The good things about SotO

[Edge.1653]

Good stuff: Basically most of what wasn't Inner Nayos or the post-Wizard's Tower storyline/content. Weaponmaster is good, new weapons were good, Wizard's Vault is a huge W, lots of the QoL/tech improvements are great. First drop focused on the Astral Ward was interesting and largely pretty darned good.

Oh, and we didn't fight a proper dragon. Very glad to have a break from dragons at least.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

I just wanted to pop into the thread and take a moment to thank you all for your ongoing feedback! I've said it before, but this kind of wide range of feedback is really useful. The constructive criticism is great, but taking time to share what you really liked and enjoyed--and what you want more of--is also incredibly valuable. So thank you for not only taking the time to voice the criticism, but also to share the good stuff! 

Next week we will be publishing the development retrospective blog post that we mentioned in the most recent studio update. This will talk in depth about what we learned during the development of SotO and how we are taking those lessons forward into our next expansion. Please keep an eye out for that! 

[HotDelirium.7984]

Good things- the SKINS my goodness and many were free through the vault, the wizard's vault is a perfect addition, the QOL updates, the top notch voice acting, new weapons and mastering, a few interesting tasks and moments, skywatch and amnytas overall were cool maps. You may take my silence towards other topics as critique 😛 heh, thank you for the efforts in this expansion.

[CoffeePlease.3082]

13 hours ago, Tuna Bandit.3786 said:

- Fireball can be a fun concept (but semi-afk on meta's is a bit a downside)

This is my main issue with the mount dps abilities. I can't tell if people think they are actually contributing or if they are just easily afking by pressing 1 button. The skyscale and turtle don't do any damage compared to if someone was simply autoattacking a boss so it's always annoying to see someone just on their skyscale tossing fireballs while I'm doing all the work.

This happened to me once specifically that I remember when I was doing a rift in the Crystal Desert. One of those roaming forged packs came into the rift and the only other player there used the skyscale mastery to mount in combat and just fly up into the air and wait until I killed everything, including the rift boss. Bro get off your mount and help me I'm literally soloing this and fighting for my life while you're up there..

Edited May 24 by CoffeePlease.3082
Typo!

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

On 5/22/2024 at 2:51 PM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

I had more fun playing Warrior Pre SotO. 

man do I feel that. I ended up swapping to Guardian/Firebrand and I haven't looked back. I didn't like what the relic/rune changes did to my zerker build. >:I

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

13 minutes ago, CoffeePlease.3082 said:

The skyscale and turtle don't do any damage compared to if someone was simply autoattacking a boss so it's always annoying to see someone just on their skyscale tossing fireballs while I'm doing all the work.

This is a double edged sword. On one hand I tell people to get off their Skyscales because I too value teamwork, but on the other: my friend's counter argument is at least they're not just *standing there* and doing nothing at all. Which happened (happens?) a lot on Drakkar. I don't like it either but its a nuanced thing. 

Edited May 24 by KindredPhoenyx.8976

[CoffeePlease.3082]

10 minutes ago, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

my friend's counter argument is at least they're not just *standing there* and doing nothing at all.

Truthfully, no offense to your friend, but they may as well just be standing there. The mounts don't do any damage. It may mow down low health open world mobs, but in a larger boss fight they are just scaling the boss to make it take longer for everyone else to kill by merely being present. 

Edited May 24 by CoffeePlease.3082
My keyboard sucks

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

2 minutes ago, CoffeePlease.3082 said:

The mounts don't do any damage.

 

2 minutes ago, CoffeePlease.3082 said:

It may mow down low health open world mobs

It doesn't do damage by your standards but it does *some* damage, minimal as it may be. Its not nothing diddly squat at all. Yes autoing is higher in damage I concede but its still something. The scaling is annoying but its more annoying when people are just standing there, having tagged once and choose to die/not WP. 

[CoffeePlease.3082]

5 minutes ago, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

 

It doesn't do damage by your standards but it does *some* damage, minimal as it may be. Its not nothing diddly squat at all. Yes autoing is higher in damage I concede but its still something. The scaling is annoying but its more annoying when people are just standing there, having tagged once and choose to die/not WP. 

