"The Midnight King" Is Now Live!

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

The entire expansion leaves me with a few questions.

First off, I do recognize that this was the first Mini-expac, and I did read you are going to review/evaluate. So here are my thoughts.

Story: Started strong, you are drawn in a new world where you have to proof yourself again... continued story... i felt like an Extra that was granted a few lines during the rest, untill suddenly I was the "hero that was praised" after the last fight. No progression, zero to max in 1 instance. What was the reasoning?

Content: What will be done with our genuine feedback, after so far nothing has changed.

- We ask to Disable Chat Bubbles from NPCs so we can aim on Skyscale, we get improved reddicle that still is blocked from vision when those hated Chat Bubbles start again. The amount of times I restarted target practise due to this poor mechanic. Why did you go through such trouble to reduce chatter (hardly noticable) and change reddicle, while a simple "disable chat bubbles from NPCs" would've 100% fixed this design failure?

- We gave tons of feedback about the bombardment of LARGE SCREAMING popups during the story and events due to massive overuse of the Special Action key with thousands of different uses for it, sometimes massively overlapping (Amnytas for example) And this last chapter added more? Why are you pushing this immersion BREAKING feature and why is there STILL no way to disable these OBNOXIOUSLY LARGE popup (typed in caps to illustrate how obnoxious they are, not to shout)

Few suggestions from a player that loves this game:

1. Don't overdo mechanics like special action key, the sheer amount (specially in amnytas) is just obnoxious and doesn't ad anything to the experience except frustration
2. If you insist us filling a bar, let it have some kind of meaning. "just do events" is not story line, it is lazy filler
3. The player doesn't need to be the All Ending Hero, but a substantial part of the team they should be. I literately felt like an extra standing on a distance behind the main characters.
4. Please stop with blocking map completion behind events. Specially obscure events that are hard to get people for after a while.
5. And really: blocking Amnytas completion behind Story. That is a direct insult. No way I am going to constantly play that LONG instance for just 2 POIs
6. Stop the condi preasure. Some classes feel like torture playing the SotO maps, while others feel no pain at all. - you should really consider all classes and builds and have a more balanced experience over all classes.

Last but not least, are we done now making the Skyscale the ultimate AFK mount?
I mean I saw people on the gates of Hathor doing the meta 100% shooting from outside for full reward zero risk...
... and still the skyscale is Meh at best.

This does sound all quite negative, but lets see positives

Map designs, I love them. Maybe Amnytas looks a bit too similar over the entire map, but I love how the maps are designed
Wizard's tower is a great place (except loading times, but yeah)
I do believe the "new" way to get a skyscale mount is MUCH more balanced.
SotO armor and how to obtain it, is in my eyes well balanced compared with other methods (although maybe PvP/WvW is a bit too timegated in comparising)
Sometimes I praise you listening to feedback, and specially when you recognized your massive error and gave us the option to disable leyline gliding... Why would a Griffon ever need it? it is still faster in flight than a skyscale on a ley line by a margine, confirming it's air superiority over the AFK mount.

Overall I am curious about the next expansion. See what brings us next, see what you do with all the feedback and the lessons you learned yourself with this first smaller expansion.

 

[Ashantara.8731]

Oof...

Let me start off by saying that the entirety of Inner Nayos should have been a single release, not being spread thin across three mini-releases, which were artificially bloated by adding way too many time-grinding filler events and achievements that were zero fun to do only to make it look like "more content". Calling them "major updates" was a straight-out marketing lie.

On to the meta event chain:

Half of the time I was asking myself why I was doing what I was currently doing during a fight. The center and west metas are the most chaotic meta events I have witnessed in the entire game. Tons of mechanics overlapping, you are taking damage from half a dozen sources at once and have no idea how to counter them. Having to read through constantly popping up lengthy tutorial texts in the midth of all the action surely isn't a good way to teach people the mechanics (especially when those texts cover 1/5 of the screen) -- it is more likely to get players killed, and they will learn near nothing from it for the next run.

Honestly, whoever designed these has no idea how to design fun metas. It looked like they were just trying to show off how many mechanics they can cramp into a single event in the name of visual clutter and chaos. Job accomplished!

6 hours ago, HorusLt.4612 said:

Like for many others  skyscale masteries and weapon additions were the best part for me, but I'm sitting and asking myself- what's the point of getting the expac if I'm going to use those features in X year old content and the new areas just make me want to be done with achievements asap and never come back to them.

