Guild Wars 2

What is your biggest fears that may come with the next expansion?

For me it’s gotta be the fear of then trying to fix underwater combat and making the next elite specizalations underwater based. Just the thought scares me half to death and I’d end up leaving till the next expansion.

What about you

Making it like HoT instead of like the core game.

Spiders. My biggest fear will always be spiders.

I blame Tolkien for this.

There are a lot of lessons they needed to learn from HoT. My biggest fear is that they’ve not done so.

Continues emphasis on platforming and more multitiered maps

My biggest fear is that it’s going to be as expensive as HoT was. I love to support ANet, but they really haven’t added enough content for the price we paid….

A lackluster story with lackluster choices, just like HoT.

I’m a little afraid that the new elite specs are going to be even more powerful than the current ones. I trust ANet to do a good job balancing them with the current elite specs (if not the core specs), but if they are more powerful I don’t think it would be healthy for the game.

That and combat while gliding. Underwater fighting is already not super enjoyable for me. I can’t imagine fighting while gliding would be any better

eduardo.1436:

A lackluster story with lackluster choices, just like HoT.

The story is not lackluster at all, the problem of HoT story is not about quality, the problem of HoT story is that it lacks quantity leading to rushed plot on later parts. Quality wise HoT story exceed with flying colors with amazing mechanics, soundtrack and voice acting. All they need to do is increase quantity.

Blude.6812:

Making it like HoT instead of like the core game.

I’m sorry WHAT??!! PLZ NO. core game content is literally close your eyes press 1 and win. Seriously find any regular mob, press 1 and close your eyes. The game literally wins the fight for you. How is that fun?

My biggest fear is the lack of quantity, for me HoT was amazing quality wise. But lacks the quantity.

warbignime.4610:

Blude.6812:

Making it like HoT instead of like the core game.

I’m sorry WHAT??!! PLZ NO. core game content is literally close your eyes press 1 and win. Seriously find any regular mob, press 1 and close your eyes. The game literally wins the fight for you. How is that fun?

Some people find that more fun than actually having to fight mobs. I personally enjoy HoT maps more, now. But seeing as how I was still a relatively new player when I bought the expansion and first entered those maps I can understand why it would be off putting to a lot of players. There is just no ramp up in difficulty between central tyria and HoT difficulty. Due to people being able to faceroll mobs, up through champions, in central tyria for years, a lot of people got used to that and never learned how to properly fight mobs. Then they didn’t do so hot in HoT maps and blamed the maps’ difficulty instead of the ease of central tyria which never forced them to learn how to fight mobs. I hope that ANet learned from this, and that if LWS3 introduces new maps that will be the entry maps to the maps in the next expansion (a la Drytop and silverwastes were to HoT) that those maps will have increased difficulty compared to central tyria so the jump in difficulty between central tyria and the second expansion happens in steps instead of all at once.

warbignime.4610:

eduardo.1436:

A lackluster story with lackluster choices, just like HoT.

The story is not lackluster at all, the problem of HoT story is not about quality, the problem of HoT story is that it lacks quantity leading to rushed plot on later parts. Quality wise HoT story exceed with flying colors with amazing mechanics, soundtrack and voice acting. All they need to do is increase quantity.

Maybe lackluster was a wrong choice of word (haha choice )
but in all seriousness Anet said there were going to be choices that had impact just like PS…….and we only got 2 that didnt affect the story in any way and let’s be honest: I am not the only one that despised the whole dream deus ex machina (the concept is fine…..but the execution? we go from “we need to find its weakness” to “let’s enter his mind” thing)

More power creep. Imagine if the next set of elite specs are as far above HOT specs as HOT elites are above core.

Rhyse.8179:

More power creep. Imagine if the next set of elite specs are as far above HOT specs as HOT elites are above core.

I came here to say this. That is my biggest fear.

Power creep is a given I think. What I fear is that this creep is going to come at the expense of what’s already been in place. Like Anet gutting Thief’s Acro traitline and paywalling it behind Daredevil, or gutting Ele’s Signet auras and paywalling aura builds behind Tempest.

I fear they are not going to balance the classes to core. Instead of adding interesting game play that can be played fairly along side the older specs, I worry that their selling point yet again will be overpowered specializations or other unbalanced additions.

EVERYONE WANTS SIDE GRADES NOT UPGRADES!

That there’s a “next expansion”.

The seasonal model worked and worked well. The only reasons we had an expansion was to boost sales and cater to the crowd that expected expansions.

If we look at what we have so far from HoT, most if not all of it could have been put out as a normal update much like we had from season 1 & 2.

