Long Term Player: Concerns

[Excell.1042]

I've been contemplating making this post, as it would seem nitpicky and generally alot of players seem to be positive about PoF and what it offers to the game, and while I can say that PoF is a high-quality expansion with alot of heart into it, to me, a players with 32.5k AP and a ton of hours (Which I dont mention because of inevitable reactions of: "Lel you have that many hours, this game is not for you") I want to state some of my concerns.

Firstly, i've always been fine with what Living World Season 3 offered, a new map every 2-3 months, additional fractals and pvp maps, story, I found that a plethora of content being put into the game, and even though I stress that I feel like there's not enough replay value in LW3 maps, im fine with this as they are the "butter" of gw2 to me.

My main gripe currently is the bread: POF, an expansion pack advertised as "All about content" yet, offering me very little in terms of replay value.

1. Map Metas

In core we got a load of maps that were full of things to see an explore, filled with stunning vistas, tasks, and jumping puzzles, aswell as mini dungeons, yet, these maps, most players didnt touch much after they finished completing them; there was no incentive beyond some large world bosses that dropped loot, which people mostly did in World Boss Trains.

Since season 1 Arena-Net has been showing their overall prowess in making large map-wide events, there have been many memorable content drops that players who used to play at that point have been vocal about, a few come to the top of my head: Watchwork Invasions, Tower of Nightmares, Marionette, Battle for LA, Tequatl (Revamp) and Tripple Trouble. Yet, here, the lack was always that the content got removed swiftly, and it added little to the existing gameworld (No new maps)

In season 2 Anet showed us how great they can actually be at making maps feel dynamic and fun, adding Dry Top and its tiers, where the entire map works together to gain the highest possible tier, to then get the highest rewards out of the sandstorm. Then later they blew us away with Silverwastes which still stands as one of the best maps ever introduced to gw2 for its replayable value, its unique armor set, and its gold to hour ratio.

Queu HoT. It added four maps, each one having its own meta event tied to it, and each were very thrilling to play through (Remember your first Tarir? or Chak Gerent?) Cant tell me that Dragon's Stand is not epic. - Yet, saddly, with this came the problem that the maps had locked off PoI's and Vista's, making it harder to attain 100% completion.

Season 3 added new maps every 2-3 months, it expanded the game world significantly and served the purpose of keeping GW2 fresh in our mind, the entire content schedule turned into LW>Expansion>Lw>Expansion>LW> Expansion. While the maps had less going on in the terms of group content, they still served their purpose, including the fact that each living world episode added a new legendary weapon, and a fractal, or pvp map at occasion.

Then comes POF, 5 new maps, all centered around the Crystal Desert and Elona, the most memorable region in the franchise, with various iconic Landmarks like Augury Rock, the Temple of Ascencion, the Tomb of Primeval Kings, Glints Lair, Elona Reach, Thirsty River, the Mouth of Torment, the Bone Palace, and Vabbi. All of these had a lot of potential, and they are stunning areas to visit in the game. Yet.. as beautiful as they are.. all they offer is looking at them, walking inside them to get a Point of Interest or a Vista, and running off to the next beautiful landmark, maybe do a generic escort event around them, or an undertuned small event that doesnt reward anything that could be memorable, I, as a lover of GW2 found this a major dissapointment, we could've had some interesting things going on here, yet, it seemed because of the 15 minute gate on some Tarir PoIs, and having to dedicate an hour to get DS done, means that there will be none of that in POF, because we need to get that 100% map completion, dont we?

2.CollectionsRemember Silverwastes and it's Carapace and Luminescent armor? The time you spent getting it, the times you see a player around with a full set and knowing they've done quite a few silverwastes to get that? What about your friend with that Ambrite longsword, that you know has played Dry Top to unlock the recipe and craft it? What about your friend who is absolutely nuts and got the Mini Chak Gerent? I think its fair to say that its cool to look at them and know what type of content has to be done to obtain it, that you know that people have invested time into a certain zone or map, and most likely know about it.

POF offers almost none of this, you get your first set of armor via doing the story, then you can buy recipes and get a slightly modified set. After that, you can buy the recipes and craft at your hearts content, having to do very little in terms of events in any zone. You can say this about most of the armor/weapons in POF aside from the Funerary Armor and Funerary weapons, and even then, there's no collections for most of them, for those players dedicated enough to wanting to obtain them.