I stopped doing SotO achievements after Update 1, because I didn't see a point in continuing to waste my time on the most mind-numbingly boring map/story/achievement content in the entire game.

Even DRMs and Gyala Delve were more fun than Nayos...

____________________________________________________

P.S. Thanks for all the added QoL features and updates, they were for sure the best part of the past three SotO Updates.

Edited May 22 by Ashantara.8731

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

In terms of quality- it ALL matters. Let's say you graded it like a final term paper in college. Part 1 was 33/33, part 2 was a 33/33 and part 3 was a 0/33. That's a 66. That's a D.

Or, you grade it like my math teacher.

"you say only a small part of the solution is bad, but i say that without this specific part astronauts don't get to go back"

[nobleboivin.4102]

I already share everyone's thoughts about the expansion so I'm just going to leave feedback about the new meta.

The fact it requires 2 metas to do is stupid especially considering them constantly bugs.  The new meta also feels very laggy and slow.   On top it off the final boss fight there's way too much going on all at once and not enough time ot handle everything.  2 things need to be done for the new meta.  Things need to be nerfed such as spawn times.  And 2, add more than 9 minutes.

[Omega.6801]

Well, not a lot to say about this specific patch. Overall SotO feedback will be posted elsewhere.
- The Skimmer skin is nice.
- I'm looking forward to unlocking the Kryptis-Tonic.
- Adding Adventures was very welcome.
- People seem to like the second tier Legy armor.
- The story is extremely short, I guess because we're supposed to do the meta in between "Fill the bar" and the last instance.
- The story still containing a "Fill the bar"-phase for how short it is kinda sad.
- I am yet to end up on a map where the meta is happening due to bugs, which is very sad.
- Quality of the story and the "grand" finale is mid at best, sadly I didn't expect much in the first place. Isgarren is a terribly unlikeable character made terribly unlikeable from the start and I assume/hope on purpose. Then he sits all of SotO out going "Well I can not intervene, who knows what might happen." Only to deus-ex-machina in, to save the day and steal the show. He even states that he waited until the moment it was safe for him because it was clear that "we" would win. Cool move. I could've stayed at home and killed harpies in Ascalon, that Cattlepult also needs to be protected.
The bad guy felt rather generic but the fight was on par with other boss fights we had. I would have wished his attackes would have been a bit better telegraphed and some explaination for what the colored orbs do f.e.. I mean yeah, we had these orbs back in Skyforge, but they give you buffs now. There was a whole dungeon we fought through before facing off Eparch, how about some of the emoiton-coded demons use those orbs to teach us about this mechanic the endboss uses. Things like this make SotO feel rushed. Simple things, so simple, people like myself can think of them.
Interaction with other characters was very minimal this patch. I'm sorry, I'm not the kind of player that reads all the lore books and talks to all the NPCs and all that, so I'm at a disadvantage in SotO, I know. But still, the first instance, that has a bit of dialoge moves rather quick forward, and the second one has basically nothing during the dungeon crawl or the fight part. After the bossfight, there are a few lines and that's it. Of course there's the epilogue scene, where we get to talk to everyone, and they all get another few lines. That is kinda expected, so I won't count that for this point. I aknowledge it nonetheless.

[kathy.8291]

WORST META EVER!!!!!!!!!  It will die down real fast in about 2-3 weeks

[Lyd de Fioraventi.8671]

I don't usually complain, but now I need to share my disappointment.
More precisely, chapter 18 should have been blocked behind the meta. Anet can do it, they've done it with EoD (it wasn't blocked but you get an achievement if you do the meta before the story). I was so confused.
And after wrapping up the story and the meta, I was kinda feel let down. Like how the meta boss is not the second phase of the story final boss? The fight would had been more epic.
Finally, please, pretty big please, stop putting events to advance the story, instead put the meta if it brings something to the story.

[Edge.1653]

19 minutes ago, Lyd de Fioraventi.8671 said:

More precisely, chapter 18 should have been blocked behind the meta. Anet can do it, they've done it with EoD (it wasn't blocked but you get an achievement if you do the meta before the story). I was so confused.

This is one of the most headscratching decisions on their part. As you note they successfully did this in EoD, and I even intentionally checked the achievements before playing the final update to look out if there was something like this. Nope, no warning.

This final update feels like Anet regressing in a lot of ways.