They aren't "my standards" it's just math and logic. The skyscale can only do some brief burning damage and  a minor strike of damage per cast, with a decently long cooldown compared to auto-attacking and with limited chargers.

You're also disregarding the other part of my response where I highlighted that someone left me to fight entirely alone, making me the only vulnerable target for attacks. There are other numerous passive defensive/damage benefits to actually being in the fight vs being on a mount that don't happen by pressing your fireball/turtle slam skill. 

[Perihen the Thawk.9527]

"Kryptis rifts tend to sour the taste here. Little is more annoying than having your hands full with an event already, then in swoops another player, opens a rift and now you got a sea of enemies you didn't bargain for (especially on escort missions). Happened to me during asuran professor and apprentice escort in Rata Novus - not a fun experience."

 

I actually *really* love this about Kryptis rifts. I Iove when events overlap chaotically like this. Most events in this game are not super life-threatening, and I love the sudden panic of actually having to fight for my life with multiple champions slaughtering my little group lol. I get so used to the flow of things and the predictability of it that these flukes light up my day. It doesn't happen all that often, and the satisfaction from pulling through is great. Open world should have more "emergent phenomena" like this imo.

[Vayne.8563]

2 hours ago, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

 

It doesn't do damage by your standards but it does *some* damage, minimal as it may be. Its not nothing diddly squat at all. Yes autoing is higher in damage I concede but its still something. The scaling is annoying but its more annoying when people are just standing there, having tagged once and choose to die/not WP. 

No, it doesn't do enough damage to compensate for the scaling by ANY standards. It's math, not guess work. It is diddly squat and you are scaling the event. Meaning you're doing the easy thing and letting other people do the work to carry you.  I mean you can do that if you want, but don't trick yourself into believing your actually contributing. Things like convergences can fail because of people leeching like that.

[taoren.2978]

I haven't played the game in a long long time, and SOTO is the expansion that got me back into the game and i've been playing it every single day since release. I usually buy an xpac, play it for a week and dip out, but SOTO managed to keep me and i'll explain why.

Wizards Vault

WV played a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. The login rewards were boring and previous dailies also felt kind of pointless to me so i never stuck around. I am not one of the people with multiple accounts who spend hours logging in an out to click and get a reward. WV felt engaging and worthy of my time for what it is offering to me. I do my daily and weekly and i move on, while making a significant progress towards my goals.
 

• Legendary Weapon Starter Pack: also played a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. It gave me the motivation and a clear goal without it feeling overwhelming. I also eagerly await the next Starter pack every 3 months.
• Weapon, Armor, Mount skins, and various Gem Store items being available in WV: I feel like this is really cool, having these exclusive awards tied to the daily/weekly system that you can slowly work towards. Gem Store utilities are like a nice surprise every time.

How i think this could be improved even more: I feel like the current WV rewards are really good, but i wish it had more account bound / untradeable things like Mystic Clovers in a greater quantity. I feel something like 20 Mystic Clovers and 60 Mystic Coins, every 90 days, could use a boost.

Drip fed content - I like that i have new activities to do every 3 months

I know a lot of people will disagree and prefer to have everything dropped right away all at once, but i do enjoy the moderated pace. Because of SOTO release cadence i've finished my first legendary armor ever in phases, and had a blast doing so just by doing my daily and weekly tasks. I only did things in order as they were released, including any achievements as maps have been releasing. I really enjoyed this, without having me feeling overwhelmed like i had to do everything everywhere all at once.
I do hope Anet will be able to keep this up and the 3 months releases are sustainable.

Thank you Dev Team!

SOTO is far from perfect but i haven't enjoyed GW2 like this in a long time. I do not enjoy trading and the gold grind and prefer earning my own rewards by overcoming challenges and SOTO gave me more of that.

