Heart of Thorns metas are still packed, SoTo metas are now a ghost town

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

Just now, vares.8457 said:

Yeah he is a troll, it’s pretty disgusting to hope that others fail. 

Insulting another player for wanting to know about the quarterly earnings report on the sale of the expansion?  

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

how many maps does HoT have? How many different enemies? How unique each meta is?

meanwhile SotO is just two maps with like 4 different mobs that are actually reused assets with a meta that is actually the same old...

[Gotejjeken.1267]

12 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

I started the game a few years ago. Your statement is simply not true. Just because I did this 8 years later then you, doesn’t mean I didn’t get the same experience while exploring the new game which got me hooked. Something no other games could achieve. Even if I did use mounts, I got to explore nooks and crannies of the world. And every time some npc was saying something that caught my eyes (or ears👀)  I got yoinked out of my current “mission” and kept listening to them and even follow them around to see what else they would do/say. And come across beautiful spots around the maps with so many details. You can do these things even on mounts you know.
 

The game has plenty soul to me and I enjoyed core Tyria and the expansions as I played further. Some people like to just zoom through the game and others don’t. This has nothing to do with being a new player. It’s about what you prefer individually as a gamer and what you see as valuable to a game. 

Have to disagree with 'same experience'--you have no experience with something like HoT pre-mount and what actual exploring of something like TD was like.  Nor do you have experience with all the changes LWS1 brought to the maps and what that was like, only the impact--no experience of old LA or anything.

So yes, there's a lot in those 8 years to miss.  You may enjoy exploring a new game and that's fine--it just isn't the same.

12 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

I couldn’t disagree more, the new maps are not bland and this is not an objective fact, it’s your personal opinion. I really like the new maps, they are full of small details and aesthetically very beautiful and full of fun events. 

Fun events...you mean chasing the same rift 1000 times? 

Compare above, with HoT.  When it first launched you had no mount and only glider, and your map objective was to help the pact fight off vines/Mord--it all made sense and you did this in a whole bunch of ways.  The previous LW tied into it with Scarlett, Sylvari were going nuts, lots of things happening.

Now? They throw skyscale at you, make you chase the same rifts across the map which is just made up of 'fractals' of literal existing places no one cares about like Garenhoff.  By design nothing prior really ties in aside from some cameos (Zojja) and brief mentions of Aurene.

Ironically though, I thought the first chapter was great, after that just downhill.  By the 6th chapter you are doing a collection hunt in the Wizard's Tower which is the most basic thing they could have done.  I will agree this is way better than EoD which just throws politics at you the entire time without remorse.

7 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

If your idea of soulful map design are core maps with flat terrain, bland scenery, hearts, a smattering of random one-off events, and no meta then I suppose these maps would be a disappointment.  For me, the constant action of having so many events in each area is a nice change coming from the less active maps of the last two expansions and I've always disliked hearts, so good riddance to that.  I also love using the griffon to get around, which I get to do a lot of in these maps and especially Amnytas. 

<snip>

I remove the part I agree with; for the first part though, there were indeed metas; the entire point last map of Orr is a meta to open up the dungeon.  Also have had world bosses since the beginning--things like Shadow Behemoth were original ideas for the bigger metas we have now.  

Maps weren't really flat either, PoF brought the truly flat maps--and those I actually hate. 

Maybe it's me playing all the way back to GW1 when the lore was actually intense in pretty much every facet of the game.  GW2 has been a big step down from that to start with, but has really seemed to replace a lot of the details with copy paste events as the one poster put it.  

[Freya.9075]

19 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Have to disagree with 'same experience'--you have no experience with something like HoT pre-mount and what actual exploring of something like TD was like.  Nor do you have experience with all the changes LWS1 brought to the maps and what that was like, only the impact--no experience of old LA or anything.

So yes, there's a lot in those 8 years to miss.  You may enjoy exploring a new game and that's fine--it just isn't the same.

