Now that you've really got to experience EoD, what are your thoughts?

[Swynwraig.4628]

When I purchased EoD I tried to keep my expectations reasonable but was pretty happy to get the expac for:

1. Siege turtle ?
2. Maps ++
3. Story ++
4. Elite specs +
5. Fishing and Skiffs --/+
6. BONUS: Other masteries +/-

Seige Turtle

Don't have it. Maybe I'll see a successful DE meta by the time I collect enough Kale etc, or then snap, admit defeat, and buy the egg with writs.

Maps

Seiteng Province: it's beautiful, and raptor taxi's are one of my daughter's favourite features of the game. Agree there are too many Aetherblades though - they're just about everywhere and seem to vastly outnumber the actual residents. Might have been better with more instance-like Aetherblade strongholds. The map meta is a bit dull, and the few times I did it (early on) it was bugged.

New Kaineng City: It's "fine" and I think it's like Verdant Brink in that once you learn the shortcuts it's rewarding. I'd like to do more there, but I always seem to try a DE meta instead and then quit the game.

Echovald Wilds: Beautiful, and although people complain it's hard to navigate I grade it on the curve of Tangled Depths. At least roads sort of go where they seem to be going in EW. Could probably do with fewer Aetherblades, but it has local factions that make sense. I'd like to do more there, but I always seem to try a DE meta instead and then quit the game.

Dragon's End: I thought it was a bit flat feeling at first, but it's slowly growing on me. Events have some variety, and fit together for an adequate meta introduction. I'd like to do more there, but... you guessed it... when I go there I'll do a meta or two which are abandoned or fail after two hours and I quit the game, often saying "I have lots of other games I haven't finished that are more fun than this." (EDIT: but not saying it in map chat... that'd just bring people down.)

As someone who doesn't usually play in peak times (I'm not in the US) and isn't in a raiding guild it feels like the only maps that succeed are maps that are dominated by a guild run. The map limit doesn't seem to be high enough to allow a regular map population plus an organized squad, and organized runs don't want random people who they fear are "in greens" or "just pressing 1" on the map anyway. It's beyond me why it isn't an scheduled easier public/on demand private instanced event instead.

Ruminating about it depresses me so I'll stop before going into what was/is gated behind the meta success.

Story

It was "fine" 🙂

I'd say somewhere between PoF and S4. Characters were good, voice acting was good, maybe bogged down a little in New Kaineng investigating jade malfunctions - seemed like filler because New Kaineng city had to have story in it.

Elite Specs

I've only tried the Mechanist (which is again, "fine", and certainly a change from the piano style engineer I normally play) and Catalyst. Cat's gone through a few iterations but seems to be stable for now and moderately rewarding to play (how to properly balance Ele difficulty/reward compared to other professions and not just have memes about how they're always downstate is a longer discussion).

Fishing and Skiffs

Skiffs are surprisingly more enjoyable than you'd get from just watching it in a Guild Chat. Maybe other mounts are just old hat now, but seems more fun than anything bar the Roller Beetle and Griffon. - maybe because they go faster.

Fishing is... meh... (less interesting than I expected) I'm guessing my reaction time is sucky (I'm "old people" now) and maybe when I get more masteries (which will probably require me to do things other than get depressed by DE meta 🙂 ) it'll be more fun.

EDIT: Thought on it a bit more, was expecting a relaxing time killer but instead it's an annoying mini-game that hasn't given me any joy so far. --

P.S. Masteries

Skiffs - Haven't even bothered. Maybe bought the first level.

Fishing - ditto.

Jade Bots - okay. Having both the masteries, and then building plugins for every character seems a bit much though. Fine for people who just play one character.

Aside - having a recycler being a bonus to get rid of useless cruft that adds no joy to the game is really wrong-headed. Just give an option to receive "Receive coin instead of low value game world flavor items" instead. Have it on by default. Or give another bag for infinite "world flavor" item storage.

Arborstone - So forgettable I didn't even mention in in the zone discussion. Yes, I suppose it's nice to build up a hub... but wouldn't this be better in the character home instance? 90% of the regular functionality is covered by the more convenient Obsidian Sanctum.

Siege Turtles - ....

Alright, had two squad runs of Dragon's End before this so - off to play some "hard but fair" classic Dark Souls, probably one or two others.... until I work up the morale to come back to Guild Wars 2.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Swynwraig.4628
Added mostly forgettable masteries and Arborstone. Added negativity to fishing.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

Haven't played EoD content in weeks, lost interest.  The loot was absolute garbage; I've read it's improved but got so turned off from wasting time that I don't feel like checking now.