[lunacrous.6751]

As others have noted this is Anet's first attempt at a "mini" xpac, and so I hope (and expect) that some lessons will be learned from this. The best takeaway I think they could take is to scale back their story ambitions for each xpac, and be comfortable ending xpacs with threads left unresolved. If this xpac had just been the events up to Amnytas, and the next xpac had taken us to Nayos and Peitha's war there, I imagine the story would have had a lot more chance to develop in each xpac. As it is it feels rushed because it's trying to fit a storyline more on the scale of what full xpacs have done into a mini one, all while introducing us to two entire new casts of characters. Far too much to be done in a "mini" xpac without feeling like we're just playing a narrative outline.

On the whole I liked the themes, characters, and narrative of SotO, inasmuch as I was allowed the time to. It just all ended up feeling far too short and hurried. Even with shorter xpacs and updates your stories still need room to breathe.

[ursahydroxide.1862]

Just adding my voice onto this in support of what a lot of people are saying. I really hope how small and rushed the story on these nayos updates was isn't indicative of the kind of story releases we're looking at in the future, it's just disappointing and unsatisifying. If we wait three months for something it should feel worth playing. Nayos had a lot of strong concepts but nothing really interesting was done with them until the end here, except for maybe Labris as a charcter. Peitha had interesting potential, you have that overconfidence and ruthless ambition being contrasted against her inexperience and compassion respectively, but not a lot was done with it. Interesting set up for the nature of Isgarren's character going forward. The Nayos arc also felt very impersonal, there wasn't a lot that bounced off the player character and their actions, which is disappointing following the original release of SoTO which, while a little rushed, was incredibly personal and specific. Part of that was the events thing, and open world filler isn't neccesarily something bad it has been done effectively since season 3, the problem is the age old D&D advice, "kill ten goblins" is not a quest or a story, "This road is full with goblins, you need to clear it to make it safe for travellers" which happens to be the exact same quest mechanically, is. They claim "Oh doing things is helping the war effort" but it does not feel like that at all.  We also used to have people talk to us as we progressed through open world filler, giving us updates on the movement of things happening beyond what we could immediately see. There were no relationships that we built with anyone in Nayos, we didn't actually get to know anyone, there was no real meat to anything we personally were doing. Strong map, fun to be in, wish there was more done in it to explore the Kryptis as a culture and a species beyond their oppression, because conceptually they're very interesting and I'd love to learn more about them.

There's also the matter of this particular story being confusing and disorienting if you do not do the meta immediately before going into the instanced battle. If you include the meta in the story content it does feel a little more dynamic and like we're actually doing something, but the only way that could really work is with something similar to how steel and fire going into dark rime delves when you're doing the story worked, or how there was an instanced version of dragonstorm at the end of champions but you could do the meta if it was up. I understand why that wasn't the case here, but I would have preferred if the story was given a lot more care.

Overall, I would like some kind of reassurance that story content is going to be given attention again, and not relegated in favour of constant never ending bonus events. I bought this expansion for the story, I like the direction the story is going in it has interesting concepts themes and characters, I'd like to know that if I buy the next expansion that when there are story updates, they will not feel so empty.

[Luthan.5236]

Thanks for the hints with the achievements. (Seems in the Wiki now.) Got confused cause I thought it would be when the chat window was not visible. Didn't know you could type there. The other one I already had a hunch that it might have been that.

Finished some collections now. And the meta once (joind at the last part). Collections are the usual easy stuff. The meta boss feels like a grind - similar ot the Gyala Delve last one. (Not sure if it even is relevant what you do there. Need to still read about the mechanics in the Wiki later. I just attacked the boss + the mobs that tried to get to him to feed him. But there is still the essences mechanic I think. The achievemen triggered the chekcbox only for one though I went through multiple circles so I guess it only stays at the first you select.)

Upside is that the last hero chest gave an option to select currency from other maps. (When for Nayos you already get thrown a lot of that map currency at you.) Might end up as the main/only reason people do it lol. 😄 (I wonder if there will be other stuff patched in later to make people re-visit that meta event again and again.)

The adventures are nice. (Already mentioned that. And this was the one thing I missed in Nayos up til now.) Just did the hidden master in the essence collection. For the amnytas I might need a slight bit of training for the fast one (tight timer) to get gold. I will save the two new Skyscale target practies though ... maybe going for silver (or gold) - that is hard enough. Way toooo long to traint it in a reasonable time and I feel like having a hard time moving + aiming (staying still and aiming at moving targets is way easier) ... and shorter (easier to train/remember the route) adventures would have been more fun. Those ones will need painful hours of training to belong to the handful that master it - I think. 😄

[Lyd de Fioraventi.8671]

15 hours ago, kathy.8291 said:

WORST META EVER!!!!!!!!!  It will die down real fast in about 2-3 weeks

I don't think so, with the last mastery, you have a chance to get infusions from other metas.

