Guild Wars 2

The link is here.

Some quotes:

“It’s great fun in the right circumstances, but when those circumstances shift a tad from the ideal, it falls a little flat on its face, with increasingly empty zones and the illusion of open-ended horizontal progression.”

“These are tough events, full of charging and swarming enemies that often make soloing impossible, which wasn’t a problem just a few days ago when Heart of Thorns was brand new and groups were plentiful. Just two weeks in, though, I already often find myself on maps with virtually nothing going on. I’m alone with these swarms. Sometimes a notice pops up saying that I’m invited to join a more populated map (with an XP boost, to boot), but oddly enough, it’s occasionally almost as unpopulated.”

“When it stumbles, it’s in its ostensibly open-ended mastery progression that’s more set in stone than it seems, and in its heavy group and dynamic event focus that doesn’t always jive with empty maps.”

If you want to talk numbers instead of text, HoT got a lower score than Guild Wars: Prophecies, Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall or even Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

Whether this is a player distribution issue or a general population one isn’t clear but either way this is easily one of the biggest complaints I have about HoT.

Ahh yes IGN. The ones who critisized Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze for its “unimaginitve Level Design” giving it a 6 and Pokemon ORAS for having too much Water. I don’t think if I can take anything serious from them anymore.

Hmm but I’ll give this a try and perhaps this is one of the better Reviews from them.

Funny how EotM and SW are generally full isn’kitten

Players want to be rewarded, and the less effort it takes the better for 99% of the populace. I am not shocked in the least. I like the new maps personally, but then again I like to put in some effort into getting rewards.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Funny how EotM and SW are generally full isn’kitten

Players want to be rewarded, and the less effort it takes the better for 99% of the populace. I am not shocked in the least. I like the new maps personally, but then again I like to put in some effort into getting rewards.

They designed challenging content people asked for say some but I’ll point out that no one was begging for zerg maps which is exactly what the HoT maps are. You’re 100% right about rewards, spend an hour in HoT doing a meta chain for a chest or take shovels to SW and make more money with less effort. It feels backwards.

It’s actually a pretty decent review. It hits the mark on what a lot of people have been voicing their opinions about, but it does miss a few key things still. There’s another review in the comments section that covers a few of the other things as well.

But overall, not too bad.

So, yeah. I’m sick of hearing people complain about empty maps… If u want a meta event, look in LFG, its really not that hard. And if u need extra people fot a herk challenge, ASK! ive yet to see ANYONE ask for more people to help with something and NOT get said help. Its an MMO, people are supposed to work with other people to accomplish things. If you want to play alone. Then gtho tbh…. Go play a single player game. We all wanted harder end game content, and now that hero challenges and events can’t be effectively done with one or two people that are not willing to ask for help they are gunna cry about it.. rolls eyes throws damask patch to wipe the tears

Hawken son of Z.1367:

Its an MMO, people are supposed to work with other people to accomplish things. If you want to play alone. Then gtho tbh…. Go play a single player game.

And then you’ll find that you have to play alone because everyone else has left the game.

Saying “if you don’t want to play my way, just leave” isn’t exactly a great way to answer when you’re defending GROUP play.

Decent Review. Expected much worse from them. The Thing with the Empty Maps is still something that has to do with Megaservers doing a poor Job. Combine this with big Maps and great Verticality and you get the Impression that Maps are always Empty. I hope that Anet fixes the Megaserver Issue and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

HoT is definitely not perfect and a lot of flaws shine through. Some examples:

1) Overflow system doesn’t seem to be working optimally as IGN pointed out.

2) Some adventure challenges seem overtuned, too difficult to get gold, where the real challenge should be getting high on the leaderboard. Tangled Depths map event seems out of tune as well.

3) Unfinished/rushed content – like HoT legendaries that will be tapered out in time as will raid content. WvW took a big hit and content involving it feels like an afterthought, fractal rewards got destroyed for some reason. Elite specs are not balanced. Precursor quests are bugged.

4) A lot of skin rewards involved in horizontal progression, but Anet chose to stick with the horrible transmutation system. When you have one nicely skinned ascended armor set that you spent a lot of time making, the system just makes it discouraging and frustrating to play around with new skins and looks.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

Its an MMO, people are supposed to work with other people to accomplish things. If you want to play alone. Then gtho tbh…. Go play a single player game.

