The way SotO was released was terrible - it's actually good and a real expac now

[Pifil.5193]

20 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Yes they did.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/949078163437273140/1265872107540320257/image.png?ex=66a316c5&is=66a1c545&hm=bb8e039e779719b3c204498dfdd5195d5777e5d36239f3e2a8f5556ec5fd1084&

 

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/949078163437273140/1265872107905093705/image.png?ex=66a316c5&is=66a1c545&hm=d8c294befda68ed80ca77238413e21bd02768ceda6c4f083dcfa4b637f41d67d&

OK, so I'm not seeing any evidence that anyone "blindly believed" anything there.

Quote

Spoilers: selling minis isn't some untapped gold mine.

Of course they're not, that's why they give you the tools to see profits both by Buy Orders (Instant Sell) and Sell Orders (Listings). Sell Orders are always a risk that's nothing to do with Fast farming.

Edit: BTW the huge Zizel price was due to a bug on the static charge page. The index on the page was referencing the wrong ID, I let them know last night and this morning they told me that it'll be fixed in the next fast-API update, pretty amazing turn around.

It just affected that page though, the Meta profit calculations were good (fast farming recommends crafting and selling one of the exotic Storm's Eye Weapons, not the mini).

Edited July 26 by Pifil.5193

[ShatteredStars.6548]

On 7/23/2024 at 5:10 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

The main issues with SotO might have been made more visible due to repackaging, but in truth are primarily consequences of design choices Anet should have known for years to avoid. This expansion would have been bad even if it was released in a single package.

Don't really know what you said here, so i can't respond.

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

Don't really know what you said here, so i can't respond.

My point was the explaining the issues by the fact this expac model was new, and thus hoping it will be better once they catch their stride is naive. Most issues they've had (like the poor storywriting) had nothing to do with the model they chose.

SotO is not bad because it was their first miniexpansion. It's bad because it was shoddy work done with minimal resources according to not well thought out design goals. Any lesson they could learn from that is something they should have known before that already.

[Sugar Min.5834]

 

On 7/20/2024 at 7:06 AM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Releasing a basically "alpha" version of your expac with none of the good content, which meant the majority of people immediately quit the game.

All of my friends were excited(long time GW2 players, too!) then quit the game after how buggy it was, and how bad all the content was.
~  SNIP  ~

Why would you take all the hype/marketing used on your expansion, and then just flush it down the toilet?

Is this same mistake going to happen with janthir?

Isn't Janthir Wilds still done by the same team? What do you expect?

Edited July 26 by Sugar Min.5834

[Zok.4956]

On 7/21/2024 at 10:49 PM, Randulf.7614 said:

What was wrong with the armour? 

The armor itself is a matter of taste. But the expansion relied too heavily on grinding for the armor to make the expansion sufficiently attractive to players and then neglected other areas.

[Zok.4956]

On 7/23/2024 at 1:31 AM, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

SotO was anet's first mini expac with the new release model, there was always going to be issues that they had to learn from, they even said it in a blog a month or ago or so.

Anet is not a startup that has never released expansions (or smaller content updates), but has been doing so for a good 10 years. Resource planning, planning a story arc versus effort, etc. should be second nature by now. 

[Randulf.7614]

16 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

The armor itself is a matter of taste. But the expansion relied too heavily on grinding for the armor to make the expansion sufficiently attractive to players and then neglected other areas.

I agree with that

[Zok.4956]

On 7/23/2024 at 1:41 AM, ShatteredStars.6548 said:

when you have an old game and have all this stuff in it, there's going to be bugs,  some people think it's easy to test things and find bugs, it's not that simple.

If you develop and change a game (or software in general) over the years and do not take sufficient care of restructuring/refactoring and bug fixes in a timely manner, but instead just add new things or workarounds, you accumulate more and more so-called "technical debt" and it becomes more and more difficult and time-consuming over time.

But you still have to do it.

[Cuks.8241]

I have been heavily criticising Soto basically from the start. I've been told I should wait until we have full release.

Well Soto is one of the lowest quality piece of content this game has in pretty much all departments. It's generally shoddy, bland and one big rehash. It feels like they forgot all the improvements they made to game content with each release in the past, like everyone working on this game is completely new, don't really understand gw2 and are reinventing the wheel.

