Underwhelming. Not really bad, but also not good. [Merged]

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I was told to be nice and constructive. So I will try.

Overall: the writing.... and pacing... others complained about it, I won't repeat what they wrote. 

Now to MY observations and opinions:

Reuse of dialogue (Nethos line by Ramses twice) not good. Feels cheap and/or rushed. Nothing else to add. In the future, please don't do that.

Have to prove myself - to whom? Why? While we were busy rescuing Tyria over and over again, the Astral ward were busy decorating their palace and discussing on the colour of the drapes. If anyone has to prove themselves, it is the Astral Ward to me.  One minute in and I want to punch Galrath in the throat and kick Issgarren straight into some leftover lava pool. Or feed him to the Unchained risen.  Also, I am sick of being called 'Wayfinder'. I am the Commander. The title is no joke. Not using it is disrespectful at the highest. I would accept 'greatest hero of our time', but that is a bit unwieldy. 
Btw, for the future my main char is a female sylvari. She is a SHE. Using THEM is also disrespectful. Unless you call my character also 'your highness' or 'majesty'. But I haven't seen any of that. 

 

The 'feed the starving Kryptis' event is... ok. While tedious - the dash sometimes connect, sometimes doesn't and it is hard to tell why -  the munching sounds are cute. Also they look succulent. I start to understand why Eparch is eating them.

 

That I have to pay the Faction Provisoner to get the Ancient Scroll is a disgrace. He should be happy to hand it over. Grateful that someone is finally making use of it. I am THE HERO. Not some noname gutter rat. 

Bugged events stalling out. This is not fun. Especially since you have to do those dumb events to progress story. We have 2024. This is not good anet. Busy work? I am busy at work every day. GW2 was founded on the creed to not force people into this kind of stupid do 'x quests to continue'. But if you do it, at least make sure the events work. This makes me question your QA. I reported stalled event in game using the dialogue. I am sure others did too. Please take those reports seriously.

 

The permanent tooltips are extremely annoying. They were annoying the first time I did the events. They are even more so now. Make them fade away after a second or do not pop them up, when someone does the same event for the umpteenth time. Thank you.

 

At least Nephus recognizes our past deeds. That is nice.  The fight against Queen Labris was surprsingly straightforward and not annoying. Points for that.  Mounts inside instances are also nice. That raptor was actually useful for once on these maps - appreciated. 

 

The Knaebelag fight. Ugh, another wyvern. Really? Why? We got plenty of wyvern and wyvern-like fights in expacs and living world. This... is just repretitive and again looks and feels cheap. 

 

Viewing  the vistas - that was pointless beyond words. Others raged about it, I have nothing to add.

 

Overall: it was better than I feared. But it wasn't as good as Bjora West, Drizzlewood North. And those weren't amazing either. It pales in comparism to Head of the Snake, Bug in the System or War Eternal. Overall, as a Living World Episode I would complain about the lack of content, as part two out of three I am still complaining about its quick completion, lack of inspiring/entertaining dialogue (remember Canach&Rytlock&Kasmeer in PoF? THAT was amazing. Worth replaying the content just for their lines!) and pointless and senseless busywork. The instances were fine tho. Put some of that fine from the instances in the open world part and the next part might be decent. At least I do not feel dread anymore thinking about it. And maybe add some respect for the player character. Especially from the Astral Ward. At this point I am seriously questioning why I should not burn that place into the ground. They arrogantly left us fight alone against the dragons and Balthazar while prettying up their place. They were and are rude and lacking in respect, even when we save their sorry kitten. Those pseudo-fractals where they make people suffer again and again are moraly bankrupt and disgusting and their holy-than-you attitude makes them utterly unlikeable. You need to invest some really hard work to undo that damage. At this point in the story, we have the astral ward we are supposed to care about - and give us no reason to even like them in the slightest - and the Kryptis we are supposed to like and save - but you have given us no real bonding steps. As I wrote earlier, Ramses is likeable. In a 'that colleague over there that is ok to have around. Would not spend my free time with him tho' way. To feel any emotional involvement we need a stronger bond than that. Luckily you got writers to figure out how.  Nephus might be the character we finally bond to. Please do not screw it up. At this point you NEED some attachement point. 

