Guild Wars 2

I played GW2 since release.. but after HoT left a really bad taste in my mouth I haven’t played for nearly a year.. and I really doubt I’d buy another expansion after regretting my previous purchase.

HoT has been far better received since the April patch than it was at launch. It’s old news. It didn’t ruin the game. It didn’t destroy the game. It probably drove some people from the game and attracted other people.

At most, it ruined the game for you.

Which is okay. Not everyone is going to like every expansion. This has happened in every MMO pretty much ever.

I have been having loads of fun with HoT. No bad taste here. Not regretting buying the expansion. Can’t wait for LS3 and either another LS or the next expansion.

Not sure what issues you had with the expansion, but I have enjoyed it for the most part. I’ve leveled my revalent to 80, unlocked the elite specs on all nine characters, help my guild unlock all the upgrades, unlocked all the bladed armor skin, and have all the Masters but two completed.

Yes, HoT ruined the game. Especially the harm it inflicted on core stuff in preparation for HoT.

But, it did give us some good, too. Gliding is universally well-received. Raids removed some of the worst people and sandboxed them, so there’s a lot less toxicity.

The April patch also helped a lot. HoT is still basically unplayable, but with effort, you can struggle through it. Which, unfortunately, you have to do in order to play elite specializations.

Unfortunately, the elite specs are a sword that cuts both ways. If you work a character’s way through enough HoT garbage to get it, it’s great. But, if you don’t you’re a second-class citizen except in basic open-world core Tyria.

So, I’ll say HoT tried very hard to ruin the game, and almost succeeded. ANet realized they made HUGE mistakes, and tried to correct them. IMO, they didn’t try hard enough, but they have made things at least marginally playable. And, they undid many of the really onerous things they did to core with the April patch.

So, I still play every day. I force myself into HoT whenever the dailies point me there (if I can get to whatever is required). So, it’s not ruined. More like it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

As much as I like some of the changes . . . yes. Yes, it did. But the game was apparently in trouble beforehand. No MMO goes free-to-play because things are going well.

I distinctly remember when Colin announced free-to-play. The audience reaction was more than apathetic. And, from the look on his face, he knew it.

Yes, HoT ruined the game, but it wasn’t the only thing that did.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

As much as I like some of the changes . . . yes. Yes, it did. But the game was apparently in trouble beforehand. No MMO goes free-to-play because things are going well.

I distinctly remember when Colin announced free-to-play. The audience reaction was more than apathetic. And, from the look on his face, he knew it.

Yes, HoT ruined the game, but it wasn’t the only thing that did.

If the game was already ruined, how did hot ruin it. You can’t really have it both ways.

HoT had some problems at launch, most of which were massively improved, especially since the April patch. It’s now much, much easier to get onto a good map for big events like Dragon’s Stand, all of the maps are a lot more rewarding in XP and loot, whether you play through the entire event on an organized map or just fool around for a while, and we can glide in the Core world. A lot of bugs have been fixed, the poison mastery gate was removed from story progression, and the 64 bit client has reduced crashes.

HoT did make some major mistakes (so much grind!), but I’ve had a ton of fun with the new maps, storyline (including achievement challenges,) and masteries, especially gliding. If you were hoping for a full set of new legendary weapons, you don’t like how meta event maps play, or you think elite specs ruined PvP balance, you’re out of luck, but I’m generally satisfied with the expansion now. Individual mileage may vary.

Vayne.8563:

If the game was already ruined, how did hot ruin it. You can’t really have it both ways.

He said the game was in trouble not already ruined.

Drakortha.6974:

I played GW2 since release.. but after HoT left a really bad taste in my mouth I haven’t played for nearly a year.. and I really doubt I’d buy another expansion after regretting my previous purchase.

HoT ruined GW2 for you. Other people’s reactions will vary.

If I had to point to one thing that hurt the game, I wouldn’t choose HoT — I’d point to ANet’s decision to drop everything else while they worked on HoT. I think that created a situation in which people were depending on HoT to do all the things that they wanted during the long drought of content before and there was pretty much no way a single expac could have managed that.

Even so, there are plenty of people who love HoT, plenty who have returned to the game (especially with recent updates/fixes), and it’s inevitable that some people are going to leave — people are always leaving and no matter how great an expac is, it’s always going to horribly disappoint a significant minority.

tl;dr it doesn’t make sense to ask if “HoT ruined GW2” — better to say how the expac reduced your enjoyment of the game (and depending on your feelings, you might also ask if anyone else who felt the same found an alternative, either with different GW2 goals or in some other game).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

If I had to point to one thing that hurt the game, I wouldn’t choose HoT — I’d point to ANet’s decision to drop everything else while they worked on HoT. I think that created a situation in which people were depending on HoT to do all the things that they wanted during the long drought of content before and there was pretty much no way a single expac could have managed that.

Even so, there are plenty of people who love HoT, plenty who have returned to the game (especially with recent updates/fixes), and it’s inevitable that some people are going to leave — people are always leaving and no matter how great an expac is, it’s always going to horribly disappoint a significant minority.

