SotO Feedback [Merged]

[Edge.1653]

15 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Well, the credits looked rather impressive for "too few people" working on GW2. 😉 I didn't pay attention, though, whether the credits ran more than once. 😁

A lot of those are outsourcing companies for project work where it just seems like the whole company got credited. It's like when you see an Assassin's Creed credits roll with like 2500 people in it. No, only a fraction of those are full time developers working on the game. Most of those did project work on a part of the game and that's it.

[Thormano.7806]

On 5/22/2024 at 4:11 PM, misterman.1530 said:

Possible Spoilers:

So, after you start this chapter by talking (unskippable dialog for the win!), you have to do a bunch of random stuff that you've already done before to get to the next stage (so not really "new" content). Then you do a couple of generic fights. Then you face Eparch. 10 min later everything is done. The longest parts are the random stuff you have to do before you can get to the 2nd stage, and talking to everyone (some more unskippable dialog...yay!) and discover points of lore while the credits roll. That's it.

Without the random stuff to fill the green bar, this whole chapter is done in, what,. 30 min tops?

But now we have to do a meta to progress back into the citadel we just successfully attacked to get a mastery point, View point, and some points of interest.

Yikes.

Hear hear!

[Bingus.4236]

The credits were longer than the Eparch fight.

[Inssengrimm.7924]

5 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Well, the credits looked rather impressive for "too few people" working on GW2. 😉 I didn't pay attention, though, whether the credits ran more than once. 😁

Which makes this even more sad.
If this expansion was the product of a small team of people, i would say its even great.

But if you telling me there is a long kitten credit list thats longer than the actual last boss fight.... Yeah.

A single FFXIV patch has more content that the entirty of SotO. 
This wasn't an "expansion" and there is nothing "major" about any of it's patches. 

GW2 doesn't add raids anymore, doesn't have dungeons, once we thought story instances and overworld development was the focus, but story now lasts half an hour and you get a single map in 9 months total of wait time. 

 

Edited May 23 by Inssengrimm.7924

[Teknomancer.4895]

On 5/22/2024 at 7:48 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

SotO rewards were worthless for us as we don't care about legendary items.  I rarely go to these maps now. 

There are certainly better-looking maps for it, but it can still be fun zooming around there on a griffon from time to time. 😜

[Amantiel.3542]

On 5/21/2024 at 10:17 PM, HotDelirium.7984 said:

They wanted to experiment with a different content delivery method

.....it's the exact same as every single other game with expansions does, only smaller than a full expansion, this isn't an experiment nor something that deserves praise for them to have "tried".

[CoffeePlease.3082]

Since the threads are being merged, I'm just going to post my main pieces of feedback based on my experience here rather than create a new thread. It's only a few maaajor points, and this is just me, but customer service directed me here so here I am:

-Please move away from using mounts so heavily in meta events. We saw the Turtle used in Gyala Delves pretty heavily (and almost exclusively in part 2), and the Skyscale being used extensively in Soto. My guess is they thought "Hey we are known for having the best mounts in mmos, let's use that" but I do not find it fun to participate in a fight by pressing 1 button on a mount. They can be restricted to a small part of the event as needed but having to fly around and shoot a fireball, or traverse a tunnel on a clumsy turtle, is not fun. I am playing my [enter class here], I want to push my class buttons.

-I recognize that open world legendary armor was widely requested for a long time from a large number of players, but revolving an entire expansion around it kind of killed the motivation to play for a large majority of us who already had legendary armor. Legendary weapons hit different for me for some reason, and even though I found gen 3 lackluster compared to gen 2, I still chip away at working on those. Armor though, I know it has a unique visual effect, but even the raid armor that I have I never use the unique visuals for because A) they weren't all that good to begin with, and B) I like the armor pieces that are my go-to already. Making an expansion fully revolve around what is essentially just an armor skin for some of us really killed the motivation to keep logging in, and I took the longest GW2 break that I've ever taken since I started playing because of it. The new vendor that was added to allow players to convert essences into anything else was long overdue and should have been implemented at the start due to the limited use of them outside of crafting motivations (which use research notes and HOLY GOD even though they've improved creating those, please find a way to replace them with something less annoying). 

-It's difficult to stay engaged with the story with the new rollout. I actually think the Soto story was pretty good! And it had a few moments that were really nice that I enjoyed. But once we got out from the launch, it fell apart because it was trickled out in these very brief, rushed-feeling micro bits that just made it really hard to care anymore. I bet if I had never played the story this expansion and waited until now to play through it start to finish I would have loved it, but the way it was implemented just felt very messy and left it hard to care by the end. 

