I have mixed feelings about SOTO [Merged]

[Vayne.8563]

11 minutes ago, Elena.8734 said:

I truly hope it will be. Still i find the lack of polish of this expansion to be unforgiving, especially when they do not fix clearly broken stuff behind (French translation, as example, is still missing half of it's voicelines for 6 months now. They're supposedly working on a fix since 3 months and the fix is nowhere to be seen. Worse, it affected Nayos too behind.). I get they are in restructuration  and probably some steps are to be refined. Still, SOTO feel like an unfinished product even before talking about the amount of content and lack there is for parts of the community.

For me it's a shame that they best content of SOTO is to play old expansion content with some new weapons in your arsenal. This is the funniest part for me.

Sorry, I play on US servers, and I play in English. It doesn't feel broken or unfinished to me.  First of all, I really like the First and third zones. I like the convergence. I could do without Amnytas, but it's okay.  The achievements are a bit grindier than I like but the ability to take off on my skyscale while in combat, and the fireballs are pretty kitten good for me. More than even the weapons, taking off when in combat so I can get to where I'm going is huge. 

This month we have a WvW beta, possibly the last before world restructuring goes live. I'm very excited about that, even though I understand others may not be. For me, it's a good change, at least on paper. 

But honestly, I'm having more fun now than I did a couple of years ago.

[Nash.2681]

On 12/28/2023 at 12:44 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

It has long term goals and grinds. If you think Guild Wars 2 doesn't you're not paying attention.  I'm in full legendary gear, are you?

Where did you get that legendary relic from? Asking for a friend...

[Vayne.8563]

2 minutes ago, Nash.2681 said:

Where did you get that legendary relic from? Asking for a friend...

Ah, let me rephrase it so everyone can understand. I have every slot that can be filled with legendary gear, filled with a piece of legendary gear. I would assume most people would consider that full legendary rather than assuming that I have a piece of gear that doesn't yet exist. Full legendary gear to most people means all the legendary gear availble. To be clear I am missing a few legendary skins, but I have every type of legendary gear so far available, including every weapon and doubles on all fo them except torch. 

Hopefully that clarifies things. 

[Ashantara.8731]

11 minutes ago, Nash.2681 said:

Where did you get that legendary relic from? Asking for a friend...

It will be released with SotO Update 2. No one has a legendary relic yet.

[Elena.8734]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

But honestly, I'm having more fun now than I did a couple of years ago.

I wouldn't say i do. Yet i like the way they made clearer some goals, being by completing Wizard's Vault stuff or by showing how's made legendaries through Lyrh. It made my goals clearer, less abstract and working toward them is fun. Still it's mostly old content. 

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It doesn't feel broken or unfinished to me

Yet dont you feel like Archipelago Meta should be more than Kill mobs and collect essence. Amnytas has spectacle in it, but the end is so anticlimactic and the zone is so awful to traverse that's very bad in my words. Nayos is Ok, because it's the first part of the Zone. We'll see in 50-ish days what's the full picture of this Meta. I bet they made something like Drizzlewood Coast where one part feed into the other. For now it is fine, just not great.

The fact there' only two strike this Expac make the Daily Strike be more repetitive as we get them 3-4 times a week instead of 1-2. Let's not talk about Rifts that just lacks a spark of excitement, while asking player to farm them for hours of mindless farm to get the required essence (being for Mog or for Legs). I don't mind farming, but let's say that there could have been means to make them less repetitive by changing the challenge, have different kind of rifts, have a special ''Treasure goblin'' spawn before you close a rift...

This is an unfinished product as the Gameplay loop of SOTO is pretty dull. GW2 is awesome, but SOTO could not live by itself if it wasn't living in the context of the whole game.

Edited January 5 by Elena.8734

[Nash.2681]

54 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

It will be released with SotO Update 2. No one has a legendary relic yet.

I'm very well aware of that, which is one of the main reasons I didn't purchase SotO yet. Just took Vayne.8563 slightly wrong worded post as cause to express my discontent with this new way of rolling out expansions.

