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

[mitri.3842]

Good question! Im not a gw2 dev so if you want my layman's opinion:

things always changed in this game, 10 years ago the game was supposed to have no expansions and live of off the living world system. Years ago we had semi-regular raid releases. Dungeons were the end game content. But ever since the game launched our character was whenever it was possible referred by their title, not necessarily he/she. Valiant, Gladium, Hero, Commander etc and now Wayfinder. If ya have a bone to pick with devs de-gendering your character then you could've said so 10 years ago.

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

25 minutes ago, mitri.3842 said:

Good question! Im not a gw2 dev so if you want my layman's opinion:

things always changed in this game, 10 years ago the game was supposed to have no expansions and live of off the living world system. Years ago we had semi-regular raid releases. Dungeons were the end game content. But ever since the game launched our character was whenever it was possible referred by their title, not necessarily he/she. Valiant, Gladium, Hero, Commander etc and now Wayfinder. If ya have a bone to pick with devs de-gendering your character then you could've said so 10 years ago.

I do see your point and I respect your opinion. I do agree that Online games do change over the years. Sometimes things don't work out as originally planned so a change is necessary but not all changes are good changes which is why LS1 didn't work out so they had to go back to a format that does work by making the story static and accessible to all players regardless when someone joined the game with LS2 and beyond that way people don't end up missing out. They also had to remake LS1 so that it became playable again since it proved that people wanted to experience that part of the story in game because of the story gap.

As for the story of our characters, our titles changed during story progression made sense too. For example, we started off as Hero of Shamore because of the act we did during centaur attack. A title that was earned. Then we progressed to becoming an Initiative when joining the Order of Wispers as a newbie, and eventually started Pact with the other orders and became the Commander of the Pact to take down Elder Dragons. Then we had other nicknames like God Slayer for killing you know who, and Dragon Slayer for killing the elder dragons from our past actions. All these nicknames / titles were something we earned during our story progression and made sense and didn't take us away from our immersion. The only title that felt forced or wasn't really clear to me is Wayfinder? I feel like I just got called that out of random? Would be nice to have a more clear story progression to show how that title was earned in the story and how it fits to my character's unique role in the story. Like perhaps they could add a story instance were they explain this title or role and how my character accepts it or something? That would be a nice addition cause I don't really have a clue how I became the Wayfinder or what this role actually means.

Also, I'd like to add that changing ranks / title / nicknames for my character based on what he/she achieved is not the same feeling as when my gender suddenly just turns non-binary since it takes me out of immersion. It's like my female characters all of the sudden isn't female anymore or my male characters aren't male anymore. Like it makes no sense and breaks the immersion for me. So this is why I really dislike the They/Them pronouns being used by npcs to identify my characters. I like playing the game's story because I want to immerse in it. Gaming is all about immersion in my opinion. It's why I like playing them. So this is why I have a big problem with this personally. A change that takes you away from your immersion isn't really a good change for the player.

Edited February 29 by DreamyAbaddon.3265

[Vavume.8065]

14 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

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.

Totally agree, it the most annoying thing about Soto for me, I only need to read them once each EVER, not everytime.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours 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 understand that. Still, cost-cutting at every corner does not result in improved quality. In fact, it does not even help with retaining previous quality. It just makes everything look cheap, and seem like devs no longer care.

[Portico.2354]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Oh, i understand that. Still, cost-cutting at every corner does not result in improved quality. In fact, it does not even help with retaining previous quality. It just makes everything look cheap, and seem like devs no longer care.

I would also prefer they keep both versions. And I think the way to do that while still reducing costs is to reduce the amount of dialogue. The story has been dialogue heavy recently imo. They could drastically cut down the amount of voice lines in open world sections. And they could tighten up the dialogue overall to remove the useless parts that might add a tiny bit of flavor but don’t meaningfully advance the plot or lore (which is most of it).