-Strikes. They are neat, but they aren't the same as raids by a long shot. It can sometimes take longer to form a group than to complete your daily strikes. Additionally, as neat as they are, 2 of them are not neat enough for an entire expansion. It is incredibly hard to recruit my friends into gw2 when the topic of raids comes up because they don't see the incentive. "Come learn an entirely new game and class so that we can fight 2ish challenging bosses a year" is not an effective selling point, and the other competitive mmos out there offer much more than that on a more regular schedule. At the end of the day, the limited amount of challenging content for small groups is not enough to bring people in who would be interested in the game otherwise. It's just not worth people's time, money, or energy unless it becomes more part of the norm. It's also very weird (as someone who also plays WoW) how often the game has class balancing considering how little instanced content is released. I would say it's just for pvp/wvw but a lot of the changes are pve specific so who cares if there isn't anything new to do outside of 2 strikes and (eventually) 2 fractals? Are these open world balancing changes, or "we saw this unrealistic, very specific scenario benchmark done on a training golem, so we should address that?" Very weird if we aren't going to be getting more instanced content outside the few pieces we got this expansion. 

-Finally, general game feedback, something should be done about the amount of leeching/afking/bots that is rampant around the game, particularly in high value meta events. I don't really care about someone multiboxing a dust farm, but I've run Dragon's End almost every day that I've played since it's released and the amount of people that are clearly multiboxing and afking on multiple accounts is absurd. It's incredibly frustrating as a commander to try and get your group into the map unless you commit to a range of annoying tricks to spawn a new map only to see the same multiboxers that you've seen for years now taking up space in a map that you can't realistically move away from least you risk separating your group further. Reports do nothing despite providing annoying-to-take requested screenshots of the evidence of people tapping Soo-Won during the 1st phase and then jumping off the platform during the first crystal phase only to never be seen again because you get the reward regardless at that point. It kills the drive to lead, it kills the incentive to try to do the event at all, and it overall is just incredibly frustrating to see your squad of 50 dwindle to 40ish over the course of the fight because the afkers want to hide somewhere on the map. It is so rampant, and so unhandled, I can actually accurately predict which bots I will see at different timeslots of the day, by name. It's ridiculous. 

Looking forward to the conversation about lessons learned coming up and I am still rooting for Guild Wars 2. I love this game and I see a lot of potential in the future, I just hope the last expansion isn't a herald of what to expect going forward. 

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

I started playing gw2 when I was 19, and I'm 29 now. This expansion is the first time I've seen the game get to the point where I'm considering leaving and not coming back for the next one. The quality was just... yikes.

Edited May 24 by KindredPhoenyx.8976

[Randin.5701]

On the story side of things, the thing I really came away with is that Anet needs to rethink the narrative structure for future expansions. While SotO had other story issues (the Kryptis just being kinda dull once we got to know them being a big one), it's biggest problem is that has too much of a narrative break between the launch and post-launch story. This wasn't a single contained story; this was the equivalent of trying to do both an expansion story and its follow-up Living World story all in one release. And trying to do it in an expansion smaller than the previous ones to boot. It's like trying to do the story of PoF in the launch content, then trying to squeeze the entirety of LW4 into Nayos, and it works about as well as you would expect.

If SotO had just been the story of helping the Wizards fend off a Kryptis invasion, it would've hung together a lot better. Then, if they wanted to revisit the Kryptis and send us to Nayos in a future expansion, that would've given them more room to flesh that story out.

So yeah, it needs to be one expansion = one story, not trying to squeeze two stories in one expansion.

[Navaryn.7946]

Hello, I already posted this on reddit yesterday but since I saw Arenanet comment here that they want feedback then I will post it here too...

In this post I will only focus on story. I have nothing bad to say about systems, mechanics, collections, strikes or fractal that were introduced in SotO. I mostly enjoyed all of it and QoL changes were top of the top. Good job on this one Anet. I will not talk about bugs or other technical issues, all games nowadays have them and I didn't encounter any game breaking ones or anything that would ruin my experience. Although if I have to give my feedback on story and how it was delivered… Well, enjoy

Let's start with how I felt during story and when patches came out

Release: It was really good. Wizard tower was hanging there for ages so everyone wondered about it and there were a lot of “Secrets” to unveil. Big secret wizard society watching over Tyria for Gods knows how long, there will surely be a bunch of mysteries to solve. There is lot of interesting characters like Mabon, Lyhr, Dagda, Isgarren, those are not some common folks. They are one of a kind from their races we can interact and actually learn something from them, their history, which was not properly fleshed out in Guild Wars 2 and if you don’t know much lore from GW1 then it’s even more interesting to finally have a living Mursaat, Dwarf or Seer. I love our dynamic duo, best bros Lyhr & Mabon and how could I forget about Gladium and R’tchikk. Man I hope we will flesh out those relations more. 