This is actually a fair assessment of the overall situation. +1

Rhapsedy.1569:

Vayne.8563:

If the game was already ruined, how did hot ruin it. You can’t really have it both ways.

He said the game was in trouble not already ruined.

Sure and now it’s ruined. But based on what?

First of all, many MMOs plan to go free to play before they even launch. But for a game that’s buy to play, it could indicate something completely different than a subscription game.

In a buy to play game, virtually any of them, people who play the game that are interested tend to buy it early. And eventually those people are used up and only people less interested might try it. The trick is to remove as many barriers to entry as you can so more people try it.

For all anyone knows, this was always in the business plan. Making generalizations that MMOs do or don’t go free to play unless they’re in trouble is not only silly but it’s quite probably wrong.

Without a doubt HoT hurt the game in many ways. While there were some good stuff that came out of HoT, notably gliding which tops my list, too many bad stuff also came from HoT.

In PvE, the game became more exclusive when raids and harder to solo content were implemented. Agree or not, most can acknowledge that the strength of GW2 PvE was always this casual approach with an inclusive design where everybody could join in on fights to get loot. GW2 PvE always pride itself for not leaving anybody behind. That changed with HoT. And for many, HoT PvE felt like one huge grind after another, from masteries, to specializations, to grinding for crafting/legendary materials. There was a time when people picked the achievements they wanted to do and shoot for. In HoT it felt like you were pressured and forced to do achievements in order to play the content that came out of HoT, if you know what I mean.

In WvW, HoT expansion devastated the WvW community. Desert borderlands were terribly designed, keep/tower placements had no strategic values, maps were too large and filled with too many PvE gimmicks such as rock walls, invis fog, lava, air turrets, etc.. It also wasn’t properly beta tested as Anet only invited select few to test them pre-launch, many of them were just twitch streamers. Many changes did not improve WvW, changes such as guild upgrades and new PvE gimmicks such as air strikes, chilling fog, over the top siege, iron hide, banners, the oasis laser event, I can go on and on. We lost so many players in WvW since HoT launch, it’s not even funny.

The fact that they disabled laser event due to it being broken and unfixed 5+ months into launch, and the fact that they stripped Desert borderlands out and replaced them with Alpine, proves everything I said above is true. They’re not subject for debate, Anet’s actions tell you they knew they messed up.

As for sPvP, twitch views for pro tournaments haven’t increased. Playing ranked PvP ingame, you often are matched with the same people over and over, and that tells you the playerbase is small. PvP balance went out of whack with HoT, Revs were introduced into the game and immediately replaced several classes & builds (surprise surprise). They’ve been at the core of all teams throughout PvP seasons since HoT launched. This isn’t to mention how elite specs totally replaced OG classes across the board. So…bottom line is they dumped $400k into esports and viewership isn’t increasing, ingame playerbase isn’t increasing (just how it feels).

Argue whether HoT ruined GW2 all you want. Without a doubt HoT hurt GW2, it pushed many players away.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Yes, HoT ruined the game, but it wasn’t the only thing that did.

Like I said, the preparatory work that paved the way for HoT is what ruined the game. F2P is just one aspect. But, it wasn’t F2P specifically that caused the damage. It was removing the core game from sales. That meant that all new players were either F2P (with all the restrictions) or HoT (with all the damage). There was no longer an option to play core.

I should add: if they had had an option to remove HoT and revert to core only, I would have done it in a heartbeat between November and April. It would have been a no-brainer for me.

At this time, though, since the patches, HoT is tolerable. I still don’t like it, but I don’t hate it with an ever-burning passion, as I did for the first 6 months.

I’m down to three things on my list:

Fix the maps so you don’t lose your memory every time you move. If we have a map, dangit, leave that map COMPLETE once I’ve been through it. No more of the hidden passageways that you can only find by accident. No more being able to walk immediately over or under some object or event you need, but have no idea how to get to it. So, show tunnels and ramps more clearly once we’ve been through an area. There’s no excuse for making maps on which we can see the shadows of trees, but we can’t know that there’s a cavern underneath it unless we’re standing inside that cavern. It’s cool when we first go through an underground area, but once we’ve been there, it’s just a chore finding the entrance again.

Fix XP. XP is a reward, or should be. But, once you’re level 80 and masteried-up, it’s useless. Either make it worth something, or remove all references to it in level 80 consumables, boosters, etc., and replace them with something else. I got gold on an adventure for the first time yesterday. But, you know what I received? 2 mastery points and a slight movement of my mastery bar. That’s all. Next time? I’ll get nothing. Why on earth do they give away XP to people who cannot use it?

Apologize. Don’t just fix nebulous problems without specifics. Let us know you made a set of specific mistakes, so we’ll know you won’t make them again.

HoT didn’t ruin GW2 for me. I’m quite satisfied for the most part.

