I have mixed feelings about SOTO [Merged]

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Morvran.8265 said:

A transition into what exactly?

The way I see it the next expansion will have even less in it, as they won't be able to recycle as much. Weaponmaster training, relics, easy skyscale, even legendary armor - these were all existing things they repackaged. Next one will have to do something new and I don't think they're capable of that anymore.

The Wizard's Vault was a huge improvement to the game. Firebreathing skyscales and mounting in combat added something.  Every expansion wasn't meant to rewrite the game completely. They added plenty in EoD, and it wasn't that long ago. And now suddenly they can't.  People need to get a grip.

[SweetPotato.7456]

2 hours ago, Morvran.8265 said:

A transition into what exactly?

The way I see it the next expansion will have even less in it, as they won't be able to recycle as much. Weaponmaster training, relics, easy skyscale, even legendary armor - these were all existing things they repackaged. Next one will have to do something new and I don't think they're capable of that anymore.

Space Wars 

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

The Wizard's Vault was a huge improvement to the game. Firebreathing skyscales and mounting in combat added something.  Every expansion wasn't meant to rewrite the game completely. They added plenty in EoD, and it wasn't that long ago. And now suddenly they can't.  People need to get a grip.

Maybe you need to get a grip?  Who are you to tell people how they're supposed to feel about anything?  You like SotO? Great!  I don't.  And I agree with people who say the things it adds are less impactful.  I fully recognize that doing so becomes more difficult the more you add to the game, but so what?  If they somehow ran out of cool new features to add am I supposed to feel good about it if they release an expansion with no cool new features in it?  "I understand, guys.  It's okay.  I'll try to pretend I like this because of all the great things you did before."

[Vayne.8563]

43 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Maybe you need to get a grip?  Who are you to tell people how they're supposed to feel about anything?  You like SotO? Great!  I don't.  And I agree with people who say the things it adds are less impactful.  I fully recognize that doing so becomes more difficult the more you add to the game, but so what?  If they somehow ran out of cool new features to add am I supposed to feel good about it if they release an expansion with no cool new features in it?  "I understand, guys.  It's okay.  I'll try to pretend I like this because of all the great things you did before."

The guy I responded to was saying Anet is incapable of creating anything anymore, but EOD was like a year ago, even if you didn't like Soto. And whether you liked it or not had nothing to do with Anet being able to create something.

Saying I don't like that they reused models is one thing. Saying they're incapable of creating stuff is crap. Not unless they lost that ability in the last year. I'm not telling people how to feel. And I don't care whether people like Soto or not.

But the idea that Anet isn't capable of creating something doesn't have anything to do with you liking an expansion or not.

[Morvran.8265]

3 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

The guy I responded to was saying Anet is incapable of creating anything anymore, but EOD was like a year ago, even if you didn't like Soto. And whether you liked it or not had nothing to do with Anet being able to create something.

Saying I don't like that they reused models is one thing. Saying they're incapable of creating stuff is crap. Not unless they lost that ability in the last year. I'm not telling people how to feel. And I don't care whether people like Soto or not.

But the idea that Anet isn't capable of creating something doesn't have anything to do with you liking an expansion or not.

Let me rephrase that.

SoD set the bar pretty low, and they only managed this much using cheap tricks. They are running out of things to recycle for the next expansion, and I doubt that they'd add more new content or features than SotO to compensate, which means future expansions won't even match the already barebones SotO.

It's not that Anet can't make anything new. But their ability to add new content is clearly diminishing each year, and they are rapidly burning through stuff to recycle to mask this.

Edited January 2 by Morvran.8265

[Gwynnion.7364]

I mean, it's pretty clear they either don't have the resources or aren't allocating the resources to do more than iterate on existing designs, and possibly, they're running up against the limitations of the horizontal progression model, to the point they're repackaging and selling us stuff we already had.

Everything about SOTO seems designed to encourage grind and pad out time played, including how cumbersome it is to get around Skywatch and Amnytas.  And if you aren't focused on eventually getting the legendaries, there's not much reason to do those grinds either, as the rewards are fairly minimal.  Which would be fine, really, if the storytelling and art design were amazing to compensate.  I'm sure some people think so.  But eh.

I'm sure they can do great things.  Maybe they are, working on something else.  But with this game, we're getting just enough -- currently -- to keep interest alive.