Patch one: All I described in release part is immediately thrown to the thrash and we forget about it. Mabon dead, Zojja could be also dead, I don’t think we see Lyhr, Dagda, Gladium or R’tchikk anymore. All we have left is Mommy Peitha, Frodo and Sam… I mean Frodo’s daughter. We also get Ramzes, probably only regular Kryptis which is intelligent I assume, at least he was the only example of that. We’re also getting twist in our story, those “Kryptic” demons feeding on our dreams and emotions? They are just regular guys under bad management. Dream realm where we gather allies to make a revolution? You mean island which size is comparable to Queensdale (when we merge two parts) with castle in the sky aka Divinity’s Reach (I’m sorry Divinity’s Reach is bigger). Heitor's territory? More like my grandpas garden. If this is the amount of land Kryptis Houses get then it’s even worse than our world. It doesn’t really feel like exploring another dimension. We barely see any architecture there and although I love the style and colours of Nayos, I can’t believe intelligent beings would live there like it. It’s empty…

Patch two: Second half of Queensdale with god awful story delivery. I don’t know if ever in my gaming career I was less convinced that I am taking a part in something big. Simply the moment when we try to kidnap Queen Labris… General Nephus is giving orders like he is commanding whole army on battlefield where in reality there is only two of us fighting 5 regular Kryptis. We merge with our 2 other allies at queen’s porch and deal easily with her 2 secret service guards, this is the revolution. Plot twist with Queen sacrificing herself so Eparch’s gonna destroy us was surprise but a welcome one.

Last patch: One hour story which can be shortened to “do two events and kill the bad guy”. There was nothing interesting at the end. Everyone during final encounter was vague, no room for any speculations, why Eparch did those things, is there higher motivation for all of this? It was the only way for him to survive? Maybe there is something Peitha is not telling us… Nope, Eparch bad because bad and hunters must feed because it is what it is… The Eye of Janthir in throne room only gives me PTSD from Season 3 Episode 6 which we all want to forget

So let's gather it into some thoughts about what happened here and this new expansions releasing cycle:
I understand they changed release schedule and this is their first attempt, but this is 12 years old game, they really had time to learn how much they can deliver. At this point I am not sure if Arena Net is aware why previous release cycle worked for players. Not gonna lie, expansions story were always ok-ish at best and also could be finished in two/three days but it wasn’t an issue. Why? Because with 1/2 seasons of buildup it was ok for expansion story to be like big finale. We had time to get involved in ongoing events and set pieces on the board. In SotO we get only finale that was stretched over a year. I’m sorry Anet but this doesn’t work. There was no time for us to feel the story and everything happened so fast without any environmental story telling. I’m looking at you General Nephus and your “HAVE YOU BEEN OUT THERE? WE ARE STRETCHED ACROSS DOZENS OF POSITIONS, BARELY ABLE TO HOLD THEM”. I guess I haven’t because frankly I don’t see any of it. The only evidence that we are fighting Eparch’s army is that you said so in this one instance general. Since I mentioned Season 3 Episode 6 I think this is a good moment to compare Lazarus and our Midnight King. I can’t shake this feeling I’ve already seen it. We essentially killed bad guy in the same room we meet him. Ignore 1 minute scene at the end of second patch where he shows up, says we gonna regret it and leaves. To say it was underwhelming is like to say nothing. In my opinion with this expansions release schedule Anet should consider some kind of series of expansions like current WoW gonna do. 2/3 expansions will give us enough time to care about characters we meet and will give time to devs to actually show us some stuff, not only tell us that things are happening. It is impossible to tell a good story about meeting secret society, demon invasion, plot twist demons are not bad, revolution and overthrowing dictator in 3 patches in the way it will be convincing. You can slow down Arena Net. You finished Dragon Saga and we will gladly take our time with exploring new things you have to offer and new stories you want to told. I personally want to see some new characters that will stick with us for longer, not forget them in span of one patch

And for the end, my fanfic how it could be, aka copying mechanism:
I could easily see this expansion focusing on how exactly Kryptis found their way to Tyria. Maybe Wizards were doing some weird and unethical things in the name of science with fractals. We could be unveiling those “secrets of the obscure” while Demon voice/shadowy figure on the other side of the rifts is talking to us, feeding us with more questions to ask Wizards. 

Every chapter could focus on 1/2 characters being possessed by Kryptis like Dagda and unlock some of their memories like Lyhr during Skywatch meta. Maybe this way Kryptis are trying to gain knowledge how to break barrier between worlds for good. This way every patch could end with some kind of fractal with their most emotional memory aka cool parts of story for Mursats/Dwarves/Jotuns etc. Heck we could even get into Zojia memories of being kidnapped by Mordremoth and see the mind tortures she experienced while being in the pod during HoT. Final patch would be Isgarren and finale being memory of finding/exalting Eparch which would attract Cerus. We get Temple of Febe ending with Peitha joining us and telling what is to come…. 

Then next expansion we are taking charge into Nayos before Eparch prepare full invasion and we would explore this mysterious realm of dreams. Allying houses like it’s Game of Thrones with different maps for each Kryptis house would actually make sense, rather than asking one general if he could join us while standing in Eparch’s garden and we are ready to go.

