Guild Wars 2

I’d go with a 7/10.

As usual stunning environment art/design, gliding and mushrooms are a lot of fun, music is good too. The atmosphere in each map is great.

Only downside is the contrived content gating, but otherwise I’m enjoying it a lot so far.

Nemesis.6938:

im very frustrated because
the maps are stunning
the story is fine
the enemies, weapons, armors – all good to great

but – the pathfinding, complicated maps, hero points and mastery grinding – its incredibly frustrating to me right now….especially cause i feel im running around for 2 hours only to achieve something worth 15 minutes…

and this is really a shame – cause it has so much great and beautiful stuff – but after hours of not finding stuff im ready to throw my keyboard into the screen

Exactly describes my own feelings…

TMcMahon.5014:

Vyshan.2345:

I’d give it a 3.
The story was fun, up until “You need to unlock XX mastery to continue” coupled with the inability to unlock my elite spec.

I’ve just stopped playing entirely.

Pretty much the same here. I’m having a lot less fun than I was having prior to the expansion releasing. I’m thinking of heading away for a few months, and seeing if I can enjoy it again after a good break.

Same here, haven’t played at all yesterday and am thinking about taking a break
and look for other games at the moment.

8/10.

Of course, most of the people who rate it highly are playing it rather than rating it.

Vicko.1204:

4/10 I could provide my reasons but I don’t have the mastery for that yet.

ok that one made me laugh

10/10 at first, credit were credit is due, the maps and mobs look amazing
and the fights are more challenging and interesting, but…
then i hit my first “grind xp to continue!”
then it was 8/10 until i hit my second “grind xp to continue”
5/10 as i started to get bored of “grind xp to continue”
now its 3/10 ever since i hit the “grind FIVE MILLION xp to continue”.

it might pick up once i unlock reaper, but guess what “grind xp to continue!”

Vicko.1204:

4/10 I could provide my reasons but I don’t have the mastery for that yet.

you just won the internet!

lordhelmos.7623:

Well, all of us know the real numbers.

$-1000<-122.34<-\pi^e<-\gamma<-0.00000001<-0.0000000000000000001 \in \mathbb{R}$

But if we continue this way, looks like the largest negative number will be

$-0.0000\dots1$, but this number, as defined by Cantor, is $0$.

So can we say the largest negative number is $0$

HoT funfactor is less than the above.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one reading this thread understanding your LaTex codes but here goes you’ve earned it. For this I’ll rescale the OP to 0=horrid, 1 = ecstatically fun

Let $h$ be HoT fun factor and let $\epsilon > 0$ be given. I claim there exists a $0 \le \delta \le 1$ such that $\epsilon < h < \delta$. Now let $\delta(t) = f(t)$ where $t \in [0,\infty]$ and $f$ is the function whose image represent your satisfaction with your achievement in HoT and $t$, obviously represent time since your acquisition of HoT to an indefinite arbitrary future. Since the codomain is finite as the game is a finite state automaton, $f$ is continuous since the domain consists of singleton units of time. Extreme Value Theorem guarantees a maximal $\Delta$ in a singleton subset of any element in $[0,13140000]$ where $t$ here is measure in seconds for the span of 10 years. Remember $\Delta \le 1$. Set $h = \Delta/24000$ where 24000 is approximately the amount of seconds one takes to get 1 point in the current expansion.

its boring exp grinding jp maps is absolutly terrible amd zone map is bad too you cannot select floor i found tangled depths is more boring zone in the game bad orientation today i play 1 hour and i meet only 12 people every bigger event fail because there is no people. its better stay on first map and some week grind mobs and events for mastery. hot mastery is terrible design when in zone is almost nothing how earn exp. tyrian mastery is 10x faster to level up that hot

Was so excited for HOT to come out . I have played it until my eyes bled , I hate the fact that I have to unlock pretty much the whole expansion. Hey ANET I have a job already I do not want a second job . This is all work ugh I give it a 2/10

3/10

Being a busy person you cannot enjoy this expansion at all. It requires kitten loads of time to progress even a bit. The core GW2 worked better in that regard because you could slow but steadily progress through the world content. Here enjoying the new unlocks and achievements take so much work and time. Also 400 hero points for elite is a joke, I’ll never get it that way.

Exterior Knight.5132:

Reaper Alim.4176:

5 since A Net is going to force WvW players to PvE and map complete to unlock the class they’ve already paid for. Awesome graphics, gameplay is fun.