[Vayne.8563]

3 minutes ago, Gwynnion.7364 said:

I mean, it's pretty clear they either don't have the resources or aren't allocating the resources to do more than iterate on existing designs, and possibly, they're running up against the limitations of the horizontal progression model, to the point they're repackaging and selling us stuff we already had.

Everything about SOTO seems designed to encourage grind and pad out time played, including how cumbersome it is to get around Skywatch and Amnytas.  And if you aren't focused on eventually getting the legendaries, there's not much reason to do those grinds either, as the rewards are fairly minimal.  Which would be fine, really, if the storytelling and art design were amazing to compensate.  I'm sure some people think so.  But eh.

I'm sure they can do great things.  Maybe they are, working on something else.  But with this game, we're getting just enough -- currently -- to keep interest alive.

It's been like this since EoD though. Padding isn't anything new.  In fact, it's hard to think of episodes of the living world that doesn't have us filling a bar at one point.  If you want to be charitable, that's because they want people to actually play and experience the zone, but some people have a different interpretation of it. 

Getting masteries in IBS was longer and harder than any other expansion. Even Lake Doric had a Bar. Ember Bay, Siren's Land, Draconis Mons and Lake Doric padded out the story with having to do hearts to progress, or at least making them a good way to progress. In Siren's Land you had to do the Hearts though to move on.

I'm not sure I've seen any MMO without padding of some type though.

[Gwynnion.7364]

Well, sure, that's MMO design, giving people a reason to do the content.  But we've seen a progressive lowering of the bar.  On the feature side, EOD was already a little thin, SOTO feels even more so, and the grind has gotten more obvious.  It's a little jarring in this game compared to say, WoW, where grinding for the next tier is the end all, be all.  It seems like they got bored of Cantha almost immediately and wanted to move on.  Or maybe it just made more financial sense to sell another expansion right away.  But SOTO feels less like a transition to something different than something tacked on to give players something to do.  And like I said, I don't think that's entirely their fault as developers -- what else are you supposed to give players at this point?

But it does make me wonder about the future of this game.

[Phyb.6704]

HoT Oct 2015. We had a big influx of content and then living sotry aobut 9 months later. July 2016 LWS3. With small events between. We got elite specs and more.
PoF Sept 2017. We had a big influx of conent and story content just 2 months later. Daybreak November 2017. With small events and elite specs.
EoD Feb 2022. We got a big influx of content then story content and zone 1 year later. Gyala Feb 2023. We got elite specs and small events during that 1 year. 
Soto....... two zones and a player hub. No elite specs. Access to existing but expanded weapons. 1 new zone 3 months later and another scheduled for february which is 6 months from soto first release in august.
Xpacs in general have about 5 zones. At this rate we will get to 5 zones in soto ( not including the player hub ) 9 months from soto release.... which in HoT and PoF would have been either starting living world or well into living world. 
Since EoD it feels like we are just getting less content at a slower speed. 
Soto feels like 2 - 3 living world episodes but not really an actual xpac. We are also re using things like skyscale, updrafts, ect. Not getting much new besides rifts which function similar to events but you have to channel the rift to start the event. I think about all the stuff we got in HoT like mushrooms, gliding, ect...... PoF gave mounts.... Soto just feels lacking.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Worth $25?  100%.  But you also shouldn't expect too much for the price of ordering pizza.

[AliamRationem.5172]

8 hours ago, Gwynnion.7364 said:

Well, sure, that's MMO design, giving people a reason to do the content.  But we've seen a progressive lowering of the bar.  On the feature side, EOD was already a little thin, SOTO feels even more so, and the grind has gotten more obvious.  It's a little jarring in this game compared to say, WoW, where grinding for the next tier is the end all, be all.  It seems like they got bored of Cantha almost immediately and wanted to move on.  Or maybe it just made more financial sense to sell another expansion right away.  But SOTO feels less like a transition to something different than something tacked on to give players something to do.  And like I said, I don't think that's entirely their fault as developers -- what else are you supposed to give players at this point?

But it does make me wonder about the future of this game.

There's not really an argument to have here.  Even the people defending are just saying its not anything new.  It's a 10 year old MMO that isn't seeing the kind of development it used to.  What else is there to say?

[enigmatic.3576]

If you like to do all achievements, or want a non-raid PvE version of legendary armor, then it should be worth it.  It's not really outside of that.  It's certainly lacking when you compare what we got from the previous expansions for what we spent.