Rifts are just bad (really bad) and convergences are not much better. It's what I called rush content. Rush, rush, rush without any substance.

Story started promising and just completely crashed from Inner Nayos onwards. It is not really a matter of not having enough time. It's just unimaginative and each release downplays or just plain forgets half of the stuff from previous release.

Story missions... let's just forget about story missions. Everything from combat encounters to story delivery to just overall setting and scale... we will pretend they don't exist.

We got 2 strikes and one is really bad. It's even worse than some IBS strikes. Who designed Dagda? It can't be the same developers that gave us EOD strikes.

Maps and metas are playable. But far from the top quality. I don't play them anymore and have no motivation to ever return to them. Maybe the last meta, that one at least has some mechanics although it's nothing to write home about.

New weapons and weapon mastery are ok. It adds variety, I don't hate it. 

We got huge power creep during the expansion which is very worrisome and degrades older content - the good content.

I do appreciate all the qol and general improvements to the base game. This is by far the biggest upside from EOD onwards and gives me hope for the game. We got some stuff I never thought we will (UI rework please). 

[illuminati.8453]

On 7/26/2024 at 4:51 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

SotO is not bad because it was their first miniexpansion. It's bad because it was shoddy work done with minimal resources according to not well thought out design goals. Any lesson they could learn from that is something they should have known before that already.

This is spot on.  I don't mind the delivery change, but I absolutely mind that SoTo was poor story with fill up event bars for 'content'. 

[Gop.8713]

The way I see the new expac release system is as a de facto subscription model. An extremely inexpensive subscription model. And if you don't like what the expac offers? Then don't pay the subscription, keep playing the game you originally paid for and accrue some qol/polish benefits from the expac anyway. Anything "new" the expacs introduce is kind of a meh at this point, to me . . .

[Kozumi.5816]

3 hours ago, illuminati.8453 said:

This is spot on.  I don't mind the delivery change, but I absolutely mind that SoTo was poor story with fill up event bars for 'content'. 

I don't. I think they should spend as little time as possible on story, as it's content you do once for 15-25m then never again.

The focus on story instances is what made the games end game content suffer so much for the first 10 years of it's life span, ESPECIALLY LS4.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

On 7/28/2024 at 8:30 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

I don't. I think they should spend as little time as possible on story, as it's content you do once for 15-25m then never again.

The focus on story instances is what made the games end game content suffer so much for the first 10 years of it's life span, ESPECIALLY LS4.

I don't think anyone who says this about LW4 can be taken seriously. The problem with SotO is that there wasn't ENOUGH story.

[Kozumi.5816]

13 hours ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

The problem with SotO is that there wasn't ENOUGH story.

Yes, because 15 minutes of game play you do once and then never again would've made SotO such a better expansion.

Not having metas that people do 10 years into the games life span like HoT. HoT is a bad expansion, because it has bad story, right?

Edited July 31 by Kozumi.5816

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Yes, because 15 minutes of game play you do once and then never again would've made SotO such a better expansion.

Not having metas that people do 10 years into the games life span like HoT. HoT is a bad expansion, because it has bad story, right?

You're partially right. SotO is so bad because all its elements are bad, not just story. Its only saving grace is the Obsidian Armor, but that alone is not enough to carry an expansion. Especially since the implementation of acquisition model for this armor was extremely bland even if we consider it's an OW set.

Still, a good story can do a lot about improving an opinion about the content. LS4, which you so complain about, is generally considered to be one of the high points for GW2, and the primary reason for that is the story. And HoT story you seem to dislike is still way above SotO patches level. And notice, that PoF isn't considered to be SotO level of bad even though its metas are practically nonexistent and likely below of what SotO offers.

HoT is a good expansion not just because of metas, but because of a lot of elements that were good, or at least decent. And because its weaker parts were smoothed over with time (first with the initial rework, then due to mounts and power creep).

[fourhim.3584]

To me, personally, the best thing about SOTO was it let me get the Skyscale in less than a week.  In EVERY other area, again in my opinion, it was definitely the weakest expansion, and I even like every Living Season better.  It may have suffered from a lack of Dragons and Gods, for a change.  But it does not inspire me for Janthir 😞

[Fipmip.7219]

am i the only one that doesnt mind "fill up event bar" as a story step? i see it as something they tack on to the story rather than a replacement. ofc the story itself was lackluster which kind of soured the whole thing, but the concept of doing metas as a story step is fine by me, as it gives me a window to check out some of the metas. it also tells me when it would be a good time to do the map meta in the spot it would have the most continuity with the story.

