SotO Feedback [Merged]

[Malus.2184]

The Nayos story had strong vibes of being written from chapter to chapter and as such, had no cohesion. Things just appeared that were never even mentioned before. For example, that "The 11th Hour" implies that Eparch only ate his subjects because he was afraid of being weak since his brother was unable to defend himself against being eaten by Mordremoth and that he saw Isgarren as strong due to him saving him.

The sudden implication that the reason Peitha and the like look similar to the Sylvari is because Modremoth created the Sylvari with Eparch brother as the template rather than humans as initially thought.

It's okay if small things are added during because people suddenly realise things, and the main story should have been written out in at least note form prior to work even beginning on it so it remains cohesive from start to finish.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Rubi Bayer.8493, here is some Suffused Obsidian armor feedback. 

• I like that the unsheathed elements are a slight ornamental upgrade to T1 rather than a steep jump
• I like the glowing runes and that they take on the dye of the channel below them
  • Not sure how easy it would be to do, but having the floating runes being a separate dye channel entirely would be amazing
• I both like and dislike the rune burst on the draw animation
  • I like the muted feel of it, but at the same time wish it could be dyed
• I liked this collection so much more than the Aurene variant collections. Please go with this style of collection moving forward for any future variants to legendary items.

Also, Gharr is lit. Please expand his item list to include Core, HoT, PoF, and EoD gifts in the future.

[Zera.9435]

Now that we have everything we're ever going to get for our money from SotO, we can provide actual feedback. This post is meant for the devs.

THIS POST HAS STORY SPOILERS      THIS POST HAS STORY SPOILERS      THIS POST HAS STORY SPOILERS

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

• 'Obsidian Armor': Full stop, this is the reason I bought SotO when it came out (no pre-purchasing, thanks). Open world legendary armor with no raids, pvp, or wvw. SOLD. Overall I like the appearances of all three weights. The light one has a very nice regal look to it. The medium one has that 'agile killer' vibe to it. Heavy just has a nice functional aesthetic to the armor. I liked the little details of the heavy gloves and boots in particular that make it look like the player character could actually remove them. They don't just magically fit, they actually fit. 
  
  My only real complaint with it is that it is obsidian in name only. The suffused appearance for all 3 armors, with their glowing runes, screams that the armor should have been called 'runic armor' instead of  'obsidian'. I am officially calling for the name change from obsidian to runic armor. I feel like you guys only named it 'obsidian' to tug at the heart strings of GW1 players like myself.
  
  As far as acquisition goes, I feel it was mostly fair as it kept me busy for several months. The high amount of ecto/essence cost is a bit excessive, but I get why you did it: it was to pad the game's play time for players like me who bought the expansion for this reason. I wouldn't have minded it as much if the acquisition had us going all over Tyria doing a variety of content (like Prismatic Champion's Regalia did), rather than just doing a couple thousand rift runs. Now that I'm done with all 3 weights I can say I got my money's worth and am done with SotO as a whole.
   
• Content: 3 maps, 2 strike missions, legendary armor, convergences, rifts hunting, useful masteries, lots of achievements, minis, weapon and armor skins, easier access to Gen 1 legendaries, ranger pets, and access to new weapons on our characters, and all for only $25. That's a kitten good deal. The pricing for this expansion is on point.
  
  I will say, however, that the staggered releases did hurt it. For me, the most dreadful example is the most recent mastery. After having farmed thousands of unusual coins for my legendary armor, only then did we get the mastery to open those arcane chests faster... now that I have 0 use for them. This alone is enough reason to not do the staggered releases. If any of you guys are thinking "Well, that's why you shouldn't rush through content or be an early adopter", I'd like to remind you that you are saying the content is only worth doing once everything is released, thereby saying the staggered releases are a bad idea, or at the very least not done well for this expansion. The mastery for the arcane chests opening faster should have come a lot sooner... like immediately after mastery to be able to open them in the first place. If you guys plan on continuing with the staggered releases, then make sure that the QoL masteries become available to use when they are actually a QoL improvement, not after the fact.  If you want to hide legendary merchants behind a high level mastery, fine, but QoL masteries should come first, not last.
   
