A Fat Cry About EoD

[NomadProphet.1752]

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING - YET ANOTHER 'EOD IS BIG BAD ME SAD' POST

 

I have had such an incredible time in this game. I remember teaching my first serious girlfriend how character creation worked and letting her make a Sylvari that sat on my account till things turned pear-shaped between us. I remember how frustrated I felt when Heart of Thorns released and all the mobs promptly punched me in the mouth because I had never really learned the game till that point. I remember how proud I felt as I watched my commander form Dragons Watch. This game is nothing short of incredible. Sadly due to several recent events, I think its clear that Guild Wars 2 is in dire need of some change.

 

Coming off the back end of  Icebrood Saga: Champions which even Arenanet seemed pretty displeased with, End of Dragons has not been what I expected and needed. I cannot find any direct statement, but I seem to recall Arenanet saying that Champions was pretty lackluster due to the challenges of the pandemic, but also because so many of their people were hard at work on End of Dragons. For me the final result is simply not a reflection of this reasoning.

 

End of Dragons started out very strong, with Seitung Province being one of the most stunning maps in the game. The music, the aesthetic, the colors all work wonderfully to give a fantastic introduction to the expansion. However the more I played on this map the more I noticed how 'unalive' it felt. The emptiness of EoD maps has been something many people have spoken about and it certainly contributed to the 'unalive' quality of Seitung Province, but most of all it is the lack of meaningful or interesting events and Hearts. The base game and previous expansions have some great diversity and creativity in the Hearts and events - the rabbits that kick your teeth in, or helping set up Auric Basin for example. Seitung Province has a nice gardening event and the Leviathan... and that kind of seems like it. Everything else just feels pretty forgettable and samey. Perhaps it is because so many of the events in this area don't really seem to be leading up to anything. In the Heart of Thorns maps the events all tended to feed into a greater thing, preparing for an assault or contributing to the map Meta. In Seitung Province they just seem to happen, finish, and then every couple of hours we fight Aetherblades. (I will talk about all the map metas in more detail later in this post.)

 

New Kaineng City is what Cyberpunk 2077 should have felt like. It has holographic whales, a wonderful canal system, incredible skyscrapers and Jade Tech everywhere. It is very, very cool. And then you spend an hour or two doing map completion and you start to notice things. There are a lot of reused assets, which is relatively understandable. But then you notice that there don't seem to be very many people. After Seitung Province the idea of a bustling metropolis is very enticing, the loading screen really fed into this fantasy for me. Yet you cannot seem to find the bustling part... even players are scarce, leading to the feeling you've loaded into the beta for this map somehow. Whilst I do not agree with everything said by OP, this post makes some accurate observations about the New Kaineng City map. The way the samey events are continued here, the fact they are so oddly spread out across a map that can be exceedingly difficult to navigate from the ground, the lack of players and a meta that was straight up not happening for the first week or two due to player cap issues all gave New Kaineng City a strange beta-esque feel. Some of this has been improved with player caps being increased, but you don't get a second chance at a first impression and the other issues around events and lack of NPC's still stand. Not to mention the fact that we cannot buy noodles at the food stalls. This actually struck me pretty hard, which may seem odd as it is a very small issue. I personally found this simple lack of detail emblematic of a greater problem. Lack of care. This minuscule detail that would cost ArenaNet nothing to implement, and would make the world feel so much more immersive and fun was overlooked and missed. It felt very negligent when I first walked up to a food stall and found no prompt. The smallest details like this are what makes a world come alive, and its a target ArenaNet keeps missing.

 

Echovald Wilds. Many people compare this place to Tangled Depths, and to those people I say you have clearly blocked your memories of TD due to trauma. Echovald has some complexity to it with the tree roots, winding paths and general murkiness, but it is nowhere near as tough as TD was to navigate. I would actually attribute the majority of the difficulty navigating to Echovalds dark sameyness. Yes, this 'samey' quality seems to be cropping up quite a lot. However out of every map released with EoD this was my favorite. It feels rich with history and mystery. The Dark Souls feel of the cathedral aesthetic is a welcome difference from the Ancient China/Korea designs you have been trekking through for a number of hours. The enemy spawn rate during my map completion was pretty shocking however. I had enemies respawning from within the same group I had engaged only a few seconds ago in several cases. The bug that caused the mini-dungeon to flop did not leave a particularly good feeling, and then I found yet another NPC was bugged stopping me from getting to yet another 'hidden' POI. All in all, Echovald Wilds was fine, I guess. The relative sameyness of the map takes points off, and the bugs preventing cool things from happening is another. Otherwise it was pretty nuanced and interesting. The Hearts especially felt far more fleshed out and made with genuine care which made them stand out so wonderfully.