I actually think that is where the writing in the game suffers the most currently is that it seems too much effort is spent writing dialogue that doesn’t matter to the game or story and could be cut with no effect other than reducing the runtime of the chapters. If you want to pad the story out some, the better way to do it is by adding combat or some other gameplay (since it is a game). It would reduce the costs of dialogue recording and allow the devs to record multiple lines.

(another option is to always refer to the pc by the title, wayfinder currently, and just tweak dialogue to avoid third person pronouns)

Edited February 29 by Portico.2354

[Jianyu.7065]

It could be me, but I honestly don't ever remember being referred to as he/him - maybe for the exception of the beginning of the personal story, otherwise I only remember being referred to as Commander.

[Dotveg.5108]

Ahai there.

Glad there's a topic to share opinions on the expac — here I go.

So far, it feels like everything that has been going on in Nayos did not require our intervention — that is fine, this is a world of its own, and we are effectively interlopers butting in on a political situation that basically completely goes over our head. I don't mind that the Commander has been relegated to Wayfinder, and as such, is being looked down on by a mightier-than-thou secret organization that is basically used to play Gods without anyone questioning their morals outside of the walls of the Wizards' Tower. There is absolute hubris in the way Isgarren is treating the problem of the Kryptis insurgency, and definitely room for a very messy failure, which I still hope will be the conclusion to this arc (as it would be the only way, in my opinion, to link the former storylines with this one, and force the Court to interact with the rest of the world, as the Kryptis issue blows wide open and Tyrians all around realize the Dragons were just the tip of the iceberg).

 

The past couple updates have felt like an introduction; a build-up, if you will. We're not going to defeat Eparch, far from it: we are faced with a conflict that is much bigger than us and we can barely comprehend it as outsiders. Peitha herself seems to struggle with the fact that this will not be an easy victory, and what happened by the end of Realm of Dreams comforts me in the idea that we do not know who we are truly facing and what they are capable of.

 

I sincerely hope the Kryptis storyline will not be over by the next major release. A magic hungry, gluttonous, seemingly all-powerful tyrant that consumes the very magic keeping his world alive should absolutely not be thwarted off within a single chapter — definitely not if he is supposed to be a long lasting threat to Tyria itself. 

As much as I understand the need for a more formulaic release schedule, please do not forget that quality should always come before quantity. Do not rush this story off stage, it deserves time to develop.

Edited February 29 by Dotveg.5108

[kharmin.7683]

4 hours ago, Sarius.9285 said:

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

Do you really need to ask why?  I thought that everyone had figured it out by now.

[Blur.3465]

I think SotO vibe is in a good spot. It definitely holds more seriousness than previous storytelling and it holds that darker tone which I appreciate.

That said, it's lacking something and it does feel like it's either being rushed or there's just ... something missing, I am not sure what.
Characters are a lot more mature etc, there's no cringy humour which I appreciate as well, but something something...I don't know what's missing ahhh.
I'm really hoping for some epic twist by the end of it though!

Not gonna lie, though, I am not a fan of the original SotO maps. I do like Nayos, but feel that NPC chatter/comm device is overdone beyond imagination. Definitely need to tone down on  the NPC chatter through events and comm device.

[Portico.2354]

28 minutes ago, Dotveg.5108 said:

I sincerely hope the Kryptis storyline will not be over by the next major release. A magic hungry, gluttonous, seemingly all-powerful tyrant that consumes the very magic keeping his world alive should absolutely not be thwarted off within a single chapter — definitely not if he is supposed to be a long lasting threat to Tyria itself.

I hope not but I very much fear that it will be. The new expansions are designed to be smaller and self contained to avoid the devs getting bored with telling one sprawling story like the elder dragons.

I think a better format would be to conclude Soto with a status quo where Eparch is temporarily thwarted and Tyria is safe but he’s not gone. Then we can move on to another mini expac story and return to the kryptis and wizards later so the devs don’t get burned out on one thing but the expac stories don’t get cut painfully short. 
 

I also hope Peitha betrays us or something because her character is becoming very boring compared to her introduction.