That the only “lesson learned” as mentioned in NCSoft quarterly report was that they should not predict so much revenue. My hope is that the lessons learned by ANet are more like:

• Making adventures peripheral content with desirable intrinsic rewards rather than a prominent vessel for horizontal progression.
• Making maps about more than just a few exploration objectives packaged around a map meta.
• Making map navigation more intuitive and accessible while still providing some platforming challenges for those who like such things.
• Maintaining a degree of challenge such as HoT offered in terms of mob ability, while avoiding as much as possible the issues of over-scaled events and packs of mobs just standing around as nothing more than a barrier to run around.
• Providing a currency purse.
• Though I’ve no idea how to do it, I hope that there will come a day when taxiing is not the be-all and end-all solution to mega-server problems, because it is at best a contributing cause to the problems, while only working some of the time and for some of the players.
• That there will be a greater emphasis on smaller scale content, as opposed to the almost ubiquitous emphasis on large-scale content seen in HoT.
• That maybe, just maybe, Anet will realize that FotM needs more than just reward and instability changes, it needs actual new encounters.

eduardo.1436:

warbignime.4610:

eduardo.1436:

A lackluster story with lackluster choices, just like HoT.

The story is not lackluster at all, the problem of HoT story is not about quality, the problem of HoT story is that it lacks quantity leading to rushed plot on later parts. Quality wise HoT story exceed with flying colors with amazing mechanics, soundtrack and voice acting. All they need to do is increase quantity.

Maybe lackluster was a wrong choice of word (haha choice )
but in all seriousness Anet said there were going to be choices that had impact just like PS…….and we only got 2 that didnt affect the story in any way and let’s be honest: I am not the only one that despised the whole dream deus ex machina (the concept is fine…..but the execution? we go from “we need to find its weakness” to “let’s enter his mind” thing)

This.

I enjoyed HoT and have sunk enough time into the expansion and the content to make it my absolutely worth my money. Many of the gripes of other players I did not share because I was simply enjoying myself even if I had to learn playing a completely new class and got wacked by HoT high difficulty (which i found very fun to deal with though I do understand when people who come home after a days work simply want to “relax”. On that front maybe arenanet can split the new content design wise so both groups can be satisfied). Maybe the way to go is to make open world content easy and instanced content challenging.

I was very let down by the story though, not idea/lore wise but execution wise. The second half of the HoT personal story definately felt rushed. I love that they kept with the achievements for the personal story since it added replayability, but next time they need to up their game as far as exectution and length (mostly length, the mission themselves were fun I’d say).

Class homogenization

I am all for new Elite Specs (even more if they ever get balanced) adding a different flavor to a class, but I really don’t want to see things like Warriors cloaking, Necromancers making portals, and Rangers with Alacrity.

That the damage from the previous expansion did too much to ANet’s reputation, and there is no coming back from it no matter what the next expansion is. In other words, the broken promises, the lack of overall content, the mindless nerfing to classes due to lack of testing, the decisions based on PvP in a PvE game, the attempt to sell Living World Content as an expansion, and the bugs (some of which are very much in the game still) will make anyone think twice before giving ANet another dime . . . and rightfully so.

And now that many players are jaded and gone, it’ll be as hard as kitten to convince them to come back.

That’s my biggest fear for the expansion: the previous one created a point of no return.

I’m afraid of more Hero Point Grind features. The Elite’s are nice but the HP grind to get it IMO was annoying and an experience I do not want repeated in the next expansion. Even after you get used to getting them with each character, it just becomes annoyingly repetitive.

That all the new zones will be like tangled depths.

Another metaevent-only expansion. Since launch we’ve not gotten anything but meta-focused maps. IMO maps should be more like Harathi Hinterlands: half of it is focused on the centaur shaman meta, while the other half is more focused on side stories and exploration. I even made a topic about it before HoT came out and was a bit disappointed when my hunch was mostly correct.

warbignime.4610:

Blude.6812:

Making it like HoT instead of like the core game.

I’m sorry WHAT??!! PLZ NO. core game content is literally close your eyes press 1 and win. Seriously find any regular mob, press 1 and close your eyes. The game literally wins the fight for you. How is that fun?

I like the core maps just as much, if not more, than the HoT maps. What I don’t want in the next expansion is a game where every map is a meta event. There’s less incentive for players to go off and find all the side story and bits of lore from all the other NPCs around. You feel compelled to constantly stick with the meta events so you don’t lose out.

HoT suffers horribly from a lack of side story, lore snippets, interesting dialogue outside of the main story itself and interesting things to see after you’ve had a small nostalgia hit from The Falls. Don’t get me wrong, the place is beautiful and the attention to detail on what’s been done is very good. The issue is it’s one dimensional. It’s all about getting to Mordremoth, or doing the map metas, which doesn’t do anything to flesh out the rest of the world.

