Guild Wars 2

I know that people did not Like HoT, but the one thing I felt HoT did right was the ways to traverse the maps. Mushrooms,gliding,updrafts ect ect. But in PoF none of that exists, which basically makes HoT completely irrelevent by all means. It also enforces the use of mounts which is a turn off, I dont like mounts and I feel kind of slighted. I mean I bought the last expansion yea? Cant I have alternative means to travel the map, so if I dont like maps I can still do the content but do it how I like?

I never was under the assumption the HoT masteries would be the way we traveled the new zones, but as an alternative method so you dont HAVE to use mounts. This would make it so like they said, you dont need to buy HoT unless you dont wana use the mounts. Offering the people who own it and have stuck with them through all the kitten, still able to use all the time sinks we have unlocked. It also begs the question of “When the new expansion comes out after PoF will mounts be left in the dust?”. What next snow boarding? Come on arena-net you could of at least offered some of us who liked HoT something, but as it stands all I see is “The Mount expansion”. The eliet specs seem meh in most cases, with some having some cool stuff but lacking in some forms. But they are no where near as exciting as the HoT ones were, and that probably has to do with them moving away from the class’s niche. You should be building upon class mechanics not destroying them, or blatantly removing them.

But the specs look good so they will be why I play, but once I do everything there is to do it will be hard to stay in the content. You talk about the Joy of movement, yet you restricted us by removing previous ways to traverse the terrain. One could argue its due to us being in a desert, and they might be right. However Deserts are windy as hell, so updrafts should still exist. Mushrooms can still grow, and you even put the mushrooms and updraft in a snowy area where they would not be as.. prevalent. Plus to top all of that off you could still have Leyline gliding which again could be use to offer, a different way of travel.

Exactly, mounts are huge turn off for me as well, the main issue seems to be that mounts will be tools to play PoF so without mounts you simply can’t play. I don’t like how mounts are controlled (it’s reallly hard to move around) and move, many people have motion sickness when riding these raptor mounts, sadly we could not see other mounts.

Also I find it really sad and weird there is no transition between EXPANSION, just like Thornwolf said, there should be some updrafts and mushrooms around.

Anet you seem not to care so much about older players… sometimes you share some content for free and make angry older players who just feed you and dont get anything in exchange, other times people expect HoT to be free but you say ‘no no no no, that’s not what we said’ so HoT maps probably will be empty, and you cant travel in the jungle alone :o So maybe this time make an exception from your ‘Dont care rule’ and add content from HoT to PoF, mushrooms, updrafts, nunoch. HoT is not only about gliding and you will probably let ride mounts everywhere so it seems not fair.

Well, I for one, don’t like the entire organization of HoT (multi-level jungle growth) that pretty much demanded the stupid mushrooms and updrafts to get anywhere. I do like the gliding but you can keep those other means of transportation. As for the mounts in PoF, for me it’s too early to really tell. I did enjoy the long jumping of the raptor mount and that fact that it ran faster than my character can.

As with the HoT demos of several years ago, I feel that it’s really too early to be certain of much regarding how I will like PoF. Back during the HoT demos I thought I’d like HoT. Not till I had played there for some time did I grow to really dislike it.

I actually like the mounts, because i have a ton of characters and if i want to do one of those old school quests, i have to creep through the whole world exploration again, which is rather tedious to me.

The point is Im asking for other means of transportation outside of mounts, As an alternative to using mounts IF I DONT WANT TO. We already bought one expansion, did masteries and ect I should not have to SKIP the whole expansion because I dont like mounts. That is bad business, and just an utter disregard for the people who bought the previous product.

Im not asking for it to be required, but for it to be an option for those of us who want to do the content (outside of story) without mounts. I should be able to explore the map anyway I want, and use the “Joy of Movement” I prefer.

You bought HoT and got HoT masteries that work in HoT area. HoT and PoF are different products, with different areas built for different means of transport. If you do not like anything in PoF you are not forced to buy it, you can always return to the HoT maps and play there, nobody is closing down HoT areas just because new expansion gets released.

You can of course use gliding in PoF maps too. There are no updrafts and everything can be reached without it so it is mostly about chilling and looking around after jump. So if you want to fly, just climb on top of building and mountain and go for it! Nothing in PoF maps stops you from doing that.