Thanks for joining my Ted Talk

[TheNurgle.4825]

Sad is that SOTO's story had great potential, but it was wasted. Misconception about Zolja. Lets be real how many players actually care about Zolja? If you played as asura and did dungeon, then maybe you remember her.

Mabon and Irja are/were two huge missed opportunities.

Mabon as mursaat with his past, current struggle with kryptis and possible future and it is gone. Also written in as Mabon:"I can not do it anymore." Everyone else:"k, we do not care".

Irja as young inexperienced and naive kryptis which could be used to learn about kryptis as Irja learns it, but nope. Introduction of the char and killing of that same char done in 5 mins.

[Obnoxa.6702]

That is a really well thought out and excellently presented feedback post, Navaryn, well done! /cheer
I think it's a great breakdown of what a lot of us thought (except for the 2/3 people who are consistently clicking the 'confused' reaction to anything close to poohpoohing the final portion of Soto; always 2 or 3 confused - nothing sus about that at all 🤔 ), it was a first draft so I'm still hoping they take genuine feedback like this into consideration and round 2 might come a little closer to meeting both what the community wants and what Anet is equipped to make.

[Inssengrimm.7924]

The dissapointing narrative, i was very hyped up to Amnytas.
But when Nayos came, and the Krypis became just deformed humans, with very human behavior, very human emotions, very human dramas, they completely lost me.

They took something that was CRYPTIC and made it so mundane.
I was so intrigued by Cerus, Peitha and Eparch, and they ended up just very mundane, average even, and very archetypical characters.

 

[ugrakarma.9416]

The intro was great, but it turned into another generic stuff

Also the demons was mysterious, then soon they turned into "theyre like us tyrians but in another shape".

 

[Edge.1653]

55 minutes ago, Inssengrimm.7924 said:

The dissapointing narrative, i was very hyped up to Amnytas.
But when Nayos came, and the Krypis became just deformed humans, with very human behavior, very human emotions, very human dramas, they completely lost me.

They took something that was CRYPTIC and made it so mundane.
I was so intrigued by Cerus, Peitha and Eparch, and they ended up just very mundane, average even, and very archetypical characters.

 

Maybe the Secret of the Obscure was that even demons from weird fleshy dimensions are still ultimately largely just boring humans.

[Obnoxa.6702]

On 5/23/2024 at 11:42 AM, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I was done with story in 1h. And that included vaping breaks and thinking about the good times.

"... and thinking about the good times"  - 🤣

LOLing aside, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig is not wrong though.

[perilisk.1874]

Did not care for story (after the first releases). Built up wizard characters, then abandoned most of them until the very end. Do not want to talk to the demons. Sometimes evil people oppress other evil people, especially when they're literal predatory manifestations of spiritual evil and not people, and interfering is just going to lead to the same thing but with a cast change. There's no obvious reason why the next Midnight King would better than the current one, or why Epach was uniquely a threat other than ruling a dimension of demons. Do other Kryptis not have the exact same hunger he does? It's like replacing one boss vampire with another and thinking that the Camarilla is going to start holding hands with kine and hunters and singing Kumbaya.

Peitha would have worked better if she remained an antagonist and monster who was playing invisible quest giver and coercing the PC into helping her take the throne (maybe even playing for sympathy to some extent, since the PC is a chump), and inevitably betrays them when she gets it (basically, SHODAN in SS2 as the archetype -- bigger twist if she had ruled first and Eparch was the revolutionary who overthrew her reign of terror). Unfortunately, the idea that the greater evil might currently have less power is an incomprehensible idea to... certain worldviews.

[Albadaran.1283]

On 5/22/2024 at 5:54 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Don't get strongarmed into paying for the bad stuff just because you'd rather not have it even worse. If it's bad, it's bad. If you pay for it, you support it being bad (and potentially getting even worse, because now they know they can get away with lowering quality).

Than don't pre order and take some time to read the reactions after the release before you decide to buy.

[Johnleon.3481]

Was holding on posting any feedback until I exhausted SOTO content (barely have any posts at all). Posting my perspective as a returning player last year.

I came back to play last year after ~6 years of break, having a ton of content to "catch up" with (LS3,4,PoF,IBS,EoD, Raids [Had 0 LI]). So the majority of this year has been an incredible experience, from completing all legendary trinkets, to raid armor and various IBS collections (Dragonscale cape etc. ) [Context for some of the next bullets].

I wanted to first start with a huge thanks to the team who worked on SoTo, it was a great experience and I hope that it will be altered to be a great experience also for new and returning players in a year from now.

