I have mixed feelings about SOTO [Merged]

[Elena.8734]

I just finished the whole accessible SOTO story (yep, it took me that much time to get it done), and started endgame stuffs and collections.

When Soto was  announced, I was perplexed by Anet's decision of allining themself with a similar expansion development model than TESO, with yearly expansions +3 patch, with self-contained theme. From there, i bought the expansion without being much hyped by it, but still giving it a chance to change my mind. GW2 never really disappointed me. There was some miss, but globally, most patches were good enough to, at least, enjoy the story and be entertained for a while.

To be honnest, i'm still not confident into Anet to pull out something good from this development model.

To put some of my criticism in perspective, i'm a french speaking player and i've played Guild Wars from Propheties up until now in French. 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

LOCALIZATION
I'll clear it first and fast. Aside from some rare misfire here and there (especially since Icebrood Saga), the french localization had always been very good, good enough so I've never felt the need to turn my game in English while i do it with most of my games.  BUT, SOTO has a bunch of problem in it's french localization, the biggest being that half the voice acting line are not voiced at all. When it happens with your character, you can keep up by reading the chat bubbles, but when those chat bubbles don't appear on your screen because it's  from an external source, from a big NPC or sometime just randomly not appearing for a reason or another, you just miss the story. SOTO is the first time i have to turn my language in English in order, not to enjoy the story, but to be able to follow it. This is the first reason why it got me so much time to complete the story, cause I've waited for a fix that never came.

ARTISTIC DESIGN
Art is subjective, but sometimes, it's just too obvious that there is a lack of polish/limitations due to the game engine. Nayos is great it has it's alien-demonic vibes and Anet always did a great job in chaotic and natural environments to make them feel right and believable. Nayos is no exception to this and is great in terms of art. This said, Amnystas, the Archipelago and the Mage Tower suffer from two things that makes those zones so much less enjoyable to explore.

First, the Mage Tower white and gold model Kit is too obvious and the different pieces of it do not match well with each other, which makes it unbelievable and uninspired. There's many places where (Amnystas in particular) the blocking is just in your face without polish of any kind. Maybe having those unbelievable sanitized environment was part of the design, but ultimately, the game engine never felt good with the shadow render of any squared corner. Everywhere i look in Amnystas and the mage tower, i can't help myself from just seeing those Lego Kit and it just feel cringe as it feel like a first blocking draft more than a finished product.

Globally i feel like there's also a lack of new interesting things to see in those two zones, pre-destroyed Rata Novus being the exception. It feels like there was next to no vision of  what those zone would look like before devs started to build the expansion zones. It feel like they rushed pre-prod, which harmed production behind. But the lack of vision is clear.

STORY
Without spoiling, I'll say that the prologue is quite nice, up until you get in the first zone. There, i felt like instead of telling a coherent story, the game tried to teach me how the game works for pretty much 2-3 chapters. While i understand the value of having the little training session in EOD with Rama, it's not taking one third of the story neither. In the first chapter, it feels like we chain ''How to ride a Dwagon'', ''Tutorial for rift'', go search X-Blue (which is the only story bit of the first zone), ''Tutorial for What's a Public Event''. There's always been tutorials, but really if tutorials as to takes as much of the story to teach, just tutorialize outside of it or create a new tutorial in the base game so tutorial do not take away the few story chapters we get in those reduced expansions. It's such a waste.

LEVEL DESIGN
I love the vertical design of GW2 maps since HoT, it's awesome to have to think in 3D instead of 2D like in most other games. But Amnystas and the Archipelago are just a pain to traverse before having the 4th mastery in the flight master mastery line. Sure it feel like a significant upgrade and it feel nice to get, but not because the feature is nice to have, but because the level design is working so much against you that you feel relieved to stop dealing with it's kitten. Again, i feel like there was no vision of what kind of design they wanted for traversal. It feel's like they made a zone and added energy bubbles and airflows where their platforms were unreachable. There's just no movement flow in those zones.

THE GOOD
Not everything is bad, tho. Nayos is nice. The Story starts to kick when Peitha reveal herself, which means there's probably 2-4 great chapters ahead. It's nice to see new builds emerging  with the weaponmaster perk and i look forward for the new weapons this winter. The strike i've done (Temple of Febe) was pretty nice. Public Events seems mostly fine even tho the Meta-Events are not the best Anet did. The collections seems nice to farm. The legendary path is clearer that ever. The Mage Vault is  a nice feature for goal oriented players that struggle on finding personal goals in the game.