 

Dragons End. DUN DUN DUUUUN. Yeah I don't even really want to talk about this one. So insanely divisive because of a mount and a meta. I mean there is more complexity to it but boy has there been enough posts about this. All in all, the map is fine. I have completed it, I have done the meta, I no longer care about being on it ever again.

 

Now. On the topic of metas. What has really done it for me is how buggy this release has been. Inb4 I get a barrage of people comparing EoD launch to HoT or PoF - having a previous track record of poor releases does not exonerate any company from another poor release. If anything we should hold them accountable more severely. They have had time to grow, learn and improve. They have had time to improve stability and performance, experience of how a playerbase will react and should learn how to manage expectations. ArenaNet does not seem to have learned much. Seitung Province meta was bugged quite badly for a decent amount of time. New Kaineng City had issues with map populations making it impossible to do the meta. Echovald Wilds was the one I completed first, I even tagged up for it and had a merry old time due to an overall lack of bugs comparative to the other maps. Dragons End will not be discussed here because I don't feel like beating a dead horse, or kicking a hornets nest. I will say that Dragons End did not seem bugged in any traditional sense of the word. However the biggest gripe I have with these metas is that they are not very good. They are pretty boring. HoT has set my standard for a meta and EoD falls way short of those standards. In fact every meta in this expansion other than Dragons End is almost the exact same event reskinned. There are some mild flavor differences with the Aetherblade stun walls in Seitung Province, and the events that lead up to the meta being rather engaging in the Echovald Wilds, but ultimately they are really lacking in creativity. Verdant Brink is an amazing meta that requires communication and planning to get the rally points under control, it has a continual engagement through defending and leveling them up, and then the map itself levels up with player engagement to provide better rewards for performance. There are multiple unique bosses that then are used in places that make sense in later maps. There is nothing even remotely close to this standard in EoD (except for Dragons End on a really good map). In fact any semblance of communication between multiple commanders, any ideal around working together to overcome multiple different threats and finally fight in unison for meaningful rewards has been... forgotten? Ignored? Was this on purpose? Was this laziness? I really just don't know how a ArenaNet can release something so incredibly stale.

 

The buggyness of the metas seems to have been addressed, I have actually done all them. Here is where things get really deeply anger inducing for me. EoD overall has felt like a fairly rushed expansion. The maps lack the care and complexity I have come to expect. The biggest and coolest events were not good and straight up broken for a good long while. My most recent issue has been the turtle collection. The Luxon Tools did not drop for me on my main, so I did the Jade Maw event for a third time on a different character and they dropped. I filed a bug report. I then did everything else. Finally I had the strike to do. I did it, and got nothing. No chest. I did it again. Nothing. I filed a bug report and a ticket. The response I got was unsatisfying:

 

Hello,

Thank you for contacting our team about a game issue that you experienced. The Guild Wars 2 Development Team is aware of this issue and team members currently are working on addressing it. Please keep an eye on the official forums for any future updates and announcements regarding Guild Wars 2. You can reach the forums via this link: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/

Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Regards,

GM There is no way I'll post this persons handle, come on now

 

And yet with the new patch this issue is unlisted, and someone on this reddit thread is still experiencing it.

 

I'm afraid this is it for me. Guild Wars 2 ded gayme. I can't actually be bothered. The deep dissatisfaction combined with frustrating bugs and and overall lack of polish or real care has just killed my will to play. I think there is no cohesion from Anet on what Guild Wars 2 should be. I think they are probably burned out and out of ideas. I mean this post is essay length and I haven't even touched on the new Elite Specs, which in some cases are amazing (looking at you Specter) and in other cases... well I guess Anet just hates Eles and doesn't really give a kitten about Rangers. I have not talked about the story because expecting anything great from MMO story writers is not really fair to the medium as they have to keep stringing us along like a TV series that just won't die so now Tammy is pregnant with a centaur baby in season 53 of 'How Is This Still Going?'. That being said I really liked moments of the EoD story when it started to feel like we might go investigate a group of xenophobic terrorists instead of saving the universe from #GenericDarkExistentialThreat3688. It made me yearn for the times in RPG's where I wasn't very important. But hey that's a whole other discussion. Maybe this end will open Guild Wars 2 up to new stories where we are not the commander anymore. Where the threats are more personal and intimate and interesting. Maybe future content will feel like it was made with passion and care like previous parts of the game. I sincerely hope so. I love this game dearly, I want it to thrive and succeed. Great change will need to come to those running it for that to happen. Or maybe they can just pump out some sick turtle skins and roll in our money. Either way, I'm heading out for a while.