Is GW2 ruined? Maybe. It certainly was. However, Anet has done a lot to clean up the mess. HOT as it launched was a disaster. Most of that disaster has been corrected though, as much as possible anyway considering that most of it was built into the maps. PVP issues excluded, that is still a colossal mess. Anet clearly knows they screwed up. It remains to be seen if they know why.

>HOT began with a brick wall. You hit Verdant Brink, and were instantly locked behind a progression grind because masteries are needed to even navigate the maps. Everyone’s first experience of the expansion was thus completely terrible, full of frustration and “WTF I need to grind for two days to get that Hero Point because of a freaking BOUNCY MUSHROOM?!!!” This has been addressed by reducing the grind to a fraction of what it was, reducing the pain. It can’t be eliminated though, since it’s built into the maps themselves, but at least we can be sure Anet knows it was a mistake.

>HOT maps require mastery progression, but don’t account for that very progress. Imagine if the zones went AB > VB > TD > DS. You’d start with a basic map with some progression helping out (AB), to a map where masteries aren’t required but really are needed to get the most out of it (VB), to a map that’s really only possible at all with masteries (TD), to DS which is really just an epic boss encounter anyway. The maps would progress with your character, and you gain more and more use of your masteries as you move forward. Instead, they threw you right at the wall. Whether they learned this mistake or not is unknown, since they have released no new maps.

>HOT increased the combat difficulty, but again as a sudden wall. The new creatures use a variety of short-telegraph (and some zero-telegraph) punishment mechanics, that you have to learn, anticipate, and then counter. But instead of being eased into the new mechanics that creatures used, you’re left to figure it out when you die suddenly. I actually REALLY like the new combat, but admit that it was frustrating to adjust. My wife, who’s much more casual then I am, still refuses to solo HOT content because her first experience with it was death and frustration. I am certain that Anet lost players over this.

>HOT maps are exclusively meta-event maps. There are no old-school explorable type maps. Furthermore, loot was tied directly to meta-progression, not to personal activity. This means you had to commit to doing the entire 2+ hour event chain to get decent rewards. Casual players who like to log in, do some stuff, go make a sandwich, come back 20 mins later, do more stuff, etc, got completely shafted. Naturally, they left. More customers lost. This has been addressed by breaking rewards into their sub-events, not the overall meta. As a side note, I’m worried that this will affect them in the long-term when people move on to new expac maps, and there’s not enough people left to finish the metas.

>PVP was completely unhinged by elite specs. The sudden, massive power creep not only changed the gameplay meta overnight (which was expected from an expac anyway), but also changed the speed and pace of PVP combat and made it almost a completely different game. It also instantly excluded all non-expansion players. This means that people who were taking a “wait and see” approach to buying the expac saw a classic Buy To Win scenario and fled the game. This has not been fixed and PVP remains unbalanced and terrible.

>WVW had the additional component of needing to unlock the elites, meaning that WVW players now had a grind wall of their own, and were forced into regular PVE to climb it. Naturally, many of them didn’t want to do that and simply left.

>Guild halls were also a bust. They took features that people already had (missions, XP bonuses, etc) and took them away. Then they stuck them in the expansion. They also stuck them behind a massive grind designed for large groups of people, which left small guilds shut out. This was seen as obvious, underhanded way to force people into buying and was heavily protested. Not to mention the small guild players that got shafted. More customers gone. It has not been fixed.

On the upside, Anet seems to have realized most of this and has been slowly eliminating or reducing the problems. Masteries get much more XP now, Elites take fewer points to unlock, meta-event progression has been broken up so you don’t have to play for hours at a time, (DS excluded, that’s kind of locked into the map design), and so on. Power creep and PVP have not been addressed at all, sadly. But it’s not hopeless – the next expac may actually be good if Anet has actually learned these lessons (also, they have a new Creative Lead). I advocate a “wait and see” approach and certainly won’t be pre-ordering the next one, but I’m cautiously optimistic. The power creep worries me though – if the next expansion has the same amount of creep, I’m gone and won’t look back.

I can certainly see how someone might dislike the HoT zones, but one can play GW2 without ever going to the new zones. How is the rest of the game ruined by the existence of a small number of zones that can be readily ignored?

Personally I waited months before buying HoT. Can’t say I enjoy navigating the new zones. Never have enjoyed mazes or platforming games. Those aspects of the new zones are a turn off, but the encounters are much more enjoyable than much of the original zones.

Even so, the maze-like, platforming game-like, aspects of HoT have no impact whatsoever on my enjoyment of Orr, for example.

This type of post comes up a lot and I wonder if its from people who havnt played a MMO before that has expansions.
HOT doesnt affect the original game in the slightest apart from adding gliding.
You arnt forced to buy HOT.
Even if you do and you dont like it like me , theres nothing stopping you from continuing to play the original game .
All you need to do is simply avoid the HOT zones.

mdee.5194:

This type of post comes up a lot and I wonder if its from people who havnt played a MMO before that has expansions.
HOT doesnt affect the original game in the slightest apart from adding gliding.
You arnt forced to buy HOT.
Even if you do and you dont like it like me , theres nothing stopping you from continuing to play the original game .
All you need to do is simply avoid the HOT zones.