[Sarius.9285]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Do you really need to ask why?  I thought that everyone had figured it out by now.

yes I do, cause the reason given was budgeting, which doesn't make sense. And if you're talking about including neutral pronouns, we could just have the option to choose a pronoun at character creation, like every other rpg in the last 5 years 

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

16 hours ago, Tanek.5983 said:

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.

Not at all! I really appreciate the time you (and a LOT of people contributing feedback!) took to share your thoughts. This is really helpful. 

[Dotveg.5108]

3 hours ago, Portico.2354 said:

I think a better format would be to conclude Soto with a status quo where Eparch is temporarily thwarted and Tyria is safe but he’s not gone. Then we can move on to another mini expac story and return to the kryptis and wizards later so the devs don’t get burned out on one thing but the expac stories don’t get cut painfully short. 

I can see this happening fairly easily, actually. I wouldn't say the current arc is about "the war on Eparch", but rather "Peitha's (mildly succesful although extremely brittle) attempt at revolution", which definitely leaves the door open to more Kryptis story, even outside of Nayos. 

We even already have somewhat of a precedent for this in the form of Lazarus/Balthazar leading to Path of Fire after his big reveal during LWS3 – self-contained shouldn't mean the storyline as a whole can't be fueled by each expac's events.

Anyway, lotta words to say "here's hoping and see you in 3 months" I guess.

[One more for the road.8950]

As a former GW1 player, perhaps some of what some people are missing is something that people that have played GW1 get.

I haven't played the latest new content yet, but I have spent more time than I would like to admit on finding details, information nuggets and references to GW1 content. That has been done brilliantly.

Edited February 29 by One more for the road.8950

[Cuks.8241]

The story dialogues really regressed at some point, I haven't really noticed when exactly but it was really obvious to me in Soto.

We started with these semi cutscenes in vanilla (which you could skip) and then moved away from that to a more interactive variant which didn't pull you out of the world. And while this started a bit clunky, especially because the npc were clumsy and slow, the quality really went up and peaked somewhere in LS4 and start of IBS (intro in Grothmar, Darkrime Delves were amazing). Even if the dialogues were long and/or boring sometimes it didn't feel that way because things were happening and you were in control of your character. Some parts felt like an interactive movie, good camera movement, camera effects. Rarely it felt boring to me even if I am not really a gw story enthusiast.  

Now we have probably the worst iteration ever. Everyone is completely static. NPCs just ramble and ramble while standing there (and I am doing something else because I can't skip it). Talk to NPC no1, talk to NPC no 2, talk to NPC no3, talk to NPC no1, talk to NPC no 4. Maybe talk at length to NPC no 2 and 3 again for achiev. Now do mission and return to talk to NPCs again. They are probably at the same spot that they were for the last 4 steps. I wonder if their back hurts from just standing there all the time.

Now the story itself. Please forgive me if I say something wrong but mostly I phased out the story very early in Soto but that's also a tell on it's quality. It's not unusual for this game that the next chapter downplays or forgets the events of the previous ones but that was not so bad when LS episodes were partially self contained. But the start of this latest chapter is just sad. For example the arc between Frodo and Arina (I think that was the name of his daughter). For some reason it really imprinted in my mind and I was really thinking they are going somewhere. Arina presumed dead, Frode worrying being kept in the dark about her alive by Isgarren. They could really take this in so many interesting directions. But all we get in this chapter is basically "Oh hai", "She can take care of herself". 😕

As for the Kryptis. Now I haven't finished this chapter yet so maybe I'll change my mind but at this point I doubt it and the harm was already done. The whole ordeal with Peitha started promising. Potential ally of dubious nature, we travel to this strange demon world and get a glimpse of their game of thrones. Great setting for something interesting, new. They are kitten demons, you could do whatever. Dubious morals from our point of view, strange customs, funny or tense interactions because they are kitten demons, betrayal (I guess that one is still to be played out or not). And what we get? They (our allies) end up just another oppressed group of "people", refugees, like so many we saved in the past that needs saving by the good old Commander (Wayfinder now I guess. I don't really care how they call us). Please Commander bring some water, food and bandages to the poor Amnoon refugees... oh wait... am... poor Kryptis refugees. They just want to live the rest of their quiet lives at a farm growing Thornsprout blooms.