Hard to imagine why so many people would want to play solo when they could spend their valuable leisure time surrounded by friendly, helpful players bringing sunshine and happiness into their lives.

If IGN struggles with mobs it says much about their abilities, but y they always scratch the surface as they cant invest enough time

Aidenwolf.5964:

Tommyknocker.6089:

Funny how EotM and SW are generally full isn’kitten

Players want to be rewarded, and the less effort it takes the better for 99% of the populace. I am not shocked in the least. I like the new maps personally, but then again I like to put in some effort into getting rewards.

They designed challenging content people asked for say some but I’ll point out that no one was begging for zerg maps which is exactly what the HoT maps are. You’re 100% right about rewards, spend an hour in HoT doing a meta chain for a chest or take shovels to SW and make more money with less effort. It feels backwards.

Interesting, if I spend an hour in HoT doing a Meta event, I don’t get just one chest, but half a dozen chests easily, besides the event rewards…I think people expect to do nothing and get rewarded, which is what the SW chest train is(I still have to use up my 170 shovels though) and the EotM Ktrain.

HoT maps are not necessarily zerg trains, if people would bother to learn the mechanics and then follow through…do you ever notice how it takes 5 times as long to kill the Champs and Legendaries in the HoT events because NO ONE wants to do the Break bar…which performs 2 functions, either preventing the enemy from taking off or doing an massive damage skill and it increases the amount of damage they take from players, effectively ending the fights that much faster.

When I see a Legendary Wyvern get killed in 15 minutes when if could have been done in 5, it just makes me laugh that people then complain it takes to long to do the bosses. It would not take to long if you did them as designed.

nacario.9417:

If IGN struggles with mobs it says much about their abilities, but y they always scratch the surface as they cant invest enough time

No average player will invest enough time.

I’ve been reading some comments on a youtube vid yesterday that was reviewing the core game, and there were a lot of them of the type “I’ve tried it for a little while but it didn’t grab me in”.

There are a lot of games out there nowadays, to be successful you need to grab a player’s attention fast, else he will move on and try to find a better game.

And before you say “Fine, we don’t need casual players”, look what happened to Wildstar.

yeah, maps feeling deserted is a massive turn off for this content. Meta events being badly designed for the map populations (the events are fine if the pops were higher).

Feeling of a solo game in the new maps 90% of the time.not an MMO.

Compared to the old content, which still has large numbers of players in, either the expansion did not sell well or the new maps have really low pop limits….or people just are not playing them. something is off and it needs addressing really quickly.

Some time I feel like Anet made story season 3 add a few shiny thing to it like Revenant and guild hall. Then release it one time instead of over many week and call it expansion.

Test.8734:

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

We did have a better system, in my opinion. We guested to a higher pop server. Just my 2 copper, I found it far easier than trying to catch taxis before they poof. It’s like trying to catch fish with bare hands.

Qugi.2653:

Some time I feel like Anet made story season 3 add a few shiny thing to it like Revenant and guild hall. Then release it one time instead of over many week and call it expansion.

Not to mention the year we had to wait for it!

I was one of the few it seems that liked and wanted the 2 week schedule to continue. I have been so bored over the last year I spent more time on the forums and watching movies than playing the game I so loved at launch. I do realize that many wanted an expansion, but I would still have settled for once a month content over this.

Test.8734:

The link is here.

Some quotes:

“It’s great fun in the right circumstances, but when those circumstances shift a tad from the ideal, it falls a little flat on its face, with increasingly empty zones and the illusion of open-ended horizontal progression.”

“These are tough events, full of charging and swarming enemies that often make soloing impossible, which wasn’t a problem just a few days ago when Heart of Thorns was brand new and groups were plentiful. Just two weeks in, though, I already often find myself on maps with virtually nothing going on. I’m alone with these swarms. Sometimes a notice pops up saying that I’m invited to join a more populated map (with an XP boost, to boot), but oddly enough, it’s occasionally almost as unpopulated.”

“When it stumbles, it’s in its ostensibly open-ended mastery progression that’s more set in stone than it seems, and in its heavy group and dynamic event focus that doesn’t always jive with empty maps.”