[Vayne.8563]

10 minutes ago, Elena.8734 said:

I wouldn't say i do. Yet i like the way they made clearer some goals, being by completing Wizard's Vault stuff or by showing how's made legendaries through Lyrh. It made my goals clearer, less abstract and working toward them is fun. Still it's mostly old content. 

Yet dont you feel like Archipelago Meta should be more than Kill mobs and collect essence.

No, because I play the game that's there. Anything can be made better for me and my personal taste, but that doesn't guarantee that it won't be worse for someone else's taste. That meta is different from other metas and that's okay for me. I like the idea that variety exists. That's the thing. I'm playing the game that exists. I can second guess anything.

When AB launched, a couple of high damage people could troll the entire meta and kill their Octovine too fast. Don't you think metas should not be able to be trolled?

I loved HoT when it lauched, and how the daytime events affected the nighttime events, but Anet ended up decoupling day from day, making the daytime events far more pointless, because they were isolated from the story of the zone more.  But people complained that it was too hard, took too long and was too much of a problem.

Drizzlewood is a great meta, but the first half of it is much better than the other half of it.

The Kourna meta only happens in a very small part of the Fortress it's held it. Don't you think it could have been better?

I won't even go into the complaints about the DE meta, even though I like it.

The truth is, every meta could be improved from someone's point of view. All of them. If you analyze anything like that you can find a way to improve it...for you. For people who play like you. Plenty of things I'd like to see changed in this game that I'd like and the community at large would not.  But I don't see a tremendous amount of complaints from casuals about the new metas, and I believe they're most of the playerbase.

[LSD.4673]

7 hours ago, Yaki.9563 said:

HoT was nearly 8 years ago. People who constantly compare everything to HoT are like those WoW players still pining for the good old WotLK days. PoF wasn't as good as HoT. EoD wasn't as good as HoT, what on earth makes you think anything they will produce will have a good chance of living up to your HoT expectations? Get over it already.

The sad reality is that HoT was rushed and unfinished, too. The dropped, or unresolved, plots, are still pretty unforgivable. Some of the few genuinely interesting parts of the game's story -- the Pale Tree, Malyck, the Nightmare Court, and how it all fits together -- were unceremoniously "left on the cutting room floor". And yet HoT is the best the company has put out, with each expansion gradually worse.

People appreciate the great parts of HoT, and can see the decline. That's why they compare.

[Vayne.8563]

8 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

The sad reality is that HoT was rushed and unfinished, too. The dropped, or unresolved, plots, are still pretty unforgivable. Some of the few genuinely interesting parts of the game's story -- the Pale Tree, Malyck, the Nightmare Court, and how it all fits together -- were unceremoniously "left on the cutting room floor". And yet HoT is the best the company has put out, with each expansion gradually worse.

People appreciate the great parts of HoT, and can see the decline. That's why they compare.

And yet at launch, HOT was more reviled than any of the expansions. You think the complaints we're seeing now held a candle to the outcry that HoT caused.  Cause I was there, and I remember it quite clearly.  POF didn't make those waves. EoD had some drama, but not nearly what HoT had at launch. Here were some of the immediate problems that HoT had.

The story was so buggy it often couldn't be finished, and it wasn't the problem of just a single instance.

You needed 400 hero points or every hero point in HoT to unlock your elite spec.

The story required you to train your masteries all the way through poison resistence.

The TD meta was so hard, even two weeks after it released, only one guild was able to do it.

Casual players got wrecked, because there was no ramp up. People complained about the map because back then there were no up and down arrows even to tell you where an objective was. 

People complained about day needing to be done to make night easier, which took too much time.

People complained  about how slow masteries leveled.

There was a ton of discontented people at HoT launch.  It really was the worst launch of all of them.

But Anet isn't trying to compete with the old zones, they're simply adding more options now. If they made a great meta, that gave the best rewards and everyone flocked to it, it would hurt other metas, in the same was multimapping hurt other metas in HOT during that period of time.

I can see the decline too, but my expectations isn't a duplicate of something we already have. It's more options for more and different people. PoF was like that too. HOT was the hard core expansion and POF was more casual. Less metas on timers, more bounties on demand sort of thing.  No one can say no one likes fishing and skiffs, because I know people who like fishing and skiffs.  

