The good things about SotO

[maxwelgm.4315]

The little achievements across the maps were nice, I've done every map achievement so far and in process of doing the last ones for the meta portion of the map that was released. That they released a basically empty last portion of the map was very underwhelming, especially given it's the coolest area in Inner Nayos by far.

The story was also only good inside of these mini achievements. The collections of notes regarding Mabon, Zojja, etc. as well as the notes in Nayos were pretty cool. Eparch's story is ironically far better told in the notes than whatever they thought they were doing with the meta/story/fractal. I'll definitely come back for the pleasant more small time exploration and small achievements in future maps, not so much for these odd non-timed metas and rushed story instances without sense of scale.

[nightpelt.1063]

From the perspective of a long-term, casual player, I had a lot of things I really enjoyed in this expansion!

First, the new weapons are great. I love that I can now hop on my full dps warrior and also contribute to my group staying alive in open world when it seems needed, and the staff just feels great to use. I also like that the weapons are no longer bound to elite specializations!

I also really enjoy the Wizards Vault . The weeklies  give me a reason to revisit old maps and remember why I liked them, and I especially enjoy completing the special objectives! It has also helped me finally finish some old goals - due to the easier access to money that the WV gives, I was finally able to finish my griffon, which has been a blast to use in the new maps.

Speaking of which, I quite like the map design. Skywatch Archipelago had a nice balance between varied nostalgia, while still being its own unique challenge to navigate and also showing off the wide variety of environments that this game has always had to offer. Amnytas is drop-dead gorgeous, but I did find it the hardest to get around in - especially when the top waypoint is contested. Inner Nayos was a great new area to experience, and still something that felt very unique. 

I've also quite enjoyed the accompanying metas: the timing was nice, they feel grand in scale and they are just challenging enough I always feel like I am actively contributing to the larger whole. 

To get back to the movement: the added skyscale/griffon masteries are great! The updrafts feel entirely natural, and hopping on a leyline to quickly get around feels very nice, especially when this was made toggleable!

All the QoL features have been lovely - i want to especially note the latest update of being able to read squad messages on minimap - its absolutely ideal and it really does improve the roaming single player experience, and I've actually started joining coms more often since it was released.

 

All in all, while there is a lot of valid criticism, I really did enjoy a lot of the expansion, both in terms of the features but also in the story!

[LichOverlord.6329]

13 hours ago, Amantiel.3542 said:

So.....nothing? Cause SOTO kinda proves you learned nothing.

Bit funny though how the negative feedback is ignored, but when you guys see a "oh look at the good things!" post, THAT is when you drop by.

Just because @Rubi Bayer.8493 doesn't pop in and thank everyone for it doesn't mean that the devs don't see it.

I guarantee you the devs are well aware of the negative feedback as well - hence why she said

15 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

The constructive criticism is great... So thank you for not only taking the time to voice the criticism...

as well as addressing the good stuff.

Even if a post on the forums, official subreddit, Twitter/X, etc. doesn't get a dev response like they sometimes do, it doesn't mean they don't read the posts or that they don't care - there's not only a number of devs who maintain profiles on said sites, but there's also people who's literal job it is to read feedback, so rest assured: they do listen, even if they don't always speak.

As for "learning nothing" like you claim, with game design it's not only usually difficult to pivot (especially when your studio has hundreds of people in it), but with a planned content release schedule like we have now, updates and deliverables are usually planned and committed to months and months and months in advance, and therefore by the time feedback is recieved, the next update is already getting close to completion, and it's a bit difficult to change it.

Rather than undo what's already on its way out the door and risk delaying a release, its far more effective to change what's not as far along in the process at the time - namely, the next expansion - especially the post-expansion updates. 

Of course, we'll have to wait until the next studio update to see the specifics of it all, but I'd be willing to bet money that a number of things people were critical of during the initial release, Through the Vale, and Realm of Dreams was taken on board and will be addressed in the next update, and that the most recent criticism will be addressed in the future as well.