[HotDelirium.7984]

I too am having trouble connecting with the story. The kryptis invade, we defeat invasion with deus ex machina, Isgarren says ok on a truce, it looks like Peitha is gona backstab us a mile away, WHILE this whole time I'm still more interested about all the fractals in Skywatch and what's going to happen to them. Peitha delivering her SUPER important lines to the wall next to Nephus also didn't sell it lol

[Quirin.1076]

The only issue I ran into was the red zone for leaving the instance.  The Skyscale is hard enough to aim and fly around and swoop to take out turrets in the sky, now I had to worry about taking out the turret in the red zone that keeps killing me, will that kick me from the instance.   Also the demons figured out my weakness and went into the red zone to avoid combat.  I had to hop on my skyscale and shoot them from a distance.

The person that creates those red zones, a little breathing room would be cool.

[Kiki.9450]

Just finished the story today! I enjoyed it more than the Through the Veil release, and I was trying to compare the two as I went as far as how much content I had to play.

Overall, The Realm of Dreams is a little longer and felt a bit better paced I think, but I noticed that The War Council was largely "go do events" (I think I had done nine or ten to complete the story chapter). Like many have noted, the double-dipping of that one line from Ramses felt strange. I honestly thought it was a bug at first, but maybe not. Something else that felt sort of odd about this particular chapter is how my character went about his dialogue. Most of it was delivered after I clicked the dialogue selection, so it almost came off (to me) as he was reading queue cards I was holding up.

Forced Hand was real short unfortunately. First playthrough took me ten minutes, with me chasing down the weapons for that one achievement. 

Eventide's March was neat though! Felt fun to play through the whole time, and caught me with a bit of a twist at the end.

Spoiler

I'm now hoping that Eparch (who is smaller than I was expecting) wins somehow. And semi-related: where the heck is Nourys? We pushed that thing back out of Tyria (because Amnytas is ours demon! OURS!) but since we've been in Inner Nayos, we've been seeing its tentacles all over the place in various events, and if you listen carefully to the map's ambience, you can hear it in the distance. At least, that's what I think that is.

Point of me bringing that up is, no way we'll deal with both of them on a permanent basis in the last release, right? Not unless we nuke Nayos from orbit anyway.

One thing that I want to mention again, reluctantly, is the pronoun thing. Now, I've already read through this thread and folks have already discussed it. I noticed while playing though this release that my character was never once referred to as they/them or he/him, which is fine as it was pretty rare prior to SotO that Commander/Wayfinder was ever referred to as such anyway (but it has happened many times between LWS2 all the way through Gyala Delves). As such, I consider this a sort of success on the whole pronouns consistency "debacle." Didn't break my immersion. Couldn't, as there was no real opportunity for it! 😄

Also, funny bit, during Forced Hand, one of the enemies states "Take this pretty one alive. Kill that ugly creature at his side." I can hear in my little head-canon land my mesmer quietly going "she called me pretty c:" at this part.

Spoiler

I do have to say though, for a release titled The Realm of Dreams... not a lot of dialogue about dreams this time. Consider this little sylvari puzzled. Really hoping to see more on this as we approach Eparch, seeing as he eats dreams and all.

Lastly regarding story, one last piece of story content to go (calendar's already marked, 14th of May!) but I'm curious how we'll handle all that's left in a satisfying way. My hope is that this won't be the end of the kryptis in the GW2 story, simply because this story seems bigger than one expansion. As others have mentioned, I'm also curious about what's to come from those fractals in Skywatch Archipelago. I really enjoy fantasy concepts such as alternate realities, time travel, "what-if" scenarios brought to life, and other such things. They can be fun, though I do realise they can also be difficult to produce.