[Randulf.7614]

I look at the instance in the Drizzlewood story arcs and even at the start of SoTo and I look at Nayos' story (map and instanced) and it's just a world of difference. There's a LOT of filler to go do events and whilst I'm doing events, I'm being remotely communicated to by NPCs I haven't met yet in the story (I think), which feels a bit jarring. 

I'm not necssarily asking for a deep, meaningful, layered, booker prize winning literary story arc. But this drip feeding contains almost no substance.

Both Bjora and Drizzlewood were enhanced by adding the next section. Dry Top and Silverwastes weren't exactly deep content buckets, but they had more reasons to replay and go back. There's not much reason to play Nayos after it's done and yet I still play the aforementioned maps many years on.

As for the rest:

- Weapon unlock via story this far along seems a gate too far. It doesn't bother me too much, but I did just want to play with my ele's pistol before I staretd the story, but I couldn't. 

- Tooltip spam is beginning to seriously aggravate me. It needs an option or remove them until an option is added. They hinder more than help trying to get them off the screen all the time

- I like the event variety. It also needs more things - more collectibles, adventures, bounties etc. It's a pretty map, but space is wasted. If the skyscale is so important to the map, utilise it more with other activities. I'll take a griffon race at this point. I almost miss hearts - at least they add to the map stories. Making events respawn in mega quick time isn't a subsitute for content

- I haven't yet found anything to spend essences on other than legendary armour which I am not really that bothered about. If there aren't any, that needs rectifying. (if there is stuff, point me to them please)

- Not a lot of ambient music in Nayos. GW2 maps usually thrive on the ost. It's all a bit quiet. The music should convey the alienness, the oppressiveness or the feeling of being on enemy war lines

- There's some cool structures in the map, I like the Echowald asset reuses. A bit more map storytelling is needed though. Most LS and expansion maps tell stories really well across the whole map or in isolated pockets. This just feels like we've wandered into the demon version of the cattle field. What exactly is the culture? What do Kytpids...do?

- This 3 way split doesn't appear to be working. Either a two map split or release the one map at this point in the cycle and use the rest of the cycle for instances and maybe a similar public instance to Forged with Steel. 

- I'm not sure why the change to map completion. It's not a big deal to me, but I can see why people don't understand the sudden change

- Fleshing out on the filler story: Why do we have Instance, do events. Speak to an npc, visit 5 bits of map. Do more events. Instance. Visit 3 bits of map. NPC. Go back to exact same 3 bits of maps and tag vistas this time. Instance. I seem to be going back and forth from the same areas. GW2 seems to be becoming a more A-B style mmo from this update. If I wanted that, I'd play Lotro

I feel like it was chucked out just to tick off a content delivery, rather than pass the quality standards of the team in their prime. Surely delivering less per cycle means a much higher quality than ever before not a more basic one?

That's my grumpy feedback. As the op says, it wasn't "bad", just unremarkable

 

Edited February 29 by Randulf.7614

[kharmin.7683]

17 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

 

- Tooltip spam is beginning to seriously aggravate me. It needs an option or remove them until an option is added. They hinder more than help trying to get them off the screen all the time

 

 

This annoys me, too.  At this point in the game, players should know how things work and don't require a tool-tip to hand-hold them.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

you aim at turret, in the last moment it shuts up, insta tool tip. It is enraging.. 

[Randulf.7614]

14 minutes ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

you aim at turret, in the last moment it shuts up, insta tool tip. It is enraging.. 

That extractor event might be the most blood pressure raising event in the game. Constant turret spawn, constant tool tip spam, concotions not always hitting accurately

[Linken.6345]

21 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

This annoys me, too.  At this point in the game, players should know how things work and don't require a tool-tip to hand-hold them.

Well we do know that SotO was a way for Anet to try to get some new blood into the game ther dragon saga is over and its a fresh start so for those new players the tooltip make sence.