Tyria is not as different as you think regardless of the impact Scarlet and living world season 1 had. Some maps have been changed, but a new player will not pay attention to that. They see a new world to explore just as you did before living world started. I have played through season 1 now and seen old lions arch. Some story parts are missing, but it fixed some holes in the story I was curious about. My overall exploration and how I saw Tyria as a whole was not affected by this. A new player will not see Tyria through your eyes. But the experience is the same. You may think it is not because you have experienced those changes and it creates nostalgia for you. I do not have this nostalgia, but I do have nostalgia from Tyria as I know now. It's not that different at all. The world may be a little different, but the experience is not.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Freya.9075

[Hashberry.4510]

Ehh it's wildly different being so power creeped. It robs from all of us the chance to repeat content with only change being our improvement in skills. Super short sighted.

[Dreams.3128]

So people are just being disingenuous.

So we are going to ignore the plethora of threads complaining how hard the HoT content was? We are gonna ignore the fact people out the fact people were leaving in droves? So we are going to ignore the fact that many people were here CRYING that what the original HoT actually made Anet more money, in reality they had lost both players and money that people pointed out time and time again throughout the years? 

How many maps HoT had? Oh you mean the maps people were sobbing about and saying that Tangled Depths was one of the worst maps ever created.

How many different types of enemies HoT had? The enemies that were promptly recycled from other enemies we had in base GW2?

It will forever blow my mind how people will twist the truth on things just to fit their argument, and then disappear into thin air as soon as they're proven wrong. And THEN to top it all off, they use pointless, weak arguments on an expansion that hasn't been out for a month compared to HoT which has been out for literal years at this point. I swear these forums are just an echo chamber when they can't stretch their point to places like Discord or Reddit.

[Hashberry.4510]

HoT was the high point of the game. That's not coming back.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

6 minutes ago, Dreams.3128 said:

So people are just being disingenuous.

So we are going to ignore the plethora of threads complaining how hard the HoT content was? We are gonna ignore the fact people out the fact people were leaving in droves? So we are going to ignore the fact that many people were here CRYING that what the original HoT actually made Anet more money, in reality they had lost both players and money that people pointed out time and time again throughout the years? 

How many maps HoT had? Oh you mean the maps people were sobbing about and saying that Tangled Depths was one of the worst maps ever created.

How many different types of enemies HoT had? The enemies that were promptly recycled from other enemies we had in base GW2?

It will forever blow my mind how people will twist the truth on things just to fit their argument, and then disappear into thin air as soon as they're proven wrong. And THEN to top it all off, they use pointless, weak arguments on an expansion that hasn't been out for a month compared to HoT which has been out for literal years at this point. I swear these forums are just an echo chamber when they can't stretch their point to places like Discord or Reddit.

We had Bristlebacks in base GW2? Smokescales? Pocket Raptors? etc. etc.

We DO have Fire Elementals, etc., etc. that SoTO rehashes.  I'm finding Amnytas particularly bad with this as one of the first events you can do upon map entry is an event to corral identical enemy types we've had over the years, but the twist is you have to unpossess them first. 

Also, just because something is difficult, and they change it doesn't mean it's a good thing.  It's called selling out to keep the game alive--sure that's a necessity for any company, but the players don't have to like it.  

If you like paying for little content now with the promise for more later, great.  Don't project that on those of us who remember complete expansions though.  

[Dreams.3128]

Just now, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

We had Bristlebacks in base GW2? Smokescales? Pocket Raptors? etc. etc.

We DO have Fire Elementals, etc., etc. that SoTO rehashes.  I'm finding Amnytas particularly bad with this as one of the first events you can do upon map entry is an event to corral identical enemy types we've had over the years, but the twist is you have to unpossess them first. 

Also, just because something is difficult, and they change it doesn't mean it's a good thing.  It's called selling out to keep the game alive--sure that's a necessity for any company, but the players don't have to like it.  

If you like paying for little content now with the promise for more later, great.  Don't project that on those of us who remember complete expansions though.  