What you are basically asking is to make PoF expand only on the HoT, so it is bought by only those who own HoT, have finished everything in HoT and in general enjoy HoT content. That is really bad business plan, as it cuts down your potential customers to fraction of total playerbase. There are huge number of players who do not own HoT, do not plan to buy it, do not like HoT maps and have never finished HoT masteries. Making each new expansion based on the earlier, failed experiment, would just show developers are unable to learn previous mistakes.

I am happy to see they have managed to leave HoT disaster behind and are now able to provide content for those players too, who do not enjoy HoT design, instead of simply ignoring them.

I just want to point out to you that…you did a bit of nay saying in regards to HoT prior to that expansion releasing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Content-that-is-actually-worth-while-whut

But then you did turn around and start saying that it was better than the core game and praising it a bit more than you had prior to actually playing it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Did-we-get-our-bang-for-our-buck

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Heart-of-Thorns-Killed-My-Interest-in-GW2/6334500

Now I’m not saying you were saying it would be absolutely terrible and I’m not saying you now think it is perfect, I’m simply saying that you very clearly have a habit of jumping to conclusions before having sufficient knowledge/evidence to appropriately support those conclusions.

You even bashed on Gliding a bit, saying it was just something easy to pull from Archeage, yet now you’re all about gliding.

Maybe just…give it some time and actually experience the expansion before you start believing that you’re going to be bothered by some feature it is adding and then suddenly decide that you love it? Its amazing what actually fully experiencing something does to your perspective of it.

I believe this is the result of Anet walking the “new expansion” line while trying to bring in fresh blood.

• New players don’t want to lay out money for xpac 1 &2 and possibly LS seasons. They probably want the latest version to play now with friends. Does Anet ruin their feeling of newness by making them feel like they totally missed out by not buying HoT? Filling PoF maps with HoT masteries would make a new player feel behind. If a new person decides they love the game, maybe they’ll buy more content later but they shouldn’t feel pressured to do it before having fun in the new zones.
• There is a group of folks who hated HoT (or didn’t buy it) and want nothing to do with it. They don’t want to see any signs of HoT masteries and they don’t want to feel “forced” to go back to those maps and do stuff they didn’t like or didn’t play from xpac 1.
• If Anet accomodates the vet players by re-using lots of HoT masteries, they alienate the aforementioned non-HoT players. Perhaps Anet can weave in a few uses of HoT masteries as optional alternatives here-and-there, but they really are trying to keep separate the paid portions of the game.

Personally, I feel I benefited from the HoT masteries and I continue to love gliding throughout the game. I used gliding to get around to several difficult-to-reach places in the PoF demo. I explored a good portion of the demo on foot, too. I don’t feel chained to using mounts but I see their potential usefulness as another mastery option.

Thornwolf.9721:

I know that people did not Like HoT, but the one thing I felt HoT did right was the ways to traverse the maps. Mushrooms,gliding,updrafts ect ect. But in PoF none of that exists, which basically makes HoT completely irrelevent by all means. It also enforces the use of mounts which is a turn off, I dont like mounts and I feel kind of slighted. I mean I bought the last expansion yea? Cant I have alternative means to travel the map, so if I dont like maps I can still do the content but do it how I like?

To be honest, you do somewhat contradict yourself in this first paragraph. You claim to like how transport was done in HoTS, but feel that you’ve been slighted with the introduction of mounts, but in both cases, they are simply a means traversing the map that people may or may not like. If someone doesn’t like gliding, but loves mounts, then is their argument not going to be precisely the same as yours, only reversed? Gliding and using mushrooms, etc, were necessary to reach all the locations in the first expansion, and if you didn’t like them, you still had to use them. So really, it was no different back then than it is now, only as of yet, I have had a lot less cases of requiring a mount to traverse the terrain in the new area than I did with gliding requirements in HoTS for example (though we only got to see a small part of one new area, so I have no idea how steep the requirements will be going further).