For veterans there really should be disable tooltip I agree

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

I love this thread, thanks to those of you who have contributed so far. There's a lot of my favorite kind of feedback in here: Not just what you find frustrating or difficult to engage with, but also what you enjoyed playing/doing, what you felt was done well, and you want more of, along with a bit of insight into why you feel that way. 

What's fun/interesting/enjoyable is incredibly subjective and everyone feels differently about it, so this sort of constructive insight is great for helping me find out more about how you all interpret those things! Thanks @VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. for your input and thanks to all of you who contributed so far!

[kharmin.7683]

31 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well we do know that SotO was a way for Anet to try to get some new blood into the game ther dragon saga is over and its a fresh start so for those new players the tooltip make sence.

For veterans there really should be disable tooltip I agree

I get that, but maybe new players shouldn't insta-jump to the latest content and learn to play the game first?  We can all dream.  🙂

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

One thing I missed:

the lit the beacons story part. 

What I liked that the mobs were different at the beacons and that you actually had to cc the ones at one of the beacons. Little things, but I appreciated the variation. 

But one of the beacons, the one in Eventide's was troublesome. The guide pointed me in a certain direction and down while it was pretty much behind me and on the same high? Only when I mounted up and looked from above I saw it. Very strange. 

[Astralporing.1957]

1 minute ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

One thing I missed:

the lit the beacons story part. 

What I liked that the mobs were different at the beacons and that you actually had to cc the ones at one of the beacons. Little things, but I appreciated the variation. 

But one of the beacons, the one in Eventide's was troublesome. The guide pointed me in a certain direction and down while it was pretty much behind me and on the same high? Only when I mounted up and looked from above I saw it. Very strange. 

I didn't appreciate it when at one of the beacons mob spawned just right on top of it and as soon as it spawned the cleansing got interrpupted.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

Well that is bad luck. Happened to me once but since the cleansing does not take much time, I just redid it, mobs spawned at reasonable distances and all was fine.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

I may not have gotten far enough in the new stuff (stopped after getting new weapons), but so far Nayos just feels too disconnected from rest of Tyria. 

I daresay need more than just random rifts hunting in Tyria to drive the point home as right now the entire xpac feels like a bottle episode of a TV show.  Just the main character doing things with other characters in a location that has zero to do with anything else currently happening.  

Like, Inner Nayos looks super unique to me and may be among my favorite art styles the game has, but I can't remember a single thing going on (or tell most of the characters apart by name) as it's seeming to aim for some GoT style Kryptis drama but the gravity of it is missing.  

Lot of that might be due to the piecemeal nature of it, hard to judge an unfinished story really.  

[mitri.3842]

the various event mechanics are lovely, i really appreciate the wide range of ways we get to interact with things in this map.

as buggy as they get the innate clunk is just there; barrel rolling on skyscale doesnt always get the fruit in the feed hungry kryptis event, sometimes bonus fruit falls to the ground sometimes not, but the most frustrating is the fact we can only carry 2 fruits at a time! and the throw SAK has a 5 sec cooldown on top of that! like cmon i set ground targeting to instant cast and crafted these 20 slot bags for a reason! 

other thing is more so a question, ever since release im a bit confused on the spherical barrier visual on the kryptis turrets/sentiels. the barrier visual in most cases doesn't show up at all but when it does its when the turrets are open and vulnerable. Shouldn't that be the other way around? 

Edited February 28 by mitri.3842
typos!

[Entara.3075]

I have enjoyed SoTo for the most part. I mostly echo the OPs on both the good and bad aspects. I really enjoy the more constant updates but the overall quality seems much more rushed and/or repetitive.

I can't emphasize enough how annoying the tool tip pop ups are but that has also been said enough. I am honestly surprised that there is not a check box to turn it off or something.

The other thing I would recommend going forward is to avoid putting repeatable activities behind locked areas. For example the Hall in Amnytas that you have to get 5 people to escort Lyhr to. Having the mastery in there along with a POI and an event is fine imo. To then have a repeatable objective like the lantern in their is a giant pain going forward. For the legendary armor I have to visit that lantern 18ish times and finding 5 people for the escort will be come harder and harder over time. There is a similar one in Echovald that is equally as annoying. This leaves me feeling pushed to get it done as fast as possible and vastly decreases overall enjoyment. I don't feel that that aspect of the game respects player time, which is often one of GW2's strong points 

Just my two cents.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

I do want to drop a quick note for you all that I am making sure that the studio is aware of the feedback on the tooltip issue! 