The great:  Music

The bad:  I hoped I'd find fishing fun, but it bores me, and since skiffs only seem to be useful in fishing, skiffs bore me too.  The Jade Bot stuff aggravates my motion sickness so that's a no-go (that's a me problem and not a game problem).  New Kaineng City looks and sounds empty -- if they can't add more NPCs and events they could at least add more big city ambient sounds.  The Siege Turtle looks ugly and clunky to me, zero interest in acquiring it.

The so-so:  Haven't tried all the Elite Specs and will probably go back eventually, but again, the horrible first impression of having to complete the entire story on nine characters was a major turnoff.  I read it's changed but ANet needs to remember the old saw of "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."  Some of the story was interesting but a lot of it droned on and on.  Let us skip dialogue.

[Ashen.2907]

I will start with the good:

 

I enjoy the strikes very much. There is a variety of challenge levels between them. The mechanics are interesting and keep you on your toes without being overwhelming. Sure a lot to take in at first but not too difficult to learn.

The final meta event is fun. I do not normally care for large open world meta events because there is usually very little sense of personal contribution. Wi th this event, at least when I have played it, I feel as if it actually mattered that I was there and doing my best.

The maps are beautiful. Perhaps a bit overboard with the colors in Seitung, but still lovely.

I really like some of the elite specs. Virtuoso, Willbender, Specter, and Mechanist have been very fun to play.

 

Based on the above I do not regret purchasing the expansion. Those elements alone are enough to justify the cost. But now on to the bad: 

The story is lacking. It feels rushed and contrived. A problem that had not been hinted at previously is suddenly on the verge of ending the world. Mai Trin's forced redemption arc came across as fan service writing. We are clearly expected to care about Soo Won but had only just met her before we need to kill her.. In general there is entirely too much telling without showing. This lack of embrace of the concept of, "show don't tell," is not new to EoD for ANet but seems very pronounced here.

Dialogue can be an important part of creating a locale. Giving it character. Setting it apart from other locales within an overall setting. How characters within a locale view their world, articulate their views, and so on are important to creating at least a facade of immersion. Having NPC's in EoD use very modern speech patterns or dialogue deprives Cantha of an important part of its character. 'Min-Sec, totally," and more example of very modern western approaches to speech deprive us of the sense of visiting a far off land filled with people who are very interesting because of the ways in which they are different than us. Just slapping different naming conventions and new armor skins is not sufficient to carry this aspect of being a world explorer.

Kaineng is an exception to my comment about beautiful maps above. It may be superficially attractive but it is horribly designed. A city that grows organically over a period of centuries or more can be expected to be a convoluted mess nigh impossible to navigate efficiently. For a newly built, planned, city to have that element indicates that the people in charge, Canthan government not ANet, are idiots. As designed it is ridiculous to expect that the normal citizenry could hope to function within their own home city. Kaineng from GW1 was a collection of maze-like neighborhoods due to being an old city, there is no excuse for New Kaineng to be that way, And, for what it is worth, I am not opposed to a maze-like vertical map...this was just the wrong place to make it. Having an extensive section of Old Kaineng in ruins to explore would have been a better idea if the devs had their heart set on difficult urban exploration.

Another exception to the beautiful maps comment is the Jade Tech everywhere. Why in distant, seemingly either unexplored or at least hostile to exploration, reaches of the Expansion are there zip lines, jade tech chests, etc EVERYWHERE. Is someone wandering around purposefully leaving glowing treasure chests out in the open in enemy held territory? Jade Tech is relatively new so these chests had to have been purposefully littered around in areas hostile to technicians. Long lost buried treasure works in other maps, could have done so here too.

I find The Untamed to be an excessively convoluted mess of design. It is a solution looking for a problem and has no identity of its own. Harbinger is OK but I think that focusing on the blight mechanic as a replacement for shroud would have been better than diluting attention by having both. A deeper investment in the new mechanic would have been superior (part iof why I enjoy Scourge). Haven't really played the other new elites that much so no comment there. I will say that having the Mechanist be a superior pet class option than Ranger who has it as the core mechanic is odd.

Rewards are awful Getting a silver and a half worth of rewards for completing the story, the culmination of ten years, seems a bit odd.

Population levels are awful. I know that this is a player choice matter but ANet designed the content to be less rewarding that almost anywhere else in the game so I place responsibility for this issue on the expansion.