Other things from the release that I've dabbled with so far: various events in Nyedra Surrounds have been fun. I really liked the meta here. While I'm glad the bug was fixed for "Destroy hazardous nests to reduce air toxicity in the area" I do have to say that the failure dialog for that one was pretty hilarious, and I don't think I would have encountered it if it weren't for that bug! My issues with feeding kryptis has been mentioned, as has the one event in the far west of the map where you toss bombs at the extractor.

As for the Convergences bosses, I find them better than Demon Knight and Sorrow. Less annoying to fight than Sorrow, but still not too easy like Demon Knight. That said, hoping that any future Convergence bosses won't have pushback effects, because we're now at four of four bosses that push you around and it's getting old. 😛 I also think I'll like alternating the bosses as old pair-new pair on a weekly basis, though we'll see how I feel about that at the end of next week. Hoping I don't fight Sorrow three times in a row.

TLDR: Biiiig post! Story fun! Has a few rough spots, but overall better than the previous chunk. New Convergences feel more fun too.

[kiroho.4738]

On 2/28/2024 at 8:09 PM, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Reuse of dialogue (Nethos line by Ramses twice) not good.

One sentence was repeated at one NPC.

It's always interesting to see on what high level complaints about the game actually are.

[Deihnyx.6318]

I'm still gathering my thoughts on the expansion, but the one piece of feedback I absolutely agree with though is the use of tooltips ad nauseam. Like I get it the first time for a new mechanic but it becomes pretty annoying after a bit.
It's especially bad in the Nexulus fight. I like fights that adds a mechanic that you have to pay attention to, but the popup and dialog felt like half of the difficulty of the fight, that doesn't feel right!!

I guess the other underwhelming thing for me is feeling that masteries are more and more used as an excuse to grind for xp and no longer bring new gameplay elements.
That, and I really wish you could use your remaining mastery points for each regions after you're done (how about 1% MF per remaining mastery point of something?), that would incite people to really go for all mastery points.

[Phyb.6704]

Two bars of events was not lazy... yeah....
The story depicting a big war with 3 groups going for a attack from 3 sides...... We held hands and skipped along. 
WHAT in all hell was with the difaculty spike. Mobs go from doing no damage to the queen being like..... SMACK. She was not hard but holy hell did that catch me off guard. Why was everything else so easy. The elite guards where garbo. 

Weapons are great tho. Enjoying them. Warrior staff could still use some buff tho. I dont see a warrior heal being taken over a druid, rev or scourge. The mobility is super fun but it needs to do better at the healing part. Maybe a larger aoe would help. 

If we say that 1/2 of the 25 bucks was the first 2 zones and the new hub. This would mean each part of nyos is 4 bucks. It is def what I would expect from 4 dollars but why is the scale so small. People will pay more.... they want an option for more content. You can charger more and produce more and increase the scale. Its like having a customer say.... give me 60 bucks worth and telling them.... nah here is 25 bucks worth. Then when they ask why..... you just ignore them. Do you not want the sale? It is super confusing to why its such a low scale of production when you have a huge amount of customers wanting to buy more and open to paying more. 

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

32 minutes ago, Kiki.9450 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm now hoping that Eparch (who is smaller than I was expecting) wins somehow. And semi-related: where the heck is Nourys? We pushed that thing back out of Tyria (because Amnytas is ours demon! OURS!) but since we've been in Inner Nayos, we've been seeing its tentacles all over the place in various events, and if you listen carefully to the map's ambience, you can hear it in the distance. At least, that's what I think that is.

There's some dialogue one can overhear from some enemy NPCs that mention the beast is wailing around in the shadows, still trying to recover from its injures in the Amnytas meta, and they don't expect it to return to the front lines in the future.

Edited March 1 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Zera.9435]

To make sure I understand: you are complaining that you got your money's worth? It was $25 for a reason. It is an expansion, just not a massive one. $25 is a good price for what we got and are getting. Sure, there are issues, but nothing that is completely unforgivable due to the low price. They're trying out a new way of delivering content to see how it plays out, how players respond, and what they can do to improve. They figure people are more ready to spend $25 than $75. All we can do is give them valid criticisms and constructive feedback where appropriate. Point out what doesn't work, point out what does, and hopefully the next expansion will be better because of it. This content is definitely NOT worth a base price of $75 or even $60, but don't forget that they totally could have done that but didn't. The pricing is on point.