 

(Please keep the feedback on everything coming, but I saw that mentioned in here so I wanted to let you know)

[Randulf.7614]

21 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I do want to drop a quick note for you all that I am making sure that the studio is aware of the feedback on the tooltip issue! 

 

(Please keep the feedback on everything coming, but I saw that mentioned in here so I wanted to let you know)

Thanks Rubi. Out of curiosity though, we've raised this particular issue a lot since SoTo's release. Has it not already been fed back? Or is it a case of continuing to feed back that its an issue?

[Tanek.5983]

I agree with most of what is being said here. SotO for me, has been my least favorite of all the expansions and LW seasons. Not because it is bad on its own (though I do have things I really don't like about it), but because it feels so much shakier than what came before. Story, mechanics, UI, characters...I think what is most telling for me is I don't want to spend time just hanging out and playing in this expansion like I have all the other areas of the game when they were new.

For the UI, I'll add to the pile of tooltip feedback. I am very glad it is being looked into. Granted, tooltip spam isn't exactly new to the game, but before it was pretty much just the "hey you need a mastery to do blah blah". And at least that went away when you got the mastery. Now it is jsut constant with so many things. Hopefully a balance can be found between letting players know the mechanics and trusting that after being told 100 times they maybe know the mechanics. 😁

In addition to this, SotO raised the communicator spam to a new level (I first noticed it in EoD, expecially Echovald). So many times we just have NPCs breaking in with event or meta spam while we are trying ton run the story. It can get confusing...am I hearing this because it is part of the story, ot because some event started on the opposite side of the map? Bad enough on the Skywatch and Amnytas maps, but Nayos was small enough that it was constant. Plus, events would loop every few minutes making the whole zone feel like a chaos of yelling and manic repeats that just drove me away.

I know this is a new start after the Dragon Cycle, but the combination of ditching all the characters we've gotten to know over the years and the superquick introduction of new characters that I struggle to understand, let alone care about (other than R'tchikk and Gladium...those two I'd fight for), was jarring. Even with main character syndrome having taken over our lives as Commander I don't see the motivation behind 90% of what we are trusted to do, so that constantly keeps me on edge, too. 

Then there are the little things in the story that seem to be rushed or missing. Having dialogue about the fractals that assumes we'd been told about the fractals when that doesn't happen until the next story step. A character barely introduced only to be confusingly sacrificed in the next scene. A voice line that seems to have accidentally been put in two places. Story instance boss fights that don't feel like they were meant as story instances (the Cerus fight and the first "convergence" fight both feel like they were designed to be large group things where the mechanics translated very poorly to the story where they are first encountered).

That is a lot of complaining on my part. And it makes it seem like I don't enjoy much about SotO. As I was telling someone just yesterday, though, just about any other dev studio puts out something like this expansion and it is among the top of what they have created. ANet just set the bar high enough that this expansion happens to be, for me, toward the bottom. It has incredible zones, sone really fun ideas, a ton of lore scattered about in books. It is obvious that lots of work went into so much about SotO that I almost feel bad not liking it more.

I know the next expansion(s?) is already being worked on. With it due out this year I hope there is enough time to take the SotO feedback and make something great. 🙂

Edited February 29 by Tanek.5983

[pallas.8150]

I really enjoyed the start of this expansion. Every quarterly release, however, is simply boring me.

New Legendary armor is boring and aside from visuals no reason for most of us who have Legendary armor elsewhere. New weapons? Also boring. I main an Ele and was severely underwhelmed by the pistol (I'm already back to scepter).

Maybe this is where I look at this as a jumping off point? I don't see anything to be enthused about.

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I do want to drop a quick note for you all that I am making sure that the studio is aware of the feedback on the tooltip issue! 

 

(Please keep the feedback on everything coming, but I saw that mentioned in here so I wanted to let you know)

It is not like this have not been an issue since heart of thorns and your mastery is ready to train that pop up every time you got exp while being short of mps for what you wanted to train.