Just how every other MMO steals ideas from GW2, i think it would be worth while for Anet to look into how FFXIV does things when it comes to releases. FFXIV is also far from perfect but somehow they manage to satisfy most of the player groups by giving everyone something worth while: from story, to new maps content, non-combat things, new fashion, dungeons/trials/alliance raids/raids, PVP updates, and trying new things all in a timely fashion.

I feel like SOTO went into a right direction, benefiting mostly casual and solo players like me, but i think we can do much better in terms of quality across the board. I am excited to see what is next for the game.

[Assassine.1958]

After 10 years of playing this game ... Is this really the best performance of the devs? I know they had some internal problems over the years, but i wished they let this game die in peace. In my opinion, they should have added a short living world in cantha (~ 3 episodes) after there sh*tty release of Gaya Delve. So 3 new living world maps around in cantha with a little bit of story, some achievments, new map currencies and some nice canthan styled skins, gizmos, etc... . And after that a nice peaceful ending for GW2! But instead we got SOTO...

I'm really disappointed, because SOTO started strong and catched me first. But with the following updates it got worse. 

Story started with an interesting concept and some interesting characters. But as mentioned, with the following updates it lost a lot of potential here. Also the new map concepts are technically kind of "lazy", because there are only floating islands above some water (void), -- also in nayos. I mean i can understand to try out some new and refreshing concepts, but in this case i have to label it as a technically lazy map concept!

Next of all are some wasted potential in meta events. I'm a huge friend of event timers! I like it, when i exactly know, when a meta event is going to start -- and not just gets triggerd by some event grinding mechanics. The first two metas like skywatch archipelo and amnytas just were okaish, but the nayos metas are not good designed (no timer and not statisfying).

Strike missions are a joke in normal mode and convergences are not enjoyable (boring). I don't wanna talk about the weapon-master and the new weapons.

So overall, I can't say good things about SOTO -- and that's sad, because after 10 years of playing this game, I never had such a burnt-out experience! In the past, I played GW2 nearly everyday but since SOTO I play it 1h/week or less -- I guess that says a lot.

At least, I have to point out, that the price for SOTO was the same as for the other 3 expansions! SOTO hasn't nearly that value of HoT, PoF or EoD!! 💢💢 And you can't be so d*mb and believe in ArenaNets "marketing illusions".

Edited May 24 by Assassine.1958

[Futa.4375]

I know why but why isn't this merged with the 'SotO feedback' thread? 😄

[Izzy.2951]

For me not even the initial launch of SoTo felt strong. Obviusly it was more engaging that the rest of the releases, but still.

When i entered the new maps i was blown away with the assets reuse, and the "oh, ive seen and completed this event plenty of times" (copy paste events/mechanics). Skywatch was a bit of "oh well they justified all of this cos they are fractals", Amnytas and the Wizards Tower is literally 2 textures copypasted all around really bad optimized (not really beautiful or interesting for me). Metas... were really boring. Story was interesting initially, rewards were decent i guess. Strikes were a straight downgrade to instanced content, really boring aswell (ive been here done that and with better quality).

Overall i cant find a moment where ive think SoTo was a good expansion at all. I would rather see them focus in less thigns and go back to HoT/PoF quality, even if they need to increase price to 30 euros and hire a few new devs. Also QoL updates should focus hard stuff that affects the gameplay, like LFG, raids and other different various things that would improve the experience. Honestly as cool as action camera sounds, the game is literally the same, it didnt change something sustantial of the game.

Cheers

[Cuks.8241]

I like the Amnytas map event chains (not the meta, the regular events). They are a bit reminiscent of the Hot outpost events (my favourite ow event chains in the game). I would like they would go even further towards the Hot concept where they have an impact on the map (outposts are upgraded, parts of the map and activities are unlocked) and the more you upgrade the outposts the more rewards and chests you get. For some reason there is always plenty of players for Hot outposts and Amnytas events are barely played. Which is a shame because some of them are really good. I wish we get another Verdant Brink in the future, it's really a unique map that uses this concept of upgrading the whole map to it's fullest.

I liked the aesthetics of Inner Nayos map initially. It was nice to get a completely new environment. Unfortunately like many things in Soto it would need more polish and details. While I was pleasantly surprised with the aesthetics initially it just got repetitive after the full unveiling. 