SOTO's not a thrash expansion. But...it could have used of a couple of weeks of polish and it feels like it's done by a team of Junior Devs on which Anet thrown the project with no pre-prod creative vision. At least, all previous content is still current, but i hope this quality level is not the new Standard. I hope they are aiming at doing better this summer with the next expansion.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Elena.8734

[DanAlcedo.3281]

A well write post. 

It always so interesting to me just how different people see and play the game. 

For example, it would never even cross my mind what color a certain wall is. 

Or how difficult it is to get somewhere when way points and griffon exist. 

For example, in the first map, just port to the Dwarf island and climb towards the wizards tower a bit. Then zoom to every corner of the map. 

Amnytas has the high up way point in the middle. That + Griffon means you are at any corner in seconds. 

 

[Elena.8734]

36 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

For example, in the first map, just port to the Dwarf island and climb towards the wizards tower a bit. Then zoom to every corner of the map. 

Amnytas has the high up way point in the middle. That + Griffon means you are at any corner in seconds. 

To be fair You are right in those claim, still you have to get to those WP first before using them. Furthermore, counting on WP for your traversal design is pretty bad  since you ask for players to pay each time they need to go elsewhere on the map. As i said, this is especially bad in early game before you get the 4th mastery, and in Amnystas, it's the last WP you get. All the others WP are particularly badly placed in the lower part of their island.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Elena.8734

[DanAlcedo.3281]

5 minutes ago, Elena.8734 said:

To be fair You are right in those claim, still you have to get to those WP first before using them. Furthermore, counting on WP for your traversal design is pretty bad  since you ask for players to pay each time they need to go elsewhere on the map. As i said, this is especially bad in early game before you get the 4th mastery, and in Amnystas, it's the last WP you get. All the others WP are particularly badly placed in the lower part of their island.

But you only struggle once. Never again. 

Also, with how much money Anet is throwing at us, a measly 1-2 silver in WP cost is  really nothing to worry about. How much is a single Ecto right now? 30 silver? 

So opening one of the chests in SotO should fuel your travel costs for a while. 

[Elena.8734]

I suppose it's fair. Still, those maps are in my opinion badly designed and i have next to no fun playing in it. At least, Nayos isn't bad, which means i've a place to farm my masteries before going back in old zones. Maybe there's just a part of me that dislike the whole Mage Tower vibe. I can argue that's not my cup of tea. Tho, i like the Kryptis, and the darker vibe they bring. Maybe the next expac will have a theme i like more and i'll be more inclined to close my eyes when it comes to details i dislike, like GW2 did achieved during pretty much the entire Cycle of Dragons.

I'm just not convinced by what i experienced in SOTO that Anet is able to maintain the rythm with 1 expac +3 patch a year without a drop in quality.

[Randulf.7614]

For me Nayos is the weakest of the three by far. It lacks interesting things to discover, interesting things to do , does nothing with the unique look and it lacks strong map storytelling—it lacks a lot of depth. I appreciate it’s part one, but let’s look at part one of Drizzlewood and compare—the map storytelling is off the chart and is stacked with achievements and ambient things going on to build it up into a war zone. Even Silverwastes had a better map story going on for its part one and that’s a limited map in terms of complexity. The next Nayos map part has some massive heavy lifting to do to recover. The leyline route is also odd. It leads back to the start which is redundant given you can just waypoint. It’s only saving grace is that the events are on such a ridiculously short timer, mastery xp flows thick and fast. 

Amnytas suffers from not having much differentiation between buildings. It’s a map brimming with unused potential and a meta which has one of the coolest looking bosses in the game. There’s a lot of good stuff going on, but too often feels a bit drab for the spectacle it is. It’s otherwise decent, but not somewhere I go to often.

Archipelago is prob the best of the three. It’s varied, it has a lot of storytelling, a lot of nooks and crannies, a lot of events to find and activate and stuffed full of interesting stories see. It’s not perfect, but a strong starting map. I disagree that no thought has been put in—if anything they’ve really thought about how the fractals work, how the people living their lives feel and how each event could have unfolded. 

t does have a story I’m invested in though. After the mess of the Dragon story, I’m happy about that

Edited December 22, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[Andy.5981]

A nice write up. For me the issue with the maps is that they seem to exist only to drive the story forward and nothing else. What I mean by that is that in HoT and PoF the maps were much bigger than the story required - there is always something going on off the storyline, quests, places to explore, weird little events happening. SoTO just has the feel and rewards of a Living story, which is particularly exacerbated by the episodic release of the "expansion".