As for your point about using masteries from HoTS in PoF, or visa versa, there’s a reason they didn’t do that, and it’s because both expansions are separate and can be bought separately. To have one become counter-reliant on another would, for all intents and purposes, force people to purchase both even if they don’t want to. I personally think it’s suitable to have different locations have different requirements as far as exploration goes, and seeing bouncy mushrooms, which are a fauna that is native to the Maguuma jungle suddenly start growing in the desert would be odd from both a lore and gameplay perspective. Aside from those tidbits, you can still glide in the new areas, so your masteries are not all being rendered useless, and there’s no telling if some of the other new locations might use some of the other masteries, where appropriate (though if such cases exist, I presume they’d simply be for fun, and not necessity, for reasons stated above).

If they designed the map to feature lots of the methods of HoT style traveling, the shrooms, the lava tubes, the gliding ley-line paths and updrafts, then somebody who just buys PoF won’t have access to any of that and would be punished for not buying the other expansion.

This is what Anet is avoiding for this.

Kalavier.1097:

If they designed the map to feature lots of the methods of HoT style traveling, the shrooms, the lava tubes, the gliding ley-line paths and updrafts, then somebody who just buys PoF won’t have access to any of that and would be punished for not buying the other expansion.

This is what Anet is avoiding for this.

And Again I did not want it to be required, but to be accessible for the sake of those who bought HoT. Its more of offering more options rather than simply doing away with them, this would make it so you dont need them to play the expansion. But if you have them then great, you can use them if you so desire and that is for you to decide. I feel that taking away that choice and seemingly pushing mounts is a turn off, I already bought the expansion but I figured id be able to not use mounts should I not want to. But to actually see the full expansion, enjoy it and get my bang for my buck I have to use mounts and I dont feel that is necessarily ok.

I as well know others who feel the same, just because some people wanted mounts your going to push them. This is a cave on their part and they are giving in which is fine, their buisness and decision to do it. But to make it so those of us who have the masteries from the previous entry, unable to use them? Then what was the point of HoT at all, none of that kitten matters. And as for lore arguements, No mushrooms would grow in bitterfrost and yet there they are? Why cant we leyline glide in the new maps just to see the map fully if we desire and scout it out? I understand the wallows as their builders have not been there. But the mushrooms grew all over the place, from volcanoes to snowy peaks? A desert being the only place that they dont seems far fetched, and reaks of kittenty design. It becomes one of those “You introduced me to it, and now I like it. But now you take it away” situations which never feels good.

So in the end you all can come and try to defend mounts, and their force fed nature. But in reality it was stated “The Joy of movement” would be player choice, but when you remove the choice how can I feel any joy? If I choose to use mounts then sure, why not. But when im forced into it, just like you will be forced into a meta and forced into specific gear stat choices? There could at least be choice in how I traverse the map simply for adventures sake, make it so those of us who have HoT have options. Dont make them required just make them lead to the same outcome a different way, which lets everyone be happy. Its disappointing to see that you cant just get a few dabs of player choice, and are once more being told “You have to do this, if you buy the expansion.”

I also feel “Then dont buy it and wait for the next one” is a horrible way to rationalize it, I was not big on gliding because I did not like Arc-ages varriant. But then I Tried it and fell in love, I tried mounts as well in this past beta. But I did not get the feeling I got from gliding and I almost just kind of “meh” about it. They feel the same as every other game, just something more for me to use to get around. But when I have stuff that can do all that they can do, and am simply not allowed to use it well that kittenes me off. Especially when I happen to like those other methods more, so do you cater to the new and say “kitten everyone who plays my game now?” Or do you offer something for both of them, to make everyone feel happy with the choices.

Offering options is never bad, some people love gliding but others hate it and some people hate mounts and others adore it. Dont punish one or the other, just offer paths for both to take that lead to the same place. Thats not a huge thing to ask for, thats just asking to allow me to choose which path id like to walk.

Thornwolf.9721:

The point is Im asking for other means of transportation outside of mounts, As an alternative to using mounts IF I DONT WANT TO. We already bought one expansion, did masteries and ect I should not have to SKIP the whole expansion because I dont like mounts. That is bad business, and just an utter disregard for the people who bought the previous product.

Im not asking for it to be required, but for it to be an option for those of us who want to do the content (outside of story) without mounts. I should be able to explore the map anyway I want, and use the “Joy of Movement” I prefer.