[crosknight.3041]

soto launch was the highlight of the expansion. the nayos stuff felt like it was a completely different story. honestly felt like soto should have been split into 2 expansions, with the first being to secure the wizards line of defense and consolidate forces and the 2nd expansion is the nayos stuff. story just felt rushed in hindsight and we couldnt really get time to get to know the new characters before they were swapped out for another group of characters. plus the scale of a demon invasion story felt to big for a single expansion.

convergences are a neat idea. but the bosses at the end just kinda come off as uninspired and they can take to long. havent tried the CM on them yet

new weapons are -mostly- great with some grievances i have (cough cough ele pistol gimmick cough)

fractal flat out sucks. i've given my thoughts on it in another thread. the Strikes are ok, havent tried CM yet. a bit basic but has some interesting mechanics.

Wizard Vault is an godly inclusion to the game

drip feeding content is good, but honestly i'm kinda annoyed by the "do this open world padding to progress the story" thing. it's not as bad as the HOT "get this mastery to progress story" but it is still annoying.

i would give the expansion a 5/10 (5 being average, which would be an IGN 7/10 lol). there were good ideas but just couldnt get the full potential out of them.

[leila.7962]

Here's my 2 cents

Good stuff:

• Decent amount of maps, with each map being drastically different from the others
• Rifts being events that the player has the control of when they start
• Wizard's Vault was definitely a hit, giving the players to choice of what they want instead of giving a lot of things that might not be useful for some players
• Occasional special tasks on the Wizard's Vault is also great, it gives something for players to do that are not related to dailies or weeklies.. maybe we could even have the monthlies back?
• New masteries for an old mount actually gave me the sense that I had a progression/upgrade because it will be constantly helpful from that point and on, unlike a lot of old masteries that are mainly used on their original map and then here and there on some other content
• Temple of Febe is really fun, the variety of mechanics and the different possible outcomes for the same battle depending on players choice feels great 
• Metas events that are not combat driven are fun, it was refreshing to not have to kill things all the time like it has been since the begining
• Access to a Legendary Armor set for people that avoided every other way to aquire them for whatever reason all these years, so they can work on it at their own pace
• New weapons for each class was a nice change over just dropping a new specialization that would probably just make balancing even more complicated
• Monsters being able to put more pressure on fights (constant boon steal / boon corrupt) made them more interesting
• One Waypoint on the map at a higher ground - Amnitas revived the griffon mount for me, I rarely used it before because I'd often have to get to a higher place using the skyscale, and by the time I got to the higher point using a skyscale I'd just stick with it. Since the mount can't actually take flight, having a waypoint on a higher ground made me actually think of using it more often again. I wish there was one for each map though.
• A new fractal that is somewhat related to the expansion content was definitely a good choice
• Lots of collections achievements were fun!! I love them
• Skywatch and Amnitas metas take a good amount of time, not too short not too long, they have a chance to fail if people don't participate, they're great

Edited May 25 by leila.7962

[Gilosean.3805]

Skyscale and griffon mastery upgrades and weaponsmaster were unqualified wins, after the toggle was added to allow controlling when we'd get caught by a leyline.

The new weapons were a heavily mixed bag, because of the UI and UX design. I really appreciate that we're still getting updates and new skills, but the UI has become so cluttered and confusing that it is impacting gameplay and preventing players from actually understanding how to use the new weapons. I basically gave up on elementalist pistol because of this. This is a big problem I'm hoping is fixed in the next expansion.

The Wizard Vault dailies...the system is great, but the rewards need to be tweaked or we are going to see ongoing inflation. GW2's money supply control and economic stability is one of the things that really helps it, especially since so many players dip in and out for long periods. In particular, and speaking as someone who is profiting from it, I think the infinite gold is a mistake.

Open world legendary armor is an unqualified win, I was finally able to make a piece of legendary armor! Super excited to keep making progress on that.

QoL and bugfix updates were amazing. They're what convinced me to buy the next expansion, which I had decided not to purchase about halfway through the Soto story.