• When SoTo was announced I was super excited knowing I continue enjoying new additional content from now on; The launch was amazing even though the story could've contributed from a  "darker" perspective (See below).
• The new approach for "mini-expacs" makes sense overall, however, once all the story parts / metas have been launched, or with each release, I think merging some of them would make more sense. This is obvious with the last map & the meta structure that drove much of the feedback. (Avoiding any spoilers here.)
• The story received varied feedback here and on reddit; I agree with some, but understand the reasons. I think there's a larger shift in writing in games avoiding darker stories, but this one took a turn a complete other direction being too predictable;
  • Spoiler

    There was a moment after Eparch was killed, that I hoped so bad that Peitha would turn on us & that would be the last chapter (Soveirgn of Nayos). When I came back from a short break, the story just ended, with a happy clappy Kryptis who's afraid to jump into the pool. I'm not sure this opinion is shared but I truly believed that Anet always planned to spin the story into something more than "demons can be friends". (See GW1 Khilbron betrayal)

• Except for the story and some collections, engaging with the expansion content has no incentive other than the armor;
  • No long-running collections with lucrative skins / mounts;
  • Everything is heavily leaning on the fact players would want to craft PvE armor; I crafted the T2 Light suffused set and I think that contrary to my experience with returning to the previous expansions; New / Returning players that would like a PvE armor would be insanely bored getting it via rifts alone, and convergences loses any incentive once you completed the set you wanted / the new CM achievements.
  •  New / Returning players will have a really hard time LFGing for it once the next expac is released.
  • The currency conversions trader is a good approach (similar to IBS Strikes & Volatile Magic) however, it doesn't have enough conversions for essence, with some being a complete "scam". Adding thoughtful conversions would drive players to come back & make use of essence except for the legendary armor.
• Some great things in SoTO:
  • Honorary Astral Ward: Fun and engaging collection, greatly written, rewarding unique skins that are truly beautiful and carry lore (Unseen sword, Waylit Lantern..)
  • T2 Legendary suffused journey: Not too exhausting and drives players to participate on the different maps, could do with more non-SOTO maps for the events / world bosses or randomized in some manner (Not gonna craft another).
  • Weapon masteries as an approach to extend possible gameplay, driving greater incentive towards legendary weapons, some are super cool too!
  • Skyscale for new players (I also really like my Kryptis skyscale!)
  • Map meta events are great & require collaboration; Nayos would be perfect if joined as a single meta and some additional work on the last one. 
  • The approach for the Legendary Cerus CM was interesting, I personally haven't found a group to complete it with and I like this fact. There should be more extra hard content in the game.
  • Convergences: A great example for good, huge PvE instanced content, I think over time introducing more incentive and variance (similar to mistlock) can go a great way. Voting on the boss was one of the most fun parts of the CM so bringing this to public might be worth it. The nuggets are an awesome idea of rewarding players who participate, and adding the one for healing Zoija was a great idea; however, over time when people won't need essence, this reward is not meaningful.
• Wizard Vault
  • I like the idea and especially the revamp of dailies; I do think that some of the dailies are too trivial (Vista, Breakbar, Dodge) and I think adding a mastery for altering the vault by a difficulty (with a small boost) can improve it and make for  more interesting gaming sessions.
• As a returning player, I haven't been here for PoF, EoD aftermath, and it's possible it's the same feeling you get when you complete some other game, but I am kind of burned out! Will probably go only for weekly vaults until the next expansion. I will preorder the next one as I love this game, but will probably take it much slower seeing I have less incentive to grind now that I have all legendary weights covered and most of the weapons I use, with most cool skins locked behind the gem store.

 

[Ashantara.8731]

On 5/22/2024 at 5:56 AM, illuminati.8453 said:

Yeah, so having seen it all now, I have to say that these can no longer be called expansions in the traditional sense. These are absolutely living world seasons, and they should just own that. Sell them for cash or make them purchasable with gems, but don't market them as expansions—it just feels disingenuous.

I think you just offended the creators of Living World seasons 3, 4, and even the IBS. 😄

[BlueJin.4127]

On 5/24/2024 at 2:57 AM, Ashantara.8731 said:

Well, the credits looked rather impressive for "too few people" working on GW2. 😉 I didn't pay attention, though, whether the credits ran more than once. 😁

Credits often get bloated with people who really shouldn't be listed in the first place (partly because some people get really testy about not getting "credited" for barely spending a few minutes contributing to a project). I've led many projects where strangers I've never even heard of are listed as having worked on my team. Other times, some of the employees don't even know why they were included in the credits of a game they never even heard of when they haven't even made any indirect contributions to the project.

For example, Bob from department C would spend like 5 minutes helping project A with something. Then a dev from project A asks Bob to email his full name so that Bob can be included in project A's credits for contributing 5 minutes. Then Bob would email the names of everybody in department C for some reason, and all of a sudden, we have random people from department C credited in project A. Like, seriously? 😵‍💫

Edited May 26 by BlueJin.4127

[Zok.4956]

On 5/24/2024 at 6:36 AM, Randin.5701 said:

This wasn't a single contained story; this was the equivalent of trying to do both an expansion story and its follow-up Living World story all in one release. And trying to do it in an expansion smaller than the previous ones to boot. It's like trying to do the story of PoF in the launch content, then trying to squeeze the entirety of LW4 into Nayos, and it works about as well as you would expect.

