How would you rate EoD compared to HoT and PoF?

[Randulf.7614]

1 hour ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Might look different in 6 months, but right now to me EoD is unfinished work. I dunno how PoF and HoT looked like at launch, but they are finished products in my eyes, when I play them now. EoD, no.

HoT had a lot of cut content, so in a way it was unfinished, but apart from the rushed story, it felt pretty complete. I spent more time in Verdant Brink alone than I’ll prob spend in all the EoD maps combined in the future based on current content.

PoF generally felt the most complete and finished, although I’d argue the story was rushed through during the raising Jokos army section and suddenly ended up in the final instance. There was plenty more story to tell. The maps may have have lacked replay value, but that was by misguided design rather than being unfinished.

EoD so far, feels unfinished to me. Certainly beautiful and plenty of focus on the central story, but everything else seems to have been sacrificed. It is desp in need of content, the problem is whether it is too late to rectify that. I’m also a bit confused why that should be the case. IBS was sacrificed for EoD, but given the development time, to only get four maps - two of which so far are comparatively empty of content for early maps - seems concerning. At what point does the game stop working towards the future and deliver in the now?

Edited March 16, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[neighto.7386]

Placed it last....I really feel like we were all beta testing the content rather than it being live.    Dragon's End has put such a bad taste in my mouth regarding this game that I fear my time is finally drawing to an end.    Being forced to play content I cant stand really tells me that I am not their customer any longer and I will reflect that by no longer supporting this game monetarily going forward

[angrax.1372]

I did not enjoy PoF much. I say this after playing it just to unlock the mounts.

 

I found HoT ok, although I cannot fathom completing those maps without a Skyscape. Whoever played it right after release, I salute you.

 

So for me, EoD was the most enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing.

Edited March 16, 2022 by angrax.1372

[Mik.3401]

I think EoD is the worst because it is mostly about the aesthetics (which are not even my taste). The specs don’t bring much exciting stuff, jade bots and turtle are again very optional. PoF and HoT definetely changed the game much more during their times.

[Shreek.8120]

IMO, EoD is very weak compared to HoT and PoF.

 

I have little interest in the content of EoD outside of Jade bots and the passives they provide for mount regen and open world res-assist.

Skiffs are useful for fishing, but to me, fishing provides nothing tangible anyway.  For getting around I'd use a skimmer.

I have no interest in turtles.

The EoD legendaries are a huge disappointment; I don't see them as any more than another black lion weapon skin collection.  They have no individual character.

 

Once I complete the Jade bot mastery I'll probably never go back into those maps.

[Desh.7028]

26 minutes ago, Shreek.8120 said:

They have no individual character.

 

Which allows matching sets. Something not possible with previous legos and space that is good to be explored.

And it's a lot more flashy than a BL skin and comes with draw animation and footsteps. There will be ways to attune them as well.

Furthermore the Aurene version completes the aura from the Return necklace.

 

Aaaand once the market stabilizes they are probably simply the cheapest purple for each slot, even with MCs going down in a big way. And every playstyle can get them unlike previous legendary weapons which is big for those who don't even care about the fashion and just want the armory feature.

[Gorem.8104]

Forgot to mention something about HoT - That expansion also gave us the Ley-Line converter (HoT had sooo much content and they had planned even more). Which the other 2 didn't give. That single item is already a huge incentive to visit HoT meta's forever. 
You can open it, click through some tabs and be more rewarded by it in an instant, then spending 2 hours on EoD's final meta zone. 

[suialthor.7164]

EoD looks "pretty."  But I enjoyed the other two expansions, and most of the living seasons, more than EoD. 