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

The biggest issue I have is the They/Them pronouns being used on my character. I don't mind it on Yao but my female characters are female. The NPCs should refer to me as She/Her. Same with my male characters: He/Him. It really takes my immersion away when characters are using the incorrect pronouns of my characters who are already well established. I really wish this doesn't happen again tbh.

If you want to use non-binary pronouns that's fine for some NPCs I guess. But let's focus more on the Story and less on that stuff. I don't want to memorize 100s of different genders just to enjoy the story of the game. Sometimes just keeping things simple provides a better experience. I want to be immersed so sticking to traditional character pronouns for the story would be preferable.

Edited February 29 by DreamyAbaddon.3265

[kajoken.1630]

11 hours ago, Randulf.7614 said:

That extractor event might be the most blood pressure raising event in the game. Constant turret spawn, constant tool tip spam, concotions not always hitting accurately

This! So much this. Yesterday I did this event for the achievement all by myself because basically no one on the pretty full map wanted to do it. It's by far the most annoying event that has been added to the game for years. Way too fast spawns, the grenades don't hit 9 out of 10 times. Only 5 grenades at a time but you'll need at least two per target. Not gonna do that event ever again in this state.

[mitri.3842]

33 minutes ago, DreamyAbaddon.3265 said:

The biggest issue I have is the They/Them pronouns being used on my character. I don't mind it on Yao but my female characters are female. The NPCs should refer to me as She/Her. Same with my male characters: He/Him. It really takes my immersion away when characters are using the incorrect pronouns of my characters who are already well established. I really wish this doesn't happen again tbh.

If you want to use non-binary pronouns that's fine for some NPCs I guess. But let's focus more on the Story and less on that stuff. I don't want to memorize 100s of different genders just to enjoy the story of the game. Sometimes just keeping things simple provides a better experience. I want to be immersed so sticking to traditional character pronouns for the story would be preferable.

just to throw few cents to this; using they them pronouns for the commander is “keeping things simple”, like it or not.  it cuts down on additional voice lines that otherwise would have to be recorded every time a npc refers to our character by he or she. 

Edited February 29 by mitri.3842
MY FIRST CONFUSED REACT EVER LETS 🐈ing GOOO

[Randulf.7614]

1 minute ago, kajoken.1630 said:

This! So much this. Yesterday I did this event for the achievement all by myself because basically no one on the pretty full map wanted to do it. It's by far the most annoying event that has been added to the game for years. Way too fast spawns, the grenades don't hit 9 out of 10 times. Only 5 grenades at a time but you'll need at least two per target. Not gonna do that event ever again in this state.

The event in itself is fine, but the turrets spawn too quickly and after a while stop replenishing. By the time you go back to the npc, all the turrets respawn

It needs wider collision detection in the throw and infinite use potions. It seems to be an event people avoid and with a meta pretty much always active, it’s difficult to attract people to it even with a tag

 

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

11 minutes ago, mitri.3842 said:

just to throw few cents to this; using they them pronouns for the commander is “keeping things simple”, like it or not.  it cuts down on additional voice lines that otherwise would have to be recorded every time a npc refers to our character by he or she. 

Oh, I totally get that it cuts down on cost for additional voice lines. But as a player who wants to enjoy the story, I am less concerned about the cost and prefer they spend extra to keep the traditional pronouns for player characters to keep us immersed. Sudden changes on my character's pronouns makes it more complicated to follow the story and takes away the immersion. I want to be immersed when I play a game not be taken out of immersion. Making a game is always more complicated than playing a game so as long as the game is more simple to play and the story is simple to follow, it's worth the extra effort and cost for developers to stick to traditional pronouns for player characters.

 

Edited February 29 by DreamyAbaddon.3265

[Sarius.9285]

22 minutes ago, mitri.3842 said:

just to throw few cents to this; using they them pronouns for the commander is “keeping things simple”, like it or not.  it cuts down on additional voice lines that otherwise would have to be recorded every time a npc refers to our character by he or she. 

but that's never been an issue in the 10 years before, so why randomly change it now?