[Nash.2681]

6 hours ago, Fipmip.7219 said:

am i the only one that doesnt mind "fill up event bar" as a story step? i see it as something they tack on to the story rather than a replacement. ofc the story itself was lackluster which kind of soured the whole thing, but the concept of doing metas as a story step is fine by me, as it gives me a window to check out some of the metas. it also tells me when it would be a good time to do the map meta in the spot it would have the most continuity with the story.

Can only speak for myself, but to me it's the very contrary. When there's a new area, I usually go there and stray away from the main story to explore for a certain extend on my own. This includes doing events, leveling masteries, completing a significant part of the map, especially mastery points. If I then decide to take the next story steps and after endless talking all I get is "congratulations, you may now do the same events again you did for the last few hours of playing anyway", it sucks. Same goes for including metas. When it comes to the story, I want to play it at my own pace, at my own time. Being dependant of meta events is a no go for me. If I want to play a meta, I do so. I'm also fine with scheduling my game time for that. But if I want to play my personal story, leave me alone with this. Also wondering which genious thought it's a good idea to add an achievement for finishing the Eparch meta before doing the respective story.

So tl;dr: can't say you're alone since I can't know, but I definetly feel the opposite.

[Kozumi.5816]

17 hours ago, Fipmip.7219 said:

am i the only one that doesnt mind "fill up event bar" as a story step? i see it as something they tack on to the story rather than a replacement. ofc the story itself was lackluster which kind of soured the whole thing, but the concept of doing metas as a story step is fine by me, as it gives me a window to check out some of the metas. it also tells me when it would be a good time to do the map meta in the spot it would have the most continuity with the story.

I prefer it, because they shouldn't spend any dev time on story at all.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

On 7/31/2024 at 2:41 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Yes, because 15 minutes of game play you do once and then never again would've made SotO such a better expansion.

Not having metas that people do 10 years into the games life span like HoT. HoT is a bad expansion, because it has bad story, right?

HoT was good expansion with a good story. The metas in SotO are fine, too.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

5 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

I prefer it, because they shouldn't spend any dev time on story at all.

So you want the game to die. No story means no attachment to what is going on in the world. You don't know how franchises work, so what you say can be taken with a grain of salt.

[Perisemiotics.4579]

On 7/21/2024 at 11:24 AM, Omega.6801 said:

I've been an investeed player since launch; 20k+ hours played, 45k+ AP, did Raids, did PvP, did WvW, did almost everything PvE. I was there when the game was at its peak (imho) with PoF to Drizzlewood, I was there when the game was at its (again imho) lowest, dev being laid off, the abandonment of WvW and PvP, Kourna, IBS, DRMs and so on.

but... Kourna and IBS were also within the timeframe you consider the "peak"

[Eekasqueak.7850]

2 minutes ago, Perisemiotics.4579 said:

but... Kourna and IBS were also within the timeframe you consider the "peak"

IBS was good up until champions imo. 

[Perisemiotics.4579]

Just now, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

IBS was good up until champions imo. 

Absolutely, the first three maps (I guess the only "maps"of IBS really, lol) are still my faves - the Saga just felt like the story had the old gravity and style of GW 1 again, until...

[Jumpin Lumpix.6108]

On 7/19/2024 at 7:06 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

Releasing a basically "alpha" version of your expac with none of the good content, which meant the majority of people immediately quit the game.

All of my friends were excited(long time GW2 players, too!) then quit the game after how buggy it was, and how bad all the content was.

Rifts were the worst content in the universe, convergences are fun and good.
The two first metas were as bad as core world bosses, the new metas are good.

You couldn't even get legendary armor until months in(6+?)

 

Why would you take all the hype/marketing used on your expansion, and then just flush it down the toilet?

Is this same mistake going to happen with janthir?

I'm wary of buying janthir after SoTo and ive played guild wars for 20 years...  I thought cantha and path of fire were the best expansions

Edited August 5 by Jumpin Lumpix.6108