• Characters: I have to be honest. The only character I cared for was Mabon (mostly because I think the Mursaat are a really cool creature type and I love GW1). I just like it when former enemies or enemy-types become allies (Pyre Fierceshot in GW1 is another great example). He was approachable, wasn't needlessly cryptic, and genuinely cared for the player character's well being. He opened the door for interesting story telling and character growth... aaaaaaand you killed him.
  
  I wanted to like Lyhr, but something about him was just off-putting. I think his splitting-self stuff just weirded me out. Which one is the real Lyhr? Is Lyhr even real? Is Lyhr just an idea that is an amalgamation of several different 'aspects'? Either way, I'm over him/them.
  
  I can't stand to even look at Dagda. She's just ugly. Aesthetics aside, I do like that she was a pillar for Zojja in her time of need, while also holding the astral ward together in Mabon and Isgarren's absence, but her initial edge-lord vibe of "I know it must have been very hard for you to avoid killing me in our first encounter" was just terrible. That is not how you get me to like you! I wasn't thinking about it then, but yeah now that she brought it up I kinda wish I did kill Dagda, and that is how I will always remember Dagda: a 'should have killed her'.
  
  Frode and Arina are great as they are. They get kitten done. Galrath is just an unlikable grouch. The other named ward members are just there, in my opinion.
  
  I do not approve of what you guys did to Zojja. That whole "I wanted to be found, but not found, because suddenly I'm not the main character in everyone's lives" was just weird. She went from being a dragon-slaying technically savvy independent asura to an emotional wreck that can't seem to hold her focus and is dependent on validation from others. I get that the reason Zojja was left out of everything after HoT was because Felicia Day is expensive, but come on! Zojja deserved better writing.
  
  Peitha is our regime-change puppet, kind of. I say kind of because she sought us out, not the other way around. I'm honestly apathetic towards her. She got hers, and all I got was a shortness of breath when I entered Nayos. Ramses, on the other hand, was a much more interesting character. I liked that he was just cryptic enough to keep me interested, while he was simultaneously interested in Tyria as a whole. Honestly, I want to take him out across Tyria to experience all the things like buying some noodles in Cantha, swimming in Lion's Arch, and the festival of the four winds. I like his closure.
  
  Not much I can say about Eparch. He showed up briefly.... and now he's dead. Yay. All I got was that he was a tyrant that ate his people... that's it. He's like Saddam Hussein as a big spider: a big problem for us but for a short time.
   
• Enemies: I can get behind reusing creature model assets and animations as a cost cutting measure. It's just smart. What I can't really get behind is how some regular enemies are overtuned. First off, what is up with the Terror guys (the spiders) seemingly going invulnerable at will? Second, why are the Rage guys given unavoidable attacks that are telegraphed as regular attacks. Third, why are these unavoidable attacks dealing damage as a percentage of our health rather than a fixed number? This makes armor, defense, health pool, and buffs basically pointless.
  
  Additionally, what's up with some enemies having a bigger defiance bar than they have health? Seriously, I've encountered countless situations where I can't break a regular enemy's defiance bar  with 3 CC abilities before I just deplete their health outright by powering through their endless protection and resistance buffs. I absolutely dread fighting elites in open world because they are champion level difficulty without champion level rewards.
   
• Story: The story in general was fine. A little predictable at times, but there were some moments that actually felt impactful and done right. That reveal towards the end regarding the 'hundreds of kryptis we are about to fight' was the most memorable for me in a way that got me to actually care about the Kryptis. Nice work there. It really encapsulated the atrocities committed by Eparch and why I'm glad he's dead. Let's just hope Peitha isn't secretly worse.
  
  Part of the reason my feedback for the story is short is because I couldn't bring myself to replay the story again. There was just a lot that was just forgettable for me because I did it so long ago. This is mostly due to how the segmented releases were done. The first chunk should have ended with getting back into the tower. Second chunk should have been the Amnytas stuff and Peitha's reveal. Third chunk should have been arrival in Nayos up to the fight with Knaebelog (whatever the hell Eparch's pet is). The final chunk should have been Eparch lashing out after we killed his pet, then his queen should have tried to hunt us down, and so on until we got what we got in this recent release.
  