The people mostly complaining are the people who like harder core content. They're not getting enough of it and they absolutely have a right to complain. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a bunch of casuals running around the new zones having fun either.

[kharmin.7683]

26 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

 But that doesn't mean that there aren't a bunch of casuals running around the new zones having fun either.

I'm about as casual a player as can be in GW2 and I enjoyed the new zones on release, but they didn't fully appeal to me or maintain my interest enough for me to visit them on a regular basis.  /shrug

[Zok.4956]

On 1/3/2024 at 10:54 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

I truly believe Guild Wars 2, as it stood during the living world years, was unsustainable. I don't know about you, but I never paid for a living world episode.

I never paid for a living world episode, too. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to play all the episodes when they were first released.

However, I think GW2/Anet was financially sustainable (except maybe the revenue drop after HoT for a few quarters) before about half the staff (around 40% - 60%) were working on unannounced side projects and before IBS.

 

On 1/3/2024 at 10:54 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

Some people just farm gold and never pay for anything in the gem store with cash.

We don't know what share of sales the gem shop currently has or had back then. My guess was that the LW's costs were borne entirely by gem shop sales. LW increases player retention, higher player retention and online game time increases (statistically proven, in many games) the gem shop sales. And “earning” GEMs with gold only works because many players buy GEMs with real money. Otherwise the Gold->GEM exchange rates would be so prohibitively high that it wouldn't work.

 

On 1/3/2024 at 10:54 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

But Guild Wars 2 just sort of chugs along, sitting somewhere around the top 5 MMOs, just doing it's own thing.

I agree with you. That's why sometimes I don't think it's good for the game if GW2 doesn't try to concentrate (in various things/details/principles) on its own strengths that made it successful and still does, but rather tries to be like "those other games".

 

On 1/3/2024 at 10:54 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

Covid and it's affect on the world including gaming was sad to me.

Covid and its impact on the world was sad for me too. 

But for games, including GW2, Covid led to a massive increase in player numbers. Anet once confirmed this in an interview. And if Covid hadn't caused a massive increase in new and returning players in GW2 and Anet hadn't been able to keep them in the game until EoD was released, EoD might have been a financial loss.

 

On 1/3/2024 at 10:54 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

But compared to other games out there, this game is doing very well.

I agree with you. As I once wrote in the Q3/2023 sales figures: If sales remains at the current level, GW2 should be sustainable.

My guess is that the new legendary open world armor contributes significantly to SotO's financial success so far, because legy armor seems to be important for many "open world" players ("open world" players are certainly the majority of players). But you can only do something like this once. Because most players who have complete Legy armor for the three weight classes certainly don't want additional Legy armor just for the skins.

 

 

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

And yet at launch, HOT was more reviled than any of the expansions.

Yes, HoT was hard upon release and had bugs. Some things really bothered me too. And some things were too extreme and were toned down and bugs were fixed.

However, the maps, both in terms of their severity and lack of clarity and in their immense amount of detail, fit perfectly with the general theme of HoT, that you have crashed in an unknown, hostile and very dangerous area, everything in the jungle wants to kill you and you have to try to cooperate with other players on an ad-hoc basis in order to survive.

This is an artistic quality and creativity (regardless of the various errors that initially obscured it) that for me represents the actual quality of HoT and with which I compare all subsequent releases.

And because HoT also fundamentally changed some gaming principles and game systems (metroidvania like map travel, masteries, ...) this also initially led to criticism and a kind of culture shock. And the benefits of these changes only became apparent to some later with LWS3, PoF and LWS4, which were able to build on them. Even SotO is still based on it.

BTW: You didn't even mention HoT's worst mistake: How the "Desert Borderland" was introduced into WvW in HoT almost completely killed the entire game mode.

Edited January 5 by Zok.4956

[Zenith.7301]

I'm also wondering when we will see expansion relevant lounge passes, or finally a portal scroll tome to put them all in. Them continuously creating separate portal scrolls to eat up shared inventory slots is so scummy, as well as inventory clutter with crap like the new improved comms device you can't even put in the shared inventory slot. Relics not having their bank tabs despite Anet being unwilling to expand our bank tab purchasable slots.

