Shortest story ever?

[Wolfofdivinity.6251]

Honestly I'm not falling for this awful delivery again. I thought EoD was pretty meh. EoD is OG factions compared to this drivel. It's sooo bad. Not another dime for quality this poor. 

Edited May 22 by Wolfofdivinity.6251

[Obnoxa.6702]

1 hour ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

For their lessons learned:

Find the story writers that worked on HoT through LWS4 and rehire them.

/mic drop. ❤️

[Bunny.9834]

Pay a sub fee, then you can whine about how much content you're getting. 

 

It's 2024 people, $25 now is like $5 10 years ago. 

Adjust your expectations lol.  I think they did a decent job with this mini-expac. 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

We can finally move on. 

[Futa.4375]

21 minutes ago, Bunny.9834 said:

Pay a sub fee, then you can whine about how much content you're getting. 

It's 2024 people, $25 now is like $5 10 years ago. 
Adjust your expectations lol.  I think they did a decent job with this mini-expac. 

Don't act as if the $25 is the only thing they get from players, if anything, they don't care about the 25$. The meat is in the cash shop, which is very expensive and most skins are made by third-parties. Considering the size of their team they should be able to deliver a lot more, with a far better quality.

They know they don't have to make any efforts because we are addicts and a lot of people throw their money at the cash shop for skins they use once. SotO is unacceptable and extremely disrespectful towards their players. EoD wasn't too far off either. And IBS set the way.

[BadSanta.6527]

well clearly the where in xpac mode 

idk for short story just hoped battele ve epoc will be much epic 

hope the convergenve and fracals will be good 

wish list for the new xpac 

dungen hard mode

new raid wing 

[Obnoxa.6702]

32 minutes ago, Bunny.9834 said:

Pay a sub fee, then you can whine about how much content you're getting. 

 

It's 2024 people, $25 now is like $5 10 years ago. 

Adjust your expectations lol.  I think they did a decent job with this mini-expac. 

I cut my teeth playing Everquest - I'll gladly pay a sub for good content, and the thousands of real dollars I handed over to SOE across a decade is a testament to that.
Anet made the never-have-to-pay-to-play promise, I never demanded it.
Anet made the move to put out new xpak lite, I never asked for it.

... I wont even address the foolishness of touting the bulk of the games profit comes from expansions and not the gem store. 

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

1 hour ago, Bunny.9834 said:

Pay a sub fee, then you can whine about how much content you're getting. 

 

It's 2024 people, $25 now is like $5 10 years ago. 

Adjust your expectations lol.  I think they did a decent job with this mini-expac. 

I was happily dropping an effective sub fee in the cash shop every month. I was happy to contribute to a company geared towards making quality content for me to enjoy. I've now stopped that, because what I'm seeing in terms of content delivery screams a company that is, at best, taking their customers for granted. At worst, they are taking them for mugs.

This patch is a giant middle finger to everyone. For me it says "we're busy working on the next paid expansion, so here's what little our interns could churn out to keep you busy".

Nothing I've seen suggests they can maintain the pace of content delivery they've CHOSEN to do. I won't be pre-ordering the next one. Hell, I may not be ordering it at all. Not until I see improvements.

[Zok.4956]

11 hours ago, Tinstinni.6357 said:

The entire credits at the end actually seems to compete with the update's story length xD

Yes, I found the end credits of SotO a bit exaggerated. With EoD I still found it adequate, it was a normal-sized expansion (regardless of how I feel about the quality of EoD). But SotO's end credits gave me the impression that Anet was trying to say, "Look, so many people worked on this, so don't complain about the expansion being too small."

[Joncal.9623]

Thank God, honestly. This expansion couldn't end sooner and we can't move on faster.

Altho I'm afraid the quality will only worsen from here on out if SotO is to be held as the standard. 🥱

[Inssengrimm.7924]

IBS set a precedent of how little they can do to retain players.
And to be honest, IBS was only bad towards the very end.
EoD had the covid-factor, but so did many other MMORPG releases and here it clearly hitted the hardest.

SotO is the first step towards a new estandar, one set even lower than IBS it seem. 
If this is was the effort of 5 to 10 people in a game without microtransactions i would get, but we talking about a franchise of a few millions and studio that, even if not large by industry standars still is considerable in size.

The only good thing with the end of SotO is that is so short, it will be over just on time for me to go and play FFXIV Dawntrail. You know, that MMORPG where characters actually matter.

[Blazing Rathalos.1904]

12 hours ago, illuminati.8453 said:

Only tangentially related to the OP, but I feel like the #1 goal for Anet in this expansion was to ensure they could release one update per quarter, no excuses. If the content is perceived as lacking, they'll work on it, but that is secondary to maintaining their release schedule.

This is probably accurate. That seems to have added up to:

• An initial release that equals about 2 LW episodes.
• Another LW episode spread out over three updates.