  One of the glaring problems in the story is the padded runtime with the filler. I get that you want us doing the events, but to require us to do x-amount of events as part of the story is just not good. IF you want to implement open world events as part of the story, do it as you've done it before: have us do specific events that are relevant to the particular plot point or story step we are on. For example, the part where Dagda had yet to be located, you could have created an event chain that led us to Dagda's location in that northeast region of Skywatch. Just a series of open world events that led to that location, the end of which would have given us the green starburst to enter the instance where we confront Dagda.
  The story's runtime is padded by excessive and long dialog, and it is made worse by tying certain achievements to forcing ourselves to sit through long dialog. You guys can definitely do with less voice acting, that's for sure. Save some costs there (and save us time). This is made even worse by Peitha's manner of speaking. I get it, she's not a Tyrian and does not speak in the same manner, but her manner of speaking definitely makes things longer than they should be.
   
• Writing and dialog: I am not a writer by any stretch, but my gawd some of the dialog is a little annoying or just plain weird. I've mentioned before that you guys use ellipses for dramatic pause/effect way too much. It's to the point that the dramatic effect has lost its value. It happens both in the story and in the open world. Please tone down the use of ellipses and dramatic pauses in future updates. It should only be used sparingly for truly dramatic moments where the kitten is hitting the fan, not every 5 minutes just because an NPC wants to take a moment to pick a 'better' word, or lack thereof.
  
  Speaking of trying to find 'better words', what is up with you guys trying to redefine certain words? The obvious weird one for me is 'king'.  King has an understood meaning (a male monarch, to put it simply). Why is Peitha, an obvious female who is referred to as female, calling herself a king? Why not queen? Is queen somehow supposed to be a derogatory term now for a female monarch? Are you guys trying to get it to mean that a queen is somehow inferior to a king? If that is the case I invite you to read up on Queen Elizabeth of England. King = Queen, and the only difference is a gender. If you guys wanted to instead use a non-gendered term, which is totally fine, you can use 'monarch'. Peitha calling herself the midnight monarch sounds way better than the midnight king. It's just a strikingly unusual use of the word king to describe a female character. Queen is not a bad word, nor is it inferior or derogatory. Use it!
  
  As many of us have stated before, I'm bringing it up again because it bears repeating until this issue gets fixed: let us hide the chat bubbles that hover on the player character when the comms device is being used to communicate with the player. We hear it, we see it in our chat. WE DO NOT ALSO NEED IT OBSTRUCTING OUR VIEW. This is by far the worst part of the expansion (and prior content) in regards to dialog. This is made worse by the excessive use of voice lines to convey event instructions. There should be little to no voiced dialog to relay event instructions. The UI on the right side should have all the info we need to do an event. Idle chatter that is relevant to an event is fine, but not in a chat bubble on our character that we can't hide. Look no further than open world events in core Tyria.
  
   
• SUMMARY: I'm afraid I had more bad things to say than good. Make no mistake, there IS some good here, but it is slightly overshadowed by the not so good. The pricing is good, so I definitely got my money's worth. However, as I said earlier: now that I am done with the 3 sets of armor, I am done with SotO as a whole. Without the armor to drive me, I have no reason to revisit SotO's content after the initial play through. I just can't bring myself to sit through all that dialog again. Earlier today I did the last convergence I ever intend to do, and I will never again do any more rift hunting. I don't care for collecting mini pets, and achievement points for me have lost all their meaning after I hit the 30k mark a while back. Strikes are not my thing. So what's left? Regardless, I look forward to seeing what the next expansion brings. Thank you for the armor, the masteries, and the ranger pets. And that is the end of that story.

[Malus.2184]

Write the ENTIRE story of the expansion, that includes the later releases, as bullet points and lock in the details later.

The narrative of SotO had the vibe of being written at the same time for the beginning and then it was written ad hoc for each release.