I just feel like A Net since all the WvW players a message as such… “Master say you WvWers do PvP or no new spec line for you. You want that new spec line you’ve paid for right? Well better get to the PvEing and Map Completion then master demands it!”

I’ll give GW2 post HoT a solid 5 as I take my business else where. I’ll be kitten to be a game dev slave. My money my enjoyment not my money dev enjoyment. Point and point.

Actually you can unlock your elite spec completely in WvW, you get certain items that you trade to vendors and then the item you get from the vendors completes a random hero point instantly, you don’t even need to leave WvW

Yep, perfectly right.

Just grind out 400 wvw levels on the toon that you want the elite spec for. That won’t take long at all, right?

I’ll be generous and give it 1/10. Bought it on the basis would be able to play the elite specs and skills, and then work on masteries, badly disappointed to find elites time and exp and hero points gated behind all sorts of pve rubbish.

art design: 9/10
The frogs look silly, but overall the art team did their job with flying colors. The maps are beautiful, end of story.

Story (at least the first few steps): 8/10
The devs try to make the most out of an engine that’s not really suited to tell a story to tell their story and I can respect that. Furthermore, what I’ve seen so far is enjoyable.

game design: Urgh!/10
I hate the slow progression. No, I don’t want to breeze trough the game in a couple of hours, but the progression HoT enforces is just tedious grinding. I don’t explore the world and the story and become stronger and more skilled while doing so, story and map exploration are gated content and require hours of grinding.
If the asian market is that important to ArenaNet and NCSoft because grinders are apparently very popular there, fine, but as a player who plays Guild Wars to avoid the tedious and boring asia grinders, I feel left behind.

Did not buy it, i (fortunately) waited for the first tests and forum posts.

But lets face it…..GW 2 has been one of the most grind intensive games out there (farming Halloween mobs for hundreds of hours etc etc .), but it was very well disguised.

Now it seems they failed to mask their grind feast!

Boy oh boy I’ve never seen so much cry babys. So what a lot of you saying is: We wanna play an MMO, we buy an MMO, but we don’t like this game to be so much MMO’ish… Maybe a lot of you forget that masteries are acount wide? So when you have them all unlocked you don’t have to do it anymore on other characters, never again… After that you may come back here to cry about how you all have nothing to do etc… Common guys, enjoy the game, or go play some other crap game like WOW… -.-

Okay, now here is my comment/rating:

10/10. There is no better MMO then GW2… Period…

(I’m not even starting on those sour people who wanted their elite spec on log-in).

less than zero. If your buying the game (in a free 2 player) you should get the elites unlocked for buying it.
maps look silly, all this massive tree roots, weird gaps that if you go to the bottom of you just die…
Refuse to buy. Designed to cater for those no lifes who only live to spend 8 hours a day farming stuff. (like the person above).

2/10

Honestly, the new zones design are amazing. It’s so beautiful that at first i though it would keep me overjoyed for a while. Little did i know that it was a HUGE jumping puzzle. Seriously, other than the first two zones where you can keep track of the roads, the rest is way too hard to keep up with.
Most events and more importantly, hero points, cannot be completed because they are impossible to find and/or require that you kill a champion. Something that you cannot do on your own.
I have no real problem with masteries, except their very low progression rate.
Lastly, make something about the Elite Specializations please. I am a new player and didn’t get to do world completion. Farming all those hero point to be able to play Reaper is too much. Let alone do it for my alts, too.

PS: I know it is just my opinion and many ppl will claim otherwise. All i want to say is that GW2 is a game and it’s supposed to be enjoyed. Not be tedious, let alone repeat itself so much. For such purposes we can always play WoW.

The challenging npc’s are a welcome change but the meager xp is really disheartening. Events do not give enough experience. I just want to play with a specialization but I do not want to work 6 months for that privilege.

It is really frustrating getting to a hero challenge and finding out it requires a mastery to complete. It would be appropriate to have some kind of info on the map to tell us the requirement.

3/10

10/10 a lot of new achievements to get

My only complaint is unlocking elite spec is counterproductive. Elite Spec should of been a Personal Story line filled with intrigue and new clues into maguuma. And should of been available shortly after entering new maps. The hero point grind simply doesn’t mesh….

Clearly most think the game is great but the grind is bringing it down a bit.

You really REALLY feel the grind here.

The story, visuals, voice acting, dialogue, AI, fights, new monsters, areas and just everything is awesome.

But for the third time, dat kitten grind.

Did I mention that it’s grindy as hell?

Templar.3418:

Clearly most think the game is great but the grind is bringing it down a bit.