You don’t have to skip the whole expansion because you don’t like mounts. The mounts will not be required for the vast majority of the expansion. You will have to mount occasionally to do some content or travel to certain areas. Once you get there you can dismount again, if desired.

This is inevitable, some content will require you to be mounted in the same way that some content in HoT required a particular mastery. Most of the time in HoT you have a choice too; you can use the updrafts or mushrooms or leylines or you can take a longer route on foot.

I wouldn’t be opposed to some updrafts or mushrooms or whatever but as people don’t need HoT in order to play PoF it makes sense that only PoF masteries should be required for PoF.

Thornwolf.9721:

I should be able to explore the map anyway I want, and use the “Joy of Movement” I prefer.

and yet you like the vertical map movement in HoT, which requires you to use gliding, shrooms, etc.
what about the players who don’t like this?
they have as many alternatives to gliding and shrooms in HoT as you will have to using the mounts in PoF.
so what’s the difference? oh right:
you like gliding but hate mounts. so gliding is fine but mounts should be banned from guildwars. seems legit ^.^

seriously, i keep asking for arguments against mounts in all those “mount hate threads”
but these arguments keep getting more and more ridiculous and seem reaaally desperate…
not to mention that those double standards make me cringe!

oh and btw; there’s at least one way to get basically everywhere without using any mastery at all:
mesmer portals

PS:
what if i told you, that you can cry as much as you want; at the current stage ANet won’t change anything about mounts/masteries that effects the gameplay in PoF.

I wouldn’t say that Anet’s not appeasing GW1 players. If anything, the only reason that we’re in Elona is because of GW1 nostalgia, and pandering to the older players.

Twyn.7320:

I wouldn’t say that Anet’s not appeasing GW1 players. If anything, the only reason that we’re in Elona is because of GW1 nostalgia, and pandering to the older players.

I mean…or thats just where the story took us. I wouldn’t call it pandering at all. Elona is a part of the world of GW2, just because it was a part of GW1 and now we are going there again in GW2 does not at all suggest pandering.

Will it be pandering when we eventually go to Cantha? Will it be pandering if we eventually go further into the Eye of the North areas? Pandering when/if we enter further into the Blood Legion Homelands? Its content and these places have a level of significance in the world of Tyria.

Imagine having to actually develop this. In xpac 4, they’d have to design maps around four set of masteries because someone out their wants to use xpac 2 masteries in xpac 4 maps and another person would rather use xpac 3 masteries. It also means there would be no sense of progression in each expansion. Once you’ve mastered xpac 1 masteries, you don’t need any more. This would be crazy design.

They should do exactly what they are doing now; designing the maps around the features released alongside them.

Bringing in content from GW1 is pandering? LOL, I’ve heard it all. Ya, no other reason Anet would want to make GW2 feel as if it was a sequel to their previous game in the same series OTHER than pandering! No way they would maybe just want to continue a story of a world they created, right?

Now for those of you who don’t like mounts, don’t use them then. Walk and cast your swiftness when not on cooldown. Problem solved. The rest of us who love large worlds but hate spending 80% of our play time on auto run to the horizon applaud this great addition. I never felt I had to have a mount in GW2 and gliding helps a lot, but a bit of a speed boost is nice sometimes, and the addition of mount-specific abilities is an awesome addition. To me it just makes sense. Why would anyone NOT have ground mounts at least? It just makes sense. Flying mounts ruin immersion as they allow you to just straight line it to anywhere, and avoid other players, but ground mounts don’t do this. They just speed up travel time a bit. As long as the mounts are not running at insane speeds (they aren’t), then they don’t ruin immersion and in fact make things more fun.

Last of all, if you liked the Jungle of HoT, then more power to you. Yet why would you think a desert should be built the same way? HoT could be fun, but trying for over an hour and a half over two nights played time just for 1 of the 11 mastery points I need isn’t fun. I ported over to Divinity’s Reach and logged in an alt.

Games are things we should look forward to playing, not ones that feel like a 2nd job. As Angry Joe said, in his GW2 review on YouTube “how about a game that doesn’t feel like a f&^%ing chore!” He was right, GW2 had a great flow/pace, and there was always somewhere to go next. You got there and started the content in that area. There were places you had to climb for vistas, and other challenges. Then HoT drops and….CHORE! Fun at times, but far too often it was all about spending forever trying various paths to get to a mastery point, hero challenge, etc.