Having said that I like the storyline and Peitha is clearly one of the more intersting characters that they have introduced. Still don't trust her though.

[Ashantara.8731]

4 hours ago, Elena.8734 said:

I just finished the whole accessible SOTO story (yep, it took me that much time to get it done), and started endgame stuffs and collections.

[...]

Always fascinating how tastes differ. I find Nayos extremely boring and monotonous so far, while the Archipelago and the Wizard's Tower are my favorite SotO maps. Amnytas is quite unspectacular as well for the reasons Randulf mentioned.

SotO has been having way too much monotonous grind and a majorly disappointing Update 1, so my feelings about it are mixed as well -- but for different reasons than yours. 😉

[Randulf.7614]

2 hours ago, Andy.5981 said:

A nice write up. For me the issue with the maps is that they seem to exist only to drive the story forward and nothing else. What I mean by that is that in HoT and PoF the maps were much bigger than the story required - there is always something going on off the storyline, quests, places to explore, weird little events happening. SoTO just has the feel and rewards of a Living story, which is particularly exacerbated by the episodic release of the "expansion".

Having said that I like the storyline and Peitha is clearly one of the more intersting characters that they have introduced. Still don't trust her though.

That is an interesting and pretty accurate observation. 

[Jumpin Lumpix.6108]

cant believe they abandoned cantha living world for this.  The only thing I was looking forward to was the legendary pve armor, and they made it insanely grindy, its not even worth doing, might as well do raids or WVW.  THe only thing I like is skyscale combat mount mastery.

[Ashantara.8731]

12 hours ago, Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

cant believe they abandoned cantha living world for this.  The only thing I was looking forward to was the legendary pve armor, and they made it insanely grindy, its not even worth doing, might as well do raids or WVW.  THe only thing I like is skyscale combat mount mastery.

I don't think there ever were plans for a Cantha LW. Also, looking at Gyala Delve, I am glad they didn't go down that road -- everything that was cool about Cantha in GW1 is pretty much non-existent in GW2.

I agree with the rest of your post.

[Cuks.8241]

I see this game having 2 types of maps. The expansion and vanilla maps which are larger, intricate, filled with sides stories, secrets and exploration. Layers upon layers of content to discover. And there are LS maps which are generally smaller, packed and mostly serve the basic story. There are some exceptions to this like Jahaii Bluffs which also has a ton of interesting side content.

Soto maps definitely fall into the LS maps category. Archipelago gives good first impression but is just bland and uninspired once you uncover it's first and only layer. Amnytas they were trying to have a coherent map where everything leads to a big finale but it feels like they stopped developing it at 75% on pretty much all aspects; map design, event design, secrets... It just feels unfinished and a bit copy paste. And Nayos looks promising with the first part but is for now just too small and too much packed into one small area. Let's see how it unfolds.

I'm practically done with Soto. There is nothing really in it for me. Maybe a daily strike from time to time and finish the story once it comes out but that's it. I have my legendary armours so am not interested in rifts and convergences and they are so bland and boring I wouldn't do them for fun. 

On the other hand I started with Nevermore achievements yesterday and had to do Hot outposts, one on each map - VB, AB and TD. I started on the event chain put on my mentor tag and in 5 minutes there were 20+ players around me and we did the events which still after so much time felt unique and fun and epic at points. I think they tried that with Amnytas but just don't have the creativity and resources anymore to pull it off.

[Hotride.2187]

Idk I bought the expansion last week. Story was over in a few hours, map mastery achievements in a few evenings... All thats left for me is do some daily metas for exp until I can max the masteries. Which on average are not that exciting.

I'm seeing some new weapons used by others, but by and large most builds I see remained unchanged.

2 zones plus a third of a zone, a bit of story, a bit of new character customization, at the half of an expansion price. Overall its not a bad deal, considering more is on the way. Its pretty meh for an expansion, not inspiring and not disappointing. In some ways more finished than EoD on release, in other ways less finished... though EoD is not a tall bar.

Leggy relics are really the only thing I hate about it - having to farm again for something I considered done. Having to wait half an year for it as well... Not cool.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Fueki.4753]

On 12/24/2023 at 8:07 AM, Hotride.2187 said:

at the half of an expansion price.