You really REALLY feel the grind here.

The story, visuals, voice acting, dialogue, AI, fights, new monsters, areas and just everything is awesome.

But for the third time, dat kitten grind.

Did I mention that it’s grindy as hell?

My thoughts exactly.

graphic and design 10/10
rest 2/10 killed all what makes guild wars 2 different to other mmo’s for me. overnight nerf near to all different play and farm styles.

in the last two weeks i was farming 1000 gold 100% map completion and a little bit more ^^ because it was fun and i choose to do this, not because i had to do this.
and what we get now, you have to play xyz or you have a huge disadvantage ( and its also a disadvantage, if you had to do things that you dont like to have fun again after you are done ). and this is what people call content now.

I would say 9!!

0 fun factor.
The story seems interesting if I ever will manage to unlock enough mastery to progress the story. Exploring the new maps is impossible if you have not unlocked the masteries. There is no content in Hot providing enough experience if not participating in the events. Running in an event train is not challenging, not exciting or stimulating. The mini games seems always to be locked but it doesn’t matter as if I wanted to play mini games I can do that on my mobile. HoT could have been so much more than only event trains.

Fun factor? I give it a well deserved 3. I play solo and a lot of the content requires a bunch of other people to attempt. That, in turn, means I need other people who have grinded as much as I have to get to obscure hero and mastery points around the map.

I’d give it a solid 7 if I not for the grind and the fact that Berserker feels… Pretty bad. But, so far, half of every map is blocked off by a different grind, and now I need to go back and repeat Tyria content another 300 times to unlock the new stuff there… Fun.

i’d say 7.

The maps are fun, the masteries really do give you the excitement back from leveling again, and the story so far is amazing.

The parts I don’t agree with, is the elite specs being so annoyingly heavily gated. the maps are kind of just like silverwastes all over again, some hero points require you to have 5+ people to complete. And then the story itself is gated too.

Also yeah, they are really annoying to navigate, I spent hours trying to figure out here to go in tangled roots. The only thing is, I don’t see much of a point to unlocking meguuma masteries once u get your elite spec, and complete the storyline.

I’d give it 9/10 because of the thrill of map exploration while timing my movement to slip through the tough mobs

but I’m giving it a flat 4/10 because elite spec and mastery grinding… especially certain masteries required for certain story acts… what a killjoy

also the maps are confusing… I need to run around, backtrack, glide here and there all over the map just to get to 1 point (maybe I’m terrible at navigating idk :p )

4/10. Gating, grinding, ranger nerfs …

For me HoT is a easy 9.5 / 10 .

I love the map design and the graphics. Also i just LOVE the new minigames they build in everywhere. They are fun and challenging at the same time !!

Since i have map completion and level 80 i was able to nearly fully unlock my elite specialisation in about a day without any greater problems.

The story is very nice and takes place at various part’s of the maguuma jungle which guides you through the map’s.

And i have just discovered two maps. It really makes me looking forward to what the jungle have next in store for me !!

Great job ArenaNet.

I would say, 8/10.

Some mobs are just annoying, not challenging + ofc “Group hero points” + contested waypoints (Since release) are the most annoying things in this game. Other than that i enjoy the new expansion.

8/10. Exceeded expectations, keep it up. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but I’m happy with the present situation provided that improvements are forthcoming. Or, in other words, I’m not looking forward to farming lots of hero points on all of my alts.

On the whole, I agree with quite a few of the complaints that have been made, but I was lucky enough to avoid the absolute worst of it, and even if I hadn’t been, I don’t think the outrage threads we’re seeing are anywhere near justified for the most part.

I don’t think the number of hero points required for an elite spec can be much lower than 400 without turning them into a virtually free unlock, and I don’t think they should be a virtually free unlock — if you don’t agree with this, I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree, it’s not a topic that we can have real debate over. But I’d certainly be in favour of adding a lot of new, alternative ways to get those hero points.

Note that in the case of the champs and the ‘forced grouping’, I’m not convinced that those hero challenges aren’t bugged — at least some seem to spawn vets every time.

2/10

The grind is horrible. Kind of sad I bought the expansion.

I gave it a fun factor of -10 and after more playtime it still remains the same. I’m really trying to get into but I just can’t. Instead of being wide open spaces of exploration and deeper understanding of the lore they simply assembled the worst elements of Super Mario Bros (including walking ’shrooms, of all things) and blended them into the GW2 universe all the while vacuuming all that made GW2 fun.

