core game good, rest is broken
I dont really agree everything past core is broken. I certainly enjoyed the non story part of HoT and it brought a lot of great things to the game like masteries, interesting maps, gliding and elite specs.
Also, we have had 6 fractals since they launched.
Molten dungeon
Molten Boss
Aetherblade dungeon
Aetherblade Boss
Thaumanova
Chaos
You can argue the first 4 are rehashes of a dungeon, but they still required designing from scratch whether dungeon or fractal.
I dont raid, but I dont think they are a waste. They were a requested feature by players and the GW franchise always had elite dungeons. In fact places like FoW and Underworld are amongst the fondest remembered content of GW1.
1-80 is far from great. It’s the weakest aspect of the game, and of any MMO i’ve played.
I think the exact opposite.
Leveling 1-80 was by far the most boring thing EVER. Hearts on maps are so freaking boring. and Tyria maps are just boring. I hated it.
Now when I’m 80 and I can do fractals, all dungeons, HoT maps I am much more happy with the game. It’s finally fun!
And gliding is just awesome. Even doing boring Tyria maps … it’s just less boring with gliding.
HoT maps are fun and interesting. Lots of events, hard to get places and no stupidly boring heart-quests.
I also love the elite specialization. My main is mesmer and leveling it was so painful. Now with chronomancer game is fun, I feel needed by my team.
If we all got buffs then all mobs would need a buff too, so it doesn’t make sense.
I don’t like WvsWvsW thought… it’s stupidly unbalanced that some guy with legendaries and ascended gear can 1-second burs you if you don’t have equally good gear…. PvP is more balanced, it’s more skill related than “I payed for gems and bought items with gold/played for months and have better gear than you, you new player! How dare you to be new and not have the best gear. Haha, now feel the pain!”
But – if we think the opposite, then it’s good. It means the game caters to different players. If I like my “end-game” fractals etc then that;s what I should play. If you like leveling and wandering around the world, just create a new character and level him up if that’s what you like to do : P.
(edited by Kas.3509)
I enjoyed the core game, but I like the HoT maps more. Maybe it’s just a matter of opinion.
All we get are skill nerfs, constantly. Cant we all get buffs?
This is problematic for two reasons:
- Each individual buff to damage requires a wide-spread set of buffs to defenses or time-to-live goes down across the board.
- PvE needs to be rebalanced every time.
It’s much smarter to set a power baseline, and buff/nerf as elements deviate from this baseline.
Levelling in any game is “fun” for what – the first few levels? Then it becomes cumbersome and super ultra mega repetitively boring. Thank ANet we have ways to skip straight on our way to 80 in this game via tomes/scrolls/boosters quicker. I want to be able to participate in high level content (WvW primarily) that I find enjoyable ASAP.
Skill nerfs are/were needed in this powercreep infested ‘meta’. I’m glad for any nerfs to obnoxiously OP specs.
Games will never ever be balanced but forever changing be it slow or swift – people will ALWAYS find a new ‘meta’, QQ about OP things then devs nerf it, rinse and repeat.
- Each individual buff to damage requires a wide-spread set of buffs to defenses or time-to-live goes down across the board.
That only happens if the buffed things exceeded the power of the existing meta.
Buffing crap things so that they are only mildly crap does not require the entire game to be adjusted.
YouTube
Things do feel broken the higher up you go.
I could write a list of it all, but it’s like fighting a tidal wave with a fly swatter.
Let’s just say it’s like if Valve made an mmorpg.
Levelling in any game is “fun” for what – the first few levels? Then it becomes cumbersome and super ultra mega repetitively boring. Thank ANet we have ways to skip straight on our way to 80 in this game via tomes/scrolls/boosters quicker. I want to be able to participate in high level content (WvW primarily) that I find enjoyable ASAP.
Funnily enough, before i got GW2, i remember the criticism it got for the emptiness of endgame, as well as the constantly regurgitated response: that “all content is end game content”.
Considering how terrible the hearts system is, i can’t imagine what GW2 was like before Fractals and raids and ascendeds and stuff. Did people seriously go back to low level zones and do hearts?
It’s an absolutely awful system. Quests are never fun in MMOs, but at the very least it gives you a purpose. That doesn’t exist here. You’re literally wandering into arbitrarily set zones to do random jobs (often literal chore-like jobs) for NPCs you’ve never even seen before, with no over-arching goal or story.
Most people i know who got GW2 have only reached about 20-30 because the hearts system sent them packing. The levelling really is atrocious.
In my opinion, HoT content, while not perfect, is a clear improvement over the original game. I think the open world content is just better. There’s more going on and every event you complete ties into the progression of the map meta. You aren’t just escorting an NPC from A to B and that’s it. When you get there, the story continues and it ties into events that are happening all over the map.
The conclusion of the map meta is generally more complicated and difficult, requiring some degree of coordination. That does present the problem of getting yourself into an organized map that is focused on completing the meta. Initially, I thought this was a failing of HoT, but more and more I appreciate this style of content.
If I want to just farm or run other objectives (HPs/MPs, etc.) I can do that. If I want to get in on the meta, I can either begin to organize the map by throwing up a tag and getting started or I can hop to another map that already has something going on.
Finally, I love the uniqueness of these maps. I wasn’t too excited about the HoT storyline, but stepping into the verdant brink for the first time and seeing the aftermath of Mordremoth’s assault on the pact fleet was a definite high point. And then I just leaped right into it with the events fitting right into the storyline.