If you play the competitive formats, you need HoT.

What they did to WvW ruined it. I’ll give you that much.

HoT added a lot of systems to the game that are really good long term designs. Collections, elite specializations, WvW tactics, Guild Halls, tech updates to the way styory instances and npc conversations work, masteries, and a host of other things.

The problem is that, in typical ArenaNet fashion, they spent far too much time developing extensivble systems and far to little time developing content for those systems.

The new zones are fantastic. The problem is that there are literally four of them. The new armor is great. The problem is that there are literally three sets. The new masteries are good. The problem is that they all have excessively narrow uses due to the small number of zones.

Then there’s the weird handling of non-HoT accounts and guild halls. Like, why let people enter the halls if they can’t use the stuff in them? You could have easily said “that’s a HoT map, buy the expansion” and people would have been okay with that, Non_HoT accounts being able to access their upgrades from withing the guild initiative HQ, which is already less convenient than the hall to visit.

HoT vastly improved GW2, but it improved it at a theoretical level moreso than a usable level simply due to lack of content for its systems. The fact that half a year later they haven’t leveraged all of the new systems they build specifically to make extending them and rolling out content easier is the problem.

PopeUrban.2578:

HoT vastly improved GW2, but it improved it at a theoretical level moreso than a usable level simply due to lack of content for its systems. The fact that half a year later they haven’t leveraged all of the new systems they build specifically to make extending them and rolling out content easier is the problem.

It’s really going to be on LS3 and Expansion #2 to prove that all the time they spent building tools was worthwhile. Reception around Precursor Scavenger Hunts seems to have been generally positive, but it took ages to develop, and then had to be abandoned because of how resource-intensive it was to continue supporting. Hopefully masteries, elite specs, and other developments can avoid that fate.

PyrateSilly.4710:

I have been having loads of fun with HoT. No bad taste here. Not regretting buying the expansion. Can’t wait for LS3 and either another LS or the next expansion.

Same. Love it. I will say I wasn’t sooper thrilled with it when it came out. I kinda didn’t “get it”. I think a little of the “ohmigod-I-need-to-do-everything-NOW!” fever had ahold of me when it first released. Now that I’ve had some time to get my mind right and kind of slow down, take it as it comes; I’m actually kinda blown away by HoT.

No, HoT didn’t ruin GW2, but I don’t really enjoy most of it and I will not rush to buy the next expansion.

HoT didn’t ruin GW2, as much as ANet did. They left us with a drought of content in the nine months before HoT was released, delivered a semi-enjoyable but incomplete story, broke the economy, and have given us only raids, empty promises, and a very small number of half-hearted fixes. Their attitude towards the game is the only thing making the difference between the dying game we have and the incredible game it could be. We need accessibility, quality, and new things, not elitism, hardmode, and a story that leaves more plot threads hanging than the unmodded KOTOR 2 ending.

Yes, without going on too much of a rant, the elite specz alone seem just too op to me. The second I unlocked the perma fury on Rev Elite Spec, I went through maps on double time and saved like 5 hours of play time (only had like 3-5 maps left to complete at that point), just because I did so much more damage and without even more effort.

i really love HOT whats not to like?

Gliding
New story (yea i know)
Raids (altho i am … not into it but still looks intresting)
New Skills , specializations , pets and class (throw able hammers ?! and Fighting Staves?)
New achievement points challenges
New ascended weapons for each class
New maps to explore and glide through !
with Interesting events and hero points
New monsters to fight and Races to learn about
Challenging content
Guild Halls ( yea it might not be perfect yet, but YAY )
Yes i know you can argue on all of these stuff i mentioned but they did bring alot to the table and introduced new mechanics , but hey thats my opinion it is no better than any ones else ,
i just love the HOT expansion.

and i got to say beautiful design on the maps , i can just stare at the environment for hours its so distracting , because of that i die by a suicidal mushroom.

HoT definitely changed the core gameplay from what it was before. Whether it ruined it or not is entirely subjective; some like it and some don’t.

I love PvE in general, but I can’t stand the HoT PvE. So I mostly play WvW now. Its great that you can now unlock of a lot of HoT equipment and elite specs through pure WvW. However, even there, HoT has left its mark; the elite specs are very powerful and basically caused the pirate ship meta as well as other undesirable things like CC and condi spam.

Who knows what expac2 will bring, but I am definitely not going to be an earlier adopter.

MrPinks.2015:

i really love HOT whats not to like?