I’ve had a good run with GW, ever since 2005, but now, with this last offering, I think it’s time I take my distance for a while from a game I don’t even recognize anymore. I used to play at least 4 hours per day, even more during week-ends but now I’ll put those hours to better use. I honestly and most sincerely regret the prepurchase.

3/10 so far. Maybe it gets better.

The problem as I see it with “Grind of Thorns” is that they didn’t give us more content because there “was nothing to do” – they gave us little new content but they make you stop and farm xp arbitrarily every step of the way to “stretch it out” and make it seem longer.

I rate it a 10
It’s beautiful and a totally new, refreshing and extremely challenging experience from GW2.

7/10.

Some bugs still around, especially when doing the first transition from SW to VB while teamed.

Worst part is the WvW-map, which does not fit for smaller servers at all. Plus, the WvW-Alternative for leveling the Elite-Spec seems to be a nightmare, especially on said smaller servers, where you don’t have fights/events all the time. Please, someone at ANet finally understand your own WvW.

Apart from that the maps are looking great, there is a bit too much verticality and complexity in them (not only WvW, but the new PvE maps as well), but visually they are absolutely beautiful.

The new PvE-maps are a tad too solo-unfriendly. Multiplayer does not necessarily mean teamed and role-playing includes lone wolf as a role. I’d prefer it if this would be toned down a bit in upcoming adjustments. Additionally some of the events take too long. That is also true for the core game in some areas. Golem Mk II does not become more interesting just because it takes so long.

I can live with the fact, that I have to play the game in order to play the game. Every MMO has to do some gating, there cannot be fresh content for thousands of hours of gameplay, so neither masteries nor hero points pose a problem for me. If you start a fresh account and character, you also have to level to the appropriate level to continue your personal story, so what.

It is solid and maybe with a few tunings it becomes even better – although I fear that will not work for the WvW desert borderland. That one in my opinion is just into the completely wrong direction.

I don’t like layer type maps at all; There are way too few waypoints; Here challanges are, well, the forums are full of complaints. You must do the same few events 10 thousand times to get a single level of mastery. 3/10

4.5/10

I am alright with the mastery grind to unlock the other things as they are account wide but I think we should haven’t to grind that much just to use our classes. Its just too much just to be able to have the elite spec.
Other than that, i think the maps are good.

I’m really not enjoying it at all. I hate how everything is gated, oh you want that Vista? Well tough luck, you don’t have updraft. Want that skill point? “You’re not worthy”. And the amount of XP you need is just insane. The map has a horrible layout that’s just a chore to traverse. It’s probably the worst expansion for any MMO I’ve ever played.

9/10

There are a couple of small things that bother me, but nothing is totally making this a bad experience.

I give HoT a 2/10
on one hand, as a necro i love reaper
but putting myself through splitting headaches, hours of unnecessary boredom, and lots of unbridled rage due to how poorly designed and implemented hero points and mastery system are, is simply not worth it in the slightest
I honestly feel insulted by anet with all the BS they are making us put up with after we already gave them OUR MONEY.
Grind wars 2: Heart of grind

edit:
So as not to just complain without a solution, here is what I think
1.Mastery system gating: This should not be a thing, This is not horizontal progression at all. This mechanic specifically blocks content and in many cases utterly halts all progression until grinded to the correct level. And yes it is grinding
In case some genius at anet decides to think “Well FOTM is grinding, it’s the same thing, and you guys like that!” No, fractals are not grinding because you constantly progress in difficulty as you go on, and that keeps it refreshing. Grinding the same events on the HoT maps over and over and OVER is not fun in the slightest. It makes me want to pull my hair out. I don’t know what other people here play video games for, but I play for fun, and doing the same thing over and over in order to unlock CORE FEATURES is terrible. mastery needs be redesigned as not to gate core features
2. elite specializations: great, you did it anet, the elites are great, if only we could PLAY THEM. once again this CORE FEATURE is gated by massive amounts of grinding and gates by the mastery system. my solution, make hero points on the HOT maps worth 5 each and reduce the cost of specializations by half, this would make the work we do outside of the new maps less trivialized while still making playing on the new maps a good idea(instead of absolutely mandatory)
3. treat your players like kitten adults: I have made many decisions in my life, I am currently fighting a war in Afghanistan, I think that I am adult enough to make my own decision to skip content and unlock core features. The people on this forum who enjoy the content, good for you, keep playing it, but DO NOT force others to play it just because “you like it”. we are all adults(a few kids play i’m sure) and we are perfectly capable of making our own decisions, let us skip the kitten content.