So when I say I’d like the next expansion to be like the core game, I don’t mean in terms of gameplay; I mean in terms of story and exploration. You can still have HoT difficulty and you can still have multi-tiered maps (though a mix of both would be better – and if we went to the Desert I’m not sure a multi-tiered map seems appropriate), whilst also having the depth and interest that the core game’s maps bring to the table.

I want both nostalgia hits and new lore snippets and mysteries to discover. I don’t just want a rush to the end and the loot box.

On a slightly related note – I noticed that more events got dropped into HoT maps a while back. Veteran creatures and other mini events. It’s just “something to do” while you’re waiting for the meta. It would have been nicer to see side-story events pop up. For instance – you clear out the Colossal Vine in Verdant Brink, but afterwards a priory team decides to investigate the ruins and you learn more about who built them, and why. Perhaps the first time you complete the event you get a book as a reward which needs to be delivered to Gixx and then appears in the Durmand Priory library for you to read. This sort of stuff adds depth, gives the landscape more purpose, and gives you a link back to the core maps.

Biggest Fear? Wow’s that a tough one.

I mean, I know what I would like to see them provide, but it’s hard to say what I fear, as, who knows what they may have brewing, or what they will plan next.

Now I don’t know what my biggest fear is, but I will say my biggest hope is that they return to their roots and revisit this philosophy.

If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do, I played it multiple times because it was fun!

Mine would be like HoT… Releasing the expansion then going on holidays while the game was broken and stripping lots of dedicated players of their accomplishments.

This is the 2nd game company I’ve ever put money into but after all that’s happened, the money I’ve lost through building guilds before HoT and various factors it’s become the reason why I won’t spend another cent for any game.

That it won’t be for another 5 years.

But seriously?

Not enough maps.
That enjoyable pve content will yet again seemingly take the backburner to PVP seasons.

Other than that? Anything new sounds good for the most part. Would love some more elite specs, like a caster Rev for example. Would love for Mesmers to finally get dual pistols.

Also not big on the Jormag plot. The snow zones are pretty, but not pretty enough to be trapped in for an entire expansion. The zones should be reasonably contrasting in order to hold people’s attention.

If they are just going to add 2 mediocre armors set skins for expansion users because of clipping issues again. While it’s a legitimate concern, we are paying 50 dollars. Well at least we have another 10 more outfits and gliders in the gemstone fitting the theme of the new expansion.

I don’t really have any fears about another expansion but I sure as heck will not be rushing to buy it. Regardless of the pre-order incentives/bribes I will be waiting until the dust settles and there is an accurate picture of how it plays. And then I’ll seek out a discounted copy. If, as we expect, it comes with “all the previous games and expansions” then I may find it hard to add it to my account rather than using it to start a whole shiny new account, in the same way that I was never happy that adding a second GW1 game to the account gave you fewer new char slots that using it standalone.

Sylent.3165:

What is your biggest fears that may come with the next expansion?

For me it’s gotta be the fear of then trying to fix underwater combat and making the next elite specizalations underwater based. Just the thought scares me half to death and I’d end up leaving till the next expansion.

What about you

My main fear is that it’ll be even more P2W than HoT, offer even less content and still cost full price.

My biggest fear? That the community will get worse with every expansion… which it will so…not fear but reality.

Rushed out Story like the last Story Chapter in HoT, and cut Content like the Nigthmare Court Content for HoT.

You have Guys working on the next Expansion now. Take your Time and flesh out the Story. You improved on Storytelling with HoT ( still average ), improve more and give the Story the quantity it needs. Don’t Rush Parts of the Story just to get it done. Rushing out will decrease the overall Quality.

Lack of solo-ability.

I wouldn’t say I have ‘worries’ or ‘fears’ about the next expansion (I save those for RL things), just concerns:

- Abbreviated/rushed story
- Slowness of addressing bugs, particularly those that affect major parts of the expansion (Hearts and Minds, I’m looking at you)
- More unbalanced adventures which are requirements for collections/masteries
- A repeat of the navigational nightmare that’s Tangled Depths
- Palador’s concern that they’ve not learned where they went wrong with HoT; I’d like to think they have after the April patch.

None of it keeps me awake at night but it does give me an uneasy feeling when I think about the next expansion.

Pay $50 you get 4 sets of ugly weapon skins and the rest 10+ sets + other skins are locked behind BLC.

After all the forum hate because of HoT my biggest fear is that anet makes the next expansion faceroll easy and boring as hell.

Probably what they’re gonna do with the new elite specs:

- Will they let us equip a new type of weapon again? I somehow don’t want every profession to be able to use everything…

- (Biggest fear) Will they nerf the current elites, since they’re so good, to force us to play the new ones?