Gliding
New story (yea i know)
Raids (altho i am … not into it but still looks intresting)
New Skills , specializations , pets and class (throw able hammers ?! and Fighting Staves?)
New achievement points challenges
New ascended weapons for each class
New maps to explore and glide through !
with Interesting events and hero points
New monsters to fight and Races to learn about
Challenging content
Guild Halls ( yea it might not be perfect yet, but YAY )
Yes i know you can argue on all of these stuff i mentioned but they did bring alot to the table and introduced new mechanics , but hey thats my opinion it is no better than any ones else ,
i just love the HOT expansion.

and i got to say beautiful design on the maps , i can just stare at the environment for hours its so distracting , because of that i die by a suicidal mushroom.

Gliding is pretty cool, and I’m glad they brought it to the mainland too.
The new story had promise, but I believe it is one of the weakest parts of the expansion. See my earlier comparison to KOTOR 2; it had enormous potential, but fell incredibly flat at the end because it seems like something was rushed or some writer stopped caring entirely. They dangle fascinating lore about revenants, Glint, Mordremoth, magic, Rata Novus, the egg, Caithe, Faolain, and so many other things in front of us… then the most we get out of it is… “Later, cub.” Somebody did something very wrong here, and they deserve to be called out on it. Same with the new races and monsters. Then, they take another bit of really intriguing lore and lock it away behind the raid, where a hefty percentage will never be able to reach it.
The challenge of the maps is pretty good after so much content that was mindlessly easy, the maps are good, and the new skills and specs did turn out rather well.
Guild halls are spectacular, but downright prohibitively expensive, and they unfortunately do even more to fracture a already-split community.

The biggest problem with the expansion is that although it does a lot right, they could have and should have done a lot more with what they had, and they did a surprisingly bad job of tying it seamlessly into a world that feels alive. It’s a theme park, not a world. They gave us attractions to gawk at, rollercoasters to ride on, and above all, treadmills to walk on, but they didn’t bother painting the walls. I’m not a hamster that’s happy running on a wheel just for things to do, even if other players might be. The expansion itself is not bad. But what it did not do is a symptom of bad things to come, especially since ArenaNet themselves are (willfully or not) blind to that fact and refuse to fix or apologize for their mistakes.

I have 2 problems with HoT

1. The content that was used to sell copies and then never worked on until well after it’s launch.

2. Dungeons were killed off, Raids were brought in.

I have Reasonably High expectations for living story 3. If it comes around and we find out that almost a year after launch and we just get another tiny pizza slice of story, i’ll know exactly what to expect of the next expansion/dlc and plan my dollars otherwise.

Mushin.3928:

HoT definitely changed the core gameplay from what it was before. Whether it ruined it or not is entirely subjective; some like it and some don’t.

I love PvE in general, but I can’t stand the HoT PvE. So I mostly play WvW now. Its great that you can now unlock of a lot of HoT equipment and elite specs through pure WvW. However, even there, HoT has left its mark; the elite specs are very powerful and basically caused the pirate ship meta as well as other undesirable things like CC and condi spam.

Who knows what expac2 will bring, but I am definitely not going to be an earlier adopter.

I thought the Pirate Ship meta in WvW was caused by the changes to stability, not the existence of Elite specs.

@Chat, you are right, stab change was the first thing. But HoT reinforced that meta, for sure. Even though they have improved stab a bit, its still very piratey and thats coming from HoT.

For instance, no class really has enough stab to deal with the CC thrown at them. So you group ends up frontlining a bunch of guardians to provide AoE stab, and if you don’t have them, you die stunlocked.

Simple answer no. Complicated answer; maybe… to some people.

NayNay.7680:

I have 2 problems with HoT

1. The content that was used to sell copies and then never worked on until well after it’s launch.

2. Dungeons were killed off, Raids were brought in.

I have Reasonably High expectations for living story 3. If it comes around and we find out that almost a year after launch and we just get another tiny pizza slice of story, i’ll know exactly what to expect of the next expansion/dlc and plan my dollars otherwise.

The storyline that they presented us with in Heart of Thorns could have been good, but wasn’t. It needed:
A) Buildup story before release. Even if there wasn’t much content, the subplot of people being wary of sylvari was an untapped gold mine that loses all of its power now that Mordremoth is gone.
B) To tie off plot threads rather than rushing to the finish.
C) More followup story within 3-4 months.

As far as I’m concerned, they have a backlog of “things they should have done” to make up for, and it only grows with the amount of time they take to release more content. As it is, waiting 10 months for more story means they ought to deliver something almost as big as HoT story was. I have massive and growing doubts that that will happen.

I stopped playing 5 months ago but only indirectly because of HoT. I love the elite specs, I hate the direction the game went beyond that. Im back now hoping living story is coming soon

@MrPinks: I love your outlook… these forums need more of this kind of positivity.

Compared to my experience and memories of the 3 MMOs that died while I was actively playing, HoT hasn’t killed, maimed, wounded, or even bruised GW2. It’s still an awesome game, and HoT added many new great ideas… the fact that it feels different than core Tyria is a great thing.

~EW

HoT on initial release was definitely not what it was hyped up to be. The HoT maps were unrewarding and mastery points felt like a grind to do. I still think for people new to HoT it will be a bit of a upward struggle to enjoy it. However HoT begins to feel rewarding once you unlock most of your mastery and no longer have to grind for more exp and the new maps instead become more like a journey or adventure, which in my opinion is truly what the devs intended behind all the time gates and exp gates.