I think you are right. I kept wondering why the SotO story wasn't consistent and stopped and changed so abruptly. Your description would explain it well.

[Xaylin.1860]

I finished the story earlier this week and want to summarize my feedback on SotO now that the first mini-expansion cycle has finished. My view is from a casual perspective. 

Short version: On one hand, I think that SotO was worth the money for what it is. Especially on the feature side it delivered. Both, the story on the maps on the other hand, started strong and disappointed me in the end. Many things give the impression that the scope of the expansion was too big for ANet to be able to deliver on their vision in the given time frame. Being it the bad story pacing with the updates, the frustrating staggered roll-out of Nayos, the obvious cop out of turning armor sets with clear weight classes into accessible for everyone with the third one being a Peitha meat suit, or the lack of character development. In the end, I wished that the SotO focussed on the Astral Ward, their main members and the ethical strategy of fractals and protecting Tyria. The Kryptis could have been involved in later chapters, but Nayos most certainly would have benefitted from being a stand-alone expansion (e.g. “The Midnight King”).  

 

Longer version 

Characters, the story pacing and themes. 

The ideas of the Astral Ward and the Kryptis are interesting in general. I like the main companion cast of the Astral Ward. It helps that they are anchored in existing lore because in the end, they didn’t get much real character development during the expansion. The Kryptis, Peitha, Ramses and Co. are a much harder sell. Naturally. But ANet really did them dirty. We learn so little about their motiviation and the information we get, is usually told, not exerpienced by ourselves. This also led me to sympathize with Isgarren in the final chapter. Why should I care for the Kryptis? For example, the death of Irja supposedly was horrible but I felt no connection. I, as a Tyrian, would have been fine with Eparch and everyone else die. Peitha included. We do get some glimpses of the relatable sites of Kryptis during the credit segment and achievements added with last patch. But while playing the story or the maps, I didn’t really have that. In the end, even the Astral Ward cast is weirdly expandable and interchangeable. It didn’t really matter who helped me at what point since they didn’t have real game in the story to begin with.  

I was especially let down how short and unimpressive the final act was, even more so when compared to the final meta. We already lost all urgency of what was going on due to the staggered roll out of Nayos, to then go out on this weird dethroning and the exposition dump in the Wizards Tower. 

A theme that I wished played out way more, was the Kryptis possession and the role emotions play for them. The possession already had context in lore and during the expansion we keep getting told how bad it is. In the end, it is mostly inconsequential. When it comes to the emotions, those could have helped us seeing something relatable in Kryptis. This was something for Peitha to prove and show quite early in Nayos to get us onto her side. Showing some painting Kryptis during the credit scene is not enough. ANet failed her on that one. Again, Kryptis are a hard sell. They are supposed to be otherwordly. But ANet did a better job of introducing and making a foreign society relatable in the past during PoF. We have people living with the undead, doing horrible things to other humans and their own kin. But we got time to get to know and understand them. And empathize with them by seeing them suffer under Balthazar, Kralkatorrik and their own king. 

Features  

As I said, I think that the features in general are solid. There are enough and diverse items and skins to earn. The Wizards Vault is a great revamp of the Daily System and addition to the game. The Masteries that aren’t just fillers (e.g. Fireballs, flying on leylines and updrafts with mounts) are good. I’d like more like that, e.g. Skimmers learning how to use whirls like Jakals when having an expansion in an area with water. For example... in a river or bog delta :wink.  Weaponmaster training and new weapons are great as substitute for elite specs for the smaller scale this expansion was. However, I wished that they were added with launch and had a proper implementation and lore integration. There are so low hanging fruits, e.g. linking Ranger Mace to the Bastian of the Natural. I don’t understand, why it wasn’t done. 

Relics are a smart decision from a balancing perspective although it does heavily devalue Runes. I wouldn’t go as far as accepting them as full-fledged new feature. Ultimately, they are just level 6 rune bonusses.  

What really disappointed me was the Fractal. Re-using assets is all nice and good. But Lonely Tower doesn’t add anything to the game aside from occupying a slot in the Fractal rotation. To me, personally, Fractals always told at least a short new story – or showed a new perspective of an already told story. This one is a re-used a map we have been to several times. It re-used bosses. We didn’t learn anything new about any party, being it Astral Ward or Eparch and entourage. It also isn’t particularly fun to play. It is bad and might as well just have been a two-stage Strike Mission on a platform. The Fractal could have been used to explore the backstory of someone in the Astral Ward. How Dagda joined. Of the founding of the Astral Ward. A story from the perspective of a Kryptis (think Charr Fractal). Of Eparch meeting Mordremoth (or at least Mordrem). Of the moment that led to Peitha turning against Eparch. Of Kryptis society before Eparch involving how it looked (more colors?) or how art and emotions were cultivated back then. Silent Surf wasn’t too exciting story wise either. But this one is worse. 