• The map design in the two middle zones is awful.  If you have to memorize everything to navigate it without a map, then it is poorly designed.  Sure it might be fun to explore but that is a one time thing.  The focus should be on making it enjoyable for extended use.  Adding more distinct visual elements would go a long way to solving this.  
• Big maps (with the exception of the last one) should not have contested waypoints.  With the exception of the last map, all the others need at least 1 more waypoint if not 2.
• Story needs to remove all the RP walking and unavoidable dialog that takes so long I often step away form the computer.  It was okay the first time.  After that it is a waste of time.  At least give us an option to skip it after we complete the story on another character.  It was bad before EoD but in this expansion it seems so much worse.
• The last meta is a two hour event if you expect to get into a decent group.  That is a huge portion of an evening after work.  Remove the preparation phase (this is the equivalence of your commute to work) and make it a farm phase.  Then the map resets for the meta where you earn buffs as you progress across the map.  
• If they want to keep the difficulty in the last meta then let it be something we can queue for as a premade squad.  Otherwise design for less than optimized groups.  
• Many of the new elites are disappointing.
• To many of the renown hearts are boring due to lack of combat options.  I'm fine with giving pacifist options.  But please do not make that the only reasonable method.  Again it was annoying before, but seems worse in EoD.

[Hypnowulf.7403]

I can't get over that after what happened in The Icebrood Saga, they basically went ahead and told the same story twice. Kick a person when they're down, why don't you?

 

What really bothered me the most is the handling of Soo-Won. So, here's this incredibly benevolent, kind, compassionate dragon who's been aiding Cantha for some time now and... she gets possessed and then butchered! How about no?

 

I mean, we have so much Deus Ex Magicka on our side. We have Taimi, our eternally terminally ill hypergenius, Gorrik, our gaspy-lass Aurene, and now Machiavellian corporate mastermind Joon too. I can't accept that this lot couldn't cobble together some device and cook up some mad thaumobabble to purify Soo-Won. Soo-Won, of all the dragons, didn't deserve to die.

 

See, my Commander isn't a psychopath. She never was. I mean, she's pretty great like that. Thus, she would outright refuse to kill Soo-Won and demand another way be found, regardless of what it takes. That's just the empathetic, decent, kind, and just thing to do. I mean, if it'd been Marjory or Kass this happened to, I can't imagine most would accept that. I can't accept this for Soo-Won.

 

The situation with Jormag wasn't great. I mean, the whole story of IBS was basically "Hey, let's drive Jormag completely batshit insane by murdering their kids and ignoring their pleas for help as Primordus uses telepathy to torture them by beaming burbling death screams and visions of people being split stem-to-stern and boiled alive into their head. If we poke their go-crazy button enough by torturing an abuse victim even more, we can goad them into committing suicide and taking Primordus with them! Hooray, we are such heroes!"

 

I mean, that felt like psychopathy already. Soo-Won though is that++. I can't deal with it. Why is such an untenable level of psychopathy expected of the players? I wouldn't want to celebrate Soo-Won's passing. I wouldn't want to boast about that, or be prideful about it. I'd be devastated and traumatised. It's so wrong. And they could've written such a different story.

 

The dragons aren't the problem with the story, the real issue is that there's just too much psychopathy. I don't know what that says about the writers, the designers, and the producers but I'm really not a fan. I'm not a person who gets off on murdering loving, kind persons or abuse victims.

 

It was one thing when the dragons were mindless forces of nature. That's one thing. If you give them a personality, an identity, then you should expect that anyone with empathy is going to want to save them, to rescue them, you know, like an actual hero would. Not everyone wants to be a psychopath???

 

I really liked Path of Fire. LWS4 was really iffy for me as I'd learned that Kralkatorrik basically had a torment parasite that was driving the bus by torturing him and now he gets to die for that. That... wasn't okay. I didn't know how bad things would get after that, though. Up until LWS4's end, I'd say the writing was mostly okay.

 

The Disney rot they pulled with Aurene was really ridiculous too. I mean, was it really necessary to kill her just to revive her in the next episode? You could... Oh, I don't know, not kill Aurene? That's an option! This is why I get weird Dark Triad vibes from the writers, because you shouldn't play with people like that. But what do I know?

 

So, no. End of Dragons sucked for me, just as The Icebrood Saga sucked for me. And again, the problem was never the dragons, just the apparent and clear psychopathy in the writing.