HoT to gw2 is like a cap increase. Lv80 is no longer the cap, instead having elite spec and 166 mastery points is the new cap. Of course the journey toward the cap is a bit of a grind, but it’s something you only get to experience once, and you only have to do it once since mastery is account wide. Unlocking mastery is like opening up a new world of possibilities and rewards.

Imo, it did not at all; It really did improve upon the game.

While it didn’t ruin the game, it somewhat ruined my opinion of Anet. Their April update was all fine and dandy, but it didn’t address my core issue with the expansion: that it had very little content for the price they were asking.

-Pathetically short story
-Few maps
-Repetitive content

If mastery gating wasn’t a thing, you’d be able to see everything the expansion has to offer in about 10 hours (minus raids). For something that costs almost has much as a new game, that’s simply unacceptable. I will be installing the game again at the end of the summer when LW3 hopefully finally comes out. I’ll make my mind up from there if I’ll ever buy another expansion.

It did and it didn’t.

For those that just like the soloing, story, and freeplay, it sucks. In GW2 pre-HoT, when did you have to unlock anything to progress in the story? You had to solo instance boss fight and walk to some new places, thats it. In HoT, you MUST participate in content repeatedly on HoT maps, grinding your mastery until you have the right unlock to progress your story. The time spent unlocking story to playing story in HoT vs pre-HoT is massively disproportionate. It really feels like grinding now, no exploring new hearts to get experience. There is zero point to exploring the map and enjoying it like an adventure.

For those you you liking zergs and zerg trains, thats exactly what its become. You don’t actually think for yourself, you just follow the guy in front of you and do what he does. “working together to take things down” by copying the guy beside you to do the one event that’s on the map. The game already had this but to make it the what-is for all new content is harsh for those outside zerg-mentalities.

HoT also doesn’t match up with 5v5 pvp which I don’t like. If you want thorn related content you have to do thorn related events. Where as the reward tracks in 5v5 showers u in stuff u’d get from the original content.

xD

GW2 has become like other MMO’s now, its lost its uniqueness. Did it ruin it? no, do I wish it was more diverse? yes

I don’t think HoT ruined the game in itself, however, I will say it did remove a lot of the charm GW2 core has such as making solo exploration an enjoyable process >.<

I am glad they are seeing the problems players are point out and are trying to address them as time goes on but… HoT will not be the type of expansion that everyone will enjoy. Basically, if you like the grind of MMO’s HoT is where some players will gravitate towards and if you like chill casual; core is the other option XD

Nova.7261:

For those that just like the soloing, story, and freeplay, it sucks.

I like soloing the story, and freeplay. It didn’t suck (for me).

Nova.7261:

In GW2 pre-HoT, when did you have to unlock anything to progress in the story?

From launch to current you have had unlocks required to progress the story.

Nova.7261:

It did and it didn’t.

For those that just like the soloing, story, and freeplay, it sucks. In GW2 pre-HoT, when did you have to unlock anything to progress in the story? You had to solo instance boss fight and walk to some new places, thats it. In HoT, you MUST participate in content repeatedly on HoT maps, grinding your mastery until you have the right unlock to progress your story. The time spent unlocking story to playing story in HoT vs pre-HoT is massively disproportionate. It really feels like grinding now, no exploring new hearts to get experience. There is zero point to exploring the map and enjoying it like an adventure.

Actually, you had to grind experience levels to progress the story Pre-HoT, which could easily be far more tedious on a first character than masteries. And you have to unlock the maps/waypoints to get to the next story instance. While there aren’t ‘Hearts’ in HoT, each map has several equivalents in terms of the local meta events (Thankfully, the April patch fixed the reward structure) – the assorted outposts in VB (Noble Crash site, Ordnance Corps, Itzel village, Main Pact base, and the Sylvari team in the ruins) and TD (Nuhoch, Ogres, Rata Novus, and SCAR), and watchposts in AB come to mind.

For those you you liking zergs and zerg trains, thats exactly what its become. You don’t actually think for yourself, you just follow the guy in front of you and do what he does. “working together to take things down” by copying the guy beside you to do the one event that’s on the map. The game already had this but to make it the what-is for all new content is harsh for those outside zerg-mentalities.

Eh. “Zerg Trains” are a great way to end up with incomplete maps. You gotta spread out, and a lot of events are very soloable. Though I find your dismissive attitude toward group play to be highly disturbing.

I don’t think it matters what they ruined or didn’t ruin.

How many people have said it over and over “Anet ain’t no charity”.

They sold you a game that you bought. Then they found a way to sell it to you again. And you bought it again. And they will do it again and again, and you will buy it again and again. Or you won’t. Probably you will. Probably I will.

At least they don’t seem to have the temerity to keep that “buy once, play forever” line going. Perhaps it should be “buy once and then save up ‘cause we’re coming for it”.