As much as I am burned out on HoT, I think the jungle was designed like a jungle should be. Lots of open area would have not fit. I’m glad we having more open areas in PoF with the desert. Lets not act as if it too should look like a jungle, as that too would not fit.

As many others have said, they shouldn’t do anything concerning travel in PoF that gives a discernibly better advantage to those who own HoT over those who just purchase PoF. Imagine if they made updraft and/or shrooms that allowed for faster and easier access to hero point locations (maybe not explicitly but players would figure out a way to make a path easier using those methods). PoF only players would feel cheated and lied to about how you don’t need HoT to enjoy PoF because everyone would be on reddit about how much easier PoF is to navigate if you have HoT masteries.

Splitting these two expansions up and making each one not rely upon masteries from past expansions is the way to go. I know people may say ‘adding shrooms or updrafts to the game doesn’t make it rely on HoT – just lets us use our earned masteries’ but also think of not only the cost to add these things to already finished maps but also the user perception should anything like this be added.

Keep in mind, they added Masteries as horizontal progression so that with each expansion we could feel like gaining experience was still earning us something and I think they worked out pretty well in that regard and its not all that difficult to level them. Even getting the Mastery Points themselves isn’t all that difficult, it is another thing for a player to do to help them “advance”, in a sense, through the game and actually achieve something.

Any form of progression is a “time gate” in any game. Even Skyrim has time gates based around gaining enough skill points to unlock something in one of the skill lines. Same principle. However even in the circumstances of them being a time gate for story steps it wasn’t all that difficult to just unlock them if you just played the game.

Mounts are simply a nice addition to the game, helpful for getting from a waypoint to, for instance, a boss spawn area that much quicker and helpful for navigating the desert due to the lack of Waypoints. Which there is a potential lore explanation for less Waypoints in the Elona areas anyway. Waypoints are canon within the universe, they were designed by the Asura and they even get a big mention in the story with Taimi and Phlunt and the like at one point. Elona had been cut off for a long while, it would make sense that there are much fewer waypoints there.

Even in the next expansion mounts and gliding will still have their place. Hell you could get to some of the mastery points in the Crystal Oasis zone during the beta with just gliding, so it stands to reason that they aren’t invalidated, they just wouldn’t be specifically supported, they’d be additional help or options to just move through the zones. As for the other methods of transportation, like mushrooms and ley line gliding, yeah no we may not see those but thats perfectly reasonable since they don’t want to require the purchasing of HoT to fully experience this expansion. Gliding will still have its place, as will the HoT masteries…in the HoT areas, its highly unlikely that the Maguuma zones will go unused considering even the core game zones do not at all go unused when HoT was released.

Again @Thornwolf.9721, I said previously in this thread that you were a bit of a naysayer with HoT prior to its release and yet now you, seemingly, love HoT and its gliding and the methods of travel gained from the HoT Masteries. Maybe before you make ill-informed judgments about the expansion you should actually play it when its fully available, yeah?

This trend towards a movement skill based game is what turns me off. Most of these skills(bouncing mushrooms, updrafts, mount skills, etc.) are necessary to reach platforms or vertical levels of maps. I don’t care for the Nintendo creep in the game.

In my opinion, the pinnacle of this game was during season 1 with the Marionette events and defend Lion’s Arch events………. This is the type of thing I am looking for from gw2.

Dashingsteel.3410:

This trend towards a movement skill based game is what turns me off. Most of these skills(bouncing mushrooms, updrafts, mount skills, etc.) are necessary to reach platforms or vertical levels of maps. I don’t care for the Nintendo creep in the game.

In my opinion, the pinnacle of this game was during season 1 with the Marionette events and defend Lion’s Arch events………. This is the type of thing I am looking for from gw2.

+1

One can only hope for the game to recover from all this nonsense with the third expansion.

Honestly, in the preview area, there was a grand total of TWO locations you could not reach with a mount.

One needed tier 3 raptor mastery, the other a skimmer.

I must say that I hope PoF isn’t as annoying in this regard as HoT has been. I do enjoying gliding but all the rest of the movement skill stuff that they introduced in HoT seemed nothing more than an annoying gimmick to me.