Sure, its nice we have trade contracts, but we've nothing to spend it on. My ideal world would be having more currencies for different maps. Dedicated rewards are fun, and diserve their own dedicated content. Yet, I understand that for some its aggrivating to spend more than 3 hours in the same maps.

Also, its important to give incentives to playing content, gold, for me, personally isnt that big of an incentive, as I feel theres different ways to attain it, I feel therefore that the removal of collections was a bad idea. I finished my achievements in Crystal Oasis today, and I see very little reason to ever go back there, beyond legendary bounties for funerary weapons.

Lastly, i'd like to state I finished all the HOT collections, most of them at launch, full bladed armor took me 2 weeks, tarir weapons and backpiece took a month, chak weapons took an additional month, I cant comment on Leystone armor as it was a low drop rate, and at this point I had to drop HOT and play some other content for a little while, to later come back (A month before POF) to finish the Machined Weapon collections, the Leystone Armor, and the "Great Reformer", and I had a blast doing it. Also, dont forget you got 1 piece of free armor and 1 free weapon every story piece, aswell as having pvp reward tracks to get an aditional weapon/armor, so I dont think stating "Yeah but its so much work to get skin (x) is fair, you had one freebie, and it would take you half a day to a day to get another one, or you could've just replayed a bit of the story.

3.AdventuresThis one is nitpicky, as I know alot of people dont like adventures, I will keep it very short therefore, Guildwars 1 had challenge missions that gave rewards to the highest ranking players of the day, week, and month, they were a competitive type of PVE, something Guild Wars 2 picked up on in the form of adventures. In HOT we saw a large variety of them (15 in total), yet, people didnt like them because of the fact that masteries were tied to them, and the different levels of difficulty. I was expecting a slightly changed system, more akin to GW1's challenge missions, yet, found myself in a very sour position when I found out all the adventures in POF were relating to riding your mount around the zones. As if we're already not doing that enough.

Lastly, i'd like to say to anyone who is going to comment on this post with "You rushed there is plenty to do"- I spent 5 days on the story, 1 day per map, I did events, unlocked my mount masteries without boosters, I spent tons of hours running around with maxed out masteries, not gaining experience towards the next mount because I simply didnt unlock them. I got 100% on every map, did a majority of events, did the odd bounty, did the races (Which no people are play), and overall had alot of fun finding the secrets. Yesterday I went back to Crystal Oasis and started doing the achievements, this includes every achievement, even the treassure hunter ones, without guide. Today I worked on the Desert Highlands achievements, yet got bored halfway along because of the lack of anything else to do in this expac but exploration. The only way to reduce the time I played this even more was to slow-walk to every bleached bone and lost dwarven chest.

POF in my opinion is a concerning example of what an expansion should be, it's nice for a casual player who can sink maybe an hour into it, but to a mono-gamer like me who has been with this franchise for years, its simply not enough, should LWS4 be akin to what LWS3 was, I dont envision myself able to stick for another 2 years.

I'd love to hear from you guys wether im over-reacting, or if you feel the same, that mostly counts towards veteran players , who play this game as main-stay.

[Excell.1042]

Also! Didnt get the Griffon yet, as im working on their collections cassualy aswell.

[therapite.3645]

I'd like to state that I don't think you're being as nitpicky as you think. You're thinking of how you like to play long term and how the game will be enjoyable for you in a year or two in a region that you love. I don't think that's unreasonable, honestly, and would agree with you for some of the things that you've presented. I myself have just finished the story and am now free to work on doing it on alts and doing map completion bits and seeing what there is to see in the areas since I have the story finished up on my main.

Honestly, I'd like to hope that this area is a canvas for them to add in new and enriching things for the future. I mean, the griffon is hidden so who is to say that there aren't other undiscovered things out there that people haven't found yet? Bounties exist as things to do in place of meta events, and honestly, I love that idea since I don't need to wait for hours just to get into something like Dragon Stand to get currency or map completion or whatever.

Maybe in the future, they will put in things that you like to see. New adventures, or new events, new armor sets or achievements. Maybe the living story is going to build on the maps that exist already instead of giving us entirely new ones, or maybe it'll do both. For right now, I just wanted to say that your concerns are more valid than you think and that you're not alone. Definitely, make suggestions since it means so much to you and I think it shows clearly that you love this game and the people who make it. Happy gaming! :)