Nightfade.4625:

I don’t think it matters what they ruined or didn’t ruin.

How many people have said it over and over “Anet ain’t no charity”.

They sold you a game that you bought. Then they found a way to sell it to you again. And you bought it again. And they will do it again and again, and you will buy it again and again. Or you won’t. Probably you will. Probably I will.

At least they don’t seem to have the temerity to keep that “buy once, play forever” line going. Perhaps it should be “buy once and then save up ‘cause we’re coming for it”.

I’m sorry is something stopping you from playing Guild Wars 2, whether you buy HoT or not.

Yes, you can buy Guild Wars 2 and you can keep playing it, probably not forever, but at least until the servers shut down at some point in the undescribed future.

At the same time, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is a new product. An expansion. Guild Wars 1 worked the same way. You bought the game, and you could continue to play it, whether you bought the expansion or not.

Just like they say Guild Wars 2 is free to play now…but Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is not.

Sartharina.3542:

Nova.7261:

It did and it didn’t.

For those that just like the soloing, story, and freeplay, it sucks. In GW2 pre-HoT, when did you have to unlock anything to progress in the story? You had to solo instance boss fight and walk to some new places, thats it. In HoT, you MUST participate in content repeatedly on HoT maps, grinding your mastery until you have the right unlock to progress your story. The time spent unlocking story to playing story in HoT vs pre-HoT is massively disproportionate. It really feels like grinding now, no exploring new hearts to get experience. There is zero point to exploring the map and enjoying it like an adventure.

Actually, you had to grind experience levels to progress the story Pre-HoT, which could easily be far more tedious on a first character than masteries. And you have to unlock the maps/waypoints to get to the next story instance. While there aren’t ‘Hearts’ in HoT, each map has several equivalents in terms of the local meta events (Thankfully, the April patch fixed the reward structure) – the assorted outposts in VB (Noble Crash site, Ordnance Corps, Itzel village, Main Pact base, and the Sylvari team in the ruins) and TD (Nuhoch, Ogres, Rata Novus, and SCAR), and watchposts in AB come to mind.

For those you you liking zergs and zerg trains, thats exactly what its become. You don’t actually think for yourself, you just follow the guy in front of you and do what he does. “working together to take things down” by copying the guy beside you to do the one event that’s on the map. The game already had this but to make it the what-is for all new content is harsh for those outside zerg-mentalities.

Eh. “Zerg Trains” are a great way to end up with incomplete maps. You gotta spread out, and a lot of events are very soloable. Though I find your dismissive attitude toward group play to be highly disturbing.

I can’t agree with you that changing maps and getting to a new waypoint is the same as unlocking masteries. And I also don’t know how your soloing events in HoT? You must be at least rallying with randoms in the area. You’re way above average if you soloing a bunch of HoT events.

And yes, I’m not a fan of trains so I have this tone in my posts. But with original content there were work arounds for the trains. It was walk two feet, bump into an npc who needs help and start something so you didn’t need to go on one should you choose to. WvW trains were always running, you just needed to catch up to it making it different then PvE which goes off on set timers and they are also circumvent-able as there are ways to do your own thing.

Most of the map in HoT is pointless to explore more then once and its the diversity I’m poking at here. Its become a rail shooter.

If I could level up my HoT mastery in the original content I would. There is just too much content to enjoy that you rarely come to do the same thing twice, let alone in the same order. But I can’t since mastery of HoT and pre-HoT don’t overlap. I don’t mind leveling slow, I just want to enjoy it while I do and not be forced into repetition.

Nova.7261:

Sartharina.3542:

Nova.7261:

It did and it didn’t.

For those that just like the soloing, story, and freeplay, it sucks. In GW2 pre-HoT, when did you have to unlock anything to progress in the story? You had to solo instance boss fight and walk to some new places, thats it. In HoT, you MUST participate in content repeatedly on HoT maps, grinding your mastery until you have the right unlock to progress your story. The time spent unlocking story to playing story in HoT vs pre-HoT is massively disproportionate. It really feels like grinding now, no exploring new hearts to get experience. There is zero point to exploring the map and enjoying it like an adventure.

Actually, you had to grind experience levels to progress the story Pre-HoT, which could easily be far more tedious on a first character than masteries. And you have to unlock the maps/waypoints to get to the next story instance. While there aren’t ‘Hearts’ in HoT, each map has several equivalents in terms of the local meta events (Thankfully, the April patch fixed the reward structure) – the assorted outposts in VB (Noble Crash site, Ordnance Corps, Itzel village, Main Pact base, and the Sylvari team in the ruins) and TD (Nuhoch, Ogres, Rata Novus, and SCAR), and watchposts in AB come to mind.

For those you you liking zergs and zerg trains, thats exactly what its become. You don’t actually think for yourself, you just follow the guy in front of you and do what he does. “working together to take things down” by copying the guy beside you to do the one event that’s on the map. The game already had this but to make it the what-is for all new content is harsh for those outside zerg-mentalities.