The story writing was so incoherent, contradictory, full of dropped threads, and just plain bad that I actually decided not to purchase the next expansion. The other updates, particularly the ongoing fixes and QoL updates, won me back, but guys, the Soto story was a net negative. I would honestly rather not have a main story than have another story as bad as this one.  The environmental storytelling, the event chains, all of that was fine. The dialogue and plot of the main story instances were just...no. If this and Gyala Delve, which was similarly incoherent and immature, are the best that huge narrative team can come up with, then maybe it's time to play to your strengths and just focus on setting, environmental storytelling, and event chains as ways to convey the plot. Those things were fine, even good, in Soto, but ultimately couldn't overcome the story instances.

Edited May 24 by Gilosean.3805

[Manpag.6421]

8 hours ago, CoffeePlease.3082 said:

You're also disregarding the other part of my response where I highlighted that someone left me to fight entirely alone, making me the only vulnerable target for attacks. There are other numerous passive defensive/damage benefits to actually being in the fight vs being on a mount that don't happen by pressing your fireball/turtle slam skill.

I don't want to totally derail the thread, but I do want to point out that there is a difference between people fighting on skyscale vs people fighting on turtle. Both deal less damage than an unmounted player, but turtle objectively contributes more damage, holds aggro which skyscale won't if fireballing from high in the air, and has enough toughness to actually draw aggro, as well as doing CC. I always open mine to let people hop on and off for extra damage, or as an emergency refuge if they're low on health. There are some bosses where it's a drain, but some where it really shines by easily absorbing or avoiding attacks that can wipe an unprepared group of players. Sometimes, the contribution is just staying alive and continuing to chip at the mob until it dies, more people arrive, or dead players can WP back.

On topic, I think my favourite things about SotO are (ironically, given what I've just said) the enhanced skyscale masteries, and Skywatch Archipelago. The masteries were a really great idea, giving people an alternative option to unlock the mount with basic masteries, as well as giving new buffs and abilities to enhance both skyscale and griffon. Continuing that pattern in future expansions to refresh and update existing mounts would be a really good way to keep them all relevant and fun to use, rather than just a few.

Skywatch Archipelago is just a lot of fun; I love how diverse the biomes are, with a solid lore basis for them all existing in one place, and the navigation is difficult enough to be a challenge and encourage the new masteries, while not feeling like you're locked into skyscale all the time. I think the shape of the map helps navigation; you can see the islands sloping up above you from the start, and it's generally obvious how to traverse from one island to the next without there being a set order. For contrast, Amnytas lacks visual diversity, enemy diversity, looks like all the bastions should be on the same level when actually they ascend counter-clockwise so trying to get between them in the wrong order is frustrating and slow.

[Gilosean.3805]

6 minutes ago, Manpag.6421 said:

Skywatch Archipelago is just a lot of fun; I love how diverse the biomes are, with a solid lore basis for them all existing in one place, and the navigation is difficult enough to be a challenge and encourage the new masteries, while not feeling like you're locked into skyscale all the time. I think the shape of the map helps navigation; you can see the islands sloping up above you from the start, and it's generally obvious how to traverse from one island to the next without there being a set order. For contrast, Amnytas lacks visual diversity, enemy diversity, looks like all the bastions should be on the same level when actually they ascend counter-clockwise so trying to get between them in the wrong order is frustrating and slow.

Skywatch is a lot of fun, after you memorize the locations and directions of leylines, updrafts, and generally know how to get around. That's my main problem with it. It's a similar problem to some HoT maps, which require players to memorize unmarked or barely marked height changes to know which paths lead where. However, HoT maps do at least try to mark roads or tier transitions, which is slightly better.

Like many players, I hop around to lots of different maps and activities. A map that requires me to remember features that aren't on the map to get around is mostly just irritating.  I can't memorize all of these unmarked locations on all these maps! I basically need BlishHud to get around Soto maps in a reasonable time.

Now that updrafts and ley lines are navigational features, they really should be marked on the map and minimap in some way.  That would really make playing on Soto maps a lot more fun, IMO.