Even worse, 10+ years since GW2 release and you can't still autosort the bank tabs. Items have to be manually sorted, it's horrendous.

Having to manually delete skins instead of absorbing them for a transmutation charge into your account.

The inability to choose the appearance of legendary accessory effects, so if you prefer the 1/2/3 accessory combination appearances, you can choose.

Edited January 5 by Zenith.7301

[Phyb.6704]

1 minute ago, Zenith.7301 said:

I'm also wondering when we will see expansion relevant lounge passes, or finally a portal scroll tome to put them all in. Them continuously creating separate portal scrolls to eat up shared inventory slots is so scummy, as well as inventory clutter with crap like the new improved comms device you can't even put in the shared inventory slot. Relics not having their bank tabs despite Anet being unwilling to expand our bank tab purchasable slots.

Even worse, 10+ years since GW2 release and you can't still autosort the bank tabs. Items have to be manually sorted, it's horrendous.

Having to manually delete skins instead of absorbing them for a transmutation charge into your account.

Personally the portal scrolls get used once by a new character and then never again. WP is so cheap I really do not care. Gold comes so easy that I dont see why using a wp is given any thought regarding it's price.

[kharmin.7683]

Inventory slots, bags and transmutation charges are probably the items that make Anet a lot of money.  I really don't see them eliminating these with QOL features, especially if they haven't done so by now.

[Vayne.8563]

9 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I'm about as casual a player as can be in GW2 and I enjoyed the new zones on release, but they didn't fully appeal to me or maintain my interest enough for me to visit them on a regular basis.  /shrug

Sure, but you're more than just a casual player, from previous posts, you're more casual than most casuals I know. Everyone I know that's casual that's playing the game isn't looking for each expansion launch to completely fill their time every second of every day till the next launch. We all have things we're doing, whether it's just doing metas we like at certain times, or collecting some sort of currency from something we have to do, or collections or achievements.  We may not all be jumping into raids and T4 fractals every day, but the game has stuff to do, and all we really get from expansions, besides furthering the story, is miore stuff to do.

As a casual, who spends time in the open world, you don't find the mounting on your skyscale in combat useful? Or the ability to get a hit with a fireball if you're approaching an event and running out of time to get credit?

These expansions are about adding to the game world, not reinventing it, or taking people away from anything else.  I do convergences because I like them, and the weekly convergence reward makes it even more profitable to do 3 a week. That's something a casual can do, without going into any of the zones, because the entrances is in the wizards tower. It's like Dragon Storm and I still do that, because it's fun enough and profitable. 

If you count every zone in the game and list the ones I go into regularly because I like the zones, you'd skip most of the core world. Like I might go into Timberline Falls for something I need, but I don't hang out there. Same with Lorners, but they both have things I need to go to sometimes, like guild bounties.

Expansions in the game is to fill in areas that we don't have. More aerial zones, or a zone that feels like Inner Nayos (which I love btw) just from the atmosphere. It feels more like Orr did back in the day.

You being an example of a casual player is fine. But from your posts, you're on the far side of casual. Other casuals I know are in and out of those zones all the time, because they're chipping away at the new armor sets, or some other reward they want. I feel I'm a little qualfied to talk about it, because I run a casual guild with hundreds of people and I can see where they are and what they're doing in the guild panel.

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

that feels like Inner Nayos (which I love btw) just from the atmosphere. It feels more like Orr did back in the day.

Is that the new one? I was sufficiently put off by the story in the first SotO release that I have not finished the first release nor started the second, but if the second is like original Orr I might give it a shot.

[Vayne.8563]

35 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Is that the new one? I was sufficiently put off by the story in the first SotO release that I have not finished the first release nor started the second, but if the second is like original Orr I might give it a shot.

The thing I like about it is the atmosphere and the number of events that are everywhere. The meta isn't on a timer, it's more a fill the bar type of meta like Silverwastes, but happens more often.  I like the meta, even though it's a relatively fast meta and not particularly hard. There are all sorts of events in the zone, always something to do. It's only a third of a zone so far, so it will be expanded, but at this point, it feels very much like I'm in an enemy stronghold, of  the creepy, surreal variety.   That's what I mean by it feels like Orr.