It's not half the price of an expansion, it's over 80%.

HoT, PoF and EoD were at 30€, while SotO is 25€.

[Ryuk.6840]

On 12/23/2023 at 3:00 AM, Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

cant believe they abandoned cantha living world for this.  The only thing I was looking forward to was the legendary pve armor, and they made it insanely grindy, its not even worth doing, might as well do raids or WVW.  THe only thing I like is skyscale combat mount mastery.

Hopefully they reduce the requirements for the armor  by half ( the half of them progress instead toward  the Variant )  and a special event for 10 days  period in  WvW where the tickets you collect are stored and a copy of them  are transformed into triple the amount for the OW Variant one ., so you progress both in the same time 

Cycling through less rewarded contents offer - 3% reduction (that stacks) , each time (special event on server time) . Or +3% chance later (that stacks) one to find a "rare" one (variant 2)

Edited December 26, 2023 by Ryuk.6840

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

It's not half the price of an expansion, it's over 80%.

HoT, PoF and EoD were at 30€, while SotO is 25€.

HoT was $49.99 at release. PoF and EoD were $29.99 though.

[Linken.6345]

19 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

HoT was $49.99 at release. PoF and EoD were $29.99 though.

Correct hot was never 30 bucks

[Fueki.4753]

2 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

HoT was $49.99 at release. PoF and EoD were $29.99 though.

Maybe it was for sale then, or Europe actually had a lower price at one point.

I remember buying it for about 30€ on Amazon EU.

[Labjax.2465]

It sucks, but you can see in the way they talk about the game now, they are trying to spin negative into a positive while having less to offer. Small team size (compared to other games), slower content pace, confusing development track (ex: alliances). I would respect it more if they said "since the layoffs, we've become a struggling studio and with how few people we have relative to the size and scale of the game, it's impossible to accommodate the expectations that such a large game with a wide variety of core content types and mini games has nurtured, so going forward, we don't expect to be able to do more than meet some of those expectations some of the time for the types of content that have the most players." But I know, that's not how PR works. PR says you call a struggling studio a "unique challenge" or "a scrappy team". You call difficulty with meeting the standards of years past "adjusting the content pace to accommodate work life balance." You call gradually increased prices for players to keep up with the game "more frequent updates." You call removing a longstanding feature and repackaging it as something else "relics."

With lacking capability to create new, more energy gets put into repackaging and refurbishing the old. Of course, refurbishing can be a healthy thing for a game like this, but when it's in the form of a thing like relics, where it's clumsily done in a way that aggravates existing players, seemingly to be able to give an "expansion" a "new" marketable feature, it's sad to see. You can feel the marketing and PR teams superseding game development at this point. Without the game dev resources to create what they really need to create to compete with other games and meet existing expectations, PR becomes the driving development force. This seems to be the new "maintenance mode" standard across multiple games now (GW2 is definitely not the only one guilty of doing what I'm describing), where to avoid at all costs the negative image of being seen as "no longer in active development," PR and greatly trimmed down size and scope of content are combined along with repackaging of old, in order to cling for as long as possible to an image of a healthy, robustly developing game, even as those with intimate familiarity of the game scratch their heads, wondering why they are hearing hype and receiving something that doesn't live up to what they saw in years past.

The most dedicated fans would probably be happier in the long-term with a marketing model that was more comfortable with being viewed as maintenance mode, or close to it, because then the development choices might be modest enough that the game would mostly stay the same, apart from quality of life tweaks. But when the priority is as it seems to be, you get a much less extreme version of what happened with SWG, which in recent years, happened in some capacity with SWTOR, and now glimmers of it are showing in GW2 with relics and dailies; gameplay systems are not safe from being fundamentally altered in order to try to resell the same product as something fresh and new. Over time, if done too much or in an area someone really loved (ex: people who loved certain 6 set bonus effects that are just gone without even promises of a return) a sort of ship of theseus effect takes hold, until people become estranged from the game they once loved, where it's technically still "GW2" but no longer feels like it anymore.

This kind of sad destruction of existing beauty that people put hundreds of hours into creating, often (sadly) at the cost of their mental health to create it in the first place, is one of many reasons I struggle to be into video games anymore at all. Nothing is sacred or beautiful, it is only fleeting marketable dopamine, and must make more money or bust.