[Exciton.8942]

I enjoyed EoD but like HoT and PoF more. HoT was a bit too grindy at the start but got tuned down. The maps and meta events were really fun. The elite specs were also really inspiring. PoF brought in mounts, which is probably the best expansion feature.

 

EoD is mostly solid. But elite specs feel unfinished and expansion doesn't have something super exciting like HoT and PoF. 

[MachTen.7614]

12 hours ago, neighto.7386 said:

Placed it last....I really feel like we were all beta testing the content rather than it being live.    Dragon's End has put such a bad taste in my mouth regarding this game that I fear my time is finally drawing to an end.    Being forced to play content I cant stand really tells me that I am not their customer any longer and I will reflect that by no longer supporting this game monetarily going forward

My sentiments exactly.  Played GW1 + GW2, bought all expansions, spent probably thousands of dollars over 10+ years on Gemstore.  First time I genuinely felt physically sick playing the game and couldn't wait to log out and do smth else other than EoD.

 

1. Horrid storyline with terrible character writing (thankfully I have a dual screen setup so I can watch Seinfeld whilst I mute the GW2 characters with their cringe speeches)

2. Elite specs are generally bland (looking at you Harbinger),

3. Maps look terrible (New Kaineng is just a lazy design/QA - you can see where the city's polygon blocks intersect and they make no sense),

4. Maps/metas seem empty compared to when HoT/PoF were released (I wonder if all the players are leaving after EoD) and;

5. The new masteries are generally pointless fillers compared to the game-changing gliders/mounts when we unlocked those.

 

I actually dread turning on GW2 and going into Canta again. Feel like the game has become a cash grab now and the fans are leaving.

[aspirine.6852]

After doing all map metas I must say there is a lot of visual clutter. I mean sometimes i cant even see what is going on anymore. Had to do some vanilla gw2 metas for some collections and boy this was and felt a lot better.

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

First expansion that drops since I started playing. So ignoring the bugs, since I do not know how it was when HoT or PoF dropped.

For maps (looks): HoT - EoD - PoF
Story: PoF/HoT (equalish) - EoD 
Content: HoT - PoF - EoD
Meta's: HoT - PoF - EoD
Masteries/features: PoF - HoT - EoD

General speaking End of Dragons comes last in most cases. The maps are pretty, but as others said before, they feel empty. There is a lack of content (I miss the adventures Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire had, with Heart of Thorns being the best due to variety)

Path of Fire gave us mounts, and my personal favorite alltime: Griffon. Related to that, the EoD maps (with the exception of boring open field Dragon's End) look like they are designed with a Griffon/Skyscale combo in mind. Get up high and seer through the challenging channels, trees, swamps etc... Fun.

I do not enjoy the Meta's to be honest. First off Dragon's End took 15 times to finish once and feels so darn long that I have little desire to try it again. The newly added loot doesn't really warm me up for it either. The other maps are... ok Meta's but not really as fun and rewarding as HoT Meta's 

The Masteries, Skiff is useful with groups, Jade Bot a bit dissapointing considering you need to equip the items on each character. Same goes for Fishing, not the Enjoyable Semi-AFK activity I hoped it would be.

The Turtle can be a very useful mount, provided you have a gunner, when playing solo, it is utterly useless except for the large amount of hitpoints.

Arborstone... beautiful place, missed opportunity... That would've made a great true VIP area or even better: Guild Hall. 
Right now, considering I have a Mistlock pass, useless except for the Bot Workstation (Since the scroll allows me to travel there) 

Story started great with that challenging opening (the leaps are fun) and the final felt epic (although a bit too easy) most inbetween was not to my liking and parts too gringy to replay.

EoD Elites not feeling it... Elite Specialization collection designed to replay entire story on each character (since you cannot skip on different toon) is nuts... You think we would love to play with story 9 times? Seriously? 

Overal, Max out and return to the other content for me at this stage. I do hope they see the problems and overhaul it to make things feel more fun and alive. I will return from time to time to fly... cause 3 out of the 4 maps have routes that would be fun to try on a Griffon.