Eh. “Zerg Trains” are a great way to end up with incomplete maps. You gotta spread out, and a lot of events are very soloable. Though I find your dismissive attitude toward group play to be highly disturbing.

I can’t agree with you that changing maps and getting to a new waypoint is the same as unlocking masteries. And I also don’t know how your soloing events in HoT? You must be at least rallying with randoms in the area. You’re way above average if you soloing a bunch of HoT events.

And yes, I’m not a fan of trains so I have this tone in my posts. But with original content there were work arounds for the trains. It was walk two feet, bump into an npc who needs help and start something so you didn’t need to go on one should you choose to. WvW trains were always running, you just needed to catch up to it making it different then PvE which goes off on set timers and they are also circumvent-able as there are ways to do your own thing.

Most of the map in HoT is pointless to explore more then once and its the diversity I’m poking at here. Its become a rail shooter.

If I could level up my HoT mastery in the original content I would. There is just too much content to enjoy that you rarely come to do the same thing twice, let alone in the same order. But I can’t since mastery of HoT and pre-HoT don’t overlap. I don’t mind leveling slow, I just want to enjoy it while I do and not be forced into repetition.

There are so many hot events you can solo now it’s not funny. Any of the new vet spawn events can be soloed. Clearing outposts in VB night can be soloed. The itzel hunting event that spawns like every few minutes at the end of the day cycle can be soloed. There are many events that can be soloed.

But zerging is something that’s really not done very often at all. 2-3 people can probably complete 90 plus percent of the events.

I’ve finished most of the events in most of the event chains in daytime VB with 3 people. It’s definitely doable.

That’s hardly what I’d call zerging.

In fact you don’t even need zergs to finish things like tarir.

In some cases, zergs scale up the events to make them harder and less people have an easier time. If you don’t believe me, I’d be happy to show you.

But of course

We had issues prior to HoT but people still had hope and expectations of what the game could become with a more focused vision. An expansion was a make or break deal where many ideas are taken and bundled together to show people Anet vision for the game. Many people were let down and those were primarily vets. Old guilds vanished as it’s old guard turned away new guilds took their place and new players came but in smaller quantities. To make the matters worse as can be seen on these very board these new players are asking for the exact same things the veterans have asked for since the launch of the game. Some people may take these posts for trolling since the topics have been seen for years but these are usually new players fresh to the game seeing the exact same issues and coming up with the exact same solutions and thus making similar posts.

The whole April update argument doesn’t hold any water either as people are talking about a slight fix months after the fact. Sure they could have left HoT as is and not change a thing but this is a business a corporate power and larger companies have suffered greater losses in the span of time from the HoT launch till the April patch. It’s completely unrealistic to expect people to turn a blind eye to the past. The brand is damaged and Anet has a soured reputation people don’t care that they stated they will be quiet about the next quarterly patch and people don’t care for fixes that come months after the fact.

I suppose another question could be is it HoT or was it the late response and lack of communication after HoT. People who left don’t want to hear that things can be soloed now or that things are different after months of silence after the launch. They look and they will see Raids and they will see E-sports along with dungeons, underwater, fractals, and so forth tossed under the bus and forgotten because Anet is on their next big kick.

Constant instability with lack of focus or vision seems to be the direction of this game and Anet is aware of this as they’ve stated numerous times that they’ve been working on systems upon systems to make things more streamlined but then they toss out those systems to create more systems.

The expectations were cemented with HoT and veterans lefts I’ve heard from some who have been gone for years who have returned which is completely possible with a game without subs like GW2 for people to return. That the game doesn’t evolve even with HoT if a person who started at launch who took a break maybe 1-2 years after that launch and logged back in today they will see new modes like raids and whatnot. However their class is unchanged, the dungeons are the same, now new types of weapons have been added, very few armor sets in an endless sea of outfits, play-styles removed, people expecting trinity roles(Raids), Season 1 garbage littering the maps, and worst if all everything is both balanced, designed, and capped to their E-sport deisres. While E-sports did the most damage it was HoT that was the final straw for many people. Things have been added to the world(Raids) but the world really hasn’t changed other than this becoming an endless endgame of grinding shopping lists and hoping no more pvp balance changes ruins your class even further in other aspects of the game..

IMHO, yes it did and the worst part is that it has permanently damaged the game and user base. I remember having the discussion after the first open beta in with guildies and noted that it won’t be received well on multiple levels (gating, verticality, locked out map areas…). All of these were true and then HoT brought terrible grind to the mix.
Out of 4 guilds I was member of, only 1 survived HoT aftermath.

People just stopped playing the game including myself. I do come back from time to time to Central Tyria to see how Anet is merging servers one after another. There are currently several games that GW people took refuge in and I haven’t heard anyone mentioning anything about going back to GW2

Nothing can fix the HoT I’m afraid as it is unfixable without a complete redesign, lowering grind is but a makeup on an old face.