That matches about the content Arenanet has historically been able to pull off in a year. The initial release met my expectations (apart from the fact that I really would have preferred to get the new weapon in that same release). Unfortunately, that left 1/3 of a LW episode for the quarterly releases. I think that's just not enough for people to come back for. Worse, the fact that it was cut into three pieces seems to have further compromised the quality of this "third episode". And unlike the drip-feed effect, that's a permanent flaw on SotO now.

[SentriX.3209]

Feels like maintenance mode...probably 3 guys worked on the expansion.

[Blazing Rathalos.1904]

49 minutes ago, SentriX.3209 said:

Feels like maintenance mode...probably 3 guys worked on the expansion.

Of course it's not "maintenance mode". People have been working on the next expansion instead. "Maintenance mode" means no new content is being worked on.

[misterman.1530]

11 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

they could at least, let us sit in the throne and joke about wanting to be the midnight king or something... =:/

Actually, it appears that sitting on the throne nets you an achievement. I just wanted it to be all over and didn't do that

[RoseofGilead.8907]

The longest parts of the "story" were watching the NPCs slowly portaling in (one group at a time) to the final room after the end of The Eleventh Hour and (in the next chapter) having to wait for NPCs with dialogue to finish talking so you can make them say their next scripted bit of dialogue before you can go talk to the next NPC.

Edited May 22 by RoseofGilead.8907

[Sindust.7059]

At least the filling the bar step wasn't as annoying as in the previous parts of SOTO. And there was only one of those. Doing those adventures once was kinda fun. Not something that I can say about the previous fill-the-bar "story" steps.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Blazing Rathalos.1904 said:

This is probably accurate. That seems to have added up to:

• An initial release that equals about 2 LW episodes.
• Another LW episode spread out over three updates.

That matches about the content Arenanet has historically been able to pull off in a year.

Not quite. It may seem so if you are only comparing to LS season release schedules. You are ignoring however that once they were also able to work on an actual expansion in parallel. Now they are at best at half the content rate of what they were capable of before. Additionally (and that's much worse), the quality of the content they are able to put out plummeted hard as well.

In summary, not only we're getting less content now, but what we do get is of poorer (in large part much, much poorer) quality.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

4 hours ago, SentriX.3209 said:

Feels like maintenance mode...probably 3 guys worked on the expansion.

If you want to see maintenance mode GW1 is only 40€ for all the content. That is maintenance mode, the game runs, you get to play it. 

[Jedrik.3109]

13 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

I half expect one of the streamers to record a SotO playthrough from start to finish, cutting out all the go-fetch/meta-grind filler, with only the story remaining. I suspect it would be quite a short vid after edit.

I'm not spending 20 mins editing for for 30 mins of game content that would be a 60 second video. But it would be a good W.

[Thormano.7806]

This chapter took forever and I gave up after about 80 minutes without finishing it. I experienced really bad lag on the EU Fissue of Woe server around 11.00 am CET. I will return after minimising graphic option. It was OK at the beginning of the instance but the longer I progressed the worse the lag became. In the 'release essence' room I was trying to move, waited for a response, then moved again (repeated over and over again). Has anyone else experienced lagging problems which I'm assuming is because of server demand at the time?

[Edge.1653]

21 hours ago, DylanLucas.6058 said:

Might this be the shortest story ever? released today

This update, narratively, could have been an in-game mail.

[zefaistos.2601]

I play mmorpgs for the combat and to control my character. To me this non-combat stuff and collecting orbs is the worst part of soto (and gyala delve), so that's my main complaint. 

Next complaint would be that they are going with this design where a lot of enemies are stationary hp sponges, a lot of bosses that do nothing and take forever to die. And it doesn't even make sense when soto does not include elite specs, but the expansion is balanced around the power creep of elite specs.

Another big issue is that soto was created around the legendary armor. After you have completed it, or if you already have legendary armor or don't care about it, soto content overall feels disposable. You can farm a bit of gold doing the metas to craft the weapons and sell, but as prices go down, the value of the content will follow.

For the next expansion I hope the rewards are more materials related, things to keep the content more relevant as gold farming options after the expansion is over. Also, at this point the game is a daily/weekly simulator with lots of timegated materials. At this point even games like wow and bdo have less fomo than gw2.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

15 hours ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

they could at least, let us sit in the throne and joke about wanting to be the midnight king or something... =:/

Actually there is an AP for that. 😉

[Malus.2184]

My biggest issue with it was that important NPCs suddenly just appeared, like that General Zar...something guy. From what you can piece together from the bits and bops in the release he was important and I swear I've never seen him before.

Similar with Zojja, when you talked with her the conversation was about her the awesome stuff that she did in Nayos and I never saw her there. Shopw me the awesome stuff or keep quiet about it. Else it's just useless exposition where you're told about something awesome happening rather than shown it.

Edited May 22 by Malus.2184