Sure I'm fighting Kryptis instead of Risen, but that doesn't bother me. The Rifts in the new zone are different too, requiring you to keep certain things out for an achievement. It's just a bit more complexity than a normal Rift. Plenty of champs around too.  I just run around mindlessly doing events and relaxing until the meta comes up. It's not a high intensity zone, but it's good fun for me, when I'm looking for a break from having to do everything on a timer.

Edited January 6 by Vayne.8563

[Zenith.7301]

19 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Ah, let me rephrase it so everyone can understand. I have every slot that can be filled with legendary gear, filled with a piece of legendary gear. I would assume most people would consider that full legendary rather than assuming that I have a piece of gear that doesn't yet exist. Full legendary gear to most people means all the legendary gear availble. To be clear I am missing a few legendary skins, but I have every type of legendary gear so far available, including every weapon and doubles on all fo them except torch. 

Hopefully that clarifies things. 

Not only legendary gear, but the different legendary skins, as well as color variations for the aurene legendaries. Plenty of stuff to chase. Fractal God alone takes over a year of grinding fractals every day.

[Zenith.7301]

2 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Is that the new one? I was sufficiently put off by the story in the first SotO release that I have not finished the first release nor started the second, but if the second is like original Orr I might give it a shot.

Orr is better. More variation in gameplay and theme. Nayos is the worst map by far. Too monothematic. The first SoTO map is easily the best. The second map has the best meta.

Edited January 6 by Zenith.7301

[Leger.3724]

While I think it's a cool the floating islands, dream world concept is a bit rough for being an inviting world you want to inhabit and be a part of. I think it sort of hits on the drawback of flying mounts like the skyscale and a world designed based on travelling with them.

I think for me in terms of "I want to spend time here":

Core Game and End of Dragons are probably the best at it with Path of Fire in third. Core Game is so many zones I'll explain in terms of End of Dragons - the first two maps are filled with allied NPCs everywhere. Seitung has the palace, then a city to top it off but then there are multiple small villages all over the island. Kaineng is one big city. They also have the fishing Leviathan farm. They're places you want to spend time where you'll find other people. I think if they had a bit more event frequency like the core maps they would be amazing. And then Echovald gets a little more sparsely populated like a Path of Fire map. And then you have the massive Dragon's End Meta event. I think that's a good philosophy and it's a similar one they took to the core game. You start with inviting friendly zones like Queensdale and by the end you're in Orr and they're large meta event maps.

I wish SOTO was less intense on needing a skyscale and wanting a griffon for fun/speed. I understand it's something people were working towards before SOTO if they didn't have them but I think the maps should always be designed with someone who has no masteries in mind. Auric Basin where you start high and go lower. Kaineng with its staircases.

[Vayne.8563]

20 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Orr is better. More variation in gameplay and theme. Nayos is the worst map by far. Too monothematic. The first SoTO map is easily the best. The second map has the best meta.

I felt Orr was mostly monothematic, though I was specifically thinking about The Cursed Shore.  And we've only seen 1/3 of the map anyway.

[Ashantara.8731]

22 hours ago, Nash.2681 said:

I'm very well aware of that, which is one of the main reasons I didn't purchase SotO yet. Just took Vayne.8563 slightly wrong worded post as cause to express my discontent with this new way of rolling out expansions.

I can fully relate to your discontent.

[Phyb.6704]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:32 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

Sure, but you're more than just a casual player, from previous posts, you're more casual than most casuals I know. Everyone I know that's casual that's playing the game isn't looking for each expansion launch to completely fill their time every second of every day till the next launch. We all have things we're doing, whether it's just doing metas we like at certain times, or collecting some sort of currency from something we have to do, or collections or achievements.  We may not all be jumping into raids and T4 fractals every day, but the game has stuff to do, and all we really get from expansions, besides furthering the story, is miore stuff to do.

As a casual, who spends time in the open world, you don't find the mounting on your skyscale in combat useful? Or the ability to get a hit with a fireball if you're approaching an event and running out of time to get credit?