 

[Obnoxa.6702]

Fair point, it is worth mentioning the good points too and while I know my expectations might be less than realistic, since I compare everything to what I consider to be the height of GW2: PoF, it was really just the story to SoTO that was a let down for me.
Mount improvements were awesome - I LOVE that I can utilise leylines and updrafts while mounted.
Weapon Mastery - I personally think WM was a great way to breathe new life into classes without an entire new elite class; which will become really daunting if that was part of every new expansion.
The Wizard's Vault - absolutely a welcome change from the daily system, 90 day reups with xpack related skins and content can really be built upon and expanded in the future, so I look forward to more of that. Now I can focus on slowly burning through these 227 repair cannisters without having to worry about where I'm going to put yet another stack of them.
The Wizard's Tower - It was done the justice it deserved and is the player hub that Arborstone was designed to be.
Rifts occurring all over Tyria - it's a small thing but I have always celebrated how well ANet has worked to keep zones from dying; it's the only mmo I've ever played that isn't full of abandoned zones for the newest shiny spot, so playing into the story kryptis invasions and taking us all over the world to combat those pending attacks instead of just hearing about them was a nice touch. I know I wasn't the only one jumping into running events and world bosses I haven't gotten involved with in a long time, just because I happened to be there for a rift and something popped up close by, so well done on keeping core Tyria included.
My biggest piece of advice would probably be: I don't need to save the whole world every, single time - you've closed the chapter on dragons, feel free to pull a richer, lore-filled story across two or three expansions; as long as there's some meaningful resolution at the end of an xpack, that's what matters.
 

[Edge.1653]

6 minutes ago, Obnoxa.6702 said:

My biggest piece of advice would probably be: I don't need to save the whole world every, single time - you've closed the chapter on dragons, feel free to pull a richer, lore-filled story across two or three expansions; as long as there's some meaningful resolution at the end of an xpack, that's what matters.

This so much. I yearn for smaller stories after a decade+ of dealing with world-ending threats constantly. Was hoping that's what SotO would deliver, but not quite. Hopefully the next expansion is a bit less apocalyptic. Maybe we can just spend an expansion being local extrajudicial justice for some bandit-infested communities, yaknow?!

[Inssengrimm.7924]

That it ended.
And hopefully they learn from their mistakes.

And allow more resources and people to work on the next expansion as the new patch cycle is clearly suffering both in quantity and quality, if its not exactly that, just a justification to neglect the Guild Wars 2 proyect altogether. 

[eldrevo.1746]

Might as well pitch in. Semi-hardcore player of some years here, so as much as I appreciate all the features aimed at newer and casual peeps (Skyscale, Vault rewards, Obsidian armor), I also understand I'm not the target audience of these. I also want to appreciate Cerus CM and Legendary as a treat to the more hardcore crowd.

What I did like personally:

1. Aesthetic. The music is positively out of this world. The art is great across the board, from new characters to weapon and armor rewards, to environment. 
   Criticism: I'd love more visual variety in zones like Amnytas and Nayos, and maybe with Kryptis design / color scheme.
2. Open world. Undoubtedly, one of the strongest parts of the game still. The visuals are gorgeous. The traversal is fun. A lot of great events. Metas can be underwhelming mechanically, but are great spectacle as always. Bits of environmental storytelling, collections, achievements were all great fun, and I really appreciate that the last update added some more reason to revisit the first 2 maps. The meta-achievement for all the masteries with Wayfinder title is also a great touch!
   Criticism: The island structure (and the 3-act structure of Nayos) made the locations feel disjointed, and sometimes hell to navigate. I'd love to see some events or mechanics bridging the gaps.
3. Story. Ended up a mixed bag, really, but I loved some initial bits. The first chapter, all about unraveling the mystery of Astral Ward and Rift hunters. The introduction of Peitha with her whispers. Some bits of her dynamic with other Kryptis later on. Some side little characters like (Gladium, the rat, Narcissa) were nice.
   Criticism: There's a lot. Kryptis were feeling too human in later updates. Wizard characters (Lyhr, Dagda, Mabon, etc) didn't feel too outstanding or cool to me. Maybe there was too many characters introduced over the expansion and then the patches.
4. Quality of Life updates and especially all WvW stuff. I've ended up getting more and more into the Mist War, and enjoying it a lot! All the extra rewards and vendors are great, and I can't wait for the Restructuring to come out.
5. Economy. One thing that instantly made the last update a win for me was the new Converter. It's great to have a sink for all the resources needed mostly for the legendary armor, and some older resources without much use nowadays. And it's also great that you can use it to grind your way to some rare drops.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

SotO had a pretty cinematic and interesting start with pretty unique missions, but the later content winded down like a wheel that popped right off a car.  It can get you in, but it can't keep you in.  Having juicy starts and empty or rushed endings is not uncommon in videogames, but in SotO it was made more apparent.

Maybe it would not have felt that way if Nayos had been the next expansion and more work had been put into deepening the Wizard's tower and its characters.

[kurosy.1384]

I can't manage listing what i liked of SOTO without pointing out what ruined it for me, but i'm going to do it in a constructive way.