 

These are my personal thoughts though... it's ok to disagree, everyone has different tastes and interests.

[Felipe.1807]

I would say its worse then the other 2. I havent event finished the main story and I am allready back to BDO, I really wanted to like the expasion, being playing GW2 since its release and it was my main game for a long time, but honestly, buyers remorse is hitting kitten hard and I kind of regret buying the expansion, lots of things I strongly deslike on the game, but just seeing the whole drama around EoD meta event just demotivated me to even bother to keep going foward...Anet have their data, they will do whatever they think is for the best, but the game with the "best MMO community" is really showing its true colors, atleast people in BDO act like assholes towards each other cause the game forces you, here they just do it for the sake of it and to appease their own ego...gonna keep checking patches and what not about the state of the game and might come back when I feel its not gonna be a waste of my time.

[Xerxez.7361]

HoT - Dreadfully long Story and enough Masteries you will like in HoT for months, HP that requires groups, 2/4 Rewarding Metas vs Time Investment, & enough dreadful achievements to last years. 6/10

 

PoF - Interesting Story with some parts that drag on, but tough not to tough fights to be fun, Group Achievements, 1/4 Rewarding Metas, & Sweet Glorious Mounts!!! 9/10 (For Mounts Alone)

 

Eod - Short and Sweet Story that doesn't drag on, Buggy Achievements (If they weren't buggy not that bad), One really hard and now Rewarding Meta (Maybe not when Antique Summoning Stone prices drop). 7/10 and 12/10 for the Visuals

[LeSavage.1359]

PoF and HoT are waaay ahead of EoD. To me EoD shows in how bad state arenanet is right now, sadly. I was so hyped about new expansion, considering how much fun i had in HoT and PoF. In older expansions i had so much fun testing new specs, EoD ones are so much worse, they lack identity, are weird and not interesting (maybe beside willbender and virtuoso). HoT brought us EPIC metas, harder, challenging content and cool specs. PoF brought us the mounts, the more you progress with mounts, the more areas you can explore. It reminded me games like Castlevania or Metroid, and it was implemented in 3d world! That was very impressive to me. Also new specs were so cool. 

EoD is meh, jade bot - loot machine for trophies

Skiff - annoying to use, anchoring this thing so bugged, summoning requires clicking through very small UI icon, skimmer mount is a lot better

Masteries? Literally fillers with very small impact. 

New mount, turtle - huge dissapointment, because you cant use its most fun feature (shooting) by yourself, like wtf, srsly? Instead we have that dumb melee autoattack locking you in place for couple seconds. Every time (i mean couple of times because i stopped using turtle already) i see somebody shooting from my turtle im so jealous why i cannot  have that ability... dissapointing

Fishing - its fine, for achievments and chill. But its just simple minigame, mostly for big list of achievments. 

Edited March 18, 2022 by LeSavage.1359

[Sarrs.4831]

I'm honestly not sure. It's a bit difficult to say because there are a lot of moving parts in assessing an expansion.

I think the elite specialisation polish is not quite as good as it was for PoF or HoT. While most of them are quite good, I think the Untamed and Willbender in particular need a bit of work to really get them to the level they need to be.

The content tuning seems good, however I haven't dived into Strikes yet. There have been obvious issues with Dragon's End, but it was explicitly overtuned on purpose to begin and I'm fairly confident that the content is at a good level now. The content itself is pretty well designed in general and I've enjoyed each of the maps, once getting used to the geography in New Kaineng and Echovald.

My instinct is to say that it's not quite on the level of PoF, but it's around on par with HoT. I'm more than happy with the expansion though and from what I've seen of the development cycle, I can't really fault them for these issues, as PoF had the benefit of a healthy development cycle and neither HoT nor EoD did.

[battledrone.8315]

On 3/17/2022 at 4:06 AM, Hypnowulf.7403 said:

I can't get over that after what happened in The Icebrood Saga, they basically went ahead and told the same story twice. Kick a person when they're down, why don't you?