I imagine some who may read this will feel I'm being dramatic or will feel genuinely confused, and that's fair. This is not something I expect everyone to understand. It goes beyond one game and there is a lot of reflection and sadness with this industry as a whole behind it.

But in the spirit of the holidays, I will end this by saying I have endless appreciation for the people who, in spite of callous business mechanisms beyond their control, put a part of themselves into so many games over the decades. Without their collective beauty, I would have nothing to pine over the decline of. They are artists without question and if only for their sake, I will hold onto hope that one day, this industry sees its creations as more meaningful and as something to cherish, than as something to market and dispose of when it becomes inconvenient to preserve it as it is.

[LSD.4673]

On 12/23/2023 at 1:00 AM, Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

The only thing I was looking forward to was the legendary pve armor, and they made it insanely grindy, its not even worth doing, might as well do raids or WVW. 

The raid armour is easy to get. Couple weeks of doing raids and boom, you got it. Maybe a dozen hours of playing.

The WvW armour will take you months if you grind it, or years if you just play WvW out of enjoyment. And you'll still have to buy stacks of Memories once you have the Skirmish Tickets to afford it.

[Alsandar.7420]

I think zones are the most beautiful ever. Art team is just genius and I love their mice, keyboards, mind, and bodies if they're down.

But as far as content, stuff to do, and grinds, not much going on 😭

[Vayne.8563]

On 12/23/2023 at 1:13 AM, Elena.8734 said:

I suppose it's fair. Still, those maps are in my opinion badly designed and i have next to no fun playing in it. At least, Nayos isn't bad, which means i've a place to farm my masteries before going back in old zones. Maybe there's just a part of me that dislike the whole Mage Tower vibe. I can argue that's not my cup of tea. Tho, i like the Kryptis, and the darker vibe they bring. Maybe the next expac will have a theme i like more and i'll be more inclined to close my eyes when it comes to details i dislike, like GW2 did achieved during pretty much the entire Cycle of Dragons.

I'm just not convinced by what i experienced in SOTO that Anet is able to maintain the rythm with 1 expac +3 patch a year without a drop in quality.

Skywatch Archipelgo is a great map for me, but it's probably more like Verdant Brink as far as navigation for people who don't have a skyscale. When we first started in HoT, we had no way to glide. Then no way to use updrafts. Then no way to use lean gliding. We had to level bouncing mushrooms too. Until we had the basics, Verdant Brink was much harder to navigate, but once we had them, we had a far better path forward.  Skywatch is no different.

Everyone can use Skyscales, and once you level the ability to ride updrafts, you're pretty much home free. There are still a few places that are harder to get till you get laylines, but you can follow the story pretty easily.

You may not like the design of the zone, but it's not much different from the original design of Verdant Brink, with the exception of the fact that a significant portion of the playerbase already has flying mounts and gliding and updrafts trained up.

[Ashen.2907]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Skywatch Archipelgo is a great map for me, but it's probably more like Verdant Brink as far as navigation for people who don't have a skyscale. When we first started in HoT, we had no way to glide. Then no way to use updrafts. Then no way to use lean gliding. We had to level bouncing mushrooms too. Until we had the basics, Verdant Brink was much harder to navigate, but once we had them, we had a far better path forward.  Skywatch is no different.

Everyone can use Skyscales, and once you level the ability to ride updrafts, you're pretty much home free. There are still a few places that are harder to get till you get laylines, but you can follow the story pretty easily.

You may not like the design of the zone, but it's not much different from the original design of Verdant Brink, with the exception of the fact that a significant portion of the playerbase already has flying mounts and gliding and updrafts trained up.

Yeah, Skywatch give off a Verdant Brink navigation vibe to me as well. It feels very much as if ANet is trying to recapture what went well for them in the past, albeit with a new skin.

[enigmatic.3576]

5 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Yeah, Skywatch give off a Verdant Brink navigation vibe to me as well. It feels very much as if ANet is trying to recapture what went well for them in the past, albeit with a new skin.

But instead missing what actually went well

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, enigmatic.3576 said:

But instead missing what actually went well

I don't know. I talk to a lot of people and many like the new zone. Of course, many people also hated Verdant Brink.  I think, for me anyway, two of the three expansion zones were fine. I'm not a huge fan of Amnytas, but I know people who like it. The same is true of maps like Lake Doric, Draconis Mons, Tangled Depths. Different people like differnet things. I think that Anet did a great job on both VB and Skywatch Archipelago. In my opinion they did a good job of capturing a similar feeling.