- I LOVED having new maps with new assets to explore! Exploring/immersion is what made me fall in love with gw2 and everytime there's a new map i experience it with joy (no map ever disappointed me under the exploration pov).
- I was so thrilled by having a new cathegory of enemies to fight against but the Kryptis lost me when i saw all the animation/rigging/skills were recycled :C Sorry, i understand the huge cost in terms of time and money but it was really a down point for me
- The story was so intricate at the beginning! So many possibilities, the promise of a darker plot, some politic con. Having a demon whispering in commander's mind... maybe it was time for the commander to make some huge mistake and fight back to solve it. (Unfortunately story fell flat after the core soto, everything was very predictable and goody-goody especially the ending chapter! Damnit, you guys even released a Peitha wallpaper with good side and bad side!! :C)
- new achievements, new pve skins&collections, little games including lamps, bouoncing balls and arcane chests, i like that kind of things! It's fine to recycle some of them but pls also add something completely new!
- I really like the exhistance of hard pve endgame content capable of mobilitating the most tryhard pve communities into days of competition! (what i don't like is seeing mechanics that make things super easy for 1-2 classes while other classes fall behind, or bosses being hard mainly because their health pool is gigantic!!)
- I like the importance given to skyscale BUT i would love to see the other mounts not left behind. Skimmer minigames, griffon-only hard loops, jackal puzzles, events manageable with springers maybe?
- i really love the Vault and the new daily/weekly/monthly programs! Really gave me a huge hand into casual playing during those periods i have little time or just no particular goal.
- i really liked the new weapons and i would love seeing  more of this or more build-expanding mechanics in general

I'll edit if anything else comes to my mind~

[Trejgon.9367]

On 5/23/2024 at 8:43 AM, Linken.6345 said:

Yea we heard all that before.

Back in the day heart of thorns was the fundation expansion something they would build upon hence why it did not  have many features.

Then they reinvented the wheel again with pof and again with eod and none of them got more features then the supposedly fundation expansion.

I have no idea where you have heard all of those things, because Heart of Thorns had a ton of features. Much more than many competitor expansions.

PoF have had another round of new features that frankly revolutionized how the game plays, and it is only EoD when they ran out of gamechanging features.

SotO is first of new concept for GW2 expansions, and I'd say that it's only downsides is that we had to wait for half of big features of the expac, and that it's postlaunch content drops were short of story. There is argument to be made that maybe they should not do nayos civil war in SotO story, and just focus on recovering from initial assault, repairing and fortifying tyrian defences so that it does not happen again. Maybe we could get demonic civil war some time later at another expansion.

I am looking forward to the blogpost to see what AN have learned from time spent with SotO and what improvements can we expect from this years expansion, and what improvements happened too late to cut the mark for 2024 expac, but will impact 2025 expac.

[KiLLiAN.5629]

Some feedback from me:

Maps
-I really like the Skywatch Archipelago (different biomes on all islands). Even though some people say these are recycled assets, I found the map great and varied.
-I've enjoyed Nayos greatly thanks to different atmosphere, environments, creatures, colors etc. I think this kind of vibe could suit even an entire expansion!
-I didn't like Amnytas, because the whole map is the same, uses the same assets over and over (apart from places like the gallery, library etc.), looks like from an AI generator. The events though are fine, no complaining here.

Story:
-Really strong beginning, cool cast of new characters. Great idea to finally visit the Wizard's Tower. I was super hyped about it.
-Of all the new characters, I think the return of Zojja turned out to be the least interesting, but she finally got to close her story arc and that's OK.
-Later on, the story updates were too short, uninteresting, there was no sense of scale. Waiting so much time for 1h of story content of this quality wasn't exciting. Even IBS had better releases (not the DRMs, though :P) and the story, its length and quality fall short behind LS3 and LS4.
-Kryptis were cool at the beginning, but in the end just became humans using different models when it comes to their psychological profiles. A bit of a letdown in the end.
-Lots of story steps forced us to do events to fill the bar - artificial way of prolonging the story and content which was irritating.
-The ending of the expansion was meh. No plot twists, no sense of drama, short, no cinematic at the end. Some joke that the credits and talking to ~20 NPCs in the end take longer than the story.

Metas:
-I pretty much enjoy all metas on all maps aside from the final one in Nayos. It takes forever to get to Eparch and then the fight is even longer (those corridors never end...). I understand that you wanted it to be an epic finale, but it's far from the Dragon's End meta which is still challenging but actually very fun to play.
-That being said, I really like Amnytas and Skywatch metas. First two metas in Nayos are also quite alright.

Wizard's Vault
-Great idea for a free version of the battle pass found in other games. Pretty similar to what WoW did.
-Step in the right direction.
-I quickly run out of things to buy in the Vault (skins) so after 1 or 2 days it's just choosing whatever translates to more in-game gold.
-Please allow us to buy more than 5 instances of the same item/currency at the same time.