 

It's time for me to go now Tyria. You made a valiant effort to entertain, and it's been a wyld ride. Good luck, hopefully I see you again. Because I really, really don't want to go play with the FFXIV weebs just to get my MMO hit.

 

 

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, NomadProphet.1752 said:

Echovald Wilds. Many people compare this place to Tangled Depths, and to those people I say you have clearly blocked your memories of TD due to trauma. Echovald has some complexity to it with the tree roots, winding paths and general murkiness, but it is nowhere near as tough as TD was to navigate.

I agree with most of your post. Just some notes about Echovald Wilds:

With some experience most of Echovald Wilds is quite easy and fast to travel with the roller beetle from the waypoints. It even feels like Anet made the paths for the roller beetle. And when you are near the position where you want to go, you just use ZIP-line, Springer or Skyscale if you need to go up on a platform/tree.

The longer I played in New Kaineng City, the more lifeless and boring the map became. The longer I played in Echovald Wilds, the more interesting the map became (I did not really like the "general murkiness" of the map) and I think the map has the most little, hidden details of all EoD maps that could be explored (and are fun to explore).

Maybe Echovald Wilds is the most fleshed out map of EoD.

 

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

 

Maybe Echovald Wilds is the most fleshed out map of EoD.

 

It also feels to me that of the first three maps it has the greatest event density. There have been times where I've been circling Seitung and New Kaineng just trying to find an event to do, but they're everywhere in Echovald.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

The fact that nkc is the only map with kill achievements shows to me they kinda just phones it in for that map. 

[snakeboy.3062]

Kaineng is so disappointing, not even close to the loading screen art that shows how it should have been: a bustling metropolis. Looking at those liveless docks, so sad. No ships moving, no trade, nothing. Rather they made the city a third as big but as lively as Amnoon. 

[Sak Bak Nakan.4368]

"The deep dissatisfaction combined with frustrating bugs and and overall lack of polish or real care has just killed my will to play."

 

I feel this deeply.   My whole EoD experience has been heartbreaking.  Story took me just 3 days.  Map completion took just 3 days.  A meta I've wasted 24+ hours cumulatively trying & failing 100%.  Therefore a mount I'll never unlock (no I'm not kittening paying for it because I still need meta completion for other achievements).  Fishing achievements broken for 10 days & counting.  Horrendously time-gated legendaries that I'll never get because frankly they're boring, but also I can't stand playing this game anymore.  Specialization Collections requiring me to re-play a story that I truly despise 9 more kittening times?!??   GTFO.  EoD is quite simply a parody of everything wrong with GW2.

 

I had such great expectations after waiting 5 years since PoF (which  I loooooooooooved) but THIS?!??   This ain't it....

[Farohna.6247]

I actually like the almost sterile quality of New Kaineng, the contrast from mountains and lush valleys to the dark tangled gloom to the overly modern, too clean of a city is interesting.  Gives me the feel that I'm the only Tyrian to hit the town and I'm the odd one.  It's too clean, too neat, like something menacing underlies the surface facade.  

Still haven't made it out of Echovald Wilds, it will probably grow on me with time, but currently I don't care for it and was relieved when the personal story took me back out.  

Not really excited about the turtle mount since I have little to no interest in strikes, suppose I'll do it anyway but groups will probably be harder to find once I get to that point.

OP, it's ok to know when to put a game down and walk away from it.  If you're not enjoying your time, then don't make yourself frustrated or bitter. Enjoy the times you experienced wonder and don't worry there are more out there in what ever you play.

[Bast.7253]

Another thing I found disappointing about Kaening was just how many of the buildings are merely decoration. There are skyscrapers and buildings all over Cantha though and apart from Saeting most of them you can't enter, can't interact with, anything. 

I spent hours walking around Kaening hoping to find somekind of special details that were hidden... 

I even carried a random stick I found in a crate near the Echovald entrance all the way to some post-story scene that mentioned "maybe pull him out with a broom?" And I was like, hey, maybe that's what that random stick in the crate on the second level of this building is for. 

Nope. It's just a random stick in a crate I guess? Or maybe it's tied to something else near it and I just didn't see any events or anything going on?

I walked up to nearly every doorway I could find, walked on every rooftop, and there was just nothing but flash.

I really wish they would invent somekind of phasing tech that allows different instances of the map depending on the story. I think they kind of did though with Kaening given the post-story achievement items. Maybe they've always had it and I just didn't notice it before. 

But it's possible they could repurpose that to make Kaening reusable for future story plots that might see a change in events, an invasion, or whatever. It really is a snoozefest as a map though. 