Visual: 10
Audio: 10
Exploration: 10
Story: 8

Daredevil: 7 (would be 10 if the dodges were combat-changeable stances instead of filler for grandmaster traits)

Mastery 6 (would be 9~ if you could know ahead of time if some content needs a specific mastery, it’s the worst feeling in the world getting to a hard place just to discover you don’t have the mastery to do the content)

Event density: 5

Event pacing: varies from 1 to 10 (some are EXTREMELY slow, it’s insane)

add 1 point for all the extra systems the entire game got, making everything better and HoT is a solid 8.5.
Could go up to 10 with some QoL.

The HOT hype train ended up a train wreck.

eldrin.6471:

The HOT hype train ended up a train wreck.

Except it didn’t. This is a usual case of, the loudest people are the ones not happy, but there are way more happy people. When you make an MMO, you can never make everyone happy. Some want everything at once, others like me, want to enjoy what the game has to offer at a pace. It’s not even a super slow pace, it’s actually nice.

9/10 for me. Only issue I had with it they patched/are patching today. Itzel poison lore for story was kind of silly, but all the other mastery gates are perfectly fine. Just like personal story requiring a certain level.

I’m still super hyped and would be playing it tonight as soon as I got home if I didn’t have other plans after work.

eldrin.6471:

The HOT hype train ended up a train wreck.

Pretty much, it’s not what I wanted at all so I’m here instead of playing. Not the best £30 I’ve ever spent.

MrH.2591:

eldrin.6471:

The HOT hype train ended up a train wreck.

Pretty much, it’s not what I wanted at all so I’m here instead of playing. Not the best £30 I’ve ever spent.

On top of that, when people ask for a refund, they would deactivate HoT and the original GW2. I’m seeing Anet in a whole new light now. I can’t believe I ever supported them.

I caved in and bought the expac for 3 things, Revenant, Specialization and Guild Hall.

Having fun with the Revenant so all good there.
Whoever decided on the cost of the specializations shouldn’t be allowed to make a decision of any kind in any game permanently. It’s just a f****** specialization, most of them average compared to the core ones, and they cost 400 hps? they better come with a full set of ascended armor and a legendary to be worth that much (even then i’m not sure). Absolutely ridiculous.
Can’t say anything about the guild halls, my guild still figuring out what to do and when.

Basically, even having fun with the revenant, the thought of the idiotic grind for one specialization (i have 8 chars) is enough to make me stop playing. I knew the masteries would take time, no problems there but the specialization cost is WAY too much, they should cost, at the most, double of a core specialization.

So i give it a 3/10 (because of the revenant)

Fun? What fun? I will tell you when I find any. <trollface>

8-9/10

I feel the Elite Spec could be less Hero Point intensive, that way I personally could get a better feel for it and not feel like I just blew 400 Hero Points on something I regret.

Other than that, the Artwork and the Map Design, New Creatures ect. along with the other Content added in this expansion, I am REALLY enjoying myself and finding the Challenging content to be to my liking.

Sadly, a sorely disappointed 1/10.

I’ve not enjoyed any of the 3 maps I’ve been on (beyond admiring the amount of design work that obviously went in to the construction), and my stomach turns at the amount of event repetition demanded to level my Maguuma Masteries here.

Obviously the past few years have lowered expectations concerning loot drops, but as a GW1 player it still feels hollow to have a new expansion’s drops & endless varieties of containers yield zero of interest (I don’t really consider the Makeshift weapon set to be of interest, considering they’re designed specifically so to look like L1 trash drops).

Terrible disappointment to open the bank wardrobe first minute I got in post-release, to find the only armour sets – for all weights – are ‘shredder’ (GW1 assassin says hi) and ‘rocks with stink waves’; no intention to use them on any of my characters.

Most disappointing of all that the devs have had all this time and never said that post-HoT guilds would be unable to function with fewer than 3 active members; my brother & I have been our own GW guild for 10 years now (w/ every possible hall upgrade in GW1), and so to have that journey come to end so abruptly with no acknowledgement (much less justification) from Anet was a sad find on Friday.

Upshot: we cannot play in the evenings anyway due to our ISP (EE), until we switch over to the new one November 4th. I’ll see if 5 workdays till my next play session lessens the disappointment, and if it doesn’t then rather than start the 50m XP slog I’ll just have to have a frank conversation with my brother about whether he still wants to play this game & when my own jumping-off point will be for it.

I miss GW1 – and its gameplay/design ethos – more than ever… 8 (