- (Minor but real) Will they use new elite icons again on the players’ nameplates? Whilst it shouldn’t be an issue for the vets, it’s gonna confuse the new players even more (they would have to learn to identify 27 icons – sic – just to know their opponent’s class in PvP/WvW).

- Probably more…

Sylent.3165:

What is your biggest fears that may come with the next expansion?

For me it’s gotta be the fear of then trying to fix underwater combat and making the next elite specizalations underwater based. Just the thought scares me half to death and I’d end up leaving till the next expansion.

What about you

Think of underwater combat as a space battle the only difference is being able to go to the top of the water but deeper water u fight in every direction. I personally think underwater combat is one of the best ideas in GW2, because of that reason

IndigoSundown.5419:

That the only “lesson learned” as mentioned in NCSoft quarterly report was that they should not predict so much revenue. My hope is that the lessons learned by ANet are more like:

• Making adventures peripheral content with desirable intrinsic rewards rather than a prominent vessel for horizontal progression.
• Making maps about more than just a few exploration objectives packaged around a map meta.
• Making map navigation more intuitive and accessible while still providing some platforming challenges for those who like such things.
• Maintaining a degree of challenge such as HoT offered in terms of mob ability, while avoiding as much as possible the issues of over-scaled events and packs of mobs just standing around as nothing more than a barrier to run around.
• Providing a currency purse.
• Though I’ve no idea how to do it, I hope that there will come a day when taxiing is not the be-all and end-all solution to mega-server problems, because it is at best a contributing cause to the problems, while only working some of the time and for some of the players.
• That there will be a greater emphasis on smaller scale content, as opposed to the almost ubiquitous emphasis on large-scale content seen in HoT.
• That maybe, just maybe, Anet will realize that FotM needs more than just reward and instability changes, it needs actual new encounters.

<3

I appreciate that you frame this in a more positive way. As a design team, ANet is still learning, and HoT was something that may have been overly ambitious for them, which inflicted a large number of oversights in design. So instead of ‘fear’ of the next expansion, let’s hope ANet continues to learn from their current development hurdles.

Sylent.3165:

For me it’s gotta be the fear of then trying to fix underwater combat and making the next elite specizalations underwater based. Just the thought scares me half to death and I’d end up leaving till the next expansion.

To be honest that sounds pretty good.

I would say, though, that I would be surprised if any elite specs would be designed to only work underwater. Perhaps one trait from the minor, major and grandmaster lines could be underwater-centric. A big underwater revamp makes sense at some point in the game’s life.

Why would you just assume that because they try to fix underwater combat that it’ll automatically turn out to be bad?

cptaylor.2670:

Also not big on the Jormag plot. The snow zones are pretty, but not pretty enough to be trapped in for an entire expansion. The zones should be reasonably contrasting in order to hold people’s attention.

This is suddenly my biggest fear. I’m scared they may focus the next expansion on Jormag. I will have to listen to that butchered pronunciation for an entire expansion. Legions of GEORmags, everywhere.

Also, if Claw of GEORmag is any indication, the fears will be constant and applied liberally.

Making even more complicated maps like HoT, further limiting the way we can set up our toons’ builds, and making an even more ridiculous story. Just finished the Verdant Brink portion of the HoT story and so far…not a fan.

My biggest fear? Is that the next “expansion” will be just another cluttered-up meta-map in the tradition of Silverwastes/Dry-Top/HoT, instead of something that feels like an actual new big open world to explore.

Rauderi.8706:

cptaylor.2670:

Also not big on the Jormag plot. The snow zones are pretty, but not pretty enough to be trapped in for an entire expansion. The zones should be reasonably contrasting in order to hold people’s attention.

This is suddenly my biggest fear. I’m scared they may focus the next expansion on Jormag. I will have to listen to that butchered pronunciation for an entire expansion. Legions of GEORmags, everywhere.

Also, if Claw of GEORmag is any indication, the fears will be constant and applied liberally.

Haha, yeah, isn’t it technically supposed to be “Yor-mag”? Plenty of other Norn character and place names with “j” in them have it pronounced correctly. But not the big, bad dragon.

My biggest fear has already been announced… that they are doing another expansion instead of returning to the free content model that existed before HoT.

Expansions are antiques of a bygone era. Let’s allow them to die peacefully rather than continue to march their stinking corpse out to make a quick buck off of the players who refuse to allow progress.

power creep

…

Rhyse.8179:

More power creep.

Seconding this. Any additional power creep at this point would be completely detrimental to my enjoyment of the game.

That I will no longer be playing. I am logging in much less already.