New Systems/Masteries. A mastery system to add merchants to yet another not truly customizable instance? Fishing? A reskin of our skimmer? I am not going to say that these things should not exist. Some people enjoy them. But as expansion major features they are underwhelming, to say the least. Sure it will be difficult to top or even equal gliding and mounts, but you can do better than features that another game would have had as minor mini-games at launch or have added as a minor side feature as part of a patch. 

 

Ah well, already longer than I intended so I guess a final grade:   5.5/10

[aspirine.6852]

On 4/16/2022 at 4:37 AM, Dante.1508 said:

Specter, Virtuoso and Mechanist are amazingly fun and feel perfect.

The rest are atrocious.. Untamed is so horrendous.

Agreed on the Virtuoso and mechanist. I havent tried specter yet but since I agree with the other 2 I will make him next. 🙂  One little side note. Dagger on virtuoso is kinda meh. I dont use it that much.

Power or condi specter btw?

Edited April 17, 2022 by aspirine.6852

[Witcheye.8976]

When I compare the experience of Cantha from Guild Wars 1 this to damned atrocity I feel like I have been robbed. The original Cantha expansion had tons of zones rendered by amazing artists. The tone was excellent, probably because it lacked all the technology, steampunk and asura BS which we must now push through in desperate hopes of getting to a zone which you can have fun fighting.

But that isn't going to happen since there's only 4 zones now. Those meager 4 zones are also a total eyesore because they were apparently created by color-blind interns. Even compared to previous expansions in GW2 this is a disaster.

If there were any justice, the incompetent clowns that built this hideous edifice to millennial incompetence will be let go, or at least issued an eye exam. With the exception of Echovald forest, this entire expansion is bush-pig ugly, which is doubly painful given the fact that the NPC voices in the story keep trying to convince me how beautiful it's supposed to be. What happened to the amazing art direction, even from this very same game in previous expansions?

This thing is tacky, poorly designed, and short on content.

The only thing I thought was good was the puzzle quest in the main story line which involved running around a house and switching power cells out to make various things unlock. Like the rest of the expansion it was ugly AF but at least the puzzle itself was well designed.

The boats maybe could be fun if we didn't have to sail them through the ugliest zone in Guild Wars.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Witcheye.8976
misspelling

[Dante.1508]

2 hours ago, aspirine.6852 said:

Agreed on the Virtuoso and mechanist. I havent tried specter yet but since I agree with the other 2 I will make him next. 🙂  One little side note. Dagger on virtuoso is kinda meh. I dont use it that much.

Power or condi specter btw?

Condi but i use celestial set for survivability scepter / dagger.

[Granrey.8920]

Very good. I wish there was another new mount additional to the turtle (which I love btw).

 

 

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 hours ago, Witcheye.8976 said:

When I compare the experience of Cantha from Guild Wars 1 this to damned atrocity I feel like I have been robbed. The original Cantha expansion had tons of zones rendered by amazing artists. The tone was excellent, probably because it lacked all the technology, steampunk and asura BS which we must now push through in desperate hopes of getting to a zone which you can have fun fighting.

But that isn't going to happen since there's only 4 zones now. Those meager 4 zones are also a total eyesore because they were apparently created by color-blind interns. Even compared to previous expansions in GW2 this is a disaster.

If there were any justice, the incompetent clowns that built this hideous edifice to millennial incompetence will be let go, or at least issued an eye exam. With the exception of Echovald forest, this entire expansion is bush-pig ugly, which is doubly painful given the fact that the NPC voices in the story keep trying to convince me how beautiful it's supposed to be. What happened to the amazing art direction, even from this very same game in previous expansions?

This thing is tacky, poorly designed, and short on content.

The only thing I thought was good was the puzzle quest in the main story line which involved running around a house and switching power cells out to make various things unlock. Like the rest of the expansion it was ugly AF but at least the puzzle itself was well designed.

The boats maybe could be fun if we didn't have to sail them through the ugliest zone in Guild Wars.

But seriously, though.  Tell us how you really feel.

I'm with you on the lack of content, though.  I wish I enjoyed playing on these maps, but there's not much for solo players to do for fun, rewards, and challenge while we wait for metas and those metas are long, boring, and unrewarding.  I could have enjoyed DE meta at least, but it fails half the time if you aren't planning your entire session around it and I just can't be bothered.

Pretty maps, in my opinion, and I don't mind the tech (except the stupid labeled jade objects cluttering the place for no good reason!).  But just totally boring to play on.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 4/10/2022 at 12:23 PM, Tachenon.5270 said:

EoD is like a 6-piece chicken nuggets happy meal with only 4 nuggets and the baby yoda toy is missing an ear. The 4 nuggets are still mighty tasty and you can of course still play with the toy, but it's just not as happy a meal as it should have been. Especially when what you really wanted was two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

PS: Tengu, Tengu everywhere, and not a playable one in sight.