How am I projecting that? I'm not projecting anything. What I am saying is that you need to stop sounding like HoT was a golden age when these forums EXPLODED from the sheer AUDACITY of Anet trying to do anything beyond zerging content or easy, casual content that the majority wanted.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 minutes ago, Dreams.3128 said:

How am I projecting that? I'm not projecting anything. What I am saying is that you need to stop sounding like HoT was a golden age when these forums EXPLODED from the sheer AUDACITY of Anet trying to do anything beyond zerging content or easy, casual content that the majority wanted.

That will always happen, because a vast majority of people (in life in general) want instant gratification.  They want easy, point and click mobile game style content because low effort content is still rewarding in some fashion.  Just look no further than the Wizard's Vault to see that direction in action.

For me though, HoT was a golden age as it was actually crafted content.  Yes, TD is a pain in the kitten to navigate, and yes Dragon Stand was the first 'meta only map' and I hate those--but overall, it brought a lot of new things to the table.  

What I think this topic is aiming at and what I want is for them to step back and create something meaningful, even if it does take a few years to get.  That may be well impossible now though with all the power creep they've introduced and 11 years of non-SoTO maps and content to maintain--but one can dream.

Basically, as a summary for me, the first 5-6 hours of SoTO is what I wish the rest of it was.  Had meaningful use of core maps to introduce it, then the first rift you get pulled into / hell and hiding from big kitten demon dude--all great.  Introduction to the islands, great.  The open world part after is where it all falls apart because they lynchpin the next 5-10 hours on 'hunt rifts and let's introduce you to skyscales again'. 

[Linken.6345]

51 minutes ago, Dreams.3128 said:

How am I projecting that? I'm not projecting anything. What I am saying is that you need to stop sounding like HoT was a golden age when these forums EXPLODED from the sheer AUDACITY of Anet trying to do anything beyond zerging content or easy, casual content that the majority wanted.

In hindsigt it was the golden era of gw2.

Remember it was supposed to be the systems expansion that they would build the next expansion upon and in the end it have more staying power on the maps then any of the expansions after.

That is a feat in itself.

[Gravitron.7982]

4 hours ago, MuscleBobBuffPants.1406 said:

First day =/= financial success.  The key will be when the numbers drop for the quarterly earnings and sales.  As noted by Rubi she mentions 
"already-ambitious", which always felt strange to say it that way.  It almost seems like they had low expectations from the get go for this "expansion", did better on day one, but I am very curious to see the drop off over the following week and following month.

Same, I'm curious what the expansion specific sales numbers looks like for the first 3 months after launch. 

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

So we are going to ignore the plethora of threads complaining how hard the HoT content was? We are gonna ignore the fact people out the fact people were leaving in droves? (...)
Oh you mean the maps people were sobbing about and saying that Tangled Depths was one of the worst maps ever created. (...)
It will forever blow my mind how people will twist the truth on things just to fit their argument, and then disappear into thin air as soon as they're proven wrong.

Or you could make fewer generalizations with which you justify why those who think differently "twist the truth". Because through such generalizations, many different, even contradictory, points of view are possibly falsely summarized.

Although I liked the initial difficulty of the HoT maps and for me TD is one of the best (and most confusing 🙂 ) maps to date: Of course the higher and for many players unexpected difficulty of the maps of HoT was a point of criticism for many and of course Anet has with the desert borderland almost killed WvW. etc etc

For me, Anet did the most things right with the metas in HoT. The course correction of the metas in PoF is/was less successful. And yet I like the SotO maps and the meta in Amnytas and the Amnytas meta doesn't feel empty to me.

 

2 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

What I am saying is that you need to stop sounding like HoT was a golden age

It kind of was golden age. For me S1 and S2 was kind of "We want GW2 become the Game of Thrones of gaming but we don't really know how to continue after the first success and we still have to find ourselves again."

And then Anet introduced so many new and creative ideas with HoT/S3 that are leveraged by all the following expansions including SotO. And Anet tried to rethink many things and leave the beaten path. Which of course meant a high risk of mistakes, and unfortunately Anet made some serious mistakes.