 

What really bothered me the most is the handling of Soo-Won. So, here's this incredibly benevolent, kind, compassionate dragon who's been aiding Cantha for some time now and... she gets possessed and then butchered! How about no?

 

I mean, we have so much Deus Ex Magicka on our side. We have Taimi, our eternally terminally ill hypergenius, Gorrik, our gaspy-lass Aurene, and now Machiavellian corporate mastermind Joon too. I can't accept that this lot couldn't cobble together some device and cook up some mad thaumobabble to purify Soo-Won. Soo-Won, of all the dragons, didn't deserve to die.

 

See, my Commander isn't a psychopath. She never was. I mean, she's pretty great like that. Thus, she would outright refuse to kill Soo-Won and demand another way be found, regardless of what it takes. That's just the empathetic, decent, kind, and just thing to do. I mean, if it'd been Marjory or Kass this happened to, I can't imagine most would accept that. I can't accept this for Soo-Won.

 

The situation with Jormag wasn't great. I mean, the whole story of IBS was basically "Hey, let's drive Jormag completely batshit insane by murdering their kids and ignoring their pleas for help as Primordus uses telepathy to torture them by beaming burbling death screams and visions of people being split stem-to-stern and boiled alive into their head. If we poke their go-crazy button enough by torturing an abuse victim even more, we can goad them into committing suicide and taking Primordus with them! Hooray, we are such heroes!"

 

I mean, that felt like psychopathy already. Soo-Won though is that++. I can't deal with it. Why is such an untenable level of psychopathy expected of the players? I wouldn't want to celebrate Soo-Won's passing. I wouldn't want to boast about that, or be prideful about it. I'd be devastated and traumatised. It's so wrong. And they could've written such a different story.

 

The dragons aren't the problem with the story, the real issue is that there's just too much psychopathy. I don't know what that says about the writers, the designers, and the producers but I'm really not a fan. I'm not a person who gets off on murdering loving, kind persons or abuse victims.

 

It was one thing when the dragons were mindless forces of nature. That's one thing. If you give them a personality, an identity, then you should expect that anyone with empathy is going to want to save them, to rescue them, you know, like an actual hero would. Not everyone wants to be a psychopath???

 

I really liked Path of Fire. LWS4 was really iffy for me as I'd learned that Kralkatorrik basically had a torment parasite that was driving the bus by torturing him and now he gets to die for that. That... wasn't okay. I didn't know how bad things would get after that, though. Up until LWS4's end, I'd say the writing was mostly okay.

 

The Disney rot they pulled with Aurene was really ridiculous too. I mean, was it really necessary to kill her just to revive her in the next episode? You could... Oh, I don't know, not kill Aurene? That's an option! This is why I get weird Dark Triad vibes from the writers, because you shouldn't play with people like that. But what do I know?

 

So, no. End of Dragons sucked for me, just as The Icebrood Saga sucked for me. And again, the problem was never the dragons, just the apparent and clear psychopathy in the writing.

the modern day commander would had been a miniboss in the core game. we hear some rumours, and then we go out and kill pretty everything on the map in search of more information. not only that, but after the genocide, we find out, that

things usually havent changed for the better. 

[battledrone.8315]

2 hours ago, Sarrs.4831 said:

I'm honestly not sure. It's a bit difficult to say because there are a lot of moving parts in assessing an expansion.

I think the elite specialisation polish is not quite as good as it was for PoF or HoT. While most of them are quite good, I think the Untamed and Willbender in particular need a bit of work to really get them to the level they need to be.

The content tuning seems good, however I haven't dived into Strikes yet. There have been obvious issues with Dragon's End, but it was explicitly overtuned on purpose to begin and I'm fairly confident that the content is at a good level now. The content itself is pretty well designed in general and I've enjoyed each of the maps, once getting used to the geography in New Kaineng and Echovald.