If you want to talk numbers instead of text, HoT got a lower score than Guild Wars: Prophecies, Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall or even Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

Any particular reason that you only quoted negative comments rather than presenting a balanced view of what was said?

I agree with somethings IGN says but mostly I disagree. Let me explain.

Is HoT empty. Nooo, the LFG tool is right there and I’ve never seen it be utilized so much. If you are still looking for others to play with, ask someone in your guild.

Their mastery system is great with each mastery I’ve mastered, I’ve felt transversing the jungle has gotten easier as I’ve leveled up. I’m at a point now were I’m itching for more mastery points.

If they shouldve knock anything, it should have been the story, I understand that Season 3 is coming but, that had such a great opportunity to fully explain why the elder dragons rose. They havent even hinted at the fact that they are apart of the world, and destroying them will unbalance the chain.

I still feel that I’ve gotten my money’s worth but there was no twist. Everyone knew who was going to die. I even ruined the story for myself my completing it before doing the final meta event. Which made things a bit clearer once I eventually participated in the event. Overall the story was ok. They can do better.

Arenanet did an awesome job, there are many more things to do (some things recycled, but a betterment of the system), and they are adding more in the coming weeks.

Give it 3 months and then we can slam a verdict down.

Those negative comments reflect the feelings of a huge portion of GW2’s player base. HoT is not a success.

^ Those negative comments were cherrypicked, the review also points out lot of good stuff.
I wonder why the OP felt the need to quote the negative parts and leave the good ones out, mmm …..

I’d argue the review is pretty accurate, frankly. I’m not fond of IGN, but I think they nailed the review.

It’s a beautiful, thrilling theme park ride, but the more you do it inspect it, the more you realize it’s really not worth the lines and the sensation feels less and less exciting each time.

I gave it a 6 on Metacritic with the addition of some of the post-release fixes. I docked extra points because of the WvW changes and dungeon reward nerfs. With dungeons nerfed, all I see is the further promotion of SW grinding.

Skynet.7201:

Test.8734:

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

We did have a better system, in my opinion. We guested to a higher pop server. Just my 2 copper, I found it far easier than trying to catch taxis before they poof. It’s like trying to catch fish with bare hands.

The flaw in the old system was the overserver thing. If you were playing in an overserver – which was common when doing one of the big meta events – and disconnected, you had no way of returning to the overserver you were in. A district system more similar to the one in the original GW would help with that.

Raziel.4216:

^ Those negative comments were cherrypicked, the review also points out lot of good stuff.
I wonder why the OP felt the need to quote the negative parts and leave the good ones out, mmm …..

Well look at OPs Post Histroy and you know that he is just negative about everything with Anet and GW2

Raziel.4216:

^ Those negative comments were cherrypicked, the review also points out lot of good stuff.
I wonder why the OP felt the need to quote the negative parts and leave the good ones out, mmm …..

I’ve not read the review and indeed there are a lot of good things to say about HOT. but unfortunately because pretty much everything Anet has added to GW2 in the last 18 months is based around whole map Meta Events that require highly populated maps to complete, the nature of the cherrypicked criticism is more than relevant.

I find the money spend on HoT to be such a waste. I did not plan on more of the meta events being the norm or must do in order to progress. The review reflects many of my friends who now are kittened at me cause I convinced them to buy HoT. Mobs are to difficult and it is a sorry thing to have to use LFG when the megaserver should be functioning properly.

I refuse to even click on the link to read it and give them add revenue.

This

Daroon.1736:

cherrypicked criticism

Is not compatible with this

Daroon.1736:

relevant.

Anything that’s cherrypicked will, by definition, ignore the context that it’s taken from.
But if you take a look at the whole review, including the cherrypicked criticism, the bad parts that the OP didn’t quote + the good points made in the review you can have a better picture.

Test.8734:

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

There was a long ago answer that districts weren’t possible, for technical reasons. They didn’t say why and that post is long gone with the internet winds.

Personally, if we can taxi in I don’t see why there can’t be a drop down option for the currently available shards to pull ourselves over to. Since there is the LFG now this might not be something they’ll revisit, but it would solve a lot of map population problems.