[ShroomOneUp.6913]

On 5/22/2024 at 2:09 PM, ShroomOneUp.6913 said:

i do not know what you udnerstand under plot holes, but nothing remained unexplained. unlike FOD which had an unreasonable bone headed commander, a botch ed attempt to make joon neuro divergent and the asinine ankha word view.....
it was straight forward and had no plot holes.

YOu may think of "DEPTH" that was missing and to be honest i do not expect depth from anet at all since HoT. it was a save set up/new beginning after 10 years of doing one over arching story that tossed away plot line like the white mantle and palawa joko. its not the greatest story told by far but its not riddled with plotholes.
any stronger negative take is born from unrealistic high expectations. I bet you expected EoD hype or lw4's having to end on a high note because lay off threatened anet to be closed down possibly.

its a no box sale, mini expansion and it did exactly what i expected it to do.

since some seem to react confused:
i do not hate as much as people do hate this min expac because i LITERALLY had no big expectation for it. I spend 12 years with this game and have accepted the occasional massive fumbling of anet as a company to just show it ugly face every now and then.

Much in contrast to seemingly most other player who seemed to have expected something at the scale of EoD or PoF. I already had that feeling you have now when they botched the icebrood saga and potential destroyer saga.
Does that mean all criticism is invalid? HECK NO. they all have merit if they are not the usual emotional "PAHTATIC" outbursts and constant spamming in map chat.(seriously just stop, you are WORSE than the expac if you do)
Page three has FINALLY some well thought through details and actual points to make. Much better than the incessant whining.
 

in short: i set my expectations low and was not disappointed just affirmed in what i know about anet.

[Ashantara.8731]

I have to say, some of the new Achievements look quite intriguing. Saw a scavenger hunt or two, so I am definitely going to look into those. 🙂 

2 hours ago, Lyd de Fioraventi.8671 said:

I don't think so, with the last mastery, you have a chance to get infusions from other metas.

True. Once per day. If you actually have interest in any of those infusions.

[Edge.1653]

I genuinely cannot wait for the post-mortem on this expansion, even if it's absolutely going to get sanitized to heck for public consumption. Far more excited for that than I am to even log back into the game to try actually beating the meta, or the next expansion announcement.

[Tony.8659]

Replaying story chapters for achievements is not showing up for me, is this how this update supposed to be?

[HotDelirium.7984]

On 5/22/2024 at 1:49 PM, Ashantara.8731 said:

Oof...

Let me start off by saying that the entirety of Inner Nayos should have been a single release, not being spread thin across three mini-releases, which were artificially bloated by adding way too many time-grinding filler events and achievements that were zero fun to do only to make it look like "more content". Calling them "major updates" was a straight-out marketing lie.

On to the meta event chain:

Half of the time I was asking myself why I was doing what I was currently doing during a fight. The center and west metas are the most chaotic meta events I have witnessed in the entire game. Tons of mechanics overlapping, you are taking damage from half a dozen sources at once and have no idea how to counter them. Having to read through constantly popping up lengthy tutorial texts in the midth of all the action surely isn't a good way to teach people the mechanics (especially when those texts cover 1/5 of the screen) -- it is more likely to get players killed, and they will learn near nothing from it for the next run.

Honestly, whoever designed these has no idea how to design fun metas. It looked like they were just trying to show off how many mechanics they can cramp into a single event in the name of visual clutter and chaos. Job accomplished!

I stopped doing SotO achievements after Update 1, because I didn't see a point in continuing to waste my time on the most mind-numbingly boring map/story/achievement content in the entire game.

Even DRMs and Gyala Delve were more fun than Nayos...

____________________________________________________

P.S. Thanks for all the added QoL features and updates, they were for sure the best part of the past three SotO Updates.

Content and content delivery are equally important. If Inner Nayos would have been one release I think it would have been received well. So if this is inner whats outer Nayos and why is it the world of dreams? Whose dreams? Humans? The non-canon Arachnia lore could have made its debut and shocked everyone.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 5/24/2024 at 6:41 PM, HotDelirium.7984 said:

Whose dreams? Humans?

