@devs: Some Points of Criticism after the Praise

[Ashantara.8731]

After the initial praise and having played through the content these past two weeks, there are a few points of criticism:

• Lack of Waypoints:
  Others already noted that there simply aren't enough of them. And while it was fun to explore every corner of each map on mounts and using the new tech on my first playthrough, I have to agree that the lack of waypoints becomes more noticeable the more characters you guide through Cantha. Especially doing some of the achievements like Lighting the Lanterns quickly grows into a very tedious task since the maps have a lot of verticality.
   
• ZIP Lines:
  While they were fun at first, they simply can't replace waypoints. They are also sparse and often it is impossible to tell where they lead unless you land, dismount and approach them on foot. It quickly becomes a disruptive chore which in most cases makes you favor your mount(s) over the use of this new tech.
   
• Jade Batteries:
  It becomes quite the annoyance (i.e., disruption of gameplay) after a while to have to reload battery charges for a variety of tasks, like opening chests, and it is even more painful that you lose all charges when you log out of a character. After the initial enthusiasm, I now hope to never see this tech again in future content, along with ZIP lines -- tiresome to use, plus disrupting the beauty of the environment.
   
• Bug Fiesta:
  As somebody wrote on another thread, the more content (especially achievements) you want to tackle in EoD, the more bugs you run into. At some point, you are starting to get frustrated, because your list of postponed tasks becomes longer and longer. I don't recall any previous content releases having such a massive problem like this.
  • To name a few bugs: enemies get pushed into walls and get stuck so you cannot complete an event; event NPCs get stuck or stop moving/progressing, and certain enemies required for collections don't spawn (forcing you to sometimes spend hours looking for a working instance of the map); other collections stall due to some bug (like the Blanket crafting option never popping up in Mori Village); story missions have to be restarted due to some bug (like enemies that need to be killed becoming invulnerable); mini-dungeons bug out when more than one player enters, and so on. It can truly kill the whole fun.
     
• Questionable Visual Design Choices:
  Besides the specific color of dragon jade used in jade tech and the weirdly shaped, plastic-like jade mechs, my only other issue is with certain aspects of the environment:
  • The sky lighting on all maps (except Echovald Wilds) is off. It is way too bright, even during night-time.
  • The fog color doesn't look like fog. Instead, it just adds a weird, depressing aura to maps in combination with the aforementioned sky lighting. I assume you were trying to go for a "noire" or "mystery" feel, but missed the mark.
  • The newly added flora glows (even in shadowy spots and the dark). Why?
     
• Kurzick/Luxon Culture:
  In general, there was not enough emphasis on the Luxons, only the Kurzicks got a tribute with the cemetery and other locations as well as events troughout the Echovald Wilds. The Luxons were basically reduced to all-things turtles.
  At the very least, you could have added classic Kurzick and Luxon armor sets to the list of available skins in EoD. I get that those cultures have been suppressed for generations, but many people would have loved to get those classy heritage looks ([ex.1], [ex.2]).

If anything else comes to mind, I will add it later to the list. Thanks for reading.
 

Edited March 17, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Farohna.6247]

Good list!  More waypoints would be great, especially since the maps are quite large.  Not a huge fan of the ziplines, they're fun but I barely use them unless I am required to.  I don't mind the green, it was less eye abrasive than I expected.

Jade batteries....yeh.  I do not like losing the charges on map change.  Very annoying.  I would have liked to have seen that as part of the mastery for jade bots to not have to recharge them (although that wouldn't make sense story wise now that I think about it) or to have a service chip that I can do a one and done charge with.  Charge it once on a map, and unlimited use.

[kharmin.7683]

*Lack of Waypoints - This is probably to encourage the personal waypoint mastery?  I haven't really been bothered with the few that are available, but I'm pretty casual and don't mind working my way around without them.

*Zip Lines - I, too, would like a better indicator of where the destinations are.  Also, losing conjured elements and necro minions on dismount is a problem.  I actually enjoy them for getting up to higher points quickly and then launching with skyscale.  I'd like to see some in other maps, like they did with the bouncing mushrooms.  We'll see.

*Jade Batteries - I charge mine on zip lines, so for me this is not too much of an issue.  I don't like losing charges across maps, but I also don't like the idea of a mastery for permanent charges.  Honestly, I think that the charging mechanic is designed to slow progression through maps so that players don't zip through them (no pun intended) too quickly.

*Bug Fiesta - I haven't run into many of what was listed, but yeah, they need to be addressed.

*Visual Design Choice - I haven't had the issues that many players have had with the lighting or colors.  Maybe I don't have high enough graphics hardware?  For me, I don't find the choices to be questionable.  They look ok to me.

*K/L Culture - I wasn't a huge fan of re-visiting Cantha, but I was surprised that the team didn't involve these "factions" more, instead, they seemed to hand-wave them away with a convenience time-skip.  I feel that this really missed the mark with the players who were really looking forward to this return -- as if Anet made the decision without considering what the players might actually want.  There were plenty of hopeful threads around here when the expac was announced, even before Cantha was known for certainty.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

I think all your criticisms are valid and well-stated.  I'm slogging through EoD's story and maps with my main but can't see playing the content much after that, except for fishing on other maps for the collections.  One of my biggest beefs right now is that the rewards/loot are so poor that they're not worth my time.  I think last night I was literally dreaming about Drizzlewood Coast.

[kharmin.7683]

12 minutes ago, Witch of Doom.5739 said:

I think all your criticisms are valid and well-stated.  I'm slogging through EoD's story and maps with my main but can't see playing the content much after that, except for fishing on other maps for the collections.  One of my biggest beefs right now is that the rewards/loot are so poor that they're not worth my time.  I think last night I was literally dreaming about Drizzlewood Coast.

I can agree about the rewards.  I get better rewards running a few world bosses.

[Fwog.9387]

New Kain might be the biggest offender of Zip lines vs waypoints.

Yes there are teleporters but they are usually offline when you actually need them. 
There are zip lines all over the place and i am gonna need an external app (tac0) in order to know at a glance what direction they are going to fire me in. 
New Kain sometimes expects you to cross the entire map very quickly. Its the biggest map, some parts of it are maze like both horizontally and vertically. Even if you have a griffon and a skyscale its a bit of a chore to travel in. 
I actually had to screenshot the New Kain map and mark all the teleporter locations to know where they are as none of them are marked on the map and not all of them are where you would think they are. Additionally half the time they are offline and you have to boot them back up yourself to use them. 

Its the Tangled Depths of this expansion.