HoT - 'good and meh' review

HoT - 'good and meh' review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Shampanix.3928

Shampanix.3928

From who’s perspective this is written:
I’m playing occasionaly hardcore hours, but mostly I try to limit my time on gaming due to real life duties. So no, I’m no high-end gamer. Sometimes I can spend whole weekend on playing, but that’s all. I can’t sit all day @ computer during week days.

What is good:
1. VB and AB. These maps are just amazing. Beautiful. Complex but not too hard. Feels like dangerous, hostile world – exactly how it should be.

2. Elite specialisations – some better, some worse, yet they changed a lot for some classes and I like it. More variety. More stuff to experiment with. (could use more balance)

3. Gliding – oh my god this is wonderful! Way better than any mounts in other games – this is just fantastic way to travel across the new zones. With uprafts, oh come on – probably best idea in whole expansion!

4. The idea of masteries is great as well. No more death of last season’s gear yay! But….. only idea, check out below.

5. Music. THIS IS MUSIC!!!! It’s just awesome. Especially those pieces that are played in AB, oh my god <3 I’m in love in terms of art – good game Arenanet!

6. Despite being limited as hell in terms of more lore to get hands on in game, more stuff, more interactions, I really like the Exalted! They fit perfectly.

7. And Sylvari madness, awwyeah. That was something great! I even hoped you would destroy alliance and make two opposite factions of players! Yeah, stuff I got used to in WoW haha… but I don’t mind how Sylvari plot played out in the end. Could be more of this of course, but overal a good idea.

What is bad in my opinion? Oh well… there we go!
1. How am I supposed to gain exp when the initial rush through maps is gone? Yeah I try hard to find maps through LFR but it is getting harder and harder, as you would expect people are less interested in the new zones after burning through them. Gating exp in events that require a lot of players isn’t a good idea. We could use some other ways of gaining exp not to be forced to do only one way of playing repeteadly.

2. Dragons Stand. – event map. This decrease actuall open-world maps to 3 (or 2 cus as for me TD is very frustrating and I hate every moment I need to spend there either with my main or my alts). I managed to do meta event there only once. Had fun. Now when I try to do it again I have a lot of trouble finding organised map through lfr. Sad.

3. Tangled Depths – I like that it’s complicated, but you can’t navigate there without hours of painful exploration, while being instakilled by mobs. This was my worst experience at first walk-through on my main guard. Since then I try to spend as least as possible time there with my alts.

4. Stronghold in pvp – good idea, obviously a move towards e-sports as the idea of gameplay taken from mobas. Tho it feels… clunky to play? Yeah. Let’s say I like old maps way more.

5. Masteries. Some of them are great, like beloved gliding, mushroms, byt others are… just to be there. So the mastery tree do not look too empty. I expected them to unveil some mysteries. Involve some lore, just additional stuff. For giggles, for fun, for immersion into world. Something actually meaningful. But… yeah. They’re just to “ding”, and limit you as long as you don’t have them, nothing more. Simple, boring, grindy stuff with tons of exp to gain to progress. And you know what? I played wow a lot. Each time I played alt and went through all current expansion’s maps I dinged max lvl by just doing stuff in maps but not repeatedly. This was progression of character. And here I played 4 characters through HoT maps and storyline. And I can’t even get half masteries done by now without dedicating myself to farm events with all xp boosters on. How isn’t that grindfest? Meh. But yeah, they plan to add new masteries along. Hopefully something useful outside raids -.-’

6. Soo, the story (look out, some spoilers). In VB – omg, amazing stuff. That felt just soo great, finding yourself in hostile teritory fighting to survive! And then flash speed and done – way too fast. Especially with wierd ending. Like, we struggle sooo hard to go through @ first 2 maps within story and suddenly bang it’s over. Why so easy? Couldn’t the bad guy be there longer to annoy us for a while? Why the story couldn’t be bit more complex? I do pray for lw season 3 to fix this.

7. Raids – hello? Okay, I can leave it be. I won’t be able to do it. It’s too hard for me and I don’t have enough of time to spend killing one dude in a game for several tireing hours to train it. It’s okay, let hardcore guys have something to chew on. But you know what? Raids seem to be main source of end-game gear now. Next is crafting which is total grindfest again.

8. Then I started to think – let’s do dungeons. But NOPE, they nerfed rewards from dungeons. Almost noone plays them now. Okay…

9. So fractals? Currently not worth it in terms of rewards. But at least they will fix it @ december for which I am grateful <3

10. And btw, yeah that insta-kill in new zones is so great. At least after the time I’ve learnt how to survive in Maguma. But yeah, I totally understand why people are so angry at it. Yet… at this point I think this should stay. It makes sense after all, this is serious enemy teritory.

11. Would forgot – Revenant! Yeah, profession got some good things but overal feels limiting. You have to stick to premade set of utilities. But yeah, that’s the nature of it. Either you like it or play your old main. I think I might like it when Rev gets one more damage spec and legend and Ventari got buffed to be a real healing spec.

12. Rewards in HoT – what rewards? :P Like, really. Raids which are for small ammount of players? Okay, perhaps some stuff gain through currencies of maps. But except this we are spammed with greens and blues which are useless junk to be either sold by some bronze coins or salvaged.

13. I wanted to try WvW in HoT but it looks soo dead now. Only EotM is ususally filled with people. Tho for me it’s lvling farm for alts. A lot of fun, but it’s not HoT

Uhm… okay. Sorry, I had to do this. I was angry for too long

So overal – a lot of good ideas but implemented poorly. I didn’t mind challenge in game, and I still don’t mind it. But these things need some attention. At least some. Right now I feel totaly discouraged to play. Most of stuff is either gated by heavy grind of masteries, or gated by heavy difficulty or gated by population requirements to do anything.

Was it worth buying? Not so sure, but I think in the end – yes. At least to try it out, check out a lot of new stuff.
This can be fixed. And then game will be more enjoyable. Now it’s just annoying and grindy after surprisingly short time.

I do hope that Anet will bring some fixes and good new stuff to the game in upcoming months.

(edited by Shampanix.3928)

HoT - 'good and meh' review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: kuritsutian.2987

kuritsutian.2987

9. So fractals? Currently not worth it in terms of rewards. But at least they will fix it @ december for which I am grateful <3

Do you have information about what’s going to be fixed? can you or someone else point me to the list or something?…please

Suddenly in the Forums Everyone is now a Game designer!

HoT - 'good and meh' review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Vissarion.6509

Vissarion.6509

9. So fractals? Currently not worth it in terms of rewards. But at least they will fix it @ december for which I am grateful <3

Do you have information about what’s going to be fixed? can you or someone else point me to the list or something?…please

no list, just some bumping of rewards, we dont know any specifics still, wait till next week
oh and the annoying Tons of touphness/HP after lvl60, scaling lower now.

They called us TEMPESTs, but we can use our elite to cheat death instead

HoT - 'good and meh' review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Valky.2574

Valky.2574

7. Raids are also the story leading up to s3 . No raid no story for you

HoT - 'good and meh' review

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Shampanix.3928

Shampanix.3928

9. So fractals? Currently not worth it in terms of rewards. But at least they will fix it @ december for which I am grateful <3

Do you have information about what’s going to be fixed? can you or someone else point me to the list or something?…please

There: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Upcoming-Fractal-Changes

7. Raids are also the story leading up to s3 . No raid no story for you

OMG… hugs anyone? this is painful