[Phyb.6704]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Worth $25?  100%.  But you also shouldn't expect too much for the price of ordering pizza.

Same $$ as ordering pizza! Yep. But I do feel anet really needs to release story content faster if they are going with this new content release model. Inner nyos is not really that big and honestly feels empty. Considering what maps we got in LWS2,3,4 and icebrood its a pretty boring map. Just compare it to something like dragons stand, auric, crystal oasis. There just really is not that much to do in inner nyos. 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Reminder that SotO costs 25 Euros. 

Thats like a small Dinner for 2 at McDonald's. 

About 1-3 hours of work pay for most.

Reality is, in today world. 25 Euros is basically nothing anymore. And you pay this once a year. 

Expectations should be equal to the money spend. 

[Yaki.9563]

SoTO feels like "the legendary armor xpac". If you took out the carrot of getting legendary armor, it would be a pretty barren showing as nearly all the content and rewards revolve around it. As much as I wanted open world legendary armor I was hoping it would be something like Aurora or Vision for each piece, not a simple repetitive event grind.

The only thing I like from SoTO is the convergence. That is fantastic imo, though once again the rewards from it are all toward legendary armor. If you don't want or already have it, what's the reward?

Edited January 3 by Yaki.9563

[Yaki.9563]

2 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Reminder that SotO costs 25 Euros. 

Thats like a small Dinner for 2 at McDonald's. 

About 1-3 hours of work pay for most.

Reality is, in today world. 25 Euros is basically nothing anymore. And you pay this once a year. 

Expectations should be equal to the money spend. 

I expected less content. What I didn't expect is for them to diminish legendary armor down to grinding the same event for half a year. In a year, SoTO will be completely abandoned. Kind of like PoF, honestly.

[Zenith.7301]

I'm just wondering what possessed them to let go of much of their animation/vfx team. They used to be known for beautiful and unique animations, now the new elite specs and weapons just recycle assets and look lazy.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

47 minutes ago, Yaki.9563 said:

I expected less content. What I didn't expect is for them to diminish legendary armor down to grinding the same event for half a year. In a year, SoTO will be completely abandoned. Kind of like PoF, honestly.

Legendary armor is a huge reward tho. Which means people want to do the meta events. 

There is no meta in PoF worth doing except Pinata. 

[BlueJin.4127]

SotO is getting a total of 3 maps, not 5. The final map (Inner Nayos) releases in 3 parts.

I'm not as concerned about quantity as much as I am about quality. Considering how awful and lazy SotO's major contents are (metas, rifts, and convergence), I'll see whether they're worth the hassle or not depending on how much I like the Obsidian armors, especially the heavy armor. The concept art looks nice, but that doesn't mean it'll look nice in-game on my characters.

As for features, I really like the ability to equip elite weapons regardless of the spec. It really opens up how I can play my professions. For me, this is the best part of SotO. Being able to use updrafts on a flying mount is an OK QoL feature, but nothing amazing. You can always just dismount, use updraft, and remount in the air. It's more useful for griffon travel, but still too niche. Ability to mount in combat is better than not having it, but too clunky. CD is long, it doesn't work with mounts other than the skyscale, and you can accidentally trigger it.

Overall, unless I'm really impressed with the Obsidian armors, or the complete Inner Nayos map is amazing... yeah, mixed feeling would be the best way to describe SotO.

Edited January 3 by BlueJin.4127

[Phyb.6704]

1 hour ago, BlueJin.4127 said:

SotO is getting a total of 3 maps, not 5. The final map (Inner Nayos) releases in 3 parts.

I'm not as concerned about quantity as much as I am about quality. Considering how awful and lazy SotO's major contents are (metas, rifts, and convergence), I'll see whether they're worth the hassle or not depending on how much I like the Obsidian armors, especially the heavy armor. The concept art looks nice, but that doesn't mean it'll look nice in-game on my characters.

As for features, I really like the ability to equip elite weapons regardless of the spec. It really opens up how I can play my professions. For me, this alone almost makes SotO worth it. Being able to use updrafts on a flying mount is an OK QoL feature, but nothing amazing. You can always just dismount, use updraft, and remount in the air. It's more useful for griffon travel, but still too niche. Ability to mount in combat is too clunky. CD is long, it doesn't work with mounts other than the skyscale, and you can accidentally trigger it.