The first part gave the vibe of being A->B->C->Etc->End and then rather than continuing on from that so it would be End->A->B->C->Etc->End, each release was A->B->C. There was no cohesion in the story. I still have no idea what made Eparch cannibalise the Kryptis and I've no idea what caused Peitha to want to be the king rather than wanting to stop Eparch from cannibalizing the Kryptis. Only having a motivation to prevent something is a rather bad and empty motivation, what did she want to create?

The Nayos story was also completely void of any ideological reason for doing anything, all the characters were flat and one-dimensional. This was really apparent in "The Midnight King" release where you encounter Isgarren again who's a much more complex character who has ideological reasons for doing what he did.

As for Eparch cannibalizing the Kryptis, all I have is a hypothesis stitched together by various bits and pieces.

Eparch was traumatised by his encounter with Mordremoth, and he then started idolizing Isgarren, kinda like Incrediboy did before he became Syndrome. After the event with the Centaurs Eparch discovered that he could become stronger by eating others. At the same time, Isgarren sent him off. This caused Eparch's admiration for Isgarren to fester into a deep hatred, again, just like Syndrome and Mr. Incredible. You can see this in Eparch's physical form which is "Isgarren but Darker and Edgier. He wanted to be stronger than Isgarren whom he both admired and loathed. From the information of the first memory, it can be inferred that at some point Eparch looked different since his brother most likely became the later template for the Sylvari as the Sylvary and the more humanoid Kryptis look similar.

Again, this is just a hypothesis as there's nothing in the game that confirms or denies this. This is the hallmark of a story written without cohesion.

How it could have been shown in-game:

End of SotO:

Isgarren: Saving Epoarch from Mordremoth was my biggest mistake ever.

"The Midnight King."

Eparch to the player:

Eparch: You're weak like my brother was and and just like he was eaten by the jungle dragon so you shall be my power!

Eparch to Sylvari:

Eparch: How come I can feel a faint essence of my brother in you? Never mind, he was weak, and just like he was eaten by the jungle dragon so you shall be my power!

Isgarren when seeing Eparch for the first time in millennia:

Isgarren: Your new form looks familiar. Then again, you were always clinging to me.

Eparch in response:

Eparch: I NO LONGER CLING TO YOU. I'M STRONGER THAN YOU AND NOTHING SHALL EVER THREATEN ME AGAIN!

Eparch to Peitha when winning:

Eparch: Take my power and continue my legacy for the Kryptis.

Peitha: No, your power is tainted by your fear. It ends here with you and all you'll be known as is the shame of the Kryptis.

This way Eparch's motivation for doing what he did is shown, we no longer have to guess, and we know that he did it because he deep down was afraid of everything.

Metas

Incorporate them in the story, especially in the later releases. Being ordered to fill the green bar was unsatisfying and explained nothing of the things you saw in the story despite them being a necessity for understanding them.

When you do the Heitor's Gate story the gate itself is rather empty. There's no explanation for this and if you do the meta you find out there's no guardian there because we killed him.

If the objective had been to "soften the gate before confronting Heitor, do the meta Heitor's Gate, " the relative emptiness would have made sense.

The same with the arena in the second release. If the objective had been "Secure the arena, do the Fangs That Gnash meta-event to slay the guardian there," then it would make sense that Peitha could use it without obstruction.

"Into the Spider's Lair" directly connects to "The 11th Hour" since we weaken Eparch and then he flees. Confronting him in the throne room and taking him down with just five people makes sense because we're confronting a weakened Eparch rather than a full-power Eparch.

[Harfang.1507]

Just a little feedback for immersion that is not technically a bug, but jarring:

I have a character going through the SotO storyline. He is at chapter 8 Into the Obscure. He has returned to the Wizard's Tower, specifically to The Wizard's Court to discuss the aftermath of Mabon's demise at the claws of the demonic Kryptis. Who is there? Ramses, pleasantly discussing with two overlapping Galraths the Undying about wall maintenance . . .

[geogiam.5301]

The best characters in SOTO were the mute char and his rat companion, sadly forgotten after the intro to never be seen again...