No, the Kryptis'.

Edited May 25 by Ashantara.8731
typo

[EcoEffect.9486]

The game is becoming more and more difficult for regular players. With each patch the content becomes more and more difficult. New fractals cm, strike cm - are too difficult for ordinary players who want to enjoy the game.  New profession builds that change like gloves. ArenaNet let go of the people who were doing the work in this game and only those who spend anything just to spend something are left. The story is getting worse from patch to patch. The meta events are boring as hell, the game's plot is crap. ArenaNet is trying to retain players, but they won't be able to keep it for long with such junk content.

[Luthan.5236]

Is there a way to restart the fight at chapter 18? Seems they again forgot the replay for achievement option (checkpoints)? I even logged to char select and went back in - only to notice that it fully restarts the instance. I mean Eparch Evader achievement should not be that hard but still annoying when you accidentally fail it and do the full instance again. Well ... doing it with my main - where I feel more comfortable with (should be easier then) again after having finished the chapter on the 2nd char (where I just went in again cause I forgot the last POI there at the first visit).

(What doesn't work is to fully port out of the room too early/too far btw. 😄 I did that first. Really needs you to get behind Peitha as she says in the dialogue.)

Edited May 25 by Luthan.5236

[dilo.1907]

The story itself is not so bad, imho the problem is the whole direction

[dilo.1907]

On 5/23/2024 at 2:17 AM, kathy.8291 said:

WORST META EVER!!!!!!!!!  It will die down real fast in about 2-3 weeks

Maybe I haven't payed the right attention to the dialogs? It could be, however here in SotO:

why story characters with the champion fight a version of Eparch in the sory istance, while in the map meta event Eparch appears in another shape?

I mean: in HoT there was a similar situation and there was a clear explanation

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, dilo.1907 said:

Maybe I haven't payed the right attention to the dialogs? It could be, however here in SotO:

why story characters with the champion fight a version of Eparch in the sory istance, while in the map meta event Eparch appears in another shape?

I don't think this is properly explained. In the map meta event "Defeat Eparch, the consumed King" we defeat him and he retreats up to the Spire of Dreams. The story instance "18: The Eleventh hour" starts in the same room where the map meta event with Eparch happened and we follow Eparch up into the Spire of Dreams into the room with the Midnight Throne.

Maybe in the map meta he's the "consumed king" and fat because he used up all the cryptis and he doesn't stand upright (otherwise we'd just be fighting just his legs) and that's why he looks different. 😉

 

[Luthan.5236]

After having played more (got the new mastery - the new vendor and a bit working on a T2 legendary piece even though I only have one T1) I can say that this does not feel too bad. The T2 is not that costly (unless you want to buy every step) - except with the lantern most stuff seems not too annoying to finish. But the lanterns still work well for peole that yet have to complete the T1 set. Can do lanterns for T2 while also getting the gifts tor T1.

Mastery makes the arcane chests pretty fast. The meta boss is boring - at lest some achievements. (Still not sure what is going on - just attacking it. There are just too many people on the small area. Similarly annoying as Dragon's End while having the hp of the Gyala Delve boss. :D)

Vendor for trading currency seems nice. I guess it's okay to do the meta every now and then - for the repeatable achievement for the AP (3 repetitions with doing 1 path at the step before the finale boss maybe 6 more times the meta). Then maybe better just splitting between the maps and doing the other metas for the currency. 😄 (Unless you want to get lucky ... the additional chest with the super rare changes .... seems interesting. But just too low the changes.)

T2 achievement would have been better with small sub-achievements (not the effect in the boon UI that already is crowded). Not sure why they could not have done it that way. (Or at least showing the stuff only relevant to the maps: Rift thing everywhere. Convergences in the Wizard's Tower and in a convergence. The lanterns and SotO meta tracker on all of the SotO maps with the event tracker only for that map you are in. And in the core Tyria maps the world boss tracker. I think for some other/older stuff it worked that way - to display only in certain maps. Then hidden but remembering the counter - when you are in other maps that do not offer relevant content to progress the thing.)

The fractal has another thread I think. 😄 Did it on T1 - and I am more a low dps guy doing at max up to T3. This felt like a T3 Silent Surf boss hp-wise. 😄 

Edited May 27 by Luthan.5236

[quake.9023]

i hope they learn alot from this first small expansion. and actually listen and give what players want especially after 12years.