I think that would be less of an issue of the other maps weren't, as the person above said, "samey." If the other maps were hustling and full of intense events then having Kaening being  the "relaxing" hub for fishing. I also wouldn't mind seeing them actually turn this into a massive city hub with trading posts/banks/crafting stations or whatever in multiple districts with their own waypoints. 

I think for this expansion, the story was a jumbled mess to me and took a nosedive pretty much halfway through Kaening. I think they kind of honed in on player requests, which is great, but I think the maps and everything suffered because of the story. 

There was so much stuff involving mounts, paperwork, unnecessary villains like Minister Li that could have been pushed aside for a living story season... jade tech (The biggest reason why I believe the maps, the metas, the story, and the expansion in general suffered. They focused way too much on making this the focus of the story and the expansion and I honestly think it's because they knew people wanted a high tech modern Kaening and I'm glad they went with it but it really could have been a minor plot point.)

It's not my cup of tea and I get some people think this is the "best writing of any expansion." I don't know how they got to that conclusion as someone that's been playing this game for like... nearly a decade now but to each their own. Different strokes for different folks I guess. 

Personally, I found the Path of Fire expansion story to be top notch, far more cohesive, and it found a much better balance between focusing on character building and cutscenes, the overarching plot, and gameplay. It tied all the zones in really nicely between rallying Joko's army to dealing with Warforged and Balthazar's army.. to tying in exalted lore and the process Balthazar used to make the warforged.. as well as Aurene and Glint's prophecy. The underworld. 

The biggest issue with Path of Fire for me was the fact that the story instances would often kick you out, repeatedly, and there were several times I had to just give up because I kept crashing. 

The lack of interesting events, the lack of rewards, the story that felt extremely rushed and focused way too much on characters they really WANTED to be interesting but in my opinion aren't, the grindiness of the masteries and how incredibly alt unfriendly and tied to the story the masteries are despite being able to purchase jade bot cores on the trading post. 

It's a hot mess. I was worried it might be due to the delay, where they started, and the initial review followed by the people on guild chat sometimes looking PETRIFIED, like they knewwww this wasn't the quality they had hoped for. I think they realize it and they tried their best. 

To be honest, we're... 3 weeks? into this expansion and I'm struggling to find any reason to visit these maps. The majority of the content beyond the story is just mastery grind and collections...

And I don't mind the way they handeled collections with unique npc's that start them off. I think that's a clever way of getting players out and exploring, but most of these collections seem to be nothing more than a dismal amount of achievement points, some new currency reward, crafting materials, and that's pretty much it. Why do I want to go google a guide to look up a 10 step collection achievement for... 3 achievement points and a few writs of... whatever those things are used for. I mean the story is cool if it's interesting but so far I haven't found any collections that are super rich on lore. Even a majority of the little interactable journals and "research notes" or whatever are kind of just focusing characters, jade tech and filling the gap of the isolation. I would have loved to see more about Soo, about the wardens, about Ione, or even about other Saltsprays. 

And the elite specs definitely didn't appeal to me much but I'm learning to enjoy some of them. I still think Catalyst is an abomination and a playstyle we really didn't need. It's probably the only thing more rushed and disjointed than the story for me. Like, if you're going to give us a jade sphere with "celestial" like creatures, why not just make the whole kitten spec about the Celestials and lose this melee bruiser mixed range hammer aura combo field energy accumulating needlessly convoluted and BORING trainwreck of a spec. 

It plays fine enough and has decent enough sustain post-launch, but compared to Tempest or Weaver this feels like some kind of weird wack-a-mole spec. Hammer in general, in this game, just feels like it's permanently confined to one playstyle. Rev shook this up. Greatsword on Mesmer is different. I don't know why they couldn't break the mold and at least make hammer more interesting than just being copy paste skills from other specs with nearly every facet of this spec revolving around pbaoe spam. 

I think I've seen maybe... 3 people playing it so far this expansion in open world? So I mean, I'm sure if they have metrics for that sort of thing they'll see how bad of a mistep they took with this spec but sadly I don't think they'd ever change it. And now they've released it so you'll risk pissing off the few people that LIKE this playstyle if they try to rework it.

Personally I see no issue with making hammer air and fire 1200 yard max range abilities. At least then you could lay a few fire fields or tornadoes in wvw or open world bosses or something without getting your face caved in. It's just so unsatisfying to play and they have so much potential with this profession. Tempest and Weaver while both being better in melee, have a unique playstyle with plenty of versatility. 

No, I'll stop. This is going off the rails. Sorry. lol