Rifts and Convergences
-Rift were a terrible grind, but convergences made them much better (the buff that you get which increases the drops). 
-Generally even though they are similar, I preferred the bounties system that didn't require killing a lot of mobs before the boss would spawn. It was faster and more neat. Also, it didn't take forever for the boss to spawn (some have an invulnerable animation that lasts a couple of seconds even after they appear in the world).
-I really like Convergences and did way more than 100. It's a cool big scale, raid-like experience although with much easier difficulty level.
-I completed all new Convergence CM versions on gold and must say that was super fun content that required organizing, being focused and added great replayability. Difficulty level is pretty OK, although could be a bit harder (but not Umbriel, he's challenging enough 😉).

Strikes:
-Both were fun for me, but the fact that there are only 2 is sad.
-I completed CO CM a couple of times, enjoyed it. Haven't tried ToF CM yet, but it's a cool idea that it has 2 versions of the CM.
-Rewards (in terms of skins) were underwhelming. I had no real incentive to farm the strikes..

Masteries:
-Improvements to the good old skyscale are great. It's a game changer to be able to use updrafts while on a griffon and skyscale. Fireball is just super cool.
-The rest of the masteries are mostly time-gates that block you from certain elements of the game or collections. None of them feel fun, necessary or game-changing (aside from the Wayfinder mastery that allows you to open the chests with less clicking...). Also, none of them feel like expansion-level masteries that we had in the past when we got gliding, mounts, skiffs, fishing or even a jade bot. 

General thoughts:
-Story should be longer and better. Especially the chapters that were added post launch which felt like a short filler content.
-It's about time we got a new playable race, entirely new class (ritualist?!) or new weapons.
-There were a lot of really cool collections to finish AFTER the story. It would make sense to tie them more into the story steps through UI other than just the achievements section - maybe somehow add them to the story journal to a new sidequests section?
-New weapons (at least some of them) are really fun and I didn't miss new elite classes. Pistol guardian is fun to play.
-Legendary armor was a great incentive of the expansion, even though I have the raid one. It's a shame that it was obtainable so late into the expansion and that tier 2 was introduced at its end. It was one of the main features of the expansion and we basically got it after a year.
-Opening arcane chests with the mini-game was horrible, it's nice that the new mastery remedied that a bit.
-Lots of QoL updates were great. 
-Where are new faces and hairstyles?!
-Research notes and the way they are acquired are still a terrible mechanic which should be abandoned.
-It's a shame that jade bot got completely dropped after EoD. I feel like there could be new modules added in future expansions.
-There are too many unnecessary /emote achievements (especially hidden ones that award 0 AP).
-I really like the fact that new content was kept being added to Nayos (new adventures and collections).
-I wish there were more reasons to use old mounts. Right now I only use skyscale, griffon and rollerbeetle. Skyward Marches in Skywatch could have had jackal portals for example.

Edited May 26 by KiLLiAN.5629

[Gehenna.3625]

For me the Wizard's Vault is the best addition to the game. It does need some tweaking but overall I really like it. The new weapon training is a mixed bag for me, but in the balance it tips to the good side for me.

The map art in Nayos is pretty awesome imo. But the map design in SoTO is kindaterrible imo particularly Amnytas with the big buildings that have many places for doors but with actually very few doors. Just because we have Skyscales doesn't mean that really high objects are fun to scale. Perhaps I would think differently after going there for a while and learning the maps better, however, that'll likely never happen because I simply don't want/need the legendary armor sets and as such I have very little reason to spend time in SoTO maps.

The metas and events are mostly fine. I actually enjoy many of them but I'd rather spend time in other areas of Tyria because I have actual reasons to be there as in stuff to do. 

So yeah, there are good points but then some of them come with drawbacks as well.

[Fenella.2634]

Even though the story content was pretty disappointing, all in all Soto isn't all bad. 

- The weapon mastery alone has been worth it to me.

- The Wizard's Vault is neat. It could use some polishing, but I like the system.

- I like the fractal-themed map. I've seen a lot of people complaining, because technically it's just reusing older assets, but I like the "what if" approach. Also, it's pretty. 😄

- The first part of the story was quite good. The Tower NPCs had potential to be interesting and some instances had really great atmosphere. (First meeting with Cerus, Peitha being creepy. That was really well delivered.)

- There's a lot of lore bits to be found. I wish it was integrated better into the main story, but it's there.

- The new CMs sound good. Couldn't test them yet, though.

 

So... yeah. It's not as bad as the second half of IBS, but that's a very low bar anyway.