Even though PoF built on the previous work of HoT, I had the feeling at the time that there was still the same desire to revolutionize the gaming experience. And as a result, Anet produced the best mounts in the industry, for example.

I didn't see the same desire to rethink and improve the gaming experience later in the game. Probably because the internal failed attempts, which were not even published, caused far too much development costs and Anet no longer wanted to take such a high risk. From an economic point of view, I can understand that. An Anet representative once said in an interview (ca. around 2 years ago): "I had to learn that we don't have to be good, but we have to be good enough".

From this perspective I think that during HoT/S3/PoF/S4 was in a way the golden age of GW2.

BTW: I believe that GoT was even the inspiration for the names/abbreviations HoT, PoF and EoD and that they ran out of good ideas and therefore SotO has 4 letters. 😇

[willow.8209]

On 8/29/2023 at 5:22 PM, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

HoT will always be relevant since has infusions in two of the maps, the first map has easy exotic armor purchases, and even the HPs are good daily farm. EoD has none of that with the final meta being a risky time loss. SotO has plenty to do solo so not everyone is doing the metas.

how are we supposed to know the armor boxes are exotic? I thought they were rare because they have a rare border color/ name tag color.

Edited August 31, 2023 by willow.8209

[Zebulous.2934]

hmm in my experience if a company has two products, and customers start to complain that one product is inferior, the company usually reduces the quality of the more popular product.  It seems stupid, but it also makes sense.  Instead of spending money to improve a faulty product a company can spend less money and simply nerf the better product.  That way new customers see to comparable products and might spend money on either one, rather than only buying the superior product and ignoring the other product.

[Dreams.3128]

11 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

Or you could make fewer generalizations with which you justify why those who think differently "twist the truth". Because through such generalizations, many different, even contradictory, points of view are possibly falsely summarized.

If I could tap into the older forums, I would have been more than happy posting many, many threads of the complaints of HoT. It's not generalizations, it was a literal flood. Also, if we wanna call out generalizations, then let's go scroll back to the first page of this thread or the threads on the front page of this section.

Please keep the energy for both sides. 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Dreams.3128

[Trejgon.9367]

16 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Have to disagree with 'same experience'--you have no experience with something like HoT pre-mount and what actual exploring of something like TD was like. 

There is nothing stopping new player from exploring HoT without mount, and getting lost in TD all over again just like in the HoT launch day. The only difference would be that mobs in the area are less punishing than they were, and the metas are failing much less.

 

Quote

Nor do you have experience with all the changes LWS1 brought to the maps and what that was like, only the impact--no experience of old LA or anything.

So yes, there's a lot in those 8 years to miss.  You may enjoy exploring a new game and that's fine--it just isn't the same.

Old LA was just a single city map, and in the end the changes LWS1 brought ended up being limited due to how alot of them got flat out removed with subsequent patches. The main thing to miss from that era is FOMO of having to keep up with story that is not waiting for you (and achievements).

Meanwhile the post you are responding to was response to you making it sound like "experiencing maps like they were made to be explored" is something no longer possible.

Quote

Fun events...you mean chasing the same rift 1000 times? 

I think they meant the plethora of events that are going on on those maps practically all the time. Trying to pretend that it's only same rifts 1000 times is either disingenious or shows you ignored everything on the new map because you didn't want to experience them for what they are.

Quote

Compare above, with HoT.  When it first launched you had no mount and only glider, and your map objective was to help the pact fight off vines/Mord--it all made sense and you did this in a whole bunch of ways.  The previous LW tied into it with Scarlett, Sylvari were going nuts, lots of things happening.

Technically speaking you didn't even have a glider, you needed to grind the masteries to even get that.

Quote

Now? They throw skyscale at you, make you chase the same rifts across the map which is just made up of 'fractals' of literal existing places no one cares about like Garenhoff.  By design nothing prior really ties in aside from some cameos (Zojja) and brief mentions of Aurene.