Edited May 24 by Gilosean.3805

[Manpag.6421]

11 minutes ago, Gilosean.3805 said:

Skywatch is a lot of fun, after you memorize the locations and directions of leylines, updrafts, and generally know how to get around.

Neither leylines nor updrafts are necessary for basic navigation though. Wizard's Ascent to Devastated Garenhoff is straightforward, and from there you can go up to Stargaze Ridge using latent magic or even springer, along to Rata Novus Prominade, and from there to Primal Maguuma which lets you go across to either lower points in the map or up to the higher points. That's what I like about it, that it encourages you to get those masteries to take shortcuts or open up the very highest points, but you aren't barred from any of the main areas or events with no masteries. In some respects, it's better designed than HoT maps which prevent players from participating in some of the meta events without certain masteries trained, when the only things locked here are a handful of chests/PoIs/mastery insights.

[Gilosean.3805]

6 minutes ago, Manpag.6421 said:

Neither leylines nor updrafts are necessary for basic navigation though. Wizard's Ascent to Devastated Garenhoff is straightforward, and from there you can go up to Stargaze Ridge using latent magic or even springer, along to Rata Novus Prominade, and from there to Primal Maguuma which lets you go across to either lower points in the map or up to the higher points. That's what I like about it, that it encourages you to get those masteries to take shortcuts or open up the very highest points, but you aren't barred from any of the main areas or events with no masteries. In some respects, it's better designed than HoT maps which prevent players from participating in some of the meta events without certain masteries trained, when the only things locked here are a handful of chests/PoIs/mastery insights.

Yes, you can explore the map without leylines and updrafts.

You usually can't get to other islands fast enough to catch an event without the leylines and updrafts. A huge part of GW2 is heading over to an event when you see one, and maps which make that difficult are going to be irritating maps.  Core maps handle this with wayponts. PoF maps handle this by being flat enough that players can easily to determine paths and zoom over. HoT maps don't do either of those and are constant source of lowkey complaints.  IMO Soto maps make the same mistake.

Edited May 24 by Gilosean.3805

[Manpag.6421]

1 minute ago, Gilosean.3805 said:

HoT maps don't do either of those and are constant source of lowkey complaints.  IMO Soto maps make the same mistake.

That's a fair point, though again I think Skywatch does it best of all the maps because all the major areas have a waypoint. I know Amnytas does that too, but the bastions are a lot bigger and more vertical in themselves, while the islands are smaller and more easily traversed. It does suck when they're contested though, putting an event practically on top of the Jade Mech Habitation Zone waypoint wasn't the wisest. But yes, the other maps do make the same mistakes as HoT, locking navigation and meta participation behind masteries.

I think it goes back to your earlier point:

57 minutes ago, Gilosean.3805 said:

Now that updrafts and ley lines are navigational features, they really should be marked on the map and minimap in some way.  That would really make playing on Soto maps a lot more fun, IMO.

I'd rather they kept them minimal, or distributed them more widely so that you don't need to memorise set routes and locations just to get around. I love how HoT maps have lots of updrafts so there are multiple viable ways up, and I prefer the scattered latent magic orbs because you can either follow a trail or just pick one or two up to give you a boost. Relying on a few updrafts/ley lines to get you somewhere ironically makes flying feel more prescriptive and on-rails than just traversing normally, which is why I rarely use ley lines in the first place.

[Rallicus.8367]

Love Wizard's Vault, much better than the daily login rewards. I also liked the elite specialization weapon unlock across specs; people might argue that it muddles the "identity" of the elite specs but I personally like it. I absolutely love the design of the Citadel of Zakiros; gave me Castle Zvahl from FFXI vibes for some reason, and other than the visual puke on the final boss I thought that the last meta was pretty decent. Finally, while you've long since lost me in regards to caring about the story -- that ship sailed mid-IBS -- I was momentarily pulled from my fugue state while spacing out talking to NPCs during the post-final boss credits, when I got to Zojja and finally got some closure as my Asuran main. It was a pretty nice, bittersweet moment.