My instinct is to say that it's not quite on the level of PoF, but it's around on par with HoT. I'm more than happy with the expansion though and from what I've seen of the development cycle, I can't really fault them for these issues, as PoF had the benefit of a healthy development cycle and neither HoT nor EoD did.

why would they overtune it on purpose? what on earth can they gain by doing this? the first impression is prolly the 

MOST important moment in a games history. specially one that is STILL marketed as "casual"

[Hume.2876]

I am grateful to have new content - but I think Arenanet is out of ideas with this engine/game setup.  I can see why they were working on new projects. I hope they make enough money for GW3 and they get some great new talent.  I think SilverWastes and Auric Basic were basically as good as it gets. Though I think Verdant Brink is pretty fantastic too..  So they have done a lot of cool stuff with their open world zones.

 

But they just don't know how to improve on that. I think the engine limits them. I think the lack of roles limits them. And I think the lack of community in the game (probably because of some of their design choices) limits what they can do. They try one hardish meta and never hear the end of it.

 

Poor Arenanet.. its tough being an MMO developer for sure.  Maybe the living story zones will be amazing.

 

I think HoT was the best - but PoF mounts were pretty amazing.  EoD has some really pretty zones but like I said - they are just out of ways to innovate in terms of gameplay.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Hume.2876

[Sarrs.4831]

1 hour ago, battledrone.8315 said:

why would they overtune it on purpose? what on earth can they gain by doing this? the first impression is prolly the 

MOST important moment in a games history. specially one that is STILL marketed as "casual"

Because challenging capstone content is more memorable than pushover capstone content, imo.

[Zephire.8049]

I rate it HoT > PoF > EoD

• HoT had interesting maps, the story was fine, the metas were challenging but doable and fun. It's also improved with age via the mounts and power creep.
• PoF brought mounts and the story was also fine but leaned too human-centric for my personal taste (especially after LW3). The maps were kind of same-y, though, without much replay value. Plus those hearts take forever to fill up. The metas being ignored until they were effectively dead didn't help matters.
• EoD is pretty and there's some nice QoL aspects of it (commune HPs, ability to buy from heart vendors without doing the heart, hearts that don't take forever to do) but it's also the only expansion where I have had a visceral negative reaction toward and burnt out on in less than two weeks. It just seems it caters to the players the current devs wish they had rather than the players past devs built the game for (and who still populate the game).

[Eekasqueak.7850]

PoF remains my favourite but I enjoyed EoD's setting and story over HoT's, I just wish they'd done better on the map metas. 

Edited March 18, 2022 by Eekasqueak.7850
Typo

[Agramon.4278]

You cant compare EoD with HoT and PoF. Even some side stories are better than EoD.

 

HoT : Revenant, gliding

PoF : Mounts 

 

First 2 expansion specs are become meta immediately.

 

EoD : 0 new class, 0 new mechanic (gliding, mount), probably worst specs on every kind, buggy and empty maps. There is only 1 thing i can say "good" about EoD, Fishing. But i already completed 9 achievements and bored.

[Cloudz.6890]

End of Dragons, but Kunavaang, Albax and Aurene are still around. NPCs also welcome in the "Age of Aurene". For as central as an issue the Void is, we really glossed over it. Aurene and party say they're concerned about her absorbing the corrupted magic, but there's never an issue. So we have an immortal, all powerful dragon who can see all the ley-lines and absorb any kind of magic. I hate the phrase, but a lot of writing seemed "woke" too. It felt like it was written as if the characters were actually in the year 2022 instead of Tyria. I thought we were gonna end in a climax where Aurene sacrifices herself to save Tyria from the Void. Instead it was just "kill another Elder Dragon and let's go home".

The maps are huge, but feel really empty. Lots of NPCs with no lines. Tons of empty spaces due to it being designed for people using mounts. Meta events seems unusually more difficult than previous metas. I know some got nerfed after release, but this is year 10 of GW2. Hoped we wouldn't retread the same mistakes.

Music and voice acting are absolutely phenomenal.

No Luxon or Kurzick armor, no dragon weapons or armor set like in previous Elder Dragon metas, pre-meta events are super unrewarding. The main rewards are for crafting a legendary gear. But what % of players actually craft legendary armor/weapons.

Anet had to rush to get this out after IBS and it shows.