That is gross misrepresentation. The more accurate representation would be this:

You ended the dragon cycle, aurene went to sleep, but tasked you with watching over everyone, but since everyone is doing fine, you have a moment of nothing to do. You get a tip from one of the colleagues that there is something interesting going off at Garenhoff, and while you investigate the disappearance of wizards tower, you discover whole secret society of wizards, and things go flat out bonkers with demonic large scale invasion, that as a side effect pulled fractal researches they were conducting into real tyria. Things going complete bonkers, during which you need to balance helping very real people from those mini-realities, helping wizards repel demons, and repair infrastructure that is meant to make those sort of invasions impossible.

Rifts are just one of the small aspects of story and things to do. One you are presented fairly early to be sure, but in the large scope, of even just a first map - miniscule side activity.

And those "literal existing places" are not "literal existing places" but chunks of alternate realities pulled into this one. Alternate realities specifically created by wizards "for science".

Quote

Maps weren't really flat either, PoF brought the truly flat maps--and those I actually hate. 

Vanilla maps are fairly flat in their design. Some of them are definitely more flat than PoF maps. Each of PoF maps have aspects of verticality that was simply unfeasible pre-HoT.

Quote

Maybe it's me playing all the way back to GW1 when the lore was actually intense in pretty much every facet of the game.  GW2 has been a big step down from that to start with, but has really seemed to replace a lot of the details with copy paste events as the one poster put it.  

Coming from someone who played GW1, and have replayed grand most of GW1 just prior to EoD release, I would say you may want to take off your nostalgia glasses there.

[AliamRationem.5172]

22 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

So people are just being disingenuous.

So we are going to ignore the plethora of threads complaining how hard the HoT content was? We are gonna ignore the fact people out the fact people were leaving in droves? So we are going to ignore the fact that many people were here CRYING that what the original HoT actually made Anet more money, in reality they had lost both players and money that people pointed out time and time again throughout the years? 

How many maps HoT had? Oh you mean the maps people were sobbing about and saying that Tangled Depths was one of the worst maps ever created.

How many different types of enemies HoT had? The enemies that were promptly recycled from other enemies we had in base GW2?

It will forever blow my mind how people will twist the truth on things just to fit their argument, and then disappear into thin air as soon as they're proven wrong. And THEN to top it all off, they use pointless, weak arguments on an expansion that hasn't been out for a month compared to HoT which has been out for literal years at this point. I swear these forums are just an echo chamber when they can't stretch their point to places like Discord or Reddit.

I don't know about anyone else, sales numbers, etc. But I started GW2 because of HoT, I loved it then and still think it's easily the best expansion we've seen.  And yes, I started during HoT, before mounts,  and Tangled Depths is my favorite map.

Just my opinion, of course.  I know it's controversial.  But I also think it's easy to point to how rich HoT was with new features, incredibly detailed maps and a great event cycle.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

(IMHO) Part of why HoT metas are still popular (well, TD and AB anyway) are because they're rewarding, have the chance to drop infusions, and don't take an inordinate amount of time/effort. I don't see people doing VB/DS quite as often (time/effort/rewards aren't as great as TD/AB), though people still do. The rest of the time, unless it's baubles week, when I've gone to HoT maps, they're usually dead.

But, man, I remember when the forums EXPLODED with how much people hated HoT because it's a HUGE jump in skill level between Core/LWS1/LWS2. Hek, I hated it early on because I wasn't skilled enough at GW2 at the time nor did I have a gearset/build that played nicely with HoT's difficulty. Newer players STILL complain about the jump in difficulty.

[Trejgon.9367]

1 hour ago, QueenKeriti.5176 said:

But, man, I remember when the forums EXPLODED with how much people hated HoT because it's a HUGE jump in skill level between Core/LWS1/LWS2. Hek, I hated it early on because I wasn't skilled enough at GW2 at the time nor did I have a gearset/build that played nicely with HoT's difficulty. Newer players STILL complain about the jump in difficulty.