These expansions are about adding to the game world, not reinventing it, or taking people away from anything else.  I do convergences because I like them, and the weekly convergence reward makes it even more profitable to do 3 a week. That's something a casual can do, without going into any of the zones, because the entrances is in the wizards tower. It's like Dragon Storm and I still do that, because it's fun enough and profitable. 

If you count every zone in the game and list the ones I go into regularly because I like the zones, you'd skip most of the core world. Like I might go into Timberline Falls for something I need, but I don't hang out there. Same with Lorners, but they both have things I need to go to sometimes, like guild bounties.

Expansions in the game is to fill in areas that we don't have. More aerial zones, or a zone that feels like Inner Nayos (which I love btw) just from the atmosphere. It feels more like Orr did back in the day.

You being an example of a casual player is fine. But from your posts, you're on the far side of casual. Other casuals I know are in and out of those zones all the time, because they're chipping away at the new armor sets, or some other reward they want. I feel I'm a little qualfied to talk about it, because I run a casual guild with hundreds of people and I can see where they are and what they're doing in the guild panel.

Yes each xpac is not meant to completely fill someones time. But even playing 2 hours a day for 5 days a week for a month can easily use up pretty much everything you have to do in a new release when the gap is 3+ months. I am talking about 10hrs a week. Not some hardcore 6-8hrs a day of play as a streamer. It is hurting for a bit for content. I feel it is more about knowing that people would pay more then 25 bucks if more content was offered and be quite happy with their purchase leads to the question of "why not?" Why not up the price and volume of content and make more money. Why not increase the scale when you know you can make profit. As I said previously.... it just feels lazy. Anet wants to push the cash shop and even when they could make profit and increase production volume of content.... they just do not seem to have that as a priority. 
I have been thinking for a long time that there must be SOMETHING in production thats quite large that we do not know about because what we do know about just makes me wonder due to the lack of volume.

[Vayne.8563]

6 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Yes each xpac is not meant to completely fill someones time. But even playing 2 hours a day for 5 days a week for a month can easily use up pretty much everything you have to do in a new release when the gap is 3+ months. I am talking about 10hrs a week. Not some hardcore 6-8hrs a day of play as a streamer. It is hurting for a bit for content. I feel it is more about knowing that people would pay more then 25 bucks if more content was offered and be quite happy with their purchase leads to the question of "why not?" Why not up the price and volume of content and make more money. Why not increase the scale when you know you can make profit. As I said previously.... it just feels lazy. Anet wants to push the cash shop and even when they could make profit and increase production volume of content.... they just do not seem to have that as a priority. 
I have been thinking for a long time that there must be SOMETHING in production thats quite large that we do not know about because what we do know about just makes me wonder due to the lack of volume.

This is complete crap, unless all you do is sit there, make a list of everything there is to do and check this off one by one.  People had the exact same complaint about Path of Fire.  But it wasn't most people. It was the content locusts. No developer can make a game that satisfies the content locusts. It's not possible.

Again, how many rides does Disney World add every month? Every two months?  You can see everything in a few days, but you keep going on your favorite rides.  WoW has you doing the same content over and over for weeks or even months on end.  I'm not sure why  anyone doesn't expect the same from any MMO.

If a new raid came out, the hard core community would rejoice. They'd do that over and over again for months. But most of the community would have nothing new at all, because most of the community doesn't raid.  I'm doing convergences several times a week, I'm doing the other metas in the zone. The game is 11 years old, and the new stuff by itself is never going to entertain you for 3 months straight, because PoF didn't, and that was a "full expansion".  That's why they broke it up like this.

For years now, we've had people saying half an hour of content every time a living story came out, but it was more content for me.  The rest of us do dailies and weeklies, Sometimes, fractals and raids, other favorite things in the game and the the new stuff.

This idea that MMO expansions come out, any of them and they can entertain you for more than a month or two is just not true for most people.  You choose the MMO you like based on the stuff you enjoy repeating.  For WoW and Final Fantasy that's mostly raids.  For Guild Wars 2 that's meta events, and probably stuff like crafting or weeklies. All any MMO is at the end of day is a list of stuff to do. I'm not sure why more people don't get this.