We pay the 100 g but do not run the claim-events with the goal of claiming, rather with the goal of exploration. At least that is the plan. 
 

On 12/20/2021 at 12:37 PM, Thereon.3495 said:

• With regards to the Strikes are you going to experience them as they are presented to you or once the story has concluded?

If the Strike Missions are part of the story, e. g. part of the plot, I have to run the public versions. I hope that this will not be the case, or at least that the difficulty is reasonable as in Forging Steel.

If the Strike Missions are designed in the way of Shiverpeak Pass, I just run the story-instance for the story-progression and revisit the real thing right after that. Then I can have a small overview over the difficulty and can decide if I want to try a public version or rather skip it until later (see guildhall).

If the Strike Missions are designed as the other ones, I will skip them until I am done with the story.

 

[Avenrise.3592]

Thanks for all the replies everyone, it's given me a great guide for when EoD is released. Having had a think I might give it a few days after launch for the major bugs to be patched and in the meantime just avoid all social media, forums and game chat! I'm pretty casual with GW2 anyway so it's not like I can't take a few days off. 

When in game I'm thinking of prioritising the story but stopping between maps and taking a day or two to fully explore. Get to know the events/metas, talk to some NPCs and generally get immersed before moving on. Having rushed through S2>S4 I think I can take my time this time around. 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I did not like HoT very much when it was new. Difficulty was radically higher then the base game when playing solo, the jungle is not a theme that really resonates with me, the default glider looked butt-ugly just to sell the nice looking ones in the gemstore and some of the masteries just handicapped the player until they obtained the mastery. (Like the poison resist mastery) However, over the years I got to appreciate the good parts of HoT. Nice achievements, solid group content with dynamic events and gliding was fun.

 

PoF was a direct hit with me. Beautiful theming, great story, balanced difficulty. Well-designed mounts with good looking default mount skins. (See, you don't have to cripple the default looks for players to buy premium ones in the gem store) Overall the better expansion. Downside is that in the long run it gave less replayability than HoT with its meta events and many achievements give little AP. Still, I would take PoF over HoT any time.

[Lyssia.4637]

I still haven't finished either HoT or PoF.  Come to think of it, I'm still that last mission short of finishing the core game.  I play until I get bored with the story, irritated with the area, or distracted, usually by something that needs a collection achievement, which obviously happens to me pretty quickly.  With HoT, I had real life going on that kept me from starting it until well after it was released and patched, and by then the story was long since "spoiled" for me; with PoF, I ran into trouble with the first mission and dropped it until I'd figured out a better class, elite specs, and a meta build with which to tackle it.  (About 3 years later.)  I'm more interested in the Cantha setting, and I'll be a little more prepared in the sense of building up hero points for useful specs, but I imagine it will be a very long time before I actually complete it.