Yeah it were a wild times - even tho personally I did not hate it and I actually enjoyed strolling through HoT on my half-trained druid (that for first couple days was halftrained because it costed 400 hero points - got instantly fully trained on the day the patch reducing the cost rolled in). I do have alot of fond memories of that time.

That being said I would still hesitate from calling this particular period as "best time of GW2" nor I am not going to pretend that it was universally well received when it launched - it had alot of hype, but that hype train crashed hard as soon as all the meta berserks started getting stomped in the jungle 🙂

[QueenKeriti.5176]

43 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Yeah it were a wild times - even tho personally I did not hate it and I actually enjoyed strolling through HoT on my half-trained druid (that for first couple days was halftrained because it costed 400 hero points - got instantly fully trained on the day the patch reducing the cost rolled in). I do have alot of fond memories of that time.

That being said I would still hesitate from calling this particular period as "best time of GW2" nor I am not going to pretend that it was universally well received when it launched - it had alot of hype, but that hype train crashed hard as soon as all the meta berserks started getting stomped in the jungle 🙂

I was running around as a greatsword mesmer in rare assassin's gear with randomly chosen traits in my build because I had no clue what I was doing. 🙃It got really frustrating really fast to take forever to kill something and die in seconds lol.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Idk I dislike half of the HoT maps, Verdant Brink and Auric Basin are nice but the Tangled Depths is a mess and dragon's stand is only interesting for the meta which is only ok. 

[circuitnerd.5863]

People tend to follow where the biggest rewards are in terms of gold acquisition. Soto maps have very little rewards. I think it's like... 7 chests at the end of Amnytas that each grant 1 or 2 pieces of blue or green unidentified gear. There is the meta progress chests but again, it's not really much and it only starts when the Kryptis actually invade. The map currency doesn't really give much more than minis so... Lastly people tend to want to gravitate more to maps that also have events going all the time which progresses the meta, such as Silverwastes, Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Dragonstand, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood, etc. Those 2 things I think are the driving factors. 

[Trejgon.9367]

5 hours ago, circuitnerd.5863 said:

People tend to follow where the biggest rewards are in terms of gold acquisition. Soto maps have very little rewards. I think it's like... 7 chests at the end of Amnytas that each grant 1 or 2 pieces of blue or green unidentified gear. There is the meta progress chests but again, it's not really much and it only starts when the Kryptis actually invade. The map currency doesn't really give much more than minis so... Lastly people tend to want to gravitate more to maps that also have events going all the time which progresses the meta, such as Silverwastes, Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Dragonstand, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood, etc. Those 2 things I think are the driving factors. 

You are omitting here legendary armor mats that are so far only available from soto metas 😉 (and their map currencies).

Also on a side note verdant brink, and auric basin no longer "have events all the time which progresses the meta" - daytime VB and pylons AB were decoupled from their metas couple years ago.

[Zzik.5873]

On 8/30/2023 at 1:08 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

From someone who started in beta...

I think it's kind of objective fact the SoTO maps are possibly the most bland ones we've ever seen.  The first one is just annoying to navigate but obviously serves a purpose of enforcing skyscale = mandatory.  It's also uninspired, a bunch of fractal islands of other places in the game...

The Wizard Tower I'm not even sure why it's a map other than they needed some themed hub.  Compared to something like Arborstone in EoD its terrible.

I got like three feet into Amnytas so I could get the new ranger pet, but already it just reminds me of Edge of The Mists and I'm not really rushing to go back.

Newer players don't realize this but there is such a thing as no more soul left to a game.  Unfortunately for anyone starting now they won't get to experience what it was like doing heart quests and having each map crafted to be explored.  Now it's just blaze through everything with a mount and if the maps become any more basic, I'd expect a mobile version of GW2.

Really, call it jaded or whatnot but even IBS maps blow these out of the water.  That's saying a lot.  

Dont take your opinion for objectivity. Im a vet since pre HoT. The first new map is so original and amazing to explore, the second one I dont like it that much, but I got the feeling it will grow on me. The tower is a cool new hub, full of little stuff here and there. Maybe your just playing too much and need to do something else?