Kryptis  

I know, we are on a budget here. But re-using models to such an extent was probably a bad idea when introducing a whole new race (and ecosystem). Especially if it is supposed to be so otherworldly and must stand out from other creatures. I don’t mind rigs and models being re-used. But just slapping some eyeballs and weird wobbly textures on didn't work for me. The desaturated colors, horns everywhere and pulsing effect make especially the smaller Kryptis hard to look at. Not because they are scary or unsettling. Because they lack a focal point and distinct body features. It would have been amazing to have “base kryptis” and their features being altered based on different emotions. There is a hint of that with the Glutton one based on the frog model. But doesn’t really translate for others. Also, the disconnect between the humanoid and lower Kryptis is confusing. A positive example of a diverse race that feels connected, are the Chak. The only Kryptis, that I’d considered well designed and implemented, is Nourys. 

Now that I think about Kryptis and the Chak: The Chak also had very unique and distinct sound design. I don’t remember anything standing out from the Kryptis. 

Skyward Archipel 

Despite the heavy re-use of assets, I enjoyed this map the most. The story premise of fractals was very interesting. The selected settings were great (and smart for upsells). I wished the story would have spent more time on the dilemma of Fractals. Alongside this, on the map itself, I would have preferred separate bigger event chains with at least some form of resolution for each main island. While the map meta is alright, forging the key could easily just have been covered within a story instance. This could also have given ANet ways to avoid this weird empty half of the tower in the top corner of the map. 

Talking about empty space... there is a lot of it. I didn’t line trace the islands, but I’d guess that up to 50% of the map is basicalyl empty. Adding the Observatory to it which basically is only relevant for a short segment of the story, and other smaller areas that aren’t connected to the main Fractals. Having only small explorable and playable areas makes sense for the concept of this map. But considering this, I would have even more so expected more impactful event chains in those areas and not so many stand-alone throwaway events. 

Amnytas 

I dislike this map to an extent that I only go there to specifically do the achievements or the meta. The spire is impressive. The meta boss as well, although the phases aren’t all fun. But everything else is soulless. Some of the achievements (e.g. the ones related to unique weapons) slightly redeemed the general idea for me. But rather than running all over the place, I would have preferred earning them within the bastion itself. 

In general, I think it is a very bad idea to have so many maps in an expansion that require flight as primary form of movement. Before finishing the masteries, navigating Amnytas was especially miserable. Furthermore, always being up in the sky takes away a huge amount of joy of exploration. I felt about this in Kaineng as well, where the city looked gorgeous from above or from a skiff from the kanal, but as soon as you stepped foot on land, it became a nightmare. ANet could have easily played with larger open spaces like in PoF despite the bastions floating on islands. I also wondered why each theme of the bastion and the personal influence of their leaders played such a small influence in how they look. Why don’t we see more things like in their personal quarters within the bastions? Why isn’t the botanical garden the prominent feature of the Bastion of Natural (e.g. Melandrus Reliquary in Sirens Landing)? Why is the library so much less impressive than the one of the Durmand Priory? Why do people in Queensdale feel more motivated in training their weapon skills than anyone in the bastion of strength?  

You can see the aspiration for the map here and there. But ANet can to so much better. It shows that they lacked time once again. They had the tower assets. They mapped out everything on high level for the meta and story. Buildings blocks where placed and filled with events and the minimum required props for them. In Amnytas, there wasn’t even the additional challenge of having it appear like a buzzling city like in Kaineng. And it still feels inorganic and far removed from being a placed where the Astral Ward lives and works. 

The bastions have a lore potential that could easily provide content for more than one expansion. And at this point in time, it feels wasted.  

Nayos 

I do like the overall aesthetic – both from the desaturated part as well the darker citadel. However, the staggered roll out really harmed this map. It also feels that it must do too much at once. I wished that we started off on a map that focused on getting to know the local flora and fauna like Verdant Brink, with a first interaction with Peitha and friendly Kryptis and then a first Kryptis settlement in the later parts of the map. The whole raid on Eparch needed a separate map. 

My biggest disappointments on this map: the lack of meaningful locations and Kryptis settlements. Yes, there are buildings and points of interest. But you can’t enter any buildings and experience how they live there. The Kryptis feel like they were just scattered around if an event or achievement required it. Some good old heart quests could have helped a lot. It also would have been easier to let us get behind the lines of the loyalists in disguises like we did with the factions in Echowald Forest. As far as I’m aware, we only have this with one single event for a very limited amount of time. 

Then again... maybe lower Kryptis don’t use buildings like the royal Kryptis or humans. But how would I know? I’ve never really learned about their life. 

[Gehenna.3625]

On 5/24/2024 at 1:43 AM, Inssengrimm.7924 said:

Which makes this even more sad.
If this expansion was the product of a small team of people, i would say its even great.

But if you telling me there is a long kitten credit list thats longer than the actual last boss fight.... Yeah.