It is true that there are many disappointing aspects about EoD.

My biggest grief is that nothing of what made Cantha great in GW1 was left in EoD. Its whole cultural foundation has been replaced with something rather generic and boring, with only references left of its former glory (i.e. the mighty tradition-rich Empire and the beautiful and fascinating Kurzick and Luxon cultures). Hight-tech does not equal culture, it's merely a flavor, a tool to simplify life.

My second biggest grief is the ugly color choices on three of the four new maps.

Fortunately, these things were clarified before we got to jump into the expansion, so I had time to brace myself, which allowed me to enjoy the remaining aspects of the expansion, namely story, exploration, meta events and strike missions.

The story in particular shone thanks to great writing, an amazing cinematography during cutscens and interesting new mechanics used in story missions.

[Zaoda.1653]

My thoughts:

 

• Still tons of bugs that have been reported and ignored
• Turtle mount locked behind raid-like strike mission is stupid and exclusive to only those who like/do raids and group player strike missions
• 2 player mount system for siege turtle is stupid - Anet should have allowed the turtle mount owner to both move and shoot cannon - problem solved.
• Dragon's End meta was and still is a one big cluster-bleep in terms of incentives and rewards - 2 hours worth of effort for constant failures is demoralizing and as it is most players aren't going back. I'm glad there'll be an infusion drop being added though and the hero choice chest thing which can offer an antique summoning stone - which is a start!
• Disappointed there weren't many new armour and weapon skins to unlock for 'expansion worthy' content
• I personally still don't like most of the new elite specs - the only ones I'm using somewhat are Virtuoso (only because of the long range of that dagger), and the vindicator is a bit fun to use - other than those 2, I don't really use the new elite specs. I mean, the untamed elite spec literally means to not be controlled by anything, yet you're literally controlled by a pet/animal that puts you into combat/aggro when you don't want it to (hence why I'll still always play soulbeast over other ranger elite specs, because you can get rid of the pet).
• the 4 maps look good - dragon's end is the nicest in my opinion - I really dislike echovald forest though - it feels worse than tangled depths in terms of navigation and unlocking all the poi's, etc. - and with new kaineng city, I really dislike the verticality of it all. I think Anet should have given archways like in Divnity's Reach - so you can still have the verticality, but can still easily navigate the map without having to jump into the waterways on your skimmer to get around the ridiculously high buildings - and yes there's the zip lines, but they still don't indicate very well where their end destination is other than a ping on the map that lasts 1 second and doesn't come back if you didn't see it. I really hate the navigation of at least 2 of the 4 new maps, and you have to look up on youtube how to get specific poi's and such just to complete the map, as there's no indicators or clues as to how to get to some of the poi's.
• I thought it was pretty bad that the piece of dragon jade, used for making jade bot cores, wasn't even accessible for the first 2 days of the expansion, which I felt was a pretty basic thing - considering it's needed for the jade bot - one of the most marketed things of the expansion.
• Hate fishing and skiffs. I feel like it's a complete waste of my time for very little reward, so I won't be doing either of them again unless I absolutely have to for a collection or item skin reward. There's so much wrong with fishing and skiffs it's about a page worth of notes I have on it, so too much to type here, but needless to say both were designed poorly (skimmer > skiff, and no interface or skillbar showing amount of baits etc.? this is basic stuff!!) and I won't be fishing or skiffing again unless I have to for something I want and it requires it.
• overall I think there's a lot that went wrong and still is going wrong, but maybe in a year or two these things will have been resolved. I do think the expansion went pretty smoothly in terms of amount of players being online when it went online, so I give props to Anet for that.
• I like the fact that the jade bot cores give an additional health pool bonus while in PvE - as it certainly helps with a bit more health. I think some of the service chips and sensory arrays could be better, but overall they're nice additions to the game.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Zaoda.1653

[Balsa.3951]

very nice xpac 

just a little light feature wise, but what they added is fun.

Strikes are no Piñata anymore and having fun mechanics

New Elites always nice

Maps are beautiful, just event wise a little monotone? not sure yet 

fishing/ skiff/ Jade bot/Turtle they all add something to the game (Nothing wow but it makes the world feel more mmo like... hard to describe)

 

In short positive its all high quality what they added

negative they didnt added much in compare to HOT and the set of maps we get is probably 2 Maps only BUT lets see

 

(side note) Big mistake to not add any PVP stuff 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2022 by Balsa.3951