Overall, unless I'm really impressed with the Obsidian armors, or the complete Inner Nayos map is amazing... yeah, mixed feeling would be the best way to describe SotO.

Not a good sign for gw2. from EoD and now Soto the xpacs are giving less and less conetent. I would be totally fine with it being 50 dollars and actually being the same amount of content as HoT was. The game needs patches and content more fequently. Honestly with no sub I do not know why they would not do a larger more expensive drop of content. 15 bucks a month for a year is 180 bucks. Gw2 has no sub so charge 70 bucks and give us a big content drop..... would still be cheaper then other mmorpgs. 

[Balsa.3951]

13 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Worth $25?  100%.  But you also shouldn't expect too much for the price of ordering pizza.

expensive pizza but i agree worth it

but in comparison to other xpac its really slim

Edited January 3 by Balsa.3951

[Morvran.8265]

2 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Not a good sign for gw2. from EoD and now Soto the xpacs are giving less and less conetent. I would be totally fine with it being 50 dollars and actually being the same amount of content as HoT was. The game needs patches and content more fequently. Honestly with no sub I do not know why they would not do a larger more expensive drop of content. 15 bucks a month for a year is 180 bucks. Gw2 has no sub so charge 70 bucks and give us a big content drop..... would still be cheaper then other mmorpgs. 

People who don't understand GW2's business model think subs are the only real way of making money. The most profitable games on the market today don't have sub fees, usually they are F2P too.

There's a lot of money in microtransactions and GW2 is extremely heavily monetized. There are whales dropping hundreds if not thousands of $$ each month on gems alone.

It's actually why Anet keeps making less and kess content. Why have 100 devs working 1 year on an expansion for 25$ when you can sell an outsourced plush skin for 20$? Anet only does the bare minimum to keep the whales logging in. If they could keep them around without releasing any content, they would never release another map.

In a way the business model is killing the content.

Edited January 3 by Morvran.8265

[Cyninja.2954]

11 minutes ago, Morvran.8265 said:

People who don't understand GW2's business model think subs are the only real way of making money. The most profitable games on the market today don't have sub fees, usually they are F2P too.

There's a lot of money in microtransactions and GW2 is extremely heavily monetized. There are whales dropping hundreds if not thousands of $$ each month on gems alone.

If the game were so heavily monetized, the revenue would be higher.

The issue is it's not as heavily monetized, and especially not unfair or scummy monetized (compared to industry standards), as many other games, which cuts into the amount of content delivered.

[Randulf.7614]

5 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Not a good sign for gw2. from EoD and now Soto the xpacs are giving less and less conetent. I would be totally fine with it being 50 dollars and actually being the same amount of content as HoT was. The game needs patches and content more fequently. Honestly with no sub I do not know why they would not do a larger more expensive drop of content. 15 bucks a month for a year is 180 bucks. Gw2 has no sub so charge 70 bucks and give us a big content drop..... would still be cheaper then other mmorpgs. 

I loved HoT, but let’s end the myth we got a monster level of content- even the devs said it was going to be a feature driven expac rather than content. We got four very samey maps instead of three varied ones in SoTo. We got three raids vs two strikes, a convergence and a fractal with Soto. We got prob the best set of adventures with HoT and the most replayable content, so yes it def wins. But it’s not a big leap. In fact I think if we really added it up, EOD and HOT are on par with amount of content. EoD even has a bigger story by far and SoTo has a similar sized story (albeit miles better than HoT imo whose story was rubbish)

While we do have less content by a small amount, what we are getting is less quality, less reasons to visit the content beyond legendary armour. That’s the area that needs improvement. Hot I will replay the same maps and content for years. I’m not sure SoTo will bring me back after we move to new areas

[MuscleBobBuffPants.1406]

10 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Same $$ as ordering pizza! Yep. But I do feel anet really needs to release story content faster if they are going with this new content release model. Inner nyos is not really that big and honestly feels empty. Considering what maps we got in LWS2,3,4 and icebrood its a pretty boring map. Just compare it to something like dragons stand, auric, crystal oasis. There just really is not that much to do in inner nyos. 

I think the pizza analogy is good because like a pizza you enjoy it for one day and then stop playing it.  So yeah don't run MMOs like pizza shops.