[Chyro.1462]

At the start of Soto the one thing that kinda pulled me into the story and along with it was Zojja, her change of character, the little lore bits of what she experienced and her voice lines. Then she becomes a wizard and .. that's it. It's as if she died without a burial. Just gone and out of the story. Maybe she will come back and still play a role going forward, but currently I find it hard to stay invested in the story surrounded by characters that feel like strangers.

[Edibleghost.5631]

I've done pretty much all the pve there is to do in the game but WvW is the real draw me for me so my feelings on the pve side are never terribly dramatic. I view this entire expansion as overall serviceable but not pulse quickening. The plot and story are just okay, I have particularly liked some of the characters but do find myself zoning out with the dialogue sometimes; the maps in my opinion have been awesome even if asset reuse has been a point of contention for some, though I think some of the getting around (waypoint placement, difficult verticality on Skywatch, leyline placement) could have been better. I agree with someone else's point that the world could be made to feel a bit more alive in terms of what the kryptis society it like when there's not people shooting magic everywhere.

Convergences we're a great addition, like nailed it pretty well and I wouldn't mind seeing more content in this style; something like fighting up a tower or instead of a corner spread fighting down a long valley, there's just a lot of potential in the idea I feel. Please put it on a somewhat shorter time interval though, it you happen to miss the public one it feels pretty bad.

Wizard's vault has been really good, I've liked a lot of the offerings and feel that everything is attainable for a casual player with enough left to engage with if you're heavier on your time commitment, some of the prices for noobtrap items are definitely still out of whack but nobody ought to really NEED them in the first place so it's a bit moot. I would like to see a little more rotation such as build template one season and equipment template the next but I get that some of this is to drive sales and ultimately that's okay. My one real ask here would be to detatch the AP from the chest itself on daily and weekly goals so that if you're stockpiling or forget to redeem the chest you can still get the points.

Overall I've been trying to view this expansion through a specific lens of what it's trying to do and it's my belief that this is the studio running light and trying out their new release cadence and working out the bugs with it on their side so it's playing it safe on a lot of things and trying to use it as an entry point for new and casual players. The whole expansion essentially uses the new armor as it's main driving force and absent that doesn't have much to offer and the thing is that's okay, I just hope that we see things grow outward more with less uni-polar focus when we come to next expansion. I can't speak much to sPvP because I deeply dislike it but they definitely deserve a bone thrown to them at this point and WvW likewise feels neglected if a bit less so while I have no hopes that they get majority share in any expansion I would like them both to have something substantial that isn't matchmaking related going forward. On pve I think strikes are an okay model for 10 man content, I would just like more of them in a release cycle with maybe a little bit more on what we can buy with crystals. I'd like to see more side activities like jumping puzzles and such but I think some need to be reassessed like mount races; I think a lot of people think they want them but engage with them a few times and never look at them again so I'd prefer to see them less map integrated and more their own standalone thing like a roller beetle colosseum, the same thing with boat races so that you know people are there to do them and not for the map meta.

I have cautious optimism for pve going forward and hope that any shortcoming on this go around are due to the new release style. I would say more than anything we need more communication from the studio, this expansions on our side seems to be characterized by people feeling that everything is too thin and barely getting past the finish line and so you see a lot of people voicing fair criticism and a lot of others going to bat for you and shouting it down and I don't find that to be healthy. You said not long ago that you were bringing more people on and gearing up but that doesn't feel born out in the content received, so if you're stretched a little with what people you have but working tirelessly we'd like to know, if we're at the bottom of a ramp leading upward and that process just takes time we'd like to know, if you're neglecting one thing in favor of another we'd like to know. I think you need to do a better job at managing expectations and letting us know concretely where priorities are.