A single FFXIV patch has more content that the entirty of SotO. 
This wasn't an "expansion" and there is nothing "major" about any of it's patches. 

GW2 doesn't add raids anymore, doesn't have dungeons, once we thought story instances and overworld development was the focus, but story now lasts half an hour and you get a single map in 9 months total of wait time. 

 

I was thinking about this but I guess the credits list all the people who did some work on this expansion. That includes people then who only contributed some small part to this expansion. We don't know how many people went on to other things after they did their part. So this might make the teams seem bigger than they are in actuality. Now, I'm not saying that the team is very small and a ton of people cam in and out in support but I do think that the team isn't as big as it seems if that makes sense.

[Jokubas.4265]

Secrets of the Obscure felt like two completely different products.

• The launch content up to Amnytas. A story of a secret society protecting us against unimaginable alien horrors that aren't a species so much as manifestations of ideas, like nothing we've encountered in Guild Wars before.
• The patch content of Nayos. A story of a foreign society that needs help with a rebellion.

There's surprisingly very little overlap except the names of a few places and characters.

1) I really, really liked the launch content and felt it was absolutely worth the price. I want to make this abundantly clear because it's been awhile since I experienced it and I almost certainly won't spend as much time gushing about it as it deserves. It also had great Quality of Life features like the Wizard's Vault, Weaponmaster Training, and I'm even going to include the new weapon types here since they were promised on the "box." I hope we can still get things like new Elite Specializations, Professions, or Playable Ancestries in the future, but Weaponmaster Training and new weapon options were something I felt had been missing from the game.

I really liked the launch story to Secrets of the Obscure. It was neat finally getting to learn something about the Wizard's Tower and I think the initial reveal did justice to the mystery. Despite everything we've experienced as the Commander, I felt like we were getting in over our head's with something we really weren't prepared for. I understood why this might be kept from the rest of the world. The only small criticism I have here is how quickly we seem to become crucial to the Astral Ward, but Secrets of the Obscure at least leaned toward Guild Wars 1's style of implying different protagonists for each campaign by giving you a new nickname here with Wayfinder instead of just adding to the literal Commander's deeds.

I didn't even end up minding the vast reusing of assets with the fractals and enemy types, because it felt very well integrated into the story. It was also a clever way to allow us to get some more exposure to the endangered ancestries of Tyria like Seers, Mursaat, and non-stone Dwarves without ruining their mystique. Saving Zojja's return for this story also felt very clever as it was respectful to her while also giving us something personal to act as a hook in a story that otherwise worked best with as little connection to us as possible.

The introduction of the Kryptis was appropriately terrifying. I felt completely out of my depth despite everything we've faced so far. The Kryptis felt truly alien and threatening in a way I haven't seen a story pull off in a long time. "Demons" have really been diluted in fiction in the last few decades to little more than just another fantasy monster, but Secrets of the Obscure did a lot to reconstruct the terror of something that can threaten more than your physical life but your immortal soul.

I don't know exactly what it was about it, but even Nourys, a colossal bundle of tentacles and eyeballs like so many generic "Lovecraftian horrors" in fantasy nowadays, actually felt unknowable to me and something I absolutely didn't want any further in Tyria than it already was.

2) I want to be clear that I don't think the patch content was bad, just that I found it to be incredibly run-of-the-mill. What makes it look worse is how it compares to the launch content. The Astral Ward almost completely disappears from the story. As I played through the epilogue I was constantly surprised at all the characters I completely forgot had been introduced because I haven't seen them in so long. To some extent, I'm glad I didn't learn too much about them, because I think mystery is an important part of the Astral Ward and its plotlines, but it's weird that they essentially vanished from their own expansion. If they scarcely appeared from here on out that'd be fine, preferable even, but it's weird it already happened.

The biggest issue is the handling of the Kryptis. Everything I said about how they reconstructed the fear of something terrifying and evil beyond the physical and mortal was completely undone. I can't think of anything significant in the patch content that couldn't have been done with any society on Tyria. For one, most of the possession and emotional manifestation concepts disappeared outside of enemy names. Every once and awhile someone would say the Kryptis are inherently predators, but it wasn't really shown. In fact, a lot of the Kryptis we helped seemed like they were "prey", not just because Eparch was hunting them, but because of their outlooks and vulnerability. Don't get me wrong, I have no inherent problem with a story that shows that, behind an evil invasion force there are innocent civilians who are just as much victims of their rulers. I also have no inherent problem with a story that shows that something that looks bad or dangerous isn't bad or dangerous after all.

It's just that the launch content did such a good job reconstructing the idea of a fantasy enemy that is not just another species and not mortal or physical at all, but some sort of terrifying literal manifestation of evil. That was something it felt like we needed something like the Astral Ward to protect us from. During the patches, it felt like any other distant land we could have helped out